Nature

Asia Cup: Sri Lanka in no mood to show mercy

An authoritative performance sees Afghanistan’s role reduced to a feeble bit-part

Sri Lanka turned up, internalised the scene, and proceeded to flesh out its role at the Sher-e-Bangla Stadium. So larger than life was its act on Monday that Afghanistan was reduced to a feeble bit-part.

This Asia Cup contest was all about Lankan assertion as the team gleefully steamrollered Afghanistan by 129 runs and took home a bonus point. The Island nation has also emphatically confirmed its place in the final.

Opting to bat first on a sluggish wicket, Kumar Sangakkara’s charmingly-sedate knock took Sri Lanka to 253 for six.

Afghanistan’s was a woeful response as its men went down without a fight. After being on 120 for five at one stage, Afghanistan lost its remaining wickets for the addition of four runs.

Asghar Stanikzai and skipper Mohammad Nabi gave a glimpse of some eye-catching stroke-play, but such minor parts were never going to be enough in a tough chase.

In the afternoon, Sri Lanka, after opting to bat, didn’t exactly put itself on the expressway. Its first 10 overs yielded a modest 35 runs. A large chunk of credit for that ought to go to Shapoor Zadran, the towering left-arm paceman.

The 26-year-old kept Lahiru Thirimanne second-guessing; there would be one delivery that would stay full while the other would crash into his ribs. In the sixth over, Shapoor sent down an in-ducker that sped past the gap between Thirimanne’s bat and pad.

At the other end, skipper Nabi chose to assign off-spinner Najibullah to target the two lefties, Thirimanne and Kusal Perera. Najibullah’s staunch adherence to a flatter trajectory built up the pressure from one end.

Dawlat Zadran, though, wasn’t as disciplined as the other Zadran, forcing Nabi to deploy himself as well as Mirwais Ashraf.

The latter bowled a wonderfully metronomic spell, and along with Nabi, continued to choke the batsmen, and Kusal, suffocated by the slowness of the wicket, played Ashraf onto the stumps.

Sangakkara set shop in his own elegant manner. It wasn’t all fluidic grace for him though. He had to settle for being the artisan rather than the artist.

Mahela Jayawardene and appeared set to construct a tall score. But his attempted lob was snapped up at mid-on.

There was also a discernible improvement in Afghanistan’s fielding following its nervy display against Bangladesh. At one point, Nabi hit the stumps thrice in a row.

With Hamza Hotak, Nawroz Mangal and Shenwari bowling, Sangakkara eked out a half-century.

He also became the second batsman, after Sanath Jayasuriya, to aggregate 1,000 runs in the Asia Cup.

By now, Sangakkara was beginning to whack the ball around. He earned a reprieve when on 62 as Dawlat dropped a return chance.

Dinesh Chandimal was bowled by a fine delivery after chipping in with a useful score.

A misunderstanding between skipper Angelo Mathews and Sangakkara led to the latter being run-out.

Following Chaturanga de Silva’s dismissal, at 184 for six, Sri Lanka was heading towards a sub-par total.

But Mathews and Thisara Perera eschewed mad rush in favour of level-headed run-accumulation. Perera didn’t score a single boundary in his innings.

En route their unbeaten 69-run association in 49 balls, they were aggressive only when they could.

The pragmatism worked well as Sri Lanka finished with a sizeable score.

Scoreboard

Sri Lanka: K. Perera b Ashraf 33 (49b, 4x4, 1x6), L. Thirimanne b Shapoor 5 (16b), K. Sangakkara run out 76 (102b, 6x4, 1x6), M. Jayawardene c Nabi b Ashraf 14 (14b, 2x4), D. Chandimal b Hotak 26 (41b, 1x4), A. Mathews (not out) 45 (41b, 4x4), C. de Silva c Ashraf b Dawlat 17 (16b, 1x4), T. Perera (not out) 19 (23b); Extras (lb-6, w-6, nb-6): 18; Total (for six wkts. in 50 overs): 253.

Fall of wickets: 1-14 (Thirimanne), 2-50 (K. Perera), 3-83 (Jayawardene), 4-157 (Chandimal), 5-158 (Sangakkara), 6-184 (de Silva).

