Freedom Cafe

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Sunday, December 07, 2008

The Attack on Mumbai

The heinous terrorist attack in Mumbai has received a great deal of media exposure and coverage. This attack has been dubbed “India’s 911” by a sensationalist press that has served to aggrandize the terrorists’ actions and conflate this attack with the global War on Terror. Key questions about this event remain unanswered. Is Pakistan behind the attack? That’s doubtful. Do the perpetrators of this attack have some sort of ties to extremist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba? Perhaps, but that doesn’t implicate Islamabad. What is more important to explore than speculating on the specific group responsible for this attack is the causes of this action and what political ramifications it will have.

India itself is a land of contradictions. It is the world’s largest democracy, but the majority of its people suffer from endemic poverty. Over 1.1 billion people call it home, but many groups in society have been marginalized and ignored. India has constantly been plagued by terrorism, but it has also perpetrated acts of terror in Kashmir. This recent attack in India has been claimed by a nascent terrorist organization—called the Deccan Mujahedeen—that is probably a ghost organization “created” solely for this attack. However, what are the grievances alleged by this organization and how will their crime impact India?

This act of terrorism, while completely unjustifiable, has been blamed on radical Islamists who have a wide-range of grievances. The disparities between Muslims—which make up close to 14% of the population—and Hindus—which make up around 80% of the population—in India are vast and are increasingly a cause of conflict. According to the government-sponsored Sachar Commission Report of November 2006, four out of every ten Muslims in India’s cities—and three out of 10 in the countryside—are living below the poverty line. Generally speaking, Muslim Indians have shorter life spans, lower literacy levels, and lower-paying jobs. Muslims face constant discrimination in education, housing, and employment. On top of being treated as second-class citizens and a constantly suspect subaltern group in society, issues such as the destruction of the Ayodha Mosque, the massacres in Gujrat, and the brutal military occupation of Kashmir have deeply affected Muslims in India. If India continues to ignore these grievances the likelihood of the growth of home-grown militants will increase.

The impact of this event is still reverberating across Indian society. On the political level, this terrorist attack could not have come at a more inopportune time for the Congress Party. When Congress came to power in 2004, they made revoking the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act their top priority. This act—similar to the American Patriot Act—was revoked that year but the Mumbai attack has renewed discussion on it. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which under Atal Bihari Vajpayee had passed this act, has renewed its support for it and has denounced Congress for being “soft on terrorism.” With general elections only a few months away, the BJP could galvanize its right-wing Hindu support base to try to defeat Congress in the upcoming elections. The idea that the government must respond to terrorist attacks by increasing the internal security apparatus is wrong. These actions will just lead to a more repressive state and a clamp-down on civil liberties. India should instead tackle problems such as poverty, lack of education, and unemployment because these issues feed the desperation that can lead to extremism and ultimately terror.

This terrorist attack has also complicated relations between India and Pakistan. It seems rather convenient for Indian to blame Pakistan anytime it has a domestic terrorist attack that involves Muslims. The allegation against Pakistan seems utterly baseless considering the strong denunciation by the Pakistani government and their offer to cooperate with India. Furthermore, Pakistan faces tremendous problems of its own—such as the growth of an indigenous Taliban movement, terrorist attacks against Pakistan, and internal economic problems—that it is trying to fix and stoking tensions with India is definitely not in their best interests. In fact, Pakistan has been aggressively pushing for a détente with India and this terrorist attack occurred during a peace negotiation visit by the Pakistani Foreign Minster to New Delhi. This attack has caused the distracted international media to focus on manufactured tensions between India and Pakistan rather than the root causes of this attack.

