"We will put Nepal's relations with India on a new and equal footing"

Senior Nepali Maoist leader C.P. Gajurel on the future of Nepal-India relations and on the bizarre set of coincidences which led to his arrest in Chennai in 2003 for attempting to travel on a forged British passport.








30 January 2007
The Hindu

"We will put Nepal's relations with India on a new and equal footing"
Out of Indian jail, Nepali Maoist leader C.P. Gajurel looks to future

Siddharth Varadarajan

NEW DELHI: A patently doctored British passport and the unfortunate coincidence of a British diplomat's spouse passing through Chennai airport immigration at the time of his attempted departure for Europe in 2003 led senior Nepali Maoist leader C.P. Gajurel to spend more than three years in an Indian prison.

Back in Delhi now to attend a convention after being released from jail in December, C.P. Gajurel, 58, brushes aside his imprisonment as the product of "the risk every revolutionary has to take."

Mr. Gajurel, also known as `Gaurav', is a member of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and head of its international affairs department.

"I had to travel to Europe to build support for our party," Mr. Gajurel told The Hindu here on Monday when asked about the circumstances of his arrest. "A British passport originally belonging to a white, London-born doctor was arranged for him. "The person who provided it warned me that there was a flaw in the passport and a 10 per cent chance I would be caught. I decided to take the risk but at Chennai airport, an immigration official became suspicious. I answered all his questions but he couldn't make up his mind".

Unluckily for Mr. Gajurel, the wife of a British diplomat happened to walk past after seeing off her husband and the immigration official sought her opinion.

The Maoist leader thought it best to act friendly in order to get her on to his side. "It turned out that the British woman's uncle worked at the same hospital where I said I worked. I said the hospital was big and that I didn't know him but if she wanted to send a message I would happy to convey it!" said Mr. Gajurel. "She then asked me where I lived in London and how I commuted to the hospital. She also asked me about the tube fare and other details, which I couldn't answer. So I changed tactics and said angrily, `Who are you to question me?'"

The diplomat's wife promptly told the immigration official she thought the passport was forged and Mr. Gajurel was arrested on the spot.

He spent the next three years on remand in Chennai, often in solitary confinement except for the "hundreds of mosquitoes" whose company he was compelled to keep. "In those days, India was helping the King fight the Maoists so I was treated not as a political prisoner but a member of a terrorist group". His cell had no fan or proper drinking water. The lone bulb that glowed faintly was not enough to read by once the sun had set. "I ruined my eyesight trying to read at night," he said.

When the water made him sick, Mr. Gajurel preferred not to go to the jail hospital. "The prisoners all avoided the hospital. I was told they re-use syringes there".

While in jail, Gajurel befriended Nakkeeran Gopal , the editor who was being held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. "But when I helped him write a letter to the editor of The Hindu expressing his inability to attend the newspaper's 125th anniversary celebrations, the jail warden got really angry and sent me back to solitary", Mr. Gajurel said.

Convicted finally in 2006, Mr. Gajurel's sentence was adjusted against the time he had already spent and he was released last September. He was promptly rearrested on a sedition charge and spent the next two months in a West Bengal jail until charges were dropped mid-December.

Despite the time he spent in Indian jails, Mr. Gajurel says India and Nepal have to put the past behind them and work to establish their relations on a new and equal footing. In particular, he says the Indo-Nepal treaty, which is 57 years old, is not in keeping with the changed situation. Asked about the future sale of electricity to India, Mr. Gajurel said Nepal's first priority would be to use its water resources for its own development. "Certainly, we would like to share what we have, but after Nepal's needs are taken care of".

According to Mr. Gajurel, the United Nations mission in Nepal will probably take another two weeks to complete the process of registering and managing the arms and ammunition of Maoist combatants. Following that, the interim government with Maoist participation would be formed.

Asked about the ongoing agitation in Nepal's Terai region — where a number of organisations representing the Hindi-speaking Madhesi people have declared a strike — Mr. Gajurel said he hoped the issue would be resolved soon. "Please remember the Maoists were the first to speak of Madhesi rights and we were the ones who wanted elections to the Constituent Assembly to be held on the basis of proportional representation [PR]." Under pressure from the seven-party alliance, the Maoists had to water down their demand for PR. "But now that others are trying to hijack our agenda, that too on a communal basis, we have to think about this issue again".

Read more

India struggles to steer its own course on foreign policy

India and U.S. are 'partners' whose interests often diverge



26 January 2007
International Herald Tribune

News Analysis: India struggles to steer its own course on foreign policy
India and U.S. are 'partners' whose interests often diverge

By Siddharth Varadarajan

NEW DELHI: Last week, the Indian external affairs minister, Pranab Mukherjee, became the first senior leader from a major democracy to visit Naypyitaw, the vast and forbiddingly empty city that Myanmar's military rulers named as their country's new capital in 2006.

At a time when the United States is trying to exert pressure on the Burmese regime, India demonstrably broke ranks with its new "strategic partner"— as both Washington and New Delhi refer to their relationship — as Mukherjee declared that the issue of democracy and human rights in Myanmar was that country's internal affair.

