MASSIVE URANIUM DEPOSITS FOUND IN ANDHRA PRADESH VILLAGE

By M H Ahssan

It's now a uranium treasure. Following the recent US$22 billion find of gold, diamonds and all manner of trinkets in a south Indian temple, explorers in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh have found one of the world's largest deposits of uranium.

The Tummalepalle mine in the Cuddapah district was estimated in 2007 to have nearly 50,000 tonnes of uranium ore, enough to feed an 8,000 megawatt nuclear power plant until year 2047. Explorers at the Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research, India's official uranium hunters, now estimate the region could provide three times as much - or about 150,000 tonnes of uranium ore.

The uranium mega-find was disclosed on July 18 by Atomic Energy Commission chairman Srikumar Banerjee, when inaugurating the second pair of 700-megawatt indigenously built nuclear reactors in Rawatbhata town in Rajasthan, northwestern India. The find matches the world's existing single-largest source of uranium, Australia's McArthur River mine.

Uranium, discovered by German chemist Martin Klaproth in 1789 and named after the planet Uranus, is the world's only naturally occurring fissionable element. Fission, or splitting of the nucleus into smaller neutrons, releases a chain reaction of tremendous energy and more neutrons. The vast quantity of heat released in this process is used in modern nuclear reactors to generate electricity.

The Tummalepalle trove nearly doubles the existing quantity of uranium ore in India, according to state-owned Uranium Corp of India Ltd (UCIL). The 44-year-old company is developing Tummalepalle and 11 other uranium mines and two ore processing plants across the country.

India, one of 31 countries with nuclear-powered electricity, gets less than 3% of its energy from nuclear plants. The country has 27 of the world's 450 nuclear reactors that in total generate approximately 350 gigawatts (1 gigawatt = 1,000 megawatts), or about 16% of the world's electricity.

India plans to nearly double its current capacity of 4.7 GW to 7.3 GW by March 2012, and triple nuclear-sourced energy by 2020 - still only half of China's planned capacity of 40 GW by 2020, and only a small part of India's electricity needs.

"In the coming five decades, though coal-based thermal power plants will continue to be the mainstay of electricity generation, the share of nuclear power has to be significantly expanded," says a report "Strategy for Growth of Electrical Energy in India", from the Department of Atomic Energy. The study expects nuclear power to become the second-largest source of India's electricity within the next 50 years.

"The Tummalepalle mining discovery was a gradual process," said S K Malhotra, spokesman of the Mumbai-based Department of Atomic Energy, which oversees India's nuclear progam and functions under the country's Atomic Energy Commission. "Exploration has been going since the 1990s, when initial estimates were about 20,000 tonnes of uranium reserves. Now we estimate it to be about 150,000 tonnes."

India, however, faces severe hurdles as it seeks to make the most of its new-found treasure, not least in the controversial India-US nuclear deal of 2008, the accord to circumvent the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) under which India was denied nuclear technology and resources since exploding its first nuclear device in May 1974.

United States nuclear reactor equipment companies such as General Electric-Hitachi and Westinghouse were expected to earn billions from India through contracts for nuclear power plants following the agreement, which then-US president George W Bush strongly pushed as one of the "highlights" of his presidency. It was also the deal that nearly brought down Manmohan Singh's government in 2008 over nationwide opposition.

But riches from India's nuclear expansion riches have not yet flowed the US way; one hindrance is clause 17(b) in India's Civil Nuclear Liability Bill of 2010. The legislation makes suppliers of reactors liable for 80 years for any industrial accident, both to the Indian government and private litigators.

That's okay for state-run nuclear reactor builders in France and Russia backed with taxpayer money, but not for privately owned firms in the US. So French companies like Areva and Russia's Rosatom, rather than their US counterparts, are securing chunks of the $150 billion India is spending on developing its nuclear power industry.

Last December, Areva, the world largest supplier of nuclear reactors, signed a $7 billion agreement with the Nuclear Power Corp of India to build six nuclear reactors at the Jaitapur nuclear plant in Maharashtra. In March last year, agreements were signed for Russia to build six Russian-designed nuclear reactors and assist in building Indian-designed reactors.

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to New Delhi this week - ostensibly for the second Indo-US Strategic Dialogue - was also aimed at clearing the way for US nuclear reactor companies to enter India.

Clinton failed to make much headway, with suspicions of nuclear plant safety having increased in India, as elsewhere, since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster that followed the earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan in March this year. It would be political suicide for Manmohan to ease liability conditions in the nuclear liability bill, as Clinton demanded.

India's indigenously designed reactors have safety features that do not require manual intervention, as in the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.

Uranium Corp of India expects to process the uranium ore at the Tummalepalle mine into yellow cake by 2012, in the process leading up to using purified uranium in a reactor. The mining facilities and ore-processing plants are being built.

The quality of uranium ore found in India, though, is relatively poor compared to other countries, with less than 0.1% of the actual uranium found in one tonne of uranium ore. "With about 0.04% to 0.05% of uranium per tonne of ore, we need to invest much more effort to get the uranium compared to other countries," Department of Atomic Energy spokesman Swapnesh Kumar Malhotra told Asia Times Online.

India spends about $100 to $140 to extract one kilogram of uranium. The material can be extracted from Australia's much richer ore at less than $40 per kg. Australia owns 43% of the world's known high-yielding uranium ore, followed by countries like Kazakhstan (21%), Canada (18%) and South Africa (8%).

