Pakistan as a Frontline State in the Terror War

re:#101 by anew
Did you read George Perkovich`s book on Indian nuclear program from 1947 yet? If not, at least read the review of the book. Otherwise, you are wasting our time. You cannot just point to some paragraphs in an article and claim India got help from Israel. You guys are just pathetic. No wonder your country is in a hellhole.
Sridhar

#103 anew (suffering from acute jihadolepsy)

I realize no one in the world would have any human rights without the efforts of the pakistanis. In fact, I think Amnesty International was founded in 600AD in Mecca, right?

A pakistani giving a lecture on human rights! Hah, what a joke !! It is like a Nazi giving a lecture on judaism.

We are all aware that functioning democracies have challenges and deficiencies. Israel, India, USA, UK, Turkey and even Malaysia and Bangladesh fall into this category.

It is only the truly bigoted and clueless who fail to understand this. Those consumed by jihadolepsy cannot differentiate between the rule of tyrants, the musharrafs and the ghaddafis, the princes and the sheikhs vs democratic institutions. Even more bizarre, they stupidly think that because democracies allow internal criticism, that this PROVES something is wrong with them. Of course, exactly the opposite is true...

I suggest taking some medication to cure your jihadolepsy. A pill of reality taken twice a day may help you, though I fear your disease is much advanced...

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pmishra2 foolishly states:


``Another nut says:

[quote]
And so what if Israel is a democracy?
[end-quote]

Why not just say all knowledge is in the Koran and get it over with? At least you will then be honest, instead of being a hypocrite and pretending to be interested in concepts like human rights, secularism etc.``

*Sigh*. You missed the point, as usual. Israel is a democracy. True. It`s also a democracy that systematically violates the rights of others (according to the standards of most western democracies). Soooo...one then must ask what worth this democracy if it doesn`t safeguard rights it espouses? This is a valid question, even from the most die hard Islamist - but I ain`t one, so answer the question and stop trying to deflect.

Geez...

And as for your article, the hypocrisy is glaring. It`s alright to demand that western ideologies domenate the world, but heavens forbid another makes the same clame. There`s only one idelogy that is currently employing facism as an end, and it ain`t rinky-dink terror outfits.

#109 by mohar11 on December 24, 2003 10:07am PT

This is not Mohar11 speaking - A hindu does not speak with this arrogance; This is Ariel Sharon speaking inside Mohar11.

Pakistan, by the Grace of ALLAH, can defend itself from the Real Axis of Evil and Threat to World Peace - India, Israel & USA.

mohar11
this may help you to understand #106.

[#8 by khamkhwa.
a pakistani writer writing about pakistan.....seven interacts so far...all by indians...and yet some people say pakistan is obsessed with india...frikking indians there is more to life than pakistan....;)]

#97 by sigalph235 on December 23, 2003 8:29pm PT
India and Israel

It`s fabulous that Israel and India are finally cooperating on a concrete, if limited, basis. Two pluralist, representative, liberal democracies

The two sham democracies of the World;

India - a sham democracy (2003 Amnesty International Report Summary)
http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/ind-summary-eng

The right of minorities to live in the country as equals was increasingly undermined by both state and non-state actors, despite it being clearly asserted in the Constitution. Religious minorities, particularly Muslims, were increasingly targeted for abuse. In Gujarat, Muslims were victims of massacres allegedly masterminded by nationalist groups with the connivance of state agencies. New and stringent security legislation, which gives wide powers of arrest and detention to the police, was misused to target political dissent in areas of armed conflict and elsewhere. Human rights defenders were frequently harassed by state and private actors, and their activities labelled as ``anti-national``. The criminal justice system remained extremely slow, under-resourced and difficult to access for people from socially and economically marginalized sections of society, including lower castes and women. Security agencies continued to enjoy virtual impunity for past abuses, thanks to specific provisions contained in security legislation and to political protection. International human rights monitors, including UN independent experts and international human rights organizations, were de facto denied access to areas of armed conflict and were granted only very limited access to the rest of the country.

