Lessons from Mumbai attacks

Afshain Afzal

On the eve of the second anniversary of the Mumbai attacks, one recalls the horrifying incident in which many families lost their love ones. We cannot do anything for those who are not with us today but can always share our deepest condolences to the families of the innocent victims. Compensations or some relief by the government is neither the substitute for those wonderful people who have lost their lives nor this article is going to bring them back. However, we must learn from our past follies so that such incidents are not repeated again. In fact, the Indian authorities have never tried to reach to the root cause of such incidents. Allegations are being leveled on neighbouring Pakistan without out thinking what does the bodies of Tamils and Indian Muslims killed by the Indian security forces during Mumbai attacks reflected? Why they were holding weapons in their hands, claiming to be Indian “Deccan Mujahideen” and communicating with the Indian authorities to give account of the atrocities against Muslims of India? One wonders if New Delhi’s claim on held Jammu and Kashmir state is genuine why some of those Kashmirs killed during Mumbai attacks were Pakistani and not Indians. Even if we trace back the family history of Aamir Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor among the militants who participated in Mumbai attacks, we would come to the conclusion that his parents were Indian nationals who migrated to Pakistan four decades back. The fact can be realized from the name of Aamir Ajmal Kasab. The word “Kasab” is not spoken either in his native town Okara or anywhere in Punjab as in Punjab the butcher is called “Kassai” whereas this word is spoken by the Indians or only the Pakistanis who migrated from India during partition.

Recently, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (D. Litt) degree the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama. While speaking on the occasion, Dalai Lama said, “I defend Islam. We should not generalize Islam due to few mischievous people. Such mischievous people are there among Hindus, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and all religions”. He said, “Islam is one of the very important religions for many centuries, in the past, present and future it is the hope of millions of people.” He added, “Some Muslims in this country told me genuine Islam practitioner must extend love and compassion to all creatures. If a person creates bloodshed they are not Muslims and the meaning of “Jihad” is a struggle within ourselves against all negative emotions like anger, hatred, attachment, that creates problem in the society”. Muslims have great respect for the Buddhists, especially the people of Pakistan. Whatever, Dalai Lama said is whole truth but the world nations must understand that Almighty Allah (God) has allowed the Muslims to help the oppressed people through providing them justice trough political pressure and even physically fighting against tyrants. If what United Nations Organization is doing around the world is message of peace and US and other western countries occupation of Afghanistan and other countries is justified how another standard can be set for the Muslims. One wonders those Muslims who are able to purify their inner selves against all negative emotions like anger, hatred, attachment and are not involved in bloodshed should or should not be allowed to act on the lines of other developed countries? Does it means that embracing Islam and becoming a Muslims is a crime?

Interestingly, Haja Sarah Omar, the grandmother of US President Barack Hussain Obama, who is a Kenyan Muslim, during Haj pilgrimage to Makkah has said in an interview that she prayed for the her grandson, President Obama to convert to Islam. Present Obama should be very clear that if he embraces Islam he would be giving up a lot of privileges and should be ready to be treated with suspicion as a criminal. Probably he has to give certificate each year that he has no links with Osama Bin Laden and similarity of his name Obama with world Number 1 on the wanted list is a mere coincidence. I have met many foreigners who were too vocal against Muslims and Pakistanis, claiming that Muslims are involved in acts of terrorism. Mumbai attacks and attacks on US during September 11 were their major concerns. It is important to know who all are Muslims and who are not because calling anyone Muslim who is born in a Muslim family would be great unjustice for the Muslim community and factually wrong. As President Obama, who was born in a Muslim family, is not a Muslim, there are millions of people around the world who have Muslim parents but are not Muslims. Two weeks back, Indian Central Bureau of Intelligence arrested Swami Aseemanand from Haridwar, who is the mastermind of the Makkah Masjid blast. Ironically, previously Muslims were suspected to be behind the blast and many innocent Muslims were arrested and maltreated. One hopes there is no confusion that Swami Aseemanand is a Hindu and not a Muslim. It is pertinent to mention here that Oman which is a Muslim country has recently announced to allow a Hindu Temple and a Sikh Gurdwara to be built on its soil. On the contrary, India which claims to be the largest Muslim country of the world and is striving to get membership of Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) has kept its Muslim population backward and second class citizens. It is high time that Justice Sachchar Committee Report which identified Muslim backwardness and Justice Ranganath Misra Commission which prescribed 10 per cent reservation to all Muslims all over India should be implemented without delay. The issue of plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir state on the basis of United Nations resolutions as well as burning issues in other state also need immediate attention. Unless concrete positive actions on issues are not taken, Mumbai attacks like incidents are likely to happen again in the future.  

