Gobind Thukral

INDIAN parliamentarians face a tough task during the next general elections that could come up in April or May next year. It is amply clear from the results of five state assemblies of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Mizoram and Chhattisgarh. Elections are yet not complete in Jammu and Kashmir. The BJP which had ruled over three of the four states could retain Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. A frightened Congress after great struggle could retain Delhi and snatch Rajasthan. India’s two main political parties, the centrist Congress and rightist, mainly Hindu party Bhartiya Janata Party can not gloat over the results. None can forecast any straight victory for the Lok Sabha polls. Era of coalition is firmly here despite the two main parties wishing it otherwise.

Though the BJP managed to retain Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh handsomely, it failed to prevent the Sheila Dikshit-led Congress from scoring an unprecedented hat-trick in Delhi. BJP president Rajnath Singh described the Delhi loss as “surprising.” It evidently marred the party’s joy of beating back the anti-incumbency factor in the much larger Madhya Pradesh and in Chhattisgarh. The Congress came within a whisker of winning a proven majority on its own in Rajasthan; with at least 96 seats won in its kitty out of 200. It is poised to form next government. In Mizoram, the Congress dislodged the Mizo National Front from power by making a clean sweep; winning 32 out of 40 seats.
This round of Assembly elections was being widely billed as a “semi-final”. People voted in the shadow of the Mumbai terror attacks, the BJP expected to make big gains in these States. Most pollsters had widely expected the BJP whose high-decibel campaign sought huge political capital out of the horrible repeated terrorist attacks, to defeat Congress. Equally the Congress was frightened.
Some observers have noted that the outcome indicated the electorate’s mood, one that is not very receptive to the BJP. The Congress victory in Delhi and Rajasthan apparently checked the party’s recent string of electoral reverses; conversely, the much-felt loss in Delhi and Rajasthan is seen to have applied the brakes on the BJP’s seemingly inexorable march to the national capital. BJP’s attempt to build a national campaign around the issues of terrorism, inflation, and a deepening agriculture crisis as a prelude to the Lok Sabha elections worked, at best, only partially. Local issues of governance won the day. Otherwise how could one explain the Congress retain Delhi. It is also true that the Congress would have done better in most states if the terror attack had not taken place in Mumbai.

Some view this elation differently. Mumbai terror attacks affected the thinking of Indian s people all over the country. They were deeply hurt, felt insecure and cursed the political class for the ills of the country. Their sense of outrage could not be confined to the four walls of their dwellings. It must have had some impact on the voting pattern. The Congress was clearly at the receiving end and should have lost many votes, particularly in the urban areas. Does it mean that its position was stronger in these states? There must have been some impact of the BJP loud advertisement blitzkrieg. Congress had entered the electoral arena as a visible underdog. The BJP’s focus on national security and terrorism was ruse for communal consolidation to which its “secular” partners in the NDA couldn’t possibly object. It worked to some extent only.

Apart from the party politics, Indians want strong governments both in States and at the Center. They want good governance that can ensure security, development with equity and better quality of life. That’s the message emerging from the election results in five states in which more than 60 per cent of the electorate — higher than last time — cast its vote.

Visible and assertive leadership worked across states for both the Congress and its principal rival, the BJP. Smaller parties like BSP and CPM made gains, substantial from their point of view but not much to cause any political flutter. BPS has cost congress many seats in all these states except Mizoram.

Inversely, weak, confusing or arrogant leadership brought failure for both the parties. In Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje’s style of functioning became a liability for the BJP, while in Madhya Pradesh Suresh Pachauri’s style harmed the Congress. In the tiny remote state of Mizoram, Lalthanhawla, given a free hand by the high command, delivered a victory for the Congress after 10 years.
Delhi, Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh elect 72 of 542 members of the Lok Sabha, while Mizoram elects one. The BJP has 57 and the Congress 15 MPs in the current Lok Sabha from these states. This has made BJP fumble for words to explain the results or come up with a coherent strategy. Congress’s refusal to decisively project a leader has worked against it and BJP used this to its advantage – for instance, in Chhattisgarh.

