Water could be the focal point of South Asia’s next great conflict, writes Ben Doherty.

A precious necessity... a boy bathes under a water pipe to cool off on a hot day in Allahbad. Pakistan is claiming a hydro-electric plant India is building will rob it of water. Photo: AFP Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/source-of-life-becomes-the-threat-20120518-1yvwi.html#ixzz1vLHmI4ob

South Asia lives on its rivers. Its three great basins – the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra – are the most densely-populated in the world. The Ganges alone supports half a billion people.

Seventy per cent of South Asia’s 1.5 billion people live in farming families, and depend on the water of those basins for their survival. That number grows by 25 million every year.

For generations the rivers have watered the bread basket of the Punjab, the cotton plants and fruit trees of the Sindh, and the rice paddies of Bangladesh, and grown this region faster than anywhere else.

But South Asia’s water supply is unpredictable, and increasingly unmanageable. Lashed annually by monsoons, and regularly by devastating floods, in between, there are severe and prolonged droughts across the region. Even when the rain falls in moderation, there is often little infrastructure to manage or preserve it for leaner times.

Across every part of all three basins, there is less water, and ever more people who rely on it. The issue of water in this part of the world is back in the spotlight this week with a case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague between Pakistan and India.

Pakistan claims a new hydro-electric plant India is building on the Kishanganga River (known as the Neelum River in Pakistan) in Kashmir will rob it of water that rightfully belongs to it.

This is the political reality of this water-short century: rivers are (even more) powerful. Water is becoming a powerful weapon of diplomacy, even of coercion, and a new point of dispute.

And South Asia’s geography, demography and climate portend a growing, global, problem.

A security report from the US director of national intelligence released this year says that over the next decade, ”many countries … will experience water problems – shortages, poor water quality, or floods – that will risk instability and state failure”.

”As a result of demographic and economic development pressures, North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia will face major challenges coping with water problems.”

Disputes are likely to emerge between countries, between states within countries, and even between cities and communities, over the right to an increasingly scarce resource. Water shortages will likely drive nation-states towards diplomatic solutions and to sharing agreements, the report says, but extremists will ”almost certainly” target vulnerable water infrastructure.

”Beyond the next 10 years, water in shared basins will increasingly be used as leverage, the use of water as a weapon or to further terrorist objectives also will become more likely.”

The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, told her department: ”These threats are real, and they do raise serious security concerns.” Already, water has become part of the terrorist call-to-arms.

The alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Hafiz Saeed, has railed India for it’s so-called ”water terrorism”, threatening ”water flows or blood”.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, a proscribed terror group, regularly threatens to blow up India’s dams, and violent condemnation of India’s water policies is cheered on by a growing hardline.

Last year, Pakistani newspaper Nawa-i-Waqt, urged the government: ”Pakistan should convey to India that a war is possible on the issue of water and this time war will be a nuclear one”.

Most experts argue a declared ”war” between nations in the near future is unlikely, but as pressure grows, smaller conflicts will flare across the region.

The Strategic Foresight Group, has postulated the idea of an ‘arc of hydro insecurity’, stretching from Vietnam in the east through China, the countries of South Asia, to Iran, Iraq and other Middle East countries, and finally through to Egypt and Kenya in East Africa.

Scarce water will drive up food prices, destabilise governments, and spark mass migrations within and across state borders.

For South Asia, climate change will see less water in rivers. A recent Dutch study found that by the middle of this century, shrinking glaciers will reduce the flow of water to the Indus by 8 per cent while Purdue University researchers found climate change could cause weaker monsoons, which start later, and have longer breaks in between periods of rain.

Demographics are changing too. As a country like India, especially, develops economically, a wealthier population will eat more meat, requiring more water-intensive agriculture.

Environmental author B.G. Verghese said water was already a major security concern for the region. ”Water, and the energy that comes from water, affects every household … If the well is empty and the women have to walk to the next village for water, mini water-wars breakout between villages, fighting over the last bucket. More people will be killed by insanitary water than by all the sum total of all the wars and all the insurgencies that might be fought.”

Mr Verghese said while water issues will lead to disagreements between countries, ”I don’t think it will lead to war”.

”The only country that could go to war on this question is Pakistan, and Pakistan simply has no case. They have mesmerised themselves into thinking all their problems come from India.”

The current Pakistan-India water dispute is a test of a decades-old water-sharing agreement that has withstood three wars, territorial disputes, nuclear tests and terrorist attacks.

Essentially, the Indus Waters Treaty, signed in 1960, gives Pakistan rights over the Indus Valley’s three western rivers, India control over the three rivers to the east. The treaty is hugely important, in particular to Pakistan, which is downstream from India, and reliant on its larger neighbour’s adherence to it for survival.

The Indus irrigates more than 80 per cent of the country’s 22 million hectares of farmland, in turn providing 21 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

But the treaty is beginning to crack under new pressures, and Pakistan’s increasing anxiety about its neighbour’s activities on its watercourses.

India has no fewer than 45 dams or power stations completed, planned or proposed on ‘Pakistan’s’ western rivers, which Islamabad believes will give Delhi control over how much water flows over the border, and the ability, if it so chooses, to choke off Pakistan’s agriculture, starve its people and ruin its economy.

