By Ananya S Guha
The report on Britain and the USA’;s intervention in Iraq is now an official document. It is now subject to interpretations; inferences can be drawn and conclusions made. Prior to that things we were only speculating. It is clear now that the reasons cited by Tony Blair on which the USA led by George Bush a professed Born Again Christian crusaded againstthat the Saddam Hussain regime were preparing with arsenals for a war, were not based on facts. It was, as the report now says, a hype and a pretext for invasion and meddling into the internal affairs of another country, however dictatorial its leader maybe. That led to Libya and Syria. That also led to Al Qaeda and now ISIS.
Super Powers must know that interventionist policies play with the lives of people, both in their country and the country they have occupied. Iraq’s woes are known, children, women and men died. The UK sent soldiers to die. The pull out of forces was hardly a solution, only a desperate act of redemption. It all started with the pyrhhic victory of US forces in Vietnam. That lesson was not enough. To support rebel causes in another country is poking noses into their business in the garb of a saviour. Russia did another attack in Syria to counter US domination.
The world is a battle ground now for captivity and fanatic domination. One group uses the name of religion and resorts to mindless killing. Another group led by AmericanEuropean coterie is treating the world as it’s own property and backyard. And this is a trend since the 1960s mind you ever since the Vietnam fiasco. It is in this context that the BREXIT must be seen and also China’s proxy wars and silent aggression. The poorer countries in Africa, South A sia depend heavily on aids and assurance of safety from the Super Powers. The US’s support to India for membership in the NSG is a case in point to force an ally in the face of Pakistani Islamic terrorism and China’s might as a rapidly developing nation in areas of arms, education, standards of living and sports.
We have parallel worlds now. A world dominated by muscle power and the other by the power of the cyber world which is misused and abused, notwithstanding our exhortation of a borderless, unified world. Once nuclear power enters fully the cyber world wars may not be fought in real spaces but in virtual ones. Perhaps the process has started. It is sad that in the name of development people are dying like swatting of flies. Poorer Nations have little choice but to anchor on to the more developed ones in terms of strategy, geo politics and wealth. Communism with all its plea for egalitarianism is almost a myth, a pale imitation of what it thundered to be. The working classes are sufferers. The Berlin Wall was dismantled but walls of human corrosion have not.
It is to be augured what political will both the USA and UK will show and how the EU steers between such a crisis in terms of the UK backing out of the EU, a common market and a common Union sans the British of course.
Coming to India both Jammu & Kashmir and North East India loom large as unsolved if not insoluble problems in the India dominion. Many may argue that India more than a country is a continent, in my childhood in geography lessons we read of India as a subcontinent. Recently in The Hindu a former Chief Minister of Manipur and a man of jurisprudence wrote a brilliant exposition of how North East India’s problems must be seen in common and the region’s problems must not be seen in terms of it’s diversity in ethnicity and cultures. That he argued will be to create more division and discord.
For reasons both real and imagined the feeling of neglect has always impinged on the minds of the people of this region. When real fears are mingled with imaginary ones then voices of separatism and xenophobia become strident. It is then that empathy and understanding must intervene. As the writer contended simply doling out money will not suffice. We have to think in terms of road connectivity, more railway connections, health care services, mitigating the rate of drop outs in schools. All these have been spoken of but what remains is an all out effort overcoming political expediency and gains. The Act East Policy will remain on paper if these hurdles are not overcome. The Naga truce still remains shrouded in secrecy. If a solution is in the offing then much of the separatist feelings in North East India will be assuaged. Breaking walls, those of divisiveness, pangs of separatism within the country is a must and as yet, North East India and Jammu and Kashmir are major impediments. The EU might have been an attempt at European unity; in retrospect many may consider it to be effete, but it was an attempt to bring a semblance of historical and cultural throwback, backed by trade and commerce on a common footing.