Less than a year ago, President George W. Bush told a gathering of elite Indians at the Old Fort, in the heart of New Delhi, that "India has an historic duty to support democracy around the world." Among the countries he identified as violators of freedom were several with which India had good relations, such as Iran, Syria, Cuba, Zimbabwe and Burma.

But India, which is one of strongest backers of the United Nations democracy fund, is wary of democratic messianism.

"We have to deal with governments as they exist," Mukherjee told a group of reporters accompanying him on a three-day official tour of Myanmar. India is a democracy and wants democracy to flourish everywhere, the minister said. "We are not interested in exporting our own ideology," he said, adding, "This is for every country to decide for itself."

More than the symbolism of the highly publicized visit, however, it was the business Mukherjee transacted that is likely to raise eyebrows in the West. Among the items on his agenda: an offer to sell military hardware to the Myanmar military. India, whose national oil and gas companies own a stake in a couple of lucrative offshore gas fields off the Rakhine coast of Burma, also wants to construct a 2,000-kilometer, or 1,250-mile, pipeline to feed the energy needs of its eastern states.

India is not alone in wooing the Myanmar junta, or in eyeing its hydrocarbon potential. Chinese companies have a major presence in the offshore fields, and China is keen to construct an oil and gas terminal at the port of Sittwe along with a pipeline through Myanmar and up into its Yunnan Province.

On the day Mukherjee was in Naypyitaw, the local authorities had already started putting up signs welcoming their next important foreign visitor: Li Tieying, deputy chairman of the standing committee of China's National People's Congress.

Mukherjee denies that India and China are competing with each other. "This is not the Cold War, when relationships were meant to be exclusive," he said. "Just like we have a presence in Myanmar, so do the Chinese. Why should either of us be worried about the other?"

The minister's nonchalance was not just a posture. At least in the hydrocarbon sector, India and China have managed to avoid the rivalry Western analysts had predicted by seeking to pool their resources in third countries as far afield as Sudan, Syria and Brazil.

And though the two countries do not have joint operations in Iran, Chinese and Indian companies present there provide political cover for each other at a time when the Islamic Republic is facing the heat of international sanctions.

Officials at the Indian Foreign Ministry bristle at the suggestion that there is anything cynical in India's attitude toward Myanmar or other countries that the West in general, and the United States in particular, prefer not to do business with. "Even after the Cold War, the U.S. has continued to rely heavily on dictatorships or undemocratic regimes of one kind or another," said one senior official who asked not to be identified.

To be sure, Indian officials are not alone in believing that the Bush administration’s ‘freedom agenda’ is a cover for the pursuit of geopolitical interests by other means. Nor do they necessarily have moral objections to this kind of strategic subterfuge.

What is remarkable, however, is the implication that in virtually all of the countries targeted by Washington, the geopolitical interests of the United States and India do not seem to overlap.

This lack of strategic congruence between two "strategic partners" in many of the principal international battlegrounds underlines a key problem for the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the diplomatic front: how to reap the benefits of a friendship with the United States without compromising the independence of the country's foreign policy.

This dilemma, which has been present ever since the two countries began drawing closer together in the final years of the presidency of Bill Clinton, became more acute after India and the United States signed a series of landmark agreements on defense and nuclear cooperation in 2005.

Those agreements raised the prospect of Indian troops accompanying U.S. soldiers on multinational operations — a heretical idea in a country wedded to the notion that only UN-run military missions are legitimate — as well as of Indian participation in a range of U.S.-led initiatives from nuclear counterproliferation to the promotion of democracy.

Even though both countries deny that the purpose of their partnership was to contain or isolate Beijing in any way, it is clear that the rise of China as a world power was a major factor in American calculations. Building on the quadrilateral naval relief exercise it led in the wake of the December 2004 Asian tsunami, Washington is now eager to start a formal security dialogue between the United States, India, Australia and Japan as major regional democracies.

Among the topics the four powers would presumably discuss, China will figure quite prominently.

While defending themselves against the charge by domestic critics of drawing too close to U.S. policies, government officials have argued that India could leverage the American willingness to cut a deal on civilian nuclear energy into stronger ties with all global power centers and into a more effective foreign policy in general.

When the process of congressional certification of the nuclear deal began, however, the burden of Washington's expectations began to weigh heavily on New Delhi.

At the September 2005 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors in Vienna, India surprised the world by joining the United States and its allies in voting to send Iran's nuclear file to the UN Security Council.

India repeated that vote in February 2006. It also began to rein in its foreign policy in a number of ways.

For example, it grounded the prime minister's special envoy to the Middle East, Chinmaya Gharekhan, for several months lest his meetings with regional players like Hamas or Syria send the wrong signals to the United States.

And knowing Washington's opposition to Asian regional groupings that exclude the United States, India also avoided any high-level participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which it joined as an observer along with Iran and Pakistan in July 2005 just days before Bush made his offer of nuclear cooperation.

When a senior Indian official was presented with these examples at an off-the-record briefing late last year, on the eve of a key congressional vote, and asked whether India was deliberately pulling its punches, he replied, "Just let the nuclear bill be passed by Congress. Then you will see."

