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Saturday 30 September 2017

Nation At 9: Does the government need to prioritise between railways and bullet train? (NewsX)



75 lakh commuters use Mumbai locals every day and their safety is under tremendous threat to the state of the bridge. Elphinstone foot overbridge was a tragedy waiting to happen. With MPs to Mumbaikars, all are raising a red flag. A day after the tragedy, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal did stock taking and made crucial changes to ensure that the safety of commuters is paramount. So much so that the Indian Railways is expected to work on a war footing to identify bridges that need fixing and foot overbridges will now be treated as essential and not an amenity. While these measures are being taken, the question we ask is when will the bridge be built? Previous Railway minister Suresh Prabhu announced the bridge in Feb 2016 and the tender is yet to be awarded. Does the government need to prioritise between railways and bullet train? 

Nation At 9: Bhagwat's speech a wake-up call for Modi sarkar? (NewsX)


A rising tide lifts all boats. A saying most apt for the Indian economy hoping to lift millions out of poverty, as higher growth benefits even the last man standing in the queue. But the economy is clearly now on a downward spiral. Something that's worrying not just BJP senior leaders like Yashwant Sinha and Subramaniam Swamy, who have warned of the economy going into a tailspin if corrective measures are not implemented. And it's now the ideological fountainhead of the party, the RSS, who has raised a red flag regarding the current health of the economy - not in a strident critique, but as a wake-up call. Mohan Bhagwat, in his Dussehra speech, from RSS headquarters has urged the government to junk existing policies to ensure job creation and safeguard small and medium sectors that bore the brunt of demonetisation and the GST roll out. That's our big focus tonight. While the government has been very dismissive of criticism from senior party leaders and opposition parties, will Bhagwat's message force Modi sarkar to do a reality check? 

IAS needs a 21st century ‘Modi-fication’ (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat 
 
The way in which a necessary move such as GST has been implemented illustrates the problem created by 21st century policies implemented in a 19th century fashion.
 
