Tolerating terror

In the preface to the revised edition of her autobiography, Daughter of the East, Benazir Bhutto begins by saying: “I didn’t chose this life; it chose me. Born in Pakistan, my life mirrors its turbulence, its tragedies and its triumphs.” She goes on, “Once again Pakistan is in the international spotlight. Terrorists who use the name of Islam threaten its stability. The democratic forces believe terrorism can be eliminated by promoting the principles of freedom. A military dictatorship plays dangerous games of deception and intrigue. Fearful of losing power, it dithers, keeping the forces of modernisation at bay while the flames of terrorism flourish.” She wrote this in April 2007.

Bhutto represented modernity to the increasingly obscurantist power-brokers in Pakistan and, therefore, a threat to them. She represented, in some ways, a democratic hope for ordinary Pakistanis. She was thus perceived as a threat to the entrenched khaki interests.

Bhutto ended her autobiography with prophetic words. She said, “So as I prepare to return to an uncertain future in Pakistan in 2007, I fully understand the stakes not only for myself, and my country, but the entire world. I realise that I can be arrested. I realise that like the assassination of Benigno Aquino in Manila in August 1983, I can be gunned down on the airport tarmac when I land... But I do what I have to do, and am determined to return to fulfil my pledge to the people of Pakistan, to stand by them in their democratic aspirations.” It almost happened this way on the day of her arrival.

Ultimately, her prophecy came true. Judging from the last video clips of Bhutto’s life, the assassin knew she was wearing a bullet-proof vest, so he aimed for her neck. He knew her route, and was waiting for her. The assassin or assassins were trained, skilled and the bomb blast was either a fall-back or a diversion to allow escape. We will never know.

It is reasonable to assume that there must have been an assessment about the threat to Bhutto’s life, especially after the October attack. Despite this, the assassin had easy access to his target. This can only mean that those involved in providing her security were lax, or just callous and careless or worse, they were complicit.

The assassination has occurred at a time when Musharraf’s approval rating and his credibility among Pakistanis is at its lowest — lower than that of Osama bin Laden and Bhutto. People are prepared to believe the worst about him and not willing to accept the best from him. There has been a constitutional breakdown and institutional collapse in the country. The former Chief Justice of Pakistan and other judges have been locked up, the media have been gagged, political parties emasculated and other centres of nationalist dissent, like Baloch leaders Akbar Khan Bugti and Balach Marri, killed by Pakistani authorities. Any judicial probe ordered now would lack credibility because the courts have been widely suborned by Musharraf.

It is interesting and worrying to read a recent report (November 2007) by SENLIS Council, a Britain-based international policy think-tank. The report is called ‘Afghanistan on the Brink’, but also discusses Pakistan. There is also a map that shows permanent Taliban presence in all of the NWFP, most of Punjab and northern Balochistan. Sindh is depicted as having substantial Taliban presence. Bhutto’s assassination only emphasises this growing Taliban presence and the support or sympathy they receive from various sections of the Pakistani establishment.

Repeated attacks in recent months on the army and the ISI in Rawalpindi by unknown assailants signify that there is something more sinister happening in Pakistan.

Yet, those who planned and executed this attack must have taken several aspects into consideration. Bhutto’s death leaves the PPP without an effective and acceptable leader. The immediate beneficiaries in an election now would be Musharraf’s boys in the PML(Q), while the blame for the killing falls on al-Qaeda. If the PPP does manage to win the elections riding on a sympathy vote, despite various efforts by the authorities to prevent this, its leadership will be divided and thus easy to handle. If, like the PML(N), the PPP too chooses to boycott the elections, then the PML(Q) will have a free home-run. The hope is that the agitation will eventually die down and the murder will become just another episode in Pakistan’s history.

It does not matter if the elections are described by every Pakistani as a farce, since approval from the US to go ahead with them has already been received. As of now, the elections are supposed to be held on schedule, but if the violence in the country escalates and the army has to be called in, it is possible that they may have to be postponed. The calculation probably is that the leaderless agitation and the anger on the streets will eventually subside. It has to be remembered that the last time elections in Pakistan were ordered by a dictator, the country split. And as already stated in these columns earlier (August 20, 2007), Pakistan faces a bigger crisis today than it did in 1971.

For American policy-makers, having messed around in the region for decades, salvaging US policy means protecting Pakistan.

This, in turn, means bolstering Musharraf under all circumstances, even when it was known that there is institutionalised double-crossing of benefactors in the hunt for terrorists and in the use of largesse supplied. This has been America’s Magnificent Obsession.

The current American blind spot for the generals of Pakistan is similar to that for the Shah of Iran and other surrogates in the past. Unfortunately, instead of persuading the US towards our perceptions of policy towards Pakistan, we are now seen to be following the US in putting all our eggs in a leaking Musharraf basket.

Second, all countries have an army, while in Pakistan, it is the army that has a country. No one denies the importance of the armed forces or intelligence agencies, but unless Pakistan adopts a system of governance where the army retains its special perks and privileges, yet remains subservient to the civil authority, Pakistan will never start to move towards being a ‘normal’ country.

Third, very often, Pakistanis refer to the ‘root cause’, meaning Kashmir, in the context of improving Indo-Pak relations. There is a larger issue here. Pakistan must address its own ‘root cause’ first — its increasingly jehadi mindset. The mullahs are winning in Pakistan thanks to what is taught to its children not just in madrasas but even in mainstream schools. A curriculum of hatred and bigotry only leaves the young with warped notions about the rest of the world as some of them find their way into the corridors of power.

Bhutto’s assassination may make some difference internally in Pakistan but will have little immediate impact on Indo-Pak relations. Her assassination in Rawalpindi, the unofficial capital of Pakistan, only heightens the fact that terrorists have the ability to strike at symbols of power and their own mentors in that country. The extent to which power in Pakistan is being wielded by an intolerant section, in league with some in centres of power, is frightening. The drift towards radicalism and intolerance that began with the jehad in the 1980s has now become a tidal wave which many outside Pakistan fail to recognise or accept.

Source : 30th Dec 2007, Hindustan Times

Al Qaeda does not have a mailing address

It was her finest speech they say when Benazir spoke at Liaquat Bagh on December 27. Little did the Daughter of the East know that this was her swansong. But those who killed her did not just kill her -- they killed the hopes for democracy in Pakistan. Weeping Pakistanis have been heard saying, 'Ab kuchh nahi bacha is mulk mein (there's nothing left in this country).'

Benazir had seen a lot of life in her 54 years. Born to utmost luxury and a privileged upbringing, Benazir of Harvard and Oxford was blooded into politics quite early in her life when she accompanied her father to Simla in 1972 for talks with then prime minister Indira Gandhi [ Images].

She was just out of college and 24 years old when General Zia-ul Haq hanged her father and imprisoned her along with her mother; 32 years old when her younger brother Shah Nawaz was poisoned in Cannes [Images ]; and 43 when her other brother Murtaza was murdered in Karachi. She was already in her second term as prime minister when Murtaza was killed, and was dethroned soon after that.

Those were turbulent times and the Punjabi political cliques, the army and the feudals could not accept the idea of a Sindhi woman ruling over them. She simply had to go. Soon after this she was harassed out of Pakistan and she chose to live in exile in Dubai and London [ Images] with her three children and ailing mother Nusrat.

Yet, none of these adversities dampened her resolve or her ebullient spirit. Those who knew her, remember her as somebody who retained her ability to laugh at herself, will to fight for the cause of Pakistan. She had the fortitude to bring up her three children mostly on her own as her husband spent long years in jail without trial. Benazir had the courage to return to Pakistan knowing that there would be assassins waiting for her. She had the largeness of heart to admit that in her two incarnations as prime minister she was unnecessarily hostile to India and strident on Kashmir.

On the first occasion because she also half-believed in this, but the second time she knew she had to deal with the army who called the shots on India, Afghanistan and strategic nuclear issues. She probably felt obliged that as the first woman prime minister in the Islamic world, she had to prove herself as tough as they come in a male dominated, conservative, India-bashing Punjabi milieu. Yet the army kept a watch on her, tapped her telephone and did not let her visit the Kahuta nuclear complex.

The mutual animus can be traced back to the way her father treated Zia and how Zia eventually had his revenge when he hanged him. The Bhutto-army relations were tenuous throughout and remained so till the end. Although she negotiated with Musharraf for her return, she never really trusted him. She accepted that the pressure on her to negotiate with Musharraf was not because there was urgency to install her as prime minister but to give Musharraf's rule some legitimacy.

It was during this second term and her exile that she began to rethink about Pakistan and the subcontinent. She realised that this business of jihad was taking Pakistan downstream rapidly and bringing Pakistan into direct confrontation with the West. This had to be curbed; also that the peace dividend with India would be much higher than the war dividend.

Benazir had great hopes for the region and spoke of soft borders in Jammu and Kashmir [ Images]. She was not, however, sure how she would restrain the army and make it answerable to a civilian leadership. And this, in the end, proved to be the most difficult aspect of her homecoming.

Benazir's assassination is not the first political assassination in Pakistan and like all previous assassinations, will remain unsolved. It was not just a terrorist act and to describe it thus is to evade the real issue. It is very convenient to have the Al Qaeda claim that they killed her; but then Al Qaeda [Images ] does not have a mailing address.

In all such cases of assassinations, the opportunity to act, and access to the target, are the most important aspects. Once these two are available and there are guns for hire, the rest is easy as a matter of patient waiting, or a speedy arrival and quick escape.

Benazir used to say that unless she went back to the people they would never believe in her. And now many in Pakistan and on the subcontinent grieve for her. Her brother Murtaza returned to Pakistan and was killed and she returned to Pakistan and she was killed as well.

Benazir represented modernity and tolerance in a society whose controllers are becoming increasingly intolerant and bigoted while the small civil society looks on, helpless and afraid.

From today, in Garhi Khuda Bux in Larkana, she will forever lie next to her father -- the man she admired and loved the most. She will sleep in peace and no longer be touched by the turbulence of her life.

Is this the end of the Bhutto era, or should one say 'Jiye Bhutto (Long live Bhutto)'?

Source : 29th Dec 2007 , Rediff.com

Terror Lessons not learnt

Stop Referring to terrorists as fidayeen

SIX years ago, many Indian MPs survived a sensational assassination bid in the heart of the city in a high-security zone. A combination of luck and the courage and fortitude of the security forces saved the day. Today, can one say with certainty that such an attempt will be pre-empted or prevented from taking place?

In a way it is an unfair question to ask because there is no magic formula by which a counter terrorist force can kill a man or a woman who is willing to die. Nevertheless, it is fair to ask whether we, as a nation and not just professionally, are better prepared to handle this threat which will not go away and will conceivably become bigger. The short answer may be 'afraid not'. Terrorist attacks all over the country have continued.

The terrorist strikes in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and recently in Varanasi, Faizabad and Lucknow show terrorist cells have existed in these cities and there must be similar cells elsewhere. Also, the jehadi terrorist seems to have moved out of the Valley and is now more visible through his actions in the rest of the country.

The jehadi terrorists may have been able to get international headlines through big-ticket urban attacks but they do not have the capacity to organise jail breaks of the kind that Naxalites had done in November 2005 when they sprung 341 prisoners from the district jail in Jehanabad. The other difference has been that the jehadi terrorist does not hold territory. The Naxals do — and places like Dantewada and Narainpur in Bastar district or the Saranda forest in Jharkhand are no-go areas for the state.

Terrorism in India has largely remained restricted to various states — J&K, Manipur, Nagaland and Assam — with each outfit operating independently in its own area. The Naxals, on the other hand, have now got a reach that is officially admitted to extend to 185 of India's 605 districts in the heart of the country. Others put this figure at 256 districts. Thus, while we may externalise the jehadi terrorist problem and may therefore be better able to tackle it knowing that its mentors realise that beyond a certain threshold it could escalate beyond their control, there is no such possibility in the Naxal case. It is a purely internal problem that has been inadequately addressed in every way.

