B.RAMAN
Two soldiers of the Pakistan Army were killed and three others injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), early on the morning of June 26,2009.
2. The Pakistani media has carried conflicting versions of the suicide attack. The "News" ( June 26) reported that "a suicide bomber ripped through an Army vehicle near Shaukat Lines, Muzaffarabad" without giving other details. The "Daily Times" of Lahore (June 26) reported that "he blew himself up near an army vehicle."
3. However, in its online edition of June 26, the "Dawn" of Karachi gave a different and more detailed version. To quote it: " According to witnesses, a bearded man in his twenties walked through a ground used by army personnel for physical training and local youths as a playground and entered the barracks of non-commissioned army men at about 6.30am. 'The bomber was intercepted by a soldier whom he tried to engage in a conversation presumably to attract other soldiers around for causing maximum casualties’ and then blew himself up, official sources said. A soldier was killed on the spot and four others were injured and taken to the Combined Military Hospital where one of them died. An army pick-up parked a few yards away overturned and another vehicle was damaged. The blast was heard in most parts of the town. An intelligence official said the ground was splattered with blood and limbs. He said four legs and other limbs had been found in the ground and under the overturned vehicle which indicated that more than one bomber might have been involved in the attack. The junior section of the Army Public School, several other educational institutions and the 5-AK Brigade headquarters are around the place where the blast took place."
4.The "Dawn" report gave another significant detail. It said: "The barracks fall under the 5-AK Brigade of the Azad Kashmir (AK) Regiment which is reportedly taking part in the operation against militants in Swat and adjoining areas."
5. The Azad Kashmir Regiment (AKR) has had an interesting history. When the Pakistan Army tried to capture Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) in 1947-48, it first sent into the state a large number of Mehsuds, Wazirs and other tribes recruited by it in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and trained and armed by it. Pakistan denied any responsibility for their actions and projected them during the debates in the UN Security Council as Kashmiris, who had risen in revolt against the then Maharaja of J&K and the Government of India. It used to describe them as Kashmiri irregulars over whom it had no control.
6. After the 1948 ceasefire, the Pakistan Army constituted these so-called irregulars into a unit called the Azad Kashmir Regular Forces (AKRF), which was shown as a para-military force of the POK Government. It was placed under the over-all control of the Pakistan Army. The tribals of the AKRF were again used by the then President Ayub Khan for spearheading the invasion of J&K in 1965. The invasion, which led to fighting between the Indian and Pakistan Armies, failed.
7. When the Bengalis of the then East Pakistan rose in revolt in 1971, Yahya Khan sent the fanatic tribals of the AKRF to East Pakistan where they indulged in large-scale massacre of Bengalis. In 1972, in recognition of its "services" in East Pakistan, the Pakistan Army absorbed the AKRF into the regular army and renamed it the Azad Kashmir Regiment (AKR). Its Regimental Center is located at Mansar, Attock District, Punjab. Initially, the AKR consisted largely of Pashtun tribals recruited in the FATA officered by Punjabis. Now it has a larger percentage of Punjabis. Exact present figures of Pashtuns and Punjabis in the AKR are not available.
8. When there were fears in Pakistan of a military retaliation by the Indian Armed Forces after the Mumbai terrorist attack of November 2008, Baitullah Mehsud, the Amir of the TTP, had reportedly said that if India attacked Pakistan, the TTP would stop its fight against the Pakistan Army and join it in fighting against India. This was welcomed by a Pakistani Army spokesman as a patriotic gesture. Subsequently, there were reports of differences developing between the TTP on the one side and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami(HUJI) and the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) on the other because of the unhappiness of these four Kashmir-centric organisations over the attacks being carried out by the TTP on the Pakistan Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). They reportedly felt that the TTP and other organisations should focus on attacking the NATO forces in Afghanistan in collaboration with the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda and should not attack the Pakistan Army. Only the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), the anti-Shia organisation, supported the TTP's fight against the Pakistan Army. They felt that since the Pakistan Army was letting itself be used by the US against Al Qaeda, attacks on it were justified.Following these differences, the TTP reportedly ordered these four organisations to close down their training camps in the tribal belt.
9. Since the TTP came into existence in 2007 after the Pakistan Army's commando raid into the Lal Masjid of Islamabad in July,2007, it has carried out over a hundred acts of suicide terrorism.Many of them were in non-tribal areas and important cities and cantonments
such as Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Lahore, Sargodha and other places. Many of these attacks were directed at the Army, the ISI,the Special Services Group (SSG), the US-trained commando group, the Air Force, the Navy, the Police and the Federal Investigation Agency. Recently, the TTP had warned of an attack in Multan from where the operations of the helicopter gunships in the Swat Valley are co-ordinated.
10. But it had carefully refrained from any act of suicide terrorism in the POK. This is the first time there has been an act of suicide terrorism in the POK, which has been attributed to the TTP. The Associated Press and sections of the Pakistani media have quoted Hakimullah Mehsud, a close associate of Baitullah, who is responsible for the TTP activities in the Orakzai, Khyber and Kurram areas and who also coordinates Taliban attacks on trucks carrying logistic supplies to the NATO troops in Afghanistan, as claiming responsibility on behalf of the TTP for the Muzaffarabad attack. A person claiming to be Hakimullah was reported to have told the AP over phone that the attack was made to prove that Baitullah had not been weakened by more than a week of strikes on his suspected hideouts in South Waziristan.. “We are in a position to respond to the army’s attacks, and time will prove that these military operations have not weakened us," he reportedly said. It also needs to be noted that since the co-ordinated hunt for Baitullah started, Hakimullah's men have stepped up their attacks on Shias in the Kurram Agency.
11. Presuming that this call was, in fact, made by Hakimullah and that it was the TTP which had carried out the attack, the Muzaffarabad attack reflects the concerns of the TTP and Baitullah over the co-ordinated operations launched by the Pakistani and US forces in South Waziristan in order to neutralise Baitullah and his close associates. The TTP has apparently come to the conclusion that only fears of reprisal attacks in the POK could prevent the Pakistan Army from reinforcing its ground forces in South Waziristan for the operations against Baitullah and his forces.
12. The Pakistan Army, which has by now got used to a wave of suicide attacks all over Pakistan, is unlikely to be deterred from the South Waziristan operation by a single attack in the POK by the TTP. But if there are more such attacks and in quick succession, it might be unnerved by the prospects of instability in the POK as a result of its operations in the NWFP and the FATA. As of now, the TTP does not appear to have the capability for sustained operations in the POK. Even if it has, it is unlikely to use it since any attempt to create instability in the POK would aggravate the divide between it and the people of Pakistan. Its anti-Army activities in the POK could also be opposed by the anti-India, Kashmir-centric jihadi groups.( 27-6-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt.of India,New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
June 27, 2009
June 26, 2009
The US military in Africa
Listen (Duration: 11 minutes)
BBC World Service (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
In a few weeks, President Obama will be off to Ghana - on his first visit to Africa since taking office. Our Africa editor Martin Plaut looks at Washington's little discussed military relationship with the African continent.
http://http-ws.bbc.co.uk.edgesuite.net/generatecssram.esi?file=/worldservice/css/nb/41004090622.ra
Nabucco, an American piece for a European orchestra
19:3724/06/2009
MOSCOW. (Alexander Knyazev, director of the regional branch of the Institute of the CIS, for RIA Novosti) - The European Union and Turkey plan to sign an intergovernmental agreement on the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project on June 25 in Ankara.
Why such a romantic name?
"Nabucco" is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi based on a biblical story about the plight of the Jews as they are assaulted and subsequently exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian King Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar). It is also an enchanting story of love and struggle for power.
The latter element of the story is probably the only thing in common between the opera and the gas pipeline project initiated by U.S. President George W. Bush and based on some European and post-Soviet countries' non-love of Russia, as well as the global battle for elbowing Russia out of the Eurasian gas market.
Since Nabucco is mostly a political product, Turkey's efforts to use its transit location to its best advantage are perfectly logical from the viewpoint of its national interests.
Turkey will host a major portion of the 2,050-mile pipeline, which is to bring gas supplies from Central Asia and the Middle East to Europe without using Russian resources or territory.
A consortium of six countries - Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Germany - was set up to build the pipeline to Central Europe via Turkey and the Balkans. The shareholders will finance one-third of expenditure, with the remaining part to be covered by international financial and credit organizations.
The more than 3,300-km pipeline has been estimated at 7.9 billion euros ($10.7 billion) and will have an annual throughput capacity of 31 billion cubic meters. It is to be completed by 2013.
However, technical calculations show that it cannot be commissioned sooner than in 2015; and that given the high and stable energy prices. The project is burdened with political risks and will run across a difficult geographical terrain.
Europe, in truth, is encumbered by problems with energy delivery routes.
A small Polish oil pipeline running from Odessa to Gdansk via Brody in Ukraine has long been incapacitated by Chevron's inability to supply oil from the Tengiz deposit in Kazakhstan.
Poland, which has been trying to break its dependence on Russian energy supplies, should now heave a sigh of relief, since supplies via Belarus are likely to shrink. The same goes for Lithuania whose oil refinery, Mazeikiu Nafta, that used Russian oil, has been idling since last year.
If this is the energy freedom they wanted, then the two countries are paying an excessively high price for it. Europe's efforts to solve its energy problems without Russia by importing energy resources from Central Asia are counterproductive - this is a fact. And the same is true of the Nabucco project.
On the contrary, Russia's South Stream project will have the guaranteed amount of natural gas, and its capacity can be subsequently increased. A recent agreement between Russia's Gazprom and Italy's Eni stipulates increasing it to 63 billion cubic meters annually. Besides, Nabucco is unlikely to be competitive compared to Gazprom's project in terms of prices.
The Russian gas export monopoly plans to pay for the South Stream construction and gas distribution and to sell gas to end users in Europe at attractive prices.
Gas for Nabucco is expected to come from Turkmenistan and possibly Iran. However, Russia has an agreement with Turkmenistan under which it buys all of its export gas, and Russia and Iran may veto the construction of any pipeline along the bottom of the Caspian Sea.
This means that Nabucco can receive gas only from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz deposit, but the probability of this is undermined by tensions between Turkey and Azerbaijan over the recent thaw in Turkish-Armenian relations.
In other words, Nabucco will have no reliable sources of natural gas in the near future.
A pipeline partnership is unimaginable without stability and reliability, something the U.S. administration cannot ensure even to its taxpayers. And so, what does the U.S. administration have to do with the Nabucco project?
Unlike the most naive part of the European establishment, the East European and other "democratic" media describe Nabucco not as a European economic or energy project, but as an American political venture.
The chaotic chanting in support of the Nabucco project reminds me of the "Va, pensiero" chorus of Hebrew slaves from Verdi's opera - beautiful yet altogether gloomy and hopeless.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
MOSCOW. (Alexander Knyazev, director of the regional branch of the Institute of the CIS, for RIA Novosti) - The European Union and Turkey plan to sign an intergovernmental agreement on the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project on June 25 in Ankara.
Why such a romantic name?
"Nabucco" is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi based on a biblical story about the plight of the Jews as they are assaulted and subsequently exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian King Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar). It is also an enchanting story of love and struggle for power.
The latter element of the story is probably the only thing in common between the opera and the gas pipeline project initiated by U.S. President George W. Bush and based on some European and post-Soviet countries' non-love of Russia, as well as the global battle for elbowing Russia out of the Eurasian gas market.
Since Nabucco is mostly a political product, Turkey's efforts to use its transit location to its best advantage are perfectly logical from the viewpoint of its national interests.
Turkey will host a major portion of the 2,050-mile pipeline, which is to bring gas supplies from Central Asia and the Middle East to Europe without using Russian resources or territory.
A consortium of six countries - Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Germany - was set up to build the pipeline to Central Europe via Turkey and the Balkans. The shareholders will finance one-third of expenditure, with the remaining part to be covered by international financial and credit organizations.
The more than 3,300-km pipeline has been estimated at 7.9 billion euros ($10.7 billion) and will have an annual throughput capacity of 31 billion cubic meters. It is to be completed by 2013.
However, technical calculations show that it cannot be commissioned sooner than in 2015; and that given the high and stable energy prices. The project is burdened with political risks and will run across a difficult geographical terrain.
Europe, in truth, is encumbered by problems with energy delivery routes.
A small Polish oil pipeline running from Odessa to Gdansk via Brody in Ukraine has long been incapacitated by Chevron's inability to supply oil from the Tengiz deposit in Kazakhstan.
Poland, which has been trying to break its dependence on Russian energy supplies, should now heave a sigh of relief, since supplies via Belarus are likely to shrink. The same goes for Lithuania whose oil refinery, Mazeikiu Nafta, that used Russian oil, has been idling since last year.
If this is the energy freedom they wanted, then the two countries are paying an excessively high price for it. Europe's efforts to solve its energy problems without Russia by importing energy resources from Central Asia are counterproductive - this is a fact. And the same is true of the Nabucco project.
On the contrary, Russia's South Stream project will have the guaranteed amount of natural gas, and its capacity can be subsequently increased. A recent agreement between Russia's Gazprom and Italy's Eni stipulates increasing it to 63 billion cubic meters annually. Besides, Nabucco is unlikely to be competitive compared to Gazprom's project in terms of prices.
The Russian gas export monopoly plans to pay for the South Stream construction and gas distribution and to sell gas to end users in Europe at attractive prices.
Gas for Nabucco is expected to come from Turkmenistan and possibly Iran. However, Russia has an agreement with Turkmenistan under which it buys all of its export gas, and Russia and Iran may veto the construction of any pipeline along the bottom of the Caspian Sea.
This means that Nabucco can receive gas only from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz deposit, but the probability of this is undermined by tensions between Turkey and Azerbaijan over the recent thaw in Turkish-Armenian relations.
In other words, Nabucco will have no reliable sources of natural gas in the near future.
A pipeline partnership is unimaginable without stability and reliability, something the U.S. administration cannot ensure even to its taxpayers. And so, what does the U.S. administration have to do with the Nabucco project?
Unlike the most naive part of the European establishment, the East European and other "democratic" media describe Nabucco not as a European economic or energy project, but as an American political venture.
The chaotic chanting in support of the Nabucco project reminds me of the "Va, pensiero" chorus of Hebrew slaves from Verdi's opera - beautiful yet altogether gloomy and hopeless.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
Third Force in Iran Power Struggle
26 Jun 2009
While it’s too early to predict the outcome of the current struggle for power in Iran, the battle is clearly one of seismic proportions and the emergence of a Third Force is stirring things up, Kamal Nazer Yasin writes for ISN Security Watch.
By Kamal Nazer Yasin in Tehran for ISN Security Watch
As expected, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s vow to violently crush Iran’s nascent democratic movement has been successful so far. On 20 June, the full panoply of repressive forces at the disposal of the Iranian state - other than the military, that is - were deployed against the fewer than 3,000 demonstrators congregated in downtown Tehran. The outcome seemed pre-ordained.
These forces consisted of contingents from the Basij militia, Revolutionary Guards (RGCI), regular police, anti-riot units, the Ministry of Intelligence and armed vigilantes, around half of whom were brought in from other regions.
As ISN Security Watch reported earlier, the RGCI is now in charge of the overall security for Greater Tehran, which means it is the first time since the early 1980s that the RGCI has been deployed in urban areas.
The “soft coup" reported by the ISN Security Watch is in full swing. There is an effective late-night curfew in huge swaths of Tehran; internet and mobile phone service work intermittently or not at all; and there is 100 percent censorship on the press and the web services.
Predictably, the massive display of force has snuffed out the public protests for now. But, unbeknownst to the world, a second conflict, no less intense, is now raging behind the scenes, one for which, Khamenei’s iron fist is of little use.
Here, Iran’s main factions and power centers are furiously lobbying, jockeying and regrouping for a battle royale. Although pervasive censorship makes it impossible to analyze the more subtle developments underway, three main force constellations seem to have emerged so far whose machinations and maneuverings will alter the future face of the Islamic Republic. (The reformists, though enormously popular are not a party to this struggle).
Power centers
The first power center is that of Khamenei and his allies in the security establishment, state and para-statal institutions, and the clergy.
The second power center is that of Hashemi Rafsanjani. He has top-level supporters interspersed in several important institutions and organs. Admittedly, these are currently a rather diffuse and unorganized entity, but due to Rafsanjani’s remarkable acumen and his unmatched leadership skills, he should be considered a major force unto himself.
Third, a new force constellation has emerged in the last few days, one navigating between the two other poles, which may end up playing a decisive role in the coming battles. They consist of independent or rightist politicians opposed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, influential figures in the economy, the polity and the armed forces, and the so-called traditionalist clergy. The latter should be seen as the real power base of this group as well as its main source of legitimacy. For instance, as of this date, none of the major Grand Ayatollahs of the holy city of Qum has congratulated Ahmadinejad for his electoral victory, effectively not recognizing the outcome of the election as legitimate.
It is not clear what coherent strategy, structural form, or platforms this pole would end up adopting, but an evident need to save the Islamic state from destruction and the desire to distinguish themselves from the other poles is bringing these disparate forces and individuals together.
The Larijani clan
According to a well-connected cleric who spoke to ISN Security Watch on the condition of anonymity, the individuals most prominent within this grouping are from the Larijani clan. They are scions of prominent clerical families that constitute today’s clerical aristocracy.
Former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani is the present speaker of the parliament. His brother, Mohammad Javad, is a major rightist strategist. Their other brother, Sadegh, who is a cleric, is one of the 12 jurists on the powerful Council of Guardians (before the recent events, he was touted as the most likely candidate to take the place of the outgoing Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Shahroodi). Ahmad Tavakoli, a major star in the Iranian firmament, is a cousin of the Larijanis. Ali Motahari, the son of the venerable slain ideologue of the Iranian revolution and a major rightist thinker, is an in-law (their kids have married) of Ali Larijani.
Together, these men are the political center of this emerging force with one foot supported by the traditionalist clerical circles and another reinforced by moderate conservative elements. For example, before joining the parliament last fall, Ali Larijani ran from Qum, where he had secured the endorsement of the high clergy.
Mohsen Rezai, one of the three presidential candidates who has run against Ahmadinejad is politically very close to Larijani. Last May, Ali Motahari, the son of the late Ayatollah Mortega Motahari, shocked the hard-liners by breaking with Ahmadinejad and officially endorsing Rezai’s candidacy. Motahari had long been assumed to be an Ahmadinejad loyalist. He had been a major player in the right-wing circles for as long as anyone could remember. He was even a regular visitor to Khamenei’s house in downtown Tehran.
Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is yet another major figure in this force field. Ghalibaf’s presidential ambitions are well-known. He even had put together an embryo of an electoral political machine before being told about Khamenei’s preferences.
At present, the Third Force is bolstering itself by making concerted attacks on the positions of both Mousavi and Khamenei camps (it is not clear how it is undermining Rafsanjani’s). For instance, Larijani has made several trenchant criticisms of the Khamenei-allied agencies like the Interior Ministry and the national broadcasting company; he has visited some of the injured in the hospital; and formed a parliamentary commission that took the Khamenei-allied vigilante groups to task for attacking student dormitories a few days ago. These moves by Larijani have raised the ire of the hardliners.
On 24 June, hard-line deputies announced a plan to impeach Larijani in the parliament; an effort that would only increase his popularity.
The cleric speaking to ISN Security Watch is of the opinion that Sadegh Larijani is probably behind the reporting by the Guardian Council of some of the election-related discrepancies that have clearly embarrassed the Supreme Leader. Among these is the fact that in over 50 cities, there were participation rates of over 100 percent reported; or that a large part of the 3 million votes examined may have been tinkered with. Khamenei has so far on two separate occasions - on 24 June and 19 June -effectively ruled out large-scale rigging.
Mortal danger to regime
While the Third Force’s criticisms of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are generally restrained and subtle, their attacks on presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi are direct and unapologetic. That is because, Mousavi’s Green Wave movement, if unchecked, poses a mortal danger to the undemocratic nature of the Islamic regime from which all the Third Force activities have hailed.
For instance, it is inconceivable that any of the present MPs, including Larijani, could have been elected in an open, democratic contest.
Aside from this, taking on Khamenei explicitly is not easy and has its own pitfalls. After all, he is still a spiritual leader to millions of Iranians.
These days, the press and national broadcasting are filled with one-sided attacks on Mousavi and his supporters. He is routinely accused of anything from betraying the values of the Islamic Republic, to undermining national security to consorting with the enemy. This doesn’t displease the Third Force leaders.
On 22 June, Mohammad Javad Larijani appeared on TV in person and used the entire one-hour airtime to level vicious attacks on Mousavi. Moreover, all the leaders of the Third Force daily call Mousavi’s tactics illegal and outside the pale, his supports rioters and arsonists.
While it is too early at this stage to foresee with any certainty the outcome of the present struggle, or to pass judgment on the future of the Green Wave, there is no doubt that the events of the last three weeks have created a seismic shift in Iranian politics.
Kamal Nazer Yasin is the pseudonym of an Iranian journalist reporting for ISN Security Watch from Tehran.
While it’s too early to predict the outcome of the current struggle for power in Iran, the battle is clearly one of seismic proportions and the emergence of a Third Force is stirring things up, Kamal Nazer Yasin writes for ISN Security Watch.
By Kamal Nazer Yasin in Tehran for ISN Security Watch
As expected, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s vow to violently crush Iran’s nascent democratic movement has been successful so far. On 20 June, the full panoply of repressive forces at the disposal of the Iranian state - other than the military, that is - were deployed against the fewer than 3,000 demonstrators congregated in downtown Tehran. The outcome seemed pre-ordained.
These forces consisted of contingents from the Basij militia, Revolutionary Guards (RGCI), regular police, anti-riot units, the Ministry of Intelligence and armed vigilantes, around half of whom were brought in from other regions.
As ISN Security Watch reported earlier, the RGCI is now in charge of the overall security for Greater Tehran, which means it is the first time since the early 1980s that the RGCI has been deployed in urban areas.
The “soft coup" reported by the ISN Security Watch is in full swing. There is an effective late-night curfew in huge swaths of Tehran; internet and mobile phone service work intermittently or not at all; and there is 100 percent censorship on the press and the web services.
Predictably, the massive display of force has snuffed out the public protests for now. But, unbeknownst to the world, a second conflict, no less intense, is now raging behind the scenes, one for which, Khamenei’s iron fist is of little use.
Here, Iran’s main factions and power centers are furiously lobbying, jockeying and regrouping for a battle royale. Although pervasive censorship makes it impossible to analyze the more subtle developments underway, three main force constellations seem to have emerged so far whose machinations and maneuverings will alter the future face of the Islamic Republic. (The reformists, though enormously popular are not a party to this struggle).
Power centers
The first power center is that of Khamenei and his allies in the security establishment, state and para-statal institutions, and the clergy.
The second power center is that of Hashemi Rafsanjani. He has top-level supporters interspersed in several important institutions and organs. Admittedly, these are currently a rather diffuse and unorganized entity, but due to Rafsanjani’s remarkable acumen and his unmatched leadership skills, he should be considered a major force unto himself.
Third, a new force constellation has emerged in the last few days, one navigating between the two other poles, which may end up playing a decisive role in the coming battles. They consist of independent or rightist politicians opposed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, influential figures in the economy, the polity and the armed forces, and the so-called traditionalist clergy. The latter should be seen as the real power base of this group as well as its main source of legitimacy. For instance, as of this date, none of the major Grand Ayatollahs of the holy city of Qum has congratulated Ahmadinejad for his electoral victory, effectively not recognizing the outcome of the election as legitimate.
It is not clear what coherent strategy, structural form, or platforms this pole would end up adopting, but an evident need to save the Islamic state from destruction and the desire to distinguish themselves from the other poles is bringing these disparate forces and individuals together.
The Larijani clan
According to a well-connected cleric who spoke to ISN Security Watch on the condition of anonymity, the individuals most prominent within this grouping are from the Larijani clan. They are scions of prominent clerical families that constitute today’s clerical aristocracy.
Former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani is the present speaker of the parliament. His brother, Mohammad Javad, is a major rightist strategist. Their other brother, Sadegh, who is a cleric, is one of the 12 jurists on the powerful Council of Guardians (before the recent events, he was touted as the most likely candidate to take the place of the outgoing Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Shahroodi). Ahmad Tavakoli, a major star in the Iranian firmament, is a cousin of the Larijanis. Ali Motahari, the son of the venerable slain ideologue of the Iranian revolution and a major rightist thinker, is an in-law (their kids have married) of Ali Larijani.
Together, these men are the political center of this emerging force with one foot supported by the traditionalist clerical circles and another reinforced by moderate conservative elements. For example, before joining the parliament last fall, Ali Larijani ran from Qum, where he had secured the endorsement of the high clergy.
Mohsen Rezai, one of the three presidential candidates who has run against Ahmadinejad is politically very close to Larijani. Last May, Ali Motahari, the son of the late Ayatollah Mortega Motahari, shocked the hard-liners by breaking with Ahmadinejad and officially endorsing Rezai’s candidacy. Motahari had long been assumed to be an Ahmadinejad loyalist. He had been a major player in the right-wing circles for as long as anyone could remember. He was even a regular visitor to Khamenei’s house in downtown Tehran.
Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is yet another major figure in this force field. Ghalibaf’s presidential ambitions are well-known. He even had put together an embryo of an electoral political machine before being told about Khamenei’s preferences.
At present, the Third Force is bolstering itself by making concerted attacks on the positions of both Mousavi and Khamenei camps (it is not clear how it is undermining Rafsanjani’s). For instance, Larijani has made several trenchant criticisms of the Khamenei-allied agencies like the Interior Ministry and the national broadcasting company; he has visited some of the injured in the hospital; and formed a parliamentary commission that took the Khamenei-allied vigilante groups to task for attacking student dormitories a few days ago. These moves by Larijani have raised the ire of the hardliners.
On 24 June, hard-line deputies announced a plan to impeach Larijani in the parliament; an effort that would only increase his popularity.
The cleric speaking to ISN Security Watch is of the opinion that Sadegh Larijani is probably behind the reporting by the Guardian Council of some of the election-related discrepancies that have clearly embarrassed the Supreme Leader. Among these is the fact that in over 50 cities, there were participation rates of over 100 percent reported; or that a large part of the 3 million votes examined may have been tinkered with. Khamenei has so far on two separate occasions - on 24 June and 19 June -effectively ruled out large-scale rigging.
Mortal danger to regime
While the Third Force’s criticisms of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are generally restrained and subtle, their attacks on presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi are direct and unapologetic. That is because, Mousavi’s Green Wave movement, if unchecked, poses a mortal danger to the undemocratic nature of the Islamic regime from which all the Third Force activities have hailed.
For instance, it is inconceivable that any of the present MPs, including Larijani, could have been elected in an open, democratic contest.
Aside from this, taking on Khamenei explicitly is not easy and has its own pitfalls. After all, he is still a spiritual leader to millions of Iranians.
These days, the press and national broadcasting are filled with one-sided attacks on Mousavi and his supporters. He is routinely accused of anything from betraying the values of the Islamic Republic, to undermining national security to consorting with the enemy. This doesn’t displease the Third Force leaders.
On 22 June, Mohammad Javad Larijani appeared on TV in person and used the entire one-hour airtime to level vicious attacks on Mousavi. Moreover, all the leaders of the Third Force daily call Mousavi’s tactics illegal and outside the pale, his supports rioters and arsonists.
While it is too early at this stage to foresee with any certainty the outcome of the present struggle, or to pass judgment on the future of the Green Wave, there is no doubt that the events of the last three weeks have created a seismic shift in Iranian politics.
Kamal Nazer Yasin is the pseudonym of an Iranian journalist reporting for ISN Security Watch from Tehran.
Gazprom: no reason to panic
16:2726/06/2009
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti economic commentator Oleg Mityayev) - The economic downturn has hurt both the price and the volume of the natural gas Russia exports to Western Europe.
However, some analysts attribute the drop in Russian gas exports to another major reason, Gazprom's inflexible pricing policy, which could eventually lose the gas monopoly its European customers. However, officials at Gazprom do not plan a policy change. Neither do they see any reason to panic.
Deputy Energy Minister Sergei Kudryashov said on June 23 one of the problems with Russian gas exports was the lack of flexibility in liberalized European markets when the competition grows fierce. By Kudryashov's estimate, demand for gas in Europe dropped by a mere 5% in the first quarter, while Russian exports plummeted by nearly 60%.
It transpires that, along with the shortfall in earnings, the key Russian gas exporter lost part of its control of the European gas market to competitors.
The next day, June 24, Gazprom's Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev did his best to rebut criticism of the monopoly's export policy. He admitted that supplies to Europe at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 were cut for reasons beyond their control.
Gazprom's relations with foreign customers are regulated by long-term contracts, where quarterly price adjustments are based on European petroleum prices six to nine months before. In the first half of 2008, oil reached a peak, gas prices also peaked, and so after the relevant time lag, prices reached $500 per 1,000 cubic meters in the forth quarter. The price remained high in early 2009.
That is why Europeans drew more heavily on their underground gas storage tanks. In Medvedev's estimates, they increased the use of previously accumulated fuel by 65% in the first quarter. This move naturally affected Gazprom's earnings along with other gas suppliers, Nigeria and Algeria, but benefited Norway which trades on the spot market for gas, where deals take immediate effect. In addition, Norway then commissioned a huge gas deposit, Ormen Lange.
The Russian-Ukrainian gas conflict also seriously harmed Russia's supplies to Europe, resulting in a 4.5 billion cubic meter shortfall for European consumers.
Nevertheless, Medvedev does not believe Gazprom is losing its grip on the European gas market (of which the Russian monopoly has controlled a quarter until recently), and sees no point in abandoning the existing pricing or contract policy.
Europeans began increasing purchases from Gazprom in April as they needed to refill their storage tanks. Gazprom's prices have stabilized at a fairly acceptable level. The Russian monopoly's latest estimate says the average price for Europe will exceed $280 this year, the same as other suppliers'.
This is why Gazprom pays no attention to advice about adding flexibility to its pricing policy, even though the monopoly potentially has a system of discounts.
Gazprom is not planning to abandon the long-term contract practice. The management board believes this system suits both the monopoly and its customers, supporting stable operation both at price peaks and during lows. Only the gas export problems in late 2008 and early 2009 might refute this last statement.
In Gazprom's latest estimates, its exports beyond the CIS will drop by 10.5% this year, to 142.1 billion cubic meters (26% in the first half of 2009). The company will see a 38.5% decrease in export earnings, to $40 billion. Medvedev admitted that the monopoly would have to revise its investment plans for this year.
Gazprom's plummeting income could prod the company to searching for more borrowed resources and lobbying for further domestic gas price increases. On the other hand, gas exports may stabilize in 2010, and Gazprom's profits will grow again.
Meanwhile, the state gas monopoly is making ambitious plans as usual, including the Nord Stream and South Stream pipeline projects in Europe. Neither has it lost the hope of reaching a few remote corners of the world. Medvedev confirmed Gazprom's plans to operate in Alaska and Nigeria.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti economic commentator Oleg Mityayev) - The economic downturn has hurt both the price and the volume of the natural gas Russia exports to Western Europe.
However, some analysts attribute the drop in Russian gas exports to another major reason, Gazprom's inflexible pricing policy, which could eventually lose the gas monopoly its European customers. However, officials at Gazprom do not plan a policy change. Neither do they see any reason to panic.
Deputy Energy Minister Sergei Kudryashov said on June 23 one of the problems with Russian gas exports was the lack of flexibility in liberalized European markets when the competition grows fierce. By Kudryashov's estimate, demand for gas in Europe dropped by a mere 5% in the first quarter, while Russian exports plummeted by nearly 60%.
It transpires that, along with the shortfall in earnings, the key Russian gas exporter lost part of its control of the European gas market to competitors.
The next day, June 24, Gazprom's Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev did his best to rebut criticism of the monopoly's export policy. He admitted that supplies to Europe at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 were cut for reasons beyond their control.
Gazprom's relations with foreign customers are regulated by long-term contracts, where quarterly price adjustments are based on European petroleum prices six to nine months before. In the first half of 2008, oil reached a peak, gas prices also peaked, and so after the relevant time lag, prices reached $500 per 1,000 cubic meters in the forth quarter. The price remained high in early 2009.
That is why Europeans drew more heavily on their underground gas storage tanks. In Medvedev's estimates, they increased the use of previously accumulated fuel by 65% in the first quarter. This move naturally affected Gazprom's earnings along with other gas suppliers, Nigeria and Algeria, but benefited Norway which trades on the spot market for gas, where deals take immediate effect. In addition, Norway then commissioned a huge gas deposit, Ormen Lange.
The Russian-Ukrainian gas conflict also seriously harmed Russia's supplies to Europe, resulting in a 4.5 billion cubic meter shortfall for European consumers.
Nevertheless, Medvedev does not believe Gazprom is losing its grip on the European gas market (of which the Russian monopoly has controlled a quarter until recently), and sees no point in abandoning the existing pricing or contract policy.
Europeans began increasing purchases from Gazprom in April as they needed to refill their storage tanks. Gazprom's prices have stabilized at a fairly acceptable level. The Russian monopoly's latest estimate says the average price for Europe will exceed $280 this year, the same as other suppliers'.
This is why Gazprom pays no attention to advice about adding flexibility to its pricing policy, even though the monopoly potentially has a system of discounts.
Gazprom is not planning to abandon the long-term contract practice. The management board believes this system suits both the monopoly and its customers, supporting stable operation both at price peaks and during lows. Only the gas export problems in late 2008 and early 2009 might refute this last statement.
In Gazprom's latest estimates, its exports beyond the CIS will drop by 10.5% this year, to 142.1 billion cubic meters (26% in the first half of 2009). The company will see a 38.5% decrease in export earnings, to $40 billion. Medvedev admitted that the monopoly would have to revise its investment plans for this year.
Gazprom's plummeting income could prod the company to searching for more borrowed resources and lobbying for further domestic gas price increases. On the other hand, gas exports may stabilize in 2010, and Gazprom's profits will grow again.
Meanwhile, the state gas monopoly is making ambitious plans as usual, including the Nord Stream and South Stream pipeline projects in Europe. Neither has it lost the hope of reaching a few remote corners of the world. Medvedev confirmed Gazprom's plans to operate in Alaska and Nigeria.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
BALOCHISTAN: Memories of another day
The 1973-77 struggle for rights had proved to the Baloch people, and to the world, that the struggle for their rights could bear fruit with tenacious dedication and perseverance. The Baloch have not been cowed down by the ever-increasing presence of the army and have stood up for their rights, which no government here is ready to concede or even listen to. The Baloch have resorted to the use of arms only because their rights have been trampled upon and all other avenues of redress have been blocked.
by Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
The Baloch resistance to the unwarranted and unjust military operations, after the equally illegal and unfair dismissal of Sardar Ataullah Mengal’s government in February 1973, only 10 months after being sworn in, was the most protracted, pervasive and forceful struggle which demonstrated the determination and resilience of the Baloch when faced with overwhelming odds.
The Mengal government was sworn in on May 1, 1972 amid hope and expectations, but from the first day, the Federal government created hurdles and problems. The Federal government among other things created a law and order situation in Lasbela by making supporters of Jam Ghulam Qadir take up arms against the provincial government alleging persecution. Mengal government had to raise a Levies force to quell the trouble as Federal government refused to send help. Jam Ghulam Qadir, the Jam of Lasbela, later became the Chief Minister after Mengal government dismissal.
At a public meeting in Lahore, Akbar Bugti claimed that a plan for a ‘Greater Balochistan’ had been hatched. The Greater Balochistan Plan envisaged independence of Baloch majority areas in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan through military means. The issue of sending Punjabi officers to serve in Balochistan also became a sore point, though later, it emerged that Ghulam Mustafa Khar, then governor of Punjab, had encouraged the officers to return. Iran too was unhappy with even nominal autonomy to Baloch fearing similar demands from Baloch within its borders.
The final straw was the charade of discovery of arms at the residence of Nasir Al-Saud the military attaché of Iraqi embassy in Islamabad on February 10 1973. Interestingly he had disappeared from Pakistan three days before the exposure. He was later executed by Saddam for being a Savak agent. The Mengal government was dismissed on February 13 and in its wake, the Mufti Mahmood government in the NWFP also resigned in protest against the dismissal because JUI members were part of Mengal government. Akbar Bugti was made the governor and continued for nearly a year.
Incidentally, Mir Rasool Baksh Talpur my paternal uncle, then Governor of Sindh, also resigned because his elder brother Mir Ali Ahmed Talpur, my father, was accused of involvement in the Iraq Embassy arms affair. He was accused because by now it was known that I was in the Marri area that too thanks to Akbar Bugti who had disclosed it to the press.
The dismissal of a government, which the people considered their true representative, was enough to make the people rise up to defend their rights and fight against the injustice. At its helm were people like Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, Sardar Ataullah Khan Mengal, Mir Gul Khan Naseer, Khair Bakhsh Khan Marri, who headed the National Awami Party (NAP) and others who had suffered imprisonment and restrictions on their movement since 1947 for their views regarding rights of the Baloch.
While Sher Mohammad Marri was arrested in March 73 the above mentioned leaders were arrested on 15th August soon after the promulgation of 1973 Constitution. Nawab Khair Baksh and Mir Ali Ahmed Talpur were notable exceptions to the signing of 1973 constitution.
The hostilities didn’t break out immediately. While the Baloch people waited in vain for a resolution of the dispute, the government was busy blockading the Marri and Mengal areas, the hot spots of the previous resistance. They slowly tightened the noose, to the extent that people living in the Marri area faced extreme hardships just to procure basic rations.
Once, our small group had to survive for a few days on flour which had become quite inedible. Our group consisted of three Marri tribesmen a friend from city whose name need not be divulged and me. Our group was basically a support group which carried medicine and some extra rations on two or three donkeys. I knew a little about treating diseases, something that I had learnt while in Sindh.
On May 18, 1973 an eight-man patrol of Sibi Scouts was ambushed and killed near Tandoori. No one knows who was responsible but within three days, a military operation was launched with helicopters ferrying troops to Mawand, a small town in the Marri area. A fortnight later, a pre-dawn capture of Kahan ensued in a similar manner. I remember the day well. We had woken up and were having tea when the ominous sound of helicopters surprised us because it was not yet light. We saw some 15 helicopters with their blinking lights, flying towards Kahan. The offensive was intense and on a large-scale.
The resistance to the army began almost immediately and, contrary to the accusations that the Baloch struggle was foreign-funded, this struggle was the result of the blatant violation of Baloch rights. The arms used by the Baloch fighters were either .303 rifles made in Darra, old Lee Enfield single-shot rifles or hunting rifles. The only automatic, if it could be given that lofty status, was a 9mm sten gun which, more often than not, jammed after a few rounds.
The only advantage that the Marri fighters enjoyed was their intimate knowledge of the terrain; they knew where the watering holes were or where the caves and gorges were. They carried flour in their pushti, a bed-sheet sized cloth, and water in a khalli, a small goat-skin bag, and survived on meagre rations.. This, combined with their determination, the Marris were a potent force. They would fight, disappear and later regroup at another place.
The Marri area is small, it is only 3,300 square miles and relatively easy to control, so it was to the credit of the Marri fighters that most of the action during this struggle took place in that area. According to journalist Selig Harrison, at one time 80,000 troops were deployed in the province.
The operations were relentless and caused immense disruption in the social and economic life of the people. They shifted to other towns and cities in Balochistan and Sindh. Eventually many had to migrate to Afghanistan. Those who migrated in winter suffered the loss of the young and old alike due to exposure to extreme cold and frostbite. And after moving there, life didn’t get any easier.
In September 1974, an army operation took place in Chamalang where 15000 Marris, including families, had amassed because traditionally Marri tribesmen took their flocks for grazing to that area. There the Army used artillery, Mirage and F-86 fighters, along with Huey Cobra helicopters manned by Iranian pilots against them. The Army claimed that 125 guerrillas were killed and 900 captured while the Baloch claimed that these figures are inflated and they killed 446 soldiers. Livestock numbering over 50000 heads and 550 camels were taken away and sold in Punjab. The army claimed it was a great success but, in fact, it was just a temporary setback to the Marri people because the fighting continued even after it.
We always moved in small groups to avoid detection. Our group consisted of five people, two donkeys which carried medicine and other such provisions and two goats which we kept for milk. It was Eid day in January 1974 and we were moving from Tadri towards a safer place. A few days earlier the army had had attacked a household where Tangav Ramkani a Marri tribesman of Mir Hazar Khan Ramkani's clan and his nephews, Jalamb and Karam were killed. It should be remembered that Mir Hazar Khan was the leader of insurgency in Marri area.
We had slept the night in the open as we always did and moved at dawn hoping to see some Marri household where we would bake bread with our flour rations. As we turned a mountain corner, we saw smoke which we understood was coming from a household. Apparently, the people living there had seen us from a distance and thinking we were the army, since we carried rifles, had moved away, because when we reached there, not a soul was present. Then we saw some people in the hills nearby and upon seeing that we weren’t from the army they shouted and asked us to stay and have food, but we didn’t want to embarrass them so we moved on. The incident shows the terror that the people lived in.
The missing person’s problem was equally acute and widespread then, as it is now. People were picked up on the slightest suspicion or were given away by some undercover agents who had infiltrated the Baloch ranks. Many disappeared without a trace; among them was Asadullah Mengal, son of Sardar Ataullah Khan Mengal, and Ahmed Shah Kurd, an intrepid activist. They were picked up in Karachi and never heard of again. Dulip/Johnny Dass was abducted along with Sher Ali Ramkani Marri, near Belpat, by an undercover agent and suffered the same fate. Shafi Mohammad Badani, Bahar Lalwani, Ali Dost Durkani and many others also disappeared.
Activists were picked up and tortured, as were many tribesmen. Some of them were later released, disabled permanently due to torture. It is noteworthy that it was during this period that the first ever jail break from Quetta Jail occurred. Fed up with the torture, four young activists made plans to escape and enlisted the support of some other prisoners who, although not willing to go through the risky exercise, promised that at the arranged time they would all put on the electric heaters to reduce the current passing through the wires on wall. So, according to the plan one climbed up and put a quilt on the wires and crossed over, the other two did the same but the fourth one gave up after hurting his leg. Minutes after they climbed over the wall, the alarm went off but they made good their escape.
Activists from other provinces who were involved in the struggle included Najam Sethi, Ahmed Rashid, Rashid Rahman, Asad Rahman, Dulip (Johnny) Dass, Mohammad Bhaba and me. Most of them were studying in London before they joined the Baloch national struggle and were also known as the London Group.
These activists were mainly involved in political work which included the printing and distribution of a clandestine newsletter named 'Jabal'. These activists were also involved in educating people and also in providing treatment to the people; the activists who were in the mountains lived in the same conditions as the common tribesmen lived.
There are conflicting claims regarding the casualties from the contending sides and though no confirmed figures exist, it is believed that during the conflict some 3000 soldiers and 5000 Baloch died but nothing can be said about the veracity of these figures as no attempt has been made by either side to collate the facts. Some of the prominent Baloch persons who were killed in action were Safar Khan Zarakzai in Jhalawan, Mir Laung Khan, a septuagenarian, the elder brother of Mir Gul Khan Naseer who died defending his village Mali and Jalat Khan Durkani. When Zia took over some 6000 Baloch who were held in different jails were released.