Alyssa Ayres, a scholar at the Center for Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania, has argued that India is likely to play the role of a "France in Asia," allied to Washington in general but unwilling to go along with every U.S. policy goal. American policy makers, she says, need to understand and plan for this kind of relationship and not harbor unrealistic expectations that would never be met.

In reality, there is both a little of France and a little of Britain lurking below the surface of Indian foreign policy.

As the process of Asian integration deepens and India slowly rises in economic and strategic significance, the United States hopes that India will reprise in Asia the role Britain plays in Europe of being in and out at the same time. The United States needs India as an Asian power so that it can influence the design of the emerging Asian strategic architecture in such a way that vital U.S. interests are not affected. But it does not want India to become so "Asian" as to join hands with those who believe Asia can go it alone.

To the extent that balance-of-power notions dominate official thinking, India is likely to play the role of a Britain. Though relations with Beijing have improved dramatically in recent years, sections of the Indian establishment believe India needs the United States to preserve the balance.

At the same time, India's democratic polity and its own sense of where the national interest lies will not allow the country to enter into the kind of commitments that being a "Britain" in Asia would imply. Shades of "France" were visible in 2003 when India refused to send troops to Iraq, for example, or when it engaged Myanmar. Or when it insisted, as it did last month after the Security Council sanctioned Iran, that the Iranians had the right to pursue their "nuclear program for peaceful civilian use."

But analysts believe the challenge for Indian diplomacy really lies in being neither France nor Britain but a country with a capacity to help resolve problems that are currently threatening the stability of Asia.

From the Palestinian territories and Lebanon in the west to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea in the east, Asia is home to virtually all of the world's most serious conflicts. Despite its status as an emergent power in Asia, India is not involved in the process of finding solutions to any of these problems.

In private, Indian leaders and officials acknowledge that America's policies in all these theaters are tending to aggravate the problems there, and that a country of India's size and importance cannot afford to limit its foreign policy to saying "Yes" or "Non." Yet there is little appetite to play a bigger diplomatic role.

Many countries in Asia, not to speak of Africa and Latin America, are waiting for the Indian elephant to stir the grass up a bit. But as of now, it seems, the gentle giant is content to wait at the crossroads a little longer.

Siddharth Varadarajan is Associate Editor of The Hindu newspaper.
Note: Paras in grey typeface above were edited out for space reasons but am including them here for completeness.

Read more

Nay Pyi Taw - A photo album

These are, I believe, the first photographs of Myanmar's new capital, Nay Pyi Taw (also spelt as Naypyi taw or Naypyidaw) to be published anywhere on the web.

Most of the 23 photographs here were taken on January 20 and 21, from the window of a car moving through the city's streets at high speed, or from the air, shortly after take-off.

As far as I could tell, there are no restrictions on photography. The reason I couldn't walk about and shoot is very simple. The city is too huge to see anything on foot, there are virtually no taxis, and I was there for a very short time, as part of an official delegation.














On the left is an aerial view of the new apartment blocks that have already been built for Myanmar's government employees. On the right, is the Royal Kumudra hotel, with bungalow-style rooms, in the city's hotel zone.

[Note: I am releasing these pictures for use under the Creative Commons License]

Driving through Nay Pyi Taw's vast streets















Government-built housing



















Official buildings



On the left is the Bayintnaung Yeiktha, the ceremonial reception centre for foreign dignitaries, at the Ministry of Defence. On the right, an office building.


There are no tourists yet, and no reason why there should ever be any, but an information centre has already been built (left). On the right, the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development.



On the left is an aerial view of a very grand building, purpose unknown. On the right is a ceremonial gate in the Ministry of Defence zone of the capital.




Another office building, in the military zone, and on the right, a picture of the ongoing construction work that is taking place at various places in the city.






At Nay Pyi Taw airport




















More aerial views

Read more

India to supply military equipment to Myanmar

We are willing to expand ambit of military cooperation between two countries, says Pranab Mukherjee in a major Indian policy shift.

22 January 2007
The Hindu

India to supply military equipment to Myanmar

Siddharth Varadarajan

Naypyitaw: India has promised Myanmar's military rulers a "favourable response" to their request for military equipment.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee conveyed the Indian decision to Vice-Senior General Maung Aye, number two in the hierarchy of the military-run State Peace and Development Council regime, during a 45-minute meeting held on Sunday morning.

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Mr. Mukherjee said he told his hosts that India was willing to expand the ambit of military cooperation between the two countries. A specific request for equipment had been made by General Thura Shwe Mann, the regime's number three, during his visit to Delhi last December. "We have examined that request and decided to give a favourable response," Mr. Mukherjee said.

Though Indian officials said they would only provide more details about the nature of the equipment when the actual transfers took place, Myanmarese opposition groups and publications such as irrawady.com have reported in the past that the Myanmar military was seeking helicopters, mortars and radar equipment from India.

New chapter

The prospect of Indian arms sales to Myanmar opens a new chapter in the relationship. Until now, India has preferred to limit its military-to-military cooperation to the provision of training and the sharing of information on the activity of insurgent groups.

Apart from equipment, Mr. Mukherjee said the Myanmar side wanted Indian help in servicing and upgrading their MiG fighter fleet. But since the intellectual property rights were Russian, this would require prior consent from Moscow.

