The Lama, the Dragon and the Red Rainbow

On October 7 South African anti-apartheid crusader and Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu turned 80 years old. While the whole of South Africa rejoiced, one could not overlook the pall of gloom hanging heavy over the occasion. And Desmond Tutu himself made a reference to it, Fellow Nobel Laureate the Dalai Lama, who was expected to attend the celebration and give talks in the country, was not present at the function because the South African government did not process his visa. Tutu might be an octogenarian and retired from active duty as archbishop, but his vigour and zeal to fight injustice is as strong as it was in the eighties when he fought the minority White apartheid regime in South Africa. Tutu was critical of the ruling African National Congress for bowing to diplomatic pressure from China (China is one of the biggest investors in the country). And all it took for Beijing to stop South Africa from issuing the Dalai Lama a visa was a pledge to invest $2.5 billion in South Africa. The South African government played it safe by not antagonising China and inviting the Middle Kingdom’s displeasure (see The Dalai Lama Effect). But the reaction of the people of South Africa, as of many around the world, was best summarised on a banner outside the cathedral: ‘Sold out for a few yuan’.

Hounding the Lama

This is not the first time China has had its way in sidelining the Dalai Lama on various stages around the world. From 1959, when he fled Tibet after an uprising against the Communist Party of China failed, China has been after the Dalai Lama, who currently lives in India. Though there was unrest prior to it, it was the Lhasa uprising in March 1959 that got wide global attention.
The present Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, is the 14th reincarnation of the Buddha Avalokiteshvara.  Though a leader for the people of Tibet, he is seen as a separatist by Beijing. While he has been going around the world speaking about the cause and garnering support for the Tibetan movement, China has been stonewalling the efforts of the Lama.
In 1989 when the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, China warned Norway of the cutting of trade relations. China took objection to Canada’s decision to award the Dalai Lama honorary citizenship in 2006 and to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s meeting him in September 2007. In December 2008 Belgium’s Prime Minister Yves Leterme’s meeting Dalai Lama irked China. Beijing once again raised objections to Mexican President Felipe Calderón meeting the Lama this month.
In 2009 the Dalai Lama was prevented from attending a Nobel laureate’s conference in South Africa. The same year in October, while the Dalai Lama was in Washington, United States President Barack Obama cancelled a meeting with the spiritual leader after what was recognised as pressure from China. In refusing to meet the Lama, Obama became the first US President to do so. The round went to China. This was the same Obama who, along with Hillary Clinton, in April 2008 urged then President George W Bush to boycott the Beijing Olympics because of the bloody repression of the uprising in Tibet. However, the following February Obama met the Dalai Lama at the White House. Again in July 2011 they met at the White House. As expected China voiced its displeasure but with the two Nobel Peace Laureates meeting, that round went to the Tibetan spiritual leader.

Protests and India

Since 1959 Beijing has taken full control over Tibet. From 1959 to 1989 (Tiananmen Square) it went about its social and political reforms and after 1989 it has concentrated on suppressing the uprisings in Tibet, including the bloody suppression of the 2008 uprising which coincided with the Beijing Olympics. Currently there is a cycle of protests under way with the tenth monk setting himself ablaze in China. On October 25 a monk in the Sichuan province took the extreme step in a wave of anti-China protests hitting the country. China, as usual, dismissed the incidents as conspiracies by ‘splittist’ agitators, who China claims are influenced and instigated by the Dalai Lama.
Tibet has a very great bearing on Sino-India relations. The two countries at the best of times are suspicious of each other and at worst have fought a war – 1962 – in which India was badly scarred. Though over the years bilateral relations have looked up, there are whispers in the dark about unresolved issues like the border conflict. In Sino-India relations Arunachal Pradesh is a contentious issue because it is generally believed that if the next Dalai Lama has to come from outside Tibet, it is likely to be from Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh where the Sixth Dalai Lama came from.

