Another kind of influence

WHEN people in Pakistan talk about the growing American influence in their country, they are, of course, thinking of the way Washington may be affecting policymaking in Islamabad. That the administration headed by President George W. Bush has forged a close relationship with the administration of President Pervez Musharraf is a fact of life for Pakistan.

However, there is one other way in which America has begun to impact on developments in Pakistan. What I have in mind is the influence originating from an increasingly powerful group in America. The reference here is to the Pakistani diaspora in the United States made up of hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis resident in different parts of that country.

In the minds of many Pakistanis, the recent economic recovery in the country is attributed to the large flows of foreign capital. This is true to some extent. But less well known and realized is the fact that the largest part of this flow is not from official sources such as the government of the United States or the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank. It is coming in as remittances being sent by Pakistanis living and working abroad.

Since the mid-seventies, when this type of external flow became important for the Pakistani economy, it was referred to as “workers’ remittances”. That was a correct description since the bulk of the money being sent then was coming from the millions of Pakistanis working in the Middle East. A very large number of these people were unskilled or semi-skilled workers labouring on thousands of construction sites all over the oil producing and exporting countries of the Middle East. These workers went on short-term assignments that lasted for no more than three to five years. They lived in labour camps near the construction sites, saved most of what they earned, and remitted back to Pakistan most of what they saved.

There was an impression at that time that much of this flow of money was simply frittered away by those who received it. There was no doubt some waste that always happens with windfall incomes. That notwithstanding, the remittances went straight to friends and families of the workers and a good proportion of the money was used for meeting the basic needs of dependents that had stayed back. That the incidence of poverty declined in Pakistan by a significant amount during this period was largely the result of the flow of this money to the poor. But that was then. Now the origin of remittances and the use to which they are being put are entirely different from those earlier flows.

The construction boom in the Middle East is now mostly over; most of the workers who were employed on the construction sites are back in Pakistan; the people of Pakistani origin still resident in the Middle East mostly represent a different economic and social class; their pattern of savings and investments are different from those who worked in this part of the world a few decades ago. They have, in other words, a different kind of relationship with the homeland. The Pakistanis living and working in the Middle East are not sending back as much money as was the case with the first wave of migrants.

One way of illustrating this fundamental change in diaspora economics is to look at the streams of remittances into the country over the last several decades. For a quarter century from 1975 to 2000, Saudi Arabia was the largest source of remittances into Pakistan. In the 10-year period between 1990-1991 and 1999-2000, Pakistanis living in Saudi Arabia sent a total of $4.796 billion to their homeland. This averaged at $480 million a year. However, the amounts being sent declined steadily from $682 million in 1990-1991 to only $310 million in 1999-2000. By the end of the decade of the nineties, the amount of remittances received by Pakistan from Saudi Arabia was less than one-half of the amount at the beginning of the decade.

Not only did the amounts sent by the Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia decline, their proportion in the total also fell significantly. In 1990-1991, the Saudi Arabian remittances accounted for 37.4 per cent of the total; 10 years later, the proportion had declined to only 28.5 per cent.

During the same period, Pakistanis living in the United States began to increase the amount of money they were remitting to the homeland. This flow cannot be called “workers’ remittances” in the strict sense of that term. The funds that constituted this stream were not emanating from the working class but from the class of professionals who had, over time, built a large diaspora in North America. What motivated this group of people was not the provision of financial assistance to the people they had left behind. They were much more interested in making economic investments in the country of their origin.

The stringent regulations introduced on money transfers after the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, had an impact on this flow of funds. In one year — between 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 — remittances from the United States increased almost six-fold, from $135 million to $779 million. In the following year, they increased by another 60 per cent and reached a record of $1.24 billion. They have stayed around that level since then. What explains the sudden jump in this type of financial flow?

The initial impetus no doubt came from the steps taken by the US treasury following the terrorist attack. Instead of using the informal ‘hundi’ and ‘hawala’ channels for transmitting funds, the remitters were forced by new regulations to use official banking channels. Some black money that was available with the members of the expatriates also came under scrutiny and was probably pulled out of the United States and sent back to Pakistan. Some of the remitted money probably constituted capital flight — deposits held in the American banking system by the Pakistani businesses awaiting a turnaround in their country’s economy. Some members of the Pakistani diaspora in the United States, troubled by the policies pursued by Washington in the Muslim world, may have sought new investment opportunities in their own country.

