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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Kenya

An Orgasm for the Lungs

02 Thu Jun 2016

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Society

≈ Comments Off on An Orgasm for the Lungs

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Abu'l Fath Gilani, Africa, Ahli Shirazi, Andes, arguileh, calabash, chillim, Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds, dakka, dhoom netra, Ecuador, ghalyoon, gudugudda, hookah, hubbly bubbly, India, Iran, Ismet Ertep, Kenya, lulava, mu'assal, narguileh, Native American, okka, Ottoman Empire, Peru, shisha, smoking, sprezzatura, tobacco

Salve amici! Just what is it that people find so seductive about the ghalyoon? I am referring, or course, to the pneumatic water pipe, a device that is used for smoking in large parts of South Asia, the Asian –stans, and the Middle East and is known by several names – narguileh, shisha, arguileh, okka, lulava, chillim, dakka, gudugudda, hubbly bubbly, and perhaps most common, hookah. Connoisseurs swear by the succulence and richness of the flavoured tobacco smoked through a long, mesmerising, and oftentimes colourful hose; the ghalyoon has been the standard of smoking for centuries among the elites of the Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman empires, a well-crafted instrument evoking an image of feminine beauty with its elegant and curvy profile. Whether it is the imposing lines that hint at an exotic mystery draped in puffs of smoke or an enchanting effect of the sound of gentle bubbling, the ghalyoon is a soothing symbol of relaxation and reminiscences of times long past.

The origins of the ghalyoon remain shrouded in mystery. The earliest incontrovertible written evidence of the existence of such a device comes from the report of Edward Terry, chaplain of the first English ambassador to the Mughal court, Sir Thomas Roe, in 1616. He describes it as a clay pot half filled with water, from which emerges a tube; the bottom end remains submerged in water while on top of this tube is placed loose tobacco and hot coals. The user would inhale the resultant smoke that has passed through the cool water through a hollow cane that is also inserted into the spout in the clay pot. Some believe that the hookah was invented by Emperor Akbar’s court physician, Abu’l Fath Gilani, in the late 1580s as a means of purifying the tobacco smoke when his patron took up the habit. However, the ghalyoon finds an earlier mention in a ruba’i by a Persian poet Ahli Shirazi in the court of Shah Tahmasp I that dates its probable origins to the 1520s:

The hookah enjoys of your lips,
The pipe turns to a sugarcane in your mouth,
It’s not the smoke of tobacco around your face,
It is a cloud surrounding the moon.

However, the etymology of one of the names for the ghalyoon – narguileh – suggests an even older history and association with India. Derived from the Sanskrit word for coconut – narikela – the name describes accurately a device that served much the same function as the modern hookah. Although tobacco was introduced to the subcontinent only in the last decade of the 16th century, its natives were not new to smoking when the gifts of the New World arrived east. In fact, smoking has a history that goes back to at least 2000 BCE in the subcontinent and to 5000 BCE in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes. Native Americans smoked tobacco from calabashes and the excavations at Hyrax Hill in Kenya prove that smoking was an African pastime too, though dating the site has proven to be difficult. In India, smoking formed part of the Ayurvedic repertoire – dhoom netra involved the inhalation of medicated smoke passed through water to calm the vitiated doshas in the head and neck.

In this respect, the adherence to a modern origin of the arguileh narrative, such as in the tales of Ottoman and Iranian genius, seems implicitly biased towards the consumption of tobacco though the plant was actually a latecomer to the world of smoking. Nonetheless, it is the Safavids and Ottomans who get the most credit for creating the water pipe in its present form and popularising it; they perfected the apparatus from its initial configuration of using coconut shells as the water receptacle to clay, wood, brass, and finally glass. Even today, hookahs manufactured in Iran, Turkey, and the Levant are noted for their exquisite traditional designs in glass and metal.