Sprawling complex

The meeting between Mr. Mukherjee and General Maung Aye took place in the sprawling Defence Ministry complex at one end of Naypyitaw. So vast is Myanmar's new capital that it took the Minister's motorcade more than 30 minutes of high-speed driving through traffic-less highways to reach the complex from his hotel. At points within the military zone, the four-lane highway gave way to eight lanes, specifically designed to allow small aircraft to take off and land.

On Saturday, Mr. Mukherjee met Prime Minister Soe Win as well as the Ministers for religious affairs and planning.

Another issue which figured prominently in his discussions here, said Mr. Mukherjee, was the fencing of certain stretches of the border. In particular, both countries had agreed to undertake fencing in the Kabaw valley region bordering Manipur. "We hope that this will now be expedited."

Insurgency

As for the Indian insurgent groups which have taken shelter on the Myanmarese side and maintain training camps there, Mr. Mukherjee said the Indian Government gave information to Myanmar from time to time "and they do cooperate."

Nevertheless, in his meeting with Gen. Maung Aye, the Minister suggested the building of institutional mechanisms for military commanders on both sides to coordinate their efforts. According to Mr. Mukherjee, the Vice-Senior General welcomed the idea but noted that the terrain on the Myanmar side was inaccessible by motorised transport and could be approached by soldiers only by foot. Mr. Mukherjee said India was prepared to offer any assistance needed in this regard. "Of course, we didn't mention joint operations because that is not possible," the Minister added.

On his part, the General suggested these issues should be discussed in more depth at the operations level.

Read more

Myanmar will sell India gas "only if reserves permit"

India has agreed to sell weapons to Myanmar's military rulers. But it is still not clear whether it will get gas in return.







22 January 2007
The Hindu

"Gas for India only if reserves permit"

Siddharth Varadarajan

Naypyitaw: Vice-Senior General Maung Aye, second-in-command of Myanmar's military regime, has said his Government is not yet in a position to guarantee assured supplies of gas for the proposed Myanmar-India pipeline because the requisite survey of reserves has not yet been completed.

In a meeting with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday, the General said the survey would be completed by April or May. If the reserves proved to be large enough and India was able to offer a competitive price, his Government would have no objection to earmarking it for an Indian pipeline.

An Indian survey of A-3, one of the offshore blocks where the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and the Gas Authority of India Limited have a combined 30 per cent stake, suggested reserves of 5 trillion cubic feet. Though this is enough to feed the proposed pipeline, the Myanmar authorities are keen to explore all options, including converting the gas into liquefied natural gas and exporting it to China and other East Asian markets.

Transport linkage

Among the other issues India and Myanmar are working on is transport linkage. Apart from the Tamu-Kalewa and the Moreh-Bagan-Maesot trilateral highway linking India, Myanmar and Thailand, Mr. Mukherjee told reporters that the Sittwe-Kaladan-Mizoram multi-modal transport project was at an advanced stage of conception, and the Union Cabinet was likely to sanction $100 million for upgrading the infrastructure on the Indian side.

In addition, India was prepared to offer a soft loan of $10 million to Myanmar so that the facilities in Sittwe could be improved and a link road to the Mizoram border constructed.

During his meetings, the External Affairs Minister was asked whether India could provide more locomotives and rolling stock for Myanmar's metre gauge network. Mr. Mukherjee said India would be able to do so.

"On the whole, my visit was quite good," he told reporters at the end of his visit. "They were quite receptive and responsive."

Read more

In Myanmar's phantom capital, a city slowly takes shape

But Naypyitaw is a city with a difference, its geometry so incredibly vast that even a crowd of half a million is unlikely to pose a political threat.










In Myanmar's phantom capital, a city slowly takes shape

Siddharth Varadarajan

21 January 2007
The Hindu

NAYPYITAW: Nobody quite knows what prompted the military government to relocate Myanmar's capital to this isolated, dusty place 320 km north of Yangon last year but judging by the pace and scale of construction under way here, the transfer is intended to be final and irrevocable.

On November 6, 2005, at a time and date apparently chosen by an astrologer close to Senior General Than Shwe, the process of shifting Myanmar's seat of government to a vast but barren tract of land near Pyinmana village in Mandalay division officially began.

The first to move were elements of the military, who built a garrison and a small dam for themselves to generate electricity. Next, the Ministries, most of which are headed by generals, began the process of shifting, though without the orderly precision of the soldiers who preceded them. As newer plots were carved out and official buildings began coming up, the tract of land was formally christened Naypyitaw — or royal palace — and declared the national capital of Myanmar. Fittingly, the declaration was made on Tatmadaw or Armed Forces Day — March 27 — at a military function here in 2006.

Less than a year later, every single Ministry has moved but Naypyitaw is still very much a work in progress.

In terms of spatial design, the emergent city is reminiscent of Islamabad, though considerably less green. A "hotel zone" with several luxury establishments has come up on the "outskirts," a district that the capital's planners say will eventually become "downtown." Further in, a number of brightly painted apartment buildings line the left side of the road, all of which are occupied by civil servants. On the right side, at some distance, were what appeared to be rather more modest huts, presumably for construction workers. And finally there is the government district. Later this year, Yangon-based embassies will be offered plots in the new capital and most will eventually make the move.

