Intelligence

Sixty bitter years after Partition

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Sixty bitter years after Partition

As the 60th anniversary of Indian Partition approaches, the BBC's Andrew Whitehead looks back at how and why independence from Britain meant the creation of two separate countries, India and Pakistan.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (right) emerges with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Pandit Nehru after talks
Poor relations between Nehru (left) and Jinnah boded ill

"There can be no question of coercing any large areas in which one community has a majority to live against their will under a government in which another community has a majority. And the only alternative to coercion is partition."

With those words, the last Viceroy of British India, Lord Mountbatten, announced that Britain would be granting independence not to one nation, but to two. All Britain's attempts to devise a constitutional formula which preserved India's unity while offering safeguards for the large Muslim minority had failed.

Mountbatten's speech was made on 3 June 1947. Just 10 weeks later, he was presiding at twin independence ceremonies.

In Karachi on 14 August, he witnessed the birth of a nation with an explicit Muslim identity, Pakistan. The following day, he was in Delhi for India's independence ceremonies - a country more than three times the population of Pakistan and with a large Hindu majority.

In those hectic weeks between the announcement of partition and the transfer of power, a British judge, Cyril Radcliffe, was brought in to devise the border between India and Pakistan. It meant cutting in half two of India's most powerful and populous provinces, Punjab and Bengal.

Radcliffe had never been to India before and never came again. Whatever line he had devised, tens of millions would have felt aggrieved. The hasty partition of these provinces triggered one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th Century.

Independence dream

Tens of millions of Muslims on one side, and Hindus and Sikhs on the other, found themselves on what they regarded as the wrong side of the boundary line. Amid the tension, the communal clashes and the panicked mass migration, there was huge loss of life. No one knows the exact number.

Muslims surround a Hindu corpse in Calcutta
Partition saw as many as half a million people killed

Historians believe that upwards of half a million people were killed, tens of thousands of women were raped or abducted and more than 10 million people became refugees in a catastrophe which still haunts South Asian politics and diplomacy.

India's demands for self-rule dated back to the previous century, and gained particular force in the 1920s and 1930s under the leadership of the Hindu ascetic and campaigning genius, Mahatma Gandhi.

By 1945, and the end of World War II, it was clear that self-rule for India was imminent. The landslide victory of a radical-minded Labour party in Britain's 1945 elections hastened the process.

The complicating factor was that many in India's large Muslim minority felt they would be at a disadvantage in a mainly Hindu nation.

The Muslim League, led by austere lawyer Mohammed Ali Jinnah, took up this issue.

Religious split

It was as late as 1940 that the Muslim League started demanding a separate nation for the region's Muslims. But the League's strong showing in post-war provincial elections meant that their demand for a separate Pakistan could not be ignored.


THE PARTITION IN VERSE
Muslims at Lahore fleeing from Hindu India, August 1947
...In seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided, A continent for better or worse divided
from Partition by WH Auden
Corpses lie strewn in your [the Punjab's] pastures and the Chenab [river] has turned crimson
from An Ode to Waris Shah by Amrita Pritam
Somewhere the wave of the slow night will meet the shore and somewhere will anchor the boat of the heart's grief
from Freedom's Dawn by Faiz Ahmad Faiz

The terrible violence between communities which so tarnished independence began in Calcutta (now Kolkata) a year before the British transferred power and slowly spread.

But it was only after the independence ceremonies - and then, two days later, the announcement of where the boundary would run - that Punjab became engulfed in the worst of the Partition bloodletting.

Punjab was home to a large and influential Sikh population, who dominated much of the region's agriculture but there was hardly anywhere where Sikhs were in a majority and their lands and most important places of worship straddled the new Partition line.

Almost all Sikhs felt more comfortable in India than in Pakistan - hundreds of thousands moved in endless caravans, some 70 miles long, in the monsoon months of 1947. So did many Hindus. Roughly equal numbers of Muslims made their way to Pakistan.

There was little pattern to the violence. All communities suffered, all harboured perpetrators. It was vicious - almost unbelievably so. Columns of refugees were attacked, harried and sometimes slaughtered.

Trainloads of migrants were put to death, their bodies sometimes horribly butchered and disfigured. On both sides, women were particular targets for violence and impregnation.

Bad neighbours

The debate about whether Partition was right or wrong, whether it was inevitable or avoidable, has receded over the years.

The national flag of India is hoisted in Delhi, 15 August 1949
Britain handed back its Indian territory to a divided people

But historians in South Asia by and large agree that if Britain had sought a less hasty and better prepared transfer of power, much of the bloodshed could have been avoided.

Pakistan's founder, Jinnah, and India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, never got on well. The tension and appalling violence which overshadowed their nations' births made matters much worse. Countries which could have been good neighbours turned out to be enemies right from the start.

The Kashmir issue intensified the sense of conflict. Kashmir lay between India and Pakistan. It had a Muslim majority but a Hindu princely ruler had to make the decision about which country to join.

Pakistan tried to force the issue, encouraging first a local uprising and then an invasion by Pakistani tribesmen. The maharaja pleaded to India for help, and Indian troops airlifted into the Kashmir Valley succeeded in blocking the tribal army's advance.

Within months of independence, India and Pakistan were at war in Kashmir. The dispute has never been resolved. Kashmir has endured its own informal partition with the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, the heartland of Kashmiri culture, under Indian control but still claimed by Pakistan.

Pakistan had the acute problem of geography. It consisted of two wings, Bengali-speaking East Pakistan, and Punjabi-dominated West Pakistan, with 1,000 miles of Indian territory in between.

The East had just the larger population - but power and influence lay with the West. In 1971, Indian troops supported Bengali nationalists in prising East Pakistan free of West Pakistan's control, and the new nation of Bangladesh was born.

Defined by the differences

The wars and rivalry between India and Pakistan have encouraged both countries to build strong armies (in Pakistan, the army has repeatedly overthrown civilian governments) and to develop nuclear arsenals.

Sirdan Abdur Rab Nishter signs the document creating Pakistan, 18 August 1947
Pakistan went on to challenge India as a regional power

Regional co-operation in South Asia has been perpetually frustrated by this rivalry. India still has a large Muslim minority, about one in seven of the population, but the tension with Pakistan has put strain on the Indian tradition of secularism in public life and religious tolerance.

