Tuesday, February 7, 2012

One size does not fit every Arab Spring By Rodger Shanahan - The Australian



One size does not fit every Arab Spring


THE seeds of the failed UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria were laid last August when Tripoli fell to Libya's rebels.

While this outcome may have convinced some in the West that it was possible for a united international political front combined with the limited use of military support to overthrow hitherto insurmountable autocratic regimes, in Moscow and Beijing the opposite lesson was learnt -- multilateralism in the Middle East advances only Western interests.

Now, as opposition grows against another formerly implacable autocratic regime in the shape of the Syrian government, UN resolutions get vetoed, Arab League observers deploy and redeploy, and regional sanctions are imposed, lifted or ignored. The inability of the international community to give the Assad regime the final push many are convinced is needed remains frustrating.
The reality is that Syria is vastly different to Libya or Tunisia. With the exception of Yemen, it is more complex socially and geographically than the other countries affected by the Arab Spring, and the regional implications of regime change in the Levant are more consequential than elsewhere in the Arab world. As a result, the stakes being played for and the risks to regional stability of an intervention are much higher than for the Libyan experiment.
The inability of a united international (or even regional) response to Syria should come as little surprise. There are four key reasons why the Syrian case is so difficult to solve multilaterally.

First, Russia and China feel used by the West in the UN. They feel that what they signed up for (or abstained from) and what they got regarding the Libyan intervention were two vastly different things. Rather than a defensive no-fly zone to protect civilians, they got a NATO air campaign that took the fight to the Libyan military and provided close air support to the Libyan rebels, thereby ensuring the fall of the Gaddafi regime. Russia and China will not let that happen again.

Second, Syria still has friends in the Arab world. While the unusually forward-leaning position taken by the usually intervention-shy Arab League has surprised many, not all its members agree on what to do about Syria. Neither Lebanon nor Iraq voted in favour of punitive action against Syria. In Lebanon, the Hezbollah allied government has stood fast in supporting the Assad regime politically. Economically, the country relies on Damascus for the security of its regional exports.

Iraq has also decided to support the Assad regime; because Saudi Arabia doesn't and because Baghdad is fearful that any rise in Sunni power in its western neighbour could provide succour to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and further destabilise the Shia majority government in Baghdad.

Third, Russia likes the Assads. Like his father, Bashar al-Assad enjoys good relations with the Russians. Syria has provided the Russian navy with a logistics support base on its coast as Moscow's Mediterranean bridgehead and, as the traditional arms supplier to the Syrians, Moscow has sold $4 billion of arms to Damascus this financial year, with nearly $2bn of additional purchases under discussion. With the fall of Gaddafi, a $4bn export market dried up overnight, which leaves Syria as the only Arab ally in town for Moscow. The fact that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and intelligence chief Mikhail Fradkov will visit Damascus this week is indicative of the closeness of the relationship and a further indication that Russia is keen to see the crisis solved on its, rather than the West's terms.

Finally, doubts remain about the Syrian opposition. Unlike the successful overthrow of regimes in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, sectarianism is a major issue in Syria. The main opposition movement, the Syrian National Council, has been heavily criticised for being unrepresentative because its members have been outside the country while lives have been sacrificed inside and, more importantly, because it is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Sunni Islamist dominance in a country where 25 per cent of the population are from religious minorities is not something that many middle-class supporters of the regime are too happy about. It is also something that Lebanon, Iraq and even Jordan, with its enmity towards the brotherhood, do not feel comfortable about.

The Free Syrian Army, if it is not destroyed by the regime, may also be wary of ceding authority to the council when it feels that it has shed all the blood for the cause.

The regime faced an internal challenge from the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s that it brutally defeated. The challenge this time is more widespread.

More importantly, though, this time Syria is isolated regionally and internationally. But unlike Libya it is not entirely friendless and, while it appears inconceivable that Assad can survive, he has been able to divide, if not conquer, his opposition inside and outside the country till now.

Time will tell if he can continue to wait out his opponents or whether Assad will be the last of the lions of Damascus.

Rodger Shanahan is a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy

Comments posted on The Times of India website over Edit Page Article: Shared stakes in safety by Deepak Kapoor - By Ghulam Muhammed

Comments posted on The Times of India website over Edit Page Article: Shared stakes in safety by Deepak Kapoor :

The contention that "The battle for India's defence has to be fought beyond its border" is a direct lift from US army's strategic doctrines and is most dangerous for India, if it revamps its own defence strategies to such an aggressive posturing. India should not get pumped up to feel that it is a super-power in the hidden meaning of the term that West is advancing to trap India into becoming a 'qurbani ka bakra' to fight its own wars. India should concentrate in safeguarding its own borders, militarily as well as politically. Hot-heads in the armed forces should be made to understand that it is historically beyond the consensus of Indian people to move out and conquer other territories, just to make India subservient to world economic compulsions. Our human resources are our most valuable asset and it is not cannon fodder to shed blood in causes that remotely concern us, if we are fully aware of what India stands for. We are billions but each of us Indian is as valuable to us as a billion. India need not have to side with the West, in the manner, when British colonials could boast of fighting their wars till the 'last Indian'. India must revisit its colonial history and learn to defend India from foreign machinations.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