The character of terrorism has changed more rapidly in its operating procedures. There is greater reliance on cyberspace and less on the cellphone and on sleeper cells among the jehadi networks while the Naxals retain a very strong hierarchical control mechanism. Both retain their element of surprise but the latter is also a reflection of poor ground, state-led intelligence. Both seem better trained, better equipped and extremely mobile. The counter terrorist lacks in all three spheres.

It is easy to blame the intelligence agencies for all that occurs. Globally, it has been found that despite all the state assistance for intelligence agencies, the ability to collect intelligence about non-state adversaries remains the most difficult.

In India our tendency has been to make some post-event superficial changes. We do not even have adequate laws to deal with the threat like the British and the Americans do, and for a country that has had to face terrorism for most of its independent existence, we do not even have national identity cards. Our border controls remain inadequate.

A terrorist event makes a good story or 'breaking news' but the media too needs some rules of conduct. The other day it was all over the channels that police were looking for as bunch of terrorists in a white Ambassador. Surely the terrorists saw this too and abandoned their white Ambassador.

Repeated telecast of pictures of frightened families, terrified children or mangled bodies is a victory for the terrorist. He has succeeded in frightening the people. Often we glorify a terrorist when we refer to him as a fidayeen. All this has to change too if we want to win the war on terrorism.


Source : 13th December 2007, Mail Today

Fission for compliments

Of course India needs US friendship. But why through the N-deal

It would seem that push has finally come to shove. Not too long ago, Washington launched its Ultimate Weapon with the landing of Henry Kissinger in New Delhi. He, of the guttural charm and Germanic weltenschaung, did not come just to receive a bouquet from the Leader of the Opposition. He came to generally render gratuitous advice to sign on the dotted line of the nuclear deal. Henry Paulson, George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary, was here too, lauding the benefits to India from the deal. Fatwas from Washington and heavy breathing in New Delhi gives US officialdom the finesse of a battering ram.

There has been controversy about the implications and benefits of the 123 Agreement or how this agreement and its enabling legislation, the Hyde Act, will be interpreted by the US and India in the future. The intense debate, mostly outside Parliament, was divisive for the country, threatening at one stage the continuation of the government. Essential questions, even basic ones like the price per unit of nuclear energy, remain unanswered. Doubts about long-term strategic implications have been lost in hopeful obfuscation that the deal holds the key to superstardom.

Assuming that the deal is the best thing that has happened to India in a long time, why has the US been pushing it with such single-minded dedication? Why is the US willing to welcome India to this elite club as an honorary member when the pursuit of nuclear non-proliferation has been an article of faith with that country? Why the hard sell? What is it that we are all collectively missing? Surely the obvious gains — Indian markets, defence sales to India and engaging India (as the Chinese fear) as part of the US strategy to encircle China — could have been achieved without the Indo-US nuclear deal. Logically, therefore, there must be a larger US interest beyond the obvious.

The US naturally wishes to maintain its global superiority. Nations attain this status not through magnanimity or virtue but through the use of military might, superior technology, fixity of purpose and ruthlessness. The Republican Party’s foreign policy commandments have their origins in the neo-con thinking of the Defence Planning Guidance of 1992. One of the many guidelines was that “we [the US] must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role”. Another document of importance, ‘Rebuilding America’s Defences — Strategy Forces and Resources for the New Century’, in 2000 reaffirmed that the 1992 document provided the blueprint for maintaining US pre-eminence and preventing the rise of a rival power. All this led to the National Security Strategy of September 2002, which also laid out the justification for an endless war on terror against phantom enemies and the need to strike at them pre-emptively anytime anywhere. Simultaneously, the US must continue to have access to cheap energy and control its distribution. Any disruption of this is perceived as a threat to US security.

Fortress America was suddenly vulnerable to terrorist zealots on September 11, 2001, and a terrorist armed with a nuclear device was the ultimate horror. Pakistan was seen as the home of al-Qaeda, an unstable country with a thriving terrorism industry, possessing nuclear weapons and a dubious record of proliferation. This became an intolerable risk and US interests dictated that not only al-Qaeda and Taliban be destroyed, but that nuclear weapons in Pakistan be secured.

The new Bush doctrine formulated immediately after the 9/11 attacks (Nuclear Posture Review, March 2002) postulated that the US would not accept that governments in which they did not have confidence or countries where they could not verify facilities should hold nuclear weapons. Pervez Musharraf had come on board for the war on terror but the US wanted control of Pakistan’s nuclear capability, and quickly. It even wanted to place sufficient force on the ground to control access. Yet, since Pakistan was needed for the war on terror, its leaders could not be seen as having submitted themselves to nuclear blackmail for fear that this would arouse Islamic anger further.

There were reports that in March 2002, American troops, primarily drawn from Special Operations Command, along with scientists from Nuclear Emergency Search Teams arrived in Pakistan. According to George Friedman (America’s Secret War), they were deployed to all of Pakistan’s nuclear reactors. Inventories were quickly made and the Americans concluded that Pakistan was not in a condition to deliver a nuclear device to al-Qaeda, given the US monitoring of Pakistani facilities. The US discovered that there were “advanced Chinese plans for other devices that had not been built at that time but these would have made Pakistan much more dangerous by increasing the reliability and sophistication”. Friedman asserts that the US had secured Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, although it was only nominally observing them. Musharraf agreed to keep this a secret and also purge the ISI. It also appears that at the confirmation hearing of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, she was asked about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities should something happen to Musharraf. Eventually, she reassured Senator Kerry that the matter had been taken care of, but did not elaborate. Recent debate in the American media about the safety of Pakistani nuclear weapons, accompanied by official assurances that they are safe, suggests that the US may have reason to be confident.

If correct, this should be good news. But no one was ever going to confirm this to the Indians as it would break the India-Pakistan hyphenation and leave India as the pre-eminent regional power. Besides, the National Security Strategy of 2002 categorised China and India as potential US rivals, though they were listed as current allies, and mentioned Russia as an emerging threat. US strategists would have some concerns about a militarily-strong, economically-powerful India 20-30 years from now, which might just as well go into a China-Russia-India or a Russia-Iran-India triangle with all its potentially anti-American possibilities. By then, India might even be able to master the three-stage cycle through breeder reactors that use thorium and not be dependent on imported uranium. This would leave India with adequate fissile material and energy production as well as make it independent of American control. All this could have devastating consequences for US interests and had to be prevented, alongside capping India’s nuclear weapons capability.

India had both to be stopped and enrolled as an ally, but the Pakistan route was impossible. The chosen route was the 123 deal, read with the India-specific Hyde Act flowing from the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The Hyde Act says very clearly that one of the objectives is to “halt, roll back and eventually eliminate” India’s nuclear capability. It also mentions five times that if the US stops supplying nuclear material to India following a treaty violation, it will not allow other members of the NSG to supply this. Nicholas Burns reaffirms (Foreign Affairs, Nov-Dec 2007) that with the deal, India will come into the international non-proliferation mainstream. There were sermons on India’s foreign policy on Myanmar and Iran, with the suggestion that India should buy US combat aircraft.

The debate should not be about whether or not we need modern technologies and American friendship. Of course we do. Instead, the debate should be whether or not the deal, in its present form, ensures, enhances or impairs India’s strategic interests.

Very often it is argued that if the deal breaks, then Indo-US relations will suffer a setback.
Any relationship that is based on just one issue is seriously flawed.

Source : Hindustan Times , 27th Nov 2007

Islamabad to worse

The situation in Pakistan has spun out of Musharraf's control.

Pervez musharraf — Pakistan’s part- time President but full-time Army Chief, and the US’s ally of allies, with an approval rating less than that of Osama bin Laden — is in trouble like never before. The three main crises that he faces have acquired their own potentially devastating momentum, as they run concurrently at three different venues.
The political crisis, which is mainly Punjab-centric, has arisen from Musharraf’s desire to retain power. Musharraf may have shot himself in the foot by clamping martial law but in the months ahead this will be the least of the problems. The second crisis, momentarily swept under the carpet, is the silent Baloch insurgency. This crisis is not going to be easy to solve soon and needs major socio-economic engineering. The third crisis in the NWFP is now the most serious and complicated that Islamabad has ever faced, because this is now a mixture of Pushtun nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism.

The General’s speech, after he imposed martial law, gave the bizarre impression of General Musharraf indicting President Musharraf for eight years of misrule but both had to stay. In order to protect democracy, he locked out the unarmed Bench and the bar, choked the media and arrested mainstream politicians while releasing armed militants in the NWFP in exchange for captured soldiers. Unless the peoples’ movement acquires a totem pole soon, like the Myanmar students found Aung San Suu Kyi, and is backed by sustained international pressure, it will be crushed under the jackboot. Continued US indulgence and political divisiveness will lead to a stalemate and some kind of elections but with no winners. This is what the army would want, a fractured mandate that allows them to retain control but go back to the barracks, refurbish and return after the politicians fail, as they inevitably would.

Musharraf’s ploy was to keep the Americans reasonably happy by doling out some terrorist or the other periodically and collect a bounty each time as well. By September 2006, there had been 369 Guantanamo-bound renditions for millions of clandestine dollars. In reality, Musharraf allowed only a sporadic hunt of al-Qaeda while protecting the Taliban. Simultaneously, he also acquired military hardware worth $ 3 billion that is not meant for counter-insurgency operations but for use against India. This was justified as one of the ways to keep Pakistan’s top brass happy. But Stephen Cohen recently described Washington as the General’s ATM. Musharraf’s focus on self-preservation has hampered effective measures to deal with the emerging threat in the NWFP that has now spread to the rest of the country.
Musharraf had anticipated US and Western reaction accurately. Pursuit of US interests — at this moment the American war on terror and keeping nuclear weapons away from extremists — being the main consideration, fancy notions like restoration of democracy in Pakistan took a backseat. There was the anticipated table thumping for effect but nothing that would hurt.
It is, thus, Musharraf who holds the carrot and the stick — for his role in the war on terror, the possibility of the periodic capture of an important terrorist and the fear that the nuclear bomb could fall into the hands of a terrorist. He could even deliver a ‘high value target’ that might include Osama bin Laden or Al Zawahiri and then all sins, past, present and future will be forgiven.

Therefore, all the West wants is that Musharraf sheds his uniform and holds some kind of elections that they can call free and fair. The US would like Musharraf to use Benazir as a prop for legitimacy but the General would rather use Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the patron saint of the Taliban, for this. They are soulmates anyway and the Maulana is useful in curbing the nationalist aspirations of the Baloch. Balochistan seems to have gone off the global radar screen because Islamabad has put the province under a shroud of secrecy. It is, however, more like a pressure cooker about to explode. Not many hear of the bomb blasts, the gas pipeline disruptions or the arrests and incarcerations. Thousands of Baloch nationalists have simply disappeared and others have joined the underground. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group in a recent report concluded that “The insurgency is unlikely to subside as long as the military relies on repression, killings, imprisonment, disappearances and torture to bend the Baloch to its will”.
The Taliban takeover in the Fata is now being replicated in the rest of the NWFP. Three of the seven districts of the valley of Swat, Pakistan’s idyllic tourist spot, is today under the thrall of Taliban forces. Attempts by Musharraf’s security forces to oust them have failed. There are fears that this new development marks the arrival of al Qaeda outside Fata and represents the most potent threat to Pakistan’s security.