By the mid-17th century, as the English physician and travel writer John Fryer attests, the hookah had become a crucial part of upper middle class coffeehouse culture in India. It was equally popular in Iran and the Sublime Porte as Jean-Baptiste Tavernier and Jean-Baptiste Chardin, two French gem merchants, note in their diaries. Interestingly, there was fierce opposition to the habit then as there is now. In the second half of his reign, Sultan Murad IV (1623-1640) of the Ottoman Empire banned the narguileh in Istanbul upon pain of death. He also banned coffee and alcohol though historians report that he was a regular drinker himself. In more recent times, the emirate of Sharjah forbade hookah aficionados their pleasure in 1993, as did Abu Dhabi in 1996 and Oman in 2001, while Tunisia banished the shisha from café terraces. Egypt has spent millions in a vigorous public campaign against the shisha and various Indian cities impose and lift bans on ghalyoon parlours at whimsy. None of this has ever deterred the hookah loyal worshippers anywhere; these laws were usually more honoured in the breach than the observed, and at best, it pushed hookah parlours underground for a short while until the ban was lifted or a more permissive mood returned.

Interestingly, none of the bans were prompted by health concerns but social factors. With an increasing number of women participating in communal smoke sessions by the late 19th century, the usual stick-in-the-mud guardians of morality worried about the presence of women in what were until then male-only bastions and their marriage prospects. It comes as no surprise that the belly dancers some cafés introduced and waitresses in risqué uniforms missed their notice.

ghalyoon workingSo what exactly is a ghalyoon and how does it work? Any piece has the following basic components – a base jar, a hollow metal stem that fits into the jar and makes an airtight seal, an ash collector, a clay bowl, a hose, a set of tongs, and a windscreen. Grommets are used between the bowl and the top of the stem and the hose and the centre of the metal stem to better seal the joints. The tobacco – mu’assal, as it is known – is placed in the bowl on top and covered with a thin sheet of perforated aluminium. The jar is filled with water, and if large enough, plenty of ice, such that the bottom of the stem when it is inserted is about two inches below the surface of the water. The hose is attached and hot coal is placed op top of the aluminium-covered bowl. As the user inhales from the hose, the smoke is dragged down into the stem, through the water and into the air chamber in the base jar above the water from where it feeds the hose.

Hookahs come in many sizes but to optimise your smoking experience, it is vital to have a reasonably sized air pocket where the smoke can collect. If it is too big, you will be left light-headed due to inhaling too hard and if it is too small, a long drag on the hose will not be as satisfactory. Most regulars prefer their shishas at a height of between 26 and 32 inches. Ghalyoon regulars have historically known to be very picky about their apparatus and consumables: not all tobacco qualified for use in the hookah. First, the leaves had to be washed several times to make the tobacco milder; then, the leaves were immersed in honey along with molasses and various flavours – apple, grape, mint, orange, watermelon, guava, peach, jasmine, strawberry, melon – and left to ferment. This is very similar to the techniques used to this day and the due to the constant quality assessment required, the industry has resisted mechanisation so far. Non-tobacco mu’assal is also available and some users even make their supplies at home.

Similarly, self-lighting coals are a strict no-no in the hookah community – for one, they contain more chemicals that are harmful but more importantly, they ruin the flavour of the smoke. Only small chunks of natural charcoal are used, rotated, and refreshed in a smoking session. Depending on the flavour you are smoking, some users like to spike their water jar with rose oil or pomegranate juice. For some of the new flavours enjoyed only by hookah apostates – coffee, Cola, chocolate, cigar, licorice, mojito, bubblegum – the base jar is sometimes filled with milk, orange juice, vodka, or other liquids that enhance the flavour of the tobacco.

The health effects of smoking hookahs has recently come under increasing scientific scrutiny as its popularity, particularly among college students, has soared. Although the negative impact of tobacco and smoke on the respiratory system cannot be denied, some studies have absurdly suggested that one hookah session – which usually lasts up to an hour – is equivalent to smoking a hundred cigarettes. These same studies also warn smokers of the deleterious effects of other chemicals in the hookah tobacco. However, any survey of middle-of-the-road to high quality hookah tobacco brands will reveal that they contain substantially less chemicals than are found in cigarettes. Furthermore, the tobacco content of mu’assal is much less. Since the mu’assal is placed in a clay pot and heated rather than burned, it also produces less tar than cigarettes. Lower nicotine content reduces risk of addiction. Admittedly, the water in the base, commonly believed to filter impurities, does not do so completely – its primary function is to cool the smoke.

