|
Sri Lanka: Tamil detainees
reunifying with families
Jehan Perera in Colombo
The opening of the road to Jaffna was one of the dividends of the presidential election. It illustrated the benefits that could accrue to the people due to the competitive bidding for votes by rival political parties. In its bid to attract votes from the North prior to the presidential election, the government relaxed several of its security measures. One of these was the restrictions on travel to Jaffna by the A9 highway. This was promise that the government has kept even after the election.
Unfortunately, as I discovered on a visit to Jaffna last week, there were also promises the government made and did not keep which has bitterly disappointed the people. They include the reunification of detainees in the camps with their families, and the dismantling of High Security Zones to enable people to get back their long lost lands.
The last occasion I had travelled along the A9 highway up to Jaffna was in 2005 during the period of the Ceasefire Agreement and just prior to the presidential election that the LTTE decreed the Tamil people should boycott. Even at the tail end of the ceasefire there was quite a lot of traffic on the road beyond Vavuniya and running through the LTTE-controlled area.
Large numbers of Sinhalese people from the South used the period of the ceasefire to make the pilgrimage to the historic place of Buddhist worship in Nagadipa, which is among the eight most sacred Buddhist places of worship on the island.
But there was a difference this time. The travellers in the buses were more relaxed. This was evident in the fact that at various intervals along the road there were groups of people who had stopped their buses and were having little picnics by the side of the road.
When LTTE controlled
By way of contrast, during the period of the ceasefire there was a more regimented flow of traffic. The LTTE monitored the road north of Vavuniya and drivers of vehicles took care to observe the strict speed limits set by the LTTE, as its traffic police could impose stiff fines on those who violated their traffic rules.
During the ceasefire period, there was also an apprehension of LTTE cadres and roadside landmines that deterred travellers from getting off their vehicles and relaxing by the roadside. This was accompanied by the belief that the LTTE did not permit anyone to get off their vehicles between Vavuniya and Jaffna, and no one appeared willing to take the chance that they might indeed mean business. The LTTE was then a powerful force, and a virtual government in that part of the country. But now with the LTTE defeated nine months ago, there was no fear factor to deter the pilgrim travellers.
Southern influx
In their bid to win the votes of the people, government politicians have been emphasising the government's victory in war over the LTTE, which previous governments were unable to do. Unless handled sensitively, this triumphal attitude can spill over into one that sees the North as a place of conquest rather than a place of equal citizenship. There is an urging of the Sinhalese people in the South to travel to the North to see the history of their country and appreciate the sacrifice of the soldiers who heroically fought the war and, of course, the political leadership who made this all possible.
The increased tourist traffic from the South to Jaffna is incredible. When I went to the Nallur Temple on Saturday morning, I saw more than 10 buses of all sizes, big and small, parked by and streams of pilgrims going into the temple precincts. This increased tourism has been a boon to some sectors of the population in Jaffna and given a boost to the local economy. There is a high demand for local products such as dried fish and prawns and other products. Apparently the demand is so high that similar products from the South are imported to Jaffna and sold to unsuspecting customers who are prepared to pay premium prices to obtain something genuine from Jaffna.
Rooms in hotels and guesthouses are also marketed at a premium rate of between Rs 2000 to 4000 per night. This matches the rates in Colombo and other parts of the country where the main market is for foreign tourists. This has led some house owners in Jaffna to terminate their tenancy agreements and convert their spare rooms into guest rooms for the local tourists. Despite this market-induced increase in the number of rooms available for tourists the number falls significantly short of the demand. During the years of the war, investment in housing and property in Jaffna was understandably low. Not many people wished to put their investments in assets that might be blown up in the course of fighting. As a result many of the pilgrims coming in from the South are unable to find affordable accommodation.
This impels many of the pilgrims to find temporary accommodation in public spaces such as parks and inside the buses that transport them which are parked in public places. But this again is part of the pilgrimage tradition in the South, where pilgrims to other sacred places such as Adam's Peak and Kataragama also engage in similar practices. But for Jaffna this type of mass influx of pilgrims is a new experience. The shortage of infrastructure in Jaffna also extends to toilet and washing facilities. These are factors that are causing distress amongst the local population that need to be dealt with in a suitable manner by the government authorities. There are reports that the government is planning to convert some abandoned buildings into pilgrims' retiring places which is a welcome initiative.
