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Taliban in paradise – what awaits these virgin islands?

The first war of the twenty first century, US President George W Bush said after 11 September 2001, will be “a new kind of war”. It will be “a conflict without battlefields or beachheads”.

Well, almost 10 years on, we can see he was a bit off the mark with the battlefields – Afghanistan is one, Iraq another, Iran is a strong possibility, Yemen cannot be ruled out entirely. Some of us foresaw the prospects for disaster in many a decision made by President Bush before he blundered, swaggered or smirked his way into them. But I bet no one foresaw that he could also be wrong about the beachheads.

There could yet be many a beachhead in the ‘War on Terror’. Hundreds of them. Around nice pristine Maldivian beaches. The Taliban were “smoked out” of the caves in Afghanistan – will they be fished out of our waters, or simply blasted out? And at what cost to our lives? In Afghanistan the civilian death toll was over 2000 in 2008 alone… what fate awaits us?

Safety first

“Taliban feels that the safest place in the world for them right now is the Maldives”. Less than a decade after the world’s strongest military power declares war on not just the ‘terrorists’ – but also on those who “harbour them, feed them, house them, encourage them, and comfort them” – the Maldives offers them a peaceful retreat. With no military power to speak of, being of little or no geo-strategic consequence, not quite the most sophisticated of movers in global realpolitik – we go ahead and provide the Taliban a beautiful sanctuary where they can sit and plan their next move, with nothing to fear except perhaps a wayward coconut.

The government response to the discovery of the Maldives’ novel status as the Taliban’s new BFFL (best friend for life) is to tell us it is a compliment. A compliment, dear citizens. Pluralism personified, the New Maldives – a Taliban sanctuary, where religious extremists are a protected species. Follow the government line of thinking on this, people and you begin to see the advantages. Given the burgeoning numbers of people following their brand of Islam, we might not have to hang up our tourism hat just yet. There is an untapped market with huge potential out there. Think of the ads – “Tired of being vilified? Find unconditional adulation in the Maldives”; “Sick of being loathed? Come and feel the warmth of the Maldivian embrace”. “Sun, sea and blind faith”; “Maldives – no bad news, no bombs”.

Countering terror

A week later, and the same government is about to formalise a counter-terrorism agreement with India. The same government spokesperson that told us to be flattered by Taliban’s friendship, tells us that the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to be signed with India is “very important because it gives notice that the Maldives will not allow terrorist operations here.”

I beg to differ. The MoU is to be welcomed, if there is anything the Maldives can do to help shore up the security of the exemplary democracy that is India, we should to it. But, the agreement does not in anyway signal to us Maldivians that “the Maldives will not allow terrorist operations”.

How can that be, when the government is positively preening from the Taliban’s exclusive attentions; and continues to form subversive and inexplicable alliances with political parties and dubious NGOs who are making Maldivians look, speak, behave, eat, have sex, punish and procreate according to the teachings of the Taliban?

What the MoU, coming as it does on foot of the government’s warm embrace of the Taliban, signals to us is that this government does not have a cogent or coherent national security policy. It is being formed on ad hoc basis, according to whatever political interests that needs to be served at a given time. We can sign hundreds of agreements, treaties and conventions. On paper, it makes the Maldives look good. But for the people who are living this enforced politicization of their religious beliefs, and being told to see this sea-change in Maldivian culture and identity as ‘pluralism’, it signals impending disaster, and a government that is unable to see the threat from within.

The Maldivian government was unaware of the Taliban hosting secret talks on our islands or was unable to detect their presence in the country because it can no longer tell the difference between a Maldivian and an Afghan, or any other follower of the Wahhabbi sect for that matter. We cannot tell who is Ibrahim Maniku and who is Abdul-Ibrahim bin Abu Muharram, or whatever other name we are now apparently required to have in order to be Muslims.

