SOUTHASIANPHERE
Guerrilla chowkidars of South Asia
Planet-like head
Impregnable pupils
Aggression dripping from every pore of the body
That which is exceptional must be saved
—Harishchandra Pandey in Hindi poem
Sher Bachao (Abhiyan)
On Her Majesty's service, yet again? |
It is time to test the loyalty of the toadies
of the neocon wolves in liberators’ sheepskins. So,
the imperial overlord wants its dues, and all the colonies
seem to be more than willing to oblige. Governments in South
Asia are jostling to rush their jawans to “stabilise”
Iraq and release their master’s forces for ‘regime
change’ duties elsewhere in the region, perhaps Iran.
Colin Powell merely hinted that the imperial
powers might need some foot soldiers in dangerous areas of
the occupied territories in West Asia. His wish made Bangladeshi
generals salivate. Ever since the restoration of civilian
rule, the Dhaka brass is loath to let any opportunity of overseas
sentry duty pass.
In Nepal, the greed for guard duty is so strong
that when a proposal was put up in the cabinet recently to
consider the American request, it seems no one even cared
to point out the perils of aligning with an army of occupation.
Of late, the Royal Nepal Army has earned a name for itself
in peacekeeping duties for the United Nations. But its history
of fighting for imperial powers goes back far. Even though
its country was never a formal colony, doing duty for imperialists
is a tradition with the Nepali soldiery.
The first Rana, Jang Bahadur, led the Gorkha
contingent that helped the East India Company suppress the
‘sepoy mutiny’ of 1857 in Awadh. Chandra Shumshere
backed England with man and money in the first world war.
Baber Shumshere led Nepali troops to Afghanistan to aid the
British in the battle at Waziristan. Juddha Shumshere put
eight battalions of his fiercest fighters at the disposal
of Allied commanders right at the outset of the second world
war.
These rulers were handsomely rewarded for their
services. Jang Bahadur got the opportunity to ransack Lucknow
and an additional gift of some land from the territory of
the vanquished nawab of Awadh (the ‘naya muluk’).
Chandra preferred cash – he settled for an annual payment
of one million rupees to be paid in perpetuity.
After the second world war, the award was doubled.
The vulgar Rana palaces of Kathmandu valley – now curiously
being restored as heritage sites – are built largely
from the blood money of Gorkha soldiers sent abroad to die
for the benefit of their feudal lords. A promptness in sending
its serfs to serve foreign masters is characteristic of the
Kathmandu ruling class.
It is not just Bangladeshi and Nepali ruling
elites that are dying to do the imperial bidding in Iraq,
however. Even the ‘nuclear powers’ of South Asia
seem to be ready to dance to the tunes of Don Rumsfeld.
Outsourcing chowkidars
The most damning indictment of “two great self-respecting
republics” of South Asia has come from Dawn columnist
Ayaz Amir – he has likened the poses of General Pervez
Musharraf and “lohpurush” (iron man) LK Advani
to “the dance of the courtesans”.
In the afterglow of his Camp David performance,
General Musharraf told ABC channel on 26 June that he has
agreed, in principle, to send troops to Iraq. But he wished
for the fig leaf of the United Nations, the Organisation of
Islamic Conference (OIC) or the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
Pakistani civil society does not seem to favour sending troops
to fight Muslims in a Muslim country. And, Musharraf is slowly
but surely falling prey to the ‘Gorbachev effect’
– wildly feted in the West for actions intensely hated
at home.
Barring firebrands such as P Sainath and Praful
Bidwai, most “opinion leaders” of Bharat mahaan
are waving the star spangled banner, with saffron flags firmly
in place as backdrop. The New Delhi elite seems ready to ignore
the sensibilities of Indian Muslims, dump the ideology of
national sovereignty and forget about morality in its foreign
policy – all for the sake of crumbs from the table of
imperial plunder. Sensing the hunger of his guest, Tony Blair
met Advani, the Indian deputy prime minister, in London. Subsequently,
he announced in the House of Commons that “19 or 20
countries” may join the peacekeeping operations in Iraq.
My guess is that at least 4 or 5 of those servile countries
will be from South Asia.
Patrol duty in and around Basra and Baghdad
is anything but peacekeeping. If the experience of British
troops over the last few months is anything to go by, the
mission in Mesopotamia is more likely to be counterinsurgency
operations in a newly acquired colony. No wonder, the US Marines
desperately want to subcontract the dirty work. This is one
outsourcing no trade union in the United States will complain
about. Hence, the intensive body shopping by the errand persons
of the Pentagon.