After Bhutto was ousted by Zia the Army activity nearly came to a standstill though minor clashes continued. The fact that Zia released the Baloch leaders, dismissed the Hyderabad Tribunal and declared amnesty for all took the steam out of the struggle. More importantly difference of opinion regarding the continuation and the mode of struggle emerged not only between the Pashtun and Baloch leadership of now defunct NAP but among the Baloch leaders themselves. Most of the Baloch leaders in exile in Kabul opted to return and only the Marris opted to stay there and they returned only after the fall of Najibullah government in 1992 as the fundamentalist leadership which replaced him was much indebted to Pakistan refused to support them.
The 1973-77 struggle for rights had proved to the Baloch people, and to the world, that the struggle for their rights could bear fruit with tenacious dedication and perseverance. The Baloch have not been cowed down by the ever-increasing presence of the army and have stood up for their rights, which no government here is ready to concede or even listen to. The Baloch have resorted to the use of arms only because their rights have been trampled upon and all other avenues of redress have been blocked.
Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
mmatalpur@gmail.com
Tando Mir Mahmood
Hyderabad, Sindh.
71000
by Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
The Baloch resistance to the unwarranted and unjust military operations, after the equally illegal and unfair dismissal of Sardar Ataullah Mengal’s government in February 1973, only 10 months after being sworn in, was the most protracted, pervasive and forceful struggle which demonstrated the determination and resilience of the Baloch when faced with overwhelming odds.
The Mengal government was sworn in on May 1, 1972 amid hope and expectations, but from the first day, the Federal government created hurdles and problems. The Federal government among other things created a law and order situation in Lasbela by making supporters of Jam Ghulam Qadir take up arms against the provincial government alleging persecution. Mengal government had to raise a Levies force to quell the trouble as Federal government refused to send help. Jam Ghulam Qadir, the Jam of Lasbela, later became the Chief Minister after Mengal government dismissal.
At a public meeting in Lahore, Akbar Bugti claimed that a plan for a ‘Greater Balochistan’ had been hatched. The Greater Balochistan Plan envisaged independence of Baloch majority areas in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan through military means. The issue of sending Punjabi officers to serve in Balochistan also became a sore point, though later, it emerged that Ghulam Mustafa Khar, then governor of Punjab, had encouraged the officers to return. Iran too was unhappy with even nominal autonomy to Baloch fearing similar demands from Baloch within its borders.
The final straw was the charade of discovery of arms at the residence of Nasir Al-Saud the military attaché of Iraqi embassy in Islamabad on February 10 1973. Interestingly he had disappeared from Pakistan three days before the exposure. He was later executed by Saddam for being a Savak agent. The Mengal government was dismissed on February 13 and in its wake, the Mufti Mahmood government in the NWFP also resigned in protest against the dismissal because JUI members were part of Mengal government. Akbar Bugti was made the governor and continued for nearly a year.
Incidentally, Mir Rasool Baksh Talpur my paternal uncle, then Governor of Sindh, also resigned because his elder brother Mir Ali Ahmed Talpur, my father, was accused of involvement in the Iraq Embassy arms affair. He was accused because by now it was known that I was in the Marri area that too thanks to Akbar Bugti who had disclosed it to the press.
The dismissal of a government, which the people considered their true representative, was enough to make the people rise up to defend their rights and fight against the injustice. At its helm were people like Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, Sardar Ataullah Khan Mengal, Mir Gul Khan Naseer, Khair Bakhsh Khan Marri, who headed the National Awami Party (NAP) and others who had suffered imprisonment and restrictions on their movement since 1947 for their views regarding rights of the Baloch.
While Sher Mohammad Marri was arrested in March 73 the above mentioned leaders were arrested on 15th August soon after the promulgation of 1973 Constitution. Nawab Khair Baksh and Mir Ali Ahmed Talpur were notable exceptions to the signing of 1973 constitution.
The hostilities didn’t break out immediately. While the Baloch people waited in vain for a resolution of the dispute, the government was busy blockading the Marri and Mengal areas, the hot spots of the previous resistance. They slowly tightened the noose, to the extent that people living in the Marri area faced extreme hardships just to procure basic rations.
Once, our small group had to survive for a few days on flour which had become quite inedible. Our group consisted of three Marri tribesmen a friend from city whose name need not be divulged and me. Our group was basically a support group which carried medicine and some extra rations on two or three donkeys. I knew a little about treating diseases, something that I had learnt while in Sindh.
On May 18, 1973 an eight-man patrol of Sibi Scouts was ambushed and killed near Tandoori. No one knows who was responsible but within three days, a military operation was launched with helicopters ferrying troops to Mawand, a small town in the Marri area. A fortnight later, a pre-dawn capture of Kahan ensued in a similar manner. I remember the day well. We had woken up and were having tea when the ominous sound of helicopters surprised us because it was not yet light. We saw some 15 helicopters with their blinking lights, flying towards Kahan. The offensive was intense and on a large-scale.
The resistance to the army began almost immediately and, contrary to the accusations that the Baloch struggle was foreign-funded, this struggle was the result of the blatant violation of Baloch rights. The arms used by the Baloch fighters were either .303 rifles made in Darra, old Lee Enfield single-shot rifles or hunting rifles. The only automatic, if it could be given that lofty status, was a 9mm sten gun which, more often than not, jammed after a few rounds.
The only advantage that the Marri fighters enjoyed was their intimate knowledge of the terrain; they knew where the watering holes were or where the caves and gorges were. They carried flour in their pushti, a bed-sheet sized cloth, and water in a khalli, a small goat-skin bag, and survived on meagre rations.. This, combined with their determination, the Marris were a potent force. They would fight, disappear and later regroup at another place.
The Marri area is small, it is only 3,300 square miles and relatively easy to control, so it was to the credit of the Marri fighters that most of the action during this struggle took place in that area. According to journalist Selig Harrison, at one time 80,000 troops were deployed in the province.
The operations were relentless and caused immense disruption in the social and economic life of the people. They shifted to other towns and cities in Balochistan and Sindh. Eventually many had to migrate to Afghanistan. Those who migrated in winter suffered the loss of the young and old alike due to exposure to extreme cold and frostbite. And after moving there, life didn’t get any easier.
In September 1974, an army operation took place in Chamalang where 15000 Marris, including families, had amassed because traditionally Marri tribesmen took their flocks for grazing to that area. There the Army used artillery, Mirage and F-86 fighters, along with Huey Cobra helicopters manned by Iranian pilots against them. The Army claimed that 125 guerrillas were killed and 900 captured while the Baloch claimed that these figures are inflated and they killed 446 soldiers. Livestock numbering over 50000 heads and 550 camels were taken away and sold in Punjab. The army claimed it was a great success but, in fact, it was just a temporary setback to the Marri people because the fighting continued even after it.
We always moved in small groups to avoid detection. Our group consisted of five people, two donkeys which carried medicine and other such provisions and two goats which we kept for milk. It was Eid day in January 1974 and we were moving from Tadri towards a safer place. A few days earlier the army had had attacked a household where Tangav Ramkani a Marri tribesman of Mir Hazar Khan Ramkani's clan and his nephews, Jalamb and Karam were killed. It should be remembered that Mir Hazar Khan was the leader of insurgency in Marri area.
We had slept the night in the open as we always did and moved at dawn hoping to see some Marri household where we would bake bread with our flour rations. As we turned a mountain corner, we saw smoke which we understood was coming from a household. Apparently, the people living there had seen us from a distance and thinking we were the army, since we carried rifles, had moved away, because when we reached there, not a soul was present. Then we saw some people in the hills nearby and upon seeing that we weren’t from the army they shouted and asked us to stay and have food, but we didn’t want to embarrass them so we moved on. The incident shows the terror that the people lived in.
The missing person’s problem was equally acute and widespread then, as it is now. People were picked up on the slightest suspicion or were given away by some undercover agents who had infiltrated the Baloch ranks. Many disappeared without a trace; among them was Asadullah Mengal, son of Sardar Ataullah Khan Mengal, and Ahmed Shah Kurd, an intrepid activist. They were picked up in Karachi and never heard of again. Dulip/Johnny Dass was abducted along with Sher Ali Ramkani Marri, near Belpat, by an undercover agent and suffered the same fate. Shafi Mohammad Badani, Bahar Lalwani, Ali Dost Durkani and many others also disappeared.
Activists were picked up and tortured, as were many tribesmen. Some of them were later released, disabled permanently due to torture. It is noteworthy that it was during this period that the first ever jail break from Quetta Jail occurred. Fed up with the torture, four young activists made plans to escape and enlisted the support of some other prisoners who, although not willing to go through the risky exercise, promised that at the arranged time they would all put on the electric heaters to reduce the current passing through the wires on wall. So, according to the plan one climbed up and put a quilt on the wires and crossed over, the other two did the same but the fourth one gave up after hurting his leg. Minutes after they climbed over the wall, the alarm went off but they made good their escape.
Activists from other provinces who were involved in the struggle included Najam Sethi, Ahmed Rashid, Rashid Rahman, Asad Rahman, Dulip (Johnny) Dass, Mohammad Bhaba and me. Most of them were studying in London before they joined the Baloch national struggle and were also known as the London Group.
These activists were mainly involved in political work which included the printing and distribution of a clandestine newsletter named 'Jabal'. These activists were also involved in educating people and also in providing treatment to the people; the activists who were in the mountains lived in the same conditions as the common tribesmen lived.
There are conflicting claims regarding the casualties from the contending sides and though no confirmed figures exist, it is believed that during the conflict some 3000 soldiers and 5000 Baloch died but nothing can be said about the veracity of these figures as no attempt has been made by either side to collate the facts. Some of the prominent Baloch persons who were killed in action were Safar Khan Zarakzai in Jhalawan, Mir Laung Khan, a septuagenarian, the elder brother of Mir Gul Khan Naseer who died defending his village Mali and Jalat Khan Durkani. When Zia took over some 6000 Baloch who were held in different jails were released.
After Bhutto was ousted by Zia the Army activity nearly came to a standstill though minor clashes continued. The fact that Zia released the Baloch leaders, dismissed the Hyderabad Tribunal and declared amnesty for all took the steam out of the struggle. More importantly difference of opinion regarding the continuation and the mode of struggle emerged not only between the Pashtun and Baloch leadership of now defunct NAP but among the Baloch leaders themselves. Most of the Baloch leaders in exile in Kabul opted to return and only the Marris opted to stay there and they returned only after the fall of Najibullah government in 1992 as the fundamentalist leadership which replaced him was much indebted to Pakistan refused to support them.
The 1973-77 struggle for rights had proved to the Baloch people, and to the world, that the struggle for their rights could bear fruit with tenacious dedication and perseverance. The Baloch have not been cowed down by the ever-increasing presence of the army and have stood up for their rights, which no government here is ready to concede or even listen to. The Baloch have resorted to the use of arms only because their rights have been trampled upon and all other avenues of redress have been blocked.
Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
mmatalpur@gmail.com
Tando Mir Mahmood
Hyderabad, Sindh.
71000
India’s trajectory to regional and global power: Risks, Obstacles and Strengths
By A. K. Verma
(This paper was prepared & published by Cenjows)
Many observers have commented that the 21st century belongs to India (and China). Since economics is increasingly becoming the currency of power this statement acknowledges the changing balance of power in the world and is a tribute to the growing economics muscles of India.
Since the 1990s India is on a new economic path. The forecast was that by 2020, its economy would treble and by 2050 it will leave US economy behind. That surely implies that India will by then be seated on the high table because with economic power will also come the political strengths. As a result courting of India by other powers has already begun.
Globalization, with new interconnectivity and fillip to trade through opening of markets, has brought new prosperity to India. Liberalization enabled India’s economic revolution to match the levels achieved by East Asian Tiger states.
The credit for the new economic momentum goes to Prime Minister PV Narsimha Rao. All subsequent Central Governments of India followed his lead. The years 2003-07 recorded a big surge in the economy which touched 9.4% of the GDP in 2006-07. Unfortunately, the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 in the US has initiated a world recession which will drop India’s growth during 2008-09 to 7% or nearabouts. India’s economic fundamentals are now very sound which should enable India to get back to her accelerated growth by 2010-11 at the latest. But for this hiccup, thanks to the financial breakthrough achieved in the previous five years, Indian economy was expected to double every eight years. At this rate India was destined to become the 5th largest consumer market in the world. India’s status then would not be high just in Asia, but in the entire world.
The drawback was that the new prosperity was not reaching all sections of people in India. The rich were becoming richer, the poor remaining poor. Inequality between the urban and rural areas was widening. It is also going to have a spatial north-south divide with southern states and west moving far ahead of the rest of the country causing an imbalance that may move people towards these regions. Social and political changes were not keeping pace with the economic growth. Estimates were that in 2004-05, 33.6% of people were living on less than $ 1 per day. The state continuously failed to deliver to the people on basic issues of health, education, employment and infrastructure. In a sense the economic miracle was also creating transformational disruption. Naxalism which started as a revolt against the state for its political and economic policies from a village called Naxalbari in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal in 1965 has spread to 16 states affecting more than 150 districts. Lobbying for power on the basis of caste has fragmented Indian politics.
The Indian growth story is, thus, not a smooth process. India’s future trajectory on the power graph will depend upon how the impediments to economic growth get removed and with what success. Apart from societal ones, the impediments lie scattered in several sectors notably governance and regulatory. Corruption has consistently remained one of the main causes for failure of delivery.
The Government, however, is doing its best to surmount these obstacles so that economic growth could be sustained at the levels already achieved and the nation building programs do not falter. There is a heavy accent on expansion of education and infrastructure. New job opportunities are being created and it is hoped that in time, more people, employed presently in agriculture and related activities which are poorly paid will be able to join industry and businesses. What has been done and achieved still remains miniscule in comparison with what needs or remains to be done but there is hope and confidence in the air that India is on the march ahead. With that India is acquiring a new vision of itself vis a vis the region and the world.
This vision while keeping national security at the top seeks to develop a cooperative and friendly attitude with all countries of the world. India has no hidden agenda but it is well aware that other nations may not feel equally benign towards it. Its nuclear program was designed to forestall any surprises from the neighborhood as well as to seek recognition that India is on its way to becoming a leading power of the world. Slowly, India is building a blue navy with aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines which signify a high military status. It has the fourth largest land army in the world. It has a powerful and advanced air fleet for defense. With its space and lunar programs and recent successful orbiting of the moon, it has sent a message that it is seriously developing its credentials as a global power. Its quest for permanent membership of UN Security Council is to get the world accept its status which demography and economic growth entitles it to. In the field of IT its unique and worldwide standing has already been accepted.
India has always wanted an important role in the world. When the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was mooted India was quick to join it hoping that promotion of trade, business and cultural interaction would bring harmony and raise living standards of the people in the region. But deeply held animosities within the region have come in the way of encouraging mutual dialogue beyond a threshold. In the meanwhile the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) had been established (1967) as a forum for dialogue to prevent the compromise of the members’ national interest by what appeared to be predatory powers in the neighborhood, China and Japan and across the Pacific, the USA. Regional togetherness has made ASEAN countries close knit. In 1993 a new entity, the Asean Regional forum (ARF) came into existence which includes India as a member. The purpose was to keep taking stock of security related issues of the region but the group has so far refrained from discussing any contentious issues. Yet another organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) came up in 2006, pointedly for looking into issues of regional terrorism and Islamic extremism. India has an observer status with SCO. East Asia Summit, set up in 2005, is the latest new entity with sixteen members including India. It’s not yet clear what East Asia Summit is set to achieve but one thing is clear: the emergence of these organizations signifies that the Asian countries increasingly feel the need for a collective identity to forge cooperative common policies which will keep in view the interests of each nation. In time it may lead to the constitution of an Asian Union on the lines of European Union but right now, given the mutual rivalries, fears and aspirations, the prospects are nowhere in sight. By being accorded a place in all these bodies, either as a member or observer, India’s role as a leader get fairly well established. A place in the East Asia Summit gives it a voice on affairs of the region.
India’s rise has attracted US attention, which consequent to the shift of economic and political power to Asia, is seeking to establish a new security architecture in Asia as well as the world. In the new geopolitical situation of today, US prowess remains supreme and is likely to remain so at least for 20 to 25 years more. And yet, emergence of prospective power centers principally in Asia and growth of Islamic terrorism makes it feel vulnerable, causing it to look for new friends.
In March 2005 the US announced that it welcomes and supports India’s growth to a great power status. US shift towards India represented a fundamental and strategic shift of an exceptional nature, soon confirmed through the civil nuclear agreement between the two countries whereby, without having to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, India was to be made eligible for supply of nuclear fuel and equipment to augment its civil nuclear energy resources. Another agreement in June 2005 provided for a joint defense framework which laid the foundation for a ten year project to promote a military relationship between the two countries.
The shift clearly signifies that the US was seeking India’s cooperation in dealing with a resurgent China which might challenge US's preeminence in Asia and the world in future at sometime. In US calculations India’s democratic system was a big plus point. Japan and other smaller countries of East Asia had a similar understanding which had led to India being welcomed to join East Asia Summit. Japan had been indifferent towards India earlier but is now seeking strategic cooperation, keeping in mind the historical bitterness with China. A new alliance of democracies seems to be in the offing between US, Japan, India and Australia that China perceives as targeting it directly. Already a joint naval exercise has been held between the navies of these countries and Singapore in the Bay of Bengal of 2007. However it is not easy to make a firm assessment about Japan’s commitment to India yet as its policiea have appeared wobbly at times.
However, coming together of US and India is just in the nature of a strategic partnership and is not a strategic alliance. Globalization has led to a great deal of economic interdependence with mutual trade and investments but relations between states will also simultaneously remain mutually competitive for access to resources from outside. Sometimes competition may bring forth a military threat, or geopolitical rivalry. In such times policy making becomes a complex exercise. The present tilt in US policy towards India is just a product of current circumstances of US. If the context changes, so can this tilt.
How true can this be is amply illustrated by the policies of US towards Pakistan. During the 1990s when the US desperately needed Pakistan to be on its side to prosecute the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, it completely closed its eyes to Pakistan’s proliferation of nuclear materials to North Korea, Libya and Iran. Though the US knew India to be the target of Pakistani nuclear weapons development program, it never shared any information about this program with India. More recently, Pakistan’s campaign of terror against India was never condemned by the US in terms that would have required Pakistan to change its ways. Taking all this into consideration, it would be wise to treat US’s current interest in India as arising out of compulsions of its own national interests and no more. Any power trajectory that India may aspire to build in future will have to be on its own, not on any closeness to US. US objectives to get India to cap, rollback and eliminate its nuclear weapons program will not be given up. US will mount pressures again the moment it judges it to be the right one.
The country which India has to be most wary about is China. It views India as a threat to its preeminence in Asia, which can engage in fierce competitions for scarce resources, political influences and friends. It will like to deny India strategic space in Asia, Africa and Latin America and to see India confined to South Asia as a regional power. In such a relationship some tension will always be present. As years pass by, tensions could rise. Another war, like 1962, may be unlikely but can not be ruled out altogether.
China is feverishly upgrading its military forces and space capabilities. In 2007 it surprised the world by shooting down a satellite with a missile. Its military budget of $ 45 b in 2007 was twice that of India and has for the past ten years been recording a double digit rise. Growing at this rate the Chinese armed forces will become a formidable machine. It is also developing a blue navy with nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers that will enable it to project power in distant seas like the Indian Ocean.
Specially worrisome to India is the ‘string of pearls’ it is creating all around the sub continental India, a deep sea port at Gwadar off Baluchistan coast in Pakistan, a road from Yunnan in China to Bay of Bengal, surveillance facilities in islands of Myanmar and ports in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. It has arms supply relationship with Nepal and Bangladesh.
The most damaging anti Indian action by China has been to setup Pakistan as its Israel. The Pakistani nuclear weapons program which is India specific was guided, nurtured, equipped and overseen by China. In 1990 it tested a Pakistani nuclear bomb at its test site in Lop Nor. China is unlikely to unravel the problems of borders in Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as it does not believe that a compromise will turn out to its advantage. It has gone back on an understanding that any border adjustment will not upset settled populations. The issues remain mired in procedures, far from substance. It may be noted that officially backed Chinese think tanks have even talk of retrieving Arunachal Pradesh by force. China had opposed India’s’ access to Nuclear Supply Group in 2008 until forced by the US. On the Mumbai terrorist carnage by Pakistan, its scholars and media, all state controlled, expressed doubts about Pakistani complicity, placed the blame on internal contradictions in India, and called it a major blow to India’s big power ambitions. Thrice China had blocked UN efforts to have Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Pakistani organization behind the outrage, declared an international terrorist organization in 2006.
Chinese antagonism against India emanates from its uneasiness about sturdy Tibetan nationalism and the fact that the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama has made India his home along with 1, 00,000 other Tibetans. China has taken great pains to pacify Tibet through development, colonization and redemarcating its borders with adjoining Chinese provinces. Tibet seems to be firmly under Chinese control but the religion based Tibetan identity is not dead nor the power of Buddhist monasteries in Tibet to serve as magnetic centers for mobilization. Choosing a successor to Dalai Lama on his death can prove to be an explosive event. The Tibetans would want to make the choice themselves but the Chinese government is unlikely to grant this privilege to them. If civil commotions break out in Tibet over this issue that find an echo in the diaspora abroad, relations between China and India can nosedive.
Relationship with Pakistan belongs altogether to a different category: intensely problematic. It has been so from day one when Pakistan came into existence. The problem began with Pakistani covetousness for the J&K state. Four wars have been fought between the two countries and a proxy war continues. Single minded antagonism to India led to the emergence of the Pakistani nuclear program. The Pakistani Establishment has been itching to employ the arsenal on India. There have been four occasions in the past when they come close to it US discovery of their intentions thwarted them the last three times.
The first time was in 1982-83 when Pakistan suspected that India, aided by Israel, was planning to bomb out Kahuta where the Pakistani nuclear weapons program was taking shape. The last three were linked to Indian Brasstracks exercise in 1987, commencement of Pakistani inspired insurgency in J&K state (1990) and Kargil (1999).
Meanwhile, new developments have occurred which have altered Pakistan’s strategic objectives. The Pakistani state has greatly weakened and grown unstable. A good part of its North Western region has become Talibanised. Sizeable sections of the security establishment including its intelligence and paramilitary forces subscribe to the Islamist ideology. It is an easy transformation from Islamism to Jihadism. As Talibanisation creeps into the hinterland and nearer Islamabad and Rawalpindi the probability of the security establishment donning the colours of Jihadism becomes somewhat real.
The Jihadi aim is to set up India as an Islamic Caliphate. They count on Islamic injunctions to assume, not proven so far, that large sections of Indian Muslims will aid and support them.
Such designs and the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan, make it today the most dangerous spot in the world. If another 9/11 hits the US, most western intelligence believe the source would be Pakistan which has provided refuge to the Al Qaeda leadership. Pakistani duplicity of masquerading as a US ally in the fight against international terror while giving covert support to Talibans in Afghanistan against the US stands exposed. The US has now warned Pakistan that if does not move against the Al Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan, its ground forces will enter Pakistan to finish the job themselves. Such an event if it occurs will exacerbate tensions between Muslims and non Muslims all over the world. A collapsed Pakistan may be good for India but India may face unpredictable consequences.
Japan is another country to watch. The three greats in Asia in times ahead will be China, Japan and India, each engaged in a furious economic competition with the other two. But while Japan is unlikely to cease regarding China as an abiding threat for reasons of history and quarrels over territory in East China Sea, its attitude towards India is changing from indifference to active strategic cooperation. The largest quantity of Japanese aid now flows to India not China. In the new balance of power politics in Asia, the Japanese support will be a plus factor for India provided one can count on it.
India’s relationship with most of its immediate neighbors has not been happy. This includes besides Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Part of the reason is India’s size as compared to that of the neighbors, which gives rise to misplaced suspicions of hegemonism. In response, neighbors have permitted or promoted terror against India and given shelter to leaders of insurgencies fighting India. Such an environment allows easy access to Chinese interests into these countries. Lack of mutual trust becomes a cause for impeding growth of economic and trade relations. In the Saarc region, India’s trade with its neighbors is no more than 3%. Perhaps Saarc has no future and our best hope may be to revert back to bilateral relations selectively.
Thus, there are multiple challenges for India in its neighborhood. The way to deal with Myanmar will be not to waste too much time on the character of its Government which is authoritarian and undemocratic but to concentrate on trade and economic relations which should include investments and aid to development. In Bangladesh a new window of opportunity has opened up with Hasina, the recently elected new Prime Minister who has already indicated a firm resolve to eradicate terrorism from its soil. Bangladeshi infiltration into India poses another primary security problem. Bangladesh is also a land of grinding poverty. Indian attitudes need to be governed both by compassion and concerns for national security. Nepal has just run through cataclysmic changes with internal stability still elusive but Nepalese Maoists have definitely chosen to be embourgeoised. A new chapter is waiting to be opened in Indo Nepal relationship which can heal existential animosities and suspicions. The new relationship should abjure the military dimension and be predicated entirely on how economic and cultural benefits can be secured for both the countries. The Nepalese Maoists have generally kept themselves away from the Indian Maoists with the latter considering the former revisionists. It is unlikely that the Nepalese Maoists will aid their Indian counterparts against Indian interests. Sri Lanka appears to have succeeded in destroying the LTTE but it does not end Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism. India would need to insist with the Colombo government to give a fair deal to the Tamils within the overall unitary structure of the country.
The most obdurate challenge would remain terminating Pakistan’s proxy war. Right now the Pakistani political scene is enveloped by an impenetrable haze that makes difficult deciphering who commands the shots, President Zardari or Prime Minister Gilani though the Generals will always have the last word if it comes to a crunch. The US is a powerful factor in Pakistan and it appears to be on the side of Zardari. Both want democratization to strengthen, Islamic extremism to be uprooted and the military to be confined to the barracks. The unknown factor is the degree of Islamism in the Armed Forces. If it has reached high levels the probability of this section of the forces, Islamist and extremist groups and the Talibans including Neo Talibans in FATA, NWFP AND Afghanistan, making a common cause can become high. Presence of a nuclear arsenal in Pakistan makes the environment infinitely more dangerous. A whole galaxy of scenarios is possible. Indian interests will be served best by working with the US and as many countries as possible, the Security Council and the General Assembly to get Pakistan to eschew terrorism and, to have Pakistan declared a terrorist state if it does not fall in line.
The way ahead for India is not going to be smooth even as it most certainly rises to regional and global eminence. Its economic potential and its transparency will serve as magnets to propel it to that destiny. Still to be counted in the equation is the demographic dividend which a combination of improving education standards and growing young population will secure for it. Fortunately, India has moved out from the mode of idealism to one of pragmatism. National Security is, therefore, expected to remain its highest priority.
(The author can be reached at e-mail:verma_anandkumar@yahoo.com)
(This paper was prepared & published by Cenjows)
Many observers have commented that the 21st century belongs to India (and China). Since economics is increasingly becoming the currency of power this statement acknowledges the changing balance of power in the world and is a tribute to the growing economics muscles of India.
Since the 1990s India is on a new economic path. The forecast was that by 2020, its economy would treble and by 2050 it will leave US economy behind. That surely implies that India will by then be seated on the high table because with economic power will also come the political strengths. As a result courting of India by other powers has already begun.
Globalization, with new interconnectivity and fillip to trade through opening of markets, has brought new prosperity to India. Liberalization enabled India’s economic revolution to match the levels achieved by East Asian Tiger states.
The credit for the new economic momentum goes to Prime Minister PV Narsimha Rao. All subsequent Central Governments of India followed his lead. The years 2003-07 recorded a big surge in the economy which touched 9.4% of the GDP in 2006-07. Unfortunately, the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 in the US has initiated a world recession which will drop India’s growth during 2008-09 to 7% or nearabouts. India’s economic fundamentals are now very sound which should enable India to get back to her accelerated growth by 2010-11 at the latest. But for this hiccup, thanks to the financial breakthrough achieved in the previous five years, Indian economy was expected to double every eight years. At this rate India was destined to become the 5th largest consumer market in the world. India’s status then would not be high just in Asia, but in the entire world.
The drawback was that the new prosperity was not reaching all sections of people in India. The rich were becoming richer, the poor remaining poor. Inequality between the urban and rural areas was widening. It is also going to have a spatial north-south divide with southern states and west moving far ahead of the rest of the country causing an imbalance that may move people towards these regions. Social and political changes were not keeping pace with the economic growth. Estimates were that in 2004-05, 33.6% of people were living on less than $ 1 per day. The state continuously failed to deliver to the people on basic issues of health, education, employment and infrastructure. In a sense the economic miracle was also creating transformational disruption. Naxalism which started as a revolt against the state for its political and economic policies from a village called Naxalbari in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal in 1965 has spread to 16 states affecting more than 150 districts. Lobbying for power on the basis of caste has fragmented Indian politics.
The Indian growth story is, thus, not a smooth process. India’s future trajectory on the power graph will depend upon how the impediments to economic growth get removed and with what success. Apart from societal ones, the impediments lie scattered in several sectors notably governance and regulatory. Corruption has consistently remained one of the main causes for failure of delivery.
The Government, however, is doing its best to surmount these obstacles so that economic growth could be sustained at the levels already achieved and the nation building programs do not falter. There is a heavy accent on expansion of education and infrastructure. New job opportunities are being created and it is hoped that in time, more people, employed presently in agriculture and related activities which are poorly paid will be able to join industry and businesses. What has been done and achieved still remains miniscule in comparison with what needs or remains to be done but there is hope and confidence in the air that India is on the march ahead. With that India is acquiring a new vision of itself vis a vis the region and the world.
This vision while keeping national security at the top seeks to develop a cooperative and friendly attitude with all countries of the world. India has no hidden agenda but it is well aware that other nations may not feel equally benign towards it. Its nuclear program was designed to forestall any surprises from the neighborhood as well as to seek recognition that India is on its way to becoming a leading power of the world. Slowly, India is building a blue navy with aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines which signify a high military status. It has the fourth largest land army in the world. It has a powerful and advanced air fleet for defense. With its space and lunar programs and recent successful orbiting of the moon, it has sent a message that it is seriously developing its credentials as a global power. Its quest for permanent membership of UN Security Council is to get the world accept its status which demography and economic growth entitles it to. In the field of IT its unique and worldwide standing has already been accepted.
India has always wanted an important role in the world. When the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was mooted India was quick to join it hoping that promotion of trade, business and cultural interaction would bring harmony and raise living standards of the people in the region. But deeply held animosities within the region have come in the way of encouraging mutual dialogue beyond a threshold. In the meanwhile the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) had been established (1967) as a forum for dialogue to prevent the compromise of the members’ national interest by what appeared to be predatory powers in the neighborhood, China and Japan and across the Pacific, the USA. Regional togetherness has made ASEAN countries close knit. In 1993 a new entity, the Asean Regional forum (ARF) came into existence which includes India as a member. The purpose was to keep taking stock of security related issues of the region but the group has so far refrained from discussing any contentious issues. Yet another organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) came up in 2006, pointedly for looking into issues of regional terrorism and Islamic extremism. India has an observer status with SCO. East Asia Summit, set up in 2005, is the latest new entity with sixteen members including India. It’s not yet clear what East Asia Summit is set to achieve but one thing is clear: the emergence of these organizations signifies that the Asian countries increasingly feel the need for a collective identity to forge cooperative common policies which will keep in view the interests of each nation. In time it may lead to the constitution of an Asian Union on the lines of European Union but right now, given the mutual rivalries, fears and aspirations, the prospects are nowhere in sight. By being accorded a place in all these bodies, either as a member or observer, India’s role as a leader get fairly well established. A place in the East Asia Summit gives it a voice on affairs of the region.
India’s rise has attracted US attention, which consequent to the shift of economic and political power to Asia, is seeking to establish a new security architecture in Asia as well as the world. In the new geopolitical situation of today, US prowess remains supreme and is likely to remain so at least for 20 to 25 years more. And yet, emergence of prospective power centers principally in Asia and growth of Islamic terrorism makes it feel vulnerable, causing it to look for new friends.
In March 2005 the US announced that it welcomes and supports India’s growth to a great power status. US shift towards India represented a fundamental and strategic shift of an exceptional nature, soon confirmed through the civil nuclear agreement between the two countries whereby, without having to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, India was to be made eligible for supply of nuclear fuel and equipment to augment its civil nuclear energy resources. Another agreement in June 2005 provided for a joint defense framework which laid the foundation for a ten year project to promote a military relationship between the two countries.
The shift clearly signifies that the US was seeking India’s cooperation in dealing with a resurgent China which might challenge US's preeminence in Asia and the world in future at sometime. In US calculations India’s democratic system was a big plus point. Japan and other smaller countries of East Asia had a similar understanding which had led to India being welcomed to join East Asia Summit. Japan had been indifferent towards India earlier but is now seeking strategic cooperation, keeping in mind the historical bitterness with China. A new alliance of democracies seems to be in the offing between US, Japan, India and Australia that China perceives as targeting it directly. Already a joint naval exercise has been held between the navies of these countries and Singapore in the Bay of Bengal of 2007. However it is not easy to make a firm assessment about Japan’s commitment to India yet as its policiea have appeared wobbly at times.
However, coming together of US and India is just in the nature of a strategic partnership and is not a strategic alliance. Globalization has led to a great deal of economic interdependence with mutual trade and investments but relations between states will also simultaneously remain mutually competitive for access to resources from outside. Sometimes competition may bring forth a military threat, or geopolitical rivalry. In such times policy making becomes a complex exercise. The present tilt in US policy towards India is just a product of current circumstances of US. If the context changes, so can this tilt.
How true can this be is amply illustrated by the policies of US towards Pakistan. During the 1990s when the US desperately needed Pakistan to be on its side to prosecute the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, it completely closed its eyes to Pakistan’s proliferation of nuclear materials to North Korea, Libya and Iran. Though the US knew India to be the target of Pakistani nuclear weapons development program, it never shared any information about this program with India. More recently, Pakistan’s campaign of terror against India was never condemned by the US in terms that would have required Pakistan to change its ways. Taking all this into consideration, it would be wise to treat US’s current interest in India as arising out of compulsions of its own national interests and no more. Any power trajectory that India may aspire to build in future will have to be on its own, not on any closeness to US. US objectives to get India to cap, rollback and eliminate its nuclear weapons program will not be given up. US will mount pressures again the moment it judges it to be the right one.
The country which India has to be most wary about is China. It views India as a threat to its preeminence in Asia, which can engage in fierce competitions for scarce resources, political influences and friends. It will like to deny India strategic space in Asia, Africa and Latin America and to see India confined to South Asia as a regional power. In such a relationship some tension will always be present. As years pass by, tensions could rise. Another war, like 1962, may be unlikely but can not be ruled out altogether.
China is feverishly upgrading its military forces and space capabilities. In 2007 it surprised the world by shooting down a satellite with a missile. Its military budget of $ 45 b in 2007 was twice that of India and has for the past ten years been recording a double digit rise. Growing at this rate the Chinese armed forces will become a formidable machine. It is also developing a blue navy with nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers that will enable it to project power in distant seas like the Indian Ocean.
Specially worrisome to India is the ‘string of pearls’ it is creating all around the sub continental India, a deep sea port at Gwadar off Baluchistan coast in Pakistan, a road from Yunnan in China to Bay of Bengal, surveillance facilities in islands of Myanmar and ports in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. It has arms supply relationship with Nepal and Bangladesh.
The most damaging anti Indian action by China has been to setup Pakistan as its Israel. The Pakistani nuclear weapons program which is India specific was guided, nurtured, equipped and overseen by China. In 1990 it tested a Pakistani nuclear bomb at its test site in Lop Nor. China is unlikely to unravel the problems of borders in Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as it does not believe that a compromise will turn out to its advantage. It has gone back on an understanding that any border adjustment will not upset settled populations. The issues remain mired in procedures, far from substance. It may be noted that officially backed Chinese think tanks have even talk of retrieving Arunachal Pradesh by force. China had opposed India’s’ access to Nuclear Supply Group in 2008 until forced by the US. On the Mumbai terrorist carnage by Pakistan, its scholars and media, all state controlled, expressed doubts about Pakistani complicity, placed the blame on internal contradictions in India, and called it a major blow to India’s big power ambitions. Thrice China had blocked UN efforts to have Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Pakistani organization behind the outrage, declared an international terrorist organization in 2006.
Chinese antagonism against India emanates from its uneasiness about sturdy Tibetan nationalism and the fact that the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama has made India his home along with 1, 00,000 other Tibetans. China has taken great pains to pacify Tibet through development, colonization and redemarcating its borders with adjoining Chinese provinces. Tibet seems to be firmly under Chinese control but the religion based Tibetan identity is not dead nor the power of Buddhist monasteries in Tibet to serve as magnetic centers for mobilization. Choosing a successor to Dalai Lama on his death can prove to be an explosive event. The Tibetans would want to make the choice themselves but the Chinese government is unlikely to grant this privilege to them. If civil commotions break out in Tibet over this issue that find an echo in the diaspora abroad, relations between China and India can nosedive.
Relationship with Pakistan belongs altogether to a different category: intensely problematic. It has been so from day one when Pakistan came into existence. The problem began with Pakistani covetousness for the J&K state. Four wars have been fought between the two countries and a proxy war continues. Single minded antagonism to India led to the emergence of the Pakistani nuclear program. The Pakistani Establishment has been itching to employ the arsenal on India. There have been four occasions in the past when they come close to it US discovery of their intentions thwarted them the last three times.
The first time was in 1982-83 when Pakistan suspected that India, aided by Israel, was planning to bomb out Kahuta where the Pakistani nuclear weapons program was taking shape. The last three were linked to Indian Brasstracks exercise in 1987, commencement of Pakistani inspired insurgency in J&K state (1990) and Kargil (1999).
Meanwhile, new developments have occurred which have altered Pakistan’s strategic objectives. The Pakistani state has greatly weakened and grown unstable. A good part of its North Western region has become Talibanised. Sizeable sections of the security establishment including its intelligence and paramilitary forces subscribe to the Islamist ideology. It is an easy transformation from Islamism to Jihadism. As Talibanisation creeps into the hinterland and nearer Islamabad and Rawalpindi the probability of the security establishment donning the colours of Jihadism becomes somewhat real.
The Jihadi aim is to set up India as an Islamic Caliphate. They count on Islamic injunctions to assume, not proven so far, that large sections of Indian Muslims will aid and support them.
Such designs and the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan, make it today the most dangerous spot in the world. If another 9/11 hits the US, most western intelligence believe the source would be Pakistan which has provided refuge to the Al Qaeda leadership. Pakistani duplicity of masquerading as a US ally in the fight against international terror while giving covert support to Talibans in Afghanistan against the US stands exposed. The US has now warned Pakistan that if does not move against the Al Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan, its ground forces will enter Pakistan to finish the job themselves. Such an event if it occurs will exacerbate tensions between Muslims and non Muslims all over the world. A collapsed Pakistan may be good for India but India may face unpredictable consequences.
Japan is another country to watch. The three greats in Asia in times ahead will be China, Japan and India, each engaged in a furious economic competition with the other two. But while Japan is unlikely to cease regarding China as an abiding threat for reasons of history and quarrels over territory in East China Sea, its attitude towards India is changing from indifference to active strategic cooperation. The largest quantity of Japanese aid now flows to India not China. In the new balance of power politics in Asia, the Japanese support will be a plus factor for India provided one can count on it.
India’s relationship with most of its immediate neighbors has not been happy. This includes besides Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Part of the reason is India’s size as compared to that of the neighbors, which gives rise to misplaced suspicions of hegemonism. In response, neighbors have permitted or promoted terror against India and given shelter to leaders of insurgencies fighting India. Such an environment allows easy access to Chinese interests into these countries. Lack of mutual trust becomes a cause for impeding growth of economic and trade relations. In the Saarc region, India’s trade with its neighbors is no more than 3%. Perhaps Saarc has no future and our best hope may be to revert back to bilateral relations selectively.
Thus, there are multiple challenges for India in its neighborhood. The way to deal with Myanmar will be not to waste too much time on the character of its Government which is authoritarian and undemocratic but to concentrate on trade and economic relations which should include investments and aid to development. In Bangladesh a new window of opportunity has opened up with Hasina, the recently elected new Prime Minister who has already indicated a firm resolve to eradicate terrorism from its soil. Bangladeshi infiltration into India poses another primary security problem. Bangladesh is also a land of grinding poverty. Indian attitudes need to be governed both by compassion and concerns for national security. Nepal has just run through cataclysmic changes with internal stability still elusive but Nepalese Maoists have definitely chosen to be embourgeoised. A new chapter is waiting to be opened in Indo Nepal relationship which can heal existential animosities and suspicions. The new relationship should abjure the military dimension and be predicated entirely on how economic and cultural benefits can be secured for both the countries. The Nepalese Maoists have generally kept themselves away from the Indian Maoists with the latter considering the former revisionists. It is unlikely that the Nepalese Maoists will aid their Indian counterparts against Indian interests. Sri Lanka appears to have succeeded in destroying the LTTE but it does not end Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism. India would need to insist with the Colombo government to give a fair deal to the Tamils within the overall unitary structure of the country.
The most obdurate challenge would remain terminating Pakistan’s proxy war. Right now the Pakistani political scene is enveloped by an impenetrable haze that makes difficult deciphering who commands the shots, President Zardari or Prime Minister Gilani though the Generals will always have the last word if it comes to a crunch. The US is a powerful factor in Pakistan and it appears to be on the side of Zardari. Both want democratization to strengthen, Islamic extremism to be uprooted and the military to be confined to the barracks. The unknown factor is the degree of Islamism in the Armed Forces. If it has reached high levels the probability of this section of the forces, Islamist and extremist groups and the Talibans including Neo Talibans in FATA, NWFP AND Afghanistan, making a common cause can become high. Presence of a nuclear arsenal in Pakistan makes the environment infinitely more dangerous. A whole galaxy of scenarios is possible. Indian interests will be served best by working with the US and as many countries as possible, the Security Council and the General Assembly to get Pakistan to eschew terrorism and, to have Pakistan declared a terrorist state if it does not fall in line.
The way ahead for India is not going to be smooth even as it most certainly rises to regional and global eminence. Its economic potential and its transparency will serve as magnets to propel it to that destiny. Still to be counted in the equation is the demographic dividend which a combination of improving education standards and growing young population will secure for it. Fortunately, India has moved out from the mode of idealism to one of pragmatism. National Security is, therefore, expected to remain its highest priority.
(The author can be reached at e-mail:verma_anandkumar@yahoo.com)
INDIA: Intelligence Reforms
By A. K. Verma
(This paper was prepared and published by G-files)
More than 50 years after gaining independence from the British, Indian Intelligence continues to operate within the same framework left by the British. The system was created to deal with problems and requirements of a different age. Since then we have moved into a new era where the national security architecture of the world keeps changing in a kaleidoscopic pattern, creating new axess of conflicts and conciliations. Times have changed enormously and the world has become far more complex. Unfortunately, Indian Intelligence has not kept pace with the changes.
It is high time that an Indian Intelligence Reforms Commission is appointed on the lines of the Administrative Reforms Commission to overhaul the old system. There are a whole lot of new paradigms requiring to be considered. If in today’s world intelligence has become the first line of defense, there is not a moment to be lost.
