January 20, 2020
The territory of the State shall comprise all the territories
Before its accession Jammu & Kashmir was governed in terms of The Jammu
& Kashmir Constitution Act promulgated in 1939. What was considered to be
the political mainstream in Kashmir has effectively disappeared. Moreover, with
the Iranian issue back on the front burner, Pakistan will have a role to play in
the US scheme of things. This arrangement continued until the state adopted its
own Constitution.
The US needs Pakistan ever more if the US-Taliban deal has to
succeed. If you fail to drive a wedge between the populace and the insurgent —
the insurrectionary would win. However, there are also the standard bearers of
the Indian Union in the Vale of Kashmir namely the China Vacuum bags National Conference
and the Indian National Congress stretching back again to independence. With the
dismemberment of the original state of J&K that claim becomes a
non-sequitor. For in both bilateral and multilateral negotiations India would
not be able to say that we are wanting control over the original state of
J&K as acceded to India on October 27, 1947, by Maharaja Hari Singh for that
state no longer exists.Now with the government having bifurcated the state into
two what happens to the Constitution of the undivided state of J&K? For no
one can abrogate that Constitution and it has no self-destruct provision in its
12 Parts and 147 Articles.
The International Grey: India’s whole case for the
return of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the Northern Territories rests on the
Instrument of Accession, an Article of the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution and
two resolutions of Parliament. Even the Parliament of India cannot rescind it
for it has been framed by an elected constituent assembly much like the Indian
Constitution itself.The Political Grey: Going all the way back to 1947 there is
a sizeable section of people in Kashmir who have rooted for autonomy, self rule,
independence and merger with Pakistan.The Security Grey: It is a well-known
security canon that if a militant movement has popular support it is near
impossible to contain it, much less neutralise it.
The Strategic Grey: Pakistan
is back in the game not only in Kashmir but also in the region.†The two
resolutions of 1994 and 2012 state that the only unfinished business of
Partition are those parts of J&K illegally occupied by Pakistan and ceded to
China.That is why I told the Home Minister in the Lok Sabha on August 6, 2019,
that between the black and white there are 50 shades of grey in Jammu &
Kashmir. The current bifurcation has completely cut the legs out from under the
regional parties, namely the NC and PDP. The repercussions of the negation of
the political mainstream would be grave in the years to come. Then there is
always the ISIS to fill the vacuum if the demobilised Afghan fighters are
unwilling to become guns for hire for the Pakistani deep state. The most
contemporary counterinsurgency manual, authored by General David Petraeus in
2006 and applied in Iraq and later Afghanistan, is premised upon certain
fundamental principles that go the heart of COIN (Counter Insurgency)
operations.
This unravelling of J&K has weakened our case in the chanceries
and conference rooms of the world. (Photo: AP) By balkanising the state of Jammu
& Kashmir and reconfiguring its constitutional relationship with the Indian
Union, the NDA/BJP government has entered into a grey area whose shades are
going challenge the resilience of the Indian state. Para seven of the Instrument
of Accession signed by Maharaja Hari Singh on October 26, 1947, explicitly
stated, "nothing in this Instrument shall be deemed to commit me in any way to
acceptance of any future Constitution of India or to fetter my discretion to
enter into arrangements with the Government of India under any such future
Constitutionâ€. That is why a special mechanism was adopted by the Constituent
Assembly on October 17, 1949, in the form of Article 370 to cement the
relationship between the Indian Union and Jammu & Kashmir to move it beyond
the Instrument of Accession. Article 4 of the J&K Constitution states,
The
territory of the State shall comprise all the territories which on the 15th day
of August, 1947, were under the sovereignty or suzerainty of the ruler of the
State. If one was to argue that with the bifurcation the Constitution has become
a dead letter it can equally be argued that then the relationship between India
and Jammu and Kashmir is now back to the terms of the Instrument of Accession
dehors the constitutional sophistry of 2019. It remained in session till
November 17, 1956, wherein it adopted a Constitution that came into force on
November 26, 1957.The Constitutional Grey: Beyond ignoring the letter and spirit
of Article 3 and the repeal of Article 370 there are other constitutional issues
that have also been disregarded. It is ironical that three former chief
ministers of Jammu & Kashmir Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba
Mufti (who was till recently an ally of the BJP) and their families are in
incarceration.The government needed to apply the healing touch rather than
alienate the Kashmiris at this juncture.