Afghanistan bowling: Najibullah 3-0-9-0, Shapoor 9-1-46-1, Dawlat 9.2-0-60-1, Ashraf 8-1-29-2, Nabi 6.4-1-23-0, Hotak 7-1-43-1, Shenwari 4-0-20-0, Mangal 3-0-17-0.

Afghanistan: Mohammad Shahzad b Lakmal 7 (7b, 1x6), Noor Ali c de Silva b Mendis 21 (41b, 2x4), Asghar Stanikzai b T. Perera 27 (34b, 5x4), Nawroz Mangal c Sangakkara b T. Perera 4 (13b), Samiullah Shenwari c Thirimanne b Lakmal 6 (19b), Mohammad Nabi lbw b de Silva 37 (43b, 3x4, 1x6), Najibullah Zadran c Mathews b T. Perera 11 (35b, 1x4), Mirwais Ashraf c T. Perera b de Silva 1 (18b), Hamza Hotak lbw b Mendis 1 (14b), Dawlat Zadran b Mendis 0 (8b), Shapoor Zadran (not out) 0 (0b); Extras (lb-2, w-7): 9; Total (in 38.4 overs): 124.

Fall of wickets: 1-8 (Shahzad), 2-53 (Stanikzai), 3-59 (Noor Ali), 4-61 (Mangal), 5-73 (Shenwari), 6-121 (Najibullah), 7-121 (Nabi), 8-122 (Hotak), 9-124 (Dawlat).

Sri Lanka bowling: Malinga 5-0-23-0, Lakmal 7-2-30-2, T. Perera 10-2-29-3, C. de Silva 9.4-1-29-2, Mendis 7-2-11-3.

In UP, Modi takes on Mulayam, says SP misleading people under veil of secularism

BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Sunday launched a scathing attack against SP, BSP and Congress, saying they were misleading the people under the veil of secularism to hide their failures.

“Though heat of elections is yet to be felt, there is a wave in favour of BJP due to which “sabka vinash” (rout of SP, BSP and Congress) is certain….For them secularism is all about vote bank to mislead the people,” the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate told a massive rally here.

“They are misleading the people by wearing the veil of secularism to conceal their failures,” the Gujarat Chief Minister said.

Hitting out at the SP government on the issue of communal violence, Modi asked SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav to explain as to why so many riots had taken place in Uttar Pradesh.

“In the past one year of your son’s (Akhilesh’s) rule, more than 150 riots have taken place in UP, while there was not even a single riot in Gujarat in the last 10 years. Not even a curfew was clamped there. Don’t compare Gujarat with UP on development,” he said.

Accusing SP, BSP and Congress was using seclarism as a poll slogan and a tool to grab power, Modi said that for BJP secularism was about uniting people and ensuring development.

“Secularism is article of faith for us. It is to unite people and do development….For them its a tool to grab power and an election slogan,” the BJP leader said.

Taking on the SP supremo, Modi claimed that Mulayam Yadav in his address in Allahabad had conceded defeat.

“Netaji (Mulayam) has conceded defeat in his address in the SP rally….by saying that he cannot compete with the crowd at my rally….By talking about development, Yadav has been forced (by us) to leave his old ways and come to this topic….

“I have been talking about politics of development for past 10 years and I am happy that he has also started talking about it,” Modi said.

He said instead of giving false facts about Gujarat, it would have been better if he (Mulayam) would have given an account of work done by him in UP.

“He is spreading lies about Gujarat….He should first visit Gujarat and see that electricity is available there 24 hours, 365 days while in UP there is no power. In UP, there is reservation as far as distribution of electricity is concerned. Areas of Netaji are getting power, while other places did not have power….,” he sai

On the law and order front, Modi alleged that “due to hooliganism of SP leaders, 45 crimes

After Fali Nariman, former SC judge K T Thomas questions Lokpal selection

Days after Fali Nariman declined to be part of the process to pick India’s first Lokpal, the government suffered a second embarrassment in the matter — retired Supreme Court judge K T Thomas, who headed the search panel, quit, saying the committee lacked independence.

