Western duplicity-II An Indian response

By Kunal Ghosh, Professor, Aerospace Engineering, IIT Kanpur

 

 

May 03,2009

 

 

By 1190 AD Kosovo had become the administrative and cultural center of the medieval Serbian state ruled by the powerful Nemanjic dynasty. In the Middle Ages the Balkans were occupied by the Ottoman Turks and there was large scale conversion to Islam in both Serbia’s Kosovo and what is now Albania. Kosovo still continued to have a Serb Orthodox majority. During the Nazi occupation of World War II the Serbs resisted and the Albanian/Kosovar Muslims collaborated. Serbs in tens of thousands were killed and a tenth of a million were expelled by the armed Albanian groups, notably the Vulnetari militia patronised by the Nazis. After the World War, Yugoslavia including Serbia/Kosovo became relatively prosperous under the mixed economic system ushered in by Marshal Tito, while Albania remained under a Stalinist regime ruled by Enver Hoxa and became more impoverished. From 1960 onward there was a continuous influx of poor Albanians into Kosovo which gradually became a Muslim majority province. In 1990s Yugoslavia broke up and there were secessionist tensions among Muslims of Kosovo. Some ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Orthodox Serbs by Muslims took place and President Milosevic of Serbia sent a large security force to the southern province. There was an exodus of Albanian/Kosovar Muslims from Kosovo into Albania. The NATO bombed Serbia proper continuously for three months and into the ‘stone age’ by destroying all power houses, utility network, road bridges and important buildings. Serbia was forced to withdraw all security forces and the bombing stopped on January 10, 1999. The Muslim displaced population as well as fresh Albanians moved into Kosovo and started demanding independence from Serbia. In February 2008, Kosovo declared unilateral independence and was recognised by the Western powers, while Russia, India and most of the nations of UNO withheld recognition.

 

In my opinion, Kosovo’s secession is not justified and I perceive a close parallel with Kashmir. No wonder President Obama and foreign secretary (of UK) Miliband are again making a concerted noise about the Kashmir issue. We should remember that the West has to counter-balance the WCJK factor continually to placate the Muslim world.

 

Kashmir of India & Xinjiang of China

I need not elaborate on Kashmir since this article is meant mainly for Indian readers and Western duplicity vis-à-vis Kashmir from the time of India’s independence is too well known in India. During a brief period in the second/last term of President Bush’s tenure this duplicity had subsided and it has been revived again by President Obama.

 

China has a similar problem in its Muslim-Uighur majority Xinjiang province. There is a secessionist terrorist movement which enjoyed the moral support of the West in the first phase of the Afghan war, while the Russian forces were in Afghanistan and jehadi guerrilla contingents from different countries, including the Uighurs from Xinjiang and Chechens from Russia fought alongside the indigenous Afghans. Some of the arms supplied by the West to the Afghan Mujahideen must have found their way to Xinjiang.

 

Russia-Chechnya

Chechnya is a republic in the Caucasius mountains in the federal structure of Russia, inhabited mostly by a Muslim population. Since early 1990s there is a secessionist stir led by newly-arrived Wahhabis (Ref: Khan M. A., 1999, Wahhabi Threat to Russia and Central Asia, Oct. 9, Mainstream, New Delhi). President Boris Yeltsin had tried to come to terms with the Chechen aspirations by granting them autonomy, but that spurred them on further to export Wahhabism and separatism to neighbouring Dagestan and Ingushetia by terrorist methods. Finally Russia led by President Putin was forced to subdue militarily the Chechen guerrillas. A few years ago, Chechen terrorists took over a school in Beslan. The security forces tried to storm the school and the terrorists killed more than three hundred children. The Western powers, led by the Anglo-Americans, had been pontificating to Russia right from the beginning of Chechen secessionism that the Russians should give independence to Chechnya; that the Chechens were fighting for freedom and self-determination and so on. After the Beslan massacre of hundreds of school children President Bush uttered a homily that Russia should settle politically with the Chechens and give them freedom. This invited slap of a statement from President Putin that USA should settle politically with Osama Bin Laden and give him what he wanted. It should be noted that the Beslan massacre came well after the plane-bombing of World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. This tête-à-tête between Bush and Putin shows up the Western duplicity with respect to Islamist terrorism and how America is prepared to placate Muslim sentiment at the cost of Orthodox Russia.

 

How India should respond

India should not think that Democrats in America has gone off their pet Kashmir theme, and should forever be on guard against Western duplicity. India should take a lesson from President Putin’s afore-said response and resort to a tit for tat riposte when necessary. If the West says Kashmir is an issue that needs to be settled, India should at once and in clearest terms point out that Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the mother of all issues and needs to be settled first in order to take the steam out of Al Qaeda and Islamist terrorism. If the West appoints a Special envoy for Kashmir or South Asia, India should at once appoint a Special envoy for West Asia with the explicit mandate for mediating between the Palestinians and Israel. In words and action India must expose the Western duplicitous policy of supporting Israel, while the latter smashes the Muslim Palestinians with a sledge hammer, and at the same time appeasing Muslim radicalism and intransigence else where, such as Chechnya, Kashmir, Kosovo etc. Indian diplomatic corps should note that America, in a sense, plays proxy to Israel, since Jewish Americans holding dual Israeli-American citizenship play a very central role in framing America’s policy towards the Islamic world including Kashmir. Indian policy makers seem to be unwilling to account for the WCJK factor (Westren Christianity Judaism Kinship factor) in geo-politics and are over-generous to Israel, whereas Israel plays a two-faced game solely determined by its national interests; on one hand Israel appears to be a friend and supplier of arms and technology; on the other, it needles India through its American proxy. India cannot afford to be so generous Israel and should also play a duplicitous game.

 

(Concluded)

 

 

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