Is China nervous ?

India needs to remain wary of China given that country’s behaviour in the last few years, despite the smiles, handshakes and all those diplomatic niceties with noble intentions. There has been little movement on core strategic issues like the boundary as we derived disproportionate satisfaction out of burgeoning bilateral trade with adverse terms of trade for us.

State of paranoia: China exhibits reactions typical of a totalitarian state when it suspects all free thought

 

Chinese intrusions across the LAC in Ladakh have become more frequent. These intrusions suggest a pattern and the pattern sends a message. The message goes beyond wanting to keep India on the back foot in Jammu and Kashmir. As the Chinese say, ‘To get rich build roads,’ and the present leadership will spend US $18 billion building tunnels in Gilgit and Baltistan that will connect Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea at Gwadar. This reassures Pakistan of a love sweeter than honey.

The message is also for our other neighbours telling them that China can safeguard its interests in the region and asking them to make their choices about the guarantor of their economic well being and regime stability. Chinese involvement in various infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar along with resource extraction in Afghanistan is already well documented. The fact of their growing presence in our neighbourhood cannot be ignored by our policy makers.

The Chinese keep protesting to us in various ways about our attempts to improve our infrastructure and defence capabilities in Arunachal Pradesh after they themselves have deployed nuclear missiles in the Tibet region and now have a well developed infrastructure right up to the border. The famous Qinghai-Lhasa railway line new extends up to Xigatse and there are plans to extend this to Nepal.
China exhibits reactions typical of a totalitarian state when it suspects all free thought. It does not take to criticism abroad very lightly. It rapidly becomes hostile and ruthless against protests and dissent at home especially if these are persistent and violent. Any change of location of Indian army formations or their headquarters following Chinese protests would be a tacit admission of their claim and an exhibition of our lack of resolve which sends a negative message about us to our neighbours. India needs firmness of resolve not belligerence to assert national security interests.
It is conceivable that China is acting more out of bravado and nervousness when it seeks to engage its neighbourhood aggressively from the Sea of Japan to the Himalayan ranges and across the Western Pacific rim as well. The one major reason is the economic slowdown which has affected China as well.

China’s export driven economy slowed down as its clients ran out of the means to buy. This rebounded on its own ability to buy leaving it with excess capacities in vital areas like steel and cement. As China slowed down, relatively speaking from a 10 per cent rate of growth that is now hovering close to 7.5 per cent with difficulty, it sent ripples within the country and across the globe. The IMF assesses that one percentage point decline of the Chinese economy reduces global growth by one tenth of a percentage point.

Economic uncertainty means political uncertainty across the country and that is the chief dread of the leadership. No wonder the recent outbreak of violence in Xinjiang where restive native Uighurs have been campaigning against discrimination by the Hans and the Hanisation of their region. There was renewed violence last month as the Uighurs commemorated the July 2009 killing of more than 200 Uighurs in riots that lasted a few days. The Uighurs are Muslims and their movement is now led by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement with links in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Chinese are also concerned about uncertainty in Afghanistan and Central Asia after the US/NATO pullout in 2014.
Despite running Tibet with an iron hand, Bejing remains unsure and suspicious of the Tibetans as self immolations continue. It is convenient to believe that the Tibet problem will be ‘solved’ after the present Dalai Lama dies and Beijing will select a convenient successor. However, a very real fear is that the next generation of young Tibetans may not believe in non-violence for solving their problems. Tibet will remain on Beijing’s radar as it grapples with economic issues and political unease, if not unrest.

It is this unease arising from domestic, political and economic considerations at a time of the ascendancy of a new political leadership in Beijing that could contribute to Chinese adventurism and recourse to hyper-nationalism.

Source : Mid Day . 25th July 2013

The gathering storm

A former colleague remarked the other day that the Abbottabad inquiry report revelations reminded him of the Hamoodur Rehman Commission report that had indicted the Pakistan Army for the 1971 debacle.

Both the reports show the Pakistan Army in a poor light, even decrepit. The important news is not that Osama is dead. The more important aspect is that he felt secure or was made to feel so in Pakistan for nine years.

The important question then would be whether the Pakistan Army with its much-touted reach and ability was complicit in hiding Osama bin Laden for nine years and therefore devious. Or was it oblivious, therefore, incompetent and just did not know that Osama was living a few miles away from its military academy in Kakul.