The start of a separatist insurgency in Kashmir from the end of the 1980s further worsened relations between the two countries.

Pakistan insisted it was only giving moral support to the separatists - India was convinced that Pakistan was arming, training and at times organising these Muslim militants.

Some were advocates of jihad who had been supported by Pakistan in fighting Soviet rule in Afghanistan and then turned their attention to Kashmir - and have also trained and encouraged Islamic radicals who have sought targets further afield.

Both India and Pakistan have struggled to escape the shadow of the violence amid which they gained nationhood. Kashmir is only one aspect of the unfinished business of Partition. Both national identities are defined in large part by contrast with the other.

Yet India and Pakistan have - hesitatingly, and sometimes painfully - been struggling towards building better links. If that happens, South Asia will finally have managed to supersede the bitter legacy of 1947.

August 8, 2007 at 09:47 PM in Far East, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Middle East, Muslim background | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Inside brutal Burma

TheStar.com - Inside brutal Burma

Nov. 6, 2005. 04:02 PM
LESLIE SCRIVENER
TORONTO STAR

In Rangoon, a short distance from the city hall, there is a street of bookshops set back in faded arcades, a remnant of the British colonial past. The shops are not big enough to hold all the books and shoppers weave between the orderly stacks that line the sidewalks. Forty-year-old yellowing technical manuals are laid neatly out on ancient tarps. New books are photocopied and bound and laminated in little stalls crowded beside other curbside enterprises: umbrella repairers, sellers of chilis, mangos, neon-coloured plastic toys and pirated DVDs.

I was here shopping for books with a slight, scholarly looking Buddhist monk, whom I'd met on the steps of a monastery. He had looked intently at me to engage me in conversation.

"I want to tell you about my country," was one of the first things he said. "We go from crisis to crisis."

He turned this way and that to see if he was being overheard. "I am afraid of spies," he said in a low voice. "I could be put in jail."

Perhaps he had reason to be nervous. It wasn't clear where the tall man in the brown shirt and sarong had come from, but he stood resolutely about a metre away. Despite the drowsiness brought on by a monsoon afternoon and the jasmine-scented air, I felt anxious and a little chilled. Like the young monk, I started to look around.

Since 1962, a military dictatorship has ruled Burma, which the generals renamed Myanmar in 1989. During that time, this country of lush teak forests, tinkling temple bells and golden pagodas has been neglected and largely forgotten by the world. The regime governs like a Mad Hatter's tea party — laws are capriciously applied and policy changes introduced without notice. In a country once the rice bowl of Asia, one-third of the children are malnourished.

"The government is like the weather," a Burmese doctor told me. "Inconsistency and change every day." It has both neglected and terrorized its people; 700,000 refugees have fled in recent years, many to camps on the Thai border.

Surveillance is a part of daily life. The names of every member of every household are recorded in a ward council office, and even visiting relatives must register. "The government assigns an intelligence officer to each neighbourhood," a taxi driver said. "They study the families around them and if they go against the government, they will know."

The mysterious man in the sarong could merely be waiting, or he could be an informer. You're never sure. Monks, who played a leading role in the 1988 uprising in which several thousand were killed, are still not above suspicion. Hundreds of them are still in prison. Perhaps with this in mind, the young monk, with his perfect teeth and intelligent eyes, suggested we move on to the busy bookshops of Pansodan St. in central Rangoon.

Some of the shops are just stalls set along the crumbling, potholed streets. Some are more formal, with cashiers and service staff. But something of the character of a city and its people is revealed in its bookshops, and Rangoon's tell the story of a nation of readers. In the 1970s, Burma won UNESCO prizes for literacy development. More recent statistics are ephemeral in a country where the last official census was in 1983. Reports of literacy vary — most outside sources say the rate is 83 per cent— but the sense is the rate is declining as access to education plummets.

In a UNESCO list of 80 countries, Burma ranks at the very bottom, with Bangladesh, of library books per capita. "We need public libraries," a magazine editor said. "We have some, but nobody goes." It's no wonder. "If you want to borrow a book," he said, "you need a letter of recommendation from authorities."

The bookstores, on the other hand, bustle with activity. The oppression of the regime has not diminished Burmese appetites for ideas and the written word. Even the most weathered, dog-eared volume that might be thrown in a bin of discards appears to still have value and is carefully displayed for purchase — old Ladies' Home Journal magazines, nautical texts, Around the World in Eighty Days, A Tale of Two Cities.

A foreigner described giving copies of Reader's Digest to his night watchman, who reads them cover to cover then sells them for 1,000 kyat, about $1, each, about a day's wage for a trishaw driver. I noticed people reading all over the place — a soldier wearing plastic flip flops, standing guard on a Rangoon street held his gun in one hand and a book in the other, a waiter in a tea shop, a young boy, sitting on a stool lost in a book.

My monk companion was drawn to a Buddhist text with a shabby cover, which he bought on the sidewalk. In a nearby shop, he chose abridged editions of War and Peace and Gone with the Wind. They were recommended by his English teacher, who told him the latter is one of the most popular books in the Western world.

If there is a patron saint of books in Burma, it should be George Orwell, whose first novel, Burmese Days, was drawn from his experiences as an officer in the Indian Imperial Police Force in the mid-1920s. There's a Burmese joke, that Orwell didn't write just one book about the country, but a trilogy, beginning with his first novel, Burmese Days, followed by Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.

While you can buy Burmese Days almost anywhere tourist knickknacks are sold, his later novels about totalitarian states are not on display. But, according to Emma Larkin, the pseudonym of a Burmese-speaking American journalist and the author of Finding George Orwell in Burma, they make the rounds anyway. In the course of talking to historians and scholars and book lovers, Larkin found herself presiding over an unofficial Orwell Book Club in the teahouses of Mandalay.

She writes about asking an elderly man about George Orwell. He doesn't seem to know the name. G-e-o-r-g-e O-r-w-e-l-l? she asks. Nineteen Eighty-four?

"The old man's eyes suddenly lit up. He looked at me with a brilliant flash of recognition, slapped his forehead gleefully, and said, `You mean the prophet!'"

