US,CHINESE UNHAPPINESS LEADS TO TRANSFER OF ISI CHIEF

Global Intel Net
Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

B.RAMAN

The General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army announced on the night of September 29,2008, that Major-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO), has been promoted as Lt.General and posted as the Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in place of Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj, who has been transferred and posted as the Commander of the XXX Corps based at Gujranwala.

2. The change at the top of the ISI was part of a reshuffle involving 14 senior officers of the Army initiated by Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), after meeting Yousef Raza Gilani, the Prime Minister, shortly after Kayani’s return from a week-long visit to China. The announcement of the changes, which were projected by a spokesman of the army as routine changes necessitated by the impending retirement of some senior officers, was made when President Asif Ali Zardari had not yet returned from his visit to the US. Under the changes introducted by Gen.(retired) Pervez Musharraf, when he was the President and the COAS, the powers for the approval of all promotions and postings in the ranks of Major-General and above are with the President. The COAS is competent to order all promotions and postings upto the rank of Brigadier. Even though an impression has been sought to be given that all promotions and postings announced on September 29,2008, were made with the approval of or in consultation with Prime Minister Gilani, it is very likely that Zardari’s approval had been obtained either before he left for New York or while he was there.

3. Among other important changes, Lt Gen Yousuf, present Vice-Chief of General Staff, has been appointed as Corps Commander Bahawalpur in place of Lt Gen Raza Khan, who has been shifted as DG Joint Staff Headquarters. Maj-General Javed Iqbal, presently posted as GOC Jhelum, has been appointed as Director-General Military Operations (DG MO). Commander 10 Corps (Rawalpindi) Lt Gen Mohsin Kamal has been moved to General Headquarters as Military Secretary (MS) and in his place newly promoted Lt-General Tahir Mehmood has been appointed as Commander Rawalpindi Corps.

4.Maj-Gen Waheed Arshad has been appointed as the VCGS and the newly promoted Lt General Mustafa Khan has been posted as the Chief of the General Staff (CGS) in place of Lt Gen Salahuddin Satti, who will retire from the Army next week. The reshuffle involved the promotion of seven Majors-General to the rank of Lieutenants-General. They are Major General Tahir Mahmood (Infantry – present Commander Special Services Group), Major-General Shahid Iqbal (Infantry – Chief Instructor National Defence University), Major General Tanvir Tahir (EME – DG C4Is), Major-General Zahid Hussain (Artillery – Commandant Pakistan Military Academy), Major General Ahmad Shuja Pasha (Infantry – DG Military Operations), Major-General Mohammad Mustafa Khan (Armoured Corps – ISI), and Major-General Ayyaz Saleem Rana (Armoured Corps – ISI). Major-Generals Nusrat Naeem (ISI), Asif Akhtar (ISI), Khalid Jaffari (Anti-Narcotics Force)), Shoukat Sultan (GOC Lahore) and Mohammad Saddique (GHQ – former acting Chairman National Accountability Bureau ) have been superseded. They will, however, continue to serve as Majors-General.

5. Of the five senior officers in the ISI—-one of the rank of Lt.General and four of the rank of Maj.Gen—Lt.Gen.Nadeem Taj has been moved out, Maj.Gen.Mustafa Khan has been promoted as Lt.Gen. and appointed as the CGS, who acts as the eyes and ears of the COAS in the GHQ, and Maj.Gen.Ayyaz Saleem has been promoted and posted as the Chairman of the heavy industry complex at Taxila.Majs.Gen.Nusrat Naeem and Asif Akhtar have been superseded. They have been allowed to continue till their superannuation as Majs.Gen., but it is not known whether they will continue in the ISI or will be shifted out. Among other superseded Majs-Gen is Mohammad Saddique, who used to be in the National Accountability Bureau and was handling the corruption cases against Benazir Bhutto and Zardari.

6. Gen.Kayani will have in the important posts of the CGS, the DG,ISI, and Corps Commander, Rawalpindi, persons, who owe their promotion as Lts.Gen. to him and not to Musharraf. The CGS, the DG ISI and the Corps Commander Rawalpindi constitute an informal triumvirate without whom, according to conventional wisdom, no COAS can stage a coup. The persons appointed to these posts as well as to the post of the DGMO are generally viewed as confirmed loyalists of the COAS.

7. Lt.Gen.Nadeen Taj, who is distantly related to Musharraf, served as the DG ISI for less than a year. He took over as the DG, ISI, on October 8, 2007,after his promotion to the rank of Lt.Gen. Till then, he served as the Commandant, Pakistan Military Academy, with the rank of Maj.Gen.

8. Lt.Gen.Pasha, who was promoted from the rank of Brigadier to that of Maj.Gen. by Musharraf in January,2003, is due to retire on September 29, 2012.He has commanded an infantry brigade, a mechanised infantry brigade and an infantry division and has served as the Chief Instructor of the Command and Staff College.In 2001-2002, as a Brigadier, he served as a Contingent and Sector Commander with the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone. In October,2007, Musharraf agreed to a request from Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, to relieve Pasha from the post of the DGMO so that he could be appointed as the Military Adviser, Department of Peacekeeping Operations, in the UN headquarters, in place of General Per Arne Five of Norway. An announcement on his posting in the UN headquarters was also made by the office of the UN Secretary-General.

9. But, this posting did not materialise. In view of the Swat Valley in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) coming under the control of the Taliban-affiliated Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) headed by Maulana Fazlullah, Musharraf ordered a special military operation against the TNSM and asked Pasha in his capacity as the DGMO to co-ordinate it. Pasha got Sufi Mohammad, former chief of the TNSM, who was in detention since 2002, released and sought his help in the operation. In January,2008, Pasha announced that his troops had defeated the TNSM and freed the Swat Valley from the control of the TNSM. His claim came to haunt him shortly thereafter when the TNSM, which had withdrawn into the hills, staged a come-back and re-established its control over large areas of the Swat. Fighting there is still going on. In August,2008, shortly after the return of Gilani from a visit to Washington DC, Gen.Kayani ordered another special operation against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Al Qaeda in the Bajaur Agency of the Federally-Administered Tribal Area (FATA) and asked Pasha to co-ordinate it too. Despite repeated claims of the Army having inflicted heavy casualties on the TTP and Al Qaeda, the two have been putting up a determined fight against the Army and the Frontier Corps .

10. The “Dawn” of Karachi reported on September 29 as follows: “Military operations against militants have been a mixed bag of successes and setbacks; however no timeframe could be given with regard to the ongoing campaigns, sources in the military said. ‘It is a continual operation. It is not going to end in 2008 and it is not going to end in 2009. Don’t be optimistic, as far as the timeframe is concerned. It is a different ground and it will take some time’, military sources said in a media briefing.” Thus, as the DGMO, Pasha has had a colourless record. That, despite this, he has been posted as the DG,ISI, shows his closeness and loyalty to Kayani, who had taken him for his secret meeting with Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff, on board a US Aircraft Carrier, on August 26,2008, and not Lt.Gen.Nadeem Taj.