After the last round of intense militant
activity in the mid 1990s that saw killings of the leaders and cadres of
mainstream political parties they still persevered and between 1996 and 2019
over four assembly elections and seven parliamentary elections reaffirmed their
faith in the Indian democratic system. Article 3 of the said Constitution
integrated the state inalienably into India by stating that Jammu & Kashmir
shall be an integral part of India.Article 370 became all the more germane for
on November 26, 1949, rajpramukhs of all the other the princely states that had
acceded to the Union of India signed and adopted the Constitution in its
entirety, except by the Maharaja, Jammu and Kashmir. Simply translated it means
winning the hearts and minds of the people.The government needed to apply the
healing touch rather than alienate the Kashmiris at this juncture. Over a period
of time various other political outfits like the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)
founded in 1999 also joined this endeavour. Whatever militant capacity the US-
Taliban deal would free up will all come to Kashmir. Kashmiris walks past
paramilitary troops patrolling a street in Srinagar on Saturday.
To make Jammu
& Kashmir’s integration with India permanent an elected Constituent Assembly
was convened on the 31st of October, 1951. They are intertwined and overlap and
therefore the slogan of azadi means different things to different people. In the
long war against militancy in Punjab the inflection point came when a popular
government even on a thin electoral base was restored in 1992. Currently also
the government is negotiating to end the decades-old insurgency with the Naga
underground.Though other princely states also signed similar covenants but given
the prevailing state of hostilities with Pakistan the situation in J&K was
fraught with complexity. All these four strains are present in the body politic
of Kashmir. It is obtuseness to remove the political buffer between Delhi and
Srinagar and administer Kashmir from New Delhi
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January 14, 2020
This in no way applies to the procurement potential
The world of Mr Trump may be very different from what the world has so far
encountered. By taking these issues head-on early in the campaign, Mr Trump hit
a raw nerve that resonated with the people a reality that mainstream media in
the US refused to acknowledge.India so far has been pretty nonchalant about the
Trump presidency.Donald Trump has triumphed and now the show must begin in right
earnest. Would Prime Minister Narendra Modi respond differently if a similar
call goes out regarding the ISIS?Mr Vajpayee is a libertarian at heart; Mr
Modi’s core beliefs are closer to some of the ideologically-driven foreign
policy positions that the Trump administration may decide to take.
Coupled with
the desire to stride on the global stage, ignoring the reality that India is
home to the second largest Muslim population that can proudly claim that none of
them has even been remotely allured by the medieval caliphate vision of the
ISIS, this government may inadvertently walk into a situation that can have
domestic consequences as well. That’s all in the past. Over 25 ears Sixteen
years after the collapse of the erstwhile Soviet Empire in December 1991 and
four Presidents in the interim period when the US regarded itself to be the only
superpower in the world, the sheen today is off. If the spectre of Chinese
domination grows, where does that leave Australia, India, Japan, South Korea and
the littoral states of the South China Sea?
The second dilemma goes out to West
Asians, or what is referred to as the Middle East.Mr Trump has triumphed and now
the show must begin in right earnest. Mr Trump has tweeted for a qualitative and
quantitative expansion of the US nuclear arsenal. The recent general election in
the US has challenged the fidelity of voting processes.. There is a general
belief that while Democrats are more feted by the Indian political elite,
strategic thinkers believe that Republicans are better to do business with.