Larkin's curiosity was roused when she learned that, on his deathbed in 1950, Orwell sketched an outline for a novella set in Burma. What led him to return there in his imagination, she wondered, and how is it that his novels of soulless autocracies mirror the country that Burma has become in nearly half a century of military dictatorship?

Like Larkin, I had travelled in Burma first as a visitor. To tourists, Burma can seem like a fairy tale, a dream-like kingdom locked in time, where they can visit ruined Buddhist temples by horse cart and stay in wide-porched bungalows along the Irrawaddy River. Burmese still wear traditional sarongs, called longyis. Walking barefoot on the cool marble of temple floors, you'll pass pagoda upon pagoda covered in gold, one of them the 2,000-year-old Shwedagon, which holds emeralds and rubies in its shimmering crown. The air is perfumed by garlands of jasmine, frangipani and cheroot — scents so powerful they overwhelm the acrid smell of traffic exhaust. Fast food chains, ubiquitous around the globe, have no place here.

But unseen by tourists, and often unknown to them, are the human rights crimes, the ethnic villages burned to the ground, the military's tacit use of rape as a weapon of war, the far-reaching intrusions of government intelligence, the fear and demoralization of 50 million people living in one of the world's harshest dictatorships.

Life in Burma can easily seem an illusion. But this is not limited to Westerners. "Often, even we Burmese do not know what is real here," an editor says.

All news is state controlled. It is unlawful to criticize the government. Billboards exhorting citizens "to crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy " serve as a warning against dissent. Few Burmese have access to email. Many Internet sites are censored and cellphones, which cost more than $1,000, are the luxury of the very wealthy.

There are those who argue that tourists should visit Burma because they bring with them their experiences of democracy, which they can share with Burmese people. But in dozens of conversations with Burmese, not one asked about the freedoms of a Western democratic state. They are aware of life outside their borders; it's the life within that's secret and unknown.

They would never learn of crises in their country from the press or television. During the time I was there, Burma bowed to pressure from other member states and declined the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Not a word of the decision was reported in the Burmese papers. The Myanmar Television listings included "healthy exercise, nice and sweet song, international news, martial songs, dances of international races and songs to uphold the national spirit."

Yet journalists do their best. "I know they may be watching," one middle-aged editor told me over hot lemon tea. "But do I care? I am speaking the truth. I keep expecting intelligence people will call me, but they haven't, so I get bolder and bolder."

Every word he publishes passes through a government censor alert for any negative reporting on the regime or evidence of undue Western influence. "They delete what they do not approve of," the editor of another magazine says. He says his magazine features innocuous articles on beauty and he occasionally tries to slip in informative stories on HIV/AIDS.

Even covers and graphics are submitted for the censors' review. Once, they complained there was too much red in a cover, " the colour of leftists," he says. "They are mercurial. Most of the time, there are no written rules."

Everywhere I went in Burma I saw signs of a country searching for understanding. Driving in a rundown white Toyota, a democracy advocate who had been watched by military intelligence for many years held a shortwave radio up in the air from his car window to hear the BBC news. At night, the young monk secretly listens to the BBC, the Democratic Voice of Burma and the Voice of America, which are broadcast in Burmese.

Listening to foreign broadcasts is seditious; Larkin tells of a 70-year-old man sentenced to two years in prison for listening to the BBC in a teashop.

Burmese turn readily to outsiders to vent their fears and frustrations in encounters in taxis, temples or on monastery steps. "I can see in Western faces how different you are from Myanmar people," says a taxi driver. "When you talk freely, your heart is cleansed. If you can't, your heart is closed."

In a crowded bus terminus, where tourists pass regularly, moneychangers offer black-market exchange rates.

"Change money?" one asks as we pass. He adds, almost as an inducement: "I hate this government."

Walking through this city of decaying beauty, with mouldering colonial buildings and crowded arcades where leafy branches sprout from cracks in the stucco, the young monk unburdened himself. At times, it wasn't clear whether he was enjoying my companionship or troubled by it.

"I don't want to spend my life in jail, there is so much I want to do," he said, as we crossed a busy intersection.

Nonetheless, when we stopped in a teashop, he launched into a tirade about how the military government spends money on new American SUVs and gaudy, white-columned mansions, rather than on education and health care.

He dropped his voice as he looked out to the street with its roar of buses and diesel-choked air. "I want Aung San Suu Kyi," he said. When his English failed, he resorted to writing on an index card: "I want my country to be free from the army government."

And then, clearly, he said: "I want to choose for myself."

Burma watchers have noted a discernible difference in the mood of the population over the past 10 years. Despite rosy forecasts for economic growth — figures disputed by outside sources — and the occasional release of some of the 1,500 political prisoners, things are getting worse in Burma.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy, has been under increasingly punitive house arrest since 1989. In brief periods when she was allowed to speak, hundreds of Burmese thronged to her family compound in Rangoon, where she stood on a desk above her gates and answered questions. The curious can no longer drive past Suu Kyi's house; the road is barred by gun-bearing soldiers and a razor-wire barricade. She lives with two women relatives. Only her doctor can visit her, once every few weeks. Friends do the shopping and leave a full basket outside her compound walls. Intelligence officers take photos of the basket and search through every piece of food.

The state of the education system is abysmal. Stand outside a classroom anywhere in Burma and you hear the drone of students learning by rote — elementary and high school students alike.

Class sizes are enormous, with 80 and even 100 students and many attend after-school tuition classes. Only 40 per cent of Burmese children go to school beyond Grade 5.

After the 1988 uprising against the military, led by monks and students, universities were closed. In the intervening years, classes resumed, but universities have been decentralized — set up in provincial towns to prevent the likelihood of an organized mass uprising.

A technical school in Rangoon remains abandoned, overgrown with weeds and locked behind a barbed-wire fence. Most study is done by correspondence. Students attend only for a few weeks to prepare for exams.

"They are creating a population of young people unfit for work," says a woman with grown children educated in the United States. "That's why, as long as this government is in power, we do everything we can to get our children out of this country."