An army that claims it controls the life of the nation cannot possibly say that there are rogue radicalised elements within it who would have hidden Osama in opposition to instructions. Or maybe they are not really rogue elements. This leaves Pakistan in a dangerous state even if its leaders may not want to see it that way.

When a State nurtures jihadi terrorists as force equalisers in pursuit of national interests, the consequences eventually become unacceptable to the world. Isolation results and creates further radicalisation of society. Intolerance does not start with an epidemic; it begins with small isolated incidents that most people ignore.

When members of the Sunni militia regularly massacre Shias in Pakistan because of their beliefs and the authorities seem unable to prevent it, then we are looking at a gathering storm.

The Lal Masjid episode of 2007 and its aftermath and the assassination of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer in January 2011 were clear markers of radicalisation in Punjabi society. The manner in which the assassin was lionised, the difficulty that the family had in hiring lawyers, the inability of the Punjab Assembly to condemn the assassination, and the fear of the judge who handed over the punishment and had to flee, were indications of what had happened.

Radical and violent sections of society have serious problems being tolerant or acknowledging its history and legacy. There is very little possibility of negotiating with such groups and they have to be militarily defeated. This is not simple as militancy has developed a huge support base in Punjab.

The Lal Masjid raid had been followed by a spurt of successful violent attacks by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan against the army’s establishment, mostly in Punjab. Then suddenly all these stopped and Punjab-based militant outfits have been concentrating in the triangle between Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar up to distant Gilgit-Baltistan.

Some of the most vicious anti-Shia attacks have occurred in areas west of the Indus. Ultimately Punjab became quiet enough for the main political parties to take help from right-wing extremists like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and others in their May election campaign.

The Pakistan Army draws most of its recruits from Punjab, which is also where all the major Pakistani military formations are deployed along with strategic nuclear assets. The province remains the heart of jihadi recruitment and a terrorist haven.

The army with its own tendencies towards radical beliefs cannot escape radicalisation as the recruits come from the same recruiting source and have the same influences.

Pakistan’s military establishment’s consistent policy since the Afghan jihad created, nurtured and strengthened the Taliban till 2001. The duplicity, as they pretended to support the US-led effort against the al-Qaeda and the Taliban was epitomised in the hunting down of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.

This duplicity along with the continued support to India-specific jihadi groups and sectarian militias has created a situation where Pakistan’s leaders today face a radical blowback against themselves.

Punjab always had radical tendencies that are now emerging strongly. A study was conducted in 2010 to assess the attitudes of the youth towards various socio-political issues in elite universities in three cities, including Islamabad. It was found that the world view of these students was not very different from that of madrassa students in smaller towns and villages.

Rawalpindi, the home of the Pakistan Army, is said to be coming under the increasing influence of the LeT and the JuD. Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith groups are gaining in Punjab. Central Punjab is also one of the strongholds of the LeT/JuD network. Some of the electable candidates to National Assembly constituencies have supported either the Deobandi or Ahl-e-Hadith school of thought.

The Punjabi real estate business is linked with militant and radical groups of which the SSP and the LeJ are the favoured ones. Rather than pay tax, they have been willing contributors to jihadi and religious parties. This kind of elite-radical connection is particularly noticeable in smaller cities like Gujrat.

Ansar-ul-Islam, a local militant group in FATA is engaged in a violent tussle with the TTP in the Mohmand Agency, in the company of the LeT. This may be the result of GHQ plans to use their faithful jihadis, the LeT, against the TTP, but ultimately, the Deep State is battling two proponents of the same ideology that believed in spreading influence in neighbouring countries through killings in the name of jihad.

Having trained close to half a million jihadis all these years it would be virtually impossible for their mentors to keep track of all the foot soldiers of jihad (barring the ones with core competence and beliefs) and to know how they remain active or whether they have morphed. The innumerable retail stores of jihad established over the years now sell Rabid Robots at street corners.

Pakistan is today caught in this cycle of isolation-radicalisation with no easy or clear exits. Karachi is the terror capital.

Nuclear weapons, the ultimate symbol of power, are no assurance or guarantees against blowback from religious radicalism. Only when the State decides to put a stop to this and takes a lead against the beliefs and practices of radicalism, will society learn to follow and resist.

