Pipelines should carry energy, not project power

A major international seminar in Delhi saw experts discussing the enormous potential for energy and transport links between South Asia and Central Asia.










29 November 2006
The Hindu

Experts call for deeper energy links between South and Central Asia
"Pipelines should carry energy, not project power"

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Underlining the tremendous scope for energy and transport linkages between South Asia and Central Asia, academics and policymakers from the region, participating in a major international seminar here, said commercial viability and energy requirements should determine the architecture of transit corridors rather than geopolitics and power projection.

Their recommendation flies in the face of the U.S. opposition to the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline and the promotion of west-bound pipeline grids out of Central Asia as a strategic alternative to grids linking the region to energy-deficit areas in Asia.

The U.S. State Department last year unified its South Asian and Central Asian desks and has sought to use India to balance the growing role of China and Russia in the Eurasian heartland.

However, most experts at the three-day seminar on energy and transit linkages between Central Asia and South Asia, which ended here Monday, stressed the importance of India deepening its engagement with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as well as bilaterally and trilaterally with China and Russia.

"The contradictions and competing trends among various countries in the region can be minimised if these countries are made stakeholders in existing and prospective projects of energy and transport linkage," one of the seminar's recommendations states.

Organised by the Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation and the Central Asian Studies Programme of Jawaharlal Nehru University, the seminar brought together over 100 leading academics, energy specialists and officials from India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Japan and Israel.

Keeping in view the physical obstacles, the adverse security situation in Afghanistan and the reluctance of interested parties to make huge investments there, the Central and South Asian countries should look for a reliable alternative option to bring Kazakh and Caspian hydrocarbon resources to South Asia, the seminar recommends.

Many participants also stressed the importance of India working on a "North-South corridor continuum" to link Central Asia to South Asia via Iran, China and Pakistan. Central to such an initiative was the need for confidence-building measures.

A representative of the Energy Charter Secretariat noted that the Energy Charter Treaty provided a legal framework for multilateral cooperation among countries which might otherwise have difficulty working with one another.

The seminar underscored the benefits of interconnections between the South Asian and Central Asian electricity grids as the movement of electricity posed fewer geological difficulties than the movement of hydrocarbons. One of its recommendations was also for India and China to reopen the traditional India-Central Asia overland trade route via Ladakh in India and the Xinjiang region of China to the Central Asian Republics.

In the end, seminar participants stressed that the problem of connectivity between Central Asia and South Asia could only be solved through "a cooperative and inclusive approach" as against a competitive and exclusive one. "Geo-economics and geo-culture must take priority over competitive geopolitics to address the problem of connectivity between these two important regions of Asia," its final recommendation states.

Further reading:

Oil, power and the new Silk Road in Asia
Heritage Foundation report: U.S. Interests and Central Asia Energy Security

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"The answer to the Iran nuclear issue is more democracy"

Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003,Shirin Ebadi is a prominent lawyer and human rights activist within her country, Iran, as well as an advocate for human rights around the world. In an exclusive interview to The Hindu during a recent visit to India, she spoke about the situation in Iran and the impact the `war of terror' is having on human rights.




















28 November 2006
The Hindu

"The answer to the nuclear issue is more democracy"

Interview of Shirin Ebadi by Siddharth Varadarajan

What is your assessment of the effect the so-called global war on terrorism has had on the human rights situation around the world?

I must say at the outset that any kind of violence is reprehensible to me. Terrorism solves no problem. But fighting terrorism has become an excuse to infringe on human rights. On the pretext of `national interest,' governments around the world are increasing their powers and controls. But this has not led to a decrease in terrorism. In fact, it seems as if it's on the rise. And the reason may be that we are only looking at the effects and not the causes of terrorism. It's only when we look at the root causes that we can combat terrorism.

And what are the root causes?

Terrorism has two main causes. First, prejudice, which comes from ignorance and illiteracy. By bringing awareness, one can possibly fight prejudice. The education system everywhere is inadequate. For example, let's take history. We learn of wars and how one side has been the victor and one side the loser. But never do we learn of the actions that would have led to prevention of those wars. Of course, worse than insufficient education is the lack of any education at all. For example, in your country, many children do not go to school due to poverty.

The second cause of terrorism is injustice. When a nation lives under poverty for generations and the world is indifferent, when several generations live under dictatorships and the world is indifferent, when many generations are forced to migrate away from their lands and the world is indifferent, then, because they are hopeless, people may take actions and forget reasoning and common sense and light fires that can burn both themselves and others.

Like the Palestinian grandmother in Occupied Gaza who recently became a suicide bomber...

This is one of the manifestations of hopelessness. I'm against any kind of violence, even if it's carried out against oneself. But I want to understand why some people attempt violent action. Eighty per cent of the world's wealth is controlled by one per cent of its population. With food wasted in European and American restaurants, one can feed many in other countries. How do we ever expect in such a world to find peace?

Turning to Iran specifically, how has the coming to power of President Ahmadinejad affected the human rights situation there?

It hasn't gotten any better.

In what way?

Censorship is tougher. More newspapers have been shut down. The police have attacked peaceful gatherings of women's groups, student and workers' groups. Many workers have been arrested. Inflation has sharply risen. Mr. Ahmadinejad promised in his election campaign that he would fight corruption. But we're yet to see anything happen in that area.

As a human rights defender inside Iran, what are the avenues available for you to struggle? Are there any legal remedies, for example? What about mobilising public opinion?

Unfortunately, our courts are not independent and they do not carry out justice. For years, I've been defending only political prisoners. And in none of these courts have I ever seen justice carried out. One of the most famous Iranian journalists was my client. He was sentenced to six years in prison just for writing an article.

Akbar Ganji?

Yes, Ganji. Two of Iran's most famous trial lawyers are also my clients. Both have been sentenced to five years only because they accepted to represent political prisoners. One of them has been in jail for the past four and a half years. His name is Nasser Zarafshan. And the other has been in jail for seven months and we have brought him out on bail. If his sentence becomes final, he must also go to prison for the five years. As such, you can see that I have no hope in the courts.

Our only hope is public opinion, whether nationally or internationally. And it is for this reason that I go on trips repeatedly.

What about the so-called reformist wing? Do new parties such as Ettemad-e-Milli of Mehdi Karroubi and others offer any hope?

For years, the people thought the reform wing of the establishment could offer a way out. And it is for this reason that Khatami got elected [as President]. Unfortunately, his programme was defeated and he couldn't implement his reform ideas. One of the reasons he failed was that power is in the hands of extremists and fundamentalists within the establishment and they never did let him implement his programmes. Let me give you an example. Khatami wanted the government to join the Convention against Torture and the [Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women] CEDAW. At the time, the parliamentary majority was with the reformists and they did pass these laws. But the Guardian Council refused to allow them to stand. In fact, one of the high-ranking members of the Guardian Council said in public that one of the worst days of his life was when the CEDAW came before him. His point was that why should the parliament of an Islamic Republic pass this law in the first place for him to then have to reject it!

