The New Nation - Internet Edition

Shrimp export under threat

THE European Union (EU) has warned Bangladesh shrimp exporters of likely export restrictions to EU countries unless they ensure quality. This notice was served following a recent visit to Bangladesh of a EU delegation. In a letter to the government the team expressed concern over health hazards posed by antibiotics. They threatened to take steps against Bangladesh shrimp if chemicals and medicines above permissible levels were detected.

It is not for the first time that allegations of the use of excessive preservatives have been made. As a reaction to the reported presence of harmful antibiotics, EU sent back 300 containers of shrimp during the last few months. This not only brought economic loss but also loss of image of the country. This may even cause loss of the export market of frozen foods. Bangladesh exports 45-48 percent of its shrimp to EU countries. Loss of such a big market would seriously affect export trade. EU steps are not unlikely to induce others to follow suit.

Contribution of fish and fish product to GDP was about four percent in 2006-07. Export of frozen foods, mainly shrimp, earned the country US$534 million during the last fiscal year. This registered an increase of about four percent over US$495 million earned during the previous fiscal year. Earnings from this sector are supposed to increase in future. But alleged use of chemicals disliked by consumers and unhygienic handling and packaging, violation of workers' right are possible threats to the export of shrimp. The exporters should strictly maintain quality in all respects to the complete satisfaction of the importers.

Vacating occupied railway lands

EVEN the present military-backed interim government under state of emergency could not reclaim more than 50 acres out of the 2,500 acres of occupied railway land from grabbers during its more than one and a half years of rule, as reported by media recently. Soon after this government took charge, the taskforce launched 'a massive drive' to recover the occupied government land as part of its crusade against corruption. But most of the railway lands are still occupied illegally by many grabbers across the country and the Railway Department is in helpless condition and finds it difficult to go ahead with development programmes.

So far no fresh initiative has yet been taken by the authorities to recover the grabbed land. As is widely known to all how nexus is formed with gangsters in connivance with local influential people having political clout and those who are in the administration including law enforcing agencies for grabbing government land belonging to different departments and ministries. Similarly, armed hoodlums and a section of railway employees and workers have been occupying railway land for a long time though attempts were made many a time to recover those.

Much of whatever land the railway authorities recovered was reoccupied by the grabbers because of their clout. In the capital, many of the slums are along the railway tracks occupied by the grabbers rented out to helpless poor and uprooted people coming from the rural areas. These illegal occupants at Kawranbazar, Kamalapur, Mohakhali, Banani, Tejgaon and Khilgaon have rented out the lands to others for use as kitchen markets, makeshift shops, tea-stalls, rickshaw-stands and business establishments. Non-recovery of the occupied lands has led to huge loss amounting to about Tk 400 crore annually to the state-owned Railway, according to the media.

Kashmir: Land and freedom

Arundhati Roy

A Kashmiri Muslim shows a victory sign during a march in Srinagar, India. Photograph: Dar Yasin/AP

For the past 60 days or so, since about the end of June, the people of Kashmir have been free. Free in the most profound sense. They have shrugged off the terror of living their lives in the gun-sights of half a million heavily armed soldiers, in the most densely militarised zone in the world.

After 18 years of administering a military occupation, the Indian government's worst nightmare has come true. Having declared that the militant movement has been crushed, it is now faced with a non-violent mass protest, but not the kind it knows how to manage. This one is nourished by people's memory of years of repression in which tens of thousands have been killed, thousands have been "disappeared", hundreds of thousands tortured, injured, and humiliated. That kind of rage, once it finds utterance, cannot easily be tamed, rebottled and sent back to where it came from.

A sudden twist of fate, an ill-conceived move over the transfer of 100 acres of state forest land to the Amarnath Shrine Board (which manages the annual Hindu pilgrimage to a cave deep in the Kashmir Himalayas) suddenly became the equivalent of tossing a lit match into a barrel of petrol. Until 1989 the Amarnath pilgrimage used to attract about 20,000 people who travelled to the Amarnath cave over a period of about two weeks. In 1990, when the overtly Islamist militant uprising in the valley coincided with the spread of virulent Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in the Indian plains, the number of pilgrims began to increase exponentially. By 2008 more than 500,000 pilgrims visited the Amarnath cave, in large groups, their passage often sponsored by Indian business houses. To many people in the valley this dramatic increase in numbers was seen as an aggressive political statement by an increasingly Hindu-fundamentalist Indian state. Rightly or wrongly, the land transfer was viewed as the thin edge of the wedge. It triggered an apprehension that it was the beginning of an elaborate plan to build Israeli-style settlements, and change the demography of the valley.

