On a Wing and a Prayer

By Sonia Trikha Shukla

Published in Defence and Security of India, April 2012

At the height of winter in December 2011, two officers of the Indian Air Force created history by becoming the first women pilots to land their aircraft on two of the world’s most difficult runways. Squadron Leader Teji Uppal landed her transport plane, an AN-32 at the strategic airstrip Daulat Beg Oldie that is located at an altitude of 16,200 feet from sea level on the India China border. Veena Saharan landed her IL-76 military transport plane at the 10,600 feet high Leh airfield. Despite these feats, the IAF will not allow women in combat roles or to flytheir fighter aircraft.

On 4^th January 1993, nineteen years ago, on a sunny January morning Neelu Khatri marched out of the Air Force Academy in Hyderabad. She was an officer and not a gentleman. She was among the first batch of women officers to be inducted, not as doctors and nurses, but as regular members of the armed forces. None of them were aviators, that would come a year and a half later, but they were proud to be wearing the uniform.

Wing Commander Neelu Khatri was inducted on a short service commission of five years that was extended to 15 years. The women in the Indian Air Force (IAF) were not allowed to fly back then, but they could work as non-technical ground staff in the Education, Administration and Logistics streams. Khatri chose Logistics. In the next course, six months later, the Indian Air Force admitted women as engineers. Another two courses and one year down the line, women were allowed to enter as pilots in the IAF. But they could only fly transport planes and helicopters. Almost 18 years and many reviews and committees later, essentially that is where things stand for women in the IAF.

In a post feminist age, it seems almost unfashionable to talk about equal rights for women. But here it is. Women in the Indian Air Force, unlike their male counterparts, are not qualified to fly fighter planes. Women in the armed forces are not qualified to enter in combat roles. It is a strange irony, in a country where the commander in chief of the armed forces is a woman, women are not soldiers and women officers are not permitted to go to battle.

That is the central issue and while it may appear to be a straightforward matter of giving women parity in the armed forces, the debate surrounding it is far from simple. There are less than 3 per cent women officers in the army, just 3 per cent women officers in the navy and nearly 7 per cent women officers in the IAF, and for them the road to parity is long and uphill. For them, even if they were able to claim a place in combat roles their struggle would not be over because their real fight is in their day-to-day jobs and routine postings. Women in the armed forces now have permanent commissions but they still don’t feel equal to their male counterparts, unlike women in other private sector jobs.

Reshma Singh retired in 2004 after serving for 10 years in the Indian Air Force in the Logistics stream and has worked with Air Deccan and Deccan Cargo before joining Lufthansa Technik. She maintains, "I don't ask for or get any special favours as a woman" in the corporate world.

Khatri too is a successful corporate woman, the Head of Defence Advisory Services of KPMG, who takes equal opportunity at her work place as her right. But that wasn’t always the case in her earlier work environment.

In the IAF, Khatri says, “we were treated like puppet dolls and the refrain from my bosses before every posting was ‘I don’t want a woman officer”. And when she finally got to her posting, she would be given meaningless jobs, usually in areas where she served in an ornamental capacity, such as in parades for visiting VIPs. But for women like Khatri, this was a disappointment in the initial years. They had joined the service to fight for the country but instead ended up fighting the system.

In 1998-99 Khatri fought for and became the first woman officer to get herself posted to Leh. During the Kargil war, as a logistics officer she was offloading IL 76 transport planes. Posting a woman officer to a field station like Leh was considered too bold because a woman would not be comfortable there. Another colleague of hers was being denied a flying assignment to Agra because she would have to share a room with two boys. That officer went on the flight and shared the room with the boys by just putting up a curtain and dividing the room!

But having fought the system, Khatri was able to prove herself as good as, or even better than her male colleagues. From 2004 to 2007 Khatri was posted in Delhi and her unit was in charge of the preparations for Republic Day parade. At 2 am in the dead of winter, her Commanding Officer asked her to transport some materials. This posed a dilemma because she was a single parent with two young boys but at no stage did it occur to her that she could ask for a reprieve. She says, “I bundled up my two boys in a truck and off we went into the night. It was a great adventure for them and they remember it to this day.’’ Khatri’s Commanding Officer then Group Captain Prem Raj was so impressed by her dedication that he often said, “Neelu is the only man in my unit”.

