EDITORIAL
Imprudent privatization!
It must be realized that
the free lunches are over. The Governments would not be
able any longer to finance the high expenses to subsidize
the services that had, till not too long ago, been taken
as the ‘due function’ of the Governments. The
main reason for the Governments being forced to curb
their expense-account has been the fact that Governments
have stretched themselves to cover almost all the fields
of social and economic activities. From production
manufacture to distribution and services, the Government
in everything. When this extended interference of the
government met with the essential inability of the
Government to be a trader or commercial manager, the
whole edifice of ‘Government entrepreneurship’
came crumbling down. Today the Governments are faced with
the spectacle of steep rise in their expenses while the
revenues, though rising, are nowhere near meeting the
expenses. Then, the foreign aid that the Governments here
had got accustomed to began to shrink. The Governments
‘suddenly’ seemed to realize that those hefty,
loans they had been receiving had to be paid back with
interest. Today the repayments eat up nearly a third of
the total revenues the Governments earn. No wonder the
Government has begun to get hemmed in on all sides.
Those who have been
accusing the Government here of not being able to bring
in efficiency in their activities must realize that it
was the ‘efficient’ and ‘capable’ as
well as highly empowered’ autocratic, that is--
communist regimes that proved to be incapable of managing
the extended governance they took upon themselves. It was
in fact, their model of high interference that the
government in India had been emulating. China first
declared its ‘incompetence’ here, but did it in
a clever manner, calling capitalization of its economy
'modernizations’. It is a fully capitalist country
today while it retains the ‘communist’ title.
Russia did it more openly-or, inaptly ? India could not
but follow, as the economic pressures grew enormously.
Gradually those pressures are seeping into the states.
This state, which has been tinkering with economic
reforms for the last few years, has now come down heavily
to curb its expense bill. And all in the wrong way. There
are imperatives for economizing the government
expenditures. There are also imperatives to raise the
revenue base. The way Government has been constrained
over the power supplies, to take one most evident
instance, underscores this need to get prudent about the
financial management.
Yes, the Government must
get prudent about its spendings, but not imprudent in
implementing the reforms. Thus while there is a case for
the Government to reduce its expenditure, there are areas
where this expenditure can be, indeed must be, reduced.
The high army of its ministerial staff, for example. The
highly bloated secretarial corps, too. The loss making
corporations and commissions it has been supporting, for
another. The tendency to ever increase its force of
employees. This is done on one welfare pretext or another
but is actually used as to further the political fortunes
of the ruling party. Here, the ruling party must realize
that being in power does not mean that it has the
sanction to use the Government and its machinery to
further its political interests. People rightly ask
whether recruiting a lakh of people, over the last few
years, has in any way helped the administration,
increased effeciency, brought in better governance or
services, or even helped reduce the terrorism or the
so-called furstration of the youth over being unemployed.
The rosters at the
employment exchanges are bloated as ever, and legions of
educated. skilled young men and women looking for jobs
continue to grow. Meanwhile, the state has been trying
everything to get top-heavy. With half a dozen
‘Chief Secretaries’, as many ‘Director
Generals of Police’, the state of just a crore of
people is administered by scores of commissioners and
countless secretaries and directors. Administrative
reformers have been calling for a drastic reduction in
this ‘army of elites’. In fact, the state can
do without them. And do better. Today more than a third
of the total legislators are ministers of this rank or
that. Doesn’t financial prudence dictate any expense
reduction here’? Then there are wasteful habits the
state has acquired and is loath to give up, take the
District Development Board meeting, reports indicate that
during the last half-a-dozen DDB meetings held at
district headquarters, nothing, which could not be
decided at the usual cabinet meetings, has been done. The
meetings have been too short but consumed gallons of
petrol and crores in expenses, besides the time expense.
There was a need to save all this money. There is need to
save in other areas.
Instead the Government has
gone and ‘reduced the expenses on healtheare’.
