international-affairs

Sudan: The Unfolding Tragedy

Is Sudan cursed with a series of civil wars & brutal dictatorships?

As one contemplates the ongoing tragedy in Sudan, it is difficult not to raise at least two questions: What is wrong with the political DNA of this country that, since independence in 1956, its people should have been cursed with a series of civil wars, brutal dictatorships, interspersed with brief democratic governance? Can we describe the unfolding unscripted tragedy as a civil war?

Sudan Descending Into A State Of Nature

At the time of writing, at least 528 human beings have been killed by air strikes and artillery. This is the figure given by the Sudanese Health Ministry; the actual might be more as it is difficult to collect the facts. Hospitals are running short of doctors, medicines, and power. The price of daily necessities has shot up.

Those who can afford it have been fleeing to neighbouring countries, such as Chad and Egypt. Hiring a car to cross the border can cost as much as $40,000. An Indian family back home has recounted how security forces looted all their belongings, including money and a car.

In short, Sudan has descended into the Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ in many parts of this vast country of 1.88 million square km. The WHO (World Health Organization) has estimated that one-third of the 46 million population needs humanitarian assistance. Obviously, it is increasingly difficult to distribute such assistance in the chaos enveloping Sudan.

The West, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and many others have evacuated their diplomats and some of their nationals. Since foreign embassies are closed, many Sudanese cannot cross the border as their passports are with the embassies.

The ongoing crisis broke out on 15 April 2023 when the tension between the regular military, SAF (Sudanese Armed Forces) headed by General Abdel Fattah al Burhan, and the RSF (Rapid Support Forces) led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, generally known as Hemedti, spilt over into the street endangering the civilian population and even the diplomatic corps. The RSF likely fired the opening shots.

Who Is Hemedti?

General Dagalo was born sometime between 1973 and 1975, and his uncle Juma Dagalo was chief of the Rezeigat tribe, originally hailing from Chad. Leaving school while in the third grade, he got into camel trading and later joined the infamous armed gang known as Janjaweed, meaning ‘devil on a horse’ in the local language.

It gained support from the Libyan ruler Gaddafi who had plans to expand into Chad and Sudan. For that purpose, he formed the Islamic Legion imitating the Foreign Legion of France. Gaddafi eventually gave up, but Janjaweed carried on committing pillage, rape, and killing in Darfur.

General Omar al Bashir, who staged a coup and took over Sudan in 1989, used Janjaweed to put down the rebellion in Darfur. In 2003, Al Bashir established the RSF (Rapid Support Forces) with Hemeti as its head. The Janjaweed got official status.

The current strength of the RSF is about 100,000. The RSF had access to government funds. Hemedti got into gold mining- Sudan is rich in gold- and other businesses. He started selling gold in Dubai and developed links with the UAE.

He sent men and even children to fight on behalf of the UAE in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman started chasing the mirage of military victory over the Houthis in 2015. The RSF paid more to its officers and men than the IAF.

The RSF in charge of border control got $5 million from the European Union through the UN‘s OHCHR (Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights). The EU Commission has tried to justify itself by saying that the intention was to prevent or reduce the migration of refugees into the European Union. The fact is that the EU funded Hemedti after the International Criminal Court convicted him.

The Short-Lived Collaboration Between SAF & RSF

Faced with popular agitation against Al Bashir that started in 2018 as part of the Arab Spring, the SAF and RSF decided to remove him from power and arrested him. They took power, and later, as the Sudanese continued to demand an end to military rule, the RSF carried out a massacre on 3 June 2019.

It was worse than the Jallianwala Bagh (1919), with women and men being raped. The grim toll was 100 at least, and many bodies were thrown into the Nile. The Physicians for Human Rights based in Boston has given an authoritative account at https://phr.org/our-work/resources/chaos-and-fire-an-analysis-of-sudans-june-3-2019-khartoum-massacre/

The African Union met on 6th June 2019 and suspended Sudan’s membership to be resumed only after a civilian government had been established. The suspension was held till a civilian government headed by Abdallah Hamdok took office in September 2019.Unfortunately, the military struck again in October 2021.

Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok refused to support the coup and resigned. The military has postponed the holding of the general election from 2022 to July 2023. Obviously, a peacefully and fairly held general election is not in the interest of the military.

Meanwhile, the question of the induction of the RSF into the SAF came up. Obviously, the RSF demanded more than the SAF was prepared to give. It is that dispute that caused the current conflict between the two, presumably started by the RSF.

Who Can Mediate?

Ideally, Egypt should be able to mediate between the SAF and RSF, arrange a cease-fire, and hold an election, preferably supervised by the African Union. However, Egypt is facing a dilemma. It supports SAF, but the RSF is supported by the UAE, to whom Egypt, in serious economic difficulties, is beholden.

We might recall that El Sisi had the financial support of the UAE when he carried out the coup in July 2013 when as Defence Minister, he arranged for the kidnapping of the democratically elected President Morsi.

The US Secretary of State Blinken has been in touch with both sides and even succeeded in arranging for a cease-fire that did not last. Cease-fire has been declared more than once.

The United Kingdom, the former colonial power, has evacuated its diplomats and some nationals. It does not seem to have engaged in any mediation.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia might not fully qualify as mediators as the RSF is their client. The RSF has sent thousands of fighters, some even children, to Yemen, where till now the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has been chasing the mirage of military victory.

The African Union, or Sudan’s neighbors, is best placed to mediate. In this context, we need to watch closely the efforts underway by IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority for Development). The IGAD’s members are Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Eritrea, and South Sudan.

The AU amended the charter of IGAD in 1995. Sudan is the current chair of IGAD. Ethiopia has taken the lead, and the SAF and RSF have been invited to a summit meeting in South Sudan. It is not yet clear whether the two belligerents have accepted the invitation.