11. The removal of Nadeem Taj has come in the wake of reports about US concerns and unhappiness over the alleged role of the ISI in the attempt to blow up the Indian Embassy in Kabul on July 7,2008, and over leakage of information shared by the US intelligence with the ISI to the Taliban. President Bush was reported to have taken up this matter with Prime Minister Gilani, when he visited Washington DC in the last week of July as well as with Zardari whom he met in the margins of the current UN General Assembly session. While removing Taj from the post of DG,ISI, Kayani has taken care not to create a feeling of humiliation in him by posting him as the Commander of an important Corps, but as the Corps Commander at Gujranwala he will not have much to do with Afghanistan or the ongoing military operations in the tribal belt. Kayani has removed him from any role in the operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

12. The removal of Taj from the ISI has also come in the wake of reports of Chinese unhappiness as expressed to Kayani during his week-long visit to China from September 21,2008, over the lack of a sense of urgency shown by the ISI in rescuing the two Chinese engineers kidnapped by the TTP on August 29. They were working for a Chinese cellular company in the Dir area of the NWFP. The TTP kidnapped them while they were travelling and removed them to the Swat valley. The TTP has been demanding the release of over 130 Taliban members presently in the custody of the Pakistani security agencies in return for their release.

13. The Chinese Embassy in Islamabad and Chinese engineers working in Pakistan have also been reportedly expressing their unhappiness over the lack of a sense of urgency shown by the Gilani Government as a whole in getting the Chinese engineers released. They have been pointing out as to how Musharraf always gave the first priority to requests from China for assistance and to the commando action ordered by him on the Lal Masjid of Islamabad when some of the students, including Uighurs, in the madrasas of the masjid, kidnapped some Chinese women working in Islamabad, and comparing this to the lethargic response of Gilani and Zardari. They feel that Gilani and Zardari have been giving a greater importance to US interests and concerns than to those of the Chinese.

14. In a report on the subject carried by the ‘News” of September 24, 2008, Rahimullah Yusufzai, the well-informed Pakistani journalist, said as follows: ” A Chinese journalist, who requested anonymity, said the Pakistan Government hasn’t shown any urgency in getting the two young engineers freed. He recalled how the issue of the two Chinese engineers kidnapped by late Pakistani Taliban commander Abdullah Mahsud’s men in South Waziristan in 2004 was resolved within a few days. “The recent case of kidnapping of Chinese engineers hasn’t been resolved even after more than three weeks. We were hoping our citizens would have been freed by now, he said.”

15. Before his election as the President, Zardari had stated that his first official visit as the President would be to China to underline the importance attached by him to Pakistan’s relations with China. He did not keep his word and instead went on a private visit to the United Arab Emirates and the UK and then on an official visit to New York to attend the UN General Assembly session. Pakistani officials have been explaining this away by claiming that his visit to New York was not a bilateral visit to the US and that his first official bilateral visit would still be to China. (30-9-08)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

Popularity: 25% [?]

Pakistan may go the way of Iran

Global Geopolitics Net Sites – Global Intel Net
Tuesday, September 30, 2008

© Copyright 2008 Susenjit Guha. All rights reserved.

By Susenjit Guha

With the United States finally deciding to go into Pakistan when and as they like, they are setting up the former strategic ally – which morphed into a client state after 9/11 – to go the way of Iran in the future.

The roots of rabid anti-Western and anti-American sentiment in Iran started with U.S. disregard for Persian national sovereignty in the late ‘70s, beginning with the forced removal of a democratically elected president, Dr. Mossadegh, after WWII and the installation of the Shah, who was oblivious to the misery of the greater Iranian population and concerned only with oil money. The U.S. and its allies interfered with Iran’s sovereignty in order to control oil companies that Mossadegh was threatening to nationalize.

Decades of pent-up hatred in Iran led to the storming of the U.S. embassy in 1979, the Shah’s exile, the radicalization of Iranian society and the countdown to the present-day incendiary situation where U.S. presidential candidate John McCain has to sing “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran.”

The United States can no longer disregard a people’s national sovereignty, especially in the case of Pakistan, where the present threat of terrorism has manifested itself to the fullest in the heartland of the traditional U.S. ally.

Did the United States take into account the ramifications of mounting raids into Pakistan’s terrorist hotbed of Waziristan?

And did the Bush administration factor in the possible fallout of marines descending on Angoor Ada during the month of Ramadan and gunning down innocent villagers preparing a simple meal before their day-long fast?

Not likely. Bush, who will shortly retire to his Crawford ranch and who authorized the raids, never cared for such nuances. Later, following further incursions and returned fire from Pakistani forces, as well as the terrorists’ reaction of razing the Marriott, the consequences of such U.S. actions became evident.

And it seems possible that this policy of pursuit will continue beyond the current administration. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama said he wouldn’t hesitate about crossing the border if Osama’s hideout was known. And despite McCain’s restraint, his vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, has made it clear that she would support pursuing terrorists over the border into Pakistan.

However, the negative effect of such incursions on the U.S.-Pakistani relationship may cause problems for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan. For instance, the supply chain for U.S.-NATO oil and food supplies for the troops in landlocked Afghanistan passes through Pakistan.

“Things are very tense and very dangerous in Pakistan,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference. “But that doesn’t mean the sky is falling…. Now more than ever is a time for teamwork, for calm.”

Is teamwork between the United States and Pakistan possible? Teamwork with Pakistan was already blurry with gray areas, even when the United States’ staunch ally, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was in power.

Can calm suddenly come in the midst of the changed relations with the United States? Calm was never there to begin with. The situation was always simmering and is now boiling over, as can be seen by the extent of damage from regular attacks into Pakistan.

The News, a Pakistani news agency, reported that Prof. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, head of fundamentalist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) – renamed Jamaat al-Dawat – said, “If the United States attacks Pakistan, every man, woman and child of the nation will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the country’s armed forces.”

This writer had discussed in several earlier commentaries about the tradition of Pakistan’s military and the much-belated U.S. socioeconomic aid, which, had it come earlier, could have weaned an entire generation away from terrorism after the Soviets left Afghanistan.

Other signs of potential trouble have emerged. Pakistan army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani recently visited China – an ally with formidable investments in Pakistan – with a shopping list including sophisticated air defense radars and surface-to-air missiles, weapons that are too sophisticated and redundant to be used for the war on terror.

Meanwhile, the infiltration of militants into Indian Kashmir has risen, as have incursions and firing along the Line of Control between India and Pakistan, which has been breached nearly 30 times since January of this year.

Not only Pakistan, but India too will be affected by the outcome of the United States’ new policy concerning Pakistan, as U.S. focus shifts from its involvement in Iraq to the Pakistan-Afghan border.

Pakistanis are at a historical crossroad as their nation heads toward failure, but like Iranians during the late ‘70s, anti-Americanism threatens to swell among the general Pakistani population.