Apart from people like Khatri, there are others who have broken barriers and excel in male dominated streams in the IAF. The Indian Air Force has an all women 6-member sky diving team led by Wing Commander Asha Jyothirmai. In May 2011, three women officers of the IAF climbed Mt Everest, Flt Lt Nevidita Choudhary, Sqn Ldr Nirupama Pandey and Flt Lt Rajika Sharma.

But despite these fantastic achievements, women within the IAF still have a very hard time being taken seriously. Khatri was a mountaineer and a car and bike rallyist during her tenure in the IAF but she still had to fight to be given any serious responsibility. On one posting where she was made incharge of rations, Khatri wilfully committed a traffic offence by speeding past and overtaking an Air Commodore’s flag car in her motorcycle. She did it so that she would be called in for an explanation and then she could ask the senior officer for a job with more responsibility.

Contrast that with women in other armed forces like the United States and Israel where they handle offensive weapons not just as officers but also as soldiers. In Britain, women are eligible for almost 96 per cent of all jobs in the Royal Air Force.

Why are women kept out

But for everyone who is convinced that the women officers are as good as their male counterparts, there are many more who remain unconvinced in India. Group Captain (retd) Rajan Bhasin says he thinks the women officers are very good but in his entire career in the IAF “he did not meet even one woman whom he thought could have flown a fighter plane”. He further explains that, “I think women officers have the mental toughness to fly fighters but they would be wanting in physical endurance. If you want women in fighter planes then you must first create the systems to test their fitness for them.”

For women in the IAF who have seen their colleagues do sky diving and climb Mt Everest, flying a fighter plane does not seem an insurmountable challenge.

Major General (retd) Mrinal Suman has written extensively on the issue of women in the armed forces. According to him, “India has limited experience as regards induction of women in the armed forces. The first batch had joined in 1992. Therefore, our knowledge of the complexities and long-term effects of the issues involved is highly limited. On the other hand, women have been serving in the militaries of developed countries for a long time. These countries have acquired a deep understanding of all the issues involved.”

Major General’s conclusion is that India must relearn all that the developed world has learnt. He believes that for cultural reasons women officers in India must not be exposed to combat roles. There are several reasons according to Suman, but in the final balance the Indian army is not ready for women officers in combat arms because societal and cultural ethos continue to be mired in sex discrimination.

Lt Colonel Asha Kale was commissioned into the army in 1994 and after serving 14 years she too feels women are not suitable for combat roles because the Indian male soldier would not accept a woman as a commander in battle. But as a woman who is discriminated against Kale has a solution to that problem: If men don’t accept women as commanders then we should raise all women units for combat roles!

According to Bhasin, at least in the IAF, fighter pilots are at the forefront of battle and run the risk of being taken prisoners of war in combat, “I don’t think women can be subjected to that”.

People who argue against that say all women may not qualify for combat roles but they must have the opportunity to compete for those positions. According to Khatri, “women like myself who come from small towns and modest backgrounds break barriers when we join the armed forces so it is not hard for me to take it further and work as an equal among men”.

The fight from within

Women officers like Reshma Singh and Neelu Khatri who have succeeded outside the armed forces in an environment that provides equal opportunity for them don’t think that all women in the IAF would necessarily succeed. In fact, Khatri goes further and says “unlike in the corporate world where some 20 per cent of the people are very good and some 20 per cent are very poor and the rest 60 per cent make up the middle ground, in the IAF I found some 20 per cent of the women are very good but the rest are all very poor, the middle ground is missing.”

Maj Gen Suman underlines that women may not be popular in the armed forces because many female officers use their status to get preferential treatment in postings and in duties.

Khatri understands that if you have a large section of women officers of very poor calibre then they will load the argument away from giving them serious responsibilities. But she blames the lack of middle ground on an organisational structure that does not put enough pressure on them to succeed. For Khatri, it is not a question of whether women are capable or not, but of giving them serious work and responsibility so that they have the platform needed to perform.