In conversation, it was not unusual to hear Burmese speak wistfully of what they called help from the outside to break the military rule. Democracy leaders, though beloved, are in prison or else in their 70s and 80s. "Lots of ordinary people, my friends and my driver, say they hope America attacks," said one foreigner. "They don't have a clue what that means."

A businessman dismissed the possibility of help from Western democracies. "Iraq has oil and we have nothing here," he said.

The government, though, is prepared. "The paranoia is such that they are sure the U.S. is going to attack by water," said the foreigner.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, she says, Burmese women were being trained by the government to fight. "They took off their longyis and put on trousers and were put through military drills. What did they think they were going to do? Protect their country with spears?"

These days, the talk in Yangon — as the junta renamed Rangoon — is about the government's plan to move the capital inland.

"They say the government is spending billions on a capital in Pyinmana — it's 400 miles north of Rangoon, but nobody wants to live there.

"All the shops and entertainment are here, but maybe there will be helicopters for the generals and their wives to come back here for shopping," says the foreigner ruefully.

Over dinner her gaze drifts toward the smoky vista of delicate pagodas and palm trees. "If you don't know what's going on here, everything looks so romantic," she says with a sigh.

November 7, 2005 at 06:58 PM in Far East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Mutilated N.Korean Seeks Refugee Status in Thailand

Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea

A North Korean man who had his feet amputated during torture by the country’s secret services after a failed attempt to defect is being interviewed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangkok, Thailand, Radio Free Asia reported Sunday.

The woman identified by his family name Park arrived with his 19-year-old son in Thailand on Wednesday via China, Myanmar and Laos.

The news agency said Park was unable to stand unaided but looked otherwise healthy. She and his son are now in a detention center in Bangkok and seeking refugee status from the UNHCR.

RFA said there are 60 North Korean defectors in Thailand waiting for a UNHCR decision on their status -- 30 in an immigration detention center and the other 30 in a religious organization sponsored by the South Korean government.

(englishnews@chosun.com )

September 26, 2005 at 02:39 PM in Far East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Calif. man catalogs N.Korea's over-the-top rhetoric

Calif. man catalogs N.Korea's over-the-top rhetoric - Yahoo! News

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent Sun Aug 14, 8:43 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Few can denounce the "imperialist ogre" or "kingpin of evil" as well as the writers at
North Korea's official news agency, and a California graphic artist is now cataloging their rhetorical masterpieces on a Web site.

Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, is the only regular source of the views of the secretive government of Kim Jong-il available to diplomats, journalists and scholars.

But there was no way for them to search the archives of KCNA until Geoff Davis, fighting boredom during a rainy San Francisco spring, decided to hone his Web design skills on a topic he had followed in news reports on the North Korean nuclear crisis.

"Their propaganda is often unintentionally hilarious and I couldn't find an existing searchable database of the KCNA on the Web. Thus, NK News was born," Davis told Reuters.

Launched in May, www.nk-news.net boasts of having nearly every KCNA article since December 1996 -- "over 50 megabytes of hard-core Stalinist propaganda ... each article written in the unique and indelible style of the KCNA."

Readers can get a taste of that KCNA style from recommended key word searches, such as "burning hatred," which turns up 18 articles. The targets of that hot wrath include Japan, Yankees, "U.S. imperialist ogres" and "class enemies."

"Human scum" yields 25 KCNA reports applying that epithet to
President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and diplomat John Bolton. Rumsfeld also keeps company with Japanese officials in the "political dwarf" category.

RANDOM INSULT GENERATOR

The flip-side of withering scorn for North Korea's perceived foes is fawning praise for Kim and his father, state founder Kim Il-sung. Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, is hailed as a "peerlessly great man" in 139 articles since 1996.

"Inveterate" is another popular KCNA word and a search for it returns an entry describing "U.S. imperialists" as "a pack of beasts in human skin and the inveterate enemy with whom the Korean nation cannot live under the same sky."

"From browsing through the KCNA's propaganda, even the most casual observer can see that the regime is a cult," said Davis, 31, who makes his living producing graphics for court trials.

Davis took 10 weeks to build www.nk-news.net, which he calls a "hobby site," and spends $10 a month to run it. He said he doesn't count page visits but he has tallied 5,000 searches and has received positive feedback from journalists and experts on North Korea.

For those seeking a comic diversion from blood-curdling diatribes and self-congratulatory reports, Davis created a "random insult generator" using pejorative words commonly found on KCNA.

"You loudmouthed beast, your ridiculous clamor for 'human rights' is nothing but a shrill cry!" reads one insult. One click later and the message is: "You sycophantic stooge, you have glaringly revealed your true colors!"

Although he has found a source of satire in a country that is mostly known for weapons threats, repression and famine, Davis does not joke about North Korea's nature and says the world must not cut Kim's government any slack.

"The 'axis of evil' remark pales in comparison to a single day of KCNA rhetoric," he said, referring a controversial 2002 Bush speech that lumped North Korea, Iran and prewar Iraq in a trio of malign countries.

August 16, 2005 at 05:08 PM in Far East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The 'Great Game' Heats Up in Central Asia

Khilafah.com - The 'Great Game' Heats Up in Central Asia

uploaded 04 Aug 2005

Drafted By: Adam Wolfe

Russia and China delivered a one-two punch to Washington's ambitions in Central Asia on the eve of the G8 summit with a joint statement on "international order" followed by a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (S.C.O.) that was hostile to U.S. interests. While this combination was not enough to knock the U.S. out of the region, it was the most forceful challenge to U.S. interests in Central Asia since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. [See: "Intelligence Brief: Shanghai Cooperation Organization"]

Seeking to prevent any further damage to Washington's position in the "Great Game," last week U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld traveled to the region to shore up support for maintaining its bilateral agreements with the key players. This was followed by Uzbekistan announcing a deadline for U.S. withdrawal from a military base in its territory. These moves indicate that even though fighting in Afghanistan has yet to cool down, the traditional power politics of Central Asia are heating up.

China and Russia Coordinate Their Central Asian Policies

Before the S.C.O. meeting, Russia's and China's leaders met at the Kremlin on July 1 to discuss their goals in Central Asia and the upcoming G8 summit. The meeting signaled a shift toward greater cooperation between the two states, completely solved their long-standing border disputes from the legal perspective, and laid the foundation for greater integration of their state-controlled oil companies and banking sectors. One reason that the atmosphere in the Kremlin was so unusually amiable was the perception that a shared threat loomed larger than their differences in policy goals; that threat was Washington's role in Central Asia.