It is not difficult to see how grave the problem has become through neglect and connivance. The Lal Masjid episode which was followed by attacks on Pakistan’s armed forces in Tarbela, Rawalpindi and Sargodha indicate not only the ability of the terrorists to strike at will but also that they had inside intelligence. Even more important — they had access. The situation in the province also gets more complicated because of its trans-border connections. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have moved close to Kandahar for the first time since 2001 and have also occupied three other districts in western Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has been working on Pakistan-based leaders like Sirajuddin Haqqani to function as a leader within the Taliban. Sirajuddin’s Pakistani and Arab followers are uncompromising in their goal for a complete victory for al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Tribal loyalties, which are quite often trans-border, the Pushtun code of conduct and religious sentiments have become intertwined in the province. Recruitment among the devoutly religious locals is easy for the Taliban. Many of the counter-insurgent forces have remained ill- equipped and inadequately trained in contrast to the insurgents. Their morale is low and they are unwilling to fight fellow Muslims. Desertions are increasing. The Pakistani army, brought up on a single threat perception, is ill-equipped to play a counter-insurgency role. Besides, it would need local intelligence which will not be available to Punjabi troops operating in the absence of Pushtun troops. It will take years for the Pakistan army to cover this gap and, meanwhile, a Punjabi-Pushtun animus could set in.

Colonel Ralph Peters, formerly of the US Army, in his essay ‘Blood Borders’ (the Armed Forces Journal, June 2006) discusses redrawing borders in West Asia. Peters says, “What Afghanistan would lose to Persia in the west, it would gain in the east, as Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren (the point of this exercise is not to draw maps as we would like them but as local populations would prefer them). Pakistan, another unnatural State, would also lose its Baluch territory to Free Baluchistan. The remaining ‘natural’ Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi.” The essay is controversial and could not have pleased many, but does this reflect impending reality?
General Musharraf gives the impression of being firmly in the saddle, feet in the stirrups, reins held firmly, a gun at the holster and a Stetson hat. Only the horse is different. It is a horse in a merry-go-round, going nowhere but taking his rider into a spin that gets faster and faster.

Source : Hindustan Times , 14th Nov 2007

A Bhutto in Pakistan

The odds are heavily stacked against Benazir's survival in her own country.

The ecstasy and the agony of Benazir Bhutto's return were all too evident in the first few hours of her second homecoming. She had arrived to a tumultuous welcome and a violent wake-up call, which seemed to have come much too early in the campaign. In the last eight years that she was away, Pakistan had changed immeasurably — maybe even permanently, and much more since her first homecoming in Zia-ul-Haq's time in 1986.

At the time of her first return from exile, Pakistan was on the same side as the US in the Afghan jehad, although the people were running out of patience with Zia. Besides, India was on the backfoot in the Punjab, there was uncertainty in Kashmir, and Pakistan was the internationally-acclaimed frontline State against the Soviets. This time, Bhutto has returned when anti-US sentiment is high on the streets, Pervez Musharraf is seen as an American stooge and her deal with him has been cobbled together in the US. She is being viewed as just another American tool to extricate a sinking Musharraf.

In contrast to 1986, Pakistan is today widely acknowledged as the epicentre of international terrorism. And very few have a solution to this growing problem. Bhutto has returned at a time when Taliban clones stalk the corridors of power in Islamabad and roam the streets of Karachi and Peshawar. Osama has a higher approval rating than Musharraf. And a cricket captain has had to apologise to the "entire Muslim world" for having lost a match to India. What kind of a mindset have they conjured up in Pakistan?

Bhutto wants a role to steer Pakistan away from the abyss at a time when Islamists in Pakistan want all women behind the purdah. Besides, parts of the North West Frontier Province have become safe havens for al-Qaeda, and religious extremism is mixed with the Pushtun nationalism that transcends the Durand Line, with the Pakistan army unwilling or unable to take on the Islamist militants. The army, determined to pacify Balochistan through force, is losing the battle of hearts and minds and relies on the extreme right-wing forces of Jamiat Ulema-e Islam to counter the nationalists. Pakistan may have changed irretrievably into Pakistan Extreme. It is these faultlines that many Pakistanis, Indians and, indeed, the rest of the world seem to deny.

One would imagine that Bhutto would have carefully thought out her return before taking the plunge. Hopefully, she did have the time to go through Robert Greene's book, The 48 Laws of Power. Law 29 ('Plan All the Way to the End') recommends that the ending is everything. Careful planning, taking into account all possible consequences, obstacles and twists would ensure that glory does not go to others. Bhutto has only got the National Reconciliation Ordinance, while Musharraf has not discarded his uniform, has not abrogated Article 58 (2) (b), which gives him powers to dismiss the PM, has not given any indication that a third term as PM would be possible and has not disbanded the National Security Council that gives him extraordinary powers through this super-cabinet. She thus remains at a disadvantage.

Hopefully, there will be elections, where the next lot of leaders will be selected. Musharraf has already given his preference — the PML(Q) of the Choudhry Brothers. The script could be something like this. In case Musharraf finds Bhutto winning the popularity contest in the Punjab, he will import Nawaz Sharif, who began his political life in the Punjab as an army protégé, to counter her. It is still early days, but then, the PML factions could merge and form a government with the MMA or its remnants, maybe with Maulana Fazlur Rahman as Prime Minister. So, unless Bhutto has planned it to the end, glory may go to others.

Bhutto must have taken into account that there will be attempts to assassinate her or frighten her away. One more such attack and Musharraf will certainly order that she be secured in a fortress to prevent any harm. This brings into play Greene's Law 18 — 'Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself; Isolation Is Dangerous'. This says that isolation exposes the leader to more dangers and security lies in mingling and having allies. A campaign has already begun, saying that innocents are dying because Bhutto has come back despite advice to postpone her visit. Except that there is a slight modification to this. Isolation will be imposed on her to prevent her from campaigning, and will simultaneously portray a frightened Bhutto.

Bhutto has made some very courageous statements about tackling terrorism and extremism. All this would need reconciliation with the army, as terrorism cannot be tackled without its active involvement. Yet, the army has been tutored to fight enemy India and is not trained to battle internal insurgent forces. This could easily cause fissures within the army. Also, there are elements within the army who are opposed to any reconciliation with her. They would demand a price from her, and what would that be? Or would they be happy to have Bhutto as a convenient scapegoat? This would enable them to disassociate themselves with governance at a time when their image has taken a severe beating, and thus come back with their image refurbished. One does not see the army totally receding from the scene in the foreseeable future.

Arrangements worked out in the salons of New York and London are usually about power-sharing among feudal politicians, well-connected bureaucrats and industrialists and the army. But they tend to unravel quickly as they are removed from the ground reality and do not take the people into account. Then, cynics say that after years of subservience to dictatorial regimes, maybe the people have discounted themselves.

Pakistan's current status as a global destabiliser is explained as a manifestation of life-long insecurities. In trying to overcome them, the State has become delinquent, mollycoddled by offshore balancers far too busy in securing their own fortunes. The result is that today, the Pakistan State has to go to a correctional home. It can no longer seek security through adventures in Afghanistan and India. Instead, it has to provide assurance of continued good behaviour towards its neighbours. Only this will buy it security.

Pakistan's benefactors would do well for themselves, for the neighbourhood and the world by insisting on a basic minimum of orderliness accompanied by a high threshold of expectations and a low threshold of tolerance of any transgression. Merely continuing to arm Pakistan with sophisticated weaponry meant to be used against India and not for the global war on terror is not the answer. It reflects a sad lack of coherent policy towards a State that seems to be on auto-destruct. Today, the US assumes a stake in Musharraf's survival in the pursuit of its own strategic interests. India has a stake in Pakistan's survival. The two need not be congruent interests.

Source : Hindustan Times , 30th Oct 2007

A War of Nerves

Iran wants to engage with the world. but the US is in no mood to relent

Richard Perle, known in Washington power circles as the ‘Prince of Darkness’ and associated with the neo-con American Enterprise Institute and the Project for New Century, had authored a book with his associate, David Frum, soon after President George Bush launched his ill-fated Iraq war. The book, An End to Evil, is the Perle-Frum prescription about how to win the war on terror. They recommended that the US must take bold and decisive action against Iran. They said this in 2003 when the duo was still considered (and probably still are) among the most influential insiders in the Bush White House.

It is true that Iran came clean about its nuclear programme only when its clandestine nuclear liaison with Pakistan and the Libyans had let the cat out of the bag. Although Pakistani delinquency has been swept aside, there has been endless high-pitched rhetoric and speculation about when, or if, the US will attack Iran to end its so-called quest for the N-bomb, and to overthrow the current regime. Washington glowers at Tehran, demonising the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad more or less like Saddam Hussein. The US has rejected the IAEA finding that clearly concludes in Article IV(4) that: “The Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials at the enrichment facilities in Iran and has, therefore, concluded that it remains in peaceful use.”

There are renewed allegations of Iran interfering in Iraq by supplying the Shia militia with money, weapons-training and explosives and weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan. All this has not galvanised the Iranians into submission. There are other provocations to goad Iran that range from rejection of the IAEA findings, tougher sanctions, which now have the French on board, and if this were not enough, insulting Ahmadinejad after inviting him to address the University of Columbia. There have been leaks about the possibility of a pre-emptive strike that could include thermonuclear weapons, which according to some is harmless to the surrounding human population. Warplanes are said to be in position since 2004 and extensive wargames were conducted in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean in mid-2006. The Pentagon is supposed to have 2,000 bombing targets. The idea is to force Iran to retaliate and then use overwhelming force when it does.

Undoubtedly, Iran must be feeling surrounded these days much more than before. To the north is Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) member, concerned about the Iranian nuclear programme. Close to Iran are two former Soviet republics, Armenia and Azerbaijan but now friends of the West. Along with Turkmenistan, they are members of the Nato’s Partners for Peace Programme. Afghanistan in the east is home to Nato and US troops, where the Sunni, radical Taliban are becoming increasingly effective and the President, progressively ineffective. The other eastern neighbour, Pakistan, also hosts US bases, and,US-backed insurgents have used Balochistan as a base for forays into Iran. Across the Persian Gulf are six Arab kingdoms: Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — all worried about Iran’s growing clout in the region. To the west is Iraq, with its 150,000 US troops and with reports that troops will be moved towards the Iranian border. Finally, the US armada in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean is poised to pulverise. Encircled thus, it is natural for Iran to try to break the cordon and reach out to Russia and China in a kind of a quadrilateral that includes the other energy-rich nation, Venezuela. The latest in this round of high drama has been another book by Norman Podhoretz, the widely acknowledged doyen of the Neo-Con Corps in Washington. His book — World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism — is the latest neo-con warbook about the battle against global Islamist terror. Podhoretz, who considers that the Cold War was World War III and that World War IV has begun, met President George Bush recently. Word is that he urged the President to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Podhoretz is no quaint old man; he is a foreign policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani, who, some say could be the Republican front-runner for the presidential election. Podhoretz may have his reasons to predict that Iran would crumble under US ‘Shock and Awe’ (Iran edition). But it is difficult to accept this prediction after the exposures of the limitations of US military power in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Events in Iraq and Afghanistan have meant that the decline of US prestige and power is the most discerning aspect of the first decade of the 21st century. There has also been a decline in the US’s ‘soft’ power with Al Jazeera challenging the supremacy of BBC and CNN in the region. Apart from Iraq, this loss is most noticeable in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the three countries that Henry Kissinger had described as the pivot to the world’s (meaning US) security. No wonder President Karzai of Afghanistan, on a visit to Washington, and, in the presence of Bush, was emboldened to describe Iran as a helper and a solution. At about the same time Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was on an official visit to Tehran buying insurance in case the US found him dispensible. A week after Bush and Karzai had met, the Iranian President was in Kabul calling on his Afghan counterpart.
Given the importance of the region, the decline in the supply of oil in the future and production peaks and the growing needs for energy of other nations like China, the US has to keep the oil-producing West Asia and Eurasia under its control. There has always been bipartisan support for this policy in Washington; in fact, many of the projects and policies that the Republicans are now pursuing in West Asia were initiated by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Therefore, it is not easy to dismiss these leaks as simply designed to scare. They have their own momentum should Iran, in US perceptions, continue to be intransigent.

