Global News Journal

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

India turns up the heat on Pakistan, where will this end?

The language is deliberate, the signals unmistakable: India is turning up the heat on Pakistan for the Mumbai attacks that have  killed at least 195 people, and there is no knowing where this downward spiral in ties between the uneasy neighbours will end.

Beginning with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's warning that a cost will have to be paid by neighbouring nations that allow militants to operate,  to Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee's direct call to Islamabad to "dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism", there is a sharp, cold edge to the tone that you can't miss even factoring in the immediate anger and sense of outrage the attacks have evoked  across India.

Then the signs: Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in India on a previously scheduled visit to review the peace process packing his bags and heading home because Indian political leaders cancelled meetings with him following the attacks.

We have been here before, for sure. A 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, for which like the Mumbai attacks, the  Lashkar-i-Taiba was blamed, triggered a set of measures by New Delhi including breaking sporting and cultural links, downgrading diplomatic relations, and the deployment of the military in full combat readiness all along the Pakistan border.

That military stand-off ended six months later after considerable diplomatic pressure from the United States, Britain and other powers worried about two nuclear-armed nations on the brink of war.

So what are the options for Delhi this time around, beyond striking a menacing posture to force Pakistan to go after elements there which it believes are responsible for violence in India?

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Mumbai attack and Obama’s plans for Afghanistan

from Africa News blog:

Managing anger in the Niger delta

Much of the news that comes out of the Niger Delta, the vast network of creeks home to Africa's biggest oil and gas industry, is generated either by militant leaders claiming spectacular attacks on oil industry installations or by the military, keen to publicise its victories flushing out crude oil thieves from camps nestled deep in the mangroves.

Rarely heard are the voices of the "boys" who have taken up arms and make up the rank and file of the militant gangs. Oil theft on an industrial scale or kidnappings for ransom make some of their bosses rich. Peace negotiations see others rewarded with the veneer of political legitimacy and a comfortable new government-funded lifestyle. But the grunts tend to share little of the spoils.

So an initiative to take them out of the militant camps and send them abroad to be immersed in the teachings of non-violent activists from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela raised - after the initial scepticism - a strong dose of curiosity. After the attempt to "reorientate their psyches", the candidates would be schooled in skills meant to make them employable once they returned back home.

Would they be convinced that they could renounce violence and still fight for their rights? Did they really believe that theirs was a political struggle or were they simply interested in emulating some of their leaders and growing rich from stolen crude, ransom money and government pay-offs?

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Battleground India but Delhi clueless?

An attack of the scale and sophistication unleashed on Mumbai would not be possible without months of planning, and yet it completely went below India's intelligence radar.

Indeed, so unaware were the security agencies that even when the attacks began, the first reaction was these were probably gangland shootings that India's financial capital is known for.   So if the agencies have been so clueless about an attack so mammoth in its sweep, the question experts are beginning to ask is how safe are India's vital assets?

The nuclear facilities for instance ? A chilling thought but one that must be answered, says B. Raman, a former top officer at India's Research and Analysis Wing. "I shiver and sweat at the thought of what is waiting to happen tomorrow and where. The mind boggles as one tries to think and figure out how the terrorists could have planned and carried out terrorist strikes of such magnitude, territorial spread and ferocity without our intelligence and police having been able to get scent of it," Raman, one of India's foremost intelligence experts, wrote. "I could not sleep the whole of last night. One question, which kept bothering me again and again was : how safe are our nuclear establishments and material?"

Of course nuclear installations are far more heavily guarded than a public place such as a hotel, hospital or a railway station and Raman probably means to rouse what he thinks is an establishment gone into deep slumber. But after the attacks on Mumbai, no longer can Indian experts be be going around saying Pakistan is unique in not having a grip on the militant threat. After repeated attacks beginning in Varanasi last year to Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi twice this year and finally Mumbai, and still no wiser as to who is behind them,  New Delhi looks as much at sea as its counterpart in Islamabad.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Can India-Pakistan ties withstand Mumbai bombings?

from FaithWorld:

Thai haj pilgrims find airport chaos a test of faith

David Fox of our Asia Desk in Singapore found this interesting faith story amid the protests at Bangkok's international airport:

BANGKOK - Hundreds of Thai Muslims on a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca were spending a third night sleeping rough at Bangkok's international airport on Thursday, victims of anti-government protests that have paralysed air travel.

Around 700 haj pilgrims, many elderly and frail but hoping to complete one of Islam's most important pillars of faith before they die, prepared to camp out for a third night in the terminal building at Suvarnabhumi airport.

