Author: Rita Manchanda

More Guns and Boots: The Social Costs of Agnipath

With the rollout of the scheme, the gendered implications of further militarisation of society and the consequences of greater familiarity with the use and proliferation of small arms are conveniently being ignored.

Attention has been riveted on the rage on the streets and fierce ‘insider’ debates on the operational and budgetary logic of the new short term recruitment scheme to rejuvenate the military – Agnipath.

Marginalised are civilian anxieties about the social costs of ever larger sections of youth getting imbued with the ideology of militarism, comprising of an aggressive masculinity, intensified nationalism and the normalisation of the use of coercive force for dispute settlement.

Ignored, too, are the gendered implications of the further militarisation of society and the consequences, public and private, of the greater familiarity with the use and proliferation of small arms. 

Contained within the disciplinary framework of the status and dignity of a military identity, such acculturation is a source of strength and security. But what will be the situation of the Agniveers, the 34,500 of the 46,000 youths who every year, after four years of service, will be disgorged back into civilian society, stripped off their military identity, status and perks, insecure and unemployed?

Decommissioned with ‘attitude’ and no doubt with valued traits of leadership, discipline and team spirit associated with the military way of life, what qualifications will these 21 to 25 year olds have in the struggle for jobs and security in a hostile labour market? Will they use a part of the Rs 11.7 lakh exit package to invest in higher education? Educationists such as Sukanta Chaudhuri are worried about ill-conceived schemes of customised courses bridging deficits in generalised education. What recognition will these dubious certificates and degrees have? Some will fall back on the uncertainties and obscurity of running small businesses.  

People block the Jalandhar-Delhi National Highway to protest against Centre’s ‘Agnipath’ scheme, in Jalandhar, June 18, 2022. Photo: PTI

Lt. Gen. Vinod Bhatia, a respected voice in military society has warned that, “75% of Agniveers, who will not be selected for regular services in the armed forces, will go back to the villages rejected, dejected and frustrated. The reservations the government is announcing now will only help about 20% of them”. 

Even this reservation is likely to be notional, as has been the frustrating experience of ex-servicemen when confronting the ‘horizontal’ interpretation of the quota system, explained Maj. Gen. Jagatbir Singh to the writer. Every year 60,000 skilled ex-servicemen retire of which about 45 % are within the age group of 35-40 years and back in the labour market. Less than a half are likely to secure positions in paramilitary and police forces, while others find placement in diminished positions of security guards in public and private establishments. 

Younger Agniveers, especially those with combat exposure could find lucrative openings as mercenary soldiers or in the contract armies of foreign private security service contractors as Rahul Bedi in The Wire alerted, but more likely, they would exploit their soldierly skills by spawning or bolstering local militias and armed gangs.

For instance, in the conflict troubled Northeast the default practice of imperfect decommissioning of armed actors in peace processes, and the proliferation of small arms has created a nexus between insecure political elites and local militias, which is used to manipulate political institutions and exploit opportunities for extortion.  

There are good reasons why in peace settlements, the disarming, demilitarising and reintegration of state and non-state militarised youth is vitally important, and why the management of veterans in conscript armies is a critical issue.

Moreover, militarised societies experience the normalisation of the presence and use of small arms in public and private spaces.  According to figures available for India at gunpolicy.org, the total number of guns held by civilians in 2017 was over 71 million of which less than 10 million were registered.  

Already, militarist ideological discourses and physical training, coupled with the spread of arms has resulted in widespread prevalence of violence in Indian politics and ominously its legitimation as a form of politics. Moreover, popular anger, outrage and mob violence have become integral features of everyday politics.

Youngsters block railway tracks in protest against the Centre’s Agnipath scheme, in Dhanbad, Friday, June 17, 2022. Photo: PTI

Political commentator Zoya Hasan has remarked about vigilantes feeling they are exacting Bollywood style justice beyond the procedures of law, with crowds of locals triumphantly watching the gruesome spectacle captured by videos that subsequently go viral. 

Sociologists such as Michael Kimmel in analysing the participation of young men in far right political violence have drawn attention to the need to reclaim manhood and restore a sense of masculine entitlement. Feminist analyses of the public performance of mob violence in communal episodes have emphasised the gendered role of aggrieved entitlement which makes men thwarted by political and economic change feel frustrated and emasculated. Aggressive participation in collective violence is a way of reclaiming hegemonic masculinity and male bonding embedded in the construction of a soldier’s identity. Such analyses alludes to the likely social risk that General Bhatia’s “rejected, dejected and frustrated” Agniveers could seek to reclaim the status and dignity of their lost masculine military identity and be drawn to violent political movements and mob vigilante action. 

Militarism privileges a violent form of masculinity and its corollary, increased gender inequality. Increasingly research has shown a correlation between gender inequality and violence prone societies. Also, the militarisation of societies has consequences for increasing rates of domestic violence. 

Surely, the gendered implications of the further militarisation of society should be a factor of some concern in this still evolving debate over Agnipath, along with the altogether elided concern of the democratic implications of the spread of militarist ideologies that normalise the use of coercive force against citizens in the name of security measures.  

Rita Manchanda is a scholar and activist. She can be reached at ritamanchanda2003@yahoo.co.in.

