The bloodshed in Mumbai continues to be horrific. One of my great grad students, Anant Goenka, hails from that part of the world and is blogging about it here.
Check it out as he will stay on top of it.
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I wonder what Randy Paul means by “backlash.” Let’s see now — a highly trained, well financed organization with access to shipping and automatic weapons attacks a civilian population, taking special care to murder Jews, killing over a hundred people and wounding at least three times that many. What, then, is a proper response? This certainly was an act of war and multiple acts of terrorism against a civilian population. It remains to be seen whether any governmental entities (or quasi-governmental entities) are involved, but it certainly demands a strong response. Perhaps Mr Paul is suggesting that the Indian government needs to take special care to protect its 100 million Moslems from its billion non-moslems; this is obvious, but not obviously possible.
I think that by “backlash” Randy’s suggesting that it’s not inconceivable that after a terror attack a government might engage in a response that’s some combination of disproportional, opportunistic or wholly misdirected. (See “Iraq, invasion of”.) Also as you suggest, these things heighten existing ethnic and religious tensions (and that’s likely the intent.) “Backlash” could well define the category of response that the terrorists themselves are hoping for.
By backlash, I mean precisely what your last sentence was, Bob and there is historical precedent in the recent past for this.
Honestly, do you really think I believe that counterattacks against terrorists are backlash? That doesn’t even fit the basic definition of the word.
If India were to attack, say Kenya, a country that had nothing to do with this as a result of these horrific incidents, then that would be completely out of line.
Of course, as Reg notes, there is recent historical precedent for this.
* Jason Burke in Bahawalpur
* guardian.co.uk, Saturday November 29 2008 00.01 GMT
* The Guardian, Saturday November 29 2008
* Article history
Down dusty lanes in the southern Punjabi town of Bahawalpur are two religious schools that are well known to security services on both sides of the Pakistani-Indian border and further afield.
They do not look like centres of global terrorism. Earlier this week when the Guardian visited, students poured out of the Dar ul-Uloom Medina at the end of morning lessons and teachers sat on rope beds drinking tea and eating bananas. The high-walled, heavy-gated Usman au Ali school in the heart of the city was quiet.
Yet appearances may be deceptive. Both schools are accused of being recruitment and logistics bases for Jaish-e-Muhammad, a militant group now among India’s suspects for this week’s Mumbai attacks. Elsewhere in Bahawalpur and in the surrounding villages are other schools and safehouses linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the other group in the frame.
Both groups have their roots in the conflict over the disputed Himalayan state of Kashmir. Developing out of irregular militias to fight Indian security forces in the Indian-administered parts of Kashmir in the early 1990s with the encouragement and support of Pakistani intelligence services, the groups’ fighters have been blamed by the Indian government for a catalogue of atrocities.
They include a gun and grenade assault on the parliament buildings in Delhi in 2001, hundreds of violent killings in Kashmir over the last decade and a half, the 2002 killing of Jewish-American journalist Daniel Pearl, an airplane hijacking, and bombings in Indian cities.
The result is that although Pakistan’s tribal areas along the frontier with Afghanistan are internationally known as “al-Qaida central”, it is towards the towns and villages of Pakistan’s Punjab province that New Delhi’s finger is now pointing.
Islamabad’s policy of using such groups as proxies is long-standing.
“Given the power asymmetry between the two neighbours, Pakistan knows that it is the weaker militarily and that bleeding India is one way of attaining strategic aims and using paramilitary groups with plausible deniability is one way of doing that,” said Farzana Shaikh of the Chatham House thinktank.
In recent years the dynamic has changed although judging how far is hard. In 2002 Pervez Musharraf, then Pakistan’s president, banned Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which had been openly fundraising and recruiting. Assassination attempts on him and the occupation and armed siege of the Red Mosque in central Islamabad had brought home the perils of trying to manage the militants, however useful they appeared to be.
Analysts say the militants are more fragmented than before and that although the Pakistani security establishment maintains some control over some of them, others have turned against their former patrons. Other outlets for their energies may also have been sought. Some young volunteers may be diverted to Afghanistan rather than to Kashmir, where fighting has calmed in recent years.