All economists agree that healthcare and education are
two areas where the government must invest, as much as it
possibly can. Every expense here is as investment in
human resource that goesto firm up the basis for
development in all other spheres. Noble laureate Amritya
Sen has been lauded the world over for his emphasis on
‘free and compulsory education’. In the
ardently capitalist country USA, whole presidencies are
determined by the policy on healthcare and how much the
prospective candidate promises to spend on it. Probably,
we could add the care of the aged and the pensioners,
too. These are the prime areas where government spending
is not only profusely sanctioned’ by the new
economic dispensations, but are actually prescribed as
being crucial to the development of the society. But not
here. Already the Government is virtually washing its
hands off the education. With the recent order of hefty
fee for treatments at the Government Medical Colleges, it
has nearly given up healthcare. True, there may be need
for some revenue generation at these levels, but-no
economist, no social worker no reformer -has preferred a
case for turning these Government facility, into business
propositions. When the governments have slashed all their
expenditure, have become trim and lean, have given up all
meddling-some interferences, and become neat and tidy
smart and efficient, they would still be investing in
health and education.
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Limited
war in the Indian context
By
Gurmeet Kanwal
Clausewitz,
the famous German military thinker, had
defined war as "an act of force to
compel our enemy to do our
will.’’ War is a state of
hostilities between (or among) nations
and is characterised by the use of force.
The essence of war is institutionalised
conflict between two or more hostile,
irreconcilable wills, each trying to
impose itself on the other, when
significant disagreements cannot be
settled through peaceful means such as
diplomacy. In practice, war may range
from intense clashes between large
military forces, backed by a formal
declaration of war, to covert hostilities
that simmer endlessly just above the
threshold of violence.
The
nature, costs and consequences of modern
wars have substantially changed and the
Clausewitzian tenets of destroying the
adversary’s military forces and of
territorial conquests have little
relevance today. Wars in the future will
necessarily be waged with fine-tuned
objective. War can now only be a means to
a limited capture of the adversary’s
territory, to force him to negotiate.
However, destruction of the enemy’s
military machine will remain a key factor
in conventional conflict as deterrence
will hinge on the ability to cause
unacceptable damage to enemy forces,
resulting in the paralysis of his command
structure, which will force him to the
negotiating table. Such destruction will
be caused not so much during the contact
battle but by long range weapons systems
such as artillery and surface-to-surface
missiles (SSMs) and air to ground strikes
by fighter ground attack (PGA) aircraft
and attack helicopters.
As a new
century and, indeed, a new millennium
dawns, it appears certain that regular,
conventionally armed militaries will
gradually take over the role of an
unusable, deterrent from nuclear weapons.
Traditional military principles and aims,
such as the need to launch offensive
action to defeat the enemy, are likely to
change to limiting military action to
inflicting devastating damage on the
enemy’s field forces and thus
containing him, rather than defeating him
comprehensively.
Mass
destruction and large numbers of civilian
and military casualties will no longer be
acceptable in the prevailing socio-
political milieu. A policy of
'protectivism', in which resort to armed
force is rejected as an active instrument
of state policy but accepted as a means
of protecting a country’s existing
territory against military action by an
adversary, is likely to gain
international acceptance.
The major
aim of launching conventional armed
forces into action may change from
defeating the enemy to re-stabilising the
situation to an acceptable level so that
negotiations, or even mediation, can be
resumed. The long-term trend in
inter-state warfare is clearly towards
limited ware.
With its
passage marked by two world wars and
numerous lesser conflicts, the 20th
century has been without doubt the
bloodiest in history. After the advent of
the atom bomb, capable of causing
horrendous destruction, and its first use
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, it is
indeed amazing that the record of blood
and gore has not been much worse. Perhaps
some basic human instinct for survival
stayed the hand that controlled the
nuclear trigger. Though war continued to
hold its Clausewitzian place as the
‘continuation of politics with other
means,’ it gradually dawned on the
security establishments of the
world’s leading powers that
‘total,’ ‘absolute,’
general, or all out, war was no longer
possible (though tacit acceptance came
much later in the early 1990s) and the
half-century since the end of World War
II witnessed mainly limited ware,.
