Armitage had come, delivered his now famous 'either you are with us or against us message' that fateful September day and left. It was Musharraf's turn, about a week later, to honour this commitment, having convinced his grandees in khaki of the need to pretend to make their peace with God on Earth. In a not particularly well written speech, Musharraf indulged in the mandatory India baiting ("I would like to tell India "Lay Off") as he tried to justify his dumping of their protégés, the Taliban. Despite this bravado, it was obvious that the speech had been delivered under duress but the hidden meaning is important.
Musharraf had sought an Islamic justification for this apparent U-turn on the Taliban and Al Qaeda when he acquiesced to US demands to participate in the War on Terror. He used examples from the Prophet's tactical alliance with the Jews to defeat the Meccans. And when the Jews became nervous about the rise of Islam six years later, He neutralised the Meccans with the Treaty of Hudaibiya and led the Muslims to victory.
The requirement was strategic, yet Musharraf had to satisfy the mullahs. He continued "The lesson is that when there is a crisis situation, the path of wisdom is better than the path of emotions. Therefore, we have to take a strategic decision. There is no question of weakness of faith or cowardice. … Even otherwise it is said in Shariah that if there are two difficulties at a time and a selection has to be made it is better to opt for the lesser one. .." He ended his speech describing Pakistan as the fortress of Islam, and "God forbid, if this fortress is harmed in any way it would cause damage to the cause of Islam."
Musharraf used the Prophet's example to justify his actions saying that he was choosing the lesser evil and that it (the arrangement with the Americans) was temporary. Soon enough Musharraf's game was clear when he continued to play footsie with the terrorists while he portrayed himself as the American finger in the dyke against Islamic terrorists. The charade lasted long enough for Musharraf to preen himself as the Most Stalwart Ally while the Americans poured money and India-specific weapons into Pakistan.
For six years and more, Musharraf was America's champion fighter against terror. Now, having been relegated to being a mere President, he declared that if he stepped down the US would launch direct attacks in FATA and take away Pakistan's national hero, A. Q. Khan, the Gwadar project would get into rough waters and Pakistan's time tested relations with China would suffer. From being a bastion against terrorism, an increasingly irrelevant Musharraf wants to become a bastion against the US. But the Americans have already named a price (US $ 7 billion) for doing business with the new civilian government indicating that they are moving away from Musharraf and his somersault may turn out to be less than perfect.
It is not a co-incidence that Generals Zia, Mirza Aslam Beg and Musharraf, gave India the maximum grief; the other Generals, either Punjabi or Pathans merely ended up dividing their country. The Nuclear Retailer, A Q Khan from Bhopal, has never hidden his visceral hatred for India. There has been a strong dislike for their place of birth matched by a desire to prove that their decision or that of their parents was correct. This is reflected in what they say or write and the company they keep.
In a recent newspaper article, Aslam Beg claims that India and the US had conspired to establish a large intelligence network in Afghanistan, as part of a 'great game' to destabilise Pakistan as well as China, Russia, Central Asian States and Iran. He then begins to hallucinate about a multilateral intelligence network of the CIA, MI6, Mossad, R&AW and the BND with its nerve centre at Jabal-us-Seraj. Located in huge buildings and equipped with antennas and state-of- the-art electronic gadgetry, this intelligence multinational has outposts in Sarobi and Kandahar against Pakistan; Mazar-e-Sharif against Russia and Central Asian States and Herat against Iran. The Faizabad camp against the Chinese also has Muslim ulemas from India imparting training to the Uighurs from Xinjiang, if the General is to be believed. If this is meant to be part of a psywar then it is fairly unsophisticated. Beg runs an NGO in Pakistan ironically called FRIENDS.
It is this mindset about India and excessive reliance on religious obscurantism that allows successive establishments to look the other way when Islamic radicals like Hafeez Saeed of the Dawat Irshad and their Lashkar-e-Tayyaba strikers talk of annihilating India and establishing Caliphates in India. There have been reports that the ISI and the Lashkar were trying to revive Sikh militancy following a meeting in Berlin last June. No Indian General, nor any Indian public figure makes the kind of statements that are routinely heard in Pakistan. Pakistanis and Indians may have had a common chromosome but theirs seems to have mutated into something quite different. This is what people like Zia, Aslam Beg and Musharraf have done to their people. It happened in the Army training schools and in the madrassas.
Madrassas in Pakistan, quite a few beyond the control of the authorities, funded internally by Pakistanis as well by generous donors from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran, educate about one and half million students. It is true that all madrassas do not teach jehad, which is just as well, otherwise the problem would be far more frightening. Jihadist tendencies have nevertheless become a growing part of Pakistani society. This problem, therefore, cannot be wished away. Pakistan is now haunted by Pakistani terrorism and the Lal Masjid episode, the massive killings in FATA and the spread of terror into the Punjabi heartland are symptoms of the disease.
The situation may appear calm for the moment as Pakistanis begin another experiment with democracy. They have voted for a political dispensation that many hope will keep the Army under civilian control and the Islamists at bay. Neither is likely to happen. The PPP and the PML (N) have buried the hatchet for the present as they tackle the common enemy, Musharraf. The Army is in the barracks and it is all quiet in FATA but the issues that aroused passion in the tribal lands -- US activities and Pakistanis participation – have not disappeared. The country is in the midst of a political honeymoon with dreams of a rosy future but democracy is still a long way away. The hard grind of running a country where institutions have broken down has barely begun amidst growing economic difficulties with no short term solutions. This could easily lead to rapid disillusionment.
It must be remembered that about 30% of the people voted in Pakistan which gave a split verdict more or less on ethnic lines. They say the Islamists have been thrown out; many did not vote nor stand for elections. It took Pakistan 30 years to slip into this jihadist mould; it will take another three decades to pull itself out of this. It has got to be a generational change with greater liberal education where history is not distorted nor children transformed into obscurantist adults.
So, those of us who exult and gush at the arrival of democracy in Pakistan may want to pause and think. The time for open borders and visa free travel is still far away.
(an abridged version of this article was published in The Asian Age, April 29, 2008)
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
India and Its External Security
There was always more than one India living together for most of its history. Today at least two Indias are growing together. A traffic jam at the 32-lane highway toll tax plaza as motorists leave for work with the occasional Bentley and its sole occupant gliding by the gates is not unusual. Nor is it unusual to see a camel drawn transportation system not too far on the side road close by or a three wheeler scooter rickshaw carrying sixteen passengers to work. This is the new India on the move – young, confident, buoyant, corporate and also a demanding 350 million consumer class. It signifies an awakening after years of colonisation that stifled and socialism that did not deliver.
According to some Pakistani calculations, two of the country’s biggest industrialists, the Ambani brothers have enough resources to buy off the Karachi Stock Exchange with money to spare and four Indian industrialists can buy of the entire produce of Pakistan, the region’s second largest economy, also with money to spare. Progress at this rate needs resources and markets and political and economic stability in the neighbourhood. India’s neighbours thus have a choice – either they can ignore the rise of India or become part of this new journey that will take them to new vistas.. Whatever happens, they remain subjects of concern for India because India lives in a difficult neighbourhood.
A Difficult Neighbourhood
The Failed State Index for 2006 prepared by the Washington-based Fund for Peace, lists Pakistan (9), Afghanistan (10), Myanmar (18), Bangladesh (19), Nepal (20) and Sri Lanka (25) as the most dysfunctional states in the world.. Six of India’s neighbours are thus listed in the top 25 dysfunctional states. India’s three other neighbours -- the gigantic and powerful China and the diminutive Himalayan state of Bhutan and the atoll republic of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean -- are the exceptions to this categorisation.
This is not to suggest that collapse of these states is imminent or that this will occur in the order listed. Equally, it is unlikely that the Fund for Peace will change this unflattering and worrying depiction of India’s neighbourhood for 2007. This is because all these states have continued to exhibit classic symptoms of failed states in varying degrees. They have failed to provide basic security and good governance to their people and have lost control over the use of force within their own boundaries.