Ultimately, how safe a ghalyoon is for you is a risk each of us will have to evaluate for ourselves. Yet no one has put the distinction between modern smoking and the hookah more succinctly than Ismet Ertep, a 71-year old pensioner made famous by Stephen Kinzer’s Cresecent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds. “Smoking a nargile is nothing like smoking a cigarette, he said. “Cigarettes are for nervous people, competitive people, people on the run. When you smoke a nargile you have time to think. It teaches you patience and tolerance, and gives you an appreciation of good company. Nargile smokers have a much more balanced approach to life than cigarette smokers.” It is this centuries-old custom and an atmosphere of quiet camaraderie that we lovers of the ghalyoon seek to ensconce ourselves into each session.

Until next time, stammi bene.


This article first appeared in the June 2015 print edition of Swarajya as part of the column, Sprezzatura.

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Yasukuni and Japan’s Simmering Nationalism

29 Sun Dec 2013

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Opinion and Response

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Akira Muto, Asian Women's Fund, Belgium, Boshin War, Britain, China, Chiyoda, comfort women, Congo, Fujimaro Tsukuba, Heitaro Kimura, Hideki Tojo, Hiranuma Kiichiro, imperialism, IMTFE, International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Japan, Junichiro Koizumi, kami, Kenji Doihara, Kenya, Koki Hirota, Kuniaki Koiso, Mao Zedong, Mau Mau, Nagayoshi Matsudaira, Nippon Izoku Kai, Osami Nagano, Radhabinod Pal, Ryutaro Hashimoto, saijin meihyo, Seishiro Itagaki, Shigenori Togo, Shinto, Shinzo Abe, South Korea, Spain, Takeo Miki, Temple wage, Tokyo, Tokyo Rusu Kazoku Kai, Tokyo Shokonsha, Tomiichi Murayama, Toshio Shiratori, United States, World War II, Yasuhiro Nakasone, Yasukuni, Yohei Kono, Yoshijiro Umezu, Yosuke Matsuoka

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni Jinja, or Yasukuni Shrine, on December 26 has yet again created a political storm in Asia and across the Pacific. Singapore, Russia, and the United States have all expressed disappointment over Abe’s decision to visit the controversial shrine, and South Korea’s condemnation took on a much sharper tone. China has not only strongly denounced the visit but also singled out the prime minister for attack. One newspaper even demanded that Abe and other Diet members who have visited Yasukuni be banned from entering China. However, no Japan-related events have been cancelled nor have there been any public demonstrations. Japanese officials have said, however, that the prime minister visited the shrine in a private, not official, capacity.

For disinterested bystanders, the outcry is puzzling. China’s denouncement of Abe, as it celebrates Mao Zedong’s birth anniversary, comes off as particularly farcical considering that the dictator was responsible for, even by conservative estimates, approximately 35 million deaths during his rule; the higher estimates put the number closer to a staggering 100 million victims. Similarly, Russia’s legacy of Lenin, Stalin, and a brutal communist dictatorship gives it little moral ground to criticise Japan. As for the United States, not only do they have the dubious honour of attacking Japan with nuclear weapons not once but twice, their conduct in Vietnam and Cambodia hardly make them shining examples of military virtue. There are, of course, other colourful instances in recent US history such as the Tuskegee experiment which went on for forty years, from 1932 to 1972.

Yasukuni is a Shinto shrine in Chiyoda, Tokyo, commemorating Japan’s war dead from the Boshin War of 1867 until the end of World War II. Originally called the Tokyo Shokonsha, meaning ‘shrine to summon the souls,’ the structure was renamed to its present title, meaning ‘pacifying the nation, by Emperor Meiji in 1879.

Since 1946, the shrine has been privately funded and operated. This is because the management of a religious shrine went against post-war Japan’s secular laws. Abe is not the first prime minister to visit Yasukuni – in 1975, Takeo Miki became the first prime minister to visit the shrine, though in a private capacity, followed by Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1985 and Ryutaro Hashimoto in 1996. Junichiro Koizumi visited the war memorial every year of his prime ministership from 2001 to 2006, and since then, Abe has been the first sitting prime minister to go back to Yasukuni. Junior members of Japan’s government, across administrations, have visited the shrine on several occasions.