The alternative to bombing is negotiations but this, too, may be difficult now. Four years ago, in May 2003 the Iranian authorities proposed a package deal to freeze their nuclear programme in exchange for an end to US hostility. The Iranians offered full transparency about their nuclear programme and full cooperation with the IAEA, on Iraq, terrorism and even material support to Hamas. In return, the Iranians wanted their country to be removed from the ‘axis of evil’ list, end of all sanctions, US support for reparations from Iraq for the Iran-Iraq war, access to peaceful nuclear technology and that the US pursue anti-Iran terrorists like the Mujahedeen-e- Khalq. Instead, the US rejected this offer and now threatens ‘just’ Wars when things are going horribly awry for them and the Iranian position in the region is much stronger.

This kind of rhetoric in the US has prompted commentators like Philip Giraldi to portray a scenario should the Iranians not roll over and play dead. This would force the US to strike the country. The escalation of conflict that Giraldi depicts in his essay What World War III May Look Like quickly engulfs the entire region, reaches the US and ends with a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India. “World War III has begun” is the last sentence of Giraldi’s script. He might as well have predicted Armageddon.

Source : Hindustan Times , 16th Oct 2007

The Pak state of general panic

Terror now stalks the sanctum sanctorum of Pakistan - the Pakistan Army.

All is not well in Musharraf’s realm as the General faces multiple crises — of legitimacy, credibility and authority. The entire trans-border of Pakistan-Afghanistan is today a vast SEZ of International Terror Inc. International terrorists like Tahir Yuldashev (Islamic Movement of Turkestan), various factions of the Taliban with Baitullah Mehsud as the most important leader in South Waziristan, Abu Kasha, the Iraqi, and Najmuddin, the Uzbek, operate in North Waziristan along with the Al Qaeda and others. They conduct their business from these safe havens.

The pattern of terrorist violence after the Lal Masjid episode has changed. Twelve soldiers were killed in Dera Ismail Khan in a suicide attack, about 300 soldiers were kidnapped by the Taliban in Waziristan early in September, 12 policemen were kidnapped from Bannu, a "settled area" of NWFP, unlike the ungovernable FATA. A bomb blast in Rawalpindi in September killed 29 personnel, mostly from the ISI. On the day US deputy secretary of state John Negroponte was in Islamabad, a Pushtoon officer blew himself up killing 19 commandos of the SSG in Tarbela, south of Islamabad. Terror now stalks the sanctum sanctorum of Pakistan — the Pakistan Army.

Meanwhile, helicopter gun ships were once again deployed this year in the Makeen area of South Waziristan. This was in retaliation against tribesmen who had repeatedly attacked a military post on the night of September 12, killing 124 security personnel. Artillery was used against tribesmen in Razmak and Datta Khel in North Waziristan.

It is not easy to kidnap 300 armed and trained personnel. It is not known whether these soldiers, surprised and overpowered by overwhelming force, had voluntarily surrendered without a fight, or had refused to fight. If they had surrendered, then they had no will to fight. But if they had refused to fight, possibly by saying that they were not trained to fight other Muslims, then this could only mean that the Pakistan Army has problems that are more serious than imagined.

Most of these incidents, especially the kidnapping, the bomb blasts in Rawalpindi against the ISI and the suicide attack in the high security SSG campus, mean that the attackers had accurate intelligence in each case. It also means that this intelligence emanated from within these set-ups. Recall that terrorists had perfect intelligence about Gen. Musharraf’s movements when they almost succeeded in assassinating him three years ago in Rawalpindi. In his autobiography, In the Line of Fire, Musharraf has mentioned that one of the conspirators was from the SSG. Musharraf just got lucky.

Earlier this year, Pakistani authorities disclosed that about 1,400 people had been killed in over 100 military operations in South and North Waziristan. Clashes between the tribesmen and the security forces have continued for some years now, but the frequency and the efficacy of the attacks on the security forces have increased. This is especially noticeable after the commando action in Lal Masjid in July 2007: 300 persons were killed, many of whom were Pushtoons and from the Waziristan area. A Pakistan ministry of interior document admitted that government forces had forfeited authority to the Taliban and their allies, and even places like Peshawar, Kohat and Nowshera were facing Talibanisation, that the security forces in NWFP and the tribal region had been outgunned and outnumbered. (There are about 80,000 to 100,000 troops in the region.)

It is apparent that Islamic radicals have been gaining in Pakistan and their strength worries even elected parties like the MMA in NWFP. The regime invariably handles the Taliban and religious extremists with kid gloves, for they are Islamic warriors, armed and dangerous, with sympathisers in high places. On the other hand, Nawaz Sharif’s short lived homecoming was handled swiftly and more with bravado than self assurance. It was the act of a regime that is getting desperate to cling to power and panicking that nothing is working in its favour. Musharraf may have succeeded, in his own eyes, of having got rid of the "problem," but this is likely to come back to haunt him.

Sixty years ago, Pakistan had only one monopoly shareholder — the United Kingdom. Then the United States took over and today Pakistan is actually like a failed MNC with the major stake holders — the US, the UK and Saudi Arabia trying to shore up this failing company. The "Chief Executive" (that was what Musharraf called himself when he ousted Nawaz) has been underperforming, but has to be rescued. That is why there have been international managers like Messrs Boucher and Negroponte rushing into Islamabad to support the CEO in public and admonish him in private.

China, the fourth shareholder in Pakistan, is worried too as its citizens continue to be killed in Baluchistan or are taken hostage elsewhere. Further, Uighur Islamists from Xinjiang have been receiving training along with Uzbeks, Tajiks and Chechens in the Waziristan areas. Pakistani troops began hunting for Uighur Muslims in Waziristan along with their Uzbek and Tajik sympathisers. Hasan Mahsum, the leader of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, who was wanted by the Chinese authorities, was killed in a gunfight with Pakistani troops in October 2004. A week later, militants kidnapped two Chinese engineers from South Waziristan, a uranium rich area. Earlier this year, the Pakistan Army launched a massive attack against the Uzbeks and Uighurs in South Waziristan suspected by the Chinese to be carrying out subversion in Xinjiang. Very few survived this attack and the rest fled to North Waziristan.

Across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the situation in the Pushtoon areas of south and east Afghanistan remains grim for President Hamid Karzai. Nato forces have been unable to assert themselves and the Taliban have killed 300 Afghan policemen in recent months. The battle now seems to be more than a battle between the Taliban and foreign troops or Afghan troops. It has become a battle between the Pushtoon in Afghanistan versus the foreigners, and between the Pushtoon in Pakistan and the rest of the Pakistanis in Pakistan. This is happening in a country where the regime is wary of even renaming NWFP as Pakhtoonkhwa for fear that this may sow the seeds of Pushtoon nationalism.

The Pakistan Army in the last 60 years has begun to resemble the East India Company, acquiring prime land at privileged prices, managing all trade and industrial houses in the country, running the country’s logistic systems, constructing highways and playing politics, setting up the Mohajirs against the Punjabis and religious elements against the nationalists. The Pakistan Army has a country to exploit. This has made Pakistan a global rogue state but no one is willing to say so.

A regime that is running scared of unarmed politicians, and either connives with or appeases terrorists, and in the process violates every written statute, is staring at a bleak future. When leaders openly disregard laws and the Constitution, then the followers can only do worse. Gen. Vinod Sehgal in his book Restructuring Pakistan (2001) had five main worries about Pakistan. These were the Talibanisation of Pakistan, a civil war breaking out in the country, further spread of state sponsored terrorism from the Afghan-Pakistan frontier, the spread of nuclear materials from Pakistan and the spread of regressive Islam into the subcontinent. It seems all this is taking place. Maulana Abu Ala Mawdoodi was prophetic when seeing the bloodshed and the killings during the partition of India, he remarked that "the bloody birth pangs of Pakistan" were "predicting the birth of a monster and not a human being."

The worst is yet to be.

Source : Asian Age 24th Sep 2007

The Nuclear Deal: The Larger Picture

As the U.S. readies for the battles of the 21st century, India must not ignore the resurgence of Russia, the rise of China and the relevance of Iran. It must manage its relations with all these powers.

The India-United States nuclear deal that was supposed to be a path breaking agreement has run into stiff opposition in both countries where critics say that each has given too much for too little. For India, the deal was supposed to provide nuclear energy to make good the shortfall, access to hi-technology, be an economic bonanza for the future and grant legitimacy as a major power. For the U.S., it was part of a larger game plan. The deal was a means to cap India’ s strategic programme, provide access to India’s growing defence market, and become a strategic partner in U.S. foreign policy initiatives globally. One of the abiding primary bipartisan U.S. objectives has been to restrict, roll back and cap the Indian strategic deterrent. Bill Clinton tried it earlier when he wanted India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and announce a moratorium on fissile production. But critics in the U.S. fear that the deal has weakened the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime.

There have been different interpretations of the deal in the two capitals. New Delhi asserts that the agreement assures continued supply of fuel and that if there is any disruption, the U.S. would help find an alternative source. American officials do not agree and will help only in the case of technical or logistical difficulties. This means that there would be no assistance in case India violates some aspects of the agreement or tests a nuclear device or reprocesses U.S. origin fuel.

The 123 Agreement has been extensively commented upon by strategic analysts, experienced commentators and scientists. One of the arguments being that the Hyde Act suggests that India should work bilaterally with the U.S. for an early conclusion of the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty instead of what India has wanted — a universal, non-discriminatory and verifiable arrangement. The Americans would want to rely on national technical means which would make the deal bilaterally intrusive. The deal does not give India access to reprocessing, enrichment or heavy water technologies or dual use components. In addition, the right of return of nuclear material, restrictions on reprocessing or building fuel reserves, verification and end-use monitoring, have been built into the agreement. This could restrict our strategic capabilities and options in the years ahead.

The deal was supposed to give India several benefits but the pressure to sign the deal by a specific deadline mostly came from the Americans, almost as if India was being hustled into this. The old principle of never ever signing anything in a hurry was abandoned. The Japanese, for instance, spent seven years discussing the deal before signing it. The China-U.S. 123 agreement of 1985 specifically states that both sides would observe the principle of international law under which neither party could invoke a domestic law to justify failure to perform a treaty. The India-U.S. 123 agreement does not have this safeguard.

It would be unreasonable to expect that the U.S. would give us a carte blanche on the business of testing and fissile material. But it was also unnecessary for us to have allowed what was a voluntary moratorium on testing become binding in a bilateral arrangement. It was also not necessary to agree to a U.S.-led fissile material cut off instead of a multilateral arrangement in Geneva. This is what we had agreed on July 18, 2005 and since then it has been a steady process downhill. In March 2006, we agreed to place 14 of our 22 reactors under safeguards and eventually shut down the Cirus reactor permanently. By voting in the manner in which we did at the IAEA on the Iran issue, we have set a precedent that may be difficult to live down. From now onwards, whenever we vote along with the U.S. or do any deal with it, opponents to this action will accuse the government of having become subservient to the U.S.

