Digging in deeper and wider

MANY already knew, when the US forces launched their operation in Afghanistan last October, that the Americans would not quit the country soon after they deposed the Taliban and dispersed the Al Qaeda, even though this was the impression the Americans tried to give. Recent statements by various American officials only confirm what many people already knew then.

An official in the Bush administration has acknowledged that the US is now making a “mid-course correction” in its strategy in Afghanistan. Judging by the comments of the US Central Command chief Gen Tommy Franks in Afghanistan early last week, this “correction” will see the US military digging in not only deeper into Afghanistan but wider as well beyond Afghanistan’s borders.

Gen Tommy Franks said the US military would be staying in Afghanistan “for a long, long time”, and he even cited the example of America’s military relationship with South Korea in this regard. A few days later, Pentagon officials talked about the necessity of increasing the international security force already in Afghanistan and extending its presence beyond Kabul.

Even more alarming was Gen Tommy Franks’s statement that over time the theatre of war against terrorism might need to be extended beyond the frontiers of Afghanistan into surrounding states. This will obviously have implications for the Central Asian states bordering Afghanistan, Iran and specially Pakistan, since it is being frequently suggested and even acknowledged that Al Qaeda men and even Osama bin Laden himself may be in Pakistan’s tribal border belt.

If the US is not ready to pack up and leave Afghanistan, and Pakistan where it has been given access to military and civilian airport facilities to help it in the operations in Afghanistan, reports in the international press also indicate that the American military is also digging in deeper in Central Asia, where it has managed to establish an unprecedented presence after Sept 11.

Since October 2001 the US has managed to lease military bases in three Central Asian republics, viz., Uzbekistan (1,500 American troops), Kyrgyzstan (over 2,000 American troops) and Tajikistan. As usual the US had assured these states, and the Russians, that these bases were temporary and would be there only until the end of the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan. However, international analysts now believe, from the way the US is building up troops and facilities in Central Asia coupled with the fact that the American “mid-course correction” in Afghanistan is going to make the war there a protracted one, the troop pullout in Central Asian states will also be prolonged indefinitely.

This “mid-course correction” in strategy in Afghanistan is not something new: the Americans had done the same in the Korean peninsula five decades ago. When the US sent air, sea and ground forces into South Korea after communist North Korea invaded non-communist South Korea in June 1950, the initial objective was to restore South Korea’s border at the 38th parallel. However, the defensive war soon turned into an offensive war as the Americans launched a drive to liberate North Korea but failed.

The “mid-course correction” in Korea then turned into permanent military presence. Today, five decades after the Korean war, and a decade after the fall of Soviet communism, some 37,000 American troops remain in South Korea and the Korean peninsula remains one of the most heavily armed area in the world.

Similarly, nearly six decades after the American troops first based themselves in Japan after World War II, today some 52,000 US troops are still housed in that country to ensure that Japan does not become a military threat in the region again. It is believed that a Japanese initiative as early as 1955 to include a timetable for complete withdrawal of all US troops in the US-Japan Mutual Security Agreement was never accepted by the Americans.

Thus, once American troops enter a country, they are very reluctant to extricate themselves from it. They did extricate themselves from the Philippines though, in 1991, after the Filipino Senate voted to shut down an American naval base there. But American military presence in this former US colony had lasted nearly a hundred years before it ended with the base shutdown. And even then, the American presence — over a thousand military advisers and support units — made a six-month comeback in the first half of this year when President Bush opened a second front in the international war against terrorism in the Philippines. The troops were duly withdrawn at the end of the six-month period, but the two countries have signed an agreement allowing American military advisers to return to the Philippines.

Over in the Middle East, when the US sent 500,000 troops into Saudi Arabia in 1991 to help protect the kingdom and expel Iraq from Kuwait, the American secretary of defence at the time, Richard Cheney, promised Saudi King Fahd that the troops would be removed after the war. A decade later today, 5,000 American troops are still based in Saudi Arabia (the unofficial figure is said to be three or four times greater — as many as 20,000 — while there are now also nearly 10,000 American troops in Kuwait, 4,200 in Bahrain, 3,300 in Qatar and a few thousand in Oman.