The site has almost two and a half million kami, spirits, enshrined, including some 28,000 Taiwanese and 21,000 Koreans. Of the two and half million kami, about a thousand were judged to be war criminals by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) set up after World War II. Of these thousand, 14 were designated as ‘Class A’ convicts. It is interesting to note that among the war criminals and the foreigners, many were enshrined at Yasukuni without consulting with surviving family members and in some cases, expressly against the wishes of their families.

The controversy at Yasukuni starts with the IMFTE. Indian jurist Radhabinod Pal argued that the trials were invalid and only a form of siegerjustiz. His book-length dissent, while admitting the horrors of Nanjing, excoriated the Americans for their use of nuclear weapons, fire-bombing cities, and provoking Japan into a war. Furthermore, he argued that all the crimes Japanese officials had been accused of came under Class B (mistreatment of prisoners, murder of civilians, wanton destruction) offences and had no need of post facto Class A (waging wars of aggression) or Class C (crimes against humanity) trials. In response, the United States did not allow the publication of his opinion until 1952 after Japan had signed a treaty recognising the validity of the Tokyo Trials. As a result, Pal’s dissent is the basis of many nationalist Japanese claims and Pal holds a revered place in Japan to this day.

In 1952, the occupation of Japan ended. Groups like the Tokyo Rusu Kazoku Kai and Nippon Izoku Kai had been lobbying the government in the name of the war dead, including war criminals, for public benefits. In May of that year, the Ministry of Justice declared that war criminals were not in the same legal category as criminals convicted by a Japanese court, thus restoring their civil rights. In 1953, a change in how public benefits were managed gave families and survivors of war criminals access to the same benefits families of any public servant who died in the line of duty would get.

In April 1954, the Yasukuni shrine started working closely with Japan’s Health and Welfare Ministry to recover the records of those killed in World War II. Once the data was compiled, the priests would decide who qualified to be enshrined at Yasukuni and by April 1959, enshrinement of all World War II casualties except war criminals was completed. Concurrently, due to an enormous public movement in Japan, the United States agreed to lessen the sentences of those found guilty by the IMFTE, and by the end of 1958, all war criminals were free and political rehabilitated.

In view of the release of the war criminals, the Repatriation Relief Bureau, the section of the Health and Welfare Ministry that liaised with the Yasukuni shrine, sent the records of Class B and Class C war criminals to the shrine. The head priest, Fujimaro Tsukuba, moved to quickly and quietly enshrine the war criminals. By 1967, 984 such war dead had been enshrined, some without permission from their families and others against the express wishes of their families.

The Health and Welfare Ministry also started sending Class A saijin meihyo, or enshrinement information cards, to the Yasukuni shrine in 1966. These included seven war criminals who had been hanged (Hideki Tojo, Seishiro Itagaki, Heitaro Kimura, Kenji Doihara, Akira Muto, Koki Hirota), five who had died in prison (Yoshijiro Umezu, Kuniaki Koiso, Hiranuma Kiichiro, Toshio Shiratori, Shigenori Togo), and two who had died of natural causes before sentencing (Osami Nagano, Yosuke Matsuoka) and were temporarily in a special category. The enshrinement was supposed to be done quietly to avoid a potential public backlash but vocal proponents of enshrinement in the Yasukuni Shrine Council passed a resolution denouncing the IMTFE and demanding that the war criminals be enshrined. The resolution left the date of enshrinement in the hands of the head priest, and Tsukuba, who had reservations about Class A war criminals, put it off until his death in 1978.

The incoming head priest, Nagayoshi Matsudaira, had an imperial background. His grandfather was a feudal lord during the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, his father the last minister of the Imperial household, and his father in law a vice-admiral in the Imperial Navy who was tried by the Dutch for Class B and Class C crimes and executed. Matsudaira himself served in the Imperial Navy and later in Japan’s Self Defence Forces. Not surprisingly, Matsudaira abhorred the IMTFE and within three months of his appointment to the high office of the Yasukuni shrine, had all 14 war criminals enshrined.