In this context, we need to examine Ethiopia’s credentials as a mediator. By building a big dam, called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, using the waters of the Nile, Ethiopia is already in a serious dispute with Sudan and Egypt as they argue that they would be deprived of water. There are territorial disputes between Ethiopia and Sudan in the context of the recently concluded military action by the Ethiopian Government against the rebels in Tigray.

However, we should not write off Ethiopia as a mediator. The AU is based in Addis Ababa. The Addis Ababa agreement of 2005 paved the way for the separation of South Sudan, ending two civil wars that cost more than 2 million human lives.

India’s Concerns

There are about 4000 Indians in Sudan. That includes the Hakki Pikki tribe from Karnataka. About 31 of that tribe are in Sudan selling traditional Indian medicines.

The Twitter exchange between senior Congress leader Siddaramaiah and External Affairs Minister Dr Jaishankar exemplifies avoidable unpleasantness. Siddaramaiah tweeted, asking the Ministry of External Affairs and others to safely bring back the 31 members of the tribe from Sudan.

Minister Jaishankar retorted that he was “appalled” that anyone should think of politicizing the issue. Siddaramaiah retorted that since the Minister is busy getting appalled, he should tell who should be approached.

Was New Delhi less than prompt in responding to the crisis on 15th April? On 20th April 2023, the Chief Minister of Kerala sent a letter to the Prime Minister, who chaired a meeting the next day, six days after the media reported the crisis.

The media reported that “the PM instructed all relevant officials to remain vigilant, closely monitor the developments and continuously evaluate the safety of Indians in Sudan and extend all possible assistance, the PMO said… He also directed officials to prepare evacuation plans to account for the rapidly shifting security landscape and the viability of various options.”

I am afraid that I must take the report with a pinch of salt. I would be ‘appalled’, to borrow the words of Dr Jaishankar, if the MEA had been waiting for P.M.’s instructions and that too from a meeting held after six days. Some in the media are working overtime to project the impression that nothing moves unless the Prime Mover, to borrow a term from Aristotle, moves first.

There is a second matter that appalled me. A young man from Kottayam requested the Embassy in Khartoum to include his pregnant wife, a Sudanese, in the list for evacuation. The Embassy refused on the ground that she did not have a visa.

Dear reader, permit me to reminisce. In August 1990, I, as Joint Secretary (Gulf) was in our Embassy in Kuwait, accompanying External Affairs Minister I.K. Gujral. Hiding in the mission was a Menon from Kerala with an American passport. He wanted to come to India on the plane of the Minister.

Obviously, he had reason to fear that his American passport might come in the way at the airport. In ten minutes, the Embassy issued him a temporary Indian passport valid for seven days to be surrendered to the Gulf Division of the Ministry.

Emergencies require lateral thinking. It was sad to see that Dr Shashi Tharoor had to spend his time asking the Ministry to do what was obvious. It is singularly appropriate that considering the election in Karnataka, the Government have announced “Operation Kaveri”. The evacuation of over 176,000 from Kuwait and Iraq in 1990-91 remained nameless!

Going back to the question about ‘civil war,’ it is wrong to use that phrase. In Sudan, two armies are at war to monopolize the political power they have been sharing. As regards the DNA question, it is painfully clear that wherever the military has removed a dictator in response to popular agitation, the military does its worst to hold on to power, as we see in Egypt too.

This article was published on madrascourier.com

May 15th, 2023 | category:international-affairs |

international-affairs

SRI LANKA: QUESTIONS AND LESSONS

Obviously, we start: How and why has Sri Lanka fallen from the status of ‘middle-income country’ as classified by the World Bank in 2018? The fall occurred in a space of three years, within two years of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s taking over the presidency with its vast executive powers.

The Origins of the Crisis

To my mind the media and pundits, by and large, with a few honorable exceptions, have failed to diagnose the predicament of the island nation. The media in general have repeated ad nauseum that Sri Lanka has been facing the “worst economic crisis since independence in 1948.” Accounting for the crisis, it has been said that Sri Lanka has been living beyond its means for decades and that the crisis was in the making for decades.

That argument does not add up to a full explanation of the genesis of the crisis.

Let us look at a World Bank graph:

In 1997 Sri Lanka, in World Bank’s reckoning, moved up from ‘low income’ to ‘lower middle income’, and in 2018 it moved higher to ‘upper income’. The World Bank assessment published in July 2019 expressed reasonable optimism about Sri Lanka’s further progress. However, in July 2021, the World Bank downgraded Sri Lanka to ‘lower middle income’.

Why? The only tenable explanation is Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s election as President in November 2019. In short, President Rajapaksa’s misgovernance and its disastrous impact on the economy compelled the World Bank to downgrade Sri Lanka and to send out red signals, signals that were willfully and culpably ignored by him.

I was Deputy High Commissioner for India from 1979 to 1982. I have seldom come across a better civil service in my numerous postings. Obviously, the political leadership was not making use of the civil service.

Why? Following Gotabaya’s victory in 2019, within two days he appointed elder brother Mahinda as Prime Minister. The SLPP (Sri Lanka People’s Party) of the Rajapaksa’s swept the polls and Mahinda continued as Prime Minister. In all there were 4 from the family in the government.

In short, the Sri Lankan voter replaced democracy with a brotherocracy, unwittingly or wittingly. Why and how? The Rajapaksas sailed to victory on a wave of fear and hatred. The majority Sinhala community was brainwashed into believing that the Tamils cannot be trusted and the LTTE (Lanka Tigers of Tamil Elam) might resurrect itself; and that the Muslims cannot be trusted and should be held in check, especially after the horrendous attack on Easter Day in 2019. In short, an ugly majoritarian agenda was presented to the gullible Sinhalese, and they bought it.

The Rajapaksa family held the major portfolios as defence, finance, economic policy& plan implementation, to name only a few. Inevitably, the brotherocracy created the economic crisis by hair-brained policies. For example, it was decided to switch over to organic farming overnight. Not because, the government wanted to promote organic farming. The real reason was that the treasury had no funds to import fertilizer. Agricultural production came down, and without foreign exchange to import shortages spread.

