Issue 49 Vol III, October 15, 2007

C O M M E N T

Taliban gaining ground in Afghanistan
Dr Swaraj Singh

THE Taliban are growing stronger and stronger in Afghanistan. They are attacking the Afghan security forces and NATO forces in every part of Afghanistan. There were two recent attacks in Kabul. Four days ago, there was a suicide attack on a bus carrying Afghan soldiers. More than thirty soldiers were killed and more than twenty were injured. Today, there was another suicide attack on the bus carrying the Afghan security forces and their families in Kabul. In this attack, thirteen people were killed. The attack on Saturday, four days ago, was the second worst attack since the war started.

President Karzai was badly shaken up by these attacks. He offered the Taliban for talks and position in the government. He said that he will go anywhere the Taliban want him to come for the talks. He said that he will give them any department in the cabinet they want.

However, the Taliban refused to talk to him so long as there are foreign troops in Afghanistan. President Karzai said that the foreign troops are needed in the reconstruction of Afghanistan and he wants them to be there until the reconstruction is finished.

President Karzai has realized that his days are numbered and that the Taliban can come back to power. Hefears that his end can be similar to the Russian supported President Najib. Najib was brutally killed by the Taliban when the Russian troops were defeated in Afghanistan. President Karzai is afraid that the same fate awaits him when the NATO troops will be defeated. President Karzai has lost most of his family to the growing violence in Afghanistan. The growing violence in Afghanistan has led to a very pessimistic evaluation of the situation by the NATO generals, and other military specialists.

General Dan McNeil, the chief of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, has warned that the success of the NATO forces against the Taliban so far may not last and the Afghan security forces cannot hold against the Taliban. He said that it will be very difficult to stop the Taliban in the coming winter. Chris Parker, who was in charge of the desert rat force, said that we do not have enough resources to control Helmond. Helmond is in southern Afghanistan where the Taliban have the largest presence.

President Karzai said he was willing to talk to Mullah Omar,leader of the Taliban and with the former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmetyar. He said he was willing to meet them wherever they wanted him to come. This offer by President Karzai clearily shows that the Taliban are gaining ground in Afghanistan and possibilities of their return to power are growing every day. President Musharraf has been considerably weakened in Pakistan and the Taliban are gaining ground there also, particularly in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. If the Taliban become really strong in this area, then it can have a significant impact on the balance of power in the Indian sub-continent as well as in the world. 

[Swaraj Singh M.D. F.I.C.S. Chairman, Washington State Network for Human Rights
Chairman, Central Washington Coalition for Social Justice

509-962-3652, 3910 Thrall Road, Ellensburg, WA 98926, USA]

BACK

Issue of Ramar Sethu
Kalpana Rao

LAST fortnight the Ramar Sethu assumed alarming proportions and had become volatile issue for Indian electoral politics. It was a matter much deeper concern in South India. Though majority opinion veers around that it should not have been coloured with religious bigotry, yet those who thrive more by communal politics and less by public welfare, were quick to seize the moment and turn this purely environmental or developmental proposition, a matter of electoral battles.

At this moment, what is essential is an objective and clear cut vision of the subject. It is critical for us to know that Ramar Sethu (Rama’s Bridge) also known as Adam’s Bridge (name first indicated in a map drawn by a British cartographer in 1804) is not technically speaking a bridge. It is a chain of shoals about 30 kms long stretching between India and Sri Lanka in the Palk Strait region. NASA refers to it as a long sand bar. The row about this bridge began with the idea of the Sethusamudram project. The aim of the project was to create a navigable route to connect the west and the east by dredging the region near the bridge so that a deep canal could allow free movement of ships.

Sethusamudram project, as many believe, is not a newly conceptualized one, but has been a much discussed idea from 1860 onwards. Way back in 1860, experts had deliberated on creating a navigable route between Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Bay. From 1860-1922, the ruling authorities had gone through approximately 8-9 proposals in a bid to cut down on costs of navigation. Although deliberations and scrutiny of the proposals had been done, the project did not take off due to economic constraints. After Independence the idea of having a canal was still very much in the air and accordingly various commissions were formed to consider and finalize the issue. Consequently, Ramasamy Mudaliar Committee (1961); Venkateswaran committee (1968) and Lakshminarayanan committee (1981) came up with different ideas and plans. Though none of these committee reports were finalized upon, it was very clear that the Union government had thought of this only from the standpoint of reducing the economic burden by having a shorter route from West to East and had not really thought of it from any other angle such as environmental, ecological and so on.

