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http://www.countercurrents.org/maitra060109.htm

By Ramtanu Maitra 06 January, 2009

Countercurrents.org

Following the Mumbai massacre (Nov. 26- 29, 2008), many “important” personnel moved through the Indian Subcontinent, ostensibly with the intent of unearthing the ghastly plot that killed at least 200 people and made a mockery of India’s security. During the visits of these “important” personnel, and subsequently, only one person mentioned the thousands of tons of opium (8,200 tons in 2007, and reportedly, 421 tons of heroin) produced year after year in Afghanistan, as a major cause of the growing terrorism in the region.

In reality, the huge amount of opium is allowed to be produced not only to finance terrorists and illegal gun manufacturers, but also to infuse cash into the bankrupt world financial system, through the offshore banks. That voice of reality was heard from Moscow when, in an interview with the Russian government daily Rossiskaya Gazeta, Russia’s federal anti-narcotics service director Viktor Ivanov said: “The gathered inputs testify that regional drug baron Dawood Ibrahim had provided his logistics network for preparing and carrying out the Mumbai terror attacks.” Ivanov said the Mumbai attacks were a “burning example” of how the illegal drug-trafficking network was used for carrying out terrorism. “The super profits of the narco-mafia through Afghan heroin trafficking have become a powerful source of financing organized crime and terrorist networks, destabilizing the political systems, including in Central Asia and Caucasus,” Ivanov said at the fifth India-Russia meeting of the joint working group on combatting international terrorism, in mid-December. The Indian delegation was led by Vivek Katju, Special Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs; the Russian delegation was led by Anatoly Safonov, Special Representative of the President.

US soldiers inspecting Afghan opium fields

The Drug-Led Corruption

While Dawood Ibrahim’s involvement has been tossed about in the media, what Ivanov said never gotthrough to the investigators. Or, is it that the drug angle was deliberately ignored, in order to abort the investigation by resorting to blame games, with the purpose of ending up nowhere? continue reading…

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Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008

MumbaiMassacre Calls For a Probe of British Role

by Ramtanu Maitra

The Nov 26-29 siege by terrorists of two top Mumbai
hotels and the Nariman House, where a Jewish group
had its residence and office, not only resulted in the
deaths of more than 200 individuals, but made clear
that India, like the United States, is one of the prime
targets of Dope, Inc. The questions remain: Who exactly
were the terrorists? What were their objectives?
And, were any of their objectives attained through this
dastardly act?

New Delhi must realize that if the Mumbai attack is
to be the last big one, it must carry out a thorough investigation.
The Mumbai terror had a very strong British
link as is detailed below. On Dec. 1, the London
Daily Mail reported that seven British Muslims were
involved. That number dwindled to two within a couple
of days. The now-deposed chief minister of the state of
Maharashtra (where Mumbai is located), Vilasrao
Deshmukh, announced that no British Muslims were
involved. In other words, whitewashing is fully in
progress.

But, it is likely that the evidence of British involvement
in this terrorist act has not yet been wiped out.
That is why, in the early morning of Dec. 14, Britain’s
Prime Minister Gordon Brown came pell-mell to Delhi
to urge the Indian Premier Manmohan Singh to allow
British intelligence, MI6, to interrogate the only surviving
Mumbai terrorist, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Qasab. It
is likely that the purpose of the MI6 interrogation is to
direct Qasab to provide details to confuse the investigators
and keep Britain out of it. The speed with which the
British Embassy in Delhi set up the Brown-Singh meeting
indicates that there is much at stake for Britain.

As far as the attack itself is concerned, in addition to
the three structures mentioned above, the terrorists also
fired random shots at the main Mumbai railway station,
Victoria Terminus, Cama Hospital, and the Metro
cinema. They also killed at least two top Mumbai police
officers, including the head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad
(ATS) of the state of Maharashtra, Hemant Karkare.
The operation surely had a strong input from local
allies of the terrorists. From the outset it was evident
that the former Mumbai mafioso, Dawood Ibrahim,
who now lives under Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)
protection in Karachi, allowed his network to
set up the attack. Ibrahim, a gangster who smuggled
gold from Dubai, U.A.E., a British-controlled area, and
later drugs, lives under threat of extradition to India. continue reading…

Ramtanu Maitra

29 Sep 2008

In recent weeks, particularly following the removal of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former President and Chief of Army Staff, on 18 August, Washington has begun to train its guns on Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which is on the border with Afghanistan.

