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[Today 10 year after India's Nuclear tests in Pokharan in Rajasthan, there is no reason for the ordinary people to celebrate. The villagers near the test site who have lived with radioactivity in the desert air and environment hardly matter to the powers that be. After the first nuclear test explosion at Pokhran in 1974, some of the wells in the area were sealed by the DAE. Water samples are reported to have been collected at regular intervals, by the offcials, but villagers have been prevented from using these wells, but without being given any reason. After the second series of experiments in 1998, water from a tube well in a village 7 km south of Pokhran, became jet black. Reduction in yield and fat content of milk was reported from the neighbouring villages. Radioactivity would have certainly penetrated the underground water and ground beneath. The gases and particles vented out during blasts would have been carried away by the desert wind. Not much written that is easily available. In 1999, Kalpana Sharma a well known journalist had written an interesting article - "Khetolai: The forgotten village", The Hindu Survey of Environment 1999. (pp.17-19) . See also Gadekar, S. 2000. The Smile that makes Generations Sick, in Lokayan Bulletin (Exploding Peace: Peaceful Nuclear Tests. 15.1/6 – July-June 1999-2000), New Delhi. (Pg. 91-93); Makhijani, A. 1999. Making the Bomb – Without Consent, With Injury. The Hindu Survey of the Environment 1999. (Pg 21-27)

Posted below are two news reports from today's papers in India -SAPW]

Nuclear history lost on local village

by Siddhartha S. Bose, Hindustan Times

Khetolai (Pokhran), May 11, 2008

Pokhran’s historic moment is lost on the people of Khetolai, the last human habitation near the nuclear blast site of 11 May, 1998. The young in this village vaguely recall the day when the blasts catapulted India into the orbit of countries with nuclear capabilities. The elderly take it with a pinch of salt.

“It took place on our land and made history. But what did it give us?” asks Ramlal, a schoolteacher in the local senior secondary school. Pokhran is 26 km from Khetolai; the 1998 blasts took place just 3 km from the village. A vast stretch of forbidden desert expanse separates the village from the heavily guarded blast site on the other end.

The villagers have lived on promises made to them by the Centre and the state government after the blasts.

Ten years have gone by and the promises still remain unfulfilled! And yet, the 250 odd families that live with a high literacy rate of 80 per cent and have a third of their adult population serving as government teachers, rarely discuss the atomic blasts with their children.

“Our livestock suffered from the radiation during initial days, fissures opened up in every single house in the village after the tremors that followed the blasts. The government made almost a tourist place out of Pokhran but locals suffered,” Ramesh Chand who grew up in Khetolai said. He has moved out of the village to work in nearby Phalodi.

Lt Colonel NN Joshi, army spokesperson based in Jodhpur, said the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) were going to celebrate the occasion as National Technology Day. “We have received a recent communication which holds up the day as a symbol of technological empowerment,” he said.

Ramlal says people take pride in the event but are disconnected from it. How would the younger generation relate to the incident, he ponders, adding: “If only the government would have given us a desperately needed hospital in Pokhran and named it Shakti Sthal (name given to the blast site), the children would have known.” Khetolai has a primary health centre but doctors come there rarely, allege villagers. Army doctors don’t cater to the local population.

Far from being obsessed with Pokhran, people here have learnt to live with the army watching over them on three sides. The sandy stretch separates the village from the watchtowers guarding the ’98 blast sites. People are forbidden from wandering into the area. Visitors are allowed till only a km ahead of Shakti Sthal.

----

10 yrs on, Pokhran to have a war museum
by Vimal Bhatia & Prakash Bhandari (Times of India, 11 May 2008)

POKHRAN: Ten years ago, on May 11, 1998, the Buddha smiled once again in the deserts of Rajasthan as the country undertook a series of nuclear tests in the Pokhran field range. The first-ever nuclear test by the country, code named ‘Smiling Buddha’, was also conducted in the same place on May 19, 1974.

The area of the tests is still kept under tight security. There are four gates spread over a 3.5 sq km area. The first is known as Kohinoor Gate and the last, Bhoochal Gate. But soon, footfalls in the sands which saw India’s strategic coming of age could increase as the government goes ahead with plans to set up a war museum in the Pokhran range.