Multiple Challenges
In considering India’s external security the country’s policy makers have to bear in mind the economic backwardness and political instabilities of its smaller neighbours, the continued inimical relations that Pakistan has maintained with India. It has used terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy and as a force equaliser. India has to contend with the intentions of a powerful China that would seek to be the paramount power in Asia. External security would demand assessment of conventional military threats but in addition, terrorism, energy security, environmental degradation, demographic changes and access to natural resources including water and markets are the new factors. The nature of threats that emanate from the weakness of the smaller countries and those from the intentions of the bigger countries, China and Pakistan, are different and need different responses.
The Smaller Neighbours
A billion Indians, with enough problems of their own, thus live in a troubled part of a troubled planet. They live in an era of exploding expectations with limited resources and in economies of shortages across the entire South Asian region. The region continues to remain economically backward and politically unstable. Pakistan and Bangladesh, two of India’s most populous neighbours, are rapidly slipping into religious obscurantism. India will continue to face demanding challenges from its neighbours.
These are Nepal’s continuing domestic turmoil as it struggles to introduce democracy in the midst of a violent campaign led by the radical left wing ‘Maoists”; Bangladesh’s recession into a thinly veiled military regime after its troubled experience with democracy and slide into Talibanisation; and, Sri Lanka’s unending fratricidal war arising from the inability of the Sinhala majority to reconcile to the demands of an increasingly violent Tamil minority. Myanmar, with whom India has a long land frontier, has largely been an aloof and distant neighbour although there are signs of a thaw in the midst of fears that China may have become the relevant power in that country. A little further away but strategically relevant to India in the context of Pakistan and access to Central Asia, is Afghanistan which continues to slide into unending chaos.
The largest Muslim concentration in the world, about 450 to 460 million live in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Of these, about one third is in India. This makes them the largest number of Muslims living in a democratic set up for the longest time, any where in the world today. The rest have been under an increasing influence of dictatorships and Islamic radicalism at a time when state policies have weakened liberal societies while an anti-American sentiment has grown sharply. The challenge here for India is to keep its own Muslims immune from external influences where attempts are undoubtedly being made not only to suborn them but also simultaneously, to provoke a Hindu backlash.
India cannot help its size or strength and has to live with the title of a regional hegemon or even a bully at times accused of arrogance and intrusiveness when trying to help or being haughty and indifferent when trying to stay away. India baiting thus is common in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. It is perhaps natural that some of them seek comfort wit the distant power against the local power. Some of the neighbours do not wish to share in the prospects of mutual prosperity that India might offer but are willing to share poverty. These countries seek their own security by isolating themselves from India defying the logic of geography.
Consequently, nations of the sub-continent are unable to maximise economic complementarities and opportunities to the extent that they hardly trade with each other. Transit routes are denied, common rail and road links are virtually non-existent. It is this lack of common economic and security perceptions among the neighbours which have hamstrung multi-lateral organisations like SAARC, unlike the EU or the ASEAN, which function as a common platform for diverse interests they represent. The other problem is that India is being globally recognised as a rising economic power but the region is slow to recognise and take advantage of this evolving new situation.
For India, the nightmare is a failed state in its neighbourhood and the influx of refugees with their socio-economic impact as India, despite its economic size, does not have the capacity to bolster the sagging systems in all these countries for all times. The choice is whether or not to become a totally dysfunctional state is the individual choice of the state yet how this is handled will be a major challenge for India in the future. Bangladesh, for instance, surrounded on three sides by India and crucial to India’s economic development, has the choice to become the birthplace for the next Islamic revolution or a reasonably modern economic state. Closer economic and trade tie-ups with India would generate employment and reasonable prosperity within the country. India could become an important stake holder in Bangladesh’s prosperity but is hampered by that country’s domestic political compulsions which seek sustenance in anti-India rhetoric. The same principles apply to Nepal where its political future still seems uncertain as the mainstream traditional political parties battle it out for space with the radical Maoists who seek a complete overhaul of the system. Sri Lanka seeks better political and economic ties with India but is constantly being pulled down by its own ethnic problems and the occasional urge to balance India with China. Bhutan has successfully amalgamated its economic system with India and has benefited from this. Myanmar has been difficult to prise it open for Indian interests but objects to any suggestion that it allows China a freer hand than other countries.
Pakistan—Slipping into a Jehadi mindset
The assassination of two-time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007 typified not only an extremely violent year for Pakistan but also signified the kind of dangerous political impasse into which that the country has slipped. In 2007 there were 1442 terrorist attacks and incidents of political and sectarian violence inside Pakistan. More than 3000 persons were killed up against 657 similar incidents in 2006 in which 907 persons were killed. 232 army men, 163 para-military troops and 71 policemen were killed in terrorist attacks and of the 60 suicide attacks 41 were directed against security forces. This indicates not only the anger against them but the absence of fear. Of the 1636 persons shown as arrested for terrorist activity the largest component, 740 was from the restive province of Balochistan where, mostly unknown to the rest of the world, a fierce battle for independence is being fought by Baloch nationalists. All this is blowback – the unintended consequences of unacknowledged actions in another country. One of the most dangerous blowbacks for Pakistan has been that there is an incumbency fatigue against the Army and it has lost much of its sheen in recent years.
This has been the cumulative result of decades of incorrect policy both by Pakistan and its benefactors. Pakistan’s leaders, both civilian and military, have not been able to reconcile to the reality that theirs is a smaller country and has fewer resources than India. They have constantly sought to justify the creation of a Muslim homeland on the sub-continent. Insecure against a ‘Hindu’ neighbour, Pakistan’s leaders from very early days, sought security outside the region and the Pakistan Army, which has ruled the country, directly and indirectly for most of the period, refuses to give up historical grudges and ambitions -- to avenge the creation of Bangladesh that undermined the two-nation theory, and to create more Caliphates in India.
There is a very real fear in Pakistani ruling circles that a secular democratic India which is also economically successful on its borders would undermine the ideology of an Islamic Pakistan. Jehad against the Soviets in Afghanistan and terrorism in India were the result of these warped policies. While the Soviets may have left, India was not going to go away. The result has been that today Pakistan faces the danger of being consumed by its own creations – jehad abroad and the Taliban at home.
Many Pakistanis see Musharraf as America’s stooge and anti-American sentiments are high in the country. Any attempt to roll back the Taliban/Islamic Emirate in the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan is being fiercely resisted with an element of the security forces unwilling to engage in battle against fellow Muslims and tribesmen. Sharia courts have been established and an Islamic taxation system has been introduced. The movement has spread further inland into other parts of the country. Violence and extremism in the name of religious ideology is now directly linked with the US-led was in Afghanistan and the Pakistan army crackdown against these forces generates further hatred. The increased targeting of the armed forces by suicide bombers is an indication of this. Yet the hard truth is that the Pakistani establishment, especially the Army, has been so deeply involved with the various terrorist organisations in their country and for so long that it is now difficult for them to disengage.
Their jehad is now targeted not only against the “infidels” occupying Afghanistan but also against the “infidels” that rule Pakistan or propagate secularism. The political situation is complicated because in the absence of any stable institutions there are no constitutional shock absorbers to cushion the tremors in a country caught up in internal ethnic and religious turmoil.
The other effect has been the outward movement of jehad from centres in Pakistan. Jehad had gone international during the Afghan jehad days and its immediate fall out was in India in the Nineties. The time to arrest the growth has now gone and events in September 11, 2001 or the Madrid train bombings, the London bombings later and again the arrests of suspected terrorists in Barcelona, all have a Pakistani connection.