This
in no way applies to the procurement potential that in any case has seen an
exponential jump in the past few years. However, Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee wisely refrained from committing any Indian troops to that China Vacuum bags ill-advised
venture. There has always existed a minor school of thought in the US that more
is better in terms of nukes? The question that it raises what would such a world
look like? Would it spark off an arms race again with a resurgent Russia? Would
it compel some of the yet undeclared nuclear weapon states to go public? This
would have profound implications on international security that are too
horrendous to even contemplate. Even then there was a BJP-led NDA government
that was charged with the remit of steering the ship of the Indian state. In
that event, a power vacuum will manifest itself which China will be eager to
fill. It will after the inauguration have to constantly keep figuring out if the
early morning tweets represent Mr Trump’s personal view as opposed to a
carefully-crafted inter-agency-driven American position articulated and executed
in a calibrated manner.
While any democratic nation is entitled to elect whosever
they like, the one significant thing that Mr Trump’s election underscores is the
deep anxiety that Americans have about their future and what the complexities of
the present world mean for the American way of life. It, on the contrary, has
everything to do with projecting power and putting it to practical use. The
unanimous intelligence read of the intelligence boffins presented to Mr Trump
have pointed to alleged Russian interference in the US election processes? Does
it have implications for other democracies around the world, specially in
Europe, where a round of critical elections are coming up? These are some of the
larger issues that are not country-specific.India was called upon by a previous
Republican administration to weigh in when Iraq was invaded by a multinational
coalition in March 2003.Immigration, the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism and
the loss of its manufacturing base essentially to China were the three
hot-button issues that politically correct establishment figures were unwilling
to address. Roberts. What does the Trump presidency mean?The first dilemma goes
out to Southeast Asians — there is a perception that the Trump administration
will not be as engaged in Southeast and even North Asia as earlier US
administrations have been.
The Trump administration has already sent out some
strong signals about the way it would want to shape the Israel-Palestine
conflict, and though the recent Paris Conference on this festering sore of
history was largely factitious, it remains to be seen as to how the new
administration looking at the region with a fresh pair of eyes can come up with
workable policy prescriptions. As Mr Trump surveys the swathe of territory from
the Strait of Bosphorus to the Khyber Pass and beyond that to the Wagah border
between India and Pakistan, it sees a region in deep turmoil. US President
Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address on the West Front of the US Capitol
on Friday in Washington, DC, after he was sworn in by Supreme Court Chief
Justice John G.The third dilemma goes out to the ayatollahs of nuclear
proliferation, arms control regimes and disarmament soothsayers.
Would the
Trump-India engagement be any different?The concerns of the Trump administration
on the need to rein in ISIS, withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the
lack of a conceptual framework vis-Ã -vis the Afghanistan-Pakistan paradigm are
some of the areas to which Indian policymakers must apply their minds too.
(Photo: AFP) Donald Trump assumed office as America’s 45th President on
Friday.
The fourth and final dilemma goes out to cyber security mandarins. In the
past eight years of the Obama presidency not a single big idea has either
emerged or has been conceptually incubated by the two countries. Does India fit
into any of these concerns?One of the frameworks that ostensibly attract the new
American administration is the size of the Indian defence establishment and its
intrinsic institutional capacity. We surely do live in interesting times
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January 06, 2020
While Hoffman is trying to look out for his boys Kinza
Hopped up on a potent mix of uppers, downers and adrenaline and the luxury of
immunity, Hoffman staggers around, almost summing up, in a nutshell, the
brashness of the "invader†persona whose boss is still obsessed with finding
WMDs and once ordered an airstrike on a model tank.Escape from Baghdad! is also
blissfully devoid of the moralising, the "with us or against vacuum
compressed bag us†mantra which dominated the post-2001 global landscape and
also crept into fiction.
Escape from Baghdad! is one of those wondrous books
that will appeal to readers who may be stuck in a genre or style.Saad Z. The
trio end up encountering the "Lion of Akkad†— a mysterious, otherworldly,
superhuman-like character — from among whose possessions they go on to steal an
even more mysterious watch.The intersection of these two threads is almost
seamless; as if the narratives are taking place in neighbouring lanes. It shakes
loose all the human garbage that exists on the fringes of society,†says one of
the characters in the book. Kinza and Dagr, with Captain Hamid in tow, are now
on the lam, trying to manoeuvre their way in a place where loyalties and
strongholds are constantly shifting.