"We are trying to set up a model of the Khetolai village in Pokhran where the blasts took place. A war museum would be set up here and the help of the Army and BSF has been sought to set up the museum," said Ambarish Kumar, district collector, Jaisalmer.
[...].

South Asians Against Nukes Mailing List
December 26, 2007
URL: groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/message/1091

o o o o

TERROR BY CLERICAL ERROR
by Jawed Naqvi
(in Dawn, December 20, 2007)

INDIA’s top missile scientist unveiled plans last week to build a ballistic missile defence by 2010 that should effectively tackle the threat from Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Dr V.K. Saraswat was also quoted as saying that the proximity of Pakistan’s assets would give India just three to four minutes to respond to a perceived attack.

The missile defence system now on the anvil would protect ‘high-value’ assets and major cities like Delhi and Mumbai. Informed people would consider the plan delusional, and therefore dangerous.

Russia and the United States, with far greater lead-time to respond to each other’s nuclear threat and with a highly refined command and control mechanism, still do not have a completely trustworthy system in place.

The official doomsday scenario written by the US government during the Cold War - called The Emergency Plan Book - would make countries like India and Pakistan look not just ill-prepared to consider the use of nuclear weapons but also ill-advised to flaunt them. For all its sophistication and years of preparedness for nuclear attack on its territory, the United States looked pretty vulnerable as recently as Sept 11, 2001. How the administration went round like a headless chicken in the aftermath is nicely recorded in The Doomsday Scenario, a 2002 book based mostly on the Emergency Plan, which author L. Douglas Keeney wangled from a library during a brief period when it
was declassified.

During the Cold War, more than $45bn was spent to protect both senior US government officials and the general public in the event of a nuclear attack. This funding supported everything from the production and distribution of films and pamphlets instructing citizens how to mitigate the effects of a nuclear blast and fallout to the secret construction of massive underground facilities to allow the government to continue to operate during and after a nuclear war.

The extensive and extremely expensive plans to build massive blast and fallout shelters for the populace were systematically rejected by US presidents on the grounds that they did not want to create a national panic. The Congress balked at the price tag and the military leaders argued that it was more sensible and cost-effective to invest in offensive weapons to deter war and, if need be, wage war. One fallout of the Sept 11 attacks was that for the first time the United States activated its Continuity of Government plans (COG), some of which have been lampooned in Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11. But the real emergency envisioned in The Doomsday Scenario, cited by Keeney, pertained to “kiloton and megaton-sized bombs” that would “pummel our industrial, transportation, communication, and financial centres in a sustained downpouring of warheads”. The national landscape, according to the American response plans, “would be blurred with smoke and haze and littered with death and destruction and contamination, with only the most rudimentary fragments of community and government surviving”.

Said the Emergency Plans Book, “12,500,000 are suffering from blast or thermal injuries and have an immediate and evident need for treatment.” The surviving labour force is “engaged in large numbers in disposing of the dead”. America’s shipping ports would be clogged with sunken ships; it would
be a nation of people scrounging for food, “with crematoriums working around the clock”.

Ironically the current discourse on nuclear weapons in Islamabad and Washington DC and Dr Saraswat’s plans to defend India’s high-value assets, whatever that means in the context of millions dead, are so obviously unreal. America’s headache stems from the fear of Muslim extremists taking control of the nuclear trigger. That the bomb looks any more secure with the followers of other faiths is one of the big fallacies of our times.

We did feel (or know) during the 2002 India-Pakistan stand-off that a more real nuclear threat could come from any ‘mad major’ lurking within the chain of command of either country. And why blame the mad major when the political leadership of that period on both sides looked quite prepared to do the job of, let’s say, Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper?Do we remember the delusional commander of a US air force base in Dr Strangelove who initiated an attack plan to strike the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons? He had set out to thwart what he believed was a Communist conspiracy to “sap and impurify” the “precious bodily fluids” of the American people with fluoridated water which he believed had caused his impotence. Change the bodily fluids with some other catchphrase that sells with our people and we are in the same league with Stanley Kubrick’s villainous brigadier.