Like Iranians, ordinary Pakistanis have been economically hard hit. Unlike the Shah’s Iran, a façade of democracy prevails, yet actual power rests in the hands of a couple hundred feudal families. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari’s track record as a leader so far is not very encouraging. And whereas Iran did not have nuclear weapons, Pakistan does, with a military that can call the shots anytime.

The United States, having created Pakistan’s military monster with unaccounted largesse, will now have to press in to Pakistan, for the future of the war on terror in Afghanistan, at the expense of the majority of Pakistanis who have nothing to do with terrorism.

Can the Pakistani army’s renewed offensive in the crucial battle for Bajaur in Waziristan succeed? And will it stop attacks inside Pakistan or crossovers from Afghanistan? It appears as if the terrorists know better than that.

The question remains of whether or not the current situation Pakistan will go the way of Iran and continue to inflame the area as a hotbed of terrorism.

About the Author:

Susenjit Guha is a writer and journalist based in Kolkata, India. He contributes a weekly commentary and analysis for UPI Asia and has written on Indian and global political issues for such online publications as Online Opinion (Australia) and Foreign Policy in Focus (USA) and M.J Akbar (India).

Popularity: 21% [?]

POLITICS-US: Bush Had No Plan to Catch Bin Laden after 9/11

Global Intel Net – Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, September 30, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Sep 29 (IPS) – New evidence from former U.S. officials reveals that the George W. Bush administration failed to adopt any plan to block the retreat of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the first weeks after 9/11.

That failure was directly related to the fact that top administration officials gave priority to planning for war with Iraq over military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

As a result, the United States had far too few troops and strategic airlift capacity in the theatre to cover the large number of possible exit routes through the border area when bin Laden escaped in late 2001.

Because it had not been directed to plan for that contingency, the U.S. military had to turn down an offer by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in late November 2001 to send 60,000 troops to the border passes to intercept them, according to accounts provided by former U.S. officials involved in the issue.

On Nov. 12, 2001, as Northern Alliance troops were marching on Kabul with little resistance, the CIA had intelligence that bin Laden was headed for a cave complex in the Tora Bora Mountains close to the Pakistani border.

The war had ended much more quickly than expected only days earlier. CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, who was responsible for the war in Afghanistan, had no forces in position to block bin Laden’s exit.

Franks asked Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, commander of Army Central Command (ARCENT), whether his command could provide a blocking force between al Qaeda and the Pakistani border, according to David W. Lamm, who was then commander of ARCENT Kuwait.

Lamm, a retired Army colonel, recalled in an interview that there was no way to fulfill the CENTCOM commander’s request, because ARCENT had neither the troops nor the strategic lift in Kuwait required to put such a force in place. ”You looked at that request, and you just shook your head,” recalled Lamm, now chief of staff of the Near East South Asia Centre for Strategic Studies at the National Defence University.

Franks apparently already realised that he would need Pakistani help in blocking the al Qaeda exit from Tora Bora. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld told a National Security Council meeting that Franks ”wants the [Pakistanis] to close the transit points between Afghanistan and Pakistan to seal what’s going in and out”, according to the National Security Council meeting transcript in Bob Woodward’s book ”Bush at War”.

Bush responded that they would need to ”press Musharraf to do that”.

A few days later, Franks made an unannounced trip to Islamabad to ask Musharraf to deploy troops along the Pakistan-Afghan border near Tora Bora.

A deputy to Franks, Lt. Gen. Mike DeLong, later claimed that Musharraf had refused Franks’s request for regular Pakistani troops to be repositioned from the north to the border near the Tora Bora area. DeLong wrote in his 2004 book ”Inside Centcom” that Musharraf had said he ”couldn’t do that”, because it would spark a ”civil war” with a hostile tribal population.

But U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, who accompanied Franks to the meeting with Musharraf, provided an account of the meeting to this writer that contradicts DeLong’s claim.

Chamberlin, now president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, recalled that the Pakistani president told Franks that CENTCOM had vastly underestimated what was required to block bin Laden exit from Afghanistan. Musharraf said, ”Look you are missing the point: there are 150 valleys through which al Qaeda are going to stream into Pakistan,” according to Chamberlin.

Although Musharraf admitted that the Pakistani government had never exercised control over the border area, the former diplomat recalled, he said this was ”a good time to begin”. The Pakistani president offered to redeploy 60,000 troops to the area from the border with India but said his army would need airlift assistance from the United States to carry out the redeployment.

But the Pakistani redeployment never happened, according to Lamm, because it wasn’t logistically feasible. Lamm recalled that it would have required an entire aviation brigade, including hundreds of helicopters, and hundreds of support troops to deliver that many combat troops to the border region — far more than was available.

Lamm said the ARCENT had so few strategic lift resources that it had to use commercial aircraft at one point to move U.S. supplies in and out of Afghanistan.

Even if the helicopters had been available, however, they could not have operated with high effectiveness in the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border region near the Tora Bora caves, according to Lamm, because of the combination of high altitude and extreme weather.

Franks did manage to insert 1,200 Marines to Kandahar on Nov. 26 to establish control of the airbase there. They were carried to the base by helicopters from an aircraft carrier that had steamed into the Gulf from the Pacific, according to Lamm.

The marines patrolled roads in the Kandahar area hoping to intercept al Qaeda officials heading toward Pakistan. But DeLong, now retired from the Army, said in an interview that the Marines would not have been able to undertake the blocking mission at the border. ”It wouldn’t have worked — even if we could have gotten them up there,” he said. ”There weren’t enough to police 1,500 kilometres of border.”

U.S. troops probably would also have faced armed resistance from the local tribal population in the border region, according to DeLong. The tribesmen in local villages near the border ”liked bin Laden,” he said ”because he had given them millions of dollars.”

Had the Bush administration’s priority been to capture or kill the al Qaeda leadership, it would have deployed the necessary ground troops and airlift resources in the theatre over a period of months before the offensive in Afghanistan began.

”You could have moved American troops along the Pakistani border before you went into Afghanistan,” said Lamm. But that would have meant waiting until spring 2002 to take the offensive against the Taliban, according to Lamm.

The views of Bush’s key advisers, however, ruled out any such plan from the start. During the summer of 2001, Rumsfeld had refused to develop contingency plans for military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan despite a National Security Presidential Directive adopted at the Deputies’ Committee level in July and by the Principles on Sep. 4 that called for such planning, according to the 9/11 Commission report.

Rumsfeld and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz resisted such planning for Afghanistan because they were hoping that the White House would move quickly on military intervention in Iraq. According to the 9/11 Commission, at four deputies’ meetings on Iraq between May 31 and Jul. 26, 2001, Wolfowitz pushed his idea to have U.S. troops seize all the oil fields in southern Iraq.

Even after Sep. 11, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney continued to resist any military engagement in Afghanistan, because they were hoping for war against Iraq instead.

Bush’s top secret order of Sep. 17 for war with Afghanistan also directed the Pentagon to begin planning for an invasion of Iraq, according to journalist James Bamford’s book ”Pretext for War”.