The "Joint Statement of the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation Regarding the International Order of the 21st Century," signed by Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 2, addresses U.S. hegemony in several less-than-oblique passages. The text emphasizes "non-interference in internal affairs," "mutual respect" for other nations' "sovereignty," and stresses the role of "multipolarity" in dealing with conflicts.

In a passage aimed at Washington's perceived encroachment in Central Asia, the document states, "The peoples of all countries should be allowed to decide the affairs of their own countries, and world affairs should be decided through dialogue and consultation on a multilateral and collective basis. The international community should thoroughly renounce the mentality of confrontation and alignment, should not pursue the right to monopolize or dominate world affairs, and should not divide countries into a leading camp and a subordinate camp." This last statement could also easily be read as a preemptive dismissal of the G8 on the eve of the Scotland meeting. Though Russia is now a member and China an observer of the grouping, they feel that the organization is dominated by the West's agenda.

This dismissal of Western-style multilateralism is further expanded in a passing broadside aimed at the World Bank and the I.M.F. and their emphasis on reform in exchange for aid or loans: "The international community should establish an economic and trade regime that is comprehensive and widely accepted and that operates through the means of holding negotiations on an equal footing, discarding the practice of applying pressure and sanctions to coerce unilateral economic concessions, and bringing into play the roles of global and regional multilateral organizations and mechanisms."

Beijing and Moscow resent the West demanding economic reforms before further integrating China and Russia into the existing globalization power structures. They wish to present an alternative marketplace for developing countries to sell their goods -- one that does not tie economic access to reform or transparency. China has been able to successfully use the widely expected expansion of its domestic market to sell this alternative source of revenue to countries irked by the I.M.F. or World Bank, from South America to Africa. Now it hopes to further cement such a relationship with the states of Central Asia.

In the joint statement, China and Russia sent a clear message to the other members of the S.C.O. -- Washington poses a threat to Central Asia's sovereignty; China and Russia can offer a similar economic and security package, only it will be designed to preserve the current status quo not to encourage market economies or democratic reforms. Fearing future waves of "color" revolutions in the region, these states were eager to receive this message.

A Bigger and Stronger S.C.O.

On July 5, the members of the S.C.O. -- China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan -- met in Astana, Kazakhstan to discuss the changing political situation in Central Asia. While previous meetings focused nearly exclusively on the "three evil forces" -- terrorism, separatism and extremism -- and were dominated by China's desire to control the Uighur population in its Xinjiang region and protect its access to energy resources, this meeting demonstrated that the organization, which represents nearly 50 percent of the world's population, desires to be a serious force in international affairs. This can be seen in the granting of observer status to India (at Russia's request), Pakistan (at China's insistence) and Iran (to the delight of all members).

The environment of the S.C.O. meeting was most influenced by the reaction to Uzbekistan's violent suppression of the May rebellion in Andijan. Western criticism of Uzbek President Islam Karimov's tactics brought to the surface the fears that the clan-based governments of Central Asia might fall in a wave of "color" revolutions, similar to that of Ukraine's "orange" revolution. Russia and China provided blanket support for Karimov after the suppression, while Washington could only offer nuanced criticism, fearing that intense criticism of Karimov would result in the loss of access to the Karshi-Khanabad air base, or K2, used to support U.S. operations in Afghanistan; nevertheless, the loss of this base now appears a likely scenario.

Washington's criticism was enough to spread fear throughout the ruling clans of Central Asia that the U.S. is engaged in covert operations to undermine or overthrow the current ruling regimes. This fear does not even escape Kyrgyzstan's subsequently elected government -- which swept into power in a similar manner as Ukraine's government -- because its support still rests on a shaky foundation of clan alliances.

In this environment, the S.C.O. sought to limit Washington's presence in the region -- Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan shifted their support to China and Russia in order to protect their sovereignty from U.S. meddling. The joint declaration issued at the end of the summit took aim at Washington by rejecting attempts at "monopolizing or dominating international affairs" and insisting on "non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states." The members further urged the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan to declare a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Uzbek and Kyrgyz bases in the region that were established to support the Afghan operations. The Central Asian states see it in their interests to fill the power vacuum that the withdrawals would create with that of China and Russia, which they believe would better ensure the longevity of their regimes.

Top U.S. General Richard B. Myers summed up Washington's interpretation of the shift in blunt terms: "It looks to me like two very large countries were trying to bully some smaller countries." Ten days later, Rumsfeld landed in Kyrgyzstan to ensure that the world's only superpower wasn't elbowed out of the region.

Washington Pushes Back

The U.S. secretary of defense's visit to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan was aimed at shoring up support for the continuation of the U.S. military presence in each country, which was successful at least for the mid-term. Kyrgyzstan hosts a U.S. military base at the Manas air base, and Tajikistan offers the U.S. military and N.A.T.O. fly-over rights and hosts a small contingent of French soldiers involved in Afghan operations. French Defense Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie was in Dushanbe on July 21 to firm up that arrangement. Notably, Rumsfeld did not visit Uzbekistan, the other S.C.O. member-state that hosts a U.S. military base. Whether his absence was the result of an Uzbek request or a calculation of Washington's, it demonstrated how the U.S. plans to address the shifting power relations in the region.

Washington has approached Central Asia on bilateral terms, never treating the S.C.O. members as a bloc. In terms of leverage in the relations, this shifts the fulcrum to Washington's advantage. China and Russia encourage the S.C.O. states to act multilaterally in an effort to limit Washington's reach. Rumsfeld's trip demonstrated Washington's ability to act bilaterally with Kyrgyzstan, which has a newly elected government and has yet to fully congeal its foreign policy, and Tajikistan, which has traditionally been the S.C.O. member that follows a balanced approach with its foreign suitors.

