OVER 150,000 INDIANS FROM KUWAIT WERE FLOWN OUT FROM AMMAN (JORDAN) 1990-91

  

OVER 150,000 INDIANS FROM KUWAIT WERE FLOWN OUT FROM AMMAN (JORDAN) BY AIRINDIA FLIGHTS (FROM AUGUST 1990 T0 FEB 1991.

 

First please read the resolution later passed by Indians in Kuwait 1994

 

 

INDIAN CITIZEN'S COMMITTEE

 

Patron   H.E ; Prem Singh

                        Ambassador of India

Chairman:      H.S, Vedi

Vice Chairman: Raman Sharma

Secretary:       Mathew Kurvilla

Treasurer:      Abraham Mathew

 

To ;       Shri P.V. Narsimha Roa ,.

              Prime Minister of India ,

              South Block.

              N. Delhi

 

 

 

INDIAN  CITIZEN'S COMMITTEE  which was formed on the dusty evening of 2nd Aug. 1990

the day of lraqi brutal invasion of' Kuwait met  in the  afternoon of Friday the 1st April 1994 at its

office in Shaab Kuwait and  unanimously passed  thc attached resolution.

 

 

Sd-

H.S Vcdi

Chairman I.C.C

2nd April I994..

 

 

 C.C

1. Shri Dinesh Singh E.A.M, N. Delhi

2. Shri Salman  Khursheed M.E A - N: Delhi

3. Shri K. Sri Niwasun  F.S - N. Delhi

4. Secretary  to President of India - N. Delhi

 

 

Issued 4/4/9

 

 

 

 

 

                                           Resolution By Indian Citizen's

                                Committee Kuwait On 1st April 1994

 

We are extremely happy to have with us today H.E. Gajendra Singh presently Indian ambassador to Turkey, who is one of the few persons who will long be remembered in our minds and recorded in the history of evacuation of Indian citizens of Kuwait for his long dedicated and unstinted services during the dark and black days of vicious Iraqi occupation of Kuwait when he was to our good luck stationed in Amman as our Indian Ambassador.

 

During the seven months long period from Aug. 1990 to March 1991, the Indian Embassy in Amman under his unflinching leadership imbued with compassion for the plight of Indian evacuees that went beyond the call of duty, in the Herculean task of arranging transport for Indian citizens of Kuwait from the Iraqi Jordanian border, some times even from Baghdad, upto Amman to a distance of over 250 KM and refugee camps, reception and migration for citizens etc. at the border and in Amman, boarding , loading in Amman upto mid Sept. 1990 till international Agencies established refugee camps and finally making sure that our citizens reached India safely. It took nearly six hundred air flights including 420 Air India Flights, an aviation history record to evacuate nearly 140,000 Indian citizens from Amman.

 

Ambassador Singh stuck to his duties even during the war days of Jan/Feb, 1991, evacuating thousand of Indian citizens including nurses, under most trying and dangerous conditions.

 

We the members of the Indian Citizens Committee in Kuwait express our sincere thanks and gratitude to you for shouldering such enormous responsibilities under tremendous physical and functional tensions, working round the clock for months without any break during this period.

 

We had noted with satisfaction that your services and those of your colleagues were widely acclaimed in lndian media including Times of lndia, Indian Express, India To day etc. and even in the international media. The Crown Prince of Jordan, the foreign Minister of Bhutan, International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and other organizations, praised the remarkable work "of the Indian Embassy in Amman.

 

We have, therefore, learnt with great sorrow and anguish that the Govt. of India instead decorating you for your services, have instead punished you in 1992 and 1993 on the basis of

false allegations. We firmly believe and request the Government of India to undo this grave miscarriage of justice and accord you the reward and acclaim which you so surely deserve.

 

We also are reminded of your meetings with many of us with severe mental, physical tension, sick and dead where you kindly attention and services were of great solace.

 

We also are aware that had the Govt. of Indian then fully complied with your recommendations, the operation of refugee exodus would have been much smoother.

 

We also note with utter shame that so called national leaders of that time displayed utter ignorance and incompetence and arrogance in dealing with the situation and further making unforgivable statements in foreign countries . Their graceless behavior left a very bad impression with Jordanian leaders.

 

We recommend a high level enquiry to the Mismanagement of evacuation Sub-committee of Ministry of External Affairs.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.O.Box 23228 Safat, Kuwait 13093

Tel: 2624719 - Fax 2623124

 

NEXT DAY KUWAIT TIMES ,WHILE COVERING THIS MEETING HEADLINED  IT AS' INDIANS" WELCOME WAR HERO ( INDIAN AMBASSADOR IN AMMAN AND HIS STAFF ), ONLY WITH TWO OFFICERS TO BEGIN WITH)

 

 

                                                                      FOUNDATION FOR INDO-TURKIC STUDIES                         

Tel/Fax ; 004016374602                                                         Amb (Rtd) K Gajendra Singh                                                      

 Emails; Gajendrak@hotmail.com                                               Flat No 5, 3^rd Floor

 KGSingh@Yahoo.com                                                                     9, Sos Cotroceni,

 Web site W3.geocities.com/Kgsngh                                                Bucharest (Romania ).

                                                                                                           12 December, 2002

 

ASIA TIMES online –December 13, 2002

 

 

AMBASSADOR'S JOURNAL
Gulf crisis: Lessons from 1991
K Gajendra Singh, who was stationed in Amman as India's ambassador to Jordan during the Gulf crisis of 1990-91, recalls the frantic efforts and bureaucratic bungling in handling the flood of Indian refugee workers from the troubled region. And he ponders whether the Indian government is any better prepared this time around. Ed

 

AMBASSADOR'S JOURNAL
Gulf crisis: Lessons from 1991 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/DL13Df01.html

By K Gajendra Singh

 

 

Dinner on January 15, 1991, at the Indian embassy residence in Amman, the capital of Jordan, turned out to be a much bigger affair than I had bargained for. On January 1, I had casually asked US Ambassador Roger Harrison if he would be free for dinner on the 15th, the deadline given by the coalition led by US President George H W Bush to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait, which he had invaded in August 1990.

 

When Roger said yes, apart from senior Jordanian officials, journalists and others, I also invited ambassadors from the countries represented in the Security Council, my human shield against the coalition attack, as I jokingly remarked. Soon word went round and everyone wanted to join in, and suddenly 70 guests were expected.

 

I had to dust off ceremonial and personal crockery and cutlery, and set up bridge tables and garden chairs to seat them all. I also had to borrow my cook's TV so that guests could watch King Hussein deliver a stirring speech on Jordanian TV as many were already watching the latest news from Israeli TV. CNN had not yet reached Amman. Guests were sprawled on sofas and wandering through my study and bedrooms. When King Hussein heard about this unusual get together, he remarked that only an ambassador from India could have thought of such a dinner. A great compliment indeed.

Most embassies in Amman had already sent their families home and were functioning on skeleton staff. The cook at the Chinese embassy, though, was considered essential, and understandably, as I have never eaten such tasty Chinese food. There were regular meetings among ambassadors. Tony, the British envoy, would turn up on odd occasions for a spot of bridge to take our minds off the mounting tension. No politics, we had agreed. Once, he got me three down doubled (a rare thing). Tony was delighted, "I do not care if Saddam wins now," he teased. His armed bodyguard would watch TV with my cook, sharing samosas. The Romanian ambassador handed out gas masks designed for oil drilling while the Chinese loaded me with various safety devices to counter poisonous biological attacks. But I used to show them the strong life line on my hand and say that nothing untoward was indicated.

