The Labs of Boston, Woolwich, Chhattisgarh:

Ruling Anarchy: The Labs of Boston, Woolwich, Chhattisgarh

by Farzana Versey, CounterPunch, June 1-3

“As we heard the instant matters before us, we could not but help be reminded of the novella, “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad, who perceived darkness at three levels: the darkness of the forest, representing a struggle for life and the sublime; (ii) the darkness of colonial expansion for resources; and finally (iii) the darkness, represented by inhumanity and evil, to which individual human beings are capable of descending, when supreme and unaccounted force is vested, rationalized by a warped world view that parades itself as pragmatic and inevitable, in each individual level of command...Joseph Conrad describes the grisly, and the macabre states of mind and justifications advanced by men, who secure and wield force without reason, sans humanity, and any sense of balance. The main perpetrator in the novella, Kurtz, breathes his last with the words: ‘The horror! The horror!’”

Blood. Death. Hate spreads. I do not know where sympathy should begin and for whom, anymore. We know the bad guys, with cleavers and rudimentary weapons, talking, walking with ruthless strides, dancing near corpses. That they do not look squishy clean like our sanitised toilet bowl gives us the power to screw up our noses.

The horror

We have seen the horror in the last few weeks, the latest being on May 25 in the tribal belt of India. Why is the quote at the beginning important? It comes from an unlikely source. In its report on the anti-Naxalite organisation, the Supreme Court of India pulled up the government and got the Salwa Judum banned.

The FBI spies on Americans. India sets up a counter-insurgency group against its citizens. They might call it 'necessary evil' but if after decades the problems persist, then it may be implied that the solutions infect the problem, hoping the virus spreads and falls dead. That is not how it works; it never has.

At 5.30 pm on Saturday at Darbha Ghati in the tribal area of Bastar in Raipur district of Chhattisgarh, a state carved out of Madhya Pradesh in central India, Naxalites rained gunfire at a convoy that was on its way to bring about change through its ‘Parivartan Yatra’ before the assembly elections. Over 25 people were shot dead by 200; many were injured. The figures change, but that is not the point.

The point is that this time it was not about innocent civilians.  Political leaders of the Congress Party and, more importantly, Mahendra Karma, who started the Salwa Judum were the targets. Although the Supreme Court disbanded it in 2011, the very idea that the government backed a terrorist outfit to deal with insurgency and got away with it reveals a conscientious and devious manoeuvre to obstruct not only the execution but the very concept of justice.

News channels and papers kept talking about how Karma was tortured. It was indeed brutal, as though the group was performing a ritual sacrifice through this purging. However, in 2010 the same government sent out photographs of a female Maoist’s body carried tied to a pole like an animal. What was the reason for it? I had written then that this does not send out a message to the Naxals, who are ready to die for their cause. And it does not send out any message to civil society. The last thing people need to believe they are safe from terrorism is to see armed soldiers enacting a theatre of the absurd.

The universal

Using a word like terrorism loosely is only giving more teeth to the establishment to pursue innocents, who might turn out to be what they are stereotyped to be. What puts the three incidents in diverse countries on par is that ‘national pride’ was aimed at.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother Dzhokhar once wanted to represent the United States, until something changed. They then planned to strike on July 4. The pressure cooker bombs were ready. They did a recce of police stations, looking for officers as possible targets. They could not wait, so on April 15 they struck at the symbol of hope and aspiration, of breasting the tape. The Boston Marathon stood for all that is good – adrenalin throbbing in the muscles of different-coloured bodies, flags fluttering in the background to convey varied ethnicities. This was the mass congregation version of the American Sweetheart.

The U.S. was afraid to bury the dead Tamerlan because it feared the site would become a cult memorial. Something has got to be wrong if this were to happen. But then, has not the superpower’s Department of Defense called all protest “low-level terrorism”? This is how it went about it: “The FBI deemed OWS (Occupy Wall Street) to be a terrorist organization and went into ‘guilty until proven innocent’ mode. Many of the FBI descriptions of possible OWS actions or those of affiliated organizations like Adbusters consistently look to have taken the most inflammatory snippets and presented them out of context.”