Ask an official the reason for the shift to Naypyitaw and pat comes the answer: space. "Yangon was getting too crowded. Here, there is plenty of space for the Ministries," one civil servant said, though without apparent conviction. Given the lack of urban facilities, most bureaucrats — including those allocated three-bedroom flats — opted to move here by themselves, leaving their families behind in Yangon.

Like any planned capital, there is indeed plenty of space, and perhaps even too much. An excellent divided road runs through the entire length of the government quarter and most ministries are situated on exits off that road at a distance from each other of several kilometres.

Shuttle buses and motorcycle rickshaws allegedly ply up and down but in the half-day that his reporter spent shuttling back and forth between the Prime Minister's Office and the foreign, planning and religious affairs ministries, none was visible. Several civil servants said their respective Ministries ran shuttle buses in the morning and evening. Given the distances, missing the shuttle is clearly not an option.

While it is likely that Naypyitaw will eventually grow to fill in the empty spaces between Ministries and also develop the usual civic amenities one associates with any capital, it will always lack the urban cadences and unpredictable rhythms that characterise city life in Yangon or Mandalay.

Critics of Myanmar's military rulers insist this is the main reason why the generals decided to shift the capital to an isolated place, as if transferring the seat of power could provide insurance against an actual transfer of power of the kind restive crowds in confined urban spaces managed to achieve in the Ukraine two years ago.

Others have speculated that the authorities felt Yangon was too vulnerable to outside attack and that Naypyitaw would be more secure. Some historians have also seen symbolic links between the recent shift of capital and an earlier tradition among the ancient Mon kings. What is certain, however, is that Myanmar has seen both transfers of capital and transfers of power before without there being any discernible relationship between the two. King Mindon moved his capital from Amarapura to Mandalay — a purpose-built city — in 1859, only to have his son, Thibaw, defeated and exiled by the British. From Mandalay, the capital shifted to Rangoon, the anglicised name for Yangon, and has now moved on to Naypyitaw.

Judging by history, the new city may not remain the country's capital forever. But there is a good chance it will endure longer than the rulers who ordered it built.

Read more

India not interested in exporting ideology: Pranab

Democracy, human rights are Myanmar's internal affair, says the External Affairs minister.

20 January 2007
The Hindu

India not interested in exporting ideology: Pranab

Siddharth Varadarajan

Yangon: Barely days after an unsuccessful American attempt to get the United Nations Security Council to censure Myanmar's military rulers, India has reiterated that the issue of democracy and human rights in Myanmar is "an internal matter" of that country.

Speaking to reporters here at the start of a three-day visit to Myanmar, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said India had to deal with governments "as they exist ... We are not interested in exporting our own ideology. We are a democracy and we would like democracy to flourish everywhere. But this is for every country to decide for itself."

"Reconciliation"

At the same time, Mr. Mukherjee noted that the Myanmar authorities had their own programme for "national reconciliation" and expressed the hope that this process would "lead to its logical conclusion."

On January 13, China and Russia vetoed a United States-sponsored resolution that sought to describe the internal situation in Myanmar as a threat to international peace and security.

Mr. Mukherjee — who is visiting Myanmar at the invitation of his counterpart, Major General U Nyan Win — arrived here on Friday night on a special flight from Kolkata. On Saturday, he will travel to the country's new capital, Nay Pyi Taw, for official talks.

Explaining the importance of Myanmar to India, Mr. Mukherjee said the two countries shared a border that was 1600 km long. "Myanmar is our only neighbour which is also a member of ASEAN. So our relationship is very much in keeping with India's `Look East' policy."

Issues highlighted

The two specific issues he highlighted were energy cooperation and enhanced transportation links between the two countries. Myanmar is an oil and gas-rich country, he noted, and ONGC Videsh and GAIL already had a 30 per cent stake in two offshore blocks. "We would like to increase our participation and also construct a natural gas pipeline from here to India," said Mr. Mukherjee. He added that the earlier agreement on running a pipeline via Bangladesh had run aground because Dhaka "put extraneous conditions" and now India was looking for a bilateral project.

According to Indian officials, the proposed pipeline would now enter India at Mizoram and extend for around 2,000 km through the north-east before reaching West Bengal. "Of course, in order to invest in such a pipeline, we need an assured supply of gas," said Mr. Mukherjee.

The issue of assured supplies has become crucial following reports that the Myanmar authorities are leaning towards exporting the bulk of their gas as LNG to the East Asian market.

Border infrastructure

Mr. Mukherjee said India was interested in developing border infrastructure and improving physical connectivity between Myanmar and India. In particular, India was keen to work on a project to connect Sittwe, Myanmar's principal port on the Bay of Bengal, with Mizoram via the Kaladan inland waterway and a purpose-built 65 km road. The idea, first mooted by India in 2002, has not made much progress, though officials say New Delhi is still serious.