The project was later approved by the NDA government in 2002 but a government statement at that point of time, had stated that a report from National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) would be awaited to inform the government about the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in that area and once that was done the project would be taken up. The NEERI had viewed the area and had thought that the benefits outweighed the negative aspects and therefore the project could be carried out. It is also to be remembered that when the project report was given (November 2004) the coast had not yet been stuck by a tsunami. Finally in 2005 the project was cleared by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Rs.2, 427 crore Sethusamudram project was inaugurated by the Prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.

Two years after the project had begun public interest litigation was filed in Supreme Court stating that Ramar Sethu which had religious implications for the Hindus should not be damaged. The Government filed an affidavit supported by the Archaeological Survey of India which stated that although it respected the sentiments of the Hindu community, the religious claims could not be supported as no substantial evidence was present. It further stated that the contents of Valmiki's Ramayana, Tuslidas's Ramcharitmanas and other mythological texts could not be treated as historical record to prove the existence of the characters mentioned in the book. Moreover the affidavit also mentioned that there was no substantial evidence such as fossil remains, human bones, etc to prove any authenticity to the belief.

This led to a great deal of controversy as most people who believed in the religious veracity of the Ramar Sethu felt let down. The Central Government withdrew the offending affidavit and decided to file a new one. At this juncture the issue got further tinted when the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu and the leader of the AIADMK, decided to oppose the same and filed another affidavit stating that besides religious purpose, the Ramar Sethu has social and security importance and the Sethusamudram committee had ignored it. She stated that the bridge had stood as a barrier against the tsunami and if not for that the disaster would have been much more serious in the Tamilnadu and Kerala coasts. This statement could be partly true because many scientists and geologists think that the tsunami had reduced impact in these areas due to certain barriers.

Instead of the issue being treated very scientifically and diplomatically, by now it had assumed various other dimensions and to add fuel to fire, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Dr. M. Karunanidhi in a DMK function questioned rather in a derogatory way the existence of Ram (“Who is this Raman? In which engineering college did he study and become a civil engineer? When did he build this so-called bridge? Is there any evidence for any of this?”). He further quoted Nehru’s statement that all this was only mythology.

Though one can easily dismiss  that thee Sethusamudram controversy has been raked up to settle political scores there are a number of dimensions that one needs to view to see the implications of what has simplistically been called a dredging activity.  First and foremost objectively viewing the issue one needs to consider whether dredging and making a navigable canal had taken into consideration environmental and ecological and economic benefits. It is to be noted that the dredging would dispose something like an estimated 84.5 million cubic meters of sand and waste. The reports have not stated clearly the means and the wherewithal of this disposal leading to serious concern among environmentalists and ecologists. The Gulf of Mannar is an ecologically considered biosphere reserve containing coral reefs and marine wealth. Besides, dredging may wash away monazite sands of the southern coast into sea, thus, diminishing the thorium reserves which are necessary to run the fast breeder reactors in the country. Likewise, fishermen fear that this activity would lead to a loss of their livelihood. Secondly can the ASI claim that since there is no historical evidence then there is no proof of the existence of a man/God like, Rama. This may be valid scientifically but when the nation is made of many religious communities then it is the need of the Government to see that it does not upset any one religious sentiment. Thirdly when a Chief Minister voices personal beliefs in public then s/he should consider if s/he is a fit leader. A leader may have any number of personal beliefs or faiths but the leader stands as a spokesperson for a larger group of people and s/he cannot depend or act only in what s/he believes. This whole issue has made many Hindus to feel that the government is partisan in its attitude. Fourthly this decision is taken in a region involving another country (Sri Lanka) too. One must not forget that in the 1990s, Sri Lanka and India ratified and acceded to United Nations Convention (1982) on the Law of the Sea. One does not know if Sri Lanka has been appraised of this project and its implications. Finally the region which had earlier been only the property of India and Sri Lanka would be open to everyone thereby reducing the security of the nation. It is therefore extremely essential for the government to seriously review and see if instead of dredging any other alternate options could be taken.

[Dr. H. Kalpana Rao teaches English at Pondicherry University, Puducherry 605014]

BACK