Otherwise, people first acquiesce out of fear, then out of habit, and finally, with consent. If the Pakistani State does not take the lead in this soon, it will slip into irretrievable radicalism.

Some say it may already be too late.


Source : Hindustan Times , 18th July 2013

How much surveillance does a country need?

The eternal question remains unanswered, what price security and what cost liberty, says Vikram Sood.

 

There has been considerable international furore over PRISM and Ed Snowden. There is debate too whether Snowden did humanity a favour by exposing the extent of surveillance conducted by the US or whether he was a traitor to his country by exposing vital secrets.

Yesterday's hero sits forlorn somewhere in Russia since June 23 with very few countries willing to grant him asylum. No state is going to encourage other whistle blowers by granting Snowden asylum even though many countries would not agree to being snooped by the Americans. It is not yet confirmed that Snowden was a Chinese spy but whatever it is, he would have caused incalculable harm to US interests. Defection usually results from slack arrangements although the reason may vary.

The US tends to overplay its hand in whatever it does, whether it is size of their hamburger steaks or the amount of nuclear weapons they feel they must have that will make them safe. PRISM is a manifestation of this heightened sense of both power and fear. The power to make themselves safe from a threat from terrorism that is far less than the threat to India.

Yet, despite spending an estimated $8 trillion since 9/11 to make the world safe, they are no where near achieving this goal. There are other factors and interests involved in the US system arising from the well known military-industry-intelligence complex that governs US policies and actions too where corporatisation of intelligence and security aspects is now American culture. But though this is only an issue of scale, the fact remains that all countries today face different kinds of threats and they need to protect themselves, their interests and their people.

The US has a unique global presence. No other country has military commands that really apportion the globe into various spheres of interest. It is the only country today that probably has more bases and soldiers outside its territory than at home. It has global economic interests ranging from control of energy, finance, currency, financial institutions and trade interests. In order to preserve its interests it needs to know -- everything and it has the means to do that. In this electronic age, electronic surveillance is inevitable.

It is also not surprising that the US spies on allies and friends and this is not the first time that this has happened. There was project ECHELON where five countries -- the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada conducted electronic surveillance globally including on its European allies and shared economic intelligence. The Soviet Union had its spies in India, kept a close watch on its Warsaw Pact allies and the Israelis spied on the US. The mock horror in Europe that this was happening, is precisely that -- mock horror while they themselves have believed in similar practices, but on a smaller scale.

There are other realities too. Intelligence collection is as old as history. Only the methods have evolved as have the threats. Four decades ago intelligence operatives still worked with secret writing and dead letter drops. The principle is the same but the techniques are now on Internet. For decades we sent human sources across our borders even to collect infrastructure details and photographs of roads, culverts, bridges and important sites.

Now we download all these from Google Earth so the signs posted outside buildings prohibiting photography are meaningless. We did aerial photography when the weather was good now we have synthetic aperture radars that see through clouds; years ago a man from the IB would sit in main post offices reading selected mail from suspect countries. Now we have all this covered by satellites and technology.

India handled the Naga and Mizo insurgencies, Sikh terrorism and all our wars much before the present technological revolution in communications and the Internet. Even so, the famous tapes of the conversation between General Pervez Musharraf while in Beijing and his Chief of Staff Lt Gen Mohammed Aziz Khan during the Kargil conflict is a classic example of electronic surveillance. It is a pity though that this was leaked to the media and the link dried up forever. There are other examples of how electronic surveillance saved the day for the intelligence agencies and more importantly, for the country. The essential point is that surveillance is unavoidable for the security of the country. The question is how much. This would also depend on the threat perceptions and availability of resources. Each country evolves security policies and practices of co-operation with other countries, on its own.

While the conventional military and WMD threats remain, the one that many more countries face today is the threat from insurgencies and terrorism. India has perhaps had the longest and the most varied threat from these insurgencies and terrorism ever since independence. It must be a world record of sorts. This threat has evolved. In an increasingly technology driven world the terrorist of the day has access to the same means of rapid communications, easy camouflage and evasion, can move funds across the globe in seconds, and cripple the state's systems. Cyber terror can only be unearthed through sophisticated extensive and expensive counter cyber terror. It is not enough to have super fast computers working on this. There is a downstream requirement of algorithm experts, people with language skills and area and subject expertise.