Seconds after the midnight ceremony on 15 August 1947 transferring power within a newly truncated country from London to Delhi, those who took over from the British headed in limousines to official residences hastily vacated by their former masters. Had Mahatma Gandhi more time on earth, there is little doubt that he would have demanded that India’s new masters adopt a lifestyle more in sync with the people they were ruling, rather than emulating the British in their pomp. Both Nehru and Patel kept the structure and chemistry of British rule intact. To this day, key branches of the executive follow manuals and procedures that have their origins in the nineteenth century. The Indian Police Act or the Indian Penal Code, to name just two examples, seem poised to celebrate the second century of their being made the foundation for administration. The bungalows, aircraft, automobiles, staff and other accoutrements of colonial authority remain, including going about on horseback as an essential part of training of those passing the IAS, the IFS, the IPS and other services examinations. Those entering them believe themselves superior and remote from the population they govern, for such continues to be the ethos of their cadres. There is even a caste system that remains in force since “birth” (i.e. central services examinations), and which classifies individuals according to the service they have been chosen for, with the IAS clearly at the apex, followed by the IFS and the IPS. Just as the white man (or, in rare cases, woman) was assumed (by themselves) to have the ability to understand and to command disparate wings of government, the IAS in particular continues to—in effect—run even those institutions (such as Niti Aayog) that were explicitly set up to create a different paradigm of governance. Neither bad performance nor lifestyles far removed from salaries by too many have been permitted to stand in the way of regular promotions such that practically every entrant to the IAS reaches the top of the salary scale, and enjoys the benefits of One Rank One Pension without a whimper of protest from North Block.
Several of the members of the IAS are indeed outstanding, perhaps about a third of them, but another third are either venal or incompetent or both, and need to be turfed out. A third of the IAS should be inducted each year from high achievers in “lower” cadres, while the remaining third should come from outside the services, and be chosen for their track record of proven achievement and integrity rather than frequency in attendance at Lutyens and other durbars. Both these streams should be given the same conditions of service as the third who will enter through the examination route. 10-year renewable contracts should be the norm for every member of the IAS (as well as other services), with lifetime tenure (i.e. doing away with the 10-year limitation) being given only to a quarter of the entire service, including those from other services and from outside, based on an exhaustive review of performance carried out after 10 years of entry. The operative words in the IAS are “Indian” and “Service”, and the values of both need to be inculcated through ensuring that field experience be present in all cases. For example, officials in the Ministry of Defense need to spend an initial ten weeks embedded with the armed forces, of which at least 10 days should be at a forward post. Such experience alone will give context and depth to the decisions needing to be made by IAS officers about how to make the armed forces have high morale and performance. In addition, at least a third of Defense Ministry posts at all levels should be held by those in uniform, who should serve one to three years in such jobs. A 10-week embedding within the police needs to be carried out for those officials posted in the Ministry of Home Affairs, just as practical experience in a print or television outlet should be mandatory for those in the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, including members of the Information service. Those in the Commerce & Industry ministry need to have work experience in these before taking up their departmental responsibilities. Every five years thereafter, a practical refresher programme of immersion in field streams needs to be ensured for every official. The IAS is the pivot of the administrative system, hence the need to ensure a level of knowledge and performance sufficient to carry out the vow of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to transform governance in India from a 19th century to a 21st century construct.
The way in which a necessary move such as GST has been implemented in practice illustrates the problem created by 21st century policies implemented in a 19th century fashion. First, the measure ought to have been passed in the first six months of the new government. Extra time was sought to “improve” the GST but it is difficult to see just what the improvements were that led to a wait of three years. Second, the measure contains such abominations as disallowing inter-state items for those above Rs 75 lakh turnover. Aside from the fact that the floor for exemption should have been Rs 5 crore rather than a paltry Rs 75 lakh, the blocking of inter-state trade is retrogressive in the context of Modi’s efforts at uniting the entire country into a single market. Third, there are too many rates and categories. A fixed rate of 10% would have ensured higher output in succeeding years, and therefore greater revenues over a 5-year period. Lower tax rates ensure higher collections. Relying on the Big Stick as has been done in the case of GST and demonetisation is counter to the Prime Minister’s credo of a citizen-friendly “Minimum Government”. Treat the Indian well and he will respond with enthusiasm. Treat him badly and he will call upon the experience of our country’s thousand years of survival in conditions of slavery to game the system, the way it happened with the return of almost all the cash extinguished on 8 November 2016 to the banking system. Those who have faith in the Prime Minister are confident that Modi will act soon to ensure that GST gets refashioned into a genuinely 21st century policy. Over to the PM.

Friday 29 September 2017

Election results bring scant relief to Merkel (Pakistan Observer)

