Rebel attacks keep Indian-run Kashmir on the boil  

KASHMIR IS INDIA'S GAZA



By AFP
November 14, 2024


Relatives and mourners carry the body of a doctor killed in an October terror attack in Kashmir - Copyright AFP/File Tauseef MUSTAFA

Parvaiz BUKHARI

Ambushes, firefights and a market grenade blast: headline-grabbing attacks in Indian-run Kashmir are designed to challenge New Delhi’s bid to portray normality in the disputed territory, Indian security officials say.

Kashmir has been divided between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since their partition at the chaotic end of British rule in 1947, and both countries claim the territory in full.

“The attacks are not merely about killing, but also to set a narrative to counter the Indian narrative — that everything is fine,” said the former head of India’s Northern Command forces, retired general Deependra Singh Hooda.

Half a million Indian troops are deployed in the far northern region, battling a 35-year insurgency in which tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels have been killed, including at least 120 this year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government cancelled the Muslim-majority region’s partial autonomy in 2019, a decision accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long communications blackout.

The territory of around 12 million people has since been ruled by a governor appointed by New Delhi — overseeing the local government that voters elected in October in opposition to Modi.



– ‘Larger message’ –



New Delhi insists it helped bring “peace, development and prosperity” to the region.

But military experts say that small bands of rebels — demanding either independence or Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan — use attacks to contradict the claims.

“The larger message being sent out is that the problem in Kashmir is alive,” Hooda said.

India blames Pakistan for arming militants and helping them “infiltrate” across the militarised dividing line to launch attacks, an allegation Islamabad denies.

A “spurt in infiltration” this year by insurgents was “not possible without Pakistan’s army actively allowing it”, Hooda charged.

Many clashes take place in forested mountains far from larger settlements.

But the huge military presence visible in sprawling camps and roadblocks — roughly one in every 25 people in Kashmir is an Indian soldier — serves as a constant reminder.

Many are frustrated by traffic jams caused by military orders that civilian cars stay at least 500 metres (1,640 feet) away from army vehicles.

Yet those who have long lived under the shadow of the grinding insurgency seemingly shrug off the threat.

When an attacker this month hurled a grenade at security forces in a busy market — killing a woman and wounding 11 civilians — shoppers returned within a couple of hours.

This month, thousands attended an army recruitment drive, even as soldiers battled gunmen in a nearby district.



– ‘Low boil’ –



Attacks appear dramatic, including a gun battle in downtown Srinagar in early November that police said killed a commander of the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.

Earlier this year, attacks in the Jammu area — a Hindu-majority region — prompted the army to supply thousands of militia forces, dubbed village defence guards, with rifles.

But the death toll of 120 civilians, soldiers and rebels killed this year is, so far, similar in intensity to 2023, when 130 people died, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a New Delhi-based monitoring group.

“It will remain like this on low boil, as long as Kashmir is divided (between India and Pakistan),” a security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to journalists.

“We control it here; they (Pakistan) will activate it from there.”

The Indian army says around 720 rebels have been killed in the past five years.

Regional army commander MV Suchindra Kumar said in October he believed fewer than 130 remained in the fight.

Another security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said those include “highly trained and well-armed” fighters who had crossed from Pakistan.

“They are causing some damage by surprise attacks,” the official said. “But the situation is under control”.

Hooda, drawing on his long experience as a general, predicts little change as long as violence serves the agenda of India’s rival Islamabad.

“I don’t see this coming down immediately,” he said, referring to the number of attacks.

“Pakistan has always felt that ratcheting up attacks will bring the spotlight on Kashmir”.

The Plague of Disaster Nationalism

Review of Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilization by Richard Seymour (Verso, 2024)

By Chris Green
November 13, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

In case you have not heard, Donald Trump was just elected President of the United States for a second time. The United States is in for some extremely difficult months and years ahead. The situation is made worse by the narrow vision and cluelessness of mainstream liberals pooh poohing legitimate voter concerns about the cost of living increases which played a major role in securing Trump’s victory. At their worst, these liberals have argued that the Biden economy was absolutely marvelous and anyone disagreeing was brainwashed by right wing propaganda. They have cited strong economic indicators achieved under Biden’s presidency but are oblivious to the fact that all too many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, barely keeping their heads above water. It is foolish to think that Trump will do anything but make the affordability crisis of health care, child care, transportation, housing and groceries worse. But the Democrats have been feeble in offering their own solutions to these problems. 

From mainstream media analysis in recent years it has been easy to get the impression that Trump is a populist with a “white working class” base but that is misleading. As political scientist Anthony Dimaggio and others have shown, the core of the MAGA base is in the middle and upper middle classes. In this year’s election, 37% of the eligible voting population did not participate. Trump was elected with the votes of only 29% of the eligible electorate. Poor and working class people are significantly overrepresented among non-voters, the largest group among the electorate in this and every presidential election in recent memory. 

Nonetheless, as this year’s election showed, Trumpism has a visible foothold in the working class. Exit polls indicate he won 45% of union voters, 53% of voters with household incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 and 51% with household incomes between $50,000 and $100,000

Richard Seymour’s Disaster Nationalism

How did we get to this point? Is there anything we can do to effectively defeat Trumpism? Some heavy food for thought on these questions is provided by the book Disaster Nationalism: the Downfall of Liberal Civilization, published late last month. 

The book’s author, Richard Seymour, is a highly impressive intellectual with an interesting life story. He had a troubled childhood in Northern Ireland but eventually achieved a PhD in sociology at the London School of Economics. He rose to public notice in the 2000s as the proprietor of a blog called Lenin’s Tomb and as a luminary in the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In 2013, being of courageous and independent minded character, Seymour made a public break with the SWP’s leadership after revelations emerged that the party had covered up multiple sexual assaults by a leading party member. He has published numerous books on subjects such as British politics, social media, the history of American anti-imperialism and the intellectual decline of the late Christopher Hitchens. These days his main publishing forum is a Patreon page. Along with the noted Marxist fiction writer China Mieville, he is a member of the editorial collective of Salvage, a UK based radical left journal of fiction, sociological and political essays. He also periodically writes for The Guardian. 

In Disaster Nationalism, Seymour seeks to understand the far right populism that has become ascendant in the United States and around the world. He attaches the term “disaster nationalism” to these movements. For Seymour, disaster nationalism has not yet reached outright fascist proportions–although he allows that in many cases it has made significant strides towards that end. 