The covert nature of the enshrinement has evoked much resentment even within Japan. When news of the enshrinement of Class A war criminals broke in April 1979, Emperor Hirohito refused to visit the shrine until his death in 1989. However, imperial emissaries have visited the shrine annually. Contrary to claims of religious or filial piety, the nature in which the war criminals were enshrined betrays the blatantly ideological basis behind the act. It is this fact that fuels the controversy to this day.

Interestingly, in a poll conducted immediately after Abe’s visit to the shrine, 43.2% of those polled said that they appreciated the gesture but a whopping 69.8% said that the prime minister should consider the international ramifications of his actions. Many Japan watchers consider visits to the Yasukuni shrine as playing to a domestic audience rather than international messaging. Indeed, the Abe administration’s approval rating has gone up one point to 55.2% and disapproval has gone down 0.4 points to 32.6% since last week.

Beyond Yasukuni, Japan’s neighbours and the United States are concerned about the country’s historical revisionism, apologies that are seen as half-hearted to the victims of Imperial Japan’s atrocities, and lack of any compensation to the victims as West Germany did with many Jewish families. Yet these issues are not so simple either.

Japan’s historical revisionism is based on the argument that they behaved as any other imperial power of the time. The atrocities committed by the Japanese Army in China, Korea, or elsewhere are to be expected in times of war and no different from European experiences in South America, the Caribbean, Africa, or Asia. This is not easy to refute. European barbarism in many of its colonies was hardly any better, if at all, than life under Japanese occupation. India is familiar with the massive famine in the late 1800s which caused, according to historian Mike Davis, approximately 29 million Indians to perish, and with Colonel Reginald Dyer. The Herero and Nama in Namibia remember the Germans well, as do the Congolese life under Belgian rule. British torture and war crimes in Yemen, Oman, Malaya, or during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya are best left unmentioned for the benefit of those with a queasy stomach. None of this exonerates Japanese war crimes but it puts them in the context of the milieu of the age of imperialism, thereby distributing the culpability to actors traditionally left unconsidered when discussing Japan.

Japan has also had trouble with its history textbooks trying to whitewash the role of the Imperial Army during World War II. The use of Korean women as sex slaves for their soldiers, chemical and biological warfare conducted by the Imperial Army, and inhuman medical experiments conducted by the infamous Unit 731 are sometimes dampened. Nonetheless, Thomas Berger, a professor at Boston University, says that these are not nearly as universal as made out to be and that Japanese history textbooks discuss Nanjing or the use of Korean comfort women in a fairly open manner. Evidence of this is seen in opinion polls that show most Japanese to be apologetic for their country’s behaviour in Asia during the Second World War. In addition, Japan has also sponsored joint historical research with both South Korea and China. In comparison, Chinese and South Korean textbooks opt for a far more hateful view of Japan than attempt any reconciliation.

Japan’s apologies have admittedly been awkward and half-hearted, and always been under a threat of retraction; it is no secret that Abe is uncomfortable with the 1993 statement released by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono as well as the 1995 statement by then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama over Japan’s wartime actions. Nonetheless, these apologies remain unchanged for now. There is, however, the question of whether any apology by Japan will ever be good enough and if Seoul and Beijing are ready to accept an apology from Tokyo.

So far, there have been few signs that receptive ears await in Asia. When Japan set up the Asian Women’s Fund in 1994 to offer compensation to South Korea’s comfort women, Seoul established a rival group rather than support the Japanese effort. Meanwhile, other countries in Asia such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines have forgiven the Japanese and moved on.

China, like South Korea, remains unmoved by Japanese apologies. Beijing has opportunistically stoked its subjects’ passions against Japan and allows their display conveniently such as in August and September 2012. China has also used exports of rare earths, a critical component for Japan’s technology industries, as a bargaining chip on several occasions. All signs from China indicate that they want to use Japan’s war guilt as a psychological weapon rather than find genuine reconciliation, a technique not entirely unknown to them. In Abe, they might have met a prime minister who does not care anymore and seeks to forge links with Australia, India, and China’s southeast Asian neighbours to counter China’s bullying.