Unfortunately, the official response to the various criticisms or doubts has been dismissive and disappointingly inadequate. No one has bothered to sit down and explain that the various doubts and fears expressed were either incorrect or exaggerated. Instead, the response has been to depict criticism as a reflection of tunnel vision of cold war mindsets or nitpicking by ignoramuses. In the midst of this emotional debate, it was forgotten that dissent is also a form of patriotism. Protagonists of the deal have claimed that the 123 Agreement overrides the Hyde Act. This is incorrect because the 1954 Atomic Energy Act is the mother of all such Acts; the Hyde Act is a stringent enabling India-specific legislation for the 123 Agreement to be signed within the parameters of the Hyde Act. It has been suggested that in case the deal did not go through, Pakistan and China would collaborate for a similar deal. Surely this would have been factored in when the deal was being negotiated. It does not require any special clairvoyance to predict that whatever the outcome of the India-U.S. deal, Pakistan would want to seek a similar arrangement either with the U.S. and failing which, with China. In a high pitch drive, it has even been suggested that this deal would now open the doors for all sorts of hi-tech technologies. Conversely, should India be seen to be in violation of this deal, these technologies would be withdrawn from us followed by sanctions.

The Nick Burns statement in Washington on July 27 is a clear enunciation of what the U.S. expects from the deal. He said that the 123 Agreement “brings India … back into the nonproliferation mainstream in a way it was not before. And that is a tangible gain for India, as well as the U.S. and the rest of the world.” From then flow the rest of the arguments about the strategic consonance on Iran, reducing India’s dependency on countries like Iran for energy supplies. He also spoke of the advantages that American companies will have in selling the “finest nuclear technology” to India. Yet he did not mention that no American company has built a single reactor in the U.S. since 1979. Mr. Burns also hoped for greater defence co-operation between India and the U.S. leading to more exercises, training and defence sales. Both countries were already working together in South Asia on Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and “in trying to form a better functioning relationship between India and Pakistan.” He hoped that the two countries would form a global partnership and work together in East Asia and Africa. The India-U.S. nuclear deal is part of an overall plan which includes the Defence Framework Agreement, the Agriculture Deal and the Disaster Management Agreement. The idea is to engage India at all levels.

The U.S. has been pursuing a military basing policy extending globally as it prepares to take on a resurgent Russia and a powerful China. There are about 1000 bases of various descriptions and purpose strewn all over the globe and Chalmers Johnson points out in his book Nemesis, India has agreed to have a ‘lily pod’ base along with Thailand, Australia and the Philippines. (Pakistan already has four such bases with much larger facilities). These ‘lily pods’ e nable pre-positioning of weapons and munitions to which U.S. access has already been negotiated. This does not mean permanent U.S. presence but only in times of emergency. No wonder Washington is very keen that the two countries sign an Access and Cross Servicing Agreement which would allow logistic support to the U.S. from locations in India. A natural corollary to this would be the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) which would give U.S. troops immunity from violations of laws of the host country. U.S. joint exercises in and around India also make perfect U.S. military sense. There is a clear agenda and a pattern.

The Washington-based American Enterprise Institute is considered to be the unofficial headquarters of the neo-cons. Writing in the July 2003 issue of the AEI National Security Outlook, just a few months after U.S. troops had landed in Iraq, Thomas Donnelly and Vance Serchuk spoke of U.S. military missions being transformed into a ‘global cavalry’ that would need a radical overhaul of America’s overseas force structure and creation of a worldwide network of frontier forts as well as a system of frontier stockades “necessary to win a long-term struggle against an amorphous enemy across the arc of instability.” This arc of instability extends from Morocco to the Philippines inclusive of Eurasia which is predominantly Muslim in the peripheries of Russia and China with India and Israel stuck in the middle.

As the U.S. readies for the battles of the 21st century, India must not ignore the resurgence of Russia, the rise of China and the relevance of Iran. It must manage its relations with all these powers. It needs to therefore pause and think about ways of smoothening the wrinkles in the nuclear deal. If the sense of the House is that there are reservations about the deal then the party in power must address them adequately, in keeping with the convention that India’s foreign policy is pursued through consensus. It should not be construed to be the handiwork of a tyranny of a minority in a minority.

Source : Hindu, 5th Sepetmber 2007

Caught in the middle

China is encircling India by reaching out to our neighbours

At the last G-8 Summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh referred to China as India’s greatest neighbour. There is no disputing this observation but if any one expected the Chinese to reciprocate this with something remotely similar they were disappointed. The Chinese media did not even refer to the meeting between the two leaders. In keeping with the Chinese view of their position in the world they accepted this statement as a factual narration.

An insight of how the Chinese let slip their view of India in their scheme of things is given by the official China handouts (China 2006) that are available in New Delhi. While describing their relations with major powers, the Chinese handout mentions China’s relations with the US, Russia, the EU and Japan. India is listed, en passant, in the portion "Other Asian countries".

We heaved a national sigh of relief when China stopped showing Sikkim as a separate entity on its maps. Yet, we say nothing when China mentions in its handouts that China has a boundary with India, Kashmir. In 1963 China and Pakistan ceded Shaksgam, a portion of Jammu and Kashmir territory in Pakistan’s occupation, to China. The agreement at that time said that this would be finally settled once the question of the status of Jammu and Kashmir is decided. Yet nowadays Chinese officials refer to this, sotto voce, as being a part of the Northern Areas. The implication is that the Northern Areas are a part of Pakistan and not part of Jammu and Kashmir. And, periodically the issues of Arunachal Pradesh and settled areas, figure in the China-India discourse while the boundary talks drag on.

Meanwhile, the two leaderships speak of cooperation not confrontation. India speaks of there being enough space for the two to grow, China speaks of its harmonious rise while seeking containment through engagement. In search of an assured energy supply and safe routes so essential for its 10 per cent annual economic growth and regime stability, China has been working on securing its interests around the Indian Ocean littoral. Strategists have begun to refer to this as a ‘string of pearls’ which has an air of innocence and desirable about it. Indian strategists, however, have woken up to the realisation that an iron necklace was being cast around the Indian neck.

Unable to protect sea-lanes because of an inadequate navy, the Chinese needed alternative routes for energy supplies. Chinese assistance for the development of Gwadar, close to the vital Straits of Hormuz and located on Pakistan’s Balochistan coast, began at a feverish pace in 2002. The port will have an exclusive SEZ for China and will eventually be linked through Khunjerab Pass to Kashgar with a network of roads, rail links and gas pipelines. Kashgar is linked to Xigatse, which will soon have a rail link with Lhasa. The road continues to run parallel to the Sino-Indian border and then south to Kunming from where a network of river, rail and road links lead to Sittwe in Western Myanmar and Thilawa near Rangoon on the Bay of Bengal. These will be the entry points for energy supplies to China avoiding the Straits of Malacca. In the 20th century, Xinjiang was the New Territory and Tibet was the New Treasure. In the 21st century, Pakistan is the New Territory and Myanmar is the New Treasure. In addition, China has offered assistance for development of Hambantota harbour in southern Sri Lanka. None of this is India specific by design but India’s encirclement will be complete and India’s influence restricted to its national boundaries. In recent years, Chinese leaders have made several statements in their internal deliberations that indicate their worries. Commenting on China’s periphery after September 11, 2001, Hu Jintao said that the US had strengthened its military positions in the Asia-Pacific region, strengthened its alliance with Japan and strategic cooperation with India, improved relations with Vietnam and established a pro-American regime in Afghanistan. He also referred to the extended outposts — possibly referring to the 737 (some calculate this may be 1,000) military bases around the globe — and that America had placed pressure points on China’s east, west and south. Premier Wen Jiabao also predicted that US military focus would shift from Europe to Asia-Pacific.

China has other ambitions although but will not challenge the US directly in the foreseeable future. It sees the US stuck in a strategic stalemate in Iraq which, for a superpower is really a strategic defeat, and sees this as an opportunity to move in to a perceived vacuum in the Eurasian region. Apart from the various energy tie-ups that Beijing has worked out with Kazakhstan, Russia and other Central Asian states, it will now build 12 new highways connecting Xinjiang to major Central Asian cities. When completed by 2010, these roads will connect Urumqi with Tashkent, Mashad in Iran and Istanbul to reach Europe eventually. China would like to position itself, not as a successor but possibly as an eventual competitor just as it has endeavoured to ease out the US from various arrangements in South East Asia.

It is in this context that the association of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation led by China with the Collective Security Treaty Organisation led by Russia assumes significance. Both Russia and China participated in week long joint military exercises in Siberia that ended on August 17 and were watched by leaders of all the participating SCO countries. Peace Mission-I would bring SCO and CSTO closer. Many view this as the Russian and Chinese response to the eastward expansion of Nato into Asia. Paradoxically, while the two powers worry about the presence of the US in Eurasia and West Asia, they also fear that should the Americans go away from Afghanistan, instability may spread to Russia’s periphery in Central Asia and China.

The high-voltage stability of the bipolar world has now been replaced by the uncertainty of evolving multi-linear multi-polarities with the US still the primary power. Inter-state relations are now going to be more carefully calibrated and sophisticated with no clearly demarcated power blocs operating. Various triangulations are being configured, many of which exclude the US. Russia, India and China have been talking to each other trilaterally and Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin referred to India during their recent meeting in Moscow. There could even be an Iran, Russia and China arrangement that effectively bottles up the energy rich Eurasian region or there could be a Russia, Iran and India arrangement.

At the same time, no country, including India, China and Russia would want to jeopardise its relationship with the US for the sake of its new partners. Indians surely understand that China and the US will not sacrifice their relationship with each other for India’s sake.

India’s relationship with the US is still evolving with several agreements having been worked out. A strategic partnership between the two will mostly be one-sided with the US far too powerful and India somewhat wary of being either overwhelmed or becoming an appendage. Since common ideals do not necessarily assure common adversaries, India will continue to look at Iran and Myanmar from its own geo-strategic perspective, just as the US has its perspective on Pakistan. India did not have to make a choice during the Cold War but in this age of multi-polarity, it might have to do so as the battle ground shifts from Europe to closer home.

Source : Hindustan Times, 5th Sep 2007

The Slide Show

Pakistan is facing a bigger crisis today than it did in 1971

Sixty years after independence, India and Pakistan are on different trajectories. India is a secular democracy — raucous and flawed — but democracy it is. After years of uncertainties, the fortune graph is now a steady upward curve as India positions itself to become a rising economic power. Pakistan, on the other hand, is on a downward slope, with a thinly disguised military rule threatening to become a theocratic-military rule as its graph dips into a jehadist abyss. While the world applauds India, it increasingly looks at Pakistan with suspicion as an irresponsible state.

While the Indian leadership of the day set about giving its people a written Constitution, in Pakistan the twin pillars of governance were the Army and Islam. Punjabi feudalism did not help matters either. Over the years this problem has only accentuated with the mullah, intolerant of any deviation, interpreting the Islamic tenets in a narrow sectarian sense that excludes women — half the country’s population — from equal treatment. He also seeks to exclude other sects from similar benefits, earthly or otherworldly. The army treats any adherence to alternative opinion as disobedience at best and treason most of the time. Equality and dissent are the essential ingredients of democracy but Pakistan’s twin pillars discouraged both.
In Pakistan, they shot dead Akbar Bugti because he dared to ask for a better deal for his Baloch people. In Pakistan, they banished elected mainstream political leaders. In India, we allow secessionists to avail of the best possible medical treatment. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, are you reading this?

There is another important aspect that is sometimes overlooked. In India, Muslims have begun to realise that the largest number of Muslims who live in democracy anywhere in the world are here. There is also a realisation that this has been possible because of an independent, secular media and the liberal class, most of whom are Hindus. True, there have been horrible slippages but it is this class of Indians that seeks to expose and protect them against injustices on the basis of religion. The mullahs of Pakistan seek to institutionalise this discrimination and even the moderately enlightened General asserts that there can be no secularism in Pakistan. For anyone to break the Indian equilibrium he must, therefore, Wahhabise the essentially Sufi Muslim and radicalise the Hindu by enticing the former and simultaneously provoking the latter. India of the 21st century must guard against such inroads from Pakistan and from Al-Qaeda indoctrination. Our response cannot be by creating quotas for vote-banks. This only builds zones of vested interests and ghettoises the nation.

