United against the terrorism

Five years ago, fugitive Indian Mujahideen commander Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri slipped through the India-Nepal border near Madhubani. From there, he undoubtedly continued to safer havens and made sure the Indian Mujahideen would be better trained and more dangerous than ever before.

The recent arrest of high-profile fugitive Siddibapa of the Indian Mujahideen—popularly known as Yasin Bhatkal—from near the Raxaul border in the northern part of Bihar has confirmed that the traditional structure of the India-Nepal border needs drastic changes.

Once, the border areas were known as peaceful regions. But now, more and more terror cells are using the area to cross international borders and plan their attacks. There have been many such cases and the current border security system has been incapable of stopping them from crossing from Nepal into India and vice-versa.

Both in principle and practice, India and Nepal are cooperating to fight terrorism and protect their lands from being misused by rogue elements. Notwithstanding the good intentions of both countries, it is clear that the open border between Nepal and India is being covertly used for passage by terrorists.

Bihar shares a 625 km border with Nepal, of which a long stretch between Jaynagar in Madhubani and Raxaul in East Champaran has been under the scanner of the Indian police since 2006. The complicity of Pappu Khan, Mohamed Khalil, Omar Madani, Ghayur Ahmed Jamali and Ajmal alias Shoaib, in recent terror attacks on Indian cities and the establishment of their activities in northern Bihar districts have justified the police’s attention and call for more of a focus in this region.

The Bihar government has shown resilience in recent years in curbing terrorist activities. The State Government woke up after a joint operation of the Intelligence Bureau and the Delhi Police in October 2005 where these agencies scanned the call details from Madhubani to East Champaran and found an unusually high number of ISD calls to hostile destinations and known terrorist linkages.

India surely appreciates Nepal’s readiness to cope with these challenges and thanks to a joint operation, India was
able to nab a deadly terrorist like Yasin Bhatkal. However, the overall security situation is very complex and the two countries have to deal with it cautiously and on time. Measures need to be taken now, as tomorrow might already
be too late.

We immediately need to end the notion that the open border between India and Nepal poses no security risk. Also, border security has to be up to the mark, which it is currently not. Second, both countries should allow each other to track wanted criminals in their respective territories, thereby making the region unattractive for wrongdoers. Times are getting tougher for India and Nepal due to the rise of international terrorism.

The leaders of both sides must recognise this and they must focus their efforts on fighting terrorism—whilst not neglecting other crucial issues. Nepal is aware of India’s problems with imported as well as homegrown terrorism. Broadly, Nepal cannot afford an unstable India and obviously, a peaceful Nepal is one of India’s main concerns. On the political side, there should be no obstacle for a new security cooperation.

An effective way to deal with cross-border terrorism could be through dialogue on high official levels. Sadly, neither side has taken this issue very seriously in the past. As a consequence, terrorists have been able to move across borders and carry out crimes.

There is, therefore, a crucial need to restructure border security arrangements and build better infrastructure on both sides of the borders. Furthermore, as Indian police are state agencies, Nepal should find a way to involve state governments, who share common concerns along the border, instead of only dealing with New Delhi. Third, the Nepal Police needs a modern upgrade when it comes to interface technology and an increase in the headcount to be deployed near the border.

The Government of Nepal has partnered well with India and if it continues to do so by making its territory safe and
its borders impassable for terrorists, India will be the beneficiary. This strategic response to the activities of non-state terror networks would end their so far successful acquisition of easily accessible resources and pieces of infrastructure.

Until a few years ago, it was unthinkable that terrorists could misuse places like Janakpur or Pokhara to conduct illegal activities against India. The two Indian districts of Madhubani and Darbhanga also suffer from these latest
developments, despite their past intellectual traditions of refined cultural practices and communal harmony.

These two districts are known in official police criminal records as the ‘Madhubani Module’ and ‘Darbhanga Module’ What, then, is fueling the hate-game? Consensus can be attained by looking at some of the most recent terror cases and their link to the districts of north Bihar. There is evidence of local support and—shockingly—most of the culprits ended up as terrorists because they misinterpreted the teachings of Islam.

They have forgotten the shared past and the unbreakable trust which still remains among the different communities of the Mithila region. Neither historical records nor the present situation justifies such misinterpretations. Nevertheless, terror has expanded. It has to be ended and terrorists have to be reformed (those who are willing to be) or wiped out.

There is no reason for us to treat them with kid gloves. India has been suffering greatly from terrorism, although it was only after 9/11 that the world acknowledged India’s pain. India has the capacity to fight terrorism and its determination to do so is unshakable. Nothing could be as helpful at this stage as effective security cooperation between India and Nepal.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Kathmandu Post on October06,2013)

Inglorious trends!

The history tells that throughout the stretches of history, India has been plundered by the imperial forces. But still it remained home to every ethnic race known to mankind. Even the better social accords were attained in those adverse times, but sadly this nation drifted from such healthy course once it succeeded to force out the nefarious British Empire in 1947 from its land.

