Mukul Deva: A surgical strike

Indian thriller-writer Mukul Deva analyses global terrorism in his no holds barred, hard-hitting tetralogy with unflinching precision

A former Major in the Indian army, Mukul Deva was in Delhi when a deadly bomb ripped apart the Sarojini Nagar Market in the capital city. Many innocent lives were lost. This incident enraged Mukul so much that he decided to do something about it.

After serving the army for 15 years, Mukul had taken premature retirement to follow his passion: writing. Mukul had already set up a private consultancy firm and had written a few books on corporate training. But his dream of becoming an accomplished author of hard-hitting and gut-wrenching novels was yet to come true.

Only it became far bigger than he had imagined.

Mukul’s response to the Sarojini Nagar Market blasts found expression in his debut novel, Lashkar. From Lashkar to Salim Must Die to Blowback (releasing worldwide this January), Mukul set out on a quest to explore the dynamics of global terrorism that has become the bane of our time. The fourth title (Tanzim), completing this tetralogy on terrorism, is scheduled to come out next year.

Lashkar was released in 2008 and it became an instant bestseller in India. Salim Must Die was released last year and it also struck a chord with the readers. In a recent book launch in Singapore, Mukul pointed out, with the pride of prescience, that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai in 2008 charted the same route (Karachi to Mumbai) that Mukul had mapped out in his novel. Also, Mukul had pre-empted the Indian government by creating a National Intelligence Command (NIC) in his novel’s pages before the Manmohan Singh government actually created one to deal with terror threats.

The seeds of terror

salimLashkar begins with the blast in Delhi’s SN market and traces the origin of the blasts from the terror camps in Pakistan. Through his characters, Mukul shows that terrorism that comes from Pakistan is a proxy war between the two neighbors who have never trusted each other completely.

India and Pakistan were created in 1947, and from day one, the blood brothers turned on each other. Pakistan complained of being given a moth-eaten state, its eastern (now Bangladesh) and western parts separated by the monstrously huge terrain of India. Pakistan considers the state of Kashmir (J&K) as an occupied territory, a territory that rightfully belongs to the Muslim-majority country. At the UN, Nehru had promised a plebiscite for Kashmiris to decide whether they wanted union with India or Pakistan. That never happened. The two countries went to war on this issue—thrice. According to human rights activist and author Arundhati Roy, Kashmir is the most densely militarized zone in the world.

Last year, she wrote in an essay in Outlook magazine (“Azadi”):“For the past sixty 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.”

But that is not all. In the 1960s and early 70s, according to the Pakistani narrative, India helped Mukti Vahini, the group that finally made East Pakistan secede from Pakistan. A moth eaten Pakistan, whose heart (Kashmir) and limbs (East Pakistan) were chopped off by a ‘treacherous’ India wounded the young nation’s ego and psyche for good. Pakistan has used this Indian perfidy and perceived monstrosity (of India) as a justification to wage a constant war—a holy war—against India. India needs to be taught a lesson—that is what seems to be driving the terror machines across the border.

That’s also why, after the Afghan Mujahidins defeated the USSR in Afghanistan with USA’s help (money, training, and moral support), Pakistan diverted the zealots to the next holy cause of Islam—extricating Kashmir from the grip of a ‘Kafir’ Hindustan. The result was that Kashmir bled for decades and though much of the militancy is under control now, the human and military cost of India-Pakistan rivalry is egregiously expensive.

However, this cost means nothing to the Pakistani terror merchants—as long as the Americans keep sending their dollars to them. Mukul says at one point: “Almost every nation was aware that the Pakistani General’s claim that he had curbed all terrorist activity in his country was a blatant lie. The whole world knew about it yet refused to acknowledge it. The Americans went about applauding the General and praising him for his help in hunting down the Al Qaida.” A certain Pakistani General comes to mind while reading this.

Terrorism and its discontents

In Lashkar, through a character called Iqbal, Mukul shows how innocent and impressionistic young Muslims are recruited for the cause of the so called Holy Jihad. Iqbal comes from a lower middle class Muslim household in Lucknow and is recruited in a Pakistani terror network. Through Iqbal’s eyes, Mukul authentically shows us the terror camps in Pakistan and how the trainers, the merchants of terror, brainwash the young minds with the gibberish of holy war.

Through Iqbal’s character, Mukul uncovers the real agenda of the Pakistani terror establishment. From being a perpetrator of terror, Iqbal becomes a force of redemption. The turning point comes when Iqbal’s eyes open up to what terror can do to innocent lives. “I am sure that even a fool like you knows that jihad means to strive…to strive for purity within oneself and goodness in society,” a changed Iqbal says to a fellow terrorist at one point in the novel.

Iqbal's metamorphosis occurs because he learns many unsavory truths about the Jihad: “You think they are doing it for us?...They just don’t have the balls for a fair fight. They have lost every damn war with India, that is why they have inflicted this endless, aimless Jihad on India. They are trying to bleed India by forcing it to fight this constant low-intensity war.”

Mukul has kept the plot simple with a handful of main characters. On the one hand is Iqbal’s story that brings in the perspective of a reformed terrorist. On the other, there is Pakistani ISI’s Ex-Brigadier Murad Salim who devises terror plans on a global level. To counter the Pak attack is the Force 22 of India, helmed by the sharp and capable Colonel Rajan Anbu and his team. These characters move the plot which is meticulously and precisely woven with frenetic action in India, Pakistan and beyond.