The Afghan Catastrophe Is a Moment of Reckoning for the ‘Women, Peace and Security’ Agenda

Uncertainty hangs over whether the clock will turn back to the dark, misogynist past or if the assurance of a less cruel, more diverse politics prevail.

The Afghanistan catastrophe is a moment of reckoning for many global agendas — Empire and ‘war on terror’; top down modernisation and globalising “liberal” values; the western “saviour” trope of liberating and reclaiming brown women’s rights and the UN Security Council’s “women, peace and security” (WPS) obligations. 

Uncertainty hangs over whether the clock will turn back to the dark, misogynist past or if the assurance of a less cruel, more diverse politics prevail. Will geopolitical deal-making, which enabled the Taliban’s “soft landing”, deliver the inward-looking politics of a coalition government or precipitate the contagion of extremist ideologies and violent politics across borders? Will the reconfigured alignments of power in the region produce stability or get sucked into proxy struggles in a conflict-scape of state collapse with floods of refugees? 

In the fog of these collective anxieties is young Waziha Tokhi, the feisty university student from Zabul, Kandahar province, who I met at the Afghan National Women’s Peace Assembly in Kabul in 2017.  

Even then, as the Taliban’s power grew in rural areas and in the vicinity of cities and local commanders monitored buses leaving rural Zabul for Kandahar, Waziha remained undaunted. Resourceful, she used a subterfuge. Three times a week she travelled two hours by bus, often the sole woman, to study law and politics at Kandahar University. She wore a burqa one day, a hijab the next and a tightly wrapped chaddar on the third day. 

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan would mean a flattening of differences between urban and rural areas. It was in the cities that significant advances were made in women’s rights to education, health, mobility, livelihood and public office. But in Zabul, as elsewhere in the conflict-scarred south and east, more than 60% of girls were out of school because of insecurity, displacement and poverty. 

Waziha was one of the 23% of women enrolled at a university in Afghanistan. Even as an adolescent, she had run a school in her home for scores of girls unable to go to school. Today, was she among the melee of thousands at Kabul airport desperate to flee or was Waziha still determined to live her dream in an Afghanistan where Zarifa Ghafari (26) had become mayor in Maidan Shahr in central Wardak Province. 

Already, reports have been thick of women in the neighbouring Herat showing up at the university and being turned away, women working in banks in Kandahar told to go home and journalists with the public broadcaster Radio Television Afghanistan stopped from working at the station’s offices till further notice. 

Waziha had been a vocal member of former President Ashraf Ghani’s Youth Parliament and like many gender equality activists, she had not questioned the cronyism and corruption of the Ghani regime. Like many urban Afghan “feminists” who focused on liberal values of freedom and not on the 2017 loosening of regulations on air strikes which killed civilians and wasted land, Waziha supported the foreign forces. 

Would her name be on the black lists that were said to be circulating of those the Taliban deemed ‘transgressors’ and targeted in house-to-house searches? 

Also read: UNSC Urges Taliban Not to Allow Terror Groups and to Ensure Safe Passage for Afghans

A general “amnesty”, declared the urbane Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid at the armed group’s first press conference, which was addressed as much to the international community as to Afghans. On women’s rights, Mujahid was emphatic; they would be contingent and conditional upon Islamic rights and worrisomely, women’s participation would be limited to the essential fields of education, ‘prosecution’ and health. 

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid speaks during a news conference in Kabul, Afghanistan August 17, 2021. Reuters/Stringer/File Photo

Equivocation on the question of women’s right to work in the media heightened uneasiness about freedom of the press amidst reports by the Committee to Protect Journalists of threats and killings of journalists since the Taliban surge. 

The newly emergent Women’s Collective of Muslims was not reassured. In a statement, they warned, “Given the Taliban’s well-documented track record of gender-based oppression, this arbitrary interpretation of what work will be available to women ‘within the framework of Islam’ is a worrisome indicator of what may unfold in the coming months and years. We cannot forget that their previous interpretation of religious texts has chosen to privilege misogynistic legal regimes masquerading as ‘shariah law’.”  

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), a radical Afghan women’s group, was most sceptical of any change in the Taliban’s mentality. RAWA had opposed both Soviet and US occupation as well as Taliban rule. In an interview to the Afghan Women’s Mission, RAWA said, “…the Taliban spokesperson declared that there is no difference between their ideology of 1996 and today. What they say about women’s rights [are] the exact phrases used during their previous dark rule: implementing Sharia law…. The Taliban will still be Islamic fundamentalists: misogynist, inhuman, barbaric, reactionary, anti-democracy and anti-progressive”.

The leading women’s organisation in Afghanistan, the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), struck a conciliatory note, presenting themselves as potential partners working with the Taliban to end the war. AWN board member Mehbouba Seraj was not going to quibble about what Afghanistan’s governing system would be – an Islamic Emirate. What was important was that the Taliban must talk to the women of Afghanistan. “Taliban cannot ignore 18 million women of Afghanistan,” she declared. 

Plaintively, she pinned her hopes on the logic that “the world is watching“ and the Taliban’s need to ward off isolation. Seraj lashed out at the US, the international community and Ghani’s government for failing to work out an interim power-sharing arrangement months ago and for vaulting the people into a void-like situation, rife for the many criminal elements to take advantage of. 