When I was in Tehran last August, I interviewed the Islamic scholar and dissident Mohsen Kadivar and he spoke of attempts being made to restrict his international movements. Do you experience such attempts?

It always happens but as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, by name is quite well known. Also, I must add that I go only to places that are independent of governments. I'm not siding with any government. For example, I am here in India on the invitation of a small NGO, Apne Aap, which works on women who live in red light districts with their children. Neither the Iranian government nor the Indian [government] can limit or repress such small organisations. I'm a human rights activist and I work only with people. Today, I am going to pay a visit to the Manipuri human rights activist Irom Sharmila, to visit a person who has protested and raised her voice by being on hunger strike for six years against a law that is unreasonable, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. [Later on Sunday, Ms. Ebadi met Ms. Sharmila at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and said she would raise her case and the AFSPA issue before the U.N. Human Rights Commission.]

As a human rights activist, does it complicate life when you have the U.S. Congress passing laws giving money for `democracy' and regime change in Iran? Does this help your work or make it more difficult?

Democracy cannot be purchased and America cannot hope to designate money to bring democracy. It is not a commodity to export. Democracy is a culture. This culture exists in Iran and for years Iranians have fought for democracy. The budget that the U.S. has set aside to bring democracy in Iran does not make anything easier for human rights defenders and activists. If anything, it gives the government a pretext to crack down on anybody who is fighting for democracy by branding them as people who get money from outside.

As a concerned Iranian, how do you look at the nuclear controversy? Do you think the United States' approach of threatening sanctions against your country will produce a good outcome?

I'm categorically against nuclear bombs for any country — India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, all of them. But regarding nuclear power in Iran, I've never been part of the government and I've no idea what goes on behind closed doors. As such, I'm not really sure what stage we're at in the nuclear energy programme. The Iranian government claims that it is using nuclear energy peacefully but the international community does not accept this claim. And the reason is clear: Because democracy is not advanced in Iran, there is no public supervision. It is only natural that when decisions are made behind closed doors, the world does not trust those claims. The only way out is advanced democracy. And if the world can see that people are supervising, or watching, the government's actions, then they will have to trust what it has to say.

Economic sanctions have never been detrimental to governments, only to people. The Iraq experience proves this. Hundreds of thousands of children died in Iraq of hunger but Saddam and his family became richer. Other solutions need to be sought out.

Are you afraid that the nuclear question is becoming a pretext to target Iran, to attack it militarily?

I can only hope that America has learned something from the Iraq situation. And I don't think the American people are for another war.

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‘The protest of poor marginalised people is not considered news’

In the latest issue of Communalism Combat, Teesta Setalvad spoke to me about the attitude of the Indian media to issues of mass mobilisation and caste in the context of the recent killing of Dalits in Kherlanji in Maharashtra as well as of Tribals protesting their displacement by a big industrial project in Kalinganagar, Orissa earlier this year.

One of my conclusions:

"The reason I think Kalinganagar became a no-go area was because it came at the intersection of three media blind spots – first, the protest of poor marginalised people is not considered news; second, allegations of wrongdoing by the security forces are almost always ignored or played down whether they occur in Kashmir, the North-east or against the tribals in Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and elsewhere; third, the target of public opposition was an industrial project which the media sees as India’s passport to economic development.

So as an institution, we have bought into the myth that big business and the security forces can do no wrong, and that in any case, the protest of some poor folk being displaced in some "remote" part of the country is not news."

Click on the link below to read the full interview.

November 2006
Communalism Combat

‘The protest of poor marginalised people is not considered news’

— Siddharth Varadarajan
Associate Editor, The Hindu

It is an unfortunate fact that both on television and in print the national media seems to show an increasing tendency to ignore the problems of working people, especially the peasantry and working class, and the poor in general. Coverage, when it occurs, is superficial and episodic. But what accounts for this bias? I think there are several distinct but interrelated factors.

First, is the effect so-called market forces have on the media. In general, the economics of the Indian media is driven by advertising revenues. This, in turn, means that editorial content must yield space to advertising because it is the latter which pays the bills! So there is a problem of real physical space – column inches or minutes on prime time – for all kinds of news. But excessive dependence on advertisers also means that advertisers get to have a say in both the content of specific news items (especially at particular moments of controversy) and also in terms of whether the overall ambience created by the news helps sell a product or not. And within this it is clear that an advertiser would not like to have a commercial for his or her product sandwiched by news of starvation, poverty, disease.

Second, the composition of the newsroom, particularly of the English national news media and even the electronic vernacular channels, leans heavily towards higher socio-economic demographic strata. So there is also a sense in which the sensibility of the average journalist may not really be attuned to the problems of the poor and marginalised.

Third, the established political parties, the government and those who wield economic and social influence play a very big role in defining what constitutes "news". What the prime minister says or does, for example, is always considered news. The same goes for statements and decisions by captains of industry. But news of people’s struggles and problems get dismissed as "activism", "NGOs" etc. We saw how farmers’ suicides were not considered news (except in The Hindu and a few other papers) but when the prime minister travelled to Maharashtra there
was quite a bit of coverage. But as soon as the PM moved to other things, so too did the news coverage. Hardly anyone took note of the fact that farmers’ suicides actually increased after the visit.

So within the constraints of the market and of the social demographics of the media there is also bias and lack of professionalism. And I think these are the factors that account for vast aspects of the lived experience of the majority of Indians being considered irrelevant as far as "news" is concerned.

On 'Page 3' journalism

As far as your questions on page three kind of journalism is concerned, I am not at all against media coverage for "society" events, fashion shows, religious festivals and the like. Supplements exist precisely to cater to sectional interests and as society becomes more prosperous and variegated this is only to be expected.

Sadly, however, our supplements, instead of catering to the diversity of tastes which we know exists, have become homogenised around a shallow "golden mean" of celebrity news, gossip, astrology, vastu and other obscurantist cults, and a certain kind of film writing that has nothing to do with paying Bollywood the due it deserves. The same is true for what passes as "spiritual" writing, which is more akin to pop psychology than the exploration of philosophical issues and concerns.

And unfortunately, many of these kinds of things have begun to invade
mainstream news spaces, further marginalising the problems and concerns of the majority of Indians.

On Kalinganar

The Kalinganagar struggle (in Orissa) is an interesting one and I’m glad you
brought it up. Not only was the horror of the massacre of the protesting tribals played down – there was no live coverage, no breathless commentary of the type even the smallest terrorist incident provokes – and even though what followed was especially gruesome (the mutilation of the bodies of the dead tribals by the police) there was virtually no coverage. The reason I think Kalinganagar became a no-go area was because it came at the intersection of three media blind spots
– first, the protest of poor marginalised people is not considered news; second, allegations of wrongdoing by the security forces are almost always ignored or played down whether they occur in Kashmir, the North-east or against the tribals in Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and elsewhere; third, the target of public opposition was an industrial project which the media sees as India’s passport to economic development.