Kale believes women are not deemed competent to command units but in actual fact they are only not capable because they are not given the opportunities to attend training courses in the same way as male officers. She goes further, “there is a deliberate move to not allow women to grow in the army because the army only has a shortfall of officers up to the rank of Lt Colonel, so the male officers don’t want women to enter the fray and make the competition tougher”.

But the lady officers are not giving up the fight. If they are not allowed to go to the battlefronts they are willing to fight the system from within. In the army and the air force, there hundreds of women officers who are fighting cases in courts for their extensions in service.

Despite all these problems, however, people like Neelu Khatri and Asha Kale don’t regret joining the forces. “A large part of my success is because of my training and experience in the IAF,” says Khatri with a ring of pride in her voice.

As another International Women’s Day comes and goes, and we recall all the Indian women who led the first war of independence like Rani Laxmibai, women who were at the forefront of the Indian freedom movement like Sarojini Naidu and others, Indian women who have been in top leadership positions in politics, even women who have been in space like Kalpana Chawla, it seems so strange that even after more than 15 years of the induction of women officers in defence services, India still finds their presence in the forefront of the field unpalatable and we still have controversies and vehement debates around this subject.

ends

Terrorism Worldwide 101

by Sonia Shukla
Published in Business Standard, September 2009

Terrorism: Patterns of Internationalization
Edited by Jaideep Saikia & Ekaterina Stepanova
Published by Sage
Price: 695
Pages: 266

As you go through this book, it makes you wonder what its target audience is. The publishers, or the authors, answer this question on the back cover. They say, this book is targeted at the military, the police, law enforcement agencies and government training institutes, in addition, it will also benefit political analysts and professionals such as counter-insurgency and anti-terrorism experts.

With that knowledge you begin to assess the success of this compilation of essays. On the face of it, Terrorism: Patterns of Internationalization, edited by Jaideep Saikia and Ekaterina Stepanova, appears to be a well-timed effort to compile studies on international terrorism in its various regional avatars. In its 266 pages the two editors have collected 11 chapters written by 12 experts on terrorism from different parts of the world.

Going by sheer numbers it is a laudable effort, but there is a problem: the text doesn’t go beyond being a 101, a mere introduction to the way several parts of the world have come to be threatened with menacing levels of violence. Most chapters, and we will discuss them shortly, have some interesting details but they don’t say much more than what is already available in newspapers every day and in dozens of other texts that have sprung up since 9/11.

Before going further afield, let’s examine some of the chapters on terrorism in South Asia.

Saikia, one of the editors, has a chapter that concentrates on the northeast of India. He says it is geographically distant from the centre and for decades has been facing militancy, insurgency, inter-ethnic conflicts and the strategic threat of Islamisation of the region. With painstaking research, he has documented the ISI-Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (Bangladesh)-ULFA nexus to shelter and train various terrorist outfits and plot terrorist attacks in India. But we already know this.

Subir Bhaumik’s chapter on Bangladesh details information about India’s neighbour facing the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism and how the Jamaat-e-Islami works through the democratic process to support violent Islamist groups. Some facts are interesting but they don’t break new ground.

Hariharan has a chapter on the LTTE’s role in Sri Lanka. He gives his observations on the LTTE and the support it still enjoys from the Tamil diaspora, despite their military defeat at the hands of the Sri Lankan army. He describes the international character of the LTTE and its widespread political, military and financial linkages. All this is well-known, but there is a new twist to the tale. Hariharan claims the IPKF withdrew from Sri Lanka because of the LTTE’s political links within India. If that was indeed the case, the contributor fails to explain why it went into Sri Lanka in the first place. LTTE’s political connections in India are well-documented but it is stretching the imagination to say this is why the IPKF was recalled.

Jennifer Lynn Oetken’s chapter on terrorism in Kashmir does not break limits of credulity but it does not break any new ground on analyzing the transforming nature of terrorism in the Valley either.

Bishnu Raj Upreti does a study of terrorist activity in Nepal and although Maoist violence is far from taking over the world, its linkages with India technically qualify it for a study of patterns of internationalization.

Other parts of the world also come up for study. Alonso and Iribarren’s paper focuses on two traditional Europe-based terrorist organisations, the Irish Republican Army and the Basque separatist group, ETA, and their connections beyond the border.

