By C Raja Mohan*

Despite shared political values and expanding connections between the two societies over the last century, Delhi and Washington found it hard to build a sustainable partnership. Repeated efforts at constructing a consequential partnership have stuttered in the past. Many, therefore, are skeptical in assessing the consequences of the unexpected political warmth between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the US President Barack Obama. They question the claim of the two leaders that they have begun a new chapter in India-US relations. Yet this scepticism, rooted in the recognition of the past failures, might be missing the elements of significant change that have begun to envelop the ties between Delhi and Washington since Modi became Prime Minister in May 2014. To be sure, Modi’s efforts to transform India’s relations with the United States are not new and are in line with the attempts that Delhi has made since the early-1980s. But by encouraging a basic change in the way that India thinks about the United States and America’s place in India’s engagement with the world, Modi has turned out to be rather different from his predecessors in the South Block.

If India and America steadily drifted apart during the early decades of the Cold War to become ‘estranged democracies’, they certainly became more engaged since the 1980s.2 When Indira Gandhi returned to power as Prime Minister in 1980 she corrected the tilt in India’s foreign policy towards the Soviet Union during the 1970s and sought to rebalance Delhi’s great-power relations by reaching out to President Ronald Reagan. Much of the deep rooted anti-Americanism that is widely presumed to be a natural attribute of the Indian political classes is the product of a tectonic political shift within India and its regional environment in the 1970s. Mrs Gandhi’s shift to economic populism at home and Third World radicalism abroad was compounded by the Nixon-Kissinger empathy towards Pakistan in the 1971 war for the liberation of Bangladesh. As Delhi drew closer to Moscow and disconnected itself from the global economy, there was little substance left in India’s engagement with the United States and the West. The focus of Indian diplomacy towards the United States turned inevitably to the management of differences rather than constructing a broad-based relationship. After Mrs Gandhi tried to change course in the early-1980s, her son and successor Rajiv Gandhi brought much greater enthusiasm to the engagement with the United States. Some of the dominant themes in India’s contemporary relations with the US – from IT business connection to defence cooperation – can all be traced back to the Rajiv years.3 Yet, the political constraints of the Cold War and India’s inward economic orientation limited the possibilities with the US. Repeated attempts at elevating ties with America into a genuine strategic partnership did not gain much political traction.

The end of the Cold War and Delhi’s economic reorientation opened up new possibilities between India and America.4 Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao declared that the ‘sky was the limit’ to cooperation with Washington. Departing from the script about nonalignment, Atal Behari Vajpayee proclaimed that India and America were ‘natural allies’. Manmohan Singh famously said how Indians ‘loved’ George W Bush. But the Indian leaders faced three sets of problems in Washington in the first decade after the Cold War. One was the fact that the US, as the sole superpower after the demise of the Soviet Union, appeared to have little reason for a strategic embrace of India. Second, America’s strong concerns on non-proliferation put India’s ability to sustain its nuclear-weapon option at risk. India’s decision to conduct nuclear tests in May 1998 sharpened the nuclear divide between the two countries. Third, American diplomatic activism on Kashmir in the 1990s raised profound concerns in Delhi that was feeling the heat from the indigenously-generated unrest in Jammu & Kashmir and Pakistan’s support for cross-border terrorism.

The advent of George W Bush as the President of the United States in 2001 provided an opportunity to recast the relationship in the second decade after the Cold War. Vajpayee and his foreign policy advisers, Jaswant Singh and Brajesh Mishra, were determined to seize the moment. Unlike Clinton, Bush was ready to look at India from a strategic perspective and recognise Delhi’s potential to shape the Asian balance of power. Having made that judgement, Bush was eager to explore creative solutions to the long-standing nuclear dispute with India, desist from interference in Kashmir and de-hyphenate America’s relations with India and Pakistan.5 This new thinking in Washington began to bear fruit in the second term of the Bush Administration that coincided with the installation of Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government in the middle of 2004. In two remarkable moves in mid-2005 – a new ten-year defence framework agreement and the historic civil nuclear initiative – Bush and Manmohan Singh laid the foundation for a productive strategic partnership between the two countries.6 In the decade that followed, the Indian government struggled to follow through on these game-changing agreements. While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh understood the enormous significance of the new strategic possibilities with the US, he could not persuade the Congress leadership that panicked at the thought of drawing close to Washington. Lack of political self-confidence among the Congress leaders and the fear of antagonising key domestic constituencies saw the government not only avoid a close partnership with the US but also deliberately introduce some distance between Delhi and Washington.

Ending the Ambivalence

That Modi has significantly altered the dynamic of the bilateral relationship within a short span of nine months is not in doubt. The sense of stasis that had enveloped the relationship towards the end of the UPA Government has yielded place to a renewed sense of optimism about the relationship, akin to that seen in the first year of Manmohan Singh’s tenure. Modi’s contribution was not about bringing big new ideas to the engagement with the United States.

Those ideas and possibilities were well debated in the mid-2000s. 7 Modi’s success was in ending India’s political ambivalence towards America and bringing clarity to India’s own objectives. Observers of Indian foreign policy have often said that Delhi does not know what it wants from its main international partners. It therefore becomes reactive rather than pro-active in its external engagement. Worse still, instead of explaining India’s new possibilities on the global stage, there is a strong temptation in Delhi to stick to the familiar and avoid any experimentation. Weak coalition governments in the last three decades have also been deeply wary of domestic political reaction to major external initiatives. Posturing to the domestic audiences, then, has tended to dominate the Indian establishment’s responses to the opportunities and challenges that confronted it since the end of the Cold War.

But few in India or the United States expected Modi to break this defensive mind-set, especially towards the United States. Given his own problems with the decade-long American denial of visa,8 many thought he would be lukewarm at best towards Washington. On top of it, there was also little enthusiasm in his own Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for partnership with the United States. In the ten years it spent on the opposition benches during 2004 to 2014, the BJP, which boldly reached out to the US under Vajpayee, turned utterly opportunistic in attacking every move that Manmohan Singh made in response to the extraordinary openings created by Bush. Many in the strategic community insisted that Modi should not travel to the US without an apology from Washington. Through the election season, Modi tended to stay away from any pronouncements on foreign policy issues. It was only towards the end of the campaign that Modi said he was not going to let his personal problems cloud his government’s foreign policy towards America.9 That reassurance, however, did not prepare Delhi for what would follow in the immediate aftermath of the 2014 elections that propelled Modi to power.

Obama quickly reached out to Modi and invited him to come for an early meeting at the White House. Modi was more than ready and took the opportunity of his first appearance at the United Nations to reconnect with America. Barring one speech at the UN General Assembly and a few meetings on the margins of the world forum, Modi spent most of his time in reaching out to the American businessmen, the Indian diaspora and the American political class.

Obama, often criticised for his aloofness towards foreign leaders, showed surprising warmth towards Modi. As they reviewed the state of bilateral relations, the two leaders decided to make a big push at resolving many outstanding issues between the two countries that had accumulated thanks to the indecisiveness of the UPA Government.10 Modi in contrast was ready to confront the problems head on if Washington showed some flexibility. The proposition that the two leaders could do business with each other was confirmed by their ability to negotiate a solution, within weeks after the September 2014 meeting, to end the spat between the two countries at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on trade facilitation and food security.11 At another equally important level, Modi reached out to the American corporates with the proposition that India is open for business with America once again.

Soon after, Modi had a bigger surprise in store. He broke Delhi’s diplomatic tradition by inviting Obama to be the main guest at India’s annual Republic Day celebrations in January 2015. This was the first time that Delhi chose to extend such an invitation. Sensing the new possibilities with India, Obama postponed his annual state of the union address to the US Congress and decided to show up in Delhi for nearly 48 hours. Obama’s acceptance set the stage for an intensive round of negotiations on a range of issues, including the lingering dispute over the implementation of the civil nuclear initiative. The outlines of a mutual understanding on implementing the civil nuclear initiative emerged in the months after the September summit, as Delhi opened purposeful negotiations with the US on three issues – American concerns about India’s Nuclear Liability Act, India’s demand for a quick closure on the terms of international safeguards, and Washington’s support for Delhi’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The two sides found innovative ways to close the gap between their positions, allowing the leaders to proclaim a ‘breakthrough understanding’ on the nuclear issues.12 While many have questioned the lack of sufficient detail, the two leaders have concluded that the two governments have done their work on finding a way out of the impasse on nuclear liability and that it is up to the commercial entities to negotiate the specific nuclear contracts.13

If a nuclear deal that satisfied the two governments was on the cards in the run-up to Obama’s visit in January, few observers in Delhi anticipated the developments on climate change, which has long been a site of confrontation between India and the United States. In a nation where the virtuousness of India’s international policies is measured by their political distance from those of Washington, Modi promised to ‘cooperate closely’ with America to conclude an ambitious global climate agreement at the end of 2015 in Paris.

With Obama standing next to him in Delhi, Modi said India’s problem was not about resisting pressure from America on climate change. Sovereign India was confident enough to handle it, Modi suggested. India’s real pressures today, Modi said, were about protecting the environment for future generations of Indians from the threats of climate change and global warming.14 The PM’s new approach to climate change is centred around deepening bilateral cooperation with the US on expanding the share of renewable energy in India’s total energy consumption and developing cooperation with Washington in multilateral forums. With his bold departure on climate change, Modi is signalling that Delhi’s entrenched ‘Third Worldism’ is yielding place to the idea of India as a responsible power.

If Modi’s approach to climate change was a surprise, many eyebrows were raised by Modi’s plans to deepen the strategic partnership with America in shaping the future of the vast Indo-Pacific region that stretches from East Africa to East Asia. For one, Modi agreed to renew the ten-year defence framework that the UPA Government had signed with the US in 2005. But once A K Antony replaced Pranab Mukherjee as the Defence Minister, Delhi slowly but certainly walked away from the spirit of the agreement. Few in Washington were willing to bet that the agreement would be renewed if the UPA had returned to power in 2014. Modi was determined to give a big push to defence cooperation with America especially in the modernisation and expansion of India’s defence industrial base. But the greatest surprise from the Obama visit was the joint vision statement that he signed with Modi on the Indian Ocean and the Asia-Pacific region.15 To be sure, promoting Asian balance of power was at the heart of the transformation of the India-US relations in the first term of the UPA Government. In the second term, though, the government deliberately began to distance itself from Washington in the name of ‘strategic autonomy’ and ‘nonalignment’. In his joint statement with Obama on the Asia Pacific and the Indian Ocean, Modi decisively repudiated that ambivalence towards the United States.

Beyond Strategic Autonomy

The decision to expand the engagement with the United States on regional security in the Asia Pacific and the Indian Ocean generated some concerns at home about the potential Chinese reaction and the implications for India’s policy of nonalignment.16 These fears were more about the lack of self-assurance in the Congress leadership and the security establishment rather than a credible assessment of China’s foreign policy record or its current geopolitical calculus or the nature of Asia’s international relations today. Consider for example the fact that China had been closer over extended periods of time to Washington than India has ever been to America in the last seven decades. Even today, China’s economic and commercial relationship is much thicker than Delhi’s ties with either Washington or Beijing. As Obama himself pointed out, the US annual trade with China stands at around US$ 560 billion while that with India is US$ 100 billion.17 India’s own trade with China is at US$ 70 billion. Even America’s Asian allies, including Japan, South Korea and Australia, have greater economic interdependence with China.

Instead of viewing Delhi’s relations with Washington and Beijing in binary terms, Modi appears to have recognised that India’s relations with both America and China are way below potential and can be significantly expanded. China, of course, does not limit its partnership with America by citing concerns of its large neighbours like Russia, Japan and India. Beijing, in fact, is urging the United States to agree to a “new type of great power relations” with China that could generate a shared leadership between the two giants.18

Beijing uses its relationship with America to secure its own national interests, shape the global balance of power and reshape its regional environment. Unlike the UPA Government, the NDA governments of Vajpayee and Modi have not been paralysed in their engagement with great powers by the ideology of nonalignment.

The idea that Beijing will react violently to India’s engagement with America is also not borne out by the history of Sino-Pak relations. After all, Pakistan has been a strong military partner for both America and China. Pakistan joined the US military alliance system in the 1950s, including the Central Treaty Organization and the South East Asia Treaty Organization, at a time when America was determined to combat communism in Asia and did not recognise the People’s Republic of China. The military alliance with America did not prevent Pakistan from warming up to China in the 1950s. Unlike India where the hot air about nonalignment began to inject ideological rigidity and strategic incoherence into India’s foreign policy, Pakistan thought more creatively about the possibilities with America and China. Navigating the complex dynamic between Washington and Beijing in the 1950s and 1960s, Pakistan became a valuable bridge between America and China when the two sides wanted to normalise relations at the turn of the 1970s. China did not object to intense military partnership between America and Pakistan in the 1980s or when Washington declared that Islamabad-Rawalpindi was a ‘major non-NATO ally’ in the 2000s.

If Delhi thinks that strategic autonomy is some kind of a unique attribute of Indian diplomacy, Pakistan is only one example of how all countries big and small seek flexibility in foreign policy and seize opportunities that present themselves. India’s problem lies in the infusion of ideology into the concepts of strategic autonomy and nonalignment. From a practical perspective, ‘strategic autonomy’ is about expanding one’s room for manoeuvre by engaging all potential partners. In India, though, the idea of ‘strategic autonomy’ has been viewed through an ‘anti-Western’ lens over the decades.19 Signing a security treaty with the Soviet Union in 1971 was not seen as undermining India’s strategic autonomy, but doing anything with America was denounced as a departure from nonalignment. In India’s foreign policy discourse, sitting together with China and Russia in a room was welcome, but building a joint platform with the US and Japan was not. Modi is saying India can no longer afford this kind of ideological self-indulgence. As one of the world’s largest economies and as a rising power, Modi is suggesting, India needs more intensive partnerships with all great powers, including America and China. Modi is also signalling that, given India’s expanding interdependence with the rest of the world, what Delhi needs is not ‘strategic autonomy’ as much as ‘strategic influence’ in regional and global affairs.

