The OTHER view of International Drug Day- what lies beneath the cover up

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World Drug Day- - Why have drug policies failed?


June 26 is the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1987. Today United Nation’s Offices of Drug and Crime (UNODC), in the developing world mainly, will be encouraging celebrations to mark World Drug Day. There will be sponsored speeches, sponsored processions waving sponsored placards, shouting sponsored slogans. What is there to wave and shout? Cultivation, trafficking, processing of synthetic substitutes and abuse of narcotics is higher than ever before. Increasing millions of drug users have limited access to treatment services, a basic violation of the right to health or life and the traffickers are more pushy.

On this day the UNODC invites a select audience (in the west no one bothers) to congratulate itself on a job done well. There are more drug users now than earlier. Evidence from UNODC’s own statistics disprove this:

Cannabis users:
147.4 million (1998) and 160 million (2008) an increase of 8.5%
Cocaine users:
13.4 million (1998) and 17 million (2008) an increase of 27%
Opiates users:
12.9 million (1998) and 17.35 million (2008) an increase of 34.5%

Then there are more than 100 mln synthetic drugs users that keep increasing every day. This day is a reminder that despite global strategies and policies, there are a growing number of drug users and traffickers.

The reason for this vast gap between hopes and performance is that the UN willfully blinds itself to reality couching its actions behind approvals by false prophets, puppet experts and committees that do what financially powerful countries want them to do.

Here is an example of how they deceive themselves. Antonio Costa, the former head of UNODC, in the 2008 World Drug Report’s Preface boasted that in 1909 there were more than 43000 (41,600 were produced in China- Source: Report of the International Opium Commission, Vol. I, 1909) tons of opium were produced and a hundred years later just about 8000, attributing this success to UNODC’s efforts. The truth is that it was the Government of the People’s Republic of China that cut the production to almost 5% by 1952. At that time China was not even a member of the UN, and yet with tongue firmly in cheek the UNODC takes credit. Consequently, in the 50s cultivation of illicit opium increased dramatically in the so called Golden Triangle.

The UNODC has a long history of misinterpreting facts, ignoring facts and shaping its policies on that of the US. It obliged the US by sending a docile team in March, 2001 that certified, after visiting one small corner of Achin in Nangarhar, that the brutal Taleban they had not cultivated opium in the Afghanistan under their control. The US wanted this certification to justify building a pipe line to carry gas from Turkmenistan through West Afghanistan. The real reason for this fall in production was that there was severe drought and the opium crop suffered proportionately. Only 180 tons or so was produced. About 8 mln suffered from hunger in 2000-1, but this reason was ignored. India’s own satellite surveys had shown that sowing of opium was as usual (Frontline 14-27, September, 2002). You play with the devil and every one suffers. Banking on this fake goodwill a Taleban delegation was taken to the US to meet leaders of the UN and the US.
The US started supporting narcotics trafficking in SE Asia from the 50s when CIA sponsored the Sea Supply Corporation and in the 60s Air America. They ferried narcotics, arms and cash for insurgents. It did not matter who they were financing as long as they were anti-communists. In The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia Alfred McCoy gives many disturbing facts and figures proving this unethical support. The same tactic was repeated in France when the CIA financed the Corsicans to bash French communists later exposed as The French Connection but glamourised in an American friendly film of the same name. Pierre Chouvy’s excellent expose of this nexus can be read in his gripping book called Opium: Uncovering the Politics of Opium. In Latin America the Contras were encouraged by the CIA to finance their hideous activities from cocaine.

In 1971 Nixon declared a War on Drugs, and soon this slogan was adopted by the UN, which provided the cloak for the US dagger. After Nixon’s grand declaration the US increased its support to narcotics trafficking as long as communists were being targeted. In SE Asia there was massive increase in opium cultivation that was tolerated by the US while as late as 2000-2 drug users were being killed in Thailand and small opium farmers in the Kachin State of Myanmar. A fact ignored by the UNODC while congratulating Thailand and Burma for a job well done. In Afghanistan of the 80s poppy cultivation was encouraged by the CIA, which was instrumental in getting most of the 80 or so DEA agents ejected from Pakistan so that the Mujahideen and the Taleban could drug finance their war against the Najibullah government of Afghanistan. In Nicaragua the US supported the Contras in their narcotics trafficking in the 80s. This is the double speak that comes naturally to the US. And the UNODC never opposed it.
The Special Session on Narcotics, which the UN had organized (UNGASS) in 1998, had claimed that the War on Drugs would be over successfully by 2015. The session in 2008 was more sober and refrained from making any predictions though it still used suspect data to express optimism.

This myopia of the UNODC is nothing new. Their War on Drugs started from 1961 when a group of so called experts articulated their fears in the Single Convention of the UN and proposed terrible punishments. These experts had declared that by 1985 there would be no coca chewing and no cannabis use (Article 49 (2) e & f) amongst many other similar laughable hopes. Coca chewing was a hasty senseless ban, and cannabis use has increased manifold. This and the other two Conventions with similar flaws the UNODC resists changing. In India, 1985 saw the emergence of the draconian NDPS Act, with the inception of which the legal use of morphine for pain alleviation came down the following year from 1 mg to .3 mg per head. As the risks of taking narcotics were high so were the prices, so was adulteration, so was needle sharing and thus so was HIV Aids.