But it does not discuss the recent phenomenon of terrorist networks in Europe that have their connections both in Europe and South Asia, specifically in Pakistan. The threat from IRA and ETA is now diminishing in Europe, but there are new terrorist modules being discovered in Britain and in other parts that have linkages abroad, especially Pakistan and they form the real new lexicon of terrorism in that continent.

In Chapter 9, Mohamed Nawab Bin Mohamed Osman discusses how the Afghan war was instrumental in the transformation of Jemaah Islamiyah from a group with local aspirations to a trans-regional organization with linkages across South-East Asia.

The editors themselves use the book to address dilemmas facing academics, like what is the meaning of terrorism, what is international terrorism, while stressing the difficulty in drawing a strict line between international and domestic terrorism. Some of these observations are interesting but you are not convinced that they are the last word for practitioners of the anti-terrorist trade.

The final chapter by Adam Dolnik studies if the unlimited goals of the al-Qaeda and the broader transnational violent Islamist movements require or are matched by unlimited means to advance these goals. Dolnik suggests the upcoming trend of terrorist operations by Islamist cells around the world is likely to be one of decreasing, rather than increasing in technological sophistication. This is a reassuring point but I doubt if anti-terrorist squads are going to stop working overtime because of it.

Slice of history in the making

Sonia Shukla
Business Standard
August 05, 2009


FROM FATWA TO JIHAD
The Rushdie affair and its legacy
Kenan Malik
Atlantic Books, Rs 399

Several books in the last eight years have discussed the impact of either fatwa or jihad on modern society, but a book with both fatwa and jihad in the title is, to the best of my knowledge, a first.

As you move beyond the title, Kenan Malik seems really to be dealing with the issue of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the ripples that created in the United Kingdom. From there the author is making a slightly far-fetched linkage between that event and the problems created by the modern jihad.

But, according to Malik, the connection between burning The Satanic Verses in 1988-89 and the burning towers of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan in 2001 is real: it is the erosion of self-belief in the western civilisation and the impact of the immediate reality of the death threat from militant Islam facing the west. Malik’s analysis of the west’s response to the fatwa and jihad is even more interesting: “Just as many reacted to the Rushdie affair by reassessing their commitment to traditional liberal values and insisting, in the name of multiculturalism, that Islamist sentiments had to be appeased, so many responded to 9/11 with unease and self-loathing.” He goes on to give examples of these.

Malik may not have created the most lucid linkage between the Rushdie affair and the current troubles of the western world that began with the fall of the twin towers, but his book is an engaging history of the politics of contemporary Britain and the changes that have taken place there over the last 30 years. Born in India, Malik grew up within immigrant communities in Britain and acquired an enriching detachment to his subject as he covered the Rushdie affair as a young journalist in Bradford.

This put Malik in a unique position to cover the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Britain. He traces the transition of Muslim identity in the west from being defined in terms of race to religion through the change in his friend Hassan: “His metamorphosis from left-wing wide boy to Islamic militant… In that metamorphosis lies the story of the wider changes that were taking place both in Britain and in other western nations.” And one of the factors at the root of this was the British policy of multiculturalism.

One of the most deplorable effects of the rise of terrorism in the last 20 years has been the culture of fear it has created, and Malik carefully patches together how this has led to an era of curtailment of the freedom of expression. He tells us how Rushdie’s publishers may have stood by him in those difficult times but the publishers today are not willing to bet on work that may cause offence. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Malik seems to suggest so.

This last thought is linked to his study of how multiculturalism has given rise to political correctness that condemns people to a life of rarely saying what they mean. This curtailed freedom of expression in the world stems from a misguided state policy.

According to his critics, Malik’s chief grouse is against the state. He believes it is all-powerful but impotent. So Britain supported Rushdie in the face of the worldwide ban of his book but fell short by not severing ties with Iran. In the book, Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, one of the founders of the Muslim Institute in the UK, says “the conflict over Rushdie was never about religion. It was about politics, specifically between Saudi Arabia and Iran over winning the hearts and minds of Muslims.” It was politics again which was responsible for the policy of multiculturalism in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. But most people already know all this; Malik just says it again in a well-researched study.