For example, he observes that during the George Floyd summer of 2020, MAGA took on the characteristics of an outright counterrevolutionary insurgency. Trump was faced with mass protests–which had significant popular support, at least initially–seeking fundamental progressive transformation of US law enforcement. The response by MAGA officialdom at the national level and among local police was to cooperate with violent, far right thugs like the Proud Boys. They embraced the vigilante murderer Kyle Rittenhouse and seemingly quietly approved of the dozens of vehicular assaults by vigilantes on BLM protestors. Meanwhile, federal law enforcement agents, operating secret police style in unmarked vehicles, started snatching BLM activists from the streets of Portland, Oregon, and in Washington state, local police deputized as US Marshals conducted an apparent extrajudicial execution of Michael Reinoehl, an antifascist activist accused of murdering Proud Boy Aaron Danielson. 

Seymour suggests that among Trump’s global allies, Israel governed by Netanyahu and India under Narendra Modi’s premiership have reached the farthest on the road to facism. Netanyahu, of course, is currently waging a literal war of extermination in Gaza. Modi’s Hindu fundamentalist government has imposed a regime of outright totalitarian terror in Kashmir and actively eroded citizenship rights for India’s Muslim minority, while police terror and mob violence against the latter has soared under his watch. For example, since Modi rose to power in 2014, hundreds of Indian Muslims have been lynched by Hindu vigilantes enforcing government laws banning the slaughter of cows and consumption of beef.

Modi, of course, is most famous for being the chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, leading the incitement of Hindu mobs that–with police complicity–massacred hundreds, perhaps thousands of Muslims. Seymour devotes a few paragraphs to describing the gruesome methods through which many of those Muslims were murdered. Another major Muslim pogrom overseen by Modi was the Delhi riots of February 2020, incited by politicians of Modi’s BJP party in response to mass protests against the erosion of the citizenship rights of the country’s Muslims. As Seymour observes, this pogrom occurred concurrently as Modi–-making the ultimate symbolic statement–received his friend Trump on an official state visit, just a few miles from the central area of the violence. 

Disaster Nationalism: Fascist or Prefascist?

Seymour is reluctant to label disaster nationalist movements as outright fascist: he states that, at the moment, they show predominantly prefascist characteristics. None of the movements Seymour studies have fundamentally destroyed preexisting institutions of bourgeois democracy. None of them have the ideological coherence of Hitler or Mussolini and none of them–Modi’s BJP is perhaps an exception–are able to mobilize the sort of political and social organizations with deep and widespread roots among ordinary people that Hitler and Mussolini could.. Unlike the movements of Hitler and Mussolini (to say nothing of the neoconservatives ascendant during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush), adherents of disaster nationalist movements like MAGA show no particular fervor for global military expansionism. Unlike Hitler and Mussolini, leaders like Trump and Modi have made no pretense of eliminating the economic stratification produced by unregulated capitalism. Trump, Modi and their ilk worldwide accept the fundamental inequalities produced by neoliberal capitalism–although they have sometimes offered rhetoric criticizing aspects of that capitalism. 

Seymour notes there is another major difference between the disaster nationalists of today and the classical fascists of yesteryear. First and foremost, ruling classes of both Germany and Italy backed fascist politics as their primary method in destroying vibrant radical left and labor movements that were ascendant in both countries. In contrast, disaster nationalists in the United States and around the world face a political landscape where radical left movements and labor unions have been in serious long term decline. 

Unlike classical fascists, disaster nationalists are notable for a complete lack of rationality. There is no organized group or political current that presents any serious threat to overturn existing social and economic hierarchies in the United States (or practically anywhere else in the world). However, the minds of MAGA adherents are often filled with the most idiotic paranoia and fantastical conspiracy theories about George Soros, Antifa, undocumented immigrants, pro-transgender teachers, Chinese communists and similar malefactors imminently poised to completely destroy American institutions and traditions. Many adherents of disaster nationalist movements like MAGA–in their capacity as political thinkers and activists–are profoundly stupid people. The irrationality and ineptitude of MAGA followers led to a serious setback for their movement on January 6th and we can only hope that there will be more cases of them self-destructing. 

For Seymour, a prime illustration of disaster nationalist idiocy and irrationality is the spread of the rumor during the Summer of 2020 that wildfires in eastern Oregon were set by Antifa activists. Scores of armed MAGA sympathizer vigilantes spread out in the region, setting up checkpoints on roads and in other ways harassing people in order to hunt down the mythical Antifa malefactors. Seymour observes that the actual primary trigger for the wildfires was climate change. 

At the same time, as noted above, Seymour is willing to allow that modern disaster nationalism does share characteristics with classical fascism. Obviously, leaders like Trump and Modi-as with Hitler and Mussolini before them–use racist demagoguery, scapegoating of alleged subversives–immigrants, Muslims and political progressives in the case of Trump and Modi– to mobilize their base. Seymour predicts that destruction caused by climate change in the years and decades ahead will provide further opportunities for fascist style politics. He points out that this is already the case in the Indian state of Assam where Modi’s regime has been inciting violence and conducting terror against Muslim Bangladeshi refugees who have fled climate disaster in their native country. 

Although modern disaster nationalists lack the fervor for state economic intervention of HItler and Mussolini, they often call for governments to adopt industrial policies that will supposedly reverse deindustrialization (for example Trump’s fervor for imposing tariffs on Chinese imports). Like Hitler and Mussolini, disaster nationalists often adopt a populist tone, posing as the champion of a “deserving” (i.e. white) working class whose hard-earned income has supposedly been siphoned off for welfare payments to undocumented immigrants and who have been abused and exploited by “woke” big business. 

Seymour notes that a region like eastern Oregon is particularly vulnerable to far right propaganda. Its key industries of fishing and logging in long term decline at the time of the Great Recession in 2008, the region was hit with particularly severity by the meltdown and has not recovered since. In connection to this dynamic of social and economic disintegration, Seymour quotes a 2020 statistic that 12% of the population of Oregon overall were alcoholics. 

Similar to the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini, the disaster nationalism of Trump has gained its initial core support among middle class elements fearful of downward mobility in the midst of economic and social breakdown caused by neoliberal economic policies.Seymour observes that this core support rooted in the middle class–in the case of both classical fascism and modern day disaster nationalism–eventually makes inroads into other economic classes, including the working class. 

Seymour writes that in spite of Trump’s promise to provide material bounty for American workers, “average incomes under Trump grew more slowly than under his predecessor, and the rich gained far more than anyone else.” What really has drawn masses of Americans to Trump’s movement is not material improvement but what Seymour calls the “psychological surplus offered by nationalist renewal” and “the ethic of popular war against national enemies” e.g. undocumented immigrants, Antifa, “wokeness,” etc. 

