Islamic State bombers struck with deadly precision at the heart of the Belgian capital, Brussels, killing 31 innocent people and injuring many more, some seriously. The targets were the city’s airport and metro. There appears to be no end to Europe’s purgatory: Madrid, London, Paris and now Brussels. It brings to mind a memorable passage from Edward Gibbon’s epic work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. There is contemporary resonance to his words describing the horror of the barbarian onslaught on the city in August 410 AD.
‘In the hour of savage license, when every passion was inflamed, and every restraint was removed …a cruel slaughter was made of the Romans, and the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies …Whenever the barbarians were provoked by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent and the helpless…’
Europe has fallen victim to the ineptitude of its rulers, of whom Messrs Cameron, Sarkozy and Hollande are standouts. They will be damned by the images of the first two hysterically acclaiming the death of the Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi and the arrival of Libyan democracy, when all that transpired was a failed state in the grip of jihadi terrorists. To their voices was added that of the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and her boss, President Barack Obama, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace, bestowed on him by a clearly demented Norwegian Nobel committee.
Lest we forget, the culture of jihadi terrorism, though rooted in the history of the Middle East and the Greater Middle East, which includes North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan, was helped to grow in the hot houses and green houses of the West as tools of its geostrategic diplomacy against the former Soviet Union, subsequently against the Russian Federation and India, whose studied aloofness from Western-sponsored pacts was frowned upon. Terrorism in the Moscow metro, for instance, was President Putin’s fault, just as the bombing of an Air India jet en route to Ireland from Canada, with the death of 329 passengers and crew, was then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s fault. Double standards on terrorism in the Western media and among Western governments have become the norm
Asymmetric resistance from the Afghan mujahideen ground down US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, where the US overthrew the Saddam Hussain regime and left a desolation in its place. Syria and Libya were further ingredients to the toxic brew. It says something for the global order envisaged by the US and its EU satraps that jihadi terrorism causes anguish when directed at them, yet is received with near indifference in parts of the non-western world where Islamist depredations have caused infinitely more havoc. Nigeria, for example, is in paralysis from continuing Boko Haram violence. Readers will be lucky to see a short paragraph about this in the American, British or French media.
The jihadi attacks, mounted from Pakistan, on Mumbai in 1993, 2006 and 2008 were reported coolly with little sense of the outrage we see on Brussels or Paris.. Yet Mumbai’s casualties, overall, were an approximate 500 dead. Terrorism was condemned without reference to its origins in Pakistan, a Nato and US ally. You may have noticed the hostility shown by the Argentine people during Obama’s visit to their country. Why so? Because in the 1970s the United States supported a vicious military dictatorship in that country, when thousands were murdered and thousands disappeared without trace. The same thing happened in Chile. The American record in South America has been, and still is, utterly appalling. It is just bad in Central America. American abominations in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia bear comparison with the atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany. American leaders never apologize for their country’s misdeeds because they believe that to do so would be demeaning, make them look like sissies. Only the truly great have the conscience and humility to admit to error. American leaders do not belong to this category, however much their absurdist boast that their country stands on a hill, a light unto the nations.
Time to end SAARC farce
The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation [SAARC] was a concept first aired in 1980 by the then Bangladesh military dictator, Ziaur Rahman, and taken up a few years by then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India. In the three decades of its existence SAARC has come to embody a nullity unique even for our desolate age. It needed only one member to put a spanner in the works, since the grouping works on the principle of unanimity. In time SAARC was reduced to a talking shop of pieties and slogans of good intent. Trade, investment, power generation, irrigation and much else remained unclimbed peaks. Indian prime ministers and bureaucrats undergo the ritual of lighting candles at the altar of this spurious body. Narendra Modi has trodden the same path, to no effect.
India placed one of its space satellites at the service of SAARC members, hence named it the SAARC satellite. Pakistan said its distrust of India ran so deep that it couldn’t and wouldn’t sign up to the satellite’s SAARC label, which has now been rebranded as the South Asian satellite. Such ballyhoo is scarcely worth the time and money expended on SAARC jamborees. Either reform SAARC without Pakistan or else dissolve what is now a monstrous carbuncle of waste matter. Cooperation between members can be better achieved through bilateral or trilateral accords. Foreign policy is a serious matter to be seriously pursued in the national interest. SAARC has long made this a mockery.
Pakistan, which has received Chinese largesse worth $46 billion, has argued for Chinese inclusion in SAARC, an utterly preposterous suggestion. That being so, it I drives Islamabad to act as SAARC spoiler. Talking shop at SAARC Summits, playing cricket in a bid to improve Indo-Pakistan ties is delusional search for the legendary philosopher’s stone whose mere touch, claimed the ancients, would remove all obstacles. Let others, if they so wish, do the searching for this mythical object. India should concentrate on things that matter. Walk out of SAARC and leave what remains to its own devices, or China’s.
London calling Indian high-tech companies
London’s charismatic Mayor Boris Johnson has always been a passionate advocate of closer Indo-British economic and educational ties. Now that he is to be the leader of Brixit campaign to withdraw Britain’s continued membership of the European Union in June referendum, and the possibility that his party will win the country’s majority vote, his decision to list 20 top high-tech Indian companies for a berth in London is most welcome. Who are these companies? Here is a sample. Uniphone Software, a speech recognition technology firm and Stelae Technologies, an artificial intelligence are among the companies Mr Johnson hopes to bring to the British capital and set up offices. He intends to be a catalyst in Indo-British partnerships by providing support on a variety of issues. This, Mr Johnson calculates, will hopefully attract greater Indian high-tech investment in London and the Greater London economy. India is already the second largest international investor after the US, and ahead of China, according to the data made available by the Mayor’s investment office London and Partners.
Approximately 250 projects were set up by Indian firms in London during 2015, while over the past decade Indian conglomerates have created cover 4,000 jobs in London and its environs. The Indian tech sector is the largest investor accounting for nearly half the overall Indian investment, followed by businesses and financial services.
Gordon Innes CEO of London & Partners, said he hoped to bolster ties with India, given recent efforts at the city and national level to engage in the process, and to consolidate and further London’s reputation as a global technological hub. London is now the world’s largest tech cluster. However, the Mayor’s plan for future growth and development has come up against the obstacle of the present UK government’s immigration policy, and the adverse impact this could have on the bilateral relationship between the India and the UK. Indeed, industrialist Lord Kiran Billimoria, a strong supporter of the Mayor’s initiative has warned of the derailing consequences of this immigration policy in the light of the proposals submitted by the government’s Migration Advisory Committee. Lord Billimoria concluded: ‘London is a welcoming place and has the right policies ...I’m afraid the Home Office has the wrong policies that have been hampering the economy. London and Partners are showing what can be achieved in spite of the immigration rules but imagine what could be achieved if we had immigration policies on our side.’
