Egypt's military arrest Muslim Brotherhood supreme leader

Egypt's new military rulers have arrested the Muslim Brotherhood's supreme leader, security sources say, and issued warrants for up to 300 other members hours after ousting the elected president, Mohamed Morsi, and taking him and his aides into military custody.

The day after a momentous night in Cairo has revealed the full extent of the military overthrow, with key support bases of the Muslim Brotherhood, including television stations, closed down or raided.

Security officials told the Associated Press and Reuters that the Brotherhood's supreme leader, Mohammed Badie, was arrested in a coastal city near the Libyan border on Wednesday and flown to Cairo in a military helicopter. The Brotherhood spokesman Gehad el-Haddad said he could not confirm the reports because the group had lost their lines of communication to Badie. Prosecutors said on Thursday morning they were seeking Badie's arrest and that of his deputy, Khairat el-Shater, for inciting violence against protesters outside the Brotherhood's headquarters in Cairo on Sunday night, when eight protesters were killed.

The dramatic events of the last day have been welcomed by many in the capital, where most state institutions, including the security establishment, had steadily abandoned Morsi since Sunday. Adli Mansour, the head of the constitutional court, was sworn in as interim head of state on Thursday. In his first remarks as leader, he praised the protests that preceded Morsi's removal and said they had "corrected the path of the glorious revolution" that brought down the former dictator Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. "I look forward to parliamentary and presidential elections held with the genuine and authentic will of the people," Mansour said in a televised address.

The epicentre of the latest revolt, Tahrir Square, was teeming with up to one million revellers until well past midnight. The crowds were reportedly the largest the square had seen at any point since the first stirrings of revolution in 2011, spilling over two bridges across the Nile and into the west of the city.

Elsewhere in Egypt, where backing for the Brotherhood had remained solid despite Morsi's political tribulations, the reaction to his ousting has been far from celebratory. Up to 10 people died in clashes, and more than 400 were reported wounded, in the hours following the military chief Abdul Fattah al-Sisi's announcement that he had ended Morsi's presidency. Rallies are expected in many parts of the country throughout Thursday and are likely to be met by a prominent military presence.

The international response to the coup has so far been muted. Barack Obama is expected to make a statement at some time on Thursday. The US president had been supportive of the democratic ballot that elected Morsi in June 2012. Arab world leaders are understood to be considering how to deal with yet another seismic shift in the political landscape at a time of profound and ongoing regional instability.

The strongest response was from Turkey's government, which like Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has Islamist roots. The foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, said the overthrow of Morsi was a military coup and unacceptable. The Tunisian ruling party Ennahda condemned a "coup against legitimacy". The coming days are likely to prove crucial across Egypt, as the military strives to assert itself in a transition it will guide, with nominal civilian leadership, towards new parliamentary and presidential elections.

The Muslim Brotherhood will also find itself under pressure to react to the ignominious ousting of its chief patron, and the man who guided it to political legitimacy eight decades after the group's inception throughout the rule of the former president Hosni Mubarak when it remained outlawed. Muslim Brotherhood leaders have pledged to conduct peaceful protests in response to Morsi's ousting. However, before the coup two of the former president's aides said no political leader could control the anger of the people.

"In the space of one night we are back 60 years," said Amr Darrag, a senior Muslim Brotherhood member and former minister for international co-operation. "All of our leaders are being arrested in the middle of the night. Their houses are being stormed. Their children are being scared. All of our remaining leaders are banned from travel and this is just the start. "Yesterday we were part of the government doing what we thought was best for Egypt. Even if you don't agree with us, this has gone too far."

Mansour's installation as interim of head of state caps a rapid rise for the head of the supreme constitutional court, who was appointed chief justice only on Sunday – timing that coincided with the first day of mass protests against Morsi. Egypt's civilian opposition as well as senior Muslim and Christian leaders are likely to play prominent roles in a transition period. The military has cast itself as a reluctant overlord and has not yet specified how long it will remain in effective control.