Seymour notes that this dynamic of a charismatic demagogic leader enchanting masses of ordinary people and inciting them to their worst instincts of hatred and cruelty was clearly on display in the Philippines after the election of Rodrigo Duterte as president in 2016. By the time Duterte left office in 2022 he was the most popular head of state on the planet, gaining an almost unanimous approval rating from all economic classes of Filipinos–in spite of the fact that poverty in the already deeply impoverished country steadily increased under his presidency. As president, Duterte incited regular police and private vigilantes to form death squads that murdered tens of thousands of alleged drug addicts and street criminals. This anti-crime campaign served as a convenient cover for a reign of terror against Duterte’s political dissidents, particularly those on the left. 

Marx and Freud

Seymour’s argument that demagogues like Trump and Duterte divert ordinary peoples’ attention from the injustices caused by economic elites with the device of demagogic scapegoating of society’s weakest groups–or that they pretend to be populist while actually serving economic oligarchy–is not particularly original. What is original are the tools of analysis he brings, fusing Marxist analysis with psychoanalysis. At some point, perhaps 7 or 8 years ago, references to the psychoanalytic theory of the likes of Sigmund Freud and Jacque Lacan started to appear in his writings–to the distaste of a few of his Marxist admirers. He latched onto psychoanalysis at least in part as a way of understanding his own childhood traumas–but also in order to mine it for insight into the human mind that might facilitate the revolutionary socialist goal of achieving the full flowering of human freedom. Like a true revolutionary socialist, Seymour argues that the best antidote to the disaster nationalism of Trump & company is the creation of conditions for the full flowering of what Karl Marx called the “species-being”: the fundamental needs of humans to create, live, work, love and play, without coercion and in solidarity with other people. 

There is one point in the book where Seymour’s laborious psychoanalytic dissection of the motivations of followers of disaster nationalist movements has me a little lost. It is in the book’s chapter where he makes an argument, which I find unconvincing, relating to persons who believe the conspiracy theory that the Covid vaccine contains a microchip which allows Bill Gates to spy on persons receiving the vaccine. In holding such beliefs, according to Seymour, people are really attempting to unconsciously suppress “erotic fantasies of bodily penetration.” I think he is on stronger ground when he applies this same Freudian analysis to fans of Andrew Tate, the American-British, pro- Trump misogynist influencer and reputed sex trafficker. Tate, who has achieved an alarmingly wide influence among young males in the UK, has heavily implied publicly that he would be willing to rape women if he felt like it. In defending Tate’s stance–that he deserves to get away with rape because he is a “top G”–Seymour posits that the influencer’s “extremely suasible male fans” are really displaying an unconscious openness to being raped by Tate himself, should their hero desire it. 

One of a Kind

I fully admit that I don’t always follow some of Seymour’s Freudian analysis or fully understand all of his theoretical arguments, at least upon first reading. As when I read essays on his Patreon page, Disaster Nationalism had me periodically resorting to the proverbial dictionary (Google) because the author sometimes peppers his prose with advanced vocabulary (for example, detumescence and misprision). I can report that the author’s use of such vocabulary didn’t derail my understanding of his fundamental arguments. 

I also believe that Disaster Nationalism (and his other writings) show Richard Seymour to be an extremely intelligent person with whom I never fail to feel intellectually stimulated after I’ve read him. In Disaster Nationalism, I particularly recommend chapter 6, which features Seymour applying his concept of disaster nationalism to Israel’s current genocide in Gaza. It is the best part of the book. It contains really first rate writing and analysis. 

In the breadth of his knowledge, intellectual curiosity and intelligence, Seymour, in important ways, is comparable to the late Mike Davis. He is a treasure amongst the English speaking Marxist left. 

Bracing for Trump 2.0

Maleeha Lodhi 

November 11, 2024 

THE world was already bracing for Donald Trump’s return to power. And it is a stunning comeback. His clean sweep in the election, winning the White House, Senate and most likely the House of Representatives, will make him a more powerful president than he was in his first term, with a stronger mandate.

What his foreign policy will look like is being feverishly assessed across the world. Will it mimic his first term’s America First approach which translated into an America Alone policy? Will it prove as disruptive and destabilising as in the past?

Influencing assessments is the widespread view among the international community that Washington’s engagement with the world in recent years has neither been sustained nor consistent, which raises questions about US reliability. This at a time when the US is no longer the sole dominant power in an increasingly multipolar world, which places limits on its ability to shape global geopolitics and determine outcomes.

Trump’s unpredictable and impulsive personality will intensify uncertainty about the course of American policy especially given his penchant for suddenly changing course. His ‘America First’ unilateralist worldview created much discontinuity and volatility in foreign policy in his first term and dented America’s international standing. His isolationist approach also made the US retrench from its global role.

One certainty, with far-reaching implications for global stability and economy, is that Trump 2.0 will continue the well-established US policy of containment of China. A bipartisan consensus now sees China as a strategic adversary and challenge. Trump might escalate the confrontation over trade and technology issues. During the campaign he threatened to impose 60 per cent tariffs across the board on Chinese imports and end China’s most favoured-nation status. Whether he raises tariffs to this extent is doubtful as he will have to calculate its impact on American consumers; costlier imports would push up prices and that too when inflation is a challenge. It would also pose a risk to European economies as China is Europe’s biggest trading partner.

During the campaign, Trump also said he would seek a good relationship with Beijing. In a Fox News interview, he said while there was no greater critic of China than him, he respected China and President Xi Jinping. Though Trump will take a tough position on trade issues, his business instincts will urge him to be transactional and open to striking deals with China on trade and perhaps other contentious issues, including Taiwan. While intensifying the rivalry with China, Trump would want to avoid a collision course or military conflict over Taiwan. He has, in fact, been critical of Taiwan, saying it should pay the US for defending it.

Disruptions in US policy are likely at a time when the world is already in a state of chaos.

Trump has proposed a 10 to 20pc tariff on all imported goods, which will strain relations with America’s European allies, who Trump treated with derision in his first term, casting them as free-loaders. Aimed at all countries that have a trade surplus with the US, this would nonetheless be hard to implement. It would be a blow to developing economies and dampen global economic growth.

While Trump is an avowed protectionist, the question is how far he will go to press this agenda. According to economic experts, his plan to raise tariffs and order mass deportations of immigrants will further fuel inflation that Trump has promised to tackle.

Where a radical change in US policy is likely is on the Ukraine war. Often claiming he can end the war “in a day”, Trump is expected to push for talks to end a conflict he says “should never have happened”. This is cause for concern for Europe. Trump has said he will press Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to enter negotiations for a peace deal. He may not be averse to an outcome that favours Moscow in which Ukraine has to cede territory. He is unlikely to respond to reservations of European nations in this regard.