In order to justify continued American military presence in the Far East and the Middle East, the US reminds the world every now and then that North Korea and Iraq continues to pose a potential nuclear/chemical/biological threat to their neighbours. Similarly to justify a continued (or growing) US military presence in Afghanistan and the surrounding region, it frequently throws up reminders that Osama bin Laden is very much alive and his Al Qaeda network is kicking up new “terrorist” attacks.

The latest wave of propaganda has come not only in the usual form of statements by American officials or reports in American newspapers that the Al Qaeda leader is believed to be alive, and now roaming the Afghan-Pakistan border. It has also taken the form of a series of videotapes broadcast by CNN television, said to be a secret library of Al Qaeda tapes showing its training tactics and chemical gas experiments.

Meanwhile, comments such as those by Pentagon officials reported in The New York Times that enlarging the international security force and placing its troops outside Kabul may help secure the country and “allow US troops to leave sooner”, need to be taken with much more than a pinch of salt. For, if the examples of American military relationship with Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia are anything to go by, the nearly year-old American military presence in Pakistan’s western neighbour definitely looks set to remain for a long, long time. All the more so when Gen Tommy Franks himself had brought up the example of America’s military relationship with South Korea when commenting on the length of stay of American troops in Afghanistan last week.

Thus the US is expected to pursue some kind or the other of long-term military and security cooperation agreement not only with Afghanistan but with all its neighbours as well, including Pakistan. These agreements could range from access to local bases as and when the US military needs to use them, to permanent American bases in the country.

If George Washington had children they would not be pulling rickshaws

GEORGE Washington had no children. However, George and Martha Washington raised two children from her first marriage. By all accounts, George Washington was a very loving father to his stepchildren. Whatever has happened to America’s first First Family and how they may have evolved are matters of conjecture.

But one thing is certain: George Washington’s heirs would not be starving or pulling rickshaws in Kolkata’s hot and humid bylanes to eke out a living as the heirs of Tipu Sultan were recently seen doing.

The link between George Washington and Tipu Sultan is too palpable to be ignored. George Washington became a hero of the American Revolution by defeating Britain’s Lord Cornwallis at the battle of Yorktown on Oct 19, 1781.

In contrast, Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore, was treacherously defeated in 1799 by the same British general who was forced to abjectly surrender before George Washington. There’s a difference here, however. While the American hero enjoyed the unflinching support of his fellow revolutionaries, Tipu Sultan was completely betrayed by the Marathas and by the ruler of Hyderabad, who both joined the assault by Cornwallis on the Fort of Srirangapatnam.

To a lot of historians Tipu represents one of the finest spirits among Indian warriors who gave the East India Company a run for their money. As a matter of record, such was his total sway over the region that he ruled and his defiance of British authority that the East India Company’s shares dropped by almost 60 per cent during the protracted Mysore campaign.

Prasanta Paul is among the few journalists who have tracked the tragedy that subsequently visited Tipu’s family. He says he was shocked by the plight of the great grand descendants of Tipu Sultan, who were as recently as two years ago lugging rickshaws in the mean streets of Kolkata.

For example, Anwar 38, is just another faceless rickshaw-puller, among the thousand others lugging their three or two-wheeled vehicles in Kolkata and its neighbourhood.

“Yet the thin, lanky Anwar is not really a nobody; he is one of the sixth generation descendants of Tipu Sultan, the great freedom fighter from South India who laid down his life in a bloody fight against the British, in the battle of Srirangapatnam, in 1799,” says Paul.

As luck and irony would have it, Anwar and his brothers have been pulling rickshaws on the very road named after one of their ancestors, Prince Ghulam Mohammad Anwar Shah, one of Tipu Sultan’s 12 sons!