All these factors contributed to the sharp flow of private funds from the United States to Pakistan. But there is more to the story than this explanation. There is enough anecdotal evidence available from around the United States to suggest that a profound change is occurring in the way the expatriates are viewing Pakistan and the way they might become important players in Pakistan’s economic progress. Islamabad would do well to take cognizance of this development and begin to cater in its planning to the wishes and aspirations of the members of the diaspora.

How large is the Pakistani community in North America (Canada and the United States) and what is the level of their incomes, savings and investments? How much wealth has this community accumulated and to what use is it being put? There is little solid information available to provide good answers to these questions. I have suggested in some of my writings that the number of Pakistanis living in the United States and Canada is close to a million, about equal to those resident in Britain. That estimate was based on some of the information available from the US Census but the problem with the official numbers is that they use the place of birth to identify the country of origin of the people living in the country. A state-by-state survey done by the Pakistan embassy in Washington suggests a much smaller number.

The Indians who claim the size of their North American community to be about 2.5 million believe that there are only 150,000 people of Pakistani origin in the United States. There is a reason why the Indians would favour a smaller estimate for the size of the Pakistani diaspora; the larger the size the greater the political influence of the community. A similar debate has gone on for some time between the Jewish and Muslim populations of the United States. Organizations representing the former claim that at most there are two to three million Muslims in the United States; the latter put their number at between six and eight million.

Even if we use a number of half a million for the size of the Pakistani community in the United States, their economic presence with reference to the homeland would still be considerable. There are several ways of estimating the economic size of this community. Since little information is available about this, I will use mostly guesswork or information about other expatriates.

If the average income per head of the members of the diaspora is $50,000 — more than the average for the United States but a bit less than the average for the Indian community — the aggregate income per head of the community is of the order of $25 billion. This is more than one quarter of the revised estimate for Pakistan’s gross domestic product. If this community saves one quarter of its annual income, the aggregate savings would amount to over $6 billion. This is equivalent to about one third of net national savings of Pakistan estimated by the World Bank at 18 per cent of the gross domestic product.

How have the expatriates deployed their savings over time? As is the case with all immigrants, housing is generally the first destination of savings. I estimate the accumulated wealth of this community at about $100 billion. Of this, probably one half, or $50 billion, is in housing. This translates into about 200,000 housing units that this community owns in the United States. About a quarter, or $25 billion , is invested in businesses, mostly small. The remaining $25 billion is in various kinds of financial assets.

The amount of total income of Pakistani expatriates in the United States will continue to increase if there is no addition to their numbers. This will happen since the total wealth of the community will keep on increasing which in turn will produce additional income. We can, therefore, safely assume that the economic size of the expatriates will continue to expand, probably at a rate larger than the rate of increase in Pakistan’s gross domestic product? How has this economic wealth begun to affect Pakistan and what is likely to happen in the future? I will take up these questions next week.

American Muslims’ plight

THE perpetrators of 9/11 have caused a grievous tragedy in the name of Islam. While they revel in the scale of the destruction that it wrought, ordinary Muslims the world over and especially in the West suffer day in and day out.

Some rot in the inhuman cells of Guantanamo Bay, others in jails across the land and yet others at the hands of overeager airport personnel perusing no-fly lists. A recent report by the justice department’s office of the inspector-general has found “a disturbing pattern” of discriminatory and retaliatory actions against Muslim inmates by wardens and guards at American prisons. This was reported in 2003 but no disciplinary action has been taken against any warden to date.

The very first Muslims were brought to America as slaves in the late 18th to early 19th centuries. After that there were three waves of immigration of Muslims to the United States and it is safe to say that all these waves pursued the American dream. The first from Syria and Lebanon between 1875 and 1912, the second wave after World War I around 1918 was also from the Middle East in contrast to the third wave that came from South Asia and Eastern Europe between 1947 and 1960. The early immigrants were migrant workers, peddlers, miners and factory workers, as opposed to the third wave of Muslims many of whom were well-educated and settled in urban areas.