India dismisses Pakistan’s fears as paranoid and without scientific basis. It says it has adhered to the treaty and its as-the-river-runs dams don’t affect its neighbour. But after 15 rounds of bilateral talks, to no progress, the parties are back in the Permanent Court of Arbitration next week seeking satisfaction.

By: Shahab Usto

We have seen terrorists blow up the shrines of mystics and saints – Bari Imam, Data Ganj Baksh, Abdullah Shah Ghazi, Sakhi Sarwar – but now even poets and political icons are in the crosshairs of terrorism. Akora Khattak, a small city in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has been twice hit by terrorism; one to destroy the mausoleum of Khushal Khan Khattak, a great Pashtun poet and freedom fighter of the 17th century, and then to destroy the under-construction tomb of Ajmal Khattak, a left-leaning politician and poet.
For years, Pakistan has been an eerie lab of extremism. Ever new arts and artifacts of terrorism are invented here to achieve religio-political objectives. Often the ingenious terror operators leave security and intelligence apparatuses dumbfounded. Bombing of shrines are not new in recent and contemporary history. In fact, shrine, seminary and mosque have respectively played a pivotal role in the Iranian revolution, the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, and the ongoing Arab Spring.
Nevertheless, the sufis, saints and folk poets are much revered in the subcontinent. People feel affinity with their spiritual and emotional lores that transcend scholastic divisions and touch chords of humanism, love, amity and aesthetics. Indeed, the local mystical traditions have been anti-monarchical and anti-dogmatic clergy. No wonder, there are many shrines in Pakistan that are visited by both Muslims and non-Muslims.
And that explains why shrines came under parochial and sectarian eyes, particularly since the times General Ziaul Haq imported from Saudi Arabia a virulent (Salafi) narrative of Islam that, inter alia, berates ‘grave worshiping’ as un-Islamic. Salafism is akin to, or some would say, a branch of Wahabiism that stresses a narrow puritanical version of Islam. The House of Saud adopted it in the early last century. Its tenet – ‘going back to the basic of Islam’– was used to unite and turn the tribal Saudi peninsula into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since Wahabiism and Salafiism, with its going back to basics slogan, developed as a reaction both to liberal Islamic and modern western traditions, the Wahhabi and the Salafi political message was to resist both diversity and modernity. The emergence of al Qaeda, and later the Taliban, are a case in point. Luckily, the subcontinental culture is too diverse and too variegated to fit into a narrow scholastic version. History witnessed socio-political conflicts whenever such an effort was made.
Indeed, many historians would agree that the unravelling of the centuries-old Mughal Empire began with Emperor Aurangzeb’s rise to the throne in the wake of a bloody fratricidal war in the 17th century. It was largely his narrow vision of Islam that disturbed the delicate balance between the minority Muslim and the majority non-Muslim populace crafted by that great syncretic king, Akbar, and continued by his successors. Aurangzeb kept the Mughal Empire alive with his sword. But the Indian subcontinent plunged into decay and anarchy soon after his death.
Pathans invaded Delhi from the north and west, the Hindu revivalists from the south, and the English from the east. Except for a brief interlude of the war of independence (1857-58) when a transient quest for redeeming India from the clutches of the English had transcended religious and social boundaries, the Muslims saw a continuous downturn in their social, economic and political fortunes vis-à-vis the Hindus and British.
Unfortunately, Pakistan has undergone the same trajectory since it was turned into a vehicle of promoting a narrow narrative of Islam in emulation, if not the wishes, of our Arab patrons. Like the House of Saud, General Zia used his narrow puritanical ‘Sharia laws’ to upstage liberal democratic forces, to use non-state actors in the region, to transform the professional ethos of the armed forces, his ‘political constituency’, into an army of Islam. And interestingly, like 18th-century Delhi, today’s Islamabad is also faced with existential threats from its northwestern and eastern borders.
But Pakistan is paying a heavy cost of this policy. Drawn into incessant ideological, political and sectarian conflicts, it has torn its social fabric, damaged its polity, surrendered its foreign policy, and suffered economic losses. Indeed, just as the post-Aurangzeb Mughal monarchs had turned helpless before the marauding forces, our central authority has been sapped to being ineffectual. The decision to reopen the NATO supplies to Afghanistan without achieving any reciprocal benefits debunks Pakistan’s costly image of being a great nuclear/regional power, thanks to our emotional and unwise international posturing.
Ironically, if our eastern borders have turned quiet, it is because India has successfully convinced the international community of the Pakistani state’s complicity in the Mumbai attacks. And if our traditional policy – strategic depth – is imperilled on the western borders, it is because the US-led 49 states strong ISAF won’t allow any ‘safe havens’ in Pakistan to be used against them in Afghanistan.
Neither did the long-awaited parliamentary resolutions demanding the stopping of drones operation and an apology from the US, nor the much trumpeted anti-US Difa-e-Pakistan rallies deter the world that is determined to stamp out terrorism from the region. Instead, Pakistan would have stood isolated if it had not reviewed its policies at a crucial time; rather, it would have been omitted as a stakeholder in the future of this region.
Thus, Pakistan stands caught in its own web, threatened by forces it nurtured. It is time the state shredded its ideological and partisan agenda to become a legally neutral, politically democratic, foreign-policy-wise peaceful, and socio-economically welfare-oriented state. It needs a supportive and mutually invested world that should not be accusing it of playing a ‘double game’ of simultaneously fighting and sheltering terrorists.
We must remember, destroying economic and administrative infrastructures is not different from targeting tombs and shrines – one scares off capital and investors, the other alienates the masses from a state that cannot protect their spiritual and emotional mentors. Either way, the state ends up losing its authority, legitimacy and face before its people and the world at large.