So don’t go to this book looking for anything new, Malik is not attempting to break new ground on the nature of Islam and terrorism. But his book has merit in chronicling a sequence of events that have left an indelible mark on the world.

Published to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the fatwa issued by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini against Salman Rushdie, the book tells for the first time the full story of this defining episode. It’s a slice of Malik’s life but From Fatwa to Jihad interests us because it is also a slice of history.

A little bit of India on the banks of the Yangtze

Chongqing’s residents have Raj Kapoor in their heart, world’s biggest dam on drawing board

SONIA TRIKHA SHUKLA

CHONGQING, SEPTEMBER 6: RAJ Kapoor will never know it, but he has something in common with Arundhati Roy. The actor-director-producer and the script-writer-turned-author meet faraway from their country of origin, in a land of Kapoor fans and big dams. In Chongqing city in south-west China, it’s a bit tough to believe that Hindi-Chini bhai bhai was the first casualty of the 1962 Indo-China war.

Awara hoon wafts through the smoky air of Chongqing’s hippest karaoke club. Chongqing TV’s biggest news broadcaster, Zhou Xiaohui, is holding stage. As People’s Liberation Army officers and foreigners from England and the United States look on, she flawlessly sings what she says is her favourite number, the ‘‘best I have ever heard’’. ‘‘It’s a wonderful tune, and Raj Kapoor and Nargis are the most beautiful couple,’’ she smiles.

Zhou is joined by Wan Xian, who can sing his favourite, Mausam Beeta Jaye from Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen. He even tells you why it is his favourite: ‘‘During the Cultural Revolution, I was purged for my liberal views and I had no friends for many years. But I had this one song for company.’’

Another fan Lin Hai is deeply hurt when he learns that the showman died years ago. Hai was part of the Red Guard in 1967, and as he travelled through China’s countryside to spread Chairman Mao’s message, he had Awara Hoon for company.

But Hindi film ditties aren’t the only reason the residents of Chongqing, south-west China’s most developed and most populated city (a 31 million population), are interested in India. Chongqing is where the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydro-electric project, is located. The Chinese may have devoured Arundhati Roy’s novel God of Small Things, but they are putting several miles between her views on big dams and theirs.

Massive in scale, ambitious in imagination, the Three Gorges Dam is ‘‘just like the Narmada dam is for you’’, says journalist Liu Qingyu. It is projected to generate 18,200 megawatts of power for provinces in south, east and central China. When completed, it will stretch across nearly a mile and tower 575 feet over the Yangtze, the world’s third longest river.

Construction for the dam began in 1994 and is scheduled to end in 2009, at a cost of over $24 billion. Its reservoir would stretch over 350 miles upstream. And, force the displacement of close to 1.2 million people. Sounds familiar?

When the dam gets built, over 13 cities, 140 towns, more than 1,600 villages and 300 factories will be submerged. Though Chongqing wants the dam, since its largest stretch, nearly 600 km, runs through the city, there are several opponents lined up on the other side of the banks.

The displaced are being housed in neighbouring areas, but the land they have received is less fertile than the Gorges area. Then, there is the age-old issue of sentiment. ‘‘People tell you they are willing to give up their land, but not their homeland,’’ says Liu.

Displacement has also resulted in a rise in crime in the region, say journalists: recently, a Buddha carving was stolen from the 900-year-old Dazu grottos near Chongqing. Though nearly two billion yuan ($250 million) was kept aside for excavation and preservation of artefacts in the region, the amount was slashed to 300 million ($37.5 million). Only a fraction of that sum has been distributed to local authorities since government officials have been unable to decide which agency should handle the money.

International criticism against the project has mounted, but the pro-dam lobby in Chongqing is suitably inspired by its pro-Narmada counterpart. This, says Mu Feng Jing of the Chongqing Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, is a sign that India and China as developing countries must cooperate. The world’s last big dams will be built in Asia’s two fastest developing economies, says Jing.

He has but one regret: India, unlike France or other western countries, hasn’t lent a hand to the Three Gorges project. But he is more sympathetic when he learns about India’s problems in completing its own dam. He thinks his government is more successful in ‘‘arranging’’ these matters of development.