Wednesday's coup followed several weeks of attempts by Morsi to reach out to opposition groups. The ousted leader's aides insist he had been prepared to enter into power-sharing arrangements, but had been rebuffed at every turn.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/04/egypt-military-arrest-warrants-muslim-brotherhood

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Ishrat Jahan was not a terrorist: CBI

Nine years after 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan was killed along with three others by Gujarat Police, CBI today ruled out her involvement in terror activities and said she was accompanying Javed Sheikh on his trip to Ahmedabad as he was her employer. CBI sources said here although the agency has not mentioned antecedents of either of four individuals – Javed Sheikh, Ishrat Jahan, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar – killed in the encounter on June 15, 2004, it plans to give a detailed report on the conspiracy which led to the extra-judicial killings in the supplementary charge sheet.

The sources said the agency has also found during its probe that the FIR of the encounter, in which four persons were killed on June 15, 2004, was prepared before the encounter took place by the Gujarat Police. Contrary to various theories on the reasons why Ishrat chose to accompany Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai on his trip to Gujarat where they were killed, CBI sources said she was an employee of Sheikh who had helped her family during a crisis.

The sources said Sheikh was an employee of Ishrat's father and was known to their family for quite a long time. Sheikh later established his own business in Mumbai and was doing well. They said after the death of Ishrat's father, family was in dire need of money and for the sake of goodwill, Sheikh gave her employment in his business. CBI found in its investigation that Ishrat accompanied Sheikh on his trip to Ahmedabad where they were allegedly picked by officials of subsidiary intelligence bureau, state unit of country's snooping agency Intelligence Bureau, and Gujarat Crime Branch officials.

The sources said Ishrat and Javed were allegedly picked up from Vasad in Gujarat three-four days before the fake encounter and kept at a farmhouse in the illegal custody of SIB and Gujarat Crime Branch officials. They said Rana was allegedly intercepted by the SIB and Gujarat Police officials in May, nearly a month before the fake encounter, while Johar was allegedly picked up in April, nearly two months before the encounter.

The sources said the then SIB Chief Rajinder Kumar, now Special Director Intelligence Bureau, ADGP Gujarat Police P P Pandey, who is absconding, and the then DIG Crime branch D G Vanzara, who is under judicial custody, held a meeting at Vanzara's office in Ahmedabad where it was decided to kill Sheikh, Johar, and Rana. The sources said, however, there was a difference of opinion about the fate of Ishrat during the meeting. On the day of encounter, June 15, 2004, a Gujarat police official allegedly drove Sheikh, Ishrat and Johar in the Blue Indica car, owned by Sheikh, from the farmhouse where they were kept in illegal custody to the location of encounter on an empty stretch of road between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar. Rana was brought in a different car to the location and all four were killed by Gujarat crime branch officials in a staged encounter, CBI claimed in its charge sheet filed today. The sources said role of Kumar, the then SIB Chief, and two other officials of the IB is under the scanner of the agency and they are likely to be named as accused in the supplementary charge sheet to be filed by the agency.

The sources said the agency's probe is based on material evidence collected by it, voluminous call records and statements of at least 20 witnesses who have recorded their accounts before a competent Magistrate. None of the seven policemen who have been made accused in the charge sheet today have given their statements before the Magistrate under Section 164.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ishrat-jahan-was-not-a-terrorist-cbi/1137265/0

How Ishrat Jahan and others were killed according to the CBI
19-year-old college student Ishrat Jahan was killed on June 15, 2004 along with three others on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. The Gujarat Police said that the group was armed and on its way to assassinate Chief Minister Narendra Modi.  Today, the CBI has said that's incorrect, and that  Ishrat and the others were killed in cold blood in a joint operation between the state's police and the Intelligence Bureau (or IB). However, the agency has not attributed any motive to the killing. The four people killed were Ishrat Jahan, her friend Javed Sheikh, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan JoharThe core of the CBI's case is based on the testimony of about 20 junior policemen who have helped establish that the four people who were killed were abducted and illegally confined at three different farm-houses in and around Ahmedabad over a period of two months. This is how the encounter unfolded, according to the CBI: The junior policemen have testified that the man known as Zeeshan had been brought into Ahmedabad as early on 27th April, 48 days before the encounter and was watched over in the police closely.