Never mind if Anwar or the members of his family pine for what is not, as their brush with history is a distant memory now, a tale almost forgotten. It was from their grandmother that they came to know about the historical connection, or rather, about the link with Srirangapatnam and, subsequently, Prince Anwar Shah.

“We are ashamed to speak of our past; that we are descendants of the great man makes us shrink further, because it won’t help to restore our fortune or mitigate our poverty,” says Anwar Shah, as his eyes search for a passenger in the scorching, humid day.

Says Paul about his assignment: “The sad reality is that talking to the correspondent here about their plight is less important than earning his daily wages, to fend for himself and the family.”

In La Martiniere College, where I went to school in Lucknow, of the four “houses” within which the boys were split into competing teams, the green one is named after Lord Cornwallis. The red one, to which I belonged, is called Hodson House, named after Captain Hodson of the colonial army.

Yes, the same Capt Hodson who captured the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar after the vanquished ruler had escaped from the Red Fort to seek shelter at Humayun’s tomb near what is today known as Mizuamuddin East. Hodson had also captured the grandsons of the Mughal ruler who were blinded and executed by him at the Khuni Darwaza, an old sandstone relic that today overlooks the Indian Express building in Delhi.

Recently, completely out of the blue, I was brought face to face with a Muslim family from the southern city of Hyderabad. They were introduced as the surviving heirs of Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Arijeet Gupta, an independent filmmaker, stumbled onto this family, safely secluded from the public eye, by accident. “The Living Moghuls” is the first-ever film on the Hyderabad-based family of 80-year-old Begum Laila Umahani, the 4th generation, of the family of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the “Last Great Moghul” and his first wife Ashraf Mahal.

This remarkable family-history reveals the story of four lost generations of descendants after Bahadur Shah Zafar’s exile following the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, also known as India’s first struggle for freedom. This brought to an end 332 years of Mughal rule of India, started by the great adventurer and romantic hero Babur in 1526.

The film shows the Umahani family living in a crowded part of Hyderabad in a dilapidated flat. Meeting them during the premier, I discovered that one of the sons has now become a kind of a chef, advising the Sheraton Hotel on whatever recipes he can remember from oral tradition. So the scion of the great Mughal dynasty turns into a khansama.

As an ardent follower of Laddan Mian’s philosophy, I would have accepted the turn of events in the lives of the children of Tipu Sultan and Bahadur Shah Zafar with good grace. Laddan Mian the late taluqedar of Mustafabad had declared once, after he had given away his assets at throwaway prices, and some even free to a few chosen friends: Jab Sultanat-i-Roma na rahi to meri kya haqeeqat. (When the mighty Roman Empire could vanish without trace, who am I a mere mortal to command these vast assets to my care?”

Mir Taqi Mir had observed this phenomenon thus: Jis sar ko ghuroor aaj hai yaan tajwari ka, kal uspe yaheen shor hai, phir noha gari ka. But there is a rub.

How come the children of those former rulers of India who fought the British colonialists with valour are out on the streets, leading a difficult life that is the lot of a majority of Indians, but those who served the British with servitude and obsequiousness are sitting as members of parliament?

Whether it is the late Rajmata of Gwalior or the late Nawab of Rampur and several others. They were all elected to the Lok Sabha, the house of the people, by a popular verdict. Fine. But to allow them to carry their titles in a republican state? And with the titles that would not have been theirs had they not betrayed people like Tipu Sultan and Bahadur Shah Zafar.

This kind of liberty usurped by many a prince who was loyal to the “Company Bahadur” looks even more absurd and undeserving, since the same feudal values that gave them the power remain at the heart of their prowess even today. This is where it all looks like such a sham. While a lot many of these houses of valour have gone along with the Jana Sangh, for such was the appeal for the rightwing Hindu party, the fact that they claim to be the crux of democracy, the very substance of nationalism, can only make you laugh if not angry.

