Issue 41 Vol II, June 15, 2007

A N A L Y S I S

Back to Cold War Once Again
Sawraj Singh

President Putin warned that Russia would go back to its Cold War stance of aiming its missiles at Europe if the USA builds a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia just tested its new RS-24 inter-continental ballistic missile and claimed that this missile cannot be stopped by any interceptor system at present and many years to come in the future. President Putin acknowledged that Russia’s response can start an arms race in Europe but said that Russia would not be responsible for the consequences because the USA is bringing its weapons close to the Russian border. He called the American policies “Imperialistic“. He has also compared America to the third Reich. Russia has suspended it’s compliance with a treaty limiting the deployment of conventional forces in Europe (CFE).

President Putin seems to be going on the offensive; with the oil money making Russia economically stronger and with the West bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russia has found new confidence. Russia has also been able to beat the west in central Asia and was able to gain considerable control over the oil and gas of the central Asian countries. The West, particularly Europe, has become more vulnerable to potential disruption of its oil and gas supplies. Europe has now come under dual pressure, military and economic. The net result of increased Russian pressure on Europe may lead to a tendency in Europe to increase its distance from the USA and try to reach an independent agreement with Russia.  However, if Europe keeps on allowing America to move its weaponry close to the Russian border, then it runs the risk of becoming an epicenter for the third world war.

Europe should take the Russian warnings seriously because Russia has the capability of hitting targets in Europe and the USA with its ballistic missiles. Since Russia already has the capability of hitting targets in Europe, President Putin’s warning is more of a political rather than a technological statement. Clearly, President Putin wants Europe to move away from the USA if it wants to avoid becoming a battleground for the third world war. Europe shouldn’t have any doubts about the technological superiority of the Russian weaponry. All it has to do is look at the proxy wars in the last thirty years or so. In many instances, the side that received Russian weapons defeated the side that got its weapons from the western countries.

The RS-24 is the new intercontinental missile that was launched last week from a mobile launch at the Plesetsk launch site in Northwestern Russia and its test mark landed on target 3,400 miles away on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the far eastern part of Russia. The missile will replace the aging RS-18 and RS-20 intercontinental ballistic missiles. The new missile that is capable of carrying multiple nuclear war heads could allow Russia to maintain nuclear parity with the United States.  First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, whom many people believe will succeed President Putin, said about this missile, “It can be used at long range with surgical precision, as doctors say”. He also said, “Russia needs this weapon to maintain strategic stability”.

When America decided to deploy a new interceptor system in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia strongly criticized the move but America ignored the Russian criticism. Now, Russia has proved that the American step did not make Europe more secure and actually has made it more vulnerable and insecure. It has also increased the risk of a third world war. The west should clearly understand that unlike the two world wars, the third world war is not winnable. The west should also understand that the western domination of the last two centuries cannot be continued in the 21st century because the western dominated, unipolar world is going to transform into a multipolar world real soon. The global community should learn to solve the problems peacefully.  Peaceful coexistence is the only sane option.

[Sawraj Singh, MD F.I.C.S. is Chairman, Washington State Network for Human Rights]

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Weapons of Environment Degradation
Khushwant Toor

Weapons of mass destruction not only take precious innocent lives, but destroy the habitat, living and non living objects besides polluting the atmosphere with deadly gases and chemicals. Proof of man’s beastly instincts and desire to exploit, these weapons, products of our scientific advancement, are a clear threat to our ecology.

We present here the special types of weapons of mass destruction being used in the obvious unjust war in Iraq in addition to the mighty regular weapons being used by the United States and the United Kingdom elsewhere in Afghanistan.  Earlier these disaster weapons were used in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf war with impunity.

The use of such weapons has been evidenced by different sources from Iraq and has been documented in various media articles. Although loose reports from the Pentagon and their British counterparts confirm the usage of such weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, however their usage at large is being denied. These special weapons, since their usage have already started to leave deadly effect on civilians similar to those left on people who once happily lived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Iraq was attacked as the American President George Bush alleged that its President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. This was a ruse to attack Iraq and even President Bush admits as does rest of America and its allies that there were no weapons of mass destructions there. One wonders what are these weapons of mass destruction that the Iraqi president Mr. Saddam Hussein was accused of possessing and yet there is no opposition to their use by the so called coalition forces in Iraq.

Below is a snap shot of some of the deadliest weapons of mass destruction, which are destroying fairy tale land of Ali Baba’s Baghdad.

Cluster bombs are dropped from the air, and cluster munitions are fired from the ground. These are designated as such because they fragment into many smaller bombs.  When a cluster weapon is dropped or fired, it opens in the air and disperses hundreds of smaller explosives (bomblets or submunitions) which scatter over an area of up to hundreds of thousands of feet.