A key question arises. Could Gotabaya have applied course correction on time? Yes. Sri Lanka could have approached the IMF, before the economy collapsed. The Central Bank governor advised that course. Gotabaya rejected it on the flimsy ground that such a step would mean admitting openly that his policies were wrong.

Lord Acton said: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We may add a rider: Power isolates, and absolute power isolates itself absolutely.

The lesson to be learnt by the voter in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, wherever there is democracy, is that the voter should vote intelligently. In the 1932 general election, Hitler emerged as the head of the single largest party in the Parliament. In 2016 America voted Trump as president and he did his worst to succeed himself by resorting to mob violence to change the election results. Democracy implies an intelligent and vigilant electorate.

THE WAY FORWARD FOR SRI LANKA

Though Ranil Wickremasinghe has used or rather abused his executive powers by unleashing unnecessary violence on protesters who had announced their plan to leave the site in front of the presidential secretariat (15th July) and in other ways, I hold that it is in the best interest of Sri Lanka that the protests should be suspended. Wickremasinghe should be given the time to negotiate with the IMF, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and friendly donor countries to put an end to shortages. This might take a month or two.

Once the shortages are ended, election for the parliament and presidency should be held as neither the president nor the parliament has legitimacy even though going by the letter of the law, they both hold positions legally. The full restoration of the economy will take years and only a government that is trusted by the people can accomplish that task if there is good will on the part of the international community.

Talking about good will, President Biden has signally failed to act. He has been generous to a fault in sending money to Ukraine. Is it the case that an Asian country does not count?

The G-20 meeting in Bali was futile as the West tried to embarrass Russia who walked out. That was an occasion for G20 to discuss the plight of Sri Lankan people. One wonders why India that has provided so much assistance to Sri Lanka did not think of bringing up the matter.

China’s behavior has been rather perplexing. Why has China chosen to be so unhelpful? We note that President Xi Jinping has sent a warm message to Wickremasinghe, and we need to carefully watch the next move by China. Will it agree to rescheduling of debt, a requirement for the IMF to agree to EFF (Extended Fund Facility)?

Meanwhile, there are reports of a research ship, Yuan Wang5, currently in the Indian Ocean, going to berth at Humbantota. Though Sri Lanka has officially denied the report, the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs has said that India would “ all necessary measures” to protect “ India’s security and economic interests.” Let us watch.

Sri Lanka’s Road ahead is rather rough. Apart from the political infirmities already pointed out, the debt stands at more than $51 billion, that works out to $2272 per head. Let contrast this figure with the per capita income of $3699 estimated for 2022, with an inflation rate of more than 50% in July 2022.

The point to emphasis is that the IMF will agree to EFF only if there is political stability, and it is confident that it is dealing with a government that is willing and able to implement clearly unpopular reforms including reducing or removing government subsidies on daily necessities. How can tourism revive if there is shortage of petrol? Even now it is not too late for Wickremesinghe to constitute an all-party government with a good dosage of eminent non-party individuals. Will he rise up to the occasion?

Featured image courtesy: Sri Lanka Flag Vectors by Vecteezy

December 26th, 2022 | category:international-affairs |

books

Arab Spring or Islamic winter? KP Fabian’s new ‘was and wasn’t’ book answers this question

In an event in Delhi, KP Fabian discussed US involvement in the 2011 Arab uprisings and the flawed notion of resistance to democracy in Muslim nations.

Were the series of uprisings in 2011 an Arab Spring or Islamic winter? The mood of a discussion in New Delhi around K.P. Fabian’s newly launched book, The Arab Spring That Was and Wasn’t, mirrored this question.

A professor and former Indian diplomat, Fabian started writing this book after Tunisia—urged by a rebel hawker—first sprung into revolt in 2011. The Tunisian uprising had a domino effect, and anti-government protests swept through the Muslim world in what came to be called the Arab Spring.

Making a remarkable allusion, Fabian said that just like Macbeth, “the Arab Spring is also an unscripted drama which is still continuing.”

Former diplomat and high commissioner to Pakistan and Singapore, Ambassador T.C.A Raghavan and former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Talmiz Ahmad were also present at the book launch at the India International Centre Wednesday.

Gulshan Dietl, former professor of international studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University and moderator of the discussion said that the book takes us into “the middle of the mayhem.”

Owing to the author’s experience in the region, she added, “K.P. Fabian was on the roads, watching street protests. And since he was a diplomat, he also had access to all the boardrooms and decision-making rooms.”

Calling the book “a broad bird’s eye view of the whole region,” Raghavan gave the audience a perspective that was more central to Indians. He said while a great deal is spoken about the Indo-Pacific, we never really see the wider expanse of the Indian Ocean, which includes the oft-neglected Arabian Gulf.

“To my mind, the importance of books like these is to highlight the significance of our neighbourhood because we cannot approach it in the same way,” he added.

 

Critiquing American involvement

Ambassador Talmiz Ahmad wove in his experiences in Saudi Arabia with Fabian’s book. “Far away from my location in Riyadh, a lot was happening in Tunisia in December 2011. For 30 years in the region, I had no concern with what was going on there. But all of that changed when, in January, Tunisia’s Ben Ali was ousted and arrived in Jeddah.”

“So, quickly, the Tunisians got rid of their problems. And the Arab Spring became my problem,” he joked.

From the rise of populism, the Iran-Saudi divide and American support of oppressive regimes, there were many consequences to the Arab Spring. However, the one thing that stood out to Ahmad was, “the erosion of US influence, credibility, and authority.”

“Cluelessness is the central feature of American involvement, sometimes for two decades in a particular region or country with no knowledge about the dynamics of that country. They were there for 20 years, and created nothing but waste and damage,” he further added.

Upholding democracy in Islamic nations

The audience raised questions about resistance to democracy in Islamic States. The idea that democracy and Islam don’t go hand in hand is one that many people have come to believe. But Fabian thinks differently.