Just today, in fact, the official Xinhua news agency reported from Chongqing that over 100,000 people from south-west China were resettled to build the dam.


The Indian Express
September 7, 2001

Click on Playstation Kosovo

By Sonia Trikha Shukla

Now that the declaration of the unilateral ceasefire by the Yugoslav government has come and gone, NATO bombing can continue without that minor irritant. The ceasefire did seem an overreaction since NATO is not really waging a war. Especially not on the people of Yugoslavia. Every now and then one of the leaders from the NATO countries gets before a tele-prompter and starts telling the Serbians that they don't hate them and their fight is not against them. For that express purpose, special broadcasts are made to the Balkans. God knows who is watching them and, even more unlikely, is there anyone who believes them?
A few days ago, it was US President Bill Clinton and his Sec-retary of State Madeleine Albright (currently described as the evil witch with snake eyes over in the Balkans) who said their war is not against the Serbs (the fact that they are being killed is only incidental) but against Slobodan Milosevic.

More recently, Tony Blair sang an echo of the Clinton words in that suspiciously sincere,agitated tone which is peculiar only to someone who has lived in Islington. On the 14th day of allied bombing raids, NATO planes struck an oil refinery near Serbia's second city, Novi Sad, and destroyed a railway bridge over the Danube linking the border town of Bogojevo, 100 miles northwest of Belgrade, to Erdut, in Croatia. Allied planes hit at least five Serbian towns.

Among the targets was the residential area of the central town of Aleksinac, where five people were killed and 30 wounded, it was claimed. While the fireworks continued Blair was telling Montenegrin television: ``We have no quarrel with the people of Serbia or Yugoslavia. Indeed, we respect them. We've nothing but goodwill towards you.'' Strange way he's got of showing it.This, while the Commander of Operation Allied Force makes unmasked proclamations: ``We know where you are and we are coming after you.''

Meanwhile, his military spokesperson Air Commodore David Wilby holds the press in thrall at the NATO headquarters in Brussels as hepositions the mouse over the video replay window. Click! Splash! A Serbian aircraft repair shop was, in the immortal words of Supreme Commander Wesley Clark, ``degraded, disrupted, devastated and destroyed''. ``This technology really is amazing,'' gushed the air commodore.

Welcome to Playstation Kosovo, a 64-bit, fin de siecle fantasy game in which Messrs Clinton and Blair avert ``a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo'' and ``a broader regional conflict'' by ``degrading'' the brutal dictator's murder machine. Click! Splash! Nothing could be simpler.

Certainly not exercising the option of sending in brave, effective (but costly) ground troops. The world is being sold a bright, shining, precision-guided fallacy that Slobodan will stand still, wringing his hands and not make the Kosovo Albanians pay with their lives for wearing T-shirts urging NATO to Just Do It.

The over 400,000 Kosovar refugees in Albania bear a bleeding testimony to the murderous revenge of Slobodan Milosevic. And it isn't over yet.His latest ploy to close his borders and hem in the Kosovars with gun-point promises of safety while he landmines the area around their homeland and assures further days of misery for those who called on the West to ensure their safety. When Clinton said, ``The United States takes care of its own,'' he forgot to add, ``and of no else''.

To misquote Channel 4 filmmaker Dan Reed who was in Kosovo before all hell broke loose there: ``It would appear that the Balkans' road to hell is being paved with the West's good intentions.''


The Indian Express
April 13, 1999

‘Al Qaeda has infiltrated Harkat, Lashkar & Jaish, they want to increase heat in Valley’

Excerpts from an Interview with Rohan Gunaratna with Sonia Trikha Shukla


Rohan Gunaratna has written six books on armed conflicts in the world. His expertise on terrorism has always found respect among students of the subject, but it is his body of knowledge on the first multinational terrorist group, the Al Qaeda, that has seen him address worried world leaders at the United Nations, the US Congress, the Australian Parliament and other parts of the globe. Gunaratna, a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, was in New Delhi for the launch of his book, Inside Al Qaeda.