The Indo-Pak conflict, seen in terms of Pak-exported terrorism and India’s counter-attacks, segues into a broader international Islamic jihad in the second volume, Salim Must Die. The action spreads from China to America and Europe and terrorism takes myriad shapes: from chemical weapons attacks to the use of mini-nuclear bombs (funnily called Chhote Miyan). The details are fascinating.

Mukul’s two volumes are so blisteringly fast paced that one forgets how well-researched the narrative is. He takes the reader on a thrilling ride and shares frank insights with him on terrorism. Not just Pakistan, this realistic writer also takes the USA and the Anglo-American oil conglomerates to task. Mukul proves that the so called war on terror is not about terror but oil: America consumes about 24 percent of the global oil production but it posses less than 2.8 percent of the reserves. Nearly 70 percent of world’s oil and natural gas reserves are in the Middle East-Central Asia region (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran are the top 3 oil-rich countries). “It is primarily because of this that in mid-1995, the US administration released a National Security document stating that the objective of the war on Iraq was to protect the United States’ uninterrupted and secure access to oil,” says the head of NIC in Salim Must Die. The book is full of such insights.

For those who follow the current affairs would love this series of military thrillers—the first of its kind in Indian English fiction—and would ask for more. It is only appropriate if his readers describe Mukul as the Tom Clancy of India. This reader can't wait to read the next volume in the series.

Roy’s rage

“We should respect differing opinions up to certain point, and then it's time for the wise to blow the whistle. Sir, not only do I differ with what you say, but I would certainly not fight to the death for your right to say it. Not me. You have to pick your fights.”

- Roger Ebert (I'm a proud Brainiac)


There are two ways to deal with Arundhati Roy: you can dismiss her views as the angry rant of someone who represents a line or a party or a school of thought that you abhor. You abhor it because it shakes your Bollywood hued fairy tale worldview or it does not contribute (or rather threatens) to your secure-in-my-flat-with-a car-and-latest gizmos lifestyle.

Or you take her views seriously—like that of a prophet of conscience, a prophet who has her ears on the ground, and who can listen to the "grasshoppers", who can make us look what we only see. A true writer-prophet who warns us about our silent complicity in the crimes that are done in our name.

People say she is a one book (novel) wonder. I know why. She’s a writer who knows that we are past the age of novels, that the reality of our world is so dangerous that our short attention spans and parochial worldviews need to be upbraided by the regular hammering of reality through non-fiction, and not lulled into slumber by the gossamer navel gazing of immigrant lives in fictional settings.

Needless to say, I find myself in the second category. In fact, sometimes I feel that only she, among the panoply of Indian writers, points out issues and questions the anomalies in the system that enrage me. That too in a language that is her trademark style. To be fair, though writers such as Pankaj Mishra also ask uncomfortable questions, his touch is a tad mellow, more academic than angry.

Some say Roy creates a maze of words. Maybe yes. But is there no meaning in it?

Others say she is agonizingly repetitive. So what? I guess she has to do it to hammer home the point. Those who allege that Roy is repetitive don’t just get the point. I know why. Because they don’t want to. You have to be fair-minded and you have to have a sense of justice (irrespective of caste, creed and colour) to appreciate Roy’s point. You can’t understand her plea if you seal yourself in a wall of self-righteousness. She challenges you to get out of it.

And then face the truth.

In her essay, Democracy's Failing Light (Outlook), she makes many points about the fissures in India’s democracy. The points she makes can be summarized in a couplet by Allama Iqbal:

Jamhooriyat woh tarz-e hukumat hai ke jis men
Voton to gina karte hain, tola nahin karte

(Democracy is such a system of governance in which
votes are counted but not weighed)

Indian democracy has much strength, many merits. But that does not mean that we should not be aware of its shortcomings—how it is being misused by the powers that be (democracy fused with predatory market economy?). Roy shines her critical light on democracy’s fault lines. It could be our blind nationalism—another myopia—that often prevents us from seeing the truth and acknowledging the elephant in the room. Why do we forget what George Orwell, that brilliant journalist and writer, the creator of Animal Farm and 1984, had said about nationalism?

To question the ills of the system does not mean you are unpatriotic. Nationalism (be it in any form, religious or secular) makes us blind. Patriotism is different.

The Kashmir Issue

Roy draws our attention to the issue of Kashmir, one of the elephants in the room (among many others). She is right. Why don’t we want to talk about it?

None of India's analysts, journalists and psephologists cared to ask why people who had only weeks ago risked everything, including bullets and shoot-at-sight orders, should have suddenly changed their minds. None of the high-profile scholars of the great festival of democracy—who practically live in TV studios when there are elections in mainland India, picking apart every forecast, exit poll and minor percentile swing in the voteshare—talked about what elections mean in the presence of such a massive, year-round troop deployment. (An armed soldier for every 20 civilians.) No one speculated about the mystery of hundreds of unknown candidates who materialised out of nowhere to represent political parties that had no previous presence in the Kashmir Valley. Where had they come from? Who was financing them? No one was curious.

No one spoke about the curfew, the mass arrests, the lockdown of constituencies that were going to the polls. Not many talked about the fact that campaigning politicians went out of their way to delink 'azadi' and the Kashmir dispute from elections, which they insisted were only about municipal issues—roads, water, electricity. No one talked about why people who have lived under a military occupation for decades—where soldiers could barge into homes and whisk away people at any time of the day or night—might need someone to listen to them, to take up their cases, to represent them.

