True that the idea was to creat horror, sense of insecurity, derail the Indo-Pak peace process, destabilize the economic growth and properity. True that India is quite vulnerable to these sorts of actions due to its fragments (though hailed as a superb mosaic of differences and diversity) in terms of sick politics.
Obviously, many felt so disturbed by this attack that, in the fits of fury, they came up with a wise idea of retaliating in the same manner as the US did in response to the 9/11. They would never suggest that if they had learnt of the outcome of US misdeeds. Couple of observations are:
- US ‘was’ a much stronger economy than India, and could afford this misadventure despite the fact that the world community did not approve.
- US was not toying with a nuclear power but with very week countries like Afghanistan or for that matter Iraq; whereas India is confronting with a nuclear neighbour that has also been characterised as a ‘failed state’.
- US, despite so much strength, has not won that war though it killed many people; think of the final outcome of confronting with a nuclear state.
- US is far more unsafe after the declaration of ‘war on terror’ meaning that if an enemy is not defined (terror is abstract in its strict sense of the word), victory is simply impossible.
With the changes in the global system, it is becoming clearer that even though there is lot more discussion on collective efforts to contain terrorism, it is still a very individual problem; and unless the heat spreads to other countries, collective efforts at best might be only a good will gesture.
What India needs to do is :
- Stop blaming Pakistant (even if it continues actively supporting elements agains India). Rather, India should strengthen its intellegence and ability to prevent / tackle these kinds of unfortunate events in future.
- True, that willy-nilly, Islam is somehow in the centre of terrorism, it should ‘not’ mean that all muslims share the same thoughts and sentiments. This could very well be a reason why global terrorism does not have a face of Indian muslim (hoping my information is correct).
- The biggest culprit is Indian politics where religion has been given a free hand to dominate innocent minds.
- Terrorism stems from hopelessness and it can be caused by anything – be it religion, injustice or inappropriate treatment of mankind. India needs to address this hopelessness poping up in many segments in the society.
- As I suggested in one of my previous posts below, we need to construct a system in which decision/law makers would need to present valid credentials before they are allowed to sit in the parliament. There is an urgent need to transform Indian democracy and bureaucracy.
India, a country known for its values of nonvoilence, peaceful coexistence, has never demonstated any quest to dominate the world, and so it does not deserve such terror attacks. The precision that we all have acquired in science and technology should also teach us not to follow a path of MAD i.e. mutually assured destruction.
North Korea today is home to a network of several dozen concentration camps rivaling those of Auschwitz and Dachau of days past, hosting over 250,000 political prisoners and their families. North Korea is a prison state- there are no freedoms of religion, speech, movement, assembly- even the right to leave the nation is barred from the people. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have fled to neighboring China, only to be hunted down by Chinese authorities and sent back to North Korea to face torture and death; or to be sold by brokers and smugglers as labor or sexual slaves.
Dong Hyuk Shin, a 26-year-old North Korean defector born and raised in a concentration camp. Shin was born on Nov. 19, 1982 and called the camp home until 2005. While at the camp, he endured daily beatings, torture, starvation-level rations, saw forced abortions and even witnessed the public execution of his mother and brother in 1996. Shin described his life of total isolation from the world: “In South Korea, although there is disappointment and sadness, there is also so much joy, happiness and comfort. In Kaechon, I did not even know such emotions existed. The only emotion I ever knew was fear: fear of beatings, fear of starvation, fear of torture and fear of death.”
This is the story that LiNK’s Executive Director Adrian Hong briefs on in the clip below. Liberty in North Korea, or LiNK, is an international non-governmental organization devoted to human rights in North Korea and the protection of North Korean refugees. Hoping you would share your ideas on the issue.
The remarkable precision that the terrorists have demonstrated in Mumbai attack should cause a greater concern than the US 9/11 attack. And the reasons are:
- US 9/11 showed that a country needs to protect its major installations like government buildings, defense headquarters, airports etc. in order to avoid major disasters or being hostage to the terrorists. Mumbai attack sends a message that actually, the world can be taken hostage anywhere as long as vulnerable people are around to be used as shield.
