FBI setting up base in India.

[Guest guest]

THE TELEGRAPH, INDIA

Issue Friday, July 08, 2005

 

A WORLD OF ANOMALIES

- Why have US immigration officers moved into Indian ports? CUTTING CORNERS /

ASHOK MITRA

The highest in the land has confirmed it, we have entered into a strategic

partnership with the United States of America; the objective is to crush

“international terrorism”. Things are now happening fast. American immigration

officers have moved into Indian ports — or are about to do so — to supervise our

own regular customs surveillance of outgoing merchandise to the US.

 

This needs some explaining. The US administration is worried no end. Terrorists

are not only smuggling drugs and other contraband into the US, they are also

bent on sneaking in destructive devices and matériel needed to put together such

devices. All imported merchandise are of course checked and scrutinized by

immigration personnel at US ports of entry. That apparently is not enough in

this post-9/11 era. There must be, American authorities think, a system of

double-checking; foreign ports from where goods are shipped to the US should in

addition have arrangements for scrutiny of such goods by US immigration staff.

 

The Americans have been hawking around the proposal to foreign governments.

After some cajoling, the government of India, it is understood, has agreed to

fall in. American immigration officials are henceforth going to oversee customs

operations at our ports to ensure that our own officials do not falter on their

job and no objectionable matter gets despatched to the US from India.

 

The naïve ones, or those prone to nurturing vacuous patriotic sentiments, may

feel this to be both an anomaly and an encroachment on our sovereignty. One or

two amongst them may even enquire whether we are prepared to offer the same

prerogatives to immigration officers from the 175-odd other members of the

United Nations. That would be a silly question to ask. We have not entered into

a strategic partnership with any of these other constituents of the UN. None of

these other countries also happens to be anywhere nearly as rich or as

militarily powerful as the US is. Our fixation about export-driven growth, and

the fact that the US takes in the largest chunk of our exports, are of course

further considerations to be taken into account.

 

The induction of US immigration officers is, however, only a curtain-raiser. The

fight against “global terrorism” involves other, far more serious, commitments.

The Central Intelligence Agency, of course, operates in our country in a

clandestine manner, and it does not bother to have approval of our government

for its presence. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is, however, a more

forthright institution. It has been applying pressure on New Delhi to be allowed

to open offices at several centres in India. It is still hazy whether our

government has already caved in and accorded this permission. But the FBI knows

what its mission is in India and what it expects the government of India to do

towards the fulfilment of this mission. If the war against “international

terrorism” is to be one hundred per cent successful, those conspiring against

the US on Indian soil must be nabbed. The FBI itself will do the nabbing. The US

supreme court has given the verdict that those who are captured

in this manner by the US agents on foreign soil and are charged with waging war

against the US could be shipped to American territory to stand trial, or, not

even to stand trial, to be detained indefinitely. The court has chosen to

describe such people arrested by the FBI or the CIA as “irregular combatants”;

never mind which nationality or nationalities they belong to, this category of

detainees can, in the view of the supreme court, be indefinitely held without

trial by the US authorities.

 

The implications of American administrative and judicial decisions are

far-reaching. According to the US authorities, the FBI or any other official

agency of the US has the right to arrest a citizen of any country from anywhere

in the world, transport him or her to a territory under the jurisdiction of the

US, and hold him or her there without trial. The fight against “international

terrorism”, the world is being told, justifies such draconian measures. And

since we are in a strategic partnership with the US to fight “global terror”,

the US administration expects our government to extend the fullest cooperation

to the FBI and similar other agencies to track down “irregular combatants” and

hand them over. There should be no scope of any misunderstanding here. If the

FBI suspects an Indian citizen to be guilty of “international terror”, it may,

on its own initiative, arrest this Indian citizen on Indian soil and ship him or

her to, for instance, the American military base at Guantanamo

in Cuba, to be kept at the celebrated maximum security prison there. Given New

Delhi’s strategic partnership with the US, the Americans would demand our

acquiescence in the entire operation. The so-called due processes of Indian law

— or international law, for that matter — must be kept in abeyance. If the

captured Indian citizen is subjected to inhuman torture at Guantanamo by the

American Gestapo, the government of India must remain unprotesting.

 

So the posting of US immigration officers in Mumbai, Kochi and elsewhere is only

the thin end of the wedge. There is, besides, a bread-and-butter side of the

problem. The prosperity the Indian middle class is currently enjoying is on

account of the call centres conducted here on behalf of multinational

corporations presided over by the US tycoons. As practical-minded people, we

must not, we will be told, mind if, every now and then, a few Indian nationals,

suspected of involvement with Osama bin Laden or some other equally despicable

character, are identified by the FBI or the CIA as an “irregular combatant” over

whom only the American law of the jungle would prevail. After all, we have to

choose in life; if we want a comfortable living, we must forget such things as

habeas corpus and the International Charter of Human Rights.

 

It may be, in the beginning, a bit difficult to be reconciled with an anomaly of

this nature: an Indian citizen being picked up from Indian territory by a

foreign government agency and despatched to a far-away destination, with neither

our government nor our legal system in a position to intervene. We are, however,

expected to go through the learning curve and accustom ourselves to keep quiet.

 

Anomaly-fetishists amongst us might not be totally calmed. Is not Guantanamo a

part of Cuba, and was not Cuba liberated way back in 1959, when Fidel Castro and

his revolutionary comrades drove out the American stooge, Fulgencio Batista,

from the island? How is it then that the Americans are still retaining a

military base at Guantanamo? British hegemony has ceased over Hong Kong and

Portuguese domination over Macao, both territories have returned to China’s

suzerainty. Similarly, India has got back Chandernagore from France and wrested

Goa, Daman and Diu from Portugal. How come then that the Americans not only

cling to Guantanamo, but actually dare to set up their torture chambers in that

location?

 

Doubters have to be told that the US is sui generis. The ordinary laws of nature

do not apply in its case, and for reasons that are obvious even to the most

dim-witted.

 

If anomaly-fetishists are at the same time historically-minded, they might know

that, during the golden age of gun boat diplomacy crafted by President Teddy

Roosevelt, the then Cuban regime was bullied into signing an agreement with the

US government in terms of which Guantanamo, along with its bay, was handed over

to the US for perpetuity. A revolution is all right, but, according to the logic

of the world’s biggest military and economic power, it cannot invalidate a deed

signed for perpetuity. Poor Fidel Castro does not have the armed strength to

liberate Guantanamo and put an end to all the evil deeds currently being

perpetrated there. Should he attempt to do so, the mighty US would make

mincemeat of Cuba’s socialist experiment.

 

You must never, never question anomalies created by the world’s mighty.

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