The very first reform should be to give Indian Intelligence the backing of legislative enactments. The laws should provide a degree of autonomy which frees intelligence from all bureaucratic restraints and controls relating to financial management, administrative functions, pay scales, recruitment, postings and promotions, hire and fire policies and enforcement of discipline. The laws should spell out the charters and authorize the Central Government to fix broad targets within the charter. This will prevent the misuse of the institutions by those in authority. The laws should hold intelligence accountable to the Cabinet or its Committee for national Security but also create a parliamentary committee for oversight. Detailed rules can be worked out to determine the parameters of oversight and areas of intelligence work over which it will be exercised in consultation with the Parliament.
Absence of legislative cover is a serious lacuna for Intelligence. All intelligence work is carried out under executive instructions but foreign intelligence operations would involve breaking of local laws of the country concerned. Neither those who give instructions for such operations nor those who carry them out are protected legally under the Indian laws. Institutions like the CIA of US are created by laws of the US Congress. All activities which CIA may be required to carry out are directly or indirectly identified in the charter legally given. Their operations are thus safe under US laws but no such protection is available to Indian operatives, carrying out intelligence tasks in a foreign country.
Autonomy is essential for non-conventional organisations to do their jobs. They should be free to hire the best talent available which will be possible only if a very superior compensation package is on offer to the recruit. Today’s intelligence needs require Engineers, Management Specialists, Economists, Scholars, Scientist, Sociologists among others, of supreme quality but only the inferior type wants to make a career in intelligence because the better type finds the existing compensation packages totally unattractive. Intelligence services of other countries are usually the best paid organizations in those countries. This is the reason why CIA serves as a magnet drawing in large numbers of PhDs from the best schools in the US.
In recent years the threats from International terror has grown exponentially. There are threats of mass destruction of population and property through use of weapons of mass destruction, mass disruption of communications through manipulation of cyberspace and of mass doctrinal madness through clever selective religious indoctrination. Such a range of offensive tactics cannot be countered by keeping intelligence on the defensive. Intelligence has to be provided teeth to bite with. It should therefore develop its own cadre of offensive operators or learn to do so in the company of select uniformed services. While the major countries of the world have for long practiced the offensive mode of Intelligence work, we have lagged behind in India. Intelligence reforms should open up the possibilities of covert actions. Use of non state actors by state actors effectively takes away India’s options to stay neutral to covert operations. A redefinition of nation’s security interest will shout loudly for India to give up its self created soft image and to move out to meet challenges boldly as they should be.
Intelligence has to acknowledge appearance of new perspectives following globalization. Fast moving technologies have made borders meaningless. There is a new competition for economic penetration. Sovereignties of nations are at a discount because of these trends. In the times ahead India will face acute competition from the other two rising powers of the Asia, China and Japan. Issues of land, water and climatic changes, all of which singly or together, lead to mass migrations, creating demographic imbalances. Who else should study such phenomenon holistically if not intelligence? Their database and sharp analysis can contribute to keep the nations interests secure.
The rising complexity calls for another reform – the operations and analysis cadres in the intelligence should be made distinct and separate. When intelligence needs were few, there may have been a justification for the two streams to flow as one, but not any longer. Indian Intelligence has to grow much larger than what it is today. The value of an analyst lies in the depth of his studies of his field. The longer he specializes, greater is the intuitive insight he acquires. Such knowledge will go waste if he moves to operations.
Naxalism has been identified as the nation’s most serious problem in the field of national security. Starting from a single village, Naxalbari, in West Bengal in 1965, Naxalism is now present in 16 states, affecting 160 districts. In the context of intelligence reforms, one must examine why such a growth has taken place. It would seem that our constitutional scheme by dividing powers between states and centre has prevented the latter from formulating and executing a cohesive policy for the country to battle this problem. If this situation is not rectified, mere reforms in intelligence will not take us anywhere.
(The author can be reached at e-mail: verma_anandkumar@yahoo.com)
(This paper was prepared and published by G-files)
More than 50 years after gaining independence from the British, Indian Intelligence continues to operate within the same framework left by the British. The system was created to deal with problems and requirements of a different age. Since then we have moved into a new era where the national security architecture of the world keeps changing in a kaleidoscopic pattern, creating new axess of conflicts and conciliations. Times have changed enormously and the world has become far more complex. Unfortunately, Indian Intelligence has not kept pace with the changes.
It is high time that an Indian Intelligence Reforms Commission is appointed on the lines of the Administrative Reforms Commission to overhaul the old system. There are a whole lot of new paradigms requiring to be considered. If in today’s world intelligence has become the first line of defense, there is not a moment to be lost.
The very first reform should be to give Indian Intelligence the backing of legislative enactments. The laws should provide a degree of autonomy which frees intelligence from all bureaucratic restraints and controls relating to financial management, administrative functions, pay scales, recruitment, postings and promotions, hire and fire policies and enforcement of discipline. The laws should spell out the charters and authorize the Central Government to fix broad targets within the charter. This will prevent the misuse of the institutions by those in authority. The laws should hold intelligence accountable to the Cabinet or its Committee for national Security but also create a parliamentary committee for oversight. Detailed rules can be worked out to determine the parameters of oversight and areas of intelligence work over which it will be exercised in consultation with the Parliament.
Absence of legislative cover is a serious lacuna for Intelligence. All intelligence work is carried out under executive instructions but foreign intelligence operations would involve breaking of local laws of the country concerned. Neither those who give instructions for such operations nor those who carry them out are protected legally under the Indian laws. Institutions like the CIA of US are created by laws of the US Congress. All activities which CIA may be required to carry out are directly or indirectly identified in the charter legally given. Their operations are thus safe under US laws but no such protection is available to Indian operatives, carrying out intelligence tasks in a foreign country.
Autonomy is essential for non-conventional organisations to do their jobs. They should be free to hire the best talent available which will be possible only if a very superior compensation package is on offer to the recruit. Today’s intelligence needs require Engineers, Management Specialists, Economists, Scholars, Scientist, Sociologists among others, of supreme quality but only the inferior type wants to make a career in intelligence because the better type finds the existing compensation packages totally unattractive. Intelligence services of other countries are usually the best paid organizations in those countries. This is the reason why CIA serves as a magnet drawing in large numbers of PhDs from the best schools in the US.
In recent years the threats from International terror has grown exponentially. There are threats of mass destruction of population and property through use of weapons of mass destruction, mass disruption of communications through manipulation of cyberspace and of mass doctrinal madness through clever selective religious indoctrination. Such a range of offensive tactics cannot be countered by keeping intelligence on the defensive. Intelligence has to be provided teeth to bite with. It should therefore develop its own cadre of offensive operators or learn to do so in the company of select uniformed services. While the major countries of the world have for long practiced the offensive mode of Intelligence work, we have lagged behind in India. Intelligence reforms should open up the possibilities of covert actions. Use of non state actors by state actors effectively takes away India’s options to stay neutral to covert operations. A redefinition of nation’s security interest will shout loudly for India to give up its self created soft image and to move out to meet challenges boldly as they should be.
Intelligence has to acknowledge appearance of new perspectives following globalization. Fast moving technologies have made borders meaningless. There is a new competition for economic penetration. Sovereignties of nations are at a discount because of these trends. In the times ahead India will face acute competition from the other two rising powers of the Asia, China and Japan. Issues of land, water and climatic changes, all of which singly or together, lead to mass migrations, creating demographic imbalances. Who else should study such phenomenon holistically if not intelligence? Their database and sharp analysis can contribute to keep the nations interests secure.
The rising complexity calls for another reform – the operations and analysis cadres in the intelligence should be made distinct and separate. When intelligence needs were few, there may have been a justification for the two streams to flow as one, but not any longer. Indian Intelligence has to grow much larger than what it is today. The value of an analyst lies in the depth of his studies of his field. The longer he specializes, greater is the intuitive insight he acquires. Such knowledge will go waste if he moves to operations.
Naxalism has been identified as the nation’s most serious problem in the field of national security. Starting from a single village, Naxalbari, in West Bengal in 1965, Naxalism is now present in 16 states, affecting 160 districts. In the context of intelligence reforms, one must examine why such a growth has taken place. It would seem that our constitutional scheme by dividing powers between states and centre has prevented the latter from formulating and executing a cohesive policy for the country to battle this problem. If this situation is not rectified, mere reforms in intelligence will not take us anywhere.
(The author can be reached at e-mail: verma_anandkumar@yahoo.com)
DMITRY MEDVEDEV:in Africa: Answers to Questions from Russian Journalists
Russia: Answers to Questions from Russian Journalists
http://www.isria.com/pages/26_June_2009_47.htm
PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to begin by asking a question. Can you believe that we are here, this far south in Africa? And did you know that the area of Namibia is equivalent to the area of Ukraine and Belarus combined? Whereas population density is equivalent to that of Mongolia.
REPLY: You’ve been doing your homework.
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Of course I have.
QUESTION: We also did some homework.
Our country has a history of relations with African nations. Before, there had been some talk of providing non-repayable aid. How would you formulate Russia’s current policy in this respect? How advantageous are these contacts? And naturally, we would be interested in hearing about your first impressions of Africa itself.
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Thank you.
Our policy on these matters will be very friendly, but at the same time, pragmatic. Let me remind you that the Russian Federation, like its predecessor, the Soviet Union, has always held a very friendly position toward African nations. We have always helped them in gaining their independence and fighting to create their own states.
At the same time, we do not have a painful, sombre colonial history, unlike many European countries. We do not have such a history, and I think that, to an extent, this also shapes African countries’ relations toward our nation.
Indeed, in recent years, there have been some changes in how things have developed. Our foreign policy has taken shape. In the 1990s, we gave less attention to faraway continents such as Africa and Latin America, but now, it is our obligation to do so. These nations are kindred spirits, and we have indeed provided them with aid. They are fast-developing nations, but at the same time, they have many problems. It is no coincidence that Africa always comes up during talks at G8 summits (in an expanded format), G20 summits, and other platforms as an issue that demands a rapid and adequate response from the global community and from individual countries. This includes assistance programmes and other projects.
As for my current visit to Africa, which is not yet finished, it bears historic overtones and carries a fairly pragmatic agenda, because we have separate, positive commercial programmes with every country we’ve visited. I am not going to give any names now, since there has been coverage on this matter, but I will say that major Russian companies which are interested in investment development and would like to do business are already present in Africa. Take a look at our major players, which include both state and private companies: Gazprom, ALROSA, NOVATEK, and many other companies that are currently participating in the establishment of industries in Africa, which have contracted either factories or deposits. And clearly, this is not charity work, but rather, the development of businesses whose goal is to be profitable, but which are also advantageous for our African partners. I feel that we need more projects of this kind.
There is currently a great deal of interest in Africa, and there are representatives here from all the major international players. The People’s Republic of China, the United States, and the European Union are working actively here. Are we any worse? We must do the same, especially since we have many close, trusted friends whom we have truly helped and who are ready to develop relations with us, not through a strictly charitable agenda, but on a mutually beneficial basis. This is something that we will certainly work on.
As for my own personal impressions, they are quite strong and powerful, since this is my first time in Africa, and this continent can’t help but impress visitors with its vastness and its variations in climate, cultures, and traditions. We have travelled from Egypt in the north of Africa and the Middle East to the southern part of the continent. We have crossed the equator and we have gone from a hot summer to a winter that is cold by local standards – it is only 20 degrees Celsius during the day, and temperatures drop as low as just zero degrees at night. I think that many of us may not have been prepared for this, including myself. In the evening, I might need to go out in my suit, but it’s cold out, zero degrees.
Clearly, though, this just goes to show the unique opportunities that exist in Africa. But at the same time, you come to see how many problems exist here. Look at the figures often brought up on hunger (perhaps some people have become numb to them). They are horrifying and saddening. A child dies of hunger every five seconds and there is an enormous amount of infectious diseases that are very difficult to fight. And Africa awaits our support. There are many people living here, and they, too, have the right to a normal life.
Wealthier countries are obligated to pay back their debts to Africa, not in the form of basic aid (although that is also necessary), but rather, by developing various institutions and creating a variety of companies. If this gets done, then Africa will become one of the most actively-developing continents on the planet, internal conflicts will cease, many conflicts will be resolved, and development will become stable. We are very much counting on it.
QUESTION: Your trip to Africa and your speech in Cairo followed the speech by US President Barack Obama in Cairo, which drew a very positive response. After the G8 summit, Barack Obama will return to Africa once again.
Does your visit imply that Russia is determined to compete seriously with the United States for Africa’s resources? And are we too late in our return to Africa? What advantages do we have in competing with the United States and China?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: To answer your question on being late, I can tell you honestly that we are almost too late. We should have begun working with our African partners earlier, especially since our ties remained continuous with many of them, representing decades of developing friendly relations.
Yesterday, we were in Nigeria. Our diplomatic ties with that nation have existed for nearly fifty years. We have maintained relations with Namibia’s leading political party – SWAPO – which fought for the country’s independence, for forty years.
As for competition, I do not think that there should be any competition between countries, but it is quite clear that there should be competition between companies. Competitiveness is the driving force of human progress. Those who provide the best conditions, including economic conditions, will succeed. We do not feel jealous when we see our partners visiting Africa, but at the same time, we would also like to promote our own interests here; we would like to advance Russian companies. This is normal for any government. It is probably good that more attention is being given to this continent, and it will most likely help Africa overall. I think the fact that the President of the United States is making several visits to Africa will work to the benefit of Africa itself.
But I want to emphasise again that we would like to see a significant share of Russian companies in the African market. We have all the historic background and economic conditions necessary for this.
QUESTION: I have a brief personal question. We have all seen a lot of very different welcoming ceremonies. What did you think of today’s ceremony, with all its dances?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: I was just about ready to join them, but in the end, knowing that this is a state visit, I held back. I asked the President of Namibia if we could dance. He answered “Yes,” but he himself didn’t dance, so I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it, although the dancers’ energy was really contagious.
This may be an element of national character, and we may see it as somewhat exotic. But at the same time, it demonstrates cultural diversity. Even in a country with a relatively small population, such as Namibia, there are many different ethnic groups with different, sometimes independent cultures.
As we travel through Africa, we see a variety of different cultures, beliefs, ways of life, and different customs, all on one continent. Africa is very diverse, and that may be the key conclusion that stems from one’s first visit here. Our perception of Africa – created by well-known Russian children’s authors who wrote, “Children, don’t go promenading through Africa” – is that it is a uniform continent. But in fact, it is very different from place to place. In some places, it is very rich; in others, it is devastatingly poor. The climate is very different, and the people are very different. And at the same time, there exists a kind of self-awareness, a sense of identifying oneself as an inhabitant of the African continent. In my opinion, this is a good thing.QUESTION: Recently, there have been reports that Kyrgyzstan and the United States signed an agreement on the use of the Manas Air Base. Could you comment on this agreement? How do you perceive its prospects?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Naturally, this agreement is fully within Kyrgyzstan’s rights. At the same time, I must mention that a little while ago, the President of Kyrgyzstan came to the Russian Federation; we met before the SCO summit and discussed issues regarding joint anti-terrorism efforts, including issues of assisting freight transfers. This is something that our American partners have requested. We made our decisions a long time ago; we are helping our partners, other Central Asian countries are helping, and Kyrgyzstan is willing to do this. That is fine, I think this is for the common good; it helps the joint fight against terrorism.
But aside from that, my understanding of the decisions made by the President of Kyrgyzstan and the Kyrgyz parliament was that for various reasons, their military base would cease operations, while new operations in assisting freight transfers would take place elsewhere, without resorting to any kind of immunity inherent to military personnel, and without the presence of a large number of military men, using mainly civilian personnel. Thus, this operation will be very similar to the one we are carrying out, which also assists freight transfers to help the fight against terrorism. That is how I understand it.
QUESTION: In the statement you made in the Hague, you said that we are ready for a significant reduction in the number of strategic warheads and missiles. What would you say is the maximum limit for these types of reductions?
And another question. Russia firmly monitors the coordination of strategic nuclear forces and ballistic missile defence. The Americans have already rejected this coordination. Do you think that you will be able to find some kind of compromise on this issue during your meeting?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: I would like to make just one small correction. We talked about this issue in Amsterdam, not in the Hague; although these cities are close to one another, they are, as you know, not the same.
Now, getting back to the latter part of your question: for the moment, nobody has closed any doors. And despite the fact that I made this statement, and that an expanded version of it has been published, we are continuing to discuss these topics with our American partners ahead of my colleague Barack Obama’s visit. This includes discussions on coordinating issues of ballistic missile defence and limiting strategic offensive weapons.
As for the maximum limit in reductions, this matter is still under discussion, but in order for our colleagues and you yourselves to have a better idea of what we are talking about, I specifically outlined some parameters. For warheads, it is lower than what is provided for in the corresponding Moscow Treaty [the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, or SORT]. For missiles, we area ready to make a fairly decisive, large-scale reduction, cutting them down to a fraction of what we have now.
But this matter is still under discussion, so I do not feel it right to go into detail about it right now. Still, the comments I just made should allow you to get a sense of the figures in question, after some simple calculations. All of the analysts have already done so.
QUESTION: I want to come back to the situation at home, in Ingushetia. The region has seen a number of tragic events in general of late. What role do you think the neighbouring republics can play in stabilising the situation in Ingushetia and in the region in general? How do you think the situation will develop there?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: What happened in Ingushetia, including the attack on President of Ingushetia Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, is a continuation of terrorist activities carried out by the remnants of bandit groups that are in part sponsored from abroad. This sounds like a routine explanation, but this is the way it is.
Our policy in this area remains unchanged (I stated it when I was in Dagestan) – we need to be pitiless in exterminating them [the bandits]. But this is a combat that must be fought through a variety of means. Of course, the entire country is interested in this combat’s success, especially the republics in this in this region that still has its share of problems. This includes Ingushetia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachayevo-Cherkesia – all the Caucasus republics. We therefore all need to unite in order to rid ourselves of this disease for once and for all.
These kinds of operations are underway now. Why did these bandits attack Yevkurov after all? Because he was taking real action – starting to build up relations with the republic’s elite and establishing dialogue with the moderate opposition, not with thugs, of course. He began carrying out joint operations together with neighbouring Chechnya and its head, Ramzan Kadyrov. These operations were a big success. I will not list all that was achieved and how many bandits were eliminated, but the figures are impressive and are public knowledge.
It is my view, therefore, that we need to continue this work just as resolutely and effectively as has been the case recently. But at the same time, we need to learn from what has happened and take a new look around, analyse the situation. This work will continue. This is a task for the whole country, of course, and in particular for the regions of the Caucasus.
QUESTION : Mr President, many people are looking to you for new anti-corruption initiatives. Is there a basis for these expectations and what possible steps could we hope to see in this area?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: This is a good question. I will not list the results achieved so far or announce what kinds of operations are planned, because there are a lot of details regarding planned operations that it is better not to divulge in this way. After all, the fight against corruption is part of the fight against crime. It is not just about dealing with individual civil servants who have failed in their duties or take bribes. It is a fight against crime. Corruption is a serious crime, and this needs to be uppermost in our minds.
But as far as our current plans are concerned, we have work to complete in several areas regarding the package of anti-corruption measures that were drawn up and approved on my initiative last year and this year.
In particular, work is underway on drafting a presidential executive order on checking the information civil servants provide to the tax authorities on their income, assets, means of transport and other items they have to declare. We did not think up these rules so that people could make a report and then just keep doing what they have always done. We know our people’s quick-witted nature and sense of cunning, and we know that people can always find a way to hide things if they want. This is why there has to be at least a selective check of these declarations to make a comparison between people’s real and declared assets and income.
I think this is important work, but we need to operate within a strict legal framework and respect human rights at the same time. Civil servants are people too and have all the rights accorded by the Constitution. We need to work effectively and achieve results. This is something we need to do, but this is just a part of our efforts in this area. There will be other measures too.
QUESTION: Coming back to Africa, yesterday, during the discussion on the Trans-Sahara gas pipeline, the Gazprom representative said that they will build the first main gas pipeline, and we heard the words: “whoever is on the valves is the king”. Could you comment on Russia’s plans in this respect? Is Russia perhaps looking to control gas supplies from Nigeria to Europe, and is there not the danger of something like the Ukrainian situation emerging in Africa?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: This is a good question. As far as the words you quoted go, every point of view has its right to exist, no doubt, but I think these words are not entirely correct, because even our recent experience with Ukraine shows that whoever controls the bolt is still a long way from controlling the whole situation. There are obligations and international reputation to keep in mind, and there is money too, whether in the form of payments made or of debts unsettled. And so I would say these words send out a one-sided and even primitive sort of message.
But as far as big projects go, including the Trans-Sahara gas pipeline, yes, this is an area in which the Russian Federation is interested. We are interested in these projects not because we want to control the bolts and valves and run the show, so to speak. We have enough affairs of our own to manage at home. Africa has its own specific situation, and we have great respect for the sovereignty African countries have achieved. We helped them in every way we could to achieve this sovereignty, and they do not need us to sort out their affairs. We are ready to help them in the United Nations, help them in reforming the UN itself, and we are ready to work on a bilateral basis.
But this is an area of natural interest to Russia because we are the world’s biggest gas producer. We have the longest gas pipeline network, the longest pipelines, and the greatest experience in building and operating gas pipelines. Therefore, when we offer our services this is not a means of political domination - it is business as usual. We will continue to work in this way, and not just in Africa. This is an area we are familiar with, and an area of interest to our country.
Thank you. I wish you all a good rest. Take care not to catch cold, because the temperature drops quickly here, and be careful with animals. All the best!
http://www.isria.com/pages/26_June_2009_47.htm
PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to begin by asking a question. Can you believe that we are here, this far south in Africa? And did you know that the area of Namibia is equivalent to the area of Ukraine and Belarus combined? Whereas population density is equivalent to that of Mongolia.
REPLY: You’ve been doing your homework.
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Of course I have.
QUESTION: We also did some homework.
Our country has a history of relations with African nations. Before, there had been some talk of providing non-repayable aid. How would you formulate Russia’s current policy in this respect? How advantageous are these contacts? And naturally, we would be interested in hearing about your first impressions of Africa itself.
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Thank you.
Our policy on these matters will be very friendly, but at the same time, pragmatic. Let me remind you that the Russian Federation, like its predecessor, the Soviet Union, has always held a very friendly position toward African nations. We have always helped them in gaining their independence and fighting to create their own states.
At the same time, we do not have a painful, sombre colonial history, unlike many European countries. We do not have such a history, and I think that, to an extent, this also shapes African countries’ relations toward our nation.
Indeed, in recent years, there have been some changes in how things have developed. Our foreign policy has taken shape. In the 1990s, we gave less attention to faraway continents such as Africa and Latin America, but now, it is our obligation to do so. These nations are kindred spirits, and we have indeed provided them with aid. They are fast-developing nations, but at the same time, they have many problems. It is no coincidence that Africa always comes up during talks at G8 summits (in an expanded format), G20 summits, and other platforms as an issue that demands a rapid and adequate response from the global community and from individual countries. This includes assistance programmes and other projects.
As for my current visit to Africa, which is not yet finished, it bears historic overtones and carries a fairly pragmatic agenda, because we have separate, positive commercial programmes with every country we’ve visited. I am not going to give any names now, since there has been coverage on this matter, but I will say that major Russian companies which are interested in investment development and would like to do business are already present in Africa. Take a look at our major players, which include both state and private companies: Gazprom, ALROSA, NOVATEK, and many other companies that are currently participating in the establishment of industries in Africa, which have contracted either factories or deposits. And clearly, this is not charity work, but rather, the development of businesses whose goal is to be profitable, but which are also advantageous for our African partners. I feel that we need more projects of this kind.
There is currently a great deal of interest in Africa, and there are representatives here from all the major international players. The People’s Republic of China, the United States, and the European Union are working actively here. Are we any worse? We must do the same, especially since we have many close, trusted friends whom we have truly helped and who are ready to develop relations with us, not through a strictly charitable agenda, but on a mutually beneficial basis. This is something that we will certainly work on.
As for my own personal impressions, they are quite strong and powerful, since this is my first time in Africa, and this continent can’t help but impress visitors with its vastness and its variations in climate, cultures, and traditions. We have travelled from Egypt in the north of Africa and the Middle East to the southern part of the continent. We have crossed the equator and we have gone from a hot summer to a winter that is cold by local standards – it is only 20 degrees Celsius during the day, and temperatures drop as low as just zero degrees at night. I think that many of us may not have been prepared for this, including myself. In the evening, I might need to go out in my suit, but it’s cold out, zero degrees.
Clearly, though, this just goes to show the unique opportunities that exist in Africa. But at the same time, you come to see how many problems exist here. Look at the figures often brought up on hunger (perhaps some people have become numb to them). They are horrifying and saddening. A child dies of hunger every five seconds and there is an enormous amount of infectious diseases that are very difficult to fight. And Africa awaits our support. There are many people living here, and they, too, have the right to a normal life.
Wealthier countries are obligated to pay back their debts to Africa, not in the form of basic aid (although that is also necessary), but rather, by developing various institutions and creating a variety of companies. If this gets done, then Africa will become one of the most actively-developing continents on the planet, internal conflicts will cease, many conflicts will be resolved, and development will become stable. We are very much counting on it.
QUESTION: Your trip to Africa and your speech in Cairo followed the speech by US President Barack Obama in Cairo, which drew a very positive response. After the G8 summit, Barack Obama will return to Africa once again.
Does your visit imply that Russia is determined to compete seriously with the United States for Africa’s resources? And are we too late in our return to Africa? What advantages do we have in competing with the United States and China?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: To answer your question on being late, I can tell you honestly that we are almost too late. We should have begun working with our African partners earlier, especially since our ties remained continuous with many of them, representing decades of developing friendly relations.
Yesterday, we were in Nigeria. Our diplomatic ties with that nation have existed for nearly fifty years. We have maintained relations with Namibia’s leading political party – SWAPO – which fought for the country’s independence, for forty years.
As for competition, I do not think that there should be any competition between countries, but it is quite clear that there should be competition between companies. Competitiveness is the driving force of human progress. Those who provide the best conditions, including economic conditions, will succeed. We do not feel jealous when we see our partners visiting Africa, but at the same time, we would also like to promote our own interests here; we would like to advance Russian companies. This is normal for any government. It is probably good that more attention is being given to this continent, and it will most likely help Africa overall. I think the fact that the President of the United States is making several visits to Africa will work to the benefit of Africa itself.
But I want to emphasise again that we would like to see a significant share of Russian companies in the African market. We have all the historic background and economic conditions necessary for this.
QUESTION: I have a brief personal question. We have all seen a lot of very different welcoming ceremonies. What did you think of today’s ceremony, with all its dances?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: I was just about ready to join them, but in the end, knowing that this is a state visit, I held back. I asked the President of Namibia if we could dance. He answered “Yes,” but he himself didn’t dance, so I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it, although the dancers’ energy was really contagious.
This may be an element of national character, and we may see it as somewhat exotic. But at the same time, it demonstrates cultural diversity. Even in a country with a relatively small population, such as Namibia, there are many different ethnic groups with different, sometimes independent cultures.
As we travel through Africa, we see a variety of different cultures, beliefs, ways of life, and different customs, all on one continent. Africa is very diverse, and that may be the key conclusion that stems from one’s first visit here. Our perception of Africa – created by well-known Russian children’s authors who wrote, “Children, don’t go promenading through Africa” – is that it is a uniform continent. But in fact, it is very different from place to place. In some places, it is very rich; in others, it is devastatingly poor. The climate is very different, and the people are very different. And at the same time, there exists a kind of self-awareness, a sense of identifying oneself as an inhabitant of the African continent. In my opinion, this is a good thing.QUESTION: Recently, there have been reports that Kyrgyzstan and the United States signed an agreement on the use of the Manas Air Base. Could you comment on this agreement? How do you perceive its prospects?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Naturally, this agreement is fully within Kyrgyzstan’s rights. At the same time, I must mention that a little while ago, the President of Kyrgyzstan came to the Russian Federation; we met before the SCO summit and discussed issues regarding joint anti-terrorism efforts, including issues of assisting freight transfers. This is something that our American partners have requested. We made our decisions a long time ago; we are helping our partners, other Central Asian countries are helping, and Kyrgyzstan is willing to do this. That is fine, I think this is for the common good; it helps the joint fight against terrorism.
But aside from that, my understanding of the decisions made by the President of Kyrgyzstan and the Kyrgyz parliament was that for various reasons, their military base would cease operations, while new operations in assisting freight transfers would take place elsewhere, without resorting to any kind of immunity inherent to military personnel, and without the presence of a large number of military men, using mainly civilian personnel. Thus, this operation will be very similar to the one we are carrying out, which also assists freight transfers to help the fight against terrorism. That is how I understand it.
QUESTION: In the statement you made in the Hague, you said that we are ready for a significant reduction in the number of strategic warheads and missiles. What would you say is the maximum limit for these types of reductions?
And another question. Russia firmly monitors the coordination of strategic nuclear forces and ballistic missile defence. The Americans have already rejected this coordination. Do you think that you will be able to find some kind of compromise on this issue during your meeting?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: I would like to make just one small correction. We talked about this issue in Amsterdam, not in the Hague; although these cities are close to one another, they are, as you know, not the same.
Now, getting back to the latter part of your question: for the moment, nobody has closed any doors. And despite the fact that I made this statement, and that an expanded version of it has been published, we are continuing to discuss these topics with our American partners ahead of my colleague Barack Obama’s visit. This includes discussions on coordinating issues of ballistic missile defence and limiting strategic offensive weapons.
As for the maximum limit in reductions, this matter is still under discussion, but in order for our colleagues and you yourselves to have a better idea of what we are talking about, I specifically outlined some parameters. For warheads, it is lower than what is provided for in the corresponding Moscow Treaty [the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, or SORT]. For missiles, we area ready to make a fairly decisive, large-scale reduction, cutting them down to a fraction of what we have now.
But this matter is still under discussion, so I do not feel it right to go into detail about it right now. Still, the comments I just made should allow you to get a sense of the figures in question, after some simple calculations. All of the analysts have already done so.
QUESTION: I want to come back to the situation at home, in Ingushetia. The region has seen a number of tragic events in general of late. What role do you think the neighbouring republics can play in stabilising the situation in Ingushetia and in the region in general? How do you think the situation will develop there?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: What happened in Ingushetia, including the attack on President of Ingushetia Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, is a continuation of terrorist activities carried out by the remnants of bandit groups that are in part sponsored from abroad. This sounds like a routine explanation, but this is the way it is.
Our policy in this area remains unchanged (I stated it when I was in Dagestan) – we need to be pitiless in exterminating them [the bandits]. But this is a combat that must be fought through a variety of means. Of course, the entire country is interested in this combat’s success, especially the republics in this in this region that still has its share of problems. This includes Ingushetia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachayevo-Cherkesia – all the Caucasus republics. We therefore all need to unite in order to rid ourselves of this disease for once and for all.
These kinds of operations are underway now. Why did these bandits attack Yevkurov after all? Because he was taking real action – starting to build up relations with the republic’s elite and establishing dialogue with the moderate opposition, not with thugs, of course. He began carrying out joint operations together with neighbouring Chechnya and its head, Ramzan Kadyrov. These operations were a big success. I will not list all that was achieved and how many bandits were eliminated, but the figures are impressive and are public knowledge.
It is my view, therefore, that we need to continue this work just as resolutely and effectively as has been the case recently. But at the same time, we need to learn from what has happened and take a new look around, analyse the situation. This work will continue. This is a task for the whole country, of course, and in particular for the regions of the Caucasus.
QUESTION : Mr President, many people are looking to you for new anti-corruption initiatives. Is there a basis for these expectations and what possible steps could we hope to see in this area?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: This is a good question. I will not list the results achieved so far or announce what kinds of operations are planned, because there are a lot of details regarding planned operations that it is better not to divulge in this way. After all, the fight against corruption is part of the fight against crime. It is not just about dealing with individual civil servants who have failed in their duties or take bribes. It is a fight against crime. Corruption is a serious crime, and this needs to be uppermost in our minds.
But as far as our current plans are concerned, we have work to complete in several areas regarding the package of anti-corruption measures that were drawn up and approved on my initiative last year and this year.
In particular, work is underway on drafting a presidential executive order on checking the information civil servants provide to the tax authorities on their income, assets, means of transport and other items they have to declare. We did not think up these rules so that people could make a report and then just keep doing what they have always done. We know our people’s quick-witted nature and sense of cunning, and we know that people can always find a way to hide things if they want. This is why there has to be at least a selective check of these declarations to make a comparison between people’s real and declared assets and income.
I think this is important work, but we need to operate within a strict legal framework and respect human rights at the same time. Civil servants are people too and have all the rights accorded by the Constitution. We need to work effectively and achieve results. This is something we need to do, but this is just a part of our efforts in this area. There will be other measures too.
QUESTION: Coming back to Africa, yesterday, during the discussion on the Trans-Sahara gas pipeline, the Gazprom representative said that they will build the first main gas pipeline, and we heard the words: “whoever is on the valves is the king”. Could you comment on Russia’s plans in this respect? Is Russia perhaps looking to control gas supplies from Nigeria to Europe, and is there not the danger of something like the Ukrainian situation emerging in Africa?
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: This is a good question. As far as the words you quoted go, every point of view has its right to exist, no doubt, but I think these words are not entirely correct, because even our recent experience with Ukraine shows that whoever controls the bolt is still a long way from controlling the whole situation. There are obligations and international reputation to keep in mind, and there is money too, whether in the form of payments made or of debts unsettled. And so I would say these words send out a one-sided and even primitive sort of message.
But as far as big projects go, including the Trans-Sahara gas pipeline, yes, this is an area in which the Russian Federation is interested. We are interested in these projects not because we want to control the bolts and valves and run the show, so to speak. We have enough affairs of our own to manage at home. Africa has its own specific situation, and we have great respect for the sovereignty African countries have achieved. We helped them in every way we could to achieve this sovereignty, and they do not need us to sort out their affairs. We are ready to help them in the United Nations, help them in reforming the UN itself, and we are ready to work on a bilateral basis.
But this is an area of natural interest to Russia because we are the world’s biggest gas producer. We have the longest gas pipeline network, the longest pipelines, and the greatest experience in building and operating gas pipelines. Therefore, when we offer our services this is not a means of political domination - it is business as usual. We will continue to work in this way, and not just in Africa. This is an area we are familiar with, and an area of interest to our country.
Thank you. I wish you all a good rest. Take care not to catch cold, because the temperature drops quickly here, and be careful with animals. All the best!
Russia's plans for Africa
Medvedev looking for diamonds in the rough in Angola
Diamonds are every countrys best friend when it comes to trade relations with Angola. Russias President Dmitry Medvedev is due in this gem-rich country on the final stage of what's been dubbed his ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/26/russia-africa-dmitry-medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Africa this week is Russia's latest attempt to shift the global balance of power away from the west
Irina Filatova guardian.co.uk,
Friday 26 June 2009 11.30 BST Article history
Russia's president Dmitry Medvedev spent this week in Africa, visiting four countries, Egypt, Nigeria, Angola and Namibia. Russian official sources present the visit as purely economic, stressing that its goals are to assist Russian business and to develop mutually beneficial relations with African countries. The president is accompanied by a 400-strong business delegation, and a number of important economic agreements have been signed, particularly in the sphere of energy resources and nuclear power.
This seems logical. A number of big Russian companies, such as Alrosa, Rusal, Renova, Rosneft and Gazprom are either involved in Africa or are seeking deals there, yet Russia's trade with the continent falls far behind that of China or India, let alone the US. Russia's own enormous energy resources are located in areas that are not easily accessible, sparsely populated and have extremely unfriendly climatic conditions – so developing them would be a much costlier business than developing the same resources in Africa.
But historically, visits of Russia's (Soviet) heads of state to Africa always had a political agenda – for example the 1961 visit by Leonid Brezhnev to Ghana and Guinea and the 1977 visit of Nikolai Podgornyj to Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique. Each marked a new stage of Soviet involvement in Africa. Is Medvedev's visit completely different?
Not quite. There is, indeed, a serious business element to it – much more serious, in fact, than during the African visit of Medvedev's predecessor Vladimir Putin three years ago. However, there is hardly any doubt that Medvedev's visit is at least as much about policy as it is about business – and perhaps much more so. It has to be considered in the context of Russia's final withdrawal from its negotiations to join the WTO, and the two summits that Medvedev hosted in Yekaterinburg – that of Bric countries and of the members of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. The US asked to participate as an observer, but the request was not granted. All these moves are a sign of a new stage of Russia's policy of disengagement with the west and of its leaving western financial and economic space. This tendency has been developing for a few years, but now it has obviously reached a new active phase. During his second term as president Putin often spoke of the need to transform the global economic order in order to diminish its dependence on the west. The Yekaterinburg summits sought to achieve exactly this.
In effect, Medvedev's visit to Africa should be seen as a move to create a bloc of countries rich in energy resources. The existence of such a bloc, in Russia's thinking, would increase the political weight of its participants and thus change the balance of power and influence in the world.
This may be more difficult to achieve than some Russian politicians think. Some African leaders may still be grateful to Russia for its assistance in their liberation struggles, but they need delivery, not just deals. Russia's record on this is not great. More importantly, however, the competition for the control of energy resources is exactly the field where Russia is bound to find itself in a head-on collision course not just with the west, but also with China, Russia's prize political ally in the new global order as it is seen from Moscow. It remains to be seen, how effective Russia's new engagement in Africa is going to be, and what effect it will have on its bigger goals. But for now it will certainly increase Medvedev's political weight at the coming G8 meeting.
Diamonds are every countrys best friend when it comes to trade relations with Angola. Russias President Dmitry Medvedev is due in this gem-rich country on the final stage of what's been dubbed his ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/26/russia-africa-dmitry-medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Africa this week is Russia's latest attempt to shift the global balance of power away from the west
Irina Filatova guardian.co.uk,
Friday 26 June 2009 11.30 BST Article history
Russia's president Dmitry Medvedev spent this week in Africa, visiting four countries, Egypt, Nigeria, Angola and Namibia. Russian official sources present the visit as purely economic, stressing that its goals are to assist Russian business and to develop mutually beneficial relations with African countries. The president is accompanied by a 400-strong business delegation, and a number of important economic agreements have been signed, particularly in the sphere of energy resources and nuclear power.
This seems logical. A number of big Russian companies, such as Alrosa, Rusal, Renova, Rosneft and Gazprom are either involved in Africa or are seeking deals there, yet Russia's trade with the continent falls far behind that of China or India, let alone the US. Russia's own enormous energy resources are located in areas that are not easily accessible, sparsely populated and have extremely unfriendly climatic conditions – so developing them would be a much costlier business than developing the same resources in Africa.
But historically, visits of Russia's (Soviet) heads of state to Africa always had a political agenda – for example the 1961 visit by Leonid Brezhnev to Ghana and Guinea and the 1977 visit of Nikolai Podgornyj to Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique. Each marked a new stage of Soviet involvement in Africa. Is Medvedev's visit completely different?
Not quite. There is, indeed, a serious business element to it – much more serious, in fact, than during the African visit of Medvedev's predecessor Vladimir Putin three years ago. However, there is hardly any doubt that Medvedev's visit is at least as much about policy as it is about business – and perhaps much more so. It has to be considered in the context of Russia's final withdrawal from its negotiations to join the WTO, and the two summits that Medvedev hosted in Yekaterinburg – that of Bric countries and of the members of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. The US asked to participate as an observer, but the request was not granted. All these moves are a sign of a new stage of Russia's policy of disengagement with the west and of its leaving western financial and economic space. This tendency has been developing for a few years, but now it has obviously reached a new active phase. During his second term as president Putin often spoke of the need to transform the global economic order in order to diminish its dependence on the west. The Yekaterinburg summits sought to achieve exactly this.
In effect, Medvedev's visit to Africa should be seen as a move to create a bloc of countries rich in energy resources. The existence of such a bloc, in Russia's thinking, would increase the political weight of its participants and thus change the balance of power and influence in the world.
This may be more difficult to achieve than some Russian politicians think. Some African leaders may still be grateful to Russia for its assistance in their liberation struggles, but they need delivery, not just deals. Russia's record on this is not great. More importantly, however, the competition for the control of energy resources is exactly the field where Russia is bound to find itself in a head-on collision course not just with the west, but also with China, Russia's prize political ally in the new global order as it is seen from Moscow. It remains to be seen, how effective Russia's new engagement in Africa is going to be, and what effect it will have on its bigger goals. But for now it will certainly increase Medvedev's political weight at the coming G8 meeting.
The three dangers that India faces
REDIFF.COM
Bharat Verma
June 25, 2009
Very few policy makers in India dare to acknowledge the danger to the nation's territorial integrity. The security and integrity of the nation has become hostage to vote-bank politics. Democracy and more than eight percent economic growth will be of no avail if the country as such withers away.
India is not only being frayed at its borders by insurgencies, but its very writ in the heartland is becoming increasingly questionable. The rise of a nation is predicated upon unity, peace and stability, which are essentially determined by good governance.
The prevailing security scenario poses the serious question -- Is India's development and economic growth becoming unsustainable due to poor handling of the security? There are three dangers to the territorial integrity that bedevil the nation.
Danger-1
New Delhi [Images] and the state capitals have almost ceded the governmental control over 40 percent of the Union's territory to the Naxalites [Images]. The Naxals are aided and abetted by the crime mafia that runs its operations in the same corridor from Nepal to Andhra Pradesh, as well as Maoists of Nepal who in turn receive covert support from other powers engaged/interested in destabilising India.
The nexus between the United Liberation Front of Assam and Maoists in Nepal is well established.
In a recent attack in Chhattisgarh, Maoists of India and Nepal were co-participants. There are also reports to suggest that Indian Maoists are increasingly taking to opium cultivation in areas under their control to finance their activities. The Maoist-crime-drug nexus is rather explosive.
Danger-2
The security forces, primarily the Indian Army [Images], have held the state of Jammu and Kashmir [Images] physically since Independence. The politicians and the bureaucrats have contributed nothing to resolve the situation. The danger has since magnified many times as displayed by the presence of thousands of supporters of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba [Images] flying their flags in a recent rally of dissidents.
Under the garb of peace overtures, heavily armed infiltrators with tacit support from the Pakistan military-intelligence establishment continue to make inroads into Kashmir. They are at present lying low, waiting for an opportune moment for vicious strikes on several fronts to undermine the Indian Union. This ghost force reared its head in a recent rally organised by Syed Shah Geelani. Pakistan and its sympathisers in India are working in a highly synchronised fashion for demilitarisation of the valley.
Simultaneously, there is an insidious campaign to malign the Indian Army on one pretext or the other as part of the psywar being waged by the ghost force under Islamabad's [Images] directions.
After all the wars, export of terrorism, inconsistent and weak policies by New Delhi, Islamabad could not win Kashmir only because the Indian Army held its ground. If the ghost force succeeds in making locals rise against the army, it will be an unprecedented achievement for Islamabad.
The talk of demilitarisation and the campaign to repeal Armed Forces Special Powers Act, are therefore merely ploys that aim to achieve the Kashmir objective even as the Pakistan establishment expands its tentacles not only within the valley but in other parts of India as well.
While the Pakistan dispensation talks of peace, terrorist cells are proliferating in the country including new frontiers in southern part of India. Islamic fundamentalism/terrorism footprints, as evidenced by the Bangalore-centered incidents, are too glaring to be ignored.