Many a story is told of the name-changes that occurred at immigration, across the board, even to non-Muslims, and unpronounceable Arab and Polish names were demystified into Johns and Smiths. Even today America retains this xenophobia. Its eight million American Muslims are divided into four even quadrants: 24 per cent are African-American, 26 per cent Arab-Americans, 26 per cent South Asian and 24 per cent all others. The rest of America may be graying, not Muslims; whilst 67 per cent of the American adult population is over 40, 67 per cent of the American-Muslim population is under 40.

In the arena of education, 67 per cent of American-Muslims have a Bachelor’s degree whilst only 40 per cent of the American population has this qualification. As the level goes up to master’s degrees and doctorates the gap widens even more. And with the penchant especially of South Asians to channel their children into medicine, one in ten American Muslim households has a doctor. It reminds one of an illustrative joke by Azhar Usman, a Chicago based comedian. An older Pakistani gentleman was going on about how the Muslim community is in dire need of people in the media, in journalism and law. “Uncle what do your children do?” asked Azhar. “They are all doctors, mashaallah!” was the dichotomous answer.

Interestingly we have the financial resources too. According to the 2000 US census, the average American income was $42,000 per year. About 66 per cent of US Muslims earned over $50,000 and a whopping 26 per cent earned over $100,000. The commonest occupation was student at 20 per cent, engineers 12 per cent, physician or dentist 10 per cent, homemaker 10 per cent, programmer seven per cent and corporate manager and teacher six per cent each.

American Muslims are under-represented in occupations that make public policy or influence public opinion, and very few pursue print/TV/film media. They are also unlikely to be in state legislatures and courts where laws are made and practised.

At the socio-moral level, and because of the strong definition given to our lives by Islam, Muslims traditionally follow their own way of life. The moral restrictions regarding modest attire, dating, premarital sex and single motherhood as well as the tenacity with which the Muslim Americans implement then own code can create many problems not to mention the balance of power struggle between parents and children in many a Muslim household.

The magnetism of the material invariably wanes and many American born ‘confused desis’ reach adulthood ensconced in the American dream. The coming of age of this second and third generation of American Muslims coupled with the ironic impetus of 9/11 has created a moment in time ripe for the development of the American Muslim social, religious and political identity.

Mosques dot the American landscape. It’s time that we set up hospitals and nursing homes with a Muslim board of trustees, providing health case regardless of race, gender or religion.

Participating in the political process is the indispensable medium for full expression of our citizen status. The American Muslim political coordination council orchestrated the bloc vote in 2000 and it is sad that the Muslims look at that event with a jaundiced eye.

It is important to see the bloc vote’s historic galvanizing power and how it united a very diverse, argumentative and politically puerile group. The vociferous protests caused the renaming of that group and now it is the American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Election (AMT-PAC), an umbrella organization of ten national Muslim organizations.

We must avoid micro-nationalism and calling ourselves Pakistani-Americans or Egyptian-Americans. Identification with and promotion of the common thread of Islam engenders clout and exerts numerical pressure.

American Muslims according to the 2000 census bureau have the secrets of success: number, youth, education and wealth. Participating in the political process is, by far, the shortest and most effective route to full expression and acceptance of the way we are, and not the way they want us to be— a persecuted and petrified minority.

The writer is a physician practising in Toledo, Ohio, US.

The primacy of education

TODAY, no challenge is greater than raising our educational standards. An inextricably linked factor is the development of essential qualities since the educated elite without these attributes have done little to further national progress.

Robert McNamara, a former president of the World Bank, was asked sometime back as to what he would do differently if he got another opportunity to run the World Bank. His reply was that he would channel the bulk of the aid earmarked for developing countries to education alone.

Although it is not realistically possible to devote the major part of development funds to one sector alone, McNamara’s remark does reflect the very high priority education should occupy in nation-building. Also instructive is Professor Galbraith’s remark that “no uneducated people have ever made economic progress. No educated people have long remained poor.”

Currently we are spending less than 2.5 per cent of our GDP on education, which is totally inadequate to our needs and which is the lowest in South Asia. It appears that in the past even this small allocation has not been fully utilized. Irrespective of the many essential areas on which national resources have to be spent, there is no getting away from the fundamental importance of educational development as the long-term pillar of sustainable national strength in all essential fields, including economic development and national security.

What is needed is not a new educational plan by every successive government but consistency and continuity in implementation and monitoring of existing plans. The propensity of every incoming government to undo or downgrade the measures already taken by its predecessor, positive or otherwise, has resulted in successive educational plans, good, bad or indifferent, being scrapped one after another.