Towards Strategic Influence

A stronger partnership with America opens up immense possibilities for expanding India’s strategic influence in the South Asian Subcontinent and the broader Indo-Pacific Region. Since India’s independence in the middle of the 20th century, one of the enduring problems in the relationship between India and the United States has been their divergent positions on regional issues. The US decision to draft Pakistan into the Cold War alliances in the 1950s and the US-Pakistan security treaty of 1954 set the stage for a prolonged regional contestation between Delhi and Washington.20 The two sides have differed in their reading of China in different phases. While their approaches to China changed dramatically over the last 70 years, Delhi and Washington were never on the same page.21

The end of the Cold War did not immediately reduce this divergence. The Clinton Administration’s questioning of Kashmir’s accession to India, and its eagerness to mediate between India and Pakistan in the early-1990s sharpened the political tensions. It was only with the advent of the Bush Administration that the doors for regional security cooperation opened. The de-hyphenation of US relations with India and Pakistan, and Washington’s strict neutrality on the Kashmir dispute, helped build new level of trust on regional issues with Delhi. While differences remained on how best to deal with Pakistan, India and the US learnt to live with those. In another first, the Bush Administration also decided to defer to Indian interests elsewhere in the Subcontinent. Above all, the sub-text of the Bush Administration’s warmth towards Delhi was the belief that a strong India will help contribute to a stable balance of power in Asia and limit the Chinese ability to dominate the region.22

If Bush transformed the basis for American engagement with India, initial missteps of the Obama Administration tended to revive old suspicions of US policy in Delhi. Obama’s public musings on mediation between India and Pakistan and the presumed link between the Kashmir dispute and Afghanistan renewed many Indian suspicions of US policy. In the East, the US emphasis on a China-first policy raised questions about continuity in Washington’s approach to India. To his credit, Obama held back from diplomatic activism on Kashmir, and the failure of his outreach to Beijing resulted in the articulation of the pivot to Asia. Meanwhile on the Indian side, Delhi under the UPA Government seemed increasingly hesitant to engage Washington on regional issues and let many of the initiatives launched during the Vajpayee years languish.

While the momentum of India-US regional cooperation has faltered in the second term of the UPA Government (2009-14), the need for security cooperation in Asia between Delhi and Washington has never been as critical as it is today. A weakened United States needs credible partners in the region to cope with the new challenges in Asia. India faces great uncertainty on its western and eastern flanks and needs US cooperation more than ever before. India has had a tradition of dealing with its regional security challenges on its own terms, rather than through cooperation with other major powers.

Delhi, under Modi, appears to be putting aside this reluctance and taking a more realistic approach. After all, despite the significant expansion of its own capabilities in the last two decades, India is not in a position to unilaterally contain Pakistan, reclaim regional primacy, and balance China. Any Indian strategy that focuses on producing these outcomes, rather than a rhetorical emphasis on ideological virtues, would strengthen India’s position by pooling its resources with that of another power that shares these interests.

During the Cold War, Soviet Russia played that role to a large extent. While Russia remains an important strategic partner for India, it is not in a position to mitigate India’s problems with Pakistan and China. While a partnership with the US makes sense for India, would Washington be interested in deepening regional security cooperation with India, as it prepares to withdraw from Afghanistan and recast its Asia policy? Two possible scenarios can be considered. A weaker and isolationist America might turn its back on Afghanistan and Pakistan and feel tempted to compromise with China rather than confront it in Asia. An America rejuvenated in the next few years might be strong enough to re-establish its primacy in Asia. In the real world, though, the US is likely to find itself somewhere in between and has reasons to value India’s role as a stabilising force in the region.

While the question of stabilising Pakistan and Afghanistan may not be easily amenable to effective coordination between Delhi and Washington, Modi and Obama appear to have begun a valuable conversation. They underlined the shared interests in countering the sources of terrorism in the region and turning the north-west of the Subcontinent into a bridge between South and Central Asia.23

The policy challenge in Delhi and Washington in the near-term is to sustain a political dialogue on regional issues, expand intelligence-sharing, and deepen military cooperation. That would allow the two sides to seize opportunities that might present themselves for wider regional coalitions in Asia. In fact Obama’s visit to India in January 2015 has begun to move the two countries in that direction.

The Joint Vision statement on the Asia Pacific and the Indian Ocean issued by Modi and Obama suggests a conscious effort by the two sides to deepen regional security and economic cooperation. The two leaders declared that “a closer partnership between the United States and India is indispensable to promoting peace, prosperity and stability” in the Indian Ocean and the Asia Pacific regions.24 They added, “From Africa to East Asia, we will build on our partnership to support sustainable, inclusive development, and increased regional connectivity by collaborating with other interested partners to address poverty and support broad-based prosperity”.

Complementing the economic dimension was the recognition that “regional prosperity depends on security. We affirm the importance of safeguarding maritime security and ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea”. The two leaders also agreed to “develop a roadmap that leverages our respective efforts to increase ties among Asian powers, enabling both our nations to better respond” to the emerging diplomatic and security challenges in the region.

They also affirmed that “we will strengthen our regional dialogues, invest in making trilateral consultations with third countries in the region more robust, deepen regional integration, strengthen regional forums, explore additional multilateral opportunities for engagement, and pursue areas where we can build capacity in the region that bolster long-term peace and prosperity for all”. Never before has India agreed to such expansive regional cooperation with the United States. In fact, this is also the first time that India has agreed to undertake such a venture on a large scale with any great power. If the UPA was reluctant to embark on substantive regional cooperation with the United States, Modi appears to have discarded many inherited inhibitions.

Modi’s Art of the Deal

Closing the file on nuclear liability, expanding defence cooperation, exploring common ground on climate change and extending the engagement to regional security cooperation with Washington would not have been possible without a bold rethink under the Modi Government on the importance of the US partnership in pursuing India’s national objectives. For years now, progress on these issues has been held up principally by the Indian reluctance to negotiate purposefully and find practical solutions. By combining strong political will with a clear focus on practical outcomes, Modi has altered the bilateral narrative on these issues, cleared the logjam and generated a positive environment for further advances in the partnership with America.

The two summits in quick succession and the many productive outcomes from them by no means suggest all will be hunky dory between Delhi and Washington. Even America’s closest allies find engaging Washington and its multiple centres of decision making an extremely demanding business. As Obama’s indirect criticism of the Modi Government’s policies on religious freedom and the treatment of minorities shows, India’s internal issues will continue to matter to the United States.25 On global issues like trade and climate change, there is bound to be relentless pressure from Washington on India to adapt. What has changed under Modi is India’s readiness to engage on these issues and explore the possibilities for give-and-take.

The Americans, by nature, are practical people, and their diplomatic culture has been one of finding practical solutions to problems by finding ways to work around difficult obstacles. In fact it has been quite fashionable in India to criticise the United States for being too transactional. The problem, however, was with the fact that India was not sufficiently transactional. While this has been a generic problem with India’s foreign policy, it acquired an extra-edge in dealing with America.

Over the decades a culture of near-perversity, cloaked in ideological rhetoric, put India in a position where it would rather negotiate against its own interests than find common ground. Standing up against America and resisting any compromise was considered an over-riding political virtue. This in turn filtered down to the bureaucracy which turned extra-prickly in negotiating with the United States. Repeated attempts at changing this culture had failed. Brief windows of creativity often produce dramatic outcomes as in the negotiation of the historic civil nuclear initiative and defence framework agreement in 2005 between India and the United States. But translating those agreements into reality ran into the traditional problems of political ambivalence and bureaucratic resistance.

As the first prime minister in three decades with full authority over his cabinet and the bureaucracy, Modi has the means to negotiate effectively on India’s interests from a practical perspective. Modi’s bet on discarding the entrenched domestic defensiveness in dealing with America has begun to pay off. In imagining a bold trajectory of a comprehensive partnership with the United States, Modi is departing from the Indian self-perception as a weak Third World nation that is afraid of engaging America. Modi, in contrast, wants Delhi to see itself as an emerging power and deal with Washington with self-assurance. Much in the manner that Deng Xiaoping altered China’s destiny by partnering America in the late-1970s and 1980s, Modi believes an American connection is critical for transforming India’s economy and international standing.

The significance of this template goes well beyond India’s engagement with America. Similar pragmatism could help India reconstitute its relations with its smaller neighbours in the Subcontinent as well as major powers like China and in making Delhi a more effective participant in multilateral forums. The record of Modi’s foreign policy since the middle of 2014 promises precisely that outcome.

About the author:
*Dr Chilamkuri Raja Mohan is Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore. He is also Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi; Contributing Editor for Indian Express; and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC. He can be contacted at isascrm@nus.edu.sg and crmohan53@gmail.com. Opinions expressed in this paper, based on research by the author, do not necessarily reflect the views of ISAS.

Source:
This article was published by ISAS as ISAS Working Paper No. 203 (PDF).

Notes:
2. For a comprehensive discussion of India-US relations during the Cold War, see Dennis Kux, India and the United States: Estranged Democracies, 1941-1991 (Washington DC: National Defence University Press, 1992).
3. Satu Limaye, U.S.-India Relations: The Pursuit of Accommodation (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993)
4. Sunanda Dutta-Ray, Waiting for America: India and the U.S. in the New Millennium (Delhi: HarperCollins, 2002)
5. For an explanation of the context and consequences of this shift in US policy, see Ashley Tellis, “The Merits of Dehyphenation: Explaining U.S. Success in Engaging India and Pakistan”, Washington Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 4, 2008.
6. For a discussion of these initiatives and the Indian response, see C. Raja Mohan, Impossible Allies: India, U.S. and the Global Nuclear Order (Delhi: India Research Press, 2006).
7. S. Paul Kapoor and Sumit Ganguly, The Transformation of U.S.-India Relations: An Explanation for the Rapprochement and Prospects for the Future, Asian Survey, vol. 47, no. 4. 2007.
8. The visa denial was based on Modi’s alleged role in the communal riots in Gujarat during 2002.
9. See the full interview to the Asian News Agency on April 16, 2014 at <http://deshgujarat.com/2014/04/16/narendra-modis-interview-with-anivia-youtube/>
10. The White House, U.S.-India Joint Statement, September 30, 2014, available at <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/30/us-india-joint-statement>
11. Teresita C. Schaffer, India and the WTO – A Reprieve, (Brookings, November 2014), available at <http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/11/14-india-and-the-wto-schaffer>
12. The White House, Statements by President Obama and Prime Minister Modi of the Republic of
India, January 25, 2015, available at <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2015/01/25/statements-president-obvama-and-prime-minister-modi-republic-india>
13. Ministry of External Affairs, Frequently Asked Questions and Answers on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act 2010 and related issues, February 8, 2015, available at <http://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/24766/Frequently_Asked_Questions_and_Answers_on_Civil_Liability_for_Nucle ar_Damage_Act_2010_and_related_issues>
14. The full text of PM Narendra Modi’s statement at press interaction with US President Barack
Obama, January 2015 is available at <http://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches- Statements.htm?dtl/24725/Prime_Ministers_Media_Statement_during_Joint_Press_Interaction_wit h_President_of_United_States_of_America>
15. The White House, U.S.-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region, January 25, 2015, Available at <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/25/us-india- joint-strategic-vision-asia-pacific-and-indian-ocean-region>
16. Siddharth Varadarajan, “China or US: India must have a master strategy in the poker game”, Hindustan Times, January 29, 2015; available at <http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/china- or-us-india-must-have-a-master-strategy-in-this-poker-game/article1-1311933.aspx>
17. President Obama’s remarks at the India-U.S. CEO’s Forum, New Delhi, January 26, 2015, available at < https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/26/remarks-president-obama-us-india- business-council-summit>
18. For a discussion, see David M. Lampton, A New Type of Major-Power Relationship: Seeking a Durable Foundation for U.S.-China Ties, The National Bureau of Asian Research, Asia Policy 16, July 2013, available at <http://www.nbr.org/publications/element.aspx?id=650>
19. For a discussion on the evolution of the concept of ‘strategic autonomy’ see Guillem Monsonis, “India’s Strategic Autonomy and the Rapprochement with the U.S.”, Strategic Analysis, Vol. 34, No. 4, July 2010.
20. For a comprehensive account, see Robert McMahon, Cold War on the Periphery: The United States, India and Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).
21. For a discussion, see Alyssa Ayres and C. Raja Mohan, eds., Power Realignment in Asia: China, India and the United States (Delhi: Sage publishers, 2009).
22. For a discussion of the possibilities generated by the rapprochement initiated by Bush and Vajpayee, see Stephen J. Blank, Natural Allies: Regional Security in Asia and Prospects for Indo- American Strategic Cooperation (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2005).
23. See the U.S.-India Joint Statement, January 25, 2015, available at <http://www.mea.gov.in/bilateraldocuments.htm?dtl/24726/Joint_Statement_during_the_visit_of_P resident_of_USA_to_India_Shared_Effort_Progress_for_All>.
24. See n. 15.
25. In a reference to the controversy over the agenda of the Hindu extremist groups to convert Muslims and Christians, Obama referred to the freedom of religion guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. More broadly he underlined the dangers that religious extremism poses for India’s own future: ‘India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith — so long as it’s not splintered along any lines — and is unified as one nation”; full text of Obama’s public address in Delhi on January 27, 2015 is available at <https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2015/01/27/remarks-president-obama-address-people-india>

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By RJ Marco Lorenzo C. Parcon*

“Aquino slams ‘mission impossible’ for Filipino peacekeepers in Golan Heights” – this news headline reflects the growing volatility of the areas where peacekeepers operate and points to the necessity of instigating clear and robust peacekeeping mandates. One of the three principles in the practice of peacekeeping is the non-use of force except in self-defense. However, even with the growing complexities of the problems faced by peacekeepers, the use of force is a difficult and politically sensitive issue. It has been pointed out that hostile environments make it difficult to guarantee the safety and respect for peacekeepers, as in the case of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and the UN Disengagement Observer Force in the Golan Heights (UNDOF).