One of the important issues raised by this event are its international implications. The media has dubbed this attack India’s “911” which has unfortunately obfuscated a deeper understanding of this event. The media constantly raises the issue of a “911”—whether it is s terrorist attack in the UK, Spain, or Indonesia—type attack anytime there is some senseless act of terrorism. This is done by the media for a variety of reason. One reason is because it creates a simplified narrative, a “good vs. bad” story that is viscerally understandable for an audience. This allows for the audience to moralize the event which then provides justification for whatever actions the governments take during and after the event. Furthermore, it plays up the notion of international terrorism in general, and radical Islamist terrorism in particular, as an existential threat that must be both feared and destroyed. This gross simplification plays into the illusory idea of a “clash of civilizations” in which a “barbaric other” does senseless acts of terrorism for no apparent reason. While this may be able to get ratings for the media and provide cover for government actions, this simplifies a complex narrative and reduces these events to random acts of terrorism. This allows for the justification and continuation of the global War on Terror because all countries around the world have faced these attacks and governments have responded in kind. India has become a victim of terrorism and therefore has received global sympathy for its loss. Needless to say, India’s actions in Kashmir and its treatment of Muslims are ignored throughout this news coverage in favor of painting a simplistic victimization picture. Terrorism gets all of the media attention. State-sponsored acts of terrorism are ignored as are more pressing causes of conflict such as poverty, access to education, and underdevelopment. This skewed narrative will ensure that terrorism will not abate.

The full impact of the Mumbai attack will be seen in the coming months. These tragic acts of terrorism do have causes that need to be urgently addressed. India should not respond by becoming a greater national security-state; instead, it should aggressively tackle the problems that are ripping it apart. It would be wise to recall Gandhi’s sage reflection that “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

For further reading:

1. Behind the Mumbai Massacre: India’s Muslims in Crisis, Time Magazine, Aryn Baker 11-27-08
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1862650,00.html?xid=rss-world

2. The Assault on Mumbai, Counterpunch, Tariq Ali, 11-27-08
http://www.counterpunch.org/tariq11272008.html

3. Mumbai, the NYT’s Revisionism, and Lessons Not Learned, Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald, 11-28-08
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/28/nyt/index.html

4. Blood in Mumbai, Washington Post, Dileep Padgaonkar, 11-28-08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/27/AR2008112702049.html

5. Mumbai May Derail India-Pakistan Peace Progress, Washington Post, Shuja Nawaz, 11-28-08
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/needtoknow/2008/11/mumbai_may_derail_india-pakist.html

6. The age of ‘celebrity terrorism’, BBC News, Paul Cornish, 11-30-08
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/7755684.stm

7. Muslims -- India's new 'untouchables', LA Times, Asra Nomani, 12-1-08
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-nomani1-2008dec01,0,4043886.story

8. Toll from Deadly, Coordinated Mumabi Attacks Tops 170, Two Top Indian Officials Resign, Tensions Rise Between India and Pakistan, DemocracyNow!, 12-1-08
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/1/toll_from_deadly_coordinated_mumbai_attacks

9. A Shadow Falls on Mumbai, The Progressive, Amitabh Pal, The Progressive, 12-1-08
http://www.progressive.org/mag/wxap120108.html

10. A Statement by Concerned Citizens of India and Pakistan, Press Release, 12-2-08
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/02-15

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

[Reaction] The New Humanitarian Order

The article “The New Humanitarian Order” by Mahmood Mamdani is excerpted from the conclusion of his yet to be released book Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror. This was a fantastic piece that discussed the politicization of the Darfur conflict, the concept of humanitarian intervention, subverting the language of genocide, the International Criminal Court (ICC), law and politics in transitional societies, and survivors justice. I will briefly review each of these discussions followed by some general thoughts on this topic.

Mamadani begins by rightly pointing out that the conflict in Darfur has become unnecessarily politicized and is widely misunderstood in the West. He notes that the conflict in Darfur began as a civil war in 1987-89. He notes that the two key sides of the conflict—the Fur people and the Arabs—both committed crimes against each other. However, when the ICC began to consider this conflict it put the onus of blame on the Arabs. It falsely argued that this was a racialized conflict stoked by the Arabs. In fact, the problems in Darfur were related to resource conflicts and had little to do with ethnic tensions. The three points that drove this conflict were: 1) the colonial system which reorganized Darfur into a series of tribal homelands that designated the largest areas for settled peasant tribes and none for nomadic tribes. 2) Environmental degradation has seen the Sahara Desert expand by 100 kilometers in four decades and reached a critical point in the mid-1980s in that it pushed all tribes of North Darfur—Arab and non-Arab—further south in search of more fertile land. 3) The brutal counterinsurgency by the Bashir regime in 2003-04 in response to an insurgency backed by peasant tribes. Essentially the Darfur conflict stems from a series of internal problems which have pitted some members of society against the state. Even when there was a rise in the death rate of noncombatants from 2003-04 the World Health Organization traced 80 percent of deaths to drought-related diarrhea and only 20 percent to direct violence. So for the ICC to indict President Bashir for being behind this violence is not only the wrong approach but it also doesn’t address the real problems in this conflict. For the ICC to take a politicized action undermines it as an institution and hurts the cause of peace in Darfur.