Terrorists have taken to the use of social media networks in a big way. The Lashkar-e-Tayiba uses Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, and Soundcloud and a host of other such systems to recruit tech-savvy youth not only in Pakistan but also in other countries. Workshops have been held in different cities of Pakistan to create what they call social movements with the help of social media activists.

There are dedicated Jamaat-ud-Dawa cyber teams operating in towns of Punjab. Talha Saeed the son of Hafiz Saeed is said to be the brain behind this scheme to use social media. They are evolving "fourth generation warfare" which is "an evolved form of insurgency that employs all available networks". The LeT's main target is India and cyber terror knows no boundaries. This is what we have to be ready for in the future and LeT would not be the only terrorist/insurgent group to use this.
Hostile states can be expected to continue to pose different threats a -- economic, political and military. India cannot be expected to ignore this. The constant battle between China and the US on cyber warfare is a worry stemming from cyber espionage.

This brings us back to the old dilemma of how much data is information and how much information is adequate intelligence. The other dilemma is how much surveillance is enough for security. The third dilemma is how much liberty is to be sacrificed for security. The eternal question remains unanswered, what price security and what cost liberty.



Source : Rediff.com , 18th July 2013

From the Indus to the Nile - endless strife

From the western banks of the Indus, through the Oxus up to the Nile via the Euphrates and the Tigris, there is ferment. Most of us are more familiar about the violence and the troubles in Balochistan, Khyber Pukhtunkhwa FATA and in Karachi. We also follow what is happening in Afghanistan where the prospect of a Taliban take over creates strong misgivings about the future of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is next door and like all good Indians we keep a good inquisitive eye on what is happening even when we see this with tinted glasses.

Uprising: Cairo saw the largest number of protesters in history when 5 to 7 million came out

 

Further afield, areas inhabited by those whose ancestors belonged to ancient civilisations like our own are engaged in battles that are ideological and sectarian. Essentially these are about dominance and reversion to a way of life pitted against those who want the systems changed.

What is happening in Syria, Iraq and Egypt is a surge by the Islamic right. This will clash with the political aspirations of the young in Egypt who were not willing to accept the regime of the Muslim Brotherhood and its democratic restrictions. The trouble with all extreme beliefs pretending to hold democratic power is that they are not inclusive and invariably end up falling on their feet.

The Muslim Brotherhood was no different. Egyptians, primarily the youth and the secular, had made it a minimum demand to oust Morsi barely a year after he assumed power. Cairo thus saw perhaps the largest number of protesters in history when 5 to 7 million came out. They succeeded in confirming that the army will continue to play a role hoping to remain popular after the sacking of Morsi. But Egypt has another problem because the trouble with coups by the army backed by crowds is that they can spin off in weird directions. The ousted Brotherhood and their more extremist sympathisers have vowed revenge. There are early signs of this beginning to happen.

The return of Arab Spring will have other ramifications for the autocratic regimes that abound in West Asia. The trouble with democratic assertions in a generally undemocratic milieu and region is that this becomes a concern for the neighbouring autocrats and takes a while to stabilise. During this interregnum, anything can happen.

Yet Syria remains in the midst of barefaced sectarian warfare aided by the West who seem to be acting along with Al Nusra, an Al Qaeda franchise on the Sunni side to overthrow Bashr Assad with the Hezbollah and Iran supporting the Shias and Assad. The Big Powers are involved as well.
Syria today is also about a continuation of rivalries that the Anglo-French had created after World War I when they carved out the Middle East. Post WWII Arab Nationalism, Iranian aspirations and the desire to control energy resources, led to rivalries between the Soviet Union and the Anglo-US partnership.

The retreat of the Soviet Union merely brought renewed violence of the 1990s, which has not ceased till today.

Iraq has been going through a vicious cycle of sectarian warfare that goes beyond the usual Shia-Sunni battles with campaigns against Arab Christians who have now become suspects. Syria remains unstable and in all this uncertainty, ironically Iran, which is considered to be the biggest threat to the West but has no western presence, appears to be the most stable and orderly. Instability in Egypt will continue.