Hostile environment, self-defense and the use of force

Golan Heights

MINUSMA operates in a volatile and vulnerable location. Although ceasefire agreements were signed between the government and the separatists groups, notably the Ouagadougou Preliminary Agreement and the ceasefire agreement signed last 23 May 2014, Mali still needs to address recurring crises and challenges, especially in terms of governance, security, development, and humanitarian aid. These challenges not only greatly affect the safety and security of the country, but also have great impact on the peacekeepers’ duties and mandate. The latest assault last 8 March 2015 on the peacekeepers in northern Mali injured 11 peacekeepers and three civilians, and resulted in the death of two Malian children and one Chadian peacekeeper. This attack came a day after a similar incident took place in Bamako, Mali which also resulted in five civilian fatalities and seven injuries.

The abovementioned case does not only question the effectiveness and respect of the parties to the agreed ceasefire terms, but also highlights the defense mechanisms available to the peacekeepers. A 2011 Briefing Paper of the Institute for Democracy and Conflict Resolution noted that it is often unclear when peacekeepers can “use force” and the level of force that peacekeepers can legally use. It must be noted that previous peacekeeping operations may have had great impact on defining “self-defense” and the use of force. The UN Operation in Congo (ONUC) for instance initiated this change as the increased violations of parties involved led the Security Council to authorize ONUC to take all appropriate measures, including the use of force, to prevent the occurrence of a civil war in Congo. Another notable peacekeeping operation that changed prior definitions of the use of force is the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, as it was given authority to use force against attempts to prevent them from carrying out their mandate.

On the other hand, the UN Mission in South Sudan‘s (UNMISS) mandate shifted from peace consolidation to protection of civilians, human rights monitoring, delivery of humanitarian assistance, and the implementation of the cessation agreement through Resolution 2155 (S/Res/2155). Two of the most important actions authorized by the Council are in the fourth and eighth operative clause, noting that the Mission will have a higher military component and a lower level of civilian participation.

Experts also observed the problem of combining “peace enforcement” and peacekeeping in one operation as this will bring considerable military and political risks, as in the case of the Somali Peacekeeping Operation from 1992 to 1994. The combination of enforcement and peacekeeping gives rise to uncertainties regarding the capability of the UN to carry out the mission, including whether enforcement can increase the legitimacy of the operation and preserve its impartiality. Further complicating the issue is when missions are situated in areas where political institutions have collapsed and the danger of confrontation between UN forces and parties involved is likely. If a mission’s authorization is categorized under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the rules of engagement must be observed, and must be robust and consistent as variation in engagement procedures can undermine the mission and other peace operations.

Philippines and Peace Operations

Last August 2014 UNDOF peacekeepers faced a predicament as 43 Fijian peacekeepers were taken as hostages by Al-Nusra Front rebels, an Al Qaeda affiliate. Thereafter, 72 Filipino peacekeepers were engaged in a seven-hour standoff with Syrian rebels, and thus their movements were restrained. The high level of tension around Golan Heights again puts into question not only the sincerity of the parties involved in respecting the ceasefire and other agreements in place, but also the employable defense and strategies that peacekeepers can utilize, especially when the mandate of the mission is solely focused on peacekeeping, ceasefire maintenance, and peaceful settlement of disputes. Security Council Resolution 350, the UN resolution that established UNDOF, outlined the mandate of the mission, but not the possible operational remedies to hostile situations.

Although the mission in Golan Heights is considered to be generally peaceful, there is a notable increase in hostilities even prior to the hostage situation in 2014, and this has been underlined in the UN Security Council Resolution 2163 (S/Res/2163) that renewed the mandate of UNDOF, noting that the situation in the entire Middle East is highly volatile.

Given this development, various groups called for a semi-military operation or an operation with an enforcement mechanism rather than a mission that solely focuses on peacekeeping, as these missions tend to have lower defense options especially in terms of self-defense and defense of the mandate. Moreover, Resolution 2163 does not clearly identify the defense mechanisms that peacekeepers can utilize.

Philippine troops can truly benefit from peacekeeping operations as it will enable them to enhance their professional capabilities on several fronts. But the country will not disregard the safety of its troops. Thus, it is of prime importance for peacekeeping missions to provide a clear and achievable mandate, and to ensure that peacekeepers are protected. A more comprehensive approach in terms of dealing with the issue, especially with regard to the rule of law, principles of engagement, and the safety and security of peacekeepers, is also necessary.

Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary, Albert Del Rosario has stated during the 69th Session of the General Assembly’s High Level General Debate last 29 September 2014 that, “outstanding operational and tactical issues relating to United Nations peacekeeping must be resolved at the highest levels as soon as possible.”

Conclusion

The UN peace operation efforts have had its fair share of successes and failures. Still, the UN is regarded as one of the few international actors capable of peacekeeping, being an organization that has a reputation for neutrality and impartiality – and a neutral third party is an important asset.

It is essential for relevant international and national agencies to continue to discuss issues that affect peacekeeping and to further develop a comprehensive plan for peacekeepers. Dialogues must also take into consideration the firsthand experiences of peacekeepers so that relevant institutions can make suitable recommendations and plans-of-action.

Ultimately, the international community must answer relevant questions, especially with regard to the current landscape that peacekeepers operate in and to further enhance their safety and security. Enhancing peace and stability is of paramount importance, but so is the safety and security of peacekeepers.

About the author:
*RJ Marco Lorenzo C. Parcon is a Foreign Affairs Research Specialist with the Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies of the Foreign Service Institute.
Mr. Parcon can be reached at rjcparcon@fsi.gov.ph.

The views expressed in this publication are of the authors’ alone and do not reflect the official position of the Foreign Service Institute, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Government of the Philippines.

Source:
This article was published by FSI as CIRSS Commentary Vol. II, No. 7, March 2015

The post Peacekeeping In A Volatile Environment: The Philippines In Golan Heights And Beyond – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Sojin Shin*

How does Narendra Modi’s leadership enhance India-South Korea economic relations? There seem to be several possibilities to build closer ties between the two economies especially in the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors. This paper briefly discusses the highlights of economic achievement, new possibilities, challenges, and suggestions in the realm of trade and investment that the two economies have recently focused on.

G-to-G Active Interaction

The new Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership has been in active discussions with the South Korean government to improve their economic relations as strategic partners. India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj recently visited South Korea and sought Korean investments in India. She visited just after Modi met South Korean President Park Geun-hye at the 12th ASEAN-India summit in Myanmar in November 2014. In the meeting with Swaraj, Park referred to India as “the best partner for South Korea’s future and vision”. Swaraj also mentioned that the two countries have established strong ties that would develop further, and addressed Park as onni, which means didi [sister] in Korean. Swaraj suggested to Yoon Sang-jick, Korean Minister of Trade, Industry, and Energy, that companies in the two countries co-produce LNG tankers to meet the growing energy needs in India. Such enthusiasm in India is believed to attract more South Korean investments.

The strategic partnership between India and South Korea was formed under the last United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government, led by the Indian National Congress Party, through the Korea-India Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) in 2009. In fact, the two- way imports and exports substantially increased after the CEPA came into effect, as the agreement aimed to expand trade and investment, and enhance investment protection in both countries. According to Korea International Trade Association, the total turnover between India and South Korea until November 2014 was over US$ 20 billion.2 This reflects the progress by the two economies since they signed the first trade agreement in 1974.

Big Business-Driven Focus on Manufacturing

In terms of foreign direct investment (FDI), many of South Korean investors now consider India as the most attractive destination since the Chinese market is already saturated. Interestingly, South Korean investments in India have several distinct features compared to those of other countries in India.

First, 85% of Korean investments in India is concentrated in the manufacturing sector. This is a high proportion considering that foreign investors from many other countries have been targeting India’s services sector.3 This signifies the strength of South Korean enterprises in the manufacturing sector. These enterprises enjoy comparative advantage in terms of technology and price competitiveness in the manufacturing sector of the Indian market.

Their strength lies clearly in the Greenfield type of FDI in which foreign investors set up manufacturing units in host countries by acquiring lands, securing infrastructure like water and power, and tackling environmental issues. For example, both Samsung and LG, South Korean electronics manufacturers, have captured more than 40% of India’s mobile market share, with products from factories located at Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh leading the way. Hyundai Motor Company, South Korean automobile enterprise, is another example of good performance. Hyundai Motor India (HMI) has 21% of India’s domestic market share, as a runner-up after Maruti Suzuki, a joint venture between India and Japan. HMI has its manufacturing units at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu and has a production capacity of 600,000 units per annum.

However, some South Korean big businesses like Pohang Iron and Steel Company (POSCO) have faced difficulties in negotiating with protesters over the issue of land acquisition. Such conflicts cannot be resolved simply at the ministerial levels of the two countries, because intricate socio-political factors are at stake. POSCO has struggled to embark upon its steel project at Jagatsinghpur in Odisha since June 2005. This case has served as a lesson for South Korean investors that dealing with socio- political problems in the Indian market would be much more difficult than handling economic negotiations for investment.

Second, the main investors from South Korea in India are large businesses rather than small and medium enterprises (SMEs).4 In fact, FDI outflows by the large businesses have accelerated the unbalanced growth in South Korea’s economy, even though they have enhanced the ‘go-ahead’ image of South Korean companies in the Indian market. In addition, the lack of institutional support from the South Korean government for SMEs has discouraged them from investing in India. For example, they have problems in accessing information and specialists about the Indian market.

New Possibilities

India’s current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has emphasised the significance of the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors. Many foreign investors have paid attention to the ‘Make in India’ flagship initiative that Narendra Modi’s government has designed. In fact, the focus of South Korean investors on the manufacturing sector would help in enhancing it through technology transfer and the creation of employment in the Indian domestic market.

In addition, South Korean enterprises seem to have strong interest in contributing to infrastructure in India. For example, the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Korea Exim bank) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd. (IIFCL), a wholly-owned Indian government subsidiary that specialises in providing long-term finance to viable infrastructure projects, in January 2014. According to the Korea Exim bank, the agreement included a clause that requires the Korea Exim bank to provide a tied loan of US$ 200 million to Indian domestic companies that import goods and services from Korea via IIFCL. Such agreement would be beneficial to the two economies because it can increase trade and investment by Korean enterprises. In addition, the loan helps in the development of infrastructure in India’s industry. Therefore, Indian companies facing financial difficulties can utilise such tied loans.

Challenges and Suggestions

There are several suggestions for both economies on how to enhance trade and investment. South Korea needs to promote its SMEs’ investments in India, with an institutional arrangement that can facilitate their access to information and specialists in the Indian market. Without such access, it would be very difficult for the SMEs to tackle the problems that might arise from socio-political reasons in the Indian market. At the same time, South Korean big businesses could work with the SMEs. In addition, banks in South Korea can capitalise on opportunities to extend their financial services like offering tied loans to the Indian domestic companies that want to import goods and services from South Korea.

As for India, it should provide a more investment-friendly environment at the sub-national state level where many foreign investors face problems on the ground especially with Greenfield type of investments. As briefly mentioned above, as with the case of POSCO’s struggle, the conflicts between foreign companies and local citizens cannot be resolved simply at the ministerial levels of the two countries.5 It should be supported not only by local government but also by citizens. Especially, the attitudes of local citizens are substantially based on the state-society relations that have been built over time in the process of industrialisation. Both the state governments of India and foreign investors should not forget that the benefits of investment projects need to be considerably distributed among the local citizens in India. Such considerations would bring a win-win situation for both parties in the long run.

About the author:
*Ms Sojin Shin is Research Associate at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore. She can be contacted at isassos@nus.edu.sg. Opinions expressed in this paper, based on research by the author, do not necessarily reflect the views of ISAS.

Source:
This article was published by ISAS as ISAS Insights No. 279 (PDF)

Notes:
2 ;For example, exports from South Korea to India increased 42.7% and imports from India also rose 37% in 2010 compared to those of the year 2009 (data accessed on 21 January 2015). The chief items of export from India to South Korea are petroleum products and phytochemicals while those from South Korea to India are synthetic resins and steel plates.
3. The Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) under the Ministry of Commerce & Industry in the Government of India reported that 18% of total FDI inflows from April 2000 to November 2014 were made in the services sector.
Data is available at http://dipp.nic.in/English/Publications/FDI_Statistics/2014/india_FDI_November2014.pdf (accessed on 21 January 2015).
4. The ratio of SMEs’ investments from South Korea to India is 19.5%. Many of the SMEs are focused on the automobile parts industry.
5. The POSCO project in Odisha has been discussed at the summit meetings of two countries—South Korea and India—several times when Park Geun-hye visited India in January 2014, and when Park and Modi participated in the 12th ASEAN-India summit in Myanmar in November 2014. Furthermore, Kwon Oh-joon, CEO of POSCO, met Modi and discussed the project in New Delhi on 20 January 2015. However, citizens at the local village level who have opposed the POSCO project do not seem to interact enough with either the state government or the company for land compensation negotiations.

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By Esha Meher

One, two and left, the black knight stands before the king, sailing across the black and white chequered board. The white bishop makes a diagonal move. The knight is eliminated. The bishop is now at forty five degrees to the king. One move remaining. Following which, it shall be, Check and Mate.

Yemen is a bloodied battleground today. The Houthi Rebels brandish their swords while the Saudi forces in the name of Allah- the beneficient and merciful, swear to be the protector of the Sunnis preparing their arms. The Government of Yemen? Well, there unfolds the larger story. What has been ensuing on the Yemeni soil for years now are possibly the earliest signs of a civil war. The main fight is between forces loyal to the ousted President, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, and those allied to Zaidi Shia rebels known as Houthis, who forced Mr Hadi to flee the capital Sanaa in February 2015.[1] Mr Hadi sought refuge in Aden which he subsequently declared to the de facto capital, with the help of Saudi Arabia, who now happens to one of the primary players of the conflict. Mr Hadi’s predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh continues to be a vital player and enjoys the support of a faction of the Yemeni Security forces.

The Saudi interest:

The most fundamental question which comes up before us possibly deals with the nature of the Saudi interest in this conflict. Is Saudi’s priority merely ensuring peace across its border or is it something on the lines of a vested comfort at the ideological level. To put it in simpler terms, the Saudi interest seems to be that of keeping the Shiites out of its periphery and maintaining a Sunni dominance in the region.