With British officials trying to verify Indian statements that at least two of the militants involved in the Mumbai attacks were British-born, the role of the Pakistani groups and the role of the Pakistani security establishment will now come under greater scrutiny than ever.
Well if the terrorists had trained in Afghanistan with the aid and connivance of the Afghan government, then yes India should. Basic self defense really.
Sure, of course they do. But the British name was changed by an extreme right Hindu nationalist party that seems unaccountably lacking in appreciation for the British role in saving India first from the Mughals and then from itself. I often support extreme right nationalists, but it is generally not a reasonable position to take in a country that for centuries has been the same sort of multicultural pesthole that many on the Left are trying to turn America into. No sense in saying “there goes the neighborhood,” better just try to get along. It’s Bombay.
Brown people are entitled to throw off whatever shackles they please. Islamic shackles, or European ones. European ones being ssoooooooo oppressive, you know, like outlawing sati (widow-burning) and sending Gandhi off to Oxford.
Or taxing the population and keeping them in a state of subjugation, calling them wogs. Please dear God, defend the Raj.
While you’re at it why not defend the colonial administration of Belgium and Portugal in Africa? No doubt by your standards they’re shining beacons as well.
I’ll reserve the right to be a little morally obtuse, put on my liberal internationalist hat and join Hitchens (and Andrew Sullivan) in referring to the city by its proper name.
Just for the record, Hitchens’ comparison with Burma is false on its face. Burma is under a military dictatorship; India is a democracy. His claim that the stock exchange and hospital use the name Bombay falls into the “so what” realm. I’ve lived in New York since 1980 and have yet to hear anyone refer to Avenue of the Americas as anything but 6th Avenue.
I guess I do have a double standard in the sense that in the present day I believe the US and other western powers ought to more or less leave other peoples and cultures alone, whereas I also think that, on balance, western colonialism from 1600-1950 was basically a positive force, for both for the colonialists AND for the colonized.
That is to say, footbinding, widow-burning and genital mutliation ARE truly obnoxious practices. It WAS a net plus for people south of the Sahara to learn for the first time about great, useful discoveries like the wheel. And, YES, black people were much, much better off living in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia than they are living in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or living in the French colonial empire as opposed to the Central African Republic, that great place that was run in the sevenites and eighties by that cuddly little honest-to-goodness cannibal known as “Emperor” Bokassa.
I suppose my main rationale for supporting imperialism in the past while opposing it today is I believe that today it weakens Europe and its people, while in prior centuries it appeared not to.
Still avoided any mention of Belgium and Portugal. Also avoided mentioning apartheid South Africa.
So yes, if you want to take the worst examples go ahead, by all means, but be intellectually honest. Do you think Ghana is better under colonial rule or as an independent nation? Do you think that the DRC, formerly Zaire, was better under the original kleptocrat who we helped install Mobutu Sese Seko, a man Ronald Reagan described as “a voice of good sense and goodwill” or Patrice Lumumba?
Was King Leopold’s viceroys better for cutting off the hands of the citizens and looting the DRC? Was Angola better for having been looted for decades by Portugal, then tossed aside to fend for itself after the Revolution of the Carnations, then being used as a proxy for the Cold War? How about Mozambique? How about Rwanda and Burundi? Were they better off for Belgium setting one ethnic group against another for decades?
How about we make a deal: I’ll agree that post-colonialism has turned out or may turn out pretty well in parts of Africa if you’ll admit that colonialism wasn’t all bad. I would suspect the countries that would be doing the best would be the ones that had the strongest British influence and the least Arabic influence would be doing the best. I’ve heard fairly good things about Ghana.
I know nothing about Belgian colonies in Africa aside from having read Heart of Darkness and reading somewhere else that the Belgians were terribly brutal colonialists, which I don’t doubt is the case. I ought to learn more and intend to do so as soon as possible. I am reflexively hostile to the notion that whitey came down to the Garden of Eden and screwed everything up for the noble savages, which is usually the beginning, middle and east of the leftist narrative on colonialism. But hey, let the truth be known.