Israel - The sham democracy (2003 Amnesty International Report Summary)

At least 1,000 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army, most of them unlawfully. They included some 150 children and at least 35 individuals killed in targeted assassinations. Palestinian armed groups killed more than 420 Israelis, at least 265 of them civilians and including 47 children, and some 20 foreign nationals, in targeted or indiscriminate attacks. Prolonged closures and curfews were imposed throughout the Occupied Territories and more than 2,000 homes were destroyed. Thousands of Palestinians were arrested. Most were released without charge, but more than 3,000 remained in military jails. More than 1,900 were held in administrative detention without charge or trial, and some 5,000 were charged with security offences, including involvement in attacks against Israelis. More than 3,800 were tried before military courts in trials that did not meet international standards. Ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees was widespread. Israeli soldiers used Palestinians as ``human shields`` during military operations. Certain abuses committed by the Israeli army constituted war crimes. These included unlawful killings, obstruction of medical assistance and targeting of medical personnel, extensive and wanton destruction of property, torture and cruel and inhuman treatment, unlawful confinement and the use of ``human shields``. The deliberate targeting of civilians by Palestinian armed groups constituted crimes against humanity. At least 158 Israeli conscientious objectors and reservists who refused to serve in the Occupied Territories were imprisoned. Several Israeli soldiers and settlers were arrested on charges of selling weapons and munitions to armed Palestinian groups, and four Israeli settlers were arrested and charged with attempting to bomb a Palestinian school.

#103 by pmishra2 on December 24, 2003 7:52am PT

Who has to control `Ethnic Hate`?

India - Democracy or Shame-o-cracy

http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=asia&c=india (Human Rights Watch reports)

Compounding Injustice

The Government`s Failure to Redress Massacres in Gujarat

The ringleaders of massacres committed in 2002 are still roaming free in Gujarat, Human Rights Watch charged in a new report. The 70-page report, Compounding Injustice: The Government`s Failure to Redress Massacres in Gujarat, examines the record of state authorities in holding perpetrators accountable and providing humanitarian relief to victims of state-supported massacres of Muslims in February and March 2002. Human Rights Watch urged the federal government to take over cases of large-scale massacres where the state government has sabotaged investigations. More than one hundred Muslims have been charged under India`s much-criticized Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) for their alleged involvement in the train massacre in Godhra. No Hindus have been charged under POTA in connection with the violence against Muslims, which the government continues to dismiss as spontaneous and unorganized. Although the Indian government initially boasted of thousands of arrests following the attacks, most of those arrested have since been acquitted, released on bail with no further action taken, or simply let go. Police regularly downgrade serious charges to lesser crimes - from murder or rape to rioting, for example - and alter victims` statements to delete the names of the accused. Even when cases reach trial, Muslim victims face biased prosecutors and judges. Hindu and Muslim lawyers representing Muslim victims, and doctors providing medical relief to them, have also faced harassment and threats.

Restore India`s Secular Political Culture

As the world deliberates a U.S.-led war in Iraq and braces for more terrorist attacks, the international community has turned a blind eye to the killing of thousands of Muslims in India in the name of fighting terrorism.

#106 by khamkhwa.
//...out of 105 interacts...only 6 pakistanis so far. //

May be pakistanis don`t have anything to say anymore. They find themselves boxed in like a rat - just like Saddam-in-the-hole. Nuke Proliferation, Terrorism, bad economy - you name it, pakis have that problem.

It seems, pakistanis have hardly anything to look forward to. Even the usual shot-in-the-arm that has worked everytime in the past - Kashmir. Overdose of Kashmir has made Paki masses immune - most of them probably want out. For once - they have started looking for real life stuff - jobs, food, shelter. But with failed economy and rulers still playing hokey-pokey with Jihadis - that aint coming their way.

Any right-thinking paki would be hard-pressed to defend pakistan at this point of time.

...out of 105 interacts...only 6 pakistanis so far. a ghaddar bangali is PRESENTLY siding with idealistic democrats of india....for information of newbies..sigalph is the great x 6...grandson of meer jaffar...of plassey fame...

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Arjun & all other Indian friends - pl. read this from `one of you` to know the Truth.