The present government has paid particular attention to higher education and a number of innovative measures to upgrade the system are being introduced. In the entire history of Pakistan, what has been lacking, however, is not the paucity of ideas or plans on the part of our national managers but the overriding need to monitor and implement, on a continuing basis, targets laid down and to pursue a strategy which could be judged by results and results alone.

Unless decisions and plans are implemented and monitored, the results would fall way short of the desired aims. Since education is one of the functions of a government, what is relevant is the adoption of overall national policies which would give clear priority to collective, social and national interests over personal, group or party interests.

It is this integrity in its broadest sense that demands the objective ordering of national priorities and entrusting responsibilities and power only on basis of merit and dedication and on no other consideration, political or otherwise.

It would be relevant to recall a dictum of Hazrat Ali (AS) that “in educating your children remember to prepare them for the obligations of their generation, not for the needs of your generation”. Such a progressive approach, if applied in our society, would be an antidote to intolerance and a spur to progress.

A workable democracy presupposes the ability of the electorate to assess the integrity and suitability of persons for elective office which assumes responsibilities of power with at least a minimum level of education and comprehension. In this age when democracy is supposed to be the international buzz word, the relevance of an educated electorate to the effective functioning of a democratic system has never been greater. How well Disraeli had said of the nineteenth-century England, “We must educate our masters, the people, or else we would be at the mercy of a mob, masquerading as democracy.”

In the words of John Morley, “tolerance is reverence for all possibilities of the truth”. It is amazing how even educated people fail to realize the apparent accident of birth. The fact that none of us had any control over our domicile, creed or language of our birth; the possibility that each one of us could have been born and bred in a totally different milieu does not seem to make any difference even to those from whom more sensitivity and understanding could be expected. The perceived monopoly of truth, it should be realized, can never be divorced from humanitarianism, compassion and tolerance.

Elizabeth Drew, an American journalist, had said that “democracy like other non-coercive relationships rests on a shared understanding of limits”. Such an understanding of the concept of limits is conspicuous by its absence in our society, to the detriment of our political and social structure.

Rationality, which is the essential building-block of intellectual progress, came to the West as late as the Renaissance in the fifteenth century, while it characterized Islamic ethos from its earliest centuries, as stated by the distinguished scholar Glubb Pasha in “The Lost Centuries”, his last book on Arab/Islamic history. But then intolerance raised its head. And when Cambridge and Oxford were being founded in England, libraries were being burnt in Baghdad. It was when the doors of Ijtehad were closed that the Islamic world gradually lost its preeminence.

Even non-Muslim orientalists have seen the keynote of equality and justice as the core of Islamic teaching, though certainly not of practice in today’s Muslim societies. The importance of working for a just society can hardly be over-emphasized in the task of nation-building. In reply to a question as to when justice would be established on earth, the Holy Prophet had said “Not until he who sees injustice done to another, feels it as much as if the injustice was done to him.”

To think that there is no solution to our problems is to be unduly pessimistic. In order to effectively adapt ourselves to the rapidly changing scenario on the global and regional scene, we must put our own house in order. You can fly the flag only as high abroad as you hold it at home.

The writer is a former ambassador.

Secretary of spin?

I HAVE only a glancing acquaintance with George Bush’s good friend Karen Hughes. I met her on the first Bush presidential campaign and was awed by her uncanny ability to answer a question over and over again, each time with the same inflection, volume and, of course, words.

This left me suspecting she had a computer chip implanted somewhere in her body or that she was naturally one of those people who, no matter how forceful your complaint, respond with the wholesome but empty phrase “Have a nice day.” When she comes before the Senate for confirmation in her new job — undersecretary of state — Hughes should not have a nice day.

I have no animus toward Hughes, and this should not be seen as anything personal. It is just that Hughes, once a counsellor to the president and always an intimate, represents an administration that values truth only in the abstract. In its day-to-day dealings with the American people, it has the ethical approach of a slippery door-to-door salesman — anything to make the sale. Until the Bush administration vows to become more forthright, the Senate ought to put the Hughes nomination in mothballs.