Mr. Mukherjee's visit here caps a series of high-level bilateral political and military exchanges between the two sides beginning with the October 2004 visit to India by Senior General Than Shwe, head of Myanmar's military-run Government, and the March 2006 visit to Yangon of President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. More recently, General Thura Shwe Mann, third in the official hierarchy of the State Peace and Development Council, visited India as did the Myanmar Home Minister, Maung Oo.

On all these visits, said Mr. Mukherjee, the Myanmar leadership assured New Delhi that elements hostile to India would not be allowed to use their country's territory. Though an important issue in general, Indian officials strongly denied that Mr. Mukherjee's visit was primarily intended to focus on action against ULFA and other insurgent outfits. Indeed, the subject did not explicitly figure in Mr. Mukherjee's own listing of India's priorities as far as Myanmar is concerned.

As for military-to-military cooperation, Mr. Mukherjee highlighted the fact that the three service chiefs of both countries had visited each other and that India was helping to train Myanmar military officers.

Asked about reports that India was offering military hardware to Myanmar, Indian officials denied this was the case.

Read more

Bringing to book the guilty men of Baghdad

The legal arguments used by the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi court to convict Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity apply even more forcefully to those American leaders who ordered the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

10 January 2007
The Hindu

Bringing to book the guilty men of Baghdad

The legal arguments used by the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi court to convict Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity apply even more forcefully to those American leaders who ordered the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Siddharth Varadarajan

OF ALL the excuses served up by the United States in the aftermath of the outsourced lynching of Saddam Hussein on December 30, none is more dishonest than the claim that the trial, conviction, sentencing, and execution of the deposed Iraqi President was solely the handiwork of the "sovereign" government of Iraq.

Apart from micromanaging the trial court's statute, the U.S. actively assisted the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court through the Regime Crimes Liaison Office (RCLO) housed in the American Embassy in Baghdad. U.S. minders from the RCLO oversaw the tenuous evidence produced in the Dujail case against Saddam, the serious deficiencies in trial procedure which have been amply documented by United Nations working groups and others, the blatant politicisation of the trial by the occupation-installed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as well as the deliberate scuttling of Saddam's right to a proper defence.

Moreover, the U.S. military had direct physical custody of Saddam from the point of his arrest until several minutes before his execution. U.S. custody was resumed immediately thereafter, when the body was loaded on to an American helicopter for eventual disposition in Tikrit. One cannot create a court, train its judges, take a man to the gallows, and thence to his grave, and then claim one had nothing whatsoever to do with the manner of his death.

The irony is that there would have been no reason for any American or British leader to disown responsibility for the lynching — or plant stories about "differences" with the Iraqi government about the timing and mode of execution — had the sinister hooded men who finally dispatched Saddam stuck to a sanitised script. Like the widely circulated picture postcards of lynchings across the American south in the early 20th century, the grainy cell-phone video of Saddam's last moments conveyed to the whole world the tastelessness of raw power unrestricted by either law or morality. But unlike those good ol' American lynchings — in which the mob leaders posed proudly by their hanging Black trophies — the ringleaders of the Baghdad hanging party absented themselves from the embarrassing frame, preferring the "plausible deniability" of being sound asleep in Texas and Washington.

When L. Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority drafted the original statute of the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court in 2003, they were careful to limit its mandate in two crucial ways. First, the court was given jurisdiction only for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed between July 17, 1968, and May 1, 2003. And secondly, it was stipulated that the court could try any natural person "whether Iraqi or non-Iraqi" suspected of committing these grave offences provided he or she was a "resident of Iraq."

The first limitation ensured that the court would not have any jurisdiction over U.S. occupation troops and commanders stationed in Iraq after President George W. Bush declared the end of "major combat operations" on May 1, 2003. This is regardless of overwhelming evidence that these troops have engaged in the killing and torture of non-combatants in Hadithiya, Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, and other places in Iraq over the past three-and-a-half years. The second limitation — of residency — ensured that the court would not be free to probe charges that U.S. persons had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against the civilian population of Iraq prior to May 1, 2003. This means that the charge of U.S. collusion with the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in the commission of atrocities against the Iraqi Kurds and against Iran, not to speak of the genocide of Iraqi children caused by the 12-year-long economic embargo of the country, nor indeed the killing of civilians through the disproportionate, unnecessary, and wholly illegal use of air power and military force from 1991 up to May 1, 2003, would be completely outside the purview of scrutiny by the special "higher" Iraqi tribunal.

For the U.S., the introduction of these caveats was absolutely necessary because any legal process that assigns criminal liability to Saddam would naturally run the risk of assigning criminal liability to others who committed similar acts.

Disproportionate force as war crime

The court's statute stresses that an individual can be charged with war crimes or crimes against humanity if the impugned violence he orders or takes part in is "part of an extensive and systematic action launched against the civilian population" and is known by him to be so. Both the Saddam regime and the U.S. invasion and occupation took the lives of thousands of civilians. Though the U.S. acknowledges countless civilians have been killed in its military actions in Iraq, it denies any criminal liability on the grounds that it does not "intentionally target civilians." Broadly speaking, whatever defence Saddam was allowed to mount essentially revolved around the same claim.