Most of these submunitions explode upon impact, but between 5% and 30% fail to detonate on depletion.   These then retain their deadly capabilities, and typically explode immediately when touched acting similar to a landmine spread across vast areas for many years.

Various reports confirm that during the first Gulf War, the US and its allies dropped cluster bombs containing around 20 million bomblets.  In addition, cluster munitions spread more than 30 million bomblets.  In Kuwait, around 200 cluster duds are still being found and destroyed each month.   In Afghanistan, the United States dropped 1,228 CBU-87 cluster bombs containing 248,056 bomblets.   Assuming a 7% failure rate, this would leave roughly 17,363 unexploded bomblets scattered across Afghanistan.

Both the 1997 Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty and the Geneva Convention requires a ban on usage of land mines, but the US and UK argue that cluster bombs and cluster munitions are not specifically banned.

Napalm is an incendiary chemical mix first tested during the Second World War, but used mainly during the Vietnam War.  The mix, stored in bombs and dropped from the air, was initially used to clear jungle landing pads, but has also been used against civilian populations.  The US claims to have stopped using napalm in the early 1970s and officially destroyed its last batch of stockpiled napalm on April 4, 2001. However CNN and other news agencies have reported the usage of Napalm in the Iraq war by the US forces.

The GBU-28 Bunker Buster is a 5,000 pound bomb designed to penetrate up to 6 meters of concrete or 30 meters of earth before exploding.  Various news reports and video evidence from Iraq confirms the use of these Bunker Bombs even on few of the above ground targets.

Used in anti-tank shells since the first Gulf War, depleted uranium (DU) is uranium 238, the isotope remaining after uranium 235 has been enriched for use in nuclear weapons or reactors.  When DU-tipped shells are fired at high speeds from tanks or planes, the radioactive material burns through tank armor, igniting the vehicle.  After exploding, 70% of the shell is vaporized into tiny particles and can be carried by the wind for many miles.   Although DU is only half as radioactive as uranium 235, the tiny particles can become trapped inside the human body for long periods of time, creating serious health problems.

During the first Gulf War, US tanks fired 14,000 DU shells, and anti-tank aircraft fired another 940,000 rounds, leaving a total of 564,000 pounds of DU either vaporized or unexploded. During the 2003 invasion and current occupation of Iraq, U.S. and British troops have reportedly used more than five times as many DU bombs and shells as the total number used during the 1991 war. Health agencies from Iraqi have reported Iraqis have since experienced extremely abnormal rates of cancer, birth defects, and miscarriages in the areas where DU was used, particularly around Basra.   The “Gulf War Syndrome” experienced by US veterans has also been widely blamed on depleted uranium.

The US and UK are unapologetic about DU, however, insisting that it poses no health risks and refusing to reduce DU usage in the current war on Iraq.   DU is being used in most tank battles and on exposed troops in Iraq.  A report from Iraq mentions that on March 28 (2003), a tank unit fired two 120mm DU rounds down the main road of urban Kifl, creating a vacuum effect that “literally sucked guerrillas out from their hideaways into the street, where they were shot down by small arms fire or run over by the tanks.”

Other type of munitions or weapons of mass destruction which are on the arsenal of the coalition forces as reported on the CNN website include.

BLU-82: 15,000-pound general-purpose bomb, nicknamed the "Daisy Cutter," 15 were dropped during Operation Desert Storm to clear mine fields and for psychological impact; at least four were dropped in Afghanistan against al Qaeda tunnel and cave complexes.

Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (MOAB): 21,500-pound conventional bomb. The bomb, also known as "the mother of all bombs," is the successor to the 15,000-pound "Daisy Cutter" bomb used in Vietnam and Afghanistan. It will be the largest conventional bomb in history. Work began on the weapon in 2002 and it was first tested in March 2003 at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

GBU-28/37 Penetrator: 4,400-pound precision bomb, GBU-28 is laser-guided; GBU-37 is satellite-guided. Bomb has a hardened warhead designed to penetrate concrete objects like underground bunkers; developed during the Persian Gulf War as a "bunker-buster

Many other bombs of the same kind are on the never exhausting list. Exact number of these weapons of mass destruction used so far in Iraq is unknown to the public; however shear weight of each bomb and its deadly leftover effect will distort the future Iraqi generations to come.

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Muslim perceptions of globalisation
Ishtiaq Ahmed

Akbar Ahmed's latest book Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization published by the Brookings Institute of Washington DC is an anthropological contribution to a field in which there is great scope for theorising about future relations between the west and the Muslim world.