The themes of the past ten World Drug Days have been health of the drug user ignoring the equally important trafficking component of the original idea. After all about 300 mln of the world’s 7 bln are addicted to some drug or the other. Yet health is far from UNODC’s actions. They have not yet been able to support decriminalization of drug users. Such a move will improve the health of millions of drug users the world over. This stubbornness of the UNODC towards change has forced several countries to make their own path with much more success in containing drug abuse and trafficking. UNODC still echoes only what the US thinks.. war, war, war. Despite UNODC’s insistence on health being their most urgent concern it took them more than 15 years to take the first hesitant steps in 2005 to encourage harm reduction programmes for drug users. Harm reduction means reducing the risks to the health of drug users by giving them unadulterated substitutes, access to clean needles and syringes, services for sexually transmitted infections, hepatitis and tuberculosis, pain and distress management, psycho social support and employment opportunities. As the US had objected to it, the UNODC too did not adopt it for long. After pressure from more progressive countries could not be ignored they began endorsing it tentatively.


India too has suffered from UNODC’s obtuse adherence to the Conventions. In 1971 or so a onetime exemption was given to the Government to provide subsidized opium for registered users. At that time there were about 300,000 or so. In 1999 less than a hundred were left. But the actual number of opiate users in 1999 was about 2 mln. It was suggested to the UNODC then that another exemption could be given so that all these users could be identified and given subsidized opium. This move would have helped in their rehabilitation as well as prevented diversion from licit cultivation. The UNODC disagreed. India now has 3 mln opiates and several thousands of illicit opium cultivation in 7 states, and India’s narcotics establishment does not have the will to go against a mere paper even though its own people are suffering and being exploited. Many other countries ignore the inconvenience of being signatories and go ahead and do what they think is best for their people. E.g. Portugal, Brazil, Netherlands etc et al.

On the 2nd of June an appeal to end the War on Drugs (WOD), organized by the Global Commission on Drugs and prepared by the prominent Trans National Institute of Amsterdam some twenty former heads of state and foreign policy chiefs of the UN, EU, US, Brazil, Mexico, Switzerland etc and the serving PM of Greece criticized WOD as a complete failure and favoured decriminalization and regulation of drugs. Users of narcotics should be offered education and treatment, rather than being incarcerated, they advised. And countries which insist on continuing a "law enforcement" approach to drug crime should focus resources on taking down high-level traffickers, rather than arresting street dealers. A positive sign even though some of these leaders did not express themselves as strenuously when they were in power. A surprise inclusion was a former Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Anan during whose tenure UNGASS 1998 reaffirmed its faith in WOD. The US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said the report was misguided. Head of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service Viktor Ivanov said "The aim of the report is to distract attention and not to allow the international community to consolidate efforts in the fight against a drug threat". Conveniently forgetting that 50 years of doing just that has only worsened the mess. For the sake of the well being of 300 mln drug users it is to be hoped that people in power do not wait till after retirement to speak what they feel.

The world’s narcotics bureaucracy still insists that this is the only way! Now though less is heard of the term WOD the policy prevails. The UNODC adopted the philosophy of the War on Drugs as well as the phrase. For the US Government it was only a hypocritical slogan as they continued to collaborate with insurgents and drug gangs to drug finance their wars against communism. This cooperation with drug traffickers covered Asia, Europe and Latin America and spanned 4 decades.


In India basic rights for drug users is still missing. Complete absence of justice. The national health policy also has ignored the drug users. 10 mln drug users and half a million serious drug users require medical help fast, but many of them are in jail, hardly enough rehab centres and no one bothers. In 2003 I had met a heroin using male model from Tarn Taran. He told me that 20% of all the youth in the border villages of Punjab are addicted. Today more than 50% of the youth in all the villages from Pathankot to Abohar are taking Afghan heroin despite arrest rates having shot up by 35%.

The reason for the drugs to mushroom has been the US’s failure to contain its own drug users and traffickers and its support to drug trafficking all over the world to serve its immediate political ends, and the UNODC’s inability to oppose it.
The war on drugs slogan dutifully adopted by the UNODC in the 80s meant actually war on only the drug users. Not on the traffickers, who are conspicuously absent from every World Drug Day themes. Everywhere, India included, most of the people incarcerated, harassed and prosecuted have been and are drug users. Many countries are trying to humanize their laws but they have incurred the skepticism and wrath of the Western Block.

US, the country that introduced WOD to the UN, has a drug problem that is out of control despite total war on drug users. About 21,000 dead of drug over dose in 2008. 21 mln addicts several of the injecting users being as young as 12 years. Yet it presumes to dictate to the world how it ought to tackle their problem. The UNODC has no Country Office to help them, as it does in every developing nation. WOD meant incessant attacks on the weakest in their society. In California, with 170,000 prisoners (40% for minor drug crimes and most of them Black) more money is spent on incarceration than on education. In a May 2011 TNI essay “Education or Incarceration” Tom Reifer, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of San Diego wrote “With only 5% of the world’s population, the US now has 25% of the world’s prisoners; ..... One indication of fiscal priorities is that the average starting salaries of California correctional officers are higher than those of Assistant Professors at the University of California....” This is the pillar of democracy that guides the UN by the collar. Mainly because it is its largest funder. $3.9 bln in 2008. Of the $470 mln budget of the UNODC the US with about $90 mln is the single largest contributor.