Imperialism, Israel & India
Hindutva-Zionism: An Alliance of the New Epoch
Vijay Prashad
February 2002

Vijay Prashad is Associate Professor and Director of International Studies, Trinity College, Hartford, CT. USA. He is the author of three previous books, Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001); Karma of Brown Folk (University of Minnesota Press, 2000); Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of a Dalit Community (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).

On 7 August 1958, Jawaharlal Nehru explained why India had no diplomatic personnel in Israel even as India recognized that country two years before. ``This attitude,`` he told the Parliament ``was adopted after a careful consideration of the balance of forces. It is not a matter of high principle, but it is based on how we could best serve and be helpful in that area. We should like the problem between Israel and the Arab countries to be settled peacefully. After careful thought we felt that while recognizing Israel as an entity we need not at this stage exchange diplomatic personnel.``

No stranger to the dispute, in 1947, just as India suffered the partition of the subcontinent, the government proposed a plan as a member of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine to create a federal state with autonomy for the Jewish residents of Palestine. The plan was rejected, and India joined the Arab nations to oppose the partition of the region. Nehru opened the doors to diplomatic association in the 1950s (notably when the Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Walter Eytan, visited India in 1952), but with the Suez Crisis of 1956 and the growth of Arab nationalism, the government remained reluctant to established diplomatic ties. For almost four decades, the Indian government, mainly led by Nehru`s Congress Party, stayed close to Arab nationalism and refused to engage in diplomatic relations with Israel as long as the Arab-Israeli problem remained unsettled, though clandestine relations began as early as the 60`s. [See below]

1992 - A Turning Point In Congress Party-Led Government; Normal Diplomatic Relationships

Then, in 1992, the Congress Party-led government sent an envoy to Israel and diplomatic relations began in earnest. There are two reasons for the turnabout; one the Congress Party`s entry into the neoliberal regime set-up by the IMF in cahoots with global capital, and two the Congress Party reassessed the world`s power equation in the post-Cold War era and saw itself as a player in the Indian Ocean region, akin to Israel`s role as the gendarme of the oil lands on behalf of the US.

If Israel could attain semi-world power status by its ruthless foreign policy and lack of concern for the values of non-aligned cooperation, then India, now a pretender on the world stage, should follow the same playbook. But even the Congress-led government was chary about a full-fledged alignment with both the United States and Israel, mainly because of deep ties with the Arab world as well as because of economic and military ties with powers that still opposed US imperialism (Russia, for instance).

From 1998- Hindu Right Government Coalition- Military And Political Cooperation With Israel

The ground shifted in 1998 when the Hindu-Right forged a coalition government, exploded nuclear weapons and proceeded to reach out to both the United States and Israel, trying to create a Washington-Tel Aviv-New Delhi entente against Communism and Islam - the two problem ideologies as posed by US political scientist Samuel Huntington`s style of fundamentalist geopolitics. When the Indian Defense Minister Jaswant Singh visited Israel in July 2000 he said that the relationship between the two countries was strained due to `domestic polices because of a Muslim vote bank.` The anti-Muslim tenor of this statement played to the Zionist galleries and offers us a window of why the forces of Hindutva are so eager to make an anti-Islam alliance with those of Zionism.

Over the past three years, the relationship has flourished with high level delegations making trips to each country, and with trade in harmless and harmful (namely, arms) goods on the increase with each year. This year the two governments plan a large celebration for the tenth anniversary of normal diplomatic relations, with presidential visits and with, perhaps, stamps released in both countries to commemorate the friendship. In addition, the right-wing Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee plans to release his newest book of poems in Hebrew. Even as the Arab-Israeli troubles continues and as the Israeli-right emboldens itself in its war against the PA, the Hindu-Right led government crafts a special relationship with Israel.

Hindutva - Zionism Alliance ``Against Islam``

Before the 1967 War when Israel demonstrated its military might to the world, the Hindu Right did not hold any special brief for that west Asian country. In fact, the leaders of the Hindu Right held Hitler in reverence, an ideological affinity that circumvented any turn toward Israel. V. D. Savarkar, one of the Hindu Right`s main founders, was feted by the Nazi press in the 1940s for his enthusiasm at the Blitzkrieg. His heir, M. S. Golwalkar, reflected on the Holocaust and concluded: ``Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and Cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.`` Indeed, this philosophy remains at the heart of the Hindu Right`s ideology, what is known as Hindutva.