 
Amjad was driven to Ahmedabad by Ishrat's friend, Javed, on May 27, and kept at another farm-house on the outskirts of Ahmedabad by the Gujarat Police. There are different unconfirmed theories about why Javed handed over Amjad to the police. Javed and Ishrat , headed towards Ahmedabad in a blue Indica from Nasik in Maharashtra,  were picked up by the police at  a check post in Vasad near Anand, on June 12 and taken to a third farmhouse. On June 13, the Gujarat station chief of the Intelligence Bureau, Rajinder Kumar, interrogated Ishrat at the farmhouse where she was being kept illegally. On June 14, Mr Kumar allegedly met with senior police officers DG Vanzara and PP Pandey and the plan for the shooting was finalized. On June 14, a police officer was deputed to collect weapons from the Intelligence Bureau office.  These included an AK-56 which were planted  at the site of the shooting to make it seem like Ishrat and the others were armed.
 
On the morning of June 15, a police officer drove all four of them in Javed's Indica to the Kotarpur Waterworks road where they were gunned down by a group of policemen now accused of murder and destruction of evidence. 

See also
Ishrat Jehan's mother appeals for justice // CBI Probe Nails IB Officer’s Role // Important interview with Shamima Kauser's lawyer Vrinda Grover

Ishrat Jahan case: Gujarat High Court raps CBI over delay in filing chargesheet

Public Appeal by R.B. SREEKUMAR, FORMER DGP, GUJARAT

Did Narendra Modi, Amit Shah know of the Ishrat Jahan encounter in advance?

Police records show Gujarat riots weren’t a sudden backlash

Sadiq Jamal Case: CBI Files Affidavit, Says Probe In Progress

Gujarat Police killed Sadiq Jamal despite Intelligence Bureau's clean chit

How Varun Gandhi silenced the system - Tehelka expose

1984 carnage - 5 convicted, main accused Sajjan Kumar acquitted

Probe larger conspiracy says Zakia Jafri's counsel, reminds SIT of SC order regarding 2002 riots

Poornima Joshi: Sangh Singh Song

A Hard Rain Falling (private armies and political violence in India) (EPW) 

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Noam Chomsky - What Is Striking In India Is The Indifference Of The Privileged (interview)

NB - What is even more striking is that the theft of money is considered a far more grievous matter by our opinion-makers than mass murder or the systematic denial of Article 21 ('No person of his life or personal liberty  the except according to procedure established by law') - DS

**************

Q - You have been protesting wars, from Vietnam to Iraq. And then, there has been the Occupy Wall Street movement. What have been the similarities and differences in protest movements over the years?

People do not know this, but it was very tough to oppose the Vietnam war. In the early ’60s, if I was giving a talk, it would be in somebody’s living room or a church with very few people. Right here in Boston, a liberal city, we could not have an outdoor demonstration in the Boston Common until about 1967. Any demonstration would be broken up by force. In March 1966, when we tried to have an indoor demonstration at a church downtown — since we could not have a public one — the church was attacked.The Boston Globe, which was supposed to be a liberal newspaper, denounced the demonstrators. The Harvard University faculty would not even hear about it; nobody would sign a petition. It was a few years of hard slogging. Finally by 1967-68, there were two or three years of intense activism, before it declined. The ’60s were very significant but it was very condensed. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was a very conservative campus until about 1968 and then it became very radical, perhaps the most radical in the country.

Since the late ’60s, activism has expanded but with less visibility, and it is a part of a general consciousness about all kinds of things. In the 1980s, there was a huge anti-nuclear movement. But the most significant phenomenon in the ’80s — although it did not leave much of an impact in history because it did not involve the elites very much — were the solidarity movements with central America. This solidarity was coming mostly from rural United States, like rural Kansas, and the Evangelicals, with tens of thousands of people going down to central America just to be with the victims, to help and defend them. This had never happened before, that people from the imperial state went there not just to protest, but to live with the people and participate with them. And a lot of these people stayed on. So it had a great effect over rural United States.

