BENCY'S WORLD

Within a few unlikely seconds, a pair of size 10 shoes have become the most destructive weapon the people of Iraq have managed to throw at the occupying powers, after nearly six years of occupation and formidable resistance. One Iraqi writer called the shoes, hurled by a journalist at George Bush, "Iraq's weapon of comprehensive destruction".While the uprisings of Falluja, Najaf, Basra and Baghdad against the occupation will always remain as landmarks of a people resistingoccupation, these incredible seconds have united Iraqis in the most dramatic fashion.Contrary to most media coverage, the 28-year-old TV reporter Muntadhar al-Zaidi made history not by merely throwing a pair of shoes, thehighest expression of insult in Iraqi culture, at the US president, but by what he said while doing so and as he was smothered by US andIraqi security men. He groaned as they dragged him out of the press conference. They succeeded in silencing him - and according to hisbrother he was bea

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Madhya Pradesh has set a sort of record in the country, with the arrest of a minister (under directions of the Election Commission) for threatening, insulting and intimidating a returning officer. He is to be prosecuted under Sections 186 (obstructing public servant in discharge of public functions), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).If a minister has the effrontery to browbeat a returning officer in an attempt to coerce her into rejecting the nomination papers of the Congress candidate, only those in the higher echelons of bureaucracy are to blame. The State IAS officers, the chief secretary downwards, have been behaving more like the retainers of the ruling party than as the officers accountable to the Constitution and the law. They did not feel ashamed while trooping to a contractor's house to get orders and were often seen be

While it is now known that the Indian Mujahideen which claimed responsibility for the Ahmedabad blasts, is another name for the banned Students Islamic Movement of India, the fact remains that the terror outfits have an entirely new agenda. Disrupting India's economic progress through engineering terror attacks is very much its prime focus, but what has changed is how it proposes to go about the task. The Intelligence Bureau says terror outfits are upset that they have not managed to garner mass support from Indian Muslims. With the number of increasing terror strikes, many influential Muslim organisations have slammed the terrorism as un-Islamic, and this has been causing concern to the outfits waging war in the name of Islam. To counter this, the IB says the Indian Mujahideen has put together a twin strategy. Its primary aim is to take the heat off SIMI and to give jihad a more Indian orientation. The IB says the second plan, which is more worrisome, is to garner support from loc

After the March 12, 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai, the terror coordinators in Pakistan realised it was folly to rely on gangsters to conduct terror operations. They used the underworld in 1993 because they did not have anyone then to do the logistics. They had the bombs but they needed people to place them. After many of the accused in the 1993 blasts were arrested, the terror coordinators realised that when the underworld is used, secrecy is never maintained. These underworld people also talk. Also, the underworld is mercenary, doing it for money or because "Bhai ne kaha karne ke liye (the Boss told us to do it)) -- and not for the qoum (the community) or mazhab (faith). After the communal riots of 1993, the terror coordinators realised they had a readymade infrastructure in groups like SIMI and Al Hadees. After the Gujarat riots a whole number of revenge forces have mushroomed. They usually consist of white collar individuals, novices without a criminal record. They are pious, pe