In a letter sent to the Prime Minister’s Office, Justice (retd) Thomas withdrew his “willingness” to head the search panel, saying, “Why there should be a Search Committee at all?… When the Selection Committee itself can decide on who should be the members of Lokpal…”

With Nariman and Thomas quitting, the eight-member search panel now has two vacancies.

MUST READ: Whose Lokpal

Sources in the government said Thomas’s resignation has placed the government in a difficult position, because the appointment of the head of the search committee needs the consent of the selection committee, of which Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are members. With the PM away in Myanmar, the government has little time to convene a meeting before elections are announced and the model code comes into force — expected any day now.

BJP leaders said the Leaders of Opposition in both Houses were likely to write to the Chief Election Commissioner over the delay in announcing elections. In 2009, the code of conduct had come into effect on March 3. 

As per the Lokpal selection process, the selection committee comprising the PM, Swaraj, Speaker Meira Kumar, Supreme Court Justice H L Dattu (representative of the Chief Justice of India), and jurist P P Rao (the fifth member) must set up a search committee to shortlist possible candidates. However, the government has forwarded a list of 305 names to the search committee, asking it to pick a shortlist from the list.

Thomas has said that he had second thoughts after Nariman declined to join the search panel. “The current selection process would overlook the most competent, the most independent and the most courageous,” Nariman said in his letter, sent to the PMO last Thursday.

Thomas had written: “When I went through the Rules I have come to realize that the work of the Search Committee is to pick out names of persons from the list provided by the Central Government.

“I have reservations in accepting the Chairmanship of the Search Committee. I do not consider it worthwhile to travel such a long distance from my hometown Kottayam in Kerala far up to New Delhi and spend many days to make a panel from the list forwarded by the DoPT of the Central government. The Search Committee cannot make any independent search to find

Tamil Nadu Telugu Makkal Katchi launched

It will join PMK-led Social Democratic Alliance

A new political party formed by the Telugu-speaking population residing in Tamil Nadu was launched here on Monday.

Releasing the flag of the ‘Tamil Nadu Telugu Makkal Katchi’ in the presence of leaders from various organisations, S. Ramadoss, leader of the PMK, announced that the party would join the PMK-led Social Democratic Alliance (SDA).

Speaking on the occasion, he accused successive regimes in the State of ignoring the interests of Telugu-speaking people who, despite being a linguistic minority, had contributed immensely to the economic development of Tamil Nadu.

“Even though the three parties that ruled Tamil Nadu had Telugu-speaking leaders, they had not done anything to address the grievances of Telugu-speaking population.”

Dr. Ramadoss called upon the party to take up the grievances of the Telugu-speaking people. Later, speaking to journalists, he said the contribution of linguistic minorities must be recognised.

The Telugu Makkal Katchi passed 11 resolutions. C.J. Raj Kumar, president of Telugu Makkal Katchi, said the party would work towards making Telugu the second State language of Tamil Nadu and the establishment of an academy to promote the language. The party also expressed its support to the PMK’s demand for prohibition and urged the State government to close down all the liquor outlets.

Manmohan to meet Rajapaksa today

The meeting comes just days ahead of a scheduled vote at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on a resolution calling for an international inquiry into alleged Sri Lankan war crimes.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will on Tuesday meet Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa for the first time since 2012, on what will likely be his last official foreign visit, a two-day summit here of leaders of the seven nations participating in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).

The meeting comes just days ahead of a scheduled vote at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on a resolution calling for an international inquiry into alleged Sri Lankan war crimes.

Dr. Singh had declined to travel to Sri Lanka for the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit, amid intense criticism of the country’s human rights record.

Tamil Nadu politicians have criticised the meeting, with Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader M. Karunanidhi writing in a party journal that while Tamils were “seeking a resolution for an independent probe into war crimes in Sri Lanka, Singh is holding talks with Rajapaksa, ignoring sentiments of Tamils.”

External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid responded sharply to the criticism, saying “We engage specifically for the welfare of the Tamils of Sri Lanka, and in protecting their welfare and interests.”