“Western thinkers are prejudiced against Islam. There are countries like Indonesia and Malaysia which are composed of Muslims but also very democratic. What appears to be the truth is that the West has stood in the way of democracies coming into the Islamic world.”

Taking another jibe at the West, Ahmad added, “Let’s not get carried away about the Islamic faith and the Arab people. My narrative differs. Resources are essential for Western economic repair after the World Wars and economic domination thereafter. It is this resource factor which has supported Western imperialism.”

But as Dietl quoted from Fabian’s book, the social reality of the Arab world is not binary or exclusive.

This article was originally published on theprint.in

Ambassador Fabian's latest book 'The Arab Spring That Was and Wasn’t' is available on Amazon.in. You can click here to buy this book

Image courtesy: ThePrint

August 19th, 2022 | category:books |

international-affairs

‘They should have asked students to get out of Ukraine weeks ago’

'An ambassador may not be sure whether there would be a war next month, but prudence requires him to take action to see to it that people leave early.'

'Because once the war starts, it will be very difficult to move out.'

The government calls it Operation Ganga -- evacuating Indian students stranded in the war zone in Ukraine.

The prime minister claimed at an election rally in UP that the evacuation was possible only because of 'India's rising power'.

But many in India may not remember that 32 years ago, in 1990, the Indian government conducted one of the largest evacuations ever -- of over 170,000 citizens from Kuwait.

Ambassador K P Fabian was then the joint secretary of the Gulf division at the ministry of external affairs.

In contrast, the Narendra Damodardas Modi government has scrambled to evacuate thousands of Indian students from Ukraine, which is currently under attack from Russia, even sending four central ministers to supervise the exercise.

"I would say it was an error of judgment; India did not anticipate a full-fledged war. In such matters, what is required is prudence," Ambassador Fabian tells Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier about the delay in undertaking Operation Ganga.

How did India conduct such a large evacuation process so efficiently in 1990?

We could manage it because there was synergy between the central government, the state governments, and civil society.

I will give you an example. Indians were in their thousands in Jordan, and when I went to one place, I was told that they were not getting bottled water to drink.

I made a phone call to the Indian Women's Association in Abu Dhabi, the head of which was the wife of the Indian ambassador there.

In less than one hour, a truck load of bottled water came.

This is what I call civil society co-operation. If I had asked Delhi, there will be the bureaucratic issue of first getting a financial sanction to place an order for water.

You know how time consuming it can be when people needed water to drink.

What I want to say is that India as a whole acted with more synergy then.

We also had the freedom to take decisions as we were on the ground.

We also had decided in the beginning itself that we would not charge any money from our nationals.

But this government took that decision only much later, after many students had been fleeced by the airlines.

What I want to say is, decision-making was smoother and faster though we did not have the advantage of e-mails or mobile phones or the Internet.

You mean, centralisation of decision-making should not be there in times like these?

In fact, it should never be there! Yes, certainly not during times like these.

What we require is lateral thinking in problem solving.

I remember one morning, when I was in Amman, the Air India manager came with a long face to breakfast because the Air India crew refused to fly because the passengers reached there very late the previous evening.

They walked out because by the time the flight reached Delhi, they would have been on duty for many hours!

So, the Air India manager had to take care of all the passengers including old people, women with babies, etc.

He wanted me to talk to the civil aviation secretary, foreign secretary, etc, I agreed to think it over.

I concluded that nobody in Delhi would be able to solve the problem.

Instead, I decided to make use of the media. I requested a journalist to write about the exemplary work the Air India crew had been doing.

When the news praising their dedication came out, they had no other choice but stop being rigid about extra working hours!

In 1990, more than 170,000 people were evacuated. How challenging was the entire process?

The challenging part was we could send the flights only to Amman as there was an embargo to fly to Kuwait or Iraq because of UN sanctions.

So, Indians from Kuwait and Iraq had to reach Jordan by road to catch the flight.

Our embassies in Kuwait and Iraq worked with the local community, and it was the community that organised buses to Jordan.

There was perfect co-ordination between the community and the embassies.

In today's scenario, I do not know whether it is there. I am told that the embassy had not mobilised the local community.

Though there is no big Indian community there, there are industrialists in Ukraine.

For example, war is happening in Kharkiv, but there is no consulate there.

So, you have to depend on the Indian community or an Indian company there.

India also had a proper plan for evacuation after Kuwait was invaded.

We tried to see whether it could be resolved through negotiations.

(Then external affairs minister) I K Gujral went to Washington, but came back knowing that the Americans wanted the war.

So, we knew if there was going to be a war, we had to evacuate our people before America started the war to expel Iraq from Kuwait.

And we started the evacuation then itself; we did not wait for the United States coalition to attack Iraq.

What is known as Operation Desert Storm of bombing Iraq started in February 1991 and we started the evacuation process in August 1990 completed much before Desert Storm.

Countries like the US asked its citizens to vacate Ukraine much earlier. Do you think India should have asked the students to come back earlier?

I would say it was an error of judgment; India did not anticipate a full-fledged war.

In such matters, what is required is prudence. If war clouds are gathering, there will be war though you cannot say when.

An ambassador or a joint secretary might not be sure whether there would be a war next month, but prudence requires him or her to take action to see to it that people leave early.

Because once the war starts, it will be very difficult to move out.

What they should have done was, they should have asked the students there to get out of Ukraine weeks ago.

They (the students) need not have come to India. Some students might have chosen to wait around in neighbouring countries.

It was also not important to bring them all back to India. What is important was to get them out of Ukraine. They could go to Poland, they could go to Germany...

If you are a student, once you reach Warsaw, you may find that you have a friend there, or another good friend or a cousin in another European country.

The GOI should have shown this sort of prudence.

Another thing is, if you check the language of the first advisory, it was quite vague.

An advisory should not say, 'You should consider the pros and cons'... 'Don't stay unless it is absolutely necessary', etc.