The contemporary social, economic and political shape of the world has been formed by globalisation centred on the west, with the US as its leader. Especially after 9/11 the overall economic and social difficulties generated by globalisation have been compounded by cultural estrangement: suspicion, fear and hatred from both sides has been noted. Its full impact on the cultural lives of people remains largely unfathomed. The author portrays the predicament of globalisation in words which are most apt and should be quoted:

'Since the late twentieth century, the Muslim world has plunged into the age of globalisation, which to many people resembles a new form of imperialism. Its emphasis is on producing the most goods at the lowest cost, along the way accumulating wealth for some higher standards of living regardless of the cost to society. Neither faith, in its pure spiritual sense, nor reason, based in classical notions of justice and logic, appears to figure prominently in the philosophy of globalisation' (page 12).

This is a telling indictment of globalisation which in practice has meant that the developmental state which used to provide basic services such as health, education and employment has been forced to withdraw in favour of so-called civil society taking over such functions and commercialising it to a point that common people can in no way benefit from them. Instead charitable organisations have taken over the function of helping the poor and needy but given their limited resources most people are without any help. Such globalisation has helped multi-national companies maximise their profits through the imposition of unbridled capitalism.

The author's main interest in this study is not to analyse the economic consequences of globalisation, though he does take up that aspect too. He is interested in throwing light on how Muslims perceive globalisation in cultural terms. He continues to apply a framework of analysis which he has used in the past for categorising Muslim opinion. These are the orthodox (Deoband model), modernist (Aligarh model) and Sufi (Ajmer model) modes of thinking and reasoning. I think this spectrum is quite adequate to capture a wide range of Muslim opinion, but scope should also be provided to include secular and rationalist opinion.

Akbar Ahmed, his assistant, Hadia Mubarak, and two of his American students, Hailey Wodt and Frankie Martin, travelled to the Middle East where they spent time in Jordan, Syria and Qatar; South Asia where they were in Pakistan and India; and South East Asia where they went to Indonesia and Malaysia. The author had access to presidents and prime ministers and representatives of orthodox seminaries and Sufi brotherhoods and many other prominent people.

He regrets they could not visit Iran and Saudi Arabia because of the logistical problems. I think this was only good or his American students may have had an opportunity to see the effects of Islamism in practice and thus come back with a strong opinion about it than when speaking only to its supporters in societies where Islamism is not in power.

The team conducted in-depth interviews with 120 persons at various places such as universities, hotels, cafes, madressahs, mosques and private homes. The questionnaire was prepared to find out from the respondents what they read, what changes they had noticed in their societies, the nature of their daily interaction with technology and the news, and their personal views on contemporary and historical role models.

We learn that the research team decided not to have written responses to the questionnaire because it was felt that many of the respondents were reluctant to commit themselves in writing because of fear that such material may end up with the intelligence services of their countries. Instead personal interviews were conducted.

The book provides useful information on the sects of Islam and the historical personalities that Muslims hold in great reverence and admiration. The author has shown great skill in providing as neutral an account as possible.

The findings of study are that fundamentalist ideologues such as Syed Qutb, Abul Ala Maududi and Khomeini have followers among the orthodox in the Muslim. Among those with a Sufi type of inclination Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) and Amr Khaled and some other cultural figures were popular. Some found the former Malaysian president, Mahathir Muhammad, a worthy role model of the Aligarh variety.

Quite expectedly Osama bin Laden and Yasser Arafat were the two main heroes of young Muslims from the contemporary period. This cut across the orthodox, modernist and Sufi distinctions. Even the current Iranian President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khomeini fascinated Sunni Muslims. In the popular perception they are seen to have stood up to western domination and therefore enjoy broad support.

The problem with the expression 'contemporary role model' is that while Syed Qutb, Maududi and Khomeini: all deceased are included in such a description the Turkish reformer Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is not. This gives a false impression that he is absent from the choices being made about contemporary role models. After the recent mammoth demonstrations in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir in favour of keeping the Turkish republic a secular state there should be no doubt at all that millions of Turks are convinced that it is in their interest that religion and state should remain separate.

Elsewhere too I find a revived interest in Turkey and the secular state as Muslim societies sink deeper and deeper into the quagmire of obscurantism and nihilism. One of the worst types of racism in the west is to believe that Muslims as a civilisation are incapable of thinking in secular and rational terms.

The strength of the book is that it also takes up practical life situations of the Muslims into account. Not all want to throw bombs at the Americans or want to start a worldwide jihad. This is the obsession of a tiny minority but they tend to get the most attention and indeed serve as the basis of stereotyping Muslims in the west.

We learnt that young Muslims who want to partake in globalisation and seek jobs and admissions to higher seats of learning are discriminated against in many parts of the world. The west has undoubtedly played a dirty role in creating a corrupt and exploitative economic and social order in the world.

[The writer is professor of political science at the University of Stockholm, Sweden. Email: Ishtiaq.Ahmed@stats-vet.su.se
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=59793]

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