Both parties have now set their eyes on the Lok Sabha elections. BJP has reasons to worry. They are losing ground in the regions that they won in 2004. Can the congress deliver on the issue of security? The electoral verdict that an incumbent government can retain power reassures the Congress, while the BJP says its campaign on terrorism and inflation will continue. Political Parties have sounded the bugle. Each one would stick to the agenda posted during these assembly elections. Recession by that time may as important as security. So would be unemployment and price rise. Yet good governance and a track of announcing taking some populist measures and then implementing could help the government. There would more violent political discourse during the Lok Sabha polls as stakes would be high. Money and muscle too would have their designed role as usual. At many places, the people would have little choice between the devil and the deep sea.

BACK

The death of common sense and intelligence

An open letter to the people
Shaheryar Azhar, the moderator of ‘The Forum’

What happened in Mumbai was not an abstraction for me. Having visited it thrice; basked as a guest in the old-world charm of Taj Palace Hotel and Towers; played a diligent tourist in this multicultural cauldron of ‘maximum city’; having partaken of its great shopping and some of its finest cuisines; having friends and relatives who are ‘Bombayites’ through and through and can not dream of living anywhere else; and, not the least, being an ardent fan of Bollywood films and music from my earliest memory as a child - seeing the horror unfold on November 26th was extremely personal in many ways.

What Churchill said of English and Americans may be paraphrased about Pakistanis and Indians - they are divided by a common race, cuisine, language, values, culture, emotional make-up but above all by a commonly-shared and a very typical South Asian sense of humor. Increasingly, the common people of these two countries are realizing this shared heritage of theirs even if their leaders, lacking in both imagination and courage, are unable to convert this sentiment into a suitable and more friendly foreign policy.

But as I sat in front of the TV becoming progressively sadder, watching the perpetrators of carnage in Mumbai monopolizing the world attention for three days, it occurred to me that the greatest casualty of President Bush’s version of the ‘War on Terror’ has been the death of common sense and intelligence itself. At the risk of appearing ’soft’ on terror or ‘liberal’ in the face of an existential threat or ‘unpatriotic’ at the time of greatest national peril, we have all been forced to abandon common sense and normal intelligent questioning.

A $300,000, 19-man operation on September 11, 2001 has already seen a response from America that is, according to Nobel-prize winning Economist Joe Stiglitz ‘a three-trillion war’, hundreds of thousands of causalities (ours and everyone else’s) millions displaced and a world that, after all this investment, is a much more unstable Geo-politically and economically. We have failed and are failing in our response. And as far as the enemy is concerned it appears to have no end to new, more hardened recruits, and no end to continually confounding us. What is most disturbing is that the enemy is increasingly attracting a better educated and more sophisticated from amongst their potential supporters.

Where do we start? First, by giving due respect to the enemy - the very first lesson of conducting a successful war.

We face a foe that is both highly intelligent (and thus strategically brilliant) and at the same time incredibly motivated in pursuit of its objectives. It is highly intelligent because it understood as no one else did (certainly not the political leaders of the ‘Free World’) that a globalized and inter-connected world presented it a golden opportunity for conducting an asymmetrical warfare. In other words, it grasped the truth that it didn’t need sophisticated weapons or a lot of money to mount a deadly challenge to the superpower of the world and its allies. It also understood, that it didn’t need much of a developed communications strategy (or an alternative vision of how the world ought to be) to keep up the morale of its troops, financiers and future recruits and to sow uncertainty in its adversary. That work, the enemy knew, would be commendably done by the adversary and its media themselves.

How come? Because our public platitudes were all constructed for confronting state enemies, not non-state ones. We have shown to have no mechanism at our disposal other than babbling inanities about the ‘barbarians’ and ‘Islamic fascists’ who ‘hate our freedoms’. We have not properly defined and described those who confront us and for what purpose in any believable manner. We have done so in our hubris because we do not give due ‘respect’ to the enemy and because it is ‘inconvenient’ for us to examine our policies.