“I think someone should ask the 50,000 Tamil families in the Northern Province who have got Indian-built homes what they think of our engagement. I doubt very much that they would want us to cut off contact with Sri Lanka, leaving them with no livelihoods and their children without schools.”

Dr. Singh began his meetings with key regional leaders on Monday, holding talks with Nepal’s new Prime Minister, Sushil Koirala — who stirred comment among media in his country by choosing to travel in a scheduled flight rather than a chartered aircraft.

Mr. Khurshid said Mr. Koirala had been “very forthright, very candid and very positive about India-Nepal relations.” The two Prime Ministers’ discussions, Mr. Khurshid said, not only focussed on Nepal’s Constitution-building process, but also addressed infrastructure and economic cooperation.

Dr. Singh and Myanmar’s President Thein Sen discussed the progress of bilateral measures to contain insurgent groups operating across the border.

The two leaders discussed work on construction of an Indian-Myanmar-Thailand highway and Indian involvement in Myanmar’s gasfields — the 10th largest in the world.

Lessons from a lost war

Twenty-five years ago, the last of the Soviet troops left Afghanistan. Now, as another superpower’s soldiers prepare to return home from the war-torn country, there are important lessons for India to learn

Twenty-five years ago last month, Marshal Boris Vsevolodovich Gromov walked the last few metres over the bridge from Afghanistan to the Soviet Union, at the very tail of the army he had commanded. Mr. Gromov’s son, Maksim, had stood watching as the great convoy of tanks and armoured personnel carriers thundered by, waiting for his father with a fistful of carnations. The Marshal’s own father had died in 1943, when he was just a few months old, battling Nazi troops on the Dneiper river. The story of this soldier and son had a happier ending.

Fourteen thousand, four hundred and fifty-three other Soviet soldiers, though, came home in black, zinc coffins. Perhaps 7,000 were maimed. No one knows how many Afghans died in the war for sure; estimates run up to 1.2 million.

Now, as another great army prepares to retreat from Afghanistan, the lessons of that last conflict are worth remembering. Hundreds of thousands more have died in the wars that followed the war Mr. Gromov commanded. The end of this war, too, is unlikely to herald the coming of peace.

Great power competition is toxic

From the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the first lesson is this: geostrategic competition had toxic impacts. Long before Soviet troops landed at Kabul’s airport on Christmas eve in 1979, Moscow and Washington had all competed for influence in the country. The Soviet Union sought political stability in its immediate neighbour, and feared the prospect that it could be used as a base for western short-range missiles or air assets. The United States, in turn, worried that Afghanistan could become a launch pad for Soviet expansion towards the oil-rich Persian Gulf.

The regional powers leveraged the anxieties of the superpowers to pursue their own interests — certain that their clients would protect them from the consequences of adventurism.

In July 1973, the regime of Muhammad Daud Khan laid claim to ethnic-Pashtun enclaves in north-western Pakistan. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto responded by backing the Islamists who would become prominent in the course of the anti-Soviet jihad, notably Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmed Shah Masud. In the summer of 1975, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) funded and armed an abortive Islamist coup against Daud’s government.

Daud responded to these pressures by seeking a rapprochement with Pakistan — in turn precipitating what led to the 1978 communist coup that claimed his life. Islamists responded by escalating their war against the new government in Kabul, with Pakistani backing.

Kabul’s efforts to bring about land reform, ensure that girls received an education, grant women the right to marry by choice, and proscribe the payment of dowries incensed the clerics and tribal leaderships which held power in rural Afghanistan.

In March 1979, a massive revolt erupted in the town of Herat, led by junior officers of the Afghan Army’s 17th Division, including Ismail Khan, Alauddin Khan and Abdul Ahad. More than a dozen Soviet advisers posted in Herat and members of their families were hacked to death. Afghan forces responded with massive force, using their Soviet-provided aircraft to bomb Herat. Ismail Khan’s counter-revolution spread to Jalalabad and its surrounding countryside.