The minute elections were over, the establishment and the mainstream press declared victory (for India) once again…

We keep hating Pakistan. Why can’t we accept it as a neighbor? Pakistan has created most of its problems without much external help (abandoning Jinnah’s secularism and going for a stringent form of Islam as a state policy, for example; see two articles by Ali Eteraz: Pakistan is already an Islamic State and State-sponsored Sufism) but has India helped it in growing peacefully either?

Why did we not settle the Kashmir issue with impartial justice when the time was right (now we can't even accept it as an issue, as Roy points out, and merely broaching this topic will make one sound unpatriotic in some circles)? What answer do we have for the Pakistanis when they ask us why did we have to meddle in East Pakistan and help create Bangladesh? What answer do we have for them when they ask that we are working against them in Afghanistan (along with the imperial forces) and supporting anti-Pak groups?

Are our hands really clean before we can ask them about fomenting trouble in Kashmir and launching terror strikes against India?

Granted that Pakistan’s agencies are complicit in waging terror against India. But what about us? Are we paying them in the same coin? If yes, then where is the moral superiority of India?

If this goes on we, India and Pakistan, will one day destroy each other. Roy’s metaphor of the fighting in Siachen and its larger impact on the region, deserves our intense attention. Hindu hubris and Muslim masculinity will not save our future. It is bringing us to the brink of collapse.

Is there still hope for this wish of a poet?

Hum aayen gulshan-e Lahore se chaman bardosh
Tum aao subah-e Banaras ki roshni le kar

I hope novelist Musharraf Ali Farooqi is right when he said: "... I think a lot of politicians were eating Viagra for breakfast in those days. I am glad they have switched it to a more appropriate time. I feel that in the subcontinent we talk about war and carnage so very casually because we have no real regard for the sanctity of human life. I also believe that India and Pak situation will improve drastically within just a decade or two, to the extent that it will become unrecognizable. We'll just have to wait for the generation to die that helped create the divide - both before and after the Partition."

Film review: Traitor

Documentary on the Afghanistan troop surge

Today's NYT has an interesting story on a documentary film being filmed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by American filmmaker Robert Greenwald. You can see the video below this quote from the NYT:

Mr. Greenwald is showing “Rethink Afghanistan,” a skeptical view of America’s war strategies, in five parts on the Internet, with the implied hope that it will contribute to the foreign policy debate. With the first two parts of the film already online, he arrived in Afghanistan on Sunday to conduct more interviews for what he calls his first “real-time documentary.”

Mr. Greenwald is well known in some progressive circles for his films about war profiteers, Wal-Mart’s corporate practices, and the Fox News Channel. His company, Brave New Films, uses documentary expertise to mount political campaigns, including a YouTube series last year about John McCain and what the company called “the politics of hate.”

“Rethink Afghanistan” is being shaped both as a film and a campaign at the same time. Mr. Greenwald is already posting installments on the film’s Web site, RethinkAfghanistan.com, and also on YouTube. It will eventually be stitched together into a full-length feature. As he has done in the past, Mr. Greenwald will take his finished film to the public using a mixture of DVD sales and house parties. He said he also expected to receive some theatrical distribution.

Fighting terrorism with entrepreneurship

I recently got to know about a young Indian, Shahid Syed, who had done an interesting experiment in Mumbai involving female Muslim students. "I wanted to see if I can motivate Muslim youth to fall in love with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," he says. My interest was piqued and I wanted to know more about him. So, I sent him some questions.

Through his answers, Shahid tells us his own story, his journey of struggle starting from a small town in UP to Mumbai and then to America. "I did odd jobs, even ran behind coal powered rail engines to collect raw coal pieces so that my mom could use them as cooking fuel," he says. "I even entertained the idea of plying the manual rickshaw outside Farrukhabad railway station as a number of youngsters were into it."

Now with an MBA degree from an American University, Shahid is planning to do his own bit of service to his motherland. Among the many ideas that he has, the most interesting is about fighting terrorism with entrepreneurship. "When we can create fanatically dedicated Fidayeeen Saddam, Fidayeen 9/11 and Fidayeen 26/11, we can certainly create Fidayeen - i.e. intensely motivated - in Finance and Entrepreneurship," he says.

Here is the interview:

I read about your unusual entrepreneurship training project in a Mumbai college involving female Muslim students. What was it all about? How did the idea come to you?

The idea came to me in an Entrepreneurship class here in my MBA program. That class had a profound effect on me. We were asked to submit a business plan and make presentations to a committee. It was a challenge but also a whole lot of fun. I enjoyed the experience and my confidence in starting a business on my own, found strength.

And since 9/11, I had been looking for an opportunity in helping the demoralized Muslim youth, so this idea came as a blessing. I wanted to see if I can motivate Muslim youth to fall in love with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

As per the Rajinder Sachar report, compared to Muslim males, Muslim females in India have a higher percentage of finishing graduation. The Muslim male dropout rate is higher and the reasons are manifold. One : The Muslim youth feels alienated and deprived of job opportunities upon graduation, and two, they want to start earning their way sooner than later. Somewhere along the line, they lose motivation to continue the efforts that a college degree demands.

In contrast, the girls continue with the studies as they ‘wait’ for a decent marriage proposal. They are assumed to have no talent that can be utilized for their own benefit and community. This also brings an imbalance as these girls later don’t find a suitable match with equal education to marry within their circles.

Do you think we can really fight "terrorism" with entrepreneurship? How?

Absolutely!

When we can create fanatically dedicated Fidayeeen Saddam, Fidayeen 9/11 and Fidayeen 26/11, we can certainly create Fidayeen - i.e. intensely motivated - in Finance and Entrepreneurship. I am sure the Muslim youngsters today are as brilliant as anywhere else. What is needed is a little guidance and the right resources – not just financially but even of motivation and encouragement.

