The Point of Malala Day

The point of "Malala Day" is not Girl's Education. It is not to get Malala a Nobel Prize. It is nothing that makes you feel warm and gushy.

The point of Malala Day is to focus like a laser on what happened to her and why.

She was shot because she wanted an education.

The Taliban wanted her dead because she threatened them.

She questioned their version of "Islam."

She challenged their right to deny her an education.

She was the most dangerous person to their world: a thinking, feeling, lively, super cute Muslim.

Why are the Taliban hung up on their dank murderous version of religion?

It helps hide what they do for a living: run drugs.

They run $60 billion worth of opium and heroin out of Afghanistan.

The freak-show part of the Taliban doesn't see that money of course.

Their bosses, a handful of Haqqanis, a couple of Mullahs, and the big shots of the ISI and the Pakistani government get about two percent of the total take.

The rest seeps away into HSBC accounts, "tax havens" like the Cayman Islands and Mauritius, and millions of "shell companies."

After fast-as-light laundering the black money emerges free of the blood of many Malalas.

It flows into hedge funds that keep the price of oil above $100 a barrel amidst what economists are calling The Great Recession.

It flows into the secret kitties of the lords and ladies of Britain.

In countries around the world it keeps politicians cooperative, bankers purring at their bonuses and journalists silent (alive and dead).

On this Malala Day and on every day that follows remember what the occasion is meant to commemorate: a brave girl and the great corruption that tried to shut her up.

Missing the Point on the NCTC

All the political noise about the National Counter Terrorism Center completely misses the point.

The real danger the NCTC poses is not to India's federal structure but to its democracy and the rights and liberties of its citizens.

And the NCTC is not "proposed" as our "elite" media persist in characterizing it.

It already exists as an intelligence agency with unsupervised powers of surveillance, arrest and interrogation -- a KGB-ISI in the making.  

It was brought in under the political radar by a series of administrative steps invoking the 1967 "Unlawful Activities Prevention Act" as amended in 2004 (to extend its coverage to counter-terrorism), and 2008 (to give the NCTC operational control of counter-terrorism activities).

As Kapil Sibal told journalists last February (when he was Minister for Human Resources Development), the powers of the NCTC are "already there."

He traced the origins of the NCTC to the Inter-State Intelligence Support System created after the Kargil War to improve spy operations. Following a recommendation of the Administrative Reforms Commission the ISISS (a deeply ominous acronym if ever there was one), was converted into the NCTC.

Sibal did not attempt to explain how the drive to improve intelligence operations mutated into anti-terrorism activities and then into law enforcement.

The net result of that evolution is a secret agency without either legislative authorization or operational accountability, with vast intrusive and interrogatory powers that will certainly be subject to abusive use.

Few will take comfort from that fact that the NCTC at the Centre will be supervised by an officer "not below the rank of Joint-Secretary" and at the state level by someone "not below the rank of Secretary."


What is to stop ambitious politicians, spy masters or bureaucrats in the pay of the über rich from misusing the NCTC for political/social surveillance and blackmail?  What is to prevent the torture of "suspects" and the coverup of extrajudicial killings? What is to prevent the emergence of an undemocratic and unconstitutional power centre under the aegis of the NCTC? What is to prevent India becoming Pakistan?

Nothing.

There are no oversight mechanisms, no appeals process for suspects/victims, no judicial much less public accountability. If a secret process of oversight and accountability does exist, it can be no more than a cozy arrangement to protect insiders.

Spokesmen for the UPA, including the Prime Minister and Home Minister have tried to make the NCTC controversy seem as if it is something that can be smoothed away by explanations and clarifications.

It would be fatal for Indian democracy to buy that argument.

We need a complete overhaul of the intelligence establishment, which now operates without legal authorization or constitutional safeguards.

The NCTC does not belong under an Act meant to maintain the country's internal security. To frame its activities within that limiting framework is to guarantee failure.

Terrorism is not a homegrown problem. Even though we have some homegrown terrorists, they are the domestic face of external enemies. Unless we keep the focus of NCTC and RAW firmly on external enemies all action within our borders will be reactive second-guessing.

The UPA government must abandon its ill advised move to create a NCTC that is bound to be subversive of our national interests. It must consult with the Opposition to bring in a piece of consensus legislation that will for the first time in Indian history provide a constitutional floor and framework for the work of our Intelligence agencies.

Ilyas Kashmiri: The Trend

Now that another key al Qaeda henchman, Ilyas Kashmiri, is reported to have followed Osama bin Laden into the realms of the Djin, it is clear that something more structural than luck has changed in Pakistan. It seems as if the ISI has, at long last, decided that it can no longer afford to run with the hinds and hunt with the hounds.

That is an almost unbelievable paradigm shift, for the factors keeping the ISI invested in its double game were weighty with reasons of history, strategy and profit.