From declassified material, it is now known the U.S. began funding these Islamist insurgents fighting the new communist government in July 1979 — months before the Soviet intervention. Zbigniew Brzeziñski, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, told the French newspaper, Le Nouvel Observateur in January 1998 “that we didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.”

“We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War,” Mr. Brzeziñski wrote to Mr. Carter as the Soviet 40th Army finally rolled across the Amu Darya river. He was right — but as 9/11 demonstrated, the policy wasn’t cost-free.

Withdrawal does not end wars

The second lesson from the Soviet war is this: superpower withdrawal from a war doesn’t end the carnage. In a March 15, 1985 meeting with the Afghan President, Babrak Karmal, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear that “Soviet troops cannot stay in Afghanistan forever.” General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s military ruler, was given the same message. Later that year, a massive surge of troops followed, but failed to end the fighting. In November 1986, the first seven Soviet formations — perhaps 7,000 troops — pulled out of Afghanistan. In February 1988, Mr. Gorbachev announced his intention to end Soviet military involvement.

Like many do now, all parties believed the troop withdrawal would make a negotiated peace deal between the parties possible. In April 1988, the United Nations brokered the Geneva Accords, which should have provided a road map for peace.

It didn’t. The ISI pushed its Islamist clients to take advantage of the Soviet withdrawal by staging an offensive towards Jalalabad, in the hope of seizing territory and founding a parallel government. President Muhammad Najibullah, aided by Soviet military advisers and aid, held off better than expected. The mujahideen rejected offers for a broad-based client — and Najibullah’s own position hardened, especially after a March 1990 coup attempt by his defence minister, Shahnawaz Tanai.

Late in 1991, though, a collapsing Soviet Union cut off aid to Najibullah’s government — crippling his air force, cutting off fuel supplies to the military, making payments to troops impossible.

The only states which stood by him were the former Soviet republics in Central Asia that had no desire to see the rise of an Islamist state on their borders. They provided Najibullah with six million barrels of oil, and some 5,00,000 tons of wheat — but this was too little.

Faced with recognition of the Islamists by Moscow, Najibullah’s aides deserted him. He spent his last four years in a United Nations compound, before finally being publicly tortured and executed by the Taliban.

In 1988, there was no agreed mechanism in place to share power — nor a coercive apparatus to bring all parties to the table, and keep them there. There still isn’t.

War destabilises the region

For India, there is a third, particularly important lesson: distant as the crisis in Afghanistan might seem, it has the proven potential to destabilise the region. In late November 1979, the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan was at an all-time low. A radical Islamist group from Iran occupied the Kaaba, the heart of the city of Mecca. For reasons which are still not clear, General Zia-ul-Haq informed the assembled crowd that the United States had engineered the occupation. Furious mobs torched the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.

He leveraged the situation to win strategic leverage — against India. The scholar Hassan Abbas has observed, “he was quite clear that he too was opting to be a tool of the United States.” He dismissed successive offers of military and civilian aid, amounting first to U.S. $150 million and then U.S. $400 million — eventually getting $3.2 billion, and a generous component of F-16 combat jets, from President Ronald Reagan

The U.S. also agreed that all military assistance to the Afghan jihadists would be routed through Pakistan’s ISI. In practice, this meant that while the U.S. would pay for the Islamist kite flying in Afghanistan, Pakistan would hold the string.

“It is no exaggeration to say,” Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, General Malik’s subordinate in charge of Afghan operations has written, “that by the time I left the ISI in 1987, at least 80,000 Mujaheddin had received training in Pakistan over a four-year period, and many thousands more had done so in Afghanistan.”

Patronage from the U.S. helped Pakistan launch a covert war against India in Punjab — something certain to have invited Indian military retaliation otherwise — and led on to its backing of jihadists in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan’s key role in shaping Afghan events gave it the confidence it could secure similar outcomes in Kashmir, as well as a covert war apparatus to underpin its plans.

“The water in Afghanistan,” General Zia-ul-Haq had told his spymaster in December 1979, “must boil at the right temperature.” India still has time to learn from the lessons of the war that was lost 25 years ago, and work to make sure the pot doesn’t boil over. It needs to ensure there is a multilateral international mechanism in place to negotiate Afghanistan’s political future, and funding to ensure a viable national state with a functional military. It must, most importantly, consider what to do in the worst-case scenario.