China – Harmonious rise or impending challenge
India is blessed with two neighbours both of whom are nuclear weapons states and of which one, Pakistan has remained an implacable foe while the other, China has had frosty relations for long spells with a thaw setting in recent years. Today, the world’s two largest countries, in terms of populations, with the two of the largest armed forces, nuclear weapons and with the highest growth rates are separated by unmarked 4057 km long border. There are prospects of peace and prosperity and should the two get together they would become the largest and the richest economic powerhouses and military powers. This would be a situation unthinkable among Western strategists. However, so long as the border question remains unresolved, genuine progress on major strategic issues is unlikely. There could be co operation but more likely there will be competition and even confrontation although conflict seems unlikely. Beijing, however, does not perceive India as a competitor only as a pretender to greatness.
While there is a vast economic stake in keeping the border tranquil the reality is that despite 27 years of negotiations, the border issue remains unresolved. India-China trade has grown phenomenally from a mere $ 2.5 billion a few years ago to $25 billion last year and growing. Growing economic and trade relations do not necessarily lead to political warmth as in the case of Japan and China. The slow progress in resolving this issue and China’s assertiveness regionally and on the border issue in recent times indicates a new approach by the Chinese. This is partly due to the perceived closeness between India and the United States but strategically and for decades, China has sought out balancers in the region. Consistent support to Pakistan militarily to the extent of supplying nuclear weapon and missile technology as well as equipment has been part of China’s low cost hedge against India. China too cannot afford to see the Indian model succeed and become a rival for influence in Asia which is seen by Chinese leaders as the sole preserve of China to exclusion of all, including the US.
Many Indian analysts feel that there is enough space for India and China to grow together. China has larger ambitions and its search for a greater role for itself sharpened after it became a net importer of oil in 1994 to meet its rapidly growing need for energy to sustain its economy. The US led Global war on Terror and the US presence on its neighbourhood in Central Asia indicated greater urgency for Chinese planners. China had to seek greater strategic depth for itself to ensure acquire land routes for its oil and gas requirements rather than the sea routes that were liable to interruptions. It has since then sought exclusive arrangements with various strategic energy suppliers globally, including India’s neighbourhood. It has used its closeness with the present Myanmar regime to exclude India from a gas supply arrangement. Elsewhere, China has opposed India’s attempts to seek membership of the P-5 or the post of the UNSG. It stance on the India-US civilian nuclear power deal remains ambivalent.
Unable to protect sea-lanes because of an inadequate navy, the Chinese needed alternative routes for energy supplies. Chinese began the construction of Gwadar, close to the vital Straits of Hormuz through which 40 per cent of the world’s oil passes and located on Pakistan’s Balochistan coast, at a feverish pace in 2002 and was completed in 2007. The port will have an exclusive SEZ for China and will eventually be linked through the Chinese built Karakoram Highway to Khunjerab Pass to Kashgar with a network of roads, rail links and gas pipelines. The Karakoram Highway has served as a route through occupied Kashmiri territories for covert Chinese nuclear and missile transfers and other military aid to Pakistan. 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 the Bay of Bengal.
Beijing thus has two strategic corridors on either side of India in a north-south axis — the Trans-Karakoram Corridor from western China stretching all the way down to Gwadar and the Irrawaddy Corridor from Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal that has brought Chinese security personnel to Burmese sites close both to India’s eastern strategic assets and to the Strait of Malacca. A third Chinese strategic corridor is in the east-west axis in Tibet across India’s northern frontiers. In addition the $6.2-billion railway from Gormu to Lhasa in Tibet significantly boosts China’s offensive military capability against India. A railway branch southward from Lhasa to Xigatse is nearing completion. China now has the logistic capability to intensify military pressure at short notice by rapidly mobilizing up to 12 divisions.
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 co-operation 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 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 will not however challenge the US directly in the foreseeable future but will seek to undermine its influence. 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. The present closeness of Iran and China is part of a mutually beneficial arrangement at a time when the US is on the defensive in the Middle East. Apart from the various energy tie-ups that Beijing has worked out with Kazakhstan, Russia and other Central Asian states, it will now build twelve new highways connecting Xinjiang to major Central Asian cities 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.
The Future
India thus has to deal with a turbulent Pakistan where at times it looks as if no –one is in control as the country seems to slip into an extremist abyss. On the other border China is more assertive as it perceives India as part of a southern flanking move by the US.
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 and non-state actors threatening existing stabilities. Interstate relations are now going to be more carefully calibrated and sophisticated with no clearly demarcated power blocs operating in a globalised world. Various triangulations are being configured, many of which exclude the US. Russia, India and China have been talking to each other trilaterally 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, at present and for the foreseeable future, no country, including India, China and Russia would want to jeopardise its relationship with the US for the sake of its new partners.
Handling new challenges for an India that is growing rapidly at a time when China is growing faster will throw up new challenges for India’s policy makers while old threats and problems remain. The most urgent is the eastward movement of the Taliban mindset from Afghanistan to Pakistan as Pakistan is consumed by its own creations - Taliban and jehad.
Source : La Vanguardia, Spain, April-June 2008
According to some Pakistani calculations, two of the country’s biggest industrialists, the Ambani brothers have enough resources to buy off the Karachi Stock Exchange with money to spare and four Indian industrialists can buy of the entire produce of Pakistan, the region’s second largest economy, also with money to spare. Progress at this rate needs resources and markets and political and economic stability in the neighbourhood. India’s neighbours thus have a choice – either they can ignore the rise of India or become part of this new journey that will take them to new vistas.. Whatever happens, they remain subjects of concern for India because India lives in a difficult neighbourhood.
A Difficult Neighbourhood
The Failed State Index for 2006 prepared by the Washington-based Fund for Peace, lists Pakistan (9), Afghanistan (10), Myanmar (18), Bangladesh (19), Nepal (20) and Sri Lanka (25) as the most dysfunctional states in the world.. Six of India’s neighbours are thus listed in the top 25 dysfunctional states. India’s three other neighbours -- the gigantic and powerful China and the diminutive Himalayan state of Bhutan and the atoll republic of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean -- are the exceptions to this categorisation.
This is not to suggest that collapse of these states is imminent or that this will occur in the order listed. Equally, it is unlikely that the Fund for Peace will change this unflattering and worrying depiction of India’s neighbourhood for 2007. This is because all these states have continued to exhibit classic symptoms of failed states in varying degrees. They have failed to provide basic security and good governance to their people and have lost control over the use of force within their own boundaries.
Multiple Challenges
In considering India’s external security the country’s policy makers have to bear in mind the economic backwardness and political instabilities of its smaller neighbours, the continued inimical relations that Pakistan has maintained with India. It has used terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy and as a force equaliser. India has to contend with the intentions of a powerful China that would seek to be the paramount power in Asia. External security would demand assessment of conventional military threats but in addition, terrorism, energy security, environmental degradation, demographic changes and access to natural resources including water and markets are the new factors. The nature of threats that emanate from the weakness of the smaller countries and those from the intentions of the bigger countries, China and Pakistan, are different and need different responses.
The Smaller Neighbours
A billion Indians, with enough problems of their own, thus live in a troubled part of a troubled planet. They live in an era of exploding expectations with limited resources and in economies of shortages across the entire South Asian region. The region continues to remain economically backward and politically unstable. Pakistan and Bangladesh, two of India’s most populous neighbours, are rapidly slipping into religious obscurantism. India will continue to face demanding challenges from its neighbours.
These are Nepal’s continuing domestic turmoil as it struggles to introduce democracy in the midst of a violent campaign led by the radical left wing ‘Maoists”; Bangladesh’s recession into a thinly veiled military regime after its troubled experience with democracy and slide into Talibanisation; and, Sri Lanka’s unending fratricidal war arising from the inability of the Sinhala majority to reconcile to the demands of an increasingly violent Tamil minority. Myanmar, with whom India has a long land frontier, has largely been an aloof and distant neighbour although there are signs of a thaw in the midst of fears that China may have become the relevant power in that country. A little further away but strategically relevant to India in the context of Pakistan and access to Central Asia, is Afghanistan which continues to slide into unending chaos.