In its 298-page written opinion, the Iraqi court rejected this claim. But in finding Saddam guilty, it has, paradoxically, opened the way for criminal liability to be assigned to U.S. leaders and commanders, as and when a future sovereign Iraqi government has the courage to remove the unnatural restrictions placed on the higher court's mandate. The court listed several pieces of evidence that, it claimed, established Saddam's guilt but not beyond reasonable doubt. To make the final leap, therefore, the court was forced to construe the disproportionate, excessive, and unnecessary use of force as tantamount to extensive and systematic action against civilians.

Since there was no direct evidence linking Saddam to the death of civilians, the tribunal argued that the disproportionate use of force against Dujail town by the Iraqi government and armed forces in the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt on Saddam in 1982 was in and of itself a crime against humanity for which he bore "collaborative" criminal liability. That attack led to the death of eight civilians as well as the subsequent arrest, trial and execution of around 100 others, besides the death in custody due to torture or neglect of another 40. "Saddam Hussein," it ruled, "issued his orders, directly or indirectly... to attack the town of Dujail after the unsuccessful attempt on his life by a few individuals and that large-scale attack was not necessary nor appropriate for that very limited attempt ... perpetrating those acts which were a violation of the law, and shelling of fields while their owners were in them with helicopters was not necessary and was not an `appropriate' answer at all from the points of quantity and quality ... That large-scale and organized attack and its effects constitute crimes against humanity, including deliberate killing as a crime against humanity."

If the attack on a town, which claimed the life of eight civilians and then another 140 more over two years, constitutes a crime against humanity, what about the "large-scale and organised" U.S. attack on the whole of Iraq, which initially claimed the lives of up to 10,000 civilians and has since led to the death of 650,000 more innocent Iraqis? Saddam Hussein could at least claim there was an attempt on his life; but what about the weapons of mass destruction Mr. Bush said the invasion of Iraq was all about?

The legal precedent of establishing criminal liability extends also to torture. The court ruled that though "none of the plaintiffs has stated that Saddam has personally tortured them ... [or] that Saddam has ordered that," the deposed President was nevertheless guilty as charged. Saddam, it said, had "implicitly acknowledged his awareness of those practices that took place at the intelligence and Abu Ghraib prisons" when he said in court, `Such acts and harms that occurred against [the plaintiffs] were a mistake and violate the law.' Based on that, this court sees that the accused Saddam Hussein had issued an order ... which is an order, even if it is not explicit, to torture the victims from the Dujail residents ... Therefore, the accused is criminally accountable for torturing the Dujail residents."

In the case of the torture of Iraqi civilians by U.S. soldiers in Abu Ghraib, there is documentary evidence of the fact that the Bush administration — at the highest levels — had sanctioned illegal interrogation methods. Senior U.S. officials, including President Bush, have acknowledged the reality of what happened and described them as "mistakes," much as Saddam did in court. If Saddam could be held criminally accountable for torture despite the absence of any written order, any honest court would not think twice before convicting Mr. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld for what went on in Abu Ghraib. The Iraqi court and those who control it are, of course, not honest. But a crucial test of sovereignty and democracy for any future Iraqi government will surely be its willingness to hold to account the criminals who have scripted the terrible tragedy that has been enacted in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

Read more

Iran, the U.S. and the burden of history

Ali M. Ansari's book, Confronting Iran, is an honest and dispassionate account of the less than honest intentions and lost opportunities that have been a part of the U.S. approach towards Iran.

2 January 2007
The Hindu

The burden of history

Siddharth Varadarajan

CONFRONTING IRAN — The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Roots of Mistrust by Ali M. Ansari
C. Hurst & Co. London and Foundation Books, New Delhi, 2006
Rs. 495.

When it comes to the United States and Iran, there's simply no getting away from the burden of history.

Last month, when Washington prevailed upon the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to impose sanctions on Tehran because of the latter's refusal to suspend its nuclear energy programme, the Iranian ambassador to the U.N. was quick to make the connection with the past. The resolution imposing sanctions, noted Ambassador Javad Zarif, "can only remind the Iranian people of the historic injustices this Security Council has done to them in the past six decades. It is reminiscent of the attempt made in this Council to punish the Iranian people for nationalizing their oil industry, claimed to present a threat to peace. It is also a reminder of the Council's indifference in the face of a military coup, organized by two permanent members, which restored the dictatorship."

Zarif was referring to the draft resolution brought before the UNSC in October 1951 by Britain, the U.S. and France opposing the nationalisation of the Iranian oil industry, and the subsequent sequence of events, which culminated in the overthrow of Muhammed Mossadeq as Prime Minister. Thanks to the Soviet Union, the 1951 resolution was never pressed and Mossadeq went ahead and nationalised the assets of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. But two years later, the Anglo-Americans ensured he was removed, and that constitutional, democratic rule was replaced by the authoritarian dictatorship of the Shah.

Then, as now, in the eyes of ordinary Iranians, the issue at stake was Iran's sovereign right to the development of an energy resource free from outside domination or control. "For most Iranians, not just the politically active ones," writes Ansari, the overthrow of Mossadeq on August 19, 1953 "marks the beginning of U.S.-Iran relations." The anniversary of the oil nationalisation remains a national holiday half a century later and the coup is remembered "as a day of perfidy that ranks with Pearl harbour." For most Americans, however, the coup "is at best a curiosity of the Cold War and at worst ancient history." As a result, the U.S. leadership— both in 1979 and certainly today— is simply not in a position to appreciate "the impact of this deep scar on the Iranian political landscape," let alone think about how to make amends.