Australia refuses to sell uranium to India because of Canberra's support for the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That continued refusal is "not anti-India", Peter Varghese Australian High Commissioner to India, said this week.

"Our policy on uranium sales is not anti-India policy but pro-NPT policy," Varghese told the Press Trust of India.

India's Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research has identified about 4,000 tonnes of uranium deposits at Gogi in Gulbarga district of Karnataka, with a very rich ore.

But like the 2008 India-US nuclear deal, trouble invariably follows India's nuclear riches and projects. New uranium ore processing plants and nuclear plants, such as in Jaitapur, in Maharashtra state, are tangled in conflict with locals protesting at having to live near quantities of one of the most valuable and deadliest known metals, and land acquisition troubles.

Trouble seems to follow treasured metals like a shadow, a reality the first uranium miners appear to have foreseen. The earliest known instance of uranium mining was in early 16th century in Germany, in the silver mining mountain town of Sankt Joachimsthal, near Bohemia and Saxony. The miners discovered a black mineral that they named pech blende - from the German words pech, meaning "bad luck", and blende meaning "mineral".

In 1789, German chemist Martin Klaproth isolated uranium oxide from pitch blend, the "bad luck" mineral. Less than 200 years later, the world was never the same again, with Hiroshima, Nagasaki, weapons of mass destruction and the accident in the Russian Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986 that gradually killed over 4,000 people and affected more than three million through nuclear radiation.

Similar "bad luck" is said to haunt metals and stones in the $22 billion temple treasure found in South India. A week after the discovery on July 8, India's Supreme Court forbade the opening of the Vault "B", the sixth chamber unopened for over 100 years and said to contain treasures greater than those found in the other five chambers. Locals believe the gods and dark forces protect this treasure, the world's single-largest treasure find in one location.

The Supreme Court and the rest of India have chosen to let sleeping dogs and the vast treasures lie undisturbed, leaving it to wiser times to decide. Nine days after the Supreme Court decision to maintain the status quo, lawyer T P Sundarrajan, who exposed the treasure to the world with his petition to the Supreme Court, died on July 17. He was 70 years old, and took ill suddenly two days earlier.

Locals declared that the deadly curse that protects the temple treasure killed Sundarrajan. Others said he died of natural causes, without too much suffering, and of old age.

The miners in Medieval Germany may have been more accurate in not calling the first uranium mineral "pech" or "bad luck", but naming it "wahl", the German word for "choice". India's choice appears to remain committed to digging up and using as much uranium as it can.

India's forgotten fast for years!

By M H Ahssan

Activists from India's northeast are up in arms against the "discriminatory treatment" being meted out to them by the Indian government, the mainstream media and the "mainland" public.

While a 13-day fast by anti-corruption crusader and social activist Anna Hazare got the Indian government to begin acting on his demand for setting up of a lokpal (ombudsman) institution mandated to independently probe corrupt public officials, an 11-year fast by Irom Sharmila, an activist from the northeastern state of Manipur, has evoked no response from Delhi.

"The Indian government responded to Hazare's 13-day-fast by discussing his demands in parliament but not once in the 11 years since Sharmila began her fast has the Indian parliament her demand for repeal of the AFSPA [Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958], Irom Singhajit, Sharmila's elder brother who heads the Just Peace Foundation, told Newsindia.

"This is evidence of India's racial discrimination against the people of the northeast," he said.

Thirty-nine-year old Sharmila has been on a hunger strike since November 4, 2000, to press for the repeal of the AFSPA. Two days earlier, she had witnessed the gunning down of 10 civilians waiting at a bus stop near Imphal in Manipur by personnel of the Assam Rifles, a paramilitary counter-insurgency force in the northeast.

Convinced, like millions of others in the northeast that it is the AFSPA that enables and empowers the security forces to kill innocent civilians, she began a fast to draw attention to its draconian content and press for its repeal.

Within days of her embarking on the fast, Sharmila was arrested by police on charges of attempting suicide, an act that is illegal under section 309 of the Indian Penal Code. In the 120 months since she began her protest, Sharmila has not eaten. A nasal drip administered to her by the Indian armed forces in a prison hospital keeps her alive.

In sharp contrast to the 24/7 coverage that India's television channels provided of Hazare's fast in Delhi's Ramlila Grounds, Irom's protest has been rarely covered in India's mainstream media over the past decade.

While tens of thousands of people from across the country participated and expressed solidarity with Hazare's anti-corruption campaign, few Indians living outside the country's conflict zones know that Sharmila has been on a hunger strike since November 2000. Few outside the insurgency-wracked northeast and Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), where AFSPA is in force, are aware of this legislation or of the cause Sharmila so passionately champions.

First imposed in Nagaland in 1958 - the legislation comes into force once an area is declared "disturbed" by the federal or state government - AFSPA was supposed to be in operation for a year only. But 53 years on, the geographic area over which AFSPA's writ runs has grown exponentially. It was first imposed in parts of Manipur in 1961 and extended to the entire state in 1980. It is in effect in "disturbed areas" across all seven northeastern states. It has been in force in Kashmir since July 1990.

AFSPA confers wide powers to the armed forces to shoot at sight on mere suspicion or arrest people on flimsy grounds, conduct searches without warrants and demolish property where suspects are thought to be hiding. It provides the armed forces with immunity from prosecution. Section 6 says "no prosecution, suit or other legal proceeding shall be instituted ... against any person in respect of anything done or purported to be done in exercise of the powers conferred by this act."