The largest Muslim concentration in the world, about 450 to 460 million live in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Of these, about one third is in India. This makes them the largest number of Muslims living in a democratic set up for the longest time, any where in the world today. The rest have been under an increasing influence of dictatorships and Islamic radicalism at a time when state policies have weakened liberal societies while an anti-American sentiment has grown sharply. The challenge here for India is to keep its own Muslims immune from external influences where attempts are undoubtedly being made not only to suborn them but also simultaneously, to provoke a Hindu backlash.
India cannot help its size or strength and has to live with the title of a regional hegemon or even a bully at times accused of arrogance and intrusiveness when trying to help or being haughty and indifferent when trying to stay away. India baiting thus is common in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. It is perhaps natural that some of them seek comfort wit the distant power against the local power. Some of the neighbours do not wish to share in the prospects of mutual prosperity that India might offer but are willing to share poverty. These countries seek their own security by isolating themselves from India defying the logic of geography.
Consequently, nations of the sub-continent are unable to maximise economic complementarities and opportunities to the extent that they hardly trade with each other. Transit routes are denied, common rail and road links are virtually non-existent. It is this lack of common economic and security perceptions among the neighbours which have hamstrung multi-lateral organisations like SAARC, unlike the EU or the ASEAN, which function as a common platform for diverse interests they represent. The other problem is that India is being globally recognised as a rising economic power but the region is slow to recognise and take advantage of this evolving new situation.
For India, the nightmare is a failed state in its neighbourhood and the influx of refugees with their socio-economic impact as India, despite its economic size, does not have the capacity to bolster the sagging systems in all these countries for all times. The choice is whether or not to become a totally dysfunctional state is the individual choice of the state yet how this is handled will be a major challenge for India in the future. Bangladesh, for instance, surrounded on three sides by India and crucial to India’s economic development, has the choice to become the birthplace for the next Islamic revolution or a reasonably modern economic state. Closer economic and trade tie-ups with India would generate employment and reasonable prosperity within the country. India could become an important stake holder in Bangladesh’s prosperity but is hampered by that country’s domestic political compulsions which seek sustenance in anti-India rhetoric. The same principles apply to Nepal where its political future still seems uncertain as the mainstream traditional political parties battle it out for space with the radical Maoists who seek a complete overhaul of the system. Sri Lanka seeks better political and economic ties with India but is constantly being pulled down by its own ethnic problems and the occasional urge to balance India with China. Bhutan has successfully amalgamated its economic system with India and has benefited from this. Myanmar has been difficult to prise it open for Indian interests but objects to any suggestion that it allows China a freer hand than other countries.
Pakistan—Slipping into a Jehadi mindset
The assassination of two-time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007 typified not only an extremely violent year for Pakistan but also signified the kind of dangerous political impasse into which that the country has slipped. In 2007 there were 1442 terrorist attacks and incidents of political and sectarian violence inside Pakistan. More than 3000 persons were killed up against 657 similar incidents in 2006 in which 907 persons were killed. 232 army men, 163 para-military troops and 71 policemen were killed in terrorist attacks and of the 60 suicide attacks 41 were directed against security forces. This indicates not only the anger against them but the absence of fear. Of the 1636 persons shown as arrested for terrorist activity the largest component, 740 was from the restive province of Balochistan where, mostly unknown to the rest of the world, a fierce battle for independence is being fought by Baloch nationalists. All this is blowback – the unintended consequences of unacknowledged actions in another country. One of the most dangerous blowbacks for Pakistan has been that there is an incumbency fatigue against the Army and it has lost much of its sheen in recent years.
This has been the cumulative result of decades of incorrect policy both by Pakistan and its benefactors. Pakistan’s leaders, both civilian and military, have not been able to reconcile to the reality that theirs is a smaller country and has fewer resources than India. They have constantly sought to justify the creation of a Muslim homeland on the sub-continent. Insecure against a ‘Hindu’ neighbour, Pakistan’s leaders from very early days, sought security outside the region and the Pakistan Army, which has ruled the country, directly and indirectly for most of the period, refuses to give up historical grudges and ambitions -- to avenge the creation of Bangladesh that undermined the two-nation theory, and to create more Caliphates in India.
There is a very real fear in Pakistani ruling circles that a secular democratic India which is also economically successful on its borders would undermine the ideology of an Islamic Pakistan. Jehad against the Soviets in Afghanistan and terrorism in India were the result of these warped policies. While the Soviets may have left, India was not going to go away. The result has been that today Pakistan faces the danger of being consumed by its own creations – jehad abroad and the Taliban at home.
Many Pakistanis see Musharraf as America’s stooge and anti-American sentiments are high in the country. Any attempt to roll back the Taliban/Islamic Emirate in the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan is being fiercely resisted with an element of the security forces unwilling to engage in battle against fellow Muslims and tribesmen. Sharia courts have been established and an Islamic taxation system has been introduced. The movement has spread further inland into other parts of the country. Violence and extremism in the name of religious ideology is now directly linked with the US-led was in Afghanistan and the Pakistan army crackdown against these forces generates further hatred. The increased targeting of the armed forces by suicide bombers is an indication of this. Yet the hard truth is that the Pakistani establishment, especially the Army, has been so deeply involved with the various terrorist organisations in their country and for so long that it is now difficult for them to disengage.
Their jehad is now targeted not only against the “infidels” occupying Afghanistan but also against the “infidels” that rule Pakistan or propagate secularism. The political situation is complicated because in the absence of any stable institutions there are no constitutional shock absorbers to cushion the tremors in a country caught up in internal ethnic and religious turmoil.
The other effect has been the outward movement of jehad from centres in Pakistan. Jehad had gone international during the Afghan jehad days and its immediate fall out was in India in the Nineties. The time to arrest the growth has now gone and events in September 11, 2001 or the Madrid train bombings, the London bombings later and again the arrests of suspected terrorists in Barcelona, all have a Pakistani connection.
China – Harmonious rise or impending challenge
India is blessed with two neighbours both of whom are nuclear weapons states and of which one, Pakistan has remained an implacable foe while the other, China has had frosty relations for long spells with a thaw setting in recent years. Today, the world’s two largest countries, in terms of populations, with the two of the largest armed forces, nuclear weapons and with the highest growth rates are separated by unmarked 4057 km long border. There are prospects of peace and prosperity and should the two get together they would become the largest and the richest economic powerhouses and military powers. This would be a situation unthinkable among Western strategists. However, so long as the border question remains unresolved, genuine progress on major strategic issues is unlikely. There could be co operation but more likely there will be competition and even confrontation although conflict seems unlikely. Beijing, however, does not perceive India as a competitor only as a pretender to greatness.
While there is a vast economic stake in keeping the border tranquil the reality is that despite 27 years of negotiations, the border issue remains unresolved. India-China trade has grown phenomenally from a mere $ 2.5 billion a few years ago to $25 billion last year and growing. Growing economic and trade relations do not necessarily lead to political warmth as in the case of Japan and China. The slow progress in resolving this issue and China’s assertiveness regionally and on the border issue in recent times indicates a new approach by the Chinese. This is partly due to the perceived closeness between India and the United States but strategically and for decades, China has sought out balancers in the region. Consistent support to Pakistan militarily to the extent of supplying nuclear weapon and missile technology as well as equipment has been part of China’s low cost hedge against India. China too cannot afford to see the Indian model succeed and become a rival for influence in Asia which is seen by Chinese leaders as the sole preserve of China to exclusion of all, including the US.
Many Indian analysts feel that there is enough space for India and China to grow together. China has larger ambitions and its search for a greater role for itself sharpened after it became a net importer of oil in 1994 to meet its rapidly growing need for energy to sustain its economy. The US led Global war on Terror and the US presence on its neighbourhood in Central Asia indicated greater urgency for Chinese planners. China had to seek greater strategic depth for itself to ensure acquire land routes for its oil and gas requirements rather than the sea routes that were liable to interruptions. It has since then sought exclusive arrangements with various strategic energy suppliers globally, including India’s neighbourhood. It has used its closeness with the present Myanmar regime to exclude India from a gas supply arrangement. Elsewhere, China has opposed India’s attempts to seek membership of the P-5 or the post of the UNSG. It stance on the India-US civilian nuclear power deal remains ambivalent.