An advisory should be very clear; like, 'You should leave immediately.' The language is very important to convey the message.

This article is an interview with Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier. It was originally published on Rediff.com.

Image Courtesy: Rediff.com

March 08th, 2022 | category:international-affairs |

international-affairs

The Ukraine Crisis & Operation Ganga

The Operation Ganga started too late & has a conceptual weakness.

The tragic death of Naveen, 21, from Karnataka has focused national attention on the plight of the Indian students held up in Ukraine where the Russian military is meeting resistance, perhaps unexpected, from Ukrainian military and the civilians armed by President Zelensky. It appears Naveen, who went out to buy essentials, got caught in the cross fire. His parents are anxiously waiting for his mortal remains.

The key question is: who are the men responsible for the Ukraine crisis?

Three men are responsible for the war that has killed hundreds of human beings and compelled over 600,000 people to flee their country, not to speak of the threat of a nuclear war after Putin put his nuclear weapons on high alert.

If Presidents Putin, Biden, and Zelensky had behaved responsibly the course of history might have taken a different turn. Putin is right in demanding that no NATO missiles should be deployed in Ukraine. He has taken the same stand as Kennedy took in 1962. The crucial difference is that Kennedy and Khrushchev had the wisdom and diplomatic skills to negotiate their way out of a crisis that could have led to a nuclear war. President Zelensky seems to more interested in projecting his heroism than in seeking a conditional cease-fire to be followed up by serious negotiations.

Let’s focus on the plight of the Indian students. There were about 19,000 of them in Ukraine, most of them studying medicine. That tens of thousands of young Indians have to go out to study medicine shows a serious policy failure on the part of successive governments in India. When I was Deputy Secretary, way back in the early 1970s, Malaysia offered to fully fund the establishment of a medical college anywhere in India provided they got 50 seats. I recommended the proposal to our Ministry of Education. They shot it down saying there was no ‘provision’ for permitting a foreign government to fund a college in return for a certain number of seats for their nationals.

As regards Ukraine, it seems there was no contingency plan with the Embassies in Ukraine and in the neighbouring countries. Perhaps, Ministry of External Affairs had not sent out the instructions? Considering that India has carried out evacuations in the past, including the one in 1990 when over 176,000 Indians were airlifted from Jordan, it is surprising that no contingency plans were made. In 1990, the Ministry had a plan to evacuate the entire Indian community from the Gulf in case, for any reason, their stay became unsafe. We thought that if Iraq invaded Saudi Arabia, the Indian community there should be evacuated. In the case of Ukraine, it seems the government was taken in by surprise. The correct approach is to be prudent and act in good time. Even the first advisory from the Embassy could have been worded better.

The Operation Ganga started too late and has a conceptual weakness. It is aimed at bringing every Indian student to India as Prime Minister Modi has explained. What is important is to take them out of Ukraine. It does not matter whether they stayed in the neighbouring countries or came back all the way to India.

Another question is whether the Indian community was mobilised in Ukraine and the neighbouring countries. We have not come across reports of such mobilisation. In 1990, it was possible to arrange for a truck load of bottled water to be supplied to Indians held up in Amman by making a single phone call to the president (Ambassador’s wife) of the Indian Women’s Association in Abu Dhabi.

The control room in MEA works 24/7 with a total strength of about 100, so that, at any given time, there are 20 personnel headed by a Director level officer. The Embassies in Ukraine and neighbouring countries too have been strengthened up to a point.

At present we have about 3,000 students in Kharkiv and Sumy. Both are close to Russia. When the war started, the Russian military was able to prevail and India had requested Russia to arrange for safe passage of Indians. But, soon, the military situation changed quickly to the disadvantage of Russia. We can only hope Russia will cooperate if it regains control of the area.

The dispatch of Ministers was not necessary. Our Ambassadors are capable of handling the matter. Moreover, it is unfair to impose on them the extra burden of looking after a minister. Is it part of public relations to have dispatched the ministers? Even the deployment of IAF is more a publicity stunt as Air India has enough capacity.

Let us hope that, sooner rather than later, the three presidents would have the good sense to arrive at a conditional cease-fire to be followed by negotiations. It will be in the interest of Ukraine to have the negotiations within the framework of OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) rather sit opposite Russia.

This article was written by K.P. Fabian for madrascourier.com, where it first appeared.

Image courtesy: pixabay.com

March 05th, 2022 | category:international-affairs |

domestic-affairs, politics

A Tale of Two Speeches

‘Cancer’ of partition

Two recent speeches on the partition of India in 1947, one by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and the other by Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)President Rabindra Narain Singh remind me of the opening words of Charles Dickens’ immortal work A Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Let us attempt a political parsing of the two speeches.

Rajnath Singh asserted that the partition of India on religious lines was a “historic mistake”. “Pakistan”, he said, “wants to break India by terrorism and other anti-Indian activities.” Quoting Martin Luther King Jr., the Defence Minister said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Dear reader, I for one agree entirely with Rajnath Singh. However, political parsing requires us to raise one or two questions. One, who all wanted partition apart from Jinnah? Two, who all fought against partition? We shall answer these questions after looking at the second speech.

The VHP president said that the “cancer” of partition is still there and we need “chemotherapy”. Incidentally, as Rabindra Nath Singh is a medical doctor we should take his prescription seriously.

The partition was meant, Rabindra Nath Singh pointed out, to remove the afflicted part from the body politic. Some Muslim “brothers” remained in India. Hence, the body politic is still not free from cancer.

“The 20 crore” Muslims cannot be asked to leave India. “All I am saying is Muslims should live with us, like several rivers merge into Ganga and then together flow as Ganga only. There is no such thing as Ganga-Jamuni tahzeeb.”

How does chemotherapy work? By attacking churches, Mother Teresa’s Sisters, by staking claim to mosques? Is that what the doctor is prescribing? If not, we shall be glad to hear from him what exactly he has in mind.