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TOP ARTICLE

Shared stakes in safety

Deepak Kapoor | Feb 7, 2012, 12.00AM IST
 
Afghanistan is in a perpetual time warp. The British, while ruling India, left it mostly alone keeping their acti-vities confined east of the Khyber Pass. Russian attempts at establishing hegemony in the 1970s and 1980s met with dismal failure, thanks to clandestine US and Pakistani support in establishing and propping the mujahideen against the Russian bear.

Post Russia's departure, this underdeveloped region became a perfect haven for Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and their fundamentalist doctrines. The events of 9/11 and the US's subsequent declaration of a 'war on terror' brought the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) into Afghanistan. With the announcement of a timeframe for the ISAF's withdrawal, Afghanistan is once again at a crossroads.

All this while Pakistan, led by its military establishment, has treated Afghanistan as its backyard. It perceives Afghanistan providing depth to it in case of an Indian attack. During Russian presence in Afghanistan, it used US monetary assistance to create levers in the country with which it could control events. With Russia's departure, its creation - the Taliban - occupied centre-stage. From then on, its attempt has always been to so control events in Afghanistan that, while it remains on the boil to suit Pakistani interests, a spillover is avoided and Afghanistan is managed through agencies like the ISI.

Pakistan's contribution to the US-led war on terror in Afghanistan has been selective, conditional and orchestrated with the above policy in mind. While, on one hand, it professes to be a frontline state in the fight against terror, thereby garnering massive US monetary and military assistance, on the other it provided a safe house to bin Laden and sanctuaries to Afghan Taliban leaders, hobnobbing with the Haqqani network and coordinating the activities of the Pakistani Taliban.

With the drawdown of US forces scheduled to commence this year, the US has made detailed plans to expand and empower the Afghan army and police so that they can take over the security responsibility of Afghanistan from the ISAF and be self-sustaining. Sadly, both realise that the time schedule of 2014 is too tight for this transition to be complete. This, in fact, is a major source of worry for the present Afghan government.

It is natural for Afghanistan to look for friends in the region that would help it stabilise post the ISAF's departure. India and Afghanistan have enjoyed good relations traditionally. It is no wonder then that Afghanistan sees India as a friend that can be relied upon. This found expression in the signing of the strategic partnership agreement between the two during President Hamid Karzai's visit to India in October 2011. Implicit in this agreement is the recognition of India's ability to rebuild Afghan institutions, including the military, whose requirement would be overwhelming following ISAF's departure.

India has resisted sending military help to Afghanistan despite pressure from the West in the past. That policy has stood the test of time and needs to be continued. The next best that India can do is to assist in training the Afghan army to enable it to achieve self-sufficiency and stand on its own feet. Here again there are two choices. India could enhance the levels of training currently being imparted to Afghan officers and men in India, and increase the number of vacancies on all courses. This requires marginal additional effort, can be implemented quickly, ensures availability of all types of training in Indian training institutions and provides a secure and peaceful environment both for Afghan trainees as well as Indian trainers.

However, it would lead to only a marginal increase in the number of trainees and may not meet the requirements of a rapidly expanding Afghan army. The terrain and operating environment conditions would have to be simulated. That cannot match actual conditions and can at best approximate them. Additionally, almost all the equipment - on which training needs to be imparted - with the Afghan army is of western origin. India does not have most of this equipment in its inventory.

The second choice is to send training teams to Afghanistan to train their personnel and also assist the country in establishing its own training institutions. While this takes care of the limitations of the first option, it envisages a larger commitment of Indian trainers in Afghanistan whose security would be a major concern. Therefore, besides the US-Afghan general security umbrella, an Indian security component would have to be planned for their close security, thus enhancing overall Indian commitment.

However, having Afghanistan as a permanent friend in the long run in this turbulent region is important. It recognises India's credentials as a power coming to the assistance of its neighbours in times of crises. The attempt by elements in Pakistan to use this region as a jihadi fac-tory to continue the proxy war in Kashmir would also be curbed.

The battle for India's defence has to be fought beyond its borders. India's vulnerability to fundamentalism and terrorism is well known. This monster needs to be tackled before it raises its head within the country. Strategic partnership demands that we do something more for Afghanistan than is currently being done. Besides the training being imparted in India, our trainers should go to Afghanistan to make assistance meaningful. It would help curb turmoil and terrorism in the region, curtailing levels of the proxy war in Kashmir.

The writer is former army chief.