The Korean
conflict that resulted in a stalemate,
the defeat of the ‘United States
(US) in the Vietnam war, the Arab-
Israeli Ware of 1967,1973 and 1982, the
Sino-Indian border conflict of 1962, the
Indo-Pakistan conflicts of 1947-48,1965
and 1971, the Falklands War, the long
drawn out Iran-Iraq conflict, the Soviet
intervention in and ignominious
withdrawal from Afghanistan (1979-89) and
the Gulf War of 1990-91, were all limited
wars. Each of these had limited political
objectives and military aims and even
though these were not achieved in some
cases, escalation was avoided.
War may be
limited in its political objectives and
military aims, in terms of time and
space, in the degree of application of
military force and weapons and in the
number of casualties that may be either
inflicted or accepted. The most vital
limitation of the nuclear age has, of
course, been the non-use of nuclear
weapons. As Major General J F C
‘Boney, Fuller pointed out in a
critique of Clausewitz On War, it is
peace and not victory that is the
ultimate object of war. Acceptance of
this premise automatically rules out
‘all out’ war and only limited
war remains within the realm of
possibility. Geographical limitations in
the theatre of warfighting impose their
own restrictions. Despite its inability
to meet its military objectives in
Vietnam, the US government did not
enlarge the battlespace much beyond the
17th parallel as it saw its involvement
in Vietnam being limited to the
containment of the further expansion of
communism.
This
forced the US army to restrict its
operations to what may be termed as
offensive defence, at the operational
level, rather than any major offensive
action at the strategic level.
Counter-insurgency warfare against the
Vietcong guerrillas remained the dominant
mode of fighting. The prospect of winning
,the war was not sufficiently promising
to warrant the cost of expansion. This
change of emphasis reflects the
acceptance of limited war as an
operational concept in American foreign
policy.
Today when
nations carry out a cost-benefit analysis
to determine whether the achievement of
national aims is commensurate with the
likely costs of waging a major war,
prudence invariably dictates that if war
is unavoidable, it must remain limited in
scope and conduct. While confronting
Pakistan army’s nefarious intrusions
into the Kargil sector of Jammu and
Kashmir (J&K) in mid-1999, the Indian
government had come to the conclusion
that though the early eviction of the
intruders was a prime necessity, it was
not in the overall national interest to
escalate the conflict to other fronts
along the Line of Control (LoC) and the
international border with Pakistan.
Hence, India fought only a limited
localised war to evict Pakistani
intruders.
At the
same time, the Indian military planners
did not hesitate to use overwhelming
artillery firepower and punitive ground
strikes by the Indian Air Force (IAF) to
support the ground offensive in the
Kargil sector. Simultaneously, Pakistan
was dettered from escalating the conflict
by skilfully stage managing the movement
of the army’s strategic reserves and
combat squadrons of the IAF towards the
western border and the Indian Navy’s
Eastern Fleet to the Arabian Sea to
present Pakistan with a fait accompli.
Thus, a clear and concise, though
limited, national aim was achieved
through limited military objectives in a
localised conflict that employed maximum
available ground and air firepower and
succeeded beyond expectations.
PTI Feature
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A
fight against heavy odds
By
Joginder Singh
The return
of George Fernandes to the Cabinet is
being frowned upon not only by the
opposition, but also by the
self-proclaimed defenders, including
Indians of foreign origin, of the
morality of the Nation. I hold no brief
to defend anybody unless there are
compelling reasons for it. Nobody indeed
can dismiss the existence of corruption
both in the civil and military personnel
in the Government. Nobody can deny that
there are still honest people left in
every walk of life, including politics.
There are both honest and dishonest
politicians, and officials. The unjust
criticism is an occupational hazard for
those, especially the politicians, who
are exposed to public gaze. They and
their character can be assassinated.
Fortunately. There is a Punjabi saying
that there is need to differentiate
between the Gadha (Donkey) and Godha
(Horse) and both should not be equated in
competence and intelligence. If it is not
done, the intelligence, competence and
sanity of the undifferentiating is open
to doubt. Not many people, especially the
so-called intellectuals, care for this
differentiation, when it concerns others.
