News Papers EDITORIALS - 29 NOVEMBER 2016

 ✌✌✌✌   THE HINDU    ✌✌✌✌ 

✌✌   Lessons from another jailbreak   ✌✌ 

The daring escape of six prisoners, including the self-styled commander of a Khalistani militant group, from the Nabha Jail in Punjab is another wake-up call for the security establishment. This is the second major jailbreak in the country in the space of weeks involving high-profile prisoners jailed on terrorism charges. Both were well planned and executed. While the jailbreak by members of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) from the Bhopal Central Prison last month was planned inside and executed largely by the prisoners on their own, the incident in Nabha was aided by a group of armed men from outside wearing police uniforms. Shortly after the Bhopal jailbreak, all those who had escaped were gunned down in an alleged encounter. And a day after the Punjab incident, Khalistan Liberation Front chief Harminder Mintoo was nabbed in Delhi, while the alleged mastermind, Parminder Singh, was arrested in Shamli district in western Uttar Pradesh. Apart from Mintoo, the five others who escaped are still at large. They are identified as Kashmira Singh, an alleged terrorist, and Vicky Gaundar, Amandeep Dhotian, Gurpreet Sekhon and Nita Deol, all described as dreaded gangsters. It is not clear if the plan was to release the militants or the gangsters, or all of them. Whatever the aim, it is evident that the so-called high security prisons are hardly fool-proof. Those incarcerated have enough scope to hatch a conspiracy, keep in touch with accomplices outside and finalise escape plans in meticulous detail.

What is also troubling is that even before the jailbreak has been thoroughly investigated and as the hunt for the escaped men is still on, the incident has taken on political overtones. With Punjab due for an Assembly election early next year, the suspicion that these men were breaking out of jail to disturb the peace in the run-up to the polls will naturally arise. However, while voicing this suspicion, Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal has alleged a Pakistani hand. State Director-General of Police Suresh Arora has voiced suspicion of official connivance, noting that retaliatory firing by the police at the armed men was completely ineffective. Former Chief Minister and Congress leader Amarinder Singh has called the incident a sign of breakdown of law and order and alleged official complicity at the highest level. While a high-level probe is necessary to unravel the entire plot and establish any laxity or connivance on the part of the authorities, the real issue is that there are too many shortcomings in the security arrangements in our jails. Introducing a new security regimen that will plug all loopholes ought to be a national priority.

 ✌✌   Two-pronged war in Iraq   ✌✌  

The blast in Hilla that killed over 100 people, mostly Iranian pilgrims, reinforces the fear that the Islamic State remains a potent force in Iraq despite recent military setbacks. By attacking a town located between Najaf and Karbala, two of Shia Islam’s holiest places, at a time when Shia Muslims around the world travel to Karbala to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the IS has left no doubt about who it is targeting. Besides, the attack came nearly six weeks after Iraqi government troops, aided by Iran and the U.S., started a massive operation to retake Mosul, which has been under IS control since June 2014. It is not difficult to understand the IS’s strategy. In the past, when its bases came under attack, the group had used terror to strike faraway civilian centres. Needless to say, this is a major security failure for the Iraqi government. When the pilgrimage season began, many had warned that the IS would make an attempt to attack around Karbala. What is more worrisome for the government troops is the battlefield flexibility the IS is demonstrating. It is fighting a conventional war against the government troops in Mosul while unleashing guerrilla attacks elsewhere.

More than a month after the battle for Mosul began, government troops are yet to make any substantial territorial gains. On the other side, civilian casualties are relatively high. According to the UN, around 20 per cent of the injured in Mosul are civilians, compared to the average 5 per cent in other recent anti-IS operations. Once Iraqi troops, largely Shia, enter the city that is home to a million people who are mostly Sunni, casualties could be higher. The IS, given its history of exploiting Shia-Sunni sectarian tensions to its advantage, may be waiting just for that. Against this background, the Iraqi government faces huge challenges. First, it has to make real battleground advances in Mosul with minimum civilian casualties to raise the pressure on the IS while boosting its capability to fight potential terror strikes. In the last two major terror strikes alone, the IS has killed over 400 people in Iraq. If it continues to terrorise civilians, the already feeble Iraqi government would suffer a further loss of credibility among the public. Second, the government has to guard against falling into the sectarian trap that the IS has set. In previous anti-IS battles, Iraqi troops were accused of targeting Sunni civilians. If Baghdad doesn’t win over the Sunnis living in its war-ravaged north and north-west, it will not get a grip on the cycle of terror.

  

✌✌✌✌  THE ECONOMIC TIMES  ✌✌✌✌   

✌✌  Nitish Kumar gearing up for political shift  ?  ✌✌   

Nitish Kumar is a wily politician, who routinely outguesses his opponents. This time around, though, he would appear to have outguessed himself and laid the ground for political instability in Bihar. While almost the entire Opposition has joined hands to oppose the government’s demonetisation scheme, Nitish has supported it, to the chagrin of his party’s leader in Parliament, Sharad Yadav, who is part of the Opposition lineup that has brought together traditional state-level rivals, the DMK and the AIADMK, the Trinamool and the Left, and the BSP and the SP, besides the Congress, NCP and Nitish’s ally in Bihar, RJD. In the process, Nitish has forsaken whatever chance he had of emerging as a non-Rahul Gandhi face of combined Opposition challenge in 2019 to the BJP and its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mamata Banerjee has adroitly eased herself into that role.

Is Kumar going against party policy and his powerful ally RJD, to curry favour with New Delhi? Kumar’s JD(U), which won 71 of 101 seats contested, rules at the mercy of RJD, which fought the same number of seats but won 80, with a higher vote share (18.4 per cent) than the JD(U)’s 16.8 per cent. Congress’ 27 seats boosted the alliance total to 178 of 243 seats. It is a compelling majority, with the dominant partner of the alliance not holding the chief minister’s office. Does Nitish expect this unnatural arrangement to come to an end? Is he preparing the ground for a change of allies, from RJD to the only alternative left, the BJP?

If the RJD-JD(U) alliance breaks and all 71 JD(U) MLAs go with Kumar, he can hope to cobble up a simple majority with the BJP’s 53 lawmakers. But if a section of his legislature party refuses to mock the voters’ faith in the Mahagatbandhan, the result could well be mid-term polls in Bihar.