We are at the edge of our freedom struggle. Our journey has been short and superficial. We run away from our destined fate, something which no other freedom movement had to face.

A decade of lazy talking to fix an out of the box question of Tamil nationality has changed the mindset of Sinhalese leadership. They have soundly dealt with our baseless act bringing hope and justice to the ever deceitful Tamils.

Had it not been for the quick and fast Sinhalese deliverance, the Tamils in my Foxy kingdom would still be served with a daily diet of rape, sexual harassment, murders and military offensive to fulfill my immortal megalomaniac instincts.

We have always preferred war to a peaceful solution thereby digging our own grave. Our atheistic, ravanistic dogmas and refusal to broaden our thinking has left us buried in the muck, to hear the foot thumping of peace loving, victorious Sinhalese dancing above.

Our double dealings began the day we were born. How can I forget our honeymoon with the RAW that continues still but remains under wraps? Our foot dragging with the Norwegian Mediator and peace loving regimes of Wickeramasinghe, Bandaranayake and Rajapakse were all measures meant to buy time for our crafty designs. We never allowed the dove of peace to fly freely.

I must say thanks to Rajapakse for bringing to an end this fundamentally flawed dual war and peace approach propagated by me. I have finally been spared this political absurdity, the credit for which goes to the brave, courageous and farsighted approach taken by the President. I shall also be spared that useless expenditure on raising a good for nothing army, navy and tiny air force which couldn’t hold its ground in face of roaring Sinhalese. Most importantly, I’ll whisk away under the shadow of RAW and dig a new ultra modern bunker somewhere in the backyard of 7 Race Course road.

A long time has elapsed since I embarked on this journey to satiate my dream of creating a Tamil Tiger kingdom. Folks I’m old and need to take a break from constantly swearing for the Tamil cause…

At this historic point of time, when the Sinhalese rejoice their victory and I prepare to hole out a bunker, I would like to express my gratitude to all the Tamil simpletons whom I bamboozled for so long. It’s high time they get their picture clear: There is No Tamil Land, There never was One, and there was only me Prabhakaran wrapped in his own self centered world…

Chill Folks...it’s just a spoof!

A few days after well-armed men mowed down scores of helpless people in Mumbai, an American commission released a report on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. “World at Risk” is one of those conscientious, bipartisan efforts, whose sober findings and pragmatic recommendations momentarily give you the sense that every problem—even one as alarming as the likelihood that “a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013”—has a common-sense solution. The report includes chapters on biological and nuclear risks, and one titled “Pakistan,” which would seem to suggest that the nation itself is a kind of W.M.D.

According to intelligence reports, the attacks in Mumbai were carried out by terrorists who had received extensive training from the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or Army of the Pure. Its agenda has been to force India to give up control over the disputed northern mountain region of Jammu and Kashmir. More recently, the group’s leader, Hafiz Saeed, spoke of creating a Muslim south Asia—thus, the band that carried out the killings called itself the Hyderabad Deccan Mujahideen, implying a holy war extending down to the south-central Indian region that, in the late eighteenth century, marked the farthest limit of the Mughal empire.

The name has the ring of nostalgic grandeur common among jihadist groups elsewhere, with their historical claims on far-flung places like Al Andalus, also known as Spain. And the designated targets in Mumbai suggested an ambition on the terrorists’ part extending well beyond the local troubles of Kashmir: hotels, a café, a hospital, a train station; foreign visitors, well-heeled Indians, Jews. The terrorists tortured their Jewish victims. They demanded to know the caste and home state of Indians. They held conference calls with their superiors in Lahore and Karachi to determine whether or not a certain hostage should be killed. When the goal is a Muslim south Asia, the answer is almost always yes.

The operation was so skillful and deadly, complete with a maritime landing by inflatable craft, that one security expert said that Navy SEALs would have had a hard time pulling it off. The sophisticated tactics, as well as electronic evidence, point to the involvement of top Lashkar figures, and also, according to Indian sources, of current or former officers of Pakistan’s intelligence and military. So the murders have led to a familiar volley of accusations, denials, counter-accusations, and threats between the nuclear-armed governments of India and Pakistan. They have also inspired a degree of restraint on India’s part and pledges of coöperation on Pakistan’s that are less familiar and more encouraging.