 The Dalai Lama Effect

In 2010, Andreas Fuchs and Neils Hendrik Klann from the University of Gottingen, Germany, undertook a study to find out whether China's trade with countries was affected if the leaders of that country met the Tibetan spiritual leader. The inference was that there was a decrease in exports from 8 to 16 per cent from a particular country to China if its political leader met the Dalai Lama. Fuchs and Klann called this the 'Dalai Lama Effect'.

Red Rainbow and Hope

It’s not just the ‘Rainbow Nation’ that is exhibiting more hues of red. Almost every country around the world that wants to be part of the benefits of the economic juggernaut that China is today is turning a blind eye to many of its transgressions. Apart from issuing standard statements of remorse and regret at China’s human rights abuse, no country including India and the United States is willing to back its words with actions. China’s permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council gives it more power to act according to its discretion.
The present generation Tibetans living outside the country have not been to their homeland and China is betting that as Tibetan youth get assimilated into the culture of the country they are in, the movement will lose its zest. The movement also faces a number of crucial questions: Who after the current Dalai Lama? Will there be another Lama? What about China’s efforts to project a Lama? What is the future of the Tibetan political movement under Kalon Tripa (prime minister) Lobsang Sangay?
For now the advantage seems to be on Beijing’s side but the power of a peaceful resistance can never be undermined. There is hope for Tibet and its people in exile and they, scattered around the world, seem to have taken this Chinese adage to heart: You must persevere to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks.

(This article appeared in The New Indian Express on November 3, 2011)

Is development dehumanising us?

On Friday October 21 two-year-old Wang Yue, from China’s industrial heartland Guangdong, died. This in itself is hardly any news and in a country like China, as in India, where infant mortality is a daily reality, a fact we have to swallow. Now as more details are added about Wang Yue’s death, check where it touches  a chord or if there is a lump in the throat — Wang Yue was run over by a van in a Foshan market on October 13; after the driver noticed that the front wheel had gone over her, he stopped, deliberated what to do next (in China compensation for death is limited while medical costs for the injured can be ongoing) and ran the rear types over her and sped away; 18 people (including women) passed by but avoided attending to her; in between another van ran over her. All this happened while the market was in full swing. If not for a 58-year-old street cleaner, Yueyue, as Wang Yue’s parents called her, would have been left unattended for who knows how long.
The question to ask is: Has China traded its soul to keep pace with development? The answer is not an easy one but that seems to be the consensus many are arriving at, or are afraid that will soon befall the Middle Kingdom. While Internet sites are filled with discussions about this “painful heartlessness”, as one Sina Weibo user put it, a significant move is the powerful Central Committee of the Communist Party last week acknowledging that China needs to build a “powerful socialist culture” and has decided that the main theme for this year’s plenum will be “cultural development”.
There are many factors that lead to this insensitiveness and while it is one thing to pass judgment sitting in a different country or in the comfort of the armchair, it is an altogether different story when put in a real situation.
Many people in China attribute this callousness to what is called the ‘Nanjing Effect’. In 2006, a man from Nanjing helped an elderly woman to the hospital after she had broken her leg. He was sued and ended up paying 40 per cent of her medical bills — all for extending a helping hand to a stranger; and this is just one of the many cases where Good Samaritans have ended up being victimised. In some Western countries, like Canada, there is a Good Samaritan Law which protects people who are not from the medical fraternity from facing liability for helping victims. In France and Germany law has it that it is the duty of every citizen to help victims.
It might be a far call for such laws to be effective in populous countries, but experts agree that a vacuum has been created in China by the Communist Party’s ‘iron fist’ policies. “No one believes in Marxism any more, Confucianism is not being revived, and Western values are not being accepted,” Bo Zhiyue, a Chinese politics expert, told Globe and Mail.
Eighteenth Century England lamented the loss of the mild pace of life and the mechanisation of man with the advent of Industrial Revolution. After Luddites attacked factories, laws were passed to protect machines. While England was the industrial powerhouse then, today, without batting an eyelid one can say that China is the vortex of industrial growth. Now China is contemplating passing laws to protect people who show traces of tenderness and kindness towards fellow humans — it’s a vicious cycle we’ve completed.
That brings us to the headline: Is development dehumanising us? If China does not address this numbing plague, it will be too late before it realises that the rapid economic and technological development it is achieving is creating soulless terracotta warriors in the hope that they will one day rise and protect society.
(This appeared in The New Indian Express on October 26 in the Mindspace)

The Afghanistan Question

In a June 2011 prime-time broadcast United States President Barack Obama announced the much anticipated troop withdrawal plan from Afghanistan. But Obama was not being completely honest when he said, “We are starting this drawdown from a position of strength…” because by then it was largely acknowledged the US Afghan policy was myopic and off target.