The many experienced people who have worked, uninfluenced, for a long time with all kinds of narcotics problems, say that the most sensible policy is to treat drug abuse as an ailment and to completely decriminalize it. 50 years of severity has only served to worsen all statistics. Several countries from Europe and Latin America have bucked the pressure, cynicism, scorn and opposition of the US, UK and the UNODC. They have liberalized their laws for drug users. Switzerland in 1991 and Portugal in 2001 and Netherlands, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina too have all made laws easier for drug users. Portugal’s has been a carefully recorded change. They found that the drug abuse has come down and police is making bigger cases against traffickers. Bolivian President Evo Morales fed up with the obtuseness of the UNODC to continue with the ban on coca chewing brought a wad last year to a Conference in Vienna on drugs and chewed it to show that in his country it was a traditional pick me up with no after effects. Their high altitude miners chew it every day. He has threatened to pull out of the UN if this ban is not lifted. Hardly anyone is as outspoken as Morales. I have not heard of any specialized drug organisstions or dissenting countries aggressively pursue a review of all the three Conventions, which ought to be upper most in all agendas.

With casuistry, misrepresentation and fudging of facts being the weapons of the UNODC can there be any progress?

There is an impressive array of experience, good sense, and talent providing good guidance towards a future course of action to contain the drugs problem. All seem to accept the fact that the UNODC is indispensable. Instead of combining their energies to reform the world’s largest NGO they keep taking pot shots at it without making a dent. They are like dhows armed with bows and arrows attacking a battle ship. They should instead take charge of the steering wheel. Reform is a word that is anathema to the UN system. The UN system lacks confidence to such an extent that they fear that even a mild reform is “thin edge of the wedge” and will bring their house down. That is why in the past two years a loose coalition of countries led by the US and branding themselves as “Friends of the Convention” has come up to articulate their fears of reform. This motley collection has more money than sense, and thus a darling of UNODC.

Why does the UN shy away from reform, which is long overdue? In the past 50 years there has been change everywhere but not in the UNODC.

Indispensible it is but certainly not infallible. The UNODC is a useful organisation to coordinate world’s actions in controlling drug use. It is the only arrangement that can bring together about 190 countries to discuss common drug issues. That it has not been successful in its main goal is because it is not transparent, democratic and impervious to the clout of its large donors. It has cynically ignored those well meaning countries that have made a successful path of their own, refusing to learn from them.

The movement against UNODC’s policies has also its ample share of nuts, who say that Enforcement is responsible for drug wars and gang warfare (Report by specialists and doctors from the University of British Columbia wrote in The International Journal of Drug Policy March, 2011), and some who say that addiction to drugs is a matter of right (Harm Reduction Conference, Liverpool 2010) etc! The foolish war on drugs has spawned a similar moronic reaction. The UNODC is also the only International organisation that has the capacity to have ascendancy over this kind of extremism, but because it has so many frailties it is unable to do so. Typically of such one sided shoddy research is the fact that no one from enforcement participated. Such demented thinking harms attempts to reform as these Liliputian Quixotes are easily brushed aside and discredit the entire movement.

It ought to be realized that the well entrenched narcotics establishment as well as the UNODC cannot be dislodged. It has to be rebuilt.

Cannabis- an Indian view

(Malana- in Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, North India: Home of Malana Cream the world renowned hashish. A disuassion meeting in progress in Sept 2008. No success.

Top: Another attempt at preaching in November, 2009. No luck. Cannabis is still King.)

This was how I started my end of the discussion on Cannabis in a mmeting held in Lisbon shortly. The views here are entirely mine and no one in India could have influenced me.


1- Some years ago when I was posted in Calcutta in the eastern part of India I used to see workers in an adjacent plot constructing a huge building. They would cook only one meal a day. Intrigued, I investigated. They smoked 5 gms of cannabis a day and that gave them energy to do strenuous work. - - There are at least 10 million regular cannabis users in India. Almost equal to the population of Portugal. Most of them take it because of necessity. They belong to the uprooted rural poor. Cannabis maintains the illusion of a full stomach. This enables them to labour hard and long. They send most of their earnings home to support their families in the villages and pay off the vultures who lend them money at exorbitant interest. They age at 50. Don’t blame cannabis for premature ageing as some do all too eagerly in India. Its excessive exertion with little nutrition.

In some states of Northern India and Eastern India there are many bhang shops. Bhang is an extract from hemp or from the male cannabis plant. It is commonly drunk with crushed rose petals, melon seeds, almonds mixed with curd and milk. It is not covered by the NDPS Act, but is a State subject. The state licences some shops to sell bhang. There are about 800 shops in Rajasthan alone. It is supposed to be a harmless drink but too many glasses can knock out a first timer. India had specifically asked for bhang to be excluded from the Convention as it is part of a 2000 year old tradition and has also a religious function.

