[mobglob-discuss] Southern Asian Front: "War on Terrorism"

[y&l]

crushing Maoists...old politics.
Lizard Rock
----- Original Message -----
From: "martin william fournier" <mfou1 at hotmail.com>
To: <mobglob-discuss at lists.tao.ca>
Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2002 10:22 AM
Subject: [mobglob-discuss] Southern Asian Front: "War on Terrorism"


> Interesting article on some disturbing information that goes unreported in
> most Western media.
>
> Focus
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
> War at the top of the world
>
> From the Maoists of Nepal to the separatists in Kashmir, conflict in the
> Himalayas threatens to engulf southern Asia
> CRESCENT OF CONFLICT: Flashpoints of a region in turmoil
>
> Observer Worldview
>
> Luke Harding
> Sunday May 12, 2002
> The Observer
>
> It was, by any standards, an unpleasant form of death for the few
terrified
> survivors hiding among the ruins of an army camp in the remote village of
> Gam.
> The Maoists had emerged from Nepal's scented pine forests late on Tuesday
> night. They were not in a mood to dispense mercy. 'The male Maoists held
the
> officers down. The women Maoists then slit their necks using sickles,'
Kapil
> Shrestha, of Nepal's Human Rights Commission said. 'The women soldiers
bear
> far more grudges. Most of them have been raped by the police or their
> families have been killed by the security forces.'
>
> The battle in the remote western area of Nepal was merely the latest in a
> series of gruesome encounters between the kingdom's rampant Maoist
> guerrillas and government forces. Over the past week nearly 1,000 people
> have been killed - a fact eclipsed by the blanket coverage of the far
lesser
> carnage in the Middle East.
>
> The violence now threatens to engulf the entire Himalayan region, from
> Afghanistan to Pakistan through India, Kashmir and Tibet.
>
> In India, an increasingly aggressive Hindu nationalist government has done
> virtually nothing to stop the slaughter of Muslims by Hindu gangs. More
than
> 2,000 Muslims have died over the past two-and-a-half months in riots in
the
> prosperous western state of Gujarat. Intelligence reports circulating in
> Washington and London, meanwhile, warn of a summer-long conflict between
> India and Pakistan in Kashmir, where Islamic militants have been fighting
a
> separatist battle for 12 years.
>
> In Tibet, revolt is stirring too. After a series of mysterious explosions,
> the Chinese authorities recently arrested a senior Tibetan monk, Tenzin
> Deleg Rinpoche. Almost unnoticed, the region is sliding into turmoil.
>
> In Nepal, the Maoist rebels have been battling the government for six
years.
> Outsiders dismissed them as an eccentric throwback to an earlier era, but
> over the past four months the Maoists have dramatically escalated their
> campaign. They have blown up bridges and electricity stations, plunging
> entire districts into darkness, destroyed water plants and tortured and
> executed their opponents - chopping off limbs, slicing away skin, and
> severing necks. Tourists, who once thronged the medieval streets of
> Kathmandu, drifting between email kiosks and bagel bars, are staying away
> and the country's economy is close to collapse.
>
> In rural Nepal villagers no longer go out at night. They sit at home in a
> state of mute, expectant terror. The situation has become so desperate
that
> the Nepalese government last week slashed the minimum fee for climbing
Mount
> Everest, its main tourist attraction, from $75,000 to $25,000. The sense
of
> creeping anarchy has even penetrated the country's national parks, where
> illegal logging is rife and poachers last week shot dead and de-horned one
> of the kingdom's last remaining rhinos.
>
> Nepal's Prime Minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, is seeking military assistance
> from Britain and the United States, and last week President George Bush
> promised him $20 million to help to crush the Maoists. American military
> advisers have already secretly toured the Maoist-controlled west of the
> country, reconnoitring its dense, lowland jungles, inaccessible mountain
> valleys and poverty-stricken villages.
>
> Tomorrow Deuba meets Tony Blair in Downing Street and there seems little
> doubt that Britain will also offer assistance. 'We have a very
long-standing
> relationship with the Nepalese army,' a British diplomat in Kathmandu told
> The Observer last night. 'That relationship will continue,' he added.
>
> Nepal's immense neighbour, India, is also in crisis. The Hindu nationalist
> BJP party in power in New Delhi has given every impression of tacitly
> supporting the anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat. India's Prime Minister,
Atal
> Bihari Vajpayee, has refused to sack Gujarat's unrepentant Chief Minister,
> Narendra Modi, despite frequent allegations that he instructed his
officials
> to allow Hindu mobs to rape, murder and burn their minority Muslim
> neighbours. The death toll in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's shiny commercial
centre,
> rises every day. Early last week four Hindu youths spotted M. A.
Kothawala,
> a 35-year-old Muslim lecturer, riding to work. His beard gave him away.
They
> dragged him off his motorbike, stabbed him and burnt him alive. So far
none
> of the Hindus who attacked Muslims has been punished. Gujarat's Hindu
police
> force has shot dead more than 100 Muslims.
>
> Despite the carnage, America has maintained a discreet silence on the