Mamdani continues by discussing the concept of humanitarian intervention. He rightly notes that the international system that was set up after World War II made state sovereignty essentially inviolable. Humanitarian intervention does not abide by the rule of law and undermines the concept of state sovereignty. Furthermore, which conflicts are dealt with through this venue (e.g. Iraq, Darfur, etc.) often have ulterior motives that are more important than any concern for protection of civilian lives. Humanitarian intervention is a breach to state sovereignty and undermines our Westphalian system. State sovereignty has traditionally been sacrosanct and it is a political concept that is almost universally accepted. Humanitarian intervention does not care for state sovereignty.

So Defenders of humanitarian intervention argue that it is an apolitical concept since the protection of a protection of an innocent “other” is paramount. Furthermore, the concept of humanitarian intervention has been used throughout history to justify intervention to protect vulnerable peoples. For example, Western powers used to intervene in areas under the control of the Ottoman Empire under the guise of protecting minority religious groups. Similar concepts of protection of innocents were used by all the eighteenth and nineteenth century powers to justify their imperial ambitions. Our time is no different. It seems that the generalized “West” would like the right to intervene in other countries whenever the “West” considers a minority group to be in trouble (and is shouldn’t be surprising that resources often make these innocent civilians more important). The cries of “genocide” have been used to galvanize support for humanitarian intervention. However, these calls are almost always politicized and thus undermine the gravity of genocide.

Genocide is defined by extreme violence that targets for annihilation a civilian population that is marked off as different "on grounds of race, ethnicity or religion" from the dominant population. Now genocide has become a term used as a political tool to describe something that has become so reprehensible that action must be taken to stop its continuation. All modern wars are total wars and these wars are typically one of either an insurgency (liberation war), counterinsurgency (suppression of civil war or of rebel/revolutionary movements), or an inter-state war. Many civilians necessarily die in these conflicts and there are numerous crimes committed by all sides in modern conflicts. However, raising the specter of genocide in a particular country is used to justify the other type of war, i.e. humanitarian intervention. With the onset of the War on Terror, the concept of intervention as a positive idea to prevent genocide has gained traction even though indiscriminate bombings have been a hallmark of this war that has left thousands of civilians dead. So the term genocide is used to rationalize the illegal violation of state sovereignty. But to use the term genocide to describe the conflict in Darfur is not only incorrect but it also obfuscates the facts on the ground. This is unacceptable and the ICC has reinforced this misperception.

The ICC has become a politicized organization that indicts some individuals (such as Bashir) and ignores others (such as President Bush) that commit crimes. The ICC appears to be going after targets that are of interest to Western powers but does not pass judgment uniformly. This will ultimately undermine this institution and make it increasingly irrelevant.

The right approach to resolving difficult conflicts is through principled diplomacy and the flexible application of law in transitional societies. Justice for victims has to be put in context within the reconstitution of the society. Human rights abuses need to be dealt with but not necessarily through punitive justice. The example of South African and its Truth and Reconciliation movement is an excellent case in point. By absolving perpetrators of their crimes by demanding an open detailing of their crimes was an excellent way to resolve Apartheid-era injustices. This flexible model of justice brought stability and reconciliation to South Africa, not continued violence and retribution. As Mamdani noted, “Nuremberg may have been the paradigm for victors’ justice but South Africa’s post-apartheid transition is the paradigm for survivors’ justice.

Overall this is an excellent article worth considering and I’m looking forward to reading the book. Distinguishing between crimes against humanity and genocide is important and conflict prevention should be employed at all levels to prevent war. The issue of genocide is grave and innocent civilians need protection. However, dropping bombs and indictments often hurts civilians more than it protects them.

Freedom Cafe

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Top 20 Articles of 2008

Sunday, December 07, 2008

The Attack on Mumbai

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

[Reaction] The New Humanitarian Order

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