While the government was busy allying itself with religious parties for political gains and shoring up sandbags to ward off sea-level rise, we have all been turned into sheep in Muslim clothing, following blindly those who have assumed leading roles in remote islands through their preaching and their sermons, filling a leadership vacuum left by the appointment of so-called councilors as a reward for faithful campaigning regardless of their qualifications or lack thereof.

One of the biggest questions asked of the disastrous last government was how and why heroin was allowed to permeate the very core of Maldivian society. How could the authorities not stop the destructive drug being smuggled into this small island nation? Well, Wahhabism is the new heroin. It has got our youth addicted, it has robbed them of their identity and it has taken possession of them to the exclusion of all else. Why is this government allowing this to happen? No amount of posturing on the international stage, or pieces of paper signed promising our co-operation in the ‘War on Terror’ is going to be sufficient to protect Maldivians themselves from being sucked into this ‘endless war’ that has already claimed so many lives in every corner of the world.

Anti-terror agreements signed with one hand while holding the door open for the Taliban with the other are going to be ineffective, otiose. What will a Memorandum of Understanding with a foreign ally, however well-intentioned, do for our own protection when we have yet to understand that the biggest threat we face is within?

Munirah Moosa is a journalism and international relations graduate. She is currently engaged in research into the ‘radicalisation’ of Muslim communities and its impact on international security.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Six men arrested over stolen weapons

Police have arrested six in connection with the theft of weapons and several other items.

The weapons and stolen items were recovered from G. Masodige in Male’ during a special operation, police said.

The Maldives Police Services is continuing to investigate the case.

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Former government printed money, says president

The former government’s economic policies were unsustainable, President Mohamed Nasheed claimed during his weekly radio address, explaining that expansionary budgets combined with a lack of revenue had forced the government to print money and raise inflation.

“While three to four years ago the budget stood around Rf7-8 billion, we suddenly saw an inflated Rf12 billion budget,” he said.

“The idea would have been to finance the budget through inflows from the 60 newly leased islands for resort development. Now we all know the state doesn’t get any revenue from those resorts.”

He unveiled plans to increase the government’s revenue by expanding the country’s tourism industry into the mid-market sector and upgrading the fisheries industry. This included plans to establish the country as a fish exporter, he said.

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Maldives to strengthen defence links with India amid rising terror concerns

The Maldives will formalise its counter-terrorism agreements with India after renewed fears that Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is trying to establish a base in remote parts of the Maldives.

The LeT was implicated in the terror attacks in Mumbai on 26 November 2008 in which gunmen entered the city by sea and killed at least 173 people and wounded 308. It is considered a terrorist organisation by India, the United States, the UK and Russia.

Covering the story today, Indian newspaper The Economic Times noted that Sultan Park bomber Moosa Inas was linked to the LeT and had travelled to Kerala before the bombings, a popular recruiting ground for the group.

Indian news portal Rediff.com today quoted Indian intelligence bureau sources as saying that the LeT “has nearly 1,000 operatives active in the Maldives”, and that there was no way the group’s operations “can be curbed unless there is very good intelligence sharing with the Maldives.”

The intelligence sources claimed that in the last three months “there has been an increase in LeT activites in the Maldives, and several persons from [the LeT’s] Kerala group have slipped into the country and are busy setting up operations there.”

India could ill-afford a slip in its Maldives policy, given the “extreme aggression” of the LeT group, the sources told Rediff.

The notion of a thousand LeT operatives active in the Maldives “may be an exaggeration”, said the Maldivian president’s press secretary Mohamed Zuhair, “but there may be some truth in it.”

Minister for Home Affairs Mohamed Shihab is currently in India meeting his counterpart P Chidambaram to draw up a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two countries that will be signed in April.

First Secretary at the Indian High Commission to the Maldives, Naryan Swamy, said the agreement would formalise existing arrangements with the Maldives but the details would have to wait until Shihab returned.

Zuhair said the MoU was “very important because it gives notice that the Maldives will not allow terrorist operations here.”