Being self opinionated, with a few
honourable exceptions, most of them
pursue their own agenda and want to prove
a particular point of view, unmindful if
in the process truth is damned.
There is
nothing totally white or totally black,
in this world. Puritans and
self-righteous hate the bear-baiting or
baiting of other animals, not because it
gives pain to the animals, but because it
gives pleasure to the spectators. The
same can he said about the threatened
agitation against or criticism of, the
reinduction of George in the Cabinet.
Every citizen in the country knows that
George resigned as Defence Minister, an
his own, on emotional grounds in the
backlash of the Tehalka expose. There was
no suggestion even a remote one, that
George had accepted any bribe, or done
anything wrong, during his tenure as the
Defence Minister of our country, if
anything, on the contrary, he was the
only Defence Minister, who visited our
troops and Establishments, in the most
inaccessible places and saw for himself
how shabbily bureaucracy had treated the
defence needs. He took prompt action to
remove the pin pricks It is true that
some Defence officials, including some
Generals, were videotaped, accepting
bribes to influence the defence deals.
But there has not been even a remote
suggestion that George compromised at any
stage, or spared any one of them. Forget
about compromising, he was not even
approached for doing something. Those who
know George will bear me out, that he is
not only Spartan in his living and life
style, but is impeccably above the lure
of lucre.
It is a
paradox, that if money is at the root of
all evil, it is also root of all
morality. I was Inspector General Reserve
Police in 1989, when George was given the
charge as Minister of Kashmir Affairs in
addition to his Railway Portfolio. When I
met him for the first time, I found him,
a simple down-to-earth person, who
believed in getting results without any
ulterior motives and without any
pretensions. I noticed that when he was
returning to Delhi, his only luggage
consisted of a Kurta Pajama, a toothbrush
and tooth paste, all packed in one Jhola,
and nothing more. It was stunningly
unlike the usual image of a pompous
Minister of the Mighty Government of
India, I came to know in three decades of
my service.
Only once
later, I visited his house, which
continues to be an open house. George has
no door on his house and no guards.
Probably many lesser dignitaries than him
do not feel they are important enough
unless they have outriders, escort and
pilot vehicles accompanying. Which Union
Minister has a 1995 model Premier
Padmini car in which he drives to his
office ? Thousands of the subordinates of
the Defence Minister enjoy official and
unofficial perks, like the guards,
subsidised or free rations, transport,
which the inimitable George refuses to
touch. His simplicity can be judged by
the fact that once when in his own Home
District of Mangalore, he was almost
refused entry to a function, where he was
the chief guest on the ground that he was
not the Defence Minister, as he had come
like an ordinary person without any fan
fare or pomp of the office about him. The
then Chief Minister of Karnataka, who was
presiding over the function, had to
vouchsafe that he was really the Defence
Minister of India.
In the
present day position, it is George who
has lent dignity to his own, but has come
back at the request of the Prime
Minister, in view of the existing
security scenario. It is essential to
face the fact that George Fernandes may
have been accused of anything else in
life, but never of dishonesty, corruption
and bribery. Facts do not cease to exist,
because some people choose to ignore
them. Five and five will continue to make
ten, inspite of the whining of the
amateur for nine and critics for eleven.
It is also important to remember that
George himself asked the Central
Vigilance Commission to look into the
Defence deals for the last decade,
including those in his own time.
Naturally this pulled many feathers, and
the proof of it lies in the unedited
Tehelka tapes, where Army Officials
openly abused him, ostensibly for coming
in their way of making fast buck. Not a
word was said for him, when as the
Defence Minister, he started cleaning the
Aegean’s Stables by asking the
Central Vigilance Commission to look into
the fact whether there was any thing
suspicious of the deals of the Defence
ministry.
The legal
opinion and the case law of the tapes is
that it must be continuous, should not be
edited and there should not be failure of
the electricity. Obviously in the case of
video tapes, matching of the voice with
the video is essential. Only a scientific
analysis in a reputed laboratory can
certify that the editing is not doctored.