Islamic terrorism in the garb of freedom fighting in Kashmir is therefore de-stabilising the entire country. Islamabad is determined to use Kashmir as a gateway/launching pad to rest of India.
Danger-3
Given a modicum of political will, Danger-I and II may still be manageable, however, Danger III to its territorial integrity in the northeast may prove to be the most difficult. In fact the entire northeast can easily be unhooked on multiple counts from the Union. First, these are low populated areas having contiguity with the most densely populated and demographically aggressive country in the world, Bangladesh. The country has also emerged as a major source of Islamic fundamentalism which impacts grievously on the northeast.
To add to these woes, New Delhi because of sheer vote-bank politics legitimised illegal migration for 22 years through the vehicle of Illegal Migrants (determination by tribunals) Act, 1983. Many border districts now have a majority population constituting illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. In the near future, this leverage will be used to create an internal upheaval against the Centre as in the case of the valley.
It's a classic Islamic fundamentalist principle of asymmetric warfare. What cannot be achieved by conventional wars can be done through infiltration and subsequently internal subversion. They call it jihad!
Second, the northeast if not addressed appropriately could unhook from the Union before the valley given the acute vulnerability of the Siliguri Corridor, which is merely 10 to 20 kilometres wide and 200 kilometres long. If this critical corridor is choked or subverted or severed by force, the Union of India will have to maintain the northeast by air. With poor quality of governance for which the country is infamous, the local population may gravitate towards other regional powers.
Third, with China's claim over Arunachal Pradesh becoming more strident, as evidenced by its recent stance on Tawang, the danger to the Siliguri Corridor stands enhanced. This corridor has been facing internal turmoil for many years. The area may well be further subverted by inimical regional powers.
Chinese intention to bargain for Tawang to secure Tibet [Images] is deceptive. Subsequently, it would covet entire Arunachal Pradesh to protect Tawang. The Chinese are known for expanding their areas of strategic interests with time unlike the Indians who are in a tearing hurry to convert the Siachen Glacier into a 'mountain of peace' or the LoC into a 'line of peace' or equating Pakistan as an equal victim of terrorism.
It is a matter of grave concern that New Delhi is so prone to issue statements without thinking it through, as long as it appeases the adversary even temporarily. Therefore, the northeast -- with the internal turmoil in the Siliguri Corridor, with low population surrounded by overpopulated Bangladesh exporting Islamic terrorism under tutelage of Islamabad, with China gaining influence in Nepal and Bangladesh and its upping the ante on Tawang -- the danger to the region is grave.
Manipur is a stark indicator. The insurgents have nearly weaned the state from the Indian Union. The writ of the Indian Union has ceased to operate; insurgents, compelling people to turn to South Korean music and films, ban Hindi music and films.
New Delhi continues to fiddle while the northeast burns which in turn poses a grave problem to the territorial integrity of the Union of India. The world once again is getting polarised into two camps after the end of the Cold War -- democracies and authoritarian regimes of all hues, which includes Islamists, Communists, and the Maoists. Their perspectives are totally totalitarian. Therefore with China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Nepal (Maoists), being neighbours, the danger to the Indian territorial integrity stands enhanced.
Bharat Verma is Editor, Indian Defence Review
PAKISTAN: BODY-COUNTS WITHOUT BODIES
B.RAMAN
"The Obama Administration's policy of showering Pakistan with money and arms and ammunition even in the absence of proof of sincerity and conviction and even in the absence of progress on the ground is once again creating a worrisome impression in the Pakistani leaders that to continue to benefit from US support and largesse all they have to do is to create an illusion of motion without actual movement. That is what they are doing. That is what Pervez Musharraf did when he was the President. The two Waziristans came under the effective control of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their associates and the Neo Taliban of Afghanistan, operating from sanctuaries in Balochistan, staged its spectacular come-back in Afghanistan when he was the President and was the beneficiary of billions of dollars given by the Bush Administration. What promises he made to the Bush Administration to reform and modernise the madrasas and prevent their misuse for jihad! How much money he took from the US for madrasa reforms! What happened to those reforms? That is exactly what Zardari, Gilani and Kayani are doing now. Creating an illusion of motion without actual movement, while extracting billions of dollars from the US. The Pakistani leadership---political and military--- has developed into a fine art the extraction of money from the US by exploiting the presence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in their territory. If the Taliban ultimately succeeds in further strengthening and expanding its control in Pakistan, the US will have to share a major portion of the responsibility for failing to make Pakistan act effectively instead of merely seeming to do so. "
2. So I wrote in my article of May 22,2009, titled "Pak Army's Taliban Hunt: Seeming Motion Without Movement" available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers33/paper3209.html.
3. Responsible people in Pakistan have started doubting the claims of the Pakistan Army about the progress being made by it in its operations against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Even its claims of having killed over 1500 members of the Pakistani Taliban in the Swat Valley of the North-West Frontier Province are now being doubted because the Pakistan Army has not produced any evidence in support of its claims. Had the Army really killed so many members of the Taliban, there should have been mass graves in that area. The Army has not been able to produce the dead bodies of those killed---nor has it been able to indicate where the hundreds of dead bodies of the killed Taliban were buried.Not one of the important leaders has been killed or captured.
4. For the first time, a responsible member of Pakistan's strategic analysts community----- Zafar Hilaly, a retired officer of the Pakistan Foreign Service--- has reflected in an article published by the "News" of June 24,2009, the nagging skepticism about the reliability of the claims of the Army. A copy of his article is annexed. (24-6-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE
THE DEAD DO TELL TALES
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Zafar Hilaly
The army is fast acquiring a credibility problem with its claims of dead, injured and captured Taliban. At first there were mere mutterings, sotto voce suspicions, that not all is as claimed. These doubts are increasing; the chorus of suspicion is more voluble and before they acquire the dimensions of a scream the Army had better attend to it.
The pleasant and able and composed DG, ISPR in fact alluded to these suspicions on June 22 when he said that the army had not wanted to show pictures of the dead lest the public become upset but, presumably, in response to public demand, he showed 54 pictures of dead Taliban. All of whom appeared very much as one would expect those killed in battle. I doubt if anyone was upset by those images. Actually, for Pakistanis fed on a rich diet of Taliban videos showing gory executions of soldiers, with the sound on, they were rather tame. In fact most watching probably relished seeing their tormentors dead.
Noticeably, there were no photos of injured Taliban and only a desultory few of those claimed to have been captured have ever been shown on TV. In contrast the Taliban paraded their victims, allowed interviews and generally made a great show about their capture and their own prowess. Of course, it was done with the aim of terrorising the populace just as for the army to show their captives in all poses would hopefully also terrorise the enemy.
Some Taliban practices may be worth adopting because photos of a mere 54 dead while claiming that the actual number is 2000 do not wash. Especially as not a single one of the first tier leaders has been killed, wounded or captured and rumours are circulating that the Taliban leadership have been evacuated away from the danger zone, along with Al Qaeda leaders to Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan and would return in due course.
Pakistanis are a suspicious lot when it comes to evaluating official claims, perhaps because they tend to deceive even when it is easier to tell the truth; or because they have learnt from experience that "official speak" is invariably wrong or comes with a spin; or because the claims are so fatuous as to defy credulity. For example, after every air strike the number of dead militants ranges from six to 14 militants, seldom more. All of them are supposed to be insurgents, rarely civilians, presumably because, unlike the Americans, we have very discriminating "Taliban seeking" missiles. Considering the difficult terrain and the risk to be incurred by the usually "reliable" sources reaching the site of the bombing it is remarkable how quickly the numbers of dead and injured are counted, processed and reported in the press the next day. Whoever does such an efficient job should be asked to lead our flaying attempts to cope with the IDPs problem.
It was also revealing that the BBC correspondent who was taken on a tour of the battle zone, he termed it "bandit country," said that while he was shown a half dozen or so of "captured Taliban" he saw none of the 2000 dead nor any graves or other signs of death. Instead BBC viewers last night got to see what the Taliban had allowed him to film which was the hanging corpse of a beheaded soldier and another who had been killed, with boastful Taliban standing nearby. Clearly there is something wrong with the optics of this war as far as Pakistan is concerned.
Of much greater concern was a news report carried in Dawn of 23 June entitled "Efforts on for patch- up between Darra Taliban, Adezai lashkar," which states that "Some "invisible" forces( normally a euphemism for we know who) are out to narrow the differences and broker an understanding between the Darra Adam Khel-based Taliban and leaders of the Qaumi Lashkar of Adezai on the outskirts of the provincial capital – the Taliban conditions included that their men would freely move in parts of Peshawar and would take action against those found involved in 'un-Islamic' activities and the Lashkar would not object to their actions. Secondly, the Taliban want the lashkar not to create hurdles while they recruit new members. Another condition of the Taliban is that the lashkar will not support security forces in case of any clash between the Taliban and law enforcing agencies."
Apparently two rounds of negotiations have already been held and members of the "Tableeghii Jamaat were active to broker an understanding between the two sides". When the local police chief was asked about these negotiations he denied all knowledge of them. Both are probably telling the truth. The left hand in Pakistan often does not know what the right hand is doing. Or the left side of the mouth, in the case of the Interior Minister, who claimed that Fazlullah had been "trapped," does not have a clue what the right side, which denied he had made any such statement, is saying.
Such reports, if true, damage the sincerity of the army's efforts and rob its actions and claims of credibility. It is difficult to believe that even while the army is engaged in fighting and dying in Swat another arm of government is negotiating deals with the same blood thirsty foe of murderers, kidnappers and drug peddlars. The report further negates the claim of the Tableeghi Jamaat that it is a purely religious organisation rather than one with a political agenda, as many have long suspected. (I recall being summoned to the Yemeni Foreign Office in 1988 and being asked why the Tableeqi Jamaat chose Yemen to spread the word of Islam. In the words of the Yemeni official: "Excellency, this is our religion, we gave it to you, please don't try and teach us the proper Islam. Ask them to go somewhere else. Or do they have some other agenda.")
Mr Zardari has written a column in the Washington Post emphasising that democracy and democracy alone is the panacea for Pakistan's problems. Unfortunately many of his countrymen are not so certain. Pakistanis are as sceptical about democracy as they are about dictatorship. Both have failed to deliver. Both speak with forked tongues. Similarly, Mr Zardari has claimed that he will fight terrorism to the bitter end. "Fight" should be the operative word and not "negotiate" deals of the sort being hustled in Peshawar.
The writer is a former ambassador. Email: charles123it@hotmail.com
"The Obama Administration's policy of showering Pakistan with money and arms and ammunition even in the absence of proof of sincerity and conviction and even in the absence of progress on the ground is once again creating a worrisome impression in the Pakistani leaders that to continue to benefit from US support and largesse all they have to do is to create an illusion of motion without actual movement. That is what they are doing. That is what Pervez Musharraf did when he was the President. The two Waziristans came under the effective control of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their associates and the Neo Taliban of Afghanistan, operating from sanctuaries in Balochistan, staged its spectacular come-back in Afghanistan when he was the President and was the beneficiary of billions of dollars given by the Bush Administration. What promises he made to the Bush Administration to reform and modernise the madrasas and prevent their misuse for jihad! How much money he took from the US for madrasa reforms! What happened to those reforms? That is exactly what Zardari, Gilani and Kayani are doing now. Creating an illusion of motion without actual movement, while extracting billions of dollars from the US. The Pakistani leadership---political and military--- has developed into a fine art the extraction of money from the US by exploiting the presence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in their territory. If the Taliban ultimately succeeds in further strengthening and expanding its control in Pakistan, the US will have to share a major portion of the responsibility for failing to make Pakistan act effectively instead of merely seeming to do so. "
2. So I wrote in my article of May 22,2009, titled "Pak Army's Taliban Hunt: Seeming Motion Without Movement" available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers33/paper3209.html.
3. Responsible people in Pakistan have started doubting the claims of the Pakistan Army about the progress being made by it in its operations against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Even its claims of having killed over 1500 members of the Pakistani Taliban in the Swat Valley of the North-West Frontier Province are now being doubted because the Pakistan Army has not produced any evidence in support of its claims. Had the Army really killed so many members of the Taliban, there should have been mass graves in that area. The Army has not been able to produce the dead bodies of those killed---nor has it been able to indicate where the hundreds of dead bodies of the killed Taliban were buried.Not one of the important leaders has been killed or captured.
4. For the first time, a responsible member of Pakistan's strategic analysts community----- Zafar Hilaly, a retired officer of the Pakistan Foreign Service--- has reflected in an article published by the "News" of June 24,2009, the nagging skepticism about the reliability of the claims of the Army. A copy of his article is annexed. (24-6-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE
THE DEAD DO TELL TALES
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Zafar Hilaly
The army is fast acquiring a credibility problem with its claims of dead, injured and captured Taliban. At first there were mere mutterings, sotto voce suspicions, that not all is as claimed. These doubts are increasing; the chorus of suspicion is more voluble and before they acquire the dimensions of a scream the Army had better attend to it.
The pleasant and able and composed DG, ISPR in fact alluded to these suspicions on June 22 when he said that the army had not wanted to show pictures of the dead lest the public become upset but, presumably, in response to public demand, he showed 54 pictures of dead Taliban. All of whom appeared very much as one would expect those killed in battle. I doubt if anyone was upset by those images. Actually, for Pakistanis fed on a rich diet of Taliban videos showing gory executions of soldiers, with the sound on, they were rather tame. In fact most watching probably relished seeing their tormentors dead.
Noticeably, there were no photos of injured Taliban and only a desultory few of those claimed to have been captured have ever been shown on TV. In contrast the Taliban paraded their victims, allowed interviews and generally made a great show about their capture and their own prowess. Of course, it was done with the aim of terrorising the populace just as for the army to show their captives in all poses would hopefully also terrorise the enemy.
Some Taliban practices may be worth adopting because photos of a mere 54 dead while claiming that the actual number is 2000 do not wash. Especially as not a single one of the first tier leaders has been killed, wounded or captured and rumours are circulating that the Taliban leadership have been evacuated away from the danger zone, along with Al Qaeda leaders to Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan and would return in due course.
Pakistanis are a suspicious lot when it comes to evaluating official claims, perhaps because they tend to deceive even when it is easier to tell the truth; or because they have learnt from experience that "official speak" is invariably wrong or comes with a spin; or because the claims are so fatuous as to defy credulity. For example, after every air strike the number of dead militants ranges from six to 14 militants, seldom more. All of them are supposed to be insurgents, rarely civilians, presumably because, unlike the Americans, we have very discriminating "Taliban seeking" missiles. Considering the difficult terrain and the risk to be incurred by the usually "reliable" sources reaching the site of the bombing it is remarkable how quickly the numbers of dead and injured are counted, processed and reported in the press the next day. Whoever does such an efficient job should be asked to lead our flaying attempts to cope with the IDPs problem.
It was also revealing that the BBC correspondent who was taken on a tour of the battle zone, he termed it "bandit country," said that while he was shown a half dozen or so of "captured Taliban" he saw none of the 2000 dead nor any graves or other signs of death. Instead BBC viewers last night got to see what the Taliban had allowed him to film which was the hanging corpse of a beheaded soldier and another who had been killed, with boastful Taliban standing nearby. Clearly there is something wrong with the optics of this war as far as Pakistan is concerned.
Of much greater concern was a news report carried in Dawn of 23 June entitled "Efforts on for patch- up between Darra Taliban, Adezai lashkar," which states that "Some "invisible" forces( normally a euphemism for we know who) are out to narrow the differences and broker an understanding between the Darra Adam Khel-based Taliban and leaders of the Qaumi Lashkar of Adezai on the outskirts of the provincial capital – the Taliban conditions included that their men would freely move in parts of Peshawar and would take action against those found involved in 'un-Islamic' activities and the Lashkar would not object to their actions. Secondly, the Taliban want the lashkar not to create hurdles while they recruit new members. Another condition of the Taliban is that the lashkar will not support security forces in case of any clash between the Taliban and law enforcing agencies."
Apparently two rounds of negotiations have already been held and members of the "Tableeghii Jamaat were active to broker an understanding between the two sides". When the local police chief was asked about these negotiations he denied all knowledge of them. Both are probably telling the truth. The left hand in Pakistan often does not know what the right hand is doing. Or the left side of the mouth, in the case of the Interior Minister, who claimed that Fazlullah had been "trapped," does not have a clue what the right side, which denied he had made any such statement, is saying.
Such reports, if true, damage the sincerity of the army's efforts and rob its actions and claims of credibility. It is difficult to believe that even while the army is engaged in fighting and dying in Swat another arm of government is negotiating deals with the same blood thirsty foe of murderers, kidnappers and drug peddlars. The report further negates the claim of the Tableeghi Jamaat that it is a purely religious organisation rather than one with a political agenda, as many have long suspected. (I recall being summoned to the Yemeni Foreign Office in 1988 and being asked why the Tableeqi Jamaat chose Yemen to spread the word of Islam. In the words of the Yemeni official: "Excellency, this is our religion, we gave it to you, please don't try and teach us the proper Islam. Ask them to go somewhere else. Or do they have some other agenda.")
Mr Zardari has written a column in the Washington Post emphasising that democracy and democracy alone is the panacea for Pakistan's problems. Unfortunately many of his countrymen are not so certain. Pakistanis are as sceptical about democracy as they are about dictatorship. Both have failed to deliver. Both speak with forked tongues. Similarly, Mr Zardari has claimed that he will fight terrorism to the bitter end. "Fight" should be the operative word and not "negotiate" deals of the sort being hustled in Peshawar.
The writer is a former ambassador. Email: charles123it@hotmail.com
The Influence of Lobbies on U.S. Foreign Policy
India's U.S.-based lobby is the only lobby in Washington likely to acquire the strength of the Israel lobby. It both relies on a strong network of law and public relations firms and is supported by a large ethnic population group in the United States, many of whose members are well educated and financially successful. For example, 20 percent of all the companies in Silicon Valley are owned by Indian Americans. The U.S.-India Business Council, which has a core committee of 200 companies that make up part of the United States' corporate elite, is closely allied with the India lobby. And like Jewish Americans, Indian Americans are strongly inclined toward political activism.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64941/john-newhouse/diplomacy-inc
FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE, May/June 2009
Diplomacy, Inc.
The Influence of Lobbies on U.S. Foreign Policy
John Newhouse
JOHN NEWHOUSE is a Senior Fellow at the World Security Institute and the author of a forthcoming book on foreign lobbies in the United States to be published by Simon & Schuster.
The area around K Street in Washington, D.C., abounds with lobbyists, many of whom represent foreign governments or entities. Although some major foreign governments continue to work mainly through their embassies in Washington, nearly one hundred countries rely on lobbyists to protect and promote their interests. The subculture of public relations and law firms that do this kind of work reflects a steady decline and privatization of diplomacy -- with an increasing impact on how the United States conducts its own foreign policy.
The strongest lobbies promoting foreign interests are driven by cohesive ethnic population groups in the United States, such as Armenia, China, Greece, India, Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, and, historically, Ireland. Even countries that have strong bilateral relations with the United States, such as Australia, Japan, and Norway, need lobbyists as well as embassies. Lobbyists can operate within the system in ways that experienced diplomats cannot. A lobbying group can identify with a domestic ethnic bloc even though it is paid by a foreign government. Ethnic politics can trump corporate interests and, more important, influence what agencies within the U.S. government may see as the national interest.
The United States is a nation of immigrants -- a strength that has also created vulnerabilities. Although ethnic population groups have at times offset isolationist tendencies in the United States, they also can find themselves conflicted on issues that could divide the motherland from the adopted country, the United States. In other cases, these so-called hyphenated groups unhesitatingly side with the United States and, in effect, become more royalist than the king.
Many lobbyists function as surrogates. A law firm or lobbying firm can make arrangements and put forward arguments in ways that its foreign client cannot, in part because most embassies do not operate as comfortably or effectively on Capitol Hill as can the firms. And then, the U.S. government has become so complex that only insiders, such as former members of Congress or congressional staff members turned lobbyists, can navigate its confusing structure. The most well-connected individuals are likely to join one of the major hybrid law and lobbying firms, such as Patton Boggs, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, or BGR Group. The last firm became involved in the internal affairs of Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Led by former Ambassador Robert Blackwill, it was paid $380,000 to represent the Kurdish regional government of Iraq and $300,000 for providing "strategic counsel" to former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who was striving to regain his post as leader of the Iraqi government. Official records show that other recent clients of this firm have included the governments of Qatar, Serbia, and Taiwan.
The most effective lobbying is done on Capitol Hill. Although members of the executive branch face limits on what they can do for lobbyists, congressional members and their staff are generally less constrained. When a faction in Congress takes a position under pressure from lobbyists, it can become very hard for executive-branch offices to resist. Functionally, the U.S. government is an anomaly, with a potent legislature unconnected to the executive branch but open to being exploited by domestic agents representing foreign governments.
Some of the big embassies, starting with the British and Israeli ones, have no difficulty gaining access on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. But many, if not most, of the other missions are spread thin, with limited access to the people and offices that matter. A typical midsize embassy will have one or two officers covering the agencies of chief importance at home. Most often, this means the State Department and the Department of Defense, along with other agencies involved in security issues. These embassies cannot begin to compete with lobbying groups for influence and may not even try to cover Congress. A retired British diplomat who served as ambassador to Washington in the mid-1990s said that he spent most of his time on Capitol Hill, leaving his staff to monitor the national security apparatus.
Lobbyists for foreign governments operate in ways that help U.S. officials and reinforce incumbency. A lobbying firm, for example, can help set up a deal for a foreign country to purchase agricultural machinery from a U.S. supplier. A member of Congress from the district in which the supplier is located will then announce the sale -- and the lobbyists, in turn, will say that congressional support of certain bills will help that business and others in the district.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, is the model for other lobbying groups and for lobbying firms that aim to influence U.S. foreign policy. It shows how they must focus on the internal rivalries within congressional committees and on other groups that involve politicians with voices that carry. Lobbyists working for foreign clients play a game that one of them described as "five-dimensional chess," which includes the White House, Congress, interagency conflicts, and the Republican and Democratic Parties.
A firm lobbying on behalf of a foreign client keeps data on every member of Congress, their staffs, and even some representatives in state legislatures who are considered rising figures. The firm will do a meticulous analysis of the voting records and public statements of various key players, notably the chairs of the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees.
On Capitol Hill, the most influential lobbying factions are those that represent overseas business interests, such as Airbus, the European aviation conglomerate, and Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy giant. The next most influential group is comprised of caucuses within Congress, which representatives and senators join to identify with or express support for a given country. The Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, for example, is one of the largest and contains well over 100 members of Congress, none of them Indian.
The fallout from the process is sometimes seen not only in foreign capitals but also within the Washington bureaucracy as a tendency to "move the goalposts." A lobbying firm, for example, may hear of a negotiation that the State Department has concluded or is on the verge of concluding. It may then intervene on Capitol Hill, or, on occasion, with the White House to alter the outcome in a way that benefits its client. This represents a uniquely Washington way of doing business -- a deal is not necessarily a done deal if one or more of the major parties wants to change its position.
Foreign governments, of course, do require help from time to time in navigating the Washington labyrinth, and many strive to have Washington support their interests and not their adversaries'. Israel and Taiwan are two countries that feel dependent on U.S. political support of this kind.
The activities of lobbyists working on behalf of foreign governments or businesses -- notably those whose focus is largely commercial, not political -- can be useful and in line with the national interest. The United States relies on a free and open trade and investment climate, which these lobbyists work to promote. Lobbyists representing foreign clients say that their work is a normal part of the U.S. political process and indistinguishable from lobbying on behalf of domestic clients. But the latter, however abusive it can be and often is, does not carry the risk of skewing U.S. foreign policy or compromising the national interest. Lobbying on behalf of foreign countries, many in Washington believe, can have an adverse affect on U.S. interests by challenging the sensible and balanced formation of foreign policy.
A HISTORY OF INFLUENCE
Among the earliest and most robust promoters of foreign causes in the United States were the Irish. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the Irish American diaspora in the United States began providing material and political support to the forces of Irish nationalism. This continued through the 1990s and the so-called Troubles, when groups such as Irish Northern Aid funneled aid to families of political prisoners in Ireland.
In the 1930s, as the Third Reich began to gather strength in Germany, many German Americans in the United States joined small groups such as Friends of New Germany. These were swiftly spun off into larger organizations -- one became the German American Bund, and another was a fascist organization widely known as the Silver Shirts, a reference to the Nazi Brown Shirts.
Although these organizations had more visibility than actual impact, they did attract the attention of the U.S. Congress. In 1935, a report prepared by the House of Representatives warned of propaganda that aimed to "influence the internal and external policies of our country." The report led to the passage in 1938 of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which was designed to monitor the activities of groups lobbying on behalf of foreign causes. The law covers anyone who engages in political activities or acts in a public relations capacity for a foreign principal. Such agents are required to report their activities to the Justice Department and to disclose whatever gifts and services they provide to elected or appointed officials. These criteria are far stricter than what is required of lobbyists who represent domestic interests. However, compliance with and enforcement of FARA regulations are notoriously lax, and they are often ignored entirely if enforcing them could be politically awkward for U.S. allies.
Since 1966, when FARA was amended, there have been only three indictments on alleged FARA violations and no successful criminal prosecutions. The cases were dismissed because of statute-of-limitations problems. Asked about this seemingly limp enforcement, Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesperson, replied in writing, "The Justice Department generally seeks to obtain voluntary compliance with the FARA statute through a variety of mechanisms, including if needed civil and/or administrative resolution." Since the changes to FARA in 1966, Boyd wrote, the U.S. government has faced an increased burden of proof, which has "reduced the incidence of criminal FARA prosecutions and increased civil and administrative resolution of FARA questions."
Another law, the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (LDA), is even weaker. It is filled with thresholds that define what must be reported, such as requiring disclosure only when foreign clients represent more than 20 percent of a lobbying firm's total contacts. "The LDA is a joke," one Washington lobbyist told me, "because no one looks at those filings, and there has been no enforcement."
In June 2008, Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and then Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) introduced legislation that would require all lobbyists representing foreign clients to register under FARA, even if they have already registered under the LDA. Under current law, lobbyists registered under the LDA are exempt from also registering under the more rigorous FARA regulations. Another measure under this proposed legislation would require disclosure in cases in which lobbyists represent foreign principals -- including governments and political parties -- to U.S. officials stationed outside the country. Currently, FARA requires the disclosure only of those agents who represent foreign clients in front of agencies or officials located within U.S. territory. The Justice Department has not yet publicly expressed a position on the legislation.
The issue, then, is whether it is possible to enforce the existing statutes -- if necessary by tightening them -- or whether foreign agents and their influence will continue to flourish. The proposed Senate bill would be a good place to begin strengthening the oversight process. But statutes, however tightly written, must be enforced. As Senator Schumer said last year, "Too many lobbyists are skirting the law and operating in the shadows, and in too many cases the Justice Department is standing at the light switch and refusing to turn it on."
THE MODEL LOBBY
The Israel lobby operates within a loose umbrella organization called the Conference of Presidents, which contains a number of subgroups and committees. The centerpiece of the overall organization is AIPAC. Through AIPAC's network of contacts in government agencies and on Capitol Hill, its ability to influence events and policy in Washington is probably without precedent. In one example, AIPAC successfully lobbied Congress in 1995 to pass a bill requiring the United States to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, despite private objections from the government of then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Clinton administration.
Although AIPAC characterizes its role as promoting financial assistance to Israel from the U.S. government, most of this appropriation has become routine and is rarely challenged. Where AIPAC devotes most of its energies is in defending Israel's hard line on the Palestinians to a U.S. audience and deflecting criticism in the United States of Israel's equally hard line on Hezbollah and, above all, Iran. Under the Bush administration, officials such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were determined to support AIPAC in its efforts to align U.S. foreign policy with that of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Likud Party -- namely, in identifying Iran as not only a regional threat but also a global threat to peace and stability. In pressing for votes and support, AIPAC does not threaten members of Congress so much as it makes them worry about angry phone calls from wealthy constituents. Defying AIPAC can make life complicated for those in Congress who are looking toward their reelection.
Whether AIPAC will be able to sustain its dominant role is not clear, however. A growing number of Jewish Americans regard the lobby as a group of largely ethnocentric extremists and oppose its tactics. Support for Israel is becoming age-related -- a recent poll conducted by New York University, for example, showed that more than two-thirds of the young, non-Orthodox Jewish students surveyed did not consider the situation with Israel and the Palestinians a high priority for the 2008 U.S. presidential election, whereas more than half of the Jewish Americans over the age of 65 who were surveyed did. Another poll, part of the Middle East Academic Survey Research and Exposition, conducted by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, showed that an overwhelming majority -- roughly four-fifths -- of those U.S. academics polled regarded the Israel lobby as "negative" to "extremely negative" to U.S. interests. A slightly greater majority of those polled said they believed that the lobby's tactics expose the United States "to avoidable hostility in the Middle East."
Historically, the notable exception to AIPAC's uniform hold on the Israel lobby has been the Israel Policy Forum. According to M. J. Rosenberg, the group's director of research and its key figure, the forum's mission is to encourage the United States to pursue an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the establishment of a two-state solution.
An alternative group calling itself J Street was launched in April 2008. J Street defines itself as "the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement," with the purpose of ending the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically and supporting a new direction for U.S. policy in the Middle East. It has a lobbying arm that operates on Capitol Hill, and its political action committee endorsed 41 candidates in the 2008 congressional elections and distributed $578,000 among them. Thirty-three of these candidates won, although the degree to which J Street may have helped is unclear.
Reactions to J Street have been mixed. Skeptics, of whom there are many, feel that its efforts will founder -- the two major political parties have trained themselves to listen to AIPAC first and act accordingly. Although an increasing number of Jewish Americans take issue with Israel's position on the Palestinians and favor a two-state solution to the Palestine problem, AIPAC holds several advantages, the first of which is that hard-liners in the Jewish American community care much more about advancing their position than do those who lean toward a two-state solution. Second, a deep fear of Arab intentions still leads many Jews in the United States to be more comfortable with AIPAC's politics. And lastly, and of no small importance, AIPAC is run by professionals who are rightly considered to hold black belts in the art of Washington politics.
This March, the clout of the Israel lobby and its allies on Capitol Hill was forcefully displayed by their successful derailment of the appointment of Charles Freeman to be chair of the National Intelligence Council. Freeman is among the most widely respected foreign policy analysts, and he has often taken exception to Israeli policies. In withdrawing from the appointment, Freeman wrote, "There is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired. . . . It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States."
A QUICK STUDY
India's U.S.-based lobby is the only lobby in Washington likely to acquire the strength of the Israel lobby. It both relies on a strong network of law and public relations firms and is supported by a large ethnic population group in the United States, many of whose members are well educated and financially successful. For example, 20 percent of all the companies in Silicon Valley are owned by Indian Americans. The U.S.-India Business Council, which has a core committee of 200 companies that make up part of the United States' corporate elite, is closely allied with the India lobby. And like Jewish Americans, Indian Americans are strongly inclined toward political activism.
To date, the most controversial and potentially troublesome venture in which the maturing India lobby has played a major role was its promotion of the July 2005 statement issued by President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that called for shipments of U.S.-produced nuclear fuel and technology to India. Under the agreement subsequently reached, India will separate its military and civilian nuclear programs and in return gain access to U.S. expertise and materials.
Many in the arms control community opposed the deal, suggesting that the agreement would increase India's ability to produce fissionable material for its nuclear weapons program. Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.), co-chair of a House task force on nuclear nonproliferation, called the agreement a "historic failure" that "pours nuclear fuel on the fire of an India-Pakistan nuclear arms race." A major complaint is that the deal in effect endorses India's refusal to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and exempts India from the global rules that govern the nuclear trade. Under the agreement, India becomes eligible for the same trade and scientific benefits acquired by NPT signatories -- including the five original nuclear weapons states.
Critics in the United States and India saw political as well as energy-related factors pushing the deal. Bush, they felt, was seeking to tap into India's expanding economy while creating a stronger strategic balance against China. Others suggested that the Bush administration's strong push for the deal was largely driven by Bush's quest for a legacy -- an opinion shared by some Indian officials, who often heard from their U.S. counterparts that the deal had to be completed while Bush was still in office.
Within the United States, commercial pressure for the deal came from the U.S.-India Business Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the military-industrial sector, and the two U.S. companies that produce nuclear reactors, General Electric and Westinghouse. "Billions of dollars were at stake," one lobbyist involved in the negotiations told me. "The idea here was to bind India in a strategic relationship, and the military orders would then follow."
What the Bush administration was proposing ran sharply counter to provisions of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, which require full-scale safeguards for any U.S. exports of nuclear material or technology. In order for the deal to go through, both houses of Congress would first have to approve legislation exempting India from U.S. law. The lobby began a full-court press, with the U.S.-India Business Council retaining the Washington law firm Patton Boggs and the Indian embassy hiring Venable, a law firm that employs Birch Bayh, a former U.S. senator and the father of the current senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.).
The lobbying effort brought together for the first time a disparate coalition of Indian American groups, ranging from the Asian American Hotel Owners Association and the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin to larger groups, such as the Indian American Friendship Council. The founder of this last group, Swadesh Chatterjee, proclaimed that a strategic partnership between the United States and India "will define the twenty-first century." Other groups that played an active role in the lobbying included the U.S. India Political Action Committee, which is run by Sanjay Puri, an influential businessman and lobbyist who was also a member of the transition team for Virginia's governor, Tim Kaine, now the new chair of the Democratic Party. Shekhar Tiwari, who unofficially represents the Indian American Republican Council, with 36 chapters around the country, told me that his group was "the main force behind the scenes" in pushing the deal.
The various groups supporting the deal argued that its passage would be good for the environment. India, the argument went, needs alternative energy sources to soft brown coal, the dirtiest power source and the one on which India and China chiefly rely. To make its case, the lobby spread a great deal of money around, and fundraisers were held for pivotal figures, such as then Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.), who was chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the senior Republican member of that committee; and Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), Biden's future replacement as chair. Former Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), then the co-chair of the Senate India Caucus, was another beneficiary of the lobby's largess.
By November 2006, both houses of Congress approved the deal, known as the Hyde Act, by large margins. The debate over the deal and this outcome revealed a curious polarity -- whereas majorities in both the Senate and the House supported the deal, a significant part of the foreign policy community had strenuously opposed it. This left Congress with an unanswered question -- namely, how should the United States measure the advantages of a stronger, more productive partnership with this rising global power against the risks posed by the agreement, starting with its prejudicial bearing on the NPT and on nuclear arms control in general?
The Obama administration has encouraged India and Pakistan to keep relations with each other on a stable track. And the U.S.-Indian deal may not rock any boats in Washington unless India decides to test a warhead for its new intermediate-range missile system, the Agni II, a weapon allegedly designed to target China. It is clear, however, that on Capitol Hill, any future testing would be seen as conflicting with the legislative intent of the agreement and hence would put it in serious jeopardy.
AT NATO'S DOOR
The question of how far and how fast to expand NATO was a deeply contentious issue within the U.S. foreign policy community in the mid-1990s. Countries in central and eastern Europe used their tightly focused political activities in Washington to promote various goals, including admission to Western institutions, starting with NATO. These countries included the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, and later Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. More recently, Georgia and Ukraine have used lobbyists in Washington to push for NATO membership, so far unsuccessfully.
By the mid-1990s, the risks of expanding NATO were clear. Russian nationalists could exploit the issue at the expense of more moderate figures. What Russia wanted then was to reclaim its historical place as a major player in European security -- and it still does. At the time, figures inside the Russian security structure were nursing an old grievance. In 1991, just a few years before talk of enlarging NATO began, the Soviet Union's then leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had received assurances from U.S. officials that in return for the Soviet Union's earlier acquiescence on German reunification, NATO would not deploy forces beyond Germany's eastern border.
Germany favored having a buffer between itself and Russia and was the only serious western European advocate of enlargement. Various Washington luminaries pushed the idea as a way of preemptively stifling Russia's imperial impulses. There was also an assumption, probably well founded, that the Clinton administration saw enlargement as a means of gaining the support of ethnic eastern European voters in the run-up to the 1996 presidential election.
From the candidate countries, the Polish government pushed hard for enlargement, mainly through its embassy in Washington but also with strenuous support from the Polish American Congress, an umbrella organization that includes more than 3,000 Polish American groups, and with the assistance of a lobbying firm. Poland no longer worried about being threatened militarily by Russia, but it did have concerns about becoming part of a European security vacuum. Moving NATO in its direction, the thinking went, would further commit the United States to Europe's security. The Czech Republic and Hungary made similar efforts.
On April 30, 1998, the U.S. Senate approved a bill supporting NATO enlargement, and one year later, in March 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland gained admission to NATO. Five years later, in March 2004, other aspirants -- Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the three Baltic states -- were also accepted into the alliance. In order to achieve this end, each of them had turned to Washington-based lobbyists for help.
One lobbyist heavily involved in arguing for NATO expansion was Randy Scheunemann, who would later serve as chief adviser on foreign policy for John McCain's presidential campaign. For years, Scheunemann has been a central figure in a hawkish circle of foreign policy advisers who have sought to bring NATO steadily closer to Russia's doorstep and have argued for expelling Russia from the G-8 (the group of highly industrialized states), a position McCain took as a presidential candidate. Until early 2008, Scheunemann was simultaneously working for the McCain campaign and as a paid adviser to the government of Georgia. He was also a registered lobbyist for Latvia, Romania, and Macedonia. In 2006, McCain had co-sponsored legislation that passed in the Senate endorsing an expansion of NATO to include Albania, Croatia, Georgia, and Macedonia.
Among the other firms involved in lobbying for aspirant NATO members was the K Street firm of Jefferson Waterman International, which represented Bulgaria and Romania in the process. One of JWI's first and biggest clients was the Croatian regime of Franjo Tudjman, which various human rights groups have accused of committing war crimes during the Bosnian war in the 1990s. JWI assured the Croatians it could help. In a memo drafted by Charles Waterman, the firm's CEO, JWI was ready to counter "a wave of criticism" if Tudjman were to seize control over territory patrolled by UN peace monitors. Tudjman continued to renew JWI's contract through the end of 1998 (he died in 1999).
JWI, much like similar firms in Washington, draws its leadership and senior staff from government agencies, especially the CIA. Waterman is a former vice chair of the CIA's National Intelligence Council and was also national intelligence officer for the Middle East. Samuel Hoskinson, the firm's vice president and chief financial officer, also served as vice chair of the NIC and as a senior adviser to three national security advisers -- Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Samuel Wyman, the firm's executive vice president and chief operating officer, was an operations officer for the CIA in Africa, Europe, and the Near East.
In June 2007, Hoskinson and one of his colleagues at JWI became the heads of a group that calls itself the Alliance for a New Kosovo. They were advising Bexhet Pacoli, a wealthy Kosovar Albanian businessman, who made open claims of paying a large team of lobbyists and consultants in Washington to push the White House and Congress to support Kosovo's independence. Hoskinson told me that the foundation hired eight people to lobby Congress and the State Department and circulate arguments in the media. When the United States, along with dozens of other countries, recognized Kosovo as an independent state in February 2008, the firm regarded the outcome as among its largest achievements.
In May 2002, Ukraine made clear that membership in NATO was one of its principal goals. A year later, at the invitation of Davis, Manafort & Freedman, an influential Washington lobbying firm, Sergey Lavochkin, chief of staff to the Ukranian prime minister, visited Washington. In Washington, Lavochkin contacted the State Department and was told that it did not deal with lobbying firms on K Street and that he should try working through the U.S. embassy in Kiev. Later, in 2005, a staff member at the National Security Council called McCain's Senate office, which itself was pushing for Ukraine's acceptance into NATO, to complain that Davis, Manafort & Freedman's lobbying was undercutting U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine.
By early 2008, matters were changing. The Bush administration was arguing that both Georgia and Ukraine had all but met the conditions for NATO membership. France and Germany dissented, reflecting a generalized concern in Europe about Russia's increasingly shrill and intimidating protests. Indeed, Russia was threatening to target nuclear missiles at Ukraine if it joined the alliance. Predictably, this state of affairs worsened considerably when in August 2008, just four months after the NATO summit meeting in April, the conflict between Georgia and Russia erupted.
THE PERENNIAL QUESTION
The Armenia lobby is built on a strong domestic ethnic base in the United States and is committed to having Turkey publicly condemned for genocide relating to the slaughter of Armenians that occurred in 1915. Intense lobbying for a congressional resolution accusing Turkey of genocide began in the 1980s and has since become a perennial question. Most years, the White House and the State Department support the principle behind such a resolution but ultimately conclude that adoption of a resolution of that kind against the Turks would be harmful to U.S. interests.
In 2007, the outcome could have been different, and Congress came close to adopting a genocide resolution. The Armenian community was feeling confident after Democratic victories in the 2006 midterm elections -- Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Speaker of the House, and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), House majority leader, were seen as allies, as was then Senator Biden. Passing the resolution could have meant the end of efforts to build a reliable and productive U.S.-Turkish relationship. And it could have strengthened Turkey's incentive to hedge against its weakening position in the West and the rising instability in western Asia by initiating a nuclear weapons program.
The vote was close, with the House Foreign Affairs Committee approving the resolution 27 to 21. But then, Pelosi, after stating her intention to move ahead with a vote on the floor, drew back in the face of a strong, well-coordinated argument that its passage would threaten national security. Most convincing was a strongly worded open letter signed by eight former U.S. secretaries of state who all opposed the resolution on national security grounds. Also leading the charge against the resolution were former Congressmen Bob Livingston (R-La.) and Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.). (Gephardt had just signed on with the firm DLA Piper to promote Turkish interests under a contract worth $1.2 million annually.)
In early 2009, however, the genocide resolution's prospects rose sharply. As reported in the Financial Times, the public denunciation by the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of Israel's Gaza offensive last January angered many of the Jewish American and pro-Israel groups that had supported Turkey behind the scenes during the debate over the genocide resolution in 2007.
The Armenian government spends virtually nothing on lobbying services in Washington, because it does not need to: the Armenian community in the United States -- concentrated in California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and the New York area -- promotes Armenian causes through financial contributions and its influence on Capitol Hill. The Armenia lobby in the United States is surpassed in strength and influence only by the Israel lobby and the India lobby.
A major backer of Armenian causes in Congress is Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who is the Republican minority leader in the Senate. McConnell is a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and for years served as chair of the pivotally important Senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, which controls roughly $20 billion in foreign aid. He has helped steer high amounts of earmarks and mandatory allocations toward Armenia and Ukraine. In fact, in some years, Armenia has been second only to Israel as the largest beneficiary per capita of U.S. aid. McConnell does most of his fundraising away from Kentucky, in major coastal cities where Armenian Americans and other ethnic groups are most politically active. In October 2006, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that several years ago, while speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell said, "We have a lot of Jewish-Americans who are interested in Israel, a lot of Armenian-Americans who are interested in Armenia and a lot of Ukraine-Americans who are interested in Ukraine." He continued, according to the newspaper's account, "Boy, when we hear from them, we get real interested." The article also reported that McConnell has, over the years, received a large amount of campaign donations from lobbies representing those three countries and has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars more in aid to them than was requested by either Democratic or Republican presidents.
