By Alba Çela*

The soccer match between Serbia and Albania in October of 2014, during which the famous drone incident unleashed violence towards the Albanian players, has already entered the list of most famous sports events. It illustrates the already-known logic that soccer still harbors the most aggressive, nationalistic sentiments. Albania was initially announced by the UEFA to have lost the game only to be rewarded the win later by a decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which gave the victory to the Albanian team when it stripped Serbia of three points. The rollercoaster of nationalistic rhetoric and soccer matches went on with the following game played in Albania, where Serbia scored twice, leaving Albanian fans mourning. The game was highly policed, as the Albanian government took almost draconian security measures to ensure that not even the smallest incident would happen to the Serbian team while in Albania. A few days later, winning with a striking 3-0 score against Armenia, Albania secured its historical entry into the European Soccer Championship to be held next year in France. Social media exploded with various comments and memes mocking Serbians by telling them to sit back, relax, and watch Albania kick the ball in Paris.

However, one would be mistaken to think that bilateral relations between Albania and Serbia are only recently bad. The incidents and events occurring during this year were not primarily negative and were not limited to the sports events. Albanian and Serbian prime ministers, who were involved as main players in the Berlin and Vienna summits, have flanked Chancellor Merkel in regional and EU events, displaying an unusual potential for dialogue and even camaraderie.  Youth exchanges that will lead to a regional youth center, coordinated both in Tirana and Belgrade, have produced some positive media coverage and a warm social reaction after so much negativity was poured out on TV and in newspapers in 2014.

It is an important step for respective governments to take such a commitment to normalize bilateral relations in the face of difficult pasts. However, for the effort to be successful, more society segments need to be involved. Much more needs to be done with the media, which often perpetuates myths and controversial topics despite their relevant lack of importance for current challenges faced by both countries.

Albania and Serbia share difficult historic baggage. The dissolution of Yugoslavia, the conflict in Kosovo, and the subsequent independence of Kosova have been a powerful rollercoaster for the two countries, which each claim to be home to the largest ethnic groups in the Balkans. However, even between Serbia and Kosova, some signs of normalization due to EU sponsored dialogue are starting to materialize beyond symbolic handshakes – such signs are evolving into important bilateral deals.

Most importantly, collaboration projects between some actors that have known one other for a longer time, and have found ways to cooperate in the past despite differences, have matured into more serious and sustainable joint initiatives.

Civil society organizations have once again taken the lead to strengthen their bonds and include other actors in hopes to find truth in the maxim “to know each other is to stop hating each other”.  In this context, two of the most prominent institutions of civil society in each country – the Albanian Institute for International Studies and the Forum for International Relations of the European Movement of Serbia – have joined hands in establishing the first joint Centre for Albanian-Serbian relations to promote the normalization of bilateral relations, encourage cooperation and interaction among youth, media and business community and to keep the integration impetus for better regional cooperation strong.

Beyond the frenzy both in social media and in the stadium seats, the spirit is fragile but positive among ordinary citizens. There seems to be a real potential amidst Albanian society to back the normalization project. According to a national poll of AIIS, around half of the citizens asked believe their country had normal relations with Serbia.

Most importantly, around 90 percent of the citizens recognized that the improvement of relations with Serbia was in the best interest of both countries, and hence each country should enhance its relationship with Serbia for its own sake rather than for the good marks handed down from Brussels or Berlin.

Relations between Serbia and Albania hold a key influence in terms of the overall stability in the western Balkan region. This particular importance is recognized by citizens in Albania, as the overwhelming majority of them point out that bilateral relations are key to security and stability for the entire region.  Should Albania and Serbia succeed in building an improved and structurally viable economic, political and social bond, the positive effects will reverberate in all their neighboring states. Such a relationship could become a tool for facilitating, then, the evolvement of several outstanding regional issues and also provide impetus to the EU’s integration of the western Balkans.

Therefore, the popular support becomes even more pertinent. Particularly encouraging are the results pertinent to cultural cooperation. More than 80 percent of citizens are interested in joining more cultural activities with Serbia. In this regard, the work has already started. The latest example comes from the current edition of the Tirana International Film Festival, which is hosting special programmer screening movies from Serbian directors and film students.

Borrowing an idea once again from sports, one could say that the difficult hurdle-run towards normalization has begun for these two countries that share considerable, historical enmity baggage. However, for this to be successful, the participating athletes need to be drawn inclusively from societal groups. Their blouses cannot simply say the names of the respective prime ministers, otherwise they will eventually stumble.

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” on Monday. Reactions ranged from outrage to speechlessness.

Additionally, Trump clarified that even American Muslims abroad would fall under his proposed plan. When The Hill asked whether Muslim-Americans would be included, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks replied by email, “Mr. Trump says, ‘everyone’.”

There was more demagoguery than detail in the Trump policy announcement. Without referring to how the plan would work, the statement did briefly imply when the travel ban would be lifted, saying it would continue “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Anti-Washington, DC rhetoric is part and parcel of Trump’s campaign, but Monday’s announcement spent more time on “great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population.”

“Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,” he said.

To back his claim that Muslim immigration is dangerous, Trump cited the Center for Security Policy, a think-tank founded by Frank Gaffney, a former Pentagon staffer under President Ronald Reagan who has been shunned by both conservative and liberal groups for anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. A survey by the center found 51 percent of American Muslims agreed they “should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah,” which, like other religious codes of law, is interpreted in vastly different ways, especially in the US. Trump’s statement says Shariah “authorizes such atrocities as” murder for non-believers, beheadings, “and more unthinkable acts.”

After citing polling data, Trump said, “Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine.”

Dave Weigel of The Washington Post tweeted that Ibrahim Hooper, National Communications Director for the Council on American–Islamic Relations, responded, “Where is there left for him to go? Are we talking internment camps? Are we talking the final solution?”

Last week, following the domestic terrorism attack in San Bernardino, California, Trump referred to the event as an “Islamic disaster.” One of the attackers, Tashfeen Malik, had come to the US on a K-1 “fiance visa” to marry the other attacker, Syed Farook. Together with the Syrian refugee crisis and the attack in Paris last month, fears over terrorism are more heightened. A post-Paris attack Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 83 percent of registered voters believe a terrorist attack in the US is likely, up from 73 percent in a pre-Paris attack Quinnipiac University poll.

In September, the Public Religion Research Institute found that 56 percent of Americans believe “the values of Islam are at odds with American values and way of life,” which is up from 47 percent in 2011.

Overshadowed by Trump’s proposal are other restrictive plans on immigration put forward by fellow Republican candidates Senators Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rand Paul (Kentucky). Cruz noted refugees from “territory substantially controlled by a foreign terrorist organization,” would not be permitted, and Paul’s bill similarly prohibits refugees from countries with “significant jihadist movements.”

The rest of Trump’s main 2016 competition responded either with criticism or a highlight of their own preferred policy.

This is the kind of thing that people say when they have no experience and don’t know what they’re talking about,” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told talk radio host Michael Medved following Trump’s announcement.

“Everyone visiting our country should register and be monitored during their stay as is done in many countries. I do not and would not advocate being selective on one’s religion,” Dr. Ben Carson told Fox Business.

“Donald Trump is unhinged,” Jeb Bush tweeted. “His ‘policy’ proposals are not serious.”

On the Democratic side, presidential candidate Martin O’Malley tweeted that Trump “removes all doubt: he is running for President as a fascist demagogue.”

Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont) tweeted, “The US is a strong nation when we stand together. We are weak when we allow racism and xenophobia to divide us.”

“This is reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive,” Hillary Clinton tweeted, addressing Trump, “you don’t get it. This makes us less safe.”

Speaking in Paris on December 7, 2015, the UN Secretary General again reminded the world leaders that: “More than 1 billion people worldwide live without electricity. Nearly 3 billion people depend on smoky, dangerous traditional fuels for cooking and heating. Access to modern, reliable, affordable clean energy is equally important for ending extreme poverty and reducing inequality…The clock is ticking toward climate catastrophe.” Nihilists, professional optimists, or status quo conservators would call it ‘environmental alarmism’… What is really the state of our planet?

* * * *

Back in 1990s, there was a legendary debate between two eminent scientists Carl Sagan, Astrophysicist and Ernst Mayr, Evolutionary Biologist. The issue was the question of all questions – is there any intelligent life out there? Sagan – closer to mathematics, and the counting of stars and worlds attached to it – argued that out of all the innumerable planets like ours, life must flourish at many of them. Quite a few of them, he claimed, must have developed advanced forms of living beings. Mayr – on the other hand – argued the opposite. His pessimism was coming from his profession, not from his character that was as vivid and optimistic as Sagan’s: What is a biology for natural sciences that is a history for human sciences – a space-time-lined story of the past with a predicament, or sometimes an inevitable consequences, for our future.

As Prof. Naom Chomski beautifully reminds us of this great episode, Ernst Mayr took our mother planet as an example to illustrate his claim.

The so-called biological success of species could be measured by their number, configuration and durability. By all three parameters, Prof. Mayr stressed, the most adaptive systems are those undergoing fast (non-cognitive) mutations caused by any environmental stress (e.g. varieties of bacteria, creatures stuck in a fixed ecological niches, like beetles or some sea biotas), and surviving even larger crisis including the cataclysmic events. But, as we go up the scale of what we assume as intelligence, the systems become less adaptive and scarcer by number, configuration and durability. Arriving to the top (as we classify as a tip of the intelligence pyramid), from low mammals to higher primates, apes and Homo Sapiens, the species tend to image a rarefying picture – by all three biological success parameters. By Mayr’s account, the average lifespan of upper-intelligence echelons is only around 100,000 years. Out of billions of species that have inhabited (and quite some still inhabiting) our planet, we – along with other higher primates – are late arrivals and temporal ‘accidents’. He attributes this to our intelligence, labeling it as a ‘lethal mutation’ – not a blessing but a curse. Mayr’s finding is intriguing: The higher the intelligence, the more likely to end up in self-destruction, past the transitioning on a curve of initial development.

Indeed, our environmental, financial and politico-economic policies and practices is creating the global stress for us and all other species. Deep and structural, this must be a crisis of our cognitivity. Do we want to prove Mayr right with our global Jihad against the cognitive mind?

Cognitive deficit crisis

From Copenhagen, Durban, Rio+20 to the Paris COP21, our conclusion remains the same: We need principles and accorded actions as this is the only way to tackle the grave problems of this planet. We are lacking the elementary consensus in/on the Bretton Woods institutions, on the Tobin tax initiative, in the WTO Doha Development round, on nuclear non-proliferation (and NPT), on the Middle East and ‘regime change mantra’, in the IPCC, on the post-Kyoto negotiations, and finally on the alarming state of environment. Ergo, on a global scale we fundamentally disagree on the realities of this planet and the ways we can address them.1

I am neither moralizing and idealizing nor agonizing. The world based on agreed principles and commonly willing actions is not a better place. It is the only way for the human race to survive.

Climate Change – a brutal terror against nature

We place ourselves in a center of a materialistic world – this, of what we perceive as a universe of dead matter. Therefore, what we euphemistically call (anthropogenic) Climate Change is actually a brutal war against (living) nature. It is a covert armed conflict, since we are predominantly using the so-called monetizing-potent ‘technologies,’ instead of firearms in our hands (For this purpose hereby, the army units are replaced by the demolition-man of other name; ‘transnational corporations’). This armed insurgency is waged against most of what is beautiful and unique on Earth – on the planet that gave us time and space enough to survive as species and to evolve as cognitive life. Thus, the known sustainability matrix of 3 maximums (of good, of species, and of time) becomes the minimum species, minimum time with a maximum harm.

Intentionally or not, it is a synchronized attack: We are steadily and passionately polluting our public sphere with the diverting banalities manufactured by the so-call social networks, reality shows, ‘celebrities’ and the like – trivializing the contents of our lives. At the same time, we are massively contaminating our biosphere (waters, lands, air and near outer space) with non-degradable and/or toxic, solid or aerosol, particles radiation and noise – irreversibly harming our habitat. We pollute the time as well, turning it into cross-generation warfare’s battlefield: Our dangerous patterns might seal off the fate for untold number of generations and sorts of species to come. No wonder, our corrosive assertiveness has (time-space) parallels: acidifying of oceans and brutalization of our human interactions, as well as over-noising both of them, are just two sides of a same coin. What is the social sphere for society that is the biosphere for the very life on earth: the (space/time – content/form) frame we all live in.

It seems we pay our space (linear possessions) by our time (future). Therefore, our crisis cannot be environmental, as it was never a financial one – our crisis must be a moral one. This is a cognitive deficit crisis, which we eagerly tend to spend in a limbo of denial!

Πάντα ρει (panta rhei)

Nature does not change. Change (as a cosmic constant) is a nature in itself. Still, even Heraclitus understood, this force is never eruptive or destructive (explosive), but eternally gradual and constructive (holistic and implosive).

We are drifting, dissolving and retreating on all levels and within each and every organic (marine and continental biota) or inorganic (soil, glaciers, water, polar caps, etc.) system. For the grave, burning planetary problems, our human race needs an urgent and lasting consensus which presupposes bravery, virtue, vision and creativity. All this will not result from fear of coercion, or from further military (‘war on terror’) confrontations, but from the universally shared willingness to accord our common planetary cause. Cognitive mind can do it all. Let’s start our global war on terror – but this time – on the terror of a global environmental holocaust caused by our cognitive deficit crisis.

References:
1. Chomsky, N. (2010), Human Intelligence and the Environment, University of North Caroline, Chapel Hill (Paper)
2. Sagan, C. (1980), Cosmos Random House, NY /Carl Sagan Productions Inc. (page: 109)
3. Dresner, S. (2002), The Principle of Sustainability, EarthScan London
4. Smith, L.C. (2010), The World in 2050 – Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future, Dutton (by Penguin group)

Notes:
1. Additionally, we fundamentally disagree on a role to be played by technology, even on a very definition on what should be considered as technology. Technology is not a state-of-art of science; technology is a state of mind! It is not a linear progression in mastering the natural science disciplines, but a cognitive, emphatic cluster–mastering of the critical insight.

By Behzad Khoshandam*

The year 2015 has been one of the most successful years during the past century in which Iran’s foreign policy has been at its highest degree of operational productivity. In this year, foreign policy heavily overshadowed the country’s domestic policy, clearing a path for the first time in the past 15 years for Iran to engage in international and regional interactions.

During 2015, Iran’s foreign policy trends with regard to such issues as the nuclear issue, the fight against terrorism and extremism, management of developments related to peripheral regions, human rights, as well as bilateral and multilateral relations underwent profound and fundamental changes.

During 2015, Iran’s foreign policy underwent special regeneration through relative interaction with important international organizations (UN, NATO, EU, and IAEA), big powers (the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain), actors in the Middle East, neighboring countries (including Saudi Arabia and Turkey), as well as global and regional crises (including the crises in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Yemen and Bahrain).

The key to correct understanding of developments in Iran’s foreign policy with regard to the country’s nuclear issue in 2015 is the prioritization and enforcement of the “constructive interaction doctrine” in the area of foreign policy by Iran’s 11^th administration. The constructive interaction doctrine was adopted as an operational model for Iran’s impartial foreign policy and was the main driving force that led to the win-win game of Vienna in July 2015, the main result of which was clinching of the Iran deal on the basis of choice of strategic necessity and according to the ideas of Iran’s Supreme Leader.

The Iran deal paved the way for a fundamental change in the approach taken by such important international organizations as the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to interaction and confrontation with Iran. The Security Council Resolution 2231 also cleared the path for gradual removal of Iran’s nuclear issue from the Council’s agenda. This issue has been also welcomed by such important international organizations as the UN, NATO, IAEA, OPEC, and NAM. As a result of fundamental changes in Iran’s relations with UNSC, Iran’s relations with the European Union (EU) have also moved toward gradual removal of sanctions, which were imposed on Iran by EU on July 26, 2010. Following these developments, it has become possible for the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to pay official visits to Italy and France after about one decade of official challenges between Europe and Iran.

Iran’s relations with big powers in the field of foreign policy have also undergone major developments influenced by the issue of insecurity in 2015. Relative propinquity between proclaimed views of Iran and the United States on issues of mutual difference, despite lack of a basic change in Iran’s foreign policy approach to the United States, has been among these developments. Iran’s relations with Russia with regard to the situation in Syria have also moved toward practical convergence with inter-Syrian viewpoints that are at the same time against Daesh and extremism. The two countries’ relations received a further boost through Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Iran in December 2015 to take part in the summit meeting of the member states of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF). Relations with China have been continuously on the rise, though without much hue and cry. Iran and the UK have also resumed their relations through reopening of their previously closed embassies.

With regard to Iran’s relations with the Persian Gulf littoral Arab states, the tragedy of Mina and solutions to Syria crisis have been among the most important areas of difference in relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Severance of diplomatic ties between Iran and Bahrain and Iran’s mediatory role in Yemen’s developments were important issues related to this region in 2015. During this year, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates moved in the direction of more hostility with Iran by getting in line with Saudi Arabia’s anti-Iran measures regarding Daesh, Yemen, Operation Decisive Storm, and proxy wars. At the same time, Iran’s strategic relations with Lebanese Hezbollah movement and the axis of resistance have continued. With regard to other Arab countries, the differences between approaches taken by Iran and some of its Arab neighbors to global crisis, including those in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya have given rise to challenges and controversies. With regard to Turkey, differences between the two countries’ viewpoints are notable when it comes to such issues as the fight against Daesh, the crisis of immigrants in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the fight on terror, as well as management and distribution of regional roles.

No major challenge has been observed regarding Iran’s relations with Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in 2015. As for Iran’s relations with countries in Central Asia, Caucasus, and the Caspian Sea region in 2015, regular cooperation has went on and collaboration has been ongoing within framework of such regional organizations as the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

With regard to such important global crises as those in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Palestine and Bahrain, the foreign policy apparatus of Iran, as one of the most important global actors, has taken its own specific and special approach to these crises. A development of special importance was related to the crisis in Syria when big powers invited Iran in November 2015 to take part in Syria talks for the first time. The invitation was considered as a serious step toward recognition of Iran’s practical standing and influence in the area of foreign policy, which led to Iran’s repeated participation in these talks.

The year 2015, has been a year for relative peace and practical changes in Iran’s foreign policy in the light of the emerging developments in the rising international and regional order. The year 2015, was a year for production and creation of sustainable security for Iran’s foreign policy. Iran’s foreign policy trends were being redesigned and regenerated in 2015 to facilitate a new and serious adaptation to developments in Iran’s periphery and the world. The year 2015 was also a year when global crises became more acute while they were managed in favor of Iran’s national interests by taking advantage of diplomatic means to affect the political trend of the world. Last but not least, the year 2015 was a year for the world to return to Iran option and was a high time for Iran’s diplomacy to play its effective historical role in the management of the emerging global and regional order.

*Behzad Khoshandam
Ph.D. in International Relations & Expert on International Issues

By Terri Moon Cronk

The US Defense Department has confirmed the deaths of senior terrorist leaders in Libya and Somalia from recent U.S. airstrikes, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement Monday.

Cook said a Nov. 13 U.S. airstrike in Libya killed Iraqi national Abu Nabil, also known as Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al Zubaydi, a longtime al-Qaida operative and senior Libyan Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant leader.

“While not the first U.S. strike against terrorists in Libya, this was the first U.S. strike against an ISIL leader in Libya and it demonstrates we will go after ISIL leaders wherever they operate,” Cook said in the statement.

Somalian al-Shabaab Leader Killed

Abdirahman Sandhere, also known as “Ukash,” a senior leader in the al-Qaeda offshoot group al-Shabaab also is confirmed dead from U.S. military airstrikes in Somalia, Dec. 2, Cook said.

Two other al Shabaab-affiliated associates also were killed in the strike that specifically targeted Abdirahman Sandhere, he said.

“Ukash’s removal from the battlefield is a significant blow to al-Shabaab,” Cook said, “And [it] reflects the painstaking work by our intelligence, military and law enforcement professionals.”

The death of Abdirahman Sandhere is an important step forward in the fight against the al-Shabaab organization, Cook emphasized.

“The United States will continue to use the tools at [its] disposal — financial, diplomatic, intelligence and military — to dismantle al Shabaab and other terrorist groups who threaten United States, [its] interests and persons,” he said.

Cook said the United States will continue to support its international partners, particularly the African Union Mission in Somalia, which is working to support the government of the Federal Republic of Somalia to build a secure and stable future for the Somali people.

U.S. Strikes Did Not Hit Syrian Army

This morning, Pentagon Press Operations Director Navy Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters the airstrikes this weekend in Syria’s Darazor province that hit a Syrian army position did not result from U.S. operations.

“We did conduct four strikes in Darazor yesterday,” he said, and added the U.S. strikes were all against oil-well heads. These strikes, Davis added, were about 55 kilometers away from the strike where the Syrian army was reported to be.

The U.S. airstrikes did not hit vehicles nor personnel, Davis said.

“We have no reason to indicate any Syrian soldiers were anywhere near the area where we struck,” Davis emphasized.