The reaction from Japan’s neighbours, however much it needs to be contextualised, is understandable but the United States’ disappointment is harder to fathom. Arguably, the United States meted out harsher punishment to the Japanese than they received from them during World War II; furthermore, the attack on Pearl Harbour may have been militarily unexpected (due to logistics) but hardly out of the blue politically – the crippling sanctions imposed upon Japan in the 1930s and the Hull note were designed to provoke a response. Interestingly, after the war, the United States’ NSC 48-2 imagined an Asian order almost identical to Japan’s pre-war Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Today, when Washington is actively seeking partners for its pivot to Asia, stomping on one of its closest allies in the region seems counter-productive.

It is also hard to miss the irony in the US criticism of Abe’s visit to Yasukuni when US presidents visit the Vietnam War Memorial regularly. Washington’s conduct in that little squabble in Southeast Asia has been spared the war criminal tag only because they did not lose the war as completely as Japan did World War II; even the annual celebrations of Columbus Day and Thanksgiving may be questioned for their genocidal roots.

The knee-jerk outcry over a Japanese prime minister’s visit to Yasukuni shrine is very much overdone. Admittedly, the enshrinement of war criminals was ideologically motivated and done surreptitiously; however, it is equally true that there are legitimate questions about war-time conduct and the trial for both sides. This is not to excuse the cruelty of Japan’s Unit 731 but to recognise, as the old cliché goes, that all war is a crime. The enshrinement of IMTFE criminals at Yasakuni shrine, especially against the wishes of the families, is an issue that must be solved internally by the Japanese. It has, no doubt, tainted Japanese nationalism; but then, which nationalism has ever remained untarnished?

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2013, From Mali to Bali: The Year in Review

26 Thu Dec 2013

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Opinion and Response

≈ Comments Off on 2013, From Mali to Bali: The Year in Review

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2013, al-Shabaab, Arms Trade Treaty, ATT, Bali, Booz Allen Hamilton, chemical weapons, Chemical Weapons Convention, Christianity, Edward Snowden, Ghouta, GSLV, Hugo Chávez, Ieng Sary, India, Iran, ISRO, Kenneth Waltz, Kenya, Mali, Mangalyaan, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Kalashnikov, Mohamed Morsi, National Security Agency, Nelson Mandela, North Korea, NSA, nuclear, Operation Surya Hope, Peter O'Toole, Pope Benedict XVI, PSLV, Syria, terrorism, Uttarakhand, Westgate Mall, World Trade Organisation, WTO

So another year is ending – Nostradamus and the Mayans were clearly horrible at this foretelling business, and our exile on this rock continues. The Syrian civil war continues unabated though the government forces of Bashar al-Assad seem to have gained the advantage, the European Union expanded by one more member – Croatia – despite its Eurocrisis, and Fidel Castro still lives to poke the United States in the eye. However, what were the defining moments of 2013? In the long term, it is hard to tell yet – as Groucho Marx said, outside of a dog, a book is Man’s best friend; inside of a dog, it is too dark to read. In the here and now, though, a few events stand out:

January 11 – France intervenes in Mali: Africa has been largely ignored since the end of colonialism there in the 1960s. Cold War struggles in Angola, Rhodesia, the Congo, Mozambique, Ethiopia, or Somalia rarely captured the attention of the world as Korea, Vietnam, or even South Asia did. After decades of neglect, Western powers are now following Islamists into the interiors of the continent; France’s intervention in Mali, soon after action in Libya and in context of its more vocal stance on Syria and the Congo, marks the Fifth Republic’s renewed interest in a global security commons, interestingly under a Socialist president. In the previous decade, France had notoriously blocked United Nations action in Iraq.

February 12 – N Korea’s third nuclear test: Any nuclear test is significant because it furthers a state’s knowledge of one of the most destructive weapons known. This test by Pyongyang is thought to have contributed to understanding warhead miniaturisation and greater fission of the core. If N Korea achieves this, together with its missiles (No Dong, Taepo Dong, Musudan, Unha), it becomes another de facto Nuclear Weapons State.