Towards the end of the last millennium, solidarity was visible on a new kind of global justice movement, on particular issues, like Israel-Palestine. There has been a massive shift in that. I used to have police protection on this (MIT) campus, right until the 1990s, when I talked about it. But now it is the most lively issue on the campus. I am asked to give talks about it all the time. So it’s not militant activism, but there’s a culture of independence and opposition, which I think is pretty bright.

So, who is listening to dissidents like you?

Well, anybody who is willing to talk has people listening. There aren’t too many people who are willing to go around and give talks all the time. The few of us who are willing, are deluged. Every night, I turn down a dozen invitations. When I do give talks, there is a real hunger for something different, but there is very little supply. You can almost count on the fingers of your hands the number of people who are willing to spend their lives going around and giving talks.

But on the other hand, you are in Cambridge, so you get to hear a little about India. In the United States almost nobody knows anything about the outside world — people don’t know where France is. India would be some word that they might have heard in school in passing. It is a very insular society.

What about India baffles you the most?

I have followed India carefully, and have been there a number of times. It is an exciting country in many ways with its rich culture. But what is really striking to me about India, much more than most other countries I have been to, is the indifference of privileged sectors to the misery of others. You walk through Delhi and cannot miss it, but people just don’t seem to see it. Everyone is talking about ‘Shining India’ and yet people are starving. I had an interesting experience with this once. I was in a car in Delhi and with me was (activist) Aruna Roy, and we were driving towards a demonstration. And I noticed that she wasn’t looking outside the window of the car. I asked her why. She said, “If you live in India, you just can’t look outside the window. Because if you do, you’d rather commit suicide. It’s too horrible. So you just don’t look.” So people don’t look, they put themselves in a bubble and then don’t see it. And those words are from somebody who has devoted her life to the lives of the poor, and you can see why she said that — the misery and the oppression are so striking, much worse than in any country I have ever seen. And it is so dramatic. There is a lot of talk about how India is slated to be a major power, and I can’t believe it, with all its internal problems; China too for that matter, but less so.

When my wife and I went to India a couple of years ago, my friend Iqbal Ahmed had told me that I would discover that the press in Pakistan is much more open and free than the press in India. I did not believe him first but when I looked into it, he explained, “The English language press in Pakistan is for you and your friends, and the government just lets them say whatever they want, because there are so few of them to cater to, just a couple of hundred thousand people.”

You have hailed the Mexican newspaper La Jornada as “maybe the only real independent newspaper in the hemisphere”. Do you think something similar can be founded in India?

It could. The interesting thing about La Jornada is that the business world hates it. They don’t give it any ads. It is the second largest newspaper in the country with a very high level of journalistic acumen and very smart people, and they are all over the country. You see people reading this newspaper on the streets. Actually, I noticed that in Kerala, the only part of India where you can see people reading on the streets.

In the recent past, India witnessed a scam that exposed the deep nexus between journalists and businessmen, but nothing happened…

That is a bit different here (in the United States). One good thing about this country is that there is very little state repression, no censorship, so they can speak out what they can. On the other hand, the internalisation of doctrine here is just overwhelming, that is, with the intellectual community in the universities.. read more:

http://www.tehelka.com/what-is-striking-in-india-is-the-indifference-of-the-privileged/

K. SHANKAR BAJPAI: The closing of the Indian mind

A Hard Rain Falling (private armies and political violence in India) (EPW)

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Rwanda's antidote to counterfeit drugs

bogus or substandard drugs account for at least 100,000 deaths each year in poor countries, a trend Rwanda has bucked

Globalisation has brought people many wonderful things, but occasionally it brings them death, thanks to the growing international trade in bad medicines. At least 100,000 people each year succumb to medicines that are negligently made, or sometimes deliberately faked with bogus ingredients. The solution demands local and global measures to improve regulation and make penalties tougher for medicine criminals. We simply cannot afford the cost of inaction.

This week, we published research in Public Library of Science Medicineshowing that tuberculosis drug quality is variable in low- and middle-income countries. Of 713 samples of the tuberculosis medicines isoniazid and rifampicin collected in 17 countries, 9.1% contained insufficient quantities of the active pharmaceutical ingredient, and failed basic quality control tests. The situation is even worse in some African countries, where 16.6% of medicines failed; 7% were outright fakes, containing no active ingredient. These failing medicines won't cure tuberculosis infections and could even fuel drug resistance, which makes the disease much more difficult and expensive to cure.