Entrepreneurship is all about application of creativity and generation of ideas. I want to create a group of youngsters who will allow their inner creativity and brilliance to shine through.

I figured this when I made a film “Doosra Kinara” last year. The making of the film, more than the content of the film, to me, was a classical act of guerilla film making. I did everything to make sure my film gets made. I cajoled, pleaded, as I worked out solutions to my film making challenges. In this process I sought help across colors, nationalities and religious lines. People were gracious in helping, and more importantly, I ended up making some lifelong friends. In the diasporic world here in the US, there are some people who tend towards the extreme right wing of own religion, yet they joined me in making my dreams see the light of day. In the sheer interaction, we learned from each other about our – so similar! - insecurities, problems and root cause of hostilities.

The point is, when these youngsters start their entrepreneurial journey they will too realize how they must interact with other people that are different from them. There is no way an entrepreneur is going to grow, if he is going to cater to his tribe only. They will learn to develop tolerance and appreciation for other people’s point of view, as much as appreciating the money that they will earn with their own efforts.

I want them to fall in love with life, their community, their city, state, country and the world….



Did your own life so far taught you how Muslims in a country like India can come out of their pathetic socio-economic conditions?

I was 12 when my father passed away in Farrukhabad, a small town in UP. That resulted in me dropping out of school and looking for ways to support my mother in running the house. I did odd jobs, even ran behind coal powered rail engines to collect raw (un-burnt) coal pieces so that my mom could use them as cooking fuel. I sold kites from my home. When I attracted enough customers I started, making my own manjha (sort of an abrasive), that I called Shahid bhai’s manjha (now I think of it as backward integration!). I even entertained the idea of plying the manual rickshaw outside Farrukhabad railway station as a number of youngsters were into it.

My mom sent me to Mumbai to be with a relative to further my education. There again in Mumbai, I did odd jobs - fetching chai to supervising a construction site during SSC.

Looking back I don’t think I did that badly…..Of course there is more to the story afterwards, but the bottom line is you dream and it will be given. Nature, Allah, God is kind to hard working good people, and this is my firm belief. There is always a road that springs up from somewhere if you have the right intention….

In Urdu it goes this way : “Neeyat saabit manzil aasan”

In the years of my growing up in India, I was witness – as everyone else – to a regular diet of Meerut, Bhiwandi, Mandal and anti-Sikh pogroms. Corruption ruled, and here, I was a mere small time jebroni, almost as if I had no role in deciding the future course of my life and the nation. My journey to the US must have begun long before I actually landed here. I recall that when I was in my final year of engineering, I wrote a short story in which the hero of the story declares “ I am either going to change the System or get out of India”.

At that point of time, I chose to get out of India. After completing my Masters in Civil Engineering, at Atlanta, Georgia, I did go back to India. This was 1992, and this was when my country welcomed me with the images of some folks dancing on the top of an abandoned 500 year old masjid and the later dance of evil that followed in my city.

Somewhere along the line, I came back here to the US, but with my heart stayed with the need to do something for the youngsters back in India, who could not avail of a better life. Worse, who believed a better life was not possible…

What are your future plans? How do you want to apply your ideas of social entrepreneurship in India?

Ideally, I would want to create entrepreneurs in India irrespective of caste, creed, religion and state of origin. However I do want to focus on a certain socioeconomic strata of our society that has been left behind. I see a lot of parallels between majority of Muslims in India and the blacks in America. In jail, there are more of them by sheer percentage, they have higher levels of illiteracy, are frustrated and prone to entertaining violent thoughts.

India is about to enter the elite club of developed nations and we cannot afford to leave a part of our population behind. We must offer an equal opportunity to our youth to excel in whatever area they chose. We need to provide them all the tools and training necessary and then surely they can show us what they are made up of.

I will be conducting the same process again in a few months. Preparations are on to take the next steps of “Threshold India”. The idea is to spread this at the grassroots, across cities with more involvement and the seeking of long term winning ideas. We plan to offer micro credit loans to those who would want to take forward their ideas in the real world. As well as tacit support in these endeavors.

Anything else you want to add?

The world today is at a threshold.

In this last decade, we have seen planes flown with the intent of harming innocent civilians, we have seen wars conducted in order to kill a perceived enemy and ‘cleanse the world’. Within nations, we have seen men and women killed by state controlled police and militia.

It’s about time we turn the page and offer history a chance to write some good stories: stories of hope, redemption and courage. It's about time we offer stories that inspire the next generation so that they can set their eyes to new horizons.

Fortunately, there are some great brains in the business that are supporting me in this endeavor. These are the people who show up in Mohallahs without a trace of hesitation, an area they would not have visited if it was not for this cause. And they are entrepreneurs/writers of repute like Piyul Mukherjee, Pia Verbic and Rashmi Bansal. Their continuous support and guidance is helping "Threshold India" sprint towards its goal with a lightning speed.

I invite you all to come and join me. Provide me with your support and your ideas, so that we can together serve the cause of creating a culture of entrepreneurship among our nextgen. After all, at the end of the day, we all have just one designation on this planet.

And that is being human….

Making sense of ‘packaged’ terrorism

Book Review
Packaging Terrorism: Co-opting the News for Politics and Profit by Susan D. Moeller, 2009: Wiley-Blackwell.

If you are thinking why we are talking about a book on the media coverage of terrorism in a space like this one, let me tell you one thing upfront: One, because this is a rare and important book and two, because terrorism, no matter where you are and what your profession is, can claim you as a victim.