You also probably also know more about South Africa than I do. From what I see, it has become an unpleasant and very dangerous place, especially for white people and for women of all races. But, hey, what do I know, I read Jared Taylor and maybe he’s a flat out liar. If he is, I’d like to know so that I can set him straight:
“Under white rule, South Africa was climbing steadily in the UN’s Human Development Index. It reversed course the first year of black rule and has dropped ever since. South Africa can no longer keep accurate crime statistics, but it is unquestionably one of the most dangerous places on earth. Anyone who can afford to lives in a private fortress, and carjacking is so common it is considered foolish to stop at a red light after dark. Amazon.com limits shipping to South Africa because postal workers steal so many packages. Interpol reports that South Africa has the highest rape rate in the world—and the highest AIDS rate. About one-fifth of South African men admit they have raped a woman, and an estimated 35 percent of the armed forces have AIDS. Race preferences for blacks are so ruthless that approximately 50 percent of white men are self-employed and nearly a million whites have emigrated, most citing crime and race preferences.”
Yes there is crime in South Africa, but if you want to make the case that white rule was a boon to all South Africans and use that racist, Jared Taylor to make your case, then we have nothing to talk about.
How about we make a deal: I’ll agree that post-colonialism has turned out or may turn out pretty well in parts of Africa if you’ll admit that colonialism wasn’t all bad
Not every instance was as bad as others, but every nation has the right to determine its own way, free of colonial interference.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Another good source is Global Voices Online. After this is done, I pra that there is no backlash.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I wonder what Randy Paul means by “backlash.” Let’s see now — a highly trained, well financed organization with access to shipping and automatic weapons attacks a civilian population, taking special care to murder Jews, killing over a hundred people and wounding at least three times that many. What, then, is a proper response? This certainly was an act of war and multiple acts of terrorism against a civilian population. It remains to be seen whether any governmental entities (or quasi-governmental entities) are involved, but it certainly demands a strong response. Perhaps Mr Paul is suggesting that the Indian government needs to take special care to protect its 100 million Moslems from its billion non-moslems; this is obvious, but not obviously possible.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I think that by “backlash” Randy’s suggesting that it’s not inconceivable that after a terror attack a government might engage in a response that’s some combination of disproportional, opportunistic or wholly misdirected. (See “Iraq, invasion of”.) Also as you suggest, these things heighten existing ethnic and religious tensions (and that’s likely the intent.) “Backlash” could well define the category of response that the terrorists themselves are hoping for.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
By backlash, I mean precisely what your last sentence was, Bob and there is historical precedent in the recent past for this.
Honestly, do you really think I believe that counterattacks against terrorists are backlash? That doesn’t even fit the basic definition of the word.
If India were to attack, say Kenya, a country that had nothing to do with this as a result of these horrific incidents, then that would be completely out of line.
Of course, as Reg notes, there is recent historical precedent for this.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Listen you spiders spinning your spin…calm down.
From the BBC
Militant suspects have roots in Kashmir conflict
* Jason Burke in Bahawalpur
* guardian.co.uk, Saturday November 29 2008 00.01 GMT
* The Guardian, Saturday November 29 2008
* Article history
Down dusty lanes in the southern Punjabi town of Bahawalpur are two religious schools that are well known to security services on both sides of the Pakistani-Indian border and further afield.
They do not look like centres of global terrorism. Earlier this week when the Guardian visited, students poured out of the Dar ul-Uloom Medina at the end of morning lessons and teachers sat on rope beds drinking tea and eating bananas. The high-walled, heavy-gated Usman au Ali school in the heart of the city was quiet.
Yet appearances may be deceptive. Both schools are accused of being recruitment and logistics bases for Jaish-e-Muhammad, a militant group now among India’s suspects for this week’s Mumbai attacks. Elsewhere in Bahawalpur and in the surrounding villages are other schools and safehouses linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the other group in the frame.
Both groups have their roots in the conflict over the disputed Himalayan state of Kashmir. Developing out of irregular militias to fight Indian security forces in the Indian-administered parts of Kashmir in the early 1990s with the encouragement and support of Pakistani intelligence services, the groups’ fighters have been blamed by the Indian government for a catalogue of atrocities.
