Spuriously deductive diplomacy

In the annals of spuriously deductive diplomacy, comments made by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang ought to enjoy pride of place.

Reuters reports from Beijing this:

"A Chinese government spokesman (Qin Gang) said Barack Obama should be especially sympathetic to China's opposition to the Dalai Lama and Tibetan independence, as a black president who lauded Abraham Lincoln for helping abolish slavery."

Let me deconstruct this comment for you. According to the Chinese the institution of the Dalai Lamas proactively practiced slavery. That means the 14^th Dalai Lama kept slaves before he was driven out of Tibet as a 24-year-old. That is one strand of the official logic. Then there is a parallel strand which says Obama is a black man and an admirer of President Abraham Lincoln. As a "black president", therefore, he understands what it means to be a slave and how significant Lincoln's contribution was in abolishing slavery. Fuse these two strands and you arrive at the conclusion that Qin has reached, namely that the Dalai Lama and Tibetan independence must be opposed by China at all times.

Qin's exact quote: "He is a black president, and he understands the slavery abolition movement and Lincoln's major significance for that movement."

While reading the dispatch the first image that came to my mind was that of those flying Shaolin monks who go through such complex calisthenics to overwhelm their adversaries. The idea that in order to oppose slavery as practiced in medieval times by the Dalai Lamas (when the rest of the Western world doing the same), a goal that "black" President Obama must applaud and help accomplish, China today must oppose Tibetan independence is not very different from the leaps in the air by Shaolin monks.

Let me distil this position down to mathematical equations:

DL = SL

BO = BL

BL SL

∴ BO must oppose DL and Tibetan independence and support China on everything it does against the two.

(The keys: DL is the Dalai Lama,BO means Barack Obama, SL is slavery, BL is black, BL SL means blacks have kicked slavery, ∴ therefore)

You have to admire the sheer gumption of that position. Just as one might think Qin would have stopped at that he went further and said what Beijing was doing in Tibet was similar to what Lincoln did southern U.S. states.

"Thus on this issue we hope that President Obama, more than any other foreign leader, can better, more deeply grasp China's stance on protecting national sovereignty and territorial integrity," said Qin.

All these comments come just before President Obama is to make his first official visit to China from November 15 to 18.

USAID, Taliban and cricket

This morning it is a toss-up between the qualified success of the Pakistani military offensive in the Taliban-controlled South Waziristan, the nomination of Indian American doctor Rajiv Shah as the USAID chief and who the greatest cricketer of the last decade is. I can write on all three. Who can possibly stop me? It is my blog and my reputation.

To the untrained eye the three subjects may appear completely unrelated but to a seasoned hack like me (not to mention an underemployed blogger) they are inextricably linked in the South Asian context. So even though it is going to be a bit of a stretch, let me explain how the Taliban, USAID and cricket can be woven into a single cohesive theme.

One of the fundamental reasons why a misanthropic force such as the Taliban has risen and endured is because of the failure of both Pakistan and Afghanistan to invest in modern education. Pakistan's feudal ruling elite, which has always ensured the best of modern education for its own, has either consciously or otherwise deprived that basic human right to the less privileged among its society. In Afghanistan the reluctance to educate stems from somewhat more complex societal geography. This lack of access to modern education has spawned generations of malcontents who have no stake in the stability of their own surrounding. The founders of the Taliban have brilliantly exploited this population over the past decade and a half.

This is where the role played by the United States in the region comes into question. Propelled by geostrategic exigencies the U.S. has traditionally used a militarist approach to deal with the region. In the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December, 1979, the U.S. and its Western allies reasoned that heavily arming the mujahedeen was the best way to deal with the occupation. Once the Russians had left by February, 1989, the West chose to walk away without thinking about the long-term consequences of their abandonment. Had they stayed on and transformed their intervention from militaristic to something softer such as funding modern education on a vast scale under an agency such as the USAID, we might possibly have seen a different outcome. It is ironic that 30 years after the Soviets occupied Afghanistan amid global outrage, we now have the West occupying it.

The USAID has the means and capacity to emerge as the most decisive arm of U.S. diplomacy in the region. I sincerely hope that Rajiv Shah is able to successfully incorporate that into his new job. He seems to have all the right qualifications to turn the USAID into a transformational tool of U.S. foreign policy.

Now comes the difficult part of fusing cricket into this equation. Andy Bull of The Guardian has raised what he himself so accurately calls "a question of such incomprehensible triviality, such unequivocal unimportance." The question--who is the best cricketer of the last decade? For Andy's benefit, let me make it simple. It has to be Sachin Tendulkar as a batsman and either Shane Warne or Mutaiah Muralidharan as a bowler. To Andy's point that "The player of the decade is not something you can judge by statistics alone" I have a simple rejoinder. It is like assessing the Wall Street and saying it is not about profit. Cricket is about statistics because they are the best measure of a great player. It has been my longstanding argument that genius is as much about inexplicable talent as it is about producing a vast body of work over a sustained period of time. On that score all these three names qualify handsomely. I am sure there are other names but I am happy with the ones I have chosen.