Source: The Bangladesh Times

With record number of its top leaders in jail, BNP is having a tough time in preparing for the rally on June 11, the day after the party’s ultimatum for restoring caretaker government system expires.

In fact, many BNP leaders are unsure about whether the rally is possible at all if the detained senior leaders of the party, including its acting secretary general, are not released.

Insiders said the planned countrywide visit by BNP central leaders might be delayed due to the latest political development.

They also said party high-ups were waiting for Monday’s hearing on bail petition of the detained leaders. BNP would be in trouble if the leaders were not granted bail, they added.

Meanwhile, the opposition alliance has decided not to declare any tougher programmes, as it might prompt the government to go even tougher on them and hinder the preparation for the rally.

BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia recently in a meeting chose not to go for any radical movement so that the party can get ready to make the June 11 rally a success.

“Some of the alliance partners tried to convince the chairperson to opt for tougher programmes, including non-stop hartal, but she did not agree to it,” said a senior BNP leader who was present in the alliance meeting at Khaleda’s Gulshan office Thursday night.

“We should not weaken ourselves before the rally,” said sources quoting Khaleda as saying in the meeting.

Asked about the party’s preparation, BNP standing committee member Lt Gen (retd) Mahbubur Rahman told The Daily Star that the already-declared programmes, including mass hunger strike, would help them get organised for the rally.

Khaleda, also leader of the opposition, in a rally on March 12 issued the 90-day ultimatum to the government saying that agitation programmes to oust the government would be declared from June 11 if their demand for reinstating the caretaker government system was not met by June 10.

The party had already started preparing for the rally as the ruling Awami League has been repeatedly rejecting the opposition’s demand.

As part of the preparation, BNP had constituted 40 sub-committees comprising central leaders to tour across the country ahead of the rally. They were scheduled to go to district and upazila headquarters from May 20 to June 5.

But the whole process came to a halt as most of its senior leaders had been sent to jail in an arson case.

Talking to The Daily Star, BNP Joint Secretary General Mohammad Shahjahan said, “The field-level visit might be delayed as we have to reconstitute the committees due to the arrest of our leaders.”

Replying to a query, former lawmaker Shahjahan said there was no uncertainty over the rally. “We are working on it. New leaders will take up the task if we all are sent to jail, but the rally will be made successful at any cost.”

Source: The Daily Star

By: The Daily Star staff Correspondent

Not many occasions can bring together so many business icons, corporate executives, academics and civil society members than did last night’s business awards ceremony organised by The Daily Star and DHL Express.

It was a triumphant night that recognised the most successful businesspeople and companies in the country.

The Daily Star, the country’s most-read English newspaper, and DHL Express, the world’s leading logistics company, jointly honoured the best companies and individuals who have shown the greatest flair and integrity in running businesses over the years.

Finance Minister AMA Muhith handed out the 12th Bangladesh Business Awards, regarded as the premier business award in the country, to six winners, including one posthumously, at a glittering gala event at Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka last night. A special award went to Latifur Rahman, chairman of Transcom Group.

The Best Enterprise of the Year award for 2011 went to Advanced Chemical Industries, popularly known as ACI, which champions the quality of its products.

M Anis Ud Dowla, chairman of the group, received the award on behalf of the company.

“Our company has come this far as we — from the very beginning — have focused on making our employees more productive,” he said in his instant reaction.

The posthumous Lifetime Contribution Award went to MA Samad for his contribution to the insurance industry. His Bangladesh General Insurance Company Ltd is the country’s first private sector insurance company.

Towhid Samad, chairman of the company, received the award on behalf of his father. “I really think that he is present here,” an emotional Samad said.

He thanked the organisers for awarding his father.

Prime Bank Ltd, one of the fastest growing private commercial banks in the country, scooped the award in the financial institution category.

Accepting the award, Ehsan Khasru, managing director of the bank, said his bank was one of the top banks of the country for its “customer-first” focus and creating excellence within the company.

Thriving entrepreneur Sharmin Hossain picked up the Outstanding Woman in Business award, as she rose to a greater height of success by launching Fresh and Safe Agro Ltd, which sells fresh vegetables and fruits at a time when chemically-treated and spurious food items abound.

The aspiring agriculturist said the government should provide funds if any woman entrepreneur comes up with any innovative ideas.

“Also, banks should come up with more investment aimed at women entrepreneurs,” she said.

At last night’s award ceremony, Anwar Hossain, chairman of Anwar Group of Industries, won the “Business Person of the Year” laurels as the septuagenarian tirelessly continues to turn a nearly 200-year-old comb-making family business into a business empire that now employs 14,000 people.