Days of massive protest forced the valley to shut down completely. Within hours the protests spread from the cities to villages. Young stone pelters took to the streets and faced armed police who fired straight at them, killing several. For people as well as the government, it resurrected memories of the uprising in the early 90s. Throughout the weeks of protest, hartal (strikes) and police firing, while the Hindutva publicity machine charged Kashmiris with committing every kind of communal excess, the 500,000 Amarnath pilgrims completed their pilgrimage, not just unhurt, but touched by the hospitality they had been shown by local people.

Eventually, taken completely by surprise at the ferocity of the response, the government revoked the land transfer. But by then the land-transfer had become what Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the most senior and also the most overtly Islamist separatist leader, called a "non-issue".

Massive protests against the revocation erupted in Jammu. There, too, the issue snowballed into something much bigger. Hindus began to raise issues of neglect and discrimination by the Indian state. (For some odd reason they blamed Kashmiris for that neglect.) The protests led to the blockading of the Jammu-Srinagar highway, the only functional road-link between Kashmir and India. Truckloads of perishable fresh fruit and valley produce began to rot.

The blockade demonstrated in no uncertain terms to people in Kashmir that they lived on sufferance, and that if they didn't behave themselves they could be put under siege, starved, deprived of essential commodities and medical supplies.

To expect matters to end there was of course absurd. Hadn't anybody noticed that in Kashmir even minor protests about civic issues like water and electricity inevitably turned into demands for azadi, freedom? To threaten them with mass starvation amounted to committing political suicide.

Not surprisingly, the voice that the government of India has tried so hard to silence in Kashmir has massed into a deafening roar.

Raised in a playground of army camps, checkpoints, and bunkers, with screams from torture chambers for a soundtrack, the young generation has suddenly discovered the power of mass protest, and above all, the dignity of being able to straighten their shoulders and speak for themselves, represent themselves. For them it is nothing short of an epiphany. Not even the fear of death seems to hold them back. And once that fear has gone, of what use is the largest or second largest army in the world?

There have been mass rallies in the past, but none in recent memory that have been so sustained and widespread. The mainstream political parties of Kashmir - National Conference and People's Democratic party - appear dutifully for debates in New Delhi's TV studios, but can't muster the courage to appear on the streets of Kashmir. The armed militants who, through the worst years of repression were seen as the only ones carrying the torch of azadi forward, if they are around at all, seem content to take a back seat and let people do the fighting for a change.

The separatist leaders who do appear and speak at the rallies are not leaders so much as followers, being guided by the phenomenal spontaneous energy of a caged, enraged people that has exploded on Kashmir's streets. Day after day, hundreds of thousands of people swarm around places that hold terrible memories for them. They demolish bunkers, break through cordons of concertina wire and stare straight down the barrels of soldiers' machine guns, saying what very few in India want to hear. Hum Kya Chahtey? Azadi! (We want freedom.) And, it has to be said, in equal numbers and with equal intensity: Jeevey jeevey Pakistan. (Long live Pakistan.)

That sound reverberates through the valley like the drumbeat of steady rain on a tin roof, like the roll of thunder during an electric storm.

On August 15, India's independence day, Lal Chowk, the nerve centre of Srinagar, was taken over by thousands of people who hoisted the Pakistani flag and wished each other "happy belated independence day" (Pakistan celebrates independence on August 14) and "happy slavery day". Humour obviously, has survived India's many torture centres and Abu Ghraibs in Kashmir.

On August 16 more than 300,000 people marched to Pampore, to the village of the Hurriyat leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, who was shot down in cold blood five days earlier.