The Turkish government, on the other hand, measures the success of its heavy spending on lobbying in Washington by Congress' unwillingness, thus far, to adopt a resolution on the Armenian genocide. To block the resolution's adoption, Turkey relies on influential figures with prior service on Capitol Hill or in downtown Washington, such as Douglas Feith, a former undersecretary of defense for policy, and Richard Perle, former chair of the Defense Policy Board. In addition, Livingston, a former congressman and founder of the Livingston Group, and Gary Hymel, chief lobbyist for the New York-based firm Hill & Knowlton, have been useful to the Turks in the recent past thanks to the depth of their experience in Washington and their high-level contacts. In 1999, Livingston registered with FARA as a representative of the Turkish government. In March 1999, he created the Livingston Group, which describes itself as providing "comprehensive public affairs, government relations and lobbying services on a global basis." Its eight clients have included not only Turkey but also Azerbaijan, the Republic of the Congo, the Cayman Islands, firms in Morocco, and the Qatar Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by the emir of Qatar.
Before Hymel arrived at Hill & Knowlton, he was an administrative assistant to Majority Whip Hale Boggs (D-La.) and then administrative assistant to Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill (D-Mass.) for eight years. Later, while associated with Gray and Company, he was asked to offset efforts by the Greek lobby to arrange a cutback in U.S. military aid to Turkey. Turkey ended up receiving more military aid from Congress than the year before.
In Washington, the executive branch has traditionally supported Turkey as a bulwark of NATO, with the core of the U.S.-Turkish relationship based on military assistance. Turkey is also a major procurer of U.S. military hardware, which has led Lockheed Martin and other major arms suppliers to spend a lot of money supporting the Turkish government.
LOBBYING ACROSS THE STRAIT
For years, the lobby that promoted Taiwanese interests, known simply as the China lobby, was the superpower of lobbies representing foreign causes in the United States. From the 1940s, when the Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek addressed a joint session of Congress, to the 1970s, no U.S. president challenged the so-called China lobby, which opposed all contacts with mainland China.
Until recently, the People's Republic of China chose not to emulate Taiwan, believing strongly that players on the world scene should not interfere in one another's internal affairs. The concept of lobbying another state's government struck Beijing as morally tainted. Instead, China used its strategic weight to cultivate special relationships with powerful figures such as Brzezinski, Kissinger, and James Schlesinger, who was secretary of defense from 1973 to 1975.
Although their principal focus was the White House, the Chinese were also creating a generation of their own "Americanologists," or Chinese diplomats who had assignments in the United States early on in their careers. Over time, these Chinese ambassadors came to be recognized as superior diplomats who could operate effectively on Capitol Hill.
In 1989, the Chinese government reconsidered its position on lobbying following the intense international reaction to its crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square, an event that nearly caused a wave of severe economic sanctions against China. Its view of lobbying changed even more abruptly in 1995, when the Clinton administration reversed a previous decision and granted a visa to Taiwan's president, Lee Teng-hui. Beijing was shocked, and its embassy in Washington drew criticism from home for being bested by the "renegade bandits" in Taiwan. Chinese diplomats in Washington were deeply embarrassed and faced pressure to be more active; as a result, they began a process of making contacts in parts of Washington that they had previously ignored. Since then, China's reluctance to revalue its currency and refusal to address its big trade imbalance with the United States have become chronic political issues in Washington. On such trade-related questions, lobbyists can work more effectively than diplomats in promoting and protecting the interests of their foreign clients.
By 2005, China had acquired still stronger incentives to hire lobbyists. It had made a huge financial investment in the United States by buying U.S. Treasury bonds and other U.S. securities, and the U.S. market for its manufactured goods was large and growing. The Chinese government first hired Hogan & Hartson, one of Washington's largest law firms, and soon retained another firm, McDermott Will & Emery, to lobby Congress on textile quotas. In 2005, Patton Boggs signed on as well and, according to its FARA filing, contacted 13 of the 18 members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Patton Boggs' China team included Mark Cowan, a former Reagan administration official and CIA operations officer.
In June 2005, China embarked on its biggest effort to date to take over a foreign company. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), a state-owned oil company based in Beijing, made an offer of $18.5 billion for Unocal, the eighth-largest energy firm in the United States, as part of China's global campaign to secure energy resources. A bidding war loomed with Chevron, the U.S. oil giant, who was also looking to acquire Unocal. To help it win, CNOOC hired Akin Gump, a powerhouse Washington law firm.
The struggle on Capitol Hill over whether Congress would approve the deal pitted China's deep pockets and Akin Gump's potent human resources against Chevron and its political allies in Congress. Lobbyists working for Chevron wrapped their argument in nationalism, portraying CNOOC as a predatory arm of China's leadership looking to acquire a high-value U.S. asset.
In August 2005, CNOOC withdrew its bid, citing "regrettable and unjustified" political opposition in the United States. The level of political resistance in Washington had taken Beijing by surprise. Should Akin Gump, or another of China's highly paid firms, have better prepared CNOOC for the vector of Washington politics? Or, in fact, had China not fully transcended its past ambivalence toward the lobbying culture in Washington and so failed to invest enough resources?
Since then, residual anti-China sentiment on Capitol Hill has found its way into legislation aimed at changing Chinese policy on currency and trade issues. To counteract such measures in the future, China will likely call on lobbyists on K Street to draw support from a large swath of the U.S. business community, which views the growing Chinese market with great interest.
THE POWER OF MONEY
The effects of the relentless increase in the privatization of U.S. foreign policy in recent years remain underexamined and minimally understood. Many foreign governments, friendly or allied or both, deplore the skewing of U.S. policy caused by the activities of Washington-based foreign agents. Not so long ago, the foreign and defense ministries of these governments would swallow hard when they saw a U.S. policy being redirected by special interests. But there was also a confidence that the U.S. government would, in the end, set policy back on a sensible course.
Over the past several years, however, these governments have lost that confidence. They have learned that the control of policy, once lost, may not be restored to capable, disinterested hands. Instead, they see a uniquely American habit of sustaining the democratic process with money; they see a broad and deepening pattern of corrupt and corruptible members of Congress making self-serving deals with lobbyists working for foreign entities.
Some of what these lobbyists do is harmless and perhaps even useful. However, more and more, the big money financing this activity works to steer U.S. national security policy in the wrong direction. The lobbying process ignores -- or, in some cases, promotes -- instability in potentially volatile regions, such as South Asia and the Middle East, often backing questionable regimes by disguising their activities and the threats they pose. The activities of lobbies representing foreign interests have contributed to the gradual erosion of the United States' credibility and influence in the world.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64941/john-newhouse/diplomacy-inc
FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE, May/June 2009
Diplomacy, Inc.
The Influence of Lobbies on U.S. Foreign Policy
John Newhouse
JOHN NEWHOUSE is a Senior Fellow at the World Security Institute and the author of a forthcoming book on foreign lobbies in the United States to be published by Simon & Schuster.
The area around K Street in Washington, D.C., abounds with lobbyists, many of whom represent foreign governments or entities. Although some major foreign governments continue to work mainly through their embassies in Washington, nearly one hundred countries rely on lobbyists to protect and promote their interests. The subculture of public relations and law firms that do this kind of work reflects a steady decline and privatization of diplomacy -- with an increasing impact on how the United States conducts its own foreign policy.
The strongest lobbies promoting foreign interests are driven by cohesive ethnic population groups in the United States, such as Armenia, China, Greece, India, Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, and, historically, Ireland. Even countries that have strong bilateral relations with the United States, such as Australia, Japan, and Norway, need lobbyists as well as embassies. Lobbyists can operate within the system in ways that experienced diplomats cannot. A lobbying group can identify with a domestic ethnic bloc even though it is paid by a foreign government. Ethnic politics can trump corporate interests and, more important, influence what agencies within the U.S. government may see as the national interest.
The United States is a nation of immigrants -- a strength that has also created vulnerabilities. Although ethnic population groups have at times offset isolationist tendencies in the United States, they also can find themselves conflicted on issues that could divide the motherland from the adopted country, the United States. In other cases, these so-called hyphenated groups unhesitatingly side with the United States and, in effect, become more royalist than the king.
Many lobbyists function as surrogates. A law firm or lobbying firm can make arrangements and put forward arguments in ways that its foreign client cannot, in part because most embassies do not operate as comfortably or effectively on Capitol Hill as can the firms. And then, the U.S. government has become so complex that only insiders, such as former members of Congress or congressional staff members turned lobbyists, can navigate its confusing structure. The most well-connected individuals are likely to join one of the major hybrid law and lobbying firms, such as Patton Boggs, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, or BGR Group. The last firm became involved in the internal affairs of Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Led by former Ambassador Robert Blackwill, it was paid $380,000 to represent the Kurdish regional government of Iraq and $300,000 for providing "strategic counsel" to former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who was striving to regain his post as leader of the Iraqi government. Official records show that other recent clients of this firm have included the governments of Qatar, Serbia, and Taiwan.
The most effective lobbying is done on Capitol Hill. Although members of the executive branch face limits on what they can do for lobbyists, congressional members and their staff are generally less constrained. When a faction in Congress takes a position under pressure from lobbyists, it can become very hard for executive-branch offices to resist. Functionally, the U.S. government is an anomaly, with a potent legislature unconnected to the executive branch but open to being exploited by domestic agents representing foreign governments.
Some of the big embassies, starting with the British and Israeli ones, have no difficulty gaining access on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. But many, if not most, of the other missions are spread thin, with limited access to the people and offices that matter. A typical midsize embassy will have one or two officers covering the agencies of chief importance at home. Most often, this means the State Department and the Department of Defense, along with other agencies involved in security issues. These embassies cannot begin to compete with lobbying groups for influence and may not even try to cover Congress. A retired British diplomat who served as ambassador to Washington in the mid-1990s said that he spent most of his time on Capitol Hill, leaving his staff to monitor the national security apparatus.
Lobbyists for foreign governments operate in ways that help U.S. officials and reinforce incumbency. A lobbying firm, for example, can help set up a deal for a foreign country to purchase agricultural machinery from a U.S. supplier. A member of Congress from the district in which the supplier is located will then announce the sale -- and the lobbyists, in turn, will say that congressional support of certain bills will help that business and others in the district.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, is the model for other lobbying groups and for lobbying firms that aim to influence U.S. foreign policy. It shows how they must focus on the internal rivalries within congressional committees and on other groups that involve politicians with voices that carry. Lobbyists working for foreign clients play a game that one of them described as "five-dimensional chess," which includes the White House, Congress, interagency conflicts, and the Republican and Democratic Parties.
A firm lobbying on behalf of a foreign client keeps data on every member of Congress, their staffs, and even some representatives in state legislatures who are considered rising figures. The firm will do a meticulous analysis of the voting records and public statements of various key players, notably the chairs of the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees.
On Capitol Hill, the most influential lobbying factions are those that represent overseas business interests, such as Airbus, the European aviation conglomerate, and Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy giant. The next most influential group is comprised of caucuses within Congress, which representatives and senators join to identify with or express support for a given country. The Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, for example, is one of the largest and contains well over 100 members of Congress, none of them Indian.
The fallout from the process is sometimes seen not only in foreign capitals but also within the Washington bureaucracy as a tendency to "move the goalposts." A lobbying firm, for example, may hear of a negotiation that the State Department has concluded or is on the verge of concluding. It may then intervene on Capitol Hill, or, on occasion, with the White House to alter the outcome in a way that benefits its client. This represents a uniquely Washington way of doing business -- a deal is not necessarily a done deal if one or more of the major parties wants to change its position.
Foreign governments, of course, do require help from time to time in navigating the Washington labyrinth, and many strive to have Washington support their interests and not their adversaries'. Israel and Taiwan are two countries that feel dependent on U.S. political support of this kind.
The activities of lobbyists working on behalf of foreign governments or businesses -- notably those whose focus is largely commercial, not political -- can be useful and in line with the national interest. The United States relies on a free and open trade and investment climate, which these lobbyists work to promote. Lobbyists representing foreign clients say that their work is a normal part of the U.S. political process and indistinguishable from lobbying on behalf of domestic clients. But the latter, however abusive it can be and often is, does not carry the risk of skewing U.S. foreign policy or compromising the national interest. Lobbying on behalf of foreign countries, many in Washington believe, can have an adverse affect on U.S. interests by challenging the sensible and balanced formation of foreign policy.
A HISTORY OF INFLUENCE
Among the earliest and most robust promoters of foreign causes in the United States were the Irish. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the Irish American diaspora in the United States began providing material and political support to the forces of Irish nationalism. This continued through the 1990s and the so-called Troubles, when groups such as Irish Northern Aid funneled aid to families of political prisoners in Ireland.
In the 1930s, as the Third Reich began to gather strength in Germany, many German Americans in the United States joined small groups such as Friends of New Germany. These were swiftly spun off into larger organizations -- one became the German American Bund, and another was a fascist organization widely known as the Silver Shirts, a reference to the Nazi Brown Shirts.
Although these organizations had more visibility than actual impact, they did attract the attention of the U.S. Congress. In 1935, a report prepared by the House of Representatives warned of propaganda that aimed to "influence the internal and external policies of our country." The report led to the passage in 1938 of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which was designed to monitor the activities of groups lobbying on behalf of foreign causes. The law covers anyone who engages in political activities or acts in a public relations capacity for a foreign principal. Such agents are required to report their activities to the Justice Department and to disclose whatever gifts and services they provide to elected or appointed officials. These criteria are far stricter than what is required of lobbyists who represent domestic interests. However, compliance with and enforcement of FARA regulations are notoriously lax, and they are often ignored entirely if enforcing them could be politically awkward for U.S. allies.
Since 1966, when FARA was amended, there have been only three indictments on alleged FARA violations and no successful criminal prosecutions. The cases were dismissed because of statute-of-limitations problems. Asked about this seemingly limp enforcement, Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesperson, replied in writing, "The Justice Department generally seeks to obtain voluntary compliance with the FARA statute through a variety of mechanisms, including if needed civil and/or administrative resolution." Since the changes to FARA in 1966, Boyd wrote, the U.S. government has faced an increased burden of proof, which has "reduced the incidence of criminal FARA prosecutions and increased civil and administrative resolution of FARA questions."
Another law, the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (LDA), is even weaker. It is filled with thresholds that define what must be reported, such as requiring disclosure only when foreign clients represent more than 20 percent of a lobbying firm's total contacts. "The LDA is a joke," one Washington lobbyist told me, "because no one looks at those filings, and there has been no enforcement."
In June 2008, Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and then Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) introduced legislation that would require all lobbyists representing foreign clients to register under FARA, even if they have already registered under the LDA. Under current law, lobbyists registered under the LDA are exempt from also registering under the more rigorous FARA regulations. Another measure under this proposed legislation would require disclosure in cases in which lobbyists represent foreign principals -- including governments and political parties -- to U.S. officials stationed outside the country. Currently, FARA requires the disclosure only of those agents who represent foreign clients in front of agencies or officials located within U.S. territory. The Justice Department has not yet publicly expressed a position on the legislation.
The issue, then, is whether it is possible to enforce the existing statutes -- if necessary by tightening them -- or whether foreign agents and their influence will continue to flourish. The proposed Senate bill would be a good place to begin strengthening the oversight process. But statutes, however tightly written, must be enforced. As Senator Schumer said last year, "Too many lobbyists are skirting the law and operating in the shadows, and in too many cases the Justice Department is standing at the light switch and refusing to turn it on."
THE MODEL LOBBY
The Israel lobby operates within a loose umbrella organization called the Conference of Presidents, which contains a number of subgroups and committees. The centerpiece of the overall organization is AIPAC. Through AIPAC's network of contacts in government agencies and on Capitol Hill, its ability to influence events and policy in Washington is probably without precedent. In one example, AIPAC successfully lobbied Congress in 1995 to pass a bill requiring the United States to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, despite private objections from the government of then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Clinton administration.
Although AIPAC characterizes its role as promoting financial assistance to Israel from the U.S. government, most of this appropriation has become routine and is rarely challenged. Where AIPAC devotes most of its energies is in defending Israel's hard line on the Palestinians to a U.S. audience and deflecting criticism in the United States of Israel's equally hard line on Hezbollah and, above all, Iran. Under the Bush administration, officials such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were determined to support AIPAC in its efforts to align U.S. foreign policy with that of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Likud Party -- namely, in identifying Iran as not only a regional threat but also a global threat to peace and stability. In pressing for votes and support, AIPAC does not threaten members of Congress so much as it makes them worry about angry phone calls from wealthy constituents. Defying AIPAC can make life complicated for those in Congress who are looking toward their reelection.
Whether AIPAC will be able to sustain its dominant role is not clear, however. A growing number of Jewish Americans regard the lobby as a group of largely ethnocentric extremists and oppose its tactics. Support for Israel is becoming age-related -- a recent poll conducted by New York University, for example, showed that more than two-thirds of the young, non-Orthodox Jewish students surveyed did not consider the situation with Israel and the Palestinians a high priority for the 2008 U.S. presidential election, whereas more than half of the Jewish Americans over the age of 65 who were surveyed did. Another poll, part of the Middle East Academic Survey Research and Exposition, conducted by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, showed that an overwhelming majority -- roughly four-fifths -- of those U.S. academics polled regarded the Israel lobby as "negative" to "extremely negative" to U.S. interests. A slightly greater majority of those polled said they believed that the lobby's tactics expose the United States "to avoidable hostility in the Middle East."
Historically, the notable exception to AIPAC's uniform hold on the Israel lobby has been the Israel Policy Forum. According to M. J. Rosenberg, the group's director of research and its key figure, the forum's mission is to encourage the United States to pursue an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the establishment of a two-state solution.
An alternative group calling itself J Street was launched in April 2008. J Street defines itself as "the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement," with the purpose of ending the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically and supporting a new direction for U.S. policy in the Middle East. It has a lobbying arm that operates on Capitol Hill, and its political action committee endorsed 41 candidates in the 2008 congressional elections and distributed $578,000 among them. Thirty-three of these candidates won, although the degree to which J Street may have helped is unclear.
Reactions to J Street have been mixed. Skeptics, of whom there are many, feel that its efforts will founder -- the two major political parties have trained themselves to listen to AIPAC first and act accordingly. Although an increasing number of Jewish Americans take issue with Israel's position on the Palestinians and favor a two-state solution to the Palestine problem, AIPAC holds several advantages, the first of which is that hard-liners in the Jewish American community care much more about advancing their position than do those who lean toward a two-state solution. Second, a deep fear of Arab intentions still leads many Jews in the United States to be more comfortable with AIPAC's politics. And lastly, and of no small importance, AIPAC is run by professionals who are rightly considered to hold black belts in the art of Washington politics.
This March, the clout of the Israel lobby and its allies on Capitol Hill was forcefully displayed by their successful derailment of the appointment of Charles Freeman to be chair of the National Intelligence Council. Freeman is among the most widely respected foreign policy analysts, and he has often taken exception to Israeli policies. In withdrawing from the appointment, Freeman wrote, "There is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired. . . . It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States."
A QUICK STUDY
India's U.S.-based lobby is the only lobby in Washington likely to acquire the strength of the Israel lobby. It both relies on a strong network of law and public relations firms and is supported by a large ethnic population group in the United States, many of whose members are well educated and financially successful. For example, 20 percent of all the companies in Silicon Valley are owned by Indian Americans. The U.S.-India Business Council, which has a core committee of 200 companies that make up part of the United States' corporate elite, is closely allied with the India lobby. And like Jewish Americans, Indian Americans are strongly inclined toward political activism.
To date, the most controversial and potentially troublesome venture in which the maturing India lobby has played a major role was its promotion of the July 2005 statement issued by President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that called for shipments of U.S.-produced nuclear fuel and technology to India. Under the agreement subsequently reached, India will separate its military and civilian nuclear programs and in return gain access to U.S. expertise and materials.
Many in the arms control community opposed the deal, suggesting that the agreement would increase India's ability to produce fissionable material for its nuclear weapons program. Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.), co-chair of a House task force on nuclear nonproliferation, called the agreement a "historic failure" that "pours nuclear fuel on the fire of an India-Pakistan nuclear arms race." A major complaint is that the deal in effect endorses India's refusal to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and exempts India from the global rules that govern the nuclear trade. Under the agreement, India becomes eligible for the same trade and scientific benefits acquired by NPT signatories -- including the five original nuclear weapons states.
Critics in the United States and India saw political as well as energy-related factors pushing the deal. Bush, they felt, was seeking to tap into India's expanding economy while creating a stronger strategic balance against China. Others suggested that the Bush administration's strong push for the deal was largely driven by Bush's quest for a legacy -- an opinion shared by some Indian officials, who often heard from their U.S. counterparts that the deal had to be completed while Bush was still in office.
Within the United States, commercial pressure for the deal came from the U.S.-India Business Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the military-industrial sector, and the two U.S. companies that produce nuclear reactors, General Electric and Westinghouse. "Billions of dollars were at stake," one lobbyist involved in the negotiations told me. "The idea here was to bind India in a strategic relationship, and the military orders would then follow."
What the Bush administration was proposing ran sharply counter to provisions of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, which require full-scale safeguards for any U.S. exports of nuclear material or technology. In order for the deal to go through, both houses of Congress would first have to approve legislation exempting India from U.S. law. The lobby began a full-court press, with the U.S.-India Business Council retaining the Washington law firm Patton Boggs and the Indian embassy hiring Venable, a law firm that employs Birch Bayh, a former U.S. senator and the father of the current senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.).
The lobbying effort brought together for the first time a disparate coalition of Indian American groups, ranging from the Asian American Hotel Owners Association and the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin to larger groups, such as the Indian American Friendship Council. The founder of this last group, Swadesh Chatterjee, proclaimed that a strategic partnership between the United States and India "will define the twenty-first century." Other groups that played an active role in the lobbying included the U.S. India Political Action Committee, which is run by Sanjay Puri, an influential businessman and lobbyist who was also a member of the transition team for Virginia's governor, Tim Kaine, now the new chair of the Democratic Party. Shekhar Tiwari, who unofficially represents the Indian American Republican Council, with 36 chapters around the country, told me that his group was "the main force behind the scenes" in pushing the deal.
The various groups supporting the deal argued that its passage would be good for the environment. India, the argument went, needs alternative energy sources to soft brown coal, the dirtiest power source and the one on which India and China chiefly rely. To make its case, the lobby spread a great deal of money around, and fundraisers were held for pivotal figures, such as then Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.), who was chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the senior Republican member of that committee; and Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), Biden's future replacement as chair. Former Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), then the co-chair of the Senate India Caucus, was another beneficiary of the lobby's largess.
By November 2006, both houses of Congress approved the deal, known as the Hyde Act, by large margins. The debate over the deal and this outcome revealed a curious polarity -- whereas majorities in both the Senate and the House supported the deal, a significant part of the foreign policy community had strenuously opposed it. This left Congress with an unanswered question -- namely, how should the United States measure the advantages of a stronger, more productive partnership with this rising global power against the risks posed by the agreement, starting with its prejudicial bearing on the NPT and on nuclear arms control in general?
The Obama administration has encouraged India and Pakistan to keep relations with each other on a stable track. And the U.S.-Indian deal may not rock any boats in Washington unless India decides to test a warhead for its new intermediate-range missile system, the Agni II, a weapon allegedly designed to target China. It is clear, however, that on Capitol Hill, any future testing would be seen as conflicting with the legislative intent of the agreement and hence would put it in serious jeopardy.
AT NATO'S DOOR
The question of how far and how fast to expand NATO was a deeply contentious issue within the U.S. foreign policy community in the mid-1990s. Countries in central and eastern Europe used their tightly focused political activities in Washington to promote various goals, including admission to Western institutions, starting with NATO. These countries included the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, and later Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. More recently, Georgia and Ukraine have used lobbyists in Washington to push for NATO membership, so far unsuccessfully.
By the mid-1990s, the risks of expanding NATO were clear. Russian nationalists could exploit the issue at the expense of more moderate figures. What Russia wanted then was to reclaim its historical place as a major player in European security -- and it still does. At the time, figures inside the Russian security structure were nursing an old grievance. In 1991, just a few years before talk of enlarging NATO began, the Soviet Union's then leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had received assurances from U.S. officials that in return for the Soviet Union's earlier acquiescence on German reunification, NATO would not deploy forces beyond Germany's eastern border.
Germany favored having a buffer between itself and Russia and was the only serious western European advocate of enlargement. Various Washington luminaries pushed the idea as a way of preemptively stifling Russia's imperial impulses. There was also an assumption, probably well founded, that the Clinton administration saw enlargement as a means of gaining the support of ethnic eastern European voters in the run-up to the 1996 presidential election.
From the candidate countries, the Polish government pushed hard for enlargement, mainly through its embassy in Washington but also with strenuous support from the Polish American Congress, an umbrella organization that includes more than 3,000 Polish American groups, and with the assistance of a lobbying firm. Poland no longer worried about being threatened militarily by Russia, but it did have concerns about becoming part of a European security vacuum. Moving NATO in its direction, the thinking went, would further commit the United States to Europe's security. The Czech Republic and Hungary made similar efforts.
On April 30, 1998, the U.S. Senate approved a bill supporting NATO enlargement, and one year later, in March 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland gained admission to NATO. Five years later, in March 2004, other aspirants -- Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the three Baltic states -- were also accepted into the alliance. In order to achieve this end, each of them had turned to Washington-based lobbyists for help.
One lobbyist heavily involved in arguing for NATO expansion was Randy Scheunemann, who would later serve as chief adviser on foreign policy for John McCain's presidential campaign. For years, Scheunemann has been a central figure in a hawkish circle of foreign policy advisers who have sought to bring NATO steadily closer to Russia's doorstep and have argued for expelling Russia from the G-8 (the group of highly industrialized states), a position McCain took as a presidential candidate. Until early 2008, Scheunemann was simultaneously working for the McCain campaign and as a paid adviser to the government of Georgia. He was also a registered lobbyist for Latvia, Romania, and Macedonia. In 2006, McCain had co-sponsored legislation that passed in the Senate endorsing an expansion of NATO to include Albania, Croatia, Georgia, and Macedonia.
Among the other firms involved in lobbying for aspirant NATO members was the K Street firm of Jefferson Waterman International, which represented Bulgaria and Romania in the process. One of JWI's first and biggest clients was the Croatian regime of Franjo Tudjman, which various human rights groups have accused of committing war crimes during the Bosnian war in the 1990s. JWI assured the Croatians it could help. In a memo drafted by Charles Waterman, the firm's CEO, JWI was ready to counter "a wave of criticism" if Tudjman were to seize control over territory patrolled by UN peace monitors. Tudjman continued to renew JWI's contract through the end of 1998 (he died in 1999).
JWI, much like similar firms in Washington, draws its leadership and senior staff from government agencies, especially the CIA. Waterman is a former vice chair of the CIA's National Intelligence Council and was also national intelligence officer for the Middle East. Samuel Hoskinson, the firm's vice president and chief financial officer, also served as vice chair of the NIC and as a senior adviser to three national security advisers -- Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Samuel Wyman, the firm's executive vice president and chief operating officer, was an operations officer for the CIA in Africa, Europe, and the Near East.
In June 2007, Hoskinson and one of his colleagues at JWI became the heads of a group that calls itself the Alliance for a New Kosovo. They were advising Bexhet Pacoli, a wealthy Kosovar Albanian businessman, who made open claims of paying a large team of lobbyists and consultants in Washington to push the White House and Congress to support Kosovo's independence. Hoskinson told me that the foundation hired eight people to lobby Congress and the State Department and circulate arguments in the media. When the United States, along with dozens of other countries, recognized Kosovo as an independent state in February 2008, the firm regarded the outcome as among its largest achievements.
In May 2002, Ukraine made clear that membership in NATO was one of its principal goals. A year later, at the invitation of Davis, Manafort & Freedman, an influential Washington lobbying firm, Sergey Lavochkin, chief of staff to the Ukranian prime minister, visited Washington. In Washington, Lavochkin contacted the State Department and was told that it did not deal with lobbying firms on K Street and that he should try working through the U.S. embassy in Kiev. Later, in 2005, a staff member at the National Security Council called McCain's Senate office, which itself was pushing for Ukraine's acceptance into NATO, to complain that Davis, Manafort & Freedman's lobbying was undercutting U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine.
By early 2008, matters were changing. The Bush administration was arguing that both Georgia and Ukraine had all but met the conditions for NATO membership. France and Germany dissented, reflecting a generalized concern in Europe about Russia's increasingly shrill and intimidating protests. Indeed, Russia was threatening to target nuclear missiles at Ukraine if it joined the alliance. Predictably, this state of affairs worsened considerably when in August 2008, just four months after the NATO summit meeting in April, the conflict between Georgia and Russia erupted.
THE PERENNIAL QUESTION
The Armenia lobby is built on a strong domestic ethnic base in the United States and is committed to having Turkey publicly condemned for genocide relating to the slaughter of Armenians that occurred in 1915. Intense lobbying for a congressional resolution accusing Turkey of genocide began in the 1980s and has since become a perennial question. Most years, the White House and the State Department support the principle behind such a resolution but ultimately conclude that adoption of a resolution of that kind against the Turks would be harmful to U.S. interests.
In 2007, the outcome could have been different, and Congress came close to adopting a genocide resolution. The Armenian community was feeling confident after Democratic victories in the 2006 midterm elections -- Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Speaker of the House, and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), House majority leader, were seen as allies, as was then Senator Biden. Passing the resolution could have meant the end of efforts to build a reliable and productive U.S.-Turkish relationship. And it could have strengthened Turkey's incentive to hedge against its weakening position in the West and the rising instability in western Asia by initiating a nuclear weapons program.
The vote was close, with the House Foreign Affairs Committee approving the resolution 27 to 21. But then, Pelosi, after stating her intention to move ahead with a vote on the floor, drew back in the face of a strong, well-coordinated argument that its passage would threaten national security. Most convincing was a strongly worded open letter signed by eight former U.S. secretaries of state who all opposed the resolution on national security grounds. Also leading the charge against the resolution were former Congressmen Bob Livingston (R-La.) and Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.). (Gephardt had just signed on with the firm DLA Piper to promote Turkish interests under a contract worth $1.2 million annually.)
In early 2009, however, the genocide resolution's prospects rose sharply. As reported in the Financial Times, the public denunciation by the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of Israel's Gaza offensive last January angered many of the Jewish American and pro-Israel groups that had supported Turkey behind the scenes during the debate over the genocide resolution in 2007.
The Armenian government spends virtually nothing on lobbying services in Washington, because it does not need to: the Armenian community in the United States -- concentrated in California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and the New York area -- promotes Armenian causes through financial contributions and its influence on Capitol Hill. The Armenia lobby in the United States is surpassed in strength and influence only by the Israel lobby and the India lobby.
A major backer of Armenian causes in Congress is Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who is the Republican minority leader in the Senate. McConnell is a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and for years served as chair of the pivotally important Senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, which controls roughly $20 billion in foreign aid. He has helped steer high amounts of earmarks and mandatory allocations toward Armenia and Ukraine. In fact, in some years, Armenia has been second only to Israel as the largest beneficiary per capita of U.S. aid. McConnell does most of his fundraising away from Kentucky, in major coastal cities where Armenian Americans and other ethnic groups are most politically active. In October 2006, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that several years ago, while speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell said, "We have a lot of Jewish-Americans who are interested in Israel, a lot of Armenian-Americans who are interested in Armenia and a lot of Ukraine-Americans who are interested in Ukraine." He continued, according to the newspaper's account, "Boy, when we hear from them, we get real interested." The article also reported that McConnell has, over the years, received a large amount of campaign donations from lobbies representing those three countries and has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars more in aid to them than was requested by either Democratic or Republican presidents.
The Turkish government, on the other hand, measures the success of its heavy spending on lobbying in Washington by Congress' unwillingness, thus far, to adopt a resolution on the Armenian genocide. To block the resolution's adoption, Turkey relies on influential figures with prior service on Capitol Hill or in downtown Washington, such as Douglas Feith, a former undersecretary of defense for policy, and Richard Perle, former chair of the Defense Policy Board. In addition, Livingston, a former congressman and founder of the Livingston Group, and Gary Hymel, chief lobbyist for the New York-based firm Hill & Knowlton, have been useful to the Turks in the recent past thanks to the depth of their experience in Washington and their high-level contacts. In 1999, Livingston registered with FARA as a representative of the Turkish government. In March 1999, he created the Livingston Group, which describes itself as providing "comprehensive public affairs, government relations and lobbying services on a global basis." Its eight clients have included not only Turkey but also Azerbaijan, the Republic of the Congo, the Cayman Islands, firms in Morocco, and the Qatar Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by the emir of Qatar.
Before Hymel arrived at Hill & Knowlton, he was an administrative assistant to Majority Whip Hale Boggs (D-La.) and then administrative assistant to Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill (D-Mass.) for eight years. Later, while associated with Gray and Company, he was asked to offset efforts by the Greek lobby to arrange a cutback in U.S. military aid to Turkey. Turkey ended up receiving more military aid from Congress than the year before.
In Washington, the executive branch has traditionally supported Turkey as a bulwark of NATO, with the core of the U.S.-Turkish relationship based on military assistance. Turkey is also a major procurer of U.S. military hardware, which has led Lockheed Martin and other major arms suppliers to spend a lot of money supporting the Turkish government.
LOBBYING ACROSS THE STRAIT
For years, the lobby that promoted Taiwanese interests, known simply as the China lobby, was the superpower of lobbies representing foreign causes in the United States. From the 1940s, when the Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek addressed a joint session of Congress, to the 1970s, no U.S. president challenged the so-called China lobby, which opposed all contacts with mainland China.
Until recently, the People's Republic of China chose not to emulate Taiwan, believing strongly that players on the world scene should not interfere in one another's internal affairs. The concept of lobbying another state's government struck Beijing as morally tainted. Instead, China used its strategic weight to cultivate special relationships with powerful figures such as Brzezinski, Kissinger, and James Schlesinger, who was secretary of defense from 1973 to 1975.
Although their principal focus was the White House, the Chinese were also creating a generation of their own "Americanologists," or Chinese diplomats who had assignments in the United States early on in their careers. Over time, these Chinese ambassadors came to be recognized as superior diplomats who could operate effectively on Capitol Hill.
In 1989, the Chinese government reconsidered its position on lobbying following the intense international reaction to its crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square, an event that nearly caused a wave of severe economic sanctions against China. Its view of lobbying changed even more abruptly in 1995, when the Clinton administration reversed a previous decision and granted a visa to Taiwan's president, Lee Teng-hui. Beijing was shocked, and its embassy in Washington drew criticism from home for being bested by the "renegade bandits" in Taiwan. Chinese diplomats in Washington were deeply embarrassed and faced pressure to be more active; as a result, they began a process of making contacts in parts of Washington that they had previously ignored. Since then, China's reluctance to revalue its currency and refusal to address its big trade imbalance with the United States have become chronic political issues in Washington. On such trade-related questions, lobbyists can work more effectively than diplomats in promoting and protecting the interests of their foreign clients.
By 2005, China had acquired still stronger incentives to hire lobbyists. It had made a huge financial investment in the United States by buying U.S. Treasury bonds and other U.S. securities, and the U.S. market for its manufactured goods was large and growing. The Chinese government first hired Hogan & Hartson, one of Washington's largest law firms, and soon retained another firm, McDermott Will & Emery, to lobby Congress on textile quotas. In 2005, Patton Boggs signed on as well and, according to its FARA filing, contacted 13 of the 18 members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Patton Boggs' China team included Mark Cowan, a former Reagan administration official and CIA operations officer.
In June 2005, China embarked on its biggest effort to date to take over a foreign company. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), a state-owned oil company based in Beijing, made an offer of $18.5 billion for Unocal, the eighth-largest energy firm in the United States, as part of China's global campaign to secure energy resources. A bidding war loomed with Chevron, the U.S. oil giant, who was also looking to acquire Unocal. To help it win, CNOOC hired Akin Gump, a powerhouse Washington law firm.
The struggle on Capitol Hill over whether Congress would approve the deal pitted China's deep pockets and Akin Gump's potent human resources against Chevron and its political allies in Congress. Lobbyists working for Chevron wrapped their argument in nationalism, portraying CNOOC as a predatory arm of China's leadership looking to acquire a high-value U.S. asset.
In August 2005, CNOOC withdrew its bid, citing "regrettable and unjustified" political opposition in the United States. The level of political resistance in Washington had taken Beijing by surprise. Should Akin Gump, or another of China's highly paid firms, have better prepared CNOOC for the vector of Washington politics? Or, in fact, had China not fully transcended its past ambivalence toward the lobbying culture in Washington and so failed to invest enough resources?
Since then, residual anti-China sentiment on Capitol Hill has found its way into legislation aimed at changing Chinese policy on currency and trade issues. To counteract such measures in the future, China will likely call on lobbyists on K Street to draw support from a large swath of the U.S. business community, which views the growing Chinese market with great interest.
THE POWER OF MONEY
The effects of the relentless increase in the privatization of U.S. foreign policy in recent years remain underexamined and minimally understood. Many foreign governments, friendly or allied or both, deplore the skewing of U.S. policy caused by the activities of Washington-based foreign agents. Not so long ago, the foreign and defense ministries of these governments would swallow hard when they saw a U.S. policy being redirected by special interests. But there was also a confidence that the U.S. government would, in the end, set policy back on a sensible course.
Over the past several years, however, these governments have lost that confidence. They have learned that the control of policy, once lost, may not be restored to capable, disinterested hands. Instead, they see a uniquely American habit of sustaining the democratic process with money; they see a broad and deepening pattern of corrupt and corruptible members of Congress making self-serving deals with lobbyists working for foreign entities.
Some of what these lobbyists do is harmless and perhaps even useful. However, more and more, the big money financing this activity works to steer U.S. national security policy in the wrong direction. The lobbying process ignores -- or, in some cases, promotes -- instability in potentially volatile regions, such as South Asia and the Middle East, often backing questionable regimes by disguising their activities and the threats they pose. The activities of lobbies representing foreign interests have contributed to the gradual erosion of the United States' credibility and influence in the world.
Perils of dialogue with Pakistan
Source: Tribune India
Link: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090625/edit.htm#4
But people-to-people contacts must be promoted
by G. Parthasarathy
On December 22, 2000, Pakistan-based terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) staged a dramatic attack on the Red Fort, exposing the serious shortcomings in the security arrangements in the national Capital. At a public meeting a few days later, the Amir of the Lashkar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, proudly proclaimed that he had “unfurled the green flag of Islam” in Delhi, with luminaries like Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the Jamat-e-Islami and the “Ideological Father” of the Taliban, Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the Deobandi Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam expressing admiration for his “feat”.
It was no secret that Saeed and the LeT were protégés of the ISI, enjoying the patronage of the Pakistani state apparatus. Rather than expressing strong displeasure and retaliating appropriately, New Delhi took a perilous route to direct summit diplomacy, with no prior preparation, with Gen Pervez Musharraf, who was invited to Agra for a summit meeting. The ill-advised summit ended in a diplomatic fiasco.
Buoyed by what the Pakistan military establishment saw as an Indian weakness and ineptitude, yet another protégé of the ISI, the Jaish-e-Mohammed, attacked the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001 — an attack that took the two countries to the brink of conflict.
Similarly, ignoring the involvement of the LeT in the terrorist bombings in Mumbai on July 11, 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went into a summit meeting with President Pervez Musharraf in Havana on September 16, 2006, in the belief that the India-Pakistan “composite dialogue” was “irreversible”. Astonishing statements emanated from the Havana Summit, equating India and Pakistan as “victims of terrorism” and even giving the ISI an alibi, by claiming that: “We must draw a distinction between terrorist elements in Pakistan and the Government of Pakistan.”
What followed was a decision to establish a “Joint Terror Mechanism”. Even ardent supporters of this ill-conceived “Joint Mechanism” now agree that all that has been diplomatic embarrassment, giving Pakistan the means to stall, obfuscate and plead that like India, Pakistan is also a “victim” of terrorism. If the Agra Summit led to the attack on the Indian Parliament, the Havana Summit was the prelude to the attacks on our embassy in Kabul and to the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist outrage, which were executed by groups known to be ISI proxies.
Given these experiences, it was heartening that Dr Manmohan Singh candidly told President Zardari in Yekaterinburg: “I have a limited mandate to tell you that Pakistan should not be used for terrorism against India.” While the decision now is to focus only on the deliberate Pakistani inaction against the perpetrators and masterminds of the 26/11 outrage in the forthcoming talks between the Foreign Secretaries, it is imperative that the entire emphasis and structure of the dialogue are changed when circumstances permit its resumption.
We should remember that there will be no representative of Pakistan’s real rulers, the armed forces, on the dialogue table. It is not without significance that virtually every foreign visitor of consequence to Islamabad calls on General Kiyani and not his direct boss, Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar. Secondly, on issues ranging from terrorism and trade and economic relations to Jammu and Kashmir, there are serious differences between President Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who echoes the hackneyed rhetoric of his Foreign Office mandarins and military-intelligence establishment.
In these circumstances, it would be useful to promote innovative ideas on people-to-people contacts and the Sir Creek issue while remaining firm on substantive issues like Pakistan’s refusal to implement the SAARC Free Trade Agreement, to which it is a signatory, or deny Indian exports transit to Afghanistan.
The entire composite dialogue process with Pakistan should be drastically restructured. The India-Pakistan ministerial-level joint commission should be revived (when Pakistan acts credibly against terrorism) to promote trade and economic cooperation, people-to-people contacts and confidence-building measures. The ill-advised Joint Terror Mechanism should be scrapped and special envoys together with the heads of the ISI and RAW could meet out of the glare of publicity for candid discussions on terrorism.
If India concludes, based on an analysis of the ground situation that Pakistan presently has no intention of winding up its infrastructure of terrorism, the necessary conclusions should be drawn, internal security further reviewed and a more proactive policy adopted for exploiting Pakistan’s growing sectarian, linguistic and ethnic fault lines. Finally, our establishment should stop shedding tears about Pakistan “also” being a “victim” of terrorism. Pakistan is merely facing the inevitable consequences of supporting terrorism.
Steve Coll of the New America Foundation has revealed that the broad contours of the settlement reached during “back channel” negotiations on Jammu and Kashmir in 2005-2007, between India and Pakistan, were based on extensive autonomy for the region, which would lead to local residents moving freely and conducting trade on both sides of the “territorial boundary”. Over time, the border would become “irrelevant”, and declining violence would allow a gradual withdrawal of troops that now face one another across the mountain passes.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri have acknowledged that they were close to reaching a solution in 2007. It is time for the Prime Minister to disclose in Parliament what precisely transpired during the “back channel” dialogue on Jammu and Kashmir and, after taking the people of India into confidence, insist that any future dialogue with Pakistan will have to move forward from where it was suspended in 2007. If Pakistan decides to disown what has transpired, as General Kiyani and Prime Minister Gilani are advocating, then India should dig its heels in.
Mercifully, unlike his predecessor, the Home Minister, Mr. Chidambaram, appears prepared to realistically deal with Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. There is ample political space now after the recent elections in the state to take imaginative measures to deal with Pakistan-sponsored terrorism while moving towards a paradigm shift in the role of the Army, the paramilitary forces and the local police in dealing with insurgency. The separatist outfits in J&K should be dealt with more realistically.
Defence procurement procedures will have to be drastically changed as these are now afflicted by the Bofors syndrome, resulting in the Army’s artillery being woefully obsolete, with excessive procrastination and delays in virtually all major defence deals. The Indian Air Force is woefully under strength and the armed forces as a whole are ill-equipped to meet the current challenges. India will be taken seriously by its neighbours only if its defence forces are prepared and equipped to deal with the challenges the country faces. We should never again be caught unaware or unprepared to respond appropriately to future terrorist outrages planned and executed from across our borders.