There are many in India, Pakistan and the West who remain in a state of denial about the march of Islamic forces in Pakistan. The manner in which the Waziristan episode has been dealt with, the manner in which the Lal Masjid episode was handled, are some of the symptoms of the disease and of what is happening in Pakistan. Islamic radicalism is not seen in the chic salons of Lahore but at Miramshah and Wana in the NWFP and Fata and Faisalabad and Jhang in Punjab. One has to do some sustained reading of the radical Urdu press, which has a much larger circulation than the English newspapers, to assess the mood. And, it is Islamic radicalism backed by the gun.

The truth is that the Pakistani security system still treats India and its own nationalists as the biggest threat. Perennially fearful of the India’s presence in Afghanistan, the Pakistani establishment feels it not only needs the Taliban but even nurtures them just as it nurtured elements like the Punjabi Lashkar-e Tayyeba in Kashmir. It cannot therefore be serious about curbing the Taliban. But Musharraf cannot take action against the fundamentalists and extremists and also rely on them for survival. Yet, unless the Pakistan Army moves beyond looking for patchwork solutions to ensure its own primacy and decides to eradicate this menace, a spectre of total radicalism haunts Pakistan.

Musharraf has other problems and dilemmas. A year ago he looked secure as America’s favourite child. The mainstream political parties were in disarray and funds were flowing in from the US, giving an aura of economic well-being. The assassination of Bugti, the Lal Masjid crisis and the arrogant manner in which the Chief Justice (CJ) was treated weakened Musharraf’s position and when the CJ showed spine, Musharraf had no fall back.
Since then almost everything has been downhill. Today, after Musharraf went to Abu Dhabi to meet Benazir Bhutto hat in hand and the CJ has passed strictures about excluding Nawaz Sharif from Pakistan, political parties have recovered some lost ground although they are still suspicious of each other.

Balochistan remains in ferment, the NWFP is becoming a jehadist stronghold. There is even talk of renaming NWFP ‘Afghania’, which is a step further from the other existing demand for ‘Pakhtoonkhwa’, both of which are considered to have secessionist connotations. Musharraf is seen as an American stooge. The fear and awe of the uniform has gone during his extended terms, which must be irking the army.

Musharraf has other problems. Wearing his uniform like a second skin, he wants to remain glued to the chair when his popularity is at an all-time low and the US want him to continue. Should it be with his uniform or without? If he discards his uniform can he remain in control and effective? Should he impose an emergency now or later? Will this provoke street protests? Should he patch up with mainstream politicians and dump his ineffective king’s party?
Unless the army changes its mindset, ceases to think of the radicals as allies against enemy India or part of a global Islamic vanguard and goes after them for total eradication, the problem will grow out of control and spread in the neighbourhood. Unable or unwilling to take adequate action against the fundamentalists, a beleaguered leadership will look for diversions elsewhere and there is no need for second guesses. The familiar India threat will come in handy or the Kashmir problem will assume different urgencies. Total eradication is not just a military solution but needs sustained political support.

What Pakistan needs is not reinvention of the army regime. It needs a strong, fairly elected political leader who thinks of Pakistan first and realises that India is not a threat to Pakistan but neither will it compromise on Kashmir. A leader who accepts a secular successful India is an opportunity and not a threat. It is a tough task given Pakistan’s khaki reality and may not happen soon enough for Pakistan.

In a way, therefore, Pakistan is facing a bigger crisis than it did in 1971. At that time, Pakistan could blame its predicament on ‘enemy’ India and this acted as a unifying factor. It could fall back on West Pakistan. In 1971, the army had not been Islamised; it was only Punjabised. Today, the Pakistani Army’s motto is ‘Jehad fis’billah’ (Jehad in the Name of Allah). Today, Pakistan cannot blame India for its multiple sclerosis and has no one to blame. And that is the danger.

What India needs is perpetual vigil, be wary of what China might do to help its eternal friend and not rely on hope masquerading as policy.

Source : Hindustan Times 20th August 2007

Global Problems and Regional Issues

Rising global tensions and regional unpredictability will affect India; security managers have difficult choices to make

The Cold War era produced its more or less stable tensions of mutually assured destruction as the two superpowers stared across lethal nuclear fences. The transfer of these tensions to the ‘Third World’ where the main antagonists battled each other either through their surrogates or proxies, helped. Besides, these wars helped in other ways. They enabled the testing of new weapons and the transfer of obsolete weapons to others who did not really need them.

Threats to the security of nations was quantifiable in those days in terms of weapon holdings, men under arms and their fitness to do battle; it used to be about ORBATS (Orders of Battle), the enemy’s military-industrial base and similar other indices. The threats were simpler and somewhat predictable, if only one got the enemy’s intention right. Ideology was the excuse.
The Islamic Revolution in Iran against the Great Satan followed by the Afghan jehad against the Communist Infidel created a new Islamic belief of invincibility. The First Gulf War that followed was also the first Nintendo War. U.S. arms might, backed by hi-tech and smart weaponry, was visible for the first time. The war was fought as much on the CNN news channel as on the sands of Iraq. History was being shown and written in real time.

Closer home, the success of the Afghan jehad, helped substantially by U.S. weapons and Saudi money, along with the collapse of the USSR had a message for its Pakistani mentors. They assessed that they could transfer their expertise and the demobilised jehadi foot soldiers to the Kashmiri theatre. It was an opportunity to bleed India, wrest Kashmir and right the wrongs of 1971. Besides, it was necessary to keep these jehadis away from Pakistan and engaged in India.
The 1990s saw two unrelated developments but ultimately one took advantage of the other. Rising Islamic anger against perceived and real wrongs perpetrated by their rulers in league with the Christian West occurred at a time when technology was making rapid strides. Communications became cheaper, faster. The sat-phone and cell phone revolution along with the rise of the Internet meant that a new kind of threat was emerging. It was global, without frontiers. In fact, a cyber war would ensure that the terrorist need not even cross frontiers to strike. The other uncertainty in all this is that there is no knowing where technology will take us, beyond the knowledge that improvements in applied technology will be increasingly rapid, cheap and universally accessible, including to those likely to misuse and undermine existing systems and societal orders.

The counter-terrorist will remain comparatively flat-footed and also unable to agree unequivocally on the definition of the enemy. Intelligence organisations will continue to find that suicide terrorism and catastrophic terrorism will be the most difficult to predict and prevent. Despite all the intelligence, the terrorist will appear unstoppable at times, especially because it is impossible to kill a terrorist who is willing to die.

Terrorism has become truly global and interlinked with narcotics and diamond smugglers, arms traffickers, money launderers and human traffickers. This annual gross criminal product has been estimated to be about $1.5 trillion, making it substantially bigger than the nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of the U.K. Since this ‘industry’ injected so much money into the western economy, there was hardly any incentive to stop the annual cash flow. No national government is able to tackle this menace, and till September 2001 the west was not even interested.

The Global War on Terror is likely to fade away from the main screen in the next few months. It has far too many ugly memories of failure in Iraq and Afghanistan and of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. It will be extremely painful to go into an American election year with these reminders. Besides, states need new threats that are definable and tangible. The rest of us will be left to fight their own battles against terror while the U.S. gets involved in election-year politics.

There is considerable evidence that NATO, following its presence in Afghanistan, is now transforming itself into a global force. A scene from Afghanistan.

In the course of Congressional testimony last February, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates defined Russia, China and Iran as potential U.S. adversaries. In fact, one can see the beginnings of this as the Anglo-American alliance takes on a resurgent Russia. Vladimir Putin’s Russia will not allow itself to be pushed over into allowing its gigantic energy resources to be the exclusive preserve of the western oil companies. The ballistic missile shields, ostensibly against Iran, are not to be located in Azerbaijan or Turkey but in the Czech Republic and Poland. The message has not been lost on the Russians.

A similar missile defence shield will be located in the Far East, possibly in an increasingly militarised Japan which has been showing growing closeness with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) apart from its existing multifaceted relationship with the U.S. The Chinese have been enquiring about an “Asian NATO” on the Pacific Rim. Globally, China sees itself as major player and worries at this trend that could adversely affect its energy security, economic development and military preparedness. China will view growing India-U.S. relations with similar suspicion even as its own defence expenditure burgeons. It is therefore unlikely to give India much space in the region and will try to restrict Indian influence to its national boundaries.
There is already considerable evidence that NATO, following its presence in Afghanistan, is now transforming itself into a global force. Its tie-ups with Gulf sheikhdoms like Kuwait are being strengthened against possible attacks by Iran, and energy security is the new doctrine. There have been extensive tie-ups between NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council. The massive U.S. military presence in West Asia with its footprint all over the energy-rich Eurasian belt continues.

New tensions are bound to rise in the months ahead as Russia, China and Iran feel they are being encircled and seek to break out. We may be looking at a Cold War Version 2 with its excessive militarisation. This will happen at a time when the western economies are on a downturn and need some revival. Rising global military expenditures will be handy.
In today’s globalised, networked world, security, in all its definitions, is a more complicated business than it was earlier. Global events have regional effects, and vice versa. Wall Street has an almost immediate impact on Dalal Street. And we in India live in a region where six of our neighbours — Pakistan, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka — are listed in that order as failed or failing states among the world’s worst 25, by the Washington-based Fund For Peace.

This does not mean that these states will actually collapse in that order or even collapse at all. But it has to be recognised that India does have more than one problem on its borders. The most important among these problems will be the direction Pakistan will take. These may not translate into conventional military threats but they do mean additional socio-economic and demographic problems at a time when India wants to break free as a major global player.

Rising global tensions and regional unpredictability will inevitably affect India. It may no longer be possible to remain non-aligned. The country’s security managers have difficult choices in the months and years ahead as India strives to seek its place in the sun but its rise is constantly hampered by an unsettled neighbourhood.

Source : The Hindu , 15th August 2007

Capitalist roaders

Watching CNN at a hotel in Beijing, I noticed an advertisement for an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Beijing. This was unthinkable a couple of decades ago, when the Cold War still raged. Today, the Nokia cellphone’s ringtone in Urumqi, Xigatse and New Delhi is the same. There’s Kentucky Fried Chicken in Xinin, Motorola and Sony Ericsson jostle for space in Lhasa, and Buick LaCrosse is advertised on the barely-used highway outside the Kumbum Monastery. Urumqi, in faraway Xingiang, shows off its 35-storeyed buildings, which house Carrefour supermarkets and L’Oreal stores. Globalisation thrives.

Beijing has to be visited to be believed, even if one has read all that there is to read and imagined the rest. From the moment one lands at the huge, gleaming airport and takes the smooth drive along the highway into the city, one senses the feeling of economic power and assurance. From the window of Jianguo Garden Hotel, not far from the Forbidden City, one can see at least 15 giant construction cranes operating as new high-rises soar. There is no evidence of anguished debates on preserving the old. All bleeding hearts have been silenced/co-opted/satisfied.

Beijing’s five ring roads with their intricate interchanges make New Delhi’s pride, the Dhaula Kuan flyover, look puny and crowded. Changan Avenue, in the heart of the city, with its eight-lane traffic, two side lanes and designer shops and chrome and glass structures, says it all. The country’s infrastructure — roads, highways, airports, train stations, telephone systems, housing estates and schools — all built for the future, seem empty or underused. It shows China’s ability to think big.

Our infrastructure is built for the past — overcrowded and inadequate from day one. Beijing has no damaged cars, no dirty buses and no blowing horns. Honda Accords, BMWs and Audis cruise past with hardly any traffic police in sight. Officialdom favours black limousines.

