Daily Excelsior... Editorial

EDITORIAL

There are no two opinions that the threat of religious fanaticism is stalking the whole world. India for long has been a victim of it. She has also adduced tons of evidence showing all this has been groomed in Pakistan and exported in here through people dyed in the most fanatic colors. India has displayed this to the whole world. But more than Indian efforts it is actions of the Pak establishment itself from grooming Taliban to foisting Kargil that told the world how deeply that nation has been involved in this most heinous of activities. What the world finds even more disquieting is the fact that this was no sly undertaking but an active state policy of that country. Of course, the American intelligence knew all about .....more

Caught and bowled!

Is anti-Musharraf coup simmering in Pakistan ?

By Col P N Khera

A public pronouncement by Lt Gen Mohammad Aziz Khan, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee that "America is the number one enemy of the Muslim world and is conspiring against Muslim nations all over the world" ......more

Sectarian clashes & terrorism in Pakistan

By Sunil Bhan

June 8, 2003 : 11 Police trainees from Pakistan minority Shia community were shot dead and another 9 injured in sectarian attack in Quetta.

March 2002 : An explosion at a Shia mosque in Bhakkar, sectarian attack ........more

Electricity from Hydel projects

By Tushar Charan

EDITORIAL

Quetta carnage

Those godfathers-rather, real fathers-are still actively aiding if not abetting regrouping of the Taliban remnants, the so-called resistance groups in the southern Afghanistan. But the whole enterprise has not left the Pak society and nation unscarred. The Shia Sunni violence that rocked Pakistan for years only abated with the spotlight getting focused on Afghanistan and Taliban-Al Qaida in the post-9/11. That fractious violence has seen its latest upsurge in the killing of dozens of Shias in the Baluchistan province last Friday. This piece of intra-Islamic sectarian violence came close on the heels of an attack on the priest of a Roman Catholic Church in Akara. The other perpetual violence in Pakistan that between the Mohajirs and Sindhis never saw any abatement. It has been continuing all through these past two decades. Probably none outside the main contenders has even an account of how many were killed and how much havoc was wrecked in this fanaticism promoted by the very idea of Pakistan. It is useful to remember that the greatest victims in this violence as well as the cause of it are these who left India to people the Jinnah-ian dream.

So from the extreme North West tribals to the ‘migrants’ in the South-East the nation of Pakistan is one cauldron of violence. But, of course, this is the violence she has been instilling in youthful minds and exporting to places all the way from Kashmir to Chechnya. It has devastated life and economy in these target places, wrecked their peace and subjected the people there to untold miseries. It has spilled over to take other areas too in their grip. The attack on Indian parliament was by no means the last foray of these brainwashed crusaders in the plains India. On the day of massacre in the Hazara mosque, two ladies caused two detonations in Moscow killing nearly two dozen people. These ladies, the terrorists here, as well as the killers who descended upon the Imambargah in Quetta are all convinced that they have advanced God’s mission upon the earth. They are all destroyers of humanity.

Caught and bowled!

As it always happens with the people who insist upon having a monopoly over truths, Hurriyat baiter Geelani’s tactics have returned to haunt him. First his heavy household expense showed how hollow his austerity claims had been. His filing the affidavit as a senior Indian citizen to claim the fare concession was a minor crisis to his reputation. Back home he tried to take over the Jammat only to find that his old fief had been taken over. Since then he has been bombarding the Hurriyat with his very purist stand that it expel the people’s conference for its ‘sin’ for having participated in the last assembly elections. In vain did the party explain that it had expelled those who took part in elections. The implication was that the Lone’s party was hand in gloves with the rebels one of whom is now a minister in the government. Now that very argument has boomeranged on the veteran leader in the shape of a charge that he himself need be arraigned for this very ‘sin’ as his own private secretary had participated in the last elections!

That is as tricky a twist as the tangle could take. But there is a clear lesson in there for all the concerned: that none there is without blame and blemish. Opening those closets would reveal many unsavory things that none may like. Nor does it behoove anyone to claim superiority in conduct, conviction or commitments. They have all faltered. Of course, the greatest failing has been the reluctance to accept the people’s wishes as their guides and loadstars. Thus the very rejection of all those who ‘did not prevent’ people from participating in polls displays scant respect for what the people really want. Every dispensation that disdains the aspirations of people is doomed to get defunct. Rejecting the public enthusiasm for polls has practically spelled the doom of Hurriyat. It also gave a wide lie to its claim of being anybody’s representatives; being ‘true representatives’ as the amalgam styled itself, was simply a hyperbole. Today the question is whether the two dozen parties in it would be pragmatic enough to gain some legitimacy in the public eye or be lost in the rusted rut of extremism of views and visions. Especially when, there are no ‘principles’ in it on either side!