Geopolitical Notes From India | M D Nalapat
 
EMPIRICAL evidence shows that any party or individual assisting German Chancellor Angela Merkel loses out very soon, whether they be in her own party or outside. The Social Democratic Party lost a quarter of its potential vote share because its leader, Martin Shultz, seemed to be ambivalent about joining hands with the CDU-CSU after the polls. These were SPD supporters who did not under any circumstances wish to see Angela Merkel remain as Chancellor, even with Shultz as her deputy, and either abstained from voting or went over to the Left Party or to the Green Party. While the Left has not been offered a role in any future Merkel-led coalition, the leaders of the Green Party seem to be willing to exchange their principles for ministerships and a chance at governmental patronage for the first time since their formation.
This will dismay the many supporters who regard the CDU-CSU and especially Merkel as toxic, and almost certainly assures the Greens a decline in their vote share by the time the next elections roll by. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) paid substantially for its earlier role of being a tail of the CDU-CSU, but so strong is the pull of ministerial office (including the Foreign Ministry) in a context where German foreign policy (including that related to the European Union) is decided only by Chancellor Merkel and those who could be expected to follow her lead in such matters.
As for the SPD, the hunger of Martin Shultz for the privileges of office will get met through his becoming the Leader of the Opposition, although in reality the opposition to Angela Merkel will come from the Left Party and the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Despite months of demonisation of the party by the corporate-controlled media in Germany, the party broke through the 5% barrier with ease, and seems set to overtake the CDU in voter support, especially if Merkel remains in charge. The German chancellor cannot admit to her mistakes, and hence is likely to double down on them, including the opening of the door to citizenship or at the least residency to up to four million family members of the million refugees from North Africa and the Middle East that were admitted into Germany during the past three years, in the expectation by her backers that this would win for Chancellor Merkel the Nobel Peace Prize, no matter what the consequences for the population of Germany.
In fact, the UK and France ought to have admitted such a large number rather than Germany, for the reason that it was Paris and London (together with the Clinton supporters within the Obama administration) who led the implementation by NATO of the policies which led to the refugee exodus President Donald Trump appears to be getting increasingly distant from the views expressed by him on the 2016 campaign trail. He has shed his pre-election adoption of geopolitical stances of visionaries such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and instead embraced the fossilised Euro-centric views of the Clinton and Bush White House years. It was dismaying to watch Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy hark back to the years of Spanish colonisation of South America and speak almost as the overlord of Venezuela, to approving bursts of comment from President Trump.
Certainly Nicholas Maduro is not the most suitable leader for that country, but to seek to roll back the social progress that was made under Hugo Chavez in the manner desired by Rajoy is to anchor policies to a past that has no chance of returning. Whether it be in Mexico or in Venezuela or in several other South American countries, the monopoly of money and political power in the hands of the Euro-elite are dissolving, although this seems to have escaped the attention of the Trump administration. President Trump was presumably not referring to the mass murder of indigenous tribes and the sadistic exploitation of human populations by Spanish conquistadors, when he spoke about the glories of Spanish history side by side with Rajoy, who leads a country that is bankrupt and kept fiscally alive only by the IMF and by unwary investors from the Middle East and East Asia.
The country has changed since the 1930s, and the leaders of the AfD are nowhere close in mindsets to what the Nazis were. Indeed, the head of the party has a live-in relationship with a person of the same sex as herself, and that too, from Sri Lanka and not from Germany or from the Nordic countries, which would have been the case had she been a racist. Demonizing the AfG is having diminishing returns, and that party is likely to grow further, now that its bete noire (Merkel) has been given another chance at office because of the ineptitude and uninspiring qualities of the Social Democratic Party leadership. Both the FDP as well as the Green Party are certain to lose popularity, once they accept ministerial positions in the CDU-CSU government. The Green Party and the FDP will only be supporting players, unable to change the direction of policy while being held responsible by the electorate for the failures of Chancellor Merkel.
In contrast, those opposing her will rise, including the SPD, now that it has made ir clear that it will not join hands with the CDU-CSU, a stance that ought to have been made equally explicit before the polls but was not, because of the hunger for office of some SPD leaders.Hopefully, the party base will assert itself over its presently weak leadership, and ensure that the party returns to policies that are more in tune with its instincts than was the case during the years spent as the junior partner of the CDU-CSU. Chancellor Merkel will not only have her majority in the Bundestag dependent on the Green Party, but will face opposition not only from the left (Der Linke and SPD) but – for the first time – the right as well. The AfD will make up in intensity what it lacks in numbers, and can be relied upon to figure prominently in newspaper headlines, as befits a party on the way up.

Thursday 28 September 2017

China’s newly-established Standby Peacekeeping Forces (CGTN)


China’s newly-established standby peacekeeping force of 8,000 troops will join the 2,500 Chinese “Blue Helmets” currently in operation to become the backbone of UN peace missions. What is China’s vision as a rising security provider? China began its participation in UN peacekeeping operations 27 years ago by sending five military observers to the Middle East in 1990. What are the new dynamics in global security cooperation? And, how will the UN prioritize politics while reforming peacekeeping? Will the UN take a more proactive role in pushing political resolutions?

Insight : The Challenge For States (Lok Sabha TV)

Tuesday 26 September 2017

Anti-graft drive critical to the future (China Daily)