Venkatswamy Commission, which is in
possession of all facts and papers, will
no doubt keep the Supreme Court rulings
in view.
I was in
Denmark for an official work, more than
two decades ago. Denmark as a free
Scandinavian country enjoys the highest
rating in honesty, as per the Corruption
Perception Index published by the
Transparency International. Pornography
is one of its most outstanding feature
for the tourists. I asked an Embassy
official, as to how this could go on. He
replied, that all Indian Ministers who
have visited Denmark, insisted to be
taken to the best pornographic shows and
embassy had to foot their bills under the
heading of entertainment. I asked him
whether there was no law against it. He
told me: No. Only once a video was made
showing the queen of Denmark indulging in
sex and acting in a pornographic film as
a minor. A case was filed against the
company. It turned out, that the producer
has used the head, of the then queen, as
a child and juxtaposed it ‘ on the
body of a minor girl, imported from
Holland. The Producer was convicted for
using for a minor for prostitution. But
no action was taken against him for using
the photograph of the head of the queen.
The tests had been done scientifically to
prove the case in the Court of Law.
George may be accused of anything, except
for lack of integrity. He is a rare breed
of politicans, who has been acceptable to
the people right from Mumbai to Bihar and
South.
In a
seminar hosted by the Aligarh University,
in the third week of March, 2001, after
seeing the Tehelka tapes I myself raised
the point of corruption by politicians.
Salman Khurshid of the Congress Party was
the Chief guest. He was the first person
in active politics who frankly said, that
on average, any leader has to attend a 50
to 60 marriages or funerals, apart from
many other small functions, where the
persons inviting him or her, expect some
financial help. Apart from that, people
coming to the politicians, in hordes from
his own constituency or his party expect
a meal, or a cup of tea if a politician
is not a member of the Lok Sabha or
Assembly, he has to spend his own money
of travelling. He also has to support
some secretarial staff, for replying to
various communications received by him. I
totally agreed with him, and said that
the best course would be to admit the
reality and make all donations to the
political parties, tax free. This appears
to be the first step to cleanse the
politics. Unless, the media supports the
cleansing process in a big way, and all
the political parties respond positively
to the existing reality, no amount of
breast-beating would do.
A straight
line is the shortest in geometry as well
as in morality and politics. Politican's
acts are generally right, but their
reasons seldom area. It is time to rise a
above the game of recriminations for
political advantage, and do someting.
Present policy of many parties appear to
be of serving God in such a manner, as
not to offend the devil. An ounce of
performance is worth more than a ton of
preaching. It is time for action to face
the problem of making transparent the
political system. The acts of our
politicians, will be the destiny of the
next generation. PTI Feature
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A
call for a common cause
By Bharat Jhunjhunwala
A section of the
muslims have called for the boycott of US and
British goods. A section of the left has opposed
the WTO-led approach to free foreign trade. The
Hindu nationalists have been making precisely
these demands for a long time. This is a golden
opportunity for the three groups to put their
other differences in cold storage for the time
being and form a grand alliance against
indiscriminate materialism, trade and
globalization.
The main argument
of the free trade lobby is that globalization
will create better economic conditions for the
people of the world. There is some truth to the
argument. But economic welfare is not the final
objective of mankind. Gandhiji had asked the
people of the country to boycott British goods
even though they were cheap. He had sacrificed
consumer interest in favour of political freedom.
The same applies today. It is unquestionable that
the WTO encroaches upon the political sovereignty
of nations. There is a case for boycott of
foreign goods and adoption of swadeshi even if
the people get substandard goods. Of course, the
swadeshi politics must simultaneously strive to
improve the quality of the swadeshi goods without
globalization. It is a fortuitous development,
therefore, that diverse groups such as the
Muslims and the Leftists are seeking boycott of
foreign goods and the WTO.
