Obama’s confession

At-last, Obama has officially acknowledged the US drone-attack campaign inside Pakistan. The drones have been wreaking havoc in Pakistan for many years on the pretext of hunting terrorists. Different reports by national and international organisations have also suggested that most of the sufferers of US drone-attacks were civilians including innocent children. A couple of days ago, Amnesty International has asked Obama to disclose the legal basis of drone attacks in Pakistan.

President Obama's acknowledgement of drone attacks inside Pakistan has not only unveiled the official truth but also a provided a proof of US atrocities against humanity. The United Nations should take Obama's acknowledgement as a confession on committing war crimes. On the other hand, Islamabad, instead of expecting others to help, should muster up its own courage to take up the issue to the United Nations.

Amjad Chaudhry,

Rawalpindi.

India’s ‘General’ mess

The Asian Age article "A General mess" by Bharat Karnadad published recently speaks of the Indian government's bid to push to the corner its chief of army staff and the officers corps, which is aimed at psychologically keeping the military command under civilian pressure, perhaps keeping in view the Pakistan experience. But in its bid the Indian government goes too far, creating a furor over its Chief of Army Staff Gen V K Singh sought the Supreme Court help for resolving the issue of his date of birth according to which he is going to retire one year earlier.

Like many other problems that afflict India, writes Bharat Karnadad, the one relating to the selection of the Chiefs of Staff of the three armed services too was seeded in the early years. In reply to a 1948 note from defence minister Sardar Baldev Singh, asking whether merit or seniority should be the criterion in selecting officers to top posts in the army, Jawaharlal Nehru insightfully replied that if both merit and seniority were given weightage, seniority would soon elbow out merit. Whatever the reasons ultimately for K M Cariappa becoming the command in chief in 1949, the seniority factor unfortunately got the nod. Of the two other officers being considered then - Lt Gen Nathu Singh Rathore and K S Rajendrasinhji, the former was brash and outspoken and no doubt irked Nehru.

On Nehru's musing out aloud that owing to insufficient command experience of most Indian officers at the time, the Army might benefit from a few more years of British generalship, the quicksilver Rathore riposted that on that basis the Indian government too would be better off headed by Britons considering most Indian politicians had no experience whatsoever of running government! Rajendrasinhji was the first Indian officer to win a gallantry award (Distinguished Service Order) in the field in WWII. Cariappa a western army commander during the 1947-48 Kashmir operations did not impress Nehru with his leadership qualities, who perhaps believed that the battle-harndened Rajendrasinhji would have done a better job of it. In any event, with Cariappa followed by Rajendrasinhji, a wrong precedent was set. The Indian army has paid a heavy price; not the brightest officers have always headed it. The other two services, being smaller, manage their cadres somewhat better with especially the Navy consistently throwing up competent people as Service Chiefs. The Air Force, whose top posts are monopolised by fighter jocks, falls somewhere in between the army and navy.

With seniority as the sole criterion for promotion, India has a vast majority of officers aspiring to top posts becoming progressively more risk-averse in decision making as they climb up the steep promotional ladder. The consequence of an over-cautious, almost inert, institutional-qau-leadership mindset has been there for all to see for several decades now. The army chiefs, for instance, have stuck to a stunted vision responsible for the skewed order of battle that reveals a singular talent for mistaking the minor foe (Pakistan) for major adversary, even as the real danger posed by the Chinese People's Liberation Army is not addressed, if evidence of the deployment of the main force is anything to go by.

Marya Mufty,

On email.

Talks with Taliban sans Pakistan?

As the US began preliminary talks with the Taliban negotiators in Qatar on plans for peace talks aimed at ending the decade-long war in Afghanistan, amid reports that the Pakistan and Afghan governments are seeking peace talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia separate from the US-brokered talks in Doha, it is now established that things are shaping up rapidly in Afghanistan as the US is treating the so-called 'terrorist' Taliban as a political force and a political stakeholder. For that the US even agreed to transfer four to eight important Taliban figures from Guantanamo Bay to set up a political office for the exiled Afghan insurgent group. In another effort to soothe President Karzai's doubts, a delegation from the Qatar government is expected to visit Kabul to explain its role in the talks as the Afghan president feels uncomfortable over the sharp change in the US stance and policy. He has his suspicions over the direct negotiations; to him opening of the Taliban office in Qatar means giving Taliban recognition by the US against whom it fought for over a decade. Despite his suspicions however, Karzai had no option but to back the Qatar initiative.

Pakistan has been sidelined in the process, but it is not out of the game. The Taliban declared that they could not ignore Pakistan and would not like to annoy it, even if they sought more independence, and less interference by Islamabad in their decisions-making. That's why it seems, as a BBC report indicates, the Afghan government, not fully agreeing to the US' Qatar initiative and Pakistan, partially sidelined, have plans for talks in Saudi Arabia that both Kabul and Islamabad, usually at logger heads on the issue, were looking for their own talks with the Taliban. The US administration is of the view that its strong military presence in Afghanistan and an indecisive long-term plan of its military's presence beyond 2014 can be used as a leverage to convince the Taliban on the necessity of Kabul's participation in talks and cutting down on its other demands to let the talks process take off the ground. The reason cited is that if Kabul is not a part of negotiations, then it will not be possible to bring the Taliban in the mainstream political parties. Therefore, it seems difficult to understand that the negotiations will bring an end to Afghan conflict.

Looking back at the Afghan history, the talks at the highest level of warring parties always failed to provide reprieve to local conflicts driven by tribal competitions, personal rivalries and the profitable drug trade. Moreover, sidelining Pakistan and the actual stakeholders in Afghanistan is not likely to bring in the desired results. The issues of Nato supplies, drone attacks and border violations need to be resolved as immediately as possible. Though David Bill in his recent article suggests "if you are concerned about American aggression, it is not the drones you should fear, but the politicians who order them into battle", yet the wiser comment by Joshua Foust needs to be paid heed to; he says "the rush to robots in warfare is worrying. There just isn't enough thought about what consequences these systems impose on US policy. There needs to be." And the Amnesty International's report questioning the legality and legitimacy of drone strikes must be seen as to how the world views America's unilateral act against the sovereignty of a country.

Earlier the UN's special representative has already given its finding that the drone strikes are in violation of international law, as well the human rights laws.

F Z Khan,

Islamabad.