“We maintain exacting procedures and strict protocols to be precise in our strikes, and we take significant steps during targeting processes to prevent collateral damage,” he said.

“As you know, we’ve not had any reason to target [Syrian President Bashar Assad’s] regime or the Syrian army, Davis said. “We’re at war only with ISIL.”

The two opposing Libyan governments, with parliaments in Tripoli and Tobruk, reached a preliminary accord on a national unity government in a bid to end the conflict and political-institutional crisis currently underway in the country.

The deal reached in Tunis will now need to be approved by the two assemblies, the National General Congress (CGN) backed by Islamist factions in Tripoli and the Tobruk parliament, recognized by the international community.

According to the Libya Herald, the sides agreed to form a committee that will name a prime minister and two deputy premiers, while another work group will reform the Constitution.

The new UN envoy for Libya, Martin Kobler – who didn’t attend the meeting in Tunisia, parallel to those of the UN – defined it “a great starting point”.

The sides in the conflict are expected next week in Rome for an international meeting.

By Ambreen Agha*

On November 30, 2015, after a heavy exchange of fire, the Security Forces (SFs) killed at least four al Qaeda terrorists at Wador, within the limits of Gadani Police Station in Dera Ghazi Khan District. However, an al Qaeda ‘commander’ Shoaib Cheema and his accomplice Hanif Muhammad managed to escape from the encounter site. According to Police sources, the terrorists had entered Punjab via Balochistan and had planned to launch major terrorist activities in the Punjab Province.

On November 25, 2015, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) founder Haroon Bhatti and three of his accomplices were killed in a midnight raid jointly conducted by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) and Police in the Badami Bagh area of the provincial capital, Lahore. Bhatti’s slain accomplices were identified as, Omair Nadeem, Omair Hassan and Noman Yasin. Three Policemen were also injured in the gunfight. On October 22, 2015, the Police had brought Bhatti and four of his associates back to Pakistan, from Dubai, with the help of Interpol. According to official sources, Bhatti was accompanying the Police and CTD personnel to an abandoned factory where LeJ terrorists were hiding. On reaching the location, the terrorists hiding inside the factory allegedly opened fire, killing Bhatti and the three others. Later, an unnamed senior Police official admitted that the killings were staged by the authorities. In an interview to The Guardian a Lahore-based Police official, on condition of anonymity, admitted,

This had to be done to maintain peace in the Province. No one would have given evidence against them because witnesses would be brutally targeted. You can’t allow terrorists to carry on their attacks just because you don’t have any proof against them.

Bhatti, one of the founding members of LeJ, was accused of involvement in over two dozen terrorist attacks. Significantly, Bhatti was a close aide of former LeJ chief Malik Ishaq, who was killed in a similar exchange of fire with the Police on July 29, 2015, along with his two sons Usman and Haq Nawaz, and another 11 accomplices. The Police had then claimed that Ishaq had attempted to escape from their custody.

On November 26, 2015, SFs arrested nine LeJ terrorists from the Farooq-e-Azam Madrassa (seminary) in the Cantonment area of Lahore. According to an unnamed senior CTD official a huge quantity of hate material was recovered from the seminary which was involved in various terrorist incidents and was the last stronghold of the LeJ in Lahore. The CTD official stated that the seminary was sealed under the National Action Plan (NAP). Federal Minister of the Interior Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had told the National Assembly on November 11, 2015, that a total of 102 seminaries had been sealed in the country for fanning extremism since the implementation of NAP on December 24, 2014. Of these, he disclosed, 87 madrassas were closed in Sindh; 13 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; and two in Punjab where a number of students were found in contact with banned groups. The total number of seminaries sealed in Punjab now stands at three.

According to data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), 165 persons have been killed in terrorism related incidents in the current year in Punjab (all data till December 6, 2015). Of these 90 were civilians, 66 terrorists and nine SF personnel. In the corresponding period in 2014, a total of 171 persons had been killed, including 129 civilians, 22 terrorists and 20 SF personnel. With fatalities among civilians and SFs dropping considerably, the Province has experienced some respite from terror, even as a significant number of terrorists has been eliminated.

Data provided by the Provincial Home Department on November 24, 2015, stated that at least 48 terrorists, 17 of them ‘high profile’, had been killed by the CTD under NAP. An official also claimed that CTD had arrested 5,812 terrorists and their collaborators from different cities of Punjab in intelligence-based operations, averting major acts of terrorism. Of them, 1,265 were arrested in Bahawalpur District, 1,040 in Gujranwala District, 1,008 in Rawalpindi District, 810 in Sargodha District and 233 in Lahore District.

Law enforcement agencies have succeeded to some degree in minimizing the threats from domestically oriented terror outfits such as LeJ and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), but the emergence of Islamic State (IS, also known as Daesh) has introduced new complexities in the profile of terrorism in Punjab. Daesh is looking to expand its jihad by seeking allegiance from domestically oriented outfits like TTP, Jundullah, and others, who are currently under pressure from the Pakistani security establishment, and has launched a sustained and intensive campaign through the Internet. The campaign is securing particular resonance among increasingly disoriented domestic formations, which have suffered mounting losses over the past year. Specifically, since the launch of Operation Zarb-e-Azb in the North Waziristan Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on June 15, 2014, Pakistani SFs have killed at least 4,481 terrorists, almost all of them belonging to domestically oriented terror formations.

Notably, on July 6, 2014, a lesser known Punjab-based terror outfit, Tehreek-e-Khilafat-o-Jihad (Movement for Caliphate and Jihad), an offshoot of the TTP, had declared:

From today, Sheikh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi shall consider Tehreek-e-Khilafat and Jihad mujahideen fighters of Pakistan as one of the arrows among his arrows which he has kept for his bow. We are praying from the almighty Allah to give us chance in our lives to see the expansion of Islamic State boundaries toward the Subcontinent and Khurasan region in order to hoist the flag of Islamic State here.

Three months after threatening “worst attacks” in Islamabad and Lahore, the then TTP ‘spokesman’ Shahidullah Shahid, in a 16-minute online video released on October 4, 2014, had pledged allegiance to IS, along with dozens of other terrorists. On June 15, 2014, following the launch of Operation Zarb-e-Azb, Shahidullah Shahid had threatened the political elites of Punjab with “retaliatory activities by Mujahideen”. Hardening in his resolve against the Punjab establishment and subsequently “extending full support” to the IS, Shahid, in his October 4, 2014 message to Daesh had proclaimed,

Oh our brothers we are proud of you in your victories. We are with you in your happiness and your sorrow. In these troubled days, we call for your patience and stability, especially now that all your enemies are united against you. Please put all your rivalries behind you. All Muslims in the world have great expectations from you…we are with you; we will provide you with fighters and with every possible support.

Shahid was sacked from TTP after pledging allegiance to IS and was killed, along with five other terrorists, in a United States (US) drone strike in the Achin District of Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan on July 7, 2015. At the time of his death he had assumed the title of ‘commander’ of Daesh in Afghanistan. The drone strike was confirmed by Afghanistan‘s National Directorate of Security.

Meanwhile, the Punjab Home Department, citing Intelligence reports, on November 27, 2015, alerted Police and other agencies in the Province that Daesh had planned attacks on civil and military targets. The Punjab Government’s alert mentioned that Daesh-affiliated terrorists were out to strike Army vehicles moving on the Jalalpur Jattan Road and Police patrols on the Grand Trunk Road in Gujrat District. The intelligence report also claimed that a group of five terrorists had reached Lahore, and had planned to storm private establishments. According to an unnamed intelligence official, their likely targets included minorities and foreigners. Earlier, on October 15, 2015, the Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) General Raheel Sharif, during his visit to the Royal United Services Institute in London, had declared, “Daesh is a bigger threat than al Qaeda.”

Further, on August 18, 2015, posters signed by Daesh were seen on the walls of schools in the Phugla, Fazla Kachh and Barthi areas of Dera Ghazi Khan District. The posters carried messages against co-education. Earlier, on July 4, 2015, Law Enforcement Agencies had arrested three suspected terrorists affiliated with Daesh, from Lahore and had recovered laptops confirming their links with Daesh leaders, maps of sensitive buildings in Punjab and hate literature. According to Police sources, two of the suspects, identified as Asmatullah and Abdur Rehman, hailed from Afghanistan while the third, Muhammad Ibrahim, was from Pakistan’s Punjab Province.

Again, on January 21, 2015, intelligence sources had confirmed the arrest of a local Daesh ‘commander’, identified as Yousuf al-Salafi, and two accomplices, Qari Tayyab and Dr. Fahad, involved in recruiting and sending fighters to Syria from Lahore. According an unnamed intelligence source, “al-Salafi is a Pakistani Syrian who reached Pakistan through Turkey five months ago. He crossed into Turkey from Syria and was caught there. Somehow he managed to escape and reached Pakistan to establish IS.” Al-Salafi had further revealed that one of his accomplices, Tayyab, was a prayer leader in Lahore and was involved in recruiting Pakistanis and sending them to fight alongside Daesh in Syria on a charge of about USD 600 per recruit.

However, despite the acknowledgment of the Daesh presence by the CoAS, backed by various intelligence reports, Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, demonstrating the political elite’s persistent state of denial, brushed off the threat alert as being “a routine matter”, arguing: “There is no existence of Daesh in Pakistan, especially in Punjab… There are some troublemakers belonging to banned outfits and the Government is making efforts to eliminate these criminals”. A year earlier, the Federal Minister of Interior Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, in a similar note, had ruled out the existence of Daesh in the country on November 10, 2014, asserting, “No organisation of this name exists in Pakistan.”

The war against terrorism, domestic and international, is contingent upon political consensus, political will, and consistency of action. Unless there is a military and political consensus on the continuum of Islamist terrorist formations operating in Pakistan, including both domestically and outward oriented groupings, and the existence of, and creeping threat posed by, Daesh, gains against a limited group of terrorist outfits will easily be frittered away. Crucially, if elements within the leadership continue to ignore the warning signs, Daesh is more likely to gain a foothold and wreak havoc in the Punjab Province, and in Pakistan at large.

* Ambreen Agha
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

By Deepak Kumar Nayak*

Sehkholen, a leader of a breakaway faction of the Kuki National Front-Presidential (KNF-P) and one of his associates are reported to have been killed in an inter-factional gunfight at a secluded location between Leikot and Phaijang villages under Saparmeina Police Station in the Senapati District of Manipur on November 21, 2015.

On November 19, 2015, two militants were killed in a reported clash between the United Tribal Liberation Army led by Kam Robert Singson (UTLA-Robert) and the UTLA faction led by S.K. Thadou in the interior areas of Laikot, a Kuki village, under the Nungba Police Station limits in Manipur’s Tamenglong District. On November 20, the Thadou faction of UTLA clarified that the reported gun fight was between UTLA (Robert) and Kuki National Organisation (KNO) cadres and UTLA (Thadou) was not involved. Thadou asserted that his outfit had not engaged in any violence since it entered into a tripartite agreement with the Government in 2013. UTLA, a Kuki militant, was formed in 2002 and underwent a split in 2011. While the Thadou faction entered into a tripartite agreement in 2013, the Robert faction ‘surrendered’ on March 27, 2012.

With multiple factions operating, factional clashes among the militant formations in Manipur have always been a significant aspect of violence in the State. In fact, Manipur Deputy Chief Minister Gaikhangam, speaking at the 124th Raising Day of the Manipur Police in Imphal on October 19, 2015, observed that there were more than 40 insurgent groups operating in the State. Praising the Police, he added that Manipur Police had earned a “great reputation” in dealing with the difficult situation, including both the containment of the insurgency as well as complex day-to-day law and order problems. Referring to the militant groups and factions, Gaikhangam noted that, apart from the violence of underground outfits and their numerous frontal organizations, small groups of armed mercenaries were also resorting to abduction for ransom, extortion and other unlawful activities.

According to partial data collated by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), Manipur has recorded at least 20 incidents of factional clashes in 2015 (as of December 6), resulting in 30 fatalities; as against 14 incidents involving 15 fatalities in 2014; 16 incidents with 16 fatalities in 2013; 13 incidents with 27 fatalities in 2012; and six incidents with 12 fatalities in 2011.

The State witnessed three major incidents (each involving three or more killings) of factional clash in 2015, as against one such incident in 2014; one in 2013; three in 2012; and two in 2011. Some of the significant incidents include:

August 10, 2015: Three decomposed bodies of suspected militants of the Khaplang faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) were found in a jungle between Purul and Sirong village in Senapati District. The bodies were identified to be those of Francis, Veihriizii and John. Police suspected that they may have been shot dead three to four days earlier, by a rival faction.

May 22, 2015: Five suspected militants of NSCN-K were killed in a factional clash with suspected cadres of the Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-IM), at Lungsaimai village in Tamenglong District. The clash occurred when NSCN-K militants launched an attack on NSCN-IM cadres.

February 10, 2015: Three persons, identified as Jongkholun, Manglensei and Sotinpai, were killed in Churachandpur District by suspected militants. The bodies were recovered near Vaison Cemetery in the District. Sontinpai was a militant of the Kuki Independent Organisation /Kuki Independent Army (KIO/ KIA) and five ‘demand letters’ (extortion notices) to be delivered by him were recovered from his body.

July 25, 2014: Bodies of three suspected Kuki National Liberation Army (KNLA) militants were recovered from two locations in Churachandpur District. The body of Seikholun Haokip was recovered from a location near Silemat village, those of Paothansang Vaiphei and Paolal-muon were recovered from a location between Saikul and Thingchom village, along the Khuga Canal in the same District. According to Police, the militants were killed by a rival faction.

November 12, 2013: Three militants were reportedly killed and one injured in a five hour gun-battle between NSCN-IM and Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF) cadres near Bhalok village in Tamenglong District. Police sources disclosed that the three deceased belonged to ZUF and added that one NSCN-IM cadre was injured. NSCN-IM also confirmed that the three deceased hailed from ZUF. According to NSCN-IM leaders, ZUF cadres launched attacks on NSCN-IM cadres from two sides at a hillock near Bhalok village.

A cursory review of available data [2011-2015] indicates that Naga outfits, viz. ZUF, NSCN-K and NSCN-IM, have contributed overwhelmingly to the factional clashes in the State. Some of the other factions involved include the United National Liberation Front (UNLF); Nehlun faction of the Kuki National Front (KNF-N); KNF-P; Kuki National Front-Zougam (KNF-Z); Hmar People’s Convention – Democracy (HPC-D); Kuki Revolutionary Army-Unification (KRA-U); United Kuki Liberation Front (UKLF); UTLA-S.K Thadou, UTLA-Robert and KNO.

Interestingly, while there has been just one clash between a Naga and a Kuki outfit, several incidents are either among Naga outfits or among Kuki outfits, suggesting that these are principally turf-wars. Clashes among Naga outfits have been the most violent: out of a total of 69 incidents, Nagas have been involved in 37, resulting in 47 fatalities. Kuki outfits have been identified in 23 incidents resulting in 22 fatalities. Nine incidents of factional clashes have seen the involvement of either other groups or unspecified groups. In terms of number of incidents, the involvement of Kuki outfits has increased since 2013 [one in 2011; zero in 2012; 8 in 2013; 4 in 2014; 10 in 2015].

Manipur also recorded an increase in the number of extortion and abduction incidents registered during the current year. 45 extortion cases were reported during 2015 (data till December 6, 2015), as compared to 29 for the corresponding period in 2014 [actual incidence is likely to be much higher as a significant number of cases go unreported]. An October 29, 2015, media report indicated that NSCN-IM was allegedly charging INR 2,000 every month from each Government employee working in the Chandel District Headquarters.

There were at least 28 incidents of abduction registered in 2015 (data till December 6, 2015), with 50 persons abducted; in 2014, 31 incidents resulting in 47 abductions are on record.

According to SATP data, Manipur has recorded a total of 92 fatalities, including 16 civilians, 24 Security Force (SF) personnel and 52 militants in 2015 (data till December 6) which is the highest among States in the Northeast this year.

An October 6, 2015, report claimed that a series of developments in the Northeast, especially in Manipur, since the August Peace Accord between the Centre and the Naga rebel group NSCN-IM, had raised serious concerns that the security situation in the region could dramatically worsen in the coming months. According to sources in the security agencies, the NSCN-IM has probably set up a training camp in Manipur, has already recruited a few hundred new cadres, and is contributing to possible new flare-ups in inter-tribe tensions in this fragile State. Media reports further suggest that, since the August 3, 2015, Naga Peace Accord, reports of extortion, arms and drugs smuggling have registered a rising trend in Manipur. An unnamed official was quoted as stating, “Most of it is being done by I-M (NSCN-IM) cadres.” Other sources have confirmed that the outfit may already have set up new camps in the Manipur Hills to accommodate fresh cadres recruited since the Peace Accord. One official claimed that about 400 Nagas may have been recruited by the NSCN-IM in this period. There were also reports of the group recruiting new cadres from parts of eastern Nagaland. NSCN-IM is believed to have had about 2,500 cadres before the Peace Accord, and is believed to be targeting recruitment of another 1000 cadres, mostly from Manipur.

Manipur has a long history of multiple insurgencies and competing factions, as well as one of the worst insurgency-afflicted States in the Northeast. The rising trend in the proliferation of groups and factions, and the turf-wars between them, creates the spectre of increasing violence and a security situation that grows even more complex by the day.

* Deepak Kumar Nayak
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

By Michael Lelyveld

China has slashed natural gas prices to boost consumption of the cleaner-burning fuel, but the move may come as a shock to producers who have been struggling with low demand growth this year.

On Nov. 20, China’s top planning agency cut wholesale gas prices for non-residential users by an average of 28 percent, reducing the charge by 0.7 yuan (U.S. 11 cents) per cubic meter.

The price break will save industrial and commercial consumers over 43 billion yuan (U.S. $6.7 billion) annually, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said.

The NDRC has been under pressure for months to revise its policies as high gas prices have discouraged demand and efforts to curb reliance on high-polluting coal.

While coal prices have plunged by over 20 percent in the past year, the growth of gas use has slumped to 2.1 percent in the first half from 5.6 percent last year and a 13-percent annual pace in 2012 and 2013.

After the years of higher demand drove up gas prices in the Asian market, China’s regulators have been slow in adjusting to the dropoff and the country’s economic slowdown.

Double Europe’s prices

In October, Reuters estimated that wholesale gas prices on China’s southern coast were double those in Europe and over four times higher than U.S. rates.

The big cut in “city gate,” or pre-distribution, prices follows major declines in world energy costs and Asian spot market rates for imported liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Before the NDRC announcement, benchmark gas prices in Shanghai were 59 percent higher than Asian spot LNG, The Wall Street Journal said.

Lower prices could speed fuel switching by power producers and industry, easing smog and carbon emissions. The government’s goal is to boost the gas share of China’s primary energy mix to 10 percent by 2020 from 5.7 percent last year.

The target is seen as critical to meeting China’s pledges to fight climate change.

But the huge price cut, coming after a smaller adjustment in April, will leave some segments of the gas market reeling, raising doubts about whether the policy can be sustained.

“Domestic producers and importers of gas will certainly be hit with losses of billions of U.S. dollars, and these are mainly the large national oil companies,” said Philip Andrews-Speed, principal fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Energy Studies Institute.

PetroChina, the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), lost 10.6 billion yuan (U.S. $1.68 billion) on gas imports in the first half, according to the industry publication Upstream.

Profits crimped

The wholesale price cut is expected to crimp profits from domestic production and make it harder to cover the losses this year.

The dim earnings outlook may have been a factor in PetroChina’s announcement on Nov. 27 that it will sell a half-interest in its Trans-Asia Gas Pipeline Co. to a state- owned management entity for 15.5 billion yuan (U.S. $2.4 billion).

While some analysts hailed the sale to China Reform Holdings Corp. as a step toward demonopolizing PetroChina, it reflected pressure on the company to shore up its balance sheet, The Wall Street Journal said.

In its announcement, the NDRC said it would allow an upward “float” of as much as 20 percent from the new benchmark gas price, but it is unclear how it will affect final commercial rates.

In 2014, imports accounted for nearly a third of China’s gas consumption. LNG imports by ship provided about 46 percent of the imports with the balance coming by pipeline through the Trans-Asia system, mainly from Turkmenistan.

The changes could have far-reaching consequences, particularly if consumption does not respond to the price cut, leaving producers with high development costs and low sales.

LNG suppliers from Australia to Indonesia and Qatar are likely to feel the pinch after years of heavy investment in projects to meet China’s previous high-priced demand.

The weighted average price of LNG imports in September was 7.7 percent below the new city gate price thanks to low spot market rates, according to Platts energy news service.

But some LNG cargoes under long-term contract prices were as much as 28 percent higher, suggesting the potential for major losses for producers.

Falling imports

In the first three quarters, China’s LNG imports fell 4 percent as a result of high prices and weak demand.

LNG producers have been shadowed for months by reports that China’s importers have been trying to resell their cargo commitments into a glutted market with the risk that they might default on their contracts.

Turkmenistan is also expected to feel the effects of China’s sudden price drop.