“Why? Because the West did not consider the Afghan people as equal. [US special envoy] Zalmay Khalilzad decided. Pakistan decided. The World decided. We, the Afghan people, didn’t decide. If we had been involved we would have worked out our own solution,” she said. 

Also read: UNSC Drops Language on Opposing Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan, Singling Out Taliban on Terrorism

In an interview with Munizae Jahangir on Aaj TV, Seraj expressed outrage at US President Joe Biden’s deprecating comment that the Afghan national forces lacked “the will to fight”.  

“Their will to fight was killed the day when they discovered deals were being made, [to hand over power to Taliban]” she said, exasperated.  She would have wholly concurred with the bitter observation made on a Women’s Regional Network (WRN) podcast by Fionnuala Ni Aoláin, UN Special Rapporteur the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism that “our friends are not our friends”.   

In the geopolitical playbook of Afghanistan, players like Hamid Karzai – the US’s choice for piloting Afghanistan after the 2001 foreign intervention – figured in the 1994 deal that brought the Taliban back to Afghanistan after their incubation in Pakistan’s qawmi madrasas under the tutelage of Pakistan’s ISI and US agencies. This revelation was made by adoptive Kandahari and former consultant with US forces, Sarah Chayes. 

Karzai is back, coordinating the talks for an interim coalition governing structure. At the table is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an anti-Soviet warlord notorious for his human rights record. Hekmatyar was bought back by Ghani in 2017 in a controversial amnesty agreement to broker an understanding with militia groups and the Taliban, with the backing of the US. 

As the fog of war clears, confusion over the Taliban’s lightning sweep of the country gives way to evidence that the takeover was years in the making. A former colleague, Malalai Wardak, in Kabul, 2017 had warned of the deep disconnect between the government’s western directed modernisation project in the cities and the majority of people in the countryside under the thrall of regressive warlords. 

Between the collateral damage of the drone bombings and night raids for insurgents and the sackfuls of mismanaged American money that fed corrupt elites, even a female beneficiary of a USAID programme, quoted in a SIGAR military audit report admitted, “I believe if the US leaves Afghanistan, it will be better for people as a whole, as the only reason for war is the presence of the US in Afghanistan.” 

Involved in overseeing this metamorphosis in Afghanistan were the regionally proximate actors, Pakistan, China, Iran and Russia. Strategic analyst Alastair Cooke claimed that a “consensus with the Pashtun Taliban on the future was reached” and that these external powers “have brought their Afghan allies [i.e. other Afghan minorities, who are almost as numerous] to the negotiating table alongside the Taliban.” 

Whatever the strength of this argument, the Taliban has seemingly reinvented itself as a multi-ethnic, sophisticated coalition. 

None of these actors, including India, a latecomer in opening a back channel with the Taliban, is interested in defending women’s rights. The moral agenda of “liberating Afghan women”, used to justify a war for revenge against a criminal attack by a non-state actor, died when it was dropped from the US-Talib exit talks at Doha as an “inconvenient liability”. 

In Afghanistan, the UN Security Council’s “women, peace and security” agenda was militarised and women’s rights instrumentalised in pursuit of goals of “countering violent extremism”.  

Dismayed at the tragedy of states’ betrayal of the obligation to protect and promote human/women’s rights, Ni Aolain retorted, “We’ve had 20 years plus of the WPS agenda. And if that agenda doesn’t mean something now, it’s worthless.” 

 The UN mandate-holder for balancing fundamental freedoms with countering terrorism was determined that states cannot be allowed to be expedient and relative on human/ woman’s rights. “What women and women activists have to do is cease to show up to meetings on WPS. If the Security Council will not act on that agenda in the moment where it matters, we [will] withdraw from talking to you about WPS.” 

Ni Aoláin, in the WRN podcast, spoke of the Afghanistan catastrophe as a moment of reckoning, not only for governments, but also for women and the networks of women activists across the world who have rallied around, promoted and, in a way, seen themselves as defined by WPS agenda. 

Afghan women will work out their own equation with the Taliban but they need the moral pressure of the world to be watching. The alternative dystopia is too dark to reimagine. 

Rita Manchanda is a scholar and activist and the author of Difficult Encounters with WPS Agenda in South Asia, Bristol 2020.

Women’s Groups in India, Pakistan Have a Role to Play in Afghanistan’s Reconstruction

With the withdrawal of American forces from the war-torn country, India and Pakistan will have a greater role to play in Afghanistan to prevent any further chaos in the region.

If ever Gayatri Spivak’s narrative of ‘white men saving brown women from brown men’ rang true it was in the discourse of ‘liberating’ Afghan women, mobilised to morally justify bombing a country continents away and of plunging its people into a war that “they did not ask for”. In four decades of violent strife as intra and international players laid waste Afghanistan’s land and society, Afghan women’s protection and rights were weaponised in the geopolitical manoeuvrings of powerful global and regional actors, driven by ideological and strategic interests.

All the more amoral then that the international community should be impatient when Afghan women’s groups appeal for a ‘responsible’ and not the peremptory retreat of international forces, which are tired of fighting an ‘unwinnable’ war. What human security audit will register that they leave behind male sadist warlords and their militias, which the international forces armed to fight alongside them, thereby militarising and destabilising post-war transition?