Also, we have witnessed routinely how Internet-savvy terrorism has become of late: terrorism sites host beheading videos and broadcast threats of attack, terrorists abuse social networks and chat rooms for recruitments, and they use applications such as Google Earth for planning attacks (as seen in last year’s Mumbai attacks). Terrorists have been successfully using the new media to imbed fear into our hearts through our eyeballs.

The larger truth is that terrorism is the politics of our times. And like politics, even if you are not interested in it, it is interested in you.

The grand narrative of our times

Every era has its own grand narrative. Ours has been, at least for the last decade or so, terrorism. Before that, Kennedy’s and Reagan’s era was about the cold war, Clinton’s about globalisation and WTO and until recently, George W. Bush’s of global terrorism and the ‘war on terror’.

This grand narrative, however, is taking yet another new direction under president Barack Obama. The express reckoning is that the global financial crisis is a greater threat to the USA than terrorism. It is an even bigger threat to the United States' national security than the al Qaeda terrorist network or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, said retired admiral Dennis Blair, the Obama administration’s director of national intelligence, in his first appearance before the US Congress.

While the shift from terror to finance is still happening, it is a good time to look at the ogre of terrorism that has been the bane of our life and times. And if you haven’t ever thought about how the media brings the ‘news’ of terrorism to us, Dr Moeller’s book can be an eye opener. She is the director of the International Centre for Media and the Public Agenda (ICMPA) at the University of Maryland, College Park, US. If you are afraid the book will be a dry read, you are in for a surprise. The book is not jargon-heavy, is divided into short chapters and uses a lot of examples to establish claims and observations.

Packaging terrorism for our consumption

The book is about a very simple idea. “The idea is this: that it’s not the acts of terrorism that most matter in the post-9/11 world,” writes Dr Moeller in her introduction, “it’s what we are told to think about the acts of terror. Politicians tell us what to think. The media tells us what to think. Even terrorists tell us what to think. They all want to attract our attention…They all have agendas. They all are packaging terrorism for our consumption. We are the audience for all those disparate actors.”

So, in a nutshell, this book is about how to make sense of the ‘packaged’ terrorism that is thrown at us from time to time—from New York, London, Madrid, Kabul, Bali and Bombay.

Chapter by chapter, Dr Moeller builds up the gory picture of terrorism and its manipulation—by terrorists, politicians and media barons. She begins with the basics such as what is terrorism, how 9/11 happened, how president Bush and his ‘vulcans’ (Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz) crafted the war on terror—a label for their unilateralist and interventionist foreign policy goals, and how the American (and the copycat global) media responded.

Media response to the War on Terror

“The media responded as directed—and as they always have at the start of a national crisis,” writers Dr Moeller. “At the end of October 2001, the then CNN chairman Walter Isaacson wrote a memo to his staff members that ordered them to balance the broadcast images of civilian devastation in Afghanistan with reminders of the American lives lost at the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.” And thus began, according to Moeller, the beginning of a misleading media spin on the war on terror. “Isaacson was wrong,” she argues. “The American public deserved to know more about the casualties and hardship in Afghanistan. The public needed to know more about the meaning and the effect of the president co-opting 9/11 and co-opting the patriotic, broad-based interest in responding through a ‘War on Terror’.”

After examining the genesis of the ‘War on Terror’, Dr Moeller brings under her microscope various media-related issues that underlie the reporting on terrorism. Some examples: use of the umbrella words and phrases such as ‘terrorist’, ‘madrassa’ and ‘weapons of mass destruction’, defining terrorism, why news standards matter, and the politics of media coverage.

“Over and over, time and again, my centre’s studies revealed that the victims of terrorism rarely appear in the stories about it,” she says. “Media cover international affairs through the lens of their own country’s foreign policy—especially as articulated by its leadership.” Think of last year’s Mumbai terror attacks and how quickly it became an India and Pakistan issue, and how the media in the two countries adopted nationalistic agendas in reporting and discussing the attacks.

Citizen journalism and terrorism

With a rich cache of examples, the book traces a variety of developments in the media sector that arose while covering terrorism. One of the most fascinating aspects of these developments is the rise of citizen journalism, especially photos and videos, that came from citizens as well as professional photographers that were much discussed, many achieving iconic status. Perhaps blogs were invented just for this—when the mainstream media became shy of covering something or could not reach some areas, bloggers stepped in (remember the Baghdad blogger?) to fill the void. Very recently, the pain and suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza would not have come out in the open had it not been for the bloggers in Gaza and Israel who wrote the accounts of loss online when Israel had embargoed the foreign media in Gaza in its three weeks’ assault early this year.

The brave new world of murders and restrictions

With terrorism rampant in the world, what is most disturbing is the governments’ control (and thus manipulation) on the media coverage of the theatre of operations—in terms of restricting access to the war zones (embed restrictions) or killing of journalists. Consider these facts:

• Among the first killed by the Hutus during the genocide in Rwanda were 14 local journalists.

• How many people know that for the past decade Algeria has been ravaged by war that has left an estimated 100,000 dead? Not many, because both sides in that conflict have taken turns murdering journalists: 60 at last count. Same in Chechnya.

• Many don’t seem to be noticing that there is less and less coverage of the war in Iraq. By the summer of 2008, noted the New York Times, there were only half a dozen Western photographers covering the country, even though 150,000 American and 4,100 British troops remained engaged there. Why? Because of the “danger, the high cost to financially ailing media outlets and diminished interest among Americans in following the war.”