We know the truths of later time, how a nation turned into ‘three’ and the unresolved ‘Kashmir’ sandwitched for bad taste between India and Pakistan. Gripped through prejudices, and short on framing a suitable stand on Kashmir, India has been missing its chances to come in proper terms with the aspiration of Kashmiris’.

Naturally, this leads to ‘collective alienation’ among those who were never given the proper benefits of citizenship that India’s constitution essentially mandates for its citizens. Over the decades, leadership (including separatists) in Srinagar and New Delhi has shown indifferences to the basic notion of democracy and instead has followed their own chosen myopic path.

Consequently, Kashmir’s real issues were submerged in those ego clashes. Though turbulences never stopped surfacing in Kashmir, but in recent years, valley was moving towards an unusual normalcy. The disenchantment from external actors and growing self belief in a better future, based on sensible activism and leaning for the “beauty of compromise” were leading that positive change.

But the situation will not remain the same with the hanging of Afzal Guru-his trial would be remembered for misallocating judicial verdict for the falsely courted ‘collective will’. It was never true and it can’t be true. People never demanded such verdict and manner of inhuman prosecution. ‘Crime and Punishment' could be or not a classical case, but certainly the linking of 'collective will with hanging' by Supreme Court itself creates horrific sense.

Afzal was sent to the gallows after ten years in solitary confinement. Even by the record of ‘retributive justice’, one should not be given death sentence after a decade long harsh treatment. Even when the matter was sub-judice, such consideration was not given any heed and now when Kashmir is under siege, Supreme Court has extended the stay on hanging of four accomplices of Veerapan.

These four unfortunate persons will see the institutionally recommended death after having straight twenty years in the dark cells of Karnataka jail. The question arises, what makes India’s legal system so cynic and blood thirsty? Will it check the growing crime or make the situation worse? The Indian state is on the verge, where ‘thaw’ forms or ‘melts’ depending upon what a certain class thinks.

This confirms, today Indian state has its periodical choices and selective consideration over the crucial issues like ‘justice’. Again need is to remind, this is not a systemic collapse but it’s a position moulded by the virulent rise of violent identity politics. This is not a new phenomenon but a return of ‘sordid way of action’ from past. This makes the situation tense by dividing the existence as between ‘us’ and ‘them’!

Obviously 2013 is not 1984, and certainly Afzal Guru was not as firm as Maqbool Bhat was for a ‘separate Kashmir’. But still he was hanged and without even allowing a last time meeting with his family. Was he given the prosecution for his crime (as known for) or the Indian state suddenly found a taste for brutal overplay on the sensitive matter attached with mass sentiment?

Through the account of Afzal Guru’s letter, he wanted a normal life after he quit the path of militancy in mid nineties. That didn’t work out. This can’t be answered by any expert who has dealt with his case related to the attack on India’s Parliament in 2001. Because the points he made in his later, I am afraid would never get cross-checked. And if, they were cross-checked, why not the findings are in public?

The failure of legal processes and horrific compulsions of politics are in cocktail producing the most dangerous elements, upon which the radical voices would get louder. And those who are in Kashmir and suffering the ire of curfewed nights and forced curtailing of free voices would be prone to fall in another wave of alienation. This will do no good to India’s further maneuvering in Kashmir and in any case, to Kashmiris’.

The political class, who pursues the weird ideas, will keep staying in the corridors of power. The blind blow of ‘consumerist politics’ In India will give no chance to the voices from Kashmir or North East to challenge its heartless celebration of success, which is meant for few who dine and wine unrelentingly and in absolute bonhomie. India’s claimed commercial feet are so antagonistic that it easily appears like a consolidating disaster.

Pakistan couldn’t be shaped as it was dreamt by Jinnah because of chronic political deviation from the basic issues. Today, India is standing at a different but strikingly difficult cusp where its blind reliance on ‘cronyism’ is making its existence dubious, and hence less respectable. This worries me. This should worry all who really believe in the ‘Idea of India’ but feel cheated when the official authority surpasses even the minimum moral ground.

A nation, once hosted the dissents like Mahatma Gandhi and Bhagat Singh, should be more careful in misusing the authority of ‘violence’. The true rapprochement with the dissenting citizens cannot be established through the acts of coercion, or by denying the position of any genuine stakeholders.

As Afzal Guru was an Indian citizen and he had already spent ten years in jail for the charge he was framed, the government and court should have spent more time in looking on the concerned tasks that could have assess those charges against him more precisely. Rather, he was awarded solitary confinement and finally snoozes on a particular time and date, suited for exhibitions of UPA governments’ tough stand on terror.

Another side of story is that juveniles and matured criminals are raping/murdering girls on street and some of them are the ‘honourable’ members of the Parliament. In such state of affairs, status quo would be a choice of option for the power holders.