By M D Nalapat
 
President Xi Jinping's campaign against corruption has made big achievements and his Belt and Road Initiative is already bearing fruit. In fact, they may be counted among China's historic policies.
China has punished far more dishonest officials, and far more strongly, than India. But that is reflective of the different political systems in the two countries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has the same view as President Xi: that improvement in administration is essential for boosting economic performance as well as public welfare.
In India, there has been a substantial increase in penal actions against corrupt officials since Modi took office in 2014. However, besides such moves, Modi is also harnessing technology to make the governance system less corrupt. An example is railway tickets and the issuing of passports.
Now that such items are dispensed online, corruption has been reduced. The more processes go online and become transparent, the greater will be the degree of honesty in the implementation of policies.
China has become a global internet power, with giants such as Baidu and Alibaba, and is, therefore, in a much better position to use digital systems to promote speed with honesty in decision-making, and on a much larger scale, than India, where internet coverage and bandwidth is still below desirable standards.
Modi has initiated several changes in the administration by, for example, beginning to recruit experts from the private sector to serve the administration. He would also like to see "minimum government and maximum governance" in India, and is working to achieve this in the same way as Xi is striving to bring the Chinese governance system to 21st century standards of performance.
In China, thanks to the strong action taken by Xi against even the highest-level officials found guilty of corruption, some officials no longer exhibit arrogance. They understand that their duty is to serve the people, and not be served by the people. Increased accountability among even high-level officials has been a welcome side effect of China's anti-corruption campaign.
The use of technology and the deepening accountability will ensure a better future for not only China, but also India, if the latter succeeds in its endeavor. Certainly the road ahead will be hard and long. But it is necessary for China and India to act if they are to fulfill the historical task of being great nations.
Over the past three years, more has been done to bring corrupt officials in China to justice than in past three decades. However, care needs to be taken to ensure the drive against corruption does not result in compromising Party and government officials' normal wellbeing. Being human, officials cannot be infallible. So as long as the overwhelming majority of the decisions they make are good for the country and the people, and their mistakes are not very serious, they should get the benefit of doubt.
Officials need to be made secure that genuine mistakes made by them, or the problems created by circumstances beyond their control, will not be used by higher authorities to punish them. Honest officials need to be supported and protected not only in the good decisions they make but even in some of the bad ones, provided they are not very too damaging.
But if officials make too many bad decisions or are slow in acting on urgent matters, they should be assigned to execute other, less important, tasks. It is equally important to reward efficient officials. In this way China's anti-corruption campaign can become more productive and convincing.

Regional impact of Iraq’s Kurdish referendum | US-India security ties in volatile Asia (CGTN)


Iraq’s Kurds were expecting Tuesday the announcement of a big “yes” vote for independence, as authorities in Baghdad weighed how to respond to a referendum they considered illegal. Are we likely to see more conflicts in the region given fierce objections from Baghdad, Turkey and Iran? US Secretary of Defense James Mattis arrived in the Indian capital late Monday, marking the first visit to the country by a Cabinet-level official from Trump’s administration. During his visit, Mattis said the US would share some of its most advanced defense technologies with India. The two sides also discussed India’s security assistance to US efforts in Afghanistan and the growing threat of terrorism on the India-Pakistan border. How should we look at the US-India partnership in this context?

Saturday 23 September 2017

Sonia Gandhi should give Rahul full authority (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

Should he assume full powers, we may learn who the real Rahul Gandhi is. Is he more Rajiv Gandhi’s or Sonia Gandhi’s mind-child? 
 