Cheney and Rumsfeld pushed for a quick victory in Afghanistan in NSC meetings in October, as recounted by both Woodward and Undersecretary of Defence Douglas Feith. Lost in the eagerness to wrap up the Taliban and get on with the Iraq War was any possibility of preventing bin Laden’s escape to Pakistan.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, ”Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

Popularity: 25% [?]

BALI HINDUS PROTEST AGAINST TALIBANISATION

Global Geopolitics Net Sites – Global Intel Net
Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

B.RAMAN

Hundreds of Hindus in the predominantly Hindu island of Bali in Indonesia have demonstrated twice in one week to protest against the efforts of conservative Islamic elements to force through the Indonesian Parliament a Bill, which is ostensibly meant to ban the dissemination and possession of pornographic literature, films, CDs and other material. The Hindus, who have been living in Bali for over a thousand years and preserved the pristine traditions of Hinduism, apprehend that the Islamic conservative elements behind the Bill have the hidden objective of imposing on non-Muslims the Islamic dress code and prejudices against music and dancing. They fear that the Islamic conservatives want to ban the use of music and dancing based on Hindu religious themes on religious and social occasions in Bali on the ground that they encourage eroticism and remove from temples idols, which are perceived by the conservatives as erotic. They also suspect that the Islamic conservatives want to eradicate the influence of Hindu traditions and culture in Indonesia and Arabise the Muslim population in Indonesia as has already been done in Malaysia.

2. The Islamic conservatives have been trying for the last three years to have the Bill passed and implemented, but they have been thwarted in their efforts by strong opposition not only from the Hindus and Christians, but also from liberal sections of the local Muslim society. The liberals still have a strong presence and voice in the Indonesian Muslim society, but face increasing pressure from the conservatives to let the Bill go through. This year, the conservatives made a determined bid to have the Bill passed and promulgated into law during the holy month of Ramadan.

3. Provoked by this, the Hindus of Bali have demonstrated twice against the Bill. Addressing the second demonstration on September 23,2008, Made Mangku Pastika, the Governor of Bali, said that the proposed Bill overlapped with existing legislation and trampled local customs in a country of ethnic, religious and cultural diversity. “The parliament should enforce other laws on the sex industry but don’t endorse a new law on pornography, especially if that law only accommodates a single group’s perspective and disrespects others’,” he said.
He added that regulations in the media law, the criminal code, the broadcasting law and the child protection law should be enough to control pornography.

4.The Bill is too vague in its definition of pornography and the critics of the Bill fear that it could lead to Taliban-style attacks against those preserving Hindu traditions in music and dancing and dressing differently from the Muslims. The conservatives want that women should be banned from exposing their midriff and navel, which should be made an offence punishable with two years in prison. The Hindus say that the Bill would threaten their local religious and cultural traditions, and hurt the lucrative tourism industry, on which they are mainly dependent for their livelihood.The Bill would criminalise all public acts and material capable of raising sexual desires or violating “community morality,” including dance, music and poetry. The protesting Hindus sang, danced and recited from Hindu epics—– all acts which could be criminalised if the Bill became law.

5.In the beginning the Bill was supported only by the Islamic conservative parties, but in view of the elections due next year, the secular Golkar has also started supporting it. However, the Christian Peace and Welfare Party and the nationalist Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) have rejected the proposed Bill.The Hindus have threatened to launch a civil disobedience movement similar to the movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi in India if the Bill is enacted and enforced.

5. The discussion on the Bill in the Parliament has reportedly been postponed till the end of this year in view of the protests from the Hindus and the Christians, but it has not been withdrawn. (24-9-08)

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

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THE MARRIOTT BLAST: WAS DENMARK THE TARGET?

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO. 449

Global Intel Net
Sunday, September 21, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

B.RAMAN

There are some indications that Denmark might have been the target of the massive blast directed at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on the night of September 20,2008. While no organisation has so far claimed responsibility for the blast, the hand of Al Qaeda is suspected. According to IntelCenter, a US-based group which monitors and analyzes the Internet-based communications of Al Qaeda and its associates, a senior Al Qaeda leader Mustafa Abu al-Yazid had threatened attacks against Western interests in Pakistan in a video disseminated on the recent anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

2.However, in an investigative report carried by the “News” of September 22, 2008, Amir Mir, the well-informed Pakistani journalist, has stated that Pakistani investigators suspect that the blast must have been carried out by the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), which is a member of the Al Qaeda-led International Islamic Front (IIF), formed by bin Laden in 1998.
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AL QAEDA & THE MARRIOTT HOTEL CHAIN

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR–PAPER NO.448

Global Intel Net – Global Geopolitics Net Sites
Sunday, September 21, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

B.RAMAN

Since 9/11, the Marriott Hotel Chain has been the victim of six terrorist strikes mounted by Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda jihadi terrorist organisations. On four occasions—- thrice in Islamabad and once in Jakarta— it was directly targeted. On the remaining two occasions (New York and Karachi) it was a collateral victim of a terrorist strike not directly targeting it.

2. On 9/11, the destruction of the two towers of the New York World Centre by Al Qaeda destroyed the New York Marriott World Trade Center Hotel and damaged the 504-room Marriott Financial Center located there. Some senior executives of the hotel chain, who had their offices in the towers, were killed.

3.On June 14, 2002,the Marriott Hotel in Karachi suffered minor damages when a suicide car bomb exploded near the US Consulate in the same area. Eleven persons—-mostly passers-by—were killed. The hotel was not targeted.On August 5, 2003, the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta was the direct target of an attack in which 14 people were killed. The pro-Al Qaeda Jemmah Islamiya was suspected. On October 28, 2004,the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad suffered some damage to its lobby, as a bomb went off inside the hotel. Fifteen persons were injured, including an American diplomat.On January 26, 2007, an alleged suicide bomber and a private security guard, who stopped him for questioning, were killed when the terrorist blew himself up in the parking lot of the hotel.

4. In the third attack directly targeting the hotel at Islamabad on September 20,2008, sixty persons—including some foreigners— were reported to have been killed when a truck bomber carrying about one ton of explosive blew the truck up, when he was stopped for questioning at the gate by the security guards. The explosion, which practically destroyed part of the hotel causing a major fire,, took place on a day when physical security in Islamabad was very tight since only a few hours before the explosion President Asif Ali Zardari addressed a joint session of the two houses of the Parliament. The Parliament House, the Presidency, the Prime Minister’s House, offices of ministers, the judges colony and the housing colony of some of the staff of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) are located near the hotel.

5. Hotels and restaurants with suspected Jewish ownership have been among the favourite targets of Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda organisations. Al Qaeda had also targeted the Hilton Hotel in Sharm-el-Sheikh in 2005 and the Jewish-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa in 2002. Pro-Al Qaeda jihadi terrorists had targeted French submarine construction engineers staying in the Sheraton Hotel of Karachi in May,2002.