For all who thought that the black and white players on the chessboard were Saudi Arabia and Yemen, that’s where they fell prey to the mirage of gulf politics. The war today is a Sunni v Shia conflict with the knights, pawns, bishops, rooks and queens on duty. Saudi Arabia, The Hadi government, The Houthis, Iran, United States and of course, the ISIS.

It is of course a factional war, a religious war, yet again to prove the ideological supremacy. But at the heart of this tussle lies the traces of the N-word. The dreaded N-word of international politics. But then again, one may logically argue that they saw it coming. When Iran is here, can the nuclear threats be far behind? Placing the Iranian angle in a civil war between government forces and Houthi rebels may not be the easiest thing to do. However, on closer inspection of the larger picture, the footprints seem clear.

Saudi Arabia has been arming itself for over the years in anticipation of Shiite entry into the peninsula. This was one of the major reasons for the overwhelming Saudi support to the development of the nuclear programme of Pakistan. Saudi Arabia saw and wanted to nurture in Pakistan a reliable Sunni ally who would effectively counter Iran’s nuclear threats which fall an inch short of international belligerence. Allowing the bordering Yemen to be a Shiite stronghold was something that Saudi could possibly never allow. Costs had to be paid for it. And the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was ready to pay it.

Who are the Houthis?

The Houthis began as a theological movement that preached tolerance and peace and held a considerably broad-minded educational and cultural vision. Houthis belong to the Zaidi branch of Islam, also known as Fivers, a sect of Islam almost exclusively present in Yemen. They are known for being most similar to Sunni Muslims in matters of religious law and rulings. They do however, believe in the concept of an Imamate as being essential to their religion, which makes them distinct from Sunnis.[2] However, they are also regularly accused, even by fellow Zaidis, of secretly being converts or followers of the Twelver sect, which is the official religion of their ally and backer Iran Houthi leaders such as Issam Al-‘Imad have stated as early as 2011 that they are religiously and ideologically influenced by Iran, they bear a striking resemblance to the functioning style of Hezbollah in Lebanon, a piece of information which is surely not a happy one for the US and the Western World at large.

With the Houthi rebels in effective control and on the verge of staging an almost ISIS style takeover, the world seems stiff with worry if not fear. Iran has reasons more than one to be jubiliant with the current state of affairs in Yemen. Though Iran has publicly refused any form of support to the rebels, it is common knowledge that Iran is indeed sympathetic to their Yemeni rebel counterparts and their sympathy is often manifested through a generous supply of weapons and money to the Houthis in Yemen.

It which cant be named- the n-word:

Iran’s infamous nuclear threats have had a history of keeping the US on its toes perpetually. Iran has been the only country which has crossed paths with the US acting the way it wants to, on occasions more than one. Their disdainful attitude towards the West at large is no secret. From calling the French First Lady a prostitute and refusing to extend diplomatic protection on the grounds that she wasn’t officially married to President Sarkozy to carrying out executions on the face of international objections, Iran has never been the best with its table manners when it came to the diplomatic tables of negotiation.

The US, on the wake of the Yemeni conflict tried bringing Iran to the negotiating tables dissuading it from carrying out an active program against the Saudi led coalition. But the results of the US attempts seem bleak, as usual. Within the four walls of the Iranian Shura, it is the Khomeini (yes, him, despite being a little more than 75 years of age) who calls the shots in matters of such international negotiations, especially when the N-word seems involved.

Sanctions have never been the best way to deter this country in question, hence the US with all its power and intelligence does seem to be hitting a dead end. On one hand the US displays a cajoling attitude towards Iran and on the other there have been allegations of US drones being spotted in Yemen, perhaps signalling its active “contribution” to the Saudi cause in that nation.

The ISIS angle:

No instance of war or terror in the present days can be complete without the mention of the Islamic State in it. The ISIS angle to the present conflict is rather convoluted. The ISIS claiming Sunni allegiance seem anti Houthi by the look of it. They have also been accused of bombing the Houthi rebels in the past. But what indeed seems wrong in the whole picture is the working style of the Houthi rebels which show a striking resemblance to the ISIS at present. However, such vague assumptions or indications may not be enough ti provide a clear cut nexus. What would be a clearer ground for the world to frown upon would possibly be on the question that, what would be ISIS’s role in such a region of instability. ISIS’s rise to power have been on forced capture of territories, any instability in the region would just act like the smell of raw blood to a hungry hound at the moment.

It would perhaps be too premature to anticipate the ISIS moves in the Yemeni conflict, but if a fact can be vouched for, it would possibly be that of an active role of the Islamic State in the same. The form and manifestation of such a role can only be unearthed with time.

Yemen is important to us, for every bomb dropped and every life taken, it heralds much more than the casualties of a civil war. At the risk of sounding rather trivial, it must also be noted that, Yemen sits on the Bab al-Mandab strait, a narrow waterway linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, through which much of the world’s oil shipments pass.[3] Egypt and Saudi Arabia fear a Houthi takeover would threaten free passage through the strait and cut off oil supplies affecting the world at large. It is a brewing point of a number of clashing interests which might just lead to a nuclear war. At one end of the diaspora stands the Shiite Iran with its N-threats and on the other we do have the Sunni ISIS expanding vociferously. As much as the West would want to be reassured of its status now, the reality is that their only option seems to be a rather passive one.

This article was originally published at the A38 Blog.

Notes:
[1] Yemen Profile: Timeline, BBC UK, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14704951.
[2] Who are Houthis? The Tony Blair Faith Foundation, available at, http://tonyblairfaithfoundation.org/religion-geopolitics/commentaries/backgrounder/what-houthi-movement
[3] Yemen Crisis: Who is fighting whom? BBC UK, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29319423

The post Saudi Versus Yemen: So Who’s Fighting Whom? The Shiites, The Sunnies And Islamic State – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Saudi Arabia’s demand to Pakistan to join its coalition against the Houthi uprising in Yemen has put Islamabad in a catch-22 situation. Pakistan is caught between joining the Saudi alliance and not antagonising its neighbour Iran. Joining the Saudi coalition will have long-term political, economic and security repercussions for Pakistan.

By Abdul Basit*

The Pakistani parliament met on 6 April 2015 to debate the merits of joining the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthi uprising in Yemen. The session was convened after Saudi Arabia requested Pakistan to join the Saudi coalition. Before that a high-level Pakistani delegation also visited Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis have asked Pakistan for aircrafts, naval vessels and ground troops. This has put Pakistan in a catch-22 situation. Pakistan is walking a tightrope balancing its alliance with Saudi Arabia against the possibility of taking part in active combat in Yemen that can antagonise its neighbour Iran.

Six reasons not to join the Saudi mission in Yemen

Politically Pakistan is not in a position to say “no” to the Saudis but militarily Pakistan cannot afford to commit its troops. Surrounded by a multitude of internal and external security challenges Pakistan’s plate is full on all sides. Joining the Saudi coalition will have serious long-term political, economic and security repercussions for Pakistan.

To put things in context, the balance of power is shifting in the Middle East after the successful conclusion of the US-Iran nuclear deal. The Saudi airstrikes in Yemen close to the nuclear deal is not a coincidence. So, the conflict in Yemen is the start of a wider regional tussle in the Middle East between Saudi Arabia and Iran for influence and hegemony. Pakistan should not join the Saudi coalition for six reasons.

First, getting sucked into the Iranian-Saudi power struggle can be detrimental to Pakistan’s fight against home-grown terrorism. Now that the situation is gradually stabilising in Pakistan after more than a decade of violence, moving troops to Middle East will be a fatal mistake. Currently, Pakistan’s armed forces are stretched with 40 percent in combat positions. A third of the military and paramilitary troops are engaged in counter-terrorism operation in Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas. The remaining troops are deployed along the eastern border with India while others are engaged in a multitude of counter-terrorism-related activities inside the country. So, Pakistan will do well to keep itself neutral and focus on the more urgent domestic matters.

Potential domestic and regional polarisation

Second, committing Pakistani troops to Saudi in return for financial assistance will certainly come with a caveat of allowing Saudi-backed Salafist groups to preach their radical version of Islam in Pakistan without any check. This will increase religious radicalisation and polarisation in Pakistan.

Third, the decision to join the Saudi coalition will antagonise Iran which shares a 900 kilometre border with Pakistan. It can result in another episode of Saudi-Iranian proxy war on Pakistani soil between the Sunni and Shia militant groups backed by the two countries. After Iran the second largest number of Shia in the world live in Pakistan who make up around 15-20 percent of Pakistan’s total population. Iran can use the sectarian card against Pakistan. Shia and Sunni militant groups have been involved in tit-for-tat sectarian killings in Pakistan for last three decades.

Already the Saudi-backed Sunni groups like Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ), Jamat-e-Islami and Iranian-backed Majlis-e-Wahdat-ul-Muslimeen (MWM) and Imamia Student Organisation (ISO) are carrying out protest demonstrations either in favour or opposition of Pakistan’s prospective decision to join the Saudi coalition.

Fourth, any Sunni-Shia rift in Pakistan will provide an ideal opening to the IS-affiliated groups in Pakistan to exploit the sectarian fault lines to gain a foothold and increase their influence in the society. The anti-Shia and anti-Iranian militant groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Jandullah can also join hands with IS in such a situation.

Fifth, Iran can potentially undermine Pakistani interests in Afghanistan. It can extend support to groups and forces hostile to Pakistan, especially the Baloch separatist groups.

Finally, the lifting of US sanctions on Iran as a result of the nuclear deal has opened up a way for the energy-starved Pakistan to fulfil its soaring energy demands by importing gas from Iran. Importing gas from Iran is the quickest and cheapest way of overcoming the chronic energy crisis in Pakistan. If Pakistan joins the Saudi coalition, the 2012 Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline agreement allows Iran to exercise the option of penalising Pakistan to the tune of US$300 million daily for failing to construct the Pakistani portion of the gas pipeline.

Give peace a chance

At the height of the Cold War in the 1970s, Pakistan acted as a bridge for Sino-American rapprochement. Pakistan facilitated then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to China which paved the way for US President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972. Pakistan can play the same bridging role between Saudi Arabia and Iran when no other Muslim country is making any serious efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis in Yemen. This will help Pakistan to not only improve its negative reputation internationally but also prove itself as a responsible state in the Muslim world.

Pakistan has already started making efforts in this direction. On 3 April Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited Turkey seeking assistance to find a peaceful settlement to the Yemeni dispute. This week, the, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif is due to visit Pakistan – on the government’s invitation – to discuss the situation in Yemen. Pakistan is also making efforts to convene an emergency summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Pakistan should have learnt its lessons from thirty years of Jihadi misadventures in Afghanistan and Indian Kashmir. The Iranian-Saudi conflict in the Middle East goes beyond sectarian and geopolitical considerations to the civilizational Arab-Ajam (non-Arab) tussle between Arabian and Persian civilisations. Committing Pakistani troops to this never-ending Iranian-Saudi power struggle is foolhardy at best.

*Abdul Basit is an Associate Research Fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR), of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

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Passive smoking isn’t only something that people have to cope with, but plants too. This is because some plants are actually able to take up nicotine from cigarette smoke, while others that grow in contaminated soil absorb it via the roots as well.

This might explain why high concentrations of nicotine are often found in spices, herbal teas and medicinal plants, despite the fact that this alkaloid is no longer permitted in insecticides. These findings, by Dirk Selmar and colleagues at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, are published in Springer’s journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development.

Previously, nicotine was frequently used as an insecticide until it was banned by the European Union in 2009 because of its toxicity. Surprisingly, a large number of food crops and plant-derived products still contain very high levels of nicotine. Selmar’s team wanted to find out whether there are other reasons at play than the possible illegal use of nicotine-containing insecticides.

They used peppermint plants (Mentha x piperita), which contain minimal traces of nicotine, in a series of mulching and fumigation experiments. “Tremendously elevated nicotine levels were detected after fumigation with cigarette smoke,” notes Selmar.

Selmar’s team is also the first to show that peppermint plants can actually take up high concentrations of nicotine from contaminated soils. This follows the analysis of plants mulched with cigarette tobacco for more than nine days. The resulting nicotine concentrations are several times higher than the maximum residue level set by the European authorities. The research reveals, for the first time, that the reported high levels of this substance may indeed originate from tobacco.

The researchers found a drastic decrease in nicotine concentration as time progressed. This is likely because the nicotine is taken up by the roots of the peppermint plants and processed in their leaves.

“Our results suggest that the widespread occurrence of nicotine in medicinal, spice and food plants may, at least in part, be due to other nicotine sources apart from the illegal use of insecticides,” says Selmar.

In addition to the significance for the food industry, these results have a tremendous relevance for basic science: they prove that substances, such as alkaloids, can be transferred from one plant, after its death, to another.. Such “horizontal transfer of natural products” sheds light on the hitherto unexplained success behind farming practices such as crop rotation and the co-cultivation of certain vegetables.

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In the wake of the revelations that intelligence agencies have been engaged in mass surveillance activities, both industry and society at large are looking for practicable encryption solutions that protect businesses and individuals.

Previous technologies have failed in practice because they were too expensive or not user friendly enough. Fraunhofer has launched an open initiative called “Volksverschlüsselung” with the aim of bringing end-to-end encryption to the masses.

Encryption is the most effective antidote to unwarranted, mass surveillance of people, companies and authorities. Although there are any number of computer programs designed to, say, make e-mail communication more secure, most people find them to be too much of a hassle. This is why the German government made establishing universal and easy-to-use encryption part of its Digital Agenda.

A research team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT in Darmstadt developed a public encryption concept that factors in user friendliness from the outset. The software automatically installs the cryptographic keys in the right places on your computer. The researchers are also working on an infrastructure that will be available to everyone and is compatible with existing encryption services.

“With this initiative and what it’s developing, Fraunhofer is supporting the German government’s efforts to better protect people and companies,” said Prof. Michael Waidner, Head of Fraunhofer SIT. This is why “Volksverschlüsselung“ is to be made available as open-source software.

Key allocation for beginners

The software is the centerpiece of the solution. It relieves the user of the previously difficult task of allocating keys by recognizing which applications – different e-mail programs, for example – on your computer, smartphone or tablet can use cryptography and automatically allocates the right key to each one. The software also generates cryptographic keys that can be used to encrypt e-mails or files.

