A self-belittling blame game

INDIAN participants at international seminars on terrorism resent being assigned a regional role in the global campaign to thwart the menace. They believe the world makes an avoidable distinction between the countless terror attacks that have unsettled India for decades and those that galvanised the rest of the international community to wage a global campaign against the perpetrators of Sept 11 for example.

Seen from the record of official statements that follow big or small attacks in India, the establishment in New Delhi looks as culpable as the international community in India’s insignificant role in the global war on terrorism. In other words India’s obsessive finger-pointing at President Musharraf and his generals for every violent incident at home gives the world an excuse to label New Delhi’s headaches as essentially Pakistan-focused.

This is more or less what several international commentators, including The Economist also implied in the aftermath of July’s Bombay blasts. The British magazine even pitched for a solution to the Kashmir tangle to prevent future attacks in India, an idea that is difficult for the Indian establishment to accept. Thus even if blaming Pakistan for its problems with organised violence is rooted in verifiable facts the net result for the Indian interlocutors at international seminars is that they only get to be seen as Pakistan-centric and thus, of little use to the strategies needed to fight the scourge in Europe and Afghanistan, the two rising theatres of the intractable war.

Often the finger-pointing defies credibility. Friday’s attack in Malegaonthat killed dozens of Muslim devotees at a Shab-i-Barat congregation should have put a check on this obsession with Pakistan. But this was not to be.

Senior politicians like former premier Vajpayee took the view that peace talks with Pakistan should be suspended in view of the Malegaon blasts. TV anchors were pressing for analyses that fitted their view of Pakistan as being somehow responsible for the murder of the Malegaon Muslims. Weeks before Friday’s incident, Hindu extremist websites were pointing to Malegaon — the Muslim-majority town in Maharashtra — where the plot to blow up the trains in Bombay was alleged to have been hatched. One poisonous message mocked the government’s soft handling of Muslims.

“The Mohammeds of Mumbai are all good citizens. They are Islamic, i.e. peace-loving people. They can not harbour any terrorists. That means all those thousands of Bangladeshi Muslims (if they really exist) are actually living under the Arabian Sea…. (and that’s why police can never find them. Now I see.) The police said yesterday that “the blasts were planned in Malegaon”. Strange coincidence that Malegaon has 60 per cent Muslim population and Central government reports estimate another 2,50,000 Bangladeshis in Malegaon and rest of Maharashtra.”

Perhaps Mr Vajpayee and like-minded people in the media should glean a few hard facts from the Malegaon story as it has been analysed by independent and unbiased journalists. One such analysis was published in The Hindu on Saturday.

The Hindu’s story begins in April, when Hindu extremists of the Bajrang Dal — Naresh Raj Kondwar and Himanshu Phanse — were killed while attempting to fabricate an improvised explosive device along with their fellow extremists Maruti Wagh, Rahul Pande, and Ramraj Guptewar. Investigators later recovered a second bomb from the Nanded home where the bomb-making exercise was under way, and evidence that the extremists had struck before.

Maharashtra Police found that Kondwar and Phanse were the key figures in the April 2006 bombing of a mosque at Parbhani, in which 25 people were injured. Bajrang Dal operatives linked to the Nanded terror cell are believed to have carried out the bombing of mosques at Purna and Jalna in April 2003. Eighteen people sustained injuries in these twin attacks.

What disturbed the Maharashtra Police most about the Nanded explosion, though, was that it demonstrated the Bajrang Dal’s growing bomb-making capabilities. In an interview to the magazine Communalism Combat earlier this year, K.P. Raghuvanshi, Joint Commissioner of Police, Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad, admitted that the Nanded incident could have “frightening repercussions.”

Despite police concerns, the Maharashtra Government has been reluctant to take on the Bajrang Da, says The Hindu. It fears this would provide political capital to organisations such as the Shiv Sena. Although Mr. Raghuvanshi acidly noted that the bombs were “not being manufactured for a puja,” the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party Government refused to consider proscribing the Bajrang Dal.

“Politics underpins this paralysis,” the newspaper said. Both the Congress and the NCP have run a successful campaign of poaching directed at middle level Shiv Sena leaders, and believe that action which might be considered ‘anti-Hindu’ would give the religious Right a new lease of life. At the same time, the decaying Hindu far Right sees Muslim terrorism, and the widespread anxieties it has generated through India, as a means of stemming the secular tide.

Each mosque bombing is, in this vision, an act through which the frayed political legitimacy of groups such as the Bajrang Dal will be restored. Just how capable Hindu fundamentalist groups are of executing such a project is unclear, for already stretched police forces have paid little attention to the emerging threat. If a Hindu fundamentalist group did carry out the Malegaon attack, it would demonstrate a significant increase in their capabilities.

In its balanced analysis, The Hindu cautioned against any hasty conclusions to run away with. Muslim terror groups too have demonstrated their willingness to stage large-scale attacks against shrines and mosques in West Asia, Pakistan, and even Jammu and Kashmir, in the hope of securing their political objectives, it said.

Malegaon was once known for its flourishing power-loom industry. But recession and a long history of riots have made the town one of the most communally fragile places in Maharashtra. Along with Bhiwandi and Thane, Malegaon has been declared an ultra-sensitive zone by the Maharashtra Government.