Sunni anger against what they call indifference of the Shia government of Nuri Al Maliki in Iraq is reflected in the thousands of Sunnis, fearing marginalisation, taking to the streets. Vicious sectarian strife has accounted for hundreds of brutal deaths on both sides of the sectarian divide. This growing violence could easily escalate into a full blown sectarian war reaching out across the Iraqi frontiers.
Meanwhile, English language commentary in the Arab world is uniformly dismal, as can be made out by the titles ‘Liberating Iraqis’, ‘limb by limb’ or ‘Uncertainty continues’, ‘Iraq’s civil war in motion’, ‘Inching towards autocracy’, ‘Why Arabs must worry’, are indicative of the forlorn mood there. There is no easy way out of this mood or correcting the direction the region is taking.
In the 21st century, ideas and thoughts travel across the globe with considerable speed.

Source : Mid Day , 11th July 2013

Uttarakhand: The politics of disaster

The scale of the massive human and ecological disaster of Uttarakhand can barely be captured adequately on TV screens. It will take years and huge investment of resources to rebuild lives at these places of pilgrimage. One only hopes that after the usual handwringing this will not be forgotten as attention in India invariably gets diverted to other problems.

Uphill climb: It will take years and huge investment to rebuild lives at these places

 

Perhaps there was a tragic inevitability of the current crisis and Uttarakhand epitomises a national pattern. This devastation would not have been so furious but for years of human greed, administrative and political connivance. We greedily ravaged nature beyond its tolerance and without any rules. When nature responded with a kind of pent up fury, our response was sluggish and confused.

Corruption that allows faulty construction, unauthorised extensions to buildings, encroachments on illegally occupied land that are overlooked have been major contributing factors. Indiscriminate deforestation along with inadequate and inappropriate reforestation, while haphazard construction in the name of development that blocked the natural flow of waters and diverted catchment areas magnified the crisis. Uncontrolled permits for expeditions without means to remove garbage aggravated the pollution in the rivers. As usual, an unseemly blame game among political parties has now begun and can be seen on our TV channels every night. Quite a bit of this has been the result of success of one CM in evacuating stranded pilgrims while others fiddled. We forget we are dealing with a national tragedy not a political tragedy. Also can we all stop obfuscating issues or scurrying for cover.

Sixty-six years after independence, despite improvements in many spheres, we are unable to get some essentials right. Floods occur along the Brahmaputra every year and we repeat the same theme there too, year after year. We do not seem to have evolved an implementable policy that would mitigate these annual crisis and a system of water management in the region. The place is just too far from New Delhi and there are not enough votes there.

At times like this one would expect that the high powered National Disaster Management Authority would automatically lead the charge. Apparently this is not its charter which only requires it to enunciate policy. No wonder, as reported on one of the TV channels, the NDMA remained closed on the weekend as its expertise was either not needed, it did not possess it or simply decided it had no role to play.

Instead, it issues statements like this just short of the disaster: “As a part of our mandate to move away from erstwhile reactive and response centric disaster management to the holistic and proactive management of disasters, we will have to induct S & T tools for undertaking the task of vulnerability analysis and risk management for the people, property and the environment in the pre-disaster scenarios to prioritise mitigation programmes and to build back better in the post-event scenarios.” This convoluted verbiage is unlikely to help in emergencies. Responding to this tragedy, government intends to revise the NDMA Act to give it some executive powers and, one week after the disaster, has appointed a co-ordinator.

No country can ever be adequately prepared for natural disasters but what is needed is a demonstrable ability to move swiftly and mitigate the tragedy. We do not have this ability. Were it not for the bravery and devotion of our Armed Forces and our paramilitary like the ITBP, so many would not have been rescued. Difficult terrain and inclement weather will mean very slow progress despite all efforts.

Creating new institutions or merely revising rules will not help solving our many problems. Nation building is serious business but we mostly tinker as the state withers away in a decrepit manner. The first thing our leaders need to do is to debate on real issues that affect all of us and these relate to governance in its broadest meaning. The average man seeks a decent livelihood that improves with time, every day safety, education and health that matter, not his secular or ideological credentials. If our leaders cannot get these small every day things right, how can they ever learn to handle and avert major disasters.

Unless we learn to debate and discuss these issues as our life and death issues we will not even begin to understand the problem much less remedy what is wrong with our systems. Unless we have leaders and governments that are responsive and empathise with the common man instead of merely mouthing tired irrelevant slogans, we will never attain any greatness.

Source : Mid Day , 27th June 2013