The advent of Al Qaeda as the all-pervasive ogre out to destroy the world tends to lull us into the false belief that the messianic zeal of the president of the United States is any less threatening. The readiness to use tactical nuclear weapons against Iran or any other country (don’t forget the Seventh Fleet flexing its muscles in the Bay of Bengal not too long ago) is at par with the clarion call for “aar paar ki larai” (fight unto finish) that emanated from the Indian leadership.

Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine too comes ironically from a highly disciplined and professional army, not gun-toting mullahs. It signals the readiness to be the first one to stage a nuclear strike. Add to this conundrum the bristling tensions between the United States and Europe on the one side confronted by an increasingly insecure but militarily powerful Russia, and we have a serious problem on our hands.

In our self-absorption with Narendra Modi in India and the hurly-burly of January elections in Pakistan, there has been a tendency to miss out on the subversive action underway in our vicinities that is of equal if not more serious consequence to the region. Last month Russia’s parliament voted to suspend compliance with a key Cold War treaty limiting conventional forces in Europe as Moscow signalled it was weighing new force deployments on its western flank. Last week Russia’s defence officials warned that any Iran-bound missile from Europe travelling over Russian air space could be read as enemy action by its trigger-ready retaliatory system.

Stanley Kubrick’s film was loosely based on Peter George’s Cold War thriller novel Red Alert, also known as Two Hours to Doom. Dr Strangelove satirises the Cold War and the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. For India and Pakistan, with just three to four minutes to take evasive action, if Dr Saraswat’s count is right, there won’t be any time for Brigadier General Ripper to deliver all his humorous lines before doom strikes us suddenly. Whether the threat comes from a Muslim cleric or a clerical error of a secular nature, it would still spell disaster for millions.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in New Delhi.

Resolution adopted at the seminar Indo US Nuclear ‘Deal’ India, South Asia, NAM and the Global Order

[Press Release - Bombay, 12 March 2007]

The International Seminar on “Indo US Nuclear ‘Deal’ India, South Asia, NAM and the Global Order” held in Mumbai, on March 10-11, 2007 was organised by a number of local organisations, as per the attached list ‘A’, and endorsed/participated by the international organisations, as per the attached list ‘B’.

After due and indepth deliberations in which a number of international and national experts and activists took part, the Seminar has resolved as under:

I. What the Deal Is All About?
The content of the ‘Deal’, which is currently being negotiated between India and the US, was first laid out the joint statement issued by the Indian Prime minister and the US President on July 18 2005 from Washington DC and then further reiterated on March 2 2006 in another joint statement by them issued from New Delhi incorporating the major elements of agreements between the countries reached till then. The signing of the Henry Hyde Act on December 18 2006, after protracted and nervewracking deliberations in the US Congress, by the US President towards amending its own Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to make the ‘Deal’ possible is a major step forward towards bringing the ‘Deal’ into force.

The ‘Deal’, in its essence, is meant to enable India, a nonsignatory to the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT), henceforth to have ‘civilian’ nuclear trade - in terms of nuclear fuel, technology, plants, spares etc., with the US, and also other nations so desirous, by making a unique exception in case of India. India in return will have to designate, at its own options, its nuclear reactors into two categories - ‘civilian’ (for power production) and ‘strategic’ (for Bomb making), and ensure separation between the two. The ‘civilian’ reactors/plants only will be opened up for international inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The nuclear trade will accordingly be limited to the ‘civilian’ reactors only. In case of the ‘strategic’ ones, there will be neither any inspection nor any trade.

II. When and How the ‘Deal’ Comes into Operation?

In order to bring the ‘Deal’ into force, India will have to further finalise the “123 agreement” with the US, laying down the specific scope and terms of cooperation and codifying the modes of separation between the ‘civilian’ and ‘strategic’ plants and perhaps diluting some of the conditions incorporated in the Henry Hyde Act at the instance of the US Congress to which India is objecting; and conclude a treaty with the IAEA on the specific scope and terms of inspection.
Then the proposal will go to the 45member Nuclear Suppliers Group so that it unanimously amends its rules, which as of now prohibits nuclear trade with India - being a nonsignatory to the NPT, to accommodate the above two agreements reached between India, on the one hand, and the US and the IAEA on the other.
On succeeding in obtaining a green signal from the NSG, the whole package will go back to the two houses of the US Congress, which stands reconfigured since, for its final nod.