Historically, Pakistan's military spy agency was created expressly to serve as Britain's handle to manipulate Pakistan, the proxy it created in South Asia when quitting India in 1947. The man who created it was an Australian-born British Army officer, Major-General Walter Joseph Cawthorn, who stayed behind as the Deputy -Chief of Staff of the new Pakistani Army (1947-1951). He created the ISI to fight a guerrilla war against India in Kashmir, an aim the agency has maintained as one of its highest strategic priorities ever since. Because of the support from Britain, Pakistan has felt entirely comfortable in pursuing what would otherwise be a suicidally foolish policy against a much more powerful neighbour. Since Afghanistan became the main source of the world heroin trade in the 1980s, the top brass of the Pakistani military has also had the huge additional incentive of profits from trafficking narcotics.

To break the ISI loose from that strong foundation it took a threat to the integrity of Pakistan that could not be ignored, and it came in the unlikely form of a short Media Note on 15 April from the United States State Department in Washington. Issued by the Office of the Spokesman, it said:

"On April 13, 2011, the United States and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Police signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the provision of over $17 million in vehicles, communications, and other equipment. These vehicles and equipment funded by the US will support the KP Police – including the Elite Force – in their mission to protect the local population.

"State Department Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Ambassador William R. Brownfield and the Inspector General of KP Police Fiaz Toru presided over the ceremony. Also in attendance were U.S. Acting Consul General Constance C. Arvis and Embassy Islamabad Narcotics Affairs Section Director Garace Reynard.

"The US supports civilian law enforcement in Pakistan through equipment, training, refurbishment, and construction of new police facilities. Last year, the United States committed $102.6 million for civilian law enforcement assistance. This year, the United States will continue to supply the KP Police with approximately 440 additional vehicles, including trucks, armoured vehicles and personnel carriers, ambulances, and motorcycles, as well as other equipment vital to the execution of its critical mission.

"The signing of this agreement is another example of ongoing American support and is a symbol of the continuing close cooperation between our two countries."

Although the Press release mentioned the "two countries" it made no mention of any role that Islamabad had in the event. In fact, it was clearly a transaction between Washington and the Khyber Pakhtunwala police, and that political development must have sounded like a thunderclap in the Pakistani capital.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police are in charge of territory where the Pathan tribes of Afghanistan have traditionally staked their claim to independence on a large chunk of Pakistan's border region. It is the area where the old North-West Frontier Province once was a stronghold  of the Indian National Congress under the redoubtable Khan Brothers. In the most intensely Islamic area of Jinnah's "Muslim nation" (minority communities were less than 2 per cent), that was a "bastard situation," as Mountbatten's Chief of Staff Lionel Ismay put it. The violence and chaos of Partition helped stampede the tribesmen of the NWFP into Pakistan, but once things cooled off, the realities set in. The older of the Khan brothers was allowed to share power for a while, but then he was tossed into the wilderness and did not survive. His younger sibling, the great Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan spent 15 years in Pakistani prisons. (The British had kept him behind bars for only 12.) Popular resentment in the region against Pakistan's ruling Punjabi coterie has grown steadily ever since.

What Washington's mild Media Note did was heat up that old flame. It signalled clearly to Islamabad that unless the ISI played ball, Pakistan would have to redefine its Western borders radically. It was no idle threat. The Afghan and Punjab elements of Pakistan have had a rancorous relationship from the very beginning, and given the insurrection already blossoming in Baloochistan, a Pakhtoon uprising would spell disaster for the country. Quite suddenly, the weight of the British in keeping Pakistan on the old narco-terrorist tracks was neutralized, and it was, as they say in America, a whole new ball game.

Expect the terrorists in Pakistan to continue suffering major setbacks.

     

More Assassination Plots

The Indian government is said to be acting on reports that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has contracted with a former leader of Mumbai's criminal underworld to assassinate two leaders of the opposition BJP party. Security is being tightened for right-wing politicians L.K. Advani, the leader of the parliamentary opposition in Delhi, and Narendra Modi, the recently elected Chief Minister of Gujarat state. The hit man -- or more accurately, the contract holder -- is said to be Dawood Ibrahim, who is wanted in connection with the 1993 bombings in Mumbai that killed 250 people and wounded 700; he fled India after those attacks and has been living in Karachi for over a decade.

Both BJP leaders are controversial and polarizing figures, lightning rods for disaffected lower-middle class Hindus strongly and intolerantly wedded to their religious identity. Advani was the primary architect of the BJP's rise to national power in 1999, winning a mass following with his campaign to demolish a 16th century mosque said to be built over a temple marking the birthplace of Rama, the divine hero of the Hindu epic Ramayana. Modi is widely seen as responsible for the massively violent reprisals against the Muslim community in Gujarat in July 2002 after 55 Hindus were burned alive in a railway carriage as they returned from a visit to the ruins of that mosque.