Take, for instance, the government’s smarmy practice of preparing video news releases and packaging them as actual television news. The New York Times recently detailed how government agencies prepare admiring reports on what they are doing and then send them off to local TV stations, which use them, sometimes pretending the reports are their own.

Only a fool would expect the TV industry — especially local TV news — to grow up and embrace professional standards, but the government is a different story. It’s ours. We fund it. It should not be using our money to propagandize us. That, truly, is adding insult to injury.

The Bush administration did not originate this practice. The Clintons did it, too. But the Bushies have apparently expanded it, and the administration has rejected a Government Accountability Office ruling that this sort of stuff is “covert propaganda” — inappropriate on its face. What the administration seems not to understand is that the practice — no matter when it originated and who else did it — only enhances the White House’s reputation for slyness.

It was also inappropriate for the Education Department to offer money to Armstrong Williams and other media figures — a bit of Tammany largesse that spoke volumes about the ethical standards of some administration officials. Bush ordered it stopped, but no one was disciplined. Fortunately for the Education Department, a bribe can always be called a grant.

This kind of just-this-side-of-honest approach to things is exemplified by Bush’s Social Security road show. You would think that any president, especially one who claims a landslide-like mandate, would be able to pitch a tent anywhere in this great nation and talk to Americans at random.

But that is not what Bush does. His questioners are his groupies, adoring fans of our adorable president who would not think of asking him a hard question. They are vetted, examined down to their ideological DNA, rehearsed and then sent out like automatons to ask programmed questions. Bush’s town meetings are town meetings only if the town is Pyongyang.—Dawn/Washington Post Service

Guilt by any other name

SO is Narendra Modi a hero then, thanks to George Bush and Condoleezza Rice? Of the many reasons for taking a position on the Gujarat chief minister and his adoring fans in the American Asian Motel Owners Association, who have been seeking his charismatic presence on their motel-soil for perhaps two years now, this has to be silliest. The relevant point is not whether Narendra Modi has become a hero. The point to note is that he is already a hero to those who hero-worship him.

It did not need Bush or Rice to persuade the motel owners, many of them fellow Gujaratis, to adore Modi or make him their star guest. They did not want Atal Behari Vajpayee or Lal Krishna Advani; and certainly not Dr Manmohan Singh or Sonia Gandhi. They wanted Narendra Modi and no one but him, which is why they were prepared to wait.

He became their hero when he supervized a pogrom against the Muslims of Gujarat after the Godhra incident three years ago. It was the kind of “revenge” that pleased the heart of hate-mongers. Since then Narendra Modi’s problem has been to check similar heroism without losing his fan base.

Narendra Modi is a politician with both ambition and a strategy, which itself is unusual. All, well, most, politicians are ambitious, but rather than developing a strategy they wait for stars to bring them luck and joy. Modi believes that the infamous riots have provided him with a cushion-vote of some 15 million Indians. This, apparently, is his estimate of the core “anti-Muslim” vote in India. He is building other vote blocs on that to become the most popular leader of his party and by virtue of that a future prime minister of India.

His strategy is cool and logical. Having taken command of the venom vote he does not need to spew venom anymore. He can now concentrate on proving that he is an excellent administrator, which he is.

His reputation as an effective chief minister is growing steadily. Moreover, his palm does not itch in the manner of, say, Pramod Mahajan, a contemporary with similar ambitions if less strategy. As politicians go, Modi is among the least corruptible. Money is not his weakness.

So there you are: a hero to minority haters, competent, honest, ambitious. It is the kind of biodata that can take you places. There are enough middle-roaders who would be happy to overlook the riots in exchange for competence and personal probity.

Liberals may loathe Modi, but they would be foolish to ignore him or his potential.

The principal yardstick of public life is not justice, but success. Success tends to drown out accountability, while failure invites quick punishment. Modi’s success in the assembly elections, when he brought the BJP back to life from a comatose state, exonerated his mischief.

This was not the mischief behind a curtain. This was not corruption ferreted out by either fearless or sleazy journalism. This was not a crime that needed too much investigation. It was a macabre, brazen use of state power for political gain, in front of the world’s television cameras and print media. It was a crime whose evidence lies in dozens of photo exhibitions, on Internet sites and archives, and most painfully, in the minds of a generation of young people who watched helplessly as a government abetted hooligans gone berserk, torching homes and killing their loved ones. If there is another definition of genocide I would be grateful for some education.