6. Apart from suspected Jewish ownership, another reason for the targeting of the Marriott hotels in Jakarta and Islamabad are the fact that often Western Embassies in these capitals use these hotels for providing accommodation to their staff and visiting officials. They also hire a large number of rooms in the hotels for temporarily locating some of their offices till permanent accommodation is found.

7. Pakistani authorities suspect thast the explosion of September 20,2008, might have been carried out by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in retaliation for the current operation s of the Pakistani security forces in the Swat Valley of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and in the Bajaur Agency of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Another suspicion voiced by them is that the Parliament House might have been the real target of the attack and that the bomber instead went to the hotel when he found that access control to the Parliament House was tight.

8. Even though it may turn out to be correct that the suicide bomber was a Pashtun tribal from the TTP, Al Qaeda involvement in the planning and execution is a strong possibility. Since the commando raid into the Lal Masjid of Islamabad in July last year, the TTP and individual terrorists acting on their own have repeatedly demonstrated a capability for terrorist strikes in highly-protected areas in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, where the General Headquarters of the Army are located, and other cantonments. They had even targeted the GHQ itself as well as the offices of the ISI. In most of these cases, the explosions took place under identical circumstances—-the suicide bomber triggering the explosion when stopped for questioning by the security personnel.

9. Since the beginning of 2007, there have been nearly 300 suicide explosions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Most of these strikes are believed to have originated from Pakistan’s tribal belt where Al Qaeda and the Taliban have their sanctuaries. These statistics and the continuing wave of suicide strikes or attempted strikes show the inexhaustible availability of explosives and detonators and volunteers for suicide terrorism in the tribal belt. Neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan nor the US nor the other NATO forces have been able to come out with a workable answer to the question as to how to dry up these sources of supply. Unless an answer is found to this question, one has to watch helplessly as suicide bombers spread death and destruction. Whereas in India, the jihadi terrorists have been switching over to commonly available material such as a mix of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, the terrorists in Pakistan seem to have a plentiful supply of high military-grade explosives. (21-9-08)

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

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COUNTER-TERRORISM: ACT NOW

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.445

Global News Blog – Global Geopolitics Net Sites
Thursday, September 18, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

B.RAMAN

The address of the Prime Minister, Dr.Manmohan Singh, to the Governors’ conference at New Delhi on September 17,2008, contains a number of important pronouncements relating to the fight against terrorism. These pronouncements taken together amount to an attempt by the Government, which is almost at the end of its term before the general elections are due, to come out of the denial mode into which it had kept itself confined since it came to office in 2004.

2.While refuting allegations from the critics that the Government was soft on terrorism, the Prime Minister admitted that there had been intelligence failures and that in addition to the continuing threats from jihadi terrorists infiltrated from Pakistan, the nation is now finding itself confronted with a new dimension of the threat posed by more Indian nationals gravitating to the ranks of the jihadis.

3. A point, which was not mentioned by the Prime Minister, but which needs to be underlined is that the phenomenon of home-grown jihadis is not new to India. We had faced a serious threat of home-grown jihadis from the Al Umma of Tamil Nadu after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. Al Umma spread death and destruction across Tamil Nadu between 1993 and 1999 including the orchestrated serial blasts in Coimbatore in February,1998. Al Umma was almost a hundred per cent home-grown movement with no links to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) or to the global jihad waged by Al Qaeda and its Pakistani associates. The threat from Al Umma was largely neutralized by the effective action taken by the Tamil Nadu Police after the Coimbatore blasts.

4. Between the end of the Kargil conflict with Pakistan towards the end of 1999 and November,2007, we saw a new wave of jihadi terrorist strikes outside Jammu & Kashmir involving either the ISI-sponsored Pakistani organizations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) or a mix of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian elements. While the Pakistani and Bangladeshi elements in this mix largely belonged to the LET and the HUJI, the Indian elements came largely from the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) plus a few with no previous affiliation to any organization. These groups thought and acted tactically as well as strategically.

5.Tactically, they viewed their operations as meant to retaliate against the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the anti-Muslim incidents in Gujarat in 2002 after the massacre of some Hindu pilgrims traveling by a train by some Muslim fanatics at Godhra. Strategically, they viewed them as part of the global jihad being waged by the International Islamic Front (IIF) under the leadership of Al Qaeda for achieving an Islamic Caliphate and putting an end to the presence and influence of the US in the Islamic world.

6. What we have been seeing across India since November last year is a revival of the Al Umma phenomenon of reprisal terrorism with the tactical objective of wreaking vengeance against the society as a whole and the Governments in New Delhi and different States for the alleged wrongs done to the Indian Muslims. These elements have been operating under the name of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) and deny vehemently in their propaganda any foreign links either with the ISI or with the Pakistani organizations. They have till now not given any indication of any strategic objective. They just want to kill and desire to demonstrate their ability to kill wherever and whenever they want.

7. All the suspected perpetrators arrested till now in Ahmedabad, Jaipur and other places in connection with the serial blasts for which the IM has claimed responsibility are Indian Muslims. This need not mean that there is no hidden foreign involvement either of Pakistani organizations or of Al Qaeda. The fact that till now they have not been talking and acting strategically does not mean that they do not consider themselves as part of the global jihad being waged under the leadership of Al Qaeda.

8. One significant difference needs to be noted in the modus operandi of the Pakistan-sponsored jihadi organizations and the IM. Under instructions from the ISI, Pakistani organizations generally do not claim responsibility for attacks on civilians. They claim responsibility only for the attacks on the security forces. Like Al Qaeda, the IM admits its responsibility for targeted attacks on civilians and proclaims such attacks as part of its policy. Al Qaeda admitted its responsibility for the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US and lionized the terrorists, who attacked the London public transportation system in July,2005. There have been other instances of Al Qaeda openly proclaiming its responsibility for attacks on civilians.

9. The new dimension of the threat as stated by the Prime Minister has made him concede the need to enhance the powers of the police through special laws where necessary and to set up a special central agency to investigate and prosecute terrorism-related cases.

10. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister’s pronouncements, which indicate a change in the Government’s thinking and strategy, have come hardly a few months before the elections. His critics would, therefore, suspect that his pronouncements were more an electoral ploy than the result of a genuine change of conviction as to how to fight terrorism.

11.Moreover, even if he is able to counter successfully suspicions of an electoral ploy, the concretization of his pronouncements through the drafting and enactment of appropriate laws and introducing the necessary changes in the counter-terrorism architecture will take at least a year. This is not something that can be done overnight. The Lok Sabha is about to enter the lame duck mode and the opposition will try its best not to give the Government any credit for bringing about the necessary changes.

12.In this context, what is important is an urgent short-term plan to identify the brains behind the self-styled IM and neutralize them before they spread further death and destruction. As I have been pointing out repeatedly, this is a pan-Indian threat not confined to a single State and hence calls for a pan-Indian response. It is important to make the Police in all the States where the blasts have already taken place carry out their investigations in an integrated manner through an appropriate short-term mechanism, which would not require any major change in the existing laws.

