Congo spotlight on India and Pakistan

A BBC investigation into United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo has put the spotlight on Indian troops for the first time, and revived questions about Pakistani troops there.

Much of the report is based on confidential UN documents.

Concerns were first raised within the UN about Indian troop activities in eastern DR Congo in July, 2007.

After discussions between the UN and India, it was agreed that a UN investigation team would "determine whether the allegations are credible and require full investigation by India and the United Nations".

That team identified five areas involving Indian troops in which a UN report says allegations have been "corroborated":

• The illegal purchase of gold from rebels of the FDLR - the former Rwandan army that fled to Congo following their involvement in the Rwanda genocide of 1994
• The use of a UN helicopter to fly into the Virunga national park, to exchange ammunition for ivory with the rebels
• The exchanging with the rebels of UN rations for gold
• The buying of drugs from the rebels

• The failure to support the disarmament of this rebel group.

'Trivial'

It says there is sufficient evidence to take action against three named Indian peacekeepers over attempts to trade in gold (some of which turned out to be counterfeit) and the unlawful detention of one of the traders.

It says that there is insufficient evidence to act against Indian peacekeepers over the other allegations.

The memo, from the UN's Vladislav Guerassev, says the allegations "may have the potential to damage the reputation of the Indian military and the United Nations".

Therefore it says the Indian authorities "may wish to consider other avenues of inquiry, which fall outside the purviews of the (UN's Investigation Division) investigations."

In response to the allegations the Indian High Commission in London told the BBC that the allegations over trading in gold were a "trivial case" and that the three soldiers concerned were being investigated by the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).

If found guilty, they would face disciplinary action, the High Commission said.

It also said that the OIOS "has affirmed that there is no evidence of any other allegation against the Indian troops in DR Congo" including the allegations of "the arming of a militia".

'Alienating Pakistan'

The BBC first reported into allegations of corrupt practices by Pakistani peacekeepers in the DR Congo last year. These took place in a different area of eastern Congo to the activities of the Indian troops.

Now the BBC has found evidence that a UN enquiry into what took place in the gold mining town of Mongbwalu appears to have been blocked for political reasons.

Those close to this investigation told us that elements of the investigation were suppressed for fear of alienating Pakistan, which is the largest troop contributing country to the UN.

When the BBC last year published the first allegations that Pakistan peacekeepers had illegally traded in gold, as well as providing weapons to some of Congo's most notorious militia, the FNI, the reaction of the Pakistani authorities was one of denial.

In May 2007 the military spokesman at the time, Maj Gen Waheed Arshad, said the reports were "not only malicious but misleading and distorted" and without evidence.

Hard to believe

The UN's own report, dated 2 July 2007, which it has never published, concludes that the Pakistani contingent in Mongbwalu did indeed trade in gold with a group of Indian traders based in East Africa.

The UN goes on to hold just one Pakistani army officer responsible for what took place. It is hard to believe that one single officer, based in an isolated Congolese village, could organise a trade involving an estimated $7m in gold passing through four countries, but that was the UN's conclusion.

On the question of re-arming the FNI militia the UN report, which removed the names of those involved, was unequivocal: "In the absence of corroborative evidence, (the UN's Investigation Division) could not substantiate the allegation that (Pakistani peacekeepers) deployed to Mongbwalu had supplied weapons or ammunition" to FNI fighters.

Travelling back to eastern Congo the BBC has now found evidence the UN says it was unable to discover.

We interviewed several residents of the town, who told us they had seen FNI militia who were disarmed one day, in the town the next day with the same weapons.

We spoke to a man whose family members died fighting for the FNI.

"The FNI commanders - these were Dragon Masasi and Kung Fu Nyinga - took a vehicle to meet and negotiate with one of the Pakistani officers," he said.

"They went in and came back with seven boxes of ammunition. After receiving these boxes, all the militia - including my young brothers - took their arms to go and attack the Congolese army."

We also went into the maximum security prison in the capital, Kinshasa, to interview the two FNI leaders named above.

Kung Fu - real name General Mateso Ninga - was clear about what had taken place. "Yes, its true, " he said. "They did give us arms. They said it was for the security of the country. So they said to us that we would help them take care of the zone."

'Thirst for gold'

In fact the UN had compelling evidence of its own, which it failed to refer to in its report. This was the testimony of a Congolese army officer involved in the disarmament process.

He told the investigators during three interviews that he had repeatedly seen militia disarmed, yet had seen them with the same arms soon thereafter.

Asked why this was he put it down to what he called the "thirst for gold" on the part of one of the Pakistani officers.

Unofficially UN officials now accept that the trade in gold and the re-arming of the FNI militia did, indeed, take place.

And one Pakistani officer is reported to have been disciplined. The UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations says it has been sending Pakistan "notes verbal" since last year in an attempt to discover what disciplinary measures these were, but has received no reply.

In response to the latest BBC report, the current Pakistani military spokesman, Maj Gen Athar Abbas, said the BBC was showing a "biased attitude towards Pakistan".