Concern in Jaffna
However, the lack of infrastructure facilities to accommodate the influx of pilgrims is not the only concern of the people in Jaffna. Another of the concerns expressed to me by those I spoke to in Jaffna was the lack of seriousness and respect with which their religious shrines were being treated. Most of the Southern pilgrims to the North would be only coming to Hindu temples as the lesser part of their pilgrimage to the ancient Buddhist place of worship at Nagadipa. Going to a Hindu temple is a serious matter for those who are Hindus. True worshippers are expected to have a bath or at least wash their feet before entering the temple. But the pilgrims who have come from far away are often in no position to conform to these requirements. On some occasions the men may not remove their shirts although tradition dictates that they must.
It is indeed worrisome that at the Presidential Election that was held in January and now again at the General Election is to be held in April, the issue of a just and mutually acceptable political solution to the ethnic conflict is nowhere close to the centre stage in the campaign. The slogans of the main political parties, both of the government and opposition, are bereft of mention of such an initiative. As a beginning in creating a just and mutually acceptable political solution, the government could seek to work closer with the local authorities to ensure that there is better regulation of the people's pilgrimage to Jaffna.
 ^ TOP OF THIS PAGE ^ MAIN PAGE
ISLAMABAD DIARY
Pak women make their mark
Jonaid Iqbal
The International Women's Day celebration in Pakistan this year offered some space for working women, for example, the law passed by the Parliament against harassment of women at work. The bill was moved by former Information Minister Sherry Rehman, and on Wednesday it was finally signed into a law by President Zardari. A number of women legislators surrounded the President during signing the legislation document.
On the other hand, women voiced cheers for the assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, credited with bringing forward a bold outlook to serve the women. Benazir herself suffered ignominy by being sent to jail at the age of only 24.
There were more other developments marking the Women's Day celebration. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani at a grand function Monday night announced creation of a new post of Woman Ombudsman, in addition to approval of the total funding and the statutory power to the National Commission for Women. He also issued orders for establishment of hostels for working women at Islamabad and Peshawar.
If the Commission works, we may see an end to women being deprived of inheritance. Shares in family land and homes often go only to male brothers, and sometimes we see denial of their rights, for example, in marriage of a girl, an ugly totally anti-religious custom that goes against the status Islam has conferred on womanhood.
Saima's Bazaar-Bazaar
In between, we came across a series of talks, one given by Saima Zaidi, author of the recent best-seller Bazaar-Bazaar, a book on design. She took the audience (largely Pakistani women) on a journey of visual presentation of culture that has passed through different stages. Here we met Zarmaine Ansari, an architect, who has contributed a chapter in Bazaar-Bazaar.
'We only talk about disenfranchised women or the fashion-makers, and the women who take backseats were not mentioned,' she told me, referring also to the woman entrepreneur Anjum Rana, who emphatically won appreciation of the West for her Pakistani truck art.
Woman flier Ambreen
Here, perhaps we might also talk about Ambreen, who created a history in Pakistan by becoming one of the country's first female fighter pilots. However, last Sunday she was due to swap her flight schedule for an arranged marriage.
"It's all set and planned, but I haven't talked to him," she admits, her face scrubbed clean and wearing a Pakistan Air Force (PAF) jumpsuit — a far cry from the make-up and ornate dress she wore for the wedding, one day prior to the Women's Day celebrations.
The wedding between Flight Lieutenant Ambreen Gul, 25, and an engineer from Islamabad, was arranged by their families in the best Pakistani tradition. She saw her husband only once before and she has barely exchanged a word with him.
In 2006, seven women broke into one of Pakistan's most exclusive male clubs to graduate as fighter pilots — perhaps the most prestigious job in the powerful military and for six decades closed to the fairer sex.
One such exhibition arranged by Serena's environmental and development chapter, had brought together 37 small businesswomen, engaged in small enterprises run by local communities. It proved to be a platform for learning a large number of skills brought at the doorsteps of women.
At the exhibition there were an amazing number of stalls from the backward region of Hunza, Gilgit and Baltistan and also one from Dhaka Ahsania Mission. It reminded us of the severed part, once called East Pakistan.
^ TOP OF THIS PAGE ^ MAIN PAGE
The truth about the Mossad
Ian Black
Last November, a sharp-eyed Israeli woman named Niva Ben-Harush was alarmed to notice a young man attaching something that looked suspiciously like a bomb to the underside of a car in a quiet street near Tel Aviv port. When police arrested him, he claimed to be an agent of the Mossad secret service taking part in a training exercise: his story turned out to be true though the bomb was a fake.
No comment was forthcoming from the Israeli prime minister's office, which formally speaks for but invariably says nothing about the country's world-famous espionage organisation. The bungling bomber was just a brief item on that evening's local TV news.