“The Maldives is very important to India’s security – the Mumbai bombers attacked via sea,” Zuhair said. “The sea is India’s vulnerable underbelly because there are so many entry points, and the Maldives can be very helpful with that because every day we have 1,500 fishing vessels sometimes 70-100 kilometres out to sea. If they see any suspicious vessels they can coordinate the information through various centres in the Maldives.”

The system appeared to work, Zuhair said, because after the president’s speeches following the Mumbai bombing several poaching vessels were apprehended based on information from fishing boats.

India was already assisting the Maldives to establish a chain of coastal radars stations across the country’s atolls, he said, which will be networked with India’s own radar network.

Zuhair acknowledged that such defence cooperation might “concern” countries like China, but he noted that “of all our neighbours India is the natural country of choice to assist the Maldives.”

Last week Al Jazeera reported that a group seven fighters linked to the Taliban met in the Maldives with Afghan MPs to discuss an ambitious peace plan whereby Taliban soldiers would be paid to put down their arms. Al Jazeera’s report claimed the fighters chose the Maldives as the venue for the talks because it was “the only place they felt safe.”

Zuhair emphasised that the Maldives “will not allow terrorists to operate in the country and put the Maldives’ and our neighbours’ peace and security at risk.

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MDP denies activists stormed CSC’s office

A video of group of men entering the office of the Civil Service Commission (CSC) on Sunday and intimidating staff is circulating on the internet.

Secretary General of the CSC Abdullah Khaleel said the group arrived at 1:05pm and “spoke very rudely. Their actions were violent.”

“We tried to find out their purpose for coming to our office. I asked them to come sit in the meeting room to speak about the matter, but they refused,” he said.

”They were mainly talking about the civil servants’ salary issue, they were angry that we were calling on the government to reinstate the salaries,” Khaleel said.

Khaleel said staff called the police at 1:11pm but officers police arrived after the incident had ended and the men had left.

He said that the crowd consisted of around nine men, but noted that only a few of them were rude.

”Two of the nine tried to take the three angry men outside the office, and they finally left,” Khaleel said.

He said that before leaving the office, the men threatened that they would be gathering a crowd of people in front of the CSC office.

Spokesman for Maldivian Democratic Party MDP Ahmed Haleem claimed that MDP did not send anybody to enter or threaten the Civil Service Commission. .

Haleem stated that ”as 90 per cent of Maldivians are MDP members, there might be a MDP supporter involved in [any] such scenes.”

According to the Elections Commission of the Maldives MDP had 28,995 members in December last year, or 9.3 per cent of the population.

Press secretary for the president’s office Mohamed Zuhair said that ”even if there was a MDP member [involved] it does not mean that they were representing MDP. They are members of the public as well.”

He said he would not support the act, as “nobody should enter a government’s office against security procedures.”

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Police arrest HIV positive prostitute

Police have arrested an HIV positive prostitute after she allegedly had sex with several Maldivians.

Head of the Serious and Organised Crime unit Ahmed Saudhy said the 27 year old woman arrived in Male “as a tourist” on 16 January, after travelling from “a neighbouring country.”

Saudhy claimed the woman had sex with several Maldivians, and “earned a large amount of money in a short time”.

He said the woman had admitted that she was a prostitute and police were continuing to investigate the case.

Senior public health officer at the Centre for Community Health and Disease Control (CCHDC) Abdul Hameed said prostitutes were keen to work in the Maldives because there was “high demand” for their services.

He said the practice was dangerous and carried a high risk of HIV transmission, and advised all Maldivians “to stay away from prostitutes who come to the Maldives.”

There were an estimated 34 HIV positive people in the country, ”although records show 14″ he said.

”The best prevention is to be aware,” he said.

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Civil aviation department investigates pieces of aircraft wheel on the runway

The civil aviation department is investigating pieces of aircraft wheel found on the runway of Male’ International Airport, reports Haveeru.

The newspaper reported that the pieces belonged to an Emirates flight from Sri Lanka.

The flight landed safely and the Maldives Airports Company informed the flight crew immediately.

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