Yet one encouraging result stood out: no fake tuberculosis drugs were found in the sample from Rwanda. This is consistent with other recent studies, which found that the east African state has few substandard and no obviously falsified malaria medicines. So what is Rwanda doing right?

First, over the past decade the government has taken legal and technical steps to secure the whole of its medicine supply chain. It buys high-risk drugs, such as those for tuberculosis, exclusively from manufacturers certified by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and distributes them in a dedicated, controlled supply chain to hospitals and clinics.

Second, the Rwandan government has trained the healthcare workers who handle the medicines how to spot and report substandard and falsified products.

Third, a taskforce of health regulators and customs officials inspects all medicines entering the country at the border, notifying the police (who in turn notify Interpol) when something is amiss. The Rwandan approach is holistic, and draws on resources from across the government.

It is tempting to say that Rwanda does all this because – unusually forAfrica – it has a strong publicly funded health system to treat tuberculosis. Yet, without a holistic approach, the system would be undermined by criminal activity and collapse. It is not just the healthcare workers and the quality of programme management that make the system function; in terms of medicines, it is the police and regulatory officials too. "Health is too important to leave to doctors," people say around Rwanda's health ministry.

Unfortunately, there is opposition to fighting fake and substandard medicines in this holistic way. Some countries, such as India, vocally oppose commingling public health and policing at an international level. Setting up that conflict seems a tactical mistake, because, as we know from many examples – food safety, airline safety, road safety – regulation and policing are necessary to prevent accidents and protect wellbeing. In fairness, India's parliament now acknowledges (pdf) the country has medicine quality problems that "can harm patients".

But for Rwanda to fix problems outside its borders, it needs the co-operation of other countries. A global treaty is needed to make medicine safety a priority, both by building the capacities of drug regulators and by making medicine falsification an international crime.

One perspective on the problem is that the world has done a dangerously imbalanced job of globalisation. Starting with the WTO agreements in 1995, free trade in legitimate medicines has helped patients who have access to quality drugs at affordable prices, but free trade in falsified and substandard medicines is hurting and killing many others. Without reversing the good half of this equation, countries need to clamp down on criminal activity. An international law that sets standards for medicine quality and safety in international trade – which, today, it does not – is essential.

Precedents abound: you can board an aircraft in country X and land safely in country Y because there are treaties on flight safety to which all countries agree. Likewise, you cannot print the banknotes of country X and pass them off in country Y without being arrested, because there are treaties criminalising counterfeiting. If international law can promote safe flights and criminalise fake money, surely it does not take too much imagination to negotiate and agree a treaty to promote safe medicines and criminalise fakes to protect people in low- and middle-income countries.

• Agnes Binagwaho is Rwandan health minister, senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and clinical professor of paediatrics at the Geisel school of medicine, Dartmouth University. Amir Attaran is Canada research chair in law, population health and global development policy, and professor in law and medicine at the University of Ottawa

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/jul/03/rwanda-counterfeit-drugs-medicines-health

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Norway's Sommerfesten music festival: small and beautiful

The tiny Sommerfesten music festival in Ålesund holds such utopian ideals that its motto – "Peace, Love and Understanding" – is delivered completely straight-faced. Normally such wide-eyed naivety would stoke the inner cynic in me, but there's something about this place that makes me resist judgement, and I come away from the experience a little wide-eyed myself.

For a start, it's beautiful. Ålesund itself is an art-nouveau toytown built between 1904 and 1907 after a fire destroyed the settlement, and the surrounding countryside is a breathtaking, film-set-perfect jumble of mountains and fjords. Sommerfesten takes place on Giske, a miniscule island roughly 15 minutes from the town. It's been going since 2008 and has gained in popularity year by year. In 2011, 30,000 turned up and the founders restricted ticket sales to 20,000 last year, principally, it seems, to reduce the queues for the ladies' loos. "This is a non-commercial festival," insists co-founder and chief booker Ante Giskeødegård. "We've never made any money on it and we never will."