Afghanistan became the cynosure of popular hatred after it was said that the 9/11 terror attacks on the US were masterminded by a person sitting deep inside the Tora Bora caves. Overnight Osama bin Laden’s name became synonymous with Satan and it was the ‘duty’ of the US to hunt him down. Under President George W Bush America entered Afghanistan a little over a decade after leaving the nation in shambles after defeating the Russians. The aim was to get “justice” and to get Osama “dead or alive”, to recall Bush’s September 17, 2001 statement. This was padded up with the altruistic motive of ‘liberating’ the Afghans from the evil Taliban. On May 2 the US achieved its first objective when Osama was gunned down in his Abbottabad hideout in Pakistan. The ‘liberation’ of Afghans is still a distant dream.

Groping in the Dark

Afghanistan today is a quagmire, thanks to the ‘interests’ and ‘invasions’ by the Russians in the Eighties and by Americans after 9/11. However, the coming months and years are very crucial for Afghanistan, the region and the whole world. While Obama promised to bring back US troops from Afghanistan, what he did not promise was that in withdrawing from Afghanistan America would leave it a better place than when it went into the country a decade ago. The US has not got its act together and is literally groping in the dark desperately trying to find the way out. Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain’s Afghan envoy from 2007 to 2010, in his recent book Cables from Kabul: The Inside Story of the West’s Afghanistan Campaign says that while the coalition’s intentions were good and there was progress in the initial years, success was prematurely declared, while in reality the bad guys had just moved back into the safe havens in the Af-Pak border and into Pakistan. 

Inglorious Exit

By the time it was realised that the war was anything but over, in order to give an honourable façade to what seems to be an inglorious exit the CIA advisors in Langley came up with the ‘good’ Taliban-‘bad’ Taliban theory. The lack of sincerity with which Washington was selling this story was enough for the world to call America’s bluff. What the US forgot was that all cats are grey in the dark.

No sooner had Obama announced the pullout than the attacks on US and NATO troops began to rise. The United Nations, in its quarterly report on Afghanistan, has stated that as of August  2011 the monthly average of attacks is around 2,100, close to 40 per cent more than what it was last year during this period. September has been one of the bloodiest months for the coalition forces. The ground situation is beginning to resemble the 2001 mayhem when coalition forces entered the country. The quality of the lives of Afghans has not dramatically improved in accordance to the money the US has poured into the country. But believe it or not, the worst part is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Islamabad Games

Washington, while going into Afghanistan, joined hands with an old ‘friend’ from the region which had helped the US oust the Russians from Afghanistan. This friend of the US, which it has often in the past pitted against India for geo-strategic reasons, is India’s neighbour to the west — Pakistan. On the outside it looked like the usual American plan — the US has mastered the art of befriending nations in the vicinity of its enemy nation, to provide aid and set up military bases. What they chose to overlook was the ties the Taliban has maintained with Pakistan’s notorious spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Lakhdar Brahimi, former special representative of the United Nations to Afghanistan and Iraq, while characterising the influence of its neighbours on Afghanistan said, “A fly cannot go in unless it stops somewhere; therefore weapons, fuel, food, money will not go to Afghanistan unless the neighbours of Afghanistan are working, are cooperating, either being themselves the origin or the transit.”

Through supporting the Taliban the ISI is creating a conducive environment for it in Afghanistan once the coalition leaves the country. Islamabad has always used Kabul as its backyard for perpetrating terror. And now it will not want to lose this advantage to a ‘liberated’, ‘developing’ Afghanistan, especially one in which India is playing a crucial role.