We in India did very little about Modi. His leader Vajpayee made some noises, which spluttered away and exposed the impotence of a prime minister. Nor have his adversaries done anything in particular. The UPA government that succeeded the BJP-led coalition has not even bothered to worry about those riots, except to the extent that a Laloo Yadav wanted to derive his own quota of political mileage from Godhra.

It will soon be a year since it came to power, but the Congress, always ready to expend serious heavy firepower against Mulayam Singh Yadav, who destroyed the BJP in UP and effectively prevented its return to power, has not mounted any effective political campaign against Modi. To be fair, no one else has either.

Congress and non-BJP chief ministers gladly shake Modi’s hand at ministerial conferences, while media lines up to seek the favours that he can offer from office. (By the way, notch up another Modi success: he has eliminated a great deal of corruption within media.) His party, which saved him from its prime minister, does not dare interfere with the rising trajectory of his star. It is sometimes whispered that BJP president Advani would like to remove Modi, but they remain mere whispers. In any case, Advani, who retains a persistent memory of Delhi in the 1984 riots gets amnesia about Ahmedabad in 2002. If India did not bother, there was no reason why the rest of the world should. Britain, Switzerland, Australia and Singapore were happy to give Narendra Modi a visa when he asked for it.

It is extraordinary, then, that, quite out of the blue, Washington took a stand. It is of course symbolic. America can only exercise its right to deny a visa to a non-American. Most of us were unaware of the American law that “makes any government official who was responsible for, or directly carried out at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom, ineligible for a visa”.

America cannot do anything more, because Modi does not need anything more from America. He has no desire for a green card, or even a holiday. If he was interested in the members of the motel association it was because many of them are of Gujarati origin, and their applause would have resonated well among some sections back home.

According to some knee-jerk analysis, this decision could even become counter-productive. Well, so what? Is justice to be weighed on the scales of popularity, or its not-very-distant relative, prejudice? I am certain that extremists and even terrorists often have popular support. That does not make them less culpable. If we make justice conditional, we erode the foundations of civilization and sap the life-energy of democracy.

A psychoanalyst would probably find much more in the sometimes overlapping and sometimes disparate layers of Modi’s arguments against the American decision than a columnist. There is a hint of self-incrimination in the plea that if others who have violated human rights can be permitted to visit America, and even welcomed, why should he be denied a visa?

At other moments, there are suggestions that India’s sovereignty has been undermined. Er, not quite. It takes more than a denied visa to undermine our sovereignty. But Narendra Modi does provide one splendid suggestion. Should India refuse a visa to the United States chief of army staff because of the alleged violation of human rights in Iraq?

I don’t know about others, but I consider this an absolutely splendid idea. Should Pranab Mukherjee, as our defence minister, lead the campaign to prevent any such visit? That might be over the top, but how about letting this idea loose among all the liberal NGOs and human rights activists whose combined efforts persuaded the United States establishment to stop Modi’s visit. After all, the same yardstick must apply.

The evidence for the abuse is visible in hundreds of photographs, and we do not know how much abuse took place with those who were not photographed. There is serious evidence of culpability at the highest levels of the American military.

Jeff Jacoby, writing in the Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune, says: “In August 2003, when he was commander of the military base at Guantanamo Bay, Major-General Geoffrey Miller visited Baghdad with some advice for US interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison. As Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, the military police commander in Iraq, later recalled it, Miller’s bottom line was blunt: Abu Ghraib should be ‘Gitmoized’ — Iraqi detainees should be exposed to the same aggressive techniques being used to extract information from prisoners in Guantanamo. “You have to have full control,” Karpinski quoted Miller as saying. There can be ‘no mistake about who’s in charge. You have to treat these detainees like dogs’.”

Treat these detainees like dogs. Any more evidence needed? Here is some from Afghanistan. “A detainee in the ‘Salt Pit’ — a secret, CIA-funded prison north of Kabul — is stripped naked, dragged across a concrete floor, then chained in a cell and left overnight. By morning he has frozen to death.” What was his crime? “He was probably associated with people who were associated with Al Qaeda,” a US official explained.

Of course, the American military high command never accepted that they were guilty of what happened under their nose.

Neither did Narendra Modi.

The writer is editor-in-chief of Asian Age, New Delhi.