Human rights activists have pointed out that AFSPA is responsible for the killing and ‘disappearance' of thousands of innocent civilians in the northeast and J&K. If the aim of AFSPA was to curb insurgency, it has clearly failed. Not only have the number of insurgent groups multiplied manifold since the legislation was first introduced but also the geographic spread of armed conflict has grown. While the armed forces claim they need special powers like those in AFSPA to combat insurgency, it would not be an exaggeration to say that AFSPA has fueled insurgency and unrest in the northeast.

The campaign calling for AFSPA's repeal goes back several decades. It is spearheaded in Manipur by the Apunba Lup, an umbrella grouping of around 32 organizations, the Meira Paibi - a grassroots movement of Manipuri village women - and rights activists. When a person goes missing, the Meira Paibi, flaming torches in their hands, gather outside the camp of the security forces to protest the AFSPA. They have rallied behind Sharmila's fast as have thousands of others in the region.

But outside the Northeast, the campaign for AFSPA's repeal has little support. Few outside the northeast know of AFSPA, let alone its negative fallout or even of Sharmila's heroic protest. This isn't surprising given the Indian media's disinterest in issues in the distant troubled region.

Moreover, since AFSPA does not apply to "mainland" India, few here empathize with the northeast's suffering.

Not that the northeast hasn't tried to draw India's attention to the AFSPA. It has adopted dramatic strategies to shock India into stirring out of its slumber.

In July 2004, for instance, when 32-year-old Thangjam Manorama Devi was raped and then shot dead by personnel of the Assam Rifles, 12 imas (mothers) of the Meira Paibi movement stripped in front of the Kangla Fort, then headquarters of the Assam Rifles, to demand the repeal of the AFSPA.

"Indian army come and rape us all," shouted the 12 naked women outside the Kangla Fort gate. Their dramatic protest was aimed at capturing the attention of the rest of India, indeed the world, regarding the brazen abuse of AFSPA by Indian security forces in the northeast.

In the face of mounting protests in Manipur, the Indian government appointed the Justice B P Jeevan Reddy Committee in 2004 to review the AFSPA. The committee recommended the AFSPA's repeal. Yet the AFSPA remains in force in Manipur and other "disturbed areas".

In the wake of Hazare's protest and the mass support Indians extended it, Manipuris have expressed distress over India's lack of response to their suffering and demands. "The people of the northeast have always been neglected and ignored by the rest of India," says Singhajit.

Indeed, the northeast rarely figures in India's history books, its media discourse or even national imagination.

The sharp contrast between the response of the Indian public and media to Hazare's fast and the government's ceding of several of his demands has underscored to the people of the northeast their existence at the periphery of India's consciousness and the low importance they are accorded by India's political class.

The contrast in India's treatment of Hazare and Sharmila was poignantly captured by an editorial in The Sangai Express, an English daily from Manipur, a week into Hazare's fast. Hazare "has managed to grab the attention of the country, send the political establishment into a huddle whenever he announces his intention to stop eating and he has been on a fast for the last seven days or so," it said. In contrast, Sharmila "has been on a fast since November 2000 without creating so much of a flutter in the corridors of power."

Unlike Anna's fast, which took place under the full glare of the media spotlight, with celebrities and high-profile activists flocking to the venue of his fast, Sharmila is not allowed to be with her family. "Even her family members are kept away from her," Singhajit said, pointing out that they need to get government permission to meet her at the prison hospital.

Indians are familiar with fasts and hunger strikes. Mahatma Gandhi undertook 17 fasts, of which three were major fasts-unto-death. Independent India has seen scores of hunger strikes by activists and politicians to press for demands. While some fasts are genuine, several are a farce, as was the post-breakfast, pre-lunch fast in 2009 by Tamil Nadu's former chief minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi to demand a ceasefire in Sri Lanka.

Fasting as conceived by Gandhi was an alternative to violence. Gandhi resorted to fasts to unite people against violence rather than to force concessions out of the British colonial rulers. In the words of his grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi, author of Mohandas, Gandhi's fasts "were to stir consciences, not create convulsions".

This is not the case with most present-day hunger strikers in India. There is an unmistakable coercive element to their fasts, with the threat of violence lurking behind their protests should their demands not be conceded. Sadly, it is to these violent fasts that the Indian government has responded.

Hazare's campaign - contrary to the non-violent Gandhian image it was given in the media - had a coercive element to it. His demands were framed in terms that reeked of intolerance, threat and blackmail.

Hazare's campaign drew on several resources. Indian corporate houses are reported to have bankrolled the latter's country-wide campaign. The country's increasingly powerful middle-class and the influential mainstream media stood by Hazare. Besides, his protest reportedly enjoyed the backing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological fount of the Hindu right-wing Sangh Parivar.

It was the size of the crowds with Hazare, the powerful interests backing him and the possibility of his death triggering mass violence and unrest that pushed the government to pay attention to his protest and concede his demands.

India remains unshaken and unmoved by Sharmila's decade-long hunger strike because the cause she champions is too distant to strike a chord with India's upwardly mobile middle class. Her attempt to stir India's conscience goes unheard because the media denies her a voice.

Thus Delhi finds it expedient to violently keep her alive by force-feeding her through painful nasal drip.

BOOK REVIEW - Lashkar-e-Toiba - safe at home

Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Toiba by Stephen Tankel. (C Hurst and Co, London, 2011). ISBN-10: 184904046X. Price US$100, 364 pages.