Is anti-Musharraf coup simmering in Pakistan ?

By Col P N Khera

In one sweep it became clear that there is within the Pakistani military junta a core group of extreme right wing elements that is rabidly anti-American for what Washington did to the Taliban and the Al Qaeda, the handmaidens of the Pakistan army’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). At the same time this core group is flirting with the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) which is demanding that President-General Pervez Musharraf must shed his uniform.

The South Asia Times, published from the US by expatriate Pakistanis, posited the possibility: "It is not improbable, given Pakistan’s history, that Aziz was laying the groundwork for a body of people to force the government to do an aboutturn in its support for the US should the resistance movement in Afghanistan take the dimesion of a truly large-scale struggle."

And in Afghanistan, the remnants of the Taliban, the Al Qaeda, and former lapdogs of the CIA in the war against the Soviets, have coalesced to present a growing phalanx of anti-US, anti-Karzai terrorists to counter which Musharraf has, for the first time in a hundred years, deployed the Pakistan army in the predominantly tribal belt in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) which adjoins Afghanistan, to try and contain them.

That is one straw in the wind. The other is in the epicenter of the latest American misadventure – in Iraq – where groups of indeterminate hit-and-run guerrillas are making life hell for the American troops. It is not clear whether they are remnants of the Saddam Hussain’s Baath Party or new emerging forces that have anti-Americanism as their lodestar. That the Pakistan Army is eager to send contingents of troops to Iraq to join the coalition forces is an offer as ominous as "the offer that he cannot refuse" (a death knell) that is the hallmark of the American mafia.

For India too the new linkages have an ominous connotation. The antics of Jamaat-e-Islami leader in Jammu and Kashmir, Ali Shah Geelani, contribute to the growing body of evidence of new even more deadly combinations of terrorists. Finding that the All Parties Hurriyat Conference that he heads has all but become irrelevant after the recent elections and the "healing touch" being administered by new Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Geelani is set to scuttle the Hurriyat and set up his own new outfit which will take directions from the hardcore of the Pakistan army.

This development has been engendered by a section of the Hurriyat expressing its willingness to give peace a chance.

Within the Arab world, Saudi Arabia, from where most of those involved in the attack on the US on 9/11 originated, is walking a tightrope, also watching the events in Iraq – just as factions in Pakistan are waiting for events in Afghanistan to bubble over. It is a whole new ballgame.

Pakistan is the crucible of new outgrowths of jehadi terrorists whose credo is anti-Americanism and there are signs that the army is the focal point and evidence of it is in the new crop of vicious dragonseed that has begun to sprout and is being dispersed as far field as Iraq and in the Arab world.

One such outgrowth is the Muslim United Army (MUA) which raised its ugly head in a series of bomb attacks on 21 gas stations of the US conglomerate Anglo-Dutch Shell Company in Karachi in October last and the credit was taken by Asif Ramzi, the self-styled supreme commander of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni terrorist organization steeped in anti-Shia orthodoxy.

In an e-mail to media organizations, Ramzi had this to say: "All right-wing organisations including the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, have formed the Muslim United Army to organize the groups against the United States.

We are going to launch a war against … anti-Islam forces, police and other non-Muslims on the platform of the MUA".

It was his appeal to Muslims living in the US to leave that country since "the mujahideen have completed preparations to strike the US again in which more than 3.5 million people could be killed that" engendered the fear in Washington of a "dirty nuke (nuclear) bomb" in the hands of Islamic terrorists.

For long the Karachi police was baffled by this new outshoot. But the discovery of a bomb factory in Karachi and the arrest of five terrorists owing allegiance to an organization calling itself the Harkatul Mujahideen al Aalmi (HMA) who revealed that they were part of the larger grouping, the MUA, has been a pointer to the new direction that Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is taking. - ADNI

Sectarian clashes & terrorism in Pakistan

By Sunil Bhan

June 8, 2003 : 11 Police trainees from Pakistan minority Shia community were shot dead and another 9 injured in sectarian attack in Quetta.

March 2002 : An explosion at a Shia mosque in Bhakkar, sectarian attack against the minority Shia community.

February 22, 2003: Attack on Imam Bargah Mehndi mosque in Karachi, 10 Shia Muslims brutally massacred while performing prayers.

The past three years have witnessed more than a hundred Shia doctors killed in Karachi itself. A survey carried out by Jang, an influential Urdu newspaper in Pakistan in January 2002 revealed that Pakistan lost Rs 59 billion due to sectarian violence in the past decade (1990-2000), 14.4 million people either suffered heavy losses in their business or were deprived livelihood altogether. The past two decades have especially been violent.