During President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov’s visit to Beijing on Nov. 12, President Xi Jinping pledged to “push cooperation on energy … to a new high,” the official English-language China Daily reported.

But Turkmenistan is likely to have come under pressure to reduce export prices in preparation for the NDRC cut.

While the two sides have not disclosed prices since pipeline supplies started in 2009, the International Monetary Fund recently forecast a 36-percent drop in Turkmenistan’s hydrocarbon export revenue this year and a further 23-percent decline in 2016.

Despite the disruptions, China may see few alternatives to steep price cuts if it wants to keep its gas and climate goals on track.

“The top priority seems to be to increase the use of natural gas in order to clean the air. With coal prices very low and no carbon price in place, the government has no choice but to reduce the city gate prices,” Andrews-Speed said by email.

But after years of controlling prices, the government has been forced to make a large and abrupt adjustment that might have been avoided by earlier reforms.

“This step seems typical of the Chinese approach to energy price adjustments, changing the price at one end of the supply chain and working out later what to do about the other end,” Andrews-Speed said.

The new price structure may also threaten projects for future supplies.

On Nov. 18, Russia’s Interfax reported that monopoly Gazprom and CNPC will have to find a new model for cooperating on a planned western pipeline for Siberian gas due to low energy prices, according to minutes of an intergovernmental meeting last month.

Moscow has promoted the western gas route to Xinjiang as a faster and cheaper alternative to pipelines from eastern Siberia that would serve China’s industrial northeast.

There are signs that Russia’s main eastern route known as the Power of Siberia is also in trouble.

On Nov, 20, Interfax said Gazprom has cut its investment in the project this year by nearly 38 percent, although the company insisted the reduction is due to “optimization of delivery times” and installations scheduled for 2016-17.

The Soup Nazi character in the Seinfeld television show sells, at his take-out restaurant, soup that some people consider the best in New York City. But, there is a catch. Customers placing their orders at the restaurant’s counter are in fear that one mistake in phrasing or some other minor misstep will draw the ire of the Soup Nazi along with his decree “No soup for you!”

In a CBS television interview the day of the killings in San Bernardino, California, President Barack Obama effectively proposed giving an unknown number of nameless bureaucrats arbitrary “Soup Nazi” power to decide which individuals in America may or may not possess or obtain guns. If Obama’s proposal becomes law, one bureaucrat, based on the flimsiest of reason or an outright mistake, could summarily decree an individual barred from gun ownership. “No gun for you!”

Here is what Obama, in his own words, recommends in the Wednesday interview:

And for those who are concerned about terrorism, some may be aware of the fact that we have a no-fly list where people can’t get on planes, but those same people who we don’t allow to fly could go into a store right now in the United States and buy a firearm and there’s nothing that we can do to stop them. That’s a law that needs to be changed.

The next day, a vote was held in the US Senate regarding an amendment offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that would, in line with Obama’s recommendation, allow the US government to decree that individuals with some supposed connection to a terrorism threat are barred from accessing guns. By a 54 to 45 vote, senators voted not to move forward with the amendment.

Obama’s proposal may seem reasonable to many people. But, the apparent reasonableness arises from the assumption that the No Fly List is composed of people who have been objectively determined to be terrorists through an exhaustive, fastidious, and transparent process that is consistent with US constitutional principles.

That assumption could hardly be further from the truth. As I examined in my article “The Abominable No Fly List” in October of last year, the operation of the No Fly List is both arbitrary and an absolute menace to liberty.

That article provides an introduction to the Kafkaesque horror of the No Fly List. Here are a few of the major points. People’s names are put on the No Fly List through an entirely secret process that allows a person to be included and retained indefinitely on the list without any evidence whatsoever that the person has any connection to terrorism. Indeed, a person can even be included on the list via clerical error. In its own internal review, the US government even determined in 2007 that tens of thousands of names were improperly included on the No Fly List. Further, the list is operated without even the slightest regard for the due process rights of the people put on the list. The government does not even tell people they have been put on the list. Instead, a person who just wants to travel from point A to point B is told “No flight for you!” — likely after a long interrogation — and turned away without further explanation. Want to find out if you are on the No Fly List and to try to regain the US government’s respect for your right to fly? Here is what you do: Hire some lawyers; sue the US government; proceed through a long, expensive, and arduous court case (maybe held largely in secret to protect “state secrets”); and cross your fingers.

New York state’s 2013 Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act provides a preview for what Obama’s proposal may look like if implemented. Under the state law, tens of thousands of individuals have been put on a “No Guns List” resulting in the disavowal of their right to keep and bear arms. The purported purpose is to keep guns out of the hands of people with mental problems, not terrorists. But, the result is largely the same — the arbitrary restriction of the liberty of people based on bureaucrats’ whims and rote paperwork moving. County government officials rubber-stamp the reports received from health care workers asserting people’s mental problems. In turn, state employees routinely dump the reported individuals into the state’s No Guns List.

Meanwhile, the United States Department of Veterans Administration (VA) has been operating a program similar to the New York “No Guns List.” The VA reports veterans’ mental health information that the FBI then uses to add people to the gun-possession-barring National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) list. True to the No Fly List model, this is all done without the slightest respect being given to the veterans’ rights, including the right to due process.

Underlying both the ongoing mental health and the proposed terrorism-based prohibitions on the exercise of gun rights is the notion that it is legitimate for the government to outlaw the exercise of individual rights absolutely, indefinitely, and without a due process and innocent-until-proven-guilty-respecting fair adjudication of the particular facts related to the individual affected. This can only be considered justice in a perverted sense of, say, precrime justice, Star Chamber justice, or street justice. It is not the kind of justice contemplated in the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution.

You may feel slighted if the Soup Nazi shouts out at you with disdain “No soup for you!” But, it’s New York City after all; you can pick up a sandwich or a pizza slice a few doors over, and a good enough soup is available at the diner around the corner. In contrast, when the US government says “No gun for you!” you are left with only bad options — accept the deprivation of your ability to possess guns or break the law and risk suffering the legal consequences, including prison time, should you be caught.

This article was published by the RonPaul Institute.

After GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump proposed Monday to ban all Muslims from entering the US, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley strongly condemned the proposal on the Senate floor, calling it “the single worst idea I have heard from any presidential candidate, ever.”

As reported, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

Merkley denounced Trump’s proposal, which would he claimed even seek to bar active duty American servicemembers of the Muslim faith serving abroad and other citizens from returning home, as inconsistent with the vision of the Constitution.

Merkley noted that patriotic Americans of all religions are working together to defeat the threat posed by ISIS.

Merkley also blasted Trump’s idea for endangering national security.

“Making Islam the enemy is playing straight out of ISIS’s playbook,” Merkley said, “which wants to create a war between America and Islam. And in that sense, this type of irresponsible statement endangers our national security,” Merkley said.

A staggering 168 people, 12 times as many as those killed earlier this week in San Bernardino, and including a whole daycare center class of 15 little children, were killed by a crazed terrorist in the 1995 Oklahome City truck-bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. The killer, Timothy McVeigh, was a right-wing Christian fanatic who wanted to avenge the killing of a bunch of Christian cultists in Waco, Texas by federal agents two years earlier. His accomplice Terry Nichols had the same deranged goal.

Although there are plenty of right-wing and fanatic Christian nut-jobs in the US, somehow Americans get on with their lives and don’t worry over-much about being the victim of one of their attacks, though they happen often enough. Just recall the slaughter earlier this year of nine parishioners of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina by 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof, who was hoping to ignite a race war, or nut-job Adam Lanza, who killed 26 people — 20 of the schoolchildren, in the Sandy Hook School massacre.

Such terrorist killings in the US are actually pretty common, sometimes involving just one victim, as in the case of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Kansas shot point blank in the head by a Christian anti-abortion wacko as Tiller stood handing out programs in the foyer of his church. Maybe such terrorist actions are not as common as run-of-the-mill mass slayings by people who simply slip a cog when life gets too hard for them and — America being the land of the almost free gun –they grab a weapon or two and some boxes of cartridges from the local gun shop, and go out to cause mayhem en route to a suicide by cop, or by their own bloody hand. But they’re frequent enough.

Given this uniquely violent American reality, why has everyone gotten so freaked out by the San Bernardino shooting, in which only 14 people were shot, or for that matter by the Boston Marathon bombing, which killed just three people (admittedly seriously injuring dozens more)?

Awful as this latest mass killing is, and these earlier ones, let’s admit that as far American mayhem goes, they have not been particularly big a deals.

No, the thing that has people, at least in the media and in the national police state, all worked up is that this time (as in the case of the Boston bombing, where one wounded kid on the loose led to a city-wide martial-law military lock-down), the killers are Muslims — and immigrant Muslims at that. Somehow that makes it much scarier, even though the San Bernardino killers (and the Boston bombers) were not nearly as proficient at killing as McVeigh and Nichols or even Roof. Hell, McVeigh researched and figured out how to make an exploding truck that was heard 50 miles away in all directions and that took down a nine-story building! Lanza slaughtered 26 people all by himself, and even the inept Roof managed to kill nine people on his own.

The San Bernardino terrorists needed two people to kill their 14 victims.

But they are Muslim terrorists, which nonetheless makes them much more scary and dangerous, apparently, than McVeigh, Nichols, Roof and Lanza put together.

Now I know some people are going to say, “Yeah, but Muslim terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center twin towers and attacked the Pentagon, and killed nearly 3000 people.”

Okay, that’s the story line, but if we Americans really cared about that particularly heinous act of terrorism, we’d want to know how the hell it happened. Certainly we would be demanding that the US government release those sealed 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission’s official report which deal with the role of America’s ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, which is known to have funded many of the alleged hijackers of the four planes involved. We haven’t done that. It’s still blacked out. We would also be demanding to know why the FBI lied at that commission hearing claiming that the black boxes of the two planes that hit the two towers were “never recovered.” The truth is that a number of people, including police and firefighters working in the rubble, saw those boxes found and removed from the debris and hauled away in government vehicles (of course they did! those boxes are indestructible and even survive head-on plane crashes!). I myself was was informed by a source in the National Transportation Safety Administration — and reported in Counterpunch magazine, and in my book The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006) about it — that the four black boxes from the WTC planes had all been brought first to the TSA, and were then confiscated by the FBI. No one has questioned the FBI about this to this day. And finally we’d be demanding for an open Congressional hearing into the case of the Mossad agents who were observed and reported filming and celebrating the Twin Towers attacks as they happened — clearly showing they had foreknowledge that the attacks were a terrorist action — and who were later arrested by alert New Jersey State troopers, only to be released and allowed to leave for Israel under pressure from the US State Department. (This isn’t some crazy conspiracy theory — it was reported in the New York-based Jewish Forward and on ABC. Read the story about them here.)

Instead, following 9/11, we Americans have accepted a clearly false story line, have not demanded that anyone in the government be prosecuted for, at a minimum, dereliction of duty, and have surrendered most of our vaunted liberties — freedom of speech and assembly, freedom from warrantless searches, the right to a trial by jury, the right to confront our accusers, freedom from excessive bail and a ban on cruel and unusual punishment, to the point that now nothing we say or do is safe from government spying and monitoring, and if the government wants, it can simply accuse us — in secret! — of being supporters of terrorism and then spirit us away to a secret prison, or even kill us. Actually, the only Constitutional right we have left is the supposed right to buy just about any gun we want.

We’ve also accepted, submissively and with little question, the morphing of our local, state and national police forces into paramilitary organizations populated all too often by thugs, racists and psychopaths with guns and a willingness to use them, even for minor issues like parking violations, walking in the street or simply standing while black.

This surrender of our collective sanity did not happen because of the domestic terrorism and gun mayhem that has occurred in the US on a weekly or seemingly almost daily basis for as long as there have been nuts with guns. It happened because a few of those nut-jobs in recent years have been, instead of mostly whites and Christians, dark-skinned Muslims, or at least people claiming to be Muslims.

Civil liberties and the freedoms enshrined in the US Constitution only mean anything if they are applied to all, not just to the passive, compliant and silent majority. If they are taken away from those deemed to be outsiders, it’s only a matter of time before they are taken away from us all.

The famous quote from Martin Niemöller, a protestant pastor and social activist in Germany, to explain how the Nazis were able to rise to absolute power in the country of Goethe, Beethoven and Rosa Luxembourg, is instructive for us in the US today. He said:

“In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

As a nation and a society, we’re working our way down that dangerous continuum today.

The constitution and laws of the Republic of Georgia do not allow dual citizenship, and consequently and not surprisingly, Mikheil Saakashvili’s decision to take Ukrainian citizenship because of his work in Odessa has resulted in his loss of Georgian citizenship.

International law holds that individuals have a right to citizenship, but it does not establish a right to dual citizenship. That status is possible only on the basis of bilateral agreements between countries which agree that citizens of the one can simultaneously be citizens of the other.

Like most countries in the world, Georgia and Ukraine do not have such an agreement, and therefore a Georgian who takes Ukrainian citizenship or a Ukrainian who takes Georgian citizenship can expect to lose his status. But because Saakashvili was president of Georgia and because of his continuing international prominence, that has not been the end of this story.

In part, the Georgian authorities brought critical attention on themselves. President Giorgi Margvelashvili said that Saakashvili had been “stripped of his Georgian citizenship” after taking Ukrainian citizenship because “from the legal point of view, this is the only procedure and process envisaged by the law” (civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28831).

But the current Georgian president added about his predecessor that Saakashvili had “insulted” the Georgian presidency and the Republic of Georgia by choosing to give up Georgian citizenship and taking Ukrainian citizenship. That suggested to some that this was an act of political retribution rather than a simple enforcement of Georgian laws.

Saakashvili responded in an interview with RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service. He argued that the decision was “not just a legal act” but rather “the political act of scared and failed authorities” in Tbilisi who do not serve [Georgia’s] national interests” (radiosvoboda.ua/content/news/27407172.html).

The former Georgian president said that there were “several reasons” for that conclusion: “First of all, there is a two-year interim period envisaged by Ukrainian law for revoking the previous country’s citizenship. The Georgian government was well aware of it. Many [Georgia] citizens are working [in Ukraine] and have also taken Ukrainian citizenship.”

But unlike in his case, they have not lost their Georgian citizenship. “They can take my passport, but no one can revoke me of being Georgian and no one will make me lose infinite love for Georgia. We will definitely return and we will definitely win together,” Saakashvili told the Ukrainian service.

Saakashvili added that the decision of the Georgian government showed that they are “very much afraid of me” and want to prevent him from running for office in Georgia in the future. But the former president noted that he has “never said” that he wants to take part in any elections there.

Given that he faces numerous criminal charges in Georgia, charges that he says are all “politically motivated,” Saakashvili’s participation in any elections would be difficult under current conditions. Now that he has lost his citizenship, it would be almost impossible for him to run although he could still direct his opposition party, the United National Movement.

And as the Civil.ge portal notes, there is a loophole that might be applied at some point: “Although the Georgian constitution bans dual citizenship, it also allows the President to grant Georgian citizenship to a foreign national. [But] a foreign national has to apply for citizenship to the Georgian President.”

Some of Saakashvili’s supporters and some Georgian political analysts believe that his loss of citizenship will not reduce his influence in Georgia in the future (kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/273762/), but other commentators suggest this action will open the way to his eventual trial in Georgia (ruskline.ru/news_rl/2015/12/07/saakashvili_na_nary/).

By Priyanka Vaidyanathan

It was in the dusk of the Iraq War of 2003 that ISIS had its genesis. The Iraq War was fought between the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein and a coalition of the US, UK, Australia and Poland, led by the US. The USA alleged that Iraq had developed and secretly stored Weapons of Mass Destruction and that Saddam Hussein had supported a terrorist organisation. This paved the way for the US to overthrow a regime. There were many allegations to Saddam Hussein’s antagonistic treatment of the Shiites in his regime, though was known to the outer world of being a secular ruler [1]. This created a chasm in Iraq between the Shiite and the Sunni Muslims by the downfall of a tenacious Sunni regime.

Parallel to this ran Jordanian fanatic Abu Musab Al-Zarqawis’ (sunni) thirst to create his own terror organisation, by taking advantage of the vacuum created in Iraq with respect to whether there should be a shia rule or a sunni rule, he joined hands with Al-Qaeda to form “Al-Qaida in Iraq”( AQI) he had a strong malevolence against Shia Muslims thus forming a audacious Anti-Shia – Sunni group.

AQI indulged in bombing Shia holy places thereby amplifying the mutual hatred. By the unforeseen death of Zarqawi due to the bombing by US, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi rose as the next leader, who pronounced himself as a ‘caliph’, renaming AQI as Islamic State in 2011.[2] Further, another branch of Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusrat, was formed in Syria in late 2011[3] which supported the rebels in Syria, this was headed by an AQI operative, which gained immense support in Syria, amidst this massive support Islamic state collaborated itself with Al-Nusra and gained the name Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. It is imperative to note that ISIS has a strong military group, where the Caliph himself was in the Baathist Army and other ex-members of the regime.[4] This was a catalyst for the booming robust power.

The first successful step in an international platform was the recognition of the Islamic State as an insurgent group by US, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and neighbouring Arab states. Recognition of insurgency occurs out of necessity when the interests either of the de jure government or a third state are affected by the conflict, requiring the establishment of relations with the insurgent party.

ISIS elevated from it being an insurgent group and reached a penultimate stage of being a state by partially fulfilling the ‘criteria of a state’. According to Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention, prerequisite of a state are Population, Territory, Government and Independence. ISIS in its own organization has an estimated 25,000 operatives in Syria and Iraq[5], it controls 50% of Syria[6] and about two third of Iraq[7], it has established endemic governance wherein they collect tax, give their own identity card, they have their own schools and prescribed curriculum, and well established local governance, with this set up ISIS achieved to attract more number of people to its territory, it is an equal opportunity organization, this beget them to be a de facto state.

A de facto state is a secessionist entity that receives popular support and has achieved sufficient capacity to provide governmental services to a given population in a defined territorial area, over which it maintains effective control for an extended period of time. A de facto state has impact over international system mainly in two ways, in area of conflict and political economy, ISIS has been prosperous in this regard, by indulging in armed conflict with the US, Russia, Iraq and Syria and the instability in Middle East has created an impact on global political economy due its depreciating oil export[8].

But the crunch arises regarding the international recognition of ISIS as a state. According to Article 10 of the Montevideo Convention primary interest of state is, recognition of peace which is not seen as they believe in jihad, to exterminate the nonbelievers, further according to Article 11[9] other states are obligated not to recognize a state which has indulged in employment of arms and has territorial acquisition by force, ISIS is successful in gathering arms[10] to defend itself and apocalypse – eradicate non believers , thus ISIS would be ‘sui generis’ – a special entity by itself. Owing to its status as a sui generis entity it qualifies to be a pseudo state, and not in its entirety. This is because it does not have the capacity to enter into a treaty or any negotiations with nation states, due its very own aggressive character and gross human rights violation.

The main hitch in ISIS’ performance as a pseudo state is its inhuman atrocities towards mankind. It is especially appropriate to call for an armed group to respect human rights norms when it exercises significant control over territory and population and has an identifiable political structure[11]”.

Hence, regardless the intention, the foreplay by the coalition has led to more unknown unforeseen disastrous situation giving birth to a species – ISIS. Growing up to be a subject of International Law it is obligated to abide responsibilities, and it is for the better good that UN should curtail its growth owing to its violent character and reinstate peace. It is for the international community to slash the growth of a non state actor to a state actor, by realising idealistic utopian aim of ISIS – radicalisation of jihad.

[1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/sunni—shia-divide-explained/article19337058/
[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/isis-a-short-history/376030/
[3] https://web.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/groups/view/493
[4] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3028529/Saddam-Hussein-s-revenge-grave-ISIS-s-land-grab-Middle-East-orchestrated-former-Iraqi-dictator-s-generals.html
[5] ISIS: Portrait of a Jihadi Terrorist Organization
[6] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/21/isis-palmyra-syria-islamic-state
[7] http://securitydata.newamerica.net/isis/analysis.html
[8] http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-is-making-the-biggest-threat-to-oil-prices-even-worse-2015-5?IR=T
[9] https://www.ilsa.org/jessup/jessup15/Montevideo%20Convention.pdf
[10] https://www.quora.com/Why-is-ISIS-not-running-out-of-weapons-and-ammunition-Where-do-they-continue-getting-arms
[11] The Rights and Responsibilities of Armed Non-State Actors: The Legal Landscape & Issues Surrounding Engagement Andrew Clapham Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights

Recurrent insurgent attacks and rising civilian fatalities in Afghanistan raise questions on the capacities of ANSF. The US decision to revise the withdrawal plan in the wake of the Kunduz attack has indicated the gaps in the strategic and tactical capacities of ANA in dealing with the insurgency. The domestic factors also remain a key area of concern. In this weakening security and political environment it is conducive for the Taliban to regain its lost ground.