With that out of the way, let me say why cricket ought to be an intrinsic tool of USAID strategy in South Asia. Cricket is the only nondenominational, undogmatic, nonreligious religion that can trump everything else there with the possible exception of the Indian movies. Wouldn't the world rather hear the crack of the willow striking a cricket ball than the crackle of gunfire? Young men and women in that part of the world are much better off lobbing leather balls than grenades.

Phew! I did manage to fuse the three seemingly unrelated themes into a single post. Bravo, I say, bravo.

Hannity’s Freudian slip with Prejean

A note to my readers: This post is a compelling example of how much unproductive time I have these days. I have no basis, other than my lascivious mind and some unverifiable psychological and body language analysis, to write what I do here. I am not qualified either in psychoanalysis or body language. All my conclusions are just hokum.

The jacket of Carrie Prejean's book 'Still Standing'

I cannot help thinking that Sean Hannity is fantasizing throughout this interview about the content of the "sex tape" that he is interviewing former Miss California Carrie Prejean about. Never mind trivial details such as the professional conflict of interest arising out of the fact that he is interviewing someone about a book that he wrote a foreword to. After all he is Sean Hannity and he is on Fox News.

The content of the tape, obtained by TMZ but not broadcast out of editorial discretion, are not known but anyone with a minimally functional mind can imagine what it must be. It features a beautiful teenager by herself doing what teenagers do in their private world in front of a camera.

To me a telltale clue as to Hannity's private thoughts comes early on in the conversation about the tape. After saying that it was the biggest mistake of her life (so far) Prejean says,

"It is embarrassing and humiliating to be talking about this now on national TV."

Rather than helping an embarrassed young woman out of her quandary, Hannity has this to say:

"It would be really embarrassing if it was me but..I am making light of it."

Yes Sean, it would be really embarrassing if it was you. I think the fact that he trails off after 'but' is Freudian and fraught with meaning.

There is something about that response and the way it came out with accompanying facial expression that made me curious. Notice this expression immediately after Hannity says "It would be really embarrassing if it was me but…"

Implicit warning from an anonymous “scholar”

"India may have forgotten the lesson of 1962, when its repeated provocation resulted in military clashes," a scholar told the Global Times anonymously, warning, "India is on this wrong track again."

When a source, and that too a "scholar" to boot, has to issue this implicit warning anonymously you know something is not entirely convincing.

The anonymous scholar's comment came in response to the ongoing visit of the Dalai Lama to Tawang, a Buddhist monastery town that is part of the northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh which China claims is southern Tibet. Unless it is a Chinese government source whose utterances can have a chilling effect on India-China relations, I do not see why such a warning should not be attributed by name. And I do not see why scholars should issue warnings on behalf of any government.

The same newspaper quotes another scholar, this time by name as saying something that sounds at least plausible.

"The Dalai Lama went to southern Tibet at this critical moment probably because of pressure from India," Hu Shisheng, a researcher of Southern Asian studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times Sunday. "By doing so, he can please the country that has hosted him for years."

I am not suggesting for a moment that this is what happened but for a researcher this is an acceptable speculation to indulge in.

India's Minister of State for External Affairs (which really means a deputy foreign minister) Shashi Tharoor chose to respond to the speculation and, in the process gave the researcher more importance than he probably deserves and expects. Of course, Tharoor's response came across rather testy. I am sure it was unintentional.

"The Dalai Lama is free to travel anywhere in India... I have not heard the suggestion comes from us as we do not deal with the spiritual travels of spiritual leaders. He has to visit his flock as he sees fit," Tharoor said.

Still understanding Pakistan

One defining feature of Pakistan's ruling elite has been that daggers are always drawn. There is no telling who might be out to settle scores with whom. When they are not settling scores, they are making deals. At a superficial glance Pakistan seems like a society in a permanent deal making or backstabbing mode. And deeper scrutiny merely confirms that impression.

I have now been engaged with Pakistan in some capacity or the other since the early 1990s. I claim no expertise on the country but over the years one has developed a certain accurate reading of the broad trends. It was with this consciousness that I was reading a Seymour M. Hersh's latest report on Pakistan in the New Yorker. "Defending the Arsenal—Are Nuclear Weapons Safe in Pakistan" is the theme of the story.

As always Hersh does a thorough and credible job but as always Pakistan continues to escape any definite conclusion as to where it might be headed. The piece makes me no wiser about this fractured country than I have been since the early 1990s. Perhaps the media needs a new vantage point, the vantage point of the young in Pakistan.

I was struck by a few comments in the piece. One is from former President Pervez Musharraf, who now lives in exile in London. I had written sometime ago how some Pakistani leader or the other is always in exile till such time as they make a deal. They return after that so that they can polish their dagger all over again.

Here is what Musharraf has to say about the man who replaced him as president: "Asif Zardari is a criminal and a fraud. He'll do anything to save himself. He's not a patriot and he's got no love for Pakistan. He's a third-rater."