In the event of obtaining such, the US President would put his signature and the ‘Deal’ will eventually come into operation.

The Indian government, unlike its US counterpart, is not obligated to obtain any parliamentary approval.

III. Why the ‘Deal’ Must Be Opposed?
The ‘Deal’ as and when, and if at all, comes through will grievously undermine the current global regime of nuclear nonproliferation, as it is meant to make a unique exception in case India, in gross violation of the underlying principles of the NPT, and thereby also the prospects of global nuclear disarmament. The fact that Pakistan has been brusquely refused a similar deal by the US in spite of persistent clamouring and Iran is being demonstratively coerced to desist from developing its own nuclear fuel cycle technology, integral to nuclear power production allowed and encouraged under the Article IV of the NPT, further brings out graphically the abominable discriminatory nature of the ‘Deal’. Moreover, the lesson that one would tend to learn is that if one can weather the initial storms of international censures after breaking the nonproliferation taboo, things would normalise in a while. One may even get rewarded in the process. This is sure to trigger off stepped up vertical and horizontal proliferations.

Moreover, by enabling India to import fuel, natural or enriched uranium, from abroad, the ‘Deal’ would make it possible for India to use the indigenously produced uranium exclusively for Bombmaking. This possible escalation in its fissile material production capacity is, in all likelihood, push Pakistan further to nuclearise even at a great cost, and thereby aggravate tensions and accelerate arms race in the region with spinechilling consequences.

It’d also further cement the growing (unequal) strategic ties between the US and India and thereby would add momentum to the US project for unfettered global dominance and Indian craze to emerge as a global power basking in the reflected glory of the global headman. It’d just not only undermine India’s position as a founding and leading member of the NAM, it’d also pose a very serious challenge to the NAM and its objectives in terms of radically raised level of US domination on the global scene.

India’s rather meek submission to highly deplorable and dangerous threats issued and postures adopted by the Bush regime in relation to Iran and its nuclear programme instead of trying to find a just and fair solution in terms of having a Weapons of Mass Destruction free MiddleEast including Israel is a clear and extremely worrisome pointer. India’s keenness to join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) initiated by the US to interdict any vessel in international waters suspected of carrying (unauthorised!) nuclear materials, in gross violation of all international laws and also the Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) programme of the US are another two highly disturbing indicators.

India’s growing closeness with Israel, the frontline state of the US in the Middle East, would also pick up further pace in the process.

This ‘Deal’ would obviously distort India’s energy options by diverting scarce resources to developments of resourceguzzling, intrinsically hazardous and potentially catastrophic, nuclear power at the cost of ecologically benign renewable sources of energy.

This would, furthermore, provide a strong boost to the nuclear industry worldwide, particularly the potential suppliers from the US. And that’s precisely why the business lobby in the US is working overtime to get the ‘Deal’ clinched.
The recent visit by the Russian President Vladimir Putin to India as the guest of honour at the Republic Day event and his public commitment to supply additional nuclear reactors to India and work for the safe passage of the ‘Deal’ through the NSG underscores the convergence of interests of the nuclear power lobbies worldwide as regards the ‘Deal’ and the new market that it is promising to open up.

IV. We Demand

The government of India, given the grave multifaceted negative implications of this ongoing deal, must forthwith withdraw from all further negotiations with the US in this regard.

It must strive to regain its old prestige and influence, both moral and political, by opting to again play a meaningful leading role in the NonAligned Movement and other international alliances geared against imperialism, militarism and oriented towards a nuclear weapons free South Asia and the world.

The government of India is further urged to make global abolition of nuclear weapons its diplomatic priority and take up and pursue the issue vigorously with the NAM, UNGA and other international fora.

V.

The Seminar also decides to send a copy of this Resolution to the Prime Minister of India, the Chairperson of the ruling UPA - Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the incumbent chair of the NAM - the Cuban government, and also the United Nations SecretaryGeneral, Mr Ban Kimoon.

It also urges the members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to turn down the proposal to amend its rule to accommodate the ‘Deal’, as and when it come sup for discussions.

