| April 7, 2003 | Monday | Safar 4, 1424 |
Indian patriots swap drinks for election season: DATELINE NEW DELHI
Political designs and designer politics: VIEW FROM MARGALLA
THE sight on TV screens of a lead Abram M1 A1 giant, main battle tank (MBT) of “A” squadron of the 7th Cavalry, was frightening — all of a piece with the US Wild West tactic of “Shock and Awe”. The lead tank, with the rest of the squadron behind and Bradley armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs) alongside, was moving menacingly towards Baghdad, spearheading Operation Iraqi Freedom. A joke more cynical and cruel would be hard to imagine.
HAVING scaled the dizzy — and fizzy — heights of patriotic fervour at the Cricket World Cup final last month, Indian nationalists are now bracing for a major election season, a transition that will not go unnoticed for the changed brand (and odour) of their preferred drink that seems all set to be served up at the gruelling contest ahead.
While the commentator on the spot would not disclose the exact location of the advancing tank force and its distance from Baghdad, it could not have been very far from the capital.
The real-time picture of the advancing tank column under massive air cover belied Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Saeed al Sahhaf’s claims that “enemy” tanks instead of closing up to the city outskirts would still be away and adrift in the desert.
US forces are steadily gaining upon the Iraqi capital with no visible and worthwhile resistance from the home forces. The state of the Iraqi resistance has been passive and sporadic. Will the much-dreaded and widely publicized Republican Guards ever appear suddenly out of the blue to make a last ditch stand? One can only wait and see.
US Central Command spokesman Brigadier Gen Vincent Brooks aptly (even if unwittingly) called the ongoing war without parallel in military history. And rightly so too. For this happens to be the only war being waged by a superpower, in collaboration with the equally modern and well equipped British army, without a sizable enemy within sight. It is left wholly to the ability, initiative and the will of the coalition commanders “to scale up and down” the level of violence.
What will be the next move of the coalition commanders after converging on Baghdad? Considering their extremely cautious tactics and calculated moves so far, a sort of a standoff or resort to a “siege train” strategy looks more likely. Rather than take the city by storm, and run into an unanticipated trap (even, a chain of street-to-street and house-to-house traps) of messy urban warfare, they would rather wait and watch.
A timely, well calculated pause to gauge the state of the morale and fighting ability of the Iraqi forces, above all the hold of the regime over the city population, should make more sense. It would also be closer to the age-old dictum that discretion is the better part of valour.
No commander, no matter how strongly placed vis-a-vis the enemy (hardly a regular one in this case), will put the lives of his men and the safety of his war machine at stake if he can avoid it without compromising the ultimate outcome of the war. Baghdad, the city of Arabian Nights, can prove a hornet’s nest for the invading forces if invaded in a hurry.
General Tommy Franks would rather be using (as indeed he might have already) his special forces and helicopter borne assault troops to land at vital choke points in the city, and take out or seize those before storming the whole city.
According to Newsweek (March 31), the 101st Airborne (brigade or division?) can be used to support a helicopter assault. And now that the coalition forces have practically secured the Saddam International Airport, the 101st, together with other assault elements, should have been already operationally engaged.
TV channels have reported a company (in fact, a troop or squadron) of the Iraqi armour destroyed by the attackers in some sort of a tank encounter. This would be, if at all, more in the nature of a last desperate throw of the dice on the part of the Iraqis than a tank battle in the real sense. The Iraqi armour has been heard of more in terms of the losses suffered than those inflicted on the enemy.
What may well turn out to be the messiest and bloodiest part of the battle for Baghdad inside the city itself will be seen only after the coalition forces actually march into the city. For the time being, what can be said is that in spite of the success of their frontal attacks, the rear of the invasion forces all across the country remains vulnerable to Iraqi militias and guerilla groups.
The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.
Of course, the World Cup was a heady admixture of cola wars and betting syndicates garbed in misleading national colours, with a few glorious moments of cricket thrown in.
By contrast the arriving election season in India looks set to throw up a keen contest between the two main parties over a bunch of emotive issues, including a raging debate over the benefits of cow’s urine for humans. Any party seen promoting aerated drinks or even water during this contest is supposed to do so at its own risk.