The worst case nightmare for the coalition was that a few germ-loaded Iraqi Scuds (which we could see over the Amman sky cruising towards Israel) would kill a few hundred Israelis, and even the presence of senior US officials stationed in Israel to restrain them would not have stopped the Israelis from joining in the fray and directly marching to Iraq, the first stop being Amman. In the event of that happening, the coalition, almost a mini-UN force, with Pakistani, Egyptian and even Syrian and other Muslim troops in it for the money and other considerations, would have been impossible to hold together.

In this contingency, Western diplomats were to rush to the desert southeast of Amman, from where helicopters would ferry them to war ships positioned in the Gulf of Aqaba, cruising there to enforce the embargo against Iraq. The embassy Indians, though, were to remain in Amman as the ministry in New Delhi could not accommodate the families in its hostels. So our plan was to get into our cars and speed north, if we could, for shelter with the Indian ambassador and his colleagues in Damascus, the capital of Syria.

Having seen rich Indians from Kuwait reduced to sharing or fighting for food or a bottle of water with their workers in the infamous Shalan camp on the way from Kuwait to Jordan via Iraq, the only thing worth saving, I used to say, were my 10 favorite and priceless long-playing records. Only Jordan had kept its borders open with Iraq, so Amman was the only point for entry and exit from Iraq.

Meanwhile, during the evening of January 15, there was an atmosphere of great gaiety and excitement, with adrenaline levels running high after months of anxiety. Apart from sharing an historic evening and exchanging the latest news, everyone was dying to see my collection of LPs. Among them were; Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Amir Ali Khan, Beethoven, Strauss, Chopin and Mozart. But only Lata Mangeshkar had two LPs in this set, and people were asking who she was. I had to tell them she was one of India's all-time great singers and she had sent me two autographed records (Geeta and Ghazals) after a meeting in 1974 in Paris, where I was then posted. My family and I, aware that she sang only light music, and fearful that thousands of people might be about to die, put on the funereal Requiem. But animated and absorbed in conversation, few heard it. But Roger did, and we both became very sad.

The grand coalition attack on Iraqi forces did not begin that night. It came the next day, January 16, actually in the early hours of the 17th. Despite requests to all journalists to inform us immediately, and a pact with other ambassadors to inform each other, my son Tinoo from New York was the first to telephone me at 00210 hrs (LST) on January 17, and tell me that the attack on Iraq had commenced. Only just woken up, I queried how the hell did he know. CNN, he said. Soon journalists from the Jordan Times and others followed with calls. No wonder that world presidents and others confess that they learn about world events first from CNN. It takes too long for secret messages to be coded and decoded in the chancelleries.

August 2, 1990: The Gulf crisis begins
It all began on August 2, 1990. A day earlier, I had been in the Nabatean pink city of Petra, in the south of Jordan, some 262 kilometers from Amman, once the stronghold of the gifted Nabateans, an early Arab people. The Victorian traveler and poet, Dean Burgeon, gave Petra a description that holds to this day, "Match me such a marvel save in Eastern clime, a rose red city half as old as time."

After a morning visit to the sprawling ruins, just before going for lunch at the hotel restaurant, as per habit, I switched on the BBC news. The news of Iraqi troops entering Kuwait shocked me out of my reveries of the magnificent pink Hazane (treasury ) monument that suddenly comes into view as one rides through a narrow gorge. Truly a marvelous sight. Although Baghdad was 1,200 kilometers from Amman and Kuwait even farther, after three decades in diplomacy I instinctively felt that something was seriously amiss. The next morning I returned to Amman, although I had planned to explore Petra at leisure.

Yes, tension had been building up between Kuwait and Iraq, but an invasion was not on the cards; after all, inter-Arab tensions are not exactly uncommon. The last round of negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait in Jeddah over disputed territory had collapsed on August 1, and Saddam Hussein was incensed, feeling squeezed. Instead of being grateful, Kuwait, with encouragement from the West, was insisting on the repayment of "loans", and it was flooding the oil market, thus lowering the price of a barrel of oil from US$18 to $12 to $14, which hurt Iraq the most.

Saddam also felt that he had saved the Arab Gulf states, many with large Shi'ite populations, from the fury of the Shi'ite revolution in Iran, for which he had been lauded by the Arab masses and governments, and gifted billions of dollars and friendly loans. Western nations, notably the United Kingdom, France and even the US, granted him credit, dual use of technology, chemicals and machinery and even aerial intelligence on Iranian forces.

And of course there remains the mystery and enigma of the full details of the last meeting between the US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, and Saddam in Baghdad on July 25, when she told Saddam that his dispute with Kuwait was a bilateral Arab matter. Glaspie then disappeared from public view, and was barred from giving interviews or writing a book. The Western media did not pursue her as they do others, and with a few exceptions the media have subsequently functioned as a handmaiden of the Pentagon and Western spokesmen.

In the first week of August, there were hectic international political developments, with King Hussein of Jordan playing an active and constructive role in trying to defuse Iraqi aggression with an Arab solution, with help from Saudi and Egyptian leaders. There have been various versions of these events, but it appears that the US finally prevailed on President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, so dependent on US aid, and he fell into line.

On returning to Delhi in 1984 after six years, having headed missions in Dakar (Senegal) and Bucharest (Romania), I served as chairman-managing director of the Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals company, with 13,000 personnel in five units, and established the Foreign Service Training Institute in New Delhi. So my posting in July 1989 to Amman, with only a first secretary and an attache, was considered a light mission. So in Amman my bridge game improved, but I was getting distrait - bored - as the French would say. But this was only the lull before the storm.

From India's point of view, the serious issue was the safety of its foreign workers - about 180,000 in Kuwait and 10,000 in Iraq. By early August they had started to trickle into Amman as refugees. The earliest batches were mostly Indian Hajis - pilgrims to Mecca - a thousand odd, who had been stranded as Air India flights to Iraq and back had been cancelled after August 2. After Mecca, many Hajis, specially Shi'ites, go on a pilgrimage to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in neighboring Iraq.

But soon the numbers of refugees from Kuwait reaching the Amman embassy started growing. In the beginning, whatever the time of the day or night, the small Indian staff of half a dozen would rush to make tea or buy food to make the tired Indian arrivals feel at home. In the evening, the embassy would telephone that two or three more buses had arrived from Baghdad - 100 or 150 Indians. This meant arranging places to stay, and providing food until air transport to India could be arranged. Soon the staff were exhausted, but their dedication and that of others who were deputed to help the embassy later, barring a few black sheep, never flagged.

There were more frequent meetings between ambassadors. I would see Crown Prince Hassan and other important persons to assess the political situation and its likely impact on the influx of refugees. In between, I made a few trips to the Jordan-Iraq border, where there was little in terms of facilities and infrastructure. But we had still not envisaged the deluge that was to hit us.

Soon, Amman became vital as it was the only point of access to Baghdad by air, road or telephone. Apart from short telephone contacts allowed between me and the Indian ambassador in Baghdad (the Indian ambassador to Kuwait had shifted to Basra), Iraq and Kuwait were effectively cut off from the world. So, with other countries closing their borders, apart from the refugee flood, Amman became the staging point for international politicians and others visiting Iraq. Soon, too, Amman was crawling with international media.

Because of more than half of Jordan's population being of Palestinian origin and Yasser Arafat's full reciprocal support to Saddam, and Amman's close relations with Iraq, there were regular demonstrations in Amman in support of Saddam and Iraq. Jordan TV gave the Iraqi viewpoint, which was drowned elsewhere by anti-Saddam rhetoric spread by the Western media. For us, the Western viewpoint was available from Israeli TV, across the Jordan Valley 40 kilometers away. It was necessary to keep a watch on political developments to help assess their impact on the influx of refugees.