In addition there are many cannabis users who consume it for relaxation or for rituals and these can not be even counted.

Whenever there is large scale destruction of cannabis, the poorest get kicked in the stomach. There is always a price increase. Mercifully, such destructions are now rare, as enforcement has realized that cosmetic destruction has no purpose and complete extermination of cannabis is downright impossible.

India has had a long experience with cannabis. In 1895 there was the Royal Hemp Commission which concluded that “its effects were benign ….. & that no irreversible health or social damage occurred because of its short or long term use….” 102 years and several Commissions later there was still no proof that cannabis was harmful. In 1997 All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi the leading research hospital in India had held a workshop with the Ministry of Health after researching effects of cannabis on health for many years. They could not add much to what the Royal Hemp commission had said. As this was a Government sponsored seminar they could not go against existing policy and couched conclusions with lots of maybes, ifs and buts. However, their findings eventually influenced the Government to reduce the penalties on drug users especially those who took cannabis. From 2001 ‘small quantity‘ of cannabis meant 1 kg instead of 500 gms.

India had from 1955 to 1959 even allowed licensed cannabis cultivation.

Then came the horrendous 1961 Convention. And, after Article 49s meaningless grace period of 25 years ended, India had enacted its Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substance Act of 1985. Today not only is cannabis cultivation and use still common all over India, it has increased immensely. The NDPS Act influenced by the First Convention could not limit cannabis cultivation and usage at all. Post 1985 people were jailed for what they had been doing openly for hundreds of years earlier.

The problem not only remains but has hit the fan and despite hopes expressed down the decades by friends of the Convention and UNGASS I & II all efforts to suppress cannabis use have decisively failed. The First Convention was made mainly by lawmakers and pharmacologists and bureaucrats far removed from actual knowledge of narcotics. Today, even though, abetted by the UN, ignorance or indifference still rules in many countries, there are many organizations that have researched this subject well and are thus against these restrictions. They ought to be heard rather than stubbornly dittoing past mistakes.

2- India is absent from most international debates because they are embarrassed by the uncontrollable cannabis production and use in India, and by the condition of the people who abuse it. In some international discussion in the 90s India had opposed any concessions. Internationally though India would agree with the US in not diluting the severity of its laws.

3- India had a relaxed attitude towards all kinds of addiction till the First Convention. In 1985 a tough law was introduced hoping the problem would go. Well, the problem of cannabis is still there and much more than any policy maker or law enforcer could have ever dared imagine. Now hashish is being produced in large quantities too.

Limited enforcement resources are the only reason that India has been soft on cannabis. Had there been more officers, the jails would have been filled with mainly cannabis users as they are the easiest to get at.


4- India has for the past 50 years been researching medical uses of cannabis as well its harmful effects. Recently Indian laboratories have found (as have many others round the world) that cannabis is good preventive for vomiting, pain and glaucoma. The only other lesson that can be learnt from India’s experience is to have a population as large as India’s and then such problems will be ignored!

A foreigner's thoughts on the Line of Control in the Great Karakoram

Below is an extract from an article I stumbled upon recently. The thoughts are worth reading and considering, but acting upon them will be folly. Some time back the Mumbai based Indian mountaineer Harish Kapadia had suggested that all this entire area be turned into a park. A park!!! So that people from both sides can appreciate the rugged majesty of the Great Karakoram.

I cannot support this idea, for we can not trust Pakistan, much as I support the idea of us being friends. With our forces gone there is no doubt that their forces would sneak in. To all those people that say that this area is worthless, my reply is that this beauty is priceless.

However read on. It is a very good article and I have given the link to the rest of it. If you further explore Dr. Wheeler you will be surprised that he is a latter day Rambo Reagan, who believes that Capitalism is the cure all for all the ills in the world, everything American is right and Communists practice Black Magic!! This is much before Wikileaks. Poor sap. Wonder what he must be feeling now that the carefully built puppet regimes of the US in the the Arab world are rapidly falling. Yet, he is not all mad, as can be seen by his comments below:


" Comments about the Indo-Pak stand off on Siachen-

http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/2375/2/

by Dr. Jack Wheeler at Concordia—Friday, 26th of July, 2006


Here is a picture I took of a map in a tiny Pak military encampment:




I hope you can make it out. The solid red line is the border with China. The dash-dot line snaking down perpendicular from the red line is the Line of Control (LOC), the de facto border to the left of which is Pakistan, to the right India.

The dashed red line on the Pak side is the flight path of the helicopter pilots to resupply the troops. It follows the Baltoro Glacier up to Concordia (marked on the map at 15,900 feet) then turns right and heads for Siachen.

Note on the Indian side the position closest to the LOC is the Kumar Post. This is named for the legendary Indian Army mountaineer who first explored this entire region in the 1950s, Col. Narinder "Bull" Kumar.

Seeing this map marking the Kumar Post brought a big smile to my face, for Col. Kumar has been a good friend of mine for many years. It was Bull who organized my expedition to raft the Zanskar River in the remote region of Indian Tibet in 1993.