By V. Vidya Lakshmi*

On 28 September 2015, some hundred Taliban gunmen took over Afghanistan’s strategically important northern city of Kunduz. Even though the insurgents vacated the town in less than a week’s time, the ‘Spring Offensive’ launched in April 2015 by the Taliban targeting the districts of Badakhshan, Kunduz and Sar-i-Pul has had serious implications on the country’s stability. This underlines the vulnerabilities of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in dealing with the insurgents when the international force strength is at its lowest in the country.Afghan map

The first half of 2015 witnessed numerous attacks on the army and police checkpoints around Kunduz. By the end of May, major check-posts had been captured by the Taliban. Simultaneous attacks carried out on the Afghan Parliament in June left five civilians dead and 30 others wounded. In the beginning of August, a stream of suicide attacks was carried out on Kabul, constituting the first major militant attack on the capital under the new Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, after the news of the Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s was confirmed by the outfit. The deadliest attack killed almost 65 people and leaving hundreds wounded. According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) 2015 Mid-year Report, 4921 civilian causalities were reported in the first half of 2015, around 70 percent of which were caused by the insurgents. The Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, by the Security Council Report (SCR) an independent New York based not-for-profit organisation, had suggested a 22 percent rise in civilian casualties in the year 2014, primarily in ground battles following the withdrawal of the western military forces and the combat support they provided to the ANSFs.

That the drawdown decision of the international forces was premature has begun reflecting in statements of some key stakeholders. The Afghanistan Resolute Support Mission Commander Gen John Campbell stated before the Senate Armed Services Committee on 6 October 2015 that there is need for a greater American presence in Afghanistan and that the decision of troop reduction from 12,000 to 1000 in the year 2016 must be reconsidered. a A revised plan followed. President Barack Obama, on 15 October 2015, announced 9,800 US forces will remain through “most of 2016” and some 5,500 of those troops will be stationed in 2017 continuing to focus on training and advising the Afghan Army. The decision is a reflection of the situation on the ground, where the Taliban’s grip over the northern parts of Afghanistan is gradually tightening ever since the Afghan forces have taken over the majority of security responsibilities from the NATO forces. Surfacing of the Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan has also contributed to the new thinking. Revisiting the withdrawal plan, with all its on ground limitations, was a practical consideration.Vidya Points

The security responsibilities, however, ultimately are with the ANSF. An assessment of the ANSF’s performance and its management thus far does not inspire much confidence. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) report 2015 suggests that out of $110 billion the US spent on Afghanistan’s post-war reconstruction, $60.7 billion have been spent on equipping, training and sustaining the ANSF. According to the NATO Resolute Mission, the strength of ANSF personnel, as of February 2015 is 321,709 of which 167,024 personnel are assigned to Afghan National Army (ANA) and 154,685 assigned to the Afghan National Police (ANP).

However, there is little or no physical verification of these numbers. Lack of daily attendance and control over the payroll processes, as indicated by the SIGAR report mean that a significant number of ANP officials are ‘ghost police’, with commanders fabricating the ranks in records in order to receive their salaries. SIGAR’s quarterly report published in January 2015 had further indicated a decline in the number of ANA members by more than 8.5 percent since February 2014. Attrition remains a major challenge. More than 40,000 personnel have dropped out of ANA rolls between September 2013 and September 2014. Training is still inconsistent across the ANSF units making sustainability a critical operational issue. SIGAR John Sopko speaking in the wake of the September 2015 Kunduz attack, had raised valid concerns over the reconstruction challenges in Afghanistan. He had stated that “without basic security, it was almost impossible to carry out and sustain reconstruction efforts.”

The ANA, the most celebrated example of institution building in Afghanistan, is laden with several challenges. Critical high-end capability gaps have been identified in aviation, intelligence and special operations in General Campbell’s report to Armed Services Committee. Since the Afghan Air Force is still inadequate to provide the required air support, the ANA remains dependent on the NATO forces for air-strikes. At present only four Russian built Mi-17s are made available to each of the six ANA Corps, which are employed for daily logistics supply and VIP transport. The ANSF also uses Mi-24/35 attack helicopters but they are hardly operational. Although as per plans, the Mi-35 will be replaced by the Brazilian-made A-29 Super Tucano fixed wing aircrafts designed for counter-insurgency operations, only a few of these aircrafts will be made available in 2016 and majority of it can be only accessed in 2017 and 2018. Around 16 MD-530 scout helicopters are involved in the combat operations but they cannot operate above an elevation of 7,000 to 8,000 feet, which substantially reduces the area which can be patrolled. Even though Afghanistan is due to receive four Mi-25 (Mi-24D), close-air support helicopters to provide ground forces air cover, from New Delhi after the latter stepped up its engagement, filling the capability gaps remains a major challenge.

Challenges posed by the insurgents, despite the fractures developing within the Taliban after Mullah Mansour took over, are further exacerbated due to a host of domestic factors. Though there is a functioning democracy, the political transition in the country has been turbulent. There is a reported competition between President Ashraf Ghani and the CEO Abdullah Abdullah over important appointments of governors in major provinces. Elections have allegedly remained platforms for patronage politics and instruments for rivalry within ethnic groups to claim a share in power. Corruption remains an unattended issue continuing to take a toll on the economy and development of the country. Whether these continuing infirmities in the security, economy and political sectors are gradually preparing the ground for a Taliban comeback, thus, remains a critical question.

*V. Vidya Lakshmi is a project intern with Mantraya and is a researcher with the Mantraya’s ‘Mapping Terror and Insurgent Networks’ project. Opinions expressed here are that of the author.

Strategically located Maldives plays an important role in alternative maritime routes that China is seeking to build through initiatives like One Road One Belt. Much of Beijing’s growing assertion in the Indian Ocean is projected towards the US centric club China perceives Washington is building along with India. However Maldives will need to align with multiple powers if it were to meet all its needs and hence China cannot expect any ‘exclusivity’ for its regional alliances.

By Jhinuk Chowdhury*

Strategically located Maldives, sitting along major sea lines in the Indian Ocean, including the East-West shipping route that transports oil from Middle East to East Asia, has drawn attention of many major powers like the US, Russia, UK and quite naturally India. The latest great power that has set its eyes on this island nation is China. maldives_map

It is interesting how China’s foreign policy towards Maldives has been directly commensurate with its Indian Ocean strategy. Till the early 2000, most of the People’s Liberation Army – Navy (PLA-N)’s operational patterns in the Indian Ocean has been non combatant and focused on protecting its sea lines of communication (SLOC). China’s restrained posture in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) was for two reasons.

Firstly, the feasibility assessment made it evident for China that bases in South Asia would be vulnerable to air and missile attack. Also defending Chinese home waters while launching a simultaneous major combat operation in the Indian Ocean will be cumbersome for the PLA-N due to distance. Secondly, as per its own assessment of strength in the IOR vis-a-vis other powers, the PRC felt it is far behind the US in terms of maritime power and does not enjoy geographic advantages that India does. Therefore a strategy of ‘moderation’ and ‘maintaining the status quo’ of realizing its existing inferior position in the IOR formulated China’s ‘constructive engagement’ in the region.

Until the first decade of 2000, China maintained that its investment in the littoral states of the Indian Ocean including Sri Lanka and Maldives was purely economic and commercial in nature. In fact it was India, with the pro-New Delhi government led by Mohamed Nasheed (2008– 2012), that played an upper hand in Maldives even in security matters. In 2009, India signed a pact with Maldives as per which New Delhi committed to set up a network of 26 radars across the Maldives’ 26 atolls to be linked to the Indian coastal command. Further, New Delhi also said it will build an air force station from where Dornier aircraft will carry out surveillance flights. As per reports the station was also intended to host Indian military helicopters. In 2012, further deepening its defense cooperation, India announced that it will jointly fight ‘terrorists and non- state actors’ with Male. Additionally, New Delhi also decided to extend the Indian ALH Dhruv helicopter, operating in Maldives since 2010, by two years. Apart from sending a team to train the Maldivian Air Wing personnel, India also decided to station a defense attaché at Male.

On the contrary China, despite establishing bilateral relations with Male since 1972, opened a full-fledged embassy in Maldives only in 2011. However Beijing has always been watchful of the US presence in the IOR and hence the ‘America-India axis’. In fact although India has for long been suspicious about the Chinese presence in the IOR region, much of Beijing’s growing assertion in the region could be indirectly projected towards the US centric club China perceives Washington is building in the Ocean along with India. Interestingly there are mentions about India’s “Look East Policy” and the “U.S-India axis of relation in Indian Ocean region” in the Blue Book released by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), China’s premier think tank, in 2013. It pointed out that the rising of the strategic position of the Indian Ocean has prompted the US to conceive the “Indo-Pacific” concept where Washington is pushing India to integrate itself into this system to contain China. It observed that China’s Indian Ocean strategy based on ‘maintaining the status quo’ needs to change due to the changing dynamics of international relations in the region.

With over 80 percent of its energy import through the IOR, China views any disruption of its SLOC in the region directly affecting its growth, and therefore a concrete strategy for the Indian Ocean became mandatory. This hint at the shift instrategic focus was first visible in the Chinese Defense White Paper in 2013, where it stresses on “protecting national maritime rights and interests” and “armed forces providing reliable support for China’s interests overseas.” Interestingly this was also the time when the phrase ‘Indo Pacific’ comprising partners like Australia and Japan apart from India and the US started doing frequent rounds in the Western diplomatic circles.

As Robert Kaplan asserted in his book, Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, originally published in 2010, that the US Navy’s domination in the world’s maritime routes and China’s dependence on its energy imports through these routes presented a ‘deadly vulnerability’ in the Chinese eyes. Beijing responded in two ways: first by building up its own naval power, and second by seeking alternative maritime routes that are less vulnerable to any punitive measures that the US may target towards Beijing.

Launching of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative in 2013 is one such step by China to seek an alternative trade route. And Indian Ocean littorals are an important part of this initiative not just because of their strategic location but also to check America’s influence in the IOR by roping in these nations to the Chinese side.

It is no wonder that despite decades of bilateral relations, President Xi Jinping became the first head of state to visit Male only in 2014 after more than forty years. This was the first visit by a Chinese head of state since Maldives’ independence as a British protectorate in 1965. The relation between the two reached the next level as Maldives, following the visit, officially joined China’s 21st century Maritime Silk Route (MSR) – part of OBOR which envisions development of a sea route from China’s Fujian province to the Mediterranean Sea via South Asia and East Africa.

Apart from signing a deal to modernize Maldive’s Ibrahim Nasir International Airport (INIA) – after scrapping the deal with the Indian company GMR, Beijing also offered aid for building the Malé-Hulhule Bridge. Dubbed as the “China Maldives friendship Bridge”, the project will connect Male with the island airport Hulhule. According to reports, the project, awarded to Chinese contractor CCCC Second Harbour Engineering Company, is expected to be available for public use by 2017.

The investment pattern in the IOR littorals clearly point towards China ultimately trying to reduce its dependency on the security set up controlled by the US in the SLOCs of Indian Ocean. Through MSR China wants PLA-N to play greater role in controlling the security of Indian Ocean on the pretext of providing security for MSR ports and related facilities. For which the endorsement of its role, China hopes, will come from the growing base of MSR members which it has been building.

A case in point is China’s involvement in the Ihavandhippolhu Integrated Development Project or iHavan, a link to the MSR, which lies in the northernmost atoll of the Maldives on the seven degree channel through which the main East-West shipping routes connect Southeast Asia and China to the Middle East and Europe. iHavan, located centrally at the IOR, has over US$ 18 trillion worth of goods passing through its waters annually. Reportedly it gets huge concessional loans and aid financing from China. These financial aids, apparently, were given at a very high rate of interest that Male certainly would not be able to meet without a unilateral waiver. Experts say this is a common tactic applied by China to of relaxing loan conditions in exchange for control over maritime projects it helps finance. This also fits in well with Male’s ambition of transforming itself into an international trade hub on par with Singapore. By endorsing MSR, Maldives seeks to promote itself as a vital trade and transit port.

Signs have been visible for quite some time now. Both countries signed significant defence agreement in 2012. In fact many have speculated that China could be building a naval submarine base in Marao islands. Most of these reports remain unconfirmed. What is striking following the signing of agreement is the statement of Chinese Vice Admiral Su Zhiqian who stated that the Chinese navy would like to get actively involved in maintaining the peace and stability of the Indian Ocean. This push was stepped up when the Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan met with Mohamed Nazim, minister of defence and national security of Maldives, in 2014, during which both nations expressed desire to deepen military cooperation in such fields as personnel training and maritime security. China has already started offering training to maritime personnel in Maldives.

China is also trying to keep its relation with Maldives, rated as one of the top 20 favorite island destinations for Chinese travelers, multidimensional – this could also be a move to divert attention from the growing bilateral military relationship. On one hand it seeks to continue deepening the trade ties. Taking the bilateral relation to the next level China and Maldives have begun a feasibility study on a free trade area (FTA) between the two countries. Trade between the two countries reached US$104 million, up 6.7 percent from 2013, as per official data.

Currently, the Maldivian government is formulating a Special Economic Zone Bill which aims to provide more incentives to foreign investors in terms of tax breaks, relaxed financial requirements and preferential land use. In its bid to step up Chinese investments the island nation also observed the Maldives Investment Forum, held in Singapore in 2014, and in Beijing in 2015. On the other hand, in multilateral platforms, Beijing got Maldives to pass the bill to seek full membership of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in November 2015. Beijing is also encouraging smaller nations like Maldives and Sri Lanka to play greater role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). In turn Maldives supports Beijing’s bid to step up its role in the SAARC.

Taking in to the narrative of ‘sharing prosperity’ by helping smaller nations develop through its aid programs, Beijing in Maldives, constructed a building to house the Maldives Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a national museum, and is involved in the 1,000 Housing Units Project. Additionally, Beijing is actively involved in several renewable energy projects, tourism and telecommunication sectors.

However, many opine there are strings attached in the aids extended by China. Critics say these initiatives are a way to lay an infrastructural trap to feed Beijing’s expansionist ambitions. There aren’t any transparency on how these loans or aids would be repaid by the receiving countries. For instance, a study by Grison’s Peak, a London based boutique investment bank, says majority of 67 overseas loans committed by the China Development Bank and the China EXIM Bank are in areas defined by the “One Belt, One Road” strategy. Most of these loans are controlled by government held institutions. The concessional or free aid Maldives is seeking from China to build the bridge connecting the capital Malé and Hulhumalé, could be either in the form of grant aid or a loan facility from the Chinese EXIM Bank.

However, the Sri Lankan election, held in August 2015, may bring in a change in mindset in the IOR region. One of the key agendas of the Lankan election was corruption tied to the Chinese infrastructure projects. Therefore the current Lankan government promising a balance in foreign relations, took to mending ties with India. That Male has taken some clues from this is evident in its “India First” rhetoric. In a bilateral meeting, held in November 2015, the country’s foreign minister Dunya Maumoon told the Indian foreign minister Sushma Swaraj, “The Maldives’ relations with India has sufficient depth and will not be shaken by the presence of Chinese investors in the Maldives.”

Maldives’ needs from great power relations are complex. While it needs India for peace in the Indian Ocean for its own national security, it also needs the enormous Chinese investment to ensure its economic security. China is well aware that ‘choosing’ one nation over the other is not an option for Maldives or any of the IOR nations.

Given that exclusiveness is nearly impossible in the IOR, soon the oceanic region might have multiple alliances one that has the US and Japan in it, the other that has China in it. And in this, smaller nations – if they play their cards well – will emerge the largest beneficiaries.

*Jhinuk Chowdhury is a project intern with Mantraya and is a lead researcher in Mantraya’s China and South Asia project.

“I feel very angry, but I don’t want anything from the U.S. military,” said Khalid Ahmad, a 20 year old pharmacist who survived the U.S. bombing of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Kunduz on the 3^rd of October, “God will hold them accountable.”

The actions of the U.S. military elicit the same contempt from Khalid and many ordinary Afghans as the actions of the Taliban or the ISIS.

Khalid was a little wary when Zuhal, Hoor and I were introduced to him in a ward of Emergency Hospital in Kabul, where he has been recuperating from a U.S. shrapnel injury to his spine that nearly killed him.

But, immediately, I saw his care for others. “Please bring a chair for him,” Khalid told his brother, not wanting me to be uncomfortable in squatting next to him, as we began our conversation in the corridor space outside the ward.

Having just recovered strength in his legs, he had walked tentatively to the corridor, making sure his urinary catheter bag wasn’t in the way as he sat down.

The autumn sun revealed tired lines on his face, as if even ‘skin’ can get permanently traumatized by the shock of bomb blasts.

“The Taliban had already taken control of all areas in Kunduz except the MSF Hospital and the airport. I felt I could still serve the patients safely because neither the Afghan /U.S. military forces nor the Taliban would bother us. At least, they’re not supposed to.” Khalid paused imperceptibly.

“As a neutral humanitarian service,” Khalid continued, “we treat everyone alike, as patients needing help. We recognize everyone as a human being.”

“I wasn’t scheduled to be on duty the night of the incident, but my supervisor asked me to help because the hospital was swarmed with larger numbers of patients that week.”

“I was sleeping when the bombing began at about 2 a.m. I went to see what was happening, and to my horror, I saw that the ICU was on fire, the flames appearing to shoot 10 meters up into the night sky. Some patients were burning in their beds.”

“I was petrified.”

“It was so frightening. The bombing and firing continued, and following after the bombs were showers of ‘laser-like flashes’ which were flammable, catching and spreading the fire.”

What were those laser-like flashes?

“With two other colleagues, I rushed to the guard house, which was about five metres from the hospital’s main gate. In the guard house were four security guards. We all decided to make a run for the hospital gate, to escape the bombing.”

Khalid’s eyes cringed a little, disappointment soaking his voice. Such shock can be too much for a human being to bear; irreparable disappointment at the U.S. military for attacking a humanitarian, medical facility, and an unfair guilty disappointment with self for having escaped death while colleagues were killed.

“The first person ran. Then another. It was my turn.”

“I took off and just as I reached the gate, with one foot outside the gate and one foot inside the hospital compound, a shrapnel hit me on my back.”

“I lost power in both legs, and fell. Dazed, I dragged myself to a nearby ditch and threw myself in.”

“I was bleeding quickly from my back, the blood pooling at my sides. Feeling that my end was near, I was desperate to call my family. My colleagues and I had taken out the batteries from our cell phones because the U.S. military has a way of tracking and target-killing people by picking up their cell phone signals. With one good arm, somehow, I pulled out my phone and inserted its battery.”

“Mom, I’m injured, and don’t have time. Could you pass the phone to dad?”

“What happened, my son?”

“Please pass the phone to dad!”

“What happened, my son?”

I could almost hear his distraught mother wondering what could have happened to her son who should have been safe in the hospital environment.

“Mom, there’s no time left. Pass the phone to dad.”

“I then asked my dad for forgiveness for any wrong I had done. I was feeling faint, and dropped the phone.”

“In my half-consciousness, the phone rang and it was my cousin. He asked me what had happened, and instructed me to use my clothes to stop the bleeding. I yanked a vest off myself, threw it behind my back and laid on it.”

“I must have passed out, as my next memory was of hearing my cousin’s voice and other voices, and being taken to the kitchen of the hospital where some basic first aid was being given to many injured persons.”

“I saw people with amputated limbs. Some of my colleagues, some of my colleagues….what wrong had we done? Is this what we get for serving people? ”

As I struggled emotionally to register Khalid’s story in my mind, I remembered my own training and practice as a doctor in hospitals, and I wished there was a global conversation about the failure of the Geneva Conventions to protect civilians, and health facilities. The European Council in Brussels in 2003 estimated that since 1990, almost 4 million people have died in wars, 90% of whom were civilians. 

I also wished that more individuals could respond to UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres who declared in a June 2015 press release that “We are witnessing a paradigm change….It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other there is seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace.”

A positive way to respond would be to join MSF, as well as ICRC President Peter Maurer and UN Head Ban Ki Moon in saying, “Enough! Even war has rules!” , that is, we can sign MSF’s petition for an #independent investigation of the Kunduz MSF Hospital bombing.

Passively accepting the Pentagon’s confessional report of ‘human error’ resulting in the killing of 31 staff and patients in the Kunduz Hospital bombing would allow the U.S. and other militaries to continue breaching laws and conventions with impunity, like in Yemen right now.

The International Committee of the Red Cross reported in October that nearly 100 hospitals in Yemen had been attacked since March 2015. Just as recently as 2^nd December, Khalid’s haunting story repeated itself in Taiz, Yemen, where an MSF clinic was attacked by the Saudi coalition forces, prompting Karline Kleijer, MSF operational manager for Yemen, to say that every nation backing the Yemen war, including the U.S., must answer for the Yemen MSF clinic bombing.

Khalid’s story was already haunting me, “To transport me, they used body bags meant for the dead. Feeble as I was, I panicked and made sure they heard me protesting, ‘I’m not dead!’ I heard someone say, “We know, don’t worry, we have no choice but to make do.”

“My cousin brought me to a hospital in Baghlan Province which had unfortunately been abandoned because of fighting in the area. So, I was taken to Pul-e-Khumri, and on the way, because I had slightly long hair, I heard shouting directed at us, ‘Hey, what are you doing with a Talib?’. My cousin had to assure them that I was not a Talib.”