“I am not happy with the workforce of 14,000 people. I want to make it 50,000,” he said.

Hossain urged the government to improve infrastructure, ensure gas and power supply and maintain law and order. “We do not want money from the government. If the government can ensure infrastructure and stability, then nobody will be able to hold the country back.”

Business leader Mahbubur Rahman, president of International Chamber of Commerce Bangladesh, was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for his work to protect the interest of the country’s businesses in numerous roles in national and international organisations over the last five decades.

The 70-year-old said there was no alternative to sticking to social values and ethical practices to be a successful entrepreneur, although it was difficult to maintain ethics in Bangladesh.

Speaking as the chief guest, the finance minister said Bangladesh is a land of impossible things and immense potential and possibilities.

“I have experienced it in the last three to four years in a big way. We have achieved things which are not normal and are not expected of us, but we have achieved it. We have achieved it simply because of our determination.”

The country is back on track, and this feeling is moving Bangladesh forward, Muhith said. “In the next 20 years, Bangladesh would be the 20th largest economy in the world.”

Muhith said the Daily Star-DHL Express awards are recognition of hard work.

In his speech, Mahfuz Anam, editor and publisher of The Daily Star, focused on the inner strengths of the business community, and said: “They are resilient, hardworking and innovative.”

“Bangladesh’s entrepreneurs are entering the global market. Our products are being exhibited in the most famous stores of the world. This is a huge achievement. But some of us may not know the hurdles needed to overcome to achieve this feat.”

Bangladesh’s business leaders have come of age, he said. “They are more confident, knowledgeable, ambitious and, most importantly, competent. Over the years, they have made significant contributions to the economy.”

Anam said the whole world was waking up and taking a new look at Bangladesh, but “it seems that the country is on a self-destructive path”.

There are two effects of political unrest: internal and external, he said.

“Our business leaders have to deal with political programmes such as hartals through working at night. Internationally, a single footage of a bus burning on the street of Bangladesh or police baton-charging a huge crowd does enormous damage to a foreigner’s psyche.”

“The business leaders need more policy support. They need more infrastructural support. They need more political peace,” Anam said.

Before his speech, Anam paid a special tribute to Samson H Chowdhury, the founder chairman of Square Group, who died on January 5.

At the awards ceremony, Latifur Rahman, chairman and chief executive officer of Transcom Group, was recognised for making Bangladeshis proud on the global stage by winning the Oslo Business Award for Peace earlier this month.

“The Oslo award was not for me, but for Bangladesh,” he said. “And it is a great honour for me. It has been proved that it is possible for a third world country like Bangladesh to win the best achievement in the world.”

Desmond Quiah, country manager of DHL Express Bangladesh, said The Daily Star and DHL Express had introduced the award to celebrate the best in business in Bangladesh.

“It is the guiding principle of our company to contribute to business activities and entrepreneurships,” he said.

The Daily Star and DHL Express introduced the award in 2000 to honour the country’s best businesses and the people behind them for their values of business excellence, sustainability and commercial success.

Source: The Daily Star

]]> http://www.bangladeshchronicle.net/2012/05/business-heroes-win-accolades/feed/ 0 http://www.bangladeshchronicle.net/2012/05/shah-rukh-khan-banned-after-row/ http://www.bangladeshchronicle.net/2012/05/shah-rukh-khan-banned-after-row/#comments Sat, 19 May 2012 04:08:10 +0000 mansoor http://www.bangladeshchronicle.net/?p=11940

The Mumbai Cricket Association on Friday banned Kolkata Knight Riders co-owner and Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan from entering the Wankhede Stadium for five years for misbehaving with its officials and violating its rules, reports Times of India.

The “unanimous” decision was taken at the MCA Managing Committee meeting called to discuss action on Khan who was involved in a skirmish with the security and officials of the association after KKR’s victory over Mumbai Indians on Wednesday night.

MCA president Vilasrao Deshmukh, who chaired the meeting, said that his association was sending out a message that misbehaviour of any kind would not be tolerated.

“If rules are violated, action will be taken. It does not depend who the individual is. It’s a message to everyone whosoever he or she may be that stern action will be taken if there is any misbehaviour,” he told a press conference.

According to the report, Khan had, however, had denied he had misbehaved and acted only after children, including his kids, were “manhandled” by the security staff.

“How can he go inside the ground without proper accreditation? Even I can’t go inside the ground if not invited for presentation ceremony,” Desmukh said.

“We have handed a five-year ban on him and it was a unanimous decision. It applies to any match whether domestic or international at the Wankhede,” he said.

Asked if BCCI can reverse this decision to ban Khan, Deshmukh said, “We have taken a decision to protect the dignity of our association. BCCI is our parent body and we have written to them informing what had happened. We have no control over BCCI’s decision. We are also an independent body with the Wankhede being our property.”

IPL chairman Rajiv Shukla, however, said that a final decision will be taken by the BCCI.

“State bodies can only recommend but a final decision has to be taken by the BCCI. When the matter comes to BCCI, the Board will decide (on the ban),” he told reporters in New Delhi.

Deshmukh said that many MCA officials were present at the time of the fracas and they have expressed their strong views against Khan in the meeting.