> matter. India, its crucial ally in the region, is pro-American and
> pro-Israeli (and likens its tough stand against Pakistan to Israel's
> approach to the Palestinians). The communal riots began after a Muslim mob
> incinerated 58 Hindu extremists on a train in the town of Godhra. A team
of
> British diplomats recently concluded that the massive anti-Muslim backlash
> was 'pre-planned'.
>
> There are few signs, meanwhile, that the 12-year insurgency by Muslim
> Kashmiris against the Indian state is coming to an end. The daily death
toll
> in Kashmir, India's only Muslim majority province, is invariably higher
than
> in the Palestinian intifida, but it rarely merits more than a brief
mention
> in the foreign news pages. About 50,000 people - soldiers, militants,
> civilians - have died. India has blamed the rebellion on Islamist jihadis
> creeping across the border from Pakistan.
>
> This is only half the story. Repeated human rights abuses by the 400,000
> Indian soldiers stationed in the Kashmir valley against the civilian
> population have ensured the movement is an indigenous one too. India's
> Foreign Minister, Jaswant Singh, last week rejected the suggestion made by
> the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, that monitors should supervise
Kashmir's
> election later this year. His comments suggest New Delhi will, as on
> previous occasions, rig the ballot to ensure victory for the National
> Conference, part of the ruling BJP coalition. There is little sign of
fresh
> thinking on Kashmir from the Indian establishment, which sees the solution
> to its difficulties as military rather than political.
>
> The revolt in Kashmir, as in Nepal, however, is the result of political
> disaffection and economic misery. Some 80 per cent of Nepal's 23 million
> inhabitants are subsistence farmers. They lead medieval-style lives of
> appalling hardship and have seen no benefit from either the country's
> tourist industry or the arrival of democracy a decade ago. The Maoists are
> strongest in the poorest parts of the country. In their stronghold of
Rolpa,
> the scene of last week's gruesome battles, per capita income is $100 a
year
> and life expectancy is 52.
>
> The message of revolutionary justice espoused by the Maoists' shadowy
> leader, Comrade Prachanda, has won its most enthusiastic response from a
> rural underclass with nothing to lose: women, peasants at the bottom of
the
> caste heap, and the unemployed. Successive governments in Kathmandu have
> been more concerned with lining their own pockets than dealing with a
> far-away rural revolt. They hoped it would go away. It has not. Deuba, who
> declared a state of emergency in November and sent in the army, has now
> turned to the outside world for help.
>
> There is nothing new about communal unrest or insurrection in South Asia,
> but what differs about the most recent violence in Gujarat is that it has
> taken place in the heart of India with the unambiguous evidence of state
> involvement. India, as envisaged by Mahatma Gandhi and its first Prime
> Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was supposed to be a secular country, open to
> people of all faiths.
>
> But Hindu fundamentalists who pushed aside Nehru's fading Congress Party
in
> the mid-1990s have replaced his vision with something darker, fascist
even.
> They give the impression of wanting India's 120 million Muslims to
disappear
> or decamp to Muslim Pakistan. As Sunny Grewal, one of many BJP supporters
> living in Britain, put it: 'Muslims of India should pack their bags and
head
> off to Pakistan. There is no room for the Satanic evil forces of Islam in
> India. They don't belong on this earth. They are evil.'
>
> 'I think the forebodings are very grim,' Ramachandra Guha, one of India's
> leading writers and environmentalists, added last night. 'Radical Hindus
are
> trying to turn India into a kind of Hindu Pakistan, along theological
lines,
> and with Hindus in charge rather than Muslims.'
>
> Pakistan, meanwhile, has fared little better since independence. Its army
> has repeatedly toppled the country's frequently venal and short-lived
> civilian governments. And, with the Bangladesh war of 1971, the idea that
> being a Muslim was enough to hold a state together was catastrophically
> disproved when the country split in half. Like India, Pakistan, under
> military dictator General Pervez Musharraf, has signed up to the US war on
> terrorism (though not its support for Israel). He even won a spurious
> referendum in which he was the only candidate. But Islamist extremists and
> sectarian violence now threaten him with perpetual embarrassment.
>
> Both India and Pakistan are facing crises of post-colonial identity - but
> their predicament has scarcely been noticed because of the West's
continuing
> preoccupation with the troubles in the Middle East.
>
> In Nepal, meanwhile, things get worse. As well as destroying the
> infrastructure, the Maoists are infiltrating the Kathmandu valley, blowing
> up politicians' homes and enforcing strikes. They may have only 7-12,000
> fighters. But they have so far proved more than a match for Nepal's
> 45,000-strong, badly equipped army. 'The Maoists are a very intelligent
> organisation. Their leaders are well educated. They are fired up with a
> vision and sense of dynamism,' one Western diplomat in Kathmandu admitted
> last night. It is only a matter of time before the rebels launch their
next
> ambush, scythes raised.
>
> Guardian Unlimited
>
>
>
>
>
>
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