They include a gun and grenade assault on the parliament buildings in Delhi in 2001, hundreds of violent killings in Kashmir over the last decade and a half, the 2002 killing of Jewish-American journalist Daniel Pearl, an airplane hijacking, and bombings in Indian cities.
The result is that although Pakistan’s tribal areas along the frontier with Afghanistan are internationally known as “al-Qaida central”, it is towards the towns and villages of Pakistan’s Punjab province that New Delhi’s finger is now pointing.
Islamabad’s policy of using such groups as proxies is long-standing.
“Given the power asymmetry between the two neighbours, Pakistan knows that it is the weaker militarily and that bleeding India is one way of attaining strategic aims and using paramilitary groups with plausible deniability is one way of doing that,” said Farzana Shaikh of the Chatham House thinktank.
In recent years the dynamic has changed although judging how far is hard. In 2002 Pervez Musharraf, then Pakistan’s president, banned Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which had been openly fundraising and recruiting. Assassination attempts on him and the occupation and armed siege of the Red Mosque in central Islamabad had brought home the perils of trying to manage the militants, however useful they appeared to be.
Analysts say the militants are more fragmented than before and that although the Pakistani security establishment maintains some control over some of them, others have turned against their former patrons. Other outlets for their energies may also have been sought. Some young volunteers may be diverted to Afghanistan rather than to Kashmir, where fighting has calmed in recent years.
With British officials trying to verify Indian statements that at least two of the militants involved in the Mumbai attacks were British-born, the role of the Pakistani groups and the role of the Pakistani security establishment will now come under greater scrutiny than ever.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Oops I meant Guardian UK
and for a story like this far more reliable news will come out of the UK
even from The Telegraph (Tory paper, but good news reporting) or Times
November 29th, 2008 at 8:13 am
India should invade and occupy Afghanistan!
That’ll show ‘em who’s boss!
November 30th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Well if the terrorists had trained in Afghanistan with the aid and connivance of the Afghan government, then yes India should. Basic self defense really.
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:54 pm
It’s Bombay, not Mumbai.
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:28 pm
No, it’s Mumbai. It was Bombay, but it was officially changed in 1996. Surely you believe a nation’s citizens have the right to name their own citis.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Sure, of course they do. But the British name was changed by an extreme right Hindu nationalist party that seems unaccountably lacking in appreciation for the British role in saving India first from the Mughals and then from itself. I often support extreme right nationalists, but it is generally not a reasonable position to take in a country that for centuries has been the same sort of multicultural pesthole that many on the Left are trying to turn America into. No sense in saying “there goes the neighborhood,” better just try to get along. It’s Bombay.
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I often support extreme right nationalists,
No shit.
It’s Bombay.
Only in wingnut world.
lacking in appreciation for the British role in saving India first from the Mughals and then from itself.
Shorter White Cornerback: it’s alright for us white people to throw off the shackles of colonialism, but not for those brown people.
You’re morally obtuse.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:09 am
Brown people are entitled to throw off whatever shackles they please. Islamic shackles, or European ones. European ones being ssoooooooo oppressive, you know, like outlawing sati (widow-burning) and sending Gandhi off to Oxford.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:31 am
Or taxing the population and keeping them in a state of subjugation, calling them wogs. Please dear God, defend the Raj.
While you’re at it why not defend the colonial administration of Belgium and Portugal in Africa? No doubt by your standards they’re shining beacons as well.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:32 am
Hitchens expounds on changing the name of Bombay, and also Burma:
http://www.slate.com/id/2205710/
I’ll reserve the right to be a little morally obtuse, put on my liberal internationalist hat and join Hitchens (and Andrew Sullivan) in referring to the city by its proper name.
God Save The King!
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:18 am
There is no King of England at the moment.
As if I should take seriously Hitchens use of the word Bombay. BFD.
While you’re extolling British Colonialism, perhaps you can find a way to excuse the Opium Wars by saying its better than binding women’s feet.
You’re not just morally obtuse; you’re a fan of double standards.
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:29 am
Just for the record, Hitchens’ comparison with Burma is false on its face. Burma is under a military dictatorship; India is a democracy. His claim that the stock exchange and hospital use the name Bombay falls into the “so what” realm. I’ve lived in New York since 1980 and have yet to hear anyone refer to Avenue of the Americas as anything but 6th Avenue.