(Courtesy : http://pakobserver.net, 24/11/2010)

Pakistan and India in Dam-building Race — Interpreting the Indus Water Treaty

By Brett Walton

In Kashmir’s Neelum Valley, part of which is controlled by India and part by Pakistan, a high-stakes engineering race is taking shape. The rival countries are building hydroelectric power plants on the Neelum River, an Indus River tributary that has long been a source of agricultural and geopolitical strife. Now a half-century old treaty, the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), that governs water relations in the shared river basin is under stress as never before. Depending on how the treaty is interpreted in an ongoing legal case, the first side to finish its dam–either India’s Kishanganga project or Pakistan’s Neelum-Jhelum project–could gain a plum prize: priority rights on the Neelum. Secretary Clinton Announces Pakistan Water Program India and Pakistan Dispute Water Use for Hydropower, Agriculture Pakistan Raises Water Issue During Diplomatic Talks with India Pakistan Negotiates Domestic, International Water Disputes India’s Leaders Argue Over River Linking Plan Water Projects Emphasized in $7.5 Billion-U.S. Aid Package to Pakistan

With water near the top of Pakistan’s foreign policy priorities and with so many other flash points in the region–Kashmir, terrorism, Afghanistan–pivoting on the water issue, there is every indication that the countries are entering a tumultuous period in the treaty’s history. Signed in 1960 to allocate the basin’s water, the IWT is widely cited as a model of exemplary cooperation in an often fractious bilateral relationship. But because of India’s development plans, there is reason to believe that old amity is being supplanted by mistrust and suspicion. Discord over water pits India’s drive for electrical power against Pakistan’s vast irrigation needs and vulnerable geopolitical position on the river system.

The legal skirmishing is just beginning. Pakistan filed a ‘dispute’ in May 2010 against the Kishanganga project–the third and highest category of contention in the treaty’s language. A seven-member international arbitration panel is being assembled to hear the case, the first to be taken to such a level. The ruling isn’t expected for several years. Depending on how the panel decides, the existence of the Kishanganga project could become the latest escalation for political tensions in the subcontinent.

The case marks the second time in the last five years that upper-level conflict resolution procedures have been invoked. The 450-megawatt Baglihar hydropower plant was the first case to be resolved by a neutral expert, who ruled in favor of India in the key issue of spillway design. The current dispute is the first to be heard by an arbitration panel–India’s hydroelectric ambitions seem to guarantee that it will not be the last. Robert Wirsing, a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar who studies South Asian water issues, says India is considering building 33 dams on parts of the Indus and its tributaries granted to Pakistan. India is allowed to use a small portion of the rivers for storage projects, but the distrust between the countries and the scale of development leave much to worry about, he said.

“Most [dams] are in the planning stage,” Wirsing told Circle of Blue, “and some will never be built. But that’s a lot of stuff up there. And that’s the problem.” “There is a comforting notion,” he added, “that this was a really good treaty, and in my judgment it is. It’s a phenomenal piece of work. But it’s unrealistic because the Indians haven’t really gotten started [building dams]. And they have now started big time.”