It also brought a smile to my son Jackson's face, for he and I had lunch with Col. Kumar at the Delhi Golf Club just a week before.

Nothing characterizes the "lunacy of the legacy" of British India splitting apart than this pointless war 21,000 feet high in a glacial wasteland, where thousands of soldiers have died of frostbite, exposure, and altitude sickness, many more than have died in actual fighting.

The whole situation makes China very happy. As long as the armies of Pakistan and India are obsessed with hating and fighting each other, China gets to be Asia's only superpower and push everyone around.

China's greatest fear is peace between Pakistan and India. Should these two countries decide to "Make Money, Not War," to settle their differences and focus on how to bring free trade and prosperity to their peoples, the result would be a huge threat to Chinese hegemony in Asia.

A market bigger than China's (1.4 billion including Bangladesh vs. 1.3 billion) where all educated people speak English (English is the official language of both India and Pakistan) would be a magnet for foreign investment, sucking it out of China.

China would at last have an Asian rival, capable of standing up to it economically and militarily. If only the Pak and Indian armies could figure this out, that they could play significant roles on the entire Asian stage instead of bloodily dicking around on lost glaciers no one really cares about.

So as our helicopter lifted off from Concordia and we had our last glimpse of K2 as we started down the Baltoro Glacier, I had a flash of fantasy.

What if this magical name of Concordia stood not just for the most magnificent scenery on earth, not just for a gigantic glacial confluence, but the place where a concordance was finally reached between India and Pakistan? Where war was abandoned in place of doing business together? Where each country saw a vision of how flourishingly successful they could be through mutual cooperation, rather than how they can annihilate each other?

Well, it's a nice fantasy, I thought, one with the delicious side-benefit of really shafting the Red Chinese. Still, our coming here was once a fantasy. And now it had actually happened. About one thing I had no doubt - that I will be here and do this again next year.

By: Dr. Jack Wheeler at Concordia—Friday, 26th of July, 2006

http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/2375/2/

CONCORDIA


Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
Friday, 28 July 2006

Ladakh- Then & Now:... Phew comments

< Goods from Tibet. This picture was taken in October, 1975 on the NW bank of Pangong tso. Till then a yak caravan could come across from Tibet. This one had come from a place called Dambuguru, in Indian hands till October, 1962. Dambuguru is across the Ane la to the NE of Pangong tso.


Leh Bazaar Main Street in October, 1976>



Same Street in August, 2007- few poplars remain>

The two pictures immediately above are of the road that had just been opened till Khardung la in October, 1972. The third picture from below was taken in October, 1975. The others above it in August 2004 and June 2005. Change is inevitable, but not repellent and unnecessary congestion.

 The following two are of Leh's Main Bazar too- One was taken in October, 1976 and the other in August, 2007.

And this picture below, taken in 1984 during a trek from Kibber to Hanle via Tsomoriri and Lam tso, is the saddest of all. These strange formations are known as exploded stones. Its a natural phenomenon associated with volcanic activity. Now a road - turn west from the Kyun tso to Chumur road- passes through this place. Expectedly, not a single stone is left. Stolen>

Below is Fukche airstrip in October, 1972. It stopped functioning from 1973 to 2010 because of Chinese hypersensitivity. Now this air strip is being used by airplanes again and has stopped being a place for grazing yaks. The Chinese are not at all happy at this overdue assertion.

Chushul Airport-  This picture was taken in October, 1972- ten years after the airstrip had been gutted by Indian troops in the October, 1962 battle with Chinese troops here.  At the back is Spangur Gap, which is now under Chinese occupation. The blasted remains of the airstrip and buildings had still not been removed.

Songs of the Snows silenced by the Wails of Women- Kashmir Diary in 3 parts (9th to the 13th of July, 2010)

Part I, which is all about Kashmir's famous beguiling charm.


There were many such fields of Iris on the way to and all around Gangbal, an exquisite lake at 11,800 ft, in the NE of blighted Kashmir Valley.




And I was bowled over by views like these:




and

and this too



and



I am hurling these sense impressions at you to show that Kashmir's fabled natural splendour is still intact



So here are a few more



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Gangbal is about 22 kms from Naranag on the Wangat river, which emerges from Gangbal. It meets the Sind river near Kangan. Naranag is about a 90 minutes drive away from Srinagar. There are a couple of good hotels there. And if there is no curfew there is good food to be had. There ia an old and very impressive 10th C temple complex here.

During my trek (9th to the 12th of July, 2010) I saw many Gujars, Shepherds, Kashmiri and foreign trekkers going up to Gangbal. There was no one from the Indian plains except for me. A guide accompanying some Americans was surprised when I told him that I was from Delhi. He wished that there were more from the mainland visiting this Paradise on Earth, as the inscription in one of the Mughal pavillions in Shalimar Garden says. These pictures will show more than my words that Kashmir's hinterland is peaceful and that life goes on as it has always done for centuries. Except in the urban areas, where all kinds of mischievous stratagems are executed.
Shepherds take up their flocks in May and June and come back in September. There was one horrible instance of thougtlessness. A big forest fire that was caused by Gujars from Rajouri in September 2005. It destroyed thousands of hectares of handsome firs. All the villages helped in putting off the fire by raising huge mud walls, which were pummelled to the ground by the next season's heavy snow.