The reference to Ganga is intriguing. Does he mean, in plain English, that non-Hindus are second class citizens? If he means that, we should request him to read the Constitution once again.

The first prominent political leader to advocate the partition of India on the basis of religion was Lala Lajpath Roy. In 1925, he wrote to C.R. Das, advocating the division of India on the basis of religion.

“I am not afraid of the seven crores of Indian Musselmans but seven crores plus the armed hosts of Afghanistan and Central Asia, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Turkey will be irresistible.” In fact, Rai uncannily predicted the partition lines two decades before it occurred.

As the historian Tara Chand puts it,” The partition of India was not the product of the fertile imagination of the Muslim undergraduates of the Cambridge University, nor even poet Iqbal’s fancy, but the brainchild of a hypersensitive Hindu stalwart.”

We may add a correction. It is not the partition, but rather the idea of partition, that was the brainchild of the hypersensitive Hindu.

The actual partition occurred because of the given correlation of forces in post-World War 2 India. To put it succinctly, in any triangle any two sides together are longer than the third side. Since the British establishment and the Jinnah-led Muslim League worked together, both publicly and secretly, more secretly than publicly, there was nothing the Congress could have done to stop it.

There is one more point about the partition that is often lost sight of. Jinnah resented Gandhi’s rise in the firmament of Indian politics. When Gandhi declared Nehru as his “political heir”, Jinnah concluded that he would never become the Prime Minister of India. He sulked and went to England. While there, he concluded that by re-entering politics, he could divide India and be the supreme leader of a part of India. Churchill collaborated with Jinnah secretly.

Yet another point is that the British military had identified the Soviet Union as the emerging adversary and concluded that Pakistan would give the West a foothold on its territory to keep an eye on the Soviet Union. As we know the spy plane U-2 flown by Francis Gary Powers working for the C.I.A. took off from Peshawar in May 1960 before it was shot down by the Soviets.

The RSS and the Sangh Parivar did not count politically when India was divided. In any case, Savarkar had pledged his allegiance in writing to the Raj, and he and his acolytes were fighting the Congress and not fighting for independence.

They wanted a carbon copy of Pakistan, they did not get it in 1947 and the 1950 Constitution spelt out an India, secular, modern, with scientific temperament, and deeply committed to promote social harmony, social justice, and holistic development of all cutting across the divide of religion, language, caste, and other barriers.

We should note that in 2021 they are confident of re-writing the Constitution in deeds if not in words and reaching their goals.

With the above background, we understand better the disappointment of the VHP about some “Muslim brothers” remaining in India in 1947. His words about the difficulty of sending away “20 crores” of Muslims validates our statement that the ruling party in India of 2021 had wanted way back in 1947/1950, India to be a carbon copy of Pakistan.

The VHP president’s simile of the Ganga needs parsing. He wants the non-Hindus to submit themselves to be second class citizens, to put it in plain English. He wants Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism to be the tributaries of ‘Hinduism’.

A correction is called for, not of Hinduism, but of Hindutva, a deformed version of the former. In fact, Hindutva has to be surgically removed from Hinduism. Dear doctor, heal thyself first!

Prime Minister Modi spoke in Kashi of Shivaji and Aurangzeb. “Whenever an Aurangzeb comes along, a Shivaji rises.” Modi said that Aurangzeb was an invader from outside India. Little did he know that he and Aurangzeb were born in the same village in Gujarat!

To go back to Dickens. We shall know whether India is going to be a carbon copy of Pakistan when the state election results come out in 2022. It is for the voters to choose.

This article was initially published in The Citizen Credits:- https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/newsdetail/index/4/21230/a-tale-of-two-speeches

January 27th, 2022 | category:domestic-affairs, politics |

domestic-affairs, politics

The Infamous Farm Laws: Waterloo For Modi?

The public discourse on the farm laws, even in government-friendly print & television channels, has demonstrated the inability of the laws’ defenders to advance arguments that convince the alert citizen.

No. This abrupt U-turn does not resemble a Waterloo. It is more like Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign that preceded the Waterloo by three years. The perhaps unexpected, but not necessarily inexplicable, U-turn by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, convinced of his infallibility, with his entourage not daring to tell him what he does not want to hear, raises a number of questions in the mind of the alert citizen.

She might look for answers in the mainstream media, print and television. She will be disappointed as a good part of the media, run for profit, desperately dependent on advertisements from a government that can easily intimidate them, if necessary, by unleashing the investigative agencies, do not dare to raise such questions.

Let’s start with a political parsing of the speech that marked the U-turn.

"Our government brought in the new laws with good intent, full sincerity and complete dedication for the welfare of farmers, especially for small farmers, in the interest of agriculture and the country and for the bright future of the poor in villages. But we have not been able to explain to some farmers such a sacred thing, which is absolutely pure and for the benefit of the farmers, despite our efforts."

Questions:

1. Are the farmers so lacking in intelligence that even after ministers explained to them–over a period of four months, in as many as 11 meetings–they could not understand the immense benefits that the Modi government wanted to bestow on them?

2. Are the ministers lacking in articulation to put across the list of benefits? If the ministers are not articulate enough why didn’t Modi himself invite the farmers to his residence on Lok Kalyan Marg?

3. Who drafted the laws, the law ministry? Did they seek inputs from outside the government? If so, from whom and why?

Obviously, any law should provide a fair arrangement for dispute settlement. In the case of these laws, the government is the final authority and the farmer cannot go to court. This provision flagrantly violates the doctrine of separation of powers, a pillar of the Indian constitution as well as of others in democratic countries.

There is one more atrocity that has not been highlighted by the government-friendly media:

"No suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall lie against the Central Government or the State Government, or any officer of the Central Government or the State Government or any other person in respect of anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done under this Act or of any rules or orders made thereunder. – The Farmers’ Produce Trade And Commerce (Promotion And Facilitation) Act of 2020."

Was the portion granting immunity to “any other person” drafted by the law ministry, without inputs from the corporate lobby? Who decides whether the act is in “good faith”? Is there a similar provision in any other piece of legislation?