Jordan had only a small Indian community, mostly workers earning barely $75 to $100 per month, hoping to migrate to better-paying Gulf states. We hired some of them to help us out. Only a few families were well off, but I regret to say that we were let down. In the first week of refugee arrivals, before we had assessed the situation, we requested one family completing a big project to put a van at our disposal. This was refused. We requested another Indian who had an empty warehouse to let us use it to temporarily house the refugees. He also refused. In countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran or Turkey, where only a few thousand refugees in all went in the first few days, there was full support from the well-organized and large Indian communities. Soon, we started hiring whatever accommodation we could find in hotels and flats, and making arrangements for food.

Nearly a million refugees, a majority from Egypt, mostly working in Iraq, and Yemenis and others transited through Jordan, a country of less than 4 million. It was the equivalent of 200 million refugees wading through India and using its infrastructure. There was pressure on accommodation, food and transport and decisions had to be taken on the spot. Apart from morning and evening policy sessions with my colleagues, I would invite them by turn for a meal to maintain espirit de corps and I tried to make their living conditions as smooth as possible. They were working 14 to 18 hours every day, many even when ill and down with fever. The main stress was on patience against all provocation from the refugees, who, while they had been silent while in Kuwait or Iraq, started shouting and abusing once they saw Indian embassy personnel. As the majority of the refugees were from Kerala in India, four officers who had come to assist us had to pretend that they did not understand the abuses showered on them in Malyali. Some of our personnel were even assaulted and embassy cars stoned by tired and jittery Indian refugees. On many occasions the Jordan police had to step in.

The Indian government did not appreciate the gravity of the situation and gave us too little too late. In a fast-changing situation, when I requested Delhi to depute more staff, they quoted back the previous week's telegram. They even sent a junior officer to study the situation, who, on arrival, appeared more interested in visiting Petra. We had to carry out the evacuation as per normal rules designed for a few or 50 or even 100-odd stranded Indians abroad. We had to follow them, even though three to four thousand Indians per day were flying out on 10 to 15 Air India and International Movement Organization (IMO) flights. This included making them sign indemnity bonds and providing individual tickets. Despite my pleas, these superfluous formalities were not done away with. It meant queuing up for registration, air tickets and the return of forms etc, by tired and hungry refugees, even when there were up to 8,000 of them in Amman.

Once the evacuation was over, the government of India did decide to waive the indemnity ie repayment of the cost of the ticket. In 106 charity flights organized for Indians by the IOM, the only formality was the registration of the passengers in the flight manifest with passport details, etc. Without time-consuming and unnecessary formalities, the refugees would have been saved much stress and strain and my colleagues (15 to 25 at the peak ), who had to be at the embassy, hotels, apartment blocks, airports, border points and even in no man's land, could have devoted more time to looking after the comforts of the evacuees.

External Affairs Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, during his transit stay in Amman in early August 1990 on the way to his famous hug with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and the "Millionaire's flight" in an Indian Air Force aircraft from Kuwait, as the media described it, appeared curiously reluctant to meet King Hussein and Crown Prince Hassan. They received him with great warmth and brought him up to date on the situation, of which he appeared to have little grasp. Later, a non-professional Indian diplomat was sent to Amman by Gujral, who wanted to be included with King Hussein and King Hassan of Morocco, then planning to take a peace mission to Saddam. The Hashemite palace was most embarrassed. Gujral made extravagant promises to Indians in Kuwait, such as flying them out from Basra and Baghdad, with planes waiting for them. In my office, Gujral told waiting Indian refugees that they would get air tickets for their home towns on arrival in Bombay. All they got were the lowest class train tickets. He was making extravagant promises as if he were fighting a parliamentary election.

To overcome the staff shortage problem at the embassy on a permanent basis, Gujral, in consultation with the Foreign Secretary Muchkund  Dubey, selected an officer. But that officer never reached Amman to assist "people like us". Gujral kept shouting at everyone in Amman until he left for Baghdad, much to the disgust of the officers and staff who had just started trickling in from India to assist us in our monumental task, which even we had not envisaged. Gujral appeared to be edgy, short-tempered and rude. But much worse was to follow. Except for Civil Aviation Minister Arif Mohammed Khan, who flew in with the first Air India plane on August 12, who was a gentleman of the old school.

It speaks volumes for the Indian government's perspective and contingency planning under I K Gujral and the foreign secretary that it held the only conference of Indian ambassadors in the region to discuss the refugee problem and international political developments just a few days before the deadline for Iraq's withdrawal on January 15.

Now the US, with support from the UK, is threatening a war and regime change in Iraq. If it takes place, it will be a terribly messy affair, overflowing if not involving neighboring Turkey and the Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, which is also under scrutiny and attack by the hawks in the US administration. Unlike 1990-91, when they were enthusiastic allies, these states are now reluctant to support the US' unilateral action. The gulf region has nearly 5 million Indian workers. The question is, has the Indian government learned from its mistakes, and is it prepared this time around?

K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal.

(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contactcontent@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

 

 

 

 

Re: Akshay Kumar’s Bollywood Great Airlift of 160,000 Indians, not from Kuwait but Amman(Jordan)

Akshay Kumar's Bollywood Great Airlift of 160,000 Indians, not from Kuwait but Amman(Jordan)

 

Akshay Kumar on Airlift: What India had done in 1990 is not a matter of joke

Directed by Raja Menon, Airlift is about those 1,70,000 Indians stranded in Kuwait when Saddam Hussein invaded the country in 1990, and kick-started the Gulf War.

Akshay Kumar: Felt pain of refugees during 'Airlift' shooting

Times of India

- ‎34 minutes ago‎

Actor Akshay Kumar says he felt the pain that refugees went through during the filming of his forthcoming movie 'Airlift', based on evacuation of Indians from Kuwait during the Iraq-Kuwait war.----

At the Delhi press conference of the film, Akshay Kumar had a snippet or two to share about his latest patriotic venture, Airlift. Talking about the ideology behind the film, Akshay told reporters, "Is film ka nazariya yeh hai ki hum dikahana chahte hai - dikhana kya, yeh hakikat mein hai - India is the greatest country in the world. This is a real story of what happened to 1,70,000 Indians who were in Kuwait when Saddam Hussein had attacked the country in 1990. They didn't know where to go, what to do and had only one hope: calling out to their nation for help. And aapko yeh jaanke khushi hogi ki hamare jo Air India ke pilots hai unhone uss time risk uthaya and 488 flights (Kuwait ke) andar lekar gaye aur sabko bachake le aaye. This is why I chose to do this film."

 

 

INDIAN CITIZEN'S COMMITTEE

 

Patron   H.E ; Prem Singh

                        Ambassador of India

Chairman:      H.S, Vedi

Vice Chairman: Raman Sharma

Secretary:       Mathew Kurvilla

Treasurer:      Abraham Mathew

 

To ;       Shri P.V. Narsimha Roa ,.

              Prime Minister of India ,

              South Block.

              N. Delhi

 

 

 

INDIAN  CITIZEN'S COMMITTEE  which was formed on the dusty evening of 2nd Aug. 1990

the day of lraqi brutal invasion of' Kuwait met  in the  afternoon of Friday the 1st April 1994 at its

office in Shaab Kuwait and  unanimously passed  thc attached resolution.

 

 

Sd-

H.S Vcdi

Chairman I.C.C

2nd April I994..

