MINISTRY OF FEAR by Kabir Bedi

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN “TEHELKA” MAGAZINE/ AUGUST 15-21, 2010 ISSUE/ UPDATED.

MINISTRY OF FEAR

Now they’re after the Blackberry. Since “terrorists might use” Blackberry’s email and messaging services, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) wants the master keys to their encryption. Blackberry says there are no master keys, each users code is designed to be unique. So the MHA is threatening to ban them in India. Who will blink first?

The Home Ministry has always been doggedly resistant to technological advances. For decades, their techno-phobic mindsets led to the banning of walkie-talkies on film locations ---“terrorist might use them” --- and the denial of radio taxi services in India, long after it was common across the world. Remember when they’d confiscate our music batteries at airports? Then they went after the Indian telecoms, who are being forced, at an astronomical cost, to make every mobile tappable, and to personally verify owners of the 500 million mobiles in India. It’s a free lunch for the ministry who won’t be paying a penny.

To what end? None of these policies have prevented terrorists from communicating effectively. But they have seriously inconvenienced millions of bonafide customers, tourists, especially in “border states”. Kashmir was kept off the mobile map for many years. Even today whole swathes can’t use mobiles because, “terrorists may use them”. Damn the needs of all the rest.

The threat to India’s Blackberry services is frightening and real. Thuraya satellite phones have already been banned because the company refused to compromise the privacy of its worldwide users. A hapless globetrotting Brit is now languishing in prison for carrying it through the country without having used it once. Forget Thuraya’s unequalled reach in the Himalayan ranges, rural India, the Thar Desert, or the oil rigs at sea. Since “terrorists might use them” nothing else seems to count.

 

We are the greatest beneficiaries of a worldwide revolution in communications. The thrust of today’s technology is to enable people to reach each other in every way imaginable. Telephones, mobiles, smsing, email, Internet telephony, voicemail, multimedia messages, DVDs, online forums, file sharing and the plethora of social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin et al), are creating endless ways for people to communicate with each other. Can the Home Ministry monitor and control them all?

It may be news to the Ministry but smart terrorists don’t use traceable communications like email. They simply file their messages in their ‘drafts’ folder, easily accessed by recipients who share their password. Or they communicate on porn sites. Or on obscure forums in other languages. Or in heavily coded messages. Or, quite simply, through any of the many social media networks using fake accounts. Terrorists are always one step ahead, their survival depends on it.

So going after Blackberry’s privacy is not just pointless, it’s bad policy. Individuals, corporates or countries, all have justified needs for secrecy. Who wants the intelligence agencies peeping into their sexual secrets, business secrets, state secrets? Should the Home ministry be given right to know everything about everybody? Threats from terrorists, however awful their crimes, should not give the state the right to override everyone’s legitimate needs for privacy. It’s a misuse of power.

The MHA’s fear factor is also souring tourism and business in India. One David Headley, a white man who turned out to be a terrorist, and all tourist visas to India are tarred on arrival. Passports are stamped “Not eligible to return to India for two months.” While bad guys always find their way in, with or without visas (remember 26/11?), frequent travellers are lamenting the fading allure of “Incredible India”. At the Foreigner’s Registration Office (FRRO) in Mumbai, those wanting a routine renewal of their Business Visas are told by the FRRO to fly to Delhi for Ministry clearance. Easy, huh? It’s a frog-in-the-well attitude that suspects every foreigner when we’ve exported 25 million of our own.

The antiquated mentality of the Home ministry hasn’t understood the uncontrollable openness of the digital age. Gone are the good old days when surveillance meant steaming open a letter, tapping a phone or intercepting a telegram. It’s a whole new world out there. Undeterred, like some authoritarian states, they’re planning to invade Google too. Next stop You Tube and Facebook? Hey, “terrorist might use them”. What about the legitimate rights of billions who aren’t terrorists?

But let’s be fair. Chidambaram, once a great Finance Minister, is performing admirably in a difficult “job”, as he calls it, as Home Minister. But it’s also his job to change the ministry’s outdated mindset, and drag them kicking and screaming into the 21^st century. Going after Blackberry’s 41 million worldwide customers --- 1 million in India alone --- will seriously disrupt the working lives of enormous numbers of people involved in India’s growth story. And it won’t stop terrorists from communicating. We live in dangerous times and we’re rooting for the good guys. But the Home Ministry shouldn’t expect the rest of the world to do their job for them. The tail can’t wag the dog.