A reassessment of Israel came in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War when Israel defeated the Arab armies soundly, enlarged its frontiers and without apology held onto its ground despite international pressure. The Hindu-Right was disappointed that India`s defeat of Pakistan in the war of 1965 was not followed by a similar humiliation of the enemy. Israel slowly became the model, not only for its military brashness, but also for the possibility of a Hindutva-Zionist alliance against Islam.

When the first al-Fatah delegation made an official visit to India in the early 1970s, the Hindu Right political party was the only one to conduct protests against its presence (here the Hindu Right and the Pakistani Right, namely Zia-ul Haq within the military, meet, because Zia had just led his troops alongside Jordan`s King Hussein`s Bedouins against the PLO in Black September 1970 [where the Jordanian regime moved to crush the PLO militarily after gaining the pretext to do so after 4 PFLP hijackings, three of which landed in Jordan].

Hindutva`s alliance with the Jewish-Zionist state is not so strange after all, because at the ideological level Hindutva is much like Zionism, for both extol the importance of the Race-State, and both cast aspersions at the presence of a Muslim minority. If the activists of Hindutva yell `Jao Kabristan ya Pakistan` (Go to the Graveyard or Pakistan) to Indian Muslims, those of radical Zionism follow Golda Meir [former Israeli Prime Minister, Labor] in the belief that `there is no such thing as a Palestinian.`

An Indian-born analyst at the Zionist Freeman Center in Houston (Texas) makes just this connection: `Islamic fascists see Bharat [India] as a soft spot to propagate their irrational creed and foment violence. India tries to placate them. Israel expels them [as it did in 1948 and 1967]. This is what Bharat should do. If they hate Hindu Rashtra so much they are free to leave for dar-ul Islam.` India must learn from Israel, to act against Pakistan, for instance, in much the same way as the Israeli Defense Force acts against the Palestinian Authority.

The visits of official delegations from the two countries indicate their mutual interests. When the Israelis travel to India, in train come a number of arms manufacturers and military personnel. So during the 21 November 2001 Israeli visit to the Indian Defense Ministry in New Delhi, the team included the head of weapons development and infrastructure in the Israeli Defense Ministry, `Mapat` (Major General Dr. Yitzhak Ben-Israel), the head of the department for security exports, `Sibat` (Major General Yossi Ben-Hanan), and the deputy director of foreign affairs (Brigadier General Yekutiel Mor).

When India`s Home Minister L. K. Advani made his high-level visit to Israel he took with him the home secretary (Kamal Pandey), the director of the Central Bureau of Investigations (S. K. Raghavan) and the director of the Investigation Bureau (Shyamal Dutta). Israel is eager to sell arms to India, while India is eager to learn anti-terrorism measures from the Israeli Shin Bet. These are the practical components of the Indo-Israeli alliance of our period.

Military Development

The Hindu Right is not the only one in India to have ties with the Israeli government. The Indian armed forces and intelligence agencies have a long association with their counterparts in Israel. During the Indo-China War of 1962 and the two conflicts with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971, Israel provided small arms and ammunition for Indian troops (a provision not well-known at the time). In January 1963, a few months after India`s border war with China, the Indian government reached out to the Israeli military establishment and opened a dialogue.

Two years later, Israeli cabinet minister Yigal Alon visited India. But the deals in the years before 1992 took place very secretly, harbored for the most part behind the doors of the intelligence wings of both countries. India`s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Israel`s Mossad began relations in the late 1960s and it was this association that enabled Moshe Dayan to visit India in the 1970s. The Israeli army and intelligence is well known for its secrecy and RAW followed in those well-trod footprints: information about Israeli-Indian contacts is not easy to find, but for the occasional statement by politicians or bureaucrats.