So many possible fatal ‘human errors’ and mistakes….

“There was no available help in Pul-e-Khumri too, so I was finally brought to this hospital in Kabul. I’ve had five surgical operations so far,” Khalid said, his voice fading off a little, “and I needed two litres of blood in all.”

It struck me from Khalid’s account that the U.S. military could bomb a health facility by what Kate Clark of the Afghan Analysts Network suggested as ‘ripping up the rule book’, and then, not take any measures whatsoever after the bombing to treat casualties like Khalid and many others. If you are a civilian bombed by the U.S. military, you’ll have to fend for yourself!

Khalid sighed, “I’m grateful that I’ve been given a second life. Some of my colleagues…they weren’t so lucky.”

Khalid was exhausted. I understood from working in Afghanistan over the past years of a worsening war that his exhaustion wasn’t just physical. “I’m angry. The U.S. military is killing us just because they want to be the Empire of the world.”

Khalid asked why we wanted to take his photograph. His question reminded me of what we as individuals can do: taking and seeing his photo in this article isn’t going to be enough.

He steadied himself in the chair, placed his urine bag out of the camera’s view and said with full dignity, “I want my story to be heard.”

*Hakim, ( Dr. Teck Young, Wee ) is a medical doctor from Singapore who has done humanitarian and social enterprise work in Afghanistan for the past 10 years, including being a mentor to the Afghan Peace Volunteers, an inter-ethnic group of young Afghans dedicated to building non-violent alternatives to war. He is the 2012 recipient of the International Pfeffer Peace Prize.

By Luke Coffey*

The Caspian Sea is an important, if often overlooked, region in regard to many of the challenges the U.S. faces around the world, such as a resurgent Russia, an emboldened Iran, wavering allies, growing China, and the rise of Islamic extremism. The Caspian Sea is at the heart of the Eurasian continent, and anything that is at the heart of something is, by definition, important. The region is a crucial geographical and cultural crossroads linking Europe and Asia and has proven strategically important for military and economic reasons for centuries.

The U.S. needs to develop a strategy for engagement in the region that promotes economic freedom, secures transit and production zones for energy resources, and is aware of the consequences of increased Russian, Iranian, and Chinese influence in the region working against Western interests.

The U.S. should have a frank, open, and constructive dialogue with its allies in the region when and where there are human rights issues—with the goal of long-term democratization. However, human rights should be just one part of a multifaceted relationship that considers broader U.S. strategic interests and stability in the region. If the U.S. pursues the correct policies, it can help to ensure that the countries in the region are stable, sovereign, and self-governing.

The Caspian Sea: An Overview

The Caspian Sea is the world’s largest inland body of water. There is a dispute about whether the Caspian is legally a sea or a lake. If it is considered a lake, the Caspian alone would account for 44 percent of the world’s lacustrine water. There are five Caspian littoral states: Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.

The Caspian Sea is connected to the outside world by the Volga River and two canals that pass through Russia: the Volga–Don Canal, which links the Caspian Sea with the Sea of Azov, and the Volga–Baltic Waterway, which links the Caspian Sea with the Baltic Sea.[1] There is also a proposal to create the so-called Eurasian Canal, which would transform the Kuma–Manych Canal (currently only an irrigation canal) into a shipping canal that would link the Caspian Sea and Black Sea.[2] If completed, this would be the shortest route from the Caspian Sea to the outside world.

The Caspian is located between Europe and Asia: two of the most energy-consuming markets in the world today. Billions of dollars are being invested to connect the region to the rest of the world. Like spokes on a wheel, new and modernized roads and rail lines are being constructed connecting the Caspian to Europe, East Asia, and India.

The resources located in and near the Caspian make the region of particular importance for locals and outsiders alike. The region has an estimated 48 billion barrels of oil and 292 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in proved and probable reserves.[3] In addition to oil and gas, the region is also home to more than 100 species of fish. Most important is the European sturgeon, which is listed as “critically endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.[4] Approximately 90 percent of the black and red caviar sold globally comes from the Caspian. However, decades of overfishing and large-scale pollution threaten the region’s fishing sector.[5]

The regional powers have contested control of the Caspian for centuries. The region is trapped between two former imperial powers: Iran and Russia. Turkey, a regional power, also exerts significant influence for historical and cultural reasons even though it is not a Caspian littoral country.[6]

The Caspian is in a rough neighborhood. Certain regions of Azerbaijan and the North Caucasus in southern Russia are used as recruiting and transit zones for terrorist groups, such as the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). After the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly referred to as the Vienna Agreement, Iran will have more resources and confidence to act in the Caspian region than it has had in decades. Armenia continues to occupy almost 20 percent of Azerbaijan. Due to the lack of U.S. engagement, Baku has been cozying up to Moscow. Beijing has been courting Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan more than ever before.

Russia and Iran are the region’s biggest players. Yet in many ways Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan are emerging regional actors in their own rights. As Russia and Iran become increasingly distracted by events outside the region (Ukraine and the Middle East), the roles of these three Caspian countries in the region and beyond will likely become more pronounced.

Today, more outside actors are in the region than ever before. The U.S. showed a lot of interest in the region immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall and then again after the tragic events of 9/11, but has recently placed the region on the back burner. China is always looking for new economic and energy opportunities, and this remains its main motivation in the region today. Europe is also involved, but has little influence in the region. This is extremely shortsighted—and indeed a paradox—considering the economic and energy potential the region could offer Europe.

The Caspian region is religiously diverse and home to thriving Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist populations. The Ateshgah of Baku, Azerbaijan (commonly referred to as the Fire Temple of Baku) served as a Zoroastrian temple and was a pilgrimage destination for Hindus and Sikhs from as far away as India. Today, small pockets of Hindus and Zoroastrians still live in the region.

With the exception of Iran and the Republic of Dagestan—a federal subject of Russia, which accounts for two-thirds of Russia’s Caspian shoreline—radical Islam has not established roots in the Caspian region the same way as it has in the Middle East and North Africa, mainly due to do the secular nature of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.

U.S. Interests in the Region

In terms of the region’s long history, the U.S. is a relative newcomer to the Caspian. Today, the U.S. interests in the Caspian region derive primarily from its security commitment to Europe’s NATO members, the war against transnational terrorism, and the desire to check Russian and Iranian influence in the region.

While none of the Caspian countries are in NATO and therefore receive no security guarantees, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan are members of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program.[7] To varying degrees all have helped NATO operations in Afghanistan: Turkmenistan probably the least, Azerbaijan the most.

A more important consideration for the U.S. is the potential of Caspian oil and gas to offset much of Europe’s dependency on Russia for its energy needs. This, in turn, directly affects Europe’s security and, potentially, U.S. treaty obligations under NATO.

The U.S. has four primary goals in the Caspian region:

1. Assisting the Caspian in becoming a stable and secure transit and production zone for energy resources;
2. Checking Russian and Iranian meddling in the region so the countries in the region are stable, sovereign, and self-governing;
3. Keeping radical Islam out; and
4. Resolving the frozen conflicts in the region because Moscow exerts most of its influence through these conflicts.

Yet even with these interests, U.S. engagement in the region remains minimal.

With Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, one of the biggest challenges facing Washington is the perceived transactional nature of relations between the U.S. and regional countries.

By the late 1990s, the U.S. lost much of its enthusiasm for engaging with the Caspian region that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. sought to reengage with the region to secure transit and basing rights in the Caucasus and Central Asia for operations in Afghanistan. Some countries in the region even sent troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, opened transit routes, and offered basing support to the U.S. and NATO. While the countries in the region were looking for a long-term relationship, once the Afghan drawdown began and the U.S. pulled back from the region, it became clear that the U.S. was not interested in building enduring relations.

In November 2015 Secretary of State John Kerry visited all five countries in Central Asia, including the Caspian states of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. However, nothing from his visit seemed to mark a change in U.S. policy toward the Caspian region. For many leaders in Central Asia and the Caspian region who have been disappointed by Washington’s disengagement in recent years, Kerry’s visit—almost one year after the end of NATO-led combat operations in Afghanistan—is probably too little, too late to fundamentally change the perception of the U.S. in the region.

The transactional nature of America’s relationship with regional countries was shortsighted for two reasons: First, it created the perception with countries in the region that as soon as the U.S. got what it wanted it would move on. Second, it has diminished any good will that the U.S. created in the region, and regaining trust in the region will prove even more difficult. Considering how important the region is to a broader Eurasia strategy dealing with Russia and Iran, this will have negative consequences for U.S. policy. Unless another unforeseen, game-changing event occurs—like 9/11—nothing suggests that the U.S. will reengage with the region at the level it should.

Outside Actors in the Caspian

The Caspian will continue to be a strategic chessboard for regional and global powers well into the future.

The region is important for Europe. If the Europeans are to achieve any significant energy diversification away from Russia, it would likely be through the Caspian. Therefore, the Caspian region threatens Russia’s role as a major energy supplier and, by extension, Moscow’s political influence over Europe.

The desire to secure alternative sources of energy is at the heart of European engagement in the Caspian. Yet, paradoxically, the European Union has little influence in the region and does not seem intent on changing this. During its recent EU presidency (during the first half of 2015), Latvia identified Central Asia as one of the main focuses. But with only six months, an EU presidency is not enough time to make a long-lasting impact. Luxembourg, which assumed the presidency after Latvia in July 2015, has not shown the same degree of interest in Central Asia.

The EU’s dealings with Russia and Iran focus on issues of global importance, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Iran’s nuclear program. Rarely does the EU show a willingness or desire to focus on Caspian-specific issues. In its relations with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, the EU seems more interested in pushing its normative values in the region than in securing alternative sources of energy. Yet while the EU as an institution is not engaged in the region, some individual member states are. Europe’s bilateral relations with countries in the region are focused on pragmatic engagement based around energy and economic issues. In light of the Vienna Agreement with Iran, there will be a lot more European economic activity in the region.

Turkey’s main influence in the Caspian region derives primarily through its cultural, linguistic, and economic links with the three ethnically Turkic countries of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. In particular, Ankara has very close relations with Baku. With its short nine-mile border Turkey provides a lifeline to Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, an exclave that is geographically surrounded by Armenia and Iran. Turkish companies have invested billions of dollars in the region.

China has invested heavily in a number of infrastructure projects in Central Asia. Most of China’s activity has taken place on the eastern shore of the Caspian. For the foreseeable future China’s activity in the Caspian will be a continuation of Beijing’s policy of pursing its economic interests wherever in the world they might be. Moscow is already keeping a close eye on Beijing’s motives in the region and views Beijing as a potential competitor for influence in the region in the same way Russia sees Iran.

Beyond a doubt Russia and Iran are the two biggest actors in the region.

Russia and the Caspian

Russia first became active in the Caspian region in the 18th century. During the subsequent years of Russian domination over the region, Moscow occasionally shared influence in the Caspian with the Persian Empire. After a series of military defeats to Russia, Persia all but relinquished its last vestiges of influence in the Caspian. By the late 19th century the Caspian Sea was essentially a Russian lake.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the independence of the other three Caspian littoral states (Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan) in 1991, Russia still sees itself as a leader in the region.

Today, Russia maximizes influence in the region through economic, diplomatic, and military means. Russia maintains the largest naval fleet on the Caspian Sea. Russian businesses and foreign investment are found in every Caspian country. Russian-backed organizations, such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)[8] and Eurasia Economic Union (EEU),[9] attempt to bind regional capitals to Moscow through a series of agreements and treaties, with mixed success.

The goals of Moscow in the Caspian today and for the foreseeable future are to:

1. Marginalize Western influence in the region. This is especially true of the U.S., EU, and NATO. Russia has generally succeeded in this. U.S. influence in the region is at an all-time low, and the EU has not completed a Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, one of its main priorities in the region. As an institution NATO has very limited relations with countries in the region.
2. Integrate the countries in the region into Russian-backed organizations. Russia has had limited success with the former Soviet Union states in the region, but not as much with Iran. Kazakhstan is a member of the CSTO. Azerbaijan left the organization in 1999, and Turkmenistan and Iran never joined. Only Kazakhstan is in the EEU. Only Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).[10] Russian-inspired ideas, such as the creation of a joint Caspian naval force, have been met with skepticism by other Caspian countries.
3. Discourage outside investment in Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan that could facilitate the flow of oil and gas to Western markets by bypassing Russia. This goal is probably the most important for Russia. The Kremlin mentality is that, if Europe is not buying oil and gas from Russia, it should not buy them from anywhere else in the region. Moscow pursues policies in the Caspian region that limit and, if possible, block oil and gas transiting through the region to Europe.
4. Increase economic activity with the other Caspian states. Russia’s trade with Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan came to $33 billion in 2013.[11] Moscow’s desire to increase trade in the region is the main driver for several Russian-inspired transportation infrastructure projects in the Caspian—especially in light of Western sanctions over Ukraine.
5. Maintain regional hegemony over Iran. When economic sanctions against Iran are lifted or reduced, Iran will likely become more assertive in the region, no longer needing to rely on Moscow’s support on the international stage. This could become a future source of friction with Russia. But for now, as historical rivals in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Russia wants to check Iranian influence in the region, but this takes a back seat to Russia’s desire to keep Western influence out.

Russia also faces many internal challenges in the region. The Russian shore of the Caspian is ethnically and religiously diverse. The city of Astrakhan in the Astrakhan Oblast (region) has played an important role in the region’s history and is still at the center of Russian economic activity in the Caspian. While oil production across Russia’s Caspian region has declined in recent years, production has actually increased in the Astrakhan Oblast.[12]

To the west of the Astrakhan Oblast is the semi-autonomous Republic of Kalmykia. Kalmykia is home to the largest Buddhist Temple in Eurasia and is the only region in Europe where Buddhism is practiced by a plurality of its citizens.[13] It is also one of the poorest regions in Russia.[14] There are two main oil fields off Kalmykia’s coast, but the region produces the least amount oil and gas of Russia’s Caspian region.

To the southwest of the Republic of Kalmykia is the semi-autonomous Republic of Dagestan. It is estimated that one-third of the Caspian’s oil, and just under half of its natural gas is within 100 miles of the shore.[15] Dagestan accounts for two-thirds of Russia’s Caspian shoreline. Therefore, for oil and gas, Dagestan is Russia’s most important region in the Caspian. Dagestan has 20 oil and gas fields and an important oil refinery in Makhachkala, the republic’s capital and an important port on the Caspian that serves as a key transit point for oil produced in the Russian section of the Caspian Sea.[16]

Russia’s Caspian region is also fraught with political, religious, and ethnic tensions and instability. Located in the North Caucasus as well as the Caspian region, Dagestan’s population is predominately Sunni Muslim, and Makhachkala is the home of one of Russia’s largest mosques. The North Caucasus is the region’s powder keg and has a long history of defiance toward Moscow. There are legitimate concerns about the region’s long-term stability. Islamist terrorists from the self-proclaimed Caucasus Emirate have already attacked energy infrastructure, trains, planes, theaters, and hospitals across Russia and have sent foreign fighters to the Islamic State.

In an attempt to reduce the hostilities, the Russian government has implemented many economic and development programs and provided billions of dollars in aid to the North Caucasus in the past few years. However, this policy has met with mixed success.[17]

Another threat to stability in Dagestan is neighboring Chechnya. Historically, instability and conflict in Chechnya destabilizes or spills into Dagestan, just as it did in 1818 with the building of a Russian fort in Grozny (now the capital of Chechnya), the insurgency led by Imam Shamil in the middle of the 19th century during the Caucasian War, and more recently during the two Chechen Wars in the 1990s and early 2000s. A deteriorating security situation in Chechnya could impact Dagestan and would seriously jeopardize Russia’s oil and gas production in the Caspian region.

Iran and the Caspian

Iran is one of the established Eurasian powers and therefore sees itself as entitled to a special status in the Caspian region. While Iran competes with Russia for influence in the Caspian, Tehran also shares many of the same goals as Moscow, such as keeping foreign influence—especially the U.S.—out of the region.

The southern part of the Caspian Sea, which includes the Iranian section, is very deep and accounts for two-thirds of the sea’s total volume of water.[18] Oil and gas exploration and extraction in this section is extremely challenging. Until technological advances are made, this will remain the case.

Iran holds almost 10 percent of the world’s crude oil reserves and 17 percent of the world’s proved natural gas reserves, giving it the second-largest natural gas reserves in the world, behind Russia. About 70 percent of Iran’s crude oil reserves are located onshore, with the remainder mostly located offshore in the Persian Gulf.[19] Like Iran’s oil reserves, Iran’s natural gas reserves are also located away from the Caspian region. What few energy resources Iran has in the Caspian are difficult to extract, and production has been at a virtual standstill with international sanctions in place.

With the majority of Iran’s energy production far removed from the Caspian, Tehran’s interest in the region derives more from history and culture than from oil and gas. Luckily for the region, Iranian exports of its radical brand of Shia Islam have been less effective in the Caspian region than in the Middle East.

Although Iran occasionally meddles in the internal affairs of Azerbaijan, Tehran has come to realize that it cannot influence the Caspian region with religion as it does other parts of the world. Modern Iran does not appeal to the Muslims living to its north in the same way the Persian Empire once did. Most Muslim Turkmen in Central Asia are secular and are put off by Tehran’s fundamentalism. Regime oppression in Iran stifles the cultural appeal that Persian literature, music, and cinema once held in the region. Until the Iranian regime’s attitudes change or the regime changes, this will continue to be the case. Azerbaijan is perhaps the best example of this.

Azerbaijan is one of the predominately Shia areas that Iran has not been able to place under its influence. Azerbaijanis reject Tehran’s brand of extreme Islam and embrace religious freedom and secularism. Azerbaijan’s close relations with Israel are perhaps the manifestation of Baku’s rejection of Tehran’s influence.

Iran has coordinated and backed a number of high-profile terrorist events inside Azerbaijan, further souring relations between the two countries. In March 2012, Azerbaijan arrested 22 people hired by Iran to attack the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Baku. A few months prior, Azerbaijani security services prevented an Iranian-backed attack on a Jewish school in Baku.[20]

Even with the underlying religious friction, Iran and Azerbaijan maintain cordial, if at times tense, relations. Iran disputes many of Azerbaijan’s Caspian claims and has even used its navy to interfere with energy exploration operations. Azerbaijan sees Iran as a potential competitor for Europe’s energy market, especially with the lifting of international sanctions.

Iran’s closeness with Azerbaijan’s archenemy Armenia also makes Baku nervous. During the war in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in the early 1990s, Iran sided with Armenia as a way to marginalize Azerbaijan’s role in the region. Iran is expected to fund a major railway project and invest almost $100 million in an electricity deal in Armenia. As Yerevan and Tehran cooperate more closely, Baku will remain nervous.

Baku and Tehran cooperate when it is pragmatic and mutually beneficial for both. For example, Iran and Azerbaijan have revived an older oil swap agreement.[21] With this agreement Azerbaijan transports some of its oil to the Iranian Caspian port of Neka, where it then goes to refineries outside Tehran for domestic consumption. Iran then exports the same amount of crude from its southern oil fields near the Persian Gulf on behalf of Azerbaijan. Tehran has had similar agreements with other Caspian countries. With international sanctions to be lifted, such arrangements are likely to become more common.

Even though Iran’s activities in the Middle East take priority, Tehran is not idle in the Caspian region. Now that Iran has agreed to a deal on its nuclear weapons program, Tehran will likely become even more active in the Caspian Sea. The Vienna Agreement will directly affect Tehran’s policy toward the region in three ways:

1. More financial resources. Iran will regain access to between $100 billion and $150 billion in unfrozen assets once the Vienna Agreement takes effect. This does not include billions of dollars more that Iran will receive when sanctions are lifted. Consequently, Iran will have the resources to increase its influence in the Caspian region, especially in the naval sector and the construction of major infrastructure projects.
2. Less dependency on Russia. Now that Tehran is not completely beholden to Moscow for support, as it was during the nuclear talks, Iran will have flexibility to compete more aggressively with Russia for influence in the region. In particular, Iran might try to play a mediating role over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in a way that undermines Russia’s interests in the region.
3. More confidence on international stage. In the eyes of the Iranians, the Vienna Agreement was a diplomatic triumph. President Hassan Rouhani’s and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif enjoy high domestic popularity. There is a feeling among those in the government that the experience of the Vienna Agreement can be replicated to advance Iran’s interests in other regions of the world in what Rouhani describes as a “third way” for Iranian foreign policy.[22] Of course, the Caspian is included.

As Europe looks for alternatives to Russian energy resources, it should be cautious about the role Iran might play if the Vienna Agreement comes into force. Iran has identified nearly 50 new oil and natural gas projects worth $185 billion once international sanctions are lifted. At least some of these projects will send Iranian oil and natural gas into Europe via the network of pipelines in the South Caucasus and Turkey.

Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology Mahmoud Vaezi has publicly said that he hopes that Iran will soon export energy to Europe.[23] Even though the Vienna Agreement offers the potential of exporting Iranian natural gas to Europe, this will be easier said than done thanks to the fraught relations between Tehran and its neighbors. For example, under the terms of use for the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), both Ankara and Baku must agree before a third-party (e.g., Iran) can transport natural gas through the pipeline.[24] Since Azerbaijan—and Turkmenistan, if the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline is ever realized—views Iran as an unhealthy competitor for Europe’s energy markets, Baku is unlikely to agree to allow Iranian gas into the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline.

The Eastern Shore: Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan

On the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea are Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have enjoyed one of the warmest bilateral relations of the Central Asian states and share many of the same challenges in the region,[25] including falling energy revenues, difficulty exporting energy resources to global markets, and meddling by Russia and China.

Kazakhstan. In 2015, Kazakhstan celebrated the 550th anniversary of the founding of the Kazakh Khanate, which is considered the foundation on which modern-day Kazakhstan is built.[26] Although dominated by Russia for almost 200 years, since regaining its independence in 1991, Kazakhstan has developed its own regional policy that tries to be distinct from Russia’s policy. Even so, Astana retains close ties with Moscow through membership in the Russian-backed EEU and the CSTO. Kazakhstan joined the World Trade Organization in 2015.

Nearly 25 percent of Kazakhstan’s population of 17 million are Russian. Most of the Russian population lives along Kazakhstan’s 4,250-mile border with Russia. After Russia annexed Crimea in early 2014, some in Kazakhstan became nervous that parts of their country might be next. Provocative comments by senior officials in Moscow have heightened this fear. In 2014, Vladimir Putin even suggested, “The Kazakhs had no statehood.”[27]

As the largest economy in Central Asia, Kazakhstan attracts most of the region’s trade and investment. Although the Kazakh economy is not in recession, growth in recent years has been slower than expected. The economies of Kazakhstan and Russia are closely linked, so Western economic sanctions on Russia have had a negative trickle-down effect in Kazakhstan. The drop in the price of crude oil has also had a negative impact.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has called for the creation of a free trade zone among the countries of the Caspian Sea, but the climate of mistrust that plagues the region makes this unlikely to happen anytime soon.[28] Of the five Caspian countries, Kazakhstan ranks number one in economic freedom according to the 2015 Index of Economic Freedom, published by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal.[29]

Kazakhstan has been an oil producer since 1911 and is the largest oil producer in the post-Soviet space after the Russian Federation.[30] Over the years, Kazakhstan has enjoyed modest economic prosperity and stability based mostly on exploitation of its abundant mineral wealth, primarily hydrocarbons, but also ferrous and nonferrous metals, including uranium. (Kazakhstan is the world’s largest producer of uranium.)

Kazakhstan’s Kashagan oil field in the Caspian Sea—one of the world’s largest-ever oil discoveries—is still not back in operation after production halted only 18 days after starting in September 2013. The start of production in September 2013 was itself a delay of eight years from the originally planned production date. Production is not expected to restart until 2017.[31]

Turkmenistan. To the south of Kazakhstan is Turkmenistan, perhaps one of the world’s most closed societies after North Korea. In 2012, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov was reelected to a second five-year term with 97 percent of the vote in elections that international observers regarded as flawed.[32] The presidency tightly controls all three branches of government, the economy, social services, and the mass media.

In foreign relations Turkmenistan leans toward isolationism and self-described “permanent neutrality.”[33] While Ashgabat has cordial relations with its Caspian neighbors, it has refrained from joining the EEU or the CSTO. Even so, Turkmenistan has been a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program since the mid-1990s. While the Turkmen government will not admit it publicly, it has provided limited logistical support for U.S.-led combat operations in Afghanistan.[34]

Berdymukhammedov has encouraged some foreign investment in the energy sector, especially from Russia, China, and Iran. Like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan has felt the negative effects of Russia’s poor economic performance. Turkmenistan holds some of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, but has only a few options for exporting these resources to the rest of the world. Currently, Turkmenistan’s gas exports depend heavily on China and Russia.

Turkmenistan is already feeling the impact of this dependency. Russia has reduced its imports of Turkmen gas in 2015, and Ashgabat is concerned that Chinese demand could decrease as Beijing pursues other energy options. The situation is unlikely to improve. As international sanctions on Iran are lifted, Turkmenistan will have another competitor on the global energy market.

Finding an economically viable way to export gas to Europe would go a long way in helping Turkmenistan diversify its energy export market. Fortunately, there are signs that Ashgabat is serious about building the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline. Turkmenistan and Turkey have signed a framework agreement to supply gas to the proposed TANAP. Turkmenistan is also building pipeline infrastructure to the Caspian shoreline.[35] It is only logical that both of these recent measures are designed eventually to build a pipeline through the Caspian to Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan: An Important Piece of the Puzzle

Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, is arguably the most important city on the Caspian Sea. It is home to the Caspian’s largest port and serves as the transportation hub for goods shipped between Europe and Central Asia. When Peter the Great captured Baku in 1723 during a war with Persia, he described the captured city as “the key to all our business” in the region.[36] Ever since the first oil well was drilled just outside Baku in 1846, the city has been vital to the region’s oil and gas industry. For Europe, Azerbaijan provides a significant oil and gas alternative to Russia.

The Armenian Occupation. Everything the regime in Azerbaijan does must be seen through the lens of Armenia’s occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh. The occupied region accounts for almost 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory and is one of the main drivers of foreign and domestic policy in Baku.

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan started in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims on Azerbaijan’s Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. By 1992, Armenian forces and Armenian-backed militias occupied almost 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and all or part of Lachin, Kelbajar, Agdam, Fizuli, Jebrayil, Qubatli, and Zangelan provinces.

During 1992–1993, the U.N. Security Council adopted four resolutions on the Nagorno-Karabakh war.[37] Each resolution confirmed the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan to include Nagorno-Karabakh and the seven surrounding districts and called on the withdrawal of all occupying Armenian forces from Azerbaijani territory.

A cease-fire agreement was signed in 1994, and the conflict has been described as “frozen” since then. Since August 2014, violence has noticeably increased along the Line of Contact between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces. Although the Nagorno-Karabakh region is inland and hundreds of miles from the Caspian, the conflict can still affect the region. The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline and the South Caucasus Pipeline run within several miles of the front lines, and any major outbreak of warfare would immediately threaten them.

The most likely scenario for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is maintaining the status quo. The Minsk Group,[38] which was tasked with bringing a lasting peace to the war, is now defunct thanks to the breakdown in Western relations with Russia over Ukraine. Russia gains too much influence in Yerevan and Baku, especially with lucrative defense contracts with both sides, to want to see the conflict resolved anytime soon.

Azerbaijan has been arming heavily, and its defense budget now equals half of Armenia’s gross domestic product (GDP). Azerbaijan might use military force to liberate the Nagorno-Karabakh region and the seven surrounding districts. However, such a dramatic move by Azerbaijan would not happen unless one of four things happened first:

• The price of oil and gas decreases so much that disrupting Azerbaijani energy exports from a war would not be a concern;
• Azerbaijan’s energy resources eventually run out, making stability of the energy sector no longer a concern;
• Daily exchanges of fire by both Armenia and Azerbaijan could unintentionally lead to a full-scale war; or
• Armenian forces launch a major military offensive.

U.S.–Azerbaijani Relations. Azerbaijan is an important U.S. partner for a number of reasons. Azerbaijan is a strong supporter of Israel. It was a staunch ally during the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, and Baku has contributed greatly to U.S. counterterrorism efforts since 9/11. Azerbaijan is part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program and participates in Alliance training exercises and officer exchanges. Although Azerbaijan is not actively seeking to join NATO, it participates in NATO-led missions and has close relations with other NATO members and partners, including Turkey and Georgia.

Azerbaijan emerged on the world stage as a major energy power during the 1990s. In 1994, it signed the “Contract of the Century” agreement with BP and 10 other international oil companies to open up the country’s vast resources in the Caspian Sea. Since 1994, Azerbaijan’s GDP has increased 16 times. Even the non-oil sector of the economy has increased tenfold.[39]

Although Azerbaijan is a Muslim-majority country, it is a very secular society. Azerbaijan has a very close relationship with Israel and Turkey and views Iran with distrust and suspicion. Azerbaijan has a thriving Jewish population estimated to be 20,000 strong[40] and is home to the largest all-Jewish settlement outside Israel.

U.S.–Azerbaijani relations were probably at their closest after the 9/11 attacks. However, three recent events have dampened relations and forced Baku to hedge its bets with closer ties with Russia:

1. The perceived lackluster U.S. response to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia. After the invasion, policymakers in Baku started to question American power and influence in the region.
2. The U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan and the subsequent disengagement in the region. There is a feeling that the U.S. got what it wanted for the war in Afghanistan, and now the U.S. no longer needs Azerbaijan as a partner.
3. The Western response to Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. These events made the U.S. and the West look weak in a part of the world where strength and power are respected.

The sum of these events equals an Azerbaijan that is more cautious and mindful of its place in the region. Globally, Azerbaijan is trying to keep a balance in its relations with the West and Russia. Regionally, Azerbaijan has sought to keep a balance between Russia and Iran while striving to preserve its autonomy or independence as much as possible.

The U.S.–Azerbaijani relationship is perhaps the most acute example of declining American influence in the region.[41] It is also an example of a lopsided policy pursued by Washington heavily focused on lofty human rights goals, often at the expense of strategic American interests in the region.

Rightly or wrongly, there is a feeling in Baku that Azerbaijan is singled out for sustained criticism by the West—mainly by Europe, but also by the U.S.—in contrast to the almost complete silence which greets the human rights activities of China and Saudi Arabia. However, in recent years there have been legitimate concerns about freedom of the press and the slow speed of democratizing in Azerbaijan due to a number of high-profile arrests of prominent journalists. In December 2014, Azerbaijani authorities closed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s bureau in Baku as part of a larger crackdown on international organizations operating in the country.[42] In addition, international organizations have come under government scrutiny. In June 2015, the Azerbaijani government forced the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to close its Baku bureau.[43] These are worrying developments for U.S.–Azerbaijani relations.

The state of human rights in Azerbaijan should not be the sole driver of U.S. engagement with Baku. The U.S. engages with numerous countries around the world that are strategically important for security, economic, or energy reasons, but have less than stellar human rights records. U.S. engagement with Azerbaijan needs to take a multifaceted approach that involves energy, security, human rights, and geopolitical concerns. While some of Baku’s recent actions against certain elements of the media and other international organizations are concerning, these incidents should not trump other aspects of U.S.–Azerbaijani relations.

Dr. Svante E. Cornell, director of the Central Asia–Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University, summarized U.S.–Azerbaijani relations best during a recent House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing:

It is important to recall that America’s relationship with Azerbaijan, like all former Soviet states, was built on several components. A constructive dialogue on human rights and democracy was one of these. Another was American engagement in supporting the development of the east–west energy corridor, which enabled Azerbaijan to market its resources independently. A third was close cooperation on security issues, which included America’s efforts to help resolve the Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict, as well as bilateral cooperation on defense, security, intelligence sharing and counter-terrorism.

These three areas, then, formed a tripod upon which U.S. policy was based. But in the past decade, that tripod has for all practical purposes faltered. American engagement in energy issues was strong down to the completion of initial pipeline infrastructure ten years ago; it has declined since then. The position of a U.S. Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy has been abolished; and America’s role in the efforts to bring Caspian natural gas to Europe is minimal. Security interests gained salience after 9/11, but began a slow decline after 2003 as U.S. attention shifted to Iraq and European governments were unwilling to pick up the slack. Not least, U.S. leadership in resolving the Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict has been missing.

As a result, for most practical purposes, the promotion of democracy and human rights has been the only leg of U.S. policy proceeding at full speed, leading to an imbalance in the tripod that forms the underpinning of American strategy.[44]

One major sticking point in the U.S. and Azerbaijan relationship came in 1992 when Congress passed Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act as a result of the influential Armenian lobby. In sum, Section 907 prevents the U.S. from providing military aid to Azerbaijan and identifies Azerbaijan as the aggressor in its war with Armenia. This latter point is curious considering that Armenia is occupying almost 20 percent of the territory recognized by the international community as being part of Azerbaijan and that 622,892 Azerbaijanis are currently classified as internally displaced people as a result of the war in the early 1990s.[45]

After the attacks of 9/11, the Bush Administration recognized the important role that Azerbaijan would play in the campaign in Afghanistan (and later Iraq) and annually waived Section 907. The Obama Administration continued waiving Section 907. Azerbaijan is the only former Soviet Republic that has restrictions placed on it like Section 907. Even the most casual observer can see that the origins of Section 907 were politically motivated by certain lobby groups and not connected to larger U.S. strategy or goals in the region.

Azerbaijan will continue to be a regional economic leader in the South Caucasus and an important economic actor in the Caspian region. If correct policies are pursued, Azerbaijan will serve as an important alternative source of energy for Europe well into the future.

Azerbaijan will continue to look to the West. But it also realizes that while the U.S. might come and go in the region, Russia and Iran are there to stay. This is why the U.S. and Europe need to stay engaged with Azerbaijan and encourage Azerbaijan to maintain good relations with its neighbors, but also to stay focused on deeper cooperation with the West.

Oil and Gas and Caspian Ownership

An estimated 48 billion barrels of oil and 292 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in proved and probable reserves are in the Caspian region.[46] In terms of total global proved and probable reserves, this is a relatively small amount. However, each barrel of oil and cubic foot of gas that Europe can buy from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, or Turkmenistan is one less that it must depend on from Russia.

The Caspian countries’ ability to increase their energy exports depends on five factors:

1. The possible increase in domestic energy consumption. Obviously, if domestic demand outpaces production, the Caspian region can export less oil and gas.
2. The price of oil. The drop in the cost of crude is affecting the global industry. In the past 12 months, the oil and gas sector has lost an estimated 70,000 jobs and cancelled $200 billion in spending on new projects.[47] The Caspian region, where production costs are already high for geographical and political reasons, is not immune to this.
3. The rate at which additional export infrastructure can be built and made operational. The Caspian’s geographical location makes transporting oil and gas out of the region into the global market a challenge. Building key pipeline, rail, and other transit projects will require substantial investment. This is probably the main factor preventing Europe from fulfilling more of its energy needs from the region.
4. The degree to which regional cooperation deepens. The history of the region, coupled with religious and cultural differences, fosters distrust between many of the Caspian countries and with outside countries wanting to do business in the region.
5. The region’s stability and security. Stability is required to encourage foreign investment in the region. Foreign investment is needed to build the infrastructure required to export oil and gas. The same applies for oil and gas exploration and extraction.

Overarching the region’s economic, security, and energy challenges is the issue of Caspian ownership. During the reign of the Soviet Union, ownership of the Caspian was divided between Russia and Persia (later Iran). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan emerged as sovereign and independent states without an agreement on how to divide or share the Caspian Sea among the five littoral countries.

The debate about how to delineate the Caspian Sea has continued for more than 25 years. The unsettled question is whether the Caspian is a lake or a sea and which of two sets of public international law apply to the Caspian: the law of the sea if it is a sea or customary international law governing border lakes if it is a lake.

If the law of the sea is applied with the coastline and equidistance measurements used to determine each country’s economic exclusive zone, Kazakhstan would be the big winner receiving an estimated 29.9 percent of the Caspian. Azerbaijan would control 20.7 percent; Turkmenistan, 19.2 percent; Russia, 15.6 percent; and Iran, only 14.6 percent.[48]

If the Caspian is considered to be a lake, then each country would control 15 nautical miles from its shore for mineral exploration and then another 10 nautical miles for fishing. Everything else would be shared jointly between all the littoral countries. Furthermore, any major decision affecting the Caspian, such as the construction of a pipeline, would first need to be approved by all littoral countries.

In particular, ownership of the seabed is a highly contentious issue. Currently, most of the proved oil and gas is located close to the coastline and is easily extracted. This makes the ownership of the Caspian Sea less of an issue right now than it will be in the future. However, as new technology becomes affordable and available, new fields will be exploited further away from the shore. This is why an agreement delineating the waters is so important.

Negotiations on the issue of Caspian Sea ownership are held at the deputy-foreign-minister level within the framework of the Special Working Group on the convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea. This Special Working Group most recently met in Moscow in September 2015 with little agreement other than to continue meeting.[49] The next big opportunity for the Caspian countries to come to some sort of agreement will be during the fifth Caspian summit slated for sometime in 2016 in Kazakhstan.[50]

Even though each year brings new rhetoric about how an agreement will soon be reached, nothing has changed in the geopolitical situation to suggest that the upcoming meeting in Kazakhstan will end the deadlock between the Caspian states.

Even with the “lake or sea” dispute, the Caspian countries have made modest progress on agreeing on certain sections of the seabed. For example, in 2014 at the fourth Caspian Summit in Astrakhan, the leaders of the Caspian states agreed that each country will have sovereignty out to 15 nautical miles from the shore for mineral exploration and production and fishing rights for an additional 10 nautical miles beyond the 15-mile zone.[51]

Each Caspian country takes a different position on the status of the Caspian for reasons of national interest.

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan want to delineate the seabed based on the law of the sea. This is not surprising because the two countries would be the biggest winners under this scenario. In 2002, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan signed agreements with Russia recognizing national sectors based on lines drawn in the middle of the sea halfway between each state.

Turkmenistan has not been as active as its neighbors in resolving the issue of Caspian ownership. In May 2015, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan reportedly agreed on Caspian maritime borders.[52] The maritime border between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan is disputed, primarily over the ownership of the Kapaz or Serdar oil field[53] in the Caspian.[54] The Turkmen–Iranian maritime border also remains in dispute.

During the 1990s, Russia was unable to form a single position largely due to an internal dispute. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) considers the Caspian to be a lake, believing this is the best way to preserve Russia’s dominant geopolitical role in the region. On the other side, the Ministry of Fuel and Power and the oil and gas companies, such as Yukos and Gazprom, are driven more by financial considerations than anything else. To this end, the Ministry of Fuel and Power and the oil and gas lobby generally support dividing the Caspian along the lines of the law of the sea because this would allow Russian companies to compete for more lucrative contracts.

Moscow’s incoherent position has evolved into one that is best described as “common waters, divided bottom.”[55] With this policy, Russia wants to maintain surface navigational rights (and therefore naval supremacy) in the Caspian while taking a more pragmatic approach to oil and gas exploration and ownership. Generally speaking, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have at least implicitly agreed to Russia’s “common waters, divided bottom” approach.

Even though Russia has delineated its maritime borders with both neighboring countries, it is still in Moscow’s interests that the southern section of the Caspian remains disputed among Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkmenistan. An ongoing dispute will help Russia to maintain its control over the transit of gas from Central Asia to Europe.

As the Caspian country with the shortest coastline, Iran’s position is straightforward. It considers the Caspian to be a lake. To back up its claim, Tehran argues that the 1921 Treaty of Friendship and 1940 Soviet–Iranian Trade and Navigation Agreement have primacy in terms of the Caspian’s legal status until the five littoral states reach a new agreement. Iran’s reliance on these former treaties is curious because neither treaty makes any reference to seabed ownership or its use.

The outcome of the “lake or sea” debate will greatly affect future pipelines transporting oil and gas from Central Asia to Europe. The construction of a Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline is something that Turkmenistan and Europe need, and something that Russia and Iran seek to avoid. This could have serious implications for energy policy and geopolitics.

The lack of clear delineation of the waters has led to multiple disputes over oil and gas ownership and the risk of military confrontation. Until there is agreement on Caspian Sea ownership, the possibility for armed conflict in the region remains real.

Over the past decade there have been several large-scale military training exercises in the region, some unilateral, others multilateral. Russia has even used warships operating in the Caspian to conduct cruise missile strikes against targets in Syria almost 900 miles away. It is worth pointing out that the use of Caspian-based naval assets to strike targets in Syria had less to do with achieving military effect than it did about Caspian geo-politics. These missile strikes sent a strong signal to the other Caspian countries that Russia is the dominant military power in the region. However, while Russia maintains the largest naval presence in the Caspian, the other littoral countries have also been investing in new ships, anti-ship missiles, and submarines.

Iran is expected to invest more in its Caspian naval capability, especially after Tehran receives a windfall of billions of dollars as a result of the Vienna Agreement. In a recent interview, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, commander of the Iranian Navy, said that the Caspian has a special status in the development of Iran’s naval capabilities.[56]

A Transport Hub of Eurasia

In 1906, the region’s first oil pipeline was completed, connecting Baku on the Caspian Sea with Batumi on the Black Sea. More than 100 years later, this pipeline, measuring a mere eight inches in diameter, has been replaced with a modern network of natural gas and oil pipelines connecting the heart of Asia with Europe. With proper investment and the correct policies, oil, gas, and other goods will be flowing in all directions from the Caspian region.

The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project, commonly referred to as the Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India Pipeline (TAPI) could fundamentally change the natural gas connectivity of Central Asia.[57] This proposed 1,100-mile pipeline could carry natural gas from Turkmenistan to India and help to block Russian and Chinese hegemony over the region’s energy market.[58] Construction on the TAPI was delayed by more than a decade for security concerns, particularly in Afghanistan, and because of legal issues in Turkmenistan. Both roadblocks have been resolved satisfactorily, and construction is expected to begin in early 2016.[59]

It is strategically important for Europe to access as much oil and gas from the region as possible. Europe already imports oil and gas from the Caspian, primarily from Azerbaijan, but it desperately needs oil and gas from Central Asia, too, as a way to bypass Russia and Iran.