‘A’
Indian Organisers:
Bombay Urban Industrial League for Development (BUILD)
Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS)
Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action (CASA)
Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP)
Documentation & Research Training Centre (DRTC)
Forum for Justice & Peace (FJP)
Indian Institute for Peace, Disarmament &
Environmental Protection
Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD)
Initiative India
Institute Community Organization & Research (ICOR)
Labour Education and Research Network (LEARN)
National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)
Pakistan India Peoples’ Forum for Peace & Democracy (PIPFPD)
Peace Mummbai
People’s Media Initiative (PMI)
Vikas Adhyayan Kendra (VAK)
Wisdom Foundation
Women’s Centre
and others

‘B’
International Organisations Endorsing:
AfroAsian Peoples’ Solidarity Organisation
Friends of the Earth Australia
Mayors for Peace
South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD),
and others

Event Details
10.3.2007 (SATURDAY)
10 0011 00: Registration & Inauguration.
Welcome Speech: Admiral (Rtd.) L Ramdas (PIPFPD/CNDP).
11 0014 00: 1st Plenary: ‘IndoUS Nuke Deal: India, NonAligned Movement and the Emerging Global Order’.
Speakers: Achin Vanaik (CNDP), A.A.M Marleen PC (SecretaryGeneral, AAPSO, Sri Lanka), Ashim Roy (General Secretary, NTUI), Ms. Hamsa Abd ElHamid (International Secretariat, AAPSO, Cairo).
Chair: Fr. Allwyn D’Silva (FJP/ICOR).
15 0018 00: 2nd Plenary: ‘IndoUS Nuke Deal: Its Impacts on Global and Regional Nuclear Arms Race’.
Speakers: John Hallam (Friends of the Earth, Australia), E.A.Vidyasekera (AAPSO Secretariat Coordinator), Hari Sharma (President, SANSAD, Canada) speech read out in absentia, Praful Bidwai (CNDP).
Chair: Vijay Darp (PIPFPD).
March 11 (SUNDAY)
10 0013 00: 3rd Plenary: ‘IndoUS Nuke Deal: Its Impacts on Global and Regional Energy Options’.
Speakers: Surendra Gadekar (CNDP/Anumukti), V T Padmanabhan (Researcher on radiation effects on human heath), M V Ramana (CNDP).
Chair: Leslie Rodrigues (VAK).
14 0018 00: 4th Plenary:
Documentary film by K P Sasi on effects of radiation (from thorium) on human health.
Strategy Session and Adoption of Resolution.
Speakers: Theodore Orlin (President, International Human Rights Education Consortium, USA), Sandeep Pandey (NAPM/CNDP), Eric Toussaint (CADTM, Belgium) and others.
Chair: Sukla Sen (CNDP).
Discussion on Film
Speaker: V T Padmanabhan.
Chair: Sushovan Dhar (VAK).
Thanksgiving

LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA


5 March 2007
 
 
Dr. Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister of India
 
Dear Prime Minister,

Neglect of Children Under Six in the Union Budget 2007-8
 
We are writing to express our deep concern about the neglect of children under six in the Union Budget
2007-8.
 
You may remember meeting some of us on 19 December 2006 (just after “Bal Adhikar Samvad”), when we discussed the FOCUS Report, the rights of children under six, and the recent Supreme Court judgement on ICDS.  At that time you had assured us that the UPA Government was committed to the universalization of ICDS, as stated in the Common Minimum Programme (CMP), and also to the implementation of the Supreme Court judgement.  We are, therefore, startled and dismayed that this commitment is not reflected at all in the Union Budget 2007-8.  The allocation for ICDS (Rs 4,761 crores) has barely increased in real terms, and is virtually unchanged as a proportion of GDP.
 
It is a mystery to us how the CMP commitment and Supreme Court judgement can possibly be implemented within such meagre budget allocations.  The Supreme Court judgement requires an increase in the number of Anganwadis from the present 9.4 lakhs to 14 lakhs at the very least by December 2008.  Higher allocations are also required to enhance the quality of ICDS services.  Based on fairly conservative calculations of the requirements of “universalization with quality”, the National Advisory Council had recommended (in November 2004) an allocation of at least Rs 9,600 crores for ICDS in 2007-8.  This figure needs upward revision in the light of the Supreme Court judgement, yet the actual provision in the Union Budget 2007-8 is not even half of this conservative estimate.
 