An Agreement Borne from Division

The new dams being built in a contested region on the Neelum incorporate technically complex, wide-bore tunnels that are several dozen kilometers long. Both are estimated to be six to eight years from completion. In the meantime, the wrangling for the river is being litigated under the conflict resolution mechanisms stipulated by the IWT. The treaty’s genesis dates to partition. When the British Raj left India in 1947 and Pakistan was sliced from its western provinces, division of the Indus basin waters was not well considered in the rush to leave. This was a major problem as it left Pakistan at India’s mercy for irrigation deliveries during a time of deep animosity. For years after partition, troops from both countries were garrisoned at canal headworks along the border. The irrigation system they watched with eye and gun is the largest such agricultural scheme in the world, roughly 30 million hectares total–60 percent of which lies in Pakistan.

A compromise called the Standstill Agreement was enacted in the fall of 1947, keeping water allocations as they were before partition. When the agreement expired on March 31, 1948, India promptly withheld water deliveries to Pakistan on two main irrigation canals the very next day.

Several interim agreements were signed without a satisfactory conclusion. Further negotiations were stalling when David Lilienthal, a former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, wrote an article in Collier’s in 1951 suggesting the problem could be solved through technical and economic evaluations. Lilienthal recommended that the World Bank play a role as a neutral facilitator. Lilienthal’s friend, Eugene Black, president of the World Bank at the time, read the article and decided to give it a try.

At the time, the World Bank was a relatively young institution, less than a decade old, and feared that perpetual conflict between two of its principal clients would endanger its lending programs in the region, Salman M. A. Salman, a Word Bank water law expert, told Circle of Blue.

Negotiators focused on key disagreements about allocations, technical specifications, and financing. The deal that emerged granted India primary use of the eastern rivers of the basin (Beas, Ravi, and Sutlej) and Pakistan the same rights to the western rivers (Chenab, Indus and Jhelum). Both sides were also permitted nonconsumptive rights to the other country’s three rivers–Pakistan was allotted agricultural use on the Ravi, while India was given restricted storage capacity for hydropower development on all three Pakistan rivers, minding that large amounts of water are not retained or redirected. Storage restrictions were crucial for Pakistan to feel secure that India would not be able to manipulate river flows.

The allocations meant that water rights and land use patterns were thrown out of historical balance. To move its new water sources to the fields in Punjab and Sindh provinces, Pakistan would need to build two mega-dams, five barrages, and eight linking canals–at a total cost of US$1 billion 1960 dollars. The money to reconstruct the canal system came from several sources. India paid $174 million and Pakistan offered a symbolic token, but the lion’s share came from the United States and a group of five other Western countries in the form of grants and loans. With one particularly long and pointed thorn removed, peace, it seemed, now had a chance. At a news conference in Washington D.C. preceding the signing ceremony in Karachi in September 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower remarked that it was “one bright spot…in a very depressing world picture.” 

The question now is whether or not the treaty will hold. India, like a child without vitamins, lacks sufficient energy resources to grow at the pace the country desires. The peak electricity supply–125,000 megawatts–fell 12 percent short of demand in 2005 and 2006. Electrical capacity must grow 10 percent annually to keep up with demand, according to a study by the Asian Development Bank. These figures reflect just those with electrical access; nearly 40 percent of Indian homes, some 400 million people, do not have reliable electricity. As India grows, extending grid coverage will be a priority. But India has already fallen behind on its Power-for-All Plan, which would add 78,000 MW by 2012.

In India, hydropower generates 32,000 MW and comprises a quarter of the nation’s energy capacity. The country has the potential for 84,000 MW, but only one-fifth of that has been developed. The most promising sites, however, are located in contested regions–in the northeast, where there is a border dispute with China over Arunachal Pradesh, and in Jammu and Kashmir, through which the Indus flows.

The Indus Valley near Skardu, Pakistan. The Indus is one of the three western rivers granted to Pakistan under the Indus Waters Treaty. Click to see full-size image. Kashmir presents conflicting pressures on both the domestic and international fronts, says Uttam Sinha, a research fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, a hawkish Indian think tank funded by India’s Ministry of Defense.

Kashmiris demand that the Indian government build more dams to speed up local development, but those dams come at the expense of relations with Pakistan, Sinha told Circle of Blue. Many in Jammu and Kashmir (JK) feel that their interests are superseded by Pakistan’s under the IWT. The Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir says that the state was not fully compensated by the national government for economic losses created by the IWT. In October, the JK Legislature passed a bill to tax water used to generate power. The burden will fall mainly on the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation, India’s national utility.