The proclivity of the American propaganda machine
to “sex up” information while being extremely
frugal with the facts is not unknown to Tony Blair, but he
must have felt the full force of its implications when UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan categorically denied all media
rumours about the UN role in Iraq. After his talks with the
British prime minister in London on 26 June, the day General
Musharraf was looking for a UN fig leaf on ABC, Annan said
in no uncertain terms, “Until the [Security] Council
gives us a new mandate, we are not really talking of a UN
force, and I doubt that we will have the capacity to take
over that responsibility at this stage”. He pointed
out that it was the responsibility of the “occupying
powers” to provide security to the Iraqi people. With
Annan unwilling to supply encouragement, Musharraf must look
for another fig leaf, and Advani needs to fortify his justifications
before ordering Indian soldiers to join guard duty in the
new empire in Mesopotamia.
The SAGUFA uniform
It is obviously time to get serious about this peacekeeping-slash-occupation
duty at the regional level since we all so seem to want it.
One matter to discuss would be what uniform a South Asian
force would wear while serving on the doab of the Euphrates
and the Tigris. As South Asian countries respond to the bidding
of Uncle Sam, it would make sense to stitch a new uniform
(suitable for imperial guard duty) rather than go for a borrowed
langoti of the UN (or OIC or GCC) flag. A completely South
Asian outfit inspired by our shared culture of serving colonial
masters with rare distinction would probably inspire more
confidence (in the occupying powers, if not the Iraqi populace).
There can be no better agenda for the SAARC
foreign secretary-level meeting on 9-10 July in rain-drenched
Kathmandu. After all, harping on the non-existent regional
trade ad nauseum is not leading SAFTA or SAPTA anywhere. All
peacekeeping forces and occupying forces must have acronyms
(ref UNGOMAP, UNMOGIP, UNTSO, UNIFIL, ONUC), so that should
be the first order of business. Participants of the planned
Kathmandu conclave have the requisite clout in their respective
countries to carry through an innovative scheme such as the
formation of a South Asian Guerrilla Unified Force for Action
in the Gulf, SAGUFA for short.
After General Musharraf, foreign secretary
Riaz Khokar is the second most important person in Pakistan
– refer to how he upstaged Premier Jamali in the selection
of Islamabad’s envoy to New Delhi. All through Musharraf’s
tour of duty (of pledging his continued obedience to the neocon
cabal) in the US and the UK, it was the careful Khokar who
accompanied the general, not his straightforward boss, the
foreign minister, Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri. If Khokar pledges
his support to the formation of SAGUFA, the all-powerful Rawalpindi
generals are sure to nurture the project as their own baby.
Secretary Kanwal Sibal too has enough influence
with his Bhartiya Janata Party minister that if he were convinced
of it, SAGUFA would go ahead, new uniform and all. In the
‘steel frame’ system of New Delhi, babus do not
just have a say in policy formulation; they formulate national
policies. Even though they seldom do anything more than nod
‘yes, minister’ in public, their political masters
know who wields the danda.
The timing of the Kathmandu meeting is perfect.
There can be no better atmosphere to arrive at a consensus
about SAGUFA than now – an army-friendly begum is at
the helm in Dhaka, Nepal is under the direct rule of its supreme-commander-in-chief
monarch, and hawkish President Kumaratunga is the civilian
head of Sri Lanka’s armed forces. The de facto host,
former foreign secretary Narendra Bikram Shah, is an apparatchik
holdover from the Panchayat era, who has been able to do the
undoable thus far – come to a resolution of the Bhutanese
refugees issue by essentially rendering them stateless at
the behest of Thimpu.
With the foreign secretaries making the pitch,
the others are sure to fall in line and we are as good as
home on SAGUFA. Funds for the new outfit, you say? That would
be the least of its problems. An advance for promised guard
duty in Iraq should not be too hard to manage. Counterinsurgency
operations there cost the American treasury over USD three
billion every month. That is exactly the sum George Bush has
promised his man in Islamabad – spread over the next
five years and attached with some very stout strings –
for handing over the entire Afghanistan border to the American
occupation forces headquartered in Kabul. Hiring the services
of SAGUFA is sure to come much cheaper.
However, the foreign secretaries of the South
Asian countries must put one condition on the deployment of
SAGUFA – they must insist that the combined troops of
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri
Lanka will head for Baghdad via Rangoon. Whenever a unified
South Asian command becomes a reality, its first duty must
be to free Burma from the clutches of the abominable generals.
SAGUFA can then develop other agendas for,
once started, the fund-raising must be constant so that our
jawans continue to earn per diem and hardship allowances.
An important assignment for the new regional legion could
perhaps be supervision of the US presidential elections next
year. Only a combined force of all South Asian countries can
ensure that no chads are left hanging in the 2004 elections
to haunt the world for the four years after it.
–CK Lal
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