February 28 – Benedict XVI resigns as Pope: This is the first time since Gregory XII in 1415 that a pope has stood down, and the first to do so voluntarily since Celestine V in 1294. Benedict XVI may not have radically altered the course of history but by showing the ability to give up power, he has probably done more to remind the Church of its founding tenets than most popes in between.

April 2 – Arms Trade Treaty is signed: This treaty is dead on arrival, but it will nevertheless serve as another legal scalpel for powers when convenient, much like the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The aim of the treaty is to control and regulate the sale of conventional weapons, from small arms to battle tanks, prevent their diversion to clandestine buyers, and to restrict their flow into conflict areas. Past records show that such goals are a mirage – when the United States cut off arms sales to Pakistan during the South Asian Crisis of 1971, it encouraged Turkey, Jordan, and Iran to supply Islamabad from their arsenal which would be replenished and upgraded later; when the US Congress forbade the supply of arms to the Nicaraguan Contras, the Reagan White House found a way to divert money to the cause from secret arms sales to Iran.

May 28 – Taksim Gezi Park protests in Istanbul: A minor sit-in grew into a protest which became a nationwide conflagration against Turkey’s ruling Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s slow erosion of country’s Kemalist secularism. The protest, seen in isolation, means little but considering it alongside the corruption probes against several ministers in Erdoğan’s cabinet and the now open war between the AKP and the Gülen movement, the AKP will have a bust time up to the 2015 elections. Most experts give the win to Erdoğan again, but a large part of that is due to the failure of the opposition to come up with a viable candidate and platform yet. One thing is for sure – Turkey is on the simmer. and a place to watch in the new year

June 6 – Edward Snowden reveals covert surveillance by NSA: A Booz Allen Hamilton employee’s revelations about the US National Security Agency’s espionage set off a firestorm around the world. Despite being long past the era in which gentlemen did not read other gentlemen’s letters, the sheer scope of the operation is stunning. Not only did the NSA spy on other enemy governments as intelligence agencies usually do, but they also spied on friendly and allied governments, political leaders, businesses, activists, and actively worked to sabotage privacy and encryption algorithms on the internet. The public heard for the first time names of programmes like PRISM, XKeyscore, and Tempora which were designed to take metadata from phones and internet traffic in a massive attempt at mass surveillance. Whatever one’s views of Snowden are – hero, whistle-blower or traitor – the presence of US surveillance agencies in a country’s most secret networks is a great significance and this leak dwarfs Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers in potential consequences.

June 14 – Flash floods in Uttarakhand: A multi-day cloud burst over northern India caused India’s worst natural disaster since the Southeast Asian tsunami hit in 2004. Over 100,000 Hindu pilgrims were stranded in Uttarakhand, the site of the smaller Char Dham. The Indian military rescued tens of thousands of people in Operation Surya Hope but despite their valiant efforts, official records indicate that over 10,000 people perished in the tragedy. For a brief moment, there was some focus on questionable construction practices and dubious licenses issued for development in the region; the death toll made people pay attention to the environmental impact of ill-conceived development, but in keeping with India’s indefatigable inertia, everyone has adjusted swalpa and moved on.

July 3 – Mohamed Morsi removed from power in Egypt: After tempting fate one time too many, the Egyptian military removed the country’s fifth president from power. Morsi is the leader of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, and came to office via an election some claim was far from honest. The Arab Spring had come to Egypt and toppled Hosni Mubarak who had ruled the country since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. During the election campaign, Morsi had sounded like a moderate traditionalist. Once he assumed office, however, his manipulation of the judiciary and the Islamist accent of the new constitution worried many Egyptians. The Army thus enjoyed widespread support when they acted against Morsi, and while the West debated semantics – whether it was a coup or not – the bloodshed continued in Egypt, turning their Spring into a Winter of Discontent.

August 21 – Ghouta chemical attack in Syria: The use of chemical weapons in war is not as rare as one would like: most recently, they were by Saddam Hussein against Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraq War; some accuse the United States of waging chemical warfare with its use of Agent Orange in Vietnam though there are some technical quibbles. Chemical weapons have been used on civilians too, most notably in Halabja against the Kurds by, again, Saddam Hussein. So why was Ghouta different? Honestly, it is hard to say, except for that it provided an excuse for the West to intervene in Syria if it wanted to. However, the difficulty of a military adventure in Syria appears to have stayed the West’s hand, as did Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s offer to surrender his entire stockpile of chemical weapons and sign the Chemical Weapons Convention. This reduces the ranks of non-signatories to just four – Angola, Egypt, N Korea, and S Sudan.