Trump has frequently chastised Nato allies for not sharing the defence burden. He has also said in his second term, America will fundamentally rethink “Nato’s purpose and mission” and ask European nations to reimburse the US billions of dollars for military supplies it sent to Ukraine. This may be bluster but there is little doubt that Trump and the Republican Party do not want to continue military funding to Ukraine.

European allies, therefore, have much to worry about. They have to deal with a president who has shown little commitment to European security, and who declared during the campaign that “in many cases, our allies are worse than our so-called enemies”. Trump sees European countries not contributing enough to their own security and taking advantage of the US, a situation he wants to end. He has no patience with alliances. Or with multilateralism.

The crisis in the Middle East presents a clear and present challenge that Trump might seek to address by forcing a ceasefire in Gaza. While avoiding specifics, he repeatedly said during the campaign he wants to see peace in the region and Israel should end the war quickly — by winning it and “finishing the job”. He is even more pro-Israel than President Joe Biden and has no empathy for the plight of the Palestinians (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once called Trump the best friend Israel ever had in the White House).

Nor has Trump shown any commitment to a two-state solution even though that remains the US position. Any deal he might push for will be on Israel’s terms and will also aim to goad other Arab countries to accede to the Abraham Accords — his signature Middle East initiative in his first term. This will principally involve encouraging Saudi Arabia to normalise ties with Israel, although Riyadh has made it clear this will only be possible once a Palestinian state is established.

Unpredictability is likely to be the hallmark of Trump’s foreign policy. But because he has a transactional view of international relations that would also open his policies to pragmatic possibilities. The world can expect disruptions in US policy at a pivotal time when wars and crises hang in the balance in what UN Secretary General António Guterres calls an “age of chaos”.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2024

Trumped again

Mahir Ali 

Published November 13, 2024

DAWN

DONKEYS are reputed to be stubborn beasts. That possible misinterpretation of their instinct for self-preservation characterises a party that has utilised Equus asinusas a symbol since Andrew Jackson embraced a hostile description of himself as a jackass back in 1828.

The Democrats’ election symbol might be an insult to a species whose intelligence has been underrated since donkeys were domesticated 6,000 years ago, but its traditional implications accurately reflect the party hierarchy’s mindset after last week’s devastating defeat.

The post-mortems began pouring in as soon as it became obvious that Kamala Harris had been trounced by Donald Trump. Yesterday, the president-elect was due to be hosted in the Oval Office by a man who had described him as a dire threat to democracy.

Joe Biden’s claim wasn’t exactly inaccurate, but it ignored his own party’s contribution to the promotion of plutocracy. It may not have been initiated by the Democrats, but they ran with the neoliberal trend exe­mplified by the Reagan administration.

The Democrats have enabled him once more.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama lent their imagined heft to the Harris campaign, and both ignored the issues whereby their presidencies led, respectively, to George W. Bush and Trump. The Clinton presidency did not deviate all that much from the Reagan era, and Obama effectively pursued both the neoconservatism and neoliberalism of his Republican predecessor.

No one can claim with any certainty that the 2024 result would have been different had Biden butted out after the 2022 midterm elections, in which the Democrats did not fare quite as badly as the polls and the mainstream media projected, but they might have made amends that bolstered their support two years later. No such luck. Biden did propose some healthy measures on the economic and renewable energy fronts, but they made no immediate difference to most of those who were suffering from the consequences of the Covid pandemic and its inflationary aftermath.

The Democrats offered no alternative to the status quo beyond gradual improvement over the years, bolstered by pundits who proclaimed that the economy was going gangbusters, with rising employment and declining inflation. Too many voters did not feel the joy that Harris sought to project, recalling that their grocery bills were lower before Biden took over. Among the many promises Trump is unlikely to fulfil, he vowed to bring down grocery bills, cut taxes and end all wars.

Back in 2016, he emerged as a potential disruptor of a status quo that wasn’t working for most Americans. He could not reclaim the perch in 2020, after four years in power. That he was able to achieve a far more convincing victory than eight years ago is a testament to the decrepitude of the Democrats.

That does not only mean that Biden ought to have ruled himself out a couple of years ago on the basis of his senescence, but also that his successor should have diverged from a self-defeating formula by offering viable alternatives to both an economy whose supposedly thriving aspects are not trickling down to most voters, and to a foreign policy that involves prolonging a nasty war in Europe and promoting a genocide in the Middle East.

Harris focused, instead, on slamming Trump and saying that she wasn’t Biden — the latter of which was obvious given her gender and ethnicity, but less so when it came to her ideology. Much of the Democratic elite that has ridiculed Bernie Sanders for accurately claiming that the working class was only returning the favour when it deserted the De­­mocrats have also claimed that Har­ris ran a wonderful campaign but was der­ailed by unavoidable obstacles. That’s nonsense. It’s true she had only 100 days to stake her claim, thanks to her geriatric chieftain’s obduracy and his party’s inexplicable obeisance, but her rallying cries consisted of little more than hollow platitudes, and her oratorical skills don’t match those of Barack Obama.

Sanders consistently reminds the electorate that real wages haven’t increased since the 1970s, the minimum wage is far too low, and it’s a travesty that so many citizens of the world’s richest nation live in poverty despite full-time jobs, and struggle to pay their medical bills and education debts. While the Republicans’ ridiculous response is to privatise everything, the Democrats are petrified by the prospect of proposing anything more than a bit of tinkering on the edges of neoliberalism.

It’s easy to empathise with the likeliest victims of Trump’s non-consecutive second term, an achievement previously pulled off only by Grover Cleveland in the 19th century. And he was a Democrat back when the Republican Party was relatively progressive.

Trump’s unpredictability means we can only wait and see how far he will go in carrying out his threatened atrocities at home and his promised peacemaking abroad.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2024

An apocalypse Trump won’t see

Jawed Naqvi 

November 12, 2024 

DAWN

ON one of Donald Trump’s last days as lame-duck president in 2020, senior Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi rushed to US military generals to caution them against heeding any command from him that could start a nuclear war.

Whatever be the truth about the Democrats’ worry, the world was on edge. Then, the shoe was on the other foot. Biden followed a needle-and-thread policy — threading cavalier alliances and needling Russia and China into a rage. Much of the worried world responded by gravitating to BRICS. Biden and his secretary for state woke up every day to arm and finance the most gruesome slaughter of women and children since Hitler in Gaza. The Democrats thus helped Trump seem less menacing to the voters.