This is partly because neither the rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nor the rightward lurching Congress Party would want to upset their usually common benefactors. Thus the rediscovery of the virtues of sipping bovine urine has emerged as a potential winner, playing both sides of the street in the debate of obvious non-issues.
Also, since water, or at least its potable variant, has been bottled and privatized, which is beyond the reach of several million parched Indians, any discussion on the scandal would be deemed suicidal as an election topic, particularly when there is only bad news on offer.
It therefore cannot be seen as a mere coincidence that the BJP was holding its crucial pre-election national convention last week in Indore in Madhya Pradesh. Why Indore? Could it be that this is where the nation’s premier institute for research in the benefits of cow urine, the Cow Urine Therapy and Research Institute, is actually situated?
It remains a fact, that with all its chest-thumping over the May 1998 nuclear tests, the BJP was trounced in the elections that followed in Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, and Rajasthan. The same three states are in the fray again along with Chhatishgarh, a new state.
The Congress could have read the verdict as one for peace, and against the BJP’s muscle-flexing militarism, but it didn’t. And so when Kargil came, it found itself in a bind against Hindu nationalism, as it still continues to do.
The BJP has been boasting that it has led the first non-Congress government to have completed five years in power. This is not true. With its usual sleight of hand, it has included the 13- month tenure to the tally when the Vajpayee government was actually thrown out by a single vote in parliament. If we add that it makes five years, yes.
The person who tripped up that ill-fated government was Ms Jayalalitha, the present chief minister of Tamil Nadu. The BJP, which now banks on Jayalalitha’s help to shore up its alliance, has deftly masked this embarrassing reality.
But it has not allowed anyone also to recall that its own party president was caught on a video film accepting defence-related bribes. It has also kept any discussion on countless other scandals and outrages out of the political frame. Even the Gujarat massacres are sought to be obliterated from public memory.
A more immediate issue for the BJP is the ban on cow slaughter. And the Congress has responded by listing the many benefits of cow dung and cow urine, with one of its chief ministers claiming to be a regular connoisseur of the bovine offering.
Indeed Cow Urine Therapy adviser Virender Kumar Jain would tell you that on the basis of the investigations carried out over the past years at the Cow Urine Therapy Centre at Indore, a conclusion has been drawn that diabetes, blood pressure, acidity, asthma, psoriasis, eczema, AIDS and other diseases can be cured successfully with cow urine therapy. If that fails to enthuse the voters, then there is the research that with a rich haul of minerals, cow’s urine was found to contain traces of gold. Now that last claim sounds like a good pitch for someone seeking to alleviate India’s grinding poverty.
IT IS claimed that ancient Indian musicians could invoke truly magical happenings with their melodies. They could create rain and fire and help heal physical wounds with their magical music.
Now a leading Indian singer, Pandit Jasraj, says he wants to go to Iraq to help bring peace there. Pandit Jasraj claims that he had performed in East Punjab in 1990, when the state was suffering from a violent Sikh insurgency. He had performed in Pakistan in 1998, “successfully changing the attitude of the people there”. It wasn’t clear what attitude was changed and towards whom or what.
But I remember a mild mannered musician telling a professor of history at Aligarh who was learning the sitar with him that much of the talk about music casting a spell on people was mere tall claim.
“If you sing a particular raag, a deer or a cow might stand there looking entranced. But do not get carried away. For if an angry dog gets to hear the same raag, it might misunderstand your motives and might even try to bite you.”
THE Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the ideological hub of the ruling BJP, has always scowled at any American help to Pakistan. So, to be sure, we are going to be hearing from the RSS about the one billion dollars of Pakistan’s debt that the United States has reportedly written off this week. By a coincidence, the RSS journal, “Organizer”, was airing its favourite gripe even 30 years ago. It excerpted the following complaint in its weekly column about a mere 14 million dollars in military aid that was announced in 1973.
“The resumption of American military aid to Pakistan amounts to renewed American interference in the affairs of the Hindustan peninsula,” it wrote on March 31, 1973. “We are sorry to say that it is this American support for Pakistan which directly led to Indo- Pak wars of 1965 and 1971. Indeed, but for the American support to the Pakistani military machine, that country would have been spared the ignominy of martial law.”