Last Chance

“As for the United States’ future in Afghanistan, it will be fire and hell and total defeat, God willing, as it was for their predecessors — the Soviets and, before them, the British.”

— Mohammed Omar, Taliban leader in Afghanistan

The regional powers are meeting in Istanbul in November and there is a meeting in Germany in December coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. If international forces make some serious decisions, rather than nodding to the ‘reports of progress’ and ‘plan of action’ set forth by the United States; if the nations wake up to the reality that the time for rapping Pakistan on its knuckles for the double game it is playing is over and concrete action (in the form of sanctions, listing of its terror networks, etc) needs to be taken, then there is hope for a nation which has been at the receiving end of world powers who from the time of The Great Game have been trying to ‘help’ it.

History has an uncanny way of repeating itself and it is up to the international community, especially the United States of America, to see to it that the axiom often associated with Afghanistan — the graveyard of empires — is removed.

(This was published in The New Indian Express on October 13, 2011)

India Heading South-East

Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang is in India on a four-day visit to strengthen ties and Myanmar’s President U Thein Sein will be visiting India starting Wednesday. All these are signs that the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government has moved beyond its United States fixation and has started to recognise the important role it can play in the Asia region, especially East Asia.
The visit by Sang comes at a time when Hanoi-Beijing tensions over ownership rights in the East China Sea (or East Sea for Vietnam) are mounting and Sang’s statement that India is welcome to explore hydrocarbons in the region should be seen in this light. Nevertheless, it is a positive sign that trade between the two countries is at $1.8 billion in the first half of 2011 and it is poised to increase.
India-Myanmar relations, though not the most conducive, have been picking up lately, especially after the November 2010 elections which saw a ‘civilian’ government in Yangon. With the release of 6,359 ‘prisoners of conscience’ sanctions imposed on Myanmar are likely to be lifted and India can benefit from this opening. Moreover from the point of view of energy and security good ties Myanmar will be beneficial.
It is not merely a coincidence that Vietnam and Myanmar are approaching India at a time when they are locking horns with China. No doubt, the two countries have to cosy up towards China, as their relations with India cannot be at the expense of China. But the latter’s aggressiveness has made many of its neighbours wary and it is natural that these nations, to safeguard their interests, turn to another big country. If India plays its cards rightly, it can gain in prominence as a powerhouse worthy of being looked up to by others in the region. New Delhi has long neglected East Asia and this may be the chance for it to go full throttle on its Look East policy.
(This was published in The New Indian Express as an edit on October 12, 2011)