To ensure free and fair coverage of terrorism, the priority must be to build civil societies, including media, from inside out and the ground up, suggests the author. In conclusion, she says that we need to move beyond spin, ask questions because we don’t have all the answers, and evaluate what we are being told. “We need a vibrant, spirited, diverse, and pluralistic media at home and around the world,” she says.

To deal with the global curse of terrorism, the media needs to rise above all kinds of boundaries and re-evaluate their exceptionalism. Dr Moeller aptly recalls Dr Martin Luther King’s message: “A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.” (‘Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence’, 1967).

“If we do not act,” added Dr King for action, “we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. Now let us begin.”

Even though it seems to be too late, can we still begin now?

Published first as my blog entry at www.mis-asia.com

Welcome to 'Prison Earth'!

Perhaps this is my last post of 2008. Here's wishing you Happy Holidays!

I end the year with a little chilling piece that I wrote for my 'official' blog. I leave it with you:

Welcome to 'Prison Earth'!

Recently, I read a story in The New York Times about a brothel in Prague. It is called the Big Sister (perhaps an allusion to the Orwellian Big Brother) which touts itself as the world’s biggest Internet brothel.

Big Sister marries the virtual with the real, leading to an unusual business model. Customers can have free sex at Big Sister. In return, they will allow the brothel to capture their exploits on film. The resulting porn is streamed live onto Big Sister’s website.

But the newspaper report was not about the innovativeness of Big Sister’s business model. Through the brothel’s example, the report highlighted how the ongoing global financial crisis was affecting the brothel’s business as the number of sex tourists coming to Prague had diminished.

The reason I cite this example is not because I want to talk about pornography or the economic crisis. My intention is to illustrate how people willfully submit their privacy (a human right) to profit-seekers.

In Big Sister’s case, the momentary carnal pleasure comes as freebie but the ultimate price that is extracted from the revellers is priceless—human privacy. Moments of compromised privacy is broadcast to those who find value in it on Sky Italia and Britain’s Television X, or sold as a DVD, like ‘World Cup Love Truck’.

What’s scary here? One’s privacy is gone for ever but it has not been taken at a gun point. One has willingly signed it off for a (Faustian?) bargain.

What’s the connection, you might ask. Replace sex with search, and you will get the point.

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And if you have time, watch this interesting video:

Indian media: Probe deeper

Why can't the Indian media probe deeper into the claims made by Pakistani defence experts such as Hamid Zaid? Why should the media take everything coming from the Indian police sources and authorities as the only truth? We know how the police are capable of bending facts to fit to their narrative? We have seen it so many times. If Zaid is wrong, prove him wrong. Why can't the media explore the 7 points raised by Neelabh Mishra in Outlook?

Let me add one more point: Even before the boat that brought the terrorists to Mumbai was captured, Modi came out in front of the media and started telling the stories of Gujarat's boats being stolen/captured by Pakistani navy and being used for terror acts against India? Did he have prior information or was it the case of "chor ki dadhi me tinka?"

I am not interested in judging anybody but why can't the truth of explored further?

Defeat the tyranny of terror

We became the vicarious victims of terror for 60 hours while terror was let loose in Mumbai. The city was not virginal--hundreds had died there in various terrorist acts before. But the moment was—it became India’s 911.

After three days of fierce battling, the Indian commandos succeeded in ending the siege. Not just India, the whole world took a sigh of relief.

Shocked and grief stricken, people could begin to think of food and sleep. Some wiped the tears off their faces and decided to move on with life. Others seethed with anger—at the impotence of the system—a system that failed to protect citizens from repeated carnage of terror.

There was intelligence that warned the authorities of the impending attack. How could the system let such warning pass? Why did they not act in time?

Enough is enough, said angry citizens. We don’t want words, we want action, they demanded of the country’s leaders. Heads rolled, politicians at the state and union’s level resigned.

Meanwhile, after the 60 hours of live reporting, the media moved on the act II. There began the parade of armchair terror experts and page 3 personalities. Politicos were added to the combo to balance the debate on terror. The whole system was found guilty. And the attack’s culpability was thrown into the backyard of Pakistan where it always belongs.

While all this debate and shouting made good television, one thing was completely lost-- the message that the terrorists had brought with their bullets.

Global terror comes to India

Whatever group the Mumbai terrorists belonged to—Lashkar-e Toeba, Jaish-e Mohammad or Al Qaeda—the message was clear: global terror had come to India, as it had come to the UK and Pakistan, the allies of the global super power America.

This time it were not homegrown terrorists—Muslims or Hindus trapped in the cycle of communal vengeance—who had come, planted the bombs and melted away in the crowds. These were Al Qaeda style fidayeens (suicidal terrorists) who were there to create a spectacle, sure to get carried away on radio and television waves to the far corners of the world. They could not create another 911 in New York or Sydney or Shanghai because of the tight security in those cities, so they chose Mumbai—a soft target.

In other words, it was not national terror—it was global. Any country, any citizen was the target. That’s why they targeted the Americans, the British and the Israelis. That’s why a Singaporean became the first victim of global terror. Indians who were killed at the railway stations or other places were perhaps fodder to divert the attention of the police. This allowed the terrorists to take hostages at the tourist rich places—The Taj, Oberoi and the Nariman House.

And what did the terrorists rant about? The persecution of Muslims in India and the festering Kashmir problem. Stop persecuting Muslims in India, they told TV stations. They had no other demands.