The Doomsday Clock is still at 90 minutes to midnight with Trump’s second win, continuing to remind humanity that the threat from manmade apocalypse hasn’t receded. The president-elect did sound unusually benign and even faux inclusive in his victory speech. On the flip side, he pres­sed the accelerator on the unfolding environmental catastrophe. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like that,” he exulted to cheering supporters, listing the cultural and ethnic mix that voted him to office. The thought alone should worry Democrats, who regard multiculturalism as their exclusive turf, in contrast to Trump’s white supremacist calling.

“They came from all corners. Union, non-union; African, Hispanic, Asian, Arab, Muslim; we had everybody, and it was beautiful,” he croaked. It’s always disturbing to hear gilded words from autocrats. Has a compulsively sectarian Trump bucked the trend to project himself as a leader of all Americans equally? In which case, the rivals are in deeper trouble than one thought.

The Doomsday Clock has kept a watch on signs of manmade calamity that Albert Einstein had feared. Global warming is somehow only now, and grudgingly, being seen as an existential threat to mankind, though Noam Chomsky had presciently called it as lethal as the bomb. Trump walked out of two momentous agreements in his first term, making the world insecure on both counts.

He ditched the Paris Agreement on climate change, and even today, remains unconvinced that the destruction Hurricane Helene wreaked on North Carolina during the election campaign could be a sign of nature paying back in kind. He also tore up the Iran pact, making it a factor today in war-gaming an Iran-Israel nuclear exchange as a possibility. Iranian officials say that a fatwa against the bomb could be lifted if the war with Israel so demands.

Trump’s cavalier comments in his victory speech on the primacy of fossil fuel ‘to make America great again’ could send shivers down the spine of climate activists gathered in Baku this week for the fortnight of deliberations at COP29. In one fell swoop, Trump destroyed any hopes environment activists may have had from Robert Kennedy Jr in the new team. He all but declared that the environment lawyer, who doubles as an anti-vaccine campaigner, could be assigned the health portfolio. Calling Kennedy to the stage, Trump anointed him. “He is going to make America healthy again.”

As for Kennedy’s concern for climate change, Trump pre-empted trouble. “Bobby, leave the oil to me. We have more liquid gold — oil and gas — We have more liquid gold than any country in the world; more than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold. Other than that, go have a good time, Bobby.”

Trump’s second win reminds humanity that the threat from manmade apocalypse hasn’t receded.

Trump’s astounding return, completely, albeit unsurprisingly, missed by pollsters, has brought unforeseen responses. An American-Canadian friend says she is surrendering her US citizenship because she finds Trump insufferable. Google searches for ‘move to Canada’ surged 1,270 per cent in the 24 hours after the US East Coast polls closed on Tuesday. Similar searches about moving to New Zealand climbed nearly 2,000pc, while those for Australia jumped 820pc.

It’s not dissimilar to a whole host of people who have left or are leaving India with the advent of Narendra Modi, heading not to Pakistan, where his rabid cheerleaders would have wanted dissenters to go, but to trickier climes. The recent repatriation by the Biden administration of dozens of illegal migrants from India is a good example.

Trump’s denial of climate change is envied by many of his fans who do not have the means to be as brazen. On the global stage, Narendra Modi, an ardent Trump fan, presents himself as a keen environment buff. “India is committed to clean energy and environment,” he said at the recent G20 summit in Delhi. Yet it is no secret that India will use coal for decades to come, even as it explores renewables to move towards net zero in 2070.

Three days before COP27 in Egypt, India’s finance minister showcased the doublespeak. “India needs greater investment in coal production,” said Nirmala Sitharaman at the Delhi launch of the country’s biggest-ever coal mine auction, where 141 new sites for coal mines were on offer. The move was rehearsed at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow. That’s when India, backed by China, made a last-minute intervention to water down the language of the final agreement, changing the commitment to “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal power.

The fallout is palpable in the neighbourhood and beyond. The Maldives archipelago faces a watery doom, and vast swathes of Bangladesh would become uninhabitable as the sea encroaches. Pakistan, too, is reeling from the effects of climate change, not least since the 2022 flood fury.

The prime minister’s point person for environment, Romina Khurshid Alam, was preparing Pakistan’s talking points for Baku when Trump was drooling over the oil resources of America he had inherited in his victory. Ms Alam’s terror at the speed with which the mighty glaciers of the Hindu Kush are melting contrasts apocalyptically with the sight of Trump drooling over the oil wealth he plans to plunder to make America great again.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2024

The real issues

Bisma Tirmizi 

Published November 9, 2024

DAWN

THERE is nothing complicated about Donald Trump’s win as much of the mainstream media would like the world to believe. If you live in America you know the truth, and if you watch TikTok anywhere in the world, you know the truth and more.

While the liberals have a tantrum and try to complicate the reasons behind why the Americans chose to paint their country Red this time, and in essence decided to cosy up to the Draconian Blond, the reality is easy to decipher for first-time voters, seasoned baby boomers and all generations in between.

It was as simple and down to earth as ‘roti, kapra aur makan’.

Election 2024 is a clear indication that after all is said and done, after all the soap opera, the theatrical and manufactured issues, dramatic hyperbole, staged debates, and woke issues that need no oxygen or air time, politics is still about only the real issues.

One may choose to hate Trump for his crassness or his politics, but he ran on what matters to an average American — no foreign wars, no inflation, no crime, no illegal immigration and the impact on a household. In contrast, Kamala Harris ran on feelings, vague abstract vibes, oxygenating fears, a high horse with a Hollywood saddle, constant virtue signalling, appearances on SNL, and a zero-sum issue-driven campaign. Being uncharismatic didn’t help. She lacked authenticity and charisma and the Democrats’ overall message was focused on vilifying Trump and the Republican voter. That backfired.

This time it was all about making sure that Harris lost.

She clearly chose not to separate from her boss on most agendas. Plus the constantly invoked moral high ground — ‘We are better than the Republicans’ — did not work when tens of thousands of unarmed people were being obliterated in a genocide on her watch. And endorsements from the likes of warmonger Dick Cheney, which should have caused revulsion, were worn like a badge of honour. Bizarre!

Flashback 2020: Biden picked a losing vice-president in order to ensure he would do eight years. Her campaign had zero momentum from the get-go and a late arrival left no runway time for the campaign to take flight. She is no Barack Obama. And while Obama’s politics may not be ideal, his persona was absolutely dynamic.

It seemed Harris only ran on the abortion issue, and despite her calls from the pulpit, the country figured out that Trump is not really pro-life, as the Democratic rhetoric would like them to believe. Trump ran an intelligent campaign and perceptively pulled ahead of the Democratic rhetoric by clearly rejecting a countrywide abortion ban.

What was Harris left with?

She beat the drum on ‘cry wolf’, when the wolf wasn’t really there. The wolf wasn’t interested in eating the sheep.