Pakistan’s 969-MW Neelum-Jhelum project (NJP) is 160 kilometers downstream from the Kishanganga project and is located on a tributary of a river granted to Pakistan under the IWT. A 28-kilometer tunnel will divert water from the Neelum to the NJP dam’s powerhouse. The engineering firm that won the US$1.5 billion contract, China Ghazoba Group of Companies, has slowed down construction because of inefficient tunnel-boring machines, according to Pakistani media reports. The project will be completed in 2018, two years behind schedule, at the current pace.

This has drawn much ire from Pakistani officials because India may gain priority rights on the Neelum with the Kishanganga project, with current target date of 2016. The relevant section of the IWT is annexure D, paragraph 15, clause iii, which allows India to divert waters from tributaries of the Jhelum to another tributary only to the extent that it does not adversely effect an existing use in Pakistan.

If Pakistan’s NJP is first to the line, it can establish a pre-existing use on the river and claim that India’s planned diversion will cause it undue harm, said Neda Zawahri, a political science professor at Cleveland State University, in an interview with Circle of Blue. Pakistan argues that the Kishanganga project will reduce flows by 15 percent to 20 percent and limit the NJP’s power-generating potential, resulting in an annual loss of US$400 million. 

A dispute has already been registered under the IWT. Stephen Schwebel, a former president of the International Court of Justice, was selected in October to lead the seven-member arbitration panel. Historically, conflicts have been worked out by the Permanent Indus Commission, a bilateral body. For example, disagreements over the design of Salal Dam were settled this way in the 1970s.

The Baglihar Dam controversy in 2005 was taken to a second level of adjudication, which is mediation by a neutral expert. Pakistan objected that the dam did not meet the treaty’s design specifications for spillways, intakes, and gates. In its rebuttal, India claimed that new designs were needed to deal with siltation problems. The World Bank-appointed expert Raymond Lafitte, a Swiss engineer, ruled in favor of India on three of six objections. Robert Wirsing, the Georgetown professor, thinks Lafitte missed an opportunity to hit on a solution that would balance technical considerations with the spirit of the treaty. “His concern was that this be a good dam,” Wirsing told Circle of Blue. “Of course, that ran right up against the Pakistani feeling that what was important was the treaty and the treaty’s purpose, which was conflict prevention.”

John Briscoe, a former World Bank water adviser and now a professor at Harvard, argues that the ruling reinterpreted the treaty to mean that the physical limitations no longer applied in light of modern technical standards, removing Pakistan’s main protection against India meddling with the river flows. Resolution of the Kishanganga dispute will take several years. In the meantime, debate will continue about how well the Indus Waters Treaty can stand up to new circumstances.

Cleveland State professor Zawahri thinks both sides still benefit from the agreement: “As long as they continue to use the conflict resolution mechanisms available in the treaty, the treaty will survive. So I don’t see this dispute as the end of the Indus Waters Treaty. On the contrary, both states have an interest in maintaining it.” Wirsing is less optimistic: “If this panel decides that India’s Kishanganga project is okay and that Pakistan has to swallow this one too, that will, I think, drain the Pakistanis of any lingering enthusiasm for this treaty and its prospects for defending them against dams planned in India.”

(Brett Walton is a Seattle-based reporter for Circle of Blue. Reach Walton at brett@circleofblue.org.)

(Courtesy : http://www.circleofblue.org, 24/11/2010)

Neither Azad Nor Kashmir

Luv Puri  

While emphasising the involvement of Pakistan in any initiative on Jammu & Kashmir, Centre-appointed interlocutors recently expressed a desire to involve the people and leadership of Pakistan-administered J&K (PAJK) in the resolution process. It is an idea that has remained integral to several official as well as civil society initiatives between India and Pakistan. While the Indian side of J&K has hogged international attention for the recent youth unrest, there seems to be a paucity of scholarship and information about the political, ethnic and economic aspects of PAJK.