There was an old lady cycling down Changan Avenue. She would stop every 50 metres, pick up cigarette stubs and plastic wrappers with her tongs from the pavement and ride on. But while dust has been banished in Beijing and the streets are washed, pollution is still a problem — by afternoon, a haze settles over the city.

The Chinese have a wonderful way of adapting to circumstances. The local girls at the hotel front office answered to Yvonne or June, and not to their Chinese names. It was more convenient for the visitor. At the bookstore, Harry Potter was Hali Bota, since it was more convenient for the locals. There was no moral police checking on young couples in parks, but perhaps somewhere, there must have been the thought police.

Beijing is readying for the Olympics next year. The Olympic Games City will be China’s pride, for which, we are told, people willingly gave their land. For the present, the worry is about possible terrorist threats and not whether the facilities will be in place by the time of opening — 8 p.m., August 8, 2008.

Beijing may be the centre of power for China, but it is no longer a centre for Communist ideals. There is only one portrait of Mao in the city — at Tiananmen Square. Mao badges are now available in Silk Street’s curio shops, along with portraits of Lenin and Marx. During the fortnight I was there, I saw only two persons wearing Mao suits — at the Kumbum Monastery in Qinghai Province. The rise of the hemline is now directly proportional to prosperity.

It is ironic that there are more policemen on duty defending democracies than on the streets of China, protecting a totalitarian regime. In fact, in China, there is no longer any need to defend the proletariat. People now pursue capitalism with greater zeal than they pursued communism. The Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolutions were horrible mistakes and embarrassments that few talk about and fewer try to justify. Today, everybody is a capitalist roader.

Source : The Hindustan Times , 1st August 2007

The Great Game : 21st Century Version

The rules of the game

The current century began in an intensely violent manner and there are no signs of a let up. Two and a half deadly wars are being fought in our neighbourhood and threaten to spread further and may even affect India in the years ahead.

These are the results of great power politics, ambitions and economic needs. It is therefore interesting to go through some of the statements by Western strategists and political analysts from time to time. There is a common thread running through them – that seeks total dominance over the rest of the world.


Quotes

‘Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a colossus shall we be.’
Thomas Jefferson 1816

NEARLY ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS LATER
‘We have 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period … is to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with all sentimentality … we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation.’
George Kennan, US strategic planner, 1948
ANOTHER FIFTY -FIVE YEARS LATER
‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying this reality… we’ll act again, creating new realities….’
Unnamed Bush adviser talking to Ron Suskind, 2004

This is the global US view but before this we had the British giving their view of how things would be played out.

‘Turkestan, Afghanistan, Transcaspia, Persia—to many these names breath only a sense of utter remoteness … but to me, I confess they are pieces on a chessboard upon which is played out a game for the dominion of the world.’
Lord Curzon, 1898

TWENTY THREE YEARS LATER
‘Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland:
Who rules the heartland commands the World-Island:
Who rules the World-Island commands the World.’
Halford Mackinder, 1921

Reverting to American interests, expressed a hundred years after Curzon’s prediction:
‘I cannot think of a time when we had a region emerge as suddenly to become strategically more significant as the Caspian Sea.’
Dick Cheney, CEO Halliburton 1998


THE PLAYING FIELD

In today’s terminology, he who controls the energy belt in West Asia and the Caspian region controls the world. The Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea region -- Eurasia – remains the most vital region today for powers seeking dominance or economic growth or both.

It is necessary to recapitulate a few facts to capture the importance of the region. The US imports about 30% of its requirements from the region, 40% of the world’s energy requirements pass through the Persian Gulf, and in the years to come India will need to import 90% of its requirements.

Under the previous order of world affairs, private multinational oil companies controlled a large percentage of the resources of energy and their development.

The current trend is towards ownership of assets by national oil companies.

Oil is no longer just traded on the spot market in New York or London, but countries like China and India with their rapidly growing economies are now buying assets in the country of origin in long term bilateral or trilateral arrangements.

Iran is now selling 70% of its oil and gas in euros; it has also sold oil to China in yuan. It has constructed a brand new oil bourse on the Kish island in the Persian Gulf and is expected to trade in Euros. Europeans are buying Iranian gas and there are possibilities of a three-way agreement between the Iranians, Gazprom of Russia and the Austrians.

This is also done to replace the old system of production sharing arrangements where the investing company had the upper hand in acquiring the profits.


MAIN PLAYERS AND THEIR ASSETS

Today there are five major oil giants

• Exxonmobil (US)
• Royal Dutch (Anglo Dutch)
• BP (British)
• Total (French)

Chevron (US)

Even though they control only 9% of the fields, companies like Exxonmobil had a turnover of 450 billion dollars in 2006.

Many have a size that is more than the GDP of 180 of the 195 members of the UN

OPEC

Of the 12 OPEC countries 10 have leading State oil companies. Nine are Muslim majority countries i.e. Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, and UAE.

OTHER NOCs

China National Petroleum Corporation, ONGC Petrobras and Statoil Norway control 16% of the reserves. Fastest growing are the Chinese companies like Sinopec and CNOOC operated in six countries in 1999 and today in 40.

Since the beginning of oil age, the world has consumed 950 bbl of oil, 30 % of this in the last ten years.

Petroleum consumption was 10 mbd in 1950, 50 in 1970, 76 in 2000, and will be 120 in 2025.


THE MAIN NARRATIVE

Oil and gas in the vast Eurasian region are mostly to be found in areas inhabited by Muslims and ruled either by monarchical or dictatorial regimes, sometimes obscurantist as well. In addition, they are politically unstable and even violent, which could easily mean interrupted and uncertain supplies. In most of these countries, including the new countries after the break up of the Soviet Union, there is American troop presence, in varying degrees. In addition us forces are in Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially in areas facing Iran. The only hold out so far is Iran but the noose is tightening and the campaign is getting more vociferous.

But there have been challenges to US control and supremacy in the region. These have emanated from a resurgent Russia and a rising China, principally. It is a reaction also to what the Americans have tried to do in the Russia’s and China’s neighbourhood.

Iraq was never about WMDs, Al Qaeda or democracy. It was about oil, the best of its kind in the world, and because Saddam had tried to kill Papa Bush. Iran had spoiled the US game of containing the Soviet Union by going radically Islamic, held Americans hostage for 444 days and both Iran and Iraq had toyed with the idea of keeping their reserves in Euros. The switch to the Euro would have been devastating for the US economy and many experts compare this to a nuclear attack. There are indications that Iran has gone ahead and shifted a part of its petro-holdings into Euros. Afghanistan was a cold war outcome fought by the superpowers with their proxies and surrogates in the 80s.

Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not prompted by terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, nor waged to spread democracy in West Asia or enhance security at home. Instead, they were conceived and planned in secret long before September 11, 2001 and were undertaken to control petroleum reserves. US State Department official Christina Rocca told the Taliban in August 2001, during the infructuous pipeline negotiations, to “accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.” And so it came to pass.

Planning for Iraq began in 2001. While the world may look at the mayhem and the tragedies in Iraq, in reality this has been a victory for the major oil companies. The new Iraqi law that has been introduced gives the major MNCs ‘unprecedented sweet heart deals’ that allow them to have production sharing agreements. These deals will permit some semblance of Iraqi ownership of assets but the oil companies will rake in at least 75 per cent of the profits indefinitely or until such time as they feel that they have made good their infrastructure costs and investment.

Successive American Presidents have enunciated doctrines for guaranteed supplies of abundant and cheap oil from the gulf. President carter declared in 1980 that access to Persian Gulf oil was a vital national interest and that the US would be prepared to use military force to protect its interests. Carter’s rapid deployment joint task force grew to become the powerful Centcom, with an area of responsibility that coincided with the energy-rich West and Central Asian and Caspian Sea regions.

The Republican Right began planning for the future in the post-Cold War phase. In 1992, the neo con policy paper, Defence Planning Guidance, talked of permanent military superiority and world dominance. It also talked of the need to prevent emergence of a new rival. It was important to remain the predominant outside power in West Asia and Southwest Asia to preserve US and Western access to the region’s oil.

In September 2000, the project for the New American Century, the Washington based think tank, recommended massive power projection capability globally. Translated, this meant stepped-up pressure on ‘rogue’ states like Iraq and Iran, and taking “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields”.

In May 2001, President George W. Bush’s New Energy Policy recommended that ties with oil-rich countries should be bolstered and US presence expanded. The 2001 Quadrennial Defence Review spoke of the need for the US to retain ability to send forces to critical points around the globe. It identified overseas oil-producing regions as critical points. Preemptive intervention became the Bush Doctrine—clear indication that private oil interests and US strategic interests now coincided.

Even as conflict and instability in the oil-producing regions remain a real problem for the foreseeable future, two other crises loom. There is the phenomenon of peak oil. Experts differ about when the supplies will dwindle but all agree that this decline is inevitable and it will become increasingly difficult to extract more oil. The bigger countries—the US, Russia and China—have responded to scarcity by securitising the energy supply dimension and strengthening military alliances in the Gulf.

The other worry for the US was the rise of the Euro. The EU bought over half of the total crude oil produced in West Asia in 2004, which could legitimately insist on paying in Euros. The dollar’s supremacy and its status as the world’s reserve currency were under threat. Oil was denominated in dollars and the strength of the US dollar had propelled the US economy to new heights and military supremacy. In effect, the US, with its more than $ 6 trillion debt in a $ 9 trillion economy, was not really paying for any oil.

Iran had also transferred a majority of its reserves into Euros in 2002 and contemplated a Euro-based oil bourse by March 2006. Some European analysts describe the effect of this changeover as worse than a nuclear attack on the US. Iran had qualified to be a member of the axis of evil. Despite all the calls to battle, the US has limited choices. A full-scale invasion seems to be out; aerial attacks would be the other option. Clandestine covert operations through the Baloch areas of Pakistan and partly through Afghanistan are now a reality. Somehow, Iran has to be disciplined—and soon.

Political interests apart from economic interests are an important factor for the US. Supplies from the Caspian region must not go through either Russia to Europe or through Iran to the Persian Gulf, which is the cheapest and the fastest route. The Americans want the oil to flow from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan through the turbulent Caucasus and end up at Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, both expensive and long. The gas from Turkmenistan should flow through Afghanistan to Pakistan, similarly expensive and long and charted through politically volatile territories of Afghanistan and Balochistan.

The new US foreign policy of “transformational diplomacy” is not just about just reporting the world as it is but about replicating nation-states into US clones. Post conflict multinational reconstruction and stability teams consisting of lawyers, engineers, economists will be deployed. It is more about access diplomacy. Arab analysts point out that US embassy officials began to tour the corridors of government buildings in the countries to which they were posted on grounds to monitor the progress of irrigation, healthcare and other development projects sponsored and funded by US aid agencies. Soon there were whispers that American directives to local government agencies on purely sovereign concerns were being received.

America’s neo-cons have consistently professed that America had a global mission that military power was the indispensable foundation of American foreign policy, and stressed the importance of the use of military superiority to help introduce democracy. The debate in the last two decades of the 20th century provided the real foundation of the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive action which means an America driven forward by unrivalled military power aided by religion and the growing profits of the world’s largest multinational corporations. Iraq may have been an unmitigated disaster according to most but for US oil corporations it has been a glorious war. Exxon, Chevron and Conocophilips earned US $ 64 billion between them in 2005.

The US may today have a bureau of deconstruction in the Department of Defence that would deconstruct 26 regimes and a Bureau of Reconstruction in the State Department that would reconstruct these countries into democratic American clones. Others like Seymour Hersh have talked of ten countries that are up for facelifts while Ralph Peters has redesigned maps of the region. The global war on terror is not about defeating terrorism, but is a handy means for re-ordering the world and retaining US pre-eminence.