If you want to send someone an encrypted e-mail, you need the public key. In the “Volksverschlüsselung“ model, you can obtain this from the central infrastructure. “It works like a phone book,” said project manager Michael Herfert. “Anyone can look up and download public keys. The central infrastructure also ensures that the keys actually belong to the person requesting them and helps prevent identity fraud.”

At CeBIT 2015, Fraunhofer researchers demonstrated how people can register using the eID function of the German identity card. Other ways of registering are to be made possible in the future. To make it possible for a vast number of people to use the “Volksverschlüsselung“ infrastructure, it would ideally have to be set up to handle several million keys. This calls for an infrastructure that is as efficient as it is secure. The current plan is to install the infrastructure on a high-security server at the Fraunhofer Institute Center in Birlinghoven near Bonn, and other trusted partners will also be able to participate soon.

Companies also stand to benefit from the results of the “Volksverschlüsselung“ project – especially from the software. Solutions developed as part of the project could help small and medium-sized enterprises in particular by making it easier for them to implement encryption and thus better protect trade secrets.

This version of the software is designed for Windows desktop computers, but further versions for other operating systems and mobile devices are in the pipeline. The research team is also working on various add-ons, including one that supports ad hoc encryption.

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India’s Supreme Court lifted a ban on the dance drama Jesus Christ Superstar in Kottyam district of Kerala Tuesday, 24 years after the then district collector imposed it.

The then district collector Alphonse Kannamthanam banned it through a magisterial order and the legal battle to lift the ban went on till the Supreme Court lifted it on Tuesday.

The dance drama written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice has been staged the world over, including the Vatican, during this period, The Hindu newspaper reported.

The only place it remained banned was Kottayam district, says Mary Roy, the then principal of Corpus Christi school, which planned the drama as the mage production of the school.

“The children were all dressed up and only minutes were left for the curtains to go up, when I got ….an order banning the staging of the dance drama Jesus Christ Superstar, Roy, former Principal of Pallikkudom (then Corpus Christi School).

“It was 5.05 p.m. on October 15, 1990. The show was to begin by 5.30 p.m. Children were crying. Some were in shock and a few of them did not speak for days to come.”

Roy attributes personal vendetta to the ban on the play. “Why should it be banned in Kottayam alone? He had a personal score to settle with me. Moreover, my civil case with my brother was also going on. There were many who were against me. They too might have influenced,” she said.

However Kannamthanam, now a member on the BJP national executive, offered no much explanation: “Whatever I had to say I had written in my magisterial order. To attribute motives to a magisterial order is not right,” he told the Hindu.

Ms. Roy later lost interest in restaging the drama. “Every year we will have different production. We are teachers and students. We have to move forward,” she pointed out. It was in 2002 that Fr. Abraham Vellathadathil, a Christian priest, approached the Kerala High Court to lift the ban.

It was dismissed and the priest took the case to the Supreme Court in 2004.

“The magisterial order was an affront to the sensibilities of the people of this district and I wanted to prove it,” said Fr. Vellathadathil over the phone on Wednesday.

Is there any chance of re-enacting the play, in the light of the lifting of the ban? “Yes, We will have to think in that lines now,” says Roy.

The post India Court Lifts Ban On Jesus Christ Superstar appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(EurActiv) — Germany’s Ministry of Internal Affairs is blaming right-wing extremist demonstrations, aimed especially at asylum seekers, for the growing number of attacks on refugee shelters.

Amid a growing number of asylum applications and the construction of new shelters for refugees, right-wing extremists are stepping up their actions against foreigners, said a spokesman from the Interior Ministry on Tuesday (7 April) in Berlin.

The asylum issue is being instrumentalised by right-wing extremist parties and so-called civil movements, he said, including regular demonstrations against asylum shelters.

A cluster of extremist crimes has become apparent near locations where such rallies took place, Minister Thomas de Maizière’s spokesman added.

Late Friday (3 April) night, unknown perpetrators set fire to a building meant to become a shelter for refugees in Tröglitz, a city in Germany’s state of Saxony-Anhalt. 40 refugees were scheduled to move into the house in May.

The public attorney’s office in the city of Halle assumes the fire was a severe case of arson. As the investigation continues, authorities believe a political motivation to be closely related to the attack.

Two German residents in the building safely escaped. Several members of the Merkel government issued sharp criticisms of the attack, and called on citizens to stand to against right-wing extremism.

For some time now, rightists had been stirring up sentiment against plans to settle asylum seekers in Tröglitz. At the end of March, a local mayor in voluntary service left his post due to hostilities from extremists.

State Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff warned against viewing the attack as an isolated case. Several of Germany’s other states have also experienced protests and attacks on planned refugee shelters, he said.

“It is a nationwide problem,” the centre-right politician told Die Welt.

Xenophobia and hostility towards strangers are most severe in the country’s eastern states, and in Bavaria, a University of Leipzig study reports.

But the highest approval of xenophobic statements came from Saxony-Anhalt (42%). The state was followed by Bavaria, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Thuringia and Brandenburg, which each showed 30% of the population expressing support for such views.

In Germany’s western states, an average of 20% agreed with xenophobic statements.

Overall, the Interior Ministry recorded 170 politically motivated crimes within the last year in which a refugee shelter was either the target or the crime scene. 150 of these are considered to have been motivated by right-wing extremism.

129 of these offenses, alone, took place from October to December, according to numbers obtained by Reuters. Apart from the new numbers of asylum seekers, the debate over refugees heated up during this period because of widespread anti-Islamist Pegida demonstrations.

The statistics show that more than 190 crimes were registered last year at demonstrations in opposition to asylum policy. These included physical injuries, violations of the right to assembly, sedition and vandalism.

By Daniel Tost, translated from German by Erika Körner

The post Germany: Government Blames Pegida For Rise In Crimes Against Refugees appeared first on Eurasia Review.

EIA this week projected that U.S. average regular gasoline retail prices will average $2.45/gallon (gal) during the April-through-September 2015 period (summer 2015), down from the $3.59/gal average during summer 2014. The significant price decline reflects a large drop in Brent crude oil prices. As daily and weekly national average prices can differ significantly from monthly and seasonal averages, and because there are also significant regional differences in gasoline prices, prices in some areas could exceed the national average by $0.40/gal or more.

EIA’s projections appeared in the April 2015 Short-Term Energy Outlook.

Brent crude oil prices fell sharply in late 2014 and early 2015 as global supply exceeded demand, contributing to strong increases in oil inventories. EIA projects the Brent crude oil spot price to average $58/barrel (bbl) ($1.39/gal), down from the summer 2014 average of $106/bbl ($2.52/gal). The projected $1.13/gal decline in Brent price this summer compared with last summer accounts for the entire decline in retail gasoline prices compared with last summer (Figure 1). Changes in crude oil price are one of the main determinants of changes in retail gasoline prices, and U.S. gasoline prices are more closely tied to prices for globally traded North Sea Brent rather than domestic crude oil prices.

In addition to the price of Brent crude oil, U.S retail gasoline prices are generally determined by three broad elements: (1) refining costs and profit margins (wholesale margin); (2) retail and distribution costs and profit margins; and (3) taxes. Elements two and three compose the retail segment of the supply chain, and they tend to be relatively stable. Like crude oil prices, refining costs and profit margins can be volatile. They also have a seasonal component and typically are higher during the spring and summer, when gasoline demand is higher, and lower during the fall and winter.

This summer, average refining margins are projected to be about the same as last summer, as more gasoline supply from greater refinery runs balances higher projected gasoline consumption. EIA projects total crude oil and unfinished oil refinery inputs to be 180,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) (1.1%) more this summer compared with last summer. Higher refinery throughputs largely reflect fewer anticipated refinery outages during April and May, as well some minor capacity additions. As a result of higher refinery runs, gasoline production is expected to be almost 100,000 bbl/d greater than last summer. Projected motor gasoline consumption for summer 2015 averages 9.2 million bbl/d, an increase of 140,000 bbl/d (1.6%) over last summer. Year-over-year increases in summer highway travel, projected to be 2.5%, are partially offset by a 0.9% increase in fleetwide fuel efficiency.

Any difference in crude oil prices or refinery margins from EIA’s baseline forecast would be reflected in retail gasoline prices. The value of futures and options contracts traded during the 5-day period ending April 2 continue to suggest high uncertainty in the oil price outlook. For example, the market’s expectations (at the 95% confidence interval) for monthly average prices in December 2015 ranged from $20/bbl below to $35/bbl above the average trading price for that month’s futures contract. Additionally, prices for gasoline and other petroleum products are particularly sensitive to unplanned refinery outages, and any sudden loss of gasoline supply from the market could cause retail prices to be higher than forecast.

Retail gasoline prices also vary by region. Summer 2015 prices are projected to be the highest on the West Coast, at an average of $2.82/gal. Prices on the West Coast are often the highest in the country because California requires a blend of gasoline that is relatively costly to produce and some states in the region have higher state tax rates than the national average. Prices are projected be lowest on the Gulf Coast, at an average of $2.25/gal. Gulf Coast prices are often among the lowest in the country because the region generally has low state tax rates and abundant gasoline supplies, as it is home to about half of all U.S. refining capacity. Retail prices in the Midwest, East Coast, and Rocky Mountains are projected to average $2.41/gal during summer 2015.

U.S. average gasoline and diesel fuel prices decrease

The U.S. average retail price for regular gasoline decreased four cents from last week to $2.41 per gallon as of April 6, 2015, $1.18 per gallon lower than the same time last year. The Rocky Mountain price posted the lone increase, up a penny to $2.32 per gallon. The Midwest price led the declines, down seven cents to $2.31 per gallon. The West Coast price decreased five cents to $2.95 per gallon. The East Coast price declined two cents to $2.35 per gallon, and the Gulf Coast price was down less than half a cent to $2.18 per gallon.

The U.S. average diesel fuel price decreased four cents from the prior week to $2.78 per gallon, $1.18 per gallon less than the same time a year ago. The Midwest price decreased five cents to $2.68 per gallon. The East Coast price fell four cents to $2.95 per gallon, and the Gulf Coast price fell three cents to $2.64 per gallon. The West Coast price decreased three cents to $2.92 per gallon, and the Rocky Mountain price decreased two cents to $2.73 per gallon.

Propane inventories gain

U.S. propane stocks increased by 0.6 million barrels last week to 58.0 million barrels as of April 3, 2015, 30.4 million barrels (110.1%) higher than a year ago. Midwest inventories increased by 1.0 million barrels and East Coast inventories increased by 0.1 million barrels. Gulf Coast inventories decreased by 0.4 million barrels and Rocky Mountain/West Coast inventories decreased by 0.1 million barrels. Propylene non-fuel-use inventories represented 7.9% of total propane inventories.

The post US Retail Gasoline Prices This Summer Seen More Than $1/Gallon Lower Than Last Summer – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Bo Zhen*

The completion of the Chinese National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), known as the “Two Sessions”, between 3rd to 15th March, provides a clear picture regarding the nuances of Chinese foreign policy in 2015.

First, the keywords for China’s diplomacy in 2015 will be “One Focus” and “Two Main Themes”. “One Focus” is about the “Belt and Road” initiative in which the Chinese government will be making all-round progress. By further enhancing policy communication with related countries and expanding the convergence of the shared interests, China is going to promote infrastructural connectivity and build overland economic corridors and pillars of maritime cooperation. “Two Main Themes” are those of peace and development. China will work together with international community to commemorate the world’s anti-Fascist war and use the 70th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations (UN) to actively participate in the UN development summit and international cooperation on climate change.

Second, promotion and safeguarding the current international order. China considers itself a constructive force in building the international order. It was the founding member of the UN 70 years ago. Considering the fact that the UN is the centre of international order and akin to a big boat, China would like to ensure this boat sails steadily forward and in the right direction. With a seven-decades long history, the international order today is in need of better global governance and promotion of democracy. It further needs to protect the interests of the developing countries.

Third, carrying out the practical diplomacy with great powers and neighboring countries. China views the United States, Russia, Japan and India as great powers and partners with whom close political and economic relationships have been formed. Theses countries are crucial not only for Chinese diplomacy but also for regional as well as global stability.

In the specter of China-US relations, China wishes to work closely with the United States, building on the progress made during the visit by US President Barack Obama in 2014 and his meeting with the Chinese president Xi at the Yingtai island. A new model of major-country relations is in the offing, although Beijing anticipates that such an effort will not be without challenges. However, in the face of challenges, both China and the US would need to demonstrate sincerity and buttress the bottom line of “no conflict and no confrontation”. For the two giants, the mutual disagreements must not overpower the need to take the bilateral relations forward.

In the context of the China-Russia relations, the road is comparatively smoother. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi reiterated at a press conference on the sidelines of the parliamentary session, “The China-Russia relationship is not dictated by international vicissitudes and does not target any third party. Thanks to the strong strategic trust the two sides have established.” As comprehensive strategic partners, cooperation between the two is driven by mutual need and common perceptions regarding regional security and energy issues. Under the Silk Road Economic Belt framework, the trade volume between the two is expected to reach the levels of US$ 100 billion in 2015. In terms of energy cooperation, construction of the eastern route of the natural gas pipeline is expected to resume and an agreement on the western route of the pipeline would be signed in 2015. As permanent members of the UN security Council, strengthening strategic cooperation and coordination in the critical issues like settling the nuclear issues concerning Iran as well as North Korea would remain important areas of dialogue and consultation.

Unfortunately, the China-Japan relations would remain troubled till Japan acknowledges a history that has hurtful memories for the Chinese people. Even the possibility of a healthy economic relationship (Japanese direct investment into China fell by over two-fifths in 2014 compared with 2013) would be inadequate on retrieving the icy political relations between the two, especially in view of some of the right wing assertions made by some of the Japanese politicians. Chinese foreign minister Wang emphasized, “Japan lost the war seventy years ago. Seventy years afterwards, it should not lose its conscience’. Quoting a veteran Chinese diplomat, Wang said, “The more the perpetrator is conscious of his or her guilt, the more relieved the victim can feel about the suffering.”