For a festival that's grown quickly and surely, it still feels small and local, and that is down to this determination to keep doing what they want to, rather than what makes the big bucks. Instead of the usual festival rota of burger vans and greasy noodles, people are encouraged bring their own food (you get a sticker for doing so).

It's not so much a giant packed lunch as a mass communal barbecue – whatever it is you decide to donate, to whatever value, is taken to a mysterious white marquee, from where it emerges as a bowl of salad, or marinaded and ready to chuck on to one of the many drums of hot coals. In addition to steak and sausages, I spotted elk, langoustines and a seemingly endless supply of local salmon sashimi, plus cinnamon buns and home-baked cakes for desert. It's hard to imagine, say, Reading and Leeds being able to pull this off, unless people were prepared to eat a communal casserole of lager, pot noodles and bacon butties.

Many attendees have been before, and it's not just the punters who love it. When I visited last year, singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche was high up the bill. He grew up in Bergen, Norway's second city, and moved to Brooklyn 10 years ago, but Sommerfesten makes him happy to be home. "It's becoming more and more of a thing," he explains just before his set, as the winds off the north Atlantic whip up a brisk breeze. "And you hear about it mainly from fellow bands. If you say you've played at Sommerfesten, everyone has a specific story, experience of here. I have high expectations."... read more

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2013/jul/03/norway-sommerfesten-music-festival

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HIV Cure in sight?

No sign of HIV return in bone marrow transplant patients, say scientists

Two men who became free of HIV infection after bone marrow transplants have stopped taking Aids drugs without any sign of the virus returning, according to scientists.

Talk of a cure is premature, the doctors told the International Aids Society conference in Kuala Lumpur, but the news will raise hopes that progress can be made towards a treatment that will not only keep the virus at bay but eventually eradicate it.

The two men, who had longstanding HIV infections, were given bone marrow transplants at the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Centre in Boston because they were suffering from cancers of the blood. Tests showed that as their own cells were replaced by cells from the bone marrow donor, the levels of virus in their blood steadily dropped to undetectable.

One of the men stopped taking antiretroviral medication to suppress HIV almost four months ago and the other seven weeks ago. They still have no detectable HIV in their blood cells.

"While these results are exciting, they do not yet indicate that the men have been cured," said Timothy Henrich, from the division of infectious diseases at Brigham. "Long-term follow up of at least one year will be required to understand the full impact of a bone marow transplant on HIV persistence."

One of the patients became infected with HIV in the early years of the epidemic, and the other was infected as a baby. They are both monitored frequently. Scientists have conducted extensive tests to try to find HIV not only in their blood cells but also in tissue and have not found anything, although they cannot be sure it is not there. HIV is able to hide and remain at low levels but remain capable of becoming active.

The virus could still be present in an organ such as the brain or in the gastrointestinal tract, Henrich said. "If the virus does return, it would suggest that these other sites are an important reservoir of infectious virus and new approaches to measuring the reservoir at relevant sites will be needed to guide the development of HIV curative strategies."

Even if the virus does not reappear, bone marrow transplants are not feasible for everybody. There is a 15-20% mortality rate and the patient has to take drugs to suppress their immune system thereafter. But the experiences of the two men will teach scientists a great deal more about how to combat the virus.

The International Aids Society, which brings together researchers in the field worldwide, has led efforts towards a hunt for a cure for HIV infection as successive attempts to design a vaccine have failed.

The case of the "Berlin patient", later identified as American Timothy Ray Brown, was proof that a cure was possible. Brown underwent a stem cell transplant because of cancer, but his doctors managed to find a donor who had genetic resistance to HIV – a rare thing. Brown has been cured of both HIV infection and cancer, but the treatment carries major risks and is hugely expensive, and it would be very unlikely that many donors with genetic resistance to the virus could be found.

In March it was announced that a child born with HIV in Mississippi had been "cured" by being given very prompt antiretroviral therapy after birth. The child's mother stopped giving the baby drugs at around the age of 18 months and no longer went for regular checks to the hospital. When they returned five months later, the child had no detectable virus. Scientists are uncertain why it happened, but speculated that the early use of drugs – within 30 hours of the birth – may have prevented the virus taking hold.