The late Madhavrao Scindia, the Maharaja of Gwalior, was probably a good, even outstanding parliamentarian. He was first elected as a candidate for the rightwing Hindu Jana Sangh in 1972. Fine. He later switched his loyalty to the more progressive Congress Party. Fine. At least there was this progress.

I am not sure what kind of ideological commitment the self-professed pro-poor Congress party looks for among its candidates, but the former rulers are very much part of the scheme, just as is the case with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In fact, there may be no difference between the two main political parties where their attitude to the scions of the princely states is concerned. No wonder that the young Jyotiraditya, the son of the late Madhavrao Scindia, says he was approached by the BJP to be their candidate in the election that he won from his late father’s seat in Gwalior last year as Congress candidate.

Speaking about his father, after his tragic death in an air crash, Jyotriaditya Scindia said: “My family has a long tradition of serving people. Entering politics was just a means of furthering that goal. He strived throughout his life to get maximum benefits for the people in his constituency. I don’t think that he had entered politics with the aim of becoming the prime minister. He did his best in his own capacity to serve the nation. His work and the appreciation that he received for it was the driving force for him.”

Was there any attempt by the BJP to woo him in its fold just after his father’s death?

“Yes, there was an offer by the BJP to join the party. But as far as I am concerned it was never an issue.”

Had George Washington not routed Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, the British governor-general would never have been sent to India on a punishment posting. And who knows the history of our subcontinent might have been different.

Another unfair NFC award in the offing

KAWISH deplores that at the National Finance Commission meeting in Karachi, Punjab was adamant that the commission should continue to maintain population the sole criterion for the seventh NFC award, which is expected to be announced by the end of this month. On the other hand, Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP wanted revenue generation, poverty/ backwardness and geographical size of the provinces to be kept in view for distribution of tax pool revenue among them for the next year.

All over the world wherever a formula is evolved for distribution of funds among provinces of a country, it is not based only on population but factors like poverty and backwardness in different provinces are also taken into account. Ours is the only country where, since 1975 when the first NFC award was declared, population has been the only criterion for the resource distribution.

The three smaller provinces do not want any compensation for the past losses but they do want that the basis of the new NFC award be changed. Punjab’s refusal to sympathetically consider the plight of the other provinces suggests as if it does not want poverty alleviation and development process in the other provinces. While doing so, Punjab ignores the reports of various institutions which express grave concern over the rising poverty in Sindh and Balochistan. According to the report of the State Bank, the reason behind the increase in poverty in Sindh lies in destruction of the province’s agriculture sector due to water shortage. Water and finance are the two items Punjab has always wanted to keep in its hands.

Now that the debate on the coming NFC award is continuing, the Punjab government again wants its writ to prevail. However, Federal Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz says that Islamabad wants to evolve a consensus among the provinces over the award. Consensus does not mean that due to the insistence of a province, the new award be declared according to the old formula. Rather, the Centre should make Punjab agree to some new arrangements. If the sole criterion of population is maintained for the resource distribution, it will mean that the seventh NFC award will not be unanimously approved but the objections of the smaller provinces will make it controversial. Besides poverty, backwardness and size of the provinces, their demand to reduce the federation’s share should be taken into consideration.

The provinces have demanded that the federal government must authorize them to recover taxes and give each of them 40 per cent of tax revenue generated by them, says Ibrat. The issue of distribution of financial resources between the Centre and the provinces must be addressed now. Sindh provides 70 per cent of Pakistan’s revenue but, in return, it is not given even enough share to run its affairs smoothly. Similar is the case with Balochistan. This imbalance should be removed in the coming NFC award so that the deprived provinces may get a breathing space.

Awami Awaz writes that the Pakistan Engineering Council has refused to register hundreds of graduates of 1991-92 batch of the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro, on the grounds that they had passed their four-year BE course in six years. While taking this harsh decision, the PEC has tended to forget that it was not the fault of the graduates but that of the university, for which the former should not be punished. The council should review its decision to save the engineers from permanent unemployment and their successors from unnecessary depression.