“There were a lot of MCA officials present at the time of fracas. Nothing more was needed to prove that he (Khan) misbehaved. The Assistant Commissioner of Police himself was present and he said Khan was drunk,” he said.

BCCI Chief Administrative Officer Ratnakar Shetty said that the Board has received a complaint from the MCA regarding the fracas.

“The BCCI has got a complaint from the MCA. We will see to it. We will also think of some measures from the next IPL onwards to ensure that such incidents do not happen in future,” he said.

“This is an unprecedented situation. We have never come across such incidents in the last five years at the Wankhede Stadium. It was extreme restrain shown by the MCA officials in the face of abusive language being hurled on them. They should be appreciated,” said Shetty.

Khan had categorically denied that he was drunk and claimed that the scuffle broke out after MCA officials manhandled his kids who he had come to pick after the IPL match between KKR and Mumbai Indians.

MCA officials, who have lodged a police complaint against the actor, however, gave a different version.

Khan had also refused to apologise, saying that the security personnel and the MCA officials were high-handed and it was they who provoked him to use abusive language.

“I was not drunk, I had gone to pick up my children. The officials were extremely aggressive. I just got angry and said a few things in anger. I was one and they were 20-25 officials and they were extremely rude,” Khan had said.

Royal Challengers Bangalore team-owner Vijay Mallya said that “being a team-owner does not override conduct”.

“I don’t think ownership or status of Mr Khan is in question. Whatever I have seen is the MCA questioning his behaviour and that has to be addressed. The fact that he is a team-owner that does not override conduct,” Mallya said in New Delhi.

Asked about the ban on Khan by the MCA, Mallya refused to comment, saying, “That’s strictly between MCA and affected person. I can’t comment on that.”

On suggestion on some quarters that IPL should be stopped, Mallya said, “I don’t think IPL has any role to play. Stopping IPL is a senseless suggestion.”

Source: bd24news

In democratic system, politicians exploit the mistakes of the opposition. They do so with their own reasons and justifications, they want to prove how wrong the other party was and at the same time project their own views and programmes on the same subject to gain popular support. However, politicians always maintain decency and courtesy in their language and make sure that they do not utter offensive language. Politicians by nature follow diplomatic manners and etiquettes. They normally would not say something unless they are sure and certain. The British House of Commons is one place to see how deliberations are made and how they are responded to on the floor of the parliament. It is sad that even after 41 years of independence, politicians in Bangladesh have not learnt the language of parliamentary democracy. This article is all about irresponsible behaviour and utterances of politicians in Bangladesh.

The Nobel Peace Prize for Professor Doctor Yunus was a big achievement for Bangladesh. His Grameen Bank showed the way how micro credit can make people self-reliant and happy; and away from begging in the streets. The micro-credit system is now practised in many countries around the world. Hungry people do become violent and disturb peaceful coexistence. It is in this context that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Prof. Yunus. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina instead of congratulating Prof. Yunus, said that Dr. Yunus had been sucking the blood of the poor in Bangladesh to create his own empire. When she got into power, she removed Prof. Yunus from the Grameen Bank. Very surprisingly she later recommended Dr. Yunus for the post of the president of the World Bank. Was it a mockery or she was trying to compensate for her earlier mistakes?

Another Bangladeshi Mr. Fazle Hassan Abed established BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) an NGO based on donations and mutual cooperation. He worked hard for it and it has undertaken many projects in Bangladesh. The NGO is now more or less self financing and employs thousands of people. It operates banks and even a university in Bangladesh. BRAC is now operating in many other countries. Mr. Abed has been awarded Knighthood by Her Majesty the Queen. Both Dr. Yunus and Sir Abed are respected all over the world. Bangladesh can surely feel proud of these two bright stars of the country. Mrs. Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State had an exclusive meeting with them during her recent visit to Bangladesh.

The politicians feel very jealous of Dr. Yunus and Sir Abed. They are bent upon harassing them on every possible opportunity. In a recent political rally one of the ministers went up to the extent to say that micro finance or NGO activities can bring no change to Bangladesh. He claimed to know how Nobel Prizes are awarded. According to him when you go to western world you must eat cheese sandwich and white wine. This will make you popular with them and you may even get a Nobel Prize! I do not know whether the minister said it to confirm his position in the eyes of the Prime Minister who was present on the dais.

The Prime Minister quoted some newspaper of UAE and said that Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence gave money to Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its chairperson for their election campaign. Later it was found that some Indian conspirators fabricated the story and there was no truth in it. Sheikh Hasina never apologised for her earlier accusation. The same way the BNP leader Begum Khaleda Zia in a public speech said about turning the Government “lengra-lula” which means making it physically disabled and crippled. Shame on both ladies!

Bangladesh has maintained its reputation as one of the most corrupt nations in the world. With the passage of time it seems to be improving on its reputation. The World Bank has withdrawn from financing the proposed Padma Bridge project because of corruption and irregularity. Bangladesh has been excluded from the Millennium Goal funding because of its record of corruption. Bangladesh reached a new height in corruption when a car full of cash money was caught with a minister’s APS on way to minister’s residence. The minister code named “black cat” resigned but the PM preferred to keep him in the cabinet without any portfolio. This was nothing other than open patronage for corruption from the highest level.