A pipeline is the only economically viable way to move natural gas across the Caspian Sea. Transporting natural gas by ship as liquefied natural gas is profitable only after 1,200 miles or more, and the distance between Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan, and Baku is only 170 miles. The idea of a Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline has not become a reality because of the dispute over Caspian ownership. It is in neither Iran’s nor Russia’s interest to see the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline realized. Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan will not move ahead with the project due to concerns that Russia and Iran might militarily disrupt the construction of the pipeline or at least act in a way that might discourage investors in the pipeline program.

Completing the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline promises several benefits. The most obvious is providing Europe with another alternative to Russian gas. The pipeline would also improve regional stability by calming Azerbaijani–Turkmen relations, which have been strained in the Caspian over the past few years. From Ashgabat’s perspective, a Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline would also help to diversify its energy export market, which is dependent on Russian and Chinese imports.[60]

Notwithstanding the lack of a Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, new pipelines are being built and upgraded that will help to decrease Europe’s reliance on Russia for its energy. In March 2015, construction started on the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline, further linking Azerbaijan to Turkey.[61] Construction is expected to be finished by 2018. It will then link with the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, which will run from the Turkish–Greek border to Italy via Albania and the Adriatic Sea when it is completed in 2020.[62]

These new gas pipelines, in addition to the existing South Caucasus Pipeline, comprise the Southern Gas Corridor. Once fully operational, the Southern Gas Corridor will be a network of pipelines running 2,100 miles across seven countries, supplying 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Europe.[63]

In addition to pipelines, new rail networks are being upgraded, extended, and built. Rail lines form the main basis of the International North–South Transport Corridor, which is expected to reduce transit costs between Russia in the north and India in the south and everything in between. The Caspian countries are an important part of the International North–South Transport Corridor project.

The Kars–Tbilisi–Baku railway, the modern-day successor to the Transcaucasian Railway, is expected to be finished in 2015. In the long term, it is expected to move 15 million tons of freight and 3 million passengers each year.[64] That is the equivalent in passengers of moving the entire population of Armenia by train each year.

New rail lines and pipelines are not just being built and modernized on the western side of the Caspian. China’s checkbook diplomacy commonly associated with Africa also applies to Central Asia. Beijing is investing billions of dollars in projects, not only to upgrade and modernize rail networks, pipelines, and roads, but also to encourage cultural exchanges—all with the goal of maximizing Chinese influence in the region.

At the heart of China’s activity in the region is Beijing’s One-Belt, One-Road (OBOR) initiative.[65] The OBOR initiative aims to connect the countries of Central Asia along the historic Silk Road to facilitate the flow of Chinese markets with Europe. The land-based part of OBOR is called the Silk Road Economic Belt.

Russia proposed building a railway that would encircle the Caspian Sea with the goal of linking all of the main Caspian port cities by rail. The eastern semi-circle linking Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Iran was completed in 2014. The western half linking Azerbaijan and Iran is expected to be finished in 2016.[66]

Moscow has long sought to control the flow of oil and gas to Europe and has never liked pipelines that bypass Russian territory to transport oil and gas to Europe. The Kremlin’s mentality is that, if Europe is not buying oil and gas from Russia, it should not be buying it from anywhere else. To this end, where Europe is able to import from other sources, Russia has shown that it can easily pose an indirect risk to their supply.

For example, at their closest points, the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, South Caucasus Pipeline, and the Kars–Tbilisi–Baku railway run within about eight miles of the Line of Contact between Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijani forces.[67] This is one of the reasons why Russia will ensure that the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh will not be resolved anytime soon.

Russia has also recently annexed a small chunk of Georgia that places a one-mile segment of the BP-operated Baku–Supsa oil pipeline, which transports oil from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea, inside Russian-occupied territory.[68]

What the U.S. Should Do

The Caspian Sea is an important, if often overlooked, region in regard to many of the challenges that the U.S. faces around the world, such as a resurgent Russia, an emboldened Iran, wavering allies, a growing China, and the rise of Islamic extremism.

America can take a number of steps to safeguard its political, economic, and security interests in the region. The United States should:

• Show a more visible presence in the region. While John Kerry’s recent trip to Central Asia is a good first step, the U.S. must build on his visit. Occasional Cabinet-level visits need to be followed up with regular visits by senior officials from all areas of government including diplomatic, defense, economic, energy, and trade sectors of the U.S. government.
• Support a peaceful and speedy resolution of Caspian Sea ownership. It is in America’s interest and the interest of its European allies to resolve the legal status of the Caspian Sea and demarcate the maritime borders. Finding an agreement to the Caspian dispute will remove a potential source of instability and help to advance economic and energy opportunities in the region. It will also help with Europe’s energy security.
• Strike a balance between promoting human rights and safeguarding other U.S. strategic interests. The U.S. should have frank, open, and constructive discussions with its allies in the region when and where there are human rights issues—with the goal of long-term democratization. However, human rights should be just one part of a multifaceted relationship that considers broader U.S. strategic interests and stability in the region.
• Offer political support for the construction of TAPI. Whenever possible the U.S. should support Caspian energy diversification projects. In the long run, this promotes economic freedom, strengthens regional stability, and breaks regional dependency on Chinese and Russian markets.
• Offer political support for the construction of the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline and the Southern Gas Corridor project. As Europe seeks alternatives to Russian gas, the Southern Gas Corridor and completion of a Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline will play important roles. Furthermore, the construction of the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline will help to ease regional tensions between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
• Encourage Caspian countries to diversify their economies. The U.S. should promote economic policies in the region that lead to diversified local economies. The areas of focus should be in the agriculture, manufacturing, and services sectors. This is especially important in light of recent oil prices.
• Encourage countries in the region to stay away from Russian-dominated organizations. Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization are retrograde structures that serve only the interests of Russia at the expense of the other member states. The U.S. should encourage countries in the region to maintain cordial, but not subservient relations with Russia.
• Promote economic freedom in the region. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan are strategically poised for economic growth because they supply raw materials to the Chinese and East Asian markets, which are expanding. U.S. businesses should take advantage of opportunities in the Caspian region, as Russia and China are already doing.
• Engage more with Azerbaijan. The U.S. should pursue a pragmatic relationship with Baku based on strategic and regional mutual interests. There are some legitimate human rights concerns in Azerbaijan, but in the long run only U.S. engagement, not constant criticism, will return Baku to the path toward good governance.
• Help regional countries to improve their security and defense capabilities. In the Caspian region sovereignty equals security. This means respecting other countries’ sovereignty and being able to defend one’s own sovereignty. The U.S. should work bilaterally and, when appropriate, through NATO to improve the security and military capabilities of partners in the region. In some cases, such as Turkmenistan, the U.S. should seek to deepen defense ties, but not in an overt or public way.
• Counter the rise of Islamist extremism in the region. The U.S. should work with Caspian countries to prevent the region from becoming a transit zone and recruiting ground for Islamist extremists, especially ISIS. This could include capacity building in the security sector and better intelligence sharing between the U.S. and the countries in the region when national caveats allow.
• Monitor the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia’s close ties with Russia. Peace talks over Nagorno-Karabakh have been stalled for years, and the U.S. can do very little to bring the parties back to the negotiating table. However, remaining silent on the matter offers implicit approval of the status quo. The U.S. should continue to call for a peaceful solution to the conflict that includes the withdrawal of Armenian forces from all Azerbaijani territories.
• Discourage Europe from becoming dependent on Iranian oil and gas. Some in Europe are keen to import Iranian oil and gas and might even see this as a credible alternative to Russia. Yet nothing in the past 35 years has shown that Iran can be a trusted partner. Europe should avoid the temptation to import Iranian oil and gas because any degree of dependency on Tehran will further weaken Europe’s energy security.
• Provide military and security assistance to all deserving allies in the region. The U.S. government’s decision to provide military assistance to another country should be based on American security interests and not certain pressure groups lobbying Congress. Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act is an unfair impediment to this.

Geopolitical Importance

Russia and Iran, the two major powers in the region, view the Caspian with different priorities, but they share the same goal of maximizing their influence over Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan and reducing the influence of the West.

On the back of the Vienna Agreement, Iran will become more active in the Caspian region. Kazakhstan will remain nervous about Moscow’s designs on the predominately ethnic Russian part of the country, and Astana will see its membership in the Eurasian Economic Union as more of a liability than a benefit. Nothing suggests that Turkmenistan will open its society, but if the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline can be realized, Ashgabat will play a huge role in helping Europe to reduce its dependence on Russia for energy. Azerbaijan’s geostrategic position presents many benefits for Europe and by extension for the United States, and Baku will continue to play an important role in the region. However, unless the countries of the Caspian start to diversify their economies in light of the recent drop in crude oil prices, their futures could be bleak.

The Caspian region has been, is, and will continue to be an area of geopolitical importance and competition. If the U.S. is to have a grand strategy to deal with a resurgent Russia and an emboldened Iran and to improve Europe’s energy security, policymakers in Washington cannot ignore the Caspian region.

About the author:
*Luke Coffey is Margaret Thatcher Fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The Heritage Foundation.

Source:
This article was published by The Heritage Foundation.

Notes:
[1] For example, the Volga–Don Canal was used when the U.S. sold patrol boats to Azerbaijan. News release, “Former U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Point Brower to Be Officially Commissioned,” Embassy of the United States in Baku, Azerbaijan, September 18, 2003, http://azerbaijan.usembassy.gov/pr091803.html (accessed September 16, 2015).

[2] Marina Kozlova, “Caspian Canal Could Boost Kazakh Trade,” Bloomberg Business, July 9, 2007, http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2007-07-09/caspian-canal-could-boost-kazakh-tradebusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice (accessed September 16, 2015).

[3] U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Caspian Sea Region,” August 26, 2013, http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/regions-topics.cfm?RegionTopicID=CSR (accessed September 16, 2015).

[4] Nigar Orujova, “Caspian Sturgeon Population Declining to Critical Level,” AzerNews, February 3, 2015, http://www.azernews.az/azerbaijan/76779.html (accessed September 16, 2015).

[5] “Pollution and Overfishing Plague the Caspian Sea,” The Guardian, March 11, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2015/mar/11/iran-caspian-sea-pollution-overfishing (accessed September 16, 2015).

[6] Azerbaijan is the only country that borders Russia, Iran, and Turkey.

[7] Partnership for Peace forms the basis of NATO relations with Euro-Atlantic partners that are not formally part of the alliance.

[8] The CSTO is a Russian-backed intergovernmental security alliance loosely designed to counter NATO. It was founded in 1992 and includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. (Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan left the organization in 1999.) Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty states: “In case an act of aggression is committed against any of the Member States all the other Member States will provide it with necessary assistance, including military one, as well as provide support with the means at their disposal in exercise of the right to collective defense in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter.” Collective Security Treaty Organization, “Basic Facts,” http://www.odkb.gov.ru/start/index_aengl.htm (accessed September 21, 2015).

[9] The EEU is an economic union loosely modelled after the European Union. Established in January 2015, its members include Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. It is the successor to the Eurasian Economic Community.

[10] The CIS is a loose association of states that were once part of the Soviet Union. Established in 1991, its members include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Ukraine and Turkmenistan have associate memberships. Georgia left in 2008 after Russia’s invasion of the country.

[11] Vladimir Putin, “Press Statement Following the Fourth Caspian Summit,” Astrakhan, Russia, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/46689 (accessed September 16, 2015).

[12] Eldar M. Eldarov, Edward C. Holland, and Magomed-Kamil B. Kamilov, “Oil and Gas Production in the Russian Sector of the Caspian Sea: Public Opinion on Development Paths and Consequences,” Academia, 2015, http://www.academia.edu/6085368/Oil_and_gas_production_in_the_Russian_sector_of_the_Caspian_Sea_public_opinion_on_development_paths_and_consequences (accessed September 16, 2015).

[13] BBC News, “Regions and Territories: Kalmykia,” November 29, 2011, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/4580467.stm (accessed September 21, 2015).

[14] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “Eccentric President of Kalmykia to Step Down After 17 Years,” September 8, 2010, http://www.rferl.org/content/Eccentric_President_Of_Kalmykia_To_Step_Down_After_17_Years_/2152449.html (accessed September 21, 2015).

[15] U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Caspian Sea Region.”

[16] Eldarov et al., “Oil and Gas Production in the Russian Sector of the Caspian Sea.”

[17] Ariel Cohen, “A Threat to the West: Rise of the Islamist Insurgency in the Northern Caucasus and Russia’s Inadequate Response,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2643, March 26, 2012, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/03/a-threat-to-the-west-the-rise-of-islamist-insurgency-in-the-northern-caucasus.

[18] U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Caspian Sea Region.”

[19] “EIA: Iran Oil Market Overview,” Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide, http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/eia-iran-oil-market-overview/ (accessed September 16, 2015).

[20] Associated Press, “Azerbaijan: 22 Held as Iranian Agents in a Terrorism Plot, Officials Say,” The New York Times, March 15, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/world/asia/azerbaijan-22-held-as-iranian-agents-in-a-terrorism-plot-officials-say.html (accessed September 21, 2015).

[21] Gulgiz Dadashova, “Tehran Ready to Supply Azerbaijani Oil to Persian Gulf,” AzerNews, August 4, 2015, http://www.azernews.az/oil_and_gas/86334.html (accessed September 16, 2015).

[22] Sam Wilkin and Babak Dehghanpisheh, “Rouhani Says Nuclear Deal a ‘Third Way’ for Iranian Foreign Policy,” Reuters, August 2, 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/02/us-iran-nuclear-rouhani-idUSKCN0Q70TX20150802 (accessed September 21, 2015).

[23] Temkin Jafarov, “Iran Ready to Export Gas to Europe via Azerbaijan, Says Minister,” Trend News Agency, August 21, 2015, http://en.trend.az/business/energy/2425924.html (accessed August 27, 2015).

[24] Aleksandra Jarosiewicz, “Baku Keeps a Wary Eye on Tehran,” Transitions Online, August 6, 2015, http://www.tol.org/client/article/24899-azerbaijan-iran-oil-pipelines.html (accessed September 21, 2015).

[25] Casey Michel, “Caspian Agreement: Rare Good News for Central Asia Relations,” The Diplomat, May 31, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/caspian-agreement-rare-good-news-for-central-asia-relations/ (accessed September 16, 2015).

[26] Malika Orazgaliyeva, “FM Idrissov Briefs Diplomatic Corps on 550th Anniversary of Kazakh Khanate,” The Astana Times, September 10, 2015, http://astanatimes.com/2015/09/fm-idrissov-briefs-diplomatic-corps-on-550th-anniversary-of-kazakh-khanate/ (accessed September 21, 2015).

[27] Ian Traynor, “Kazakhstan Is the Latest Russian Neighbour to Feel Putin’s Chilly Nationalist Rhetoric,” The Guardian, September 1, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/01/kazakhstan-russian-neighbour-putin-chilly-nationalist-rhetoric (accessed September 21, 2015).

[28] Renat Tashkinbayev and Dinara Urazova, “Nazarbayev Suggests Creating Caspian Free Trade Zone,” Tengri News, October 1, 2014, http://en.tengrinews.kz/politics_sub/Nazarbayev-suggests-creating-Caspian-free-trade-zone-256520/ (accessed September 21, 2015).

[29] Terry Miller and Anthony B. Kim, 2015 Index of Economic Freedom (Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation and Dow Jones & Company, Inc., 2015), pp. 263–264, http://www.heritage.org/index/country/kazakhstan.

[30] John C. K. Daly, “Kashagan Oil Field Comes Back to Life,” Silk Road Reporters, July 10, 2015, http://www.silkroadreporters.com/2015/07/10/kashagan-oil-field-comes-back-to-life/ (accessed September 22, 2015).

[31] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “Operations at Kashagan Oil Field to Resume by 2017,” June 17, 2015, http://www.rferl.org/content/kazakhtan-oil-field-resuming-operations-2017/27076913.html (accessed September 16, 2015).

[32] Andrew E. Kramer, “Turkmenistan’s President Re-elected with 97% of Vote,” The New York Times, February 13, 2102, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/world/asia/berdymukhammedov-re-elected-president-of-turkmenistan.html (accessed September 22, 2015).

[33] Turkmenistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “The Conference Devoted to the UN GA Resolution ‘Permanent Neutrality of Turkmenistan’ Held at the IIR of the MFA of Turkmenistan,” http://www.mfa.gov.tm/en/news-en/3205-the-conference-devoted-to-the-un-ga-resolution-permanent-neutrality-of-turkmenistan-held-at-the-iir-of-the-mfa-of-turkmenistan (accessed September 16, 2015).

[34] Eurasianet.org, “Turkmenistan: Ashgabat Playing Key US/NATO Support Role in Afghan War,” http://www.eurasianet.org/node/62683 (accessed September 16, 2015).

[35] Elmira Tariverdiyeva, “Caspian Sea’s Status Problem—Potential Source of More Problems,” Trend News Agency, August 7, 2015, http://en.trend.az/azerbaijan/business/2422962.html (accessed September 16, 2015).

[36] Fitzroy Maclean, To Caucasus: The End of All the Earth (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1976), p. 26.

[37] Security Council Resolution 822 (S/RES/822) on April 30, 1993; Resolution 853 (S/RES/853) on July 29, 1993; Resolution 874 (S/RES/874) on October 14, 1993; and Resolution 884 (S/RES/884) on November 12, 1993.

[38] The Minsk Group was established by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1992 and consists of Russia, France, and the U.S.

[39] British Petroleum, “Azerbaijan Marks 20 Years Since Milestone Oil Contract,” September 22, 2014, http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/press/bp-magazine/observations/azerbaijan-marks-20-years-since-milestone-oil-contract.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[40] U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, International Religious Freedom Report for 2013, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm (accessed September 22, 2015).

[41] Svante E. Cornell, “Azerbaijan: U.S. Energy, Security, and Human Rights Interests,” testimony before the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, February 12, 2015, http://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA14/20150212/102956/HHRG-114-FA14-Wstate-CornellS-20150212.pdf (accessed September 17, 2015).

[42] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “RFE/RL Closes on Baku Bureau, Continues Azerbaijan Operation,” May 22, 2015, http://www.rferl.org/content/azerbaijan-rferl-closes-baku-bureau/27031745.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[43] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “Azerbaijan Orders OSCE to Shut Down Baku Office,” Asbarez, June 5, 2015, http://asbarez.com/136607/azerbaijan-orders-osce-to-close-baku-office/ (accessed September 17, 2015).

[44] Cornell, “Azerbaijan,” p. 5.

[45] U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, “2015 UNHCR Subregional Operations Profile—Eastern Europe,” http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e48d1e6.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[46] U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Caspian Sea Region.”

[47] Christopher Adams, David Sheppard, and Robert Wright, “Oil Price Collapse Hammers Big US Energy Groups,” The Financial Times, July 31, 2015, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/718f6818-379c-11e5-bdbb-35e55cbae175.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[48] Ben N. Dunlap, “Divide and Conquer? The Russian Plan for Ownership of the Caspian Sea,” Boston College International and Comparative Law Review, Vol. 27, No. 1 (2004), http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol27/iss1/4/ (accessed September 17, 2015).

[49] Trend News Agency, “Working Group on Caspian Sea Status Adopts Communique,” September 10, 2015, http://en.trend.az/azerbaijan/politics/2432052.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[50] Vestnik Kavkaza, “The Fifth Caspian Summit Will Take Place in 2016,” September 29, 2014, http://vestnikkavkaza.net/news/politics/60498.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[51] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “Putin Optimistic of Eventual Accord After Fourth Caspian Summit,” September 29, 2014, http://www.rferl.org/content/caspian-sea-summit/26610935.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[52] Bruce Pannier, “Kazakhs, Turkmen Divide Caspian Spoils Despite Demarcation Doubts,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 27, 2015, http://www.rferl.org/content/caspian-demarcation-oil-kazakhstan-turkmeinstan/27039904.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[53] The Azerbaijanis call it Kapaz, while Turkmenistan refers to it as Serdar.

[54] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan Trade Accusation over Disputed Oil Field,” June 19, 2015, http://www.rferl.org/content/turkmenistan-azerbaijan-trade-accusations-over-disputed-oil-field/24618957.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[55] Hanna Zimnitskaya and James von Geldern, “Is the Caspian Sea a Sea; and Why Does It Matter?” Journal of Eurasian Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (January 2011), pp. 1–14, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879366510000424 (accessed September 17, 2015).

[56] Trend News Agency, “Caspian Sea Has a Special Status in Iran’s Naval Based Development—Navy Commander,” July 30, 2015, http://en.trend.az/iran/politics/2420952.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[57] Micha’el Tanchum, “A Breakthrough on the TAPI Pipeline?” The Diplomat, March 20, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/a-breakthrough-on-the-tapi-pipeline/ (accessed September 17, 2015).