Gangbal is at the SE foot of Mt. Harmukh (16,872')- the 2nd highest mountain in Kashmir Valley. From this minnow of mountains most of the giants of the Karakorams were first seen. Harmukh ("The Face that can be seen from everywhere").

Capt. TG Montgomerie was lucky to first see the giants of the distant Karkoram from this peak in 1856. Month unknown. Harmukh has its head almost always in clouds from just a bit after sunrise till a short time before sunset. Montgomerie saw "two fine peaks very high above the general range" and markled them as K 1 and K 2. K1 later turned out to have a local name- Masherbrum. K2 is the second highest peak in the world. And still without a name. In 1857 from a lower summit (1600 ft) his friend G. Shelverton took the first observations of the Karakorams. Shelverton camped for a week on the lower cummit waiting for the weather to clear. In 1911 Kenneth Mason, former Superintendent of the Survey of India and author of the most definitive book on the Himlaaya and beyond revisited that station and "found his raised platform, 14ft square, still intact with his finely chiselled markstone firmly in position."

This peak, which does not look easy from this side, has been climbed many times. Its first recorded ascents were in 1899 by Dr. E. Neve and <r. GW Milai. These were followed by CG Bruce and AL Mumm in 1907. All the five sukmmits- Station, Western, Northern, Middle and Eastern have been climbed. In picture can be seen the Eastern and highest summit at the right and the Middle on to the left.

Before Gangbal is an another lake- Narbal. Its a smaller one and is at the S foot of Harmukh. The Wangat river flows out of Gangbal and thru Narbal to continue its breathtaking way towards the Sind.

And this spot is just one of the many in Kashmir that are worth visiting. Vishensar, Nichnai, Erin valley (from Bandipore),Tatkutti and so on.

Part II-

The Mess:




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The next three photographs are shocking. It happens all over India all the time. True. What is astonishing is the fact that this happens every day in many places all over the frightened Valley with much more determination, organisation and heartlessness than it happens anywhere else in India. Such instances of petty and compulsive theft take discontent to nearly every doorstep in that blighted Valley.

WINNING "HEARTS AND MINDS" the CRPF way:

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This Indian para military soldier is whacking in broad daylight some vegetables that he does not need. For, he gets his meals at his mess. Yet, he must for this plunder is simply the habit of his ilk. These pictures were taken by me on the Foreshore Road that skirts the Dal after Bren-Nishat Basti towards the University. Without exaggeration I estimate that there may be at least a thousand such instances of petty extortion experienced daily. Yes, daily. Multiply it by years and you will understand why the people of Kashmir are fed up. I do not deliberately mention the thousands of innocents, who have been maimed, tortured or killed and shown as insurgents in order to show that the uniformed forces are doing their dastardly job well. The horror stories of Alpha Mess, which is now going to be a luxury hotel above the Dal are too well known.

This Indian soldier is certainly NOT a Pakistani insurgent. Yet, the Government repeatedly accuses Pakistan of stoking the fires of violence in this lovely Valley. With such help Pakistan has only to sit back and say thank you. With our soldiers behaving like occupying forces the Pakistanis don't have to exert too much to cause trouble.

Do not the Intelligence Agencies report the truth? Is there any one who does?

I have been visiting Kashmir nearly every year since 1968. Every time I have been to Kashmir since 1987 I have seen these petty instances of theft in full view of people. I have seen soldiers take picture postcards from a helpless vendor in Char Chinari. I have seen soldiers take money from Hotels in Gulmarg and Pahalgam. I have seen soldiers and their officers calling traders from Kupwara to the Forest Rest House there and taking money from each of them. In Shopian these soldiers used to demand crates of apples from trucks carrying them. Sometime back, when a driver refused to give them this illegal tithe, he was killed and the familiar excuse that he was an insurgent trotted out. Their conscience is so dead, and their officers so involved, and supervision so lax, that they just don't care who sees them. This widespread extortion ranging from small thefts like these to taking blood money (claiming rewards for killing innocents is just one way) is turning the Kashmiris against the Governments of India and Kashmir.

Remember that this period of trouble started after the stolen elections of 1987, which were 'won' by Dr. Farooq Abdullah. In a prophetic editorial -Whose will in Kashmir?- The Statesman of the 7th of April, 1987 concluded thus: "Those who may have been inclined to turn a blind eye to what happened during the Kashmir elections on the premise that national security and secularism were therby strengthened would do well to reflect on the old and unfashionable adage about ends and means." Brutal oppression started after that. A situation tailor made for Pakistan to take advantage of. And they continue to do so.

If our uniformed personnel were to behave in a disciplined way there would be more peace than there is now. And the dreaded AFSPA would not be needed. Pakistan undoubtedly takes advantage of these disturbances and stokes the flames higher, but if there was no wide spread revulsion against the armed forces such agitations would be few and far between. I have not seen as much hatred and loathing for the armed forces as I have seen in Kashmir and in the North East- the other area afflicted by this draconian law. That aweful AFSPA is applied to only two areas. Jammu and Kashmir and the North East, and it is not a coincidence that in both these areas the armed forces are detested, and the people want the AFSPA to be trashed.