Since 1992, the relationship remained clandestine, with both sides wary of any open acknowledgement of the military ties. In March 1992, when Deputy Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs came to New Delhi to open the embassy, he told the press that `nobody told us of Indian needs in the areas of defense.` Not two months later Israeli defense industrialists came on an official visit to India to discuss arms purchases, but neither government went public to acknowledge the tour.

Israel`s charge d`affaires Giora Becher noted that `it was not the right time` to talk about the arms trade, and when challenged in Parliament, the Congress Party leader and Prime Minister noted that `we obviously know less than some of the members [of the opposition].`


Emboldened by the rise of the Hindu Right in India and the Zionist Right in Israel, the militaries and arms manufacturers in both countries became more open about their relationship. The Confederation of Indian Industry, the Israeli Manufacturers Association, the Israeli Aircraft Industries exchanged delegations, and at the December 1993 Indian air show at Bangalore, the Sibat (the Foreign Defense Assistance and Defense Export Organization of the Israeli army) held the largest demonstration after the Russia.With the Russians unable to retrofit the old Soviet armaments, the Indians turned to Israeli expertise in this area.


India`s first shopping list was loaded with aircraft demands, mainly to replace the ailing MIG-21 and MIG-29 fleet. But by the time the Hindu Right took power in 1998, the list grew much longer and far more complex. It also reveals the sub-imperial ambitions of the Hindu Right over southern Asia. In May 1998, a few days after the nuclear tests, a delegation from Israeli Aircraft Industries toured India to sell their pilotless aircraft anti-ship missiles. Components of a missile defense shield, then, have been in the works for India for at least three years.

A set of deals have been signed between the arms merchants in India and Israel to buy goods for the airforce (MIGs, Light Combat Aircraft, AWACs), navy (aircraft carrier, maritime radar, attack craft), army (Main Battle Tank, Advanced Light Helicopters), and for the missile branch of the military (the Indian defense contractors want to buy Israeli guidance and launch systems for the Prithvi surface to surface missile, and for the sea to surface Sagarika system, but there is also evidence that India wants Israeli help with the Akash, a missile system akin to the M-11). These weapons would put India into contention as the main power not only in South Asia, but perhaps, as the second front against the Chinese (a move that enabled the US to revise its military doctrine to fight only one full-scale war; its proxy powers would take care of the other one, in the new scenario).

Furthermore, the missile defense parts of the deals would enable India to fantastically suggest that Pakistan`s nuclear option had been neutralized, and that the parity of 1998 had been negated. India`s eagerness for the missile defense, then, is part of the desire of the Hindu Right to will away the 1998 Pakistani tests on the Chagai range.


If Israel`s defense industry sold India only a few million dollars worth of armaments in 1992, by the end of 2001, the amount increased to an astronomical $800 million per year, with contracts for several billion dollars worth of goods. As India and Pakistan sat down for talks in Agra (India) in mid-July 2001, the Indian and Israeli defense chiefs met in Lod (Israel) to conclude a $2 billion deal that will upgrade Indian fighter jets, provide India with Barak-type surface to surface missiles, and with parts of a missile defense package (unmanned aerial vehicles and radar systems).

The radar system, known as Green Pine, is part of the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system deployed in Israel and it alone comes at a cost of $250 million. The unmanned aerial devices cost $300 million and some of them from an earlier purchase have already been deployed by the Indian military (they saw action during the Kargil conflict in 1999) The IAI indicated last year that a further $2 billion in arms sales would follow the July 2001 contract; in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the US virtually ended the sanctions regime on India and thereby has increased the chances of a further arms build-up in India due to the IAI`s supply channels. Only the US buys more arms from Israel than India at this time. Israel is now India`s second largest arms supplier after Russia, but it is poised to overtake the yesterday`s arms giant.


Conventional weapons are not the only interest. Twice before the 1998 nuclear tests by India in Pokhran, India`s leading nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Kalam visited Israel. After his June 1996 visit, the two countries began to cooperate earnestly on sales of missile technology to India. When Israeli defense personnel and defense industrialists visit India, it is well known that they make a stop to see Dr. Abdul Kalam whose title is Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Defense, but who is known for his crucial role in nuclear weapons development. Both governments deny any cooperation on the nuclear front, however the materials available seem to suggest that some element of discussion and assistance might have been involved.