[58] Alexei Fenenko, “Obama’s Caspian Strategy: Why Does Washington Support the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline Project?” Valdai Discussion Club, June 25, 2012, http://valdaiclub.com/blogs/44960.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[59] Vusala Abbasova, “Turkmenistan Keen on Increasing Energy Supplies to Afghanistan,” AzerNews, September 11, 2015, http://www.azernews.az/region/87776.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[60] Reuters, “Turkmenistan Says Russia’s Gazprom Has Not Paid for Any Gas This Year,” July 8, 2015, http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/08/gas-turkmenistan-gazprom-idUKL8N0ZO30Q20150708 (accessed September 17, 2015).

[61] Murat Tinas, “TANAP Secures First Step with Groundbreaking Ceremony,” Natural Gas Europe, March 18, 2015, http://www.naturalgaseurope.com/tanap-pipeline-groundbreaking-ceremony-kars-turkey-22781 (accessed September 17, 2015).

[62] Aynur Karimova, “SOCAR Fiber to Lay 800-km Cable Along TANAP,” AzerNews, September 7, 2015, http://www.azernews.az/oil_and_gas/87611.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[63] Nasimi Aghayev, “The Western Flow of Caspian Natural Gas,” The Washington Times, August 26, 2015, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/26/nasimi-aghayev-caspian-natural-gas/ (accessed September 17, 2015).

[64] “Kars–Tbilisi–Baku Railway Line to Open in 2015,” February 5, 2015, Daily Sabah, http://www.dailysabah.com/economy/2015/02/05/karstbilisibaku-railway-line-to-open-in-2015 (accessed September 17, 2015).

[65] Scott Kennedy and David A. Parker, “Building China’s ‘One Belt, One Road,’” Center for Strategic and International Studies, April 3, 2015, http://csis.org/publication/building-chinas-one-belt-one-road (accessed September 17, 2015).

[66] Putin, “Press Statement Following the Fourth Caspian Summit.”

[67] Thomas de Waal, The Caucasus: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 100.

[68] BBC News, “EU Warning over Russia ‘Land Grab’ in South Ossetia Border Now,” July 16, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33549462 (accessed September 22, 2015).

Central Asia has been a strategic concern to India ever since the colonial era. The region rose to an immense significance in the 19th Century due to the Great Game when it was feared that the Russians would invade British India through Central Asia. On the top of this, the unmapped territory of the region added to British fears regarding the extent of Russian inroads into Central Asia. Thus, began the scramble for the Central Asian landmass. By late 19th Century, the Russians had occupied vast swathes of the region and the southern reaches of their conquered territories reached to southern Tajikistan, touching the Wakhan corridor (which borders the present northern borders of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir). However, the looming threat of World War I united these hitherto archenemies and the tense situation was defused. Post-World War I, the Central Asian region was well absorbed into the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 did not only mark an end to the Cold War, but it was also a defining moment for Central Asia, whose constituent regions obtained new identities as independent republics. These were namely, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Their frontiers touching the northern areas of Iran and Afghanistan also make their borders very much a part of Central Asia. The new geopolitical and economic potential that was unleashed in the post-Cold War phase suggests that it is now the need of the hour to engage more deeply with Central Asia, and to tap the region’s energy reserves to ensure its economic growth. Also, there is a need to ensure a direct overland access to Central Asia, as the absence of an overland linkage has resulted in sub-optimal benefits for India. On the other hand, China has converted its geographical proximity with Central Asia into a geopolitical and a geo-economic success that will be discussed as a comparative analysis via-a-vis India.

Huge oil-gas reserves and hydroelectricity generation potential are converting the region into an energy hub that has the potential to meet the region’s growing global energy requirements, especially India whose economic engine needs more energy to maintain a stable growth rate.

The article discusses the relations between India and Central Asian republics with a greater focus on the economic, energy and geopolitical linkage that is being manifested as a new “Great Game.” The combination of Central Asia’s geographical positioning along with its energy endowments, pipeline politics and international infrastructure corridors passing through make it a an indispensable region.

Two factors make Central Asia an unavoidable region:

1. Central Asia borders Russia to its north, China to its east, Europe to its west and South Asia to its south.
2. Energy endowments and relatively underdeveloped economy, combined with its geographical positioning have given rise to a new era of the Pipeline politics and infrastructure corridors.

RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIA AND CENTRAL ASIA

After attaining independence, India was left devoid of any overland route connecting it to Central Asia. The direct access routes that existed were those of the traditional Silk Route, in which India was disconnected from Central Asia after Pakistan was formed. Added to this, Kashmir, which served as a linking region, lost its connectivity to Central Asia due to two developments. The first was the Pakistani occupation of the Kashmiri territory of Gilgit-Baltistan, which bordered Afghanistan on its northwest and Chinese Xinjiang (an import transit route to Central Asia). The other was the coming of the Chinese Communist party to power, which ended Silk Route trading between Ladakh and Kashgar (present day Xinjiang, China).

The independence of India coincided with the beginning of the Cold War, following which the Indian leadership allied itself to the Soviet Union owing to socialist leanings and geographical proximity. Since these republics were part of the Soviet Union, the interaction was not significant as all of New Delhi’s dealings were undertaken through Moscow. Still, the economic engagement was so shallow that, by the time Soviet Union disintegrated and the New Central Asian republics formed a union, “the markets of the constituent parts of the new Commonwealth of Independent States accounted for only 1.5% of India’s exports in 1992”.1

“India’s immediate objective was to establish direct interaction with each of these new states. A major Indian initiative to establish contacts with the political leadership of Central Asia had been conceptualized a few months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. This resulted in India hosting the first visit of President of Uzbekistan in August 1991, followed up in quick succession by visits by President of Kazakhstan, in February 1992, President of Kyrgyzstan in March 1992, President of Turkmenistan in April 1992, and the visit of Prime Minister of Tajikistan in February 1993. Each of these visits resulted in the creation of a legal framework for interaction between India and the new Central Asian states”2

POST-COLD WAR INTERACTION: ENERGY AND ACCESSIBILITY

Kazakhstan has 12% of the world’s uranium resources and became the leading uranium producing country in 20093. By 2011, Kazakhstan was the world’s largest uranium producer. With the fourth-largest gas reserves in the world, Turkmenistan is also vital energy hub. The Caspian region of Turkmenistan is endowed with huge oil and gas reserves.

In January 2009 Kazatomprom signed an agreement with India’s Nuclear Power Corporation (NPCIL) to supply 2100 tonnes of uranium to India for the time period 2010-20144. “An Agreement between ONGC Videsh Limited and KazMunaiGaz on the purchase of 25% stake in the Satpayev Oil Block in the Caspian Sea was signed in Astana in April 2011”5. In 2014, Uzbekistan, one of the world’s top ten uranium and gold producers, also signed up to supply 2,000 metric tonnes of Uranium ore concentrate to India over the next four years (2014-2018)6 .

The TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline is said to be a game changer in the regional Balance of Power.

TAPI

The original project started on March 15, 1995 when an inaugural memorandum of understanding between the governments of Turkmenistan and Pakistan for a pipeline project was signed7. The project didn’t start due to the instability caused by Taliban the proposed pipeline passes through Afghanistan. In April 2008, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan signed a framework agreement to buy natural gas from Turkmenistan8. In 2010, an intergovernmental agreement was signed to begin the work. “The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India Natural Gas Pipeline (TAPI) Project aims to export up to 33 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas per year through a proposed approximately 1,800-kilometer (km) pipeline from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India”9.

However, issues like political instability in Afghanistan, agreement over pipeline transit fees and consortium have stalled the progress. The cost in building the pipeline is estimated to be about $10 billion, which too has become a stumbling block. Added to this, is the lack of a foreign commercial partner for the project.

The latest development is that the Turkmen President has ordered state companies Turkmengaz and Turkmengazneftstroi to begin building the Turkmen section of the pipeline, the Turkmen state media reported in November, 201510.

This project, if implemented, will not only diversify India’s energy import basket, but also lead to de-escalation of conflict between India and Pakistan.

INTERNATIONAL NORTH-SOUTH TRANSPORT CORRIDOR

India (along with Russia) devised a new route to reach Central Asia and Russia via Iran. The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) is a multi-modal transportation corridor that was approved in 2000 by the signing of an intergovernmental agreement in St. Petersburg between India, Russia and Iran. On January 18, 2012, a meeting of the INSTC member countries to discuss modalities for moving forward on the INSTC project was held in New Delhi. During this meeting, it was pointed out that support of countries like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey will be sought in order to complete the missing links in the North–South corridor11.

The Bandar Abbas port and Chabahar port in Iran are the gateways for India into the Central Asian markets. The Bandar Abbas port is connected via rail to Bandar Anzali (a port located in Southern Caspian Sea) from which the freight will be shipped to the Northern end. The northern end of the port will be linked to the Turkmen Kazakh rail line which will transport the freight in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. The freight destined for Russia would be transported to St. Petersburg, which is the terminal point of the corridor.

“The proposed international corridor INSTC is expected to slash time for transportation of cargo to Russia from India to about 30 days, just half of the time presently taken.”It is expected that cargo by this route would reach Russia in about 25-30 days as against the present route through Suez which takes about 45-60 days. In May, India and Tajikistan agreed to enhance connectivity between them including through the INSTC and other regional transit arrangements to boost trade.”12. Further, According to the officials working for the INSTC project, “it could also serve as the route for Southeast Asian countries to send their cargo to Europe instead of the Suez Canal route to cut down on both cost and time”.13
There is also a likely possibility of connecting the INSTC with the “Ashgabat Agreement Project” of 2011 which is a railroad “transit pact established in 2011 between Uzbekistan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Oman”14.

“The Foreign Trade Policy of India, 2015-20, has highlighted the importance of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) in expanding India’s trade and investment links with Central Asia.”15

The importance that India attaches to INSTC is evident from the fact that India was quick to sign the Chabahar port project in May, 2015 even before the Iranian nuclear deal was finalized. Although the Government of India signed the deal in 2003, the international pressure on Iran due to its nuclear programme stalled the deal. However, the deal has got a new push in 2015 with the Indian government investing $195 million to upgrade the port.

GEOPOLITICS OF PORT CONNECTIVITY: GWADAR VERSUS CHABAHAR PORT

Central Asia, being a landlocked region can be accessed to India from Afghanistan and Iran. This made Iran a focal point in India’s link to Central Asia. Hence, the only disadvantage Central Asia faced was its landlocked geography and hence no access to any of the sea based ports. This shortcoming is all set to be filled by China and India. On one hand, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was unveiled in April 2015, whereby the Karakoram Highway (which links Islamabad to Xinjiang) will be extended southwards to the Gwadar Port in Balochistan. Xinjiang’s proximity to Central Asian Borders means that freight docked at Gwadar port can be transported to Central Asia via Xinjiang and vice versa.16

Also, Central Asian oil can be transported to Gwadar to be shipped for export. Chinese authorities are presently supervising the development of the Gwadar Port. Incidentally, the Chabahar port lies just 70 kilometres west of Gwadar and is seen as India’s strategic response to China. Unlike the CPEC, which runs through a very high altitude, the INSTC has a direct connectivity to Chabahar port, which is relatively stable compared to Gwadar region which is marred by the Baloch insurgency.

THE CHINESE CHALLENGE: MARITIME SILK ROAD AND PIPELINE CONNECTIVITY

Following the Soviet disintegration, China was the first nation to establish economic ties with the Central Asian countries. The Chinese, compared to India, have massive investments in the region. For instance, Chinese investments in Kazakhstan amount to $3 billion, which are in the form of pipelines, rail and road connectivity. China has now become the largest trade partner of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, the second-largest trade partner of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and the third-largest trade partner of Tajikistan. Chinese engagement with Central Asia is evident from the fact that “In 2000, China’s trade with Central Asia was about $1 billion and by 2013 it had ballooned to $50 billion”17. Compared to this, India’s present trade figure with Central Asia amounts to a mere $1.4 billion.18

Kazakhstan, owing to its sheer geographical size and energy reserves was the first country on China’s focus. “China and Kazakhstan started energy cooperation in 1997, marked by an intergovernmental agreement covering diverse means of collaboration in oil and gas fields, including an oil pipeline between western Kazakhstan and China’s Xinjiang which became operational in 2005”19.

The Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline starts at Turkmen-Uzbek border and runs through central Uzbekistan and southern Kazakhstan before reaching China’s Xinjiang region. Currently the gas pipeline has three lines in parallel, each running for 1,830 kilometres20. The construction of a fourth pipeline, which passes through Tajikistan, is under progress.

In 2013, China unveiled its Silk Road Economic Belt project whereby it aims to build infrastructure and freight corridors (railways and roadways) which would further link to Europe. In 2014, China has pledged $40 billion under “Silk Road Fund” for this project. The first sign of the China’s grand plans have been manifested through the successful completion of the Yiwu (a city in Zhejiang Province of China) to Madrid freight railway corridor. “The longest rail link in the world and the first direct link between China and Spain is up and running after a train from Yiwu in coastal China completed its maiden journey of 8,111 miles to Madrid. En route it passed through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany and France before arriving at the Abroñigal freight terminal in Madrid”21. Through the Central Asian doors, China seeks to transform the Eurasian landmass into a unified economic belt, and reaching its ultimate destination, that is the European countries

INDIA’S CONNECT CENTRAL ASIA POLICY (2012) AND RENEWED FOCUS ON CENTRAL ASIA

India kick-started its Central Asia policy with the beginning of the First India-Central Asia dialogue in 2012, summed in a speech delivered by Minister of State External Affairs, Shri E. Ahmed, which aimed at engaging with the region deeply through economic, social and cultural ties. Following this announcement, several significant initiatives followed.

Moreover, following the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Kazakhstan this July, the 2009 uranium deal was renewed under which Kazakhstan will supply India with 5,000 metric tons of nuclear fuel for the time period from 2015-2019 22.

In July 2015, the visit of Prime Minister of India to the Central Asia was a renewed strategic engagement and reminiscent of former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who visited the five Central Asia states (former Soviet regions). The recent visit had a three-fold focus: energy, exports and countering China’s inroads in the region23. One of the key issues raised was a renewed proposal for these republics to connect with the INSTC.

A developed and integrated Central Asia is not only favorable for India’s economic and geopolitical calculus, but also for the stability of Eurasia — as well as for the South Asian region. The new Great Game has begun as India and China engage for connectivity with Central Asia, as well as a scramble for its resources.

About the author:
*Prateek Joshi, researcher at South Asian University, New Delhi

Notes:
1 http://www.iiss.org/en/events/events/archive/2012-4a49/july-70c4/india-central-asia-and-the-new-silk-road-e4d1
2. http://www.iiss.org/en/events/events/archive/2012-4a49/july-70c4/india-central-asia-and-the-new-silk-road-e4d1
3. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-G-N/Kazakhstan/
4. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-G-N/Kazakhstan/
5. http://www.mea.gov.in/Portal/ForeignRelation/Kazakhstan_2015_07_10.pdf
6. http://indianexpress.com/article/business/business-others/india-widens-n-fuel-base-signs-up-uzbek- firm-for-uranium-supplies/
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline
8. http://www.nbr.org/downloads/pdfs/eta/ES_Conf10_Lall.pdf
9. http://www.adb.org/projects/44463-013/main
10. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-11-07/news/68089750_1_tapi-project-33-billion-cubic-metres-energy-needs
11. http://www.idsa.in/issuebrief/InternationalNorthSouthTransportCorridor_msroy_180815
12. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-07-30/news/65036755_1_indian-ocean-india-and-tajikistan-cargo
13. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-09-02/news/66144139_1_india-iran-russia-corridor-project-north-south-transport-corridor
14. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/prime-minister-narendra-modis-visit-to-uzbekistan/article7392482.ece
15. http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/an-opportunity-for-india-in-central-asia/
16. http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/emphasis-on-gwadarkashgar-corridor/article7126901.ece
17. http://thediplomat.com/2015/06/will-all-roads-in-central-asia-eventually-lead-to-china/
18. http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/CII-Hails-PM-Modi%E2%80%99s-Landmark-Tour-of-Central-Asia/2015/07/13/article2917811.ece
19. http://news3.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-07/12/content_4819484.htm
20. http://www.cnpc.com.cn/en/FlowofnaturalgasfromCentralAsia/FlowofnaturalgasfromCentralAsia2.shtml
21. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/10/silk-railway-freight-train-from-china-pulls-into-madrid
22. http://thediplomat.com/2015/07/india-inks-new-nuclear-deal-with-kazakhstan/
23. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/a-counterpoint-to-chinas-inroads/article7228668.ece

By Shankari Sundararaman*

Prime Minster Narendra Modi’s four-day visit to Malaysia and Singapore is a vital part of the continuing emphasis given to India’s Act East Policy. In November 2014, during the India-ASEAN Summit and the East Asia Summit at Naypyitaw, with Myanmar as the ASEAN chair, Modi laid emphasis to the fact that the Look East Policy would be rechristened as the Act East Policy. This shift seemed to endorse a more action oriented approach to India’s growing interaction with the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region. Of primary significance in this context was the need to balance India’s foreign policy with the wider Asia-Pacific region to converge with the development focus given to the domestic policies of the current government.

In keeping with this, the focus of Prime Minister Modi’s visit has been on two parallels – first, is the emphasis given to the bilateral ties with both Malaysia and Singapore, which have been key partners in pushing for India’s deeper engagement with the ASEAN countries. Second, is the significance accorded to multilateral institutional processes; the East Asia Summit, in which India has been a member since 2005. This reiterates the continuing focus that India will give to its role in regional multilateral frameworks.

In the context of bilateral ties, the visit to both Malaysia and Singapore are critical. In Malaysia the stress was on issues relating to culture and cooperation along some areas of convergence. The unveiling of the statue of Swami Vivekananda laid emphasis on the cultural links. Prime Minister Modi’s reference to Vivekananda’s stress on One Asia finds resonance in the current theme of the East Asia Summit which was based on the premise of `Our people, Our Community and Our Vision’, highlighting the move towards achieving the ASEAN Community.

Cultural exchange programmes were also initiated for a period of five years from 2015-2020. Added to this, cooperation is to be enhanced along areas of cyber security, in performance delivery and management (PEMANDU), which will address issues where administrative delays have occurred and ensuring focus on issues of governance. A key area is the boosting of investments to complement the `Make in India’ initiative. Drawing investments, particularly in the Smart City initiative is one key area that will be critical for the Modi government. On the defence cooperation front the key was once again on maritime issues and disaster management.

Following this the visit to Singapore led to the Strategic Partnership Agreement with Singapore under which 10 agreements were inked. Moving towards a Strategic Partnership with Singapore broadens the scope of the relations along several other areas of cooperation. One of the key areas in this regard is the bolstering of the defence cooperation agreement, which includes joint exercises between the forces of the Indian and Singapore military personnel. It also looks at increasing the dialogue between their defence ministers. One of the possible areas where more emphasis will be placed in the years to come is in the realm of defence industry where the two countries are exploring options for co-production and co-development. This again fits into the agenda of `Make in India’, contributing critically to this plank of the Modi government. In the same context the issues relating to skill development have been a core area in which India and Singapore will look towards greater collaboration. One of the critical focus areas will be the development of Amaravati, the new capital of Andhra Pradesh which is seeking large investments from Singapore to develop its infrastructure capabilities.

Second focus of Prime Minister Modi’s visit was the East Asia Summit itself. The recently concluded 10th East Asia Summit held at Kuala Lumpur is a watershed in the evolution of the regional grouping that brings the key players in the region together under one umbrella. The East Asia Summit draws its origins from the ASEAN plus Three (East Asia) initiative which originally began as a macro-economic risk management group in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. However, with the inclusion of key players across the Asia-Pacific region, the initial vision of the East Asia Summit has expanded, making it one of the core groupings among the institutional mechanisms in the wider region.

Two key areas of focus in this years’ summit relates to the issue of terrorism and territorial disputes over maritime extents. The November 13 terrorist attack in Paris was an issue over which the members of the EAS converged, stating that the response has to be coordinated to address the increasing threats from groups like the ISIS. Added to this, the humanitarian crisis from movement of refugees was a critical note for all the members. Further the EAS also highlighted the tensions in the South China Sea arising from the assertions of claimant countries over territorial issues. In this context, the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated that China’s building of artificial islands in the contested sea was not to be seen as a threat, but as a provision to assist in humanitarian and public goods. This explanation did not go down well with other smaller claimants in the region given that the threat perceptions across the region from Chinese assertions in the South China Sea were contributing to regional tensions.

India’s position relating to this is valid in that it supported the right of Freedom of Navigation and reiterated its support to settling disputes through the use of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). India’s recent settlement of its maritime dispute with Bangladesh is a case in point which is critical and can offer a useful modus operandi for the settlement of maritime claims elsewhere. This standpoint by India also increases the leverage it has with its ASEAN neighbours and is indicative of the expanded interest that India seeks in the regional dynamics that are currently in place.

*Prof. Shankari Sundararaman is a Professor in the Center for Indo-Pacific Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She can be reached at: editor@spsindia.in