On 3 September, US troops raided a known habitat of Taliban leaders in South Waziristan, without seeking permission from Islamabad. The USA’s unilateral violation of Pakistani territory created a furore in Islamabad, but it is evident that Washington has come to the dangerous conclusion that the Durand Line – the international border that separates Pakistan from Afghanistan, and was drawn on sand more than century ago by a British clerk – does not hold any longer. In order to secure Afghanistan, and tame the insurgents there, Washington has decided that US troops have no choice but to take the bull by the horns and move into the FATA physically, to eliminate the Taliban leaders.

Beside the furore that the raid has caused, it is evident that the Americans do not really understand what they are taking on. It is not that the US troops are not militarily competent to deal with the enemy, no matter what the strength of that enemy could be; the real issue here is that Washington refuses to acknowledge who its actual enemies are.

On the ground, the FATA is controlled by the tribal groups, who have remained non-integrated as a result of the British policy of divide and rule, and by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), a section of which works hand-in-glove with MI6.

In other words, the enemy is the British controllers, not the local tribesmen. In a recent article, the senior Indian journalist Bhaskar Menon pointed out that relations between the ISI and the British intelligence community have been close for decades, and have extended into a variety of areas.

Britain’s post-World War II role as the patron of the Muslim Brotherhood (inherited from Nazi Germany), developed into a low-profile alliance with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to guide the most effective anti-communist movement in the Islamic world.

“The Brotherhood has provided the leadership of every major ‘Islamic’ terrorist organization, including the Taliban and al- Qaeda,” Menon noted (17 September 2008, www.vijayvaani.com).

Following the US incursion into the FATA, Pakistan’s newly appointed President Asif Ali Zardari travelled to London to seek the British Prime Minister’s support against the US-led border violation. While it is true that the FATA is basically controlled from London, with the help of the MI6 and the ISI, it is nonetheless strange, but at the same time revealing, that Zardari, who “got” his job by ousting Musharraf with the help of the United States, ran to London, and not to Washington, to seek help.  continue reading…

Ramtanu Maitra

12/30/07

The gruesome killing of Benazir Bhutto in the evening hours of Dec. 27 in Pakistan’s garrison town of Rawalpindi is yet another step in the process of weakening, and eventual break-up, of Pakistan.

Despite the crocodile tears shed in Washington and London over Bhutto’s assassination, it was a disaster waiting to happen and therefore, was altogether expected. Those who believed, naively, that Bhutto’s mission was to reinstate democracy in Pakistan and put its usurpers, the Pakistani military, in the background, do not realize why she was inserted into the scene, which was already rife with violence. The truth is that the British imperial circles, with their stooges in Washington, set up Bhutto’s execution, to advance their scheme to break up Pakistan, and create chaos throughout this strategic region.

Bhutto, no doubt, was a mass-based political leader, but she was a woman (an excuse used by the puppet Islamic jihadists to commit violence against a person), and she was goaded into the scene by the United States-perhaps now the most hated nation among Muslims in general-to serve Washington’s purpose, which was to put the Pakistani military on the defensive and force it to share power with a democratic politician. According to the master strategists in Washington, that is the best of both worlds-the Pakistani military stays friendly, while the United States shakes off its guilt of backing a military dictator.

It is not known what transpired in the telephone call between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Benazir Bhutto that led to Bhutto’s decision to return. What promises were made will not be known unless Rice can shake off the national security garb and tell the truth. The one who knew, and could tell others, is gone.

The 9/11 event had enticed a weak-in-the-head Bush Administration to embark on a journey, the path of which was paved by the British colonialists. The vestiges of British colonial aspirations exist not only at Buckingham Palace, but even more so in the power of the intrigue and secrecy-ridden City of London.

Britain and the Muslims

The partition of India, and the formation of Pakistan, a Muslim nation, by the British Raj, was not done because the British liked Muslims. They had slaughtered them by the thousands in 1856, when the Hindus and Muslims joined hands under the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, to drive out the firenghee (white-skinned foreigners). Those who remember that untold part of the history of the Indian independence movement, talk of the piles of bodies lying in the streets of Delhi slaughtered by British soldiers. Most of them, like Benazir Bhutto and her colleagues who died on Dec. 27, were Muslims.

The Muslims were “traitors” aspiring to reinstate the “despicable” and “corrupt” Mughal dynasty, London screamed.

The key to the British Empire’s financial success was its ability to manipulate Islam. The British Empire-builders eliminated the Islamic Caliphate, created nations out of deserts, eliminated some nations, and partitioned others to create Islamic nations. Britain was aware that the oil fields of Arabia would be a source of great power in the post-World War II decades. The western part of British India bordered Muslim Central Asia, another major source of oil and gas, bordering Russia and Muslim Afghanistan. British India also bordered Islamic Iran and the Persian Gulf-the doorway to the oil fields of Arabia. In order to keep its future options open, Balochistan, bordering northeastern Iran, and the tribal Pushtun-dominated areas bordering Afghanistan, remained as British protectorates. continue reading…

“Evolving Entente”: Geostrategic Import of the Coming Bay of Bengal Naval Exercise

Ramtanu Maitra

Executive Intelligence Review, 27 July 2007

Come September, India will host a major naval exercise in the strategic Bay of Bengal, located between mainland India, Bangladesh, and the western shores of Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia, Indian Defense Ministry officials report.