Atul K Thakur
Can be mailed at summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Kashmir Monitor On February19, and syndicated in Rising Kashmir on February20,2013)

Thrill and revelations of stunted Kashmir

Book Review: Non-fiction/The Meadow by Adrian Levy &Cathy Scott-Clark, Penguin, 510 pp; Rs499 (Hardback)
By the 1995, Kashmir valley was accustomed for hosting the worst of terror plots by the Pakistan supported militant operatives. This year, six foreign nationals were abducted by an obscure Islamic outfit in valley for securing the release of Pakistani militant leader Maulana Masood Azhar (few years later, this man has plotted the attack on Indian parliament) and the world for the first time started acknowledging panic stricken Kashmir’s grim plight.
Though this incident initially electrified the international governments and the government in India too, but the whole episode ended non-descript and without getting back the remaining four hostages (one miraculously escaped and another was beheaded and found a month later). Only some foibles were melted in the collective perceptions towards India and over the complex issue of Kashmir but it took another six years till the twin towers were collapsed and Pentagon attacked in 2001-9/11 to get USA realised that the world is not so flat by the counter-posing strong assertive power of international terror networks.
Discourse changed radically henceforth and war on terror became so inevitable that even the uproaring capitalist virtue seemed halted for a while. That was a late consciousness and ineffective too, as it was neither meant to end the terror nor had any welfaristic aims for other struggling countries against the militancy-clearly USA had single plan in action to reestablish its hegemony in the crucial oil rich terrains of Middle East and strategically essential, Afghanistan. That was ineluctable from the USA part seeing the might, it hold over the new strategic composition in post cold war years, but ensuing after single massive attack on its land, its riff raffling outweighed all limits against the structured rogues.
‘The Meadow’ is based on the authentic account of that lone survivor and Adrian Levy-Cathy Scott Clark’s painstaking research in Kashmir and throughout the world where they could get anything particular about those six hostages and the series of events followed. A sizable part of the research for this book is based on the verbatim authors has collected through their meticulous and ministering search over the years. So locutions sound horribly shocking and suffice for flouting big claims that the governments across the world make against their win over illegal terror (legal terror is that pursued by the state with some acceptance and more intrigue!).
This book presents a good example of investigative and also narrative journalism barring few dispensable details. On many places, this creates confusion in differentiating between author’s opinion and their commentary on real incidents. Like few pages on Jagmohan’s gubernatorial stint in Jammu&Kashmir with inefficient clarity of authors on his stand during the most turbulent phase of early 1990’s distracts from the theme, and in real, it has less to do with the triangular dispute of Kashmir that has multiple layers.
Gathering large number of facts is quite normal with the kind of book, this is, however excessive leeway of the authors for collecting more news than views produces the overall effect less natty and disorganised. Seeing through the pages, book projects many forgotten side stories, few of them are worth of revisiting and rest are easily escapable. Turning of Kashmir into a conflict zones from an abode of peace and syncretism didn’t take too long after the end of world war-II that ruined the erstwhile colonial powers. The power shifted from the ageing Europe towards USA and USSR, newly independent nation like India has stout aspiration to succeed in a new world and that was troublesome for the departing imperialists.
So they made the extremely virulent planks by converging ‘identity issues’ with the twins-religion and geography and also backed the whole plan by some strongest futuristic pronouncements. More than any other issue, this nasty idea of Mountbatten became able to confuse Nehru on Kashmir matter in the later years and that hyper-moralism tolled negatively on the peace and stability of this region. The masterly hateful antics on which M.A.Jinnah’s career thrived in the politics, succeeded to form a country with the brutal tantamount on the uncountable numbers of people who lost their lives or lost their calm forever. Unlike Nehru, Jinnah was not leading a real democracy, so he lost his control from his most unrealistic venture-Pakistan very soon and this newly born nation’s democratic training halted in infancy and never could recuperate those exercises, even half willingly since then.
The tussle of the two nations was begun as regional dispute and soon turned a hotcake of multilateral discussions without any plans to resolving the complications at fore among the different stakeholders. Abduction of those six foreign tourists in 1995 was inhuman, lately refutation got place against the Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir valley but so far condition was deteriorated much badly. India faced challenge on its secularism through a troubled Kashmir, Pakistan almost failed as a nation in projecting the very wrong agenda and what happened to Kashmiriyat, very few had any afterthought!
Situation has indeed changed in the Kashmir valley today, if compare the existing scenario of 1995, but is it really marks the win of good on evil? To a large extent, state had no option but to crush the terror networks being handled from the outside with very active interface of local dissents, those who were not qualified to be called ‘revolutionary’ since they did not know the meaning of their fight against India. The demand of ‘Azaadi’ couldn’t be simplified under the incredible leadership, Kashmir faced in the last six and half decades. That’s why, grand narrative like the ‘The Meadow’ is the simplest outcome of Kashmir’s long forgotten existential needs.
A book of this serious stature has been written for those six kidnapped tourists, this is indeed commendable as working on such project requires commitment, far ahead than one comes through the professional obligations alone. But it would be unlikely that thousands, who lost lives and lakhs of Kashmiris in valley or outside suffering the mental agony, will be ever able to be narrated through even the voluminous meta-narrative compositions…their distorted past and uncertain future probably needs no chronicler!
Atul Kumar Thakur
June 24th, 2012, Sunday, New Delhi
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Kashmir Today,June 24,2012/ http://kashmirmonitor.org/kashmonitor/06242012-ND-thrill-and-revelations-of-stunted-kashmir-28818.aspx )