- Even though the number of people died in 9/11 is much higher, 26/11 in Mumbai tells us that terrorist need not worry about big preparations like pilot training or hijacking. With a far low level of preparation and sophisticated weapons, terrorist can actually cause a bigger damage to nation’s security and citizens’ psyche.
- US 9/11 suggested that security personnels need far more superior weapons, communication equipments, reliable intelligence, outstanding coordination among the security people to counter these attacks. Mumbai 26/11 reaveals that the police had nothing, and they were helplessly witnessing and facing AK 47 and AK 74 shots. In countries (probably more true about developing nations) where security personnels are not prepared with sophisticated weapons, one can easily imagin a doom.
If US 9/11 is the preface of ‘war on terror’ with an unfinished business in Iraq and Afghanistan, then Mumbai 26/11 appears to be nothing more than just ’Chaper 1′ indicating many more chapters to come before the conclusion. Do we have the same determination to completely eradicate terrorism as we vowed? OR are we immune again since these blasts and gunshots have become so regular that we no longer hear them?
As regards India, it has to wakeup before it’s too late. Some of the things that are immidiately needed:
- Transformation of intelligence services
- Restructuring in command and control for a rapid action in disaster
- State-of-the-art weapons and communication equipments for police and army
- Infrastructure for a quick mobility
- Only professionally qualified people should be allowed to be decision/law makers (like Dr. Man Mohan Singh for Ministry of Finance)
- …..and the list goes on…..
Continuously, over 8 hours of live telecast of terror attack in real time…in utter shock. What is going on? Killing? No, not that many died as usually you would expect in crowded India.
To me, it is nothing but a very clear message that the terrorists have deviced another ultra-sophisticated modus-operandi. Soft targets with high impact. I was expecting that the Mumbai administration would show some kind of coherent strategy to handle the situation but as it appeared, it was at the end of its wits. Three super cops lost their lives even before a proper operation could start. Was it too naive? Was the situation taken lightly? Why the police jeep hijaked was not intercepted?
Whatever I saw was mindblowing. Incredible the way explosives manage to get a smooth passage through finest hotel gates. Does it mean the key to the success of terrorists lies in their dexterity in low-tech opearations? Does it mean the paradigm of terrorism has changed? Do we know anything if countries around the world are prepared to play this game with changing rules?
Seemingly, things are not in control as they are claimed to be in. Wondering what tomorrow will bring when the world awakes just to find how restless this night was when they were snoring….
An interesting narration on how we are busy making policies on North Korea without any solid basic understanding of the country and the mind of the leader. Mike Chinoy, a longtime CNN correspondent recently gave a lecture on North Korean nuclear crisis on Oct 1, 2008 at the University of Texas at Austin, LBJ School of Public Affairs. What remains to be seen is if the President-elect Obama will appoint someone new to revisit the issue in a sincere fashion in search of a feasible solution or simply continue with the regular army of seasoned diplomates who have not changed their glasses for ages…
Is it possible to look at countries as ’society’ rather than ‘market’? North Korea will be understood and handled better if we can stop thinking of it as a future ‘market’ rather than a future prosperous society.
We tend to be more aggressive when we consider a land a ‘battlefield’ that we are supposed to win. Something similar has happend to North Korea. The cluelessness of the world community stems from their restlessness regarding how to swiftly open North Korea and start exploiting the ‘virgin’ land. Most of the pundits of international relations are occupied modelling a collapse of North Korean regime, its induction in the world ‘economy’ (mind you, not ’society’ but ‘economy’), and introduction of market based economic structure (something, as we are witnessing today, that has put millions out of their homes and future prospects). What motivation do we think North Korea would have seeing all the mess that non-North Korean world is creating?
It would be far more constructive if the world community can demonstrate successful cases of transformation of the exploited or challenged societies. We should realize that a failure in Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur and the likes would do no good but has a prospect of leaving a permanent stain on our qualification as a civilized world.
Lately, many interesting reportings on North Korea have surfaced; these video reportings below titled ‘Escape from North Korea’ and ‘North Korea’s Lifeline – Japan’ by Journeyman.tv could be interesting for the blog readers.
Synopsis: Escape from North Korea
“So many people have defected from North Korea that the government is now building a wall along the Chinese border. This exclusive report follows one family’s dangerous exodus.