Aakash Provides a Galaxy of Opportunity

The news media around the world had two major technology stories on Thursday. Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple, passed away at 56 after a prolonged battle with cancer. The other was the release of the cheapest tablet in the world -- Aakash. While the former cast a pall of gloom, the latter brings hope and promise. If the right moves are made, Aakash, developed by the government of India and manufactured by Datawind, a Canada-based company run by two NRIis, is set to bring about change in a big way much like the mobile phones did to communication a decade earlier.
However, Aakash has had its share of controversies. When Union minister Kapil Sibal made the announcement on July 22, 2010 that the government would be bring out an affordable tablet aiming students, the news spread like wild fire around the world. A prototype was displayed but soon it was ridiculed as a sham and rumours spread that India was pulling a fast one, that it was buying in bulk from China and passing it as its own. In July 2010 India did not have a manufacturer on board. But that was then and fourteen months later it’s a different tale.
Aakash is an Android 2.2 based 7-inch resistive touchscreen, 256MB RAM, 2GB internal storage and 366MHz processor tablet and with a price tag between `1,300 and `2,999 the industry is sitting up and taking note.
There is a lot of promise, especially in the academic sector, but the promoters of Aakash will do well not to target the entire tablet market. Every product that is well-thought and designed will have a particular audience. In this case, the HRD ministry has done the right thing in focusing at bringing technology to the common man and student community at an affordable price.
A uniqueness, and a very significant one, about the Aakash is that the government of India has collaborated in the realisation of this tablet. Rather than going in for a bulk order of a popular gadget from an overseas MNC, which is the easy way out, the Ministry of Human Resource Development put its thinking cap on and has dared to dream. Aakash is the realisation and fruit of that dream.
One thing that can be safely said at this initial stage is that the Aakash will not cause any sleepless nights for the manufacturers of high-end tablets like Apple’s iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. With its technical features and low pricing the Aakash has turned the tables in the mid and lower ranges in the tablet market.
While the euphoria hangs in the air and everyone is gung ho about India’s ‘nano’ tablet, we should be cautious of not letting this venture slip into the abyssal knot of governmental bureaucracy and red-tapism because that is exactly what will kill the future of this promising product.
This is definitely a shot in the arm for the Information Technology revolution unfolding in the country. If channelled in the right direction Aakash can help in advancing educational facilities, healthcare services and administration services, among other fields, in rural areas.
Datawind and the government should prepare itself with the next equally important leg for the success of the product – customer care and support. Given the pricing and readily available demand for tablets --- not to mention the untapped sectors of the market --- a wide network of easily accessible and efficient customer care support is very crucial. A slip over here would be unfortunate not just for the promoters but also for the hopes of a billion people resting on Aakash.
Among world technological powers India has regrettably been an underdog and while this indigenously developed tablet is not a game changer, Aakash has done the most important thing --- bring technology to the masses at affordable prices.
On a lighter note, it will be interesting to see how neighbouring China will react to Aakash. With Tianhe-1A, the fastest computer in the world, in its kitty China is miles ahead of India on the research side. The same is the case with its ability to produce knock-offs of original products --- in some cases much before the original product hits the market, as has happened with Apple’s iPhone 5. So don’t be surprised if a grey market near you starts displaying China’s answer to India’s Aakash – the Tiānkōng.

Where hope is a cruel mirage

The queue stretches for miles. It consists of mainly women and children — all in different stages of death. The fortunate ones have not had food for day. The less fortunate ones can’t remember when they had their last meal. A mother holds her little one close enough to feel its heart beat. The child is severely malnourished. It has been reduced to an emancipated foetus with a swollen abdomen and glazed eyes. Probably the only way to ascertain a semblance of life is through the heartbeat. The mother hopes to make it to the head of the queue. Sometimes the child won’t make it or sometimes the mother. Maybe both won’t. If they are lucky both will make it alive. They are waiting under the blaze of the unforgiving sun to join the 3 lakh registered (and thousands of unregistered) refugees at the world’s largest refugee camp, the Dadaab Refugee Camp in Northern Kenya.

It is estimated that there are more than four million starving people in Somalia alone. Thousands (an exact count is impossible) have died and more than 7,50,000 are said to be ‘high-risk’ starvation groups, which means close to eight lakh people are at the risk of dying due to the non-availability of food and water. To put that figure in perspective — imagine the whole city of Kochi (which has an estimated population of around 6-7 lakh) starving without access for a square meal or reliable water to drink.

Over two decades of lawlessness and clan wars, a non-functional government coupled with the rise of Islamic terror — Somalia today is the stuff of what nightmares are made of.

But this was a tragedy that could have been avoided. The first red flags appeared 11 months ago when the October rains failed. When the rains gave a miss in April the UN and other agencies should have had a plan to tackle the situation. Instead, thanks to the uncompromising attitude of al-Shabaab (an Islamic terrorist outfit) and the grandstanding of the US, what the world literally did was to sit on its hands. Washington’s listing of al-Shabaab as a terrorist organisation in 2008 restricted more than 80 per cent of the aid that was flowing into Somalia because agencies aiding terrorist organisations in any form face penalisation. This meant that food that was until then reaching the starving thousands in southern Somalia stopped overnight.

The restrictions put on al-Shabaab crippled it to a certain extent. A great part of the aid was until then siphoned off by the militants and sold in the market. This stopped. They were being funded from the Middle East and other areas. This started to trickle and on August 6 they withdrew from Mogadishu, capital of Somalia. But in the process of restricting a few thousand al-Shabaab militants the United States choked millions of starving Somalis. Was that the only way?