Also read: Afghan Peace Talks Open With Calls for Ceasefire, Women’s Rights

What realpolitik prevails to make the international community disavow responsibility and turn indifferent to Afghan women’s collectives to support their struggle as they fight for respect for the equal rights of women, ethnic and religious minorities in Afghanistan. What happened to the narrative of emancipating Afghan women which was so integral to the geopolitical imaginary of the internationally decreed war for ‘enduring freedom’?  The endgame Afghan women are likely to face as the Taliban stands poised to takeover is to be punished for the universal freedoms that many Afghan women embraced at great risk. Already the warlords and their militias which propped up the governance structure are changing sides and making deals with the Taliban.

A ‘superpower’ hubris

It was within this context, that the patronising tone of Cheryl Bernard, American author of Veiled Courage and the wife of US special envoy on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, sounded a sharp post-colonial dissonance as she chastised Afghan feminists for trying to prevent or delay the overdue U.S. pullback and accused them of not fighting for themselves.

US troops in Afghanistan

US troops in Afghanistan. Photo: Reuters/Files

In an opinion piece in The National Interest, Bernard-Zalmay has hailed American sacrifices of men and money, and hectored “Afghan feminists to put their shoulders to the wheel and start doing what women everywhere have had to do when they wanted their rights: fight for them … emancipation and equality aren’t the product of pity or guilt, and you aren’t owed them by someone else’s army or taxpayer dollars”.

Also read: There Is a Crisis of Empathy in Afghanistan

Reeking of superpower hubris, it trivialised the courage of so many Afghan women who ran underground schools during the oppressive Taliban rule. It obscured the historical reality that before the Americans came, during the Soviet-backed communist Tariki-Amin regime masses of women got university education and entered professions.

Responding to Cheryl Bernard, Afghan women’s rights defender and High Peace Council member, Palwasha Hassan, said, “Afghan women have been fighting for our rights long before the American military arrived and will continue long after it has withdrawn…We kept our struggle going when American money went to who were more interested in personal enrichment than advancing peace.” Hassan emphatically said that this was a war “we did not ask for”.

“We are not begging for our seat at the table. We are fighting for it. All we are asking is for those who call themselves our allies not to actively work against us,” she further noted.   

That exchange was a year ago, prior to the US-Taliban agreement of February 2020 which makes no mention of women’s rights, and before the intra-Afghan talks in Doha began on September 12, stuttered and now waiting to be resumed to end 18 years of violence. The call for owning shared international responsibility is directed at US-NATO allies, and also at regional actors: Tajikistan, Iran, India and especially Pakistan. Their role is highlighted in the flurry of troubleshooting visits of US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad to Islamabad, Delhi and Dushanbe in October. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the Afghan negotiating team, has been in Pakistan, playing the role of facilitator in the talks with the Taliban, and in India, which till recently refused to deal with the Taliban.

The importance of Pakistan and India in Afghanistan

Pakistan and India have been waging a covert struggle on and off for more than 60 years over their competing influence in Afghanistan. Since the 1980s, Pakistan supported US-backed Afghan Mujahedeen to overthrow the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and later its offshoot, the Taliban. Following their ouster in 2001, Taliban members found sanctuary in Pakistan along with two million Afghan refugees.

Modi Ghani

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Afghan president Ashraf Ghani inaugurate the Indian-funded Salma Dam in Herat, Afghanistan on Saturday. The dam has been constructed at a cost of about Rs 1400 crore. Photo: PTI/Kamal Kishore

Pakistan’s army views the jihadi groups as a cost-effective means of controlling events in Afghanistan, which its strategic doctrine positions as providing it with depth against its existential security threat. Taliban’s capture of Kabul in 1996–2001 fitted that doctrine. Afghanistan borderlands became havens for terrorist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, which executed Mumbai terrorist attack, and Tehriq i Taliban, responsible for Army Public school massacre in Peshawar.

Also read: In Meeting With Afghanistan’s Peace Council Chief, Modi Reiterates Support for Talks

Post-Taliban, while Kabul and Islamabad accused each other of providing breeding grounds to terrorist groups opposing each other’s government, India expanded its assistance for the civil reconstruction of Afghanistan. Military assistance was eschewed till 2016 when India supplied four attack helicopters, and in a trilateral deal with Russia, India agreed to supply aircraft spares.

India’s development assistance in Afghanistan has demonstrated gender sensitivity. Afghan women were significant beneficiaries of India’s Small Development Projects. India’s former ambassador to Afghanistan Jayant Prasad was explicit, “For the consolidation of peace, women have a key role in ensuring that the process of reconstruction is not disrupted and the positive transition, currently underway, is not reversed. In most post-conflict situations, and Afghanistan is no exception to this general trend, women’s active and constructive role as potential peace builders tends to be overlooked.”

The dubious role of India and Pakistan

The above notwithstanding, India like NATO countries was implicated in the weaponisation of the emancipatory narrative of Afghan women for geopolitical interests. India joined NATO powers in projecting the military achievements of women in the Afghan forces, thereby justifying NATO’s role of transferring responsibility to Afghan forces.