In steadfastly refusing to allow a healthy debate from the start about our own vulnerability and their real motives we have continued to strengthen our enemies and weaken ourselves, and our allies. We have above all fooled ourselves by calling it a ‘war’ because we have cornered ourselves in fighting it ‘conventionally’ - how come, some of us are daring to ask, all our technology, our weaponry, our trillions and the bravery of our soldiers appears not enough for the rudimentary resources of the ‘yahoos’? How come?

Someone soon will be forced to answer that question.

As I was watching the coverage of the Mumbai massacres, the Western media was so busy bashing Pakistan or talking platitudes about the threat of hostilities between the ‘two nuclear powers’, that not once did I hear from all the expert talking heads about the ‘capacity’ of Pakistani state to take on the terrorists even if we assume the best of intentions and the political will of steel. Not once did the ‘wise men of Gotham’ say: If thousands of Pakistani soldiers and civilians are killed, if its generals and top political leaders are blown away, if its buses full of ‘all-powerful’ ISI staff are themselves bombed, if a five-star VIP-patronized hotel, a stone’s throw-away from the Prime Minister’s house is suicide-bombed with an incredibly powerful explosive and burned to the ground and if the President, the Prime Minister and the Generals of the country can not move about the cities with all the security at their disposal in the discharge of their normal duties, perhaps the state of Pakistan does not have the capacity to confront the enemy within. There is a limit how far one can take ‘rougue ISI and military elements in Pakistan’ argument to explain everything before it begins to sound trite and lame.
Not sufficient capacity. That is the right answer. And what has America done to build that capacity? How much has it wisely invested where it counts? The answer is obvious.

So the enemy is much smarter than us. And we have acted much more stupidly than we, in fact, are. That is a very good place to start. That given the stakes and all that stares us in the face, how quickly, for instance, the tension between India and Pakistan developed and escalated in the wake of Mumbai even seven long-years after the formal start of the ‘war on terror’ (notwithstanding the ‘burden of history between those two countries) is truly astounding. There can not be any other conclusion - that all of us are fighting this existential menace with incredible stupidity.

Secondly, the enemy hates our policies. (Whether it hates us or not is moot since it ‘understands’ us so much better, that it can keep its ‘hate’ at bay, not allowing it to interfere with its thinking and planning). That is the second place to go if the ‘patriotic blue-blooded’ will allow us. And which of our policies?
1. Israel-Palestine
2. Kashmir
3. Iraq
4. Supporting dictators, those who use repression and do not even return rudimentary improvements in people’s lives.
5. Using third-world countries for our purposes and then walking away or discarding them as ‘used condoms’ as a Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, who worked closely with us in the Afghan jihad, once bitterly and angrily remarked to me.

6. Following policies (or allowing their drift) that hugely widen economic disparities between nations.
Thirdly, we need to have policies, long-gestation policies, to build capacity (economic, social, military and intelligence) in those countries from within which the threat is most acute and this includes having old foes (like India and Pakistan) coming together to fight the common threat.

Fourthly, to have immediate policies that will keep our alliances from breaking apart during the gestation period (repeatedly using missiles to hit targets in Pakistan only takes away the credibility of Pakistani government rendering it even weaker in doing its job).

Mumbai has made it crystal clear that the time has now come to revive (and rely on) common sense and intelligence once again.

Just the way we used intelligence and our best minds fighting another different war - the cold war! Because losing this will be no less devastating to everything we cherish and have build over the last 200 years.

[Courtesy Forum and Paksitan Teahouse]

BACK

 
Terrorism: where are the leaders?

Vinod Anand

WHAT has recently happened in Mumbai is highly shocking for the country. The tussle is still on. Many lives have been lost, and one does not know what will happen in time to come. We as Indians naturally share the immediate and long-period impact of such unexpected trauma. Let us wish for the peace of the departed souls.