What was the need to proclaim an ordinance in June 2020, and why was the Union Parliament denied the chance to scrutinise the bills? Is it not an established convention that such important bills should be sent to a Select Committee for detailed examination?

This writer leaves it to the reader to figure out the answer, only pointing out that it is part of the style displayed in the case of the infamous demonetisation and the ill-starred lock down, apparently without any forethought or preparation.

As former minister P Chidambaram has asked, why was there no Cabinet discussion or decision before the U-turn was announced? At the time of writing, senior bureaucrats are burning the midnight oil to produce a cabinet note to justify the U-turn.

What has been the cost–political, economic, and social–of these hastily passed bills? Why is it that responsible bodies– such as FICCI or CII–have not yet thought of working out the economic cost?

Why did Modi wait for 670 farmers to die before making a U-turn? As Varun Gandhi, the BJP Member of Parliament urged the Prime Minister, how about paying Rs.1 crore to each of the bereaved families and sending them each a personal note of apology from the Prime Minister?

Let’s turn our attention to some related questions. The general consensus is that the U-turn was done to take care of the state elections in U.P. and Punjab. That is understandable. After all, politics, as practised in India, is all about capturing power and retaining it as long as possible by all means, fair or foul–fouler the better.

However, observers are not certain that the intended electoral benefits will follow. Of course, by taking the U-turn Modi may have stopped losing electoral ground. He is unlikely to regain the lost ground in Punjab or western Uttar Pradesh.

The public discourse on the farm laws, even in government-friendly print and television channels, has demonstrated the inability of the laws’ defenders to advance arguments that convince the alert citizen. A minister of state has said he could not understand why the laws are called black; only the ink is black, he claimed facetiously. However, the defenders should not be blamed as they were defending the indefensible.

We need to debate the merits and demerits of ‘Modi’fied India. In this context, dear reader, I do recommend Aakar Patel’s just published book The Price of the Modi Years.

The U-turn as pointed out earlier does not necessarily mark or forebode a Waterloo. But it is comparable to the Russian misadventure. It is for the alert citizen to decide whether to deliver a Waterloo in 2024 or not.

Three years separated the Russian disaster and the Waterloo. Who can look “into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not?”

This article first appeared in The Citizen.

June 30th, 2021 | category:domestic-affairs, politics |

international-affairs, politics

How China Outsmarted The U.S. At The World Health Assembly

It is now clear that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, has sustained a major diplomatic defeat at the hands of the Chinese President, Xi Jinping. What happened at the 73rd session of the World Health Assembly, the 194-member decision making body of the World Health Organisation (W.H.O.), held virtually on 18 – 19 May 2020, has to be seen from two angles.

First, in the context of President Trump’s unsuccessful attempt at finding a scapegoat as he rightly stands charged rightly for his monumental failure to deal with the contagion and his fear, not entirely unfounded, that he might not get re-elected in November this year. Second, from a more historically relevant perspective of a rising China and a declining U.S.

What is striking is that Trump had good cards, even a few trumps. However, despite having had a weaker hand, Xi Jinping, finessed to perfection in diplomatic bridge, trumped Donald Trump.

The U.S. accuses China of not being transparent – or prompt – in transmitting information on the developing situation. Furthermore, the U.S. also accuses the W.H.O. of being China’s “puppet.” Had China and the W.H.O. acted right, the U.S. argues, the contagion could have been contained before it became a pandemic.

That the U.S. case is strong will be seen from the annotated timeline below:
 

8 December 2019

Cases of pneumonia of unknown aetiology detected in Wuhan, a city of 11 million.
 

30 December 2019

Dr. Li Wenliang who raised the alarm on social media was rebuked and, later, silenced by the Mayor.
 

31 December 2019

China formally informs the W.H.O. of cases of pneumonia of unknown aetiology. China added that “there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.” Instead of digging deeper into the question of such transmission, the W.H.O. remains unconcerned and uncurious, a dereliction of its responsibilities.
 

13 January 2020

The first case of infection outside China recorded in Thailand.
 

14 January 2020

The W.H.O. tweets that there was “no clear evidence” of human-to-human transmission. This was the height of irresponsibility as there was a case in Thailand. What did the W.H.O mean by “clear”? The current entry on the W.H.O. website for 14 January 2020 is disingenuous:

The WHO’s technical lead for the response noted in a press briefing there may have been limited human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus (in the 41 confirmed cases), mainly through family members, and that there was a risk of a possible wider outbreak. The lead also said that human-to-human transmission would not be surprising given our experience with SARS, MERS and other respiratory pathogens.

 

18 January 2020

The Mayor of Wuhan hosts a banquet for 40,000 families and the virus goes viral. His reason for silencing the young doctor is clear.
 

20 January 2020

Beijing wakes up and sends Dr. Zhong Nanshan, 83, virologist, to Wuhan. He goes on national television saying there is clear danger of an epidemic, confirming human-to-human transmission.
  Didn’t the W.H.O. Representative in China report this to the Director General in Geneva?
 

22 January 2020

Lockdown begins in Wuhan. The W.H.O. Emergency Committee meets for two days and decides to meet again after 10 days to consider whether a global public emergency should be declared. This is deplorable abdication of responsibility.
 

28 January 2020

The W.H.O. Director General visits Beijing. Was he seeking permission before declaring an emergency?
 

30 January 2020

The W.H.O. declares a global emergency. (It should have declared a pandemic.) Furthermore, the W.H.O. declares there should be no ban on travel to and from China. This is criminal irresponsibility.
 

11 March 2020

The W.H.O. declares a pandemic. By then, the Hubei province had 67,773 cases and 3,046 deaths; the total for China was 80,955 cases and 3,162 deaths. Was it necessary to wait for the death toll to cross 3,000?

To go back to the diplomatic showdown, all that U.S. had to do was to put out a clear timeline. Instead, Secretary Pompeo stated that he had “enormous evidence” proving China’s culpability. The more he repeated it, without sharing the evidence, the less credible he sounded.