On the night of August 17 the police sealed the city. Streets were barricaded, thousands of armed police manned the barriers. The roads leading into Srinagar were blocked. On the morning of August 18, people began pouring into Srinagar from villages and towns across the valley. In trucks, tempos, jeeps, buses and on foot. Once again, barriers were broken and people reclaimed their city. The police were faced with a choice of either stepping aside or executing a massacre. They stepped aside. Not a single bullet was fired.

The city floated on a sea of smiles. There was ecstasy in the air. Everyone had a banner; houseboat owners, traders, students, lawyers, doctors. One said: "We are all prisoners, set us free." Another said: "Democracy without freedom is demon-crazy." Demon-crazy. That was a good one. Perhaps he was referring to the insanity that permits the world's largest democracy to administer the world's largest military occupation and continue to call itself a democracy.

There was a green flag on every lamp post, every roof, every bus stop and on the top of chinar trees. A big one fluttered outside the All India Radio building. Road signs were painted over.

Rawalpindi they said. Or simply Pakistan. It would be a mistake to assume that the public expression of affection for Pakistan automatically translates into a desire to accede to Pakistan. Some of it has to do with gratitude for the support - cynical or otherwise - for what Kashmiris see as their freedom struggle, and the Indian state sees as a terrorist campaign. It also has to do with mischief. With saying and doing what galls India most of all. (It's easy to scoff at the idea of a "freedom struggle" that wishes to distance itself from a country that is supposed to be a democracy and align itself with another that has, for the most part been ruled by military dictators. A country whose army has committed genocide in what is now Bangladesh. A country that is even now being torn apart by its own ethnic war. These are important questions, but right now perhaps it's more useful to wonder what this so-called democracy did in Kashmir to make people hate it so?)

Everywhere there were Pakistani flags, everywhere the cry Pakistan se rishta kya? La illaha illallah. (What is our bond with Pakistan? There is no god but Allah.) Azadi ka matlab kya? La illaha illallah. (What does freedom mean? There is no god but Allah.)

For somebody like myself, who is not Muslim, that interpretation of freedom is hard - if not impossible - to understand. I asked a young woman whether freedom for Kashmir would not mean less freedom for her, as a woman. She shrugged and said "What kind of freedom do we have now? The freedom to be raped by Indian soldiers?" Her reply silenced me.

Surrounded by a sea of green flags, it was impossible to doubt or ignore the deeply Islamic fervour of the uprising taking place around me. It was equally impossible to label it a vicious, terrorist jihad. For Kashmiris it was a catharsis. A historical moment in a long and complicated struggle for freedom with all the imperfections, cruelties and confusions that freedom struggles have. This one cannot by any means call itself pristine, and will always be stigmatised by, and will some day, I hope, have to account for, among other things, the brutal killings of Kashmiri Pandits in the early years of the uprising, culminating in the exodus of almost the entire Hindu community from the Kashmir valley.

As the crowd continued to swell I listened carefully to the slogans, because rhetoric often holds the key to all kinds of understanding. There were plenty of insults and humiliation for India: Ay jabiron ay zalimon, Kashmir hamara chhod do (Oh oppressors, Oh wicked ones, Get out of our Kashmir.) The slogan that cut through me like a knife and clean broke my heart was this one: Nanga bhookha Hindustan, jaan se pyaara Pakistan. (Naked, starving India, More precious than life itself - Pakistan.)

Why was it so galling, so painful to listen to this? I tried to work it out and settled on three reasons. First, because we all know that the first part of the slogan is the embarrassing and unadorned truth about India, the emerging superpower. Second, because all Indians who are not nanga or bhooka are and have been complicit in complex and historical ways with the elaborate cultural and economic systems that make Indian society so cruel, so vulgarly unequal.

And third, because it was painful to listen to people who have suffered so much themselves mock others who suffer, in different ways, but no less intensely, under the same oppressor. In that slogan I saw the seeds of how easily victims can become perpetrators.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani began his address with a recitation from the Qur'an. He then said what he has said before, on hundreds of occasions. The only way for the struggle to succeed, he said, was to turn to the Qur'an for guidance. He said Islam would guide the struggle and that it was a complete social and moral code that would govern the people of a free Kashmir. He said Pakistan had been created as the home of Islam, and that that goal should never be subverted. He said just as Pakistan belonged to Kashmir, Kashmir belonged to Pakistan. He said minority communities would have full rights and their places of worship would be safe. Each point he made was applauded.