It is not just about Kashmir or Pakistan

It were these demands, these assertions by the terrorists that got relatively suppressed in the media chatter about intelligence failure and government irresponsibility and body counts.

We all know that Kashmir, Afghanistan and Palestine conflicts are festering wounds that have bedeviled life and politics in South Asia and the Middle East. But why would the Muslims in India want ‘global terrorists’ to bring home the message of their persecution to the Indian government’s attention?

No matter what, Indian Muslims will never want any terrorist—domestic or international—to articulate their woes and tribulations. They can and they are fighting within the democratic system of India to right the perceived ‘wrongs’ done to them. And they are doing it along with millions of liberal Hindus who empathize with their problems.

That’s why, perhaps in a show of pop patriotism, Muslims of Mumbai refused to open the doors of their cemetery when the police sought to bury the bodies of the nine dead terrorists. These terrorists who killed innocent people cannot be Muslims, they argued.

The terrorists who came to fight in the name of Indian Muslims or Islam were not friends of Muslims or Islam. That’s why it is important to delink terror with Islam. Terrorism is terrorism. Period.

Islam as the only competing vision?

Why then the terrorists are playing this game? The Palestinians fight for Palestine, the Chechens for Chechnya, and the Kashmiris for Kashmir?

Then why are the ‘global terrorists’ bringing the ‘Jihadi’ fight to the country with the second largest population of Muslims in the world?

This is very important to understand as its implications will be grasped only in the next few decades.

As I have said before, this ‘global terrorism’ is not just about Kashmir or Palestine. It probably started from these grouses but I think the game plan has changed. Despite the efforts of Al Qaeda and its acolytes (whoever envisions the world domination of Islam and the end of the international system that we have now), majority of Muslims in the world have by and large remained peaceful. They have denounced the Jehadi elements, the misguided suicidal sickos that wage war with terror in the name of Islam.

The lack of Muslim response to their cause has made the ‘global terrorists’ desperate. In desperation, they have gone for a far more sinister plan—if you can’t alienate the Muslims for global Jihad, make everyone else hate the Muslims, then they themselves will get alienated. Make things so worse that everywhere people will begin to equate Islam with terror (a small example). Then Muslims will be cornered. Muslims then will have no choice but to get radicalized and that’s when the clash of civilizations will take place. Radical Islam against the capitalist-globalised-liberal democratic world—the world of pure Islam against the ‘consumption and fornication’ (Tariq Ali's formulation) fuelled world of the West and its satellite states. After all, other than Islam, which other world religion provides a banking, financial, moral and system of jurisprudence of its own?

This is the game plan now. And they are achieving this bit by bit, with every terror attack. The charge of terror is ionizing the populations—the poison is slowly spreading without people barely noticing the phenomenon.

The only way to defeat this ‘global Jehad’ is for ‘frightened’ people and governments to understand this game plan and take corrective measures.

As global terror expert Brian Michael Jenkins says, frightened populations are intolerant. They worry incessantly about subversion from within. In the case of India, it could mean the subversion by 150 million Muslims from within. In the case of USA, subversion by 5 million and in Europe’s case, subversion by 53 million Muslims, and so on. To make things worse, there already are active elements everywhere that demonize the Muslims as a community or are Islamophobic. They will act as the nature allies of the terrorists.

Security not an anti-dote to terror

To borrow another line from Jenkins, security is necessary but security alone is not an antidote to terror. It is imperative for governments to step up security and beef up intelligence gathering but more needs to be done.

There are already reports that the next 911 might be nuclear. Will terrorists go nuclear? Will they use biological or chemical weapons? Who knows but fear mongering always works. Even for terrorists, it is easier said than done. Kitchen table nuclear bombs are myths, as Jenkins says.

The bottom-line is that no amount of security or preparation can completely stop mad terrorists unleashing terror somewhere in the world. What we can and should do is to make our minds free of fear and prejudice and force our politicians to solve the festering wounds of the world, starting from our own country, to build a just world order. If we do that, ‘global terror’ of this nature will die its own death.

Let me finish my rant by quoting Jenkins from the last chapter of his book, Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? (Prometheus Books, 2008):

“We can behave like frightened sheep, content to fill our stomachs while we are herded about by terrorists and cynical politicians who chip away at our liberty. Or we can behave as citizens whose first mission is to defeat the tyranny of terror. If we value democracy, our choice is clear.”

India's 911

From my tech blog:

Yesterday morning, once again I realised the futility of reading newspapers for getting news. Mumbai was under siege and my print paper gave me no idea of it.

I reached office and checked my e-mails—that’s when I saw a message from Sree Sreenivasan, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and co-founder of South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) in the US. His message was about a radio blog discussion on the breaking story of the terror attacks in Mumbai.

What! Another terrorist strike in Mumbai?

I was both angry and sad. What were the security and intelligence forces doing that allowed another terror attack on India’s financial nerve centre? I was sad at the loss of innocent lives.

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The wonder that was India

I am witnessing the birth of a new resurgent India, which has rejected Nehruvian visions of a modern mindset and polity, and which believes in a masculine and aggressive version of religiosity and cultural hegemony, a belief in contrast to the Gandhian values of Sarv dharm sambhav.

In the light of the recent encounter killings in Jamia, Delhi and the anti-Christian activities in the south of India, I am sad to note what Shabnam Hashmi says here in her piece in Tehelka (Communalism, Centrestage):

The ascent of these forces has been systematic and well planned. Twenty years ago, most of the secular forces believed that the communal fascist forces were on the fringe of society and laughed at the possibility of their ever moving centerstage. Today the situation has reversed — the communal forces are so centrestage, it is difficult to differentiate between what is right and what is centre. They have invaded all spaces and areas including the minds of our secular politicians.