Emergence as a power

Ansari's book follows a chronologically straightforward storyline in which the brief period of national affirmation which followed more than a century and a half of interference and domination by outside powers— mainly Britain and Russia— was deliberately undermined and subverted. Even though the rule of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi saw Iran's economy grow very fast— thanks, in part, to high oil prices, particularly after 1973— the Shah could never shake off the popular impression that he was merely an agent of the U.S. Encouraged by Washington, Tehran during this period emerged as a major regional power. The Shah was sold the latest American military hardware and encouraged to develop civilian nuclear energy as an alternative to oil. So close were the relations during this period that, as Ansari documents, more than 40,000 Americans were living and working in Iran by 1978 and Iran had become the fourth largest source of long-distance telephone revenue for AT&T. The fact that U.S. government personnel in Iran had immunity from local laws was seen by many Iranians as a national affront.
If 1953 was a watershed for Iranians, the hostage crisis of 1979 — in which radical students held more than 50 U.S. diplomats captive for 444 days — is perhaps the single most important event driving American perceptions towards the Islamic republic.

The irony is that in the radical Iranian perception, the seizure of the U.S. embassy is not regarded as an important event. "In the popular revolutionary conception," writes Ansari, "the break in diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. is divorced from the reality of the hostage taking and instead interpreted as a natural consequence of the fact that the U.S could not relate to Iran's Islamic Revolution... What distinguished the two interpretations was that the Iranians regarded it as an act of closure, while the Americans marked it as the beginning of an era."

Laingen memo

Having said that, Ansari also suggests the break, which came with the seizure of the embassy in November 1979, was not necessarily inevitable. After all, the U.S. maintained diplomatic relations with Iran for nearly 11 months after the Shah fled. Though most American citizens had left the country after the revolution, a U.S. embassy report notes in June 1979 that "many U.S. businessmen have continued their work or returned permanently or periodically without incident." The U.S. administration was clearly in a `wait and watch' mode.

Ansari quotes at length from an internal memo drafted by Bruce Laingen, U.S charge d'affaires in Tehran at the time, recommending that Washington publicly acknowledge the reality of the Islamic Revolution.

"As this embassy has recommended earlier," Laingen wrote, "we believe we can and should find ways to speak publicly and positively more than we have to date about having accepted the change in Iran... This is not to say that we need to publicly embrace and endorse Khomeini... What we need to say... is that we believe we have long-term interests in Iran that continue and which we believe can be preserved in an Islamic Iran." Laingen's memo went on to ask the State Department to "find ways publicly to say we wish Iran well in putting its revolutionary objectives into forms and institutions that will command the support of all its people," and that the U.S. has no interest in or intention of imposing any regime, monarchy or otherwise.

Laingen's memo, unfortunately, was consigned to a bureaucratic dustbin because the U.S. even then couldn't think beyond regime change. Worse, President Carter allowed the exiled Shah into the U.S. for medical treatment in October, a decision, which prompted fears amongst Islamist radicals in Tehran, that Washington had begun working towards regime change and restoration of the monarchy. Within the fortnight, student activists invaded and occupied the U.S. embassy compound.

If the seizure of U.S. hostages ended the chance of any semblance of a political understanding being established at the time, Washington's tacit support for Saddam Hussein's 1980 invasion of Iran took the hostility between the two countries to a still higher plane. To be sure, there were moments of cooperation and collaboration, such as during the Iran-Contra affair, but it was only 15 years after the revolution, that the possibility of a rapprochement seemed even remotely likely. Throughout this period, the U.S. itself made no effort. But in 1997, Mohammad Khatami, who was Iranian president at the time, raised the prospects of a reconciliation by speaking of a "dialogue between civilizations." That Iranian opening went unanswered. After 9/11, Iran was one of the first West Asian countries to condemn the terrorist strike on the U.S. and express its condolences. But President Bush's response was to list Tehran in the `Axis of Evil' in his State of the Union speech in January 2002.

Need for dialogue

The Iranian side tried yet again in the spring of 2003, sending a non-paper via Swiss diplomatic channels for Washington's consideration. The unsigned note, which was seen by senior Bush administration officials like Richard Armitage as nevertheless bearing the imprimatur of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, contained suggestions for both Iran and the U.S. to de-escalate and address each other's concerns. Significantly, the note also signalled Iran's willingness to discuss the Saudi initiative for a two-state solution to the Palestinian question. But like the Laingen memo, the 2003 offer was summarily rejected.

Since then, the U.S. has consistently sought to up the ante, using the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UNSC to coerce Iran rather than to seek dialogue with it. The concluding chapter of Ansari's tightly argued book deals with the nuclear issue. Events have rapidly moved on since Confronting Iran went to press but his central message is one the U.S. will ignore at its peril: the more obsessed it is with war, the greater is the likelihood of conflict. It is only diplomacy and dialogue that can resolve the Iranian nuclear question.

Read more