Unable to protect sea-lanes because of an inadequate navy, the Chinese needed alternative routes for energy supplies. Chinese began the construction of Gwadar, close to the vital Straits of Hormuz through which 40 per cent of the world’s oil passes and located on Pakistan’s Balochistan coast, at a feverish pace in 2002 and was completed in 2007. The port will have an exclusive SEZ for China and will eventually be linked through the Chinese built Karakoram Highway to Khunjerab Pass to Kashgar with a network of roads, rail links and gas pipelines. The Karakoram Highway has served as a route through occupied Kashmiri territories for covert Chinese nuclear and missile transfers and other military aid to Pakistan. 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 the Bay of Bengal.
Beijing thus has two strategic corridors on either side of India in a north-south axis — the Trans-Karakoram Corridor from western China stretching all the way down to Gwadar and the Irrawaddy Corridor from Yunnan to the Bay of Bengal that has brought Chinese security personnel to Burmese sites close both to India’s eastern strategic assets and to the Strait of Malacca. A third Chinese strategic corridor is in the east-west axis in Tibet across India’s northern frontiers. In addition the $6.2-billion railway from Gormu to Lhasa in Tibet significantly boosts China’s offensive military capability against India. A railway branch southward from Lhasa to Xigatse is nearing completion. China now has the logistic capability to intensify military pressure at short notice by rapidly mobilizing up to 12 divisions.
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 co-operation 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 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 will not however challenge the US directly in the foreseeable future but will seek to undermine its influence. 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. The present closeness of Iran and China is part of a mutually beneficial arrangement at a time when the US is on the defensive in the Middle East. Apart from the various energy tie-ups that Beijing has worked out with Kazakhstan, Russia and other Central Asian states, it will now build twelve new highways connecting Xinjiang to major Central Asian cities 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.
The Future
India thus has to deal with a turbulent Pakistan where at times it looks as if no –one is in control as the country seems to slip into an extremist abyss. On the other border China is more assertive as it perceives India as part of a southern flanking move by the US.
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 and non-state actors threatening existing stabilities. Interstate relations are now going to be more carefully calibrated and sophisticated with no clearly demarcated power blocs operating in a globalised world. Various triangulations are being configured, many of which exclude the US. Russia, India and China have been talking to each other trilaterally 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, at present and for the foreseeable future, no country, including India, China and Russia would want to jeopardise its relationship with the US for the sake of its new partners.
Handling new challenges for an India that is growing rapidly at a time when China is growing faster will throw up new challenges for India’s policy makers while old threats and problems remain. The most urgent is the eastward movement of the Taliban mindset from Afghanistan to Pakistan as Pakistan is consumed by its own creations - Taliban and jehad.
Source : La Vanguardia, Spain, April-June 2008
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Iran-US Confrontation
The world has watched most of the last year and the one preceding, the Iran-US confrontation, at times with baited breath as the two seemed to be on hair trigger alert from time to time. The battle of nerves has ebbed and flowed over the last two years and mostly away from the US. Thanks to the badly configured and unfinished war in Afghanistan, the foolish misadventure in Iraq, and the inability to control Pakistan in the so-called Global War on Terror, the mighty US has today been reduced to trying to fend off a regional power, Iran, from acquiring precisely the same kind of stature that Bush’s National Security Doctrine seeks to prevent - that a regional power becomes strong enough to challenge US interests. As a result of the ill advised and ill planned interventionism that has been the singular feature of Bush’s foreign policy, other players like Russia and China today have a role in the region.
Both the Iraq and Afghanistan projects of deconstructing first and then reconstructing, have floundered badly. A secular Iraq has now been replaced by Shia militants, Sunni Salafist fundamentalists and Kurdish separatists. Yet some can argue that in Iraq this may have been partly mitigated if one considers that US oil interests for the future may have been safeguarded somewhat regardless of the cost (US $ 500 billion) to the US exchequer. There is no such perceived counterveiling benefit from the Afghan imbroglio. In fact the spectacular growth of the heroin trade is an alarming consequence.
For an American President battling desperately for at least one foreign policy success in the winter of his political career, the Iranian refusal to blink even in the midst of all threats that were held out to them, including nuclear attacks, must have been most exasperating. The neo-con belief that extraordinary military prowess could deliver results, did not take into account that after the dismal display of limitations of military power in neighbouring Iraq, no country was going to take these threats seriously. Even the combined pressure of the British, the French and the Germans has not helped. The Arab street was not going to buy the new line, there was something of a regional pride in this defiant anti-Americanism and for Iran it was also civilisational. It was a case of national pride with strong Islamic overtones, a quest for regional security if not dominance in an area traditionally known to be hostile to them. A defiant Iran finally decided to go ahead with its oil bourse in Euros and not deal in the dollars that Ahmadinijad had described as a scrap of paper. Besides China and Russia, the other members of the P-5 and emerging players in West Asia, were on Iran’s side. The Iranian defiance, has led to the most important development of the 21st century, that the US has reduced itself to losing a war of nerves with Iran, which until recently was an extremely weak power in the region, surrounded not only by hostile or suspicious Arabs, but also American armoury in all its might, and a hostile Israel.
The battle Washington has waged is not just about a regime change in a rogue state, but ultimately to ensure energy security for itself and its European allies, regional security for Israel, and maintaining global dominance in a world, where there are new and aggressive players challenging America’s writ. The new players on the scene are the resurgent Russians under Putin, challenging American interpretation of the scene in West Asia, and the emerging Chinese seeking a role for themselves as they search for energy security to sustain their double-digit growth. Putin became the first Russian President, ever, to have visited Iran last September and he followed this up with a visit to Saudi Arabia. He was obviously making in-roads into traditional American territory. Besides, members of the Gulf Co-operation Council have made overtures to Iran. President Ahmedinijad visited Saudi Arabia on an invitation from the Saudi King Abdullah for Haj and the two held cordial discussions.
The drum beats were louder for some time in September and October last year and were accompanied by loud rhetoric, but the march was mostly out of step by then. Condoleezza Rice had threatened to cut off Iran’s “malignant activities” in Iraq, informing the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in October that Iran would not be allowed to use “the international financial system to move its ill-gotten gains from proliferation or terrorism around the world.” The Secretary of State dutifully described Iran’s policies as constituting “perhaps the single greatest challenge to American security interests in the Middle East around the world,” and adding that El Baradei was wrong on Iran - and this is despite 2700 person hours of inspections including numerous snap and intrusive visits by the IAEA inspectors. It is true that Iran is not entirely innocent in all its dealings, especially the A Q Khan connection, but neither is it as guilty as the West makes it to be. It was when the French-British-German reneged under US pressure after first agreeing with Iran in 2005 that forced Iran to resume enrichment the next year.
In autumn last year, however, Seymour Hersh wrote in the New Yorker that the war in Iraq was being redefined as a strategic war between Iran and the US. The summer hysteria about Iran possessing a nuclear bomb, had changed to Iran wanting to possess one, and finally to the allegation that the Iranians had the knowledge to make a bomb. Iran was now threatening to destabilise Iraq by aiding the Shias there, and Revolutionary Guards of Iran were declared as a terrorist organisation. Iran was at that time threatened by surgical strikes instead of the earlier bombing blitzkriegs that were openly talked about. There were unsubstantiated allegations that Iran was helping build a Hezbollah type of insurgent organisation in Iraq. An element of the plan was to provoke Iran into some action that would require an immediate US response. The Iranians did not bite.
Nevertheless, towards the end of October neo-con gurus like Norman Podhoretz were urging shock and awe from the outside, while Vice President Dick Cheney echoed this re-commendation from within. Recipient of America’s highest honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, and the author of the book World War III: the Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, Podhoretz had met Bush in New York last October where he outlined his case for air strikes against Iran. Republican Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani also joined this chorus where the refrain was ‘bomb Iran using cruise missiles and bunker busters’.