So as an institution, we have bought into the myth that big business and the security forces can do no wrong, and that in any case, the protest of some poor folk being displaced in some "remote" part of the country is not news.

On the role of global finance

I don’t think global finance has played a role in the Indian print media scene since other than on a very limited basis there is no foreign capital in newspapers. As for television, I am not sure our channels are so bad because of global finance. Star News is linked to Murdoch and CNN-IBN and Channel 7 to the AOL-Time Warner, I suppose. But the coverage of all channels is uniformly bad. But certainly, as the role of domestic monopolies and global finance increase, I think all these negative trends that I have spoken about will get magnified.

On whether the Jessica Lal and Mattoo cases mark a turning point

Can the Kherlanji case become a Jessica Lal or Priyadarshini Mattoo case for the media? You know, I doubt it will. The Jessica Lal and Priyadarshini Mattoo
cases became middle class cause célèbres not just because the men involved in the crime were powerful and influential but also because we as a middle class society could identify with the victims. She was one of us, is what every right-thinking person in Delhi would have thought when they heard the shocking news of the acquittals of the killers of Priyadarshini and Jessica. But when it comes to Kalinganagar or Kherlanji, there is not just a remoteness of physical distance but also of caste and class that kicks in.

Or even the BMW case. Had the Nanda boy killed "one of us", I don’t think the case would have gone the shocking way it did. At least not without the media kicking up a fuss. At the same time, I want to clarify that being a middle class victim of a crime committed by a powerful person does not now mean justice will be done. In our social hierarchy, the politician and the policeman are still top of the pile. But the Jessica and Priyadarshini cases have stripped them of a certain amount of immunity enjoyed. This is a good thing. But as in these two cases I would like to see our justified concerns being converted to all cases where powerful offenders target the weak and defenceless, the Dalits, Muslims and tribals. No doubt the media, including my paper, The Hindu, have a big role to play in sensitising public opinion on this point.

(As told to Teesta Setalvad/Communalism Combat)

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New Delhi, Beijing talk nuclear for the first time

China may finally be open to backing India-United States deal on civil nuclear energy.







22 November 2006
The Hindu

NEWS ANALYSIS

New Delhi, Beijing talk nuclear for the first time

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Regardless of the precise meaning either side attaches to the words used, the very mention of "civil nuclear cooperation" in Tuesday's summit-level joint declaration by India and China marks a turning point in bilateral relations between the two Asian giants.

Considering the expansion of civil nuclear energy to be an "essential and important component of their national plans to ensure energy security," India and China, the declaration said, "agree to promote cooperation in the field of nuclear energy, consistent with their respective international commitments." The joint declaration, released after talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Hu Jintao of China, also notes the need for an "international energy order," and for global energy systems to take into account the needs of both countries based on a "stable, predictable, secure and clean energy future." "In this context, international civilian nuclear cooperation should be advanced through innovative and forward-looking approaches, while safeguarding the effectiveness of international non-proliferation principles."

"This is the first time that a reference to civil nuclear cooperation has been made in a joint document at this level," C.V. Ranganathan, a former Indian Ambassador to China, told The Hindu. Even though the declaration talks of consistency with international non-proliferation principles and commitments, said Mr. Ranganathan, this had to be seen in the context of Chinese concerns about the repercussions from North Korea's recent nuclear test as well as Beijing's lingering unhappiness at the Indian nuclear tests of 1998.

Indeed, the willingness to enter into a dialogue on civil nuclear cooperation with India suggests that China might finally be revising its hitherto negative assessment of the July 2005 India-United States nuclear deal.

Past unease

More than the possibility of India being able to access nuclear energy technology, Beijing is opposed to Washington's "unilateralism" in trying to rewrite the rules of the international non-proliferation regime for its own preferred friends and allies.

In China's first demi-official comment on the deal last October, People's Daily noted in an unsigned commentary that if "the U.S. buys another country in with nuclear technologies in defiance of an international treaty, other nuclear suppliers also have their own partners of interest as well as good reasons to copy what the U.S. does."

More recently, in a sharply worded commentary published on October 30 in the wake of the North Korean nuclear test, People's Daily said "national security," and not nuclear non-proliferation, was the "strategic objective" of the U.S.

The newspaper wrote:

"India established a nuclear programme not to defend against or attack the U.S., Russia, Britain, China, France or even Pakistan. India has three to seven times the amount of conventional weapons that Pakistan has. It is Pakistan that needs nuclear weapons. ... After India tested nuclear weapons, the U.S. quickly realised that imposing sanctions was not the best direction to take. It chose instead to find ways to encourage India to be a responsible nuclear power and to help India develop into one of the economic superpowers of the 21st century. It even wanted to develop a civilian nuclear power programme with India. This was in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. ... It is clear that the United States's deliberate violation of the NPT is a move to contain other nations. U.S. assistance to India is a kind of nuclear proliferation, vertical proliferation."

Ironically, the same commentary also attacked Washington for turning a blind eye to outward proliferation from Pakistan.

"As long as the U.S. needs anti-terrorism support, it will keep Pakistan on its side as a non-NATO ally and give it billions of dollars of support. It no longer worries about the impact of a nuclear Pakistan on the NPT. It will not concern
itself with the legitimacy of the Pakistani government, or investigate the legal
liabilities of A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb."

Changing norms?

By now agreeing to explore civil nuclear cooperation with India if China's "international commitments" allow it, President Hu is implicitly telling the Indian side his Government is not opposed to the Nuclear Suppliers' Group changing its norms to permit commerce with India. "China is slowly coming around to the India-U.S. deal," said Mr. Ranganathan, who also served as Convener of the Government's National Security Advisory Board in 2005. "They may hide behind some other NSG member's opposition but I don't think they will be the first to object."

The two countries have engaged in nuclear commerce in the past, notably in 1995, when Beijing supplied low-enriched uranium for the Tarapur reactor, as well as in the 1980s when India apparently sourced heavy water from China. (Rumours to this effect within the U.S. nonproliferation community have never beenn confirmed) Until June 2004, when China joined the NSG, Chinese nuclear exports were governed by the 1997 Regulations of the PRC on the Control of Nuclear Exports as well as its December 2003 White Paper, "China's Non-proliferation policy and measures". According to these documents, Chinese nuclear exports were to be based on adherence to three principles — guarantee for peaceful use, acceptance of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, and no retransfer of nuclear material to a third country without prior permission. Chinese law only prohibited the sale of equipment or technology to any nuclear facility that was not under IAEA safeguards. Thus, the sale of nuclear equipment and material to safeguarded Indian facilities was totally consistent with Chinese law till 2004.

After joining the NSG, however, China brought its domestic rules in conformity with those of the 45-country cartel. As spelt out most recently in its September 2005 White Paper, "China's Endeavours for Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-proliferation", "acceptance of IAEA full-scope safeguards by importing countries has been set by China as the precondition for nuclear exports." It is precisely this "precondition" that the U.S. now wants the NSG to waive for India.