Thinking of bombs from Islamabad to Mumbai

                                                      By Simon Cameron-Moore

Anyone who lives in Islamabad will recall the  moment they heard the explosion of a suicide truck bomb that killed 55 people at the Marriott Hotel on a Saturday night in September.

Sitting in their homes, watching television, having supper, putting their children to sleep, they were physically hit by  the shockwave.

The cause was unmistakable. The sight of flames leaping from the windows of a place where we had all dined, met contacts, and attended conferences was chilling.

A month later, I left a depressed Islamabad for a week’s leave. Many of the foreigners and their families had left the Pakistani capital for good. I just went to India for a break to see colleagues and old friends I first met in the late 1990s during an earlier assignment.

Living in a city spooked by security scares and covering bomb blast after bomb blast inevitably results in a certain morbidity.

from India Insight:

“Sitting here watching the Taj burn down”

Reuters Editor, South Asia, Phil Smith is reporting from outside the landmark Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, where Western hostages are being held.

"The scene at the famous gate of India is chaos, with dozens of army, police and fire trucks struggling to control a situation which began in the late evening on Wednesday. Searchlights illuminate the front of the Taj hotel, as up to five gunmen hold hundreds of hotel guests hostage. There have been several explosions from inside the hotel and earlier, grenades were thrown from windows and exploded in the street.

"At around 3 a.m., a large explosion set fire to the top part of the building, and fires are still burning on the upper floors.

"There have been rescue attempts by firefighters with hotel guests plucked from lower floor front windows by ladder and hydraulic lift. As they fled the scene, they told how they barricaded themselves in their rooms after hearing explosions and automatic fire in the hotel. There are similar scenes across the peninsula at the Trident hotel where another siege is going one.

"As dawn approaches, the fate of the remaining hostages is still unclear."

To listen to Phil's audio account click here.

Fighting graft in Africa. Or not.

 A little while back, we asked who is and isn’t fighting corruption effectively in Africa. This week, a number of examples bring us back to the subject.

In Tanzania, two former ministers have been charged with flouting procurement rules over the award of a tender for auditing gold mining back in 2002. The pair, who deny wrongdoing, served in the government of President Jakaya Kikwete’s predecessor Benjamin Mkapa. One of them also served under Kikwete himself.

Tanzania’s pledge to fight corruption is under close donor scrutiny and given the level of aid that Tanzania gets – more than one tenth of GDP by 2005 figures – it has little choice but to show willing. There have been doubts in the past, however, about how serious the government really was about going after the most senior and the best connected.

from FaithWorld:

Exercised over yoga in Malaysia

Of all the things to get exercised about, yoga would seem to be an unlikely candidate for controversy. But such has been the case in Malaysia this week.

Malaysia's prime minister declared on Wednesday that Muslims can after all practice the Indian exercise regime, so long as they avoid the meditation and chantings that reflect Hindu philosophy. This came after Malaysia's National Fatwa Council told Muslims to roll up their exercise mats and stop contorting their limbs because yoga could destroy the faith of Muslims.

It has been a tough month for the fatwa council chairman, Abdul Shukor Husin, who in late October issued an edict against young women wearing trousers, saying that was a slippery path to lesbianism. Gay sex is outlawed in Malaysia.

The council's rulings, and other religious controversies, might at first blush seem to indicate a growing strain of conservative Islam in mostly Muslim Malaysia. But it could also reflect the growing unease of Islamic authorities in defending the faith in a rapidly modernising Malaysia where non-Muslims constitute 40 percent of the population and are increasingly asserting their rights.

The yoga fatwa stirred up a hornet's next, not only in the blogosphere where that could be expected, but in another deeply conservative Malaysian institution -- the sultans.  Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, who presides ceremonially over the central state of Selangor, said Abdul's fatwa council should have consulted the nine hereditary Malay rulers who take turns being Malaysia's king before announcing the ruling.  The highly unusual comment from one of the sultans on a policy matter suggests some discord about who speaks for Malaysia's Muslims on matters of faith. Islam is the official religion in multi-religious Malaysia and the constitution designates the nine sultans as guardians of the faith. The (rotating) king is the head of Islam in Malaysia.

The sultans, for their part, have seen what remains of their secular powers eroded over the years, particularly under the two-decade administration of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. They could be defending a last bastion of royal prerogoative in the religious arena.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badaw, who has been preaching a moderate brand of Islam called Islam Hadhari, moved to contain the damage saying Muslims can do exercises like the "sun salutation" so long as they don't start chanting.