Bush himself had said that “I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems you ought to be interested in preventing them (the Iranians) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” It seems that there is cause enough for shock and awe if the Iranians have the knowledge to make a bomb, later redefined to even thinking about making one. This has led to a change of strategy. Iran remained the rogue because it was now abetting terrorism and smuggling IEDs into Iraq for use against US forces. This claim was designed to get approval from a sympathetic Congress for intervention in Iran. Apparently they were also pre-empting the uncomfortable findings in the yet to be released NIE report.
It was fairly clear by late summer 2007 that the strategy to deal with Iran would have to change as the nuclear story was no longer selling. At the same time it was not easy to give up the rhetoric - only the stress had to change. Condi Rice’s statements need to be viewed in this changed context, for she was no longer talking about mushroom clouds but about impediments to US policies in West Asia. US Congressional sources have said that the 16-agency National Intelligence Report of 2007, made public on December 3, 2007, was actually delayed thrice, and as Seymour Hersh says, Vice President Cheney was instrumental in this delay. The report essentially made the following observations couched in elliptical verbiage at times. It said that Iran had suspended its nuclear arms programme in 2003, that if it does resume this it will be based on uranium enriched after its had resumed its operation of enrichment in 2006, that Iran would have major technical problems in operating these reactors, most of which are in Natanz, that the earliest possible date by when Iran could have a bomb is 2009-but more realistically it would be 2015, and, finally, that the Iranians do not have the capability to take the plutonium route.
The reactions in Israel and the US were predictable; the former was livid with rage, and the latter mostly confused, except for the extreme right wing who denounced the report and the spin doctors in Washington became active. Some Iranians on the other side of the globe sounded smug after the report was published, feeling vindicated, while a section was not impressed by the NIE findings suspecting that there was a hidden agenda in this and that the report could still be used by the US to create an international consensus on the need to impose unilateral sanctions on Iran.
Various lobbies got active, and there was consternation in the US that the NIE would be the reason to dampen efforts to isolate Iran, and the earlier attempts to say that Iran was on its way to make a bomb suddenly seemed to be going awry. True, the French tried to help by saying that war between Iran and Israel could break out. Speaking to Le Nouvel Observateur, President Sarkozy feared that “The problem for us is not so much the risk that the Americans launch a military intervention, but that the Israelis consider their security to be truly threatened… The only debate is about whether they will develop a military capacity in one or five years.”
Israeli strategists and most analysts have refused to accept the NIE as the final word on the subject. “Words do not stop missiles,” was what Defence Minister Ehud Barak said. While they would not go so far as to say that this was a political report meant to get the US off the hook, they do assert that the report is inaccurate. Mossad aims to prove that despite having discontinued their nuclear arms programme in 2003, the Iranians are still developing a third secret programme that has been kept hidden so far. They still adhere to their intelligence assessment that Iran could have the bomb by 2009 or 2010.While even the Iranians assert that there is still a threat of an attack, other analysts have pointed out that since the Israeli invasion of Sinai in 1956, without US approval, when President Eisenhower rapped Israel hard on the knuckles, it is doubtful if Israel would today launch a military offensive in the region without unequivocal backing from the US. It seems that so far not much heed has been paid to the suggestion made by Efraim Halevy, the former Mossad chief that Israel should enter in a dialogue with Iran.
Despite the NIE report, President Bush has said “Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” His National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley claimed that the US decision to pursue the sanctions route had made the Iranians change their policy in 2003 and it was necessary to pursue the same strategy to ensure that Iran remained on course. Hardliners like former US Ambassador to UN, John Bolton led the charge against the NIE saying that the report could be misread, the report was internally contradictory and insufficiently supported by facts and that Iran could use the report for disinformation.
However, whichever way these statements may be interpreted, the Bush administration has certainly been made to look awkward and clumsy in all this with its credibility taking another knock. The NIE report has become a major obstacle to those advocating the military option. Sensing this and the direction the Annapolis conference had taken in its attempts to isolate Iran, Arabs in the region have begun to make overtures to Iran. Qatar invited Ahmedinijad to speak at the GCC, while the Egyptians sent a high-level delegation to Iran, for the first time since they broke off relations in 1979. Ahmedinijad was in Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the Saudi king to perform Haj. It is possible that all three being strong US allies probably had prior approval for these overtures but these regimes are worried that should the military option gain approval in Washington, the consequences for them could be grave and avoidable. The GCC states would want to stay on Iran’s right side following a decline of US policy in the region.
With crude selling at US $ 100 a barrel, energy dependent Italy and Austria have signed deals with Iran for the supply of gas. Iranian gas would transmit to Italy through Turkey and Greece. The Khomein Petrochemical Complex and the Italian company Basell also signed a 20 million euro contract for transfer of technology. The Iranians and the Austrian Oil and Gas Group were discussing a project for the transfer of oil and gas to Austria. The French giant Total was ready to invest 12 billion dollars in an LNG project, Royal Dutch Shell and the Spanish Repsol also have interests in Iran’s two main LNG projects; the Italian company Eni has no intention of pulling out of Iran. The Spanish energy company Fenosa, along with its subsidiary Socoin was awarded a 32.5 million euro engineering contract for the Iranian LNG project, while the Austrians OMV were still negotiating a similar contract, while a US $ 30 billion contract was separately signed for the import of liquid gas from Iran. The last round of discussions between Pakistan and Iran ended on December 21 and according to the Iranians, Indian companies have shown interest in exploring 17 oil blocks. But India is a small and doubtful player. Apart from voting at the IAEA twice, the gas pipeline is in the doldrums. The State Bank of India has disallowed LCs on Iranian banks and Essar steel pulled out of a steel project in favour of installing one in America. These decisions may be justified in strict economic terms, but coming as they do in the present circumstances, it does not look good.
Iran is not as isolated as the US would have it. The biggest buyer of energy is China. SINOPEC, the largest refiner in China, will increase its purchases of crude from 60,000 bpd in 2007 to 160,000 bpd in 2008 - a nearly three fold increase. Another Chinese state owned company, Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp will buy 400,000 bpd in 2008 and this will account for six per cent of China’s total crude demand. Apart from this, after three years of negotiations, China also signed a $ 2 billion deal to develop the Yadavaran oil field. The world’s second largest consumer of oil is obviously in a close strategic relationship with Iran. Obviously China is not going to allow the US to have a free run of the place; nor will Russia.
Even though the Russians are gas rich, they have been moving aggressively into the region under Putin, who has countered American moves on Russia’s periphery and in Europe by carrying the battle to West and Central Asia. Having been beguiled into winding down the Warsaw Pact in the Nineties, to be replaced by an eastward expansion of the NATO, The Russians under Putin have aggressively moved closer to China, reacted by abrogating missile treaties with US and strengthening the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, as well as the Collective Security Treaty Organisation. The Iran theatre is in some ways an extension of the US-Russia rivalry in Europe and Russian suspicions about the now well known American moves into Poland and the Czech Republic setting up radar and missile defences. Putin withdrew from the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty in retaliation to American insistence to go ahead with their plans in Poland and the Czech Republic. In the decade ahead, both China and Russia, in competition with each other, or jointly in asymmetric opposition to the US, will seek geo-strategic space in Central Asia, West Asia and the Caspian. US attempts to wean away the energy rich Central Asian states by having pipelines from these countries bypass Russia en route Europe. The Americans are worried that the Russians could translate their energy monopoly into untenable foreign and security influence that could hurt US-Europe relations. An example of this was when the Russians struck a deal with Austria when the two countries entered into a partnership which would allow Gazprom to have a base for further expansion into Europe.