Peace in these conditions is impossible in our time.

Part III-

It is sad but true.

The Government is not the only one to blame. The Delhi based media, with the exception of a couple of papers, is equally responsible for pedalling one sided jingoistic accounts of insurgency gone wild and painting pictures of doom, which are then parlayed as intelligence. When innocents are shot- at Harwan in April, in Batmaloo on the 10th of July when along with 3 young boys watching a cricket match during curfew a young girl in her kitchen too was killed, in the Machil encounter where they were taken on the promise of jobs and then heartlessly shot, etc etc to name only a few, can one blame the just fury of the people? The law does not help them, the Army officers repsonsible for the Machil outrage have still not been handed to the police. And for each such case that has surfaced, many many screams are stifled. And then to make matters worse funerals of the victims are also fired upon. Firing on funerals is an old habit of the armed forces. The worst so far according to my memory has been the 22nd of October, 1993 Bijbehara Chowk firing by the trigger happy BSF that killed 37 people.

Our gentle Prime Minister had spoken fervently a couple of years ago of winning over "hearts and minds" and reducing the soldiers there. Hearts and minds are turned against us and there are more troops now than ever before. At a Press Conference on the 23rd of May, 2002, the then Prime Minister Shri Vajpayee said "Your pain and anguish is mine too. It is shared by all the people of India. We are with you in your sorrow and we will be with you in your joy."

".... I have instructed the security forces to be more mindful of human rights and be sensitive to the liberties and self respect of ordinary people.." Thus spoke our Prime Minister on the 25th of May, 2006 at Srinagar. On the 7th of June, 2010 Shri Manmohan Singh said at Srinagar " ... there are a handful of people who do not want any political process for empowering people to succeed. This is the reason that attempts to disturb the lives of the people in the Valley still continue from the across the line of control. Whenever such incidents happen, they spread terror and cause disruption in the life of the people. Our security agencies are forced to act in the wake of such incidents. During the process sometimes innocent civilians have to suffer, but whenever such incidents happen it becomes necessary to act against them. ... .. On this issue the Government policy is to protect the human rights of the people even when dealing with terrorism. The security forces in Jammu and Kashmir have been strictly instructed to respect the rights of the civilians..."

Ten years. Two Prime Ministers and nine visits later the pain is still there. Atrocities have increased and so have the troops. Apparently even the P M's directions are ignored.

I had been studying the cycle of ruthlessness in the North East and in Kashmir. I have noticed that whenever peace is returning an incident is created that raises mayhem and increases gunsmoke. More troops come in. And then more. Official ruthlessness provokes retaliation in which more innocents suffer.

On the 5th of July, when curfew was briefly lifted, a Kashmiri Sikh friend of mine was stuck (he was in an Innova) in a line of 15-20 cars. Some young boys came out suddenly and hammered only his car to pulp mercifully allowing him to get out. The other cars had Kashmiri Muslims and were not touched. Another innocent suffers for no other reason except that he is seen as a representative of the oppressive forces. How long will the assault on the innocents carry on?

This blood soaked cycle will continue unless firm and yet tolerant, imaginative and kind leadership emerges. Above all the intelligence system has to be revamped so that the truth is not hidden from the civilian policy makers. I have not till now mentioned the AFSPA, which is a refuge of scoundrels. There are enough laws to take care of insurgency here, but the armed forces want a license to kill. This umbrella has to be removed.

Is it too much to hope?

More people are being killed- not all because of the security forces- (on Sunday the 1st of August, 2010 eight were killed, some agitators died in an explosion in a police station at Khru that they had burnt) and it is now impossible to have a daily account of the dead.

I have a comparison to make though. In other parts of India when buses or trains are burnt and crowds go on a destructive rampage the operative word is restraint, but here it is shoot to kill. Without restraint.

Romesh Bhattacharji

rbhattoo@gmail.com

Audit the auditors!

India has an ages old institution called Audit and Accounts. They are supposed to be the guardians of fiscal propriety over all the Government spending in India. They act as if all funds for Government use will be misused and are in the habit of cutting down ruthlessly many financial proposals. They can not visualise the needs of development.

Had India listened to their objections it owuld be still in the 50s stage of development. That is not all they are negative about. After a project is over or deaprtment's have collected revenue or spent allocations on administration they attack with knives and magnifying glasses. They are essential for good governance, but not the way they are allowed to delay and pospone and question technical plans way beyond their competency.

In today's Indian Express of the 21st of June, 2010, is a report how the kitchen equipment bill for the Commonwealth games inceased by Rs. 13 Crores (or approx $ 3 mln) most probably because of their objections.

A tender for hiring the Kitchen equipment was released on the 27th of June, 2008. 25 bids were received and the contract allotterd to a group of firms formed by Delaware North of Australia, Taj Stats of India and PKL of London. On the 3rd of February, 2010 (!!!!!) this contract was cancelled as earnest money of about Rs. 3 million was not deposited.