Religious hostilities began in 1979 when General Zia began Islamising Pakistani politics to legitimise military rule. As a result, hard line religious groups were strengthened. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979. US arms and Saudi funds allowed Gen Zia to mount a proxy war in Afghanistan with Mujaheedin or holy warriors. Drawn from Pakistan, Afghanistan as well as Saudi Arabia youths mostly educated at religious schools, the Mujahideens and their patrons became influential actors in Pakistan. Because Sunnis form a large majority in Pakistan most of the Mujahideen were Sunni too. Radical Sunni Islamists were able to establish armed groups like Sipah-e-Saheba (SS) and Tanzeem-e-Nifaz.

Shia fighters too joined the jehad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, but their bands were smaller. They received help from Iran where the Islamic revolution of 1979 had boosted Shia confidence. The growth of Shia militancy led to the establishment of groups such as Tehrik-e-Jafaria. Once the Soviets left Afghanistan, Pakistani militants returned home and began looking for a new jehad. Many were encouraged to take their combat skills to Indian administered Kashmir. Others stayed home to begin a campaign against fellow Muslim heretics. As a result, Sunni and Shia militant groups have been at the forefront of Pakistan's sectarian conflict. Fights between rival Shia and Sunni groups intensified in 1990 with the murder of SS founder, Maulana Jhangvi. In the same year an Iranian diplomat, Sadiq Gangi was also killed in Lahore.

When President Musharraf launched his campaign against extremism, he banned groups noted for violent attacks against their sectarian opponents. These groups are SS, Tehrik-e-Jafaria and Tanzeem-e-Nifaz. In his famous January 12, 2002 speech, President Musharraf revealed a startling fact that 400 people were killed in sectarian attacks in the past year and more than 1400 incidents of sectarian violence took place between 1989 and 2001 in different parts of the country. These statements establish the fact that fundamentalists forces are active in Pakistan contrary to what Gen Musharraf has been claiming to the world.

The killings of people of a particular community, is a cause of concern for the Pakistani Government. Two of the rabidly anti-Shia organisations are Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), whose primary objective is to bring about the rule of shariat in Pakistan are wiping out the Shias who have a sizeable presence in the professional world. The killings of Shia doctors and lawyers has increased in the past five years, especially, after President Musharraf seized power in Pakistan. The terrorist network responsible for the murders enjoy patronage of the military and intelligence officials. The discrimination meted to the minority Shias is clear from the fact that the maulvies of the Deobandi sect, to which the SSP and the entire jehadi cadre in Pakistan subscribe to, visit central jail each day for tableegh (religious sermons). No Shia or Barelvi maulvis have permission to visit the jail and expound their views.

Doctor Dosa was murdered on April 20, 2000 by four men. The only person arrested was a member of SSP. During the trial, he was identified by several eye witnesses but the judge decided to overlook the testimonials-and ordered a re-enactment of the murder in the court and repudiated the witness' testimonials. The killer was acquitted. Incidentally, two of the absconding accused were the body guards of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief, Maulana Masood Azar. Therein lies the link between sectarian outfits like SSP and terrorist groups like JeM and LeT, both of which are fundamentally Sunnis.

They are united by their common agenda of hoisting an Islamic state in Pakistan. They owe allegiance to the Deobandi school of thought with links to the Taliban and madarsas set up with the objective of brainwashing the innocent minds against non-believers, Kafirs.Most of SSP activists turned to terrorism as easily as changing a uniform-their training and ideology being common.

Even though President Musharraf has been claiming a crackdwon on outfits like the SSP, LeT and JeM, the truth is that the are flourishing as ever before. The deadly nexus between sectarianism and terrorism is not only wrecking Pakistan from within but is also posing threat to the world. Unless the world wakes up to this new face of terrorism. Pakistan will continue to spawn schools of terror networks that feed on religious frenzy and political ambitions of Generals like Musharraf.

Electricity from Hydel projects

By Tushar Charan

Despite its resolute opposition to let the free air of democracy blow its way, there is no denying that China has become a global power of some reckoning with a reach of influence that air outstrips India's. China's progress has been impressive in almost every field and its economy has grown to giant proportions with the phenomenon growth of infrastructure facilities. As a result a wide "power" gap divides Asia's two largest nations and neighbours, India and China.

Even with the obvious differences in their political systems, there are areas where India could profit from China's experience. Once such area is the progress made by China in small hydro projects to generate electricity. The small hydro sector in China contributes more than 20,000 MW of power, representing about one-fourth of the total hydro electricity in China.

The Indian Government took up a programme in 1989 when smaller projects were transferred from the Ministry of Power to the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources to popularise the small hydel projects (of upto 25 MW).