Cooperation with Pakistan

One imponderable in the emerging nuclear cooperation equation, however, is the possibility of China and Pakistan deepening their links in this sector with or without the NSG's blessings.

China has built a 300 MW reactor at Chashma, and is in the process of constructing a second 300 MW reactor at the same location under the "grandfather clause" of the NSG rules, which allows the completion of projects signed before a supplier country formally joined the cartel.

According to a report in the October 5 issue of Nucleonics Week, the widely respected trade journal of the international nuclear industry, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) wants China to set up two 1,000 MW reactors alongside the already-functioning Canadian-built Kanupp-1 reactor near Karachi. "The PAEC and Chinese entities are holding discussions about terms, under which Pakistan would import two 1,000-MW PWRs, currently on the drawing board at design institutes controlled by China National Nuclear Corp., or CNNC," it wrote, quoting diplomatic sources. The normally reliable journal also quoted Chinese sources as saying that if the two reactors were exported to Pakistan, they would be placed under `Infcirc 66' IAEA safeguards for standalone facilities.

In February, China and Pakistan signed a bilateral energy agreement, including the possibility of eventual reactor sales. Though Pakistan has since asked the NSG to grant it the same exemption it is presently considering for India, China has not said anything on how it would seek to reconcile its desire to sell reactors to Pakistan with its international commitments. With CNNC still completing the design work on its 1,000 MW reactors, however, Nucleonics Week speculates that it may take several years before the proposed Sino-Pakistani collaboration would reach the stage where NSG clearance might be required.

Complicating factor

For India, the one complicating factor in all this is that the U.S. Congress has written into its recent legislation authorising nuclear commerce with India the restrictive condition that the NSG must have made an exception to its rigid rules for India and India alone.

In particular, Section 105 (9)(b) of the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation legislation passed by the Senate earlier this month states that the NSG must "not permit nuclear commerce with any non-nuclear weapon state other than India that does not have IAEA safeguards on all nuclear facilities," a clear reference to Pakistan and Israel.

In its interactions with Pakistani officials, the Bush administration has said that while it did not consider Pakistan to be eligible for nuclear commerce, the question could be revisited at some point in the future. Theoretically, if China seeks — and wins — NSG clearance for its proposed cooperation with Pakistan, the U.S. deal with India would stand nullified. Of course, the NSG operates by consensus, and the U.S. can always block a rule change for Pakistan as and when the issue comes up. This means that China too could do the same to India if it wants to. After Tuesday's Manmohan-Hu summit and joint declaration, such a possibility can be considered quite remote. Nevertheless, India should take nothing for granted. Never before has the task of carefully calibrating its relations with both the U.S. and China been more important.

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No Plan B, only the certainty of defeat

Unless the Bush administration recognises that Iran might hold the key to peace in Iraq, the people of Iraq will pay the price of American adventurism for years to come.

The Hindu Sunday Magazine

No Plan B, only the certainty of defeat

SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN

WITH the absence of weapons of mass destruction and a rising number of U.S. military casualties exposing both the lies and the hubris of the Iraq occupation, the conviction of Saddam Hussein was meant to be the cathartic moment when all misgivings about the wisdom of the war enterprise could finally be put to rest. If the invasion, in the final retelling of the tale, was about ridding the Iraqi people of dictatorship, what better way to bring about closure than to have the dictator packed off to the gallows? Brushing aside the well-documented concerns of human rights groups and even a United Nations panel — the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention — the Iraqi High Tribunal rushed through its work completely oblivious to the need for fairness. But in the end, not even its improbably timed and wholly predictable verdict sentencing the former Iraqi president to death could extricate the Bush presidency from the jaws of political defeat.

Reaction to loss

President Bush has reacted to the loss of both houses of Congress to the Democrats in this month's elections by replacing Donald Rumsfeld, the Iraq war's chief prosecutor, with Robert M. Gates, a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency. A close associate of James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, who served as Bush 41's Secretary of State and National Security Adviser respectively, Gates has directly and indirectly been associated with a policy line on critical foreign policy issues such as Iran that is sometimes at variance with the Bush orthodoxy. The Deep Establishment of which he is a part was always a little wary of the ideological baggage that the Neoconservatives had loaded on to the project for the preservation and extension of American power in the Post-Cold War world. And as the Iraq fiasco threatens to undermine American hegemony in West Asia by dragging the U.S. to the brink of a political and even military defeat, the search for an alternative strategy to defeat the resistance and stabilise Iraq has emerged as the number one strategic concern of all sections of the establishment.

So apparent is the impending humiliation that even the Neocon ideologues who supplied the ideological justification for the Iraq invasion are now rapidly deserting the sinking ship of the "Greater Middle East" that the 2003 invasion was meant to launch. Richard Perle, ranking hawk on the Defence Policy Board Advisory Committee until 2004, is no longer so sure the war was a good idea. "I think now I probably would have said, `Let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists'," he is quoted by Vanity Fair magazine as saying in a forthcoming issue. Other influential Neocons who have done a flip-flop include Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute whose proximity to senior Bush strategist Karl Rove is well known. In 2002, Ledeen launched a withering attack in the National Review on Scowcroft for "[coming] out against the desperately-needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein and the rest of the terror masters". Today, he claims "there are many ways to wage a war" and that he never advocated military action.

In 2002, Perle and Ledeen were no lone rangers but part of a cabal with deep influence in the Pentagon and White House. Other members of the group included Rumsfeld, his erstwhile deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, senior Pentagon intelligence official Stephen Cambone, and Abram N. Shulsky, who headed the `Office of Special Plans' from which crooked intelligence about Iraqi WMD flowed thick and fast.

When he takes charge of the Pentagon, the easiest job Gates will have will be to shut down Shulsky and the rest of the Neocons but that will not take him or the Bush administration any closer to an honourable exit from Iraq. As matters stand, two high-level panels are in the process of reviewing United States' strategy in that country. There is the Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. Set up by Congress in March this year, its recommendations are expected shortly. There is also the military's own review process undertaken by a team of colonels put together by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace. With the prospect of failure weighing heavily on its mind, the Bush administration is hoping that either of these panels will come up with an elusive roadmap out of the Iraq quagmire.

Today, more than 150,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Iraq. The total number of U.S. service personnel killed is 2,838 and is rising every week. The bill for military operations stands at over $300 billion, compared to the $38 billion spent by the U.S. government on the reconstruction of Iraq. Economists Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz have pegged the overall cost to the U.S. economy of the Iraq war at over $2 trillion. On the other side of the ledger, the comprehensive field-based survey of mortality rates published in the Lancet suggests close to 700,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since the U.S. invasion of their country. Most parts of the country still do not have uninterrupted power supply with even Baghdad neighbourhoods getting electricity for just a few hours a day. Oil production, the bedrock of the Iraqi economy, stands at 12 per cent less than the level it was at before the war.