 

 

 C.C

1. Shri Dinesh Singh E.A.M, N. Delhi

2. Shri Salman  Khursheed M.E A - N: Delhi

3. Shri K. Sri Niwasun  F.S - N. Delhi

4. Secretary  to President of India - N. Delhi

 

 

Issued 4/4/9

 

 

 

 

 

                                           Resolution By Indian Citizen's

                                Committee Kuwait On 1st April 1994

 

We are extremely happy to have with us today H.E. Gajendra Singh presently Indian ambassador to Turkey, who is one of the few persons who will long be remembered in our minds and recorded in the history of evacuation of Indian citizens of Kuwait for his long dedicated and unstinted services during the dark and black days of vicious Iraqi occupation of Kuwait when he was to our good luck stationed in Amman as our Indian Ambassador.

 

During the seven months long period from Aug. 1990 to March 1991, the Indian Embassy in Amman under his unflinching leadership imbued with compassion for the plight of Indian evacuees that went beyond the call of duty, in the Herculean task of arranging transport for Indian citizens of Kuwait from the Iraqi Jordanian border, some times even from Baghdad, upto Amman to a distance of over 250 KM and refugee camps, reception and migration for citizens etc. at the border and in Amman, boarding , loading in Amman upto mid Sept. 1990 till international Agencies established refugee camps and finally making sure that our citizens reached India safely. It took nearly six hundred air flights including 420 Air India Flights, an aviation history record to evacuate nearly 140,000 Indian citizens from Amman.

 

Ambassador Singh stuck to his duties even during the war days of Jan/Feb, 1991, evacuating thousand of Indian citizens including nurses, under most trying and dangerous conditions.

 

We the members of the Indian Citizens Committee in Kuwait express our sincere thanks and gratitude to you for shouldering such enormous responsibilities under tremendous physical and functional tensions, working round the clock for months without any break during this period.

 

We had noted with satisfaction that your services and those of your colleagues were widely acclaimed in lndian media including Times of lndia, Indian Express, India To day etc. and even in the international media. The Crown Prince of Jordan, the foreign Minister of Bhutan, International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and other organizations, praised the remarkable work "of the Indian Embassy in Amman.

 

We have, therefore, learnt with great sorrow and anguish that the Govt. of India instead decorating you for your services, have instead punished you in 1992 and 1993 on the basis of

false allegations. We firmly believe and request the Government of India to undo this grave miscarriage of justice and accord you the reward and acclaim which you so surely deserve.

 

We also are reminded of your meetings with many of us with severe mental, physical tension, sick and dead where you kindly attention and services were of great solace.

 

We also are aware that had the Govt. of Indian then fully complied with your recommendations, the operation of refugee exodus would have been much smoother.

 

We also note with utter shame that so called national leaders of that time displayed utter ignorance and incompetence and arrogance in dealing with the situation and further making unforgivable statements in foreign countries . Their graceless behavior left a very bad impression with Jordanian leaders.

 

We recommend a high level enquiry to the Mismanagement of evacuation Sub-committee of Ministry of External Affairs.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.O.Box 23228 Safat, Kuwait 13093

Tel: 2624719 - Fax 2623124

 

NEXT DAY KUWAIT TIMES ,WHILE COVERING THIS MEETING HEADLINED  IT AS' INDIANS" WELCOME WAR HERO ( INDIAN AMBASSADOR IN AMMAN AND HIS STAFF ), ONLY WITH TWO OFFICERS TO BEGIN WITH)

 

 

                                                                      FOUNDATION FOR INDO-TURKIC STUDIES                         

Tel/Fax ; 004016374602                                                         Amb (Rtd) K Gajendra Singh                                                      

 Emails; Gajendrak@hotmail.com                                               Flat No 5, 3^rd Floor

 KGSingh@Yahoo.com                                                                     9, Sos Cotroceni,

 Web site W3.geocities.com/Kgsngh                                                Bucharest (Romania ).

                                                                                                           12 December, 2002

 

ASIA TIMES online –December 13, 2002

 

 

AMBASSADOR'S JOURNAL
Gulf crisis: Lessons from 1991
K Gajendra Singh, who was stationed in Amman as India's ambassador to Jordan during the Gulf crisis of 1990-91, recalls the frantic efforts and bureaucratic bungling in handling the flood of Indian refugee workers from the troubled region. And he ponders whether the Indian government is any better prepared this time around. Ed

 

AMBASSADOR'S JOURNAL
Gulf crisis: Lessons from 1991 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/DL13Df01.html

By K Gajendra Singh

 

 

Dinner on January 15, 1991, at the Indian embassy residence in Amman, the capital of Jordan, turned out to be a much bigger affair than I had bargained for. On January 1, I had casually asked US Ambassador Roger Harrison if he would be free for dinner on the 15th, the deadline given by the coalition led by US President George H W Bush to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait, which he had invaded in August 1990.

 

When Roger said yes, apart from senior Jordanian officials, journalists and others, I also invited ambassadors from the countries represented in the Security Council, my human shield against the coalition attack, as I jokingly remarked. Soon word went round and everyone wanted to join in, and suddenly 70 guests were expected.

 

I had to dust off ceremonial and personal crockery and cutlery, and set up bridge tables and garden chairs to seat them all. I also had to borrow my cook's TV so that guests could watch King Hussein deliver a stirring speech on Jordanian TV as many were already watching the latest news from Israeli TV. CNN had not yet reached Amman. Guests were sprawled on sofas and wandering through my study and bedrooms. When King Hussein heard about this unusual get together, he remarked that only an ambassador from India could have thought of such a dinner. A great compliment indeed.

Most embassies in Amman had already sent their families home and were functioning on skeleton staff. The cook at the Chinese embassy, though, was considered essential, and understandably, as I have never eaten such tasty Chinese food. There were regular meetings among ambassadors. Tony, the British envoy, would turn up on odd occasions for a spot of bridge to take our minds off the mounting tension. No politics, we had agreed. Once, he got me three down doubled (a rare thing). Tony was delighted, "I do not care if Saddam wins now," he teased. His armed bodyguard would watch TV with my cook, sharing samosas. The Romanian ambassador handed out gas masks designed for oil drilling while the Chinese loaded me with various safety devices to counter poisonous biological attacks. But I used to show them the strong life line on my hand and say that nothing untoward was indicated.

The worst case nightmare for the coalition was that a few germ-loaded Iraqi Scuds (which we could see over the Amman sky cruising towards Israel) would kill a few hundred Israelis, and even the presence of senior US officials stationed in Israel to restrain them would not have stopped the Israelis from joining in the fray and directly marching to Iraq, the first stop being Amman. In the event of that happening, the coalition, almost a mini-UN force, with Pakistani, Egyptian and even Syrian and other Muslim troops in it for the money and other considerations, would have been impossible to hold together.

In this contingency, Western diplomats were to rush to the desert southeast of Amman, from where helicopters would ferry them to war ships positioned in the Gulf of Aqaba, cruising there to enforce the embargo against Iraq. The embassy Indians, though, were to remain in Amman as the ministry in New Delhi could not accommodate the families in its hostels. So our plan was to get into our cars and speed north, if we could, for shelter with the Indian ambassador and his colleagues in Damascus, the capital of Syria.

Having seen rich Indians from Kuwait reduced to sharing or fighting for food or a bottle of water with their workers in the infamous Shalan camp on the way from Kuwait to Jordan via Iraq, the only thing worth saving, I used to say, were my 10 favorite and priceless long-playing records. Only Jordan had kept its borders open with Iraq, so Amman was the only point for entry and exit from Iraq.