As per this Budget, the Government of India will be spending less than Rs 5,000 crores this year on children under six, who represent more than 15 per cent of India’s population.  This compares with Rs 96,000 crores to be spent on “defence”.  This is a staggering and unacceptable imbalance in Budget priorities.  The contrast is all the more shocking at a time of growing evidence (particularly from the National Family Health Survey) that there has been no substantial improvement in infant and young child nutrition, including optimal breastfeeding practices, during the last eight years, in spite of runaway economic growth.
 
We urge you to intervene and ensure a fairer deal for children in the Union Budget 2007-8 as well as in the 11th Plan.  We also take this opportunity to reiterate our appeal for more active political leadership on children’s issues, including the universalization of ICDS.
 
Yours Sincerely,
 
                                  
  Jean Dreze        N.C.Saxena Shantha Sinha  Aruna Roy
  (Allahabad University)        (former Secretary, (M.V.Foundation) (National Campaign for
     Planning Commission)                         People’s Right to Information)
                           
Kavita Srivastava Harsh Mander   Vandana Prasad     Arun Gupta
(People’s Union  (Centre for Equity                (Jan Swasthya Abhiyan)     (Breastfeeding Promotion 
for Civil Liberties) Studies)           Network of India)
              
       Annie Raja                        Veena Shatrugna  Sudha Sundararaman            
      (National Federation               (National Institute                     (All India Democratic                       
       For Indian Women)                 of Nutrition)                   Women’s Association)         
 
 
 
 
cc: Mrs. Sonia Gandhi (Chairperson, UPA),     Shri P. Chidambaram (Finance Minister),
     Dr. Montek S. Ahluwalia (Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission)

India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch
Compilation (February 28, 2007)
Year Seven, No 168
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/
produced by South Asia Citizens Web and South Asians Against Nukes

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Eminent Jurists Begin Probe into Counter-Terrorism Laws in South Asia
2 India: So-called Anti-Terrorist Laws are Tools of State Terrorism
3 Pakistan: Militarisation of politics
4 War in Afghanistan and Pakistan
5 Pakistan: Sources of illegal weapons are all too well known to need investigation
6 India: Guns for pleasure, anyone?
7 Pakistan: New policy on military lands
8 Pakistan and India’s mad fantasy of keeping nuclear weapons free from risk:
- Nuclear accord designed to promote ‘stable’ environment
9 India and Pakistan’s tit for tat missile race:
- Pakistan military tests missile - Hatf VI missile test
- Pakistan test fires long-range ballistic missile
- India tests Brahmos Missile in February 2007
- India Plans 2nd ABM Test in June [2007]
10 India – Pakistan - Defence Spending:
- Big rise in Indian defence budget
- India hikes defence budget to Rs 96000 cr
- Hike in unproductive expenditure
11 The "disappeared" in Pakistan and India:
- Pakistani "disappeared" a growing problem: group
- Democracy disappears with persons who ‘disappear’
- Kashmir Solidarity Committee and APDP Hold protest Rally in Delhi
- Kashmir’s big lie
- India: Investigate All ‘Disappearances’ in Kashmir
- India: Government Should Act to Stop Murders in Custody
- Rogues in Khaki - Justice cannot be delivered on pick and choose basis
- Indian anti-terrorism troops accused of executing civilians
- Criminals in combat fatigues
- FIRs expose Army's hand in civilian killings
- Another body exhumed in Kashmir
- Body of carpenter killed in "encounter" exhumed
12 Siachen Madness or Mountain Peace
13 Victims of War on Terror in India and Pakistan:
- Trial and terror
- Voices of The Internally Displaced: Jammu & Kashmir
- Too many dubious convictions in Pakistan, say activists
14 Manipur and the Struggle Against AFPSA
- Manipur: The Irom Sharmila saga
15 Fire Bombing of Samjhauta Express :
- Peace and The Burning Train
- Samjhota Explosion
- Put The Joint Mechanism To Work
16 Arms Sales To The Region - Plans and The Players:
- Pakistan gets eight attack helicopters
- Russia Works To Remain India’s Top Supplier
- Aviation firms descend on India air show
- Reports: India plans aerospace military command to oversee space-based assets
- "Work on nuke deterrence for Navy underway"
- India sets sights on cruise missile market

FULL TEXT AT:
http://www.sacw.net/peace/IPARMW168.pdf

by J. Sri Raman (truthout.org)

    The hawks of India and Pakistan can heave a sigh of relief. A terrorism-hit train has failed to carry the South Asian peace process forward even fractionally, as many had fondly hoped.