Given the EU dependence on Russian energy sources, the West would need to tap into Iran’s vast hydro-carbon reserves - the world’s second largest gas reserves after Russia and the second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia. Add to this, is Iran’s geo-strategic location atop the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Having successfully checkmated US approaches into Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, Putin has begun to move into traditional American territory in West Asia. The Russian naval flotilla led by the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov was recently in the Mediterranean off the Syrian port of Tartous. In terms of size the Russian fleet was extremely small compared to what the Americans have put together in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. But it is a beginning. The Russian support for Iran against unilateral sanctions, and the decision to supply fuel to Bushehr nuclear power plant indicates a coming together of the two countries. Russian experts had arrived in Iran in December to install TOR-M1 air defence batteries at Iran’s nuclear facilities. Putin has visited Saudi Arabia (another first for a Russian President), Jordan and Qatar in February 2007 and later Iran in October that year. He would rather have the Chinese access West Asian, including Iranian, gas and oil rather that Central Asia which would increase its influence far too close to Russia. Both Iran and Russia are opposed to US led trans-Caspian pipeline schemes. Iran needs Russia for the development of the massive South Pars gas fields and the Russians would want Gazprom to move into Iran.
Putin was not going to let the Americans have a free run of the place, and assessing that there has been a decline in US prestige following a string of foreign policy disasters, it was necessary to control or influence the producers of energy in the years ahead. The timing had to be right. Vladimir Putin’s moves in election year in the US, as he moves into the space being vacated, will also be interesting to watch. The Russians will continue to oppose the invasion of Iran, which the Arabs also do not want, but it will be careful not to alarm the Arabs by being too supportive of Iran. India’s geo-strategic, economic and political interests, especially its energy requirements in the next few decades, demand that India remains friendly with both Russia and Iran while managing its relations with the US.
The struggle in Iran is not about its nuclear weapons programme. The struggle is for its oil and gas, and for dominance. Unless the Americans agree to dialogue with the Iranians fairly soon, the game could well slip away from them.
Both the Iraq and Afghanistan projects of deconstructing first and then reconstructing, have floundered badly. A secular Iraq has now been replaced by Shia militants, Sunni Salafist fundamentalists and Kurdish separatists. Yet some can argue that in Iraq this may have been partly mitigated if one considers that US oil interests for the future may have been safeguarded somewhat regardless of the cost (US $ 500 billion) to the US exchequer. There is no such perceived counterveiling benefit from the Afghan imbroglio. In fact the spectacular growth of the heroin trade is an alarming consequence.
For an American President battling desperately for at least one foreign policy success in the winter of his political career, the Iranian refusal to blink even in the midst of all threats that were held out to them, including nuclear attacks, must have been most exasperating. The neo-con belief that extraordinary military prowess could deliver results, did not take into account that after the dismal display of limitations of military power in neighbouring Iraq, no country was going to take these threats seriously. Even the combined pressure of the British, the French and the Germans has not helped. The Arab street was not going to buy the new line, there was something of a regional pride in this defiant anti-Americanism and for Iran it was also civilisational. It was a case of national pride with strong Islamic overtones, a quest for regional security if not dominance in an area traditionally known to be hostile to them. A defiant Iran finally decided to go ahead with its oil bourse in Euros and not deal in the dollars that Ahmadinijad had described as a scrap of paper. Besides China and Russia, the other members of the P-5 and emerging players in West Asia, were on Iran’s side. The Iranian defiance, has led to the most important development of the 21st century, that the US has reduced itself to losing a war of nerves with Iran, which until recently was an extremely weak power in the region, surrounded not only by hostile or suspicious Arabs, but also American armoury in all its might, and a hostile Israel.
The battle Washington has waged is not just about a regime change in a rogue state, but ultimately to ensure energy security for itself and its European allies, regional security for Israel, and maintaining global dominance in a world, where there are new and aggressive players challenging America’s writ. The new players on the scene are the resurgent Russians under Putin, challenging American interpretation of the scene in West Asia, and the emerging Chinese seeking a role for themselves as they search for energy security to sustain their double-digit growth. Putin became the first Russian President, ever, to have visited Iran last September and he followed this up with a visit to Saudi Arabia. He was obviously making in-roads into traditional American territory. Besides, members of the Gulf Co-operation Council have made overtures to Iran. President Ahmedinijad visited Saudi Arabia on an invitation from the Saudi King Abdullah for Haj and the two held cordial discussions.
The drum beats were louder for some time in September and October last year and were accompanied by loud rhetoric, but the march was mostly out of step by then. Condoleezza Rice had threatened to cut off Iran’s “malignant activities” in Iraq, informing the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in October that Iran would not be allowed to use “the international financial system to move its ill-gotten gains from proliferation or terrorism around the world.” The Secretary of State dutifully described Iran’s policies as constituting “perhaps the single greatest challenge to American security interests in the Middle East around the world,” and adding that El Baradei was wrong on Iran - and this is despite 2700 person hours of inspections including numerous snap and intrusive visits by the IAEA inspectors. It is true that Iran is not entirely innocent in all its dealings, especially the A Q Khan connection, but neither is it as guilty as the West makes it to be. It was when the French-British-German reneged under US pressure after first agreeing with Iran in 2005 that forced Iran to resume enrichment the next year.
In autumn last year, however, Seymour Hersh wrote in the New Yorker that the war in Iraq was being redefined as a strategic war between Iran and the US. The summer hysteria about Iran possessing a nuclear bomb, had changed to Iran wanting to possess one, and finally to the allegation that the Iranians had the knowledge to make a bomb. Iran was now threatening to destabilise Iraq by aiding the Shias there, and Revolutionary Guards of Iran were declared as a terrorist organisation. Iran was at that time threatened by surgical strikes instead of the earlier bombing blitzkriegs that were openly talked about. There were unsubstantiated allegations that Iran was helping build a Hezbollah type of insurgent organisation in Iraq. An element of the plan was to provoke Iran into some action that would require an immediate US response. The Iranians did not bite.
Nevertheless, towards the end of October neo-con gurus like Norman Podhoretz were urging shock and awe from the outside, while Vice President Dick Cheney echoed this re-commendation from within. Recipient of America’s highest honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, and the author of the book World War III: the Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, Podhoretz had met Bush in New York last October where he outlined his case for air strikes against Iran. Republican Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani also joined this chorus where the refrain was ‘bomb Iran using cruise missiles and bunker busters’.
Bush himself had said that “I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems you ought to be interested in preventing them (the Iranians) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” It seems that there is cause enough for shock and awe if the Iranians have the knowledge to make a bomb, later redefined to even thinking about making one. This has led to a change of strategy. Iran remained the rogue because it was now abetting terrorism and smuggling IEDs into Iraq for use against US forces. This claim was designed to get approval from a sympathetic Congress for intervention in Iran. Apparently they were also pre-empting the uncomfortable findings in the yet to be released NIE report.
It was fairly clear by late summer 2007 that the strategy to deal with Iran would have to change as the nuclear story was no longer selling. At the same time it was not easy to give up the rhetoric - only the stress had to change. Condi Rice’s statements need to be viewed in this changed context, for she was no longer talking about mushroom clouds but about impediments to US policies in West Asia. US Congressional sources have said that the 16-agency National Intelligence Report of 2007, made public on December 3, 2007, was actually delayed thrice, and as Seymour Hersh says, Vice President Cheney was instrumental in this delay. The report essentially made the following observations couched in elliptical verbiage at times. It said that Iran had suspended its nuclear arms programme in 2003, that if it does resume this it will be based on uranium enriched after its had resumed its operation of enrichment in 2006, that Iran would have major technical problems in operating these reactors, most of which are in Natanz, that the earliest possible date by when Iran could have a bomb is 2009-but more realistically it would be 2015, and, finally, that the Iranians do not have the capability to take the plutonium route.
The reactions in Israel and the US were predictable; the former was livid with rage, and the latter mostly confused, except for the extreme right wing who denounced the report and the spin doctors in Washington became active. Some Iranians on the other side of the globe sounded smug after the report was published, feeling vindicated, while a section was not impressed by the NIE findings suspecting that there was a hidden agenda in this and that the report could still be used by the US to create an international consensus on the need to impose unilateral sanctions on Iran.