13. We have had three examples of successful investigations and prosecution. The first was the investigation into the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by the LTTE in 1991. In view of its ramifications extending to more than one State and its external linkages, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), then headed by Vijaykaran, an officer of the Intelligence Bureau, was asked to take over the investigation through a special task force headed by D.R.Kartikeyan.

14. The second was the investigation into the Mumbai serial blasts of March,1993. Here the investigation was done by the Mumbai Police with the CBI handling the external ramifications. Narasimha Rao, the then Prime Minister, set up a co-ordination committee headed by S.B.Chavan, the then Home Minister, to co-ordinate the investigation on a day-to-day basis. Rajesh Pilot, the then Minister of State for Internal Security, played a live wire role in this co-ordination. Narasimha Rao closely monitored the work of this committee, by periodically chairing the meetings himself.

15. The third was the investigation into the terrorist strikes in Tamil Nadu. This was done in a very creditable manner by the Tamil Nadu Police through its own resources.

16. The serial blasts, which the country has been facing since November 2007, are more complicated. While the Police officers of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Gujarat, and Delhi have been doing excellent work through their resources, the final results in terms of identification, neutralization and prosecution may not be quite satisfactory in the absence of a continuous and effective central role. How to achieve this has to be decided by the Prime Minister quickly in consultation with the Chief Ministers of the targeted States.

17. Political and electoral considerations should not be allowed to come in the way of time-bound action to put a stop to these serial blasts.

18. If these blasts continue in this manner with the police and the intelligence agencies being perceived not only by our public, but also by foreign Governments and investors as helpless, it could come in the way of our efforts to invite more foreign investment. The foreign investors have till now shown signs of continuing confidence in the capability of our Police and security agencies to prevail over the terrorists sooner than later. But, if such incidents continue at regular intervals, this confidence could be shaken.

19. The time for action is now, not tomorrow, which may be too late.(18-9-08)

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

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US GLOVES ARE OFF AGAINST PAKISTAN

Global Geopolitics Net Sites – Global News Blog
Sunday, September 21, 2008

By Malladi Rama Rao

So the US gloves are off against Pakistan. The battle zones in eastern Afghanistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan are merged into one. From September 3, American ground assault troops with helicopter gun ships providing aerial cover are targeting Taliban and al Qaeda militants who made America lose any hope of winning the unending war in Afghanistan. US air strikes on militant bases deep inside Pak territory are also not new. The first reported strike took place at Damadola village in Bajaur agency early 2006 in which 18 civilians were killed. But what distinguishes the September 3 attack was that it was publicly acknowledged by the Americans with the White House ‘leak’ to the New York Times that President Bush had authorised in July itself attacks on terrorist havens inside Pakistan.

According to a version of the ‘attack’, two Chinook helicopters dropped several American soldiers at 1 pm on the Afghan side of the border near the Saway Waray area of Angoor Adda. They then moved swiftly towards Pakistan border villages with a helicopter gun ship flying over them, completed their ‘mission’ and returned to their bases across the Durand Line.

Well, this is hot pursuit of militants to smoke them out of their holes, as promised by President Bush nearly seven years ago. But the timing of his action is intriguing. Is he on a desperate push for an ‘al-Qaeda trophy? Or is he trying to pump prime the fortunes of the Republicans in the Presidential elections after a string of diplomatic set backs from Georgia to Iraq and in Bolivia and Venezuela.

Whatever be the ‘truth’ on which the Americans are always economical, the US President’s hands were forced by his military commanders who for long were talking about the Pakistan’s double-crossing in the fight against terrorists. There was a clear sign of desperation when the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, told the House Armed Services Committee: ‘Frankly, we are running out of time…..I am not convinced we are winning in Afghanistan….(but) I am convinced we can.’ Both Admiral Mullen and Defence Secretary Robert Gates told Congress this week that for victory in Afghanistan the US needed to take the fight to the enemy inside Pakistan. And on September 9, in a speech at the National Defence University, President Bush all but called Pakistan a terrorist state, saying that terrorists were ‘increasingly using Pakistan as a base from which to destabilise Afghanistan’s young democracy’.

There was a time before 11 September 2001 when the US would resolutely reject Indian complaints that Pakistan had become a haven for terrorists. The US refused to believe for long that Pakistan was a major part of the problem of terrorism and saw the country as a solution and counted it as its front-line ally. Now, it is mounting pressure on Pakistan to reform its ‘powerful’ Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). “It (ISI reform) has to be done,” Assistant Secretary of State for south and central Asian affairs Richard Boucher told the Reuters in Washington on September 16. Why ISI has suddenly become the bad guy for the Americans is unclear as yet. It could be a result of the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul in July. The ISI helped Jalaluddin Haqqani’s fighters to carry out the attack. American officials told Dexter Filkins, a correspondent for The Times that the evidence of the ISI’s involvement was overwhelming. “It was sort of this ‘aha’ moment,” one of them said.

Jalaluddin is a long-time associate of bin Laden. His son, Serajuddin Haqqani, is a senior Taliban commander battling the Americans in eastern Afghanistan. The Haqqanis are believed to be overseeing operations from a hiding place in North Waziristan. The Pakistan establishment has never tried to hide its equation with the Haqqanis. Two years ago, for instance, a senior ISI official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told a New York Times reporter that he regarded Serajuddin Haqqani as one of the ISI’s intelligence assets. “We are not apologetic about this,” the ISI official said. For a presumed ally of the United States, that was a stunning admission. The September 3 strike reportedly killed Jalaluddin’s wife and his daughter.

The question, therefore, is why did the Bush administration not undertake the hot pursuit of Pak based militants thus far. And instead, as a Stratfor commentary points out, used New Delhi as a lever to extract concessions from Islamabad like it did during the 2001-02 military stand off between the two South Asian rivals. The answer lies in the personal rapport Gen Pervez Musharraf had with President Bush, and his success in hoodwinking the Pentagon, CIA and the State Department. He did not even once visit the Wazirs and Mashuds in Waziristan during his nine- year rule. The tribal chiefs felt emboldened as they realised that the leadership in Islamabad lacked the will to deal with them.

Yes, under American pressure, Gen Musharraf ‘declared’ war against the militants and deployed ‘over 100,000 troops’ to ‘flush’ them out. He ordered the arrest of some 2,000 militants, many of whom were trained in ISI sponsored camps in POK and Northern Areas. Deception was the game Musharraf practiced in this drive as well. Quietly he allowed the release of most arrested militants. Pak Scouts and Frontier Constabulary were made the cannon fodder in the offensive against militants and the army was mostly spared. Also foreign militants were hit the most while the Afghan militants and the Pakistani militants who support the Afghans were ‘kid -gloved’, according to Khalid Aziz, who heads the Peshawar based Regional Institute of Policy Research.