    This should come as no surprise to watchers of the region, considering the place for terrorism in the political themes official India and Pakistan have pursued in the past, especially in the post-9/11 period. Before coming to that, a brief look at the latest twist in the tale.

    The bomb blasts of February 18 on the Samjhauta (Understanding) Express, taking a toll of 68 Pakistani and Indian lives (mostly the former), caused a surge of hope along with great sorrow on both sides of the border. The common tragedy was expected to make the rulers of the two countries move, even if reluctantly, towards a common approach to terrorism - to its perception as a common enemy.

    For a short while, this seemed to be happening. Observers noted a series of negative gains.

    For the first time, in the first place, an apparent terrorist strike did not lead to an abrupt break in the bilateral talks through which the peace process has proceeded thus far. The Mumbai train blasts of July 11, 2006, attributed officially and by the opposition in India to "cross-border terrorism," had applied a sharp, sudden brake to the process, with the scrapping of scheduled talks at the level of foreign secretaries. Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, was due to visit New Delhi on February 20.

    The very next day, an India-Pakistan pact on nuclear risk reduction was signed. And, the two sides went ahead with their earlier plan to hold the first meeting of an India-Pakistan Joint Counter-Terror Mechanism (JCTM) in Islamabad on March 6-7.

    The list of pluses ends here, and the longer one of pathetic minuses begins. Many may wonder how much of a plus the pact on nuclear risk reduction was, considering that it envisaged no more than alerting the other side in case of a "cross-border" fallout; and some may find strange the official safety promise following an accident of this scale. Let us, however, let that pass.

    What we cannot forget is how fast the feigned anti-terrorist solidarity disappeared at the official level. The people of Panipat, where the bombs went off, rushed to rescue the Pakistanis, and passengers from across the border vowed to travel by the same train and not to concede a victory to terrorism. Representatives of the two governments, especially in the foreign affairs and railway ministries, however, started bickering even as the Samjhauta victims lay groaning in hospital beds.

    While Kasuri and his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukhejee voiced the most virtuous sentiments, lesser officials traded charges over the charred bodies. Pakistanis were accused of impeding investigations, and Indians were accused of treating the victims as "suspects."

    Pakistan's Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed gave a new dimension to the ugly debate by insinuating that Kasuri was "compromising" Pakistan's position in India. We do not know whether it is an official policy to let Rashid get loudly anti-India while the rest of Pakistan's establishment, including President Pervez Musharraf, appears sober and responsible. But the Railway Minister has gone full steam ahead trying to derail the peace process.

    Nothing much, in these circumstances, was really expected from the JCTM meeting, and nothing much has emanated. According to Indian accounts, based on official briefings, the Indian side shared "evidence and information" with Pakistan about the Samjhauta affair, though the evidence seems to have been confined to the picture of a single suspect, handed over for further investigation. According to similarly based Pakistani accounts, this picture was not accompanied by the person's passport number or other particulars. Denying this, New Delhi insists that specific details were given. The public has no way of knowing which of the reports is right.

    The Pakistani side claimed to have given its counterpart "concrete evidence" of India's involvement in the Balochistan rebellion. The role of Indian consulates in neighboring Afghanistan's Kandahar, Jalalabad and Herat in this regard is said to have been documented in detail. The Indian side has, of course, indignantly denied this as well, claiming that the consulates were only devoting themselves to Afghan development projects.

    The JCTM is scheduled to meet again in June. But, despite the Samjhauta tragedy, no serious observer expects New Delhi and Islamabad to become comrades-in-arms against terrorism. The barest possibility of such a partnership, in fact, disappeared when both of them became part of the Bush-led "alliance against global terror" in the aftermath of 9/11.