It is, however, becoming increasingly costly and difficult to retain this position. It is axiomatic that without access to assured cheap and abundant energy supplies, the US cannot maintain its way of life and its full spectrum global dominance. A Russia that was supposed to have been finally defeated after the Afghan jehad and the fall of the Berlin Wall is resurgent under President Putin. The rise of China, as a global power, is another phenomenon that Washington must deal with. There is competition for resources and markets; Putin has used energy as a weapon of influence. Neither threatens the US militarily but its economic interests and those of its allies as well as political influence are being challenged. Equally, without access to similar energy resources China will not be able sustain its scorching rate of growth required to keep its economy growing and prevent an internal political upheaval.

As a vital supplier of gas and oil to Europe and Japan, Russia exhibited its newfound strength in early 2006. When it shut off gas supplied to Ukraine as part of a bargain for a higher price. Possibly, the Russian president had learnt these tactics of using energy reserves for geo-strategic advantage at the St Petersburg mining institute where he did a dissertation on “toward a Russian transnational energy company” soon after making a career change post-KGB. Russia-China relations have been on the upswing with mutually beneficial military and technology deals. They are also working some deals with Saudi Arabia. Russia may have lost the cold war but is not going to lose the energy war.

Elsewhere, the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation comprising China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, has enrolled Iran as a member. These could be early signs of moving towards a Central Asian version of OPEC or NATO. The prospects of a triangular relationship that has Russia, China and Iran as the three sides with the energy rich Central Asia boxed in, is fast becoming America’s geo-strategic nightmare especially after its colossal failures in West Asia. Iran has 11% of the world’ oil and 16% the world’s gas. Although Saudi Arabia has more oil and Russia has more gas, no other country has more of both of these resources combined. Iran is geo-strategically located as the only country that has borders with the vital Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. This, rather than the nuclear issue, is the real reason for US anxiety about the way Iran will turn. Iran is the only country that has gained from the failed US campaign in Iraq. No wonder, less than spontaneous anti-Tehran demonstrations seem to be taking place in Iran’s Azerbaijan province and in Khuzestan bordering Iraq while there have been intrusions from Balochistan into Iran by the Sunni outfit Al Qaeda associated group Jundullah.

In the last seven years, Putin has brought Russia back into international reckoning. Today, the Russians feel sufficiently confident to be able to cancel their production sharing agreement with Royal Dutch Shell in Sakhalin-2 and, Gazprom, the Russian energy giant has taken over. There is steely determination in approach, bordering on ruthlessness at times. Chechnya and the Dubrovka Theatre hostage episode are indications of the latter; the manner in which the vast energy resources have been used as a strategic and tactical weapon is a sign of a single-minded desire — to protect Russia’s national interests.

Forty-five per cent of Russian arms sales have been to China, at the rate of $ 2 billion annually. The first-ever joint military exercise of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) and the SCO will be held this year in Russia’s Volga-Urals area. There has been a coming together of Russia and China in other ways as well and the recent visit of President Hu to Russia where the two leaders referred to India as the third side of a possible triangle was interesting. Hu followed this up with a visit to Japan. Quite apparently, the Chinese are preparing themselves for stronger competition with the US, if not confrontation in the years ahead. Left to themselves they would not want to provoke the US into any pre-emptive action against them but the attempt is to assure uninterrupted supplies of energy and a base rate of growth of about 10% annually.

Meanwhile, the Chinese too have been active in Kazakhstan having purchased a second oil field since 2005. The Russian state-owned company, Rosneft, plans to enter the Chinese market for retail in petrol and petroleum products. Pipelines into China would be built by Russians and not by Western companies. The Russians have become more active in Turkmenistan and seem to be beating off competition from the US, the EU, China and Iran as the new regime seeks to strengthen its ties with Gazprom.

A smaller but equally important game is being played in our neighbourhood. Pakistan has now begun to claim that Gilgit and Baltistan are not part of the state of J&K. All along it has tried to depict these as Northern Areas of Pakistan. China too would be interested that Pakistan has total control over Gilgit and Baltistan. Otherwise the 298-million dollar investment in the development of Gwadar is a financial or strategic waste. Xinjiang is only 2500 kms away from the Arabian seaport of Gwadar. On the other hand, it is 4500 kms away from the Chinese east coast. A fully developed port at Gwadar would help in the economic development of Xinjiang. Gas and oil pipelines from Gwadar to Xinjiang and Tibet would enable China to overcome the uncertainty of sea-lanes from the Persian Gulf through the Malacca Straits patrolled by the US.

The Chinese will be building the Gwadar Dalbandin rail network into Xinjiang as an extension of the development of Gwadar port which will have an exclusive SEZ for the Chinese. China has set aside US $ 150 million to upgrade the Karakorum Highway and widen it from 10 metres to 30 metres for heavy vehicles in all weather conditions. A rail link is also planned in the region with technical advice from an Austrian firm to connect Pakistan and China. This link will be connected further south into the main Pakistani rail grid. Fibre optic cables are being laid. An Islamabad-Kashgar bus service will start from August 1.

Both China and Pakistan are getting ready for an economic boom that will include transit trade to Central Asia. The Pakistan Army’s National Logistics Cell, which has a near monopoly, will handle this freight traffic all the way up to Kazakhstan and Xinjiang. There is money to be made. Thus development of both Gwadar and control of Gilgit and Baltistan are interlinked and the Pak Army will gain financially from both. In fact, it is going to be a financial bonanza for the already huge corporate interests of the Pak Army.

The Chinese are also going to construct 12 new highways into Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan as part of their plans to extend eastwards along the old Silk Route into Europe and access to warm waters. The longest one will stretch 1,680 kilometers from Urumqi, capital of the autonomous region, to Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, Iran’s Mashhad, Turkey’s Istanbul and finally reach Europe. The road will be completed before 2010.

There is a problem though that is more intrinsic to the Central Asian republics are constructed than to any external factors. It is the problem of abundance in the three oil and gas producing countries—Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan accompanied by distorted and uneven growth as well as unstable undiversified economies leading to corruption and wasteful/fanciful schemes that are counterproductive. Political instability is inbuilt in autocratic systems. Despite these problems the Europeans and the Chinese have been looking at Central Asia for their energy requirements. Oil flows to China are still dependent on Russia and there is not enough gas potentially available in Central Asia that would change European dependence on Russia.

The fear in the West also is that long-term bilateral arrangements would knock out the spot market mechanism at the New York and London stock exchanges, while also undermining the production sharing arrangements that had benefited western oil conglomerates. The Russians are back in business and US advances have been halted. Putin gets no popularity points in Washington for this but he does in Moscow, which is important.

The new version of the Great Game includes trying to ratchet the fear of a rising Shia Iran among Sunni Arabs to create a Shia-Sunni schism. The danger is that this will merely succeed in generating anger in West Asia that will give birth to more Al Qaeda and its variants. Vali Nasr, a professor at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey California, says that violent anti-Shiism was the domain of radical pro Al-Qaeda clerics, websites and armed groups in the Arab world and Pakistan. Sectarianism — especially among Sunnis — was a driver for radical jehadi ideology.

Former American National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski has warned that if the US remains bogged down in Iraq it would inevitably lead to a conflict with Iran and the rest of the Islamic world. Unless the Americans and the Iranians engage in dialogue, there is a very real danger that we are marching towards an unimaginable disaster fought with tactical nuclear weapons. There is already speculation about the likely date of attack but when US Air Force tankers move to remote air bases to refuel B-2 bombers then it will be time for the world to take cover.

Although the US is still the primary global economic, military and technological power, American actions have given room for others to walk into the space being yielded. Obviously, us ability, or perhaps willingness to reconstruct as it did immediately after world war ii, no longer matches its ability to deconstruct. The second is the rise of Russia — Vladimir Putin’s speech at the last Munich security conference was like a punch in the Western solar plexus where he spoke of “one single centre of power, one single centre of force and one single master” and the dangers of this situation. This was evidence of an angered Russia on the rebound. Not for nothing does Putin have a 70-80 per cent approval rating in his own country. His speech was not in isolation but comes after the Russian economy with its vast energy resources has shown signs of revival.

Putin followed this with a visit to Saudi Arabia that has the potential to be as epochal as Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. Not many years ago, the Saudis had been enthusiastic members of an alliance that sponsored and financed a jehad against the god-less Soviets. During his recent visit to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar, Putin spoke of a ‘GAS OPEC’, offered military assistance to Saudi Arabia as well as nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia and Jordan. A GAS OPEC may still be some years away and is only a concept but the very thought of such a cartel has sent shivers down the Western spine as this would leave the producers of gas as the controllers of prices and production and not the consumers.

The third is the continued strong showing of China as an economic and military power on the rise. Russia and China have been moving closer to each other in the last two years as relations between the US and Russia began to sour. The border issue between China and Russia having been settled; there have been military exercises and increased Russian arms and energy sale commitments. China has made important gains in Africa, where it is likely to be in contention with the US just as it may be partly in cooperation and partly in competition with Russia in the energy rich Eurasian and West Asian regions. Meanwhile, China seeks to strengthen its position in Asia seeking but not admitting to eventually wanting to replace the US as the primary power in the continent.

Ironically, the American decline began, unnoticed, soon after the end of the cold war. It seems that the American military-industrial complex, dependent on the profits of war and insecurity, was horrified that peace seemed to have broken out. Most of the American establishment went hunting for new enemies and they thought it best to go for the Russian jugular. Thus, instead of helping the Russians to recover from years of communism, the opposite happened. This only proved the prediction that Washington and Moscow would always have competed for global dominance regardless of ideology.

After the Warsaw Pact was beguiled into disbanding, NATO quickly moved into Poland and the three Baltic republics. Ukraine and Georgia were sought to be brought under US influence through sponsored multi-coloured democracy revolutions. When the US wanted temporary bases in Central Asia to fight the war on terror in Afghanistan, Putin agreed only to find that these were becoming permanent US facilities in Russia’s own backyard. Anti-missile defence systems are now located in Poland and the Czech republic and new US air bases in Bulgaria and Romania. The Western oil conglomerates encouraged Russian oil and gas to break free of Russian government control. But under Putin this has been largely reversed and the Russians are using energy as a strategic weapon to reposition themselves much in the same way that the west has used largesse, sanctions and technology alternatively to extract concessions or force a favourable decision. Today we see a resurgent Russia challenging the US.

In the context of dwindling fossil fuel supplies and rising demands, he who controls not just the production but also the supply and has discovered substitutes, will rule the world. India, whose buoyant economy has a 70 per cent dependency on imported fossil fuels and weaponry for its security, is disadvantaged as it has neither the deep pockets of the Chinese and the Americans, the military power of the Russians and the Americans and nor the single-mindedness of the Chinese or the Russians. The jostling for vantage positions to control energy resources in the years ahead is going to be ruthless and urgent. This will largely determine each country’s future in this century.

As the Great Game intensifies, there is need to reposition and reorient our strategies. There has to be an Indian version of the CNN-BBC-AL JAZEERA kind of voice in India’s extended neighbourhood.

There is need to find alternative sources of energy, to utilize renewable resources and to conserve what we have. There is enough wind and solar resource available in India that would allow for fuller, determined and systematic use of this natural and replaceable resource. None of this will reduce our dependence on imports from a volatile and unstable region.
There is need, also, to capitalise on the soft power of our IT industry, the talent of our young population and the ability of our engineers to handle infrastructure and petro-chemical projects. India must seek to have a higher profile in the West Asia-Eurasia region.

Nevertheless, no country can have pretensions to being a major power if it is so completely dependent on external sources for energy to run its industry and turn its wheels, or imported weaponry and armament to defend itself.

Self reliance is not only required it is the difference between survival at low levels and success at high levels.

Source : Indian Defence review , Jul-Sep 2007, Vol 22(3)