At a safe house in China, a brother and sister collapse into each other arms. For months, ‘Uncle Jung’ has been trying to smuggle his sister and her family out of North Korea. Today, they crossed the Tumen river into China. “We wanted to wait for darkness but were afraid the guards would find us”, explains Park Myong Kwan. “So we just jumped into the river”. One risky journey may have ended for the Park family but another is just beginning. China regularly returns refugees to North Korea where they face almost certain execution. In contrast, Thailand deports immigrants to South Korea. Over the next week, the Parks will travel by any means possible to the Lao border, a journey of 4,000 miles. They don’t speak Chinese and don’t have any documents. “We feel like we’re lying on a chopping board right now”, confides Park Myong Kwan. “It’s like we’re gambling but the stakes are our lives”. But for them, the gamble pays off. They make it to Thailand before being arrested. In a few months, they will be flown to South Korea, where they can build a new life.”
Synopsis: ‘North Korea’s Lifeline – Japan’
“Despite its insularity, North Korea is successfully exporting its fanaticism through half a million expatriates living in capitalist Japan. Chongryun, the Workers Party of North Korea, is meeting in Tokyo. It’s easy to imagine we are in the heart of North Korea as over 10,000 fiercely patriotic members come together to celebrate the dictator Kim Jong II’s party leadership. Commitment to the cause starts young thanks to the Party schools run outside the jurisdiction of Japanese education authorities. This is the first time that the Northern Korean community has allowed any Western media to film inside their schools. Taught in Korean with censored North Korean text books, these children will never hear any criticism of their homeland. We follow eighteen year old Jong Ryol and his classmates as they prepare for their graduation visit to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang: a school trip into a country still considered hostile to the outside world, but for these students, a journey “home”. Jong Ryol returns from his trip with a glowing report Yet the bulk of funding from Japan does not come from patriotic ex-pats. Most of Japan’s 18,000 gambling parlours are owned by Koreans with an estimated $250 billion turnover. While North Koreans overlook their leaders’s autocratic ways, it seems he turns a blind eye to the origin of the money his regime receives.”
North Korea is one of those very few streams of learning where ‘oral tradition’ still continues. Most of the info that people are aware of about NK are based on hearsay, dreams or imagination since nothing concrete is on the table. Speculations are always high as NK regime continues to send contradictory messages and there is hardly anything reliable.
But what is surely reliable is that the rest of the world has not been able to bring this fragile regime to the ground – at least so far. Seems the NK regime is aware of the fact that the rest of the world would never be ‘logically’ united enough for any meaningful actions, as evident in BBC’s HARDtalk two days ago where Gregory Schulte, the US ambassador to the IAEA, was unable to articulate a direct answer to Stephen Sackur’s question on why India and why not Iran and other nuclear powers. Those frail answers and logics certainly send wrong messages to the regimes like NK’s.
Currently, we all are flirting with the speculations over North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il’s health. Rumours are that he is seriously ill/ dead/no longer in control of the regime etc. etc. as he failed to appear at not only the military parade celebrating the country’s 60th birthday but also on Chusoek celebration which are significant events.
Amidst these speculations, Hwang Jang Yup, former secretary of North Korean Workers’ Party commented (blog site http://www.chogabje.com) :
김정일의 건강에 이상이 있다고 해서 북한에 당장의 큰 변화는 없을 것이다. 김정일의 건강에 이상이 있다고 해서 당장에 긴급사태가 일어나는 것처럼 생각하는 것 자체가 북한을 잘 모르는데서 나온 주장이다. 적과 싸우는 와중에도 상대방이 아프면 예의를 갖추는 것이 기본인데 김정일이 아프다고 해서 지금처럼 떠드는 것은 정정당당하게 싸워서 이길 생각은 없고, 요행수만 바라는 경박한 행동이다 (Kim Jong Il’s health problem is not going to change anything in North Korea. Those who think that this health problem would result in a crisis in the North basically have no idea about North Korea. In case of illness, it is basic to show respect even to the enemy; just because Kim Jong Il is sick, in the absense of a fair fight, wishing for a victory simply shows immaturity).