With regard to law and order situation in Bangladesh – it is probably at the lowest ebb. A journalist couple were murdered in their bedroom and the response from the Prime Minister was “we cannot guard or protect anyone in their bedroom”. A BNP politician went missing and is still missing; and in this case the Prime Minister’s initial response “he must have been hiding in the residence of one of the own party leaders to defame the Government”. The Prime Minister has not been able to substantiate her claim as yet. Again it is a case of one of the most irresponsible utterances by the Head of a Government.

At the end we have something to cheer about. Mr. Suhail Taj, son of the first Prime Minister of Bangladesh Late Tajuddin Ahmed. Sohail realised soon after becoming a Deputy Minister that he had to tow the party line of corrupt practice and procedures. He preferred to resign. He is great. Like father, like son. When Sheikh Mujib mysteriously surrendered to the Pakistan military, it was Mr. Tajuddin Ahmed who took the helm at the crucial time. It was under his dynamic leadership that the nation fought the battle and won the independence. Today we remember him with lot of admiration.

I feel we have hit the bottom. It cannot go any further. It has to bounce back. Time has come. The young generation must rise up and provide inspiration to people like Suhail Taj to return and rebuild the country.

Some mysterious people posing as members of detective branch of police tried to enter missing BNP leader M Ilias Ali’s Banani residence in the capital early Friday.

The unidentified ‘DB men’ could not enter the house as Tahsina Rushdir Luna, the wife of M Ilias Ali, rejected their requests to open the gate for searching the house.

A group of men identifying themselves as DB police knocked at the gate around 1:00am, Luna told reporters quoting the guard of the house.

Sensing something fishy, she refused to let them enter the house in the wee hours of the night, Luna said.

Mystery shrouded over the incident while Mahbubur Rahman, deputy commissioner of Detective Branch (North) outright rejected the allegation of sending DB personnel over there.

“There is no question of such conduct. We will investigate whether anybody in the guise of law enforcers did so,” Mahbubur Rahman said.

M Ilias Ali, 51, one of the organising secretaries of the BNP and a former lawmaker, and his driver went missing while returning to his Banani residence in the early hours of April 18.

Source: The Daily Star

]]> http://www.bangladeshchronicle.net/2012/05/bd-bhutan-to-discuss-on-bilateral-trade-issue-next-month/feed/ 0 http://www.bangladeshchronicle.net/2012/05/30-opposition-leaders-in-kashimpur-jail/ http://www.bangladeshchronicle.net/2012/05/30-opposition-leaders-in-kashimpur-jail/#comments Fri, 18 May 2012 13:22:15 +0000 mansoor http://www.bangladeshchronicle.net/?p=11906

The jail authorities on Friday shifted 30 out of 37 18-party alliance leaders, including BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, accused in hartal violence, from Dhaka Central Jail to Kashimpur Central Jail in Gazipur.

Masud Hasan, a deputy jailer at Dhaka Central Jail, told The Daily Star that the 30 leaders were transferred to Kashimpur jai in two phases around 1:00pm.

He said seven of the 14 leaders, who had been granted division status, were sent to Kashimpur Central Jail Part-1 and Kashimpur Central Jail Part-2.

They are Fakhrul, BNP standing committee members Khandker Mosharraf Hossain and ASM Hannan Shah, its Self Reliance Affairs Secretary Ruhul Kuddus Talukder Dulu, Students Affair Secretary Shahiduddin Chowdhury Annie, Liberal Democratic Party President Oli Ahmed and Bangladesh Jatiya Party President Andaleeve Rahman Partho.

BNP’s Education Affairs Secretary Khairul Kabir Khokan and three others, detained during Thursday’s general strike, have already been sent to the Kashimpur Central Jail. They were sent to the prison along with 19 others who landed in jail on Wednesday.

“Those who are kept at Dhaka Central Jail are BNP Vice-Chairman Sadeque Hossain Khoka, Standing Committee Members MK Anwar, Goyeshwar Chandra Roy, Mirza Abbas, Joint Secretary General Amanullah Aman, Organising Secretary Fazlul Haque Milan and International Affairs Secretary Nazim Uddin Alam,” the jail official said.

Inspector General (Prisons) Brig Gen Mohammad Ashraful Islam Khan told The Daily Star that the leaders were transferred to Kashimpur for their better accommodation facilities.

“We sent mainly some VIP prisoners and some students leaders to Kashimpur jails”, the IG-Prisons said.

On Wednesday, a Dhaka court sent Fakhrul and 32 other opposition leaders to jail after refusing them bail in a case filed over torching of a bus in front of the Prime Minister’s Office during a countrywide shutdown on Apr 29.

The leaders failed to get bail after surrendering at the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court in the morning. The High Court had earlier rejected them bail and ordered them to surrender at the trial court.

A case was filed with the Tejgaon Police Station against 44 leaders and activists of the BNP and its like-minded parties on charges of torching a vehicle in front of the Prime Minister’s Office during the countrywide shutdown on Apr 29 protesting against the ‘disappearance’ of one of the party’s organising secretaries, M Ilias Ali.