Harsha Moily’s nomination papers for Congress primary rejected

It comes as a silver lining for former Union Minister Janardhana Poojary

The Congress’s primary election in the Dakshina Kannada Lok Sabha constituency is expected to be a damp squib, much to the pleasure of the party stalwart and former Union Minister B. Janardhana Poojary as the nomination of the other serious contender, Harsha Moily, son of Union Minister M. Veerappa Moily, has been rejected.

It is a different ball game in the Bangalore North constituency where the other primary election is scheduled. There are many keen contestants, including former Ministers. While the primary in Dakshina Kannada is on March 9, the one in Bangalore North is on March 13.

While three candidates — Mr. Poojary, Mr. Harsha Moily and U. Kanachur Monu — filed their nomination papers to contest from Dakshina Kannada, the papers of Mr. Harsha Moily have been rejected on the ground that he is not a social worker, a criterion prescribed by the All India Congress Committee to be in the fray. Mr. Poojary, a former Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president, has to now face Mr. Monu, who is regarded as a minor challenger, although he is the vice- president of the party’s State minority cell.

There are at least 11 Congress ticket aspirants in Bangalore North. Although the names of C. Narayanaswamy (who joined the Congress from the JD(S) recently), Krishna Byre Gowda (Agriculture Minister), M.V. Rajeev Gowda (IIMB professor), B.L. Shankar (former MP and KPCC spokesperson), K.C. Ramamurthy (former Inspector-General of Police) and G.C. Chandrashekhar (political secretary to the KPCC president) were doing the rounds till recently, new names are popping up with every passing day. These include Kengal Shreepada Renu (grandson of Kengal Hanumanthaiya), Nehaa S. Patil (an IIM Lucknow alumnus), Aarti Krishna (daughter of the former Minister Begane Ramaiah), N.L. Narendra Babu (Mahalakshmi Layout MLA) and Rajanna (party worker from Kamakshipalya).

Party insiders said that conducting internal polls was just to shortlist the candidates and the final choice would be made by the Central Election Committee of the party, irrespective of who wins the primaries. Congress Returning Officer for Bangalore North Nitin Kumbalkar said that the counting of votes would happen just after the voting and the result would be announced at the venue itself. “The Central Election Committee will only officially announce the candidature of the winner,” he said.

Party workers, however, said that given the limited electorate for the primaries — it was about 600 in Dakshina Kannada and almost the same in Bangalore North — it was not just enough to win the primaries.

K.T. Thomas refuses to head Lokpal search panel

‘Job only to pick names provided by Centre’

In a setback for the UPA government’s efforts to put in place the Lokpal before the expiry of its term, former Supreme Court Judge K.T. Thomas on Monday decided not to head the search committee.

The panel’s mandate is to forward names to a selection committee headed by the Prime Minister for appointment of the chairperson and other members of the Lokpal.

Last week, eminent lawyer Fali Nariman declined to be part of the same panel stating that the current selection process would overlook “the most competent, the most independent and the most courageous.”

Speaking to The Hindu from Kottayam, Justice Thomas said, “When Mr. Nariman opted out of the search panel, I got a copy of the Lokpal rules and after going through the rules I fully agree with what Mr. Nariman has said.”

He found the “recommendations of the search committee are not binding on the selection committee. Therefore, the work of the search committee can as well be done by the selection committee itself.” In his letter to Minister of State in the PMO V. Narayanasamy, in which he declined to be part of the search committee, Justice Thomas said its job was only to pick names from the list given by the Department of Personnel and not make an independent search.

He said the move to seek applications from persons to be considered for Lokpal membership had been widely criticised, and there was no doubt it would deter deserving persons from being considered. Justice Thomas said he did not consider it worthwhile to travel to New Delhi just to draw up a panel from the list.

Besides the Prime Minister, the selection panel has the Lok Sabha Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition, the Chief Justice of India or a judge of the apex court nominated by him, and an eminent jurist nominated by the President or any other member.