Recently, the relations between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have shown the strengths of Washington's bilateral approach. When over 500 Uzbeks crossed over into Kyrgyzstan following the crushing of protesters in Andijan, Kyrgyzstan initially reacted instep with the Uzbek government. Eighty-seven Uzbek refugees were sent back, prompting outrage from the U.N. and Washington. This led to negotiations between the U.N. and officials in Kyrgyzstan, which, by Washington's design, left out any avenue for input from Uzbekistan. On July 29, a plane with 440 Uzbek refugees left Kyrgyzstan for Romania. This demonstrated Washington's ability to directly influence the geopolitics of Central Asia only a few weeks after the united front presented by the S.C.O. called for a U.S. withdrawal.

However, in dealing with Karimov's government in Uzbekistan, Washington's bilateral approach is no longer effective, in part because of its success in Kyrgyzstan. The Uzbek suspicion of Washington's involvement in the Kyrgyzstan revolution and uprising in Andijan has caused Karimov to throw his government's support behind China's and Russia's vision for the region. As such, the same day that the plane carried refugees out of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan asked Washington to leave the K2 air base within 180 days. The immediate reaction from Washington was to hold back on sending a high-level representative to renegotiate the arrangement while waiting for things to "cool down."

This seems to suggest that the U.S. is leaning toward the future goal of regime change in Uzbekistan and is willing to sacrifice the air base if necessary. This does not mean that Washington will cut off all relations with Uzbekistan, but if it becomes apparent that future negotiations will not lead to an extension of the air base use agreement, Washington can be expected to pursue further bilateral agreements with the other governments in Central Asia to isolate Karimov's government.

Conclusion

Beijing, Moscow and Washington are once again using Central Asia, the setting for the "Great Game" between Tsarist Russia and Victorian England over 150 years ago, as their game board in a region rarely neglected by the world's great powers. In the contemporary version of the game, Washington approaches each state bilaterally, offering incentives to support the operations in Afghanistan while undermining the consensus put forth at the recent S.C.O. meeting.

China and Russia are acting in tandem to shore up support for S.C.O. policies by offering blanket support for the current regimes and implicitly calling attention to U.S.-led efforts to undermine their governments. The states hosting the game board will continue to swing their support from China and Russia to the U.S., and back again, so long as they keep their hold on power. The past month has seen a flurry of activity in the Great Game, and it can be expected that things will not cool down anytime soon.

Source: www.asiantribune.com

August 3, 2005 at 09:03 PM in Far East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Seven states of rebellion

TheStar.com - Seven states of rebellion

Nearly 60 years after independence, India faces bloody insurgencies on its eastern and northern borders.

MARTIN REGG COHN
ASIA BUREAU

GUWAHATI, India — Dealers at the Fancy Bazaar bargain over the best blends of Assam tea, oblivious to monsoon rains.

But when the bombs go off, all bets are off. The merchants shut their eyes and shutter their shops.

By the time security forces rushed to the scene of a bomb blast here last month, the shopkeepers claimed to have seen nothing. In strife-torn Assam state, being a police witness to deadly attacks is no way to stay alive.

Opening a burlap sack of the finest blend, Kailash Sharma insists he wasn't around when separatist insurgents planted bombs outside his teashop.

Nor was he alarmed by the blast — the latest in a series of daring strikes that have left more than 80 dead here in the past six months.

"The rebels need to make their presence felt," he shrugs, carefully sorting the fragrant tea grains on his counter. "It's part of our daily life."

This remote, rain-soaked Indian hill state has been a battleground between guerrillas and the security services for nearly 25 years.

The fighting has left more than 10,000 people dead, the economy on life support and the tea industry withering.

Assam's strife is hardly an isolated case. Nearly six decades after independence, New Delhi is still struggling to wipe out perennial rebellions along its border regions.

Groups like the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, the Kuki Revolutionary Army, the Hynniewtrep International Liberation Council and the People's War Group see India as the enemy.

More than 30 rebel armies hiding out in five tribal states along India's northeastern fringe — sandwiched between Bangladesh and Burma — still bitterly resist central rule.

Alongside Assam, Nagaland's former headhunters have been at war with the country since India attained independence in 1947, in the subcontinent's longest-running insurgency.

With more than 25,000 lives lost, a temporary truce is in effect, but the rebel leadership threatened against last month to resume fighting unless its goal of a Greater Nagaland is granted.

Fighters in Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura states are also at war.

Maoist Naxalite rebels in Andhra Pradesh, along India's east coast, are waging ideological warfare and a peasant-style rebellion against Hyderabad, the high-tech state capital that is home to India's software giants, leaving more than 6,000 dead over the past 30 years.

Islamist militants in the disputed Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir have been fighting since 1989 to break free from predominantly Hindu India, leaving an estimated 80,000 dead and prompting border conflicts with neighbouring Pakistan in the northwest. Analysts blame cross-border infiltration from Pakistan, which has provided logistical support for Islamist fighters since the early 1990s.

In sharp contrast to these entrenched conflicts, the western state of Punjab — where Sikh separatists waged a vicious decade-long war in the early 1980s that left 17,000 dead — is now at peace.

Canadians were reminded of Punjab's turmoil last month when a Vancouver court acquitted two Sikh-Canadians of plotting the bombing of an Air India flight in 1985 that left all 329 passengers and crew dead.

Punjab remains the only success story among the festering conflicts plaguing the Indian federation, made up of dozens of major linguistic and ethnic groups sprawled across the subcontinent.

Through a combination of tough — sometimes brutal — policing and superior intelligence-gathering, Punjab's local government achieved what other embattled states have so far failed to do.

"We have been arguing for a long time that India should be following the Punjab model in Kashmir and the northeast," says security analyst Suba Chandran of New Delhi's Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

"Unfortunately, we never learned the lessons of the Punjab, which was a great success story."

Regional alienation is hardly surprising in a country of 1 billion people covering a huge landmass. The violence stems from a combination of ethnic resentment, police brutality, local corruption and incompetent politicians.

"It has to do with the heterogeneous nature of society and the failure of local government," Chandran argues.

Political scientist Harish Puri, who has researched separatist movements across India and as far away as Quebec, says people felt exploited by a central government that extracted their resources but neglected their needs.

"The average Assamese always felt that the rest of India totally ignored them, so when the fighters gave hell to the government, there was a vicarious satisfaction," says Puri.