Maj Gen Abbas said there was "no evidence" of Pakistani troop involvement in the illegal exploitation of gold or the rearming of a militia. "One needs to ask what interests Pakistan peacekeepers could have in doing that" he said.

He also argued that the BBC was wrong to rely on the evidence of Mateso Ninga, a "criminal in the prison".

He also denied that the UN had been prevented from investigating the allegations.

Story from BBC NEWS

'Brain gain' for India as elite return

Ashutosh Gupta's home in Richmond Park has all the lifestyle comforts that many educated Indians of his generation left India to attain - lush and peaceful gardens, a gym, a pool and, most important, unwavering electricity and water supplies.

This luxury block in the ultra-modern Delhi suburb of Gurgaon houses several hundred Indian families who have recently returned from living in the West, part of a 'reverse brain drain' migration which is gathering speed.

Indian politicians are beginning to highlight, approvingly, the emerging phenomenon of 'brain gain', as large numbers of Indian-born executives decide that job opportunities and living conditions are as good, if not better, in India and make their way home.

Gupta, 38, moved to this gated enclave after 15 years spent studying and later working as a Goldman Sachs banker in New York and London. 'Ten years ago, if I had considered moving back, people would have questioned my sanity, and assumed I couldn't hack it in the US,' he said. 'Now everyone recognizes that India is a very exciting place. There are tens of thousands of people like me making the decision to return.'

A survey published last week showed that graduates from India's most prestigious universities, the Indian Institutes of Technology (known as IITs), increasingly see India as the best place in the world to base themselves. Until about five years ago large numbers of these elite graduates would abandon home at the first opportunity to take up well-paid jobs or to continue their education in the US and Europe.

Between 1964 and 2001 (when the economy was sluggish), 35 per cent of the nation's most promising graduates moved abroad, according to research conducted by the Delhi-based organization, Evalueserve, but from 2002 onwards (the period when India's GDP began to soar) only 16 per cent chose to leave. Now, the research suggests, the West no longer seems synonymous with wealth and opportunity. Asked to predict which country would 'hold the most promise for success' in 10 years' time, 72 per cent of the 677 IIT graduates surveyed named India, with only 17 per cent citing the US, 5 per cent Europe, and just 2 per cent China. The number who feel the US offers a better standard of living than India has fallen since 2001 from 13 per cent to almost zero. The study is a clear sign that the lamented flight of India's best students, which has troubled the government for decades, may be reversing, in tandem with the turnaround in economic prospects.

The Indian government does not compile figures of the numbers of people emigrating or returning, but Alok Aggarwal, chairman of Evalueserve, who wrote the report, said the trend of returning Indians 'seemed to be very strong'. The pull of the West remained powerful for many Indians, he said, 'but at the very top level of graduates, the smart choice now is to stay'. The flow of reverse migration has been particularly striking in the southern Indian IT city of Bangalore, where research published last year estimated that more than 40,000 Indian technology professionals had arrived back from the US and the UK to take up work.

Aggarwal, now 48, left India after graduating from an IIT in the 1980s and moved to the US. 'There was a lot of guilt associated with the decision to leave. We felt like rats leaving a sinking ship. But at the time there were few employment opportunities here,' he said. In the late 1980s Delhi did not seem a very alluring place to return to; even getting a phone line installed involved a wait of about two and a half years.

Now the decision to choose India is much easier. Jobs are plentiful and, armed with good salaries, the newly returned can cocoon themselves in gated Western-style ghettoes, which shut out any trace of the ever-present slums, squalor and poverty. The golf clubs of Delhi and neighboring Gurgaon are full of recently returned Indians.

Gupta said his switch to a private equity job in Delhi was partly motivated by a desire to spend more time with his parents, and partly down to his sense that he could do much more with his talents in India, than he could in London. 'I would sit at my desk on Fleet Street, read about what was happening in India and I'd ask myself: What am I doing here? It was an obvious choice to return.' But the transition was painful. 'After so many years away, it was a shock to be back. The traffic, the chaos, it all takes a bit of adjustment.' But living alongside hundreds of other 'like-minded returnees' had helped to dull the culture shock.

Yusuf Hatia, India vice-president of the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard, was conscious that his decision to return to live in Mumbai a year ago, with his wife and young son, was a peculiar mirror of his parents' choice to emigrate to the UK, when he was aged three, in 1975. 'My parents left India for the UK for economic reasons, and because they believed that they could give me a better education there,' he said, adding that the same reasons - the appeal of good schools, better lifestyle, and well-paid and interesting work - had persuaded him to move back. His shift from Hackney to India's business capital has afforded him a full-time nanny, a driver and private education for his son 'without any of it seeming a ridiculous luxury'. The cost of renting an apartment (about £5,000 a month, and rising) was an unexpected shock.