Among the plenty of weapons that they have used in this journey — from the peripheral to the Centre — fake encounters occupy a fairly important position. They have cleverly used different weapons at different stages. Beginning from ordinary bhajan mandalis, they moved to more organised kathas, to new age gurus. Working at different levels over 15 years — shishu mandirs, shakhas, ekal vidyalayas, sant samagams, television serials, the rath yatras, leaflets, videos, CDs — they have slowly entered the consciousness of an entire society with targeted messages against minorities. Only those sections of society who strongly and consciously contested this ideology could retain their sanity. After the seeds of hatred were sowed successfully and the harvest was being reaped, started the more decisive phase — the physical attacks and largescale genocide. Most of the experiments were done in Gujarat and the remote areas of other states. For example, the experiment within the tribal belts started in the late 1960s and early 1970s.Almost simultaneously, the VHP swamis then moved into these areas.

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The most dangerous places on earth

Pankaj Mishra in The Guardian:

Apparently, no inconvenient truths are allowed to mar what Foreign Affairs, the foreign policy journal of America's elite, has declared a "roaring capitalist success story". Add Bollywood's singing and dancing stars, beauty queens and Booker prize-winning writers to the Tatas, the Mittals and the IT tycoons, and the picture of Indian confidence, vigour and felicity is complete.

The passive consumer of this image, already puzzled by recurring reports of explosions in Indian cities, may be startled to learn from the National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC) in Washington that the death toll from terrorist attacks in India between January 2004 and March 2007 was 3,674, second only to that in Iraq. (In the same period, 1,000 died as a result of such attacks in Pakistan, the "most dangerous place on earth" according to the Economist, Newsweek and other vendors of geopolitical insight.)

To put it in plain language - which the NCTC is unlikely to use - India is host to some of the fiercest conflicts in the world. Since 1989 more than 80,000 have died in insurgencies in Kashmir and the northeastern states.

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Should governments talk to Al Qaeda?

Last night I got a call from BBC Radio to participate in a radio programme (World Have Your Say) on terrorism. The question for the dabate was: Should governments talk to Al Qaeda?

The debate had started because UK's Sir Hugh Orde, who had dealt with IRA before and who is tipped to be the top police chief of London, said that it was time governments talked to Al Qaeda. The blog notes:

He could become London’s top policeman, and he oversaw the end of the IRA , so people are taking the words of Sir Hugh Orde seriously. He’s not the only prominent figure to suggest negotiating with the architects of 9/11, and numerous atrocities from Bali to Baghdad. Tony Blair’s ex Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, thinks it’s worth a try too , as does Security Minister Lord West.

Here is the clip from the programme featuring my voice:


My point is, in addition to what you can hear in the audio clip, that if talking to the terrorists can help change the status quo, then it is not an inconceivable thing to do, as some have suggested.

And if we do that, it will change the black and white, good vs evil nature of the govt. vs terrorists equation.

It is important to understand the enemy. Much of the problem is due to ignorance--ignorance about the enemy (as well as intransigience). Ignorance leads to suspicion and suspicion leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence. The CTRL+ALT+DELETE policy might not yield any better results, though no one is advocating a soft policy towards terrorists. It is time to press CTRL+SHIFT in terms of policy.

Fear breeds more fear. The atmosphere of fear-mongering, which is not very ethical, is not sustainable. So, talking to the other side, however morally baulking, sounds better than being continuously mired in the status quo of bullets, bombs, jehadi and military violence and death.

Nonetheless, as I have noted in my radio input, there are inherent problems with the attempt to deal with a hydra-headed (as opposed to being a monolith) and protean (amorphous?) outfit like Al Qaeda. Their grievances are international in nature and that perhaps demands a multilateral approach to the discussion (with them) that is being suggested and contemplated.

Islam and terrorism

A recent gathering of Indian Muslims declared terrorism un-Islamic. They should have done it a long time ago, but as the saying goes, der aayad durust aayad (it is never too late):

A large gathering of Muslim scholars representing different schools of thoughts and Muslims organizations unanimously declared that terrorism has no place in Islam and all terror activities are un-Islamic.

The anti-terrorism conference organized by Darul Uloom Deoband and attended by about 10,000 scholars from all over India issued a declaration at the end of the conference, here today. "Killing of innocents is not compatible with Islam. It is anti-Islamic," read the declaration.

Declaration stated that "Islam is a religion of mercy for all humanity. Islam sternly condemns all kinds of oppression, violence and terrorism. It has regarded oppression, mischief, rioting and murder among severest sins and crimes."

Various fatwas have been issued in the past against terrorism but this is the first time that such a large gathering of scholars have came out strongly against terrorism. This is also a first attempt to define terrorism in light of Islam.

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Another piece of interesting news:

Here's something for Maharashtra Navanirman Sena's Raj Thackeray as well as his uncle and inspiration, the founder of Shiv Sena, Bal Thackeray, to chew on: If class X students from across the country were to take a common exam, who would perform the best?

Believe it or not, students from Bihar's madrassa board would stand high, second only to students of the ICSE board in Delhi.

Comparing the performance of educational boards across India, the HRD ministry has just released a report on student performance in various states in class X.

The results have the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination in Delhi topping with the highest pass percentage of 94.3%, followed by Bihar State Madrassa Board with a success rate of 91.4%. The Central Board of Secondary Education, Delhi, stands third with a pass percentage of 86.4%.

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