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:55 am
Randy,
I guess I do have a double standard in the sense that in the present day I believe the US and other western powers ought to more or less leave other peoples and cultures alone, whereas I also think that, on balance, western colonialism from 1600-1950 was basically a positive force, for both for the colonialists AND for the colonized.
That is to say, footbinding, widow-burning and genital mutliation ARE truly obnoxious practices. It WAS a net plus for people south of the Sahara to learn for the first time about great, useful discoveries like the wheel. And, YES, black people were much, much better off living in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia than they are living in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, or living in the French colonial empire as opposed to the Central African Republic, that great place that was run in the sevenites and eighties by that cuddly little honest-to-goodness cannibal known as “Emperor” Bokassa.
I suppose my main rationale for supporting imperialism in the past while opposing it today is I believe that today it weakens Europe and its people, while in prior centuries it appeared not to.
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Still avoided any mention of Belgium and Portugal. Also avoided mentioning apartheid South Africa.
So yes, if you want to take the worst examples go ahead, by all means, but be intellectually honest. Do you think Ghana is better under colonial rule or as an independent nation? Do you think that the DRC, formerly Zaire, was better under the original kleptocrat who we helped install Mobutu Sese Seko, a man Ronald Reagan described as “a voice of good sense and goodwill” or Patrice Lumumba?
Was King Leopold’s viceroys better for cutting off the hands of the citizens and looting the DRC? Was Angola better for having been looted for decades by Portugal, then tossed aside to fend for itself after the Revolution of the Carnations, then being used as a proxy for the Cold War? How about Mozambique? How about Rwanda and Burundi? Were they better off for Belgium setting one ethnic group against another for decades?
Do tell . . .
December 3rd, 2008 at 4:49 pm
How about we make a deal: I’ll agree that post-colonialism has turned out or may turn out pretty well in parts of Africa if you’ll admit that colonialism wasn’t all bad. I would suspect the countries that would be doing the best would be the ones that had the strongest British influence and the least Arabic influence would be doing the best. I’ve heard fairly good things about Ghana.
I know nothing about Belgian colonies in Africa aside from having read Heart of Darkness and reading somewhere else that the Belgians were terribly brutal colonialists, which I don’t doubt is the case. I ought to learn more and intend to do so as soon as possible. I am reflexively hostile to the notion that whitey came down to the Garden of Eden and screwed everything up for the noble savages, which is usually the beginning, middle and east of the leftist narrative on colonialism. But hey, let the truth be known.
You also probably also know more about South Africa than I do. From what I see, it has become an unpleasant and very dangerous place, especially for white people and for women of all races. But, hey, what do I know, I read Jared Taylor and maybe he’s a flat out liar. If he is, I’d like to know so that I can set him straight:
“Under white rule, South Africa was climbing steadily in the UN’s Human Development Index. It reversed course the first year of black rule and has dropped ever since. South Africa can no longer keep accurate crime statistics, but it is unquestionably one of the most dangerous places on earth. Anyone who can afford to lives in a private fortress, and carjacking is so common it is considered foolish to stop at a red light after dark. Amazon.com limits shipping to South Africa because postal workers steal so many packages. Interpol reports that South Africa has the highest rape rate in the world—and the highest AIDS rate. About one-fifth of South African men admit they have raped a woman, and an estimated 35 percent of the armed forces have AIDS. Race preferences for blacks are so ruthless that approximately 50 percent of white men are self-employed and nearly a million whites have emigrated, most citing crime and race preferences.”
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2008/11/transition_to_b.php
December 4th, 2008 at 7:00 am
I know nothing about Belgian colonies in Africa
And it shows. Read King Leopold’s Ghost.
Yes there is crime in South Africa, but if you want to make the case that white rule was a boon to all South Africans and use that racist, Jared Taylor to make your case, then we have nothing to talk about.
How about we make a deal: I’ll agree that post-colonialism has turned out or may turn out pretty well in parts of Africa if you’ll admit that colonialism wasn’t all bad
Not every instance was as bad as others, but every nation has the right to determine its own way, free of colonial interference.