Various lobbies got active, and there was consternation in the US that the NIE would be the reason to dampen efforts to isolate Iran, and the earlier attempts to say that Iran was on its way to make a bomb suddenly seemed to be going awry. True, the French tried to help by saying that war between Iran and Israel could break out. Speaking to Le Nouvel Observateur, President Sarkozy feared that “The problem for us is not so much the risk that the Americans launch a military intervention, but that the Israelis consider their security to be truly threatened… The only debate is about whether they will develop a military capacity in one or five years.”
Israeli strategists and most analysts have refused to accept the NIE as the final word on the subject. “Words do not stop missiles,” was what Defence Minister Ehud Barak said. While they would not go so far as to say that this was a political report meant to get the US off the hook, they do assert that the report is inaccurate. Mossad aims to prove that despite having discontinued their nuclear arms programme in 2003, the Iranians are still developing a third secret programme that has been kept hidden so far. They still adhere to their intelligence assessment that Iran could have the bomb by 2009 or 2010.While even the Iranians assert that there is still a threat of an attack, other analysts have pointed out that since the Israeli invasion of Sinai in 1956, without US approval, when President Eisenhower rapped Israel hard on the knuckles, it is doubtful if Israel would today launch a military offensive in the region without unequivocal backing from the US. It seems that so far not much heed has been paid to the suggestion made by Efraim Halevy, the former Mossad chief that Israel should enter in a dialogue with Iran.
Despite the NIE report, President Bush has said “Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” His National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley claimed that the US decision to pursue the sanctions route had made the Iranians change their policy in 2003 and it was necessary to pursue the same strategy to ensure that Iran remained on course. Hardliners like former US Ambassador to UN, John Bolton led the charge against the NIE saying that the report could be misread, the report was internally contradictory and insufficiently supported by facts and that Iran could use the report for disinformation.
However, whichever way these statements may be interpreted, the Bush administration has certainly been made to look awkward and clumsy in all this with its credibility taking another knock. The NIE report has become a major obstacle to those advocating the military option. Sensing this and the direction the Annapolis conference had taken in its attempts to isolate Iran, Arabs in the region have begun to make overtures to Iran. Qatar invited Ahmedinijad to speak at the GCC, while the Egyptians sent a high-level delegation to Iran, for the first time since they broke off relations in 1979. Ahmedinijad was in Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the Saudi king to perform Haj. It is possible that all three being strong US allies probably had prior approval for these overtures but these regimes are worried that should the military option gain approval in Washington, the consequences for them could be grave and avoidable. The GCC states would want to stay on Iran’s right side following a decline of US policy in the region.
With crude selling at US $ 100 a barrel, energy dependent Italy and Austria have signed deals with Iran for the supply of gas. Iranian gas would transmit to Italy through Turkey and Greece. The Khomein Petrochemical Complex and the Italian company Basell also signed a 20 million euro contract for transfer of technology. The Iranians and the Austrian Oil and Gas Group were discussing a project for the transfer of oil and gas to Austria. The French giant Total was ready to invest 12 billion dollars in an LNG project, Royal Dutch Shell and the Spanish Repsol also have interests in Iran’s two main LNG projects; the Italian company Eni has no intention of pulling out of Iran. The Spanish energy company Fenosa, along with its subsidiary Socoin was awarded a 32.5 million euro engineering contract for the Iranian LNG project, while the Austrians OMV were still negotiating a similar contract, while a US $ 30 billion contract was separately signed for the import of liquid gas from Iran. The last round of discussions between Pakistan and Iran ended on December 21 and according to the Iranians, Indian companies have shown interest in exploring 17 oil blocks. But India is a small and doubtful player. Apart from voting at the IAEA twice, the gas pipeline is in the doldrums. The State Bank of India has disallowed LCs on Iranian banks and Essar steel pulled out of a steel project in favour of installing one in America. These decisions may be justified in strict economic terms, but coming as they do in the present circumstances, it does not look good.
Iran is not as isolated as the US would have it. The biggest buyer of energy is China. SINOPEC, the largest refiner in China, will increase its purchases of crude from 60,000 bpd in 2007 to 160,000 bpd in 2008 - a nearly three fold increase. Another Chinese state owned company, Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp will buy 400,000 bpd in 2008 and this will account for six per cent of China’s total crude demand. Apart from this, after three years of negotiations, China also signed a $ 2 billion deal to develop the Yadavaran oil field. The world’s second largest consumer of oil is obviously in a close strategic relationship with Iran. Obviously China is not going to allow the US to have a free run of the place; nor will Russia.
Even though the Russians are gas rich, they have been moving aggressively into the region under Putin, who has countered American moves on Russia’s periphery and in Europe by carrying the battle to West and Central Asia. Having been beguiled into winding down the Warsaw Pact in the Nineties, to be replaced by an eastward expansion of the NATO, The Russians under Putin have aggressively moved closer to China, reacted by abrogating missile treaties with US and strengthening the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, as well as the Collective Security Treaty Organisation. The Iran theatre is in some ways an extension of the US-Russia rivalry in Europe and Russian suspicions about the now well known American moves into Poland and the Czech Republic setting up radar and missile defences. Putin withdrew from the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty in retaliation to American insistence to go ahead with their plans in Poland and the Czech Republic. In the decade ahead, both China and Russia, in competition with each other, or jointly in asymmetric opposition to the US, will seek geo-strategic space in Central Asia, West Asia and the Caspian. US attempts to wean away the energy rich Central Asian states by having pipelines from these countries bypass Russia en route Europe. The Americans are worried that the Russians could translate their energy monopoly into untenable foreign and security influence that could hurt US-Europe relations. An example of this was when the Russians struck a deal with Austria when the two countries entered into a partnership which would allow Gazprom to have a base for further expansion into Europe.
Given the EU dependence on Russian energy sources, the West would need to tap into Iran’s vast hydro-carbon reserves - the world’s second largest gas reserves after Russia and the second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia. Add to this, is Iran’s geo-strategic location atop the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Having successfully checkmated US approaches into Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, Putin has begun to move into traditional American territory in West Asia. The Russian naval flotilla led by the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov was recently in the Mediterranean off the Syrian port of Tartous. In terms of size the Russian fleet was extremely small compared to what the Americans have put together in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. But it is a beginning. The Russian support for Iran against unilateral sanctions, and the decision to supply fuel to Bushehr nuclear power plant indicates a coming together of the two countries. Russian experts had arrived in Iran in December to install TOR-M1 air defence batteries at Iran’s nuclear facilities. Putin has visited Saudi Arabia (another first for a Russian President), Jordan and Qatar in February 2007 and later Iran in October that year. He would rather have the Chinese access West Asian, including Iranian, gas and oil rather that Central Asia which would increase its influence far too close to Russia. Both Iran and Russia are opposed to US led trans-Caspian pipeline schemes. Iran needs Russia for the development of the massive South Pars gas fields and the Russians would want Gazprom to move into Iran.
Putin was not going to let the Americans have a free run of the place, and assessing that there has been a decline in US prestige following a string of foreign policy disasters, it was necessary to control or influence the producers of energy in the years ahead. The timing had to be right. Vladimir Putin’s moves in election year in the US, as he moves into the space being vacated, will also be interesting to watch. The Russians will continue to oppose the invasion of Iran, which the Arabs also do not want, but it will be careful not to alarm the Arabs by being too supportive of Iran. India’s geo-strategic, economic and political interests, especially its energy requirements in the next few decades, demand that India remains friendly with both Russia and Iran while managing its relations with the US.
The struggle in Iran is not about its nuclear weapons programme. The struggle is for its oil and gas, and for dominance. Unless the Americans agree to dialogue with the Iranians fairly soon, the game could well slip away from them.
Source : Indian Defence Review , Jan-Mar 2008 , Vol 23(1)
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