In Woolwich, Michael Adebolajo – a ten-year ‘Islamist’ (he converted in 2003) – was sought by M15, even offered cash. Just the sort of guy in whose mouth you can stuff some food so that he does not rant against the system and assists it.  He, along with his accomplice Michael Adebowale, hit at the concept of security in the form of a young soldier, Lee Rigby. British Prime Minister David Cameron said, "they are trying to divide us". Hugely ironic, considering it comes from the masters of divide-and-rule policy. Much has been written about the brave white woman who tried to reason with the killer. Perhaps, this is what Cameron meant by ‘they’ and ‘us’.

He has set up the Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation Task Force (TERFOR) "to stop extremist clerics using schools, colleges, prisons and mosques to spread their ‘poison’...It will also urge Muslim ‘whistleblowers’ to report clerics who act as terrorist apologists to the police". This sort of vigilantism makes everyone a suspect.

The Guardian quoted former British soldier Joe Glenton, who served in the war in Afghanistan:

"While nothing can justify the savage killing in Woolwich yesterday of a man since confirmed to have been a serving British soldier, it should not be hard to explain why the murder happened... It should by now be self-evident that by attacking Muslims overseas, you will occasionally spawn twisted and, as we saw yesterday, even murderous hatred at home. We need to recognise that, given the continued role our government has chosen to play in the US imperial project in the Middle East, we are lucky that these attacks are so few and far between."

How lucky, indeed. And this is heralded as a liberal point of view, whereas it is just more shit hitting the fan. It adds to the pan-Islamic prototype, of every darned Muslim being concerned about every country with a population that follows the faith and could get murderous in adopted lands.

Strangely, nationalistic fervour is a mirror image of the Ummah it so detests. In Chhattisgarh, the government is treating the Naxals as “kufr”, non-believers of poodle democracy.

                                                                          

The Image-makers

The reason the subject has become an even more important issue is because it highlights how the government uses subversive tactics through insidious means. In the major attack on the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) that killed 76 soldiers, the reportage and political drama hinged on ‘embarrassment’ and ‘blot’. It was the image factory at work. No emotions for the dead or the very reasons behind such insurgency,

Life of and for Comrade Binayak Sen

Dr. Binayak Sen has been awarded a life sentence. There is no evidence to nail him down. I will not go into the details of this case that will stand up for scrutiny only in a banana republic, not in a democracy.

The war against the state is a convenient ploy. Dr. Sen, an award winning doctor and national vice-president of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) was arrested in Bilaspur on May 14, 2007. He has been behind bars ever since. And it was not a fashionable ‘statement’ arrest.

His crime is that he passed letters to the Maoist ideologue, Narayan Sanyal. Together with a young businessman, Piyush Guha, they are seen as a triumvirate. The letters were apparently to “establish an urban network of the banned extremist group CPI (Maoist)”.

The charges are drawn from the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2005, and the IPC for conspiracy for war against the state and treason, apart from being the accused as members of a banned organisation.

Let us go along for a minute with the charges. What war has been fought against the state due to the efforts of Dr. Sen? How many politicians are arrested for creating wars within their own states? What is treason here? To speak out, to believe that a people have the right to seek a space? The moot point is: have they got it? As regards being members of a banned organisation, may I know how it is possible when an organisation that is banned becomes irrelevant, a persona non grata, so to speak? Therefore, his being a part of it is a non sequiter.

Apparently, the prosecution has problems with him being addressed as ‘Comrade’ in two postcards. “Comrade usi ko kahaa jaata hai jo Maowadi hai,” (Only a Maoist is called comrade) said prosecutor Pandya who is probably a comrade-in-arms with the state machinery and a whole ideology based on idiocy. If you refer to someone as 'Bhai', does it mean the person is an underworld don? Communist leaders still use the term comrade. Even so, he has every right to be a Maoist, just as people can be Bajrang Dali or Jamaatis; at least he is not using obfuscation.

How do you imagine Dr. Binayak Sen is linked to international terror groups? The sessions court in Chhattisgarh said that his wife Ilina was corresponding with Pakistan’s ISI based on some letters written by her to “some Fernandes of the ISI”.

Here is the report from the TOI:

The email said: “There is a chimpanzee in the White House.” Pandya said: “This may be code language... this perhaps means terrorists are annoyed with the US... We do not know who this Fernandes is, but ISI, as we all know, means Pakistan.”