The region known as 'Azad Kashmir' in Pakistan has a population of more than three million and comprises one-third of the erstwhile princely state of J&K. At the world stage, the region has come into focus during the 2005 earthquake or as one of the bases of militant outfits like the Lashkar. However, the region's impact on South Asian politics and even outside has remained a less studied subject of contemporary scholarship, though it has one of the largest South Asian diasporas living in Britain which has played a central role in internationalising the Kashmir issue since the early 1990s.

Some sections of the Pakistani and pro-Pakistan PAJK elite have often marketed PAJK as an independent state. PAJK, officially known as "Azad (independent) Jammu and Kashmir" in Pakistan, has its own Supreme Court, high court, flag and legislative assembly comprising 49 members, of whom 41 are directly elected and eight are nominated by the government. The head of the government in PAJK is known as prime minister and the head of the state is designated as president.

In January 2006, Sardar Abdul Qayuum Khan, the former president of PAJK and father of the region's current prime minister, Attique Khan, told me at Muzaffarabad that the struggle of his party, the Muslim Conference, would continue till the Indian side of J&K gets the same degree of political freedom as he enjoyed in his own region. Some of the basic myths about PAJK need to be demolished before discussing the politics of the region. The region is quite distinct from the Kashmir valley and the majority of the people are Pothwari-speaking, which on the Indian side is referred to as Pahari. Except religion, linguistically and ethnically there is hardly anything in common between the Kashmir valley and PAJK.

In January 2009, Sardar Attique Khan, the then prime minister of PAJK, blamed the loss of his majority in the legislative assembly on the Pakistani state and remarked that democracy has been slaughtered. More than a year later, Attique Khan is back again as the prime minister of the region. Farooq Haider, the deposed prime minister, accused the Pakistan Peoples Party-led federal government of uniting with his political rivals in the state, which resulted in his resignation. This is the third time in the last four years that the sitting prime minister has lost his majority in the assembly.

An objective study will better explain the patron-client relationship between the ruling Pakistani elite and the PAJK political elite. In 1949, the Muslim Conference, one of the political outfits in J&K, was recognised as the permanent representative of PAJK, with powers to strike agreements with the sovereign country of Pakistan. It was seen as a political reward for the Muslim Conference, a political outfit that supported J&K's accession to Pakistan in its July 1947 executive body session at Srinagar. In the political system that existed from 1947 to 1960, the person at the helm of the Muslim Conference was nominated as the president of PAJK. The major constitutional change came in 1970 when adult franchise was introduced to elect the president. In 1974, the parliamentary system was introduced in PAJK.

The democratic leadership of Pakistan continued the tradition of military dispensation to bring arbitrary executive changes in the region. In 1990, PAJK prime minister Mumtaz Rathore was 'escorted' to Islamabad in a helicopter and forced to sign a letter of resignation by the Nawaz Sharif government. Moreover, there are visible contradictions between the Pakistani and PAJK constitutions. For instance, Article 257 of the Pakistani constitution holds that the "people of Jammu and Kashmir will define their relationship with Pakistan after obtaining freedom". However, under section 5(2)(vii) of the PAJK Legislative Assembly Election Ordinance 1970, "a person will be disqualified for propagating any opinion or action in any manner prejudicial to the ideology of Pakistan, the ideology of state's accession to Pakistan or the sovereignty and integrity of Pakistan". The Islamabad-based "Azad Jammu and Kashmir Council" is headed by the prime minister of Pakistan. This key institutional body shapes the economic policy of the region.

The post-1990 phase has opened up space for new political players in the region with demands for democratisation and respect for autonomy of the region's institutions by the federal government. Any developments in this respect will impact Pakistan's Kashmir policy, which has defined the country's overall strategic and tactical calculations since its creation. The understanding of various aspects relating to PAJK, a less studied subject, and other factors in Pakistan is a prerequisite for any constructive and result-oriented dialogue between India and Pakistan.

(The writer is the author of a book based on field study in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Jammu & Kashmir.)

(Courtesy : www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 24/11/2010)