Now the whole process has to restart and they will have to buy this expensive equipment. Result: Cost increase by Rs. 13 Crores (from the earlier Rs. 20 crores for hiring equipment to Rs. 33 crores for buiyng equipment). Too high a price to pay for sluggisheness. Protest government interests by all means, but not so inefficiently!

There is more to their recklessness. They pretend that they are doing their duty when they are vilified for being too particular. But this is only in some cases. Where expenses are in billions or millions they are quite lax.

For instance see the picture below:



It shows people from a civilian truck going with jerry cans to have them filled up from an Army truck in Ladakh, just above Deskit in Nubra. For decades large scale pilferage from Defence stores in the forward areas has been conducted with impunity. Every year teams of auditors scour the records and physically visit army bases but never ever find out anything more than minor faults. About five or so years ago the J & K police seized about 45 empty oil tankers going into an army base in Ladakh. They were supposedly delivering POL. That is when the scandal broke out in the open, but though some army officers and soldiers were penalised none of the army of auditors were. Had these worthies been doing their jobs this pilferage would not have become so brazen. Even now pilfered army stores like tin food and sleeping bags etc are available in shops thoroughout Ladakh. It is an unintended public service for which the army is thanked repeatedly and profusely, but their can be other prinsipled ways of being similarly generous. This way the ring leaders and the racketeers profit.

Famous Indian beauty spots have added opium to attract more! Illegal opium cultivation in Kullu and Kashmir

For some years now there has been a new flower in Kashmir that has bloomed unseen only by officials. Its that same old troublesome opium poppy flower.

There have been sporadic eradications, but this half heartedness has emboldened more opium flowers to blossom in the Valley known for its lethal guns and non lethal flowers.

The two pictures below are of fields in Anantnag district of Kashmir.


This is an introduction to the rampant increase of opium poppy cultivation in the adjacent state of Himachal Pradesh. I want to show that what is happening in HP is not an isolated occurrence. It is part of a bigger and organised plan to keep the about 2.5 million opium addicts in India happy and their families unhappy.





"Ex-British MP's son dies of "drug overdose""


was the heading of a report in the Indian Express of the 15th of June, 2010.

The deceased Adam Coombs was just 19 years old when he died of excess of opium. His friend Ross Taylor, also 19 years old, reported "Me and Adams went for a late night stroll in the valley where we took opium. Around 3 pm the next day I woke up and found Adam sleeping. I tried to wake him up and found that his body was cold."

A sad incident. A young promising life nipped in the bud. A tree that could have grown to full height cut down by the greed of drug traffickers, and the indifference of the authoritites.

Adam Coombs was the son of Derek Coombs, a former Conservative MP from Birmingham Yardley, and perhaps that is why this untimely and unfortunate death was reported at length in news papers in India.


There is an even gloomier conclusion to this story. There have been many unexplained but similar deaths that have been given a quiet burial all over the spectacular mountain district of Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, India, but they have been unsung and unreported. All this while the menace of illicit opium cultivation has stealthily kept increasing. How many more lives will have to be lost to avarice and rapaciousness of the hoods before the enfrcement officers wake up? Or will they never wake up ? and let these deaths continue?



All the concerned narcs authorities, State and Central, are aware of it. But they act as if in fits- off & seldom on. During this year's opium lancing season the Director General of the Narcotics Control Bureau had visited some parts of Kullu that had opium cultivation. There was some eradication in places. Not enough obviously otherwise poor young Adams would still have been alive.

Opium poppy is a flower that can be seen from far away. It can't stay hid, and yet the fields are not detected in time.

- A field in Sainj Valley of Kullu-

- The Pradhan and his Deputy (Village Council Head) of Bithu Kanda, Sainj, Kullu -

- Another field with the same story-

- This Sainj field had sprinkler irrigation!-

- Many colours but the same produce-

- This cautious farmer has grown wheat next to his opium field-

This then is my grouse.....

Here, in these exquisite surroundings, a beautiful but deadly flower blossoms in April and early May. The opium is extracted strictly for tainted profit. These people had never before cultivated opium. This dangerous agricultural habit has grown over the past 15 years or so. And it seems that it will continue to grow. People from this district, and from other parts of Himachal Pradesh and adjacent states of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir too, collect opium from here.

Earlier foreigners used to head here for cannabis and hashish, now they also get opium in addition. Cannabis is still a major agricultural product (Malana Queen is famous ), and its hashish with a THC content of 10-25% is wanted the word over. Had there been a Cannabis Cup this variety would beat even the Moroccan one, as it easily does the Afghan one (3-10% THC).

But, I was writing of opium. If this fiendish agricultural activity is not squashed in an another decade or even earlier there will be heroin from here and then gangs and gang wars. Too much a price to pay for official sloppiness. . . .

........ and don't forget there is Kashmir too that has extensive opium cultivation. Kashmir- battered and bruised from both the insurgents and the soldiers- still manages to cultivate opium in full view of both. Unless both sides are blind. Kashmir is where I started this blog from and that is how I end.

In both these states easy riders are making easy money from illicit opium cultivation. These illicit cultivators are beyond the scope of any decriminalisation. Beyond redemption.