Rahul Gandhi has, for some years, been following the path of Prince Charles, who has lived a lifetime still a Royal Retirement away from being the next monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Given the demonstrated determination of Elizabeth Regina to serve her country to the end of her hopefully very long life, it would reasonable to assume that Charles may need the assistance of an attendant nurse before taking up the job that ought to have been his by now. Although the Prince of Wales has often been mocked by the commentariat, the reality is that Charles has distinguished himself across the decades by his idealism, sense of duty and flawless behaviour, never for a second giving off even a whiff of impatience at being made to wait so long before claiming his inheritance. It must be added that Royal Spouse Camilla too has won admiration, both for unbroken loyalty to her Prince Charming, as well as for the stoic manner in which the future UK Queen has faced multiple darts of innuendo and outright abuse. It was a courageous decision on Camilla’s part to have remained true to her feelings and face up to the consequences, rather than escape into what would have been a welcome obscurity. In the case of Rahul Gandhi as well, an absence of power seems to have brought out his better instincts, making him, for example, publicly oppose curbs on lifestyle, diet and speech, stances that were diligently kept out of sight during the UPA decade. Should he assume charge, will Rahul Gandhi order those who as UPA ministers and Congress Party advisers crafted so many discriminatory and punitive laws and regulations to reverse themselves by demanding the rollback of such contra-democratic measures?
Rahul Gandhi needs to reset Congress policy, if he is to engineer a recovery for his party. As important as the economy and the enhancement rather a diminution of 21st century freedoms is the fact that the majority community in India will no longer accept the second-class status into which it was relegated since the 1950s. What it asks for, reasonably, is equality of treatment with the rest of the population, rather than being discriminated against in multiple ways through no historical fault of theirs. Narendra Modi appealed to an equal future for all communities in 2014 and won. Those who harp on continuing the inequities of the past will continue to lose. 
Rahul needs to reset Congress policy, if he is to engineer a recovery for his party. The majority community in India will no longer accept the second-class status into which it was relegated since the 1950s. 
Will Sonia Gandhi’s stepping aside involve merely a transfer of position, but not effective power as well? Will Sonia’s long-term advisors continue to run the Congress Party, despite their dismal record in both governance as well as in politics? Should Rahul decide to continue with outdated minds, he would not be the only politician in India in danger of losing his future because of a refusal to cast aside those who may be personally close, but who are politically toxic. The only son of Rajiv Gandhi must get from his predecessor full freedom if he is to convert the Congress Party into a remodelled enterprise, the way Indira Gandhi did to great effect in 1969 and 1978. 
The UPA’s failures ensured the victory of the Modi-led BJP, and should the trajectory of the economy continue into 2019, the way it has been developing since the final months of 2016, there is a rising probability that by 2019, another 2004 may be at hand. What is clear is the unsatisfactory performance of the BJP in ensuring the needed double digit growth and its inability to rein in ideological hotheads intent on using state power as a bludgeon against those they disagree with. This may result in the Congress Party reaching triple digits once again. This would be the obverse of the Congress getting eliminated, as seemed possible till the aftershocks of bold but poorly implemented measures such as demonetisation and GST hit the economy. 
Should he assume full powers, we may learn who the real Rahul Gandhi is. Is he more Rajiv Gandhi’s or Sonia Gandhi’s mind-child? Is he the scion who sleepwalked through a regressive ten years of governance by those chosen for their jobs by Sonia Gandhi, or the politician who has lately been defending rights and freedoms since the Lok Sabha defeat? His party certainly needs a reset. More than the Shiv Sena, it was Congress Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh who persisted with “Sons of the Soil” regulations that made a mockery of a united India. It is the Congress government in Karnataka that is downgrading the teaching of English in contrast to Adityanath’s UP, and which is making the setting up and running of private schools impossible through controlling them in a manner certain to drain such institutions of global quality standards. Under Sonia Gandhi, the Congress Party has become a mix of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Ram Manohar Lohia. Will it be any different under Rahul? Only by getting full authority will Rahul be able to answer this query. India needs a 21st century vision on the part of its political leadership and such an outlook can only be tested by action, rather than words. Rahul deserves a chance to be given authority over the Congress Party as complete as that which his mother won 19 years ago. Rahul Gandhi should not get anointed with the poisoned chalice of a ceremonial post, with actual power residing elsewhere in a party that has only itself to blame for its recent reverses. 

Friday 22 September 2017

Growth continues to decline in India (Pakistan Observer)

Geopolitical Notes From India | M D Nalapat
 
FORMER Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is globally credited with being the architect of the 1992-94 reforms that gave a growth impetus to the Indian economy. The actual responsibility for the spurt in growth vested in Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, with Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister refusing to lower taxes on domestic companies and taxpayers but slashing away at taxes on imports. Since the period when he was Finance Minister (1992-96), foreign companies have enjoyed preferential treatment in India, and several domestic companies have in effect become commission agents for foreign enterprises.
The last two years of the five years (1992-96) of the Rao administration saw the first Prime Minister from South India buffeted by political, attacks orchestrated by Sonia Gandhi, who was wary of a person outside the Nehru family acquiring too much power. Unlike Manmohan Singh, who was at her beck and call even while Prime Minister, the soft-spoken Rao refused to scurry to 10 Janpath (Sonia’s government-provided mansion) when ordered to do so. As a consequence of such lese majesty on the part of Prime Minister Rao, Sonia Gandhi encouraged a revolt against him within the Congress