In one sense, the most appropriate response—articulated by commentators and ordinary people after the terror was over—is to express solidarity with the victims, and also with the idea of Mumbai, which, like the idea of New York, represents a vision of society that is the opposite of the vision behind names like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hyderabad Deccan Mujahideen: impure, secular, modern, open. But moral revulsion doesn’t suggest an intelligent course of action. The attacks in Mumbai reveal the vexing complexity of the interconnected conflicts throughout south Asia. At the urging of the United States, Pakistan had moved six divisions from its eastern frontier with Indian Kashmir to fight militants on its western border with Afghanistan; now the terrorists have succeeded in inducing Pakistan to threaten to cut back its pressure on the tribal areas and redeploy its troops to the east. Islamist radicalism is the main spark that keeps inflaming these conflicts.

Some commentators have simply demanded that Pakistan rid itself of the virus of extremism that threatens its own security as well as its neighbors’. But which Pakistan is going to do it? The weak civilian government of President Asif Zardari? The two-faced security services? The tribal leaders along the Afghanistan border? The huge, overwhelmingly poor, tumultuous population? The core problem is that Pakistan is no longer really a country, if it ever was. “Our Pakistan strategy is hopelessly at odds with reality,” David Kilcullen, a former counterinsurgency adviser to the State Department, said. “We treat it as an earnest but incapable ally in the war on terrorism.” In fact, some civilian elements of the government are American allies; some military elements are American enemies. The wild northwest, where Islamist militants have extended their control and created a safe haven for Al Qaeda, has thwarted those who would govern it for a long time. Lord Curzon, the British viceroy of India at the turn of the last century, fumed, “No patchwork scheme—and all our present recent schemes . . . are mere patchwork—will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steam-roller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine.”

American policymakers must be tempted to agree. Years of U.S. efforts in Pakistan—military aid, air strikes, Special Forces operations, bilateral diplomacy, coaxings, warnings—have been patchwork, and they have failed. Different approaches, including ones suggested in “World at Risk,” such as putting more effort into development and governance in Pakistan’s northwest, or bringing other regional countries to the table, offer some promise. But, in Kilcullen’s words, “Iraq might be easier than this. It’s a very, very difficult problem, and we don’t have much leverage in it.”,

In the days after the Mumbai attacks, the Washington Post reported that the Obama transition team was considering Richard Holbrooke as a special envoy to the region. The position would create a kind of civilian counterpart to General David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, filling a diplomatic void in U.S. foreign policy that the military has occupied throughout the Bush years. The Administration has always regarded terrorism in the narrow terms of war, and this myopia led it to deal with the region’s countries in isolation from one another, so that the policy in Kabul sometimes contradicted the one in Islamabad, which in turn was undermined by the growing partnership with New Delhi, and all of them were hampered by the refusal to talk to Tehran, whose role in the affairs of its neighbors to the east receives little attention. A special envoy would have to see the problem whole.

Holbrooke is the most experienced diplomat in the Democratic Party, and the aggressive negotiating skill he showed in brokering the Dayton accords that ended the war in Bosnia is badly needed in south Asia. But a legacy of the Bush Administration is that America can no longer sweep in and impose a solution on a crisis. The answers for Pakistan lie largely in its own hands—that’s the most frightening thing of all.

LINK: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/12/15/081215taco_talk_packer

A. whereas a Polish citizen working as an engineer in Pakistan was arrested by Islamic terrorists,
B. whereas despite a democratic government in Pakistan there is confirmed evidence of Pakistan hosting several terrorist groups and using them as an instrument of terrorism, particularly against India,
C. whereas Pakistan’s secret service ISI is closely aligned to the Taliban and Al Qaeda and is protecting them from international peace forces,
D. whereas the madrassas of Pakistan continue to provide cadres for terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda,
E. whereas despite Pakistan’s claim of participating in the war against terror, it continues to host terrorist leaders of the Khalistani Movement, Hezb ul Mujahideen, Lashkar e Taiba and criminal masterminds like Dawood Ibrahim, who live and operate freely.
The European Parliament has also called upon the Government of Pakistan to take immediate action to extradite to India the leaders of the Khalistan and other terrorist groups who acknowledge their role in terrorist activities in India;
2. Calls upon the Government of Pakistan to stop all cross-border infiltration and take immediate measures to reform the teaching imparted in the madrassas;
3. Calls upon the President of Pakistan to monitor these matters personally;
4. Calls upon the Government of Pakistan to take urgent action to transform its polity to prevent the continuing calls for violent jihad against its neighbours and its partners.
It has also instructed its President to forward this declaration, together with the names of the signatories, to the Council, the Commission and the Government of Pakistan.

British Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) - the joint civilian and military organization which is in charge of the rebuilding projects has been facing series of roadblocks. Most of British funds have been cleverly siphoned off by Afghan counterparts and contractors even before the reconstruction began. These contractors gave parts of projects to subcontractors. The sub contractors who undertook actual construction work used poor quality materials so the roads and buildings have crumbled much before completion. These include main bazaar road in Musa Qala, a health clinic and a mosque.