Regarding the Sino-India relations, progress can be expected even with the obstacles. Both countries can work together on issues such as counter-terrorism, climate change and G-20 etc. under the structure of BRICS and cooperate with each other in areas such as infrastructure, IT service and pharmacy. During his 2014 visit, first visit by a Chinese president to India in eight years, Chinese president Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s joint photo with the spinning wheel used by India’s father of nation, Mahatma Gandhi was widely circulated across China. China promised to invest US$ 20 billion in India in the next five years. As regards the border dispute, two countries have strong leaders and common will to solve this problem and must not remain hostage of the bitterness of the past.

About the author:
*Bo Zhen is a Research Scholar at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Source:
This article was published by Mantraya, which may be found here.

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By C. Raja Mohan*

While India continues to evacuate its citizens from Yemen, China was quick to complete its operation last week. China had barely 600 people in Yemen to rescue. India had nearly 4,000 citizens in Yemen when the evacuation began last week amid the escalation of the conflict.

For both China and India, which have significant populations living beyond borders, extricating compatriots from zones of conflict or natural disasters has become a recurring challenge. Between 2006 and 2010, Beijing rescued nearly 6,000 citizens from troubled regions. In 2011 alone, China had to evacuate 48,000 citizens, most of them from Libya.

India had pulled out nearly 17,000 people from Libya in 2011. Since the NDA government came to power last summer, New Delhi has had to deal with similar situations in Iraq, Ukraine and now Yemen. Both Beijing and Delhi are under political pressure from below to act decisively and spare no expense in bringing their people back home. Beijing and Delhi have regularly tasked their armed forces with evacuation operations in different parts of the world.

The storylines in China and India begin to diverge somewhat from here.

In Beijing, the political leadership has begun to affirm that China’s national interests go beyond the borders and securing them is a top priority. Prime Minister Li Keqiang summed up the new dynamic last year: “As China becomes more open, the number of Chinese companies and citizens overseas is increasing.” Safeguarding the “legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and citizens,” Li added, is a major political priority for the party and government.

China’s defence establishment is translating this political commitment into appropriate policies and institutional capabilities. In Delhi, the political leaders turn to the armed forces as the instrument of first resort in coping with crises involving Indian citizens abroad. But there has been no matching effort to frame the issue in strategic terms.

Overseas Interests

In the biennial defence white paper issued by China in 2013, Beijing introduced a new section that reviewed China’s interests beyond borders. “With the gradual integration of China’s economy into the world economic system,” it declared, “overseas interests have become an integral component of China’s national interests.”

“Security issues are increasingly prominent, involving overseas energy and resources, strategic sea lines of communication (SLOCs), and Chinese nationals and legal persons overseas,” the white paper said. Defending these interests, according to the white paper, is one of the new historic missions of the People’s Liberation Army.

In India, Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh often declared that India’s security perimeter runs from the Suez to the South China Sea. But the civilian leadership in the ministry of defence has been loath to make the necessary institutional changes or provide the political guidance and necessary resources to the armed forces.

Expeditionary Forces

As the demand for deploying the PLA beyond the nation’s borders grows, China’s strategic discourse has begun to evolve rapidly in the last few years. China’s defence debates are no longer constrained by old political inhibitions. China has long had a small marine contingent that was focused on military crises involving Taiwan. Beijing today sees a larger role for its marine brigades in its military strategy. While the PLA marines will have a critical role in asserting China’s expansive territorial claims in the South and East China Seas, Beijing has begun to occasionally deploy some units in the Indian Ocean.

China’s defence community is also debating the merits and problems of acquiring foreign military bases. While the need for timely military responses makes bases attractive, the political complications they generate can be rather difficult to deal with. China is also reviewing its traditional doctrine of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. Beijing is now taking a greater interest in resolving conflicts in regions of vital interest.

China has steadily expanded its participation in international peacekeeping operations. Since 2008, the Chinese navy has been deployed in the Gulf of Aden for counter-piracy operations. Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief have become major priorities for the PLA.

Beijing’s expansive defence diplomacy presents China as a good international citizen and a responsible power. It helps ease some of the concerns about China’s growing military power. Above all, the frequent deployment of the armed forces beyond borders generates valuable experience for the PLA in developing its expeditionary capabilities and familiarity with distant theatres.

Although India has had a longer and more impressive record of deploying its military for securing international public goods, there has been little appreciation of its strategic significance within the civilian bureaucracy and the political leadership of the defence ministry. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who articulated a more ambitious policy towards the Indian Ocean during his “Sagar Yatra” last month, will hopefully find ways to bring India’s military and strategic policies in line with its growing interests beyond borders.

*The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation and a contributing editor for ‘The Indian Express’

Courtesy: The Indian Express, April 7, 2015

The post Yemen Evacuation – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The death toll from Saudi-led military aggression against neighboring Yemen has climbed to nearly 450 people with more than 1,000 people so far injured in the impoverished Arab country.

According to figures released Thursday by Yemeni media outlets, at least 445 people have so far been killed since Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes on Yemen 15 days ago.

Most deaths are reported to be women and children.

The development comes as the US-backed Persian Gulf kingdom’s forces continue pounding the Yemeni territory.

Earlier on Thursday, Saudi fighter jets carried out strikes in Yemen’s capital city of Sana’a and the provinces of Taizz, Shabwah and Sa’ada.

This is while the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of internally-displaced persons, Chaloka Beyani, has warned the international community to prepare for a massive displacement and humanitarian crisis in Yemen as civilians flee the Saudi bombings and internal clashes.

The UN expert also slammed a Saudi-led airstrike which hit a refugee camp in northern Yemen on March 30, describing it as “a grave violation against some of the most vulnerable of the vulnerable civilians.”

Saudi Arabia’s military aggression against Yemen started on March 26, without a UN mandate, in a bid to restore power to the fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Reporting from the site of a Saudi air raid in Sana’a, Press TV correspondent said a ten-story residential building has been targeted, two stories of which have been wiped out.

A Yemeni man in the neighborhood said, “There are no militants in this area, there are just civilians.”

Original article

The post Yemen Death Toll Since Start Of Saudi-Led Coalition Reaches 445 appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Yavuz Yener

US Secretary of State John Kerry has expressed his discontent regarding Iran’s subversive involvement in the Yemen crisis. Citing increasing turmoil in the Middle East, Kerry warned that the US would not stand by and let Iran destabilize the region.

It has been long suspected that Iran is providing supplies to the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“There are obviously supplies that have been coming from Iran. There are a number of flights every single week that have been flying in,” Kerry said.

He added, “Iran needs to recognize that the US is not going to stand by while the region is destabilized or while people engage in overt warfare across lines – international boundaries – in other countries”.

Although Iran has denied such accusations, it sent two navy vessels to the Gulf of Aden on Wednesday in order to safeguard “naval routes for vessels in the region”.

A Saudi-led coalition, which is also supported by the US, initiated an air campaign in Yemen on March 25. The coalition strives to push back Iran-backed Houthi rebels and restore President Abdrabnuh Mansour Hadi’s rule.

Kerry’s comments came after the intensification of fighting in the city of Aden. On Wednesday, more than 22 people were reported dead in Aden due to the shelling of the Saudi-led coalition.

Meanwhile, the number of civilian casualties in the country has continued to increase. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that at least 560 people, of which 76 were children, have died and that 1,700 have been wounded between March 19 and April 4 as a result of the intensifying clashes between the Houthis and militiamen loyal to President Hadi.

As the humanitarian situation deteriorated, 1,7 tonnes of medical aid for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF-Doctors Without Borders) arrived in Aden on Wednesday for the first time since the beginning of the Saudi-led air campaign.

The post Kerry Concerned With Iran’s Support Of Houthis In Yemen appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan

There are unmistakable signs that the street protests and blockades in Dhaka, Chittagong and elsewhere of the opposition combine- BNP and JEI are tapering off though there is no official statement from the parties of having withdrawn the agitation.

Since January 5, Bangladesh has been witnessing hartals and blockades almost every day till recently that resulted in death and destruction of innocent civilians and property. It had also slowed down the economy which until the protests, had been doing fairly well.

With both sides the BNP and the Awami league taking rigid positions there was a mistaken perception outside Bangladesh that the country was teetering on the brink of a disaster all due to contest over power between the two major parties and particularly because of the rivalry between the two main leaders Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia.

A visit to Dhaka or other places except in a few strong holds of BNP would have shown that the so-called protests and blockades were becoming more and more of a farce with no public participation. On the other hand, the people were getting fed up with the politicians in general and the BNP-JEI combine in particular for disturbing normal life, schools sessions and examinations with attempts to create an artificial shortage of essential commodities in the capital and other city centres of the country.

The JEI ( Jamaat-e-Islami) which had been indulging in targeted terror attacks on police, public properties and people were being freely used by the opposition BNP as cannon fodder to continue the violent attacks on people and property.

But since the last week of March there are signs of the protests tapering off though the opposition combine has not formally abandoned the hartal programme. The signs as we see were:

• The BNP without making a formal announcement, entered the civic polls of both Dhaka- North and South and Chittagong. Unlike the Awami League and its other constituents, BNP in view of its boycott of the general elections had no official positions in the administration and was therefore free to participate in the elections.
• As said before, the hartals and the blockades were becoming more of a farce with no participation of the public. The Jamaat which produced the cadres for the violent protests in the last few months restricted itself to some token processions and their attention was diverted more on the sentencing of their leader Muhammad Kamaruzzaman to death for the war crimes. ( Kamaruzzaman’s death sentence has been upheld and his review petition has since been rejected by a four-bench Supreme Court).
• Most importantly, Khaleda Zia who was unwilling to leave her Gulshan Office actually out of fear of being locked out but claiming fears over her personal security, left her office and surrendered before the court on 5 April to obtain bail on two corruption cases for which warrants were pending. The Court granted bail and the prosecution also did not oppose the bail in view of “Khaleda’s status, social and political dignity and age.” This was said openly in the court. He should also have referred to Khaleda’s health too but did not.
• More surprising, Khaleda returned to her residence and the Police allowed the BNP cadres to break the lock of the office of BNP at Naya Paltan on April 4. It may be recalled that Khaleda this time skipped her visit to the National Monument and pay homage to the martyrs on Independence day on March 26 which she usually does and more significantly did not even visit her husband’s grave on January 19 on his birth anniversary as she usually did, all out of fear of being locked out of her Gulshan office from where she was directing the agitation.
• Lt. Gen. (Retd) Mahbibur Rahman, a BNP Standing Committee member described Khaleda’s appearance in the court as a “step forward” to overcome the ongoing political deadlock.

The ongoing political deadlock was one created by the BNP and the mayhem thus created can be stopped only by the BNP. With Hasina not giving in on any issue, the party was getting desperate to find an “escape route” and the impending municipal elections in Dhaka and Chittagong came as a good excuse.

A large number of BNP leaders are either in jail or underground. The party cannot continue with the election campaigning in such a situation and it has to succeed in the elections. In one sense it was a desperate situation. But it was also a win-win situation for them anyway. If they win, it could always say that the party is popular and that had it participated in the General elections earlier it would have won. If the party were to lose, it could go back to the allegations that they did not have a level playing field and were prevented from winning the elections!

People were not only getting fed up with the hartals but they were angry too on the innocent lives that were being lost in the agitation. If the hartals were to continue, it was getting clear that Awami League was getting stronger and correspondingly the BNP’s relevance was also getting diluted.

Has the BNP learnt a lesson? Very unlikely. But the party has finally realised that the street protests and the blockades have limits and people are not going to tolerate senseless political violence indefinitely. Care taker government or not, the Party is unlikely to boycott the next General Elections when held.

But what needs to be done is to control the activities of the Jamaat which under the protection and encouragement of the mainstream BNP has been mainly responsible for the violence perpetrated in the streets against security forces and innocent civilians. Most of the fire bomb attacks were by them. The recent recovery of large quantities of high quality explosives in March in Chittagong showed the involvement of JEI and its student wing.

The present Government had once conducted an investigation on the war crimes committed by the Jamaat. A report on this strongly indicting the Jamaat and six other organisations of their involvement in pre liberation1971 is with the government. It is perhaps time for the government to move against the Jamaat which perhaps may involve some amendment to the international tribunals that have been set up to try the war crimes.

It is to the credit of Sheikh Hasina that she stood firm in dealing with the three month long disturbances. There was never a “civil war type” situation though the Security forces had suffered many casualties in controlling the agitation.

Despite repeated calls from other western countries, the UN and other well meaning friends from the civic bodies, Hasina realised that giving in would have undermined her own position and that of her party. Ultimately her “firmness” worked and the BNP had to desperately look for alternatives until they found the opportunity to participate in the elections.

Finally a word on the Indian policy that worked. India did not get involved in trying for any compromise or brokering an agreement between the two groups despite suggestions from many quarters. Hasina won her battle on her own. But it is time that India goes ahead with the Land Boundary Agreement which is almost ready. A quick disposal of this issue will go a long way in strengthening the relations between India and Bangladesh. It should be followed later but not before with the agreement on the sharing of Teesta waters.

The post Bangladesh: Street Protests And Blockades Tapering Off – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

What steps should the international community take in order to mitigate the development and security threats coming out of Africa? Shannon Dick recommends adopting a broad brush approach that engages with non-traditional partners from the security, development, environmental, and health fields.

By Shannon Dick*

For nearly two years, the Central African Republic (CAR) has been plagued by armed violence, with the civil war between the rebel coalition and government forces claiming the lives of thousands of victims and displacing millions more. Armed groups sustain their activities in part by exploiting CAR’s many natural resources and the conflict itself has resulted in a significant humanitarian crisis that will likely have implications for the country’s health and security sectors for years to come. Unfortunately, CAR is not alone in dealing with the complex challenges that impact both sustainable development and security. Many countries in Africa struggle with the unfortunate realities caused by unfettered arms flows within and between conflict zones, environmental crime, and devastating public health crises. These interconnected challenges and their subsequent policy responses are often viewed through a singular lens. Yet the very ways in which they intersect can impact national, regional, and international security, and present wider global consequences.