There are a dozen or more militant groups operating today along the AfPak frontier. Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) remained relatively unknown outside of the region and a few intelligence circles until it launched a murderous attack in Mumbai in December 2008. That brought closer attention to LeT and to the relationship between similar groups and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Since then, attention to this relationship has only intensified as Osama bin Laden was found ensconced near a Pakistani military facility in Abbottabad, ISI blocked negotiations between the Taliban and Kabul, and a noted Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shazhad - was murdered after reporting on al-Qaeda ties with the Pakistani army. Tankel's book, then, is quite timely. It is also one of the finest studies of a jihadist organization we have.

LeT's social origins lie in Pakistan's fusion of nationalism and Islam in the service of maintaining national unity and opposing India. Indeed, Pakistani nationalism and hostility toward India have been intertwined since the 1947 partition of British India. Schools, mosques, and government agencies alike instill abiding hostility toward India, especially in regard to the occupation of Kashmir. They also seek to weaken separatist sentiment in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and tribal agencies (FATA), where many Pashtuns saw themselves as unjustly taken from their natural homeland of Afghanistan in 1947.

Institutionally, LeT emerged out of Pakistanis who fought the Soviet Union in eastern Afghanistan and who after the war coalesced into a group of military, political, and social service organizations geared toward promoting their austere form of Islam (Ahl-e-Hadith) and fighting the Indian presence in Kashmir. Significantly, LeT retained its training camps in eastern Afghanistan after the war.

Demographically, LeT's rank and file are drawn from the lower middle classes and are above average in education. (In this respect they are similar to the mujahideen and al-Qaeda volunteers we know of.) They come chiefly from the Punjab and NWFP, though LeT also recruits from the diaspora of Pakistanis and Indian Muslims in the Gulf and Great Britain. Recruits are paid the equivalent of 100-200 euros a month (US$130-$280) and given separation pay of 3,000-5,000 euros for each year of service - enviable wages in many parts of the world and a princely sum for most Pakistanis. LeT draws its money from indigenous private benefactors, private Wahhabi donors, and of course from the large and munificent coffers of the ISI.

Like Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon and Palestine respectively, LeT and its related entities operate an array of social services, including education, mosque construction, and medical treatment. Its less humanitarian elements conduct attacks and bombings in Indian-administered Kashmir and inside India itself, but it has also sent fighters into Bosnia, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, where it works with the Haqqani network to attack US and Indian targets. International in aspirations, it has established ties with like-minded groups throughout the sub-continent and Central Asia. All in all, LeT proved to be one of ISI's more dependable proxies. To a significant extent, it still is.

Pakistan's connections to LeT and the dozen or more kindred groups along the AfPak frontier - including the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda - became a source of embarrassment if not dismay once al-Qaeda struck the US in September 2001. If the US sided with India to fight Pakistan's client groups and their army supporters, Pakistan's security would be jeopardized as never before.

Pakistan - Tankel often avoids pointing specifically to the army or ISI - opted for a duplicitous policy of short-lived breaks with its client groups or merely limiting the number and severity of their attacks, while purporting to be the US's partner against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Reining in LeT and its like, though not eliminating them, allowed Pakistan to keep forces-in-being for its long-term efforts in Kashmir. This had adverse, though perhaps not unforeseeable, consequences. Many client groups saw Pakistan's cooperation with the US as a betrayal, and diverted their violent practices against their former benefactors. And so the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) came into existence.

By and large, however, LeT remained loyal to its benefactors, but it risked desertions should it become too inactive. Some fighters shifted to fighting the US in Afghanistan and Iraq as well and may also have played supporting roles in the 2005 London train bombings. Others became persuaded of the TTP view that the Pakistani government was now an ally of the US. LeT may have been involved in attempts to assassinate General Pervez Musharraf.

LeT's activities in India declined sharply a year or so after the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on the US and the attack on the Indian parliament a few months later, in which LeT took part. Several years later, however, LeT began to plan and train for what would become the 2008 Mumbai attack, which killed 166 people and wreaked havoc on a landmark hotel, Western tourist spots, and a Jewish community center, signaling a greater movement away from a Kashmir-centric agenda and toward a global-jihadist one.

Making use of Indian intelligence, interrogations of two LeT captives, and other open sources, Tankel details the Mumbai operation and ISI's involvement with planning and training for it. Why did ISI break from its post-9/11 position of limiting the number and scale of operations against India? Tankel interprets ISI's involvement in the Mumbai attack as stemming from ISI's concerns that a large-scale operation was needed to keep LeT intact and indisposed to joining TTP attacks on the Pakistani army and state.

Tankel concludes that, despite Mumbai and similar terrorist acts, LeT is reasonably secure inside Pakistan and does not at present risk facing a showdown with security forces. LeT remains a useful lever at the disposal of the army in the conflict with India; its social service network is popular with the public; and thus far it has eschewed generally siding with the TTP against the army and state.

LeT has been primarily engaged against India, but after the attacks in London and Mumbai, LeT's aspirations of becoming a global-jihadi force have become both more apparent and more ominous.

Strains steadily fray US, Saudi ties

By M H Ahssan

Accumulating strains between the United States and Saudi Arabia are steadily weakening one of the world's longest-lasting and most effective bilateral alliances, according to observers here.

The latest point of contention - Washington's opposition to this month's anticipated bid by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for statehood - is only one of a number of issues, ranging from how to react to the Arab Spring to the price of oil, that threaten the relationship.

"We're seeing an increasingly transactional relationship," according to former ambassador Chas Freeman, who served as Washington's top diplomat in Riyadh during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s.