Meanwhile, during the evening of January 15, there was an atmosphere of great gaiety and excitement, with adrenaline levels running high after months of anxiety. Apart from sharing an historic evening and exchanging the latest news, everyone was dying to see my collection of LPs. Among them were; Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Amir Ali Khan, Beethoven, Strauss, Chopin and Mozart. But only Lata Mangeshkar had two LPs in this set, and people were asking who she was. I had to tell them she was one of India's all-time great singers and she had sent me two autographed records (Geeta and Ghazals) after a meeting in 1974 in Paris, where I was then posted. My family and I, aware that she sang only light music, and fearful that thousands of people might be about to die, put on the funereal Requiem. But animated and absorbed in conversation, few heard it. But Roger did, and we both became very sad.

The grand coalition attack on Iraqi forces did not begin that night. It came the next day, January 16, actually in the early hours of the 17th. Despite requests to all journalists to inform us immediately, and a pact with other ambassadors to inform each other, my son Tinoo from New York was the first to telephone me at 00210 hrs (LST) on January 17, and tell me that the attack on Iraq had commenced. Only just woken up, I queried how the hell did he know. CNN, he said. Soon journalists from the Jordan Times and others followed with calls. No wonder that world presidents and others confess that they learn about world events first from CNN. It takes too long for secret messages to be coded and decoded in the chancelleries.

August 2, 1990: The Gulf crisis begins
It all began on August 2, 1990. A day earlier, I had been in the Nabatean pink city of Petra, in the south of Jordan, some 262 kilometers from Amman, once the stronghold of the gifted Nabateans, an early Arab people. The Victorian traveler and poet, Dean Burgeon, gave Petra a description that holds to this day, "Match me such a marvel save in Eastern clime, a rose red city half as old as time."

After a morning visit to the sprawling ruins, just before going for lunch at the hotel restaurant, as per habit, I switched on the BBC news. The news of Iraqi troops entering Kuwait shocked me out of my reveries of the magnificent pink Hazane (treasury ) monument that suddenly comes into view as one rides through a narrow gorge. Truly a marvelous sight. Although Baghdad was 1,200 kilometers from Amman and Kuwait even farther, after three decades in diplomacy I instinctively felt that something was seriously amiss. The next morning I returned to Amman, although I had planned to explore Petra at leisure.

Yes, tension had been building up between Kuwait and Iraq, but an invasion was not on the cards; after all, inter-Arab tensions are not exactly uncommon. The last round of negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait in Jeddah over disputed territory had collapsed on August 1, and Saddam Hussein was incensed, feeling squeezed. Instead of being grateful, Kuwait, with encouragement from the West, was insisting on the repayment of "loans", and it was flooding the oil market, thus lowering the price of a barrel of oil from US$18 to $12 to $14, which hurt Iraq the most.

Saddam also felt that he had saved the Arab Gulf states, many with large Shi'ite populations, from the fury of the Shi'ite revolution in Iran, for which he had been lauded by the Arab masses and governments, and gifted billions of dollars and friendly loans. Western nations, notably the United Kingdom, France and even the US, granted him credit, dual use of technology, chemicals and machinery and even aerial intelligence on Iranian forces.

And of course there remains the mystery and enigma of the full details of the last meeting between the US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, and Saddam in Baghdad on July 25, when she told Saddam that his dispute with Kuwait was a bilateral Arab matter. Glaspie then disappeared from public view, and was barred from giving interviews or writing a book. The Western media did not pursue her as they do others, and with a few exceptions the media have subsequently functioned as a handmaiden of the Pentagon and Western spokesmen.

In the first week of August, there were hectic international political developments, with King Hussein of Jordan playing an active and constructive role in trying to defuse Iraqi aggression with an Arab solution, with help from Saudi and Egyptian leaders. There have been various versions of these events, but it appears that the US finally prevailed on President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, so dependent on US aid, and he fell into line.

On returning to Delhi in 1984 after six years, having headed missions in Dakar (Senegal) and Bucharest (Romania), I served as chairman-managing director of the Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals company, with 13,000 personnel in five units, and established the Foreign Service Training Institute in New Delhi. So my posting in July 1989 to Amman, with only a first secretary and an attache, was considered a light mission. So in Amman my bridge game improved, but I was getting distrait - bored - as the French would say. But this was only the lull before the storm.

From India's point of view, the serious issue was the safety of its foreign workers - about 180,000 in Kuwait and 10,000 in Iraq. By early August they had started to trickle into Amman as refugees. The earliest batches were mostly Indian Hajis - pilgrims to Mecca - a thousand odd, who had been stranded as Air India flights to Iraq and back had been cancelled after August 2. After Mecca, many Hajis, specially Shi'ites, go on a pilgrimage to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in neighboring Iraq.

But soon the numbers of refugees from Kuwait reaching the Amman embassy started growing. In the beginning, whatever the time of the day or night, the small Indian staff of half a dozen would rush to make tea or buy food to make the tired Indian arrivals feel at home. In the evening, the embassy would telephone that two or three more buses had arrived from Baghdad - 100 or 150 Indians. This meant arranging places to stay, and providing food until air transport to India could be arranged. Soon the staff were exhausted, but their dedication and that of others who were deputed to help the embassy later, barring a few black sheep, never flagged.

There were more frequent meetings between ambassadors. I would see Crown Prince Hassan and other important persons to assess the political situation and its likely impact on the influx of refugees. In between, I made a few trips to the Jordan-Iraq border, where there was little in terms of facilities and infrastructure. But we had still not envisaged the deluge that was to hit us.

Soon, Amman became vital as it was the only point of access to Baghdad by air, road or telephone. Apart from short telephone contacts allowed between me and the Indian ambassador in Baghdad (the Indian ambassador to Kuwait had shifted to Basra), Iraq and Kuwait were effectively cut off from the world. So, with other countries closing their borders, apart from the refugee flood, Amman became the staging point for international politicians and others visiting Iraq. Soon, too, Amman was crawling with international media.

Because of more than half of Jordan's population being of Palestinian origin and Yasser Arafat's full reciprocal support to Saddam, and Amman's close relations with Iraq, there were regular demonstrations in Amman in support of Saddam and Iraq. Jordan TV gave the Iraqi viewpoint, which was drowned elsewhere by anti-Saddam rhetoric spread by the Western media. For us, the Western viewpoint was available from Israeli TV, across the Jordan Valley 40 kilometers away. It was necessary to keep a watch on political developments to help assess their impact on the influx of refugees.

Jordan had only a small Indian community, mostly workers earning barely $75 to $100 per month, hoping to migrate to better-paying Gulf states. We hired some of them to help us out. Only a few families were well off, but I regret to say that we were let down. In the first week of refugee arrivals, before we had assessed the situation, we requested one family completing a big project to put a van at our disposal. This was refused. We requested another Indian who had an empty warehouse to let us use it to temporarily house the refugees. He also refused. In countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran or Turkey, where only a few thousand refugees in all went in the first few days, there was full support from the well-organized and large Indian communities. Soon, we started hiring whatever accommodation we could find in hotels and flats, and making arrangements for food.

Nearly a million refugees, a majority from Egypt, mostly working in Iraq, and Yemenis and others transited through Jordan, a country of less than 4 million. It was the equivalent of 200 million refugees wading through India and using its infrastructure. There was pressure on accommodation, food and transport and decisions had to be taken on the spot. Apart from morning and evening policy sessions with my colleagues, I would invite them by turn for a meal to maintain espirit de corps and I tried to make their living conditions as smooth as possible. They were working 14 to 18 hours every day, many even when ill and down with fever. The main stress was on patience against all provocation from the refugees, who, while they had been silent while in Kuwait or Iraq, started shouting and abusing once they saw Indian embassy personnel. As the majority of the refugees were from Kerala in India, four officers who had come to assist us had to pretend that they did not understand the abuses showered on them in Malyali. Some of our personnel were even assaulted and embassy cars stoned by tired and jittery Indian refugees. On many occasions the Jordan police had to step in.