    Both of them, after all, entered the alliance with eagerness only in a desperate bid to turn it decisively against each other. President Musharraf has repeatedly reiterated his hope that Islamabad's anti-terrorist partnership with Washington and the West will help its cause in Kashmir. New Delhi under former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for its part, while forging a "strategic partnership" with the US, pressed for recognition of its right to stage "a pre-emptive strike" against Pakistan. Anti-terrorism, obviously, does not carry the same connotations in both the capitals.

    It never did. B Raman, a former official of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external intelligence service, illustrates the point in one of his recent articles. Recalling earlier efforts made in the late '80s and early '90s for a common mechanism of counterterrorism, he says that the Indian side then focused on the Khalistani separatist movement in Punjab, believed to have cross-border backing. The Pakistani side's counter was to present New Delhi with a dossier on India's involvement in the separatist struggle in the Sindh province.

    Punjab and Sindh, in other words, have just been replaced by Kashmir and Balochistan in the supposed counterterror confabulations of the two countries. The game can be expected to go on.

    We should not be surprised, however, that Richard Boucher, US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, finds the outcome of the JCTM session "positive." Such charades do help to keep appearances of an anti-terror alliance, while keeping its South Asian members divided enough for cynical manipulation.

    A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.

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20 Feb 2007

Pakistan-Indian Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy
condemns the fire bombing of Samjhauta Express

Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) strongly condemns the vicious terrorist bombing of the Delhi-Lahore Samjhauta Express in which 67 people were killed and more than 50 injured. Indians and Pakistanis are united in their deep grief at this heinous crime that cannot be justified by any cause and we express our deep condolences to the families of the innocent victims of this act of terror.

The train symbolizes the deep desire of the peoples of India and Pakistan to have good neighbourly relations and it has served as a crucial lifeline to maintain people to people contacts across the border. The terror attack on the train and its timings indicates that its purpose was to derail the peace process and to undermine people to people contacts, which has been a significant component of the process of building peace between the two countries. PIPFPD urges that this tragic incident should not be allowed to disrupt the process of normalizing relations as had happened last July. In this context, PIPFD is deeply appreciative of the efforts of the governments of India and Pakistan to continue with the peace process, and welcomes the move to continue without interruption the train service and other cross border links. Let this become an opportunity to affirm the urgency of normalising relations in recognition of the people of India and Pakistan’s commitment to peace and friendship.  

Tapan Kumar Bose
General Secretary

o o o

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Press Release

February 19, 2007

Terror Attack on Samjhauta Express

As citizens of India committed strongly committed to peaceful and fruitful relations between India and Pakistan as also unequivocally to lasting justice and peace between all communities within India, our heart goes out to all the victims of the recent terror attack on board the Samjhauta Express. The attack reveals above all, that terror and terrorism has no religion and victims of all communities, Muslim and Hindu, rich and poor can easily become the victims of such an attack. We offer our deepest condolences to all the affected families in this moment of grief.

We unequivocally condemn this attack that is an attempt not only to de-rail peace talks but also to create schisms and rifts between communities. We thank the political leadership of both countries for using sombre and sensitive language at such a time and urge them -- specifically the intelligence and investigative authorities of India-- to go further and rigorously investigate and get to the bottom of such an attack.

Outfits of terror have no religion and should never be equated as such. The language and acts of terror can be perpetrated by fanatic outfits within any and all social, political and religious sections. Similarly victims of terror as today’s brutal incident shows, can hail and do hail from all sections. Terror and terrorism can be home grown as well as imported; both equally are not just anti-national, they strike at the fabric of our nation because they create schisms between communities.

Vijay Tendulkar, President CJP
Dr Prabhat Patnaik, noted economist
Teesta Setalvad, Secretary, CJP and co-editor Communalism Combat
Arvind Krishnaswamy, Treasurer, CJP,
Javed Akhtar, CJP and Muslims for Secular Democracy (MSD),         
CP Chandraskehar, economist, JNU,
Javed Anand, CJP and MSD,          
Nandan Maluste, CJP,
Anil Dharker, CJP,
Rajendra Prasad, SAHMAT
Ram Rehman, SAHMAT,
MK Raina, SAHMAT,
Hasan Kamal, MSD,                        
Rahul Bose, CJP