Another sensitive issue that Harris championed was the gender choice for minors — an issue that did not sit too well at the ballot box regardless of what the pundits or the extreme left wing might have had the campaign believe. The Red sweep clearly told the Democrats that if a child can’t get a tattoo before the age of 18 without parental presence, then something as consequential, life-altering and monumental as gender change has to be off the table.

And here we are today and America has made its choice. It chose to let a felon into the White House, and as a friend (who hails from occupied Kashmir, and has faced persecution) said, “America decided it did not want undocumented immigrants no matter how persecuted they feel in their country of birth. Misogyny does not bother the majority, hate speech and da­­ngerous rhetoric isn’t that bad, reproductive rights for wo­­m­en aren’t that big of a deal after all, and the list goes on.

But nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to normalising a yearlong genocide. Liberals worked overtime to make a fascist sound normal to the people who do not agree with what has been going on this past year. They thought we could focus on safe abortions instead.

He might turn out to be just like his predecessors and continue America’s Middle East policy, but he won’t feed the world lies about it. Those who did not vote for Kamala or simply abstained as an act of defiance or for the lack of a better choice, you have my respect.’’

Cue the Muslims in the US who chose to make their voice heard.

While in 2016 there was a feeling of deep depression at Trump winning, this time it was all about making sure that Harris lost. America voted, and it voted for a better life by tuning out the noise.

And while the mainstream media looks for more rhetoric as to why Trump won, the answer is simple; real issues always trump vague feelings. Period.

The writer has published two books and is a freelance journalist.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2024

The Donald supremacy

An empire unravels as the "short-fingered vulgarian" reclaims the throne.

Asad Rahim Khan

Published November 8, 2024
DAWN

It wasn’t even close. But also, it was never going to be.

As the 2024 polls conclude, the global hegemon may be entering its own late Soviet Union phase: ancient leaders, vomiting soldiers, and the collapse of a rules-based order that, even in its prime, never quite applied to those writing it.

And yet such obituaries are a risky business: while the West’s neoliberals make up the dying regime today, they’re not going the way of the communist bloc just yet.

After all, America remains the greatest economy, the mightiest military, and the uncrowned keeper of the world’s reserve currency. It is empire, and empire is everywhere.
America picks Trump, again

But one would be hard-pressed to think, after yet another toxic election, that the American experiment isn’t flailing hard. Described over three decades ago as a “short-fingered vulgarian” in Vanity Fair, Donald Trump is displaying a different sort of hand gesture to elite magazines these days.

Fresh from a hero’s journey grosser than the reality TV he headlines, Trump is cruising past two assassination attempts, two impeachments, even a criminal conviction, to become the 47th president of the United States. “We love winners,” he said during his last term. “We love winners. Winners are winners.”

And losers are losers. Surely, asked The Guardian, didn’t the world see “Kamala Harris’s competence and expertise, her decency and grace, her potential to be the first female president?”

If the world saw it, the voter didn’t, handing the God & Oil Party its first popular victory in two decades. And the emotional meltdown on the other side is silly, self-indulgent, and self-delusional.


Because Kamala Harris was never going to win. Let’s face it: how many times has it happened in America that an unpopular incumbent won amid economic anxiety? Kamala hadn’t to distinguish herself from Trump so much as from Sleepy Joe. She decided not to. She couldn’t attack Trump’s corruption. Biden was corrupt. His harassment of women; Biden did that too. His age: Biden is ancient. His mental acuity: Biden is demented.

So Kamala was left with Kamala, and a politburo of Pelosis and Obamas lurking in the hall — a dizzy ex-prosecutor that had never won a single primary, couldn’t carry her own state in 2020, had no recognisable ideas as vice-president, had no core beliefs in general, and sold out each of her positions from the wall to Palestine. Should she have run?

Because the core theme of this election, same as the one before it, was simple: if Bill Clinton’s boys had come up with “It’s the economy, stupid”, the same dinosaurs were now too high up the managerial class to let Kamala know it was the economy again, and that those amid it were suffering.

Instead, the donors, operators, and hopey-changey Ivy Leaguers that form the Dems’ shadow party — the ones that knifed Biden when his brain froze on the debate stage — went on and on about Joe’s economic miracle: more growth, more jobs, more recovery all around.

And if median income was taking a beating, and food insecurity was at a high, and health insurance was on the wane, who cared? As Charles Schumer shrugged in 2016, for every blue-collar Democrat that dropped off, the party would snatch up two suburban Republicans. It was a poor trade to make, and it wasn’t going to work anyway, given the massive workers’ exodus from the left across the board.

“It should come as no great surprise,” said Bernie Sanders, forever the thwarted king across the sea, “that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

And how: nearly 80 per cent of voters that thought the economy was their top issue voted for Trump.
Racist orange billionaire beats deep state genocide enabler

In the other corner was Harris as a sad parody of Hillary — courting vapid celebrities over unions, and vile chicken-hawks like Liz Cheney over decent human beings. Say what you want about the state of Biden’s brain, he’d been in politics long enough to do a populist feint when needed, from laying track to splurging on jobs (all watered down once in office).

Not Kamala — she was content with just saying she’d be better than the brownshirts coming back. And why not; standing against something is still a stand. It’s just that the last time America defeated fascism, it required a titanic reorientation of the entire economy, near-full employment, and a war that killed 4pc of the world’s population.

What Kamala had were bumper stickers. “Never again,” she enjoyed telling crowds. “Never again. Never again.”

Interestingly, it may well have been never again: as of this writing, Trump is bagging the same number of votes as his losing bid in 2020, if not less. In essence, the Dems lost more than Trump won.

Yes, a fair few wealthy suburbanites feared, correctly, that Trump would take a gold-plated wrecking ball to their democracy. For everyone else, however, there were more immediate crises at hand. (“Did America really elect a dictator because Frosted Flakes hit $7.99 at the grocery store?” asked the Jacobin.)

But inflation’s a desperately dull subject, one almost as dull as social stratification — the kind that breeds status anxiety; the realisation that a certain standard of life can now only be the province of rich idiots that live in gated communities, go to the same schools, inter-golf, and inter-marry. Why not vote for Trump?


Instead, the rest of the world gets to listen to how America’s rotten id let the Donald win again — a triumph of racism, sexism, fascism, this-ism, and that-ism; that the barbarians have disarmed lady Liberty, and the Capitol will be toppled next. If it was Jan 6 then, it’ll be blood in the streets now.

The hysteria is so loud, it’s almost as if this hasn’t happened before: that a void so carefully nourished over generations — a culture that sanctifies capital, and a politics bereft of class — wouldn’t be filled by right-wing populists.