The Indian government did not appreciate the gravity of the situation and gave us too little too late. In a fast-changing situation, when I requested Delhi to depute more staff, they quoted back the previous week's telegram. They even sent a junior officer to study the situation, who, on arrival, appeared more interested in visiting Petra. We had to carry out the evacuation as per normal rules designed for a few or 50 or even 100-odd stranded Indians abroad. We had to follow them, even though three to four thousand Indians per day were flying out on 10 to 15 Air India and International Movement Organization (IMO) flights. This included making them sign indemnity bonds and providing individual tickets. Despite my pleas, these superfluous formalities were not done away with. It meant queuing up for registration, air tickets and the return of forms etc, by tired and hungry refugees, even when there were up to 8,000 of them in Amman.

Once the evacuation was over, the government of India did decide to waive the indemnity ie repayment of the cost of the ticket. In 106 charity flights organized for Indians by the IOM, the only formality was the registration of the passengers in the flight manifest with passport details, etc. Without time-consuming and unnecessary formalities, the refugees would have been saved much stress and strain and my colleagues (15 to 25 at the peak ), who had to be at the embassy, hotels, apartment blocks, airports, border points and even in no man's land, could have devoted more time to looking after the comforts of the evacuees.

External Affairs Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, during his transit stay in Amman in early August 1990 on the way to his famous hug with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and the "Millionaire's flight" in an Indian Air Force aircraft from Kuwait, as the media described it, appeared curiously reluctant to meet King Hussein and Crown Prince Hassan. They received him with great warmth and brought him up to date on the situation, of which he appeared to have little grasp. Later, a non-professional Indian diplomat was sent to Amman by Gujral, who wanted to be included with King Hussein and King Hassan of Morocco, then planning to take a peace mission to Saddam. The Hashemite palace was most embarrassed. Gujral made extravagant promises to Indians in Kuwait, such as flying them out from Basra and Baghdad, with planes waiting for them. In my office, Gujral told waiting Indian refugees that they would get air tickets for their home towns on arrival in Bombay. All they got were the lowest class train tickets. He was making extravagant promises as if he were fighting a parliamentary election.

To overcome the staff shortage problem at the embassy on a permanent basis, Gujral, in consultation with the Foreign Secretary Muchkund  Dubey, selected an officer. But that officer never reached Amman to assist "people like us". Gujral kept shouting at everyone in Amman until he left for Baghdad, much to the disgust of the officers and staff who had just started trickling in from India to assist us in our monumental task, which even we had not envisaged. Gujral appeared to be edgy, short-tempered and rude. But much worse was to follow. Except for Civil Aviation Minister Arif Mohammed Khan, who flew in with the first Air India plane on August 12, who was a gentleman of the old school.

It speaks volumes for the Indian government's perspective and contingency planning under I K Gujral and the foreign secretary that it held the only conference of Indian ambassadors in the region to discuss the refugee problem and international political developments just a few days before the deadline for Iraq's withdrawal on January 15.

Now the US, with support from the UK, is threatening a war and regime change in Iraq. If it takes place, it will be a terribly messy affair, overflowing if not involving neighboring Turkey and the Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, which is also under scrutiny and attack by the hawks in the US administration. Unlike 1990-91, when they were enthusiastic allies, these states are now reluctant to support the US' unilateral action. The gulf region has nearly 5 million Indian workers. The question is, has the Indian government learned from its mistakes, and is it prepared this time around?

K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal.

(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contactcontent@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

 

 

 

End of Road for Homo sapiens! Slow death or Armageddon

End of Road for Homo sapiens! Slow death or Armageddon

 

Part1) Apocalyptic Capitalism

PartII ) World War III: Why Russia will bury the West

 

Limits to Growth, a study about the future of our planet, on behalf of the Club of Rome, worked on systems analysis at Jay W. Forrester's institute at MIT. They created a computing model which took into account the relations between various global developments and produced computer simulations for alternative scenarios.

 

Most scenarios resulted in an ongoing growth of population and of the economy until to a turning point around 2030. Only drastic measures for environmental protection proved to be suitable to change this systems behaviour, and only under these circumstances, scenarios could be calculated in which both world population and wealth could remain at a constant level. However, so far the necessary political measures were not taken.

 

This is not likely to happen.

 

Major cities like Beijing, Delhi, Paris and others are more or less gas chambers.

 

Of course West wants others ie East and South to make sacrifices? Both China and India want to catch up with the West. Why not.

 

The situation can only get worse.

 

The world was saved by Russian Naval officer from minor Armageddon in Cuban water in 1962.Since then there have been many misses.

 

In both the scenarios US led west are the Culprits. Destruction is US DNA ever since Europeans arrived there.

 

I have come to this sad and depressing conclusion based on study of international situation, for 35 years as a diplomat and then as a journalist and have written over three hundred articles, which have been translated into 12 major languages of the world.

 

http://tarafits.blogspot.in/2014/02/amb-rtd-k-gajendra-singh-cv-post.html

 

Apocalyptic Capitalism

By Chris Hedges

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43636.htm

December 08, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Truthdig" - The charade of the 21st United Nations climate summit will end, as past climate summits have ended, with lofty rhetoric and ineffectual cosmetic reforms. Since the first summit more than 20 years ago, carbon dioxide emissions have soared. Placing faith in our political and economic elites, who have mastered the arts of duplicity and propaganda on behalf of corporate power, is the triumph of hope over experience. There are only a few ways left to deal honestly with climate change: sustained civil disobedience that disrupts the machinery of exploitation; preparing for the inevitable dislocations and catastrophes that will come from irreversible rising temperatures; and cutting our personal carbon footprints, which means drastically reducing our consumption, particularly of animal products.

"Our civilization," Dr. Richard Oppenlander writes in "Food Choice and Sustainability, "displays a curious instinct when confronted with a problem related to overconsumption—we simply find a way to produce more of what it is we are consuming, instead of limiting or stopping that consumption."

The global elites have no intention of interfering with the profits, or ending government subsidies, for the fossil fuel industry and the extraction industries. They will not curtail extraction or impose hefty carbon taxes to keep fossil fuels in the ground. They will not limit the overconsumption that is the engine of global capitalism. They act as if the greatest contributor of greenhouse gases—the animal agriculture industry—does not exist. They siphon off trillions of dollars and employ scientific and technical expertise—expertise that should be directed toward preparing for environmental catastrophe and investing in renewable energy—to wage endless wars in the Middle East. What they airily hold out as a distant solution to the crisis—wind turbines and solar panels—is, as the scientist James Lovelock says, the equivalent of 18th-century doctors attempting to cure serious diseases with leeches and mercury. And as the elites mouth platitudes about saving the climate they are shoving still another trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), down our throats. The TPP permits corporations to ignore nonbinding climate accords made at conferences such as the one in Paris, and it allows them, in secret trade tribunals, to defy environmental regulations imposed by individual states.

New technology—fracking, fuel-efficient vehicles or genetically modified food—is not about curbing overconsumption or conserving resources. It is about ensuring that consumption continues at unsustainable levels. Technological innovation, employed to build systems of greater and greater complexity, has fragmented society into cadres of specialists. The expertise of each of these specialists is limited to a small section of the elaborate technological, scientific and bureaucratic machinery that drives corporate capitalism forward—much as in the specialized bureaucratic machinery that defined the genocide carried out by the Nazis. These technocrats are part of the massive, unthinking hive that makes any system work, even a system of death. They lack the intellectual and moral capacity to question the doomsday machine spawned by global capitalism.  And they are in control.