But more than economic hardship, it is the relentless, mysterious, all-pervading violence, which most concerns the average Iraqi. The U.S. says it wants an end to sectarian killings but many of its policies have exacerbated divisions. [There is now open talk of the U.S. "unleashing the Shiite card" as a strategy]. And the occupation, in turn, has benefited from the bloodletting. Shia-Sunni violence, which had abated in 2004 and 2005 as rival militias sought to coordinate their attacks on the U.S. occupation force, has once again become a major problem following the mysterious bombing of the Askari mosque in Samara earlier this year.

Though the Bush administration is waiting for the Baker-Hamilton and Pace reports with bated breath, there are only a discrete number of policy options from which these two panels will have to choose their recommendations. And each has its own limitations and weaknesses.

Option 1: Reduce troops

This is the option favoured by most Democrats, and presumably by the U.S. electorate, which would like to get its soldiers out of harm's way in Iraq. But the drawback here is that the `Iraqisation' of security has not at all gone according to plan. Not only are the U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers poorly motivated, it is clear that they are functioning as little more than a sectional army with links to the Shia militias. In any event, a drawn down U.S. force would continue to be the target of resistance attacks and would eventually give rise to pressure to withdraw completely from Iraq. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon is keen for such an eventuality.

Option 2: Increase troops

Influential military analysts and politicians like Senator John McCain have argued that the U.S. has too few soldiers on the ground and that far from reducing the number of service personnel deployed in Iraq, there is a need dramatically to augment their presence. The McCain plan would see tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops rotated into trouble spots like Baghdad and the "Sunni triangle", as well as Shia strongholds with the aim of taking on and liquidating the Mahdi militia of Moqtada al-Sadr. Tempting though this option sounds, all previous U.S. attempts to defeat the Iraqi resistance by overwhelming force as in Fallujah, Tal Afar, Baqubah and elsewhere have led to higher U.S. casualties and an increase in Iraqi alienation. Sending more U.S. troops in, then, will only aggravate the situation further.

Option 3: Partition by another name

With neither a reduction nor an increase in troops that are palatable as options for U.S. planners, it is possible that the scenario of partition might gain more traction. Senator Joseph Biden and Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations have come up with a plan for the three-way division of Iraq into loose confederating units that will amount to partition by another name as time passes and religious and ethnic militias become stronger. This is the nightmare scenario for most Iraqis, the one option that would make matters — intolerable though they are now — even worse. The division of Iraq into Shia, Sunni and Kurdish enclaves will inevitably lead to demographic cleansing and bloodshed of an unimaginable proportion and also force Iraq's neighbours, especially Turkey, to intervene. To forestall a Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan, the suggestion made is that U.S. forces relocate there. Even if that maintains stability in the north, the southern part of Iraq would descend into chaos.

Option 4: Regional conference

Given the experience of the Dayton conference, which allowed the U.S. to enforce peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina, some analysts have suggested that the convening of a regional conference on Iraq with the participation of the invading powers as well neighbours like Iran, Turkey and Syria might open up the prospects for the eventual stabilisation of the country. But as Richard Holbrooke, the architect of Dayton has reminded us in a recent interview, the Ohio conference worked because the U.S. was there to bomb recalcitrant factions into submission. Here, the conference is being convened because of the failure of the military option. And that will certainly affect the dynamics of the process as far as the U.S. is concerned.

Nevertheless, of all the options available, certainly this one looks the least unpalatable from the Iraqi and regional perspective. Of course, it would involve the Bush administration giving up its aversion to direct engagement with Iran despite the latter's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. In 2004, Robert Gates and Zbignbiew Brezinski co-chaired a Council on Foreign Relations report on Iran, which advocated the resumption of dialogue between Washington and Tehran. In 2003, Rumsfeld and the Neocons in government got the Bush administration to rebuff a major overture made by the Iranians for a comprehensive dialogue. With Rumsfeld gone and the Neocons in retreat, it is possible Washington may be more receptive to the idea of working with Tehran. At any rate, as part of his work for the Iraq Study Group, James Baker recently had a long meeting with Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations.

There was a time the U.S. used to boast of its ability to fight and win two wars simultaneously at different locations halfway around the world. Iraq has shown that it is not even possible for it to win one properly. Iran today has said it is willing to work with the U.S. provided the U.S. is receptive to its legitimate concerns. In many ways, this offer holds the key to winning the peace in Iraq. But does President Bush have the courage and foresight to realise it?

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Delayed, perhaps, but not quite dead

The Democrats' resounding victory in Congress makes the task of tying up the India-U.S. nuclear agreement's loose ends more difficult but the underlying strategic rationale for the deal from the American perspective remains strong.

10 November 2006
The Hindu

Nuclear deal: delayed but not quite dead

Siddharth Varadarajan

IN HANDING the Republicans a "thumping" in Tuesday's mid-term election, the average American voter has signalled his displeasure at a broad range of policies being pursued by the Bush administration. Top among these is Iraq, where mounting U.S. casualties from the illegal invasion and occupation of that country have led to calls for a major change of strategy. Nancy J. Pelosi, the new majority leader in the House of Representatives, has vowed to push for a new bipartisan Iraq policy and in his first comments President George W. Bush has signalled his readiness to explore new options in cooperation with the Democrats. Mr. Bush knows there can be no "staying the course on Iraq" and has thrown his trusted Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, to the wolves. But the truth is that nobody in Washington — Republican or Democrat, Neocon or Scowcroftian — quite knows how to undo the mess. The relatively easy but totally disastrous option being favoured is partition. The difficult but much more rewarding path of using rapprochement with Iran as a means of stabilising both Iraq and Afghanistan will probably still be considered anathema.

Though India has a vital stake in how the American policy debate over Iraq shapes up, the Manmohan Singh Government is most concerned about what the altered equations on Capitol Hill will mean for the U.S.-India nuclear agreement. At one level, this is hardly surprising. The deal holds out the prospect of an end to the international boycott that India has suffered on the civil nuclear cooperation front since 1974. But the deal also brings with it collateral baggage that many in India find too onerous to make the entire transaction worthwhile. The `technical' battle on separation and safeguards has not yet fully been won; and the strategic and political costs of proximity to an America wedded to destructive policies across Asia have yet to be toted up.

The use of U.S. military power in Iraq and Afghanistan and the coercive discourse against Iran have brought anarchy and instability to our very doorstep and degraded the overall security environment in our extended neighbourhood. Whether the Indian deal sinks or swims, it is far more important, then, that the election result in the U.S. induces a dramatic turnaround in American policy towards West Asia. The world cannot postpone the resumption of nuclear commerce with India indefinitely; sooner rather than later, with or without the exertions of the Bush administration, it will come. But if the disaster that is Iraq continues, or if a conflict is initiated with Iran, the damage that results will last a long time.