Washington has been losing credibility with the Saudis since even before the 9/11 attacks when Israel ignored president George W Bush's pleas to ease its repression during the second Palestinian intifada, Freeman noted. He spoke at a forum on US-Saudi relations here on Monday co-sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center (GRC).

Professor Gregory Gause, a prominent Saudi expert at the University of Vermont, agreed. "The relationship is now based more on common interests than on a shared worldview," he said. "What keeps it together is the lack of an alternative."

The increasingly fraught relationship was brought home once again on Monday when Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former director of Saudi Arabia's intelligence forces who also served as ambassador in Washington from 2005 to 2007, published an op-ed in the New York Times entitled "Veto a State, Lose an Ally".

If Washington does not support the Palestinian bid for UN membership, "Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to cooperate with America in the same way it historically," he wrote.

A veto, he warned, would not only "have profound negative consequences" for US-Saudi relations but would also "undermine [US] relations with the Muslim world, empower Iran and threaten regional security".

United States-Saudi relations date back to the 1930s, but became much stronger during World War II, when Franklin Roosevelt declared Saudi Arabia's defence a "vital" US interest, and the early days of the Cold War. Ties have always rested primarily on a basic bargain of security for oil.

With the exception of Riyadh's participation in the Arab oil embargo during the October 1973 war, the two countries have cooperated closely on a range of issues, particularly during the 1980s when Saudi Arabia helped finance the so-called "Reagan Doctrine" whose aim was to overthrow purportedly pro-Soviet governments in Central America, southern Africa and Afghanistan.
In the early 1990s, Saudi Arabia served as the launching pad for the US-led campaign to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait, and Washington maintained a not insignificant military presence in the kingdom until shortly after 9/11.

But the relationship suffered a number of blows in the first years of the Bush administration.

In addition to then-crown prince Abdullah's disappointment with Washington's inability to rein in Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories, the fact that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals created a storm of negative publicity, especially about the degree of private Saudi backing for al-Qaeda and other violent Islamist movements.

Adding to bilateral tensions was the Bush administration's failure to respond positively to Abdullah's plan for peace with Israel that was adopted by the Arab League at its Beirut summit in 2002, and the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. The invasion was strongly opposed by Riyadh which feared - correctly, as it turned out - that Saddam Hussein's removal would significantly enhance Iran's regional power and influence.

Of the three post-9/11 issues, only one - cooperation on counter-terrorism and related efforts to defeat al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist movements - has seen significant improvement in bilateral relations, according to both sides.

"They're not just killing terrorists. but they're also attacking the ideology of terrorism," according to Freeman. "It is one area of the relationship that has been flourishing."

The other issues remain serious points of contention, however. While President Barack Obama has repeatedly praised the Arab peace initiative, as the Abdullah plan is now known, he has been unable to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept it as a basis of negotiations with the Palestinians.

"We were full of enthusiasm for Obama's election and his initial policy statements," said Abdulaziz Sager, GRC's chairman and founder. "Somehow today, unfortunately, by saying the US will veto Palestine [at the UN], that has created a lot of disappointment."

At the same time, Obama's plans to withdraw all but a few thousand US troops from Iraq by the end of this year is seen by the Saudis as likely to consolidate Iran's influence over its western neighbour, whose Shi'ite-led government has shown little interest in reconciling with its Sunni minority, and beyond.

"There is no more buffer state in Iraq," noted Mustafa Alani, director of the GRC's Security and Terrorism Studies program, who said Tehran posed both a "strategic threat and an internal threat" to the Saudis.

To these strains, new ones have been added as a result of this year's Arab Spring.

Abdullah is reported to have been personally appalled by Obama's pressing Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to resign, and Washington and Riyadh clashed publicly over the crackdown by Bahrain's Sunni monarchy against its majority Shi'ite population, especially after as many as 2,000 Saudi and Emirati troops were sent to shore up King Hamad.

That operation was seen as the most dramatic example of what analysts have described as Riyadh's "counter-revolutionary agenda" in the Gulf, if not the wider region.

"The United States has had a very ambiguous position [on the Arab Spring], and I think the relationship with Saudi Arabia has not helped," said Marina Ottaway, a democratization specialist at Carnegie.

"The differences [between the two countries] on the direction political evolution in the Arab world should take .are sharpening," according to Freeman, who also expressed concern about the impact of growing Islamophobia in the US and the West on relations with Riyadh.

Moreover, the budgetary drain caused by Saudi Arabia's multi-billion-dollar aid packages to shore up fellow-monarchies and other conservative regimes in the region, as well as the US$130 billion in new domestic subsidies it announced earlier this year to pre-empt internal demands for change, is likely to translate into higher global oil prices, according to Gause.

"Oil is one thing that could lead to more tensions in the future," he said.

Most observers note that Riyadh's continued reliance on US arms sales - it agreed in principle late last year to buy at least US$60 billion in advanced military aircraft over a 20-year period - as well as its continuing purchase of dollars shows that some of the relationship's fundamentals remain very much in tact.

But Washington should not be over-confident, according to Freeman, who noted that Riyadh is increasingly looking eastwards, particularly in its commercial relations.

United States-manufactured products and other exports now claim about half of the Saudi market share, less than they did a decade ago, and East Asia now accounts for half of all Saudi trade.

China overtook the US as Riyadh's top oil customer at about the time of the Iraq invasion which also coincided with the withdrawal of all US soldiers from the kingdom.

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Special Report: The Great Drain Robbery

India has lost nearly a half-trillion dollars in illegal financial flows out of the country, says a new study by Global Financial Integrity. P Sainath writes.