When did we first have evidence of Al Qaeda operations in India?
Originally, the plan was to attack the US embassy in India to coincide with the US diplomatic targets in Tanzania and Kenya. The operation was disrupted due to the arrest of a number of Al Qaeda operatives, especially the Sudanese member who was arrested in New Delhi. Now, the Al Qaeda has infiltrated three Pakistani and Kashmiri groups: Harkat, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba. They shared operational training and infrastructure with the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan before 9/11.

How does the Al Qaeda influence their operations?
Their ideologies are influenced by Osama’s organisation in three ways. They conduct suicide bombings, which are the hallmark of Al Qaeda. And they all attack the heart of the government, that is New Delhi. Finally, they have all attacked and killed foreigners. The Harkat did it in Kashmir, the Jaish recently killed Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. Their influence comes through infiltration. Al Qaeda is under pressure from the international coalition, so it is now operating through other groups by funding their operations. Evidence of this can be found in the recent attacks in Pakistan on diplomatic targets and churches. This is the Al Qaeda operating through front and sympathetic organisations like Jaish and others.

How is Al Qaeda different from other terrorist organisations in the world?
The Al Qaeda is unique among terrorist outfits. Its ideology is to create universal jehad. The Kashmiri groups want jehad only in Kashmir, the Hamas only in Palestine, the Islamic Jehad only in Egypt, but the Al Qaeda wants to bring jehad to the whole world.

Their strategy is: first, launch attacks themselves like the one on the World Trade Center. That is the sort of thing that inspires, instigates other Islamic groups. The other thing is: provide support to these groups.

Also, the Al Qaeda’s targetting and tactics are different. It does not want to take out 20 targets in a year. It wants to take out two but they must always be high profile and high prestige targets like the US embassies, USS Cole and the World Trade Center. Because through these, it wants to inspire other movements who in turn launch their own small attacks. In March 1988, Al Qaeda’s launch document called it the ‘‘spearhead of Islam’’ .

So how does one respond?
They are very secretive and clandestine. So the way we respond needs to be carefully thought out. We need to invest more time and energy and more resources into infiltrating the Al Qaeda. Or we can’t protect ourselves. It has global reach. Their membership comes from more than 40 nationalities and it operates in 94 countries. You need a multinational approach and high-grade intelligence. You need human intelligence by infiltrating them, not just intelligence through intercepted communications.

Even Israel’s Mossad that infiltrated state sponsors of terrorism like Syria has not been able to infiltrate the terrorist networks.
Absolutely. The thing is, we need to penetrate terrorist organisations, not the state sponsors. This is the New Game. These are more difficult because they are ideologically driven but it is not impossible. You need to be persistent and patient. The US took five years to penetrate the Hizbollah after they killed 241 US Marines in Beirut in 1983. That is the sort of time you need. But that is also the time period when the world is most vulnerable to attacks.

Do you think by destroying the Terror Inc network through the post-9/11 effort and forcing decentralisation on Al Qaeda, the world has only multiplied the threat from Al Qaeda?
That's true. The Al Qaeda cells are smaller now, they’re self-contained and clandestine and harder to infiltrate. The strategic threat to the world is graver now. The leadership is intact, its ideology is intact. For every 3-5 members who are killed they have 5-10 more recruits.

Nearly a year after 9/11 how do you assess the US-led effort to neutralise the Al Qaeda?
I think it has been a failure. Their biggest failure was their inability to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, Al Zawahiri, Mullah Omar. Unless these three are killed or caught the US cannot say they have been successful. The Al Qaeda can replenish its human losses and material wastage as long as these leaders are alive. What the US has done is only destroy their training camps. As a result, the Al Qaeda has decentralised operations into regional theatres like Somalia, Indonesia, Yemen, Chechnya, the Pankshi Valley in Georgia and others. This means that the Al Qaeda will survive for a longer period.

So what is their strategy?
There is no evidence that they are deserting Afghanistan. On the contrary, Al Qaeda and renegade Taliban elements are mobilising on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to wage a sustained campaign. They want to repeat the Soviet experience and for this, they need Pakistan as a rear base. To this end they want to kill Musharraf and establish a friendly, neutral government there. They want to increase the temperature in Kashmir through their front groups so that Pakistani forces from the Afghan border will be redeployed on the Indian border. The Al Qaeda can then reestablish lines of communications and recruits into Afghanistan.