Pelosi's support

Having said that, there is little danger of the Indian deal sinking even if the White House does not manage to win the approval of the Senate during the "lame duck" session that begins next week. When the U.S. and India Nuclear Cooperation Act of 2006 was put to vote before the House of Representatives on July 26, it passed with such an overwhelming majority — 359 yeas to 68 nays — that even the ejection of 28 Republicans at Tuesday's hustings will not alter the fundamental balance. In other words, there is no reason to imagine the deal will not win more than 300 yeas again if and when it comes up for vote next year.

There is, however, a danger that in the new Congress, some of the "killer" amendments considered this year might gain more traction. For example, Ms. Pelosi, who will be the most important member of the House, strongly backed the deal but also favoured the Berman amendment making U.S.-India nuclear cooperation conditional on an end to fissile material production by India. The Berman amendment was defeated but Ms. Pelosi voted for the deal nevertheless. At the same time, her statement to the House on July 26 gives some indication of the importance she attaches to the issue of fissile material. "[Even] if the Berman amendment is not adopted, I hope that the agreement that will be presented to Congress for approval when negotiations are concluded [that is, the `123' agreement] contains a promise by India to halt the production of fissile material. Such a promise would improve the agreement and go a long way to convincing those who cannot support today's legislation that their concerns have been heard and that the Bush administration and the government of India has sought to respond to them."

Apart from the fissile material issue, it is possible that with the Democrats in ascendance, the House will want to take on powers of oversight in terms of requiring annual certification of Indian good behaviour from the White House. Such an attempt would fly in the face of India's attempts to dilute the existing legislative language on certification.

Taken together, the election results and the North Korean nuclear test also reduce the political space for the Bush administration to be flexible on New Delhi's concerns about references to an Indian nuclear test in the so-called 123 agreement. India will thus have to carefully evaluate the final product on the basis of its stated red lines and decide whether it is worthwhile to sign on the dotted line.

All told, the existing loose ends will have become more difficult to tie up as a result of Tuesday's election. But this does not mean the U.S. will allow its nuclear deal with India to die a quiet death. If the issue gets delayed beyond the lame duck session, it will have to be reintroduced at the committee stage in both houses of Congress next year. If President Bush and the Democrats are serious about seeking bipartisanship across a range of issues, the nuclear deal with India offers them an easy platform to test their relationship. For domestic political reasons, the Democrats may be reluctant to give President Bush the satisfaction of at least one success on the diplomatic front but it is unlikely that they will allow the establishment of a strong strategic partnership with India to be held ransom to such considerations.

Coming from different ends of the political spectrum, both Neocon and Liberal Internationalist see tremendous value in building a strong economic, strategic, and military relationship with India. Both wish to harness India's rising economic clout for the furtherance of American geopolitical goals in Asia and beyond. There are also strong business lobbies working actively behind the scenes. The stakes are high. If the nuclear deal is what it takes for India to be brought on board, the Democrats are just as likely to sign on as the Republicans.

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When Bob Gates came calling

President Bush's nominee for Secretary of Defence had sought to defuse India-Pakistan tensions in 1990. But was there really a nuclear danger, as Seymour Hersh claimed?






10 November 2006
The Hindu

When Robert M. Gates came calling

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi : Robert M. Gates, the man named by President George W. Bush as his nominee for the next U.S. Secretary of Defence, is a consummate Beltway insider with an extensive record of service within the American intelligence establishment going back at least three decades. A deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the Reagan Presidency, Mr. Gates also served the older Bush White House first as Deputy National Security Adviser under Brent Scowcroft and then as Director of the CIA.

During the Reagan administration, Mr. Gates was accused of establishing clandestine military links between Washington and first Iran and then Iraq. In South Asia, however, he is perhaps best remembered for the `mission' he undertook to Pakistan and India in May 1990 during a time of military tension between the two neighbours. In a subsequent retelling by Seymour Hersh in New Yorker magazine, the U.S. envoy is said to have helped avert a nuclear war between Pakistan and India, a claim that has been challenged by former officials in both countries as well as in the U.S.

In the spring of 1990, the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir was in full flow. Concerned by Pakistan's decision to maintain the forward deployment of troops deployed near the border for the Zarb-e-Momin military exercises conducted at the end of 1989, India decided to send two tank units to the Mahajan range in Rajasthan for "training" purposes. Although none of these military deployments on either side were of any real offensive significance, the situation began to deteriorate after a series of fiery declarations by Benazir Bhutto, who was Prime Minister of Pakistan at the time, and V.P. Singh, who was Prime Minister of India. Ms. Bhutto spoke of a "thousand year war" to "liberate" Kashmir while Mr. Singh told the country to be psychologically prepared for military conflict and warned Pakistan that it would not last "even thousand hours of war".

Peace mission

It was in this context that the Bush (Sr.) administration decided to despatch Mr. Gates on a peace mission. Travelling first to Islamabad on May 20, 1990, he met President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Army Chief Mirza Aslam Beg and counselled restraint. In New Delhi, he met Mr. Singh, the External Affairs Minister, I.K. Gujral, as well as Raja Ramanna, who was Minister of State for Defence. Two week after his return to Washington, the crisis de-escalated.

According to Hersh, the U.S. had picked up evidence that Pakistan was on verge of deploying its nuclear weapons during the crisis and it was this fact which made the Gates mission all the more urgent.

But scholars such as Devin Hagerty as well as officials who were present at the time dispute this. General Beg himself denies Pakistan had a fully assembled weapon at the time.

According to Indian analysts, there was a `nuclear' dimension to the Gates mission but it was not quite what Hersh claimed. In 1989, when the Bush administration confronted Ms. Bhutto with evidence of Pakistan's weapon-grade uranium enrichment programme, she undertook to suspend the programme.

In exchange, the White House continued to certify that Pakistan did not have nuclear weapons. Early in 1990, however, the CIA and NSA received intelligence that the enrichment programme had been re-started, perhaps in the context of increasing tension with India.

"In my view, Gates went to Pakistan to tell them the U.S. knew what was going on and that if they didn't stop, the U.S. President would no longer certify that they didn't have the bomb", says K. Subrahmanyam, the well-known strategic analyst. Later that year, this is precisely what happened, and the Pressler Amendment cutting off aid to Pakistan kicked in for the first time. "Certainly, when he came here he didn't even mention the N word at all," Mr. Subrahmanyam recalls.

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To the victor belongs the judge's gavel

The show trial of Saddam Hussein was not just a violation of international legal norms by a court operating under the reality of foreign occupation but also an insult to the victims in whose name this political farce was enacted.









7 November 2006
The Hindu

To the victor belongs the judge's gavel

Siddharth Varadarajan

THROUGHOUT HISTORY, law and war have been uncomfortable companions, each acknowledging the importance of the other but unwilling to compromise on the integrity of its domain. And yet, when the scales of justice meet musket and bomb, it is usually the logic and exigencies of war that prevail over the norms of law — with the task of explication and synthesis left for future generations of generals and jurists to work out.