Almost 75 per cent of Malegoan’s population of 700,000 is Muslim -— mostly descendant of migrants from Uttar Pradesh who came searching for jobs in the mills, and refugees from the post-Partition riots in Hyderabad. “However, industrial recession led first to widespread criminalisation among the young -— and then a turning to the religious Right in search of divine redemption where the state had failed,” says the paper.

In 1992, the town itself saw large-scale violence. Provoked by the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the riots reflected the political position of Islamists who attributed the hardships of Malegaon’s Muslims to the Indian state’s ‘Hindu’ character. Violence broke out again in October 2001, this time after the police attacked demonstrators calling for a boycott of United States-manufactured goods in the wake of its attack on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

These and similar facts could help analyse a horrendous tragedy more objectively than it suits the likes of Mr. Vajpayee to admit. Indian interlocutors at international seminars would win a lot more respect if they presented a forthright assessment of the social malaise in India that makes it vulnerable to sectarian attacks. A distilled analysis along these lines would be a unique lesson for the world to glean from India’s experience. It would be able to see how not one but different religious and ethnic groups can make a country vulnerable to terror attacks from within. Shorn of the self-belittling blame game India would then have a serious contribution to make to the understanding of the root causes of terrorism worldwide.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Making life difficult for mobile phone thieves

MARIA was holding up her mobile telephone to take a picture of the performers at a crowded concert in her school in H-sector when suddenly her phone was snatched away by an unknown hand.

Similarly, the current federal minister of tourism also had her mobile telephone snatched away once when she was at a tailor shop in busy Aapbara market.

According to the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee, over 43,000 mobile phones are reported stolen annually in Karachi alone, averaging 120 per day. The actual figure could be much higher since many people do not bother to report this theft.

Not surprisingly, the surge in this petty crime in major cities has goaded efforts to introduce technology in the local mobile phone industry that allows stolen mobile phones to be immobilized. This new technology is supposed to make it tougher for thieves to sell off stolen handsets and thus, discourage them from snatching mobile phones.

According to a report in Dawn last month, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority is spearheading a programme to encourage local mobile telephone network operators to install a new database of stolen phones called the Equipment Identity Register (EIR) system. This system would enable a phone that has been reported stolen to be blocked through its International Mobile Equipment Identity (Imei) number.

As it has been reported in many newspapers, the Imei number is a 15-digit number that is unique to every mobile phone and allows a phone to be tracked even after its SIM card is changed. A mobile phone will show this number when *#06# is keyed in.

However, according to experts in the telecommunication industry, the EIR system will only help to curb mobile phone crime provided other accompanying measures are introduced as well. The most important of these is new legislation against re- programming Imei numbers.

Since the Imei number of a mobile handset is programmable and not hard-wired in a chip, the EIR system of tracking and blocking stolen phones through Imei numbers can be rendered useless by thieves re-programming the Imei numbers. There is software available to unblock phones and there is also equipment available to re-programme the Imei number of any handset so that they can be resold.

Experts in the telecommunication industry agree that unless we introduce new legislation that makes re-programming mobile phones an offence in this country, our bid to tackle mobile phone theft through the introduction of the EIR system will prove futile.

There is no apparent legitimate reason to re-programme a mobile phone. So we need to make the changing of the unique identifying Imei number a criminal offence liable to appropriate penalties. We would also need to make it illegal to own or supply the necessary equipment with the intent to use it for re- programming mobile phones.

In the UK, such an anti-mobile phone re-programming law was introduced in 2002, the same year that the EIR database system was introduced in the country. The Mobile Telephone (Re- programming) Act provides for a jail term of up to five years and unlimited fines for anyone caught re-programming a mobile phone.

Until such time when technologists are able to hard-wire the Imei number in a chip rather than programme it in, we will need to legislate a similar anti-re-programming law to help make stolen phones worthless for thieves.

In addition to a law against re-programming Imei numbers, we will also need to encourage people to register their mobile phones with their network operators. For a snatched phone to be blocked, its Imei number has to be first registered with the network operator to allow the service to disable the phone in the event of a theft.

Experience in other countries show that few people actually bother to register their Imei number when they buy a mobile phone. In the UK, a study showed that only one in three people who owned a mobile phone had registered their phone with their network operators.

One expert in the local telecommunication industry says that this can be solved by making it compulsory for the network operators to register the Imei number (as well as the SIM card number) on behalf of the customer.

Needless to say, in order to discourage thieves from selling off stolen handsets, there is a need for strict enforcement as well to stop second-hand phone dealers from trading in stolen handsets. For instance, it should be a requirement by law for second-hand phone dealers to check the identity cards of all sellers and note down the particulars of the phone.

Using the Imei numbers of phones that have been reported stolen, spot-checks should be made at these shops by the authorities to see whether stolen phones turn up there. The dealer’s paper records of Imei numbers should also be tallied against those of the phones in the shop.

Dealers who fail to keep proper records should be punished. In some countries like Singapore for example, dealers are fined for the first offence, and jailed or have their shop licence suspended in subsequent offences.

Finally, customers also have an important role to play in reducing mobile phone theft. Greater awareness and knowledge about mobile phone security among people will help to reduce such theft.

We could have short footages on television and radio telling people how to avoid being a victim of mobile phone snatching. The three safety tips for customers include: keeping your mobile phone out of sight; don’t leave it lying around or on display; and taking care when using your phone in public.

Only if the EIR system is complemented with all these other measures involving the government, the police, the mobile phone industry and the customers, can we hope to make life more difficult for mobile phone thieves.