Indian vice=president Hamid Ansari, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani. Credit: PTI/Files

Former Indian vice-president Hamid Ansari, Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani. Photo: PTI/Files

In an article, Devaditya Agnihotri and Katharine Wright showed that combat training of Afghan women officers was hailed in media reports at a time when they were not only underrepresented in Afghan forces, but also in American, British and Indian forces. Contradicting India’s own ban on women in a combat role, Afghan women officers of the army and air force were undergoing training in Chennai Officer’s Training Academy.

Among India and Pakistan women’s networks, there is a growing awareness of the complicity of our countries in the troubles in Afghanistan and the need to own responsibility for the action of our countries in damaging the rights and lives of women with whom we express kinship and solidarity.

Also read: Pentagon Report Suggests the US-Taliban Deal Was Inked in Afghan Blood

In Pakistan, the leading women’s collective, Women’s Action Forum (WAF), has recognised with regret Pakistan’s “major role in adding to instability and violence not least with support for the Taliban” and urged that “peace talks overseen by US and supported by Pakistan” ensure Afghan women’s meaningful inclusion.

WAF in a statement acknowledged the suffering of Afghan women “as stateless refugees in host (Pakistan) countries without means or wherewithal”. Resurgent violence and suppression of human rights will propel masses of Afghans, especially women and children, to flee across borders, regardless of the barbed wire fencing being put up, and produce a massive humanitarian and human rights crisis in the region.

Women from India and Pakistan have jointly appealed to their government representatives at the Doha talks “to honour their national and international obligations and support Afghan women and their struggle for rights and peace”. Initiated by members of Women Regional Network (WRA), rights activists, Rukhshanda Naz and Rita Manchanda, expressed concern that instability in Afghanistan will “widen the space for extremists to misuse ethnic, religious and linguistic differences to create division and conflict within our countries and between our countries….  Escalation of tension and violence will increase militarisation of our societies and economies and challenge our democratic governance structures”.

Also, Afghanistan’s best-known women’s collective,  Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), has appealed to the region’s civic leaders and human rights defenders to “hold your leaders accountable and call on them to play a positive role toward an end to the violence in Afghanistan”. In an open letter dated 21 October, AWN acknowledged “the strained politics of the region” but added that “our regional interdependence, and our joint values of peace and justice” require that we work together.

AWN has emphasised the “shared fight against extremism” as manifest in atrocities across the region such as “June 2020 attack on the maternity hospital in Kabul, the April 2019 attacks in Sri Lanka, the December 2014 school massacre in Peshawar, and the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai”.

It is evident that in the vacuum that the international forces leave behind will enable Afghanistan’s regional neighbours to step in. The power dynamics of Pakistan–India competition in Afghanistan impacts the futures being imagined at Doha, but instability will produce a flood of refugees crossing borders; escalating insecurities will bring down the region’s already poor human security indicators; and a male sadist utopia sanctified by a version of sharia and culture will undermine women’s freedoms in the region.

October 2020 marks the anniversary of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which for the first time recognised the relevance of women for the international peace and security agenda. Quantitative studies have bolstered the resolution’s emphasis on the importance of women’s participation, making peace agreements last. Four Afghan women have been included in the intra-Afghan negotiations, their security and meaningful participation need to be supported by India, and especially Pakistan.

Rita Manchanda is a researcher, writer and human rights advocate specialising on conflicts and peace building in South Asia with particular attention to vulnerable and marginalised groups. Her latest publication is Women and the Politics of Peace: Narratives of Militarisation, Power and Justice (Sage:2017). 

In a Global Pandemic, Is it Fair for Govts to Abandon Citizens Stranded Across Borders?

Ad hocism, and not proper planning, has so far designated whether or not Indians are rescued from abroad.

Do the hundreds of thousands students, migrant labourers, pilgrims, fisherfolk – citizens of South Asia, stranded across international borders in the time of a global public health crisis – have the right to return home?

Confronting grave insecurities of health, food, shelter, information deficit and mental anxiety in resource-strained, high-risk foreign environments during a lockdown abroad and at home, do these citizens have the right to be rescued by their own governments? Some have been forgotten by their indifferent embassies, others have been asked by their governments to stay put and watch others being evacuated from high-risk environments. Are they less worthy? Are there no ‘standard operating procedures’ in times of national disasters and globalised pandemics?

National disasters are a major test of citizenship. After the storm blows over, what will this global public health crisis reveal about the moral legitimacy of the alternatives chosen, of who gets left behind, of who can be ignored in the name of ‘collateral fallout’? In a public health crisis, human rights are readily surrendered for public protection, but should we forgo the right to demand no derogation on non-discrimination, on the legitimacy of the aim and the proportionality of that aims of ‘preventing disease’ and ‘providing care’?

In the post coronavirus world, these questions will  haunt when assessing our prioritisation of the vulnerable, and how much the ethics of care shaped the response of national governments to the desperate appeals of the abandoned – stranded overseas migrants, especially students.

As one of the 800 Pakistani students stranded in Wuhan, the epicentre from where COVID-19 spread globally, was quoted as stating, “They [Pakistan] say that we cannot evacuate. Why can’t they evacuate us? Other countries have evacuated. We are thankful to the Chinese government … but we are not the responsibility of the Chinese government. We are the responsibility of our government.”