설사 김정일이 죽는다고 해도 북한의 명맥을 장악하고 있는 중국이 자신들의 절실한 이해관계로 인해 북한의 혼란을 절대로 방치하지 않을 것이라며 탈북자들은 현재의 상황에 너무 큰 기대를 하지 말고 맡겨진 일을 열심히 하면 된다 (Even if Kim Jong Il dies, China that holds the lifeline of the North would not allow any chaos to prevail in North Korea. Defectors should not have high hopes from the current situation and must continue their work as usual).
중국은 북한을 제발 먹어달라고 제사를 지내도 먹지 않을 것이다. 북한을 민주화하기 위해서는 앞을 내다보고 중국과의 관계개선에 노력을 기울여야 한다 (China will not take over the North even if North Korea requests for it. In order to democratize the North, an inclination to improve relationship with China is needed).
Reacting to the above mentioned opinion of Hwang Jang Yup with reference to China, one netizen writes:
역사상 중국이 한반도를 먹어 버릴 기회는 수 없이 많았다. 왜 대만,몽골등 수많은 이민족과 영토를 먹어 치우면서도 한반도를 놔둔 이유를 우리는 잘 모른다. 흔히 한국인들의 현실적인 사대외교로 해서 중국이 먹을 이유가 없었다고 말하는 설이 가장 설득력이 있다. 황위원장의 말이 뜻하는 바가 뭔지를 모르지만, 그러한 맥락이 아닐까 생각된다.조선을 먹으면 바로 일본과 미국과 대치하게 되는 것이 그리 바람직하지 않다고 생각하는게 아닐까? (Historically, China has had many chances to take over Korean Peninsula. We don’t know why China left Korean Peninsula untouched whereas it swallowed many minorities and land like Taiwan and Mongolia. The best explanation for why Korea was left untouched can be sought in the pragmatic foreign policy of Korea. I don’t know what Mr. Hwang means but I think he could be wrong. Swallowing North Korea would mean coming in direct confrontation with Japan and the US, and that is surely not desirable).
Now that NK has categorically stated that it no longer wishes to be delisted as a state sponsor of terrorism and that it can go its own way and resume nuclear program, it would be interesting to see what comes next.
For those whom ‘putting a lid on the boiling pot’ means peace, we have got another game: Georgia Crisis. The UN Security Council was at the end of its wits over the sarcastic exchange of civilized tones when the US and Russian representatives were once again educating each other on the spirit of peace. While the US Ambassador to the UN enlightened the Russian Ambassador that the days of regime change by means of power in Europe (note the accent..) are gone, the Russian counterpart smilingly responded that the whole concept of regime change by power was an American invention and has never amused Russia.
Anyone who has seen the conversation in the UNSC today would be able to comprehend that, for right or wrong reasons, Russia is going ahead with what the international community is lebeling as ‘Cold War II’. It also seems very clear that Russia has realized that the display of military might is an essential and integral part of super power status (as evident in the past several excursions of the US) that Russia needs to regain. Even the novice in international politics know that maintaining a ‘zone of influence’ in global politics has been pivotal to these powers, the quest of Georgia to join NATO and EU is something that Russia finds hard to swollow.
What remains to be seen is how the world community will handle this new crisis. Can we already draw some conclusions based on what we are witnessing in the middle east, can we assume that this is Russia’s time to assert its penting feelings…..
In my previous write up (‘undo’ click on ‘axis of evil’ button for North Korea, posted on July 15), I expressed my doubts on the projected willingness of North Korea to dismental-n-disclose the nuclear project, and remarked on the haste with which the US declared that it would take North Korea off the ’axis of evil’. It seems that the US also realized that it wouldn’t be such a nice move.
The US has recently decided, never too late, that before removing North Korea from the terror list, it would varify the nuclear declaration by Pyongyang. In my interpretation, this shows that amidst all hoo-haa about the success of six-party talks, the US does realize that a ‘rational’ Kim Jong-Il should not give away his aces without ensuring proportionate gains – in this case compounded gains; and so, an honest and kind compliance of North Korea to whatever international community wants should be seen with utmost alertness.
I am tempted to restate that North Korean regime is far more proficient in diplomacy than anyone else – that too despite all its limitations- and knows well that its perceived status is different from that of countries like Zimbabwe, Iran or so.
Why did the title strike me in this context? Why do I sense an arrival of unpredicted demise of ‘axis of evil’ list in near future? …. I wonder…