Civilizations careening toward collapse create ever more complex structures, and more intricate specialization, to exploit diminishing resources. But eventually the resources are destroyed or exhausted. The systems and technologies designed to exploit these resources become useless. Economists call such a phenomenon the "Jevons paradox." The result is systems collapse.

In the wake of collapses, as evidenced throughout history, societies fragment politically, culturally and socially. They become failed states, bleak and desolate outposts where law and order break down, and there is a mad and often violent scramble for the basic necessities of life. Barbarism reigns.

"Only the strong survive; the weak are victimized, robbed, and killed," the anthropologist Joseph Tainter writes in "The Collapse of Complex Societies." "There is fighting for food and fuel. Whatever central authority remains lacks the resources to reimpose order. Bands of pitiful, maimed survivors scavenge among the ruins of grandeur. Grass grows in the streets. There is no higher goal than survival."

The elites, trained in business schools and managerial programs not to solve real problems but to maintain at any cost the systems of global capitalism, profit personally from the assault. They amass inconceivable sums of wealth while their victims, the underclasses around the globe, are thrust into increasing distress from global warming, poverty and societal breakdown. The apparatus of government, seized by this corporate cabal, is hostile to genuine change. It passes laws, as it did for Denton, Texas, after residents voted to outlaw fracking in their city, to overturn the ability of local communities to control their own resources. It persecutes dissidents, along with environmental and animal rights activists, who try to halt the insanity. The elites don't work for us. They don't work for the planet. They orchestrate the gaiacide. And they are well paid for it.

The Anthropocene Age—the age of humans, which has caused mass extinctions of plant and animal species and the pollution of the soil, air and oceans—is upon us. The pace of destruction is accelerating. Climate scientists say that sea levels, for example, are rising three times faster than predicted and that the Arctic ice is vanishing at rates that were unforeseen. "If carbon dioxide concentrations reach 550 ppm," writes Clive Hamilton in "Requiem for a Species," "after which emissions fell to zero, the global temperature would continue to rise for at least another century." We have already passed 400 parts per million, a figure not seen on earth for 3 million to 5 million years. We are on track to reach at least 550 ppm by 2100.

The breakdown of the planet, many predict, will be nonlinear, meaning that various systems that sustain life—as Tainter chronicles in his study of collapsed civilizations—will disintegrate simultaneously. The infrastructures that distribute food, supply our energy, ensure our security, produce and transport our baffling array of products, and maintain law and order will crumble at once. It won't be much fun: Soaring temperatures. Submerged island states and coastal cities. Mass migrations. Species extinction. Monster storms. Droughts. Famines. Declining crop yields. And a security and surveillance apparatus, along with militarized police, that will employ harsher and harsher methods to cope with the chaos. 

We have to let go of our relentless positivism, our absurd mania for hope, and face the bleakness of reality before us. To resist means to acknowledge that we are living in a world already heavily damaged by global warming. It means refusing to participate in the destruction of the planet. It means noncooperation with authority. It means defying in every way possible consumer capitalism, militarism and imperialism. It means adjusting our lifestyle, including what we eat, to thwart the forces bent upon our annihilation.

The animal agriculture industry has, in a staggering act of near total censorship, managed to stifle public discussion about the industry's complicity in global warming. It is barely mentioned in climate summits. Yet livestock and their byproducts, as Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn point out in their book, "The Sustainability Secret," and their documentary, "Cowspiracy," account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) per year, or 51 percent of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Methane and nitrous oxide are rarely mentioned in climate talks, although those two greenhouse gases are, as the authors point out, respectively, 86 times and 296 times more destructive than carbon dioxide. Cattle, worldwide, they write, produce 150 billion gallons of methane daily. And 65 percent of the nitrous oxide produced by human-related activities is caused by the animal agriculture industry. Water used in fracking, they write, ranges from 70 billion to 140 billion gallons annually. Animal agriculture water consumption, the book notes, ranges from 34 trillion to 76 trillion gallons annually. Raising animals for human consumption takes up to 45 percent of the planet's land. Ninety-one percent of the deforestation of the Amazon rain forest and up to 80 percent of global rain forest loss are caused by clearing land for the grazing of livestock and growing feed crops for meat and dairy animals. As more and more rain forest disappears, the planet loses one of its primary means to safely sequester carbon dioxide. The animal agriculture industry is, as Andersen and Kuhn write, also a principal cause of species extinction and the creation of more than 95,000 square miles of nitrogen-flooded dead zones in the oceans.

A person who eats a vegan diet, they point out, a diet free of meat, dairy and eggs, saves 1,100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 square feet of forested land, 20 pounds CO₂ equivalent, and one animal's life every day.

The animal agriculture industry has pushed through "Ag-Gag" laws in many states that criminalize protests, critiques of the industry, and whistleblowing attempts to bring the public's attention to the staggering destruction wrought on the environment by the business of raising 70 billion land animals every year worldwide to be exploited and consumed by humans. And they have done so, I presume, because defying the animal agriculture industry is as easy as deciding not to put animal products—which have tremendous, scientifically proven health risks—into your mouth.

We have little time left. Those who are despoiling the earth do so for personal gain, believing they can use their privilege to escape the fate that will befall the human species. We may not be able to stop the assault. But we can refuse to abet it. The idols of power and greed, as the biblical prophets warned us, threaten to doom the human race.

Timothy Pachirat recounts in his book, "Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight," an Aug. 5, 2004, story in the Omaha World-Herald. An "old-timer" who lived five miles from the Omaha slaughterhouses recalled the wind carrying the stench of the almost six and a half million cattle, sheep and hogs killed each year in south Omaha. The sickly odor permeated buildings throughout the area.

"It was the smell of money," the old-timer said. "It was the smell of money."

Chris Hedges previously spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

"The Sustainability Secret," a book quoted in this column, has an introduction by Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges and was ghostwritten by Truthdig's books editor, Eunice Wong.

World War III: Why Russia will bury the West

30 November 2015 

 

 If a global war breaks out, here are the key factors that could decide the outcome in Russia's favour.

http://in.rbth.com/blogs/stranger_than_fiction/2015/11/30/world-war-iii-why-rusia-will-bury-the-west_545807

 

In June 2014, the Pentagon conducted a "table top" exercise – a sort of war game between Russia and NATO. The scenario was Russian pressure on NATO member Estonia and Latvia. Would NATO be able to defend those countries?

 

"The results were dispiriting," Julia Ioffe writes in Foreign Policy. Even if all US and NATO troops stationed in Europe were dispatched to the Baltics – including the 82nd Airborne, which is supposed to be ready to go on 24 hours' notice – the US would lose.

"We just don't have those forces in Europe," explains a senior US general. "Then there's the fact that the Russians have the world's best surface-to-air missiles and are not afraid to use heavy artillery."

 

The Russian 'victory' was not a one-off. The Americans conducted the exercise as many as 16 times, under various scenarios, all favourable to NATO, always with the same conclusion. The Russians were simply invincible.

 

In this backdrop, Turkey's rash act of shooting down a Russian Air Force jet portends grave tidings for NATO. Because Turkey is a NATO member, if the Russian Air Force pounds the living daylight out of the Turks, at least in theory all the other members of the US-led military bloc are treaty-bound to come to its defence.

 

Although the chances that the Americans will risk New York for Istanbul are smaller than small – which leaves a very nervous Turkey on its own – one can never rule out the possibility of a NATO hothead wanting to attack Russia.

 

A nuclear exchange will undoubtedly have catastrophic consequences for both sides – and perhaps the entire planet – but there are certain factors that could skew the fighting field in Russia's favour.