The unchecked flow of arms, for example, fuels armed conflict and contributes to the displacement of millions of people worldwide, which strains local health and welfare systems. Illicitly trafficked wildlife commodities help fund armed groups and criminal organizations, providing them with the means to continue their nefarious activities. The spread of disease weakens state institutions and capacities to respond to security threats, and fosters conditions that breed instability. Poorly regulated borders and the lack of appropriate national infrastructure can exacerbate these challenges for years, often seemingly without end. Thus, it is important for national, regional, and international approaches to address these interrelated problems and develop far-reaching responses that prioritize local innovation to combat these threats.

Arms Flows

Numerous countries in Africa continue to struggle with the deadly legacy of weapons used to perpetuate conflict. Largely unregulated arms transfers have direct and indirect impacts on many countries across the region, as thousands of people are killed or injured each year due to armed violence. The spread of small arms and light weapons (SALW) in particular imposes significant problems on states by disrupting post-conflict development and hindering economic growth. Studies estimate that there are approximately 39 million firearms circulating throughout Africa, and though this represents less than half the total number of firearms circulating Europe, these weapons nevertheless take a significant toll on countries throughout the region.

Reports estimate that armed conflict costs Africa roughly $18 billion a year due to average annual losses of 15 percent in Gross Domestic Products (GDP). This includes direct costs to societal infrastructure due to physical damage and loss of personnel, as well as indirect costs to national economies due to reduced workforce, limited investments, loss of development aid, and other economic challenges wrought by instability and insecurity. And while it is difficult to ascertain the exact value of illicit arms transfers throughout the region, porous borders and the lack of comprehensive arms regulations contribute to this security challenge. Indeed, persistent armed conflict can limit access to much needed resources such as economic and humanitarian aid and dissuade investors, thereby limiting the ability of many countries to rebuild and establish the laws, regulations, infrastructure, and capacities needed to mitigate future violence and potential instability. This situation was highlighted in 2014 when Exxon Mobil discontinued oil exploration plans in South Sudan amid continued conflict, signaling weakened confidence in the country’s stability and security.

While illicit or black market sales represent one source of weapons across the continent, weapons and ammunition have also been sourced from government stockpiles around the world. Researchers have traced conflict weapons to government sources in China, Europe, Iran, Russia, and the United States. Recent research has revealed that Khartoum’s government stockpiles are a primary source of weapons for actors engaged in all sides of the conflict in Sudan and South Sudan. Additionally, poor stockpile management puts weapons at risk of looting – as exemplified by the capture of thousands of SALWs and other munitions in Libya – as well as unplanned explosions, which can have lethal impacts on surrounding communities. Without adequate safeguards to ensure the security of weapons caches across the region, poorly regulated arms can be diverted to conflict zones and fuel continued violence and instability. This, in turn, offers a prime environment for exploiting many of Africa’s valuable natural resources.

Environmental Crime

Environmental crime in many countries across Africa poses a number of ecological, security, and development concerns. While poachers and illegal loggers devastate biodiversity, their activities also hinder economic development, threaten public health, and put regional security at risk. These threats are compounded by connections to and relations with various armed groups and organized criminal syndicates. Recent reports have found, for example, that armed groups in the CAR finance their activities in part through trafficking of natural resources such as diamonds and ivory.

Estimates of the value of transnational environmental crime suggest that the trade is worth between $70 and 213 billion a year. This includes estimates for gains to be made from illegal logging, poaching, fishing, mining, and trafficking in various wildlife commodities worldwide. The low risk, high reward nature of these crimes – and the vocational opportunities they offer for individuals lacking viable alternatives – makes it difficult for governments to mitigate their detrimental impacts. Illegal logging across Africa exemplifies this challenge. Just as countries are affected by the lack of comprehensive controls to secure arms flows throughout Africa, lax controls and permeable borders negatively impact regulation of the timber trade. Armed groups looking to increase their buying power can commandeer these trades and impose strict taxes to help fund arms sales and other illicit activities. And as wood is largely used for fuel and charcoal among local communities, the unregulated trade is estimated to cost African countries $1.9 billion annually in direct revenue losses.

Continued logging and deforestation have also raised concerns about potential influences on the spread of disease. Studies have noted the impact that forest clearance and shifts in ecosystem dynamics can have on the emergence (or re-emergence) and spread of infectious diseases such as yellow fever and Malaria. Indeed, numerous studies have examined the link between deforestation and the spread of Ebola, with additional correlations to dry ecological conditions, the frequency of human contact with infected animals, and the fragility of local health systems. As forests throughout Africa continue to be threatened by deforestation and illegal logging, such links raise important questions about the tools and resources available to national governments to effectively address these challenges.

Public Health

The Ebola crisis that devastated West Africa – particularly Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone – highlighted in the most serious way the risks posed by an overstrained and underdeveloped health infrastructure. Many national public health systems in Ebola-affected countries had been crippled by years of armed conflict and limited resources, leaving local providers under-equipped and unprepared for what became the largest Ebola outbreak in recorded history and the first of its kind in the region – with over 24,000 reported cases and more than 10,000 deaths.

Ebola underscored the detrimental impact that increased stress can have on already fragile public health systems. According to World Health Organization statistics, Liberia only had one doctor for every 100,000 people and Sierra Leone only two at the height of this most recent outbreak. In addition, under-resourced health centers meant that countries lacked the facilities and equipment necessary to address the epidemic and the patients requiring help. The outbreak further reduced these capabilities after taking the lives of more than 400 health-care workers.

Local and Global Collaboration

The development and security challenges that affect many African states do not exist in a vacuum. Efforts to address these challenges should take the opportunity to engage non-traditional partners from the security, development, environmental, and health domains. A broad based approach could provide strategies for systematically addressing the challenges posed by illegal or irresponsible arms transfers, environmental crime, and public health crises.

The success of such efforts will hinge on the ability of states to effectively develop and implement innovative regulatory responses that eliminate bureaucratic stove-piping. In part, this will mean establishing comprehensive border control measures, including enhancing customs protections and developing appropriate national legislation to ensure that illegal goods do not cross porous borders. Efforts such as INTERPOL’s Regional Threat Assessment Workshops that emphasize local partnership to strengthen border management and security could provide lessons-learned and examples of good practice to increase national and regional security measures. These practices could be applied to established regional initiatives such as the African Union Border Programme to enhance border management – tailored to the relevant needs of a given country – in an effort to impede illicit transfers. Countries will also need statutory regulations and penalties for those that contravene the legal trade in arms and other commodities. A harmonized regional approach may help countries learn from each other and establish best practices and develop better cooperation measures.

National governments will need to commit to building and enhancing such capacities if progress is to be made. Without a commitment from governments to establish appropriate legislative bodies and other regulatory systems, for example, or fund healthcare, support education for healthcare professionals, or engage with donor communities before a crisis emerges to put such systems in place, efforts to mitigate these challenges will fall short of creating long-term improvements.

National, regional and international efforts must include local buy-in to ensure sustainability and help mitigate future threats. Although international actors have often been at the forefront of developing solutions to many challenges throughout Africa, input and resources from local communities is critical to ensure meaningful and lasting success. Local coordination and participation in on-the-ground programming should be a priority of the donor community to ensure long-term progress, and national, regional and international institutions must establish systematic responses that reach across the security, development, economic, and public health spectrum to fit their individual needs. In doing so, governments and key stakeholders in the region can establish a more orchestrated approach to addressing the challenges posed by these interconnected threats.

*Shannon Dick is a research assistant with Stimson’s Managing Across Boundaries Initiative. Dick is a graduate of UC Berkeley and holds a BA in Political Science and Psychology.

The post Global Threats In Africa – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Supporters of the Islamic State militant group in Gaza on Thursday called for the release of several members detained by Hamas security services, a statement said.

The group, who call themselves ‘Supporters of the Islamic Caliphate State,’ demanded that security forces release the men in the next few days, adding that “threats and political arrests will not succeed in failing IS’s unification project.”

On Monday, Hamas-run security services arrested a radical Salafist sheikh, accusing him of membership in the Islamic State group.

“Adnan Khader Mayat from the Bureij refugee camp (in central Gaza) was arrested as part of an investigation,” the source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity and without giving further details.

Hamas forces have in the past cracked down hard on Salafist groups in the coastal enclave.

In a separate statement, sources close to Salafists who are currently being held behind bars accused Hamas of “continuing its raids among our brothers and sons,” denouncing the recent arrest of their two younger members.

“These actions will lead to an escalation which nobody wants,” it warned.

In recent months, there have been a number statements claiming minor attacks that were signed by “the Islamic State-Gaza governorate” but most were dismissed on jihadist forums.

So far, no Gaza-based movement has declared its allegiance with the IS movement, experts say, although they say such claims show a desire on the part of local factions to be included in the IS fold.

According to a recent survey conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an overwhelming majority of Palestinians do not hold favorable views towards IS.

Survey results showed that 86 percent of Palestinians believe IS is a radical group that does not represent true Islam, versus 8 percent that believe it does represent true Islam and 6 percent that aren’t sure.

In the Gaza Strip specifically, the percentage is slightly higher with 13 percent believing IS is representative of their understanding of Islam.

A spokesman of the Palestinian Authority’s security services Adnan Dameiri announced in February 2015 that Palestine is free from any cells affiliated to the Islamic State militant group.

“We are obviously adamant not to have ISIS or umbrellas for them in Palestine. Those who have been trying to create the ISIS phenomenon are Israel and Hamas given that the Muslim Brotherhood movement is the incubator which created al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Nusra Front and other Jihadist and Takfiri organizations,” he said.

The PA security services, added the spokesman at the time, had interrogated several suspects over affiliation to ISIS, but they were all set free after they proved their innocence.

The post Islamic State Affiliates Call For Release Of Members Held By Gaza Security appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Muhammad Umar

Last week Seema Sirohi wrote a blog post on the Economic Times website, “Pakistan does a North Korea, openly brandishes its nuclear weapons,” on the recent conversation between the former guardian of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, Lt. General Khalid Kidwai, and the former US Assistant Defense Secretary, Peter Lavoy at the 2015 International Nuclear Policy Conference, hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C.

Seema’s rant in the post is slanderous and there is nothing substantial in her arguments.

In the blog post, Seema makes outlandish claims without evidence. Her desperation to make India look more favorable than Pakistan oozes out of her post as if she had accidentally knocked over a stall at the grocery store, and were frantically trying to recover without looking like a complete ignoramus.

The fact is that General Kidwai was not belligerent in his tone as Seema suggests, he kept making a case for peace in his conversation with Peter Lavoy. (Read: An Honest Conversation About Pakistan’s Nukes)

Seema failed to present a spirited narrative. She sounded very frustrated, and most illogical. Her objections in the post are at best nonsensical, and most of what she has objected to, India itself is guilty of doing.

For example, how can she ask that a public rationale be given for Pakistan’s TNWs, when India has kept the purpose and nature of its ICBMs out of public knowledge, and discussion?

Her annoyance at General Kidwai’s conversation with Peter Lavoy suggests that the General achieved his purpose in questioning India’s entry into the NSG, and successfully raised Pakistan’s concerns in front of an educated global audience.

None of the concerns Seema presents in her post are backed up with any substantive reasoning.

She laments that Peter Lavoy, a distinguished scholar and former US Assistant Defense Secretary, did not push back Gen. Kidwai’s arguments, going as far as suggesting that Lavoy was helping the General strengthen the US and European lobbies who are already against India’s entry into NSG.

Talk about being paranoid.

Seema says transparency is better than ambiguity, and Pakistan should be more transparent about their nuclear program. In the same paragraph she then cries about the fact that Pakistan is being given a chance to speak at the conference… how can Pakistan be more transparent, if it is not allowed to address an audience of experts in the field?

She did however rightfully state that no one with a terrorist mindset should be allowed to come close to nuclear weapons, which is certainly useful advice that applies to all nuclear weapons states including India.

A brief review of history of events in India itself including Gujarat and its neighboring states should be insightful. For the first time, BJP, a political party with established terrorist links to the RSS is in-charge of India’s nuclear weapons. A fear Seema reserved for Pakistan in her post has actually unfolded in her own country!

There is one point I agree on with Seema, she highlights the dangers a terrorist organization can pose in a nuclear country. I cannot argue with her on the concerns she raises. Certainly, Pakistan has been a victim of terror in the past decade. These terror attacks are well planned, resourced, strategized, financed, and have killed over 80 thousand Pakistanis, affected our economy, and destroyed our international reputation. Terror attacks in Pakistan have forever traumatized the innocent Muslim population of the country.

The international community must awaken to its responsibility and ask how do these terrorists manage to acquire the resources required to sustain their army of unknown and unanswerable agents? Who finances them? What is their objective? What are the implications for international peace if they are not dealt with?

The danger of alternatives to nuclear war in the shape of trying to engage Pakistan in a proxy war through the use of terrorists, and plans such as India’s proactive military doctrine, globally referred to, as the Cold Start doctrine are real, and should be a part of the narrative for peace.

This is the point that General Kidwai was trying to raise at the conference. He was clear that there is no space for limited conflicts in South Asia under the nuclear environment that presently exists, he urged both the Pakistani leadership, as well as the Indian to move forward and engage each other in diplomatic conversations, and to give peace a chance.

*The writer is an assistant professor at the National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad. He tweets @umarwrites.

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By P. Stobdan

Six months after assuming office, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has finally made his choice of selecting a strategic partner amid questions over what the future holds for Afghanistan given the continuing uncertainty. Following Ghani’s visit to Washington on 23 March 2015, at least the anxieties surrounding the post-drawdown situation seemed to have been put to rest. Ghani fervently pleaded for a slowdown of the withdrawal timeline suggesting that a delay “will pay off the investments over the last 14 years.” His plea seemingly found ready acceptance. President Obama said it is “well worth it” and agreed to prolong the withdrawal timeline until 2017 despite an earlier pledge to cut the currently deployed 9,800 troops by half to 5,500 by the end of this year.

President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah renewed the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) with the United States and secured more US commitments for stabilizing Afghanistan. This came a week after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2210 (2015) on 16 March 2015, which presented a positive report card of achievements and expressed a “renewed hope” for a stable Afghanistan ahead.