So it was that the horrors of World War I eventually gave rise to prohibitions on the use of chemical and poisonous weapons, and the deliberate bombing of civilians during World War II to the Geneva Conventions. International trials were conducted at Nuremberg and Tokyo and the top leadership of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan condemned for a range of war crimes and crimes against humanity. With the atomic devastation of Japan weighing heavily on his mind, the lone Indian judge, Radhabinod Pal, gave a dissenting opinion on the Tokyo tribunal, questioning the right of victors — who were perhaps as guilty of crimes of their own — to pass judgment on the vanquished. His disquiet was unfashionable but prescient, with the evolution of international legal thinking finally validating his key concern. Sixty years after Little Boy massacred the people of Hiroshima, the International Court of Justice ruled that the use of nuclear weapons would "generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law" and thus would constitute a war crime.

Despite the arguable taint of victor's justice, however, there was at least one vital sense in which Nuremberg represented a significant advance in humanity's quest to subordinate war to law. The tribunal concluded that aggression was the supreme international crime, the fount of "accumulated evil" from which flowed every other violation that the world found so reprehensible about Hitler and Tojo. Though international attempts to control and punish aggression have so far proved highly elusive, the experience of the past 60 years has confirmed many times over the correctness of that important legal pronouncement.

That is why, of all the historical analogies invoked to justify the trial and sentencing to death of Saddam Hussein, perhaps none is more inappropriate than Nuremberg. For the arrest and trial of the former President of Iraq, not to speak of the death of 654,965 Iraqis who would otherwise have been alive, all flow from the U.S. government's illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003. By any legal, political or moral yardstick, what President George W. Bush and his administration did in attacking Iraq constitutes the supreme international crime of aggression.

But if not Nuremberg, is there another reference point? During his presidency, Mr. Hussein committed numerous crimes against his own people and his neighbours. While the architecture for international criminal accountability is still evolving, the Iraqi people, as an expression of their sovereignty, certainly have the right and duty to hold him accountable in a domestic court of law. As the culture of impunity makes way for justice, this is precisely what sovereign people are trying to do in Chile and other countries in Latin America. Though the temptation to resort to summary trial is enormous, these societies have realised the restitutive, cathartic value of respecting the rule of law, including the requirements of due process. Verdicts produced the hard way have far more value, especially in divided societies, than the easy exertions of a kangaroo court.

Unfortunately for Iraq, the Iraqi people are today not sovereign in their own land. The tribunal established by the U.S. occupation and its Iraqi surrogates is intended to serve the political purpose of legitimising a war that ought never to have happened. So outrageous has been the conduct of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (SICT), so biased have been its procedures and norms, that the verdict pronounced on Sunday — coincidentally timed for just before crucial mid-term polls in the U.S. — was a foregone conclusion. As pointed out by jurists at the time, the SICT's rules of procedure were rigged by U.S. advisers from the start to favour the prosecution side. Just to be on the safe side, most of the SICT judges were sent to Britain, one of the invading and occupying powers, for legal `training.'

The trial for the massacre of 148 people at al-Dujail village in 1982 began in October 2005 and ended in June this year when the presiding judge, Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman, abruptly terminated the defence side's arguments and presentation of witnesses. Mr. Abdel-Rahman had been carefully handpicked to run the court. An earlier presiding judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, was forced to resign after pressure from the puppet Iraqi authorities that he was too lenient on the former President.

U.N. Working Group's opinion

Mr. Hussein may appeal to the special Cassation Panel but the rules of the SICT state there is no further possibility for appeal or pardon and that the death warrant must be executed within 30 days of his appeal's disposition.

On September 1, 2006, concerned at the accumulating evidence of bias in the SICT's proceedings, the United Nations' Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) called for the trial to be replaced by an international tribunal. Established by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 1991, the Working Group's mandate is defined both by the U.N. General Assembly and the new U.N. Human Rights Council, which the Bush administration itself rooted for. In its final opinion on September 1, the Working Group concluded: "The deprivation of liberty of Mr. Saddam Hussein is arbitrary, being in contravention of Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Iraq and the US are parties."

The U.N. Working Group described Mr. Hussein's detention and trial as a "Category III" case under its mandate, defined as a situation where "the complete or partial non-observance of the relevant international standards set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the relevant international instruments accepted by the States concerned relating to the right to a fair trial is of such gravity as to confer on the deprivation of liberty, of whatever kind, an arbitrary character."

Among the issues highlighted in the Working Group's opinion was the serious and repeated violation of Article 14 of the ICCPR, which concerns a detainee's right to a defence and a fair trial. More specifically, the WGAD found that Mr. Hussein did not enjoy the right to be tried by an independent and impartial tribunal as required by Article 14(1) of the ICCPR. "The presiding judge of the chamber trying Saddam Hussein changed twice, as the result of political pressure. The current presiding judge is reported to have made statements incompatible with impartiality and the presumption of innocence enshrined in Article 14(2) of the ICCPR. The known circumstances surrounding the changes of the presiding judge of the trial chamber render the fact that the identities of the other judges composing the chamber are not known all the more preoccupying... Neither the defendants nor the public are in a position to verify whether these judges meet the requirements for judicial office, whether they are affiliated with political forces, whether their impartiality and independence is otherwise undermined."

The U.N. Working Group also concluded that Mr. Hussein "did not get adequate time and facilities for the preparation of his defence," as mandated by Article 14(3) of the ICCPR. "The severe restriction on access to top lawyers of his own choosing and the presence of US officials at such meetings violated his right to communicate with counsel. The assassination of two of his counsel during the course of his trial, Mr. Sadoun al-Janabi on 20 October 2005 and Mr. Khamis el-Obeidi on 21 June 2006 seriously undermined his right to defend himself through counsel of his own choosing."

Finally, Mr. Hussein, according to WGAD, did not enjoy the possibility to "obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same condition as witnesses against him," as required by Article 14(3)(e) of the ICCPR. "This guarantee was undermined by the failure to adequately disclose prosecution evidence to the defendants, the reading into the record of affidavits without an adequate possibility for the defence to challenge them and the sudden decision of the presiding judge to cut short the defence case on 13 June 2006."

So pitiable has been the legal procedure that the defence was not even afforded the chance of making its final written submissions to the court, as specified by the SICT's own rules. In their final plea, on the eve of the pronouncement of Sunday's verdict, Mr. Hussein's defence team argued that at the very least the court should comply with this legal requirement. But their plea fell on deaf ears because justice and law is not what the trial and tribunal are all about. Whatever his own sins, Mr. Hussein is being hanged to expiate for the transgressions of those who defied international law, world opinion, and common sense to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003. For them, sadly, there is no court where they could be arraigned. At least not today.

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Coming to terms with India's missing Muslims

The reality of exclusion and discrimination can no longer be denied. But the remedy requires political courage on the part of the Manmohan Singh Government and wisdom on the part of those claiming to speak for Muslims.