Because it’s hard to imagine it was Nazis that re-elected the Squad: Rashida Tlaib, who refused to endorse Kamala, was returned to Congress by the same Michigan voter that had so humiliated Harris, in a stunning 20,000-vote swing away from Biden’s haul in 2020.

“Genocide is bad politics,” said an activist in Dearborn. Unless, of course, we believe the Democrats: that the minorities have turned into white supremacists overnight. Could it be, instead, that they sensed the liberal order’s self-immolation in Gaza; that the bodies of shredded children on hooks was no longer international law as usual?

It was hard to come to any other conclusion, especially with Bill Clinton being trotted out to tell potential voters their family members deserved ethnic cleansing at the hands of Eretz Zion. Incidentally, the man thought best-suited to soothing Muslim horror over an ongoing genocide was the same president that had let Serbs slaughter their way to the last Bosnian enclave before stirring himself awake (and was still celebrated by the Muslim street for it).

In fact, the Republican Party, despite boasting the world’s most diverse range of war criminals — from Kissinger to Rumsfeld to Bolton — sounded more moderate on killing kids overseas than the Democrats this round. And if the Kamala voter was being expected to ignore a genocide, why should the Trumpist be made to blush over race riots?

As for policies at home, the blues seem to have decided that victory, via a happy left-wing, would still be worse than defeat by grandpas in red hats. If there was a coalition the Democrats wanted to win over last week, it was, well, the Republican coalition. And the Republican coalition couldn’t even recognise itself: the neocons were dead, the blazers-and-slacks bunch was cowed, and the MAGA Trumpers were legion.

Because politics in America is no longer about bettering social conditions; it hasn’t been since Reagan. Politics in America is about target selection — a perverse culture war that helps people forget what’s attributed to Tanzania’s Julius Nyrere: that the US is a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.

So it is that a racist orange billionaire beats a deep state genocide enabler, in what the press calls our “most crucial election” — even as both are united on backing Israel, fighting China, protecting guns from their victims, deporting illegals en masse, drilling record amounts of hydrocarbon, and building up defence-tech. The big stuff is settled.

If there are differences, it’s on the second-string issues — tax cuts for the rich, anti-trust enforcement, crackdowns on even-legal immigrants, and whether or not Elon Musk is a white replacement weirdo.

And yet, if Trump remains the anti-war provincial he pledges to be, that will be more than enough for millions of innocents so removed from his universe — the kind of indifference that drove Bush-era torturers like Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales into the Democrats’ loving arms.

As for Pakistan — and depending on the politics of the Pakistani saying so —he’s a breath of fresh air for the country’s largest party, the PTI, and bodes well for the imprisoned Imran Khan; alternatively, say those partial to the current regime’s jailers, Pakistan’s not important enough to care about anyway. The first assumption is still premature; the second is already wrong.

What’s beyond argument is that the Donald returns older, angrier, and more extreme. He’s mopped the floor with America’s traditional dynasties, the Bushes and the Clintons, and carries a party remade entirely in his image. Meanwhile, the Senate has flipped red; the House is on knife-edge; and a third of the Supreme Court sits as his appointees. A broader realignment, towards the populist roar, is ensuring his surname becomes an era.

“This will truly be the golden age of America,” he says. Ever since its supervillains took the controls in 2000, it hasn’t been.



The author is an advocate at the Lahore High Court. He is a partner at Ashtar Ali LLP, where he focuses on constitutional law and commercial litigation. He is also a columnist at Dawn.

IHK resolution

KASHMIR IS INDIA'S GAZA

DAWN
Editorial

November 8, 2024 

IF the Indian state is serious about its democratic credentials, then it should listen to the voices emanating from held Kashmir’s legislature calling for a restoration of the region’s special status.

On Wednesday, IHK’s assembly, which was elected last month after a decade, passed a non-binding resolution calling for the safeguarding of the disputed territory’s “identity, culture and rights”.

Though the resolution, piloted by the pro-India National Conference, which now rules IHK in a coalition with Congress, made no explicit reference to Article 370, the message to Delhi was clear. “The assembly has done its job,” said Omar Abdullah, IHK’s chief minister. Mr Abdullah had during the election campaign pledged to restore Article 370, discarded by India in August 2019, as well as the held region’s statehood.

Last month’s election results, as well as the recently passed resolution, clearly show that the people of held Kashmir are not happy with New Delhi’s snatching of their limited autonomy, and want India to reverse these dubious moves. The Indian prime minister has said statehood would be restored, though other members of his cabinet have said Article 370 is ‘done’ and ‘dead’.

While statehood, and the unity of held Kashmir — India has broken up IHK into two union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh — are important, the special status granted to the disputed territory under Articles 370 and 35A must also be restored. If most of India’s north-eastern states can continue to have a special constitutional status, to protect their culture and diversity, why is the BJP-led government being so rigid when it comes to occupied Kashmir?

Post-Aug 2019, there has been a conscious effort to change IHK’s demographic profile, and obliterate its unique identity. That is why nearly all political forces there — from pro-independence parties to those in New Delhi’s good books — are united in their demand for a restoration of the held territory’s special status.

Along with meeting a key demand of the Kashmiri people, reinstating the aforesaid articles would also help improve India’s ties with Pakistan. After the Modi government made its controversial move to strip IHK of its unique status, bilateral ties quickly nosedived. Therefore, if the BJP administration were to shed its rigidity on the matter and listen to the Kashmiris, it could pave the way for the resumption of the political process in IHK, along with removing a key obstacle in improving ties with Pakistan.

Hardliners in New Delhi may be telling themselves that the Kashmir question has been resolved, but the reality suggests otherwise. The IHK assembly resolution, in fact, offers New Delhi a face-saving option to restore Kashmir’s autonomy, as the administration can say it is only responding to popular demand. Should India choose to ignore this demand, disaffection in IHK will only increase.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2024

Indian-occupied Kashmir’s legislative assembly demands restoration of partial autonomy

KASHMIR IS INDIA'S GAZA

AFP Published November 6, 2024

Indian security personnel stand guard outside the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly as it holds the first session amid a series of militant attacks in Srinagar on November. — Reuters

Indian-occupied Kashmir’s (IoK) legislative assembly passed a resolution on Wednesday demanding that New Delhi restore the Muslim-majority territory’s partial autonomy, cancelled in 2019 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.

New Delhi cancelled IoK’s special status in 2019, a sudden decision accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long communications blackout.

It has been ruled by a governor appointed by New Delhi since.

But last month the territory also elected its local legislative assembly, with voters choosing a government in opposition to Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).