Most of utopian dreams of rebuilding Musa Qala have crumbled but yet the spirit of British troops is upbeat. They feel the attempt and planning itself is a big step forward in a place like Afghanistan. Musa Qala is strategically a good place to begin a positive peace process along with Afghan government and to keep Taleban away. The troops can slowly move inwards once confidence is established. Efforts are being made at all levels to bring in the change. Local commerce has improved, military stabilization team has established local governance and an Afghan civil secretariat. Local militiants are being inducted in to local police force.

In destroyed lands, first of all it is important to rebuild the spirit of people. Local community must realize that their life is being rebuilt for their own sake. Building utopia without solid foundation is bound to crumble.

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source: timesonline

Rukhma’s case is not a stray incidence but the social condition of the women in Afghanistan, which has not changed even after the US led NATO invaded the country overthrowing the Taliban regime. Under the new Afghan constitution, women have the right to education, can get a job and are to be always protected by the law, but in reality, women especially in rural Afghanistan are as vulnerable as before. Violence against women has in fact risen in the last one year. According to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, there were 2,374 reported cases of violence against women in 2007 while the figure in 2006 was 1,651. In 70 to 80 percent of these cases often the woman is charged of criminal activities for running away from the home and committing adultery. In incidences of rape, where it is very difficult to prove the allegations, the victim is accused of adultery and thrown into the jail.

After the fall of the Taliban, condition of the Afghan women has hardly improved. 80 per cent of them are illiterate, 54 per cent of the girls are forcefully married off before they are 18. Afghanistan has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world with 15,000 mothers dying every year from preventable pregnancy related complications. The ongoing militarism has increased the incidence of violence over women. Ever since the US invaded Afghanistan, attacks on women have increased. There has been rise in kidnapping, murders of women engaged in community work, forced and honor killings, self-immolation and trafficking.

via:MSNBC

Now if the picture is taken as a whole, of both, Iraq and Afghanistan and the near by places that have been affected by the so called War on Terrorism – Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan - there is a general mistrust over the presence of American and British troops. One idea that is prevalent among these people is the feeling that the West does not respect Islam and is averse to anything that is Islamic; at least that is what is under propaganda. Another idea that generates this mistrust is the feeling that the invading country is after the economic resources of the invaded one and something that adds to these feelings is the colonial experience. And all these countries namely Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan have already learned a lot from Iran-Iraq war and Soviet war in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, the internal tousle among the warlords and their control over the people still remain. Also, America has not been able to get completely rid of Al Qaeda, whose influence still looms large over the country. Under circumstances like this, people of Afghanistan remain skeptic over whom to believe and support, but the fact is, neither of them can promise Afghanistan peace and stability.

Source: Telegraph

China is all set to become the next economic giant who will display its extravagance in the forthcoming Beijing Olympic Games but there is a dark side of China plagued in poverty and illiteracy. For 3.5 Yuan ($0.50) thousands of Chinese children are forced to work in kilns, mines, garments and textiles factories, fireworks and toys industries, for at least 300 hours a month. These children are working as slaves who have been sold by their parents or abject poverty has forced these children to volunteer for the life of bonded labor. While Communist Beijing and Shanghai are shining, Guangdong, Shanxi, Henan, Sichuan, and many other provinces in China have become a booming market for slavery and child labor.

The Chinese government had announced last year a nationwide crackdown on slavery and child labor but nothing much has been accomplished. Hundreds of poor farmers, children and mentally disabled people are forced to work in kilns and mines. The exact number of child labors in China is unknown, as the Chinese government does not allow information to be acquired directly from the country. Most China watchers conclude that child labor is increasing in the country as is evident from the high dropout rate from schools and the hasty expansion of foreign investment dependent export oriented enterprises. There is increased evidence that schoolchildren are becoming part of the growing work force in China.

Despite of Chinese laws forbidding employment of children, the enforcement of the child labor laws is sometimes made difficult by counterfeit identification cards. Compulsory education is required in China up to 16 years of age but it is unfortunate that the Chinese government in spite of its Communist manifesto and keenness to subjugate the Tibetans is not bothered about its children leading a life of drudgery.