Over time, grassroots support for separatist violence across India has declined as battle fatigue set in. Yet despite their declining popularity, the rebels have become deeply entrenched in Assam, thanks to strong cash flow from extortion and corruption.

"They have lost legitimacy; they're in the business of trading arms and drugs," says Puri. "It's part of an industry, and they have links with the police and the bureaucracy."

Running a rebellion is a big business. Equipping the rebels — and enriching the movement — requires a well-organized system of "taxation" by intimidation. Tea traders and plantation owners are among the biggest targets for extortion tactics.

Anil Jain, a merchant in the colonial-era Fancy Bazaar that was bombed last month, describes how a climate of fear has paralyzed the state capital and stunted economic development over the past 20 years.

Rebels fight the government in

the northeast states of Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura, as do Maoist Naxalites in Andhra Pradesh and Islamist militants in the disputed Himalayan

state of Jammu and Kashmir
"All of Assam is paying a price, in fact the entire northeast," he complains.

Jain was expected to make his own contribution to rebels from the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), who assessed him with a so-called "demand note."

When he refused to remit, the rebels sent an envoy who led him away on a scooter for a month-long interrogation that almost cost him his life after a death warrant was issued.

As a prominent merchant, Jain had enough connections to survive. But not everyone is so lucky in encounters with hardened insurgents hungry for cash flow.

As one of Assam's most successful tea brokers, Kamal Das travels to various plantations tasting the best teas and hearing the worst stories.

For plantation managers who must survive in isolated locations, acquiescing to rebel extortion has become a way of buying peace and a cost of doing business.

"No one wants to have a confrontation that stops their business, because if they don't pay, they could be abducted," Das says.

So-called taxation collected by the rebels ranges from $40,000 to $275,000 a year for the bigger plantations, subject to negotiation.

"They forward a demand note and thereafter you negotiate a settlement," Das explains, sipping a cup of tea made from fresh leaves he has just brought in from a plantation visit.

"Then, they add this to the cost of production."

During his years in the jungles of the northeast hinterland and neighbouring Burma, former rebel leader Sunil Nath came to count on extortion cash flow to fund his operating budget in the propaganda department.

"You need funds because it's a parallel organization," he says.

After years in jail, Nath swore off his rebel ways. But he says Assam's indigenous peoples feel hemmed in by the uncontrolled influx of Muslim migrants from nearby Bangladesh, which exacerbates unemployment.

"The boys think that India is an empire run out of New Delhi, and Assam is a colony," says Nath. "They are willing to give up their lives for the cause and believe the next generation will carry on the revolt."

Nath, however, says his time in jail convinced him that the fight against India was futile and that ULFA had lost its way.

More instability creates greater poverty, he says, and sympathy has been replaced by fear.

"People have lost faith in ULFA's capacity to succeed in the fight."

An attack in August that killed 15 people — including many schoolchildren — outraged the public. More bombs rained down on Assam and Nagaland in October, leaving 80 dead.

"Sorry to sound pessimistic, but I don't foresee any positive developments," says Nath. "It's too difficult for the military to eliminate them."

Assam's recently retired police chief, Harekrishna Deka, agrees that "the rebels are well entrenched ... their back is not broken."

The insurgents are motivated by a sense that "the country was decolonized at independence, but it was followed by a new form of colonization by the Indian heartland," says Deka, a former intelligence chief.

"Even now, they can do a lot of mischief, with the potential to harass the security forces and the government."

Indeed, just days after Deka retired from the force, rebels planted bombs at the state capital's parade grounds, where the chief minister was reviewing an honour guard. The politicians and police fled in a panic. The security services are more accustomed to dishing it out than dodging bombs.

Deka acknowledges that there were widespread concerns about police tactics before he took over the force in 2000.

"They call it `secret killings.' It was (alleged) before me, but I didn't feel it could deliver the goods," he says.

Defence lawyer Bashkar Dev Konwar says widespread human rights violations have driven more young people into rebel camps.

"The term we use is `administrative liquidation,' and it's a form of state terror to repress another form of terror," says Konwar, pulling out a sheaf of files listing the dozens of people who died in police custody from beatings or torture, or during staged "encounters" with army commandos in civilian clothes.

"It's as if the state machinery is above the law."

But India's new army chief — Gen. Joginder Jaswant Singh, himself a Sikh from the Punjab — promised earlier this year to try a softer style.

"Kashmir, Assam and Manipur are an integral part of India, so our approach has to be different here: winning hearts and minds," he said.

"It's an over-1 million-strong army facing challenges in every corner of the country."

From end to end, with no end in sight.

April 10, 2005 at 01:14 PM in Far East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Martin set for politically fraught meeting with Tamils in Colombo, Sri Lanka

Yahoo! News - Martin set for politically fraught meeting with Tamils in Colombo, Sri Lanka

BRUCE CHEADLE

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (CP) - Prime Minister Paul Martin wades into Sri Lanka's murky domestic politics Monday when he meets with parliamentarians whose views reflect those of the Tamil Tigers, a separatist insurgent group.

Martin will first pay a visit to Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team, or DART, in Ampara, almost two hours up the coast by helicopter.

But navigation could be considerably more complicated in the capital, where Martin hopes to make good on a pledge to ensure equitable aid distribution throughout Sri Lanka in the wake of the devastating tsunamis three weeks ago.

Martin made the promise in Canada, catering to the 250,000-strong Tamil expatriot community - the largest in the world. Tamils are considered crucial to Liberal electoral prospects in about 10 Toronto-area ridings, but the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) organization has been declared a terrorist organization by the United Nations (news - web sites) and several Canadian allies, including the United States, Great Britain and Australia.

Canada only went halfway in outlawing the fundraising activities of the Tigers or LTTE, but not the organization itself.

On Monday, Martin meets with three politicians of the Tamil National Alliance, which is not directly affiliated with the Tigers.

"However they very accurately reflect the views of the LTTE," a senior Canadian official said Sunday evening in Colombo.

Two of the three men Martin is to meet - Paraajasingham and Ponnambalam - were denied visas to Canada last year because of concerns they would engage in illegal LTTE fund-raising.