The Question of Terror: Future US-India-Israel Axis

Just a few days after India announced the establishment of diplomatic ties with Israel [in 1992], Ya`acov Lapidot, the Director General of the Israeli Police Ministry told the press after a visit to India that Israel was ready to give India help in the field of law and order, notably in the suppression of terrorism. Benjamin Netanyahu, then a junior minister in the government, told the Indian press that Israel `had developed expertise in dealing with terrorism at the field level and also internationally at the political and legal level, and would be happy to share it with India.` In late February of 1992, India`s Defense Minister Sharad Pawar said that the new relations allowed India to draw `Israel`s successful experience to curb terrorism.`


When the Hindu Right government came to power in 1998, the issue of terrorism took on a new urgency, since this government was prone to depict any act of violence by a Muslim as terrorism, and consequently any act of violence by a Hindu as either self-defense or the resentment of years of tyranny. In 1994, L. K. Advani, then leader of the opposition in India and a major force in the Hindu Right, visited Israel and has since developed warm ties with the Zionist elements in the Israeli establishment.

When Advani returned in 1995 he met Netanyahu, who presented him with a book on terrorism. Since then Advani has made it a practice to quote from that book when he speaks about terrorism, particularly the following: `when war gives terrorism, free society must know what they are fighting. And they must reject absolutely the notion that ``one man`s terrorist is another man`s freedom fighter.``` In other words, even as this is a rather opaque quote, the PLO (for Israel) and the various Kashmiri militant groups (for India) are terrorists regardless of any political claims they may have.


During his visit in 2000, Advani, now as Home Minister, said that he wanted to learn how Israel has dealt with Islamic fundamentalism. `Israel`s Mossad has proved itself to be an expert in this field,` he said and he hoped that the Indian agencies would learn `some of the finer aspects of intelligence gathering from the Israelis,` notably from the Mossad and Shin Bet. `Israel and India have both grappled with [terrorism] during the last two decades,` he noted.

`Terrorist organizations are now known to establish and have international linkages. This makes it necessary for the countries which are victims of such terrorism to learn from the experience of each other.` Rumors of Israeli agents alongside Indian troops in Kashmir frequently make their way among the press corps in New Delhi and in Tel Aviv, but there is nothing substantive to make a story. But it is certainly the case that Israel offered support during the Kargil campaign in 1999, it has advised India on techniques to close the Line of Control (similar to Israel`s attempts to close the border with the PA), and in early January 2002, Israel Defense Minister Shimon Peres told the Mumbai (India) press that Israel is ready to help India deal with Pakistan after the 13 December 2001 attack on parliament, but `it depends on India, what it wants and we are available.`


India and Israel could not be major players in the US-UK`s Fifth Afghan War, because, as the Pakistanis made clear, the coalition must have an Islamic face. Nevertheless, the aftermath of 9/11 and of the war reveals certain trends toward the creation of a Tel Aviv-New Delhi-Washington axis that will have an important role in the southern and western parts of Asia. In January 2002, the US cleared the sale of the Israeli Phalcon early warning radar systems to India (a deal worth $1 billion); the US had earlier stopped the deal with the argument that it might escalate tensions in the subcontinent. Now with tensions at war point, the US allows the sale. Meanwhile, the Chinese sold two squadrons (46) of F-7 MG fighter jets to Pakistan, a sale that enables the Pakistani Air Force to reach aerial parity with India. India wants to emulate the Israeli path to being a regional power with international prestige, at whatever the social or human cost. Israel sees India as a vast market for its arms, and as an ally against what it calls the Islamic world. The US, under the right, is eager to see a new configuration that includes India and Israel to encircle both Islam and Communism, to dispatch the new bogeymen of the 21st Century. These are dark times.


Vijay Prashad is most recently the author of `War Against the Planet: The Fifth Afghan War, US Imperialism and Other Assorted Fundamentalism` (New Delhi: Leftword Books, 2002). To obtain a copy, please write to leftword@vsnl.com.