Kabir Bedi is an international actor, producer and columnist.

OSAMA'S REAL WAR

OSAMA’S REAL WAR

by

Kabir Bedi

You’ve got to admire the man’s brilliance. While the Americans combed the craggy caves, ravines and villages of Afghanistan and Waziristan, he hid in a million dollar home, surrounded by colonies of Pakistani generals, a quick drive from Islamabad. But that was only half of it. Starting with his escape from the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora, Osama bin Laden outfoxed the world’s most fearsome hunters for almost a decade.

But he made one fatal mistake. Like Sherlock Holmes’ proverbial dog who didn’t bark, the absence of technology --- TV, internet, telephones ---- in an expensive Abbotabad house gave the Americans the confirming clue: it was a hideaway for “a person of great importance”. The rest is now history.

Historically, Osama’s power came from America’s mistakes. Ronald Reagan backed, armed, and hailed him as a “hero” while he fought the Russians in Afghanistan. It made him famous, even though he was really, in his words, “fighting infidels in a Muslim land”. Later, he used the same logic to demand the withdrawal of American troops in Saudi Arabia, the holy land of Mecca. His “new jihad” led to the destruction of New York’s iconic Twin Towers.

But America’s biggest mistake had far deeper roots. For decades, it remained a mute spectator to Israel’s relentless attacks against the Palestinians, more so after the 1967 war. Whatever their justifications, those brutal TV images were beamed across the Arab world, week after week, year after year, breeding enormous resentment against Israel’s principal benefactor. Anti-American resentment was the fodder that fuelled Osama’s popularity on Arab streets. It made him a folk hero for millions, however merciless his war.

But Osama was on the wrong side of history. He attacked his foes, he claimed, “to defend” Islam. No matter who: Russians, Americans, Europeans, Saudis, Indians or Chinese, his battle cry was always in the name of religion. By targeting “the enemies of Islam”, he sought to rally the Muslim world behind him. His strategy cleverly obscured his real agenda: the propagation of a highly puritanical, regressive form of fundamentalism. Osama believed "the only Islamic country" in the Muslim world was Afghanistan under the rule of Mullah Omar's Taliban. Before they were overthrown in 2001, the Taliban had regularly cut off people’s heads, hands and noses, and reduced the historic Buddha of Bamiyan to rubble with cannons. That was Osama’s ideal state. If he had broadcast this loud and clear, it would have splintered his supporters and divided their loyalties. Knowing this, he kept the focus outside Islam, not within it. Osama was really fighting a battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims everywhere.

Fortunately, Osama failed. No mass uprisings followed the news of his death. In fact, barely any demonstrations of importance were seen anywhere. Even those who may have admired him from afar for taking on, and humiliating, two world super powers seem to have been revolted by the wanton waves of death and destruction he set in motion. Many innocent Muslims suffered the ostracism of being seen as “terrorists”. In America, they became the new “niggers”. In the end, Osama didn’t dignify Muslims, he damaged them greatly.

Osama is dead, but his scattered army lives on. And his deeper agenda will not wither away easily. The battle between fundamentalists and moderates is still being fought in every country of the Muslim world. Extremists may have suicide bombers or violent enforcers on their side. But Muslim moderates have far more meaningful weapons. Numbers: the majority of people, in every religion, are not extremists. Time: everything evolves, but fundamentalists are preaching intolerance. Technology: new generations can’t be brainwashed as easily in the Information Age. Knowledge is the most potent weapon of all in the battle for minds. But it may be a while before victory can be declared.

Even as the absence of technology led to Osama’s death, its omnipresence today may help ensure that his brand of violent extremism becomes an unmourned relic of history. But, sadly, misguided lunatics remain a part of every society.

Kabir Bedi is an internationally renowned Indian actor and columnist, whose career spans Bollywood, Hollywood, England and Europe. He has been a voting member of the “Oscars Academy” (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) for almost three decades. . In December 2010, the Italian Government bestowed him a Knighthood, “Cavaliere”, its highest civilian honour.