The war manoeuvre will bring together naval forces from four other countries:Australia, Japan, Singapore, and theUnited States. The 20 warships that will participate include two nuclear aircraft carriers from the United States, the USS Nimitz and USS Kitty Hawk, and one non-nuclear carrier from India, the INS Viraat. In addition, the five-day manoeuvres will also see in action shore-based Jaguar deep penetration strike aircraft of the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy’s Sea Harrier jets and Sea King helicopters from the INS Viraat.

Indian defense officials point out that the location of the planned naval exercise has been chosen to maintain distance from the arc of the Pacific Ocean, and skirts the borders of Russia and China where such moves could arouse Beijing’s sensitivities.

From all available accounts, it can be assumed that the September naval exercise will be the biggest held in the region by far. Last April, the United States, Japan, and India conducted their first joint naval exercises off the Japanese coast. That was a one-day goodwill exercise, as one Indian official pointed out, and did not involve many manoeuvres.

The Mysore, an Indian guided-missile destroyer, along with two U.S. destroyers and three escort ships of  Japan’s Self-Defense Force (SDF), were among the vessels that took part in the exercise off Chiba prefecture (state) on Japan’s eastern coast, according to Japan’s Defense Ministry. No doubt the September exercises will be dramatically different.

A Troubled Area

The manoeuvres will take place at a time and place of great instability, much of which has spun off from the Anglo-American reactions to the 9/11 event. Not far from where the September exercise will take place is the Persian Gulf, the cockpit of the current Iraq conflict, and potential attack on Iran.

The situation in Iraq is deteriorating every day, and the fear of involvement of citizens, if not of the governments of Iraq’s neighbors, in this civil war looms large. The presence of about 200,000 foreign troops, of which 170,000 are from the United States, and almost 30,000 private, armed security forces, mostly from western countries, have not succeeded in drawing down the level of violence which exceeds 100 deaths every day in Iraq.

East of Iraq, the United States and the NATO member-nations have been engaged for over five years in trying to physically eliminate the Islamist Taliban militants, who have been entrenched in Afghanistan since 1996. The invaders’ self-proclaimed war on terror was launched soon after the 9/11 event. continue reading…

by Ramtanu Maitra

India’s six percent-plus “impressive GDP growth rate” over the years has drawn much praise from the West, and its “success” has been attributed to the “magical impact” of free-market liberalization and globalization. What it really means, is that India’s low-wage-earning labor has begun to replace a section of the high-wage-earning workforce of the West. In the process, India, a nation of 1 billion-plus people stricken with utter poverty, is becoming an economic “powerhouse”—exactly the way China became one, the Indian leaders claim.

However, a visit from one end of India to the other would make one realize that India’s GDP growth is driven by only a fraction of its population. Much of the nation remains a picture of rural poverty and urban squalor. Rising social tension because of growing income disparity between a sea of poor and a decent number of middle class, is either not noticed, or ignored, by a callous and rudderless leadership that dots the entire nation. Notwithstanding the illusions of the elites, there are definite signals that some among the many hundreds of millions of poor may not watch the process with benign and dissociated neglect, but instead, could turn violent.

The poverty in India has been exacerbated by the fact that the investors, who are no longer “led” by the powerful and visionary, now invest in those parts of the country where the investment has the maximum potential—a relative term in the Indian context—to optimize profit. As a result, regional disparities are growing fast, involving hundreds of millions of people. Nearly all foreign investments in India go to its six most urban states, with 22 other less-developed states virtually ignored. This gap between cities and rural areas is keenly felt in the suburbs of India’s cities, particularly New Delhi, the capital.

Poverty Galore

The endless poverty is there for all to see; it is not hidden like it is in China. There is no escaping the fact that a handful of “skilled Indian workers,” tied to Western workplaces through telecommunication, will not be able to pull the hundreds of millions out of the grinding poverty they endure. What is needed is leadership at every level, and the most dangerous aspect of India at the present time is that it does not have any.