AS LUCK would have it, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali fitted the bill when the official designers given the task of putting together a government of President Musharraf’s liking started looking around after the elections for a prime minister from a smaller province who had no significant political base either in his own province or in the party to which he belonged. And Chaudhry Shujaat, the party chief of the PML-Q, would not have asked for anything better because with the ruling party in his own hands and the greater part of the populace as well as the most powerful province in the hands of cousin Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, the Chaudhry of Gujrat did not need a politically powerful prime minister from the Punjab to contend with.
But Prime Minister Jamali not only has to cope with two all powerful political offices—the president of Pakistan and the president of the PML(Q)—he has also to keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see how much distance Rao Sikander Iqbal of the Patriots has covered in his own bid to replace him. Those who make and break governments in this country are said to have told Rao within the hearing distance of many at the time of the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Jamali that he (Rao) would be the next to take the oath.
The politically high profile dinner that Rao Sikander Iqbal hosted for the president in Islamabad last week is being viewed here as a precursor of an imminent change in the balance of power within the ruling hierarchy, with the Patriots going one up on the Chaudhry-Jamali combine in the on-going tussle for expanding their respective political space.
The president reportedly feels that the Chaudhry-Jamali combine had failed to defend him on the issue of the uniform and the LFO. He is also said to have taken a dim view of the attempts of Chaudhry Shujaat to win over the support of the MMA at the centre in return for some fundamental adjustments in the president’s stand on matters of his election and the constitution.
In the first place, the president seemingly may not wish to annoy the US by overtly associating the MMA with the government at the centre. Washington is said to be already feeling rather uncomfortable with the MMA heading the NWFP government and a coalition partner in the Balochistan government, the two neighbouring provinces of Afghanistan where the US forces are still at war with the Taliban.
Second, the president is said to have decided not to put his future in the hands of a ruling alliance dominated by the PML-Q and the MMA, both of which could join hands at some future date, once the president has taken off his uniform, to get rid of him. And such an alliance would also have no use for the Patriots whom the Chaudhry is said to hate from the bottom of his heart because of their PPP roots. Also, to his annoyance, a serious rebellion is said to be simmering within the PML-Q as many cabinet contenders in the party have been ignored to accommodate the Patriots who now want three more portfolios. Insiders do not rule out the possibility of a split in the ruling party with the frustrated lot soon going back to Mian Azhar.
The abnormal dependence of the president on 20 or so Patriot MNAs and his dislike of 80 or so MMA parliamentarians (MNAs and senators) is said to spring from General Musharraf’s personal distrust of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif on the one hand and his need to remain on the right side of the US government on the other.
If the elections had been free and fair, the nation perhaps would have given another split mandate allowing either Benazir’s PPP or Nawaz Sharif’s PML to form the government. This was out of the question as the president had made it very clear what was on his mind from day one with his repeated ‘either them or me’.
He, instead, had seemingly wanted a split mandate dividing the two elected houses among four equal groups of the PPP, PML-Q, PML-N and MMA so that he could rule as long as he wanted. However, his designers, Tariq Aziz and Lt. Gen. Ihtasham perhaps overplayed their hand in the case of the MMA and in the upshot the president had a parliament in which the religious alliance emerged with the balance of power in their hands.
This has allowed the PML-Q chief Chaudhry Shujaat the needed manoeuvrability to try to expand political space for himself by getting the MMA on board. In his heart of hearts the Chaudhry is a liberal maulvi who is under the influence of extremely reactionary schools of thought. And he is also at the same time a faithful fan of the Pakistan Army. This has apparently complicated his life, causing him to keep running back and forth between his ambition and his desire to remain on the right side of both the religious elements and the army.
TAILPIECE: Former president and chief of his Millat Party Farooq Leghari and former speaker of the National Assembly Hamid Nasir Chatta and the chief of his faction of PML(J) are in the run for the post of Kashmir Committee chairman. The appointing authority, the president, is in a fix because he does not want to annoy either of the two. But why do the two want such a lowly position after having occupied such high elective offices? One can only guess.—Onlooker