TOI spoke to Walter Fernandes, currently director of the North Eastern Social Research Institute in Guwahati. “Ilina and I are good friends and we frequently exchanged correspondence on development-induced displacement among tribals, which has been my subject for the last 20 years,” he said. He described the prosecution’s attempt to interpret ISI (Indian Social Institute) as Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence wing and link it to Binayak Sen as “either ignorance or bad will”.

I am currently writing about Indian Stupid Insecurity (ISI). The imagination of the prosecution aside, I have issues with the use of ‘perhaps’ in a case of this nature, that involves the life of a person and the life of civil liberties. The prosecution is supposed to verify its claims before charging a person. If it is a code word, then decode it; if it is terror groups, snoop around and check the IP address. We don’t live in the stone age that this is not possible.

There will be an appeal against this judgement. But, it is a sad state of affairs when after 1000 pages of the charge-sheet, the Indian courts come out the worse for the wear. There is nothing that reveals that Comrade Binayak Sen has betrayed the country. The judiciary has.

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Updated here

Not just patriotism of a kind

Why the heck is it so important to be a patriot of any kind? This reveals the utter desperation and inability to deny a stratified concept completely.

Here is what the newspapers say:

Writer-activist Arundhati Roy on Sunday described Maoists as "patriot of a kind" and accused the prime minister and home minister of "violating the Constitution and Panchayat (Extension of Scheduled Areas) Act by allowing corporates to use tribal land". "Patriot of a kind, they (Maoists) are. But here patriotism is very complicated. So at the moment what people are fighting for is to keep this country from falling apart," Roy said after addressing a meet on Cultural Resistance to War on People in Corporate Interest, organised by a magazine.

Patriotism is not complicated if you know your mind and the minds of the people on whose behalf you speak. There are indeed different kinds of fidelity – whether to the nation or in relationships or from your pet dog. The whole credo of ‘someone’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter’ has been going on for years and it is understood as a complex theory.

However, to say that they are fighting to keep this country from falling apart is a stretch. These are insurgency movements and they are protesting against the policies of various governments and the establishment; they are not sewing patches and not one separatist movement has any alliance with another in any part of the country. All those verbal pebbles in Kashmir did not cause even a minor ripple in the Naxal forest lakes.

"The whole world has been intently watching the poor tribal people of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Lalgarh (West Bengal). Nowhere in the world have movements (against corporate invasion) so big, beautiful and successful been carried," she said.

The whole world does not care and we should not be concerned about how the whole world is viewing movements within our country that are truly fighting for space and a say. I am quite certain that for Ms. Roy the world does not mean what Papua New Guinea or Burkina Faso or even Bangladesh and Nepal think; it is the huge conglomerate nations, the G-Summiteers who need to be impressed. That’s where the big-ticket seminars are held.

There is no doubt that the poor have raised their voices but it has come at a huge cost. There is nothing “beautiful” about it, unless you want to print glossy pamphlets that show up clotted blood in high resolution pixels. Quit romanticising the travails of the poor.

Was the magazine that organised the lecture a tribal one or sponsored by the poor? No. This is a business sector, and Ms. Roy is a part of it. Let us just say this too is corporatisation of a kind.

Another ceasefire drumroll

You create a scenario where there is enough space to meddle and then when you are asked to close that space, you renege. Why does Arundhati Roy do that?

She has been clear about her verbalised opinions on the Maoist issues with a few tantalising ifs and buts thrown in. It reveals the paucity of thinking in the electronic media that she is asked if she’d take on the role of mediator between the government and the Naxals. What prompted that query?

She said in a television interview that a ceasefire between the security forces and the Maoists was "urgent" and "unconditional". Have the security forces been given a carte blanche to make such announcements? Will the Maoists who have been waging this war for many years and many reasons suddenly give up their conditions? And if all this is urgent then why dilly-dally?

When asked if she would like to make a statement calling upon the Maoists to come forward for talks, she said, “No. Not when there are two lakh paramilitary forces closing in on the villages.”

Did she not mention unconditional? Why does she not wish to put her mouth where her mouth is?