I imagined myself standing in the heart of a Hindu nationalist rally being addressed by the Bharatiya Janata party's (BJP) LK Advani. Replace the word Islam with the word Hindutva, replace the word Pakistan with Hindustan, replace the green flags with saffron ones and we would have the BJP's nightmare vision of an ideal India.

Is that what we should accept as our future? Monolithic religious states handing down a complete social and moral code, "a complete way of life"? Millions of us in India reject the Hindutva project. Our rejection springs from love, from passion, from a kind of idealism, from having enormous emotional stakes in the society in which we live. What our neighbours do, how they choose to handle their affairs does not affect our argument, it only strengthens it.

Arguments that spring from love are also fraught with danger. It is for the people of Kashmir to agree or disagree with the Islamist project (which is as contested, in equally complex ways, all over the world by Muslims, as Hindutva is contested by Hindus). Perhaps now that the threat of violence has receded and there is some space in which to debate views and air ideas, it is time for those who are part of the struggle to outline a vision for what kind of society they are fighting for.

Perhaps it is time to offer people something more than martyrs, slogans and vague generalisations. Those who wish to turn to the Qur'an for guidance will no doubt find guidance there.

But what of those who do not wish to do that, or for whom the Qur'an does not make place? Do the Hindus of Jammu and other minorities also have the right to self-determination? Will the hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits living in exile, many of them in terrible poverty, have the right to return? Will they be paid reparations for the terrible losses they have suffered? Or will a free Kashmir do to its minorities what India has done to Kashmiris for 61 years? What will happen to homosexuals and adulterers and blasphemers? What of thieves and lafangas and writers who do not agree with the "complete social and moral code"? Will we be put to death as we are in Saudi Arabia? Will the cycle of death, repression and bloodshed continue? History offers many models for Kashmir's thinkers and intellectuals and politicians to study. What will the Kashmir of their dreams look like? Algeria? Iran? South Africa? Switzerland? Pakistan?

At a crucial time like this, few things are more important than dreams. A lazy utopia and a flawed sense of justice will have consequences that do not bear thinking about. This is not the time for intellectual sloth or a reluctance to assess a situation clearly and honestly.

Already the spectre of partition has reared its head. Hindutva networks are alive with rumours about Hindus in the valley being attacked and forced to flee. In response, phone calls from Jammu reported that an armed Hindu militia was threatening a massacre and that Muslims from the two Hindu majority districts were preparing to flee. Memories of the bloodbath that ensued and claimed the lives of more than a million people when India and Pakistan were partitioned have come flooding back. That nightmare will haunt all of us forever.

However, none of these fears of what the future holds can justify the continued military occupation of a nation and a people. No more than the old colonial argument about how the natives were not ready for freedom justified the colonial project.

Of course there are many ways for the Indian state to continue to hold on to Kashmir. It could do what it does best. Wait. And hope the people's energy will dissipate in the absence of a concrete plan. It could try and fracture the fragile coalition that is emerging. It could extinguish this non-violent uprising and re-invite armed militancy. It could increase the number of troops from half a million to a whole million. A few strategic massacres, a couple of targeted assassinations, some disappearances and a massive round of arrests should do the trick for a few more years.

The unimaginable sums of public money that are needed to keep the military occupation of Kashmir going is money that ought by right to be spent on schools and hospitals and food for an impoverished, malnutritioned population in India. What kind of government can possibly believe that it has the right to spend it on more weapons, more concertina wire and more prisons in Kashmir?

The Indian military occupation of Kashmir makes monsters of us all. It allows Hindu chauvinists to target and victimise Muslims in India by holding them hostage to the freedom struggle being waged by Muslims in Kashmir.

India needs azadi from Kashmir just as much as - if not more than - Kashmir needs azadi from India.

The Guardian

The Saakashvili experiment

Ramzy Baroud

Just as the world's attention was focussed on China's Beijing Olympics, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, on 7 August, invaded the tiny breakaway province of South Ossetia. The initial attack on the South Ossetian capital, Tskninvali, soon extended to an all out war, which eventually invited Russia's wrath, and the death of thousands of innocent civilians on both sides.