Quite possibly, the “Iraq lesson” and the consequences of prematurely leaving a fragile ally may have weighed in favour of the slowdown in the American withdrawal. In fact, the Taliban described NATO’s departure as an admission of defeat. The Afghan militia, in a sense of victory, launched the deadly spring offensive and showed no let-up in its fresh recruitment drive. This was underscored by the worst ever toll of 10,000 civilian casualties in 2014. Not surprisingly, many Western analysts anticipate a nightmare scenario with Afghanistan once again falling into a vicious cycle of chaos. The report of ISIS spreading its wings in Afghanistan was not good news either.

Interestingly enough, Ashraf Ghani’s advocacy in Washington went beyond the need to sustain peace in Afghanistan. Of course, the best thing was his style of winning the hearts and minds of American lawmakers and think tanks by speaking in a language understood by them. The substance of his speeches and the words chosen for addressing the American strategic elite at the Pentagon, Camp David, Congress and elsewhere unmistakably smacked of a well-thought-out strategy for a long-drawn US presence in Afghanistan. The texts seemed well choreographed, for he also spoke like an American strategist clearly to boost the US agenda.

Ghani’s speeches had a subtle message. Even as he expressed utmost gratitude for America’s efforts to bring stability back to Afghanistan – he cited American sacrifices and loss of life in this regard – he showed a keen desire to reciprocate the US gift in an equally strong manner. Ghani told the Americans “Tragedy brought us together, but interests now unite us.”

That interest had intriguingly featured in an op-ed column in The Washington Post on 20 March titled “The importance of the U.S.-Afghanistan alliance”, penned jointly by Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah. The op-ed tried to define Afghanistan as a hub of opportunity rather than a problem; a potential strategic asset for America and its interests rather than a liability. The duo ingeniously evoked the very vital strategic location of Afghanistan in the ‘heart of Asia’, which they pointed out was both a curse and a blessing. The location curse, according to them, made Afghanistan a victim of the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, meddling by regional actors who fuelled feuding factions thereafter, and followed by the Taliban’s destruction and making the country a safe-haven for al Qaeda terrorists. The write up reminded that it took over a decade for Afghanistan, the US and other nations to get rid of regional terror networks.

As for blessing part of Afghanistan’s location, it can become “the eastern wall standing against the butchery of ISIL or the Islamic State”. The Afghan leaders pressed for a continued security partnership to ensure that “we will be an important ally in the decades to come” and “never again become a launching ground for terrorist attacks”.

The commitment to combating terror apart, they invoked Martin Luther King Jr. and promised to ensure democracy, human rights, justice and peace. The Americans must be surely convinced that Ghani is the person they could work with. Ghani’s predecessor Hamid Karzai, who incidentally compared America to the Taliban, was perhaps too wobbly and perhaps too pro-Indian for the American liking.

This is how America creates long term assets. Hosting Ghani for two decades had finally paid off. He proved his credentials as a pro-America Afghan and John Kerry correctly hedged his bets on Ghani to head the National Unity Government. Abdullah Abdullah too would be given a chance someday. All in all, the US finally has an entirely predictable regime in Kabul that can be employed as its subedar for the region even if that means dumping deceitful Pakistan.

The duo pleaded their case before the US for supporting their “Self-Reliance” project of assuming full responsibility for combat operations and fixing Afghanistan’s economic and political mess. However, the op-ed piece made no mention about talks with the Taliban for which Ghani had keenly sought Pakistani, Saudi and Chinese support. Ghani, in fact, went an extra mile to mend fences with Rawalpindi, made several important overtures even at the cost of ignoring India and at the risk of disappointing sections of Afghans, especially the security establishment.

Instead, Ghani, through the op-ed, asserted that Afghanistan has become immunized against ideologically based challenges after 36 years of conflict. He and Abdullah noted that “there will be setbacks…because we will negotiate peace from a position of strength……we will not surrender the gains that we have made in education, health, democratic development, the media, civil society, and women’s rights.” And they added that if “properly supported, Afghanistan is uniquely positioned to block the spread of extremism.”

This poses a rather perplexing question and gives no indication whether the negotiation process with the Taliban, nudged forward by Rawalpindi, is progressing. In fact, except for Pakistan, Qatar and Turkmenistan, no other country is really keen to facilitate talks with the Taliban. Further, the Taliban itself is in a state of disarray, with ranks in the group defecting to the ISIS. Or is it that Ghani has started doubting Pakistan’s sincerity in serving as an impartial mediator? It is obvious that the majority of Afghans continue to nurture lurking apprehensions about the duplicitous moves of Pakistan.

The Ghani-Abdullah op-ed talks about Afghanistan’s plans for building trust and trade, joining free-trade arrangements, and engaging neighbours across Asia “from India to Azerbaijan and beyond.” However, it does not refer to cross-border trade prospects across the Durand Line. Instead, it highlights the new ecology of terror, and external enablers pushing terrorists from across the Pakistan border that “threatens to block not just our (Afghan) prosperity but yours (American) as well.”

Ghani’s appeal for a rethink of US Afghanistan strategy comes at a time when the US is confronted with a host of issues in South and Central Asia. Afghanistan’s strategic utility would come against the backdrop of American’s yet-to-be-settled issues with Iran, heightening faceoff with Russia, recasting its Central Asia policy, challenges of dealing with nuclear-armed Pakistan, and monitoring the unfolding developments in Xinjiang. Afghanistan is also in proximity to Jammu & Kashmir. No wonder, after being relatively relieved from the war efforts in Afghanistan, Washington is now reportedly putting together an interagency policy paper to recast its Central Asia strategy. Washington has been repeatedly showing concern about the ripple effects of the Ukraine crisis in Central Asia. Russia’s renewed political and economic assertion in the region has been quite irksome, with the US recently cautioning Moscow not to “determine unilaterally the political and economic orientation of another country” probably in the context of Russia’s creation of the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC) and its possible designs on a Central Asian state. A shift in US policy would also seem inevitable given China’s aggressive push for its “Silk Route” project in Eurasia.

The US also knows that ISIS has heavily recruited in Central Asia as more and more Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Kyrgyz have joined its ranks. China’s concerns in Xinjiang underscore the gravity of this threat.

All in all, the Afghan President has extended an open invitation to the US for an open-ended military presence in his country. He has virtually expressed a readiness to play the role of a ‘frontline state’ for any future American contingency. Considering the unfolding geopolitical imperatives, it is an offer that the Americans cannot afford to ignore. It would be interesting to observe how Afghanistan and America develop their future strategic partnership. The current balance of advantage seems to indicate that the Americans may have hijacked some of the gains made by India. The new unfolding game on the Afghan front is critical for India to take note of.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India

Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/AshrafGhaniAmericasNewSubedar_pstobdan_070415.html

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In the long struggle for justice at Guantánamo — a prison intended at its founding, 13 years ago, to be beyond the law — there have been few occasions when any outside body has been able to exert any meaningful pressure on the US regarding the imprisonment, mostly without charge or trial, of the men held there.

One exception is the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a key part of the Organization of American States (OAS), whose mission is “to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere,” and whose resolutions are supposed to be binding on the US, which is a member state.

The IACHR has long taken an interest in Guantánamo (as this page on their website explains), and three years ago delivered a powerful ruling in the case of Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian who was still held despite being approved for release (a situation currently faced by 56 of the 122 men still held).

In Ameziane’s case, his lawyers, at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), stated in a press release that the ruling marked “the first time the IACHR has accepted jurisdiction over the case of a man detained at Guantánamo, and underscores the fact that there has been no effective domestic remedy available to victims of unjust detentions and other abuses at the base.”

Ameziane was finally released from Guantánamo in December 2013, although he was sent home to Algeria, against his will.

In February, lawyers for another Guantánamo prisoner, Muaz al-Alawi, identified in Guantánamo as Moath al-Alwi, submitted a petition requesting the IACHR to “issue precautionary measures to end his indefinite detention.” Regular readers may recognise al-Alawi’s story, as I have written about him before — when his habeas corpus petition was denied in 2011 (in an article aptly entitled, “Guantánamo and the Death of Habeas Corpus”), during the prison-wide hunger strike in 2013, and last year, via the New York Times.

The lawyers — interns and supervising attorneys at City University of New York School of Law — stated in the petition:

During his detainment at Guantánamo, Mr. al-Alwi has been systematically tortured and isolated. He has been denied contact with his family, slandered and stigmatized around the globe. He has been denied an opportunity to develop a trade or skill, to meet a partner or start a family. He has been physically abused, only to have medical treatment withheld. Throughout this intense suffering, Mr. al-Alwi has never had a fair trial. Rather, he was tortured by the U.S. and coerced into making statements that were later used against him in court. After a trial ridden with procedural and evidentiary flaws, U.S. federal courts denied his habeas corpus petition in 2011. Thirteen years after he was originally brought to Guantánamo, Mr. al-Alwi remains detained, awaiting a resolution to his indefinite detention without charge or fair process.

Since February 2013, Mr. al-Alwi has participated in his most recent hunger strike. Frustrated by his continued detainment, on April 2013, Mr. al-Alwi escalated his protest by even rejecting water. At the time, Mr. al-Alwi was among the sixteen detainees who were force-fed by prison authorities at Guantánamo. As this Petition and Request for Precautionary Measures is filed, Mr. al-Alwi continues this hunger strike and fully intends to keep up his protest until he is free. He has vowed to “not eat or drink until [he] die[s], if necessary, to protest the injustice of this place …” As of February 2015, Mr. al-Alwi is still held in solitary confinement and subject to regular force-feeding.

Additionally, in April 2013, a U.S. Army guard has shot Mr. al-Alwi, without reason, multiple times at close range, striking his chest, left thigh, left elbow, and shoulder.

He has yet to receive adequate medical care for these gunshot wounds.

Accordingly, Mr. al-Alwi faces irreparable harm at Guantánamo and respectfully requests this Commission to issue precautionary measures to end his indefinite detention.

Al-Alawi’s petition was, rather shamefully, barely covered by any media outlets. An exception was The Intercept, where Murtaza Hussain picked out some highlights from the petition, noting firstly that he weighs just 98 pounds and lost 70 pounds in weight between February and December 2013 — and prompting me, yet again, to think that, if a single photo of al-Alawi or a similarly emaciated prisoner were to be leaked, the resulting outrage might speed the closure of Guantánamo.

Hussain also noted that al-Alawi’s lawyers describe how his “mental and physical state is seriously deteriorating after two years on hunger strike, and subsequent force-feeding,” and point out that he ha stated that, since he embarked on the hunger strike in February 2013, he “has been subjected to escalating physical and psychological abuse from guards, as well as increasingly brutal force-feeding procedures administered by medical personnel.”

Explaining that al-Alawi has described his strike as “a form of peaceful protest against injustice,” the lawyers also note that prison officials “have responded to his hunger strike by placing him in solitary confinement, denying him access to prescribed medical items and subjecting him to extreme temperatures in his cell,” as The Intercept described it.

Although a Guantánamo spokesperson claimed that the medical care received by prisoners at Guantánamo “is on the same level as that provided to U.S. Service members serving here,” the lawyers contend that their client’s nasal passages have “swelled shut due to the extra large tubes prison authorities have repeatedly forced down his nasal cavity” during the force-feeding process,” and also state that the force-feeding sessions “have led to heavy vomiting and daily blood loss.”

In addition, because he is shackled to a chair for many hours every day, while being force-fed, al-Alawi “now suffers severe back pain and other debilitating physical injuries.”

And yet, what he — and other force-fed prisoners — are calling for is simply to be treated humanely. As he has stated, “Tube-feed us humanely. There is no need to use the restraint chair and the riot squads.” During a visit with his lawyers in January, he also said, “It is really bewildering. I weigh less than 100 pounds. I wear braces on both ankles, and both wrists, and one around my lower back. I am five foot five … and they claim that I am ‘resisting’ and that they have to unleash a full riot squad of six giants to move me. How can I possibly resist anyone, let alone these men?”

The title of this article, via Murtaza Hussain, comes from Muaz al-Alawi’s own words, describing Guantánamo as “an endless horror story.”

The petition also describes much more about how he was shot in April 2013:

On April 12, 2013, the International Committee of the Red Cross competed a three-week visit to Guantánamo, meeting with detainees and assessing conditions after nearly a month of hunger striking by a majority of the detainees. A day later, armed guards flooded Mr. al-Alwi’s communal cellblock and physically assaulted and opened fire on the detainees. Mr. al-Alwi was preparing for dawn prayers at the time when a U.S. Army guard appeared in front of him on the other side of a wire-link fence in a small recreation area near his cellblock. From a distance of two to three feet, with no provocation, and without prior warning, a guard shot Mr. al-Alwi multiple times with rubber-coated steel bullets.

The first pellets hit the left part of his chest, above and below Mr. al-Alwi’s heart. As he fled the area for safety, the guard continued to shoot at him and struck him in the front of his left thigh, left elbow, and the back of his right shoulder. Mr. al-Alwi suffered immense pain from these shots. When he was finally away from the guard, Mr. al-Alwi realized that his clothes were soaked in blood and torn from the intensity of the rounds that struck him. The wounds close to Mr. al-Alwi’s heart were also badly swollen.

Since being shot, Mr. al-Alwi has been placed in solitary confinement and has escalated his hunger strike in protest.

It is not known when the IACHR will issue its ruling, but I hope it will be soon. As a prisoner not approved for release, but not facing prosecution either, Muaz al-Alawi is one of 56 remaining prisoners whose only other route out of Guantánamo is, conceivably, via a Periodic Review Board, a process established in 2013, which, to date, has involved reviews of the cases of 13 prisoners, approving eight men for release, and recommending four others for ongoing imprisonment — with one other case yet to be decided. The process is slow, and, although two men have been freed, the majority approved for release have not. Yemenis, like Muaz al-Alawi, they join 43 of their fellow countrymen who are still held despite being approved for release in January 2010 by President Obama’s high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force.

A supportive ruling for Muaz al-Alawi might, therefore, be useful in pushing the US to follow through on its decisions regarding the Yemenis, which remains something of a disgrace, even though 12 Yemenis cleared for release were — finally — freed and rehoused in third countries at the end of last year and the start of this.

The post Guantánamo ‘An Endless Horror Movie': Hunger Striker Appeals For Help To Inter-American Commission On Human Rights – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.