Lack of leadership hits one square in the face, starting at the municipal level, all the way up to the highest offices in the North Block and South Block of India’s capital. These powerful people have little real understanding of what it would take to make India a nation that cares for all of its people; indeed, they have little intent to achieve such a goal, in any case. continue reading…

Ramtanu Maitra and Susan Maitra

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Continuing terrorist actions and violent demonstrations over the last five decades have turned India’s Northeast into a dangerous place. Large-scale introduction of narcotics and arms from neighboring Myanmar (Burma) and China has made this strategically crucial area a potential theater of violent secessionist movements.

Imbued with the British ideology of encouraging ethnic, sub-ethnic, religious, and linguistic identities—as opposed to the identity of a citizen of a sovereign nation-state—both New Delhi and the residents of Northeast India are marching recklessly along the very path prescribed by the British Raj in 1862, when he laid down the law of apartheid to isolate “the tribals.” While it is not clear how long this fateful road is, there is little doubt what awaits them at the end.

British mindset at work

Since India’s independence in 1947, Northeast India has been split up into smaller and smaller states and autonomous regions. The divisions were made to accommodate the wishes of tribes and ethnic groups which want to assert their sub-national identity and obtain an area where the diktat of their little coterie is recognized. New Delhi has yet to comprehend that its policy of accepting and institutionalizing the superficial identities of these ethnic, linguistic, and tribal groups has ensured more irrational demands for even smaller states. It has also virtually eliminated any plan to make these areas economically powerful, and the people scientifically and technologically advanced.

A situation has now arisen in which New Delhi’s promised carrot of economic development evokes little enthusiasm in the Northeast. Money from New Delhi for “development” serves to appease the “greed” of a handful and to maintain the status quo. On the other hand, fresh separatist movements bring the area closer to the precipice.

Assam has been cut up into many states since Britain’s exit. The autonomous regions of Karbi Anglong, Bodo Autonomous Region, and Meghalaya were all part of pre-independence Assam. Citing the influx of Bengali Muslims since the 1947 formation of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971, the locals demand the ouster of these “foreigners” from their soil. Two violent movements in Assam, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the Bodo Security Force (BdSF), are now practically demanding “ethnic cleansing” in their respective areas.

To fund their movements, both the ULFA and the BdSF have been trafficking heroin and other narcotics, and indulging in killing sprees against other ethnic groups and against Delhi’s law-and-order machinery. Both these groups have also developed close links with other major guerrilla-terrorist groups operating in the area, including the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Muivah) and the People’s Liberation Army in Manipur. continue reading…

By Ramtanu Maitra 30 March, 2005

The United States is beefing up its military presence in Afghanistan, at the same time encircling Iran. Washington will set up nine new bases in Afghanistan in the provinces of Helmand, Herat, Nimrouz, Balkh, Khost and Paktia.

Reports also make it clear that the decision to set up new US military bases was made during Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to Kabul last December. Subsequently, Afghan President Hamid Karzai accepted the Pentagon diktat. Not that Karzai had a choice: US intelligence is of the view that he will not be able to hold on to his throne beyond June unless the US Army can speed up training of a large number of Afghan army recruits and protect Kabul. Even today, the inner core of Karzai’s security is run by the US State Department with personnel provided by private US contractors.

Admittedly, Afghanistan is far from stable, even after four years of US presence. Still, the establishment of a rash of bases would seem to be overkill. Indeed, according to observers, the base expansion could be part of a US global military plan calling for small but flexible bases that make it easy to ferry supplies and can be used in due time as a springboard to assert a presence far beyond Afghanistan.

Afghanistan under control?

On February 23, according to the official Bakhter News Agency, 196 American military instructors arrived in Kabul. These instructors are scheduled to be in Afghanistan until the end of 2006. According to General H Head, commander of the US Phoenix Joint Working Force, the objective of the team is to expedite the educational and training programs of Afghan army personnel. The plan to protect Karzai and the new-found “democracy” in Afghanistan rests on the creation of a well-trained 70,000-man Afghan National Army (ANA) by the end of 2006. As of now, 20,000 ANA personnel help out 17,000-plus US troops and some 5,000-plus North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops currently based in Afghanistan.

In addition, on February 28, in a move to bring a large number of militiamen into the ANA quickly, Karzai appointed General Abdur Rashid Dostum, a regional Uzbek-Afghan warlord of disrepute, as his personal military chief of staff. The list of what is wrong with Dostum is too long for this article, but he is important to Karzai and the Pentagon.

Dostum has at least 30,000 militiamen, members of his Jumbush-e-Milli, under him. A quick change of their uniforms would increase the ANA by 30,000 at a minimal cost. Moreover, Dostum’s men do not need military training (what they do need is some understanding of and respect for law and order). Another important factor that comes into play with this union is the Pentagon-Karzai plan to counter the other major north Afghan ethnic grouping, the Tajik-Afghans. continue reading…