Today Mogadishu is seeing people arrive in tens and thousands as al-Shabaab militants, who have ties with al-Qaeda, have retreated and left the city. This coming back of sorts is happening after almost five years in which the Islamic militants have been waging a war with the African Union troops who support a weak Transitional Federal Government, supported by Ethiopia who, in turn, are supported by the United States.

Terror in Somalia

The United Nations, African Union and other international watchers unanimously agree that the presence of terror groups has aggravated the humanitarian crisis. In other words the rise of extremism has a direct correlation with the famine. Al-Shabaab is the principle militant outfit in Somalia. In addition to spreading violence in Somalia and trying to establish its foothold in the neighbouring countries, al-Shabaab is causing numerous roadblocks in aid reaching the needy. Reports in July stated that al-Shabaab refused international aid in the regions under its control stating that there was no famine or crisis in those regions. It has stopped agencies from providing aid citing that aid is a means through which the West indoctrinates the people. Al-Shabaab leader Fuad Mohamed Qalaf in 2010 had sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. It should be noted that the almost negligible power of the Transitional Federal Government, in certain pockets in the country, has led to the thriving of extremist groups.

Neighbours React to Famine

Much before the media around the world picked up the crisis in the Horn of Africa, local media was pointing to the crisis that was unfolding. Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania, all countries geographically close to Somalia, are feeling the heat of the famine. Kenya and Ethiopia seem to be the worst hit with Somali refugees pouring into the camps in these countries. Many of the people here believe that in addition to the failed harvest and drought, the lack of planning for such a scenario has led to the famine worsening. The Nairobi Star, a Kenyan daily, reported that “Kenyans are starving not because the land is infertile, but because there is total mix up of priorities.”

For many people around the world Somalia and the Horn of Africa might be a tragedy unfolding at a comfortable distance. But to ignore the crisis and move ahead will be wrong on two counts. First, it shows a lack of humaneness to walk past failing to sympathise with the innocent children suffering for no fault of theirs. Secondly, these conditions now unfolding in the region are fertile ground for extremism and lawlessness. It should be a surprise that sea piracy (which affects all major countries including India) is a thriving industry in Somalia.

Playwright and a pioneer of the Theatre of the Absurd Eugene Ionesco said “Ideologies separate us, dreams and anguish bring us together.” It’s the dreams of the mothers and anguish in the eyes of the thousands queuing outside the various refugee camps that should bring the world together for a catastrophe that is of a magnitude not witnessed in the recent past.

(This article was published by The New Indian Express on Monday September 19, 2011. Link: http://expressbuzz.com/school/somalia-the-land-where-hope-is-a-cruel-mirage/315230.html

Right-wing terror– An inconvenient truth

On Friday, July 22, 2011, Norway was shaken and with it the whole world. Two terrorist acts, carried out by the same person, became the worst attack on Norway since World War II. The first was a car bomb explosion at a government office which killed eight people and critically wounded many. The second was more drastic. A man, in the colours of a policeman, opened fire on innocent campers attending a youth camp of the Norwegian Labour Party on the island of Utoya. He killed more than 70 and scarred many more for life. The toll has reached 93 and an equal number are undergoing treatment. Both attacks were brewed within the country by a well-educated, financially sound 32-year-old Norwegian, Anders Benring Breivik, from the majority community in Norway.

Fear Of The ‘Other’

To say that Anders Behring Breivik is a loner, i.e. his case can be seen as a rare exception, is to trivialise the issue and ignore the dangers it portends for society. For too long governments the world over have ignored, sidelined or rubbished reports of the growing presence of organisations that view immigration and assimilation of cultures, religions and race as a threat to the existing majority community in a country.

Though the initial suspicion in Oslo was that the attacks had links to a jihadist bombing plot last year or the prosecution of an Iraqi terrorist, it was soon realised that the terror had not come from foreign shores. This was the same mistake the US authorities made when they assumed that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was the work of a group from outside the country. Only later did they realise a US Army veteran had blown up the truck in an act of revenge for the 1993 Waco Siege in which 76 people died, including David Koresh, leader of Branch Davidians, a Christian cult group.

