Juan Cole Does Obama understand his biggest foreign-policy challenge?
Excerpt:
"A consensus is emerging among intelligence analysts and pundits that Pakistan may be President-elect Barack Obama's greatest policy challenge. A base for terrorist groups, the country has a fragile new civilian government and a long history of military coups. The dramatic attack on Mumbai by members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e Tayiba, the continued Taliban insurgency on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the frailty of the new civilian government, and the country's status as a nuclear-armed state have all put Islamabad on the incoming administration's front burner.
But does Obama understand what he's getting into? In his "Meet the Press" interview with Tom Brokaw on Sunday, Obama said, "We need a strategic partnership with all the parties in the region -- Pakistan and India and the Afghan government -- to stamp out the kind of militant, violent, terrorist extremists that have set up base camps and that are operating in ways that threaten the security of everybody in the international community." Obama's scenario assumes that the Pakistani government is a single, undifferentiated thing, and that all parts of the government would be willing to "stamp out" terrorists. Both of those assumptions are incorrect."
Ramachandra Guhs's India's Dangerous Divide has this Nehru quote:
"a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want, go anywhere else. That is a basic fact about which there can be no argument. Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilized manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State."
The Immanent Frame has several articles in Mumbai 11/26 by Dipesh Chakraaorty, Arjun Appadurai and others.
The links are through 3quarksdaily, Anti-History / In Another Life and Chapati Mystery which have several links to articles on the topic. Suketu Mehta's "The Maximum City" also has much information.
P.S. Arundhati Roy: Mumbai was not our 9/11 (via Crazyfinger)
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4 comments:
Thanks for the links.
I have only read Roy's piece. She writes well and talks a lot of sense in many places but then she cannot see past her hatred for Bush.
I don't mind calling it India's 9/11 (though I agree that it is not) but only our response should be different and learning from Bush's mistake.
Its sad that she uses these attacks as a way to put forward her opposition to Bush.
Just trying to understand. I have read very little of Arundhati Roy's writings but a lot in this article seems to make sense.
Yeah Roy does make sense here because the people she criticized did not behave with sense. She is an important and a contrarian voice and someone who should be heard. She also worked a lot with the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
Its just that I do not agree with many things she says but I would agree that hers is a very powerful and self-confident voice.
Arundhati Roy makes sense ? Not for me!
I wish if you had heard Salman Rushdie on this
Also see here , here and here
She thinks Kashmir/Ayodhya/Gujarat are the reasons behind this attack!!
Jihadi terrorism has killed large number of people in almost all countries including Holland and China ! I wonder if ayodhya was the reason for islamic terrorism in these countries! If she thinks Jihad will be over once the kashmir is liberated and ayodhya is solved, she is a naive... you know what..
About her involvement in Narmada movement, it is enough to quote a leader of Narmada Bachao Andolan, Upendra Baxi. He said "it would be wise for the Andolan to disassociate
itself from Arundhati Roy." (quoted by Mr Ramachandra Guha, in The Hindu)
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