In this context, a few ideas have come to me as a flash that I would like to share with my readers. In the earlier eras after the independence, we were completely unaware of such acts. The term ‘terrorism’ and its innovators called the ‘terrorists’ only appeared in dictionaries at that time. They were fully oblivious in real terms. But now, such acts have become a part of our daily life. Everyday we hear about such happenings all over the country that bring us real shocks of life. This negative paradigm shift is really unfortunate, and there are many reasons for this.

Terrorism is positively linked with crime, indiscipline, lack of public ethos, and severe lack of good governance, and also with the ills of economic growth. In fact, terrorists are ‘misguided criminals’. If crime goes on unabated, say because of slow and highly ineffective legal system, it gets converted into terrorist activities. The root cause of crime is severe marginalization of the poor, and the desire to become rich over night. It is also linked with the lack of ‘informal’ education that is imparted by parents to their children. It will not be out of place to mention that public responsibility is almost zero in our country. ‘Might is Right’ is followed by many people once they are out in public. They are perhaps aware of their rights, but not at all of their responsibilities. Every one tries to overpower others either by looks or abusive words or threatening body language. All this amounts to terrorizing others in public life, and sometimes also within households.

Lack of good and effective governance is also another reason for letting people to get involved in terrorist activities. Governance has five elements: the rule of law, political accountability, social justice, quality education, and effective free market. It is unfortunate that we lack in all these respects. Political infighting also negates good governance. Our politicians also lack key elements of charisma like self-confidence, vision, communication, style, dynamism, visibility, and enigmatic mystery. They do not have any vision, and hence they have no mission. They only think of the next election, and do not at all think of the next generation. They are, therefore, simply political entrepreneurs, and are not statesmen in the true sense of the term. Even the bureaucrats or the civil servants are neither civil nor do they provide any worthwhile service to the community except for supporting ‘their’ ruling politicians.

Geographically speaking, India does not have ‘non-toxic’ neighbouring countries. All of them are really toxic in the sense that they are leaners, users, betrayers, control freaks, promise breakers, gossip mongers, self- centered, and competitors. They are in fact like bad apples in a bunch. They hurt us as ‘friends’ and as a result their superficial friendship harms us in many ways.

If all the factors that have been briefly mentioned above are taken into account, no one will refute the fact that the terrorist activities in the country are on a rise. The trend is upward moving, and there is no hope that there will be any possibility of a downswing. The country has to change its point of view to get together for providing full support to the concerned authorities to negate such nefarious activities. Let us hope for the best.

BACK

 
Taliban Raids on NATO Convoys Crippling

Zofeen Ebrahim of IPS writes from Karachi

WHILE NATO and United States forces have downplayed raids in Peshawar by pro-Taliban militants, destroying hundreds of their military vehicles and supply containers destined for Afghanistan, analysts here believe that the damage is significant.

On December 13 the militants destroyed 11 trucks and 13 containers in the latest of a series of attacks over the past week designed to disrupt supply lines to NATO and U.S. troops fighting the ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan

these raids defied increased security for some 13 supply terminals around Peshawar, ordered after a major raid last weekend in which hundreds of trucks and containers were torched.

After that raid, the U.S. military in Afghanistan had played down the damage in a statement that said it would have only "minimal effect on our operations’’. U.S. military spokeswoman in Kabul Lt. Col. Rumi Nielsen-Green was quoted saying: "It's militarily insignificant.’’

But analysts here think otherwise and say that if the attacks continue they will impact plans to double the strength of NATO troops in Afghanistan from the present 67,000 -- nearly half of them from the U.S.

"More troops mean more supplies," said Ikram Sehgal, a noted defence analyst. Sehgal does not buy the U.S. dismissal of the attacks as insignificant. "If I’m hurt bad, I’m not going to own up. It is a significant loss whether they (U.S.) admit it or not. It will create horrendous problems."