Henrich said he was cautious but excited about the scientific developments. "Five years ago if you'd mentioned a cure, research people wouldn't have taken you seriously," he said. "We're not there yet. Are we close? Probably not, but who knows? This could be a rapid learning curve in the next few years."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jul/03/hiv-bone-marrow-transplant

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Jamal Kidwai on Kashmir today - Look Within

There have been five attacks by militants in the Kashmir valley since February, killing at least 23 security men. These attacks and the 24 June killings of eight unarmed army men by militants have once again raised the bogey of the return of insurgency to the Kashmir valley. This has resulted in a widespread conclusion  that in no time at all militancy will be back in the valley; the situation has even been compared to the situation in the mid 1990s.
This is based mostly on wild speculation, such as the withdrawal of Americans troops in March 2014 from Afghanistan, which, it is claimed by hawks and defence analysts alike, will give a free hand to the ISI-Pakistani military establishment to pursue its anti-India and jehadi agenda.

A disproportionate amount of significance is also given to the random anti-India statements made by leaders of jehadi organisations like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Al-Qaeda. Such an approach is far removed from domestic political reality in Kashmir, and does not want to acknowledge that it is political initiatives, and not military solutions, that will address issues that concern the people most.

The attack on army jawans came a day before the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi visit to the valley, where, amongst other things on the agenda, they had gone to inaugurate the Banihal-Qazigund rail link. The attack was clearly aimed at not only sabotaging the visit but also at sending out a signal that the militants do not approve of any initiative that has even a vague element of political engagement between the Kashmir Valley and New Delhi. 

Contrary to the theories being propagated by military and strategic analysts, what needs to be acknowledged is that every time the government tries to take political initiatives, the militants will strike, and they will target not just jawans but also civilians. This is not the first time that militants have shown their disdain for political action. They have consistently opposed elections in the valley, asked for the boycott of panchayat elections, forced elected sarpanches to resign and even killed many elected representatives. The militants and their front organisations, it will be remembered, had opposed the Srinagar-Muzzafarabad bus service that was welcomed by even those who had otherwise taken an anti-India position.

Therefore, one does not have to be a rocket scientist, as the popular phrase goes, to see that the jehadis and their backers in Pakistan and Afghanistan loathe the politics of dialogue, democracy and secularism and they will act to extract vengeance each time there is any such initiative taken. By conducting such acts of terror, the militants and the jehadists are egging on and inviting the Indian government to respond militarily, increase the already large number of security troops and conduct search operations. This, in turn, will result in more encounter killings and further acts of human rights violations, giving legitimacy to the argument that the Indian government is against the people of Kashmir and wants to keep them subjugated at any cost. But what is more troubling is that it’s not just the jehadis who seek such a response, there is a large section of the Indian military establishment, security experts and sections of media which believes that the Kashmir problem is essentially a security issue and the only way it can be resolved is through military intervention. They term human rights violations, fake encounters and disappearances as ' collateral damage' and see them as minor aberrations that happen during a `war on terror.’ 

However, the people of the Kashmir valley have given enough indication that they want normalcy to return, despite several acts of provocation by both the central and the state security agencies. The latest being the killing of two innocent young men allegedly army on the 29 June in Sumbal area of Bandipora district.  Since the days of stone pelting, there have been almost no incidents of mass protests. What took everyone by surprise were the relatively muted protests and the lack of street agitations after the hanging of Afzal Guru. That was one incident that had, paradoxically, excited both the separatists and the hawks in Delhi and Srinagar. But the people of Kashmir disappointed both of them!

This lack of agitation has, in turn, however, given strength to the misplaced perception in the establishment in New Delhi and Srinagar that all is well in the valley and that there is no simmering discontent. An unprecedented rise in the number of tourists, the opening of new restaurants and bars in Srinagar and an overall decrease in militant violence is being cited as a corroboration of this view... read more:
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?286578

See also:

BHARAT BHUSHAN - ‘Progress’ is no balm for the Kashmiri’s daily humiliations

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