'A lot of my family who are of Indian origin, living in Britain, thought I was pretty crazy. They still see India as a place to escape from, a place of poverty, not somewhere to come and do business,' he said. 'Of course, India is still a place of poverty, but in the business world there is an extraordinary sense of optimism. The long term prospects for working here are better.'

Rising fortunes

· Once an unsuccessful 'mixed' economy, India opened up to foreign investment in the 1990s

· In the 1980s, 75 per cent of its top graduates emigrated to America

· Since 2000 only 28 per cent see themselves leaving

· Poverty rate has halved in 20 years

· Between 1990 and 2004 adult literacy rose from 50 to 61 per cent

· Population: 1,147,995, 898. Expected to overtake China as the world's most populous country in the next 25 years

· GDP stands at $1.09 trillion

Indian Army’s corruption blues

The saga of corruption in the Indian Army seems unending much like the Indian TV soaps. With the involvement of some senior army officers in bribery and arms-purchase scandals, this belief is getting strengthened that corruption is deeply embedded in the everyday functioning of Indian Army. Nine months after an Indian Army major general was cashiered for corruption, the Indian Army has ordered a general court martial of two brigadiers on charges of fraud for diverting public funds with malafide intentions of personal gains. According to the media report, the two officers, Brigadiers G Illangovan and DS Grewal, during their postings in Uttarakhand, are said to have misappropriated government funds allotted from their division headquarters. Depending on the extent of crime the court establishes (which began the trial in Jabalpur on 25 June 2007) the two could be stripped of rank and denied all retirement benefits. They may also face up to 14 years of rigorous imprisonment:
The Defence Minister AX Antony has presented in parliament a long list of senior officers facing corruption charges which shows that action had been taken against 39 corrupt officers of the Indian Army. Last September, Major General Singh was also stripped of his rank and sentenced to three years of rigorous imprisonment for selling subsidized army liquor and misappropriating funds.

An alarming rise in the number of Indian military officers charged with corruption, senior ranks quitting due to frustrating service conditions and instances in which disgruntled soldiers have shot dead their seniors has started boggling the minds of India’s policy makers. For the past few decades, the Indian Army has experienced high-profile scandals, ranging from the infamous field-artillery deal with the Swedish arms company Bofors (for which former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had been accused) to the case for which another former prime minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, was convicted in 2000. This is a sufficient proof of the fact that the Indian society as a whole is a moral wasteland, From everyday experience, Indians know that acquiring a job, a place in medical or engineering school, or even a telephone, gas or electricity connection frequently entails a bribe to someone who is controlling the affairs in that setup.

Amongst the foremost corrupt institutions within India, its armed forces rank a prominent position. The Indian army personnel are known to receive “commission” from politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen. When their cases are forwarded to court of inquiry, they usually manage to slip away unpunished. The corruption report published in the Times of India speaks volumes for the state of indiscipline and corruption in the Indian Armed forces. The crime rate within the Armed Forces is comparatively high in areas where the Indian army is deployed in order to suppress insurgencies and secessionist movements like Kashmir, Nagaland, Mezoram and Assam. Incidents of suicide, self-immolation, opening fire on commanding officers and colleagues, desertions etc are frequent. The crimes are not only committed by jawans, but also the senior officers are found involved in minting money through unfair means. So much so a Brigadier of Indian army has recently been sentenced to seven years imprisonment for his involvement in running fake currency notes business.
The Indian Army’s Central Command has initiated a court of inquiry against Major General G I Singh, General Officer Commanding of the 6th Mountain Division, to probe into the case of misappropriation of money and sale of illicit liquor. According to reports, four truckloads of army liquor, which were to be sold off illegally at Singh’s behest, were seized from Dehradun. The trucks were heading for Sangrur in Punjab (the hometown of the accused). The consignment was ostensibly sent to his hometown for sale. The reports have unfolded some more scandals in the Held Kashmir. Tanker owners in the valley have said that a scam to steal army diesel fuel involved Indian military officers and had been going on for years. The IHK Petrol Tank Owners Association says “the scam involves drivers, officers and middlemen and has cost hundreds of millions of rupees to the Government of India. It was found that diesel in seven tankers bound for Ladakh had been sold off and replaced with water. According to a report published in the Times of India on October 3, 2005 the Indian Armed Forces have held 6,000 court martials since 2000, and that by any standards is a disturbing picture for the Indian Armed forces.

According to the latest statistics of the Army discipline, 1,215 Indian soldiers were court-martialed in 2000, 1,034 in 2001, 1,031 in 2002, 945 in 2003, and 872 in 2004. Last year, around 30 officers were convicted in court martial proceedings. Because of the deteriorating service conditions, the charisma of army is diminishing with each passing day.

There is no rush of youths to join the once-favoured military, and the persisting shortage of officers in the 1.1-millionstrong army is now around 11,000. Standards of armed forces have gone from bad to worse. It is because of a deep seated cancer of bribery and corruption that Indian Army faces a severe crisis of discipline, confidence and self esteem today.