There was, however, a far bigger story one that echoed across the globe two years ago this week, when a bomb in a Pajero jeep in Damascus decapitated a man named Imad Mughniyeh. Mughniyeh was the military leader of Lebanon's Shia movement Hizbullah, an ally of Iran, and was wanted by the US, France and half a dozen other countries. Israel never went beyond cryptic nodding and winking about that killing in the heart of the Syrian capital, but it is widely believed to have been one of its most daring and sophisticated clandestine operations.
The Mossad, like other intelligence services, tends to attract attention only when something goes wrong, or when it boasts a spectacular success and wants to send a warning signal to its enemies. Last month's assassination of a senior Hamas official in Dubai, now at the centre of a white-hot diplomatic row between Israel and Britain, is a curious mixture of both.
With its cloned foreign passports, multiple disguises, state-of-the-art communications and the murder of alleged arms smuggler Mahmoud al-Mabhouh one of the few elements of the plot that was not captured on the emirate's CCTV cameras it is a riveting tale of professional chutzpah, violence and cold calculation. And with the Palestinian Islamist movement now vowing to take revenge, it seems grimly certain that it will bring more bloodshed in its wake.
The images from Dubai follow the biblical injunction (and the Mossad's old motto):"By way of deception thou shalt make war." The agency's job, its website explains more prosaically, is to "collect information, analyse intelligence and perform special covert operations beyond [Israel's] borders."
Founded in 1948 along with the new Jewish state, the Mossad largely stayed in the shadows in its early years. Yitzhak Shamir, a former Stern Gang terrorist and future prime minister, ran operations targeting German scientists who were helping Nasser's Egypt build rockets foreshadowing later Israeli campaigns to disrupt Iraqi and (continuing) Iranian attempts to acquire nuclear and other weapons.
The Mossad's most celebrated exploits included the abduction of the fugitive Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was later tried and hanged in Israel. Others were organising the defection of an Iraqi pilot who flew his MiG-21 to Israel, and support for Iraqi Kurdish rebels against Baghdad. Military secrets acquired by Elie Cohen, the infamous spy who penetrated the Syrian leadership, helped Israel conquer the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war.
It was after that that the service's role expanded to fight the Palestinians, who had been galvanised under Yasser Arafat into resisting Israel in the newly occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The 1970s saw the so-called "war of the spooks" with Mossad officers, operating under diplomatic cover abroad, recruiting and running informants in Fatah and other Palestinian groups. Baruch Cohen, an Arabic speaker on loan to the Mossad from the Shin Bet internal security service, was shot in a Madrid cafe by his own agent. Bassam Abu Sharif, of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was badly disfigured by a Mossad parcel bomb sent to him in Beirut.
Steven Spielberg's 2006 film Munich helped mythologise the Mossad's hunt for the Black September terrorists who massacred 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Eleven of them were eliminated in killings across Europe, culminating in the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer, where a Moroccan waiter was mistaken for Ali Hassan Salameh, the Munich plot's mastermind. Salameh was eventually killed by a car bomb in Beirut in 1979 the sort of incident that made Lebanese and Palestinians sit up and notice last year's botched training episode in Tel Aviv.
Some details of the assassination of Mabhouh last month echo elements of the campaign against Black September which ended with the catastrophic arrest of five Mossad agents. Sylvia Raphael, a South African-born Christian with a Jewish father, spent five years in a Norwegian prison; she may have been among the young Europeans in Israel who were discreetly asked, in nondescript offices in Tel Aviv, if they wished to volunteer for sensitive work involving Israel's security. Other agents who had been exposed had to be recalled, safe houses abandoned, phone numbers changed and operational methods modified.
Over the years, the Mossad's image has been badly tarnished at home as well as abroad. It was blamed in part for failing to get wind of Egyptian-Syrian plans for the devastating attack that launched the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Critics wondered whether the spies had got their priorities right by focusing on hunting down Palestinian gunmen in the back alleys of European cities, when they should have been stealing secrets in Cairo and Damascus. The Mossad also played a significant, though still little-known, role in the covert supply of arms to Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran to help fight Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as part of the Iran-Contra scandal during Ronald Reagan's presidency.
It has, in addition, suffered occasional blows from its own disgruntled employees. In 1990, a Canadian-born former officer called Victor Ostrovsky blew the whistle on its internal organisation, training and methods, revealing codenames including "Kidon" (bayonet), the unit in charge of assassinations. An official smear campaign failed to stop Ostrovsky's book, so the agency kept quiet when another ostensibly inside account came out in 2007. It described the use of shortwave radios for sending encoded transmissions, operations in Iran for collecting soil samples, and joint operations with the CIA against Hezbollah.