It has none of the sanctimonious nature of
Robert Langdon, the protagonist of the historical thrillers by Dan Brown, who
seems more caricature than character. Thompson-esque character of "Colonelâ€
Hoffman, an apparent black-ops soldier just as notorious inside the fortified
green zone as he can be inane outside, though he has mysterious levels of access
within the myriad remnants of Iraqi bureaucracy and the new militias and
gunrunners. Hossain’s storytelling — the language, the jabs, the vivid
descriptions — is worthy of applause. After all, this is a novel set in a
post-invasion Baghdad where — almost like a tableau — a war is being played out
between a loose nexus of militias, remnants of the Baathist regime and the
United States’ forces. Escape from Baghdad! is theoretically about these human
garbage-esque characters who exist on the fringe of society and the fringes of
war.â€
Escape from Baghdad! begins with the adventures of Kinza and Dagr,
strongmen minted in the post-war era, described as "purveyors of medicine,
gossip, diesel and specialty ammunition,†who, after taking a former government
interrogator Captain Hamid captive, are taken in by a legend he tells of the
Mosul hideout of Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein’s former foreign minister, that is
full of gold. There are only a couple of moments where Hossain makes an explicit
point; in one scene, Sabeen snaps at Hoffman: What kind of person makes up
ridiculous lies about a random country, invades it, destroys all its civil
institutions, brands all its citizens as terrorists, causes a civil war, and
then pretends everything is alright Thankfully, Hossain never sets out to answer
that question. Hossain’s turn of phrase guides the characters into this magical,
drifting place: a Baghdad in flux."War sometimes has a purifying effect. Hamid,
for example, is the "Mother Teresa of black holes†and a night time scene starts
off thus:
The darkness in the streets was a smear of tar, a discombobulating
colorant turning harmless daylight noises into the snickering of hyenas. There
are moments of sudden, guilty laughter and thrilling scenes leading up to a big
revelation. Sabeen is then the guide of sorts of another trio that comprises
her, Hoffman and former Iraqi spy Behruse, who set out on another journey that
delves into the labs and diaries of a scientist on the cusp of revealing
something that binds everything — the watch, the mysterious "lion†and even the
foundations of a security apparatus.
Instead, Hossain lets the narrative and his
characters illustrate the futility and inanity of war, as in a brilliant
conversation Hoffman has with a soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress
disorder. It combines all of the real-life surrealism of the 2003 war — a hunt
for the elusive weapons of mass destruction lingers on in a country where
overnight a tight-fisted regime made way for a loose nexus of militias with even
looser affiliations — all willing to turn upon and to each other depending on
their interests. In their quest to vanquish this "lion†they end up killing the
son of a local militia leader who now wants to have his revenge.There is an
all-consuming, almost feral quality to Escape from Baghdad, one that lends
itself almost perfectly to its setting.
While Hoffman is trying to look out for
his boys Kinza and Dagr, he ends up in an imbroglio courtesy an encounter with
the acerbically honest and glamorously dangerous Sabeen. A classic femme fatale,
Sabeen poisons Hoffman on their first meeting, which does little to detract his
lust for her. As one of the characters muses: "In a vacuum, if the skin of power
was donned quickly enough, if those first few rivals were put down fast, if
those first adherents did not falter, then it all became real. Their escapades
are guided by the brash Hunter S. Hossain’s debut novel navigates these actors
and acts spectacularly. Hossain takes the best of literary genres — sci-fi,
magical realism, historical fiction — using everything from djinns trapped in
jars to medical mysteries involving storied figures from the past.Kinza and Dagr
end up seeking refuge in the warren-like home of three aged, mysterious, almost
witch-like women with a watch they can’t seem to figure out while trying not to
be caught out by Hassan Salemi, the militia leader whose son they killed.
Saba
Imtiaz is a freelance journalist and the author of Karachi, You’re Killing Me!.
His characters take on that task with such irreverence that it makes one wish
fervently for a new novel by Hossain. There is an all-consuming, almost feral
quality to Escape from Baghdad, one that lends itself almost perfectly to its
setting
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