India is losing nearly Rs.240 crores every 24 hours, on average, in illegal financial flows out of the country. The nation lost $213 billion (roughly Rs.9.7 lakh crores) in illegal capital flight between 1948 and 2008. However, over $125 billion (Rs.5.7 lakh crores) of that was lost in just this decade between 2000-2008, according to a study by Global Financial Integrity (GFI). These "illicit financial flows," says GFI, "were generally the product of corruption, bribery and kickbacks, criminal activities and efforts to shelter wealth from a country's tax authorities."

GFI is a programme of the Center for International Policy, Washington D.C. It is a non-profit research and advocacy body that "promotes national and multilateral policies, safeguards, and agreements aimed at curtailing the cross-border flow of illegal money."

In just five years from 2004-08 alone, the country lost roughly Rs.4.3 lakh crores to such outflows. That is - nearly two and a half times the value of the 2G telecom scam now exercising Parliament and the media. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) pegs the 2G scam at almost Rs.1.8 lakh crores.

Accounting for the rate of return on those illegal outflows, the present value of that $213 billion reaches $462 billion (Rs.21 lakh crores) says GFI. Astonishingly, over $96 billion of that amount left the country between 2004 and 2008. As the report's author, Dev Kar, says, "India is losing capital at an average rate of $19.3 billion per annum ... India can ill afford to ignore such a loss of capital."

As the report puts it: "Had India managed to avoid this staggering loss of capital, the country could have paid off its outstanding external debt of $230.6 billion (as of end-2008) and have another half left over for poverty alleviation and economic development."

At the 2004-08 pace (if it has not gone up), the economy is haemorrhaging at a rate of nearly Rs.240 crores every day on average. And even the total $462 billion, says GFI Director Raymond W. Baker in a letter prefacing the report, is "a conservative estimate. It does not include smuggling, certain forms of trade mispricing and gaps in available statistics." Factor these in, and "it is entirely reasonable to estimate that more than a half-trillion dollars have drained from India since independence."

The study

The GFI study is titled "The Drivers and Dynamics of Illicit Financial Flows from India: 1948-2008." Authored by Dr. Kar, formerly a senior economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and now Lead Economist at the GFI, it defines 'illicit flows' as "comprised of funds that are illegally earned, transferred, or utilised - if laws were broken in the origin, movement, or use of the funds then they are illicit." Such fund transfers are not recorded in the country of origin for they typically violate that nation's laws and banking regulations.

So massive are these illegal outflows, says the study, that the "total capital flight represents approximately 16.6 per cent of India's GDP as of year-end 2008." Its estimate falls far short of the $1.4 trillion figure cited in the India media prior to the 2009 general elections. But, says the report, "the figure still represents a staggering loss of capital." Illegal flight of capital, it says, "worsens income distribution, reduces the effectiveness of external aid, and hampers economic development."

That does seem an obvious outcome in a country where according to the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), 836 million human beings live spending Rs.20 a day or less.

The illegal outflows also account for most of India's parallel economy. "The total value of (such) illicit assets held abroad represents about 72 per cent of the size of India's underground economy which has been estimated at 50 per cent of India's GDP (or about $640 billion at end-2008) by several researchers. This implies that only about 28 per cent of illicit assets of India's underground economy are held domestically." It also strengthens arguments that "the desire to amass wealth without attracting government attention is one of the primary motivations behind the cross-border transfer of illicit capital."

The GFI study makes two vital points amongst others that will surely stoke ongoing debates in the country. One: the drain bloated massively in the era of economic liberalisation and reforms starting with 1991. Two: "High net-worth individuals and private companies were found to be the primary drivers of illicit flows out of India's private sector." Conversely, "India's underground economy is also a significant driver of illicit financial flows."

Tax havens

As Mr. Baker says: "What is clear is that, during the post-reform period of 1991-2008, deregulation and trade liberalisation have accelerated the outflow of illicit money from the Indian economy. The opportunities for trade mispricing have grown, and expansion of the global shadow financial system accommodates hot money, particularly in island tax havens.

"Disguised corporations situated in secrecy jurisdictions enable billions of dollars shifting out of India to "round trip," coming back into short and long-term investments, often with the intention of generating unrecorded transfers again in a self-reinforcing cycle." Interestingly, the points about high net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and corporates and 'mispricing' take the debate way beyond the clichéd 'corrupt politician' explanation.

Lauds reform

The report, while stressing these factors, says that given the limitations of available data, it found "scant evidence that imprudent macroeconomic policies drove illicit flows from the country." It lauds the post 1991-reform era. And praises Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for launching "India's free market reforms that saved the country," in its view, "from financial ruin and placed it on a path to sustained economic growth." On the role of macroeconomic policies in the outflows, it says there is yet work to be done, data to be generated.

But its own evidence on how the outflows escalated post-1991 is pretty damning. And India's liberalisation itself - in which period the GFI study records the greatest drain - was about a sea change in macroeconomic policies. The study notes a rise in inequality in the reform period. And acknowledges, in its summary, that "A more skewed distribution of income implies that there are many more HNWIs in India now than ever before." It implies that governance issues, deregulation without new oversight and a complex web of other factors were more to blame.

GFI calls for measures that would require country-by-country reporting of sales, profits and taxes paid by multinational corporations. It recommends India should curb 'trade mispricing.' Because "transfers of illicit capital through trade mispricing account for 77.6 per cent of total outflows from India over the period 1948-2008." It advises steps that would require automatic cross-border exchange of tax information on personal and business accounts. And actions that would harmonise vital matters under anti-money laundering laws across nations.