September 21 – Al-Shabaab attack Westgate Mall in Nairobi: Four or five gunmen from the terrorist group al-Shabaab killed 72 people and wounded over 200 over a span of three days in the upscale shopping mall of Westgate in the Westlands neighbourhood of Nairobi. The brutality of the attack – how many of the hostages were tortured – shocked the world. This is perhaps the worst terrorist attack on Kenyan soil and one of the larger attacks in the world since the attack on Bombay in November 2008. The terror group claimed that the attack was revenge for Kenya’s role in Operation Linda Nchi (2011) in which the Kenyan military coordinated with its Ethiopian and Somalian counterparts and deployed into southern Somalia in pursuit of al-Shabaab terrorists. After the tragedy, President Uhuru Kenyatta admitted that the rescue attempt had been bungled and promised to set up an inquiry.

November 5 – Indian launches Mars orbiter: One of the few bright events of the year, apart from Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement from cricket (#trollbait!), was India’s launch of its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM). Dubbed Mangalyaan by the media, the project is a first for India and the country becomes only the fifth country to send a mission to the Red Planet after the United States, Russia/Soviet Union, Japan, and the European Union. Of course, one can question if Russia deserves to be in this list given the curse its Mars programme seems to be under – 18 failures and three partial successes. India’s mission may not push on the boundaries of knowledge in any great way, but it represents the development of indigenous technology and skills needed for such a mission. The recent failure of India’s most powerful rocket, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) meant that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had to settle for the smaller Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and hence a lighter payload. The probe is expected to reach Mars by late September next year, almost exactly when the United States’ Maven mission reaches the Red Planet. Despite these disappointments, Mangalyaan is a proud milestone in the history of India’s spacefaring.

November 24 – Interim Nuclear Agreement concluded with Iran: The deal represents nothing but a declaration of good faith to conduct negotiations, and establishes conditions for both the E3+3 (France, Germany, Britain + Russia, United States, China) and Iran that they may assuage the other side’s concerns. What is most important about this deal is that it has finally broken the jinx on Iran’s discussions with the West and achieved an agreement. Iran has been accused of being a year away from nuclear weapons capability since the early 1980s (!) and sanctions became tougher over the last eight years. In the last coupe of years, the threat of war loomed large as Iran inched closer to the West’s red line on Tehran’s nuclear development. Psychologically, this deal has readied many leaders to the idea that Iran is a country that can be negotiated with and has silenced the war drums for now. News of this potential breakthrough has already seen several businesses prepare to flood Iran’s market with their services the moment a final agreement is reached on the Middle Eastern state’s nuclear question.

December 7 – Bali Package signed at 9th WTO meet: The World Trade Organisation finally signed a trillion-dollar agreement in Bali at the Ninth Ministerial Conference. The deal has been widely hailed as an engine for growth, particularly for developing countries. It was agreed to simplify customs procedures so that goods could move quickly from state to state, and India finagled an exemption on the WTO’s limits on stockpiling, subsidies, and guaranteed pricing to farmers; in effect, the United Progressive Alliance’s new and ambitious food subsidy remains safe. The agreement is also expected to create some 20 million new jobs, most of which will be in developing countries. There are still wrinkles to be worked out, but those goals, such as duty-free trade, have been declared as eventual goals and put off for a later date. By stepping away from an all-or-nothing approach, the WTO was able to secure an arrangement beneficial to all at a pace acceptable to all.

Requiescat In Pace…

  • March 05 – Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela (59)
  • March 14 – Ieng Sary, Deputy Prime Minister of Cambodia (88)
  • April 08 – Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (88)
  • May 12 – Kenneth Waltz, Professor of Political Science (89)
  • December 05 – Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa (95)
  • December 14 – Peter O’Toole, Actor (81)
  • December 23 – Mikhail Kalashnikov, Arms designer (94)

This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on December 28, 2013.

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