For a man in exile after coming to power in a coup, it might seem a bit incredible to say that an adversary will "do anything to save himself." I must let that pass because there is no point on reflecting on such contradictions in a country which thrives on such contradictions.

There is another colorful comment from Shaheen Sehbai, a senior editor of the newspaper International, which struck me. Shaheen has been quoted by Hersh as saying that Zardari's "problem is that he's besieged domestically on all sides, and he thinks only the Americans can save him," and, as a result, "he'll open his pants for them." The image of Zardari opening his pants for the Americans is a telling one and, in a cruel way, quite hilarious. I have a tendency to literalize such figures of speech. You should try it sometime. It is quite entertaining.

The best line of Hersh's story comes from Sultan Amir Tarar, "known to many as Colonel Imam," who "is the archetype of the disillusioned Pakistani officer."

Hersh writes: "Tarar spent eighteen years with the I.S.I. (Inter Services Intelligence) in Afghanistan, most of them as an undercover operative. In the mujahideen war against the Soviet Union, in the eighties, he worked closely with C.I.A. agents, and liked the experience. Tarar lamented the fact that the Americans abandoned the Pakistanis after the Soviet withdrawal. It is in this context that he came up with an arresting line. "When I asked if he'd seen "Charlie Wilson's War," the movie depicting that abandonment and a Texas congressman's futile efforts to change the policy, Tarar laughed and said, "I've seen Charlie Wilson. I didn't need to see the movie."

Dalai Lama in Tawang

The Dalai Lama (Pic: www.dalailama.com)

In visiting Tawang this Sunday, the Dalai Lama will come the closest he has ever been in the past 50 years to Lhasa, a city he was forced to flee in 1959. Lhasa is barely 316 miles away from this Tibetan Buddhist center in the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Without the mountainous terrain he could have finished that journey in less than five hours.

Although the purpose of the Dalai Lama's visit to Tawang is entirely nonpolitical, that is precisely what makes it so politically charged within the complex dynamic of India-China relations. That the Chinese border is barely 26 miles from the place the Buddhist leader is visiting makes this symbolism so palpably offensive for Beijing. When you consider that it was through this region that a 24-year-old Tenzin Gyatso entered India dressed up as a Chinese soldier in April, 1959, it gives you a fair idea why China is profoundly unhappy at the visit.

It is probably unprecedented that so much Indian nationalism, mostly implicit, has coalesced around a visit anywhere by the Dalai Lama inside the country. Syed Zarir Hussain, a correspondent of the IANS, reports: "The writing on the wall is loud and clear: the Dalai Lama's week-long visit to Arunachal Pradesh beginning Sunday is a rebuff to Chinese claims over this frontier region."

Syed says, "Banners apart, the Indian tricolor (as the Indian flag is referred to) fluttering alongside Tibetan prayer flags in vantage locations, including the monastery, sum up the local ire against Beijing's claims to Arunachal Pradesh and the stiff opposition to the Dalai Lama's visit to the region.

"We are Indians and will continue to be with India no matter what the circumstances are," thundered Norbu Lama, a young Buddhist monk.

The idea to hoist Indian flags was a deliberate attempt to demonstrate the locals' anger against Beijing."

As if to take the sting away from the powerful symbolism of territorial assertion over a region that China claims to be part of its own, the Indian government has disallowed foreign journalists to report the story. Of course, there is no bar on Indian journalists reporting from there for foreign media outlets. To think that China is impressed by this window-dressing is to betray complete ignorance about the way it operates.

It is good that New Delhi has chosen to send an unambiguous signal to Beijing about its sovereignty. However, I would be interested to find out whether it backtracks in its future interactions with its neighbor.

Back to 9/12/01?

Major Nidal Malik Hasan (Pic: Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress)

It took Muslims in America eight years to repair some of the terrible damage done to their reputation by the 9/11 attacks. The Fort Hood killings yesterday seriously threaten to reverse the clock right back to 9/12/01. While sane America, which still constitutes a vast majority, will do its best to challenge attempts to implicate an entire community for the action of a single individual, we all need to watch out for the fringe that will reinforce stereotypes. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of stereotypes.

In some ways the America of today is a more fertile ground for communal vilification to strike roots than eight years ago. The rise of Barack Obama as president has unlocked repressed animosities and hostilities within the extreme rightwing fringe groups which could project the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan as a product of the new political order.

It is no secret that there is a constituency of Americans which does not like Obama purely because to them he is anathema to everything they want in their president. The fact that the worst shooting on a domestic US military base occurred on Obama's watch and allegedly by a Major Hassan is fraught with political consequences for the president. For fringe groups that need almost no excuse to attack Obama could find in the Fort Hood killings a remarkable opportunity for insidious exploitation.

We will hear in the coming days and weeks as to the motives of Dr. Hassan, a psychiatrist, and whether he represents any sort of trend of disenchanted or alienated Muslim members of the US armed forces. If reports that Dr. Hassan complained being picked on by some of his fellow officers for being a Muslim are accurate then the killings will only fuel such reactions.