During Terror Investigations, shall we imprison everyone?

Security hawks are expanding the list of terror suspects to include not just the illiterate poor, but also the well-to-do educated Muslims. Who does that leave out, asks Firdaus Ahmed.

A recent op-ed in the Times of India, "No More Chasing Shadows" (9 September), has the head of 'a group on C4ISRT (Command, Control, Communications and Computers Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaisance and Targeting) in South Asia' casting the net of prospective terrorists wider, but not wide enough to possibly net the likely suspects.

He considers the public stereotype of the terrorist as a 'desperately poor, illiterate, uneducated, rural-based or ghetto-based, religious fanatic, a single young man in his late teens or early twenties' as inadequate. 'Madrassa students from poor families' are no longer the usual suspects. Instead, he alights on those who 'have no criminal records; are usually highly educated professionals such as engineers, doctors and architects; are usually married men with children; and have never displayed any religious extremism.'

As I read all this I got a feeling he's describing me. He goes on to say, chillingly for me as I read on, that they come from 'upper middle class families and exhibit only moderate religious behaviour.' According to him, I am now half way down to becoming a 'terror activist'. Casting his net to include both the 'poor, illiterate' and the 'rich, educated', he leaves out the non-existent 'poor, educated' and 'rich, uneducated'. Perhaps he'll include them in the dragnet over the next two blasts. Muslim women, Ishrat Jahan notwithstanding, have got away unscathed.

He goes on to enlighten us, 'Most of them joined the SIMI or HuJI only a few weeks earlier, and their families, colleagues, and close friends had detected no indications of their having done so.' To him, 'Even their families and friends would have no inkling of their having been recruited...'. This means that you don't really know if I have joined up or not as yet. You will only know when I commit my first terror act which to him will be the 'first illegal or immoral act which they have ever committed.' Apparently, elsewhere it has taken but 'three weeks' for the likes of me to 'carry out a terror attack to avenge the perceived discrimination.'

Luckily, my employers have not 'discriminated' against me professionally nor have I been 'denied entry in social circles commensurate' with my education. Thankfully, I have no reason to be a terrorist, on this score at least. That is a relief. But, not for long though.

Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad, the author, has more. Commending the Indian state for the 'brilliant manner in which the Indian government used the Jat Sikhs in the police and armed forces to work on the Jat Sikhs in the Khalistani secessionist organisations', he recommends setting up educated Muslims against Muslim terrorists. What the Sachar and Ranganath Mishra Committees could not do and what Harsh Mander's Center for Equity Studies report has not managed to dent, this honcho from the intelligence community urges of the state: 'It is high time that intelligence agencies and police recruited large numbers of Muslims of various sects in the middle to senior positions, and built bridges ...'

That should get the educated unemployed a job, catching terrorists. And I, having passed the average age of such would be terrorists, could perhaps land one such. The logic apparent is 'set a thief, to catch a thief', or more intellectually, the phrase Delhi has historically been conversant with, 'divide et impera'.

As an educated middle class Muslim, I have often had to hear, 'Stand up and speak out!' I was required to speak out against the usurpation of my religion by fanatics and condemn terrorism. I now choose to follow the advice. I begin by emulating SR 'Epiglottis' Khan, "I am not a terrorist!" I venture further than my brief, "Nor are my co-religionists!" Let me explain why.

By his cryptic designation, Prasad appears to be a denizen of the shadowy, intelligence world. His world view is perhaps widely held in the intelligence community. On that score it needs dissection.

He quotes profusely from the 'Band of Boys' theory of Marc Sageman, 'a forensic psychiatrist who has worked for the CIA in Pakistan and Afghanistan.' He also approvingly points to the UK police's surveillance of congregations in mosques. Clearly, great gains have been made by Mr. Chidambaram's trips overseas in terms of emulating homeland security measures elsewhere, as indeed they must. But how far are the conditions there replicated in India and corresponding counter measures import worthy?

The intelligence agencies can be likened to someone who has lost his car keys in the dark and proceeds to look for them under the light of the lamp post only. While no effort needs to be spared in getting terrorists to book, this is applicable for terrorists of any hue. The problem is in assuming the blasts that have taken place as having the minority's signature. This is true only to an extent. A proportion of blasts can now be irrefutably attributed to majoritarian extremists of the Abhinav Bharat variety. It may be worth investigation if the Abhinav Bharat is merely the tip of the iceberg, with its underwater mass perhaps stretching into the state and its intelligence agencies.

There are several blasts yet unexplained. These include the horrendous ones in metropolitan cities of 2008. The holes in the Batla House encounter story do not lend confidence to close these cases currently attributed to Aqil and his Azamgarh cohort, now largely eliminated. The pre CWG shooting of Taiwanese tourists, the High Court blast of earlier this year and now the latest, the nineteenth, blast in Delhi, cannot necessarily be ascribed as minority perpetrated violence. In other words, the net needs to be cast wider. Why?

The 2008 blasts were in the run up to national elections. The narrative sought could have been that the UPA was 'soft' on terror because of vote bank concerns. Likewise, this time round, the Supreme Court mandated investigations in the Gujarat carnage case are set to culminate soon. There is disarray in the right wing mainstream. The Anna agitation provided a momentary respite. It is perhaps reckoned that it is time to get back to the main story.