“This assembly calls upon the Government of India to initiate dialogue with elected representatives of people of Jammu and Kashmir for restoration of special status,” the resolution read, passed by a majority vote.

The 29 BJP members in the 90-seat house opposed the non-binding resolution, which requires the approval from the federally appointed governor.

“The assembly has done its job,” chief minister Omar Abdullah told reporters.

The resolution said it “reaffirms the importance of the special and constitutional guarantees, which safeguarded the identity, culture and rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir”.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since partition at the chaotic end of British rule in 1947, and both countries claim the territory in full.

About 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in the region, battling a 35-year separatist movement in which tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and Kashmiri fighters have lost their lives, including dozens this year alone.

The 2019 constitutional amendment imposing direct rule also downgraded held-Kashmir from a federal state to a “union territory”.

Modi has promised to restore that, without giving a timeline.

Nobody Wants This (but Israel): On Security of Indian Peacekeepers

Aman Kumar | 28 Oct 2024

India is in danger of getting the notorious distinction of having its own soldiers harmed by the arms and munitions it has supplied to Israel.

Representational Image. 

In a significant escalation of conflict, Israel has attacked the United Nations (UN) peacekeepers stationed in Lebanon for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

So far, two Indonesian peacekeepers and two Sri Lankan peacekeepers have been injured in the attacks by Israel, and fifteen peacekeepers have suffered effects, including skin irritation and gastrointestinal reactions to the smoke generated after firing by Israel.

Members of the Indian army are also currently stationed there as peacekeepers and are thus under serious and immediate risk of being attacked by Israel. In a cruel twist of fate, the Indian ministry of defence, through Munitions Indian Limited— a public sector undertaking, has supplied weapons to Israel during the ongoing conflict in Gaza and West Asia.

This post discusses the attacks from the perspective of international law, highlighting India’s contribution to the issue of attacks on UN peacekeepers.

Laying down the law

Way back in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to give an advisory opinion on the question of reparation in respect of damage suffered by either itself or by its agents while performing their duties.

Members of the Indian army are also currently stationed there as peacekeepers and are thus under serious and immediate risk of being attacked by Israel.

India was a one-year-old state at the time and still finding its feet in international law and diplomacy. It had just been a year since the Kashmir matter was taken to the UN, and just four months since the government of Hyderabad— which in its own words was “a State not a member of the United Nations”—had referred its dispute with India to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

Still, India was one of the five States to submit their written statements to the court. However, it must be noted that peacekeepers are not considered ‘agents’ of the UN. As such, the question about reparation was not about the damage suffered by them.

India’s contribution to UN peacekeeping efforts

Over the years, India has contributed to more than 70 peacekeeping field missions of various types. It has been the largest contributor of troops to these missions.

The number of members of Indian contingents who have lost their lives on these missions is 177, as per India’s external affairs minister, Dr S. Jaishankar. The website of the Permanent Mission of India to the UN provides a list of 72 soldiers who have been awarded gallantry medals for their service while on these missions. This shows that India has been proactive in its role as far as the safety of the peacekeepers is concerned… till now.

Protecting the protectors

On July 26, 2022, two of India’s troop members of the Border Security Force— head constables Shishupal Singh and Sanwala Ram Vishnoi— in the UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) were attacked and killed.

At that time, India was a non-permanent member of the UNSC and immediately called for a meeting of the UNSC. Subsequently, in a press statement, the UNSC said that “deliberate attacks targeting peacekeepers may constitute war crimes under international law”.

A few months later, in December 2022, India assumed the presidency of the UNSC. During its presidency, India launched a ‘Group of Friends’ to promote accountability for crimes against peacekeepers, as part of its ‘Protecting the Protectors’ initiative.

Over the years, India has contributed to more than 70 peacekeeping field missions of various types. It has been the largest contributor of troops to these missions.

This was done to implement the UNSC Resolution 2589 of 2021 which was also piloted by India. That resolution had called upon “member States hosting or having hosted UN peacekeeping operations, to take all appropriate measures, in accordance with their national law, and international law, as applicable, to bring to justice perpetrators of the killing of, and all acts of violence against UN personnel.”

The Group of Friends initiative of India was joined by Bangladesh, Egypt, France, Morocco and Nepal as co-chairs. It has had two meetings so far, in 2023 and 2024, and currently has 40 member States.

At the 2024 meeting, India launched a database “designed to record crimes against peacekeepers and monitor progress in holding perpetrators accountable”.

Protecting the perpetrators?

In the aftermath of Israel’s attack on the UNIFIL, on October 13, 2024, 34 UNIFIL members issued a joint statement condemning the attack and asked that such attacks must be stopped immediately and investigated adequately.

India decided not to join in issuing the statement. However, once the statement was out, the official account of the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations expressed its support for the statement almost as an afterthought.

Subsequently, it also attached its name to the statement. One wonders why the government did not join the statement from the beginning, especially since it had already released a statement on the attacks on October 11, 2024, where it had expressed concern “at the deteriorating security situation along the Blue Line” and had reiterated that the “inviolability of UN premises must be respected by all, and appropriate measures taken to ensure the safety of UN peacekeepers and the sanctity of their mandate”.

Considering that only Israel had attacked the peacekeepers, it is curious that India decided not to name it, and instead ambiguously asked “all” to ensure the safety of peacekeepers.

Indian weaponry and the Israeli army

The Indian ministry of defence has been supplying weapons to Israel and providing private Indian companies with licences to supply weapons to Israel.

Considering that only Israel had attacked the peacekeepers, it is curious that India decided not to name it, and instead ambiguously asked “all” to ensure the safety of peacekeepers.

Recently, a petition was filed challenging this action of the government. It was argued by the petitioners that by supplying weapons to Israel, India might be aiding in the commission of international crimes.

A Supreme Court Bench, headed by the Chief Justice of India, rejected the petition. As I have argued in an earlier post, the court failed to appreciate the international law arguments within the petition.

Now we have a situation where, potentially, the buyer of Indian weapons might end up attacking members of Indian peacekeeping forces themselves. It will indeed be a cruel irony.

I say ‘potentially’ because, in its media briefing on October 17, 2024 referring to Israel’s attack of October 13, 2024, which caused skin irritation to 15 UN peacekeepers, the official spokesperson of the Indian ministry of external affairs said that “in that particular zone we did not have any of our Indian troops”.

Considering Israel’s aggression throughout this month, further attacks on the peacekeepers cannot be ruled out. One can only hope that the Indian government will take some action to protect its troops before it is too late.

Aman Kumar is an alumnus of Sainik School Rewa, Madhya Pradesh. Currently.

Courtesy: The Leaflet