Detective Branch of police on May 10 submitted charge sheet against Fakhrul and 45 of the opposition alliance in the case filed under Speedy Trial Act.

Of the 37 leaders, 34 were sent to jail on Wednesday when they were to surrender before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s court while three others, including BNP’s Education Affairs Secretary Khairul Kabir Khokan, were sent to jail after they were arrested on Thursday.

Source: The Daily Star

By: Bill Quigley

US civilian and military employees regularly target and fire lethal unmanned drone guided missiles at people across the world. Thousands of people have been assassinated. Hundreds of those killed were civilians. Some of those killed were rescuers and mourners.

These killings would be criminal acts if they occurred inside the US. Does it make legal sense that these killings would be legal outside the US?

Some Facts About Drone Assassinations:

The US has used drones to kill thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. But the government routinely refuses to provide any official information on local reports of civilian deaths or the identities of most of those killed.

In Pakistan alone, the New America Foundation reports US forces have launched 297 drone strikes killing at least 1800 people, three to four hundred of whom were not even combatants. Other investigative journalists report four to eight hundred civilians killed by US drone strikes in Pakistan.

Very few of these drone strikes kill high level leaders of terror groups. A recent article in FOREIGN AFFAIRS estimated “only one out of every seven drone attacks in Pakistan kills a militant leader. The majority of those killed in such strikes are not important insurgent commanders but rather low level fighters, together with a small number of civilians.”

An investigation by the Wall Street Journal in November 2011 revealed that most of the time the US did not even know the identities of the people being killed by drones in Pakistan. The WSJ reported there are two types of drone strikes. Personality strikes target known terrorist leaders. Signature strikes target groups of men believed to be militants but are people whose identities are not known. Most of the drone strikes are signature strikes.

In Yemen, there have been at least 34 drone assassination attacks so far in 2012 alone, according to the London based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Using
drones against people in Yemen, who are thought to be militants but whose names are not even known, was authorized by the Obama administration in April 2012, according to the Washington Post. Somalia has been the site of ten drone attacks with a growing number in recent months.

Civilian deaths in drone strikes are regularly reported but more chilling is the practice of firing a second set of drone strikes at the scene once people have come to find out what happened or to give aid. Glen Greenwald of Salon, a leading critic of the increasing use of drones, recently pointed out that drones routinely kill civilians who are in the vicinity of people thought to be “militants” and are thus “incidental” killings. But also the US also frequently fires drones again at people who show up at the scene of an attack, thus deliberately targeting rescuers and mourners.

Here are five reasons why these drone assassinations are illegal.

One. Assassination by the US government has been illegal since 1976

Drone killings are acts of premeditated murder. Premeditated murder is a crime in all fifty states and under federal criminal law. These murders are also the textbook definition of assassination, which is murder by sudden or secret attack for political reasons.

In 1976 U.S. President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11905, Section 5(g), which states “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.” President Reagan followed up to make the ban clearer in Executive Order 12333. Section 2.11 of that Order states “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” Section 2.12 further says “Indirect participation. No agency of the Intelligence Community shall participate in or request any person to undertake activities forbidden by this Order.” This ban on assassination still stands.

The reason for the ban on assassinations was that the CIA was involved in attempts to assassinate national leaders opposed by the US. Among others, US forces sought to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam.

Two. United Nations report directly questions the legality of US drone killings

The UN directly questioned the legality of US drone killings in a May 2010 report by NYU law professor Philip Alston. Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, said drone killings may be lawful in the context of authorized armed conflict (eg Afghanistan where the US sought and received international approval to invade and wage war on another country). However, the use of drones “far from the battle zone” is highly questionable legally. “Outside the context of armed conflict, the use of drones for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal.” Can drone killings be justified as anticipatory self-defense? “Applying such a scenario to targeted killings threatens to eviscerate the human rights law prohibition against arbitrary deprivation of life.” Likewise, countries which engage in such killings must provide transparency and accountability, which no country has done. “The refusal by States who conduct targeted killings to provide transparency about their policies violates the international law framework that limits the unlawful use of lethal force against individuals.”

Three. International law experts condemn US drone killings

Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international affairs and politics at Princeton University thinks the widespread killing of civilians in drone strikes may well constitute war crimes. “There are two fundamental concerns. One is embarking on this sort of automated warfare in ways that further dehumanize the process of armed conflict in ways that I think have disturbing implications for the future,” Falk said. “Related to that are the concerns I’ve had recently with my preoccupation with the occupation of Gaza of a one-sided warfare where the high-tech side decides how to inflict pain and suffering on the other side that is, essentially, helpless.”

Human rights groups in Pakistan challenge the legality of US drone strikes there and assert that Pakistan can prosecute military and civilians involved for murder.

While stopping short of direct condemnation, international law expert Notre Dame Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell seriously questions the legality of drone attacks in Pakistan. In powerful testimony before Congress and in an article in America magazine she points out that under the charter of the United Nations, international law authorizes nations to kill people in other countries only in self-defense to an armed attack, if authorized by the UN, or is assisting another country in their lawful use of force. Outside of war, she writes, the full body of human rights applies, including the prohibition on killing without warning. Because the US is not at war with Pakistan, using the justification of war to authorize the killings is “to violate fundamental human rights principles.”