If troop deployment is increased as planned then an estimated 70,000 containers of supplies will have to be shipped to Afghanistan annually.

"If the supply lines are cut off, it will have a choking effect on the troops," said Brig. Mehmood Shah, former home secretary of the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) that borders Afghanistan.

Already NATO has begun looking for alternative supply routes to Afghanistan, even through Belarus and the Ukraine.

Contractors engaged in moving the containers are jittery at the possible loss in business.

Kifayatullah Jan, manager at the Port World Logistics, a contractor that has been ferrying NATO supplies, said last week’s attack on their terminal, in which 106 containers were torched, "must have cost the U.S. millions’’.

"And if the loss to the U.S. is insignificant, for us it may mean we close shop," said Jan, talking to IPS from Peshawar over telephone. "We can’t do business if the government cannot provide us protection," he said. According to Jan, the company and its drivers receive regular threats from militants to "stop transporting supplies to the Americans or face the consequences."

In March, insurgents torched 40-50 NATO oil tankers near Torkham. In April, a military helicopter valued at 13 million US dollars was hijacked. And in July, there were sporadic attacks on the convoys. Last month, some 60 Taliban fighters hijacked a convoy of trucks in broad daylight as it was travelling through the Khyber Pass.

Talk of alternative supply routes have been going on since September. According to the Washington Post, the U.S. defence department was seeking safer but longer routes through Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia due to "strikes", "border delays", "accidents and pilferage" in Pakistan.

"The Iran route is out. And they simply cannot airlift the supplies because it would be far too costly. But the supplies can come from the north," suggested Sehgal.

"The supplies can pass through the northern route by rail through Russia and the Central Asian nations to northern Afghanistan," agreed Mehmood Shah, but added: “It’s a poor alternative and will take very long to reach southern Afghanistan.’’

About 75 percent of supplies, including food, fuel, equipment and vehicles meant for the allied forces in Afghanistan pass through Pakistan’s Khyber Pass, after being offloaded from ships at the southern port city of Karachi. A second overland route connects Pakistan’s Quetta city with Kandahar in Afghanistan.

Pakistan represents the shortest land route to Afghan cities like Kandahar and Kabul.

In last week’s attack on the Port World terminal, the security guards on duty watched helplessly as around 300 militants blasted their way into two transport terminals and torched vehicles.

"These included APC jeeps, trucks, lifters and fire brigades," said Jan. "They came through the main gate which they destroyed using a rocket-propelled grenade and set fire to 106 vehicles including 80-90 Humvees. They also shot dead one of the guards.’’

"I was in my village near Charsadda, less than a hour from Peshawar, when the guards telephoned me around 3:15 am. There was no way the dozen or so of our guards could confront the militants who were armed with sophisticated weapons,’’ Jan said.

According to Shah, the attackers were criminal elements and not necessarily the Taliban as they latter have still not entered the settled area. "However, they all work hand-in-glove. And for all we know, they may have carried out the attack at the behest of the Taliban."

However, Rahimullah Yusufzai, resident editor of English daily, The News thinks otherwise. An expert on the Taliban he said: "These recent attacks show that militants are slowly moving into the settled area; that they have gained strength, and are not afraid," he said. "It also shows how weak the government is and that it cannot protect anyone."

Yusufzai told IPS that the earlier hijackings of convoys on the highways were only possible if the drivers, and perhaps even the contractors, were in collusion with the Taliban.

Terming these depots as "soft" targets, Sehgal said it is easier to attack such passive locations than intercept convoys that are protected by Pakistan’s Frontier Constabulary (FC) militia.

While past attacks have been limited to pilfering and sale of the loot in the local markets, the latest attacks were intended to disrupt supplies. "This means they want to sever the supply lines to make it unsustainable for the deployed forces," said Sehgal.

Yusufzai observed that the Taliban were adopting the age-old strategy of cutting off supply lines from the south. "It also signifies that the capacity and numbers of the militants have grown despite the army’s claim of annihilating entire villages in the tribal areas."