4 November 2006
The Hindu

Coming to terms with India's missing Muslims

Siddharth Varadarajan

WHEN THE Justice Rajinder Sachar committee submits its report on the socio-economic status of Muslims, the full extent of the community's exclusion will be obvious to all. Especially those who have made political careers out of the canard that Muslims in India enjoy special privileges and have been "appeased."

Based on the data leaked so far, it is evident there are entry barriers Muslims — who account for approximately 15 per cent of India's population — are unable to cross in virtually all walks of life. From the administration and the police to the judiciary and the private sector, the invisible hands of prejudice, economic and educational inequality seem to have frozen the `quota' for Muslims at three to five per cent. Thanks to a hysterical campaign run by the Bharatiya Janata Party and some media houses, the Sachar committee was denied data on the presence of Muslims in the armed forces. But even there it is apparent that the three per cent formula applies.

This gross under-presence of Muslims in virtually every sector is presaged by substantial inequalities in education. Muslim enrolment and retention rates at the primary and secondary levels are lower than the national average and this further magnifies existing inequalities at the college level as well as in the labour market. For virtually every socio-economic marker of well being, the Muslim is well below the national norm — not to speak of the level commensurate with her or his share of the national population — and the evidence suggests these inequalities are not decreasing over time.

This bleak statistical picture is rendered drearier still by new trends visible in many cities. Muslims, for example, find it extremely difficult to rent and buy property outside of "Muslim areas" in some metros. Apart from several journalists, I even know of one former Muslim Union Minister in Delhi whose Hindu colleagues had to intercede to find him a flat. In Mumbai, the situation is perhaps worse. Many Muslim businessmen have problems accessing credit, besides having to run the gamut of uncooperative officials who look upon them with suspicion at every turn. Even in politics, as Iqbal A. Ansari's recent book, Political Representation of Muslims in India, 1952-2004, has shown, Muslims have consistently been under-represented in the Lok Sabha and all State Assemblies since Independence except Kerala. Only half as many Muslim MPs and MLAs get elected as one might expect based on their population share. In the absence of our political parties throwing up a large enough number of Muslim elected representatives, clerics and obscurantists are only too willing to step into the breach.

The `war on terrorism' has added a new layer to this already intolerable situation as policemen across the country give free vent to their ignorance and religious prejudice. The tendency of law enforcement agencies to target Muslims during incidents of communal violence is well known. The complicity of the police in the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 was reprehensible but not so different from what the country witnessed at other times in other places. As for legal redress, neither government nor judiciary shows any sense of urgency. Terrorist crimes such as the Mumbai blasts are prosecuted energetically and this is a good thing. But no one is able to explain what happened to the cases stemming from the killing of Muslims in Mumbai in 1992 and 1993 nor why the Srikrishna Commission recommendations against erring policemen remain unimplemented.

The media are a corrective but only to a limited extent. If one section has sought to highlight the plight of Indian Muslims, another section is constantly ready to inflame prejudice by staging debates on irrelevant issues, giving undue prominence to ridiculous statements by unrepresentative `Muslim leaders' or broadcasting marital disputes within Muslim families (as one channel did last week) as proof of `Muslim backwardness.'

In the U.S., the old journalistic adage was `Jews is News'. In India, it seems, anything that shows Muslims as ignorant or fanatical helps propel TRP ratings, while rational comment is frowned upon as unhelpful. A Muslim MP was asked recently to take part in a TV debate on whether there should be reservation for Muslims. He agreed, but added that he would argue against it. The channel's reporter then tried convincing him that "surely your community needs reservation." When he didn't agree, the channel lost interest in putting him on air. One studio guest recently advised Muslims to shed their `persecution complex' and to not forget that theirs were the "hands that built the Taj Mahal." Though no one would dare accuse Dalits of "doing nothing" to uplift themselves, Muslims are blamed for their poverty and poor education. They are gratuitously advised to study hard, as if the problem of lack of schools, delinquent teachers, inadequate books, and poverty can be remedied by will power alone.

The reservation trap

It is against the backdrop of this highly vitiated atmosphere that the Manmohan Singh Government must formulate a response to the Sachar committee's findings. The reality of systemic inequality cannot be wished away and the Government must find the political courage to confront this situation head on. So serious are the implications of Muslim marginalisation that the Congress must open a channel of communication with other parties, including the BJP, to evolve a consensus on the necessity for urgent corrective measures.

Among the remedial measures to be considered, the least helpful in substantive as well as political terms will be reservation. Whatever they do, Muslim leaders and those who claim to speak in favour of Muslims, must avoid the trap that the demand for reservation is. Sixty years of affirmative action have led to some improvements for Dalits and Tribals but it is clear that the country and its rulers have used the sop of reservation as an excuse to do nothing about the persistent, underlying causes of caste-based inequality.

It is now universally recognised that the pursuit of "equality of outcomes" and "equality of opportunity" must go hand in hand. Even equality of opportunity has a formal and a substantive aspect. `Formal' equality means ending discrimination on the basis of caste, religion or gender. `Substantive' equality means overcoming the barriers (or benefits) children of equal native talent inherit from their parents so that none is advantaged or disadvantaged by birth. The India state pays lip service to the idea of equality of outcomes (through quotas) but completely ignores the necessity of crafting expenditure policies that can provide equality of opportunity. Nowhere is this more glaring than in the field of education where the increased notional access of Dalits and Tribals to university is undercut by high dropout rates and underperformance at the school level.

In a 2000 paper, Julian Betts and John Roemer model the amount of differential expenditure the United States government would have to make to provide equality of opportunity to its citizens. In a typology where they define four categories of males based on whether they are White or Black and whether their parents have `High' or `Low' education levels, Betts and Roemer conclude that the `equality of opportunity' expenditure on education must be nine times higher for members of the `Low Black' group than the `High Whites'. They also found that the `High Black,' `Low Black,' and `Low White' groups must all receive more than their per capita share of educational resources if equality of opportunity were to be guaranteed.

Both in the U.S. and in India today, the actual allocation of educational resources is regressive in that those who are affluent and socially privileged corner a greater share of social allocations for education than their relative size in the population. In reality, then, existing affirmative action — or reservation — is for the privileged and the goal of public policy has to be to reverse that by using the target of public expenditure. An important finding in Betts and Roemer's work is that economic targeting alone won't alter the relative distribution of income across cohorts. The targeting has to be aimed at the discriminated or excluded cohort.

In India, the first task of the government must be to guarantee formal equality of opportunity by dealing firmly with discrimination in the labour, housing and credit markets as well as educational system. Without instituting a system of reservation — which would generate more political heat than tangible benefit for Muslims — the Government must send out a clear and unambiguous message that the social cohesiveness and future growth prospects of the country require government departments and private firms to encourage the recruitment of Muslims. But in order to generate substantive equality of opportunity and uproot inequality and exclusion from their roots, the government has to guarantee better access to education at every level for Muslims, Dalits, Tribals, and OBCs.

All of this is only a first approximation and much more will need to be done. What is important, however, is that we recognise both the reality of Muslim exclusion and the urgent need to do something about it.

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