Via: Reuters

An American diplomat left North Korea on 9th May with boxes of documents (approximately 18,000 secret papers) containing details of two decades of Pyongyang’s nuclear secrets. That was the beginning of a process of undoing a long standing global-Asian tension. The unbending North Korea gave the signal of budging and the US was always there to make room. Prez Bush has responded by announcing that he would lift trade sanctions dating back to the 1950-53 conflict and remove North Korea from the US terrorism blacklist. It was necessary for him to score a foreign policy win before quitting his office later this year, but his declaration came with a rider - he said that the move could be reversed if North Korea fails to comply with US demands and abandon its nuclear program in a verifiable way.

Issuing a statement from White House, he left ample signs of his misgivings about North Korea, when he said,

We will trust you only to the extent you fulfill your promises.

Despite that, Mr Bush notified Congress that in 45 days, he intended to take North Korea off the State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism.

However, the result could not have come at a more opportune moment for China. Barely six weeks before the Olympics, Beijing is able to show the world that it has used its influence to break the deadlock. A State Department statement said that the reclusive state has handed China an arms dossier of its nuclear activities. The 60-page document covers nuclear production back to 1986 and includes information on the country’s plutonium program, uranium enrichment and proliferation activities. It also promises to demolish the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear complex. North Korea can now glimpse a route to emerging from its self-imposed isolation though UN sanctions would remain in place.

Its pariah status has benefited no one, and certainly its people have suffered a lot. It also offers the best hope so far of the two countries — which are technically still at war — negotiating a peace treaty and establishing conventional diplomatic ties.

However, the development has triggered a discussion about the message of this whole episode. There are people who think that the Bush benevolence would prompt many to consider it a weakness towards nations which indulge in unscrupulous designs. Weapons of mass destruction can be developed with a certain amount of assurance. Others view it as a win for the six nations talk.

Source : Times Online

Its been seven years since US led coalition toppled Taleban. There are some 70,000 foreign troops on ground in Afghanistan. But yet Taleban has managed to get stronghold just outside Maydan Shar, the capital of Wardak province, 20 miles southwest of the capital. It is from this Wardak base the militants are operating on all important supply routes and roads to Kabul. These include Kabul-Khadahar and Kabul-Pakistan via Jalalabad routes, the important arterial roads in the region.

This is a historic war tactic used two decades ago against the Soviets and before that against the British in 1841. Afghan army and government refuses to acknowledge this new strategy of Taleban. They claim they are still in control. But ground reports, attacks on supply convoys, aid workers, troops and claims by Taleban spokesperson clearly indicate that Taleban are applying historic strategy of beseiging all routes to Kabul to regain total control. Afghanistan’s rocky terrain has always helped local Taleban to launch such sudden attacks.

There is no immediate answer to the question of the truck drivers. Afghanistan has been a difficult battle for US and its allies largely due to terrain, extreme weather and Taleban operating from bordering countries like Pakistan.The local Afghanistan government and army have not been able to help in uprooting Taleban and Al-Qaeda totally. US intentions are still a suspect in this land largely dominated by conservative muslims. Troops haven’t won total trust of local people. And very little development work in the region is infact helping Taleban to recruit new militants from frustrated local villagers.The use of rocket launchers and modern weaponary shows there is no dearth of fund, expertise and support from Arab countries.

On the other hand, America has been vocal about pulling out of Iraq and sending more troops to Afghanistan. So, battlelines and strategies are becoming more clear. Both sides want a win. The role of US and allies, Afghanistan government and Pakistan will be very crucial if at all a peace process is initiated. Or else Afghanistan war may end up as most bloodied war in the history of the world. Unfortunately, neither diplomacy nor Peace, but only war and violence will be a winner once again.

source: timesonline

Are Japan and China inching closer to each other to start a new era of political and diplomatic bonhomie? The inhumane Japanese atrocities on the Chinese during the Second World War had embittered the Chinese towards Japan. However, with time being the best healer, both the countries seemed to have buried the past. After a decade, a Chinese President will be visiting Japan. Despite of best efforts by the two countries there are some contentious issues waiting to be resolved.

The latest flare-up between the two countries occurred when Japan’s health minister announced on January this year that 10 people in the country had died from food poisoning after eating Chinese-made dumplings. Japanese investigators seized six packets of dumplings and discovered traces of methamidophos, a lethal pesticide that is banned in both Japan and China. However, Chinese investigators failed to detect any trace of the lethal pesticides in the Chinese manufacturing plant in China. With the origin of the contamination remaining a mystery, a new tension has flared up between China and Japan.

The visit of the former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which houses the remains of war criminals, had created fury in China. China on its part had sought to block Japan’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. With the current Chinese atrocities in Tibet being fresh in memory, it remains to be seen whether Japan rakes up the Tibet issue with Hu Jintao.

Source:Independent
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