Link: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090625/edit.htm#4
But people-to-people contacts must be promoted
by G. Parthasarathy
On December 22, 2000, Pakistan-based terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) staged a dramatic attack on the Red Fort, exposing the serious shortcomings in the security arrangements in the national Capital. At a public meeting a few days later, the Amir of the Lashkar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, proudly proclaimed that he had “unfurled the green flag of Islam” in Delhi, with luminaries like Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the Jamat-e-Islami and the “Ideological Father” of the Taliban, Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the Deobandi Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam expressing admiration for his “feat”.
It was no secret that Saeed and the LeT were protégés of the ISI, enjoying the patronage of the Pakistani state apparatus. Rather than expressing strong displeasure and retaliating appropriately, New Delhi took a perilous route to direct summit diplomacy, with no prior preparation, with Gen Pervez Musharraf, who was invited to Agra for a summit meeting. The ill-advised summit ended in a diplomatic fiasco.
Buoyed by what the Pakistan military establishment saw as an Indian weakness and ineptitude, yet another protégé of the ISI, the Jaish-e-Mohammed, attacked the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001 — an attack that took the two countries to the brink of conflict.
Similarly, ignoring the involvement of the LeT in the terrorist bombings in Mumbai on July 11, 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went into a summit meeting with President Pervez Musharraf in Havana on September 16, 2006, in the belief that the India-Pakistan “composite dialogue” was “irreversible”. Astonishing statements emanated from the Havana Summit, equating India and Pakistan as “victims of terrorism” and even giving the ISI an alibi, by claiming that: “We must draw a distinction between terrorist elements in Pakistan and the Government of Pakistan.”
What followed was a decision to establish a “Joint Terror Mechanism”. Even ardent supporters of this ill-conceived “Joint Mechanism” now agree that all that has been diplomatic embarrassment, giving Pakistan the means to stall, obfuscate and plead that like India, Pakistan is also a “victim” of terrorism. If the Agra Summit led to the attack on the Indian Parliament, the Havana Summit was the prelude to the attacks on our embassy in Kabul and to the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist outrage, which were executed by groups known to be ISI proxies.
Given these experiences, it was heartening that Dr Manmohan Singh candidly told President Zardari in Yekaterinburg: “I have a limited mandate to tell you that Pakistan should not be used for terrorism against India.” While the decision now is to focus only on the deliberate Pakistani inaction against the perpetrators and masterminds of the 26/11 outrage in the forthcoming talks between the Foreign Secretaries, it is imperative that the entire emphasis and structure of the dialogue are changed when circumstances permit its resumption.
We should remember that there will be no representative of Pakistan’s real rulers, the armed forces, on the dialogue table. It is not without significance that virtually every foreign visitor of consequence to Islamabad calls on General Kiyani and not his direct boss, Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar. Secondly, on issues ranging from terrorism and trade and economic relations to Jammu and Kashmir, there are serious differences between President Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who echoes the hackneyed rhetoric of his Foreign Office mandarins and military-intelligence establishment.
In these circumstances, it would be useful to promote innovative ideas on people-to-people contacts and the Sir Creek issue while remaining firm on substantive issues like Pakistan’s refusal to implement the SAARC Free Trade Agreement, to which it is a signatory, or deny Indian exports transit to Afghanistan.
The entire composite dialogue process with Pakistan should be drastically restructured. The India-Pakistan ministerial-level joint commission should be revived (when Pakistan acts credibly against terrorism) to promote trade and economic cooperation, people-to-people contacts and confidence-building measures. The ill-advised Joint Terror Mechanism should be scrapped and special envoys together with the heads of the ISI and RAW could meet out of the glare of publicity for candid discussions on terrorism.
If India concludes, based on an analysis of the ground situation that Pakistan presently has no intention of winding up its infrastructure of terrorism, the necessary conclusions should be drawn, internal security further reviewed and a more proactive policy adopted for exploiting Pakistan’s growing sectarian, linguistic and ethnic fault lines. Finally, our establishment should stop shedding tears about Pakistan “also” being a “victim” of terrorism. Pakistan is merely facing the inevitable consequences of supporting terrorism.
Steve Coll of the New America Foundation has revealed that the broad contours of the settlement reached during “back channel” negotiations on Jammu and Kashmir in 2005-2007, between India and Pakistan, were based on extensive autonomy for the region, which would lead to local residents moving freely and conducting trade on both sides of the “territorial boundary”. Over time, the border would become “irrelevant”, and declining violence would allow a gradual withdrawal of troops that now face one another across the mountain passes.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri have acknowledged that they were close to reaching a solution in 2007. It is time for the Prime Minister to disclose in Parliament what precisely transpired during the “back channel” dialogue on Jammu and Kashmir and, after taking the people of India into confidence, insist that any future dialogue with Pakistan will have to move forward from where it was suspended in 2007. If Pakistan decides to disown what has transpired, as General Kiyani and Prime Minister Gilani are advocating, then India should dig its heels in.
Mercifully, unlike his predecessor, the Home Minister, Mr. Chidambaram, appears prepared to realistically deal with Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. There is ample political space now after the recent elections in the state to take imaginative measures to deal with Pakistan-sponsored terrorism while moving towards a paradigm shift in the role of the Army, the paramilitary forces and the local police in dealing with insurgency. The separatist outfits in J&K should be dealt with more realistically.
Defence procurement procedures will have to be drastically changed as these are now afflicted by the Bofors syndrome, resulting in the Army’s artillery being woefully obsolete, with excessive procrastination and delays in virtually all major defence deals. The Indian Air Force is woefully under strength and the armed forces as a whole are ill-equipped to meet the current challenges. India will be taken seriously by its neighbours only if its defence forces are prepared and equipped to deal with the challenges the country faces. We should never again be caught unaware or unprepared to respond appropriately to future terrorist outrages planned and executed from across our borders.
India needs renaissance
Source: Asian Age
Link: http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/opinion/op-ed/india-needs-renaissance.aspx
Jagmohan
June.23 : The Planning Commission’s role in promoting healthy changes in administration and arresting negative trends has been wholly inadequate. Instead of including a concrete programme of reform, it has been following the easy option of resorting to generalities. The 10th Plan, for example, talks repeatedly of a multi-faceted strategy for reforms "based upon decentralisation, civil services’ renewal, open and responsive government, tackling corruption and strengthening rule of law and fiscal and environmental sustainability". But it does not spell out a precise programme for doing so. Nor does it explain why similar recommendations and exhortations made in previous plans have not got translated into action. The approach paper to the 11th Five-Year Plan suffers from the same infirmities.
How do we cure a set-up which is beset with multiple disabilities? While the fundamental remedy lies in treating the inner pollution that has fouled the mind and soul of India, a few structural changes could help in improving the system.
At the field level, special units of management and development for carrying out well-defined jobs should be established. These units could be in place for a specific period, say five years, under the overall charge of an officer who has the requisite calibre and commitment. Such an officer could be selected from private or public sector or academic institutions, by an independent statutory board or commission. He could be vested with full powers to run the unit and achieve, within the framework of overall government policy, plans and programmes formulated for that period. If, after the expiry of the fixed period, the officer is found to have under-performed, his/her services could be ended. In the event of performance being good or outstanding, s/he could be suitably rewarded and given another five-year term. For path-breaking work, national honour could be conferred.
This would enable the government to secure the services of the best talent available in the country.
Secondly, this system would check the tendency towards smugness, which is generally generated by the fixed cadre of an elite service, like the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
Thirdly, with full power being available to the head of the unit, s/he would not be able to advance, at a later stage, a plea that s/he was handicapped by political or ministerial interference or hemmed in by the rigidities of the usual bureaucratic patterns.
Fourthly, the national set-up as a whole would become more energetic, enterprising, creative and constructive.
All key field agencies of the Central and state governments, all their public sector undertakings, all urban development authorities and local bodies need to be converted into this type of management with development units.
Keeping in view these principles, the pattern of special units of management and development that I have proposed and the recommendations of the various high levels commissions and committees, made from time to time, the Planning Commission should formulate its own package of concrete reforms and make it a part of the Five-Year Plan. The package should be divided into two parts — "obligatory" and "discretionary". The latter could be implemented by the states with whatever modifications they consider appropriate. But the implementation of obligatory part would be necessary if the states want to claim plan assistance from the commission.
Four other precise measures need to be taken. First, at the secretarial level, the practice of making "tenure appointments" should be ended. All posts of joint secretary level and above should be filled by selection which should be open to all cadres of established services and persons from educational institutions. Secondly, it should be ensured that the officers develop a managerial rather than an administrative outlook.
Thirdly, measurable standards of performance should be prescribed both for the individual and the organisation, keeping in view the principle that "what gets measured gets managed". Fourthly, standing arrangements should be made by all organisations to secure continuous upgradation of knowledge and skills of their employees and provide special opportunities to those who show extraordinary drive and dedication.
The mother of all reforms is the reform and regeneration of the Indian mindscape. Clearly, it is not possible to establish an honest administration without an honest mind or a beautiful edifice without beautiful instinct. Swami Vivekananda has rightly observed: "You may make thousands of societies, 20,000 political assemblages, 50,000 institutions. There will be no use, unless there is that sympathy, that love, that heart, that thinks for all. But where is that heart to build upon? Where are the foundations?"
The message that comes out of the past 62 years of Independence is loud and clear. It is largely because of the debased mindscape of India that hosts of formidable problems have arisen. It is this debasement that is preventing growth of governance capacities, causing corruption to extend its tentacles, giving rise to myopic and irresponsible leadership at both the Central and state levels and letting loose forces that are fomenting subversion and terrorism and crippling the efforts of the few saner elements that still remain on the scene.
Sometimes I am driven to think that our problems are so formidable, so deep-rooted, that nothing short of a revolution would do. But India’s past history and heritage show that its ethos is more in tune with renaissance than revolution.
There is a fundamental difference between revolution and renaissance. The former comes like a storm, a tornado that sweeps everything before it — old values, old attitudes, old institutions and old edifices. It dynamites the past. But it destroys more than it constructs, and extracts a very heavy price. What is worse, more often than not, it enthrones a "God" that may turn out to be false.
A renaissance, on the other hand, is like a fresh breeze that flows gently into a dark and suffocating night, and begins to remove its dust and haze, giving birth to a clear dawn — a dawn that is new but not unconnected with the dawns that are now resting in the lap of history.
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, India experienced a renaissance which was at the root of its successful struggle for freedom. But it lost its verve and vitality in the post-1947 period.
None of the leaders of any stature in the post-1947 period pondered over the fact that the social order which was dominated by the forces of obscurantism, casteism and general ignorance could produce only a weak and venal political order. And this is exactly what has happened. Every component of the state machinery is getting out of joints and exposing the system to a grave risk of total collapse. The outward facade may not look in an alarmingly bad shape, but the signals emanating from the inner recesses are ominous.
(Concluded)
Jagmohan is a former governor of J&K and a former Union minister
Link: http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/opinion/op-ed/india-needs-renaissance.aspx
Jagmohan
June.23 : The Planning Commission’s role in promoting healthy changes in administration and arresting negative trends has been wholly inadequate. Instead of including a concrete programme of reform, it has been following the easy option of resorting to generalities. The 10th Plan, for example, talks repeatedly of a multi-faceted strategy for reforms "based upon decentralisation, civil services’ renewal, open and responsive government, tackling corruption and strengthening rule of law and fiscal and environmental sustainability". But it does not spell out a precise programme for doing so. Nor does it explain why similar recommendations and exhortations made in previous plans have not got translated into action. The approach paper to the 11th Five-Year Plan suffers from the same infirmities.
How do we cure a set-up which is beset with multiple disabilities? While the fundamental remedy lies in treating the inner pollution that has fouled the mind and soul of India, a few structural changes could help in improving the system.
At the field level, special units of management and development for carrying out well-defined jobs should be established. These units could be in place for a specific period, say five years, under the overall charge of an officer who has the requisite calibre and commitment. Such an officer could be selected from private or public sector or academic institutions, by an independent statutory board or commission. He could be vested with full powers to run the unit and achieve, within the framework of overall government policy, plans and programmes formulated for that period. If, after the expiry of the fixed period, the officer is found to have under-performed, his/her services could be ended. In the event of performance being good or outstanding, s/he could be suitably rewarded and given another five-year term. For path-breaking work, national honour could be conferred.
This would enable the government to secure the services of the best talent available in the country.
Secondly, this system would check the tendency towards smugness, which is generally generated by the fixed cadre of an elite service, like the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
Thirdly, with full power being available to the head of the unit, s/he would not be able to advance, at a later stage, a plea that s/he was handicapped by political or ministerial interference or hemmed in by the rigidities of the usual bureaucratic patterns.
Fourthly, the national set-up as a whole would become more energetic, enterprising, creative and constructive.
All key field agencies of the Central and state governments, all their public sector undertakings, all urban development authorities and local bodies need to be converted into this type of management with development units.
Keeping in view these principles, the pattern of special units of management and development that I have proposed and the recommendations of the various high levels commissions and committees, made from time to time, the Planning Commission should formulate its own package of concrete reforms and make it a part of the Five-Year Plan. The package should be divided into two parts — "obligatory" and "discretionary". The latter could be implemented by the states with whatever modifications they consider appropriate. But the implementation of obligatory part would be necessary if the states want to claim plan assistance from the commission.
Four other precise measures need to be taken. First, at the secretarial level, the practice of making "tenure appointments" should be ended. All posts of joint secretary level and above should be filled by selection which should be open to all cadres of established services and persons from educational institutions. Secondly, it should be ensured that the officers develop a managerial rather than an administrative outlook.
Thirdly, measurable standards of performance should be prescribed both for the individual and the organisation, keeping in view the principle that "what gets measured gets managed". Fourthly, standing arrangements should be made by all organisations to secure continuous upgradation of knowledge and skills of their employees and provide special opportunities to those who show extraordinary drive and dedication.
The mother of all reforms is the reform and regeneration of the Indian mindscape. Clearly, it is not possible to establish an honest administration without an honest mind or a beautiful edifice without beautiful instinct. Swami Vivekananda has rightly observed: "You may make thousands of societies, 20,000 political assemblages, 50,000 institutions. There will be no use, unless there is that sympathy, that love, that heart, that thinks for all. But where is that heart to build upon? Where are the foundations?"
The message that comes out of the past 62 years of Independence is loud and clear. It is largely because of the debased mindscape of India that hosts of formidable problems have arisen. It is this debasement that is preventing growth of governance capacities, causing corruption to extend its tentacles, giving rise to myopic and irresponsible leadership at both the Central and state levels and letting loose forces that are fomenting subversion and terrorism and crippling the efforts of the few saner elements that still remain on the scene.
Sometimes I am driven to think that our problems are so formidable, so deep-rooted, that nothing short of a revolution would do. But India’s past history and heritage show that its ethos is more in tune with renaissance than revolution.
There is a fundamental difference between revolution and renaissance. The former comes like a storm, a tornado that sweeps everything before it — old values, old attitudes, old institutions and old edifices. It dynamites the past. But it destroys more than it constructs, and extracts a very heavy price. What is worse, more often than not, it enthrones a "God" that may turn out to be false.
A renaissance, on the other hand, is like a fresh breeze that flows gently into a dark and suffocating night, and begins to remove its dust and haze, giving birth to a clear dawn — a dawn that is new but not unconnected with the dawns that are now resting in the lap of history.
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, India experienced a renaissance which was at the root of its successful struggle for freedom. But it lost its verve and vitality in the post-1947 period.
None of the leaders of any stature in the post-1947 period pondered over the fact that the social order which was dominated by the forces of obscurantism, casteism and general ignorance could produce only a weak and venal political order. And this is exactly what has happened. Every component of the state machinery is getting out of joints and exposing the system to a grave risk of total collapse. The outward facade may not look in an alarmingly bad shape, but the signals emanating from the inner recesses are ominous.
(Concluded)
Jagmohan is a former governor of J&K and a former Union minister
PAKISTAN: CO-ORDINATED HUNT FOR BAITULLAH MEHSUD
B.RAMAN
According to well-informed Pakistani police sources,the US and Pakistani Armed Forces, intelligence agencies and special forces have launched a co-ordinated hunt for Baitullah Mehsud, the Amir of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in South Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). It is a co-ordinated and not a joint operation. In a co-ordinated operation the two collaborators operate independently of each other and not jointly together under a common command and control, but keep each other informed in advance of their operational plans to avoid attacking each other by mistake instead of their common target.
2. The operations undertaken by the Pakistan Army in the Swat Valley of the Malakand Division in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) since April have started coming in for some criticism because while the Pakistan Army has claimed to have killed over 1500 foot soldiers of the Pakistani Taliban hardly any important leader has been killed or captured. To avoid such criticism, the focus of the operations in South Waziristan would be on killing Baitullah Mehsud and Qari Hussain Mehsud, one of his lieutenants, who reportedly trains suicide terrorists, and not on re-establishing immediate territorial control over the Mehsud areas of South Waziristan. While re-establishing territorial control will be the ultimate objective, eliminating Baitullah and Hussain would be the immediate objective. The calculation is that if they are eliminated, the TTP could disintegrate.
3. The initial emphasis would be more on the use of air power than ground forces. While the Pakistanis would use their F-16 aircraft and helicopter gunships, the US would continue to use its unmanned Drones with their missiles. The initial emphasis on the use of air power by Pakistan also takes into account the difficulties that it might face in diverting adequate forces to South Waziristan till the operations in the Swat Valley are over. The internally displaced persons from the Swat Valley, who are presently living in camps in the NWFP, are anxious to go back to their villages in Swat. Making arrangements for their return and for maintaining control over the re-captured areas of the Swat would keep a large number of Pakistani troops tied up in the Swat Valley. Thus, the ability of the Pakistani Army to deploy adequate troops for any ground operations in South Waziristan would be limited. Keeping all these factors in view, the initial focus will be on a co-ordinated hunt for Baitullah and Hussain from the air.
4. A well-planned, intelligence-driven and smartly-executed double strike by US Drones in South Waziristan on June 23,2009, had targeted Baitullah and Hussain, but it failed to achieve its objective for want of luck despite the operations being executed with precision. The double attack was carried out at a village called Lattaka in the Shabikhel area of South Waziristan, where one of the buildings periodically used by Baitullah is reported to be located. In the first strike directed at the building, Khwaz Ali, a close associate of Baitullah, and five other unidentified persons were killed. The second strike was directed some hours later at the village graveyard where about a hundred people had gathered for the burial of Khwaz Ali. About 80 of the mourners, including some children, are believed to have been killed. Initial reports that Qari Hussain Mehsud of the Pakistani Taliban and Maulvi Sangeen Zadran, a close associate of Serjuddin Haqqani of the Afghan Taliban, were among the mourners killed have not been corroborated. There have been conflicting reports about Baitullah. Some reports say he was among the mourners, but had left the graveyard before the Drone attack. Others deny that he was among the mourners. The fact that there has been no public demonstration in the area indicates that the majority of those killed must have been members of the Taliban and not innocent local villagers as subsequently alleged by Taliban elements.
5. The US has carried out 24 Drone strikes in Pakistani territory so far this year as against 36 during the whole of 2008. The Obama Administration is not relenting in its policy of using the Drones whenever warranted by specific intelligence without worrying about proforma protests from the Pakistani authorities and leaders or about warnings by some US analysts that increasing civilian casualties due to the Drone attacks could drive more tribals into the arms of the Taliban. The stepped-up Drone strikes, which were initially justified as necessary to disrupt the presence and activities of Al Qaeda remnants in Pakistani territory, are now sought to be used to indirectly help the Pakistan Army in its operations against the Pakistani Taliban. (26-6-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
According to well-informed Pakistani police sources,the US and Pakistani Armed Forces, intelligence agencies and special forces have launched a co-ordinated hunt for Baitullah Mehsud, the Amir of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in South Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). It is a co-ordinated and not a joint operation. In a co-ordinated operation the two collaborators operate independently of each other and not jointly together under a common command and control, but keep each other informed in advance of their operational plans to avoid attacking each other by mistake instead of their common target.
2. The operations undertaken by the Pakistan Army in the Swat Valley of the Malakand Division in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) since April have started coming in for some criticism because while the Pakistan Army has claimed to have killed over 1500 foot soldiers of the Pakistani Taliban hardly any important leader has been killed or captured. To avoid such criticism, the focus of the operations in South Waziristan would be on killing Baitullah Mehsud and Qari Hussain Mehsud, one of his lieutenants, who reportedly trains suicide terrorists, and not on re-establishing immediate territorial control over the Mehsud areas of South Waziristan. While re-establishing territorial control will be the ultimate objective, eliminating Baitullah and Hussain would be the immediate objective. The calculation is that if they are eliminated, the TTP could disintegrate.
3. The initial emphasis would be more on the use of air power than ground forces. While the Pakistanis would use their F-16 aircraft and helicopter gunships, the US would continue to use its unmanned Drones with their missiles. The initial emphasis on the use of air power by Pakistan also takes into account the difficulties that it might face in diverting adequate forces to South Waziristan till the operations in the Swat Valley are over. The internally displaced persons from the Swat Valley, who are presently living in camps in the NWFP, are anxious to go back to their villages in Swat. Making arrangements for their return and for maintaining control over the re-captured areas of the Swat would keep a large number of Pakistani troops tied up in the Swat Valley. Thus, the ability of the Pakistani Army to deploy adequate troops for any ground operations in South Waziristan would be limited. Keeping all these factors in view, the initial focus will be on a co-ordinated hunt for Baitullah and Hussain from the air.
4. A well-planned, intelligence-driven and smartly-executed double strike by US Drones in South Waziristan on June 23,2009, had targeted Baitullah and Hussain, but it failed to achieve its objective for want of luck despite the operations being executed with precision. The double attack was carried out at a village called Lattaka in the Shabikhel area of South Waziristan, where one of the buildings periodically used by Baitullah is reported to be located. In the first strike directed at the building, Khwaz Ali, a close associate of Baitullah, and five other unidentified persons were killed. The second strike was directed some hours later at the village graveyard where about a hundred people had gathered for the burial of Khwaz Ali. About 80 of the mourners, including some children, are believed to have been killed. Initial reports that Qari Hussain Mehsud of the Pakistani Taliban and Maulvi Sangeen Zadran, a close associate of Serjuddin Haqqani of the Afghan Taliban, were among the mourners killed have not been corroborated. There have been conflicting reports about Baitullah. Some reports say he was among the mourners, but had left the graveyard before the Drone attack. Others deny that he was among the mourners. The fact that there has been no public demonstration in the area indicates that the majority of those killed must have been members of the Taliban and not innocent local villagers as subsequently alleged by Taliban elements.
5. The US has carried out 24 Drone strikes in Pakistani territory so far this year as against 36 during the whole of 2008. The Obama Administration is not relenting in its policy of using the Drones whenever warranted by specific intelligence without worrying about proforma protests from the Pakistani authorities and leaders or about warnings by some US analysts that increasing civilian casualties due to the Drone attacks could drive more tribals into the arms of the Taliban. The stepped-up Drone strikes, which were initially justified as necessary to disrupt the presence and activities of Al Qaeda remnants in Pakistani territory, are now sought to be used to indirectly help the Pakistan Army in its operations against the Pakistani Taliban. (26-6-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
AVOID DEMONISING AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY
B.RAMAN
Recurring incidents of violence by individual elements against Indian students in Australia have understandably given rise to concern in India as well as in the Indian student community in Australia about the physical security of the Indian students. This is a matter which needs the well-considered attention of the Australian authorities as well as the Indian diplomatic and consular missions in Australia.
2. While reflecting the concern felt in India over these incidents, sections of our media----particularly the electronic media--- and public opinion moulders unfortunately tend to lose a sense of balance and knowingly or unwittingly demonise the Australian society by projecting it as racist and arrogant. Such projections and a hysterical portrayal of the attacks as racist could prove counter-productive and will not be in the interests of the students themselves. They have gone to Australia for higher studies. During their stay in Australia, they are the guests of the Australian people. They should not allow attacks by individual elements in the Australian society to colour their attitude to the Australian people and authorities and affect the comfort level which has always prevailed between the Indian student community and their Australian hosts. Actions taken by some sections of the Indian student community such as organising huge demonstrations and creating a confrontational situation with the police are unwise and would not help in solving their concerns.
3. Australia is not a racist society today. It treats its foreign immigrants----wherever they are from--- with decency and dignity provided they have immigrated legally. It has been taking strong action against illegal immigrants not because it is racist but because it is worried over the security implications of unchecked illegal immigration ----particularly in the post-9/11 world.There are political organisations and figures in Australia, who demand strong action against illegant immigrants. By doing so, they do not become racists. In our country too, there are growing demands for strong action to stop unchecked illegal immigration of Muslims from Bangladesh. It will be as atrocious to project those opposing illegal immigration from Bangladesh as anti-Islam as it will be to project those opposing illegal immigration into Australia as racist.
4. There is no evidence to show that the attacks on some Indian students in Australia were motivated by racist prejudices. No study has been made of the causes for such attacks. From whatever little details are available, the attacks seem to have been due to feelings of jealousy and resentment arising from economic reasons. I have heard from Indian students in Australia that their university faculties look after the foreign students quite well and help them in getting part-time jobs while pursuing their studies so that they do not have to depend on their parents for pocket money. As a result of the economic melt-down, which has affected Australia too, the number of such part-time jobs available for students has come down. There is an intense competition between Australian and foreign students as well as among foreign students of different nationalities for the declining number of part-time jobs now available. This gives rise to friction in the students' community, which sometimes leads to a violent expression of the resulting jealousy and resentment. Hopefully, this will be a passing phase.
5. In some of our TV debates all sorts of meaningless arguments and unwise threats figur --- some of them coming even from retired bureaucratas, who should know better. One of such threats which one heard recently was: " The Australians should remember that their educational system will collapse if Indian students stop going there." Nothing can be more absurd. Yes, the Australian educational system has benefited from the large number of self-paying Indian students from upper middle class families who have gone there. With nearly 100,000 students from India studying in the Australian higher educational institutions, the Indian students constitute the largest single group of foreign students. But the benefit is not just one way. The Australian educational system has benefitted. So too the Indian students. India too will benefit from the knowledge and skills acquired by them. Many Indian students, who studied in prestigious Australian universities such as the Australian National University of Canberra, have done India proud by shining in whatever jobs they took up anywhere in the world after their education. We should not drop a huge boulder on our own feet by holding out such stupid threats.
6. Yes, the physical security of the students should be a matter of common concern to the authorities of the two countries. How to prevent such incidents has to be considered by the police and university authorities of Australia. The Indian students should discuss with them the measures required for enhanced security and help them in their implementation instead of creating bad blood through actions such as public demonstrations. ( 25-6-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (red), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and,presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail:seventyone2@gmail.com )
Recurring incidents of violence by individual elements against Indian students in Australia have understandably given rise to concern in India as well as in the Indian student community in Australia about the physical security of the Indian students. This is a matter which needs the well-considered attention of the Australian authorities as well as the Indian diplomatic and consular missions in Australia.
2. While reflecting the concern felt in India over these incidents, sections of our media----particularly the electronic media--- and public opinion moulders unfortunately tend to lose a sense of balance and knowingly or unwittingly demonise the Australian society by projecting it as racist and arrogant. Such projections and a hysterical portrayal of the attacks as racist could prove counter-productive and will not be in the interests of the students themselves. They have gone to Australia for higher studies. During their stay in Australia, they are the guests of the Australian people. They should not allow attacks by individual elements in the Australian society to colour their attitude to the Australian people and authorities and affect the comfort level which has always prevailed between the Indian student community and their Australian hosts. Actions taken by some sections of the Indian student community such as organising huge demonstrations and creating a confrontational situation with the police are unwise and would not help in solving their concerns.
3. Australia is not a racist society today. It treats its foreign immigrants----wherever they are from--- with decency and dignity provided they have immigrated legally. It has been taking strong action against illegal immigrants not because it is racist but because it is worried over the security implications of unchecked illegal immigration ----particularly in the post-9/11 world.There are political organisations and figures in Australia, who demand strong action against illegant immigrants. By doing so, they do not become racists. In our country too, there are growing demands for strong action to stop unchecked illegal immigration of Muslims from Bangladesh. It will be as atrocious to project those opposing illegal immigration from Bangladesh as anti-Islam as it will be to project those opposing illegal immigration into Australia as racist.
4. There is no evidence to show that the attacks on some Indian students in Australia were motivated by racist prejudices. No study has been made of the causes for such attacks. From whatever little details are available, the attacks seem to have been due to feelings of jealousy and resentment arising from economic reasons. I have heard from Indian students in Australia that their university faculties look after the foreign students quite well and help them in getting part-time jobs while pursuing their studies so that they do not have to depend on their parents for pocket money. As a result of the economic melt-down, which has affected Australia too, the number of such part-time jobs available for students has come down. There is an intense competition between Australian and foreign students as well as among foreign students of different nationalities for the declining number of part-time jobs now available. This gives rise to friction in the students' community, which sometimes leads to a violent expression of the resulting jealousy and resentment. Hopefully, this will be a passing phase.
5. In some of our TV debates all sorts of meaningless arguments and unwise threats figur --- some of them coming even from retired bureaucratas, who should know better. One of such threats which one heard recently was: " The Australians should remember that their educational system will collapse if Indian students stop going there." Nothing can be more absurd. Yes, the Australian educational system has benefited from the large number of self-paying Indian students from upper middle class families who have gone there. With nearly 100,000 students from India studying in the Australian higher educational institutions, the Indian students constitute the largest single group of foreign students. But the benefit is not just one way. The Australian educational system has benefitted. So too the Indian students. India too will benefit from the knowledge and skills acquired by them. Many Indian students, who studied in prestigious Australian universities such as the Australian National University of Canberra, have done India proud by shining in whatever jobs they took up anywhere in the world after their education. We should not drop a huge boulder on our own feet by holding out such stupid threats.
6. Yes, the physical security of the students should be a matter of common concern to the authorities of the two countries. How to prevent such incidents has to be considered by the police and university authorities of Australia. The Indian students should discuss with them the measures required for enhanced security and help them in their implementation instead of creating bad blood through actions such as public demonstrations. ( 25-6-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (red), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and,presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail:seventyone2@gmail.com )
June 24, 2009
Indian firms acquire 143 US companies, create 30,000 jobs
Wed, Jun 24 10:38 AM
Washington, June 24 (IANS) Indian companies made 143 acquisitions across various sectors in the United States over the last two years, bailed out many companies on the brink of closure and created some 30,000 jobs, according to a seminal new study.
In 2007-08 alone, 94 deals between the range of $0.8 million and $1,005 million were concluded with the disclosed value in 55 deals totalling $4,432 million, according to the joint study released by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Ernst and Young.
In 2008-09, Indian companies were involved in 49 US-bound acquisitions. Of these, deal values were disclosed in 24 cases and their value totalled $960 million. The size of the deals were in the range of $0.70 million and $172 million, the report noted.
Indian Ambassador to the US Meera Shankar released the study titled 'India Contributes to Employment, Capital Growth and Tax Revenues in the US - Direct Investment by Indian companies in 2007-2009' at a function at the East West Centre here Tuesday.
Speaking of a transformation that the India-US bilateral relationship had witnessed in recent years, Shankar highlighted the complementarities and convergences in the relationship.
The US being the largest economy in the world was naturally a key economic partner for India, she said pointing out the growing two-way investment between both countries.
FICCI President Harsh Pati Singhania and Secretary General Dr. Amit Mitra also spoke about the developing economic ties between India and the US and the numerous opportunities for further cooperation.
The study shows that IT&ITeS (information technology and information technology enabled service), consumer products, pharmaceutical and manufacturing are the key sectors where companies are active in outbound acquisitions.
However, the IT&ITeS sector is the sector where a majority of the deals took place. The IT&ITeS sector, in fact, accounted for 50 percent of the total number of deals in 2007-08 and 40 percent of the total number of deals in 2008-09.
The report attributed the rise in Indian outbound investments to the US to strong economic growth, and easy availability of debt finance for companies.
Several Indian multinationals are still looking at acquiring US companies, despite the economic downturn which has raised the cost of overseas acquisitions.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
Washington, June 24 (IANS) Indian companies made 143 acquisitions across various sectors in the United States over the last two years, bailed out many companies on the brink of closure and created some 30,000 jobs, according to a seminal new study.
In 2007-08 alone, 94 deals between the range of $0.8 million and $1,005 million were concluded with the disclosed value in 55 deals totalling $4,432 million, according to the joint study released by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Ernst and Young.
In 2008-09, Indian companies were involved in 49 US-bound acquisitions. Of these, deal values were disclosed in 24 cases and their value totalled $960 million. The size of the deals were in the range of $0.70 million and $172 million, the report noted.
Indian Ambassador to the US Meera Shankar released the study titled 'India Contributes to Employment, Capital Growth and Tax Revenues in the US - Direct Investment by Indian companies in 2007-2009' at a function at the East West Centre here Tuesday.
Speaking of a transformation that the India-US bilateral relationship had witnessed in recent years, Shankar highlighted the complementarities and convergences in the relationship.
The US being the largest economy in the world was naturally a key economic partner for India, she said pointing out the growing two-way investment between both countries.
FICCI President Harsh Pati Singhania and Secretary General Dr. Amit Mitra also spoke about the developing economic ties between India and the US and the numerous opportunities for further cooperation.
The study shows that IT&ITeS (information technology and information technology enabled service), consumer products, pharmaceutical and manufacturing are the key sectors where companies are active in outbound acquisitions.
However, the IT&ITeS sector is the sector where a majority of the deals took place. The IT&ITeS sector, in fact, accounted for 50 percent of the total number of deals in 2007-08 and 40 percent of the total number of deals in 2008-09.
The report attributed the rise in Indian outbound investments to the US to strong economic growth, and easy availability of debt finance for companies.
Several Indian multinationals are still looking at acquiring US companies, despite the economic downturn which has raised the cost of overseas acquisitions.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
June 23, 2009
COUNTERING MAOIST ACTIVITIES
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
B.RAMAN
The continuing inability of the Government ----whether at the Centre or in the States--- to counter effectively the spread of the activities of the Maoist insurgents-cum-terrorists has once again been demonstrated by the temporary control established by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and its front organisation called the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities over 17 out of 118 small villages spread across some 300 square kilometres in the Lalgarh area of the State of West Bengal ruled by a coalition headed by the Communist Party of India ( Marxist).
2. The People's Committee, with the backing or at the instigation of the Communist Party of India (Maoist),exploited local anger over alleged police excesses against the tribals following an alleged Maoist attempt to kill the Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee through a landmine blast in November last year.
3. What started as a protest movement against police excesses against the local tribals was transformed by the Maoists into a violent political movement for establishing their writ over the villages in the Lalgarh area of West Midnapore Distict.The hesitation of the Governments of West Bengal and India to act strongly against the Maoist-instigated Committee at the very beginning apparently due to electoral considerations arising from the recently-concluded elections to the Lok Sabha, the lower House of the Indian Parliament, was exploited by the committee and the Maoists, with the reported help of Maoists from the adjoining States of Jharkhand and Orissa, to strengthen their control over these villages.
4. The transformation of the ostensibly human rights movement into a political movement for a confrontation with the State is evident from the demands put forward by Gour Chakraborty, the CPI-Maoist's spokesman, in an interview to Rediff.com on June 18,2009, after the State Government forces, with the help of para-military forces of the Government of India started counter-insurgency operations to eject the Maoists from the villages controlled by them. The security forces have already succeeded in ejecting the Maoists and their supporters from many of the villages earlier controlled by them.In his interview, Chakraborty spelt out the the three main demands of the Maoists as follows: "Central and state forces must be withdrawn from the entire area; the State Government must officially apologise to the tribals for its torture and misbehaviour and it should immediately put an end to police atrocities."
5. While reiterating the Government of India's policy of being willing for talks with the Maoists on their legitimate demands if and when they give up the resort to violence, the Government of India as evidence of its determination to put down the Maoist activities firmly has banned the Communist Party of India (Maoist) after designating it as a terrorist organisation. The ban order was issued on June 22,2009, under Section 41 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The CPI (Maoist) was formed in 2004 through the merger of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), the People's War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). The earlier ban order had covered these organisations, but after their merger to form the CPI (Maoist), no specific order had been issued to bring the CPI (Maoist) under its purview. This lacuna has been sought to be filled up now by banning specifically the CPI (Maoist) and its front organisations.
6.The CPI (Maoist) is a partly political, partly insurgent and partrly terrorist organisation. It believes in the Maoist strategy of capturing political power with the help of a well-motivated and well-trained army of the impoverished rural masses. It has been using the tribal areas in the mineral rich central and east India, where the tribals have long been subjected to political ,economic and social discrimination and where alleged instances of police excesses have been frequent, for the recruitment of its cadres and for establishing operational bases from where attacks could be launched against small and big towns to capture arms and ammunition from the police and para-military forces. As an insurgent organisation, it believes in establishing its control over territory " liberated' by it. As a terrorist organisation, it differs from other terrorist organisatiions. It indulges in targeted killings of security forces personnel and its perceived class and political enemies. It does not indulge in indiscriminate killing of civilians (non-combatants), who do not come under any of these categories.
7. Since Dr.Manmohan Singh came to power as the Prime Minister in 2004, he and his Government have been projecting the Maoists as the greatest internal security threat faced by India and calling for and promising a special strategy to counter them through co-ordinated action involving the Government of India and the Governments of the States in whose territory the Maoists are active. The Congress (I) had appointed in 2004 a special task force of the party to go into the Maoist activities in the Congress (I) ruled Andhra Pradesh to come out with suitable recommendations for dealing with the Maoist activities.
8.Till now, one does not see any sign of a suitable strategfy emerging. Before evolving such a strategy, one has to understand the basic differences between Maoist insurgency/terrorism and jihadi terrorism. Firstly, the Maoist terrorism is an almost totally rural phenomenon, whereas jihadi terrorism is a largely urban phenomenon. Secondly, Maoist terrorism is a totally indigenous phenomenon motivated by domestic grievances and a domestic political agenda. Jihadi terrorism is externally sponsored or aided by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Bangladesh and is motivated by their strategic agenda. Jihadi terrorism is a cross border threat to national security. Maoist terrorism is not.
9.While the leaders of the Maoists are motivated largely by their desire to seek political power through a Maoist style People's War similar to the war waged by their counterparts in Nepal, their cadres and foot soldiers fighting for them are largely motivated by genuine grievances arising from the political, economic and social hardships faced by them. It is our long neglect to develop the tribal areas which has created large pockets of alienation against the Government and these pockets have become the spawning ground of Maoist terrorism.
10.We cannot have the same strategy for dealing with Maoist activities as we have for dealing with jihadi terrorism.We have to take note of the genuine grievances of the tribals and deal with them in a sympathetic manner. We should not dismiss summarily their allegations of police excesses. There has to be a machinery for a prompt enquiry into these allegations. Maoist terrorism cannot be effectively countered without modernising and strengthening our rural policing and the rural presence of the intelligence agencies. The tribal areas, which have not yet been affected by the Maoist virus, have to be developed on a crash basis in order to prevent the spread of the virus to them. The capabilities of the security agencies deployed for countering the Maoist activities have to be different from those of the urban counter-terrorism agencies. The emphasis has to be on greater mobility in the rural areas with very little road infrastructure at present and greater protection from landmines used extensively by the Maoists. Our failure to develop the road infrastructure in the rural areas has facilitated the spread of Maoist terrorism by taking advantage of the lack of mobility of the security forces.
11. The jihadis increasingly attack soft targets. The Maoists don't. They mainly attack police stations, police lines, camps and arms storage depots of para-military forces in order to demoralise the security forces and capture their arms and ammunition. The repeated success of the Maoists in mounting large-scale surprise attacks on such hard targets speaks of the poor state of rural policing and intelligence set-up and the equally poor state of physical security.
12. Unfortunately, instead of working out an appropriate strategy which will address these operational deficiencies and at the same time pay equal attention to the political handling of the problem, there is an unwise tendency to militarise the counter-Maoist insurgency management by adopting methods similar to those followed by the British in dealing with the Communist insurgency in Malaya after the Second World War. This will prove counter-productive.
13. It is time for the Government to have a re-think on the way we have been dealing with this problem in order to have a tailor-made strategy based on improvement of political management, strengthening rural policing and rural intelligence and developing capacities for rural operations with emphasis on mobile as well as on static security. ( 23-6-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
The continuing inability of the Government ----whether at the Centre or in the States--- to counter effectively the spread of the activities of the Maoist insurgents-cum-terrorists has once again been demonstrated by the temporary control established by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and its front organisation called the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities over 17 out of 118 small villages spread across some 300 square kilometres in the Lalgarh area of the State of West Bengal ruled by a coalition headed by the Communist Party of India ( Marxist).
2. The People's Committee, with the backing or at the instigation of the Communist Party of India (Maoist),exploited local anger over alleged police excesses against the tribals following an alleged Maoist attempt to kill the Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee through a landmine blast in November last year.
3. What started as a protest movement against police excesses against the local tribals was transformed by the Maoists into a violent political movement for establishing their writ over the villages in the Lalgarh area of West Midnapore Distict.The hesitation of the Governments of West Bengal and India to act strongly against the Maoist-instigated Committee at the very beginning apparently due to electoral considerations arising from the recently-concluded elections to the Lok Sabha, the lower House of the Indian Parliament, was exploited by the committee and the Maoists, with the reported help of Maoists from the adjoining States of Jharkhand and Orissa, to strengthen their control over these villages.
4. The transformation of the ostensibly human rights movement into a political movement for a confrontation with the State is evident from the demands put forward by Gour Chakraborty, the CPI-Maoist's spokesman, in an interview to Rediff.com on June 18,2009, after the State Government forces, with the help of para-military forces of the Government of India started counter-insurgency operations to eject the Maoists from the villages controlled by them. The security forces have already succeeded in ejecting the Maoists and their supporters from many of the villages earlier controlled by them.In his interview, Chakraborty spelt out the the three main demands of the Maoists as follows: "Central and state forces must be withdrawn from the entire area; the State Government must officially apologise to the tribals for its torture and misbehaviour and it should immediately put an end to police atrocities."
5. While reiterating the Government of India's policy of being willing for talks with the Maoists on their legitimate demands if and when they give up the resort to violence, the Government of India as evidence of its determination to put down the Maoist activities firmly has banned the Communist Party of India (Maoist) after designating it as a terrorist organisation. The ban order was issued on June 22,2009, under Section 41 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The CPI (Maoist) was formed in 2004 through the merger of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), the People's War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). The earlier ban order had covered these organisations, but after their merger to form the CPI (Maoist), no specific order had been issued to bring the CPI (Maoist) under its purview. This lacuna has been sought to be filled up now by banning specifically the CPI (Maoist) and its front organisations.
6.The CPI (Maoist) is a partly political, partly insurgent and partrly terrorist organisation. It believes in the Maoist strategy of capturing political power with the help of a well-motivated and well-trained army of the impoverished rural masses. It has been using the tribal areas in the mineral rich central and east India, where the tribals have long been subjected to political ,economic and social discrimination and where alleged instances of police excesses have been frequent, for the recruitment of its cadres and for establishing operational bases from where attacks could be launched against small and big towns to capture arms and ammunition from the police and para-military forces. As an insurgent organisation, it believes in establishing its control over territory " liberated' by it. As a terrorist organisation, it differs from other terrorist organisatiions. It indulges in targeted killings of security forces personnel and its perceived class and political enemies. It does not indulge in indiscriminate killing of civilians (non-combatants), who do not come under any of these categories.