The basic lines of
confrontation today is between the 'materialists'
and the 'non-materialists'. Modern economic
theory has been built on foundation of expansion
of profits or utility or consumer interest. Now
there is nothing wrong in making profits. But a
problem arises when profits become the sole, or
the main, objective of the society. There is
considerable literature available now to reassert
what the Hindus, Muslims and Marxists have been
saying for a long time, i.e., that man does not
live by bread alone. Profits are acceptable only
in so far as they enable the people in attaining
the higher social and spiritual objectives.
The free trade
lobby makes the mistake of focussing only on the
consumer interest which can work against
political and spiritual interests. The cloth that
was being imported from Manchester was certainly
of a better quality and cheaper than what was
available in India. Consumer interest would have
been served by using imported cloth. But it came
along with the cost of political submission. Thus
Gandhiji said that we should forego consumer
interest to secure political freedom. The Hindu
formula of 'dharma artha kama moksha' says the
same. Give up artha or consumer interests for
dharma or political freedom. Marx said the same
when he sought the roots of alienation in the
institution of private property. The mad pursuit
of profits was dehumanizing the live of human
beings. These traditions do not negate consumer
interests. They only make consumer interests
subservient to political, social and spiritual
interests.
The objective of
the contemporary Western civilization, on the
other hand, is artha per se. Consumption and
profit is the high altar on which man is
sacrificed. The true lines of battle are between
the Hindu-Muslim-Marxists on the one hand and the
Western civilization on the other. The three
should join hands in common cause. Perhaps old
hang-ups and misunderstandings come in the way of
forming such a grand alliance. There is a need
for all three--Muslims, Leftists and
Nationalists--to clear their mental cobwebs and
get their act together. Some of the objections of
these groups against each other arise from
perversions that have crept in their traditions
while others arise from misunderstandings.
The Muslims and
the Left both criticize the Hindu Nationalists
for propagating an iniquitous social structure
embodied in the caste system. Certainly the caste
system is iniquitous. But all social systems of
the past have been so. The difference is that
while most have since collapsed under the weight
of their inequity, the caste system has endured.
The reason is that caste system has helped the
Hindu civilization in begetting good governance
more than it has been possible for other
civilizations. Actually, caste is a
classification based on qualities and vocation.
The doctors, for example, constitute of a jati in
the modern context. Birth is not the central
determinant of the caste. Just like religions
have often degenerated into idolatry, so Hindu
social structure has degenerated into birth-based
determination of caste. The attack should,
therefore, be on this aberration of the caste
system rather than on Hinduism itself.
The Hindu
Nationalists criticize the Left for advocating
class war rather than harmony. But war by the
people against their own evil rulers is not
unknown to the Hindu tradition. Rama led the
tribal armies of Sugriva against the evil empire
of Ravana. That was but a people's uprising.
Kalidas says in Raghuvamsa that distrust and
resistance by the people, or lok ninda and
dharna, is one of the methods of controlling the
king in the interests of the people. The Left is
but doing such an organization of the people.
There are many
other points of differences. The point, however,
is that each of the three traditions are
extremely well-meaning. The burning problem of
the day is poverty amidst plenty. The task is to
cooperate on this issue. A grand alliance of the
Hindu Nationalists, Muslims and the Left is the
need of the hour.
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Its
central Asia's turn to take revenge
By N. B. Menon
After five years
of Taliban rule, no country in the world has
fewer friends than Afghanistan. Of the six
countries that border it – Pakistan, Iran,
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan (all
fellow-Muslim states) and China – not one
has come forward to argue against the imminent
anti-terrorist attack. Pakistan, Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan, indeed, have offered assistance to
America and its allies.
Small wonder.
Under the Taliban, Afghanistan has become an
exporter of instability that not only affects its
immediate neighbours but, as America now knows,
reaches much farther afield. The Taliban’s
sheltering of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida
movement is only one reason why Afghanistan is so
feared. Other extremist groups, harboured and
supported there, have struck out into Kashmir,
into the Fergana valley, where Uzbekistan,
Kirgizstan and Tajikistan intertwine, and
probably even into China.