President Bush had an opportunity to arm twist Gen Musharraf, when the Pak leader had entered into a series of agreements with tribal elders in Shakai, Sarogha and Miramshah. He did not. It is one of those enigmatic Bush mysteries, to put it mildly. Because these agreements for the first time had showed that all was not well in the US-Pak alliance. No doubt the Americans used ‘Predator’ diplomacy to literally nullify these peace accords but that was neither here nor there.

There is an argument that by launching direct operations against the Pak based militants the United States is undermining nascent democracy in Pakistan. This talking point is valid for the seminar circuit. It ignores the reality that Washington (like Beijing) is always comfortable with tyrants, and its concern to democracy is limited to Oval Office interactions, White House Press Briefing Room and occasionally to the Rose Garden tours. Any how, Pakistan’s new helmsman, Asif Ali Zardari is a US-backed President much like his predecessor, Musharraf, who was a US-backed dictator. This is notwithstanding the British claim that London too played a major role in ushering in the Zardari presidency by turning the screws on UK-based Pak leaders like MQM chief to make them fall in-line. The Americans opted for Zardari because as a known Mr 10 per cent he appeared more amenable than Nawaz Sharif, who is completely in the Saudi camp.

Fact of the matter is that Zardari is only a stop-gap President. He refuses to acknowledge the home truth though. That was why he dared to declare with great gusto that he wound pursue of a policy of negotiations rather than confrontation to win over the tribal militant leadership. And immediately burnt his bridges with the United States. In contrast, his wily army chief, Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani keeps himself on board the US plans while letting the myth that he had ordered the troops to shoot US raiders gains wide currency.

Washington and the American media are playing no mean role in spreading the ‘good word’ that Pakistan army is ‘determined’ to ‘defend the sovereignty of the nation’. Interestingly, however, the Kayani myth was shattered by a report tucked in the inside pages of ‘The Dawn’ on Sept 17. The headline itself was a give away. It read: “ISPR chief (army spokesman) downplays report about orders given to forces.”

The report by Iftikhar A Khan said, “Talking to Dawn, Maj-Gen Athar Abbas (army spokesman) downplayed the AP report (on orders to troops to fire at the Americans…) and said there was nothing new about it. He said he had been quoted out of context by AP. He said he had been asked how would Pakistan retaliate. The answer was that it would be done by engaging those who violated the sovereignty of the country. He did not say when the orders to fire on US troops were issued. He also did not say whether the Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani personally took the decision. The ISPR spokesman also played down suggestions that the instructions had been put into operation”.

The point is Gen Kayani has hitched himself on to anti-American band wagon with effortless ease. It helps him (and this suits the Americans) to emerge from the shadows as the darling of the masses and soldiers alike. Look at his tour diary if you are not convinced still. Last week, when anti-American sentiment was at its peak, tribal elders and religious scholars of FATA and NWFP were backing the ‘bold stance of the Army chief’, and the political class was hailing ‘no –nonsense statements of the army chief’ and was poking fun at ‘the wimpish political leadership’, (The News, Sept 17), he was neither in Wana nor Miranshah, not even Bajaur, but at the forward posts on the Line of Actual Contact and Line of Control in Northern Areas. He patted his troops on Siachen (Pak controlled). The General spoke of ‘national consensuses’ on Kashmir and declared ‘Odds can’t deter Pak army from defending the nation’. Next week he is going to China on a five-day visit, his first since he assumed the command of the Pak army.

The Kayani postures serve a purpose. More since he is in regular contact with Admiral Michael Mullen who keeps hoping into Islamabad on unscheduled visits often ( the latest visit was last week). Whatever may be his dilemma, the Kayani rhetoric helps to divert public attention towards the core issue of Kashmir and the traditional enemy ‘Hindustan’.

Undoubtedly this is bad news for Manmohan Singh government as it has already burnt its fingers badly with its Amarnath follies and the ineptitude and indifference of Home Minister Shivraj Patil. But it gives the badly needed breathing space for Kayani and his colleagues in dealing with the US. Any how Islamabad cannot risk (even dream of) a major confrontation with Washington because of its pathetic dependence on the monthly American and IMF doles.

On its part, the Bush administration is not going to get sucked into Pakistan tribal belt. It has learnt its lessons well from Vietnam to Iraq and the bloody nose the Soviet Union had suffered in Afghanistan. It has a limited goal and limited time frame to operate. Firstly, it wants to replicate the narrow strategy pioneered in Iraq, namely bump off the militant leaders one–by-one and help create infrastructure to facilitate future operations. Secondly, in fact, most importantly, diminish, if not end completely, the powerful role of the ISI, reform the army and rework the skewed policy with a set of new managers like Kayani. A high risk policy it is but President Bush is known for such gambles.

About the Author

Malladi Rama Rao is an analyst and writer on the Indian political scene and geo-political and security issues of South Asia. He directs a Weekly Feature Service in English, Syndicate Features, in colloboration with his wife Vaniram. He is also the India Editor of Asian Tribune.

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The Dragon, Emerging soft colonial power

Global Geopolitics Net Sites
Friday, September 19, 2008

© Copyright 2008 Malladi Rama Rao. All rights reserved.

By Malladi Rama Rao

The dazzling display at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games may have reminded some of the Mao-era mass parades in The Tiananmen Square. But not to the people across the world who were glued to the TV sets what with their fire works, pyro-techniques, and more than 2000 beating drums with their hands and florescent drum sticks in perfect unison. And their verdict was unanimous: China has arrived though Tion Kwa, a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the Asia Society in Washington DC prefers to dub it as a China’s synchronised anachronism.

According to him, it is not easy to think of such a display as being in line with modern norms. “The Chinese economy may be more market-oriented today than ever before, but, because the Communist Party is still in charge, China remains out of sync with those parts of Asia and the rest of the world where communism has long since come to be viewed as an anachronistic oddity”, Tion opines.

Of late, there have been many studies that have focused increasingly on the internal factors at play in China. One such study by Minxin Pei opines that there are several systemic risks in Chinese domestic politics. In his view unless these are addressed seriously, the survival of the regime may be at risk. Pei, who is Director of the China Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International peace, goes on to say that the surging pace of the Chinese economy is blinding the world to its political risks.

We cannot be oblivious to another reality. It is that from Thailand to Myanmar and from Sri Lanka to Nigeria Chinese goods are being lapped up by the dozen every day. Simply because these are affordable at all ends of the scale. In Pakistan for instance, as the Lahore daily The Nation says, Chinese motorbikes, medicines, toys and shoes are forty to forty-five percent cheap. Stationery making units are on the verge of collapse because of availability of cheap Chinese imported and smuggled items like pencils, another Lahore daily the Daily Times reported on June 6.

In the El Dorado of the 21st century, United States, consumers looking for low prices have snapped up Chinese-made goods in recent years, Economic Policy Institute, a Left-leaning Washington think-tank says. Its finding that the US trade deficit with China cost 2.3 million American jobs between 2001 and 2007 may fuel debate about free trade ahead of November presidential elections.