International travel bans and lockdowns have found South Asia’s migrants trapped: desperate Indian students stuck in Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines and Bangladesh; Pakistani and Afghan students in China and Turkey; Bangladeshi students in India; Nepalese labour in Qatar; Bangladeshi labour in Singapore; and Indian pilgrims and seafarers in Iran.

Also read: Will Religion Deliver Us From or Doom Us to the Pandemic?

Videos of their urgent appeals on social media speak of students ousted from emptied hostels, crowded in makeshift accommodation, stranded in transit at airports and border ports, running out of food, water and supplies, desperate to come home to their families. In India, families of medical students from Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Kashmir have gone to court, seafarers from Goa, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Kerala have appealed to their political leaders to bring them home.

“Why are we ignored? We have families too. Are we supposed to die here?” Shanu Mariyadasan, a fisherman from Kerala in Iran is quoted as saying to Al Jazeera. Shanu is one of the thousand-plus Indian fisherfolk stranded by Gulf employers on islands in southern Iran, and marine trainee ratings left on dead boats at ports there. Iran is one of the worst affected, with COVID-19 cases peaking at 44,605 and death toll 2,898 (March 31). Iran is where the highest number of Indians overseas have the disease: 255 have tested positive. Official figures state than some 6,000 Indian nationals were in Iran at the time of the outbreak.

By end March, despite travel restrictions, more than 500 Indian students and pilgrims were flown back in batches to India. Left behind were thousands of stranded Indian seafarers. According to news reports, over the last 25 days, they have been sending out desperate SOS videos to their families, pleading for help as supplies of food and fresh water run out. They are crowded and confined to fishing boats, anxious about catching the virus and uncertain access to medical facilities. Families of poor and marginalised fisherfolk have appealed to their elected state representatives to put pressure on the Indian foreign minister to intervene. The Indian embassy in Iran, the fishermen claimed, had been unresponsive.

On March 11, Indian foreign minister S. Jaishanker in a statement to parliament said that the embassy was sequencing the return of Indian nationals in Iran depending upon their location and exposure to COVID-19 – pilgrims followed by students. “Our understanding is that the region where most fishermen are located has not been affected so severely,” he said, adding, “They are in good health.”

By the time that assurance was given, their families were viewing videos of sons and husbands suffering from hunger, thirst and at risk of infection. Ten days after the minister’s statement, the embassy mounted a 24-hour emergency relief operation to get food and supplies to 1,000 stranded fishermen in southern Iran.

Also read: ‘Herd Immunity Is the Only Lasting Solution to the Coronavirus’, Says Leading Epidemiologist

Returning home is not possible. Seafarers have been asked to stay put. A news report quotes an Indian embassy source as stating, “We have been counselling the fishermen of the lockdown in India and cooperation of all people also and hence [the need] for them to stay put and take adequate precautions, follow all health protocols and cooperate with their owners by resuming work.”

It may sound ‘natural’ and logical for the government but for fishermen and their families, it sounds like abandonment.  “We heard that a C-17 military flight was used to evacuate 50 Indian tourists and pilgrims from Tehran. If they can send a military aircraft for 50 people, why did they not consider us worthy of rescuing?” a fisherman is quoted as saying  by Sabrang India.

Stranded students, too, have faced grave uncertainties, even discrimination, over rescue and return, especially in the case of Pakistan government’s refusal to evacuate its student from Wuhan and the Indian government’s denial to allow its students in Bangladesh to cross the international land border. Ironically, at the same time as Kashmiri students from India are stuck at the landport Benapole, 200 Bangladeshi students have crossed over from India and returned home after clearing standard procedural quarantine measures.

In the context of China, since January when Beijing sounded the alert about the coronavirus spread in Wuhan in Hubei province, and the city of 11 million was put under an indefinite lockdown from January 23, international students studying at universities there appealed to their governments to evacuate them from COVID-19 ground zero. With growing desperation, 800 Pakistan students, locked inside dormitories with limited mobility, difficult access to food, at risk of infection, watched as their colleagues from India, Bangladesh, Maldives,Uganda and Liberia were evacuated. Anxious Pakistan students posted a volley of videos on social media: three women students wearing mask appealed for help, others tried to shame Islamabad by holding up India’s example and its offer to evacuate Pakistanis. At home, families staged protest marches in Islamabad.

The Pakistani government had decided not to evacuate its nationals. Pakistani ambassador Naghmana Hashmi in an interview to explained that Pakistan’s medical facilities were not able to treat patients diagnosed with the coronavirus. However, as family members back home pointed out, Pakistan’s limited quarantine facilities had not prevented the government from bringing back students and pilgrims from Iran, also hard hit by COVID-19.

Defending the government’s stand, the prime minister’s special adviser on health Dr Zafar Mirza referred to recommendations of the World Health Organisation (WHO). However, his statement suggested that diplomatic considerations of maintaining faith with its ally China, outweighed claims of own nationals. “We believe that right now, it is in the interest of our loved ones in China (to stay there). It is in the largest interest of the region, world, country that we don’t evacuate them now.” Later he would confirm four Pakistani students in China had got the coronavirus.

Also read: An Invisible Virus Highlights the Virulence of an Age-Old Visible Virus

In the latter half of March, as China’s experimental lockdown policy showed a flattening of the curve in new cases, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan broke his silence to express sympathy for the stranded Pakistani students, but continued to minimise the seriousness of COVID-19. Meanwhile, to alleviate food shortages, 17 tonnes of halal food was airlifted to Wuhan for Pakistani students. The aircraft had come to collect medical kits from China.