"This war on terror has unleashed more horrors than one can imagine. The Pakistan army, by its own act has steered civilians towards militancy. In a bid to capture one Talib, entire villages have turned into Talibans," said Yusufzai. [Courtesy IPS]

BACK

 
Post-Mumbai: Journalists Struggle against Hostilities

Beena Sarwar of IPS writes from Karachi

PAKISTANI and Indian journalists and columnists, who forged personal relationships over the past two decades during countless joint media consultations and seminars, are struggling to overcome hostilities between their countries since the Mumbai carnage.

These voices are all but drowned in the din emanating from the blame and counter-blame rhetoric on either side, with India’s accusations of Pakistani involvement in the attacks being met defensively by many Pakistanis even as evidence about Pakistani links to the attacks grows.

Close to 200 people died after a ten-man squad, armed with assualt rifles, grenades and explosives, rampaged through the Indian port city of Mumbai before barricading themselves inside two luxury hotels to hold off commandos for 60 hours from Nov. 26-28.

The one captured gunman’s alleged links to a banned terrorist outfit in Pakistan had barely begun to emerge when belligerent rhetoric from the Indian media drew an indignant response from Pakistanis who have since then been picking holes in the Indian arguments.

Has the media hype contributed to rising tensions between the nuclear-armed states -- or are hostilities between the countries contributing to tensions between their media?

Indian voices in the Pakistani media, and vice versa, disappeared after the 1965 war. It was not until 30 years later that journalists who met at a convention of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) in New Delhi, in 1995 began writing for each other’s publications.

The rise of the internet made communication easier even in those days of lengthy and complicated e-mail addresses. However, during times of tension, those writing for papers across the border sometimes refrained from writing due to fear of reprisals -- from their governments or from right-wing groups.

In such times, the "internalisation of myths and mindsets" as the Indian journalist Rita Manchanda put it, comes to the fore. "More mundanely and invisibly, such (media) manipulation results from ‘routines’ of news gathering, structures of ownership and the exigencies of technology --the tyranny of ‘live’ coverage on 24-hour news channels."

Her observations followed consultations about how the media covered the Kargil conflict of 1999, in "Reporting Conflict: A Radical Critique of the Mass Media by Indian & Pakistani Journalists’’, published by the South Asia Forum for Human Rights in May 2001.

A decade later, little appears to have changed. The rise of independent television channels has in fact increased sensationalist reporting as they compete for viewership, with audience ratings jumping during live coverage of crises.

Conspiracy theories on both sides abound. One Pakistani TV host blamed the Mumbai carnage on "Zionist Hindus" and insisted that the captured gunman was actually a Sikh and his killed companion a Hindu. Although the host has little credibility the episode is up on various websites, prompting Indians to ask "Is this what Pakistani channels are showing?"

Observers note that some Indian channels were no better. Such conspiracy theories also have adherents in India, who insist that the Hindu right-wing in collaboration with the Israelis was behind the carnage.

The point is, say analysts, for anyone to discuss the identity of the gunmen is just speculation until the facts emerge fully.

Meanwhile, the non-stop media commentary has "pulled to the surface latent rage, deep prejudices and highlighted the incompetence of the system," as physicist and peace activist Isa Daudpota commented in an op-ed in Pakistani daily ‘Dawn’ on Dec. 8.

Drawing attention to the "ridiculous confrontation" between India and Pakistan on the Siachen glacier as well as the "core issue" of the disputed state of Kashmir, Daudpota urged the leadership to get together and draw up a lasting peace plan dealing with these issues.

"Not too long ago, the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad made apparent almost identical sentiments and flaws in Pakistan’s systems. In our failures, it is sadly reassuring that we are the same people".

The commonality in history, culture, language, music, sports and food often creates an instant bond on a human level when journalists from Pakistan and India meet.