Donald Trump also repeated charges against China, threatened to stop paying the contribution to W.H.O., and wanted an investigation into its handling of the matter. His threat to cut funding enormously weakened his case. We did not hear much from the professional diplomats as the Secretary and the President spoke all the time.

Watching the diplomatic bungling by Washington, Xi Jinping planned his moves. On day one of the Assembly, he addressed the gathering and offered $ 2 billion to support the developing countries, including the ones in Africa, to deal with the contagion. Trump on his part wrote a harsh letter to the Director-General of the W.H.O., giving an ultimatum: Put your house in order or the U.S. might walk out. It was a rambling letter, with hardly any professional input. If he had a case, Trump should have addressed the Assembly.

Trump’s attack on the W.H.O. had an unintended, but easily anticipatable consequence. We do not know for sure, but it is possible that the European Union resorted to Machiavellian tactics. It came out with a draft resolution that called for a “plan for an evaluation, to be conducted in consultation with Member States at the earliest appropriate moment, on lessons learnt from the international health response to COVID-19, addressing the long-term consequences on health, in order to assess, in line with the statement made by G20 leaders, gaps in pandemic preparedness with a view to establishing a global initiative on pandemic preparedness and response capitalizing on existing structures and programmes to align priorities in global preparedness.”

Australia came out in strong support of Trump’s stand and consulted with the EU and stiffened the language by adding the words, “an impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation including using existing mechanisms, as appropriate, to review experience gained and lessons learned from the WHO-coordinated international health response to COVID-19.”

China initially opposed the draft resolution, but it joined the growing number of supporters and extracted drafting changes. The word “impartial” is missing from the text as proposed by the Chair and was unanimously adopted. There will be no inquisition into the role of the Director-General as the Assembly “requested” him to conduct the evaluation.

Coming to Taiwan’s request for restoring its observer status, 15 microstates wrote to the W.H.O. proposing discussion on Taiwan’s request. Even before the General Committee was to consider it, realising the lack of support, Taiwan withdrew its request. Everyone noted that though Pompeo had publicly supported Taiwan, Washington did not extend formal support, one more indication of Beijing’s growing diplomatic clout.

In short, Xi Jinping’s victory was complete, and he can address the party congress with enhanced self-confidence, unlike Trump who finds that his rival, Joe Biden, has more support right now.

Coming to the larger question, the United States had seen an adversary in U.S.S.R. even before World War II ended in Europe. Such a perception was partly responsible for the ill-begotten Cold War. When it ended, it was said in U.S. that Japan had won the Cold War, implying that Japan was the new economic adversary. For many years, even before Trump came into office, there had developed a consensus among the U.S. think tanks that China was the new adversary. Incidentally, China could not have risen so fast but for the Nixon visit in 1972.

Coming to China, the Middle Kingdom is convinced of its superiority over the rest of the world. Under Xi Jinping, China has not been reticent about its plans to co-equal U.S. and later to overtake it. Hence, the basic ingredients of confrontation between the two remain. The probability of them dividing the world into two zones is slim, though it cannot be ruled out.

There is a big difference between the Cold War days and now. The Soviet Union had, and its successor Russia, has a MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) relationship with the U.S. Trump is trying to change that and gain superiority, but his chances of success are slim.

Moreover, there is a difference in the new world order. while the Soviet Union was never an economic rival or threat to the U.S., China is.

In conclusion, both U.S. and China know that economically they are Siamese twins. We might see varying degrees of cooperation and confrontation in the future. China is unlikely to have a MAD relationship with U.S. in the near future. But madness on either side could end up destroying the world as we know it.

  The above article written by Ambassador K.P. Fabian was initially published on Madras Courier Credits:- https://madrascourier.com/opinion/how-china-outsmarted-the-u-s-at-the-world-health-assembly/

May 26th, 2020 | category:international-affairs, politics |

international-affairs

Fare will put evacuees in a tough spot

Former diplomat recalls how the govt. bore expenses during the Gulf war

The Indian flights to operate from this week to evacuate nationals from all over the world will be commercial in nature. Informed sources on Tuesday clarified that the largest-ever evacuation of expat Indians from abroad will be carried out by "non scheduled commercial, flights" that will allow only those passengers who can buy tickets. The commercial condition has drawn criticism from a veteran diplomat who played a crucial role in evacuation of Indians during the 1990 Gulf crisis, The sources indicated that they are aware of the hard ships that expats are facing because of global economic downturn and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic saying the States and Central Ministries will receive data base for future employment of the returning expats who have lost jobs in the Gulf. 1990 operation The planned evacuation of Indians from the Gulf is set To commence from May 7 but unlike the operation of 1990 Gulf War the Indian na nationals will have to pay for boarding the aircraft that will fly them home. Accord ing to available information,passengers boarding the Kuwait Ahmedabad flight will have to pay around 20,000 and passengers for the Abu Dhabi-Kochi and Dubai-Ko chi flights will have to pay around 15,000. Former Indian Ambassa dor K.P. Fabian who was the Joint Secretary Of the Gulf Di Vision in the External Affairs Ministry during the 1990 Gulf War, said this was going to place the expats in a ditf cult position as many of them were facing financial hardships In 1990, we had taken a decision that the Governorment of India will bear the expenditure for the entire operation. We did not have a contractual arrangement with Air India but it was a smooth tie-up as the Minis tries of Civil Aviation, Fi nance and External Affairs coordinated. After the oper ation, MEA paid Air India for the airlift," said Mr. Fabian who travelled to Baghdad where he and External Af first Minister, the late Inder Kumar Gujral, met Iraqi rul er Saddam Hussein. Mr. Fabian also visited Jor dan subsequently to work on the logistics of the plan which led to the airlift of around 1,76,000 people by civilian airliners. The opera tion remains a record.

May 15th, 2020 | category:international-affairs |