For their own
reasons, these countries’ undemocratic
governments have tended to demonise the Tliban.
But there is some truth in their charges. The
Taliban may not have set out deliberately to
destabilise the region; but they have allowed
their territory to become a base for the
worldwide export of terrorism.
At the top of the
list of vulnerable states comes Pakistan, which
is much to blame for the rise of the Taliban in
the first place. Pakistan is reaping the
whirlwind sown by its own policies in
Afghanistan.
But the problem
faced by the five former Soviet republics of
Central Asia is different. They have neither
supported nor encouraged militant groups in
Afghanistan. On the contrary, it is the Taliban
regime that has given refuge, training and arms
to dissidents from within them. And these
republics, in differing degrees, have reacted so
repressively that they have increased the
dissidents’ appeal.
Not all the five
countries are equally affected or to blame.
Kazakhstan and Turkmensitan have managed largely
to escape the attentions of Taliban-backed
groups. The primary target of the Islamists is
Uzbekistan, the most populous of the five. The
most dangerous Central Asian guerrilla
organisation, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
(IMU), grew up in the 1990s as a direct result of
the repression of milder forms of Islamic
opposition to the rule of Islam Karimov, the
Soviet-era placeman who turned himself into
independent Uzbekistan’s first and only
president.
But their prize,
the Fergana valley, the lushest and riches part
of Uzbekistan, is also shared by Tajikistan and
Kirgizstan, and so these countries too have been
dragged into the conflict, and relations between
all three have been badly strained. Uzbekistan
has upset Tajikistan and Kirgizstan by laying
mines along their common borders, often on the
neighbours’ side.
In return for
being allowed to use bases in Afghanistan, the
IMU, whose number are estimated at 1,000-3,000,
has sometimes assisted the Taliban’s
campaigns against the Northern Alliance. By doing
so, they have made themselves too valuable to the
Taliban to be surrendered. It is said that Juma
Namangani, the young military leader of the IMU,
carries a warrant signed by Mullah Omar, the
Taliban’s leader, designating him as the
regime’s second-most-honoured guest after
bin Laden.
The IMU first came
to international attention in February 1999, when
Uzbekistan’s government accused it of
planting bombs in its capital, Tashkent. There
was no real evidence, but later that year, the
IMU launched an attack on Uzbekistan from bases
in Tajikistan, where it had been fighting with
the United Tajik Opposition in that
country’s civil war. The incursion got only
as far as Kirgizstan, where the IMU took several
hundred hostages. The militants said they
intended to overthrow Uzbekistan’s
government and to establish a caliphate, a form
of religious government, in the Fergana valley.
They then retreated to Afghanistan, but were back
last year.
This time, the
incursion got within 80 km of Tashkent. To
prevent further attacks, the Central Asian
republics have tried to strengthen their
defences. For this, the price has been high.
Across the region, event in once-liberal
Kirgizstan, the ruling regimes haver cracked down
hard on Islamists, and by extendsion on all forms
of opposition. It is hard to avoid the conclusion
that they have taken the Islamists’
activities as an excuse to tighten their grip on
power.
In Uzbekistan, and
to a much lesser extent in Kirgizstan, there have
been mass arrests of members of a Muslim group
called Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Freedom Party), which
wants to install a caliphate, across the whole of
Central Asia. Unlike the IMU, it insists that its
methods are peaceful. Yet the arrest of thousands
of its supporters could easily concert it to
violence.
The governments of
the region are now allied in a number of ways.
The bodies they belong to include a Russian-led
collective security alliance and the
Chinese-organised Shanghai Six, which are
increasingly aimed at the Taliban. (Russia has a
particular animus against the Taliban, accusing
them of supporting Chechen terrorists.) Now these
republics have fallen into line behind America,
too.
Uzbekistna and
Kazakhstan have been quick to offer the allies
the use of its territory for operations against
the Taliban. Tajikistan, it is thought, has
privately done the same.
The whole process
of revenge has come full circle. Who will be the
winner or loser is hard to decipher in the long
run is yet to be seen. INAV
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