The progress card since then has remained unimpressive: against a potential of 15,000 MW in the small hydel projects across the country, a capacity of 1320 MW has been exploited. And of the potential of 15,000 MW, only sites for generation of 10,171 MW have been identified by three agencies involved in the job—Central Electricity Authority, Alternate Hydro Energy Centre and the State Governments. The process of identification of sites in clearly tardy.

It is interesting to note that potential for small hydel projects exists in almost every State of the country. But the "big four" (with their approximate capacity given in brackets) are: Himachal Pradesh (1625 MW), UP and Uttaranchal (1473 MW), Jammu and Kashmir (1207 MW) and Arunachal Pradesh (1059 MW).

These are States known for their perennial and often overflowing rivers. But canals also offer potential for small hydel projects. The potential for canal-based electricity generation projects has been estimated at 1565 MW, which is more than 10 percent of the total small hydro power potential (15000 MW) in the country.

But so far only projects aggregating 375 MW, equal to 23 percent, have been installed. This is lamentable, as the canal-based projects, unlike other small hydel projects, do not require various statutory clearances. Nor do they require much investment in detailed survey and investigation or detailed project reports.

Canal-based projects are easily accessible sites with low head and high water discharge. Their disadvantage over the run of the river (hilly) projects is that they require large turbines to handle large quantities of water and, hence, the powerhouse has to be large. But unlike the large river projects, which require construction of big dams and submersion of huge areas, there is little or no uprooting of people and their land for small hydel projects.

According to the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources, the experience with canal-based projects has been particularly good in the States of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. So far, 58 canal-based projects have been set up in these two states which are otherwise generally seen to be locked in battles over sharing river waters. On the other hand, the process of harnessing canal-based hydro potential in the plain State of Punjab has not been encouraging because of the high cost of equipment used for electricity generation.

The potential for small hydel projects exists over a vast area of the country, which has not been tapped yet. It covers all kinds of topography. A little known fact is that tea estate in the northeastern and southern regions of the country also have potential for small hydel projects. A Parliamentary committee was so impressed with this idea that it recommended that tea estate be taken up as a separate sector for the the development and promotion of small hydro power. The Government should take steps to make investment in this sector sufficiently attractive for the private entrepreneurs.

The Government needs to be more active in promoting small hydel projects that it has been so far. There is need to set up an apex body for the promotion of small hydel projects, a recommendation made more than once by parliamentary committees. But there are a host of other things like problems relating to land acquisition, "evacuation" of power, power purchase agreements, tax concessions, clearance from the pollution boards and royalty on use of water that need to be addressed to make the small hydel projects gallop.

The demand for royalty for water use by the States does not look justified as a hydro project does not "consume" water; rather it improves the quality of water. Some states have, however, exempted water royalty for 15 years for projects of upto 3 MW. Similarly, the need for clearance from the pollution boards can also be questioned, especially the argument that small hydel projects disturb inter-relationship among water, air land and human beings. The Government has not backed this argument with any study.

As things stand today, it looks doubtful if the Government will be able to achieve the (modest) target of 800 MW by the end of the tenth five-year Plan (2007 AD). In the last 10 years only 156 MW capacity could be added. The target of 2000 MW by 2012 looks even more remote because of scanty Government allocations of funds.

To achieve these targets, the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources will requires Rs. 8000 crore by 2012 when the fact is that against a project requirement of Rs. 61 crore for 2001-02, the Government could allocate only Rs. 39 crore. For the 10th Plan period, a requirement of Rs. 678.50 crore has been projected. The Ministry of Finance and the Planning Commission are unlikely to be obliging with more funds.

India with its growing economy is well headed for becoming a totally imported fuel dependent nation. But fossil fuel reserves are reaching the point of depletion. Non-conventional sources of energy need to be developed fast, particularly those that can be exploited with lesser problems.

The world has a huge hydropower potential —estimated at 15,000 billion units (kwh) annually. India's economically exploitable hydro potential has been estimated at 4 percent of the global hydro potential, but it places India in the fifth rank in the world. There are at least 15 countries in the world where the hydro electricity share is 100 percent or close to it. India's tiny neighbour, Bhutan, is one with 100 percent hydro share.

Impressive progressive has been made in the small hydro sector in the world. But Asia occupies the top slot, thanks largely to China's contribution. After China, Japan has made impressive progress in this field, though statistically India ocupies—surprise,—the third position in Asia.

But the undisputed fact remains that China is the "sole super power" in the small hydro sector. China had made the small hydro a "mass movement" to take it to where it is today. In India it cannot become a "mass movement" or something like that unless certain specific problems are tackled first at policy planning and bureaucratic levels.

Needless to say, India has a lot catching up do with its giant neighbour. (Syndicate Features)