In other words, a crime has been committed, a motive exists. Evidence must then be sought. There is a case for setting the NIA to look for the keys where they are as likely to be found as anywhere else. The government, in not owning up to a strategy, makes Digvijay Singh appear a maverick.

Prasad is right in demanding 'original innovative thinking on part of India's intelligence agencies', but wrong in pointing them towards an 'appreciation of the psychology of urban Indian Muslim professionals.' That he does so stinks of an attempt to put the intelligence agencies off the smell. The purpose, now easier to discern, is to intimidate into silence engaged Muslim voices pointing out that the emperor is without clothes.

With this piece of propaganda occupying prime place in a leading national daily, it can be irrefutably said that the fringe has gone mainstream. At such junctures, Niemoeller's phrase comes readily to mind, 'Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.' They've now passed the secular Muslims, so secular Hindus must be next!

MY HYDERABAD DAIRY.....

The New York Times has listed Hyderabad as one of its destinations for 2011 and since then, the city has been seeing a flurry of foreign travel-writers.

 

 

Haleemi Sashimi? What does Hyderabadi haleem—that slow-cooked savoury delicacy—have in common with champagne? Or with Bordeaux wines, Swiss watches, Colombian coffee, Czech crystal, Kancheepuram silk or Mysore sandal soap? Well, it has now acquired a ‘Geographical Indication’ (GI) status—like all those other worthy items. What that means, essentially, is that its uniqueness and reputation has been recognised, and it’s legally protected against others trying to pass off imitations in its guise. The first Indian product to get GI status was Darjeeling tea, in 2004, and since then it has fought cases, intriguingly, against everything from ‘Divine Darjeeling’ coffee in Japan to ‘Darjeeling Noveau’ lingerie in the US. Which makes one wonder what kind of sneaky competitors Hyderabadi haleem can expect to encounter.

Literary Perils And Providence
The New York Times has listed Hyderabad as one of its destinations for 2011 and since then, the city has been seeing a flurry of foreign travel-writers. The most interesting, perhaps, has been Tahir Shah, author of the classic, The Caliph’s House. I took him and his India-born wife, Rachna on a walking tour of the Old City’s deodis. Spotting Tahir’s khaki photographer’s jacket, the buzz went around that we were shooting a film. No, people in the Old City are no longer media-unsavvy.

This was not Tahir’s first trip to Hyderabad; he has been here before. In the ’90s, while researching Sorcerer’s Apprentice, his book about the shamans of India when, among other things, he had swallowed Hyderabad’s famous asthma-curing fish dispensed by the Goud clan (it didn’t help much, by the way). Later, over dinner, I asked: ‘So what’s it really like being a famous author?’ Oh, it’s a tough way to make a living, Tahir replied, wincing. Breaking in was the hardest part: he had a hell of a problem selling his first book, Behind the Devil’s Teeth. No publisher would talk to him directly, and no literary agent would deign to handle him. He finally took to pretending to be an agent himself—Roger something-or-other—phoning publishers, and telling them in a fake voice about this enormously talented new author he had discovered, named Tahir Shah.

Nor does it get much easier as you go along; only the nature of the hazards changes. He told us the harrowing tale of how, on assignment in Pakistan, he was arrested for being a spy, manacled and blindfolded in a medieval dungeon, within screaming distance of a torture chamber. To the outside world, he had simply disappeared. It was only a cryptic phone call from someone at the prison to his family in London, weeks later, that enabled them to frantically press the buttons that would eventually lead to his release. “But I am lucky,” he said, “I have always loved to travel. In the beginning, I would save up money working on some dead-end job, and then blow it on a trip to Africa or wherever. And when the money had gone, I’d go back and start all over again. But then I realised I could make an income off my travels, by writing about them.” We talked about his delightful The Caliph’s House and about Peter Mayle’s books set in Provence. “The trick for any author,” said Tahir, “is to carve out a niche for himself, and Peter invented the ‘Buy-a-house-in-an-exotic-place’ niche.” Which makes me wonder: is there any opportunity in a ‘Buy-a-house-in-Hyderabad’ niche? Probably not.

The Tsar’s Bottom Echelons
What makes the Falaknuma Palace unique is that it manages to feel so unlike a hotel: it retains a sense of authenticity that—out of all of India’s palace hotels—is rivalled only by the Umaid Bhavan, where Jodhpur’s erstwhile royals still live. The main reason, of course, is the role Princess Esra, herself a trained architect, played in its restoration, insisting on a strict adherence to the palace’s original details. Otherwise, it could so easily have become just another soulless “7-star hotel”.

Wandering around Falaknuma, however, one spots occasional touches of what can only be construed as tongue-in-cheek wit: outside the loo downstairs, for example, is a large display-cabinet filled with what appear to be enormous decorative porcelain bowls, with handles attached. Like monster tea-cups. They are, in fact, 19th century chamber pots, which used to be placed under the beds of the palace’s royal guests at night. And looking at that display cabinet one cannot help wondering about the impressive array of royal posteriors—from Britain to Imperial Russia—that these chamber pots must have glimpsed, up close.

Jekyll And Hyde Park
Given the slugfest between the Telangana and Andhra factions over Hyderabad’s status, it’s interesting to note that when Potti Sriramulu demanded a separate Andhra state in 1952, he insisted on having Madras as its capital. Otherwise, the state would be “a dead body without a head”. It’s difficult to imagine today: Chennai as Andhra’s capital?! Of course, the new state had to content itself with Kurnool, until 1956, when the capital shifted to Hyderabad. So what now?