Why the ISI should want Advani and Modi dead at a time when relations between India and Pakistan are the warmest they have ever been, is an intriguing question. Islamabad has nothing to gain from raising tensions along a border that is now largely quiet, and it would be far-fetched to imagine that anyone in Pakistan, in its state of deepening crisis, would take time to pursue a long distance vendetta in India.

It is much more likely that the ISI -- or some part of it -- is acting on behalf of one of its strategic partners, the intelligence agencies of Britain, China, Saudi Arabia and the United States. This has happened in the past, most openly in Afghanistan and India, and more circumspectly in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Of the four, Britain and China have a consistent history of trying to destabilize India, but only the former has had a handle on communal (religious) conflict; Beijing has mainly been involved in running guns to separatist tribal elements along India's north-eastern border and funding its communist proxies.

British intervention has been much broader, rooted as it is in its colonial experience of using religion to "divide and rule." In the final decade of British rule in India Hindus and Muslims, who never before fought each other because of religion, were manipulated into a state of civil war. As American journalist William Shirer noted in his memoir on Gandhi, that was not a difficult achievement; he quoted the British Chief of Police in Bombay telling how a religious riot could be engineered simply by throwing a cow's head over a temple wall or a dead pig into a mosque. In pre-independence India the Muslim League under Mohammad Ali Jinnah was Britain's main proxy in mobilizing religious hatred. It organized the "great Calcutta killing" of August 1946 which took some 7,000 lives in three days and set in motion the wave of violence that culminated a year later in the killing of about a million people as Britain split India to create Pakistan.

Proof of covert British intervention in India after it became independent has been available only occasionally, but there is an abundance of circumstantial evidence. Items:

• A former British intelligence operative, Peter Bleach, was caught in 1994 after parachuting crates of AK-47s, rocket launchers and ammunition for use by the Ananda Marg, a violent Hindu cult in West Bengal. During Bleach's trial in Calcutta the defense produced the transcript of a phone conversation in which the defendant informed an unnamed official of Britain's MI-6 of his assignment and was told to proceed. Found guilty of conspiring to make war against the State, Bleach was sentenced to life in prison in 2000, but was released in 2004 after persistent representations by the British government, which included a private chat between Tony Blair and Deputy Prime Minister Advani.
  

• Indira Gandhi was assassinated on 31 October 1984 as she was heading for a BBC television interview to be conducted by Peter Ustinov. (Princess Anne was in Delhi at the time, scheduled to dine with the Prime Minister that evening.) The interview was delayed a half hour at the last minute, just the time needed for one of the two assassins (both on the Prime Minister's security detail), to begin his shift at the spot where the killing occurred. Initially, one of Mrs. Gandhi's aides was suspected of having made the change, but the judge who conducted the official investigation of the murder exonerated him completely. The judge noted the involvement of a foreign intelligence agency but did not go into detail. (A part of the report remains secret, so it is impossible to say what information he had.) Incidentally, Ustinov had a family connection with British intelligence: according to Peter Wright in his book "Spycatcher," Ustinov's father, Klop Ustinov, worked for MI-5. It is also worth recalling that the British government had rejected an official Indian protest about the BBC giving air time to a Sikh who called for Mrs. Gandhi's murder; London could not interfere with freedom of the Press, it said. For the record: the BBC Foreign Service is paid for by the government, and some of its prominent "journalists" are known to be spooks. (See the fascinating blog at http://shaphan.typepad.com/blog/bbc/index.html.)
  
• The Mark Bullough mentioned repeatedly in Shaphan's blog went from the Scots Guards to the post of Managing Director of Jardine Fleming in Bombay. He arrived in the city just as the Indian government was opening up the economy to foreign investment, and during his time there the following things happened: (1) a $1.5 billion stock market swindle in which four major foreign banks were implicated ; (2) the most serious Hindu-Muslim riots in India since independence; and (3) the March 1993 bomb attacks that demolished the stock market. It was also in the same period that the right-wing BJP party suddenly came alive with new funding (supposedly from wealthy Hindus abroad), and Advani's Hindu-supremacist campaign to demolish the mosque at Ayodha achieved its end. Bullough went on to co-found Aegis Defense Services with Tim Spicer, another Scots Guards alumnus, and both went to Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion; they were given a $293 million contract to create what was for a while the largest private army in the world. Jardine Fleming, by the way, traces its roots to the glory days of the opium trade. Jardine Matheson led the effort to circumvent China's ban on the trade in the period before Britain fought two "opium wars" to force Beijing to accept the drug.
  

Why the British might want Advani and Modi out of the way is the subject of another post.