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EDITORIAL: 16-31 October 2001
Simi
US, Taliban and terrorism
As we go to press, US and British forces have started pounding a country which
was already devastated years ago when it was tricked into fighting one
superpower’s war against the other. As soon as one superpower was vanquished
the Afghanis and with them tens of thousands of the cream of the Muslim youth
from around the world were abandoned mid-stream by the Americans who now emerged
as the sole superpower while Afghanistan was left to fight a civil war. This
left many Muslim youth deeply hurt and hateful. A decade and a half later the
Americans suddenly remembered Afghanistan and this time with the active support
of their friends in the Pakistani army trained Afghani students in Pakistani
religious schools and unleashed them on Afghanistan. These students, or Taliban,
soon conquered most of Afghanistan with active US-Pakistani arms and logistic
support.
But the Taliban refused to play ball and soon emerged as the greatest obstacle
in the face of the American exploitation of the huge gas and oil reserves
discovered in Central Asia which can be exploited only through land and pipeline
routes via Afghanistan. Taliban’s fate was sealed and it was only a matter of
time before they were somehow to be dislodged from Kabul. The tragic and
deplorable events of Black Tuesday came in handy to put into action a plan which
was already hatched before those tragic events which are yet to be fully
understood and whose responsibility is yet to be convincingly fixed at
someone’s door.
BBC's George Arney reported on 18 September, quoting Niaz Naik, a former
Pakistani foreign secretary, the US was planning military action against Osama
Bin Laden and the Taleban even before 11 September's attacks. Naik was told by
senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan
would go ahead by the middle of October.
Now that the American plan has already been unleashed it is time for all
freedom-loving nations to think of the consequences when Uncle Sam and his
British poodle sit as judge, jury and executioner of a new world order. A
precedent is being set where a mere unsubstantiated claim will serve as enough
grounds to devastate a defenceless country and install a pliable administration
there. Another issue which should be widely discussed and defined is
‘terrorism’ - what is terrorism and where self-defence and resistance
against occupation become terrorism and who will define it. Is the daily Israeli
aggression against the Palestinian people not State terrorism? Is the Russian
behaviour in Chechnya not State terrorism? Another pressing question will be
about the international order made and perfected by western countries. Is there
no role for the UN and its myriad branches under this order? Is international
law redundant now? Can states take the law into their own hands to settle issues
beyond their borders? The sooner these issues are discussed the better.
SIMI
Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIMI) has been finally outlawed for
two years. Its offices have been closed down and members all over the country
thrown behind bars. The home minister who led the movement which finally
destroyed the Babri Mosque and caused dozens of riots on his way to Ayodhya in
which thousands of people were killed across the country, has been dropping
hints that he is collecting material to ban the organisation which in any case
did not enjoy any considerable support in the community. The same minister had
earlier presided over a GoM report on internal security which sought to put a
question mark on the loyalty of the world’s second largest Muslim
concentration. This neta, whose name appeared in the Jain Hawala case, has been
day and night parroting unfounded allegations that madrasas and mosques are
bases of terrorism and ISI dens. All the while he has failed to publish a single
name of a madrasa or mosque where such activities take place and if they do why
the minster, who presides over an army of police and intelligence forces, does
not arrest them forthwith instead of repeating these allegations ad nauseum. If
SIMI is guilty, Bajrang Dal of the minister’s own super-nationalist parivar is
a thousand times more guilty of the same charges leveled against SIMI. The whole
world has very recently seen the pictures of the saffron outfit’s camps where
arms training was being imparted in the open but the minister hastened to give
it a clean chit. If Mr Advani really loves this country, as he claims day and
night, he must forthwith stop acting in a partisan way and creating enemies
where none exist. Our country has enough problems to face and solve. A true
desh-bhakt must not manufacture new problems in his bid to consolidate a vote
bank. q
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