But the worst own goal came in 1997, during Binyamin Netanyahu's first term as prime minister. Mossad agents tried but failed to assassinate Khaled Mash'al the same Hamas leader who is now warning of retaliation for Mabhouh's murder by injecting poison into his ear in Amman, Jordan. Using forged Canadian passports, they fled to the Israeli embassy, triggering outrage and a huge diplomatic crisis with Jordan. Danny Yatom, the then Mossad chief, was forced to quit. Ephraim Halevy, a quietly spoken former Londoner, was brought back from retirement to clear up the mess.
The Dubai assassination, however, may yet turn out to be far more damaging not least because the political and diplomatic context has changed in the last decade. Israel's reputation has suffered an unprecedented battering, reaching a new low during last year's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. "In the current climate, the traces left behind in Dubai are likely to lead to very serious harm to Israel's international standing," the former diplomat Alon Liel commented yesterday.
Even though Israel is maintaining its traditional policy of "ambiguity" about clandestine operations, refusing to confirm or deny any involvement in Dubai, nobody in the world seems to seriously question it. That includes almost all Israeli commentators, who are bound by the rules of military censorship in a small and talkative country where secrets are often quite widely known.
It would be surprising if a key part of this extraordinary story did not turn out to be the role played by Palestinians. It is still Mossad practice to recruit double agents, just as it was with the PLO back in the 1970s. News of the arrest in Damascus of another senior Hamas operative though denied by Mash'al seems to point in this direction. Two other Palestinians extradited from Jordan to Dubai are members of the Hamas armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam brigades, suggesting treachery may indeed have been involved. Previous assassinations have involved a Palestinian agent identifying the target.
Yossi Melman, the expert on intelligence for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, worries that, as before the 1973 war, the Israeli government may be getting it wrong by focusing on the wrong enemy the Palestinians instead of prioritising Iran and Hizbullah.
"The Mossad is not Murder Inc, like the Mafia; its goal is not to take vengeance on its enemies," he wrote this week. "'Special operations' like the assassination in Dubai if this indeed was a Mossad operation have always accounted for a relatively small proportion of its overall activity. Nevertheless, these are the operations that give the organisation its halo, its shining image. This is ultimately liable to blind its own ranks, cause them to become intoxicated by their own success, and thus divert their attention from their primary mission."
>From an official Israeli point of view, the Mossad has an important job to do. Its reputation for ruthlessness and cunning remains a powerful asset, prompting what sometimes sounds like grudging admiration as well as loathing in the Arab world where a predisposition for conspiracy theories boosts the effect of the disinformation and psychological warfare at which the Israelis are said to excel.
The government's official narrative, of course, is that Hamas is a terrorist organisation that pioneered horrific suicide bombings, fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilian targets and despite occasional signs of pragmatism or readiness for a temporary truce or prisoner swap remains dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state. It refuses to admit that its ever-expanding West Bank settlements remains a significant barrier to peace.
In western countries, including Britain, there was widespread anger at the 1,400 Palestinian casualties of the Gaza war. Barack Obama has declared the occupation "intolerable". Netanyahu heads the most rightwing coalition in Israel's history; his famous quip that the Middle East is a "tough neighbourhood" no longer seems to justify playing dirty.
Yet Israelis, and not just those on the right, worry that their very existence as an independent state is being de-legitimised. And, judging by the jobs section of the Mossad website, there are still plenty of opportunities for Israel's wannabe spies: challenging positions are available for researchers, analysts, security officers, codebreakers and other technical work. Speakers of Arabic and Persian are invited to apply to be intelligence officers.The work involves travel abroad and a "young and unconventional" environment.
It is a novelty of this episode that ordinary Israeli citizens are angry that their identities appear to have been stolen by their own government's secret servants one reason why the Mossad chief Meir Dagan may find his days are numbered. But it is hard not to detect an undercurrent of popular admiration for the killers of Mabhouh. The day after the sensational CCTV images and passport photos were shown, the Israeli tennis champion Shahar Pe'er reached the quarter-finals of a major international competition in the emirate. "Another successful operation in Dubai," the Ynet website headlined its story.
Ofer Kasti, Haaretz's education correspondent, did not have his passport cloned, but he does bear a striking resemblance to the hit-squad member named as Kevin Daveron. "My mum rang and asked gently if I'd been abroad recently," he wrote. "Friends asked me why I hadn't brought back any cigarettes from the duty free shop in Dubai. I thought I sensed admiring glances in the street. 'Well done,' said an elderly woman who came up to me in the supermarket and clapped me the shoulder. 'You showed those Arabs.'"
- The Guardian
^ TOP OF THIS PAGE ^ MAIN PAGE
|