One senior editor in New Delhi recalls a Pakistani hotel clerk in Brussels who went out of his way to make the visiting Indian comfortable. "In a sense journalists lead the 'people-to-people' contacts by riding first on the Samjhauta Express (train between the two countries) or taking sponsored bus rides to Lahore," he comments.

Only two media houses in Pakistan and India currently have a correspondent each in the Indian and Pakistani capitals respectively. Others employ locals as correspondents or stringers. With officials in both countries reluctant (or not allowed to speak openly to the media) it is often journalists who stand in for them.

Islamabad correspondent for the respected Indian daily ‘The Hindu’ Nirupama Subramaniam, told IPS that she has been feeling like a ‘punching bag’ since the Mumbai drama began.

"Television talk shows have continuously called upon me as if I was the spokesman for Indian television channels, government of India, Indian chauvinists, the whole of India. But I felt I had to go on those programmes in order to engage with Pakistanis, especially journalists."

Although she felt she "wasn’t getting through to anyone", viewers appreciated her efforts. "I liked her honesty, straightforwardness and lack of defensiveness," a retired doctor in Karachi told IPS. "We need to hear more such (Indian) voices in the media."

But the prevailing anger in India is hindering dialogue even among journalists. Pakistani TV channel Indus Television’s Director Current Affairs Shaheen Salahuddin who tries to include ‘sane voices’ from India on her daily show ‘Khuli Baat’ (Open Talk) was taken aback by a recent incident involving an editor in New Delhi.

"I had met him at several conferences and called him after the Mumbai attacks. He agreed but after that, I called three times and he was always ‘in a meeting’," she told IPS. "Finally when I got my secretary to call they told her he wouldn’t talk to any Pakistani journalist. Even Bharat Bhushan (editor of ‘Mail Today’ who is known to be friendly to Pakistan) didn’t call me back."

When contacted, Bhushan told IPS via email that he had sent a phone text message saying he would be unable to do the interview, which Salahuddin apparently did not receive.

Still Salahuddin does manage to get alternative viewpoints countering the dominant antagonism, like defence analyst Uday Bhaskar who has even helped her with other contacts for her show. A recent episode included the veteran Indian ‘peacenik’ journalist and a former Indian special forces commander.

"Even if there are tensions, war should be ruled out as an option," argued Indian journalist Kuldip Nayyar. However, he added grimly in response to a question about the ‘war hype’, "it is still very much there".

Indian analyst Lt. Gen. (retired) Afsir Karim put it straight: both countries "should cooperate to combat terrorism. War will complicate, not solve the situation’’.

He agreed that the Mumbai attacks would not have been possible without local help -- a point that Pakistani commentators have been stressing. He added that the attackers "obviously wanted to derail the peace process and take the pressure off Pakistan’s western border".

With the Pakistan-India composite dialogue currently at a virtual standstill, hostile comments on either side are "fed" by vested interests, veteran Lahore-based journalist Imtiaz Alam told IPS.

Pointing to some prominent talk shows and newspaper columnists, Alam accused them of "following the ISI’s mandate". The ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) has for years been involved in nurturing ‘jehadi’ groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) that are accused of being behind the Mumbai carnage.

Alam, who founded the South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA) in July 2000, said that while the Indian media did "pre-judge and jump to conclusions, this happens at times like these’’.

A voice frequently heard on Pakistani TV channels is that of the hawkish former ISI chief Lt. Gen. (retd.) Hamid Gul. Another retired general, Salahuddin Tirmiz referred to India as Pakistan’s "dushman mulk" (enemy country), even before the Mumbai assaults were over.

"While India goes through its national tragedy, this so-called ‘security expert’ has nothing better to say than dub India as ‘our enemy’ and create mass hysteria in Pakistan," wrote Islamabad-based analyst Foqia Sadiq Khan in a strong letter of protest about Tirmizi’s comment to the TV channel, a copy of which she sent IPS. [Courtesy IPS]

BACK