As Pakistan tries to convince its stranded citizens abroad that it cares equally for them, and is reviewing procedures for flying out its stranded nationals and as proof of its earnestness, special air ferries were arranged to evacuate Pakistanis stuck in Dubai and in transit in Bangkok. It is an open question how many of the Wuhan Pakistanis would echo the confident assertion of Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi: “We decided not to bring back the stranded Pakistani students in Wuhan. The same students are praising our decision today.”

Other governments in the region too have counselled their nationals to stay put. Take the 16,000 Indian students studying in the Philippines. As international travel bans and lockdowns were imposed, hundreds were stranded in transit at Singapore, or stuck for days at Manila airport before they scramble back to hostels, if open, or guest houses. Indian foreign ministry special coordinator for COVID-19 Dammu Ravi urged students to “stay put at that place because it is not in anyone’s interest, not even in their [own] interest, to come back and then think that you know it is a safe environment in some other place”.

Anxious families back home were told that overseas students and other nationals were a priority, but ad hocism in place of transparent standard operating procedures for evacuation in a public health crisis does not make for reassurance.

What will induce the Indian government to expedite the return of 200 India students stuck around Almaty airport Kazakhstan with no shelter, food, transport and a distant Indian embassy to counter the direct harassment they are confronting. Will they be directed by the Delhi high court? Responding to a petition, the court has directed that stranded students be expeditiously provided humanitarian assistance in terms of food, medical care, lodging and transportation and a nodal officer be identified). But what about the  most recent crisis group: 10,000 students in Kyrgyzstan ousted from their hostels, crowded in crammed rooms with food stocks disappearing in city under lockdown and with rising cases. Their families have appealed to the social welfare minister for help.

The protocols of India’s National Disaster Management Act 2005 and Epidemic Diseases Act 1867 were not imagined to deal with a pandemic emergency. All the more crucial, then, is trust in our public authorities and open access to information, not its subversion by surveillance regimes of today. This crisis which recognises no borders could have been an opportunity for embracing connection and cooperation, especially across the region as we protect each other.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s outreach to the dormant regional forum SAARC could have been a regionally transformative initiative premised on our interdependence in this and future crisis, but as elsewhere globally this crisis has found us too looking inward.

Rita Manchanda is a researcher, writer and human rights advocate specialising on conflicts and peace building in South Asia with particular attention to vulnerable and marginalised groups. Her latest publication is Women and the Politics of Peace: Narratives of Militarisation, Power and Justice (Sage:2017).

Congo Warlord Bemba’s Acquittal Is a Major Setback in Prosecution of Rape as War Crime

Jean-Pierre Bemba had been in custody for ‘command responsibility’ for failing to stop crimes that included rape, murder and pillaging, he knew were being committed by his troops.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) appeals chamber has overturned the landmark verdict convicting Congolese warlord and former Vice President Col Jean-Pierre Bemba of war crimes. Bemba had been in custody in The Hague for ten years for ‘command responsibility’ for failing to stop crimes he knew were being committed by his troops. The crimes included rape, murder and pillaging.

The reversal of judgement is a huge setback in the international prosecution of rape as a war crime. It has raised the threshold of proof to establish the legal notion of command responsibility of superior authority that plans and authorises the atrocities and assures impunity. Equally, it is a body blow for Rohingya activists looking to the ICC as the collective judicial system for establishing international accountability for ‘genocide like’ crimes which have driven more than 700,000 Rohingya across the international border into Bangladesh.

On June 8, 2018, the ICC appeals chamber acquitted Bemba of all the charges of which the trial court had found him guilty and sentenced him to 18 years in prison. Significantly, the trial court’s methodology for assessing the legal notion of command responsibility and its March 2016 guilty verdict had represented a breakthrough in war crimes conviction. Also, it was the first time that the ICC prosecuted rape as a crime against humanity and as a war crime. The Rome Statute, which created the ICC, has the most progressive and comprehensive legal framework on gender-based crimes in war till date.

Most importantly, the Bemba trial was a test case on assessing the command responsibility of a senior military official whose forces carried out the atrocities – even if he had not directly ordered them to do so, and that too in a neighbouring country. The trial court’s decision was momentous in its ruling that Bemba, then commander-in-chief of the rebel Congolese group Movement for Liberation of Congo (MLC) failed to take all ‘necessary and reasonable measures’ to prevent, repress or punish the commission of crimes by his subordinates. The court found that throughout the MLC’s campaign of terror in the neighbouring Central African Republic from 2002-2003, Bemba (though in a different country), ‘maintained full control over his troops – a pattern established by MLC intelligence reports, logs of communications, local and international media accounts and non-governmental organisations’.

Two years after the historic judgment, the ICC appeals chamber in a majority opinion supported by three of the five judges said that the trial court had ‘erroneously convicted Bemba for specific criminal acts that were outside the scope of the charges as confirmed’.

The court added, “The trial chamber erred in its evaluation of Bemba’s motivation and the measures that he could have taken in light of the limitations he faced in investigating and prosecuting crimes as a remote commander sending troops to a foreign country”.

Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo enters the court room of the ICC in 2016. Credit: Reuters/Jerry Lampen

Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo enters the court room of the ICC in 2016. Credit: Reuters/Jerry Lampen

The acquittal is devastating for the 5,000 victims who participated in the trial and waited 15 years for justice to be delivered. It is a major blow to the ICC prosecutor’s office, given the vast resources that have been devoted to this case, which has lasted for more than ten years.

Saumya Uma, a professor of law who was part of the global campaign to ensure that the ICC gives definitive priority to seeking accountability for sexual and gender-based crimes, said she “is extremely disappointed at the appeals court ruling especially as the situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) represented the most egregious case of sexual and gender-based violence before the ICC”.  She added, “The ICC appellate chamber has not said that the incidents did not happen. In fact, the heinous crimes are very real and the harm caused to victims is also very real”. However, Saumya emphasised, “it could have only upheld the trial court’s conviction of Mr. Bemba if the ‘command responsibility’ element was proved”.

“The appellate court’s judgment has made the threshold of evidence higher (and therefore more difficult) to prove that a commander operating from remote location, had effective control over his subordinates who perpetrated the ICC crime and was therefore culpable of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Command responsibility is a crucial legal principle to the ICC prosecutions as ICC prosecutes only the highest leaders, who often plan, order or mastermind the commission of crimes,” she explained.

What it means for the displaced Rohingyas

ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. Credit: Reuters

ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. Credit: Reuters

The difficulties likely in proving ‘command responsibility’ have dismaying implications for Rohingya activists, lawyer Razia Sultana and Thun Khin who are looking excitedly to the ICC as an opportunity for establishing international accountability for war crimes, said. The chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has initiated the process of judicially determining whether the ICC has the mandate to investigate the alleged crime of deportation of Rohingya civilians from Myanmar into Bangladesh.

Although the crime of deportation is a narrow line of investigation, which does not include widespread and systematic use of rape, torture, murder, apartheid, or other crimes against humanity, given its massive scale and humanitarian consequences, the ICC intervention could be of huge significance in establishing international accountability. If the judges on June 20 accept that the ICC does have a mandate, it will effectively bypass the need for UN Security Council referral to investigate Myanmar, something that it has been reluctant to do.

The Rome Statute which set up the ICC considers “deportation or forcible transfer of population” as a crime against humanity. It does not specify that deportation involves a population crossing an international border. However, Bensouda in her submission to the judges to determine jurisdiction has emphasised “crossing an international border” as an “essential legal element of the crime”. Myanmar is not a member of the ICC war crimes court and ICC cannot investigate allegations there unless instructed to do so by the UN Security Council. Bangladesh is a member opening up this possible legal avenue.

Bangladesh has responded to the ICC’s request concurring with both the territorial jurisdiction and the claim of forced displacement of Rohingyas from Myanmar. According to official sources quoted in The Daily Star, Bangladesh conveyed to the ICC that the enormity of this human catastrophe is so overwhelming, which is why it has “concurred with the prosecution’s well-crafted arguments that over a million people have been displaced from Myanmar into Bangladesh through expulsion, deportation and through other coercive means.”

Razia Sultana, drawing upon the testimonies of 36 refugees: eight rape survivors (documented in her publication Rape by Command), estimates that Myanmar troops raped well over 300 women and girls in or near at least 17 villages during the military operation. Given that over 350 villages were attacked, the total number of women raped would be significant. Razia argued that “the fact that so many soldiers, in different locations willingly grouped together to commit rape or stood by as fellow troops committed this crime indicates a clear confidence of impunity. This can only come from a shared knowledge of authorisation to rape. Myanmar’s military leaders must be held responsible,” she asserted at a seminar in Delhi.

Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar wait to be let through by Bangladeshi border guards after crossing the border in Palang Khali, Bangladesh October 16, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Zohra Bensemra

Activist-filmmaker Tapan Bose, recently nominated ‘roving global envoy’ for Rohingya rights, is much more cautious about the ICC as a collective system for establishing international accountability, especially after the Bemba acquittal. “The majority judgement in Bemba case has revised standards of review of command responsibility in a way that favoured Mr. Bemba. It could set a case law precedent that would embolden future militia commanders. Moreover, it could also set a de facto precedent in emboldening defence teams undergoing the appeals process. In the case of the generals of the Myanmar Army whose troops undertook genocidal operations in Rakhine state that have resulted in killings impacting Bangladesh, it would mean the Bensouda will have to provide the general documentary evidence that indicates exactly which are the killings, destructions, and expulsions for which they are responsible. It seems that establishing that they were in effective command of particular units would not be enough,” he said.

Despite misgivings, expectation remains high about the prospect of the ICC demonstrating that it can stand above geopolitical rivalry and be active in ending impunity for heinous international crimes. Myanmar presents an opportunity, if the ICC mandate covers the war crime of  ‘deportation across international borders’, involving that is a state party that borders a non-state party.  Also, it could be an entry point for establishing international accountability in the crime of Syria-Jordan deportation.

Rita Manchanda is a researcher, writer and human rights advocate specialising on conflicts and peace building in South Asia with particular attention to vulnerable and marginalised groups. Her latest publication is Women and the Politics of Peace: Narratives of Militarisation , Power and Justice (Sage:2017).