Prior to Saakashvili's war, little was known about the political specifics of that area and the brewing decades-long territorial disputes which date back to the early 20th century, highlighted during an intense civil war that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union and its satellite states. Georgia's successful secession from the Soviet grip, understandably, inspired independence fervour in ethnic regions within Georgia. The small region of South Ossetia-majority ethnic Russians and minority Georgians-sought to join the North Ossetian province, which remained part of Russia. Another region was Abkhazia, whose protracted fight with the central Georgian government has also provoked much violence.

The fact that South Ossetia belongs to Georgia was hardly contested. Even Russia has long recognised Georgian sovereignty in that region. Russia, nonetheless, remained largely involved in South Ossetia-mostly as a "peacekeeping force", rationalising such involvement as essential for the national security of the country and the safety of its citizens. Most South Ossentians-like Abkhazians-hold Russian citizenship.

But setting such rationale aside, the fact is that South Ossetia is an important component in Russian foreign policy, and particularly its policy and attitude towards former Soviet republics and satellite states in Eastern Europe. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War was transformed into a political scramble: the US and NATO expanded their boundaries of influence and territorial outreach, while Russia struggled to maintain a level of influence and halt the encroachment of the US-led NATO.

Georgia, situated strategically between Russia, the Black Sea, Turkey and Iran, deserved due attention. The US became keenly interested in ensuring the inclusion of Georgia into its sphere of influence. Through dedicated efforts, a pro-Western leader, Saakashvili, came to power through a highly televised "Rose Revolution". While the integrity of the elections that followed and the role of the CIA in concocting and ensuring the success of the "revolution" are still intensely debated, the fact is Georgia fell into a new sphere of influence. Saakashvili is a man desperate for European-US validation. He too sought NATO membership and heedlessly invited Israeli military "specialists" to modernise his country's armed forces in anticipation of a battle with Russia.

Evidently, Georgia's leader knew well that a victory against Russia was unattainable. By embarking on a war against a tiny province, because, as he claimed, he ran out of patience, Saakashvili was following a script that was hardly of his own writing. The logic behind the war was to test Russia's resolve, and the readiness of its newest president, Dmitri Medvedev. A hesitant Russian response would be taken as another sign of weakness or lack of political and military decisiveness in Moscow, which might also inspire more such experiments. Too harsh a response could also be decried as "genocide" and war crimes and could be exploited to compel Russia's weaker neighbours to seek the protection of NATO.

This is what indeed transpired since Russia called off military actions 13 August.

First, leaders of pro-US countries in the region-namely, Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia-attended a rally in support of Georgia's Saakashvili on 14 August in Tbilisi. The televised event was accompanied by a flood of experts pedalling Russia's evil intents to the world media while promoting a larger US role to ensure the independence of these nations and to preserve their fragile democracies. "They're all seriously worried that it's Georgia today and one of them tomorrow," surmised Krzysztof Bobinski, director of the Warsaw-based Unia & Polska Foundation.

Second, the Russian response to Georgia's war in South Ossetia has resulted in a remarkable breakthrough in negotiations between the US and East European countries regarding the Bush administration's plans for a new missile defence shield. On 14 August, "Poland and the US signed a deal to build a controversial missile defence shield in Eastern Europe," reported the British Telegraph newspaper. "The agreement highlights how Russia's invasion of Georgia has prompted a swift reappraisal of the region's security and alliances. The US and Poland have been talking about the missile shield for a year but rushed to cement their alliance in the wake of this week's conflict."

It's rather interesting how a controversial and unpopular plan that has raised the ire of the Polish people -- 70 per cent of the country is against it-was overcome within days of war and is now embraced as a necessary deterrent. One cannot help but question the relationship between the decision to invade South Ossetia, which was certain to compel some Russian response, and the rush to embrace Bush's military designs in that region. The plan to place missiles in Poland seemed like a resounding failure as late as last month when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "tried and failed just before leaving for Europe on Monday [7 July] to seal a deal to place missiles in Poland, the State Department said," according to CNN. Now Poland is all for it. It return, Poland would receive US assistance in overhauling its military, reminiscent of the Israeli-US efforts in aiding Georgia's military, which emboldened the latter to pursue war with Russia.