“I would not like to be (a mediator or part of people’s committee to mediate between the government and Maoists). I don’t think I have those skills... I don’t think I am good at it. I am a maverick... I’ll try. I don’t know how to think about it.”

If she is good enough to go on lecture tours, meet the comrades, question the government, then why not? And she forgets that she is not the real maverick here – it is the Maoists who are, the ones she thinks should call for a ceasefire as though they can be herded like sheep for someone else’s intellectual high.

“I don’t think it should be one person. I think there should be a group of people who are used to taking decisions collectively…If you studied the peace talks process in Andhra, you see that this business of picking one person and announcing it to the media... both sides have done it. Home minister P Chidambaram has arbitrarily picked Swami Agnivesh. Maoists arbitrarily announced that they want this one or that one. That is not how it works.”

Indeed. For one, collective decisions can be taken when there is uniformity in thought and action. This has not been the case. Two, there will be individuals chosen arbitrarily because they are either the face of the movement or have a record of such mediatory roles. Interestingly, she herself has suggested that rights activity B D Sharma should be included in such a committee. And isn’t she the spokesperson of several causes? Whose arbitrary decisions are those?

If the Maoists send a peace envoy and he gets killed, then she believes the government does not want peace. So, why is she asking for this committee to be formed and why this sudden ceasefire talks?

Are the Maoists getting out of hand and doing their own thing, not quite concerned about who says what at seminars?

Faisal, Farah and Lie Detecting

Everyone is going on about who this Faisal Shahzad is. As though they are supposed to know.

His neighbor has given some information: "He was quiet. He would wear all black and jog at night. He said he didn't like the sunlight."

He bought fireworks but according to the shopkeeper, those would not harm a watermelon. However, had he got them in the blackmarket it might have been different. I guess he is the stingy sort.

My question is: Why did the US and its agencies say immediately after the Times Square bomb scare that they did not suspect any Islamist group? How did this superpower with all the arsenal at its disposal make this pronouncement? And what changed? A guy who is a Pakistani and says he was trained in Waziristan. This sounds just too convenient, especially after Mehsud comes back from the dead and declares that the Taliban will attack the US. This fits in. Of course, they are still not taking it at face value for they don’t have to worry about the Taliban at all. They are thinking other nations. Or other cities.

Do remember that US intelligence had warned India of attacks in its major cities and our security and sniffer dogs went all paranoid. Either they were misled or they misled.

I wish that instead of a hotdog cart owner who was the one to smell the bomb it was a kebab seller. That would have been nicer.

- - -


The truth serum is on its way out. The Supreme Court wants investigations to be based on techniques other than narco analysis and brain mapping.

While it is true that such information gathered through lie detection techniques is inadmissible as evidence, it might have helped in putting the cops on a specific track.

Is it inhuman, given the health risks? I’d imagine it is better than keeping undertrials in prisons for years.

Former IPS officer YP Singh made a pertinent point:

“The test helped reveal vital details. Now, the use of third-degree could increase. Professional investigators are essential to conduct probes minus scientific tools. But such professionalism is no longer left in the Mumbai police force. Narco-analysis was increasingly used as it was easier.’’

Will doing away with it make the police force more vigilant to the actual collecting of data and vital circumstantial evidence? I am wary. Think about the cases where clues have not been collected or have disappeared.

We might recall how disturbed our Balasaheb Thackeray was when a Naxalite under the narco influence said that the Shiv Sena had funded them. Wonder what the SS chief would have to say had the accusation been made after a few pints of warm beer, that he had a special fondness for at one time.

- - -

Oh, here’s a story about how a Muslim woman is fighting her way into the fight club. Jordanian Farah Malhassa is a body builder. She says:

“Everyone is against me. No one understands why I want to become an international star in figure body-building.”

For six years she has been working out, managed to get all those tattoos, is now ready to go to Canada for an international competition, so there must be at least some support. I wish she would not create such a negative picture, since she is sitting in Amman and managing all this.

I think I understand her family disapproving and wondering why she wanted to “deform my body and make myself look ugly”. This is the general perception. We do have fixed ideas about the male and the female body. A man who is not of strong build or his manner not masculine enough is considered effeminate. Women who do not possess the right body type – differing in cultures (interestingly, this applies mainly to the female) – are made to become aware of it.