Martin's officials insisted there's nothing controversial about Monday's meeting, which will be followed by a talk with Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

"To meet with the Tamil leadership, I don't think that poses a problem," said one official, speaking on background.

Martin's first stop Sunday on his nine-day Asian tour was less politically fraught but more emotionally draining.

Canadian volunteers in Phuket recounted their grim duties to the prime minister after he arrived in Thailand to assess the post-tsunami cleanup.

Martin said he was deeply moved after meeting with about a dozen Canadians who dropped vacations and job commitments to help in any way they could after the Dec. 26 disaster.

"To see how human beings are capable of turning towards each other in times of crisis is a wonderful thing," said Martin.

"To recognize in your own countrymen, your own countrywomen, that kind of desire makes us recognize there is a common humanity."

One volunteer, Greg Baytalan of Kelowna, B.C., said he's spent his time helping unload recovered corpses.

"I would need longtime, deep-depth Alzheimers before I would forget this," said the public health inspector, 46.

"I was slugging bodies up to the morgue . . . It was beyond all horror."

Baytalan was on vacation in Australia when the tsunami struck and felt compelled to offer help.

Greg Jones, a mall developer from St. Thomas, Ont., who now lives in Bangkok, was on holiday in Kamala on Phuket Island when the waves struck.

He raced away from the shore as he watched the tsunami in his car's rear-view mirror - then returned to help the survivors.

"I was lucky and you just want to help," he said.

Jones has spent his time collecting lost documents and combing area hospitals for Canadians.

Four of Canada's six confirmed dead perished in Thailand. There are still 29 Canadians officially listed as missing, all but one or two of them lost from Thailand's beaches.

One government official said families of the missing have all left the country, adding it has been a week since anyone held out hope of finding any of the 29 missing Canadians alive.

The prime minister met Sunday with Thailand's interior minister, who asked for Canadian expertise in reclaiming and rebuilding damaged shorelines. Martin also talked to the RCMP forensics team that is wrapping up the grisly task of collecting identifying markings - from DNA samples to fingerprints and dental moulds - from hundreds of recovered bodies.

A visit to a Buddhist temple at Kamala beach provided a sobering view of the tsunami's damage, while at the same time showcasing the remarkable Thai recovery just three weeks after the disaster. Three monks died at the temple, while three schoolchildren and a teacher perished in an adjoining school.

Evidence of the tsunami's fury was clear three metres up the freshly scarred trunks of massive pine trees along the beach front.

Yet cleanup efforts had already taken away most of the debris from the shattered school and dozens of wrecked restaurants and shops. Thai workers were busily rebuilding Sunday as the prime minister toured the area.

Martin said later the experience shows that a long-term rebuilding plan must be put in place, especially to restore Thailand's fishing industry, which lost some 4,500 boats to the tsunami.

"It's not just the pain and suffering you see, but its the pain and suffering you don't see that we've got to deal with," said Martin.

January 16, 2005 at 09:59 PM in Far East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

North Korea Issues Wartime Guidelines

Yahoo! News - North Korea Issues Wartime Guidelines

Wed Jan 5, 6:50 AM ET
By SANG-HUN CHOE, Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea (news - web sites) has ordered its citizens to be ready for a protracted war against the United States, issuing guidelines on evacuating to underground bunkers with weapons, food and portraits of leader Kim Jong Il.

The 33-page "Detailed Wartime Guidelines," published in South Korea (news - web sites)'s Kyunghyang newspaper on Wednesday and verified by Seoul, was issued April 7, 2004, at a time when the communist regime was claiming it was Washington's next target following the Iraq (news - web sites) war.

The manual — the first such North Korean document made public in the outside world — was signed by Kim Jong Il in his capacity as chairman of the Central Military Committee of the ruling Workers' Party. That ended speculation over whether Kim has assumed the top military post following the 1994 death of his father, President Kim Il Sung.

Analysts said the guidelines reflected Pyongyang's fear over a possible U.S. military strike amid stalled talks on its nuclear weapons programs. They said the guidelines were also meant to whip up a sense of crisis among its 22 million people, reportedly growing discontent amid economic hardship.

"The United States has cooked up suspicion over our nuclear programs and is escalating an offensive of international pressure to strangle and destroy our republic," the booklet said. "If this tactic doesn't work, it plots to use this (nuclear) problem as an excuse for armed invasion."

Kyunghyang did not clarify where it acquired the document classified as "top secret."

Seoul's National Intelligence Service said in a one-sentence statement: "We believe the document reflects North Korea's wartime preparations."

The manual urged the military to build restaurants, wells, restrooms and air purifiers in underground bunkers, which government offices and military units will move into if war breaks out.

When North Koreans evacuate to underground facilities, they should make sure that they take the portraits, plaster busts and bronze statues of Kim and his parents so that they can "protect" them in a special room, the guidelines say.

The Kim family has ruled North Korea for more than a half century, creating a powerful personality cult. Portraits of Kim and his father hang side-by-side on the walls of every house.

Since the Korean War ended in 1953, North Korea has built a 1.1 million-member military, the world's fifth largest, although most of its weapons are outdated. It already keeps vital military facilities in an estimated 10,000 underground tunnels and bunkers, South Korean officials say.

The Pyongyang subway is hundreds of yards below the surface to double as an air raid shelter, and the North's military has dug "invasion tunnels" across the border with the South.

North Korea is locked in a dispute with Washington and its allies over its nuclear weapons programs.

Pyongyang escalated its threats after the United States invaded Iraq, which President Bush (news - web sites) termed as an "axis of evil," together with Iran and North Korea. North Korean villages are festooned with slogans exhorting the people to prepare for a war with "our sworn enemy, the U.S. imperialists."

"The North has real fear that it may become the next Iraq under the Bush administration," said Kim Tae-woo, a senior fellow at Seoul's Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. "The guidelines also appear aimed at tightening domestic control on the people as the economic difficulties erode the regime's grip on power."

Kim said Washington is building more powerful missiles that could destroy underground military targets in countries like North Korea.

On Tuesday, North Korea accused the United States of planning to deploy those missiles in South Korea for a "preemptive attack" on the North. Washington says it wants to end the nuclear dispute peacefully.

January 16, 2005 at 09:56 PM in Far East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home