Congress and Muslims By Ghulam Muhammed | The Islamic fine print on weavers that Rahul missed By Neelesh Misra - The Times of India

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Congress and Muslims

For over 65 years that Indian National Congress ( read Brahmins) ruled India, they have subjected Indian Muslims, a good 15 to 20% of the population, to a continuous dose of malign neglect, bordering on proactive discrimination in all spheres of social, political and economic life. Thriving Muslim communities of artisans, craftsman and agriculturists were maliciously and pin-pointedly  targeted to deprive them of their livelihood. Come election time, shameless Congress leaders have no qualms promising the seven heavens and seven seas to Muslim voters without any intention whatsoever to ever feel a duty to deliver on their electoral promises. The present scheme for Muslim weavers so grandly announced by the prince- waiting to be the King, Rahul Gandhi, to come to the aid of the one of the most precious craftsmen of fine fabrics that India could produce, is so ham-handedly or rather maliciously packaged by the Brahmin bureaucracy, that not a single Muslim weaver will ever benefit from the 'announced' 6230 Crores budgeting, as the credit trap itself being the most heinous scheme falls short of the Islamic norms of interest free borrowing. Nobody can deny that nationalized banks over the years have written off non-performing loans to corporate world to tune of hundreds and thousands of crore in one of India's most hidden corruption pipeline; however when it comes to poor, their life is threatened even for measly sums of loans that is the main cause of the epidemic in suicides all over India. The young leader, born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a very visible halo of glittering crown on his head, is emulating the French Queen Marie Antoinette, when she asked the poor, starved of bread, to eat cake. The scheme of loans to weavers is pure Tughlak, if benefit of doubt is given to Rahul Gandhi. He should have done more home work, involved more experts, come out with holistic solutions to the problem of resurrecting the economic life of the disintegrating communities, before addressing the crowd with his supposed achievements. The blocked Brahmin mind-set that is against Islamic Banking products; just as it comes with the label of Islam and its standards of equity, fairness and justice, will rather see vast devastation across the land, than to give in to the paradigm change in international finance and investment that Islamic Banking is bringing about. India must rise to the challenges ahead.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/The-Islamic-fine-print-on-weavers-that-Rahul-missed/articleshow/11787305.cms
The Times of India
India

The Islamic fine print on weavers that Rahul missed

, TNN | Feb 7, 2012, 06.37AM IST
JAHANAGUNJ (UP): It is a moment that comes frequently these days in the talent-rich but squalid homes of eastern UP's weavers, when families nurturing an ancient craft get crushed under modern day reality.That is the moment when a weaver sells the biggest, most valuable asset he has: his loom, and flees from his life of poverty to menial jobs in West Asia.

The skinny Abu Saad, 23, is fighting that moment and has witnessed it countless times in the weavers' hub of Jahanagunj 70 km north of Varanasi. The most compelling was when his best friend Ansar Ahmed sold his family loom and went away two years ago to work as a hospital sweeper in the Saudi city of Dammam.This winter, Saad has another crucial asset with which he wants to make a statement: his vote.

More than 2.5 lakh weavers - mostly Muslims - have become a key constituency with political parties aggressively reaching out to them ahead of UP's crucial elections. The charge was led by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who prodded the Centre into a Rs. 6,230 crore package aimed at 13 lakh weavers countrywide - but timed mainly for the UP elections.But in this rural hub where houses are partly collapsed, looms largely silent, youth sit aimlessly and muck line the streets, Abu Saad said Gandhi's package is an eyewash that won't touch their lives.

Its centerpiece is providing subsidised loans, and other assistance towards better availability of credit. "How can Rahul Gandhi and the government be so out of touch with our lives?" said Saad, as he stood outside the main mosque in the rural hub. "Don't they know that most of us do not like to take loans because the Quran does not allow us?"

The Centre's package will let individuals get credit card-based loans of up to Rs 2 lakh for three years without collaterals. Using an interest subsidy of 3 per cent, banks will be able to lend at 7 to 8 per cent to the weavers. The local traders' association called the package statistical jugglery with no significant new assistance. Even for those who might sign up, none of the gains have yet reached the weavers on election eve."We haven't got anything from this package so far. This is all for middlemen," said 55-year-old weaver Abrar Ahmed.

Eastern UP's weaving industry with the Banarasi sari as its most famous brand has collapsed. Thousands of weavers who were once considered among India's best artisans now live in slums."Earlier people sold jewellery and went to Saudi. Now they sell their looms," said Saad. One loom sells for Rs 50,000 and often three have to be sold to bear the expenses of going to Saudi Arabia.

With no other skill, artisans are forced to lead menial lives there as goat grazers, sweepers or labour.Previously too, politicians have sought to reach out to weavers. As CM, Mulayam Singh Yadav promised them 18-hour electricity. Mayawati has accused the Centre of not doing enough.But little has changed in their disintegrating lives.