The Indian Express
30 August 2002

Interview with Alexey Fedorov

By: Sonia Trikha Shukla


Alexey I. Fedorov, the president of the Irkutsk Aviation Industrial Association is better known as the Sukhoi chief. Fedorov is the man who will deliver to India the most advanced combat aircraft next month. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, during George Fernandes’ recent visit to Moscow, talked of developing the fifth generation fighter. But Fedorov, who calls the Sukhoi 30 MKI the closest thing to it, is no hurry to develop a fifth generation aircraft yet. Fedorov tells SONIA TRIKHA that this is the best plane, and that he wants to make this one last.

* Comments (like this one) added by VayuSena

When does the first batch of the Sukhoi 30 MKI arrive in India?

The Sukhoi 30 MKI is not in operation yet. We are just finishing the development with the Indian team in Russia. But we should be able to supply 10 Su 30 MKI by May-June.

* The First 2 MKIs were delivered to India on June 22, 2002

You are negotiating with China for the Sukhoi 30 aircraft. Will it have the same standard of preparation as the SU 30 MKI that is being supplied to India?

The plane for China is a different aircraft from a different company from the far east in Russia. It has different capabilities. The one for India is a much more advanced version. It is a new aircraft with a new radar and new engine. The plane for China is very much like the Sukhoi 30 that is already existing in India. The aircraft for India is the most advanced Russian aircraft, that is the SU 30 MKI. We are not negotiating the same for China.

* The Su-30MKKs are manufactured by KNAAPO and are considerably inferior to the MKI

There has been a great deal of talk about the fifth generation fighter. What are your plans for that?

It is just an idea right now. We are still discussing what will be the technology. What kind of an aircraft is needed by different air forces in the world? Which speed will it fly and what armament it will carry? What material to use for making it? It’ll certainly be a multi-role aircraft but we are still at a very preliminary stage of discussion.

We have to remember that it is not a plane just for India and Russia. It will be available for any country that has those aviation needs. We still don’t know what the size will be. No one knows whether it is a one engine or two engine plane. We do not have an idea of a time-frame either. For our needs — India and Russia — it will probably be ready for 2015-2020.

* India and Russia have decided 'in principle' to jointly develop the new fighter

Why do you say that?

Because the Sukhoi 30 MKI is very good. Besides, it can be upgraded in airborne equipment and armaments for future use. For the Indian Air Force this aircraft is good for the next 20-30 years.

You are saying the Su-30 MKI already comes close to the fifth generation aircraft?

It comes close to the fifth generation aircraft, certainly. This one must have a long life. We will upgrade it several times. We can upgrade it to the fifth generation standard. I think the need is to talk about the next generation of combat aircraft that can be this one.

* For example, the MKI radar, the N011M comes close to the N014, which was seen in the MiG MFI concept

There’s been an acceleration in joint collaboration between India and Russia in recent times. Given the level of military cooperation between the two shouldn’t it have happened earlier?

Russia has always been ready. This cooperation did not happen earlier because India was not yet ready. They did not have the experience and the level of industry and science was not high enough. Now, it is fine to join the world. The Indian air space industry is really good for joint development.

There is criticism that Russian military technology is inferior to western technology and so countries like India and others who have been traditional buyers should make a switch.

I see these reports as a type of competition. They are not right. If you want to know about Russian military technology ask your air force. They have been flying the Sukhoi 30 for five years, ask them, they have experience.

Civil aviation is different. There, the leaders are Americans and Europeans, companies like Boeing and Airbus Industrie. In military technology we are more advanced. But if Russia has to integrate into the world economy then we can’t be the best in all things. It is difficult to produce all products in the same country, we have to buy some technology. For instance, the Americans are better at engines and avionics. In some Russian aircraft we use western engines and avionics. To grow in quality we have to buy western engines.

Integration is about buying some things and selling some things. To have fusion. So I’d say western technology is better for civil aviation but for military aviation we have the same level of technology.


The Indian Express [April 23, 2002]