New global order

More so because a professor of management and human resources at the Ohio State University has just published his new book asking Americans to be prepared for a new global order. “Hundreds of years ago China was one of the world’s leading powers and they want to be number one again”, Oded Shenkar writes in his book, “The Chinese Century: The Rising Chinese Economy and its impact on the Global Economy, The Balance of Power and Your Job” (Wharton School of Publishing).
These pundits are worried that China could one day pass the US as major economic power. Well their concern is understandable. But in their America centric pre-occupation, they are ignoring another reality. It is that China has taken a leaf out of colonial masters of yore in its single minded pursuit of geo-political, strategic, energy and economic goals. Politics, as a scholar once said, is built on two foundations: military and economic. The two interact and support each other. This is clearly brought out by the power play China is practising in Africa and Asia. Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy sums up the situation thus: ‘The go out strategy has paid remarkable dividends and will continue to do so at least in the short term’. There is a flip-side to the Chinese rise and its business deals with unstable regimes: Beijing has become a target of attacks from Pakistan to Iraq, Nigeria, Yemen and Mogadishu. The abductors are often faceless local groups with scores to settle with the authorities.

Like the gunmen in Southern Niger Delta, who had abducted five Chinese workers on Jan 5, 2007. “They did not want money but release of four prisoners of Niger Delta origin in the Nigerian jails, “according to a Reuters report of the day from Abuja.

The attacks on Chinese engineers and workers across Pakistan are well documented. From the turbulent FATA region bordering Afghanistan to Islamabad, Chinese have not been safe in the recent years. They are not a large community numbering around 5000 in all but they are present in all segments of the Pak economy from the lowly massage parlours in capital to mining, drilling and construction of telecom towers. The message by the Lal Majid clerics (June 23, 2007) is illustrative of the local mood.

While releasing seven Chinese women ‘picked up’ by the students of the Madrassa attached to the Masjid from a nearby massage parlour, the clerics said, ‘while we value friendship with China we will not allow even Chinese women to work as prostitute and damage the morale of Muslims ‘. The pickup and subsequent events had led to Chinese pressure on the military regime of the day to act against the mosque authorities.

That the Chinese are pususing what an Indian Leftist calls as Marwari capitalism is also clear from another aspect of Chinese involvement in Pakistan. Jiye Sindh Quami Mahaz is against China’s financial aid to construction of big dams like the Bhasha dam for instance. Several rallies in Sindh and the Northern Areas have not moved the Chinese investment agency to rethink its offer.

Economic carrots

Apparently, Beijing is concerned with the economic carrots Islamabad under General Musharraf had dangled. These ranged from a rail link parallel to the Karkoram high way ending at Havelian. That will be connected to Gwadar port, which provides the Chinese alternative sea route to foreign trade.

Like the earlier generation of colonialists, the Dragon today is ever willing to play with whoever suits its bill. For its ends matter. May be for it the adage precept is better than practice and the Gandhian concept of ends and means to end matter equally are dated. Consider how Beijing had dealt with LTTE and Colombo alike. Also how in Myanmar Chinese nationals carried out illegal gold mining in Laiza and Namsan Yang areas, some 80 km ( 50 miles) south east of Myitkyina, Kachin state. Yangoon Junta was forced to step in and ban all mining activity in the area since the second week of June, 2008.

China earned the wrath of local movement for justice in Northern Niger with its patronage of Niger government. Chinese companies supplied arms to the authorities as the trade off for the permission to undertake uranium mining. But faced with abductions, uranium mining was shut down (2007). China has supplied arms to several governments and rebels in Africa for mutual benefit. Take for instance China-Sudan ties. China buys two thirds of Sudan’s oil and in return sells arms with no concern whatsoever for Darfur imbroglio.

Human rights
Johannesburg’s publication, ‘The Weekender’ reports that Mugabwe regime is getting Chinese weapons. Foreign office in Beijing termed the report as a groundless rumour. , Professor Humphrey Moshi of the University of Dar-es-Salaam doesn’t appear to be a taker for the denial. This is clear from his advice to China: Give up engagement with rouge nations. His contention is that China’s engagement with such countries undermines human rights values. In his view,” Chinese investments will likely fuel conflicts as also delay the conflict resolution and mediation process’.

A close study of Chinese presence in Africa and Asia shows that the professor’s advice has no takers in Beijing. Because, as Drew Thompson says in a James Foundation report (Volume 4 Issue 24, December 07, 2007) its efforts are aimed at creating a paradigm of globalisation that favours China. His conclusion is based on his study of how Chinese interests in Africa expanded to spheres of influence and access to energy and raw materials through diplomacy, trade, aid and investment.

Observation
These observations are equally valid for Asia since China has adopted the same route in countries like Sri Lanka and Myanmar. What should however be of equal concern is China’s promotion of its own brand of economic development and reform, model amongst the Third World countries. Beijing has been encouraging friendly countries to send high level delegations to learn from Chinese experiments and experience.

Pertinent is the observation of George Friedman, the Stratfor expert. Says he: “The dramatic economic development has benefited the coast and left the interior—the vast majority of Chinese—behind. It has also left China vulnerable to global economic forces that it cannot control and cannot accommodate. This is not new in Chinese history, but its usual resolution is in regionalism and the weakening of the central government. Deng’s gamble is being played out by his successors. He dealt the hand. They have to play it. The question on the table is whether the economic basis of China is a foundation or a balancing act. If the former, it can last a long time. If the latter, everyone falls down eventually. There appears to be little evidence that it is a foundation. It excludes most of the Chinese from the game, people who are making less than $100 a month”.

About the Author

Malladi Rama Rao is an analyst and writer on the Indian political scene and geo-political and security issues of South Asia. He directs a Weekly Feature Service in English, Syndicate Features, in colloboration with his wife Vaniram. He is also the India Editor of Asian Tribune.

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B-308, Puneet Apts. B-10, Vasundhara Enclave, Delhi; Ph -22617660 E-mail: syndicatefeatures@rediffmail.com

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US STRIKES IN FATA: CHANGE IN CONTINUITY

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.447

Global Politics Online – Global Geopolitics Net Sites
Friday, September 19, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

B.RAMAN

The rules of engagement relating to Pakistan’s tribal belt followed by the US forces in Afghanistan before July,2008, were that while Pakistan had agreed to deniable air strikes by unmanned Predator aircraft of the US on suspected terrorist hide-outs in Pakistani territory adjoining the Pakistan-Afghan border in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), it had not agreed to any unilateral ground strikes by the US forces based in Afghanistan either in exercise of the right of hot pursuit or to pre-empt planned attacks by Al Qaeda and the Taliban on the NATO forces in Afghanistan from sanctuaries in Pakistani territory.

2. According to leaks to sections of the US media by unidentified US officials, in the middle of July President George Bush approved some changes in the rules of engagement relating to ground strikes under which he authorised the US special forces to undertake unilateral ground strikes in Pakistani territory under certain circumstances. In this connection, reference is invited to my previous article titled PAK-US SNAFU of 13-9-08 at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2843.html .
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