7. Since Dr.Manmohan Singh came to power as the Prime Minister in 2004, he and his Government have been projecting the Maoists as the greatest internal security threat faced by India and calling for and promising a special strategy to counter them through co-ordinated action involving the Government of India and the Governments of the States in whose territory the Maoists are active. The Congress (I) had appointed in 2004 a special task force of the party to go into the Maoist activities in the Congress (I) ruled Andhra Pradesh to come out with suitable recommendations for dealing with the Maoist activities.
8.Till now, one does not see any sign of a suitable strategfy emerging. Before evolving such a strategy, one has to understand the basic differences between Maoist insurgency/terrorism and jihadi terrorism. Firstly, the Maoist terrorism is an almost totally rural phenomenon, whereas jihadi terrorism is a largely urban phenomenon. Secondly, Maoist terrorism is a totally indigenous phenomenon motivated by domestic grievances and a domestic political agenda. Jihadi terrorism is externally sponsored or aided by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Bangladesh and is motivated by their strategic agenda. Jihadi terrorism is a cross border threat to national security. Maoist terrorism is not.
9.While the leaders of the Maoists are motivated largely by their desire to seek political power through a Maoist style People's War similar to the war waged by their counterparts in Nepal, their cadres and foot soldiers fighting for them are largely motivated by genuine grievances arising from the political, economic and social hardships faced by them. It is our long neglect to develop the tribal areas which has created large pockets of alienation against the Government and these pockets have become the spawning ground of Maoist terrorism.
10.We cannot have the same strategy for dealing with Maoist activities as we have for dealing with jihadi terrorism.We have to take note of the genuine grievances of the tribals and deal with them in a sympathetic manner. We should not dismiss summarily their allegations of police excesses. There has to be a machinery for a prompt enquiry into these allegations. Maoist terrorism cannot be effectively countered without modernising and strengthening our rural policing and the rural presence of the intelligence agencies. The tribal areas, which have not yet been affected by the Maoist virus, have to be developed on a crash basis in order to prevent the spread of the virus to them. The capabilities of the security agencies deployed for countering the Maoist activities have to be different from those of the urban counter-terrorism agencies. The emphasis has to be on greater mobility in the rural areas with very little road infrastructure at present and greater protection from landmines used extensively by the Maoists. Our failure to develop the road infrastructure in the rural areas has facilitated the spread of Maoist terrorism by taking advantage of the lack of mobility of the security forces.
11. The jihadis increasingly attack soft targets. The Maoists don't. They mainly attack police stations, police lines, camps and arms storage depots of para-military forces in order to demoralise the security forces and capture their arms and ammunition. The repeated success of the Maoists in mounting large-scale surprise attacks on such hard targets speaks of the poor state of rural policing and intelligence set-up and the equally poor state of physical security.
12. Unfortunately, instead of working out an appropriate strategy which will address these operational deficiencies and at the same time pay equal attention to the political handling of the problem, there is an unwise tendency to militarise the counter-Maoist insurgency management by adopting methods similar to those followed by the British in dealing with the Communist insurgency in Malaya after the Second World War. This will prove counter-productive.
13. It is time for the Government to have a re-think on the way we have been dealing with this problem in order to have a tailor-made strategy based on improvement of political management, strengthening rural policing and rural intelligence and developing capacities for rural operations with emphasis on mobile as well as on static security. ( 23-6-09)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
June 22, 2009
Assassination attempt on Ingush president
Q&A: Ingushetia insurgency
Today's assassination attempt on the Ingush president is likely to be the work of Islamist militants. Luke Harding explains the history of the insurgency and its ramifications in the region
guardian.co.uk, Monday 22 June 2009 14.09 BST
Who was behind today's bomb attack in Ingushetia?
The attack on President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was almost certainly the work of Islamist militants. The rebels are waging an insurgency to overthrow the region's federal government and establish their own Islamic caliphate. Their movement began as a separatist uprising in Chechnya, the scene of two Kremlin wars. It has now transformed into a unified pan-regional struggle, focused on the Muslim republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan.
Do locals support the insurgents?
The insurgents were unpopular after a bloody attack in July 2004 on Nazran. Chechen and Ingush fighters seized the town overnight and killed about 100 people, mostly federal officers. Since then, the Kremlin has run counterinsurgency operations in which dozens of people have been killed, tortured or disappeared. Human rights groups say this has alienated villagers and driven some local people, especially boys, into joining the insurgents.
Who is Yunus-Bek Yevkurov?
Yevkurov, 45, became president in October after his controversial predecessor, former KGB general Murat Zyazikov, was removed from office. Yevkurov immediately set about undoing some of the harsher measures introduced by Zyazikov. He created a new human rights commission, met family members of those who had disappeared, and tried to curb official corruption. He also travelled with fewer bodyguards than Zyazikov, the target of several assassination attempts. None of this appears to have made much impression on the rebels, who see Yevkurov as a symbol of federal power.
Does the Kremlin have a strategy for dealing with the revolt in the north Caucasus?
Not really. The Kremlin has appeared impotent in dealing with a series of high-profile attacks that have ravaged the southern region this year. Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, visited Dagestan this month, four days after the republic's top law enforcement officer was shot dead at a wedding. FSB officials have responded by launching more counterterrorist operations. With scant prospect of success, the Kremlin may now invite Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen president, to coordinate the anti-insurgency operation in Ingushetia and Dagestan. Kadyrov's brutal track record in crushing insurgents speaks for itself.
Are the fighters all Islamists?
They were not to begin with. Many of the young men who join the insurgency do so out of frustration with the poverty and lack of opportunities endemic in the region, rather than religious belief. Others join because special forces have murdered their family members. Experts say the recruits are swiftly indoctrinated and that the revolt has a clearly jihadist influence.
Do al-Qaida or other militant Islamist organisations fund the insurgents?
There is some evidence of small-scale funding from outside Russia. But the insurgent movements in the north Caucasus are mainly indigenous, organised and supported by locals. Analysts dismiss claims by Kadyrov and other Kremlin officials that the west is to blame, in particular the US and UK, which Kadyrov says are funding the rebels to sow instability on Russia's southern borders.
Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election
Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election
Programme PaperAli Ansari, Daniel Berman and Thomas Rintoul, June 2009
Working from the province by province breakdowns of the 2009 and 2005 results, released by the Iranian Ministry of Interior, and from the 2006 census as published by the official Statistical Centre of Iran, this paper offers some observations about the official data and the debates surrounding the 2009 Iranian Presidential Election.
_______________
SUMMARY
Working from the province by province breakdowns of the 2009 and 2005 results, released by the Iranian Ministry of Interior, and from the 2006 census as published by the official Statistical Centre of Iran, the following observations about the official data and the debates surrounding it can be made.
· In two conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of more than 100% was recorded.
· At a provincial level, there is no correlation between the increased turnout and the swing to Ahmadinejad. This challenges the notion that Ahmadinejad’s victory was due to the massive participation of a previously silent conservative majority.
· In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, all former centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former Reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.
· In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas.
That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces flies in the face of these trends.
The Uzbek-Kyrgyz wall
Source: Strategic Culture Foundation
21.06.2009
Aleksandr SHUSTOV
The escalating conflict along the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border after a checkpoint and a building of the Security Service in the city of Khanabad were attacked on May 2, had an unexpected sequel. On June 9, radio “Ozodlik” (an Uzbek service of Svoboda (Liberty) radio station) reported that Uzbekistan had started building walls and digging trenches along stretches of their mutual border with Kyrgyzstan. The tension on the border is becoming especially serious now because delimitation and demarcation of the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border have not been completed. Uzbekistan’s building of walls along the border with Kyrgyzstan includes disputable areas.
The Kyrgyz Border Protection Service confirmed the information that Uzbekistan is carrying out fortification of borders. Uzbekistan is digging 3 meters wide and 3 meters deep trenches on the borders of Suzaks, Aksyisk and Nookatsk districts of Kyrgyzstan and building 7 meters high concrete walls in the Rishtan district of the Fergana region. Uzbekistan has also started to evacuate citizens, who reside right near the Kyrgyz border to other districts.
Three weeks after the attacks in the Andijan region the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border is still closed. Both Kyrgyz and Uzbek residents are allowed to return to their lands but after that they are not allowed to cross the border again. Moreover, in case of unsanctioned border-crossing border guards use weapons. On June 7, Uzbek border guards shot dead a 29-year-old Kyrgyz citizen. Ulukbek Zhorokanov from the town of Kara-Suu tried to cross the border to buy fruits and vegetables in Uzbekistan. He was seriously wounded and later died. The Uzbek authorities think that the fortification of borders will prevent intervention of gunmen from Kyrgyzstan. The gunmen who attacked the checkpoint and the Security service building allegedly came from Kyrgyzstan. But the Kyrgyz authorities overturned these allegations. Later on it was reported that the gunmen were linked with the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan and the radical wing of the United Tajik opposition, who fought together with Taliban groups in Pakistan. When the Pakistani Army forced Taliban to leave the Swat Valley the troops of the United Tajik opposition returned to the Karategin valley of Tajikistan. The Kyrgyz-Uzbek border conflict, as well as the Uzbek-Tajik border conflict, is the most complicated in the Central Asia.
The division of the Fergana valley between three republics of the USSR in 1920-s led to the situation when ethnic and state borders did not coincide anymore and also to the emergence of enclaves. Kyrgyzstan has two Uzbek enclaves on its territory – Sokh and Shakhimardan with population from 40 000 to 50 000 people. Uzbekistan has a Kyrgyz village of Barak with the population of about 600 people. The residents there face constant border crossing problem, economic and social problems. The attempts to resolve the problem of these enclaves by territories’ exchange have failed. In 2001, Uzbekistan proposed Kyrgyzstan to unite the Sokh enclave (with its 19 settlements populated mainly by Tajik people) with Uzbekistan by a narrow stretch of land and to transfer the southern part of the enclave to Kyrgyzstan. But Kyrgyzstan rejected the proposal saying that the proposed land “did not have agricultural and technical value”. The Kyrgyz officials also said that in that case the Leileksky and Batkensky districts would be isolated from the rest of the country.
On February 26, 2001, the two countries signed a memorandum on delimitation of the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border. In 2003, after a number of intergovernmental talks, the parties managed to agree on delimitation of only 654 of 1270 kilometers of the border. By 2009, 993 of 1375 km (about ¾ of the border) had been delimited. According to the Fergana.ru information agency, there are still 58 disputable stretches on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border.
The Kyrgyz-Uzbek border dispute is difficult to resolve because the border often passes through settlements splitting them into Uzbek and Kyrgyz parts regardless of ethnic origin of the residents. A typical example is the village of Chek located on the border of the Jalalabad region of Kyrgyzstan and Andijan region of Uzbekistan. The village is divided in two parts by the Pakhtaabad channel. After the break-up of the Soviet Union 24 of 182 families, who lived on the Kyrgyz part of Chek found themselves on the territory of Uzbekistan. Most of Chek’s residents who are Kyrgyz citizens are Uzbeks by origin.
In April 2009, representatives of the Uzbek administration together with armed servicemen and policemen conducted checks in the village of Chek. They searched some local food stores and houses of some Kyrgyz citizens residing on the territory of Uzbekistan. The searches were followed by the exchange of statements but there was no result and it was decided to resolve the problem on the level of local administration. Some indignant citizens of Chek complained to President K. Bakiev and later demanded to help them to move from Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan.
The decision to build fortifications on the border was approved right before a summit of CSTO (the Collective Security Treaty Organization) in Moscow on June 14. On that summit the members of CSTO were to sign an agreement to establish joint rapid reaction forces. Uzbekistan and Belarus refused to sign the document while other Central Asian states, which are also members CSTO (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) signed it. This demarche of Uzbekistan coincided with the rumors that the US planned to remove its military base from Manas in Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan.
However there is also an economic aspect in digging of trenches and building of walls the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border. Chinese goods are delivered to Uzbekistan via Kyrgyzstan, namely they come to Uzbekistan from the markets in the Kyrgyz towns of Osh and Kara-Suu. Uzbeks illegally supply non-ferrous metals, ferrous metal scrap, cotton and lubricants to China and fruits and vegetables to Kyrgyzstan. According to “Eurasianet” and “UzMetronom” internet media resources, the fortification of border is aimed at hampering cross-border trade and focusing it in the hands of certain commercial structures. As a confirmation of this version - Fergana.ru reported that Uzbek TV had said against the construction of a wholesale market on the Uzbek territory which would be similar to the market on the Kyrgyz territory of Kara-Suu.
Whatever makes the Uzbek authorities build walls and dig trenches along the border with Kyrgyzstan such actions lead to further escalation of the conflict between two members of CSTO.
Considering that Russia is interested in stronger role of CSTO and stability along its Southern borders we can assume that it may also become involved in Uzbek-Kyrgyz conflict.
21.06.2009
Aleksandr SHUSTOV
The escalating conflict along the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border after a checkpoint and a building of the Security Service in the city of Khanabad were attacked on May 2, had an unexpected sequel. On June 9, radio “Ozodlik” (an Uzbek service of Svoboda (Liberty) radio station) reported that Uzbekistan had started building walls and digging trenches along stretches of their mutual border with Kyrgyzstan. The tension on the border is becoming especially serious now because delimitation and demarcation of the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border have not been completed. Uzbekistan’s building of walls along the border with Kyrgyzstan includes disputable areas.
The Kyrgyz Border Protection Service confirmed the information that Uzbekistan is carrying out fortification of borders. Uzbekistan is digging 3 meters wide and 3 meters deep trenches on the borders of Suzaks, Aksyisk and Nookatsk districts of Kyrgyzstan and building 7 meters high concrete walls in the Rishtan district of the Fergana region. Uzbekistan has also started to evacuate citizens, who reside right near the Kyrgyz border to other districts.
Three weeks after the attacks in the Andijan region the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border is still closed. Both Kyrgyz and Uzbek residents are allowed to return to their lands but after that they are not allowed to cross the border again. Moreover, in case of unsanctioned border-crossing border guards use weapons. On June 7, Uzbek border guards shot dead a 29-year-old Kyrgyz citizen. Ulukbek Zhorokanov from the town of Kara-Suu tried to cross the border to buy fruits and vegetables in Uzbekistan. He was seriously wounded and later died. The Uzbek authorities think that the fortification of borders will prevent intervention of gunmen from Kyrgyzstan. The gunmen who attacked the checkpoint and the Security service building allegedly came from Kyrgyzstan. But the Kyrgyz authorities overturned these allegations. Later on it was reported that the gunmen were linked with the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan and the radical wing of the United Tajik opposition, who fought together with Taliban groups in Pakistan. When the Pakistani Army forced Taliban to leave the Swat Valley the troops of the United Tajik opposition returned to the Karategin valley of Tajikistan. The Kyrgyz-Uzbek border conflict, as well as the Uzbek-Tajik border conflict, is the most complicated in the Central Asia.
The division of the Fergana valley between three republics of the USSR in 1920-s led to the situation when ethnic and state borders did not coincide anymore and also to the emergence of enclaves. Kyrgyzstan has two Uzbek enclaves on its territory – Sokh and Shakhimardan with population from 40 000 to 50 000 people. Uzbekistan has a Kyrgyz village of Barak with the population of about 600 people. The residents there face constant border crossing problem, economic and social problems. The attempts to resolve the problem of these enclaves by territories’ exchange have failed. In 2001, Uzbekistan proposed Kyrgyzstan to unite the Sokh enclave (with its 19 settlements populated mainly by Tajik people) with Uzbekistan by a narrow stretch of land and to transfer the southern part of the enclave to Kyrgyzstan. But Kyrgyzstan rejected the proposal saying that the proposed land “did not have agricultural and technical value”. The Kyrgyz officials also said that in that case the Leileksky and Batkensky districts would be isolated from the rest of the country.
On February 26, 2001, the two countries signed a memorandum on delimitation of the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border. In 2003, after a number of intergovernmental talks, the parties managed to agree on delimitation of only 654 of 1270 kilometers of the border. By 2009, 993 of 1375 km (about ¾ of the border) had been delimited. According to the Fergana.ru information agency, there are still 58 disputable stretches on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border.
The Kyrgyz-Uzbek border dispute is difficult to resolve because the border often passes through settlements splitting them into Uzbek and Kyrgyz parts regardless of ethnic origin of the residents. A typical example is the village of Chek located on the border of the Jalalabad region of Kyrgyzstan and Andijan region of Uzbekistan. The village is divided in two parts by the Pakhtaabad channel. After the break-up of the Soviet Union 24 of 182 families, who lived on the Kyrgyz part of Chek found themselves on the territory of Uzbekistan. Most of Chek’s residents who are Kyrgyz citizens are Uzbeks by origin.
In April 2009, representatives of the Uzbek administration together with armed servicemen and policemen conducted checks in the village of Chek. They searched some local food stores and houses of some Kyrgyz citizens residing on the territory of Uzbekistan. The searches were followed by the exchange of statements but there was no result and it was decided to resolve the problem on the level of local administration. Some indignant citizens of Chek complained to President K. Bakiev and later demanded to help them to move from Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan.
The decision to build fortifications on the border was approved right before a summit of CSTO (the Collective Security Treaty Organization) in Moscow on June 14. On that summit the members of CSTO were to sign an agreement to establish joint rapid reaction forces. Uzbekistan and Belarus refused to sign the document while other Central Asian states, which are also members CSTO (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) signed it. This demarche of Uzbekistan coincided with the rumors that the US planned to remove its military base from Manas in Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan.
However there is also an economic aspect in digging of trenches and building of walls the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border. Chinese goods are delivered to Uzbekistan via Kyrgyzstan, namely they come to Uzbekistan from the markets in the Kyrgyz towns of Osh and Kara-Suu. Uzbeks illegally supply non-ferrous metals, ferrous metal scrap, cotton and lubricants to China and fruits and vegetables to Kyrgyzstan. According to “Eurasianet” and “UzMetronom” internet media resources, the fortification of border is aimed at hampering cross-border trade and focusing it in the hands of certain commercial structures. As a confirmation of this version - Fergana.ru reported that Uzbek TV had said against the construction of a wholesale market on the Uzbek territory which would be similar to the market on the Kyrgyz territory of Kara-Suu.
Whatever makes the Uzbek authorities build walls and dig trenches along the border with Kyrgyzstan such actions lead to further escalation of the conflict between two members of CSTO.
Considering that Russia is interested in stronger role of CSTO and stability along its Southern borders we can assume that it may also become involved in Uzbek-Kyrgyz conflict.
SCO Yekaterinburg summit and China’s energy offensive towards the Caspian Sea
Source: Strategic Culture Foundation
18.06.2009
Ajdar KURTOV
The political and expert quarters will remain for a long time riveted on another summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that was called in Yekaterinburg on the 16th of June.
One could keep looking for quite some time for some fundamental ideas of the main document the summit has adopted, - the Yekaterinburg Declaration of the SCO Heads of State. But comparing some provisions of the Declaration with the practical activities in the central Asian region seems to prove more productive.
Item 5 of the Declaration sounds somewhat pathetically: “The SCO member states, noting the key significance of energy sector for successful economic development and creation of favourable preconditions for improving the living standards of their peoples, express determination to further advance mutually beneficial cooperation in this field on the basis of equality with the aim of ensuring effective, reliable and environmentally safe energy supplies”.
And now let’s take a look at how the SCO unconditional leader China implements its energy plans in the region. Let’s focus on the following two situations by way of an example. The first one has to do with China’s growing involvement in the production of hydrocarbons in Kazakhstan. Back in the 1990s Kazakhstan made easily available its mineral wealth to American, British, French and Italian companies, the companies that foisted disadvantageous or even downright crippling terms on Kazakshtan. The bulk of the profit generated was channelled to Kazakhstan’s new partners, while those were not liable for obligations under the contracts signed, specifically with regard to compliance with ecology-related standards. The situation was largely prompted by corruption that had corroded the Kazakh leaders, including top-echelon officials (a case to illustrate the point is the so-called “Kazakhgate”). A threat loomed large of Kazakhstan turning into a third-world country with a raw exports role to play for the highly-advanced states.
The West was perfectly content with the Kazakh leaders’ policy, since that policy both helped settle the economic problem of securing excess profits to western companies and was in line with the western nations’ political objectives, namely tearing Kazakhstan away from Russia and preventing any new-form revival of the alliance of the former Soviet republics.
However, Kazakhstan growing stronger economically, socially and politically, the internal destabilization risks being largely reduced due to the defeat of the Kazakh opposition and irredentist Slavic organizations and the world hydrocarbons market prices shooting up early this century made Kazakhstan leaders think better of their old stands. The new conditions prompted Kazakhstan to reconsider the earlier signed agreements, and Astana specifically proclaimed the objective of establishing state control over the oil and gas sector.
Astana began to gradually change the national legislation on subsurface resources management and environmental protection to coerce the western companies into greater compliance with Kazakhstan demands, and simultaneously provoked a conflict with the Italian company ENI, the operator of Kazakhstan’s most promising oilfield Kashagan, on the Caspian Sea shelf. Besides Kashagan, ENI’s contractual area in Kazakhstan’s sector of the northern part of the Caspian Sea also comprises the Aktoty, Kairan and Kalamkas oilfields. But Kazakshtan formally laid claims to its foreign partners for the failure to meet the deadlines for making the oilfields operational and producing large amounts of oil.
Kazakhstan made amendments to its Internal Revenue Code, to the law on its mineral wealth and subsurface resources management and to the ecology-related laws concerning foreign investor activities. The legal innovations provided for the consolidation of the State’s right to a 50% share of each new project on secondary markets, too; for a ban on re-selling licences for subsurface resources management for a two-year period following the registration of property rights; toughening control by the Ministry for Environmental Protection; a mandatory demand that foreign economic entities should attract the “Kazakh content” and also the right to use a reference to the need to guarantee national security as explicit justification of a refusal to grant licences for subsurface resources management.
Let us focus for awhile on the term “Kazakh content”, which implies not only an enlargement of Kazakhstan’s share of the authorised capital of consortiums, engaged in drawing up certain projects, but the idea that Kazakhstan’s foreign partners are bound to be geared to the use of Kazakhstan’s mineral wealth. For instance, the foreign partners should purchase no less than 30% to 35% of Kazakh-made materials and equipment, to use no less than 90% of labour and services; and some 90% of personnel. As of May 2009 the Kazakhs have introduced this sort of contractual obligations into 144 contracts.
The national company “KazMunaiGaz” was made responsible for advancing Kazakhstan’s state interests in the oil and gas field institutionally. In autumn last year the company was in control of 18% of oil production in the republic, 80% of oil transportation, half of oil refining and only 6% of oil product retail sale. It was just last year that many things indicated that Kazakh President was trying to shore up the “KazMunaiGaz” Company’s positions. According to the data available, “KazMunaiGaz” is in control of 615 million tonnes of oil reserves, however the greater part of these is believed to be hard to recover; besides, the oil production peak period is over in many oilfields. Given the situation, “KazMunaiGaz” is naturally keenly interested in boosting its oil and gas assets, an objective it tried to attain through the use of state red tape, which helps adjust the earlier signed contracts.
The Kazakh authorities brought pressure to bear on the foreign companies in a bid to force the latter to accept changes to the earlier signed contracts. This was the case of the Canadian company “PetroKazakhstan”, which was compelled to pay major fines for ecological disruptions and temporarily bring the production process to a halt, until the company’s top managers agreed to sell a certain share of implemented projects to Kazakhstan. The transaction looked perfect, with the Canadians selling their business to the new owner, CNPC International Ltd., which “waived” a 33% share of the “PetroKazakhstan” oil refinery to “KazMunaiGaz” and a 50% share to the affiliated company “Kazgermunai”.
Kazakhstan’s government resorted to similar tactics against the British company “BG Group” to oust it from the North-Caspian project, and against the “Aqip KCO” consortium, which taps the largest oilfield Kashagan. Although, of course, in the case of the consortium Astana chose, in the wake of a protracted struggle amid accusations of “resource nationalism” hurled at Kazakhstan leaders, not to exacerbate the situation and meet the consortium halfway. “Aqip KCO” agreed to boost “KazMunaiGaz’s” share of the Production-Sharing Agreement from 8.3% to 16.8% for 1.78 billion dollars. Formally Kazakhstan’s claims to the consortium boiled down to disagreement with pushing back the date of industrial-scale production in the Kashagan oilfield to 2011, while simultaneously increasing the project target costs from 57 billion dollars to 136 billion dollars.
Initially Kazakhstan leaders applied much the same tactic to pursue the same objective to one of Kazakhstan’s three oil refineries, the Pavlodar refinery, which is located by the Russian border and technologically oriented to Russian oil refining. The facility was privatized in January 1997 and the government’s stake placed in management by the US CCL Oil Ltd. Company on the terms of a public-private partnership agreement. But the Kazakh government prematurely terminated the agreement a few years later and handed over a 51% stake to the OAO “Mangistaumunaigaz”. The company later brought its stock of shares to 58%, with 42% of the Pavlodar oil refinery’s stock capital owned by the state.
After that the national company “KazMunaiGaz” bought 51% of the “Mangistaumunaigaz” stock of shares from Indonesia’s Central Asia Petroleum and consequently gained control over the facility. Meanwhile the Russian gas giant GAZPROM made futile attempts to buy 49% of the “Mangistaumunaigaz” stock of shares. The Kazakh authorities have preferred China to Russia. It was reported on the 16th of April 2009 that amid the world economic crisis Kazakhstan borrowed from China 10 billion dollars during N. Nazarbayev’s visit to Beijing. The Chinese CNPC Company bought a 50% stake of “Mangistaumunaigaz” for 1.4 billion dollars. The details of the transaction remain unknown, but Astana claims that the Pavlodar oil refinery has been dropped from the deal and will now become property of “KazMunaiGaz”. But experts estimate “Mangistaumunaigaz” at 3.6 billion dollars. The company owns 36 fields, with drilling under way in 15 of those. Experts claim that “Mangistaumunaigaz” has oil reserves of 1.32 billion barrels. It is safe to assume that it is the above-mentioned Chinese loan to Kazakhstan that made Astana decide in favour of China, rather than GAZPROM, on the sale of “Mangistaumunaigaz”.
In other words, Kazakhstan leaders are ousting western partners from the hydrocarbons market and refusing to meet Russian companies halfway, while losing ground to China. Chinese companies already own a third of Kazakhstan-produced oil, or more than 20 million tonnes per year. The purchasing of Kazakhstan’s “Mangistaumunaigaz” assets by China’s CNPC further tightens China’s grip on the Kazakh oil market and weakens the positions of Russia and the West in Kazakhstan’s fuel and energy complex. China is coming to possess major resource amounts that enable it to reverse Kazakhstan’s oil strategy in Beijing’s favour. Now, Kazakhstan’s authorities’ assurances that they will seek to regain control over the economy’s fuel sector do sound hollow against that backdrop.
The second situation illustrating China’s energy policy on Central Asia has to do with a country that formally has no SCO membership; however, this does in no way restrain China’s policy of advancing towards the Caspian Sea region resources. The Central Asian country in question is Turkmenistan.
Ashgabat has long discussed the construction of a 6,400 kilometre gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China to Japan. The construction project was due to be carried out in 10 years and was pretty costly (11 billion dollars, of which some 1.7 billion dollars would account for the sea section of the pipeline). It was possibly because of that, and also because of China’s changed energy policy in the 21st century that the easterly direction of Turkmen natural gas deliveries was sort of “updated”, namely the option for laying a pipeline to Japan was dropped, with China having been made the only terminal point of delivery.
The China National Petroleum Corporation, CNPC, and Exxon Turkmenistan (Amu Darya) Limited have for many years studied the hydrocarbon potential of the promising fields along the Amu Darya Turkmen bank. The studies aimed to find out about the economic expediency of what was then hypothetical project of an eastern gas pipeline. The geophysical study was made all over the Amu Darya right bank. A number of new gas fields, specifically in the Garagoi area, have been discovered at the approaches to the Kyzylkum desert in the year 2000.
According to the Exxon Company, the project of laying a long-haul gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China could only prove realistic if it were used to supply 30 billion cubic metres of gas or more per year. But experts thought that the amount could also include gas from China’s western areas. Turkmenistan was to guarantee the annual delivery of 33 billion cubic metres of gas (including 3 billion cubic metres to ensure the operation of compressor stations) throughout 25 years.
The Chinese factor has been central to Turkmenistan’s foreign policy since approximately 2006. The two countries had by then signed 36 intergovernmental agreements. Turkmenistan had registered 37 investment projects involving Chinese companies, to the tune of 382.6 million dollars and 360 million Yuan.
A more important development for Turkmenistan in 2006 was the republic’s president S. Niyazov’s visit to China in early April. The main agreement in a package he signed in Beijing was the General intergovernmental agreement on the implementation of the Turkmenistan – China gas pipeline project and on selling natural gas from Turkmenistan to the People’s Republic of China in the volume of 30 billion cubic metres annually for 30 years since the time the gas pipeline was commissioned, which was due in 2009. Under the agreement the Amu Darya River right bank should be used as a resource potential area for the supplies in question, with Chinese experts to be engaged in prospecting and development jointly with Turkmen experts. However, the agreement also featured a provision whereby Turkmenistan guaranteed gas deliveries to China, if need be, also from other gas fields of the republic.
The duration of the agreement was set at three years. The People’s Republic of China allocated 200 million Yuan as a cheap loan to Turkmenistan in the framework of another agreement shortly afterwards. Two weeks after his visit to Beijing S. Niyazov ordered the setting up of a special Turkmen-Chinese cooperation Directorate at the Ministry of Oil and Gas Industry and Mineral Resources.
One year later, in summer 2007, the two countries concluded yet another agreement to make the pipeline to China a reality. CNPC was authorized to make relevant efforts in Turkmenistan and granted an operator licence for prospecting for gas and development of gas fields on land, the first ever licence that Turkmenistan has granted to a foreign company. The overall length of the new Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline will make up some 7,000 kilometres, with over 180 kilometres due to be laid in Turkmenistan, 530 kilometres, - in Uzbekistan, 1,300 kilometres, - in Kazakhstan, and over 4,500 kilometres, - in China. The overall cost of the project makes up some 20 billion dollars. 17 billion cubic metres of Turkmen gas were due to be annually exported through the development of new gas fields, while the remaining 13 billion cubic metres of annual gas exports,- through the construction of gas purification and treatment plants at the largest gas condensate field Bagtyyarlyk.
Incidentally, the Stroytransgaz Russian Company has won a 395 million-euro contract for laying the 188-kilometre Turkmen section of the gas pipeline from Malai to Bagtyyarlyk. The company will also build a plant to purify and dehydrate gas and a gas-measuring station. The construction of the pipeline got under way in 2008.
During the Beijing Olympics in 2008 Turkmenistan’s new President Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov said the flow efficiency of the pipeline to China would be increased. The deal was made part of a special framework agreement that was signed during an official visit to Ashgabat by China’s leader Hu Jintao. The flow efficiency of the pipeline to be commissioned in 2009 is due to be boosted from an annual 30 billion cubic metres of gas to 40 billion cubic metres of gas. Unlike Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan continues to insist that all 40 billion cubic metres of gas will be pumped into the pipeline from the gas fields on Turkmenistan’s right bank of the Amu Darya River. However, it has still been unclear what Turkmenistan will charge China for its gas. Ashgabat obviously reserves the right to having the final say, in the hope that in future it will be able to play on contradictions between its trade partners who will seek to get Turkmen gas.
Nor is it clear whether Ashgabat will be able to supply the entire China-requested gas volume. The Chinese also claim the right to develop another two major projects in their own interests. The projects in question are as follows:
1. A cluster of gas fields on the right bank of the Amu Darya River, with the maximum projected gas capacity estimated at 25 billion cubic metres to 30 billion cubic metres per year. The projected capacity should be attained some time between 2015 and 2020 approximately. 12 billion cubic metres of gas are expected to be produced in the gas fields in 2010. The largest gas fields of the cluster are Samandepe and Altyn Asyr. The estimated reserves of the Bagtyyarlyk contractual area make up 1.7 trillion cubic metres; however, the figure has failed to be proven. A total of 17 gas and gas condensate fields have been discovered on the right bank of the Amu Darya River, including Samandepe and Farap (under development); Metejan, Kishtivan, Sandykty (mothballed); Akgumalam, Tangiguiy, Iljik, Yanguiy, Eastern Yanguiy, Chashguiy, Girsan, Beshir, Bota, Uzyngyi, Bereketli, Pirgyi (under exploration). The largest of these for the time being is Samandepe with the 80 billion cubic metre gas reserves.
2. The Yashlar-South Yolotan cluster of gas fields, of which the largest are South Yolotan (Gunorta Yoloten) and Osman. Turkmen geologists claim the reserves of the fields make up from 3 trillion cubic metres of gas to 7 trillion cubic metres of gas. A British company, asked to estimate the reserves, shared the opinion and actually came up with a higher figure for the gas saturated thickness. Notably, just three years ago the maximum projected gas output was estimated at 15 billion cubic metres to 20 billion cubic metres per year, but the Turkmen now claim the output in the gas fields will have reached 45 billion cubic metres of gas per year by 2020. The projected capacity is due to be attained between 2015 and 2020 approximately. 10 billion cubic metres of gas are due to be produced in 2010.
13 billion cubic metres of gas should be supplied to the Chinese pipeline from the Samandepe and Altyn Asyr gas fields, which are currently developed by the Turkmengaz Company. The Turkmen see the reserves as proved. The remaining 17 trillion cubic metres of gas are due to be supplied through the development of the gas fields that haven’t yet been opened up in the Bagtyyarlyk contractual area, where the CNPC Chinese experts work on product sharing agreement terms.
Following an explosion of the Central Asia- the Centre pipeline on the 9th of April 2009 Ashgabat decided to spite GAZPROM and include Chinese companies on the project to develop the South Yolotan deposit. It has thus clinched China’s earmarked credit of 3 billion dollars to develop the gas deposit on an industrial scale. This has largely added to the steadiness of the project to supply Turkmen gas to China and complicated the feeding of gas to Russia on reasonable terms. In early June 2009 the Turkmen President said confidently that the republic would start pumping 40 billion cubic metres of gas to China through the new pipeline by later 2009.
The pipeline to China is sharp evidence that Beijing is tightening grip on Turkmenistan. In 2006 and 2007 the Turkmen-Chinese trade turnover grew 18-fold. 30 Turkmen-Chinese joint ventures were operational in Turkmenistan as of August 2008. Chinese companies are involved in 49 investment projects in Turkmenistan to the tune of 1,284 billion dollars.
While taking part in SCO activities, China never forgets about its own interests. It has been steadily gaining access to the energy wealth of Central Asia, while ousting American, European and Russian companies from the area. This is what one should give a thought to now. All the wish-wash about the SCO future supranational currency is suggestive of the Soviet-time discussion of “forming a communist society person”. One should realize that the energy policy interests of Central Asian countries, Russia and China are far from always coincident. The SCO Energy Club has to this day failed to come up with a cooperation model that would suit all member-states. China seeks to keep up its high economic growth rates. China is currently energetically penetrating Central Asia to gain access to the local oil and gas reserves. The Chinese are simultaneously laying pipelines to transport the mineral resources in question to China’s western border.
So far there’s been no rapprochement between the SCO member-states on energy cooperation, although the concept of SCO energy policy has been under discussion for several years now. At least the latest SCO summit-approved Yekaterinburg Declaration offers nothing but “diplomatic fog” to that end. Signs are we are watching some trendy stage production.
18.06.2009
Ajdar KURTOV
The political and expert quarters will remain for a long time riveted on another summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that was called in Yekaterinburg on the 16th of June.
One could keep looking for quite some time for some fundamental ideas of the main document the summit has adopted, - the Yekaterinburg Declaration of the SCO Heads of State. But comparing some provisions of the Declaration with the practical activities in the central Asian region seems to prove more productive.
Item 5 of the Declaration sounds somewhat pathetically: “The SCO member states, noting the key significance of energy sector for successful economic development and creation of favourable preconditions for improving the living standards of their peoples, express determination to further advance mutually beneficial cooperation in this field on the basis of equality with the aim of ensuring effective, reliable and environmentally safe energy supplies”.
And now let’s take a look at how the SCO unconditional leader China implements its energy plans in the region. Let’s focus on the following two situations by way of an example. The first one has to do with China’s growing involvement in the production of hydrocarbons in Kazakhstan. Back in the 1990s Kazakhstan made easily available its mineral wealth to American, British, French and Italian companies, the companies that foisted disadvantageous or even downright crippling terms on Kazakshtan. The bulk of the profit generated was channelled to Kazakhstan’s new partners, while those were not liable for obligations under the contracts signed, specifically with regard to compliance with ecology-related standards. The situation was largely prompted by corruption that had corroded the Kazakh leaders, including top-echelon officials (a case to illustrate the point is the so-called “Kazakhgate”). A threat loomed large of Kazakhstan turning into a third-world country with a raw exports role to play for the highly-advanced states.
The West was perfectly content with the Kazakh leaders’ policy, since that policy both helped settle the economic problem of securing excess profits to western companies and was in line with the western nations’ political objectives, namely tearing Kazakhstan away from Russia and preventing any new-form revival of the alliance of the former Soviet republics.
However, Kazakhstan growing stronger economically, socially and politically, the internal destabilization risks being largely reduced due to the defeat of the Kazakh opposition and irredentist Slavic organizations and the world hydrocarbons market prices shooting up early this century made Kazakhstan leaders think better of their old stands. The new conditions prompted Kazakhstan to reconsider the earlier signed agreements, and Astana specifically proclaimed the objective of establishing state control over the oil and gas sector.
Astana began to gradually change the national legislation on subsurface resources management and environmental protection to coerce the western companies into greater compliance with Kazakhstan demands, and simultaneously provoked a conflict with the Italian company ENI, the operator of Kazakhstan’s most promising oilfield Kashagan, on the Caspian Sea shelf. Besides Kashagan, ENI’s contractual area in Kazakhstan’s sector of the northern part of the Caspian Sea also comprises the Aktoty, Kairan and Kalamkas oilfields. But Kazakshtan formally laid claims to its foreign partners for the failure to meet the deadlines for making the oilfields operational and producing large amounts of oil.
Kazakhstan made amendments to its Internal Revenue Code, to the law on its mineral wealth and subsurface resources management and to the ecology-related laws concerning foreign investor activities. The legal innovations provided for the consolidation of the State’s right to a 50% share of each new project on secondary markets, too; for a ban on re-selling licences for subsurface resources management for a two-year period following the registration of property rights; toughening control by the Ministry for Environmental Protection; a mandatory demand that foreign economic entities should attract the “Kazakh content” and also the right to use a reference to the need to guarantee national security as explicit justification of a refusal to grant licences for subsurface resources management.
Let us focus for awhile on the term “Kazakh content”, which implies not only an enlargement of Kazakhstan’s share of the authorised capital of consortiums, engaged in drawing up certain projects, but the idea that Kazakhstan’s foreign partners are bound to be geared to the use of Kazakhstan’s mineral wealth. For instance, the foreign partners should purchase no less than 30% to 35% of Kazakh-made materials and equipment, to use no less than 90% of labour and services; and some 90% of personnel. As of May 2009 the Kazakhs have introduced this sort of contractual obligations into 144 contracts.
The national company “KazMunaiGaz” was made responsible for advancing Kazakhstan’s state interests in the oil and gas field institutionally. In autumn last year the company was in control of 18% of oil production in the republic, 80% of oil transportation, half of oil refining and only 6% of oil product retail sale. It was just last year that many things indicated that Kazakh President was trying to shore up the “KazMunaiGaz” Company’s positions. According to the data available, “KazMunaiGaz” is in control of 615 million tonnes of oil reserves, however the greater part of these is believed to be hard to recover; besides, the oil production peak period is over in many oilfields. Given the situation, “KazMunaiGaz” is naturally keenly interested in boosting its oil and gas assets, an objective it tried to attain through the use of state red tape, which helps adjust the earlier signed contracts.
The Kazakh authorities brought pressure to bear on the foreign companies in a bid to force the latter to accept changes to the earlier signed contracts. This was the case of the Canadian company “PetroKazakhstan”, which was compelled to pay major fines for ecological disruptions and temporarily bring the production process to a halt, until the company’s top managers agreed to sell a certain share of implemented projects to Kazakhstan. The transaction looked perfect, with the Canadians selling their business to the new owner, CNPC International Ltd., which “waived” a 33% share of the “PetroKazakhstan” oil refinery to “KazMunaiGaz” and a 50% share to the affiliated company “Kazgermunai”.
Kazakhstan’s government resorted to similar tactics against the British company “BG Group” to oust it from the North-Caspian project, and against the “Aqip KCO” consortium, which taps the largest oilfield Kashagan. Although, of course, in the case of the consortium Astana chose, in the wake of a protracted struggle amid accusations of “resource nationalism” hurled at Kazakhstan leaders, not to exacerbate the situation and meet the consortium halfway. “Aqip KCO” agreed to boost “KazMunaiGaz’s” share of the Production-Sharing Agreement from 8.3% to 16.8% for 1.78 billion dollars. Formally Kazakhstan’s claims to the consortium boiled down to disagreement with pushing back the date of industrial-scale production in the Kashagan oilfield to 2011, while simultaneously increasing the project target costs from 57 billion dollars to 136 billion dollars.
Initially Kazakhstan leaders applied much the same tactic to pursue the same objective to one of Kazakhstan’s three oil refineries, the Pavlodar refinery, which is located by the Russian border and technologically oriented to Russian oil refining. The facility was privatized in January 1997 and the government’s stake placed in management by the US CCL Oil Ltd. Company on the terms of a public-private partnership agreement. But the Kazakh government prematurely terminated the agreement a few years later and handed over a 51% stake to the OAO “Mangistaumunaigaz”. The company later brought its stock of shares to 58%, with 42% of the Pavlodar oil refinery’s stock capital owned by the state.
After that the national company “KazMunaiGaz” bought 51% of the “Mangistaumunaigaz” stock of shares from Indonesia’s Central Asia Petroleum and consequently gained control over the facility. Meanwhile the Russian gas giant GAZPROM made futile attempts to buy 49% of the “Mangistaumunaigaz” stock of shares. The Kazakh authorities have preferred China to Russia. It was reported on the 16th of April 2009 that amid the world economic crisis Kazakhstan borrowed from China 10 billion dollars during N. Nazarbayev’s visit to Beijing. The Chinese CNPC Company bought a 50% stake of “Mangistaumunaigaz” for 1.4 billion dollars. The details of the transaction remain unknown, but Astana claims that the Pavlodar oil refinery has been dropped from the deal and will now become property of “KazMunaiGaz”. But experts estimate “Mangistaumunaigaz” at 3.6 billion dollars. The company owns 36 fields, with drilling under way in 15 of those. Experts claim that “Mangistaumunaigaz” has oil reserves of 1.32 billion barrels. It is safe to assume that it is the above-mentioned Chinese loan to Kazakhstan that made Astana decide in favour of China, rather than GAZPROM, on the sale of “Mangistaumunaigaz”.