Farah might like muscles, but not all women do. Sure, she ought to have a choice and she has made it. Some of us just course through life training with the weight of our follies. And they come in different sizes.

Indian elections, Issue Pakistan

Set the poll rolling:
Imagining the Taliban

by Farzana Versey

The News International, April 30, 2009

If you do not look at the candidates, the manifestoes and the daily dose of quotes, then you might begin to think that India is voting in the Pakistani elections. Sorry if this sounds insensitive, but the Taliban crisis is what has made the marketing guys tout these as the most important elections in India.

Of the times I have visited Islamabad, I had never heard of Buner. These days, Indian news channel anchors talk about Buner as though it were something in their exclusive backyards. Is this fear psychosis, the ragged remains of the Mumbai attacks which are raked up by every group with chiffon saree and pearls and cotton-silk kurtas and striped ties? These are women and men who are rolling the word 'Bun-air' blithely and lithely off their tongues.

Isn't that why if we cut through the swathe of national issues, then the real vote is against terrorism? The only terrorism we seem to recognise comes from across the border. The more serious media show us scruffy-looking men, heavily armed and bearded, crossing hills. Their destination, we are told, is India and they are supposedly the Taliban. When they realise this sounds ridiculous, they change it to jihadis. The subtle difference having raised the bar of their consciousness, they become eligible to be considered with more gravitas.

It is shocking to hear intelligent commentators hallucinate that if the Taliban were to reach Karachi, they could threaten us. We now even have a reason: some of the 26/11 terrorists did use the sea route. But are they interested in India? The Taliban, or at least Pashtun elements, have always been an important source of anxiety and anger among the Karachiites. They have business dealings there and this would be a part of their spreading the message and taking over Pakistan agenda, if it is that. India does not matter to them politically or even strategically.

I am, therefore, surprised that a retired colonel joined the bandwagon and sought to write an open letter to General Pervez Kayani stating: "Sir, it is imperative that we recognise our enemy without any delay. I use the word 'our' advisedly – for the Taliban threat is not far from India's borders. And the only force that can stop them from dragging Pakistan back into the Stone Age is the force that you command… the future of humankind in the subcontinent rests with you." This is utterly debasing not only to Pakistani civil society but also to the Indian electorate that is being brainwashed with such damaging information and homilies. Interestingly, the onus is being placed on the army, an army that was sought to be thrown out in democratic elections.

While the army in Pakistan has had running tenures for long periods of time, it is in fact often a puppet in the hands of the democrats. After all, it was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who asked Yahya to arrest Mujibur Rehman. He then took over as leader and promptly released Mujib and arrested Yahya! The only common fallout was that India has had to deal with Bangladeshi immigrants and Pakistan with the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet incursion.

Pakistan, and not merely the extreme north, has had to deal with bomb blasts; these were not engineered by the Taliban. There are regional and linguistic issues. How serious can a discourse be if it chooses to use an American newspaper's puff prophecy? The CIA had branded Pervez Musharraf as among the ten worst dictators. None of these certificates or crystal ball gazers bothers to provide even broad definitions of what they mean by 'dictator' and, more importantly, 'collapse'.

The economy has collapsed, starting with the west. Did they anticipate it? Elected governments collapse when they are voted out of power. There is a collapse when Israel puts a blockade around Gaza and denies its people basic facilities. Essential services collapse when there are strikes by trade unions – legitimate dissenters. How many more examples of collapse should be provided to explain in perspective that New York Times cannot be taken at face value?

Pakistan, the Taliban and jihad are catch-phrases that might work, especially during election time, but it is rather tragic that so soon after the Assam blasts and the Naxalites going on a killing spree, we have moved on to the Taliban. There is something called ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom) that has been in existence for years and they in fact are working on a separatist notion that there is some feeble stipulation for and the Naxal Maoist forces constitute the extreme wing of the left, a big party in the electoral process.

One is waiting for an open letter to our army chief regarding the 100 terrorists who have reportedly 'sneaked into Jammu and Kashmir' (one had no idea they would seek permission!). The only thing in our favour is that we are still a democracy with no constitutional provision for a theocracy. Maybe, the good colonel would like to convey that to those propagating dreams of a Hindu Rashtra.