Four. Military law of war does not authorize widespread drone killing of civilians

According to the current US Military Law of War Deskbook, the law of war allows killing only when consistent with four key principles: military necessity, distinction, proportionality, and humanity. These principles preclude both direct targeting of civilians and medical personnel but also set out how much “incidental” loss of civilian life is allowed. Some argue precision-guided weapons like drones can be used only when there is no probable cause of civilian deaths. But the US military disputes that burden and instead directs “all practicable precautions” be taken to weigh the anticipated loss of civilian life against the advantages expected to be gained by the strike.

Even using the more lenient standard, there is little legal justification of deliberately allowing the killing of civilians who are “incidental” to the killings of people whose identities are unknown.

Five. Retired high-ranking military and CIA veterans challenge the legality and efficacy of drone killings

Retired US Army Colonel Ann Wright squarely denies the legality of drone warfare, telling Democracy Now: “These drones, you might as well just call them assassination machines. That is what these drones are used for: targeted assassination, extrajudicial ultimate death for people who have not been convicted of anything.”

Drone strikes are also counterproductive. Robert Grenier, recently retired Director of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center, wrote, “One wonders how many Yemenis may be moved in the future to violent extremism in reaction to carelessly targeted missile strikes, and how many Yemeni militants with strictly local agendas will become dedicated enemies of the West in response to US military actions against them.”

Recent polls of the Pakistan people show high levels of anger in Pakistan at US military attacks there. This anger in turn leads to high support for suicide attacks against US military targets.

US Defense of Drone Assassinations

US officials claim these drone killings are not assassinations because the US has the legal right to kill anyone considered a terrorist, anywhere, if they can argue it is in self-defense. Attorney General Holder and White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan recently defended the legality of drone strikes and argued they are not assassinations because the killings are in response to the 9/11 attacks and are carried out in self-defense even when not in Afghanistan or Iraq. This argument is based on the highly criticized claim of anticipatory self-defense which justifies killings in a global war on terror when traditional self-defense would clearly not. The government refuses to provide copies of the legal opinions relied upon by the government.

Growing Resistance to Drone Assassinations

In signs of hope, people in the US are resisting the increasing use of drones.

CODEPINK, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the London-based human rights group Reprieve co-sponsored an International Drone Summit in Washington DC to challenge drone assassinations. Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill noted that Congress only managed to scrape up six votes to oppose the assassination of US citizens abroad. “What is happening to this country? We have become a nation of assassins. We have become a nation that is somehow silent in the face of the idea that assassination should be one of the centerpieces of US policy.”

The American Society of International Law issued a report “Targeting Operations with Drone Technology: Humanitarian Law Implications” in March 2011. Concerned that drones may be the future of warfare, scholars examined three questions in the US use of drone technology: the scope of armed conflict (what is the battlefield upon which deadly force of drone killing is authorized); who may be targeted; and the legal implications of who conducts the targeting (since it is often not military but clandestine CIA agents who decide who dies). Concluding that the US may soon find itself “on the other end of the drone” as this technology expands, they criticize official US silence on these key legal questions.

Others are taking direct action. Select examples include: fourteen people arrested in April 2009 outside Creech Air Force base in Nevada in connection with a protest against drones by the Nevada Desert Experience; in January 2010 people protested drones outside the CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia; in April 2011, thirty-seven were arrested at Hancock Air Force base in upstate New York as part of a four hundred person protest against the use of drones; in October 2011, as part of the International Week of Protest to Stop the Militarization of Space there were protests outside of Raytheon Missile Systems plant in Tucson; in April 2012, twenty-eight people were pre-emptively arrested on their way to protest drones at Hancock Air Force Base.

There is a brilliant new book, DRONE WARFARE authored by global activist Medea Benjamin which documents the nuts and bolts of the drone industry and the money involved in their production and operation. She collects many global media reports of innocent civilian deaths, investigations into these deaths, and gives voice to international opposition groups like her own CODEPINK, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Fellowship of Reconciliation, War Resisters International, Human Rights Watch, the Catholic Worker movement, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and others working against the drones.

As National Public Radio and The New Republic jointly editorialized, there is good reason to doubt the veracity of US claims that drone killings are even effective. Drone use has escalated and expanded the US global war on terror and thus should be subject to higher levels of scrutiny than it is now. As the use of drones escalates so too does the risk of killing innocents which produces “legitimate anti-American anger that terrorist recruiters can exploit….Such a steady escalation of the drone war, and the inevitable increase in civilian casualties that will accompany it, could easily tip the delicate balance that assures we kill more terrorists than we produce.”

There is incredible danger in allowing US military and civilians to murder people anywhere in the world with no public or Congressional or judicial oversight. This authorizes the President and the executive branch, according to the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, to be prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.

The use of drones to assassinate people violates US and international law in multiple ways. US military and civilian employees, who plan, target and execute people in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia are violating the law and, ultimately, risk prosecution. As the technology for drone attacks spreads, protests by the US that drone attacks by others are illegal will sound quite hollow. Continuation of flagrantly illegal drone attacks by the US also risks justifying the exact same actions, taken by others, against us.