 

Megaton capability

According to data exchanged on October 1, 2014 by Moscow and Washington, Russia has 1,643 deployed strategic warheads, compared with 1,642 for the US. Marginal difference in numbers but Russian land-based strategic forces have an explosive yield that is an order of magnitude greater than anything in the US armoury.

 

Moscow's primary deterrent weapon is the mighty SS-18, a single one of which can destroy an area the size of New York – the state, not just the city. To get an idea of the destructive power of the SS-18, just look at the nuclear weapon the US used to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The Hiroshima bomb was a primitive 15 kiloton warhead and yet it wiped out a city of 70,000 in a few seconds. The SS-18 – code named Satan by NATO – carries 10 warheads, each having a yield of 750 to 1000 kiloton). Some of these missiles carry a single 20,000 kiloton warhead – that's 1333 times Hiroshima.

 

At the same time, 80 per cent of the American population resides on the eastern and western seaboards, so a few well-aimed nuclear missiles can end all human life in these densely populated coastal strips. Russia has a population only half of the US but it's dispersed widely across the country's massive landmass so that pockets of human inhabitation can survive both a first as well as a second strike.

 

Russia has another trump card up its sleeve – its supersonic bomber fleet of Tupolev Tu-160s. These Mach 2 plus aircraft can take off from well-defended airbases located deep in the heart of Russia, fly over the North Pole, launch nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from safe standoff distances over the Atlantic, and return home to watch the destruction on CNN.

 

That's assuming CNN will be around. For, the Russian strategic bomber fleet can singlehandedly wipe out every major city in the US.

It is because the Americans know the capability of Russia's nuclear forces that they have tried hard to eliminate the doomsday weapons like the SS-18 through arms limitation talks.

 

Tactical warheads

Before the use of strategic weapons, Russia could cripple forward NATO bases with tactical – or battlefield – nukes. Russian military doctrine emphasises the use of small-yield nuclear weapons as a war fighting tool early on in a conflict in order to stun and confuse NATO forces, impacting their ability to think and act coherently.

After tactical nuclear artillery decimates forward deployed NATO military troops, Russia could deliver small-yield warheads via intermediate range missiles that could devastate the next line of military bases, while limiting civilian casualties. At this point the US would be faced with the option of retaliating with strategic weapons and face a devastating response from Moscow. A good guess is the option won't be used.

 

For, no American president would risk a single US city for a dozen European ones. John F. Kennedy didn't risk it in 1962 for the same reason – the loss of even one city was too many.

 

State of US strategic forces

How reliable is the US Strategic Nuclear Command? If you are an American, you won't feel so reassured after reading that Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton both "reportedly lost the launch code cards that presidents are expected to have on them at all times – Clinton for months, according to a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Carter allegedly sent his out with a suit to the cleaners".

 

In any conflict – more so in a high stakes nuclear standoff – morale, training and discipline are key factors. Russian officers who have the job of deciding when and where to aim their nuclear missiles include PhD holders who are required to think on their feet. On the other hand, American personnel whohave the same role are beset with alcoholism, depression and cheating.

Nothing can sugar coat the crisis plaguing the US strategic forces. In October 2013, Major General Michael Carey, responsible for the command of 450 nuclear missiles, was fired after drunken behaviour on a visit to Russia. Days earlier, another military officer, Vice Admiral Tim Giardina, with high-level responsibility for the country's nuclear arsenal, was relieved of his duties after he was caught using counterfeit gambling chips at an Iowa casino.

 

Think that's frightening? Check this out. A US Air Force general who supported the command mission to provide nuclear forces for the US Strategic Command was an alcoholic. General David C. Uhrich kept a vodka bottle in his desk and repeatedly drank on duty, so much so that another officer told investigators that "if he did not have his alcohol, the wheels would come off".

The rot has trickled down to US missileers who have a culture of cheating on competency tests, endangering the readiness off American ICBMs. Again, in February 2014, the US Navy revealed it was looking into allegations that enlisted sailors cheated on tests involving the nuclear reactors that power its submarines and aircraft carriers.

 

The US strategic forces are also suffering from systemic neglect, with its ICBM bases in North Dakota and Montana reporting "leaking roofs". The missileers, who work in blast-proof bunkers located 60 feet underground, are forced to defecate in buckets and urinate in jugs, and bring it all back up at the end of 24 hours. How ready these personnel will be when they have to react to a Russian missile strike is questionable.

 

On the other hand, Russian Strategic Forces are treated as the very elites in the military. The quality of Russian personnel can be deduced from the actions of Russian strategic forces officer Lt Colonel Stanislav Petrov. On September 26, 1983, a Russian early-warning satellite indicated five US nuclear missile launches. Tensions were high between Washington and Moscow after the downing of a South Korean airliner weeks earlier, and Petrov had only minutes to respond. With little additional information to go on, he deemed the readings a false alarm, reasoning that "when people start a war, they don't start it with only five missiles".

This is precisely why highly qualified personnel matter. When you're placed squarely in the cross hairs of the enemy's nuclear missiles and you're holed up in a bunker 60 feet below the earth's surface, then nervousness, insomnia and depression are part of your daily life. Unable to cope, less educated personnel will abuse alcohol and drugs and even exhibit criminal behaviour. On the other hand, educated and motivated officers will keep their cool even in the event of a thermonuclear showdown.

 

For, a nuclear war may not necessarily involve a quick exchange of ballistic missiles. According to War Scare: Russia and America on the Nuclear Brink, by Peter Vincent Pry, Director of the US Nuclear Strategy Forum, the Russian Strategic Forces are trained to "launch pre-emptive or retaliatory nuclear strikes, survive a hammer blow from a massive enemy nuclear attack, launch follow-on nuclear strikes, and supervise military operations in a protracted nuclear war, expected to last weeks or months".

In such a drawn out, harrowing scenario, Russia's nuclear warfare specialists clearly have the edge.

 

Reflexive Control: Ultimate Weapon

Disinformation, camouflage and stratagem are some of the ways one can influence the outcome of a war. The Russians have taken these ancient arts to another level through the use of the theory of Reflexive Control (RC).

 

Developed by Russian military strategists in the 1960s, RC aims to convey information to an opponent that would influence them to voluntarily make a decision desired by the initiator of the action. It can be used against either human or computer-based decision-making processors. Russia employs it not only at the strategic and tactical levels in war but also in the geopolitical sphere.

Russian Army Major General M.D. Ionov was among the early proponents of RC, having pursued it since the 1970s. In an article in 1995, he noted that the objective of reflexive control is to force an enemy into making decisions that lead to his defeat by influencing or controlling his decision-making process.

 

Ionov considers this a form of high art founded of necessity on an intimate knowledge of human thinking and psychology, military history, the roots of the particular conflict, and the capabilities of competing combat assets.

Timothy L. Thomas writes in the Journal of Slavic Studies: "In a war in which reflexive control is being employed, the side with the highest degree of reflex (the side best able to imitate the other side's thoughts or predict its behaviour) will have the best chances of winning. The degree of reflex depends on many factors, the most important of which are analytical capability, general erudition and experience, and the scope of knowledge about the enemy."

 

If successfully achieved, reflexive control over the enemy makes it possible to influence their combat plans, their view of the situation, and how they fight. RC methods are varied and include camouflage (at all levels), disinformation, encouragement, blackmail by force, and the compromising of various officials and officers.

 

According to Robert C. Rasmussen of the Center for International Maritime Security, "It is exactly this type of application of Reflexive Control that a young Vladimir Putin would have learned in his early development at the 401st KGB School and in his career as a KGB/FSB officer."

Because every battle is first fought in the head before a bullet is fired on the ground, Russia's long experience with RC would be a key factor in its existential struggle with the US.