In other words, Kazakhstan leaders are ousting western partners from the hydrocarbons market and refusing to meet Russian companies halfway, while losing ground to China. Chinese companies already own a third of Kazakhstan-produced oil, or more than 20 million tonnes per year. The purchasing of Kazakhstan’s “Mangistaumunaigaz” assets by China’s CNPC further tightens China’s grip on the Kazakh oil market and weakens the positions of Russia and the West in Kazakhstan’s fuel and energy complex. China is coming to possess major resource amounts that enable it to reverse Kazakhstan’s oil strategy in Beijing’s favour. Now, Kazakhstan’s authorities’ assurances that they will seek to regain control over the economy’s fuel sector do sound hollow against that backdrop.
The second situation illustrating China’s energy policy on Central Asia has to do with a country that formally has no SCO membership; however, this does in no way restrain China’s policy of advancing towards the Caspian Sea region resources. The Central Asian country in question is Turkmenistan.
Ashgabat has long discussed the construction of a 6,400 kilometre gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China to Japan. The construction project was due to be carried out in 10 years and was pretty costly (11 billion dollars, of which some 1.7 billion dollars would account for the sea section of the pipeline). It was possibly because of that, and also because of China’s changed energy policy in the 21st century that the easterly direction of Turkmen natural gas deliveries was sort of “updated”, namely the option for laying a pipeline to Japan was dropped, with China having been made the only terminal point of delivery.
The China National Petroleum Corporation, CNPC, and Exxon Turkmenistan (Amu Darya) Limited have for many years studied the hydrocarbon potential of the promising fields along the Amu Darya Turkmen bank. The studies aimed to find out about the economic expediency of what was then hypothetical project of an eastern gas pipeline. The geophysical study was made all over the Amu Darya right bank. A number of new gas fields, specifically in the Garagoi area, have been discovered at the approaches to the Kyzylkum desert in the year 2000.
According to the Exxon Company, the project of laying a long-haul gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China could only prove realistic if it were used to supply 30 billion cubic metres of gas or more per year. But experts thought that the amount could also include gas from China’s western areas. Turkmenistan was to guarantee the annual delivery of 33 billion cubic metres of gas (including 3 billion cubic metres to ensure the operation of compressor stations) throughout 25 years.
The Chinese factor has been central to Turkmenistan’s foreign policy since approximately 2006. The two countries had by then signed 36 intergovernmental agreements. Turkmenistan had registered 37 investment projects involving Chinese companies, to the tune of 382.6 million dollars and 360 million Yuan.
A more important development for Turkmenistan in 2006 was the republic’s president S. Niyazov’s visit to China in early April. The main agreement in a package he signed in Beijing was the General intergovernmental agreement on the implementation of the Turkmenistan – China gas pipeline project and on selling natural gas from Turkmenistan to the People’s Republic of China in the volume of 30 billion cubic metres annually for 30 years since the time the gas pipeline was commissioned, which was due in 2009. Under the agreement the Amu Darya River right bank should be used as a resource potential area for the supplies in question, with Chinese experts to be engaged in prospecting and development jointly with Turkmen experts. However, the agreement also featured a provision whereby Turkmenistan guaranteed gas deliveries to China, if need be, also from other gas fields of the republic.
The duration of the agreement was set at three years. The People’s Republic of China allocated 200 million Yuan as a cheap loan to Turkmenistan in the framework of another agreement shortly afterwards. Two weeks after his visit to Beijing S. Niyazov ordered the setting up of a special Turkmen-Chinese cooperation Directorate at the Ministry of Oil and Gas Industry and Mineral Resources.
One year later, in summer 2007, the two countries concluded yet another agreement to make the pipeline to China a reality. CNPC was authorized to make relevant efforts in Turkmenistan and granted an operator licence for prospecting for gas and development of gas fields on land, the first ever licence that Turkmenistan has granted to a foreign company. The overall length of the new Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline will make up some 7,000 kilometres, with over 180 kilometres due to be laid in Turkmenistan, 530 kilometres, - in Uzbekistan, 1,300 kilometres, - in Kazakhstan, and over 4,500 kilometres, - in China. The overall cost of the project makes up some 20 billion dollars. 17 billion cubic metres of Turkmen gas were due to be annually exported through the development of new gas fields, while the remaining 13 billion cubic metres of annual gas exports,- through the construction of gas purification and treatment plants at the largest gas condensate field Bagtyyarlyk.
Incidentally, the Stroytransgaz Russian Company has won a 395 million-euro contract for laying the 188-kilometre Turkmen section of the gas pipeline from Malai to Bagtyyarlyk. The company will also build a plant to purify and dehydrate gas and a gas-measuring station. The construction of the pipeline got under way in 2008.
During the Beijing Olympics in 2008 Turkmenistan’s new President Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov said the flow efficiency of the pipeline to China would be increased. The deal was made part of a special framework agreement that was signed during an official visit to Ashgabat by China’s leader Hu Jintao. The flow efficiency of the pipeline to be commissioned in 2009 is due to be boosted from an annual 30 billion cubic metres of gas to 40 billion cubic metres of gas. Unlike Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan continues to insist that all 40 billion cubic metres of gas will be pumped into the pipeline from the gas fields on Turkmenistan’s right bank of the Amu Darya River. However, it has still been unclear what Turkmenistan will charge China for its gas. Ashgabat obviously reserves the right to having the final say, in the hope that in future it will be able to play on contradictions between its trade partners who will seek to get Turkmen gas.
Nor is it clear whether Ashgabat will be able to supply the entire China-requested gas volume. The Chinese also claim the right to develop another two major projects in their own interests. The projects in question are as follows:
1. A cluster of gas fields on the right bank of the Amu Darya River, with the maximum projected gas capacity estimated at 25 billion cubic metres to 30 billion cubic metres per year. The projected capacity should be attained some time between 2015 and 2020 approximately. 12 billion cubic metres of gas are expected to be produced in the gas fields in 2010. The largest gas fields of the cluster are Samandepe and Altyn Asyr. The estimated reserves of the Bagtyyarlyk contractual area make up 1.7 trillion cubic metres; however, the figure has failed to be proven. A total of 17 gas and gas condensate fields have been discovered on the right bank of the Amu Darya River, including Samandepe and Farap (under development); Metejan, Kishtivan, Sandykty (mothballed); Akgumalam, Tangiguiy, Iljik, Yanguiy, Eastern Yanguiy, Chashguiy, Girsan, Beshir, Bota, Uzyngyi, Bereketli, Pirgyi (under exploration). The largest of these for the time being is Samandepe with the 80 billion cubic metre gas reserves.
2. The Yashlar-South Yolotan cluster of gas fields, of which the largest are South Yolotan (Gunorta Yoloten) and Osman. Turkmen geologists claim the reserves of the fields make up from 3 trillion cubic metres of gas to 7 trillion cubic metres of gas. A British company, asked to estimate the reserves, shared the opinion and actually came up with a higher figure for the gas saturated thickness. Notably, just three years ago the maximum projected gas output was estimated at 15 billion cubic metres to 20 billion cubic metres per year, but the Turkmen now claim the output in the gas fields will have reached 45 billion cubic metres of gas per year by 2020. The projected capacity is due to be attained between 2015 and 2020 approximately. 10 billion cubic metres of gas are due to be produced in 2010.
13 billion cubic metres of gas should be supplied to the Chinese pipeline from the Samandepe and Altyn Asyr gas fields, which are currently developed by the Turkmengaz Company. The Turkmen see the reserves as proved. The remaining 17 trillion cubic metres of gas are due to be supplied through the development of the gas fields that haven’t yet been opened up in the Bagtyyarlyk contractual area, where the CNPC Chinese experts work on product sharing agreement terms.
Following an explosion of the Central Asia- the Centre pipeline on the 9th of April 2009 Ashgabat decided to spite GAZPROM and include Chinese companies on the project to develop the South Yolotan deposit. It has thus clinched China’s earmarked credit of 3 billion dollars to develop the gas deposit on an industrial scale. This has largely added to the steadiness of the project to supply Turkmen gas to China and complicated the feeding of gas to Russia on reasonable terms. In early June 2009 the Turkmen President said confidently that the republic would start pumping 40 billion cubic metres of gas to China through the new pipeline by later 2009.
The pipeline to China is sharp evidence that Beijing is tightening grip on Turkmenistan. In 2006 and 2007 the Turkmen-Chinese trade turnover grew 18-fold. 30 Turkmen-Chinese joint ventures were operational in Turkmenistan as of August 2008. Chinese companies are involved in 49 investment projects in Turkmenistan to the tune of 1,284 billion dollars.
While taking part in SCO activities, China never forgets about its own interests. It has been steadily gaining access to the energy wealth of Central Asia, while ousting American, European and Russian companies from the area. This is what one should give a thought to now. All the wish-wash about the SCO future supranational currency is suggestive of the Soviet-time discussion of “forming a communist society person”. One should realize that the energy policy interests of Central Asian countries, Russia and China are far from always coincident. The SCO Energy Club has to this day failed to come up with a cooperation model that would suit all member-states. China seeks to keep up its high economic growth rates. China is currently energetically penetrating Central Asia to gain access to the local oil and gas reserves. The Chinese are simultaneously laying pipelines to transport the mineral resources in question to China’s western border.
So far there’s been no rapprochement between the SCO member-states on energy cooperation, although the concept of SCO energy policy has been under discussion for several years now. At least the latest SCO summit-approved Yekaterinburg Declaration offers nothing but “diplomatic fog” to that end. Signs are we are watching some trendy stage production.
India crack down on telcos that allow mobile handsets without IMEI number
India has banned imports of mobile phones which do not have a unique international identification code.
Last year, Indian intelligence agencies had said phones without the code were being used by terrorist groups in attacks in the country.
Source: THE HINDU
Huge impact on grey market phones.
Our Bureau
New Delhi, June 17 In a move that could signal the end of grey market mobile phones, the Government on Wednesday banned import of all handsets without the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number.
IMEI is a unique 15-digit code that identifies a mobile. It prevents the use of stolen handsets for making calls and allows security agencies to track down a specific user. However, a majority of handsets sold in the grey market do not come with the IMEI, which has is of concern for security agencies.
The Government move to ban handsets without the code will hit a number of Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers that were flooding cheap handsets in the grey market. The move will have no impact on the 25 million cellular users who already have bought a handset without IMEI. The ban is applicable only on new handsets being imported into the country.
The Director-General of Foreign Trade issued the notification on Wednesday imposing the ban with immediate effect.
Welcoming the decision, Mr Pankaj Mohindroo, President, Indian Cellular Association, said, “This is a step in the right direction to throttle handset grey market. However, much more needs to be done to tackle this menace. We are working with the Government in this regard.”
To protect consumers who have already bought handsets without the IMEI number, the Cellular Operators Association of India has tied up with Mobile Standard Alliance of India to set up 1,600 retail outlets across the country to provide the IMEI number on handsets without one. It is estimated that there are 25 million subscribers across the country using handsets without the IMEI number. Concerned over the national security, the Department of Telecom had earlier asked operators to disconnect services to handsets that do not have the IMEI number by April 15. However, the COAI, representing the GSM industry, has developed a software that will provide the unique number to instruments that do not have it.
The solution is being implemented with the approval of the DoT and the security agencies. Subscribers who do not avail themselves of this facility will be disconnected by the operators after June 30.
DoT asks telcos for IMEI list
22 Jun 2009, 0031 hrs IST, Joji Thomas Philip, ET Bureau
NEW DELHI: After banning the import of all mobile handsets that do not have a unique international identification code, the government has now
decided to crack down on telcos who still allow their subscribers to use such handsets on their networks.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) has now asked all operators to furnish details as to how many of their customers, who use cheap Chinese handsets without the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number (a 15-digit code which appears on the operator’s network whenever a call is made), have availed of the software update which will enable these phones to get a unique number.
In May 2009, following a government directive to ban all handsets that do not have an IMEI number on account of security issues, all telcos jointly had said they would get their subscribers who used such devices to get a software update, which would provide these phones with an unique identity, as required by the law. Telcos also said that they had set up over 1,600 centres across the country to enable their customers to get this software installed for a fee of Rs 180.
Telcos had also argued that since ‘most of these handsets are owned by the masses, it would be unfair and unjust to disconnect such customers as they have bought these handsets unknowingly’, while adding that software update would address the security concerns raised by intelligence agencies and the Home Ministry.
The software was jointly developed by GSM operators’ body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and Mobile Standards Alliance of India.
It is estimated that close to 25 million of the 400 million plus mobile users in the country use cheap Chinese handsets without IMEI numbers. This unique code reflects on the operator’s network whenever a call is made or received from any handset and therefore allows lawful interception of all calls.
Mobile operators store these numbers in Equipment Identity Register (EIR) — so if a handset is stolen, and its owner can provide the IMEI number to his operator to ensure that all calls from this device is barred.
In October 2008, the DoT asked telcos to install EIR so that calls without IMEI or with IMEI consisting of all zeroes are not processed. This followed investigations by security agencies looking into the bomb blasts in several Indian cities this year which revealed that mobile phones used by terrorists did not bear valid IMEI numbers.
June 21, 2009
TEHRAN: AT LEAST 20 KILLED BY MILITIA--- BUT PROTESTS CONTINUE
B.RAMAN
At least 20 anti-Government demonstrators are reported to have been killed in Tehran on June 19,2009, when the Basij militia and the Revolutionary Guards opened fire to prevent demonstrations in support of the call for the annulment of the Presidential elections of June 12 and for holding a fresh poll. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared elected for a second term in the elections. His victory has not been accepted by his opponents, who have alleged widespread rigging by the Government machinery.
2. Despite the use of lethal force by the Government to disperse the demonstrators on June 20,2009 and the resulting deaths, the supporters of Mir Housain Mousavi,the reformist leader, who came second in the elections as per the disputed official results, are going ahead with plans for another day of protests on June 21,2009. The Government has not so far used the Army against the protesters.
3. Some of the latest Tweets are given below:
Mousavi we will stand beside you - we will die beside you - Allah Akbar.
It is dawn- we go to pray to Allah - pls people of the world pray with us - God is but one - Allah .
Again we thank you for support - pls see our vidoe links for vioolence in Tehran today.
Mousavi - we have gone too far to stop now.
We have no confirmation of tank in Tehran - that is a rumor from Gov.
We must rest - Tehran is burning with the fire of freedom - but tomorow we fight again - we have injured ppl.
Rafsanjani has stayed silent until now - he has the support of the army - our hope is that the army will protect us.
Mousavi calls on Sea of Green - DO NOT act violently.
Confirmed - Bank Melli hospital Tehran - at least 9 dead.
Confirmed - Rasoul Hospital Tehran - at least 11 dead.
Confirmed - hospital source - hundrends injured Saturday.
We know that the army is not ready to kill the people of Iran.
We are the bird of freedom of Iran - but we have no wing without you Allah - peace be upon you.
Brothers and sisters were killed before our eyes today - the innocent blood of the martyrs of Allah.
We have no future - no life - no hope - without you Allah - our creator - our leader.
Hojateleslam bin Moslemin Rafsanjani holds the honour of the army of this great nation.
We are of peace for all men - we are the blood of Allah - we stand for that which you Will and decide.
Allah you are he creator and to you we shall return.
We are washed in the pure water of heaven and stand before you Allah to be martryred . (21-6-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
At least 20 anti-Government demonstrators are reported to have been killed in Tehran on June 19,2009, when the Basij militia and the Revolutionary Guards opened fire to prevent demonstrations in support of the call for the annulment of the Presidential elections of June 12 and for holding a fresh poll. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared elected for a second term in the elections. His victory has not been accepted by his opponents, who have alleged widespread rigging by the Government machinery.
2. Despite the use of lethal force by the Government to disperse the demonstrators on June 20,2009 and the resulting deaths, the supporters of Mir Housain Mousavi,the reformist leader, who came second in the elections as per the disputed official results, are going ahead with plans for another day of protests on June 21,2009. The Government has not so far used the Army against the protesters.
3. Some of the latest Tweets are given below:
Mousavi we will stand beside you - we will die beside you - Allah Akbar.
It is dawn- we go to pray to Allah - pls people of the world pray with us - God is but one - Allah .
Again we thank you for support - pls see our vidoe links for vioolence in Tehran today.
Mousavi - we have gone too far to stop now.
We have no confirmation of tank in Tehran - that is a rumor from Gov.
We must rest - Tehran is burning with the fire of freedom - but tomorow we fight again - we have injured ppl.
Rafsanjani has stayed silent until now - he has the support of the army - our hope is that the army will protect us.
Mousavi calls on Sea of Green - DO NOT act violently.
Confirmed - Bank Melli hospital Tehran - at least 9 dead.
Confirmed - Rasoul Hospital Tehran - at least 11 dead.
Confirmed - hospital source - hundrends injured Saturday.
We know that the army is not ready to kill the people of Iran.
We are the bird of freedom of Iran - but we have no wing without you Allah - peace be upon you.
Brothers and sisters were killed before our eyes today - the innocent blood of the martyrs of Allah.
We have no future - no life - no hope - without you Allah - our creator - our leader.
Hojateleslam bin Moslemin Rafsanjani holds the honour of the army of this great nation.
We are of peace for all men - we are the blood of Allah - we stand for that which you Will and decide.
Allah you are he creator and to you we shall return.
We are washed in the pure water of heaven and stand before you Allah to be martryred . (21-6-09)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
We can say ‘No’: India can pursue independent foreign policy
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090620/edit.htm#4
THE TRIBUNE, JUNE 20, 2009
by T. P. Sreenivasan
An assertion heard in the context of the foreign policy of the first Manmohan Singh Government was that it abandoned India’s independent foreign policy, or was in the process of abandoning it, had it not been for the pressures of its leftist partners. Now that Winston Churchill’s “little man walking into the little booth with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper” has rejected that assertion, at least in the sense that his little cross has led to the advent of a second Manmohan Singh Government, time has come to examine how independent or otherwise was the foreign policy of India in the last five years. The critics of that policy have not been vindicated, though they will say that foreign policy was not an issue at the elections.
Foreign policy, by its very definition, has to relate to the world realities and it has to be reshaped constantly on the basis of the response it gets from its “consumers”, who are the foreign countries, whose actions we aim to influence by our foreign policy moves. An independent foreign policy, in that sense, is a myth. It must have, as its basis, a solid sense of the world around us and must be adjusted to derive the most from it.
The other question is who should foreign policy be independent of? Once it is established that we should hear every one in the process of formulating and implementing foreign policy, the argument that policy should be independent of external influences does not hold. The only consideration has to be whether or not the foreign policy benefits India. The impression created during the first Manmohan Singh Government was that somehow the government could not be trusted to have a sound judgment about India’s interests. Or worse, there could be ulterior motives in pursuing a particular policy. The net result was the creation of a veil of suspicion and an atmosphere of pressure, making it difficult for the government to act decisively. The world watched in consternation when other countries had to deal not with one Government of India, but also with its different factions. The government, it looked, lacked independence to pursue a foreign policy. When the government was being criticised inside the country for lacking an independent foreign policy, it was being perceived abroad as being unable to be independent enough to keep its commitments.
The independence of Indian foreign policy has been questioned before both internally and externally. Freedom of thought and independence of action were at the heart of the nonaligned movement, but the movement itself was seen as a natural ally of one of the power blocs. While India took its decisions independently, on the basis of its own judgment, it was seen as tilting to the Soviet Union, more so after the Indo-Soviet Treaty of 1971 and the Bangladesh war. History will testify that India did not succumb to pressure from the Soviet Union on issues such as Asian Collective Security and some of the other strategic moves of the Soviet Union. India proved that it was too big and too independent a country to be subservient to any other country.
The events of 2004 to 2009 did not make India any less independent, just as the events of 1970 to 1977 did not make it any more dependent on any foreign power. In 2004, the UPA Government inherited the shattered theory of “India Shining”, shattered not by the rest of the world, but by the Indian electorate itself. The rest of the world was dazzled by India’s growth, the nuclear tests and the way India coped with their aftermath. They had abandoned their attempts at isolating India and had come round to working with a nuclear India despite apprehensions about India’s nuclear posture. The most remarkable achievement of the UPA Government was the way it went about bringing India into the nuclear mainstream, an effort, which was seen as surrendering our independence. Suffice it to say here that the much criticised shift in policy took place in Washington than in New Delhi. The NDA Government left off the talks with the United States, accepting four of the five benchmarks the US set for normalising relations. The fifth, strategic restraint, a euphemism for restricting India’s nuclear arsenal, was as unacceptable to UPA as it was to NDA. It was the change of heart in Washington that it could work with the other bench marks that led to the nuclear deal. In achieving it, there was give and take, but those decisions were taken with India’s interests kept intact. Even if the elections were not fought on this issue, Dr Manmohan Singh, identified as he was with the deal, would not have become Prime Minister again without wide acceptance of his stand on this issue.
India’s Pakistan policy is another matter in which the charge of dependence was made. It was alleged that Washington had its hold on our responses to Pakistan. The truth is that India has been ferociously independent in conducting our relations with Pakistan. The most innovative ideas reported to have been put forward in the back channel negotiations on Kashmir were not conjured up outside India. The sketchy details that have emerged have been received well in the West, but no one outside could claim any credit for them. For the rest, India was basically watching the chaos in Pakistan and encouraging the advent of democracy. We did not need anyone’s advice to respond to President Zardari’s overtures. The Bush Administration, mercifully, took no interest in Kashmir at any time. The charge of external influence came up in the post 26/11 situation due to American activism. But today, there is recognition that the Indian response was prudent, logical and inevitable. The rest of the world may have wished that there would be no conflagration, but our decision not to take that route was dictated only by our judgment.
Our vote on Iran at the IAEA is another issue on which there were charges of external pressure. But long before the Iranian situation became a contentious issue, India had taken the position that Iran should abide by its commitments under the treaties that it had signed and that should remove the fears of the international community by answering the questions raised by the IAEA. We had a sense, right from the beginning, that Iran had something to hide and that it was important to have a full disclosure of their peaceful intentions.
On neighbourhood policy, the charges were not about independence, but about ineffectiveness of our policy to turn things around in our favour. Some have the perception that we have unlimited influence on our neighbours and if we do not have it, we should force our way there. Some feel that it is India’s duty to solve all the problems of our neighbours. The test of a good neighbourhood policy is whether it protects our political and economic interests in the neighbourhood. Goodwill from small nations towards their big neighbours is limited and any evidence of interference will be resented. Neither unilateral concessions nor strong arm tactics will help us to deal with our neighbours. In Sri Lanka, the eventual outcome has suited us, while in Nepal, we would have desired a different outcome. But our policies of restraint and helpful posturing have enabled us to retain our influence and to be able to play a role in the eventual dispensation.
Our links with China, Russia, Japan and the European Union have also won approbation of the public in India, though none of these was smooth sailing or without hazards. Our nonaligned links were preserved and nurtured and new partnerships with Brazil and South Africa have prospered. We are no nearer to becoming a permanent member of the Security Council and the chances are bleak not because we have not tried, but because the world is not ready for it yet. We should appear unattached on this issue as permanent membership without veto will be a liability rather than an asset. We should remain ready and willing, but we should not do any deals for it or make our bilateral relations hostage to the support we get on this issue.
No one will claim that the election results are a vindication of India’s foreign policy in the last five years. But the truth is that foreign policy was thoroughly examined in an unprecedented manner and it found favour with a majority of the people. We should not forget that it was on foreign policy issues that Dr. Manmohan Singh staked the very existence of his Government. He is now fully equipped to follow a foreign policy free of extraneous factors and his enhanced prestige around the world will be good for the nation.
The writer, a former Indian Ambassador, is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington
THE TRIBUNE, JUNE 20, 2009
by T. P. Sreenivasan
An assertion heard in the context of the foreign policy of the first Manmohan Singh Government was that it abandoned India’s independent foreign policy, or was in the process of abandoning it, had it not been for the pressures of its leftist partners. Now that Winston Churchill’s “little man walking into the little booth with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper” has rejected that assertion, at least in the sense that his little cross has led to the advent of a second Manmohan Singh Government, time has come to examine how independent or otherwise was the foreign policy of India in the last five years. The critics of that policy have not been vindicated, though they will say that foreign policy was not an issue at the elections.
Foreign policy, by its very definition, has to relate to the world realities and it has to be reshaped constantly on the basis of the response it gets from its “consumers”, who are the foreign countries, whose actions we aim to influence by our foreign policy moves. An independent foreign policy, in that sense, is a myth. It must have, as its basis, a solid sense of the world around us and must be adjusted to derive the most from it.
The other question is who should foreign policy be independent of? Once it is established that we should hear every one in the process of formulating and implementing foreign policy, the argument that policy should be independent of external influences does not hold. The only consideration has to be whether or not the foreign policy benefits India. The impression created during the first Manmohan Singh Government was that somehow the government could not be trusted to have a sound judgment about India’s interests. Or worse, there could be ulterior motives in pursuing a particular policy. The net result was the creation of a veil of suspicion and an atmosphere of pressure, making it difficult for the government to act decisively. The world watched in consternation when other countries had to deal not with one Government of India, but also with its different factions. The government, it looked, lacked independence to pursue a foreign policy. When the government was being criticised inside the country for lacking an independent foreign policy, it was being perceived abroad as being unable to be independent enough to keep its commitments.
The independence of Indian foreign policy has been questioned before both internally and externally. Freedom of thought and independence of action were at the heart of the nonaligned movement, but the movement itself was seen as a natural ally of one of the power blocs. While India took its decisions independently, on the basis of its own judgment, it was seen as tilting to the Soviet Union, more so after the Indo-Soviet Treaty of 1971 and the Bangladesh war. History will testify that India did not succumb to pressure from the Soviet Union on issues such as Asian Collective Security and some of the other strategic moves of the Soviet Union. India proved that it was too big and too independent a country to be subservient to any other country.
The events of 2004 to 2009 did not make India any less independent, just as the events of 1970 to 1977 did not make it any more dependent on any foreign power. In 2004, the UPA Government inherited the shattered theory of “India Shining”, shattered not by the rest of the world, but by the Indian electorate itself. The rest of the world was dazzled by India’s growth, the nuclear tests and the way India coped with their aftermath. They had abandoned their attempts at isolating India and had come round to working with a nuclear India despite apprehensions about India’s nuclear posture. The most remarkable achievement of the UPA Government was the way it went about bringing India into the nuclear mainstream, an effort, which was seen as surrendering our independence. Suffice it to say here that the much criticised shift in policy took place in Washington than in New Delhi. The NDA Government left off the talks with the United States, accepting four of the five benchmarks the US set for normalising relations. The fifth, strategic restraint, a euphemism for restricting India’s nuclear arsenal, was as unacceptable to UPA as it was to NDA. It was the change of heart in Washington that it could work with the other bench marks that led to the nuclear deal. In achieving it, there was give and take, but those decisions were taken with India’s interests kept intact. Even if the elections were not fought on this issue, Dr Manmohan Singh, identified as he was with the deal, would not have become Prime Minister again without wide acceptance of his stand on this issue.
India’s Pakistan policy is another matter in which the charge of dependence was made. It was alleged that Washington had its hold on our responses to Pakistan. The truth is that India has been ferociously independent in conducting our relations with Pakistan. The most innovative ideas reported to have been put forward in the back channel negotiations on Kashmir were not conjured up outside India. The sketchy details that have emerged have been received well in the West, but no one outside could claim any credit for them. For the rest, India was basically watching the chaos in Pakistan and encouraging the advent of democracy. We did not need anyone’s advice to respond to President Zardari’s overtures. The Bush Administration, mercifully, took no interest in Kashmir at any time. The charge of external influence came up in the post 26/11 situation due to American activism. But today, there is recognition that the Indian response was prudent, logical and inevitable. The rest of the world may have wished that there would be no conflagration, but our decision not to take that route was dictated only by our judgment.
Our vote on Iran at the IAEA is another issue on which there were charges of external pressure. But long before the Iranian situation became a contentious issue, India had taken the position that Iran should abide by its commitments under the treaties that it had signed and that should remove the fears of the international community by answering the questions raised by the IAEA. We had a sense, right from the beginning, that Iran had something to hide and that it was important to have a full disclosure of their peaceful intentions.
On neighbourhood policy, the charges were not about independence, but about ineffectiveness of our policy to turn things around in our favour. Some have the perception that we have unlimited influence on our neighbours and if we do not have it, we should force our way there. Some feel that it is India’s duty to solve all the problems of our neighbours. The test of a good neighbourhood policy is whether it protects our political and economic interests in the neighbourhood. Goodwill from small nations towards their big neighbours is limited and any evidence of interference will be resented. Neither unilateral concessions nor strong arm tactics will help us to deal with our neighbours. In Sri Lanka, the eventual outcome has suited us, while in Nepal, we would have desired a different outcome. But our policies of restraint and helpful posturing have enabled us to retain our influence and to be able to play a role in the eventual dispensation.
Our links with China, Russia, Japan and the European Union have also won approbation of the public in India, though none of these was smooth sailing or without hazards. Our nonaligned links were preserved and nurtured and new partnerships with Brazil and South Africa have prospered. We are no nearer to becoming a permanent member of the Security Council and the chances are bleak not because we have not tried, but because the world is not ready for it yet. We should appear unattached on this issue as permanent membership without veto will be a liability rather than an asset. We should remain ready and willing, but we should not do any deals for it or make our bilateral relations hostage to the support we get on this issue.
No one will claim that the election results are a vindication of India’s foreign policy in the last five years. But the truth is that foreign policy was thoroughly examined in an unprecedented manner and it found favour with a majority of the people. We should not forget that it was on foreign policy issues that Dr. Manmohan Singh staked the very existence of his Government. He is now fully equipped to follow a foreign policy free of extraneous factors and his enhanced prestige around the world will be good for the nation.
The writer, a former Indian Ambassador, is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington
BRIC plotters stage a farce
The author always uses a pseudonym. Although it is not very hard to surmise that he has roots in the motherland. Another very interesting spin on the meet.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KF20Dj02.html
By Chan Akya
The inaugural summit of the BRIC group of countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - took place in Yekaterinburg in Russia, the site being of more historic importance than the outcome of the actual summit suggested.
Copywriters were quick to notice that the summit took place in the same site where the Russian communists murdered the last czar and his family, suggesting a plot from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: four ambitious nobles conspire to bump off the Roman ruler on the pretext that he had pretensions to monarchy. In much the same way, the CNBC-generation warns us, these four countries plan to murder the world's sole superpower, the United States, and usher in its stead a multi-polar world.
What actually transpired though was more comedic than serious, topped as the whole show was with a bland statement that hardly
touched on any of the real challenges to the world economy, let alone suggest new measures. To be sure, this wasn't for want of intention, but rather the complete absence of internal cohesion that practically ensured a sticky end result to proceedings.
For example, the summit statement with respect to reforming the international financial system pointed the following:
We are committed to advance the reform of international financial institutions, so as to reflect changes in the world economy. The emerging and developing economies must have greater voice and representation in international financial institutions, and their heads and senior leadership should be appointed through an open, transparent and merit-based selection process. We also believe there is a strong need for a stable, predictable and more diversified international monetary system.
Superficially, this statement addresses the concerns of the "Global South", namely that the current financial system architecture appears outdated for the needs of a changing world. Then again, does it? Reading the statement closely reveals the basic gist to be one of an intended reallocation of seats rather than a complete overhaul of the system itself.
Or put in different terms, the BRIC statement merely reads as a polite request that one of their nationals be appointed as head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Bank, rather than the usual reservation of such jobs for Europeans and Americans, as is the current status.
For how else does one explain "... must have greater voice and representation in international financial institutions, and their heads and senior leadership should be appointed through an open, transparent and merit-based selection process" or indeed the fact that three of these countries (Brazil, Russia and China) have quickly accumulated some US$70 billion equivalent of the IMF's Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) in recent days?
"Please sir, I want some more," as Oliver Twist pleads in the Dickens novel of the name. Rather than stopping at the demand for their citizens to be made heads of the IMF and the World Bank, the motley crew also stated the following with respect to the need for reform of the United Nations:
We express our strong commitment to multilateral diplomacy with the United Nations playing the central role in dealing with global challenges and threats. In this respect, we reaffirm the need for a comprehensive reform of the UN. ... We reiterate the importance we attach to the status of India and Brazil in international affairs, and understand and support their aspirations to play a greater role in the United Nations.
At this point, your humble author had to stop reading, and go away clutching his stomach while laughing uproariously. Since when did the followers of Mao Zedong and Vladimir Lenin ever acknowledge the need for dialogue over brute power? That is only the case when they have no power or at least have no confidence in such power.
Neither fish nor fowl
The primary reason for the summit descending into a farce is the unfortunate presence of Russia. In some ways, Russia is unique - as a member of both the "established economic power" group of the Group of Eight - supposedly the world's leading industrialized nations - and the "rising power" group of the BRIC, the country can be arguably positioned as a perfect bridge between the recent past and imminent future.
All that talk is misplaced, as Russia is more akin to a country with neither a glorious past nor a promising future. While resource-rich, the Russian state lacks both the demographic impetus and systemic integrity to ensure any sustained profits from these activities. Instead, under the influence of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the Russian state appears headed towards another bout of political turmoil; like a creature forever chasing its own tail in circles.
In other ways too Russia differs from its group members in BRIC. Unlike the diligence of the Chinese, the resourcefulness of the Brazilians or the innovation of the Indians, the country is seen as heavily trapped in its own history. A country that cannot quite decide whether it will play well with its neighbors or simply go out to bomb them, in other words. This confusing agenda of the Russians has been encouraged by the feckless Europeans (see Utterly pointless Europe, Asia Times Online, August 19, 2008), and a confused state of affairs that persists in Washington.
Also, unlike those of the other three countries in the grouping, the Russian economy contracted by almost 10% in the beginning of the year. The swift rise in oil prices towards $70 per barrel will do wonders for growth in the second half of the year, but even that could well be cold comfort given the mountains of debt that need to be refinanced by Russian companies and banks in coming months.
The collapse of various neighbors in Eastern Europe presents economic losses for Russian oligarchs and banks, while the strategic situation for the country remains in flux against a resurgent Georgia and the current "people power" revolution in Iran that could see the Russian acolyte president being removed in favor of the more American-friendly reformer.
Given all this, it is unlikely that the Kremlin will have much ammunition, and even less interest, in doing anything for a nascent multilateral body where the benefits, if any of acting together are likely to accrue to other members before itself, and what percolates down will only do so over the very long term.
Internal tensions
Added to the nonsensical position of Russia in this meeting, tensions between India and China have also increased in recent days over the issue of trade tariffs. Specifically, Indian companies have demanded that the new government (the re-elected Congress party led government in Delhi) impose tough anti-dumping sanctions on Chinese-made products. In an article in the Financial Times dated June 14, 2009:
India's small and medium enterprises have warned that they are suffering because of cheap imports from China. They are urging New Delhi to accelerate anti-dumping investigations and impose tougher safety and quality checks on Chinese products. The appeal for greater government protection came amid rising tensions between New Delhi and Beijing over trade, after a high-profile dispute over an Indian ban on Chinese made toys.
India's Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry said on Sunday that a survey of 110 small and medium-sized manufacturers found that about two-thirds had suffered a serious erosion of their Indian market share over the past year because of cheaper Chinese products.
In its statement, FICCI said the Chinese imports were between 10 and 70% cheaper than comparable Indian products, a price differential that it said was "huge and difficult to explain". Amit Mitra, the FICCI's secretary-general, said Indian industries were being hurt by "typical Chinese predatory pricing" intended to drive rivals out of business so that Chinese companies could capture the market - and then raise prices to more normal levels.
The bite was felt by companies in a range of sectors, including processed food, light engineering, building materials and heavy engineering, chemicals and textiles, FICCI said. Indian manufacturers face serious competitive disadvantages in comparison with China, including poor infrastructure and rigid labor laws, that perversely discourage companies from growing and instead promote inefficient fragmentation.
The answers to India's plight are in the story above: poor infrastructure, the need for industrial and labor reform and the relative inefficiency of investments into the country.
Still, what is at stake between the two countries often presents its own dynamic of how far away is the point at which these economies can actually rely on each other rather than those in Europe or the United States for growth. It is not inconceivable that at some point Brazil and China could have a spat over the price of steel (a point of tension in the not-too distant past as Brazilian steel was sold cheaper than locally made products in China at the turn of the century) or indeed that Russia and China have another period of tension over energy exports to China from Russia's neighbors.
We can conclude that the first BRIC summit was a much-needed first step in a journey that could well overhaul global economic architecture in decades to come. However, as things stand now, internal dissent within that group, the lack of common interests and any vision towards achieving longer-term sustainable growth implies that future meetings could easily descend into the farce in which the first one ended.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KF20Dj02.html
By Chan Akya
The inaugural summit of the BRIC group of countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - took place in Yekaterinburg in Russia, the site being of more historic importance than the outcome of the actual summit suggested.
Copywriters were quick to notice that the summit took place in the same site where the Russian communists murdered the last czar and his family, suggesting a plot from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: four ambitious nobles conspire to bump off the Roman ruler on the pretext that he had pretensions to monarchy. In much the same way, the CNBC-generation warns us, these four countries plan to murder the world's sole superpower, the United States, and usher in its stead a multi-polar world.
What actually transpired though was more comedic than serious, topped as the whole show was with a bland statement that hardly
touched on any of the real challenges to the world economy, let alone suggest new measures. To be sure, this wasn't for want of intention, but rather the complete absence of internal cohesion that practically ensured a sticky end result to proceedings.
For example, the summit statement with respect to reforming the international financial system pointed the following:
We are committed to advance the reform of international financial institutions, so as to reflect changes in the world economy. The emerging and developing economies must have greater voice and representation in international financial institutions, and their heads and senior leadership should be appointed through an open, transparent and merit-based selection process. We also believe there is a strong need for a stable, predictable and more diversified international monetary system.
Superficially, this statement addresses the concerns of the "Global South", namely that the current financial system architecture appears outdated for the needs of a changing world. Then again, does it? Reading the statement closely reveals the basic gist to be one of an intended reallocation of seats rather than a complete overhaul of the system itself.
Or put in different terms, the BRIC statement merely reads as a polite request that one of their nationals be appointed as head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Bank, rather than the usual reservation of such jobs for Europeans and Americans, as is the current status.
For how else does one explain "... must have greater voice and representation in international financial institutions, and their heads and senior leadership should be appointed through an open, transparent and merit-based selection process" or indeed the fact that three of these countries (Brazil, Russia and China) have quickly accumulated some US$70 billion equivalent of the IMF's Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) in recent days?
"Please sir, I want some more," as Oliver Twist pleads in the Dickens novel of the name. Rather than stopping at the demand for their citizens to be made heads of the IMF and the World Bank, the motley crew also stated the following with respect to the need for reform of the United Nations:
We express our strong commitment to multilateral diplomacy with the United Nations playing the central role in dealing with global challenges and threats. In this respect, we reaffirm the need for a comprehensive reform of the UN. ... We reiterate the importance we attach to the status of India and Brazil in international affairs, and understand and support their aspirations to play a greater role in the United Nations.
At this point, your humble author had to stop reading, and go away clutching his stomach while laughing uproariously. Since when did the followers of Mao Zedong and Vladimir Lenin ever acknowledge the need for dialogue over brute power? That is only the case when they have no power or at least have no confidence in such power.
Neither fish nor fowl
The primary reason for the summit descending into a farce is the unfortunate presence of Russia. In some ways, Russia is unique - as a member of both the "established economic power" group of the Group of Eight - supposedly the world's leading industrialized nations - and the "rising power" group of the BRIC, the country can be arguably positioned as a perfect bridge between the recent past and imminent future.
All that talk is misplaced, as Russia is more akin to a country with neither a glorious past nor a promising future. While resource-rich, the Russian state lacks both the demographic impetus and systemic integrity to ensure any sustained profits from these activities. Instead, under the influence of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the Russian state appears headed towards another bout of political turmoil; like a creature forever chasing its own tail in circles.
In other ways too Russia differs from its group members in BRIC. Unlike the diligence of the Chinese, the resourcefulness of the Brazilians or the innovation of the Indians, the country is seen as heavily trapped in its own history. A country that cannot quite decide whether it will play well with its neighbors or simply go out to bomb them, in other words. This confusing agenda of the Russians has been encouraged by the feckless Europeans (see Utterly pointless Europe, Asia Times Online, August 19, 2008), and a confused state of affairs that persists in Washington.
Also, unlike those of the other three countries in the grouping, the Russian economy contracted by almost 10% in the beginning of the year. The swift rise in oil prices towards $70 per barrel will do wonders for growth in the second half of the year, but even that could well be cold comfort given the mountains of debt that need to be refinanced by Russian companies and banks in coming months.
The collapse of various neighbors in Eastern Europe presents economic losses for Russian oligarchs and banks, while the strategic situation for the country remains in flux against a resurgent Georgia and the current "people power" revolution in Iran that could see the Russian acolyte president being removed in favor of the more American-friendly reformer.
Given all this, it is unlikely that the Kremlin will have much ammunition, and even less interest, in doing anything for a nascent multilateral body where the benefits, if any of acting together are likely to accrue to other members before itself, and what percolates down will only do so over the very long term.
Internal tensions
Added to the nonsensical position of Russia in this meeting, tensions between India and China have also increased in recent days over the issue of trade tariffs. Specifically, Indian companies have demanded that the new government (the re-elected Congress party led government in Delhi) impose tough anti-dumping sanctions on Chinese-made products. In an article in the Financial Times dated June 14, 2009:
India's small and medium enterprises have warned that they are suffering because of cheap imports from China. They are urging New Delhi to accelerate anti-dumping investigations and impose tougher safety and quality checks on Chinese products. The appeal for greater government protection came amid rising tensions between New Delhi and Beijing over trade, after a high-profile dispute over an Indian ban on Chinese made toys.
India's Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry said on Sunday that a survey of 110 small and medium-sized manufacturers found that about two-thirds had suffered a serious erosion of their Indian market share over the past year because of cheaper Chinese products.
In its statement, FICCI said the Chinese imports were between 10 and 70% cheaper than comparable Indian products, a price differential that it said was "huge and difficult to explain". Amit Mitra, the FICCI's secretary-general, said Indian industries were being hurt by "typical Chinese predatory pricing" intended to drive rivals out of business so that Chinese companies could capture the market - and then raise prices to more normal levels.
The bite was felt by companies in a range of sectors, including processed food, light engineering, building materials and heavy engineering, chemicals and textiles, FICCI said. Indian manufacturers face serious competitive disadvantages in comparison with China, including poor infrastructure and rigid labor laws, that perversely discourage companies from growing and instead promote inefficient fragmentation.
The answers to India's plight are in the story above: poor infrastructure, the need for industrial and labor reform and the relative inefficiency of investments into the country.
Still, what is at stake between the two countries often presents its own dynamic of how far away is the point at which these economies can actually rely on each other rather than those in Europe or the United States for growth. It is not inconceivable that at some point Brazil and China could have a spat over the price of steel (a point of tension in the not-too distant past as Brazilian steel was sold cheaper than locally made products in China at the turn of the century) or indeed that Russia and China have another period of tension over energy exports to China from Russia's neighbors.
We can conclude that the first BRIC summit was a much-needed first step in a journey that could well overhaul global economic architecture in decades to come. However, as things stand now, internal dissent within that group, the lack of common interests and any vision towards achieving longer-term sustainable growth implies that future meetings could easily descend into the farce in which the first one ended.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
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