This hatred towards the ‘other’ (as Edward W Said explains in his 1978 book ‘Orientalism’) cannot be seen in isolation and finds parallels in other places in Europe and the United States. A ‘right-wing Christian fundamentalist’, Breivik in an interview in which he asks and answers his own questions describes his ideology as “cultural conservatism, or a nationalist/conservative orientation known as the Vienna school of thought. As a political movement, I would describe it as a national resistance movement, an indigenous rights movement or even a right-revolutionary movement”.

Right-Wingers

People like Breivik are misled into believing that if things go on the way they are, with continuing immigration mainly from the Muslim-dominated parts of Africa and West Asia, it will lead to a clash of civilisations. They are indoctrinated to see it as is their job to ‘rescue’, ‘protect’ or even ‘cleanse’ their country. In his 1,500-page manifesto ‘2083: A European Declaration of Independence’ Breivik mentions that his aim is to save “European Christendom” and help it prevail against the “Marxist-Islamic alliance and the certain Islamic takeover of Europe to completely annihilate European Christendom”.

Bourgeois, Redneck Politics

The economic slowdown and high levels of immigration have fuelled an anxiety among the majority population and given more room and acceptability to right wing forums and parties that have come to the front since the eighties. Even mainstream parties are going populist.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared in October 2010 that “multiculturalism has failed, utterly failed” and this is the prod the Christian Social Union was waiting for to up the ante against immigration from West Asia. British Prime Minister David Cameron echoed Merkel’s views in February. In France it seems that despite Front National leader Marine Le Pen lacing her comments with scorn for Muslims her public ratings are soaring, threatening to unseat President Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 election. In the Netherlands the Party of Freedom won 15 percent of the vote share in 2010. Its leader Greet Wilder compares the Quran to ‘Mein Kampf’ and says, “I don’t hate Muslims. I hate Islam.” In Sweden and Denmark right-wingers are quick to attribute any and every problem the countries face to Muslims. In the US rabid-mouthed vitriol-spewing Republicans are getting shriller in their anti-Muslim rants and Christian pastors like Terry Jones, who proposed to burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11, are bolder – and stupider – than ever before.

These politicians provide grist for the fundamentalists’ mill. A common thread in all these cases is the growing Islamophobia (which peaked after 9/11, 7/7 and the Madrid bombings). But what is unfortunate is that just as European leaders have not done their part, Muslim rulers and leaders around the world have not done substantially enough to denounce the violence perpetrated by jihadists.

Camouflaged Easy Targets

The Fat Men and Little Boys can be used as political deterrents and for sabre-rattling between hostile nations. The unfortunate fact is that more casualties are caused by small-scale high-impact attacks by ‘loners’, sleeper cells and little known fringe groups around the world, which thrive because of a lack of effective surveillance.

A trait of these individuals/groups is that they do not show on the radar (suspect list or surveillance category) of the authorities as they do not come under the government classification of ‘suspects’.

Another trait of many people used by extremist groups, either through direct recruitment or through indoctrination, is that most of them are young, educated, from reasonably well-to-do backgrounds. More often than not indoctrination happens through local influence groups (like religious institutions or community-based organisations) or through the Internet (websites, chat rooms and networking sites) as in the case of Breivik. The Internet provides fundamentalists the manna that changes the world view of gullible people like Breivik. A fact, which many fail to see, is that most of the arguments and conclusions are based on specious arguments and discussions.

Shiver Down The Spine

Timothy J McVeigh, the 1995 Oklahoma City bomber whose act of lunacy claimed the lives of 168 people, commented thus on his deed, “Isn’t it kind of scary that one man could wreak this kind of hell?” McVeigh’s reflection of his work should send a shiver down the spine of every law enforcement officer. Imagine the many McVeighs and Breiviks who can be or are misguided. If July 22 has a message it is that no longer can any country afford to be naïve. While focusing on the trouble from outside it cannot ignore the rumbles from within.

(This article was published in The New Indian Express
http://expressbuzz.com/school/right-wing-terror%E2%80%93-an-inconvenient-truth/310786.html)