Jihadi violence, inept western response
About a month ago, US President Donald Trump and one of his top generals brushed off the Taliban truculence in Afghanistan, now that the enemy had spurned peace talks with Washington. Obliteration would follow. The recent suicide bomb blast in Kabul (teeming with US and Afghan troops) exposed once more the absurdity of such posturing. The Taliban presence in the country has expanded with telling efficiency; they strike at will, whenever and wherever they wish. Two-thirds of Afghanistan are under their effective control, notwithstanding remorseless US attacks by aircraft and lethal remote- controlled drones. America’s Nato allies have also pitched in with supportive fire, all to no avail. After 17 years of struggle and promises of the elusive victory, the longest war in American history grinds on regardless with no end in sight. Since the fateful 9/11 jihadi air assault on New York and Washington, the US invasion of Iraq in search of Saddam Husain’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that never were, the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations embarked on ill-conceived wars of intervention in the Greater Middle East, from Afghanistan to Libya, destroying lives and property with unforeseen consequences. Europe is coping with thousands of refugees fleeing the inferno for the perceived shelter across the waters of the Mediterranean. The templates of European political and social stability have been shaken, possibly beyond repair.
According to the US Watson think tank on security, the United States has spent some five trillion dollars, three alone on the Iraq adventure, said Economics Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. Moving on to the present, not much has changed; if anything, is has for the worse.. The rancid clichés keep coming with the numbing echoes of a road drill. Nicholas Burns, a former Assistant Secretary of State in a Democratic administration and now a Harvard University academic, questioned on television on the Trump administration’s policy on Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, upheld Washington’s strategic alliance with Riyadh, Iran being the regional Beelzebub. Burns blotted out the shameful US record in Iran in 1953, when the CIA and British intelligence agencies arranged the fall of the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh and his replacement by the Shah’s hateful regime, Its rotten core, in turn, was demolished in 1979 by the clericalist regime of the Ayatollahs.
Turkey is visibly miffed by Washington’s cynicism prioritizing mega defence deals with Saudi Arabia, as long as these kept enriching US arms companies and ensured American jobs. America First is President Trump’s clarion call come wind or high water. It wasn’t so when a jihadi team - of whom 15 were Saudi nationals - piloted their aircraft into iconic buildings in New York and Washington on 9/11, 2001 for the loss of some 3000 lives. Mr Trump, as he was then, denounced Saudi Arabia as a jihadi state grown fat on petro-dollars.
There was the customary crap-shooting on America’s democratic values and leadership of the notional ‘free world’ – for long an anodyne term for a Bantustan global order. Khashoggi’s longtime residence in America as a featured Washington Post columnist apparently made him an American citizen in all but name, was an affront to American prestige, and hence unacceptable to America’s liberal consensus. Administrations across the aisle have long been addicted to regime change in countries that fall foul of their diktats. Attempted and successful assassinations are well documented.. The international pubic has lost its innocence about the workings of the present global order and its myriad covert and overt operations.
Meanwhile the vexed situation in next-door Afghanistan deteriorates by the hour and day. The country’s President Ashraf Ghani, trapped in cloud cuckoo land brims with optimism on the likely turning of the jihadi tide and the dawn of a new age of peace and prosperity and much else that is the stuff of dreams. His deputy in the coalition government Abdullah Abdullah struck a more sceptical tone. Against a fraught background of increasing Taliban and ISL attacks across the country and the mounting losses among the Afghan army the future remained bleak.
Britain, meanwhile, wrestles with Brexit, the Parliamentary Committee on national security and intelligence issued a statement highly critical of MI for its failures to detect and abort five jihadi attacks across the UK. The first in Manchester on a children’s pop festival claimed 15 lives, its Libyan mastermind was a known jihadi who travelled frequently to Libya remained at large despite being on the MI radar. The other jihadi attacks occurred in London Bridge, Westminster and Parson’s Green. Having the sown the wind with their collusion with Islamic radicalism, the US and UK are now reaping the whirlwind.[See Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs] To compound this folly, Britain’s army chief General Mark Carelton Smith told the Daily Telegraph in London (November 24) that the biggest threat by far to British security was Russia and not terrorist groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. A pre-emptive British invasion (along with Nato) of Russia could follow – a repeat of the British, American, French and Japanese intervention of 1919-20. Nothing forgotten, nothing learned.
India, Australia in closer embrace
The relationship between India and Australia is set to transcend cricket and curry houses to exalted heights of investment and bilateral trade. The first visit to Australia by an Indian President has opened a new and exciting chapter of infinite possibilities. President Ram Nath Kovind struck a chord in his conversations with Prime Minister Scott Morrison on subjects of mutual interest. The platform today is firm and encouraging. The two countries have been on the same page on regional peace and security, of which their naval exercises with Japan and the United States are a prime example to be hopefully followed next year with Indian membership of Regional Comprehensive Economic Cooperation covering much of the Asia Pacific area.
Australia has opened its welcoming doors to skilled Indian immigrants whose presence testifies to the needs of the Australian economy an to a future of rising standards of living.
The next level of engagement beckons. Apart from investment and greater volumes of Indian tourism arising from deeper Indian pockets, Australia has started attracting increasing numbers of students to its world-class universities and research institutes, more so as barriers to their entry to the UK and US multiply. Looking to the future, India and Australia signed five Memoranda of Understandings (MoUs) concerning bilateral investments. These surely will translate into legal entitlements, given the present climate of optimism that is driving India-Australian ties.
A grim anniversary to remember
November 26, 2008 was a day Mumbai and India are destined never to forget. A terrorist team from across the border came ashore and fanned out into different corners of India’s financial capital, occupying iconic sites, spreading mayhem as they embarked on their murderous spree. Around 167 innocents who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time went to their deaths. It was a dystopian experience like no other, a warning of the age we were, and are, condemned to endure going forward. India was introduced to a new style of warfare never experienced before in its annals: no formal declaration, no tanks, artillery, no air strikes, but killers trained to strike at unsuspecting victims at random, irrespective of age, sex, ethnicity or occupation. The exception was the local Jewish Centre, whose young Rabbi and wife were shot dead. The reason cited by the killers’ handlers In Pakistan, was that murdering Jews the surest guarantee of safe passage to Paradise. The primary aim of the exercise was to strike fear among the people of India and those elected to govern them. There was the usual hand wringing and breast beating from the great and good of ‘free world’ and beyond, the same brutal cynicism we witness today.
Islamabad denied all knowledge of the affair, then explained to its US overlords that it was a maverick group from within the notorious Inter Services Intelligence directorate, who had planned and executed the deed. The American scout, born of a Pakistani father and American mother, who had selected the sites to be assaulted was initially protected from interrogation by Indian intelligence sleuths, then reluctantly permitted to do so, was eventually tied by an American court tried and sentenced to a severe term of imprisonment.
Eternal vigilance, preparation without let or hindrance in defence capability and deterrence must be the government’s guiding principle. No normal relationship between states is possible until abnormal obstacles are removed. The mere fact that Pakistan’s international cricket fixtures on home grounds are played in Arab Gulf kingdoms because of security concerns is why England, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, to go no further, consider Pakistan to dangerous a place to tour; the risk to life and limb too great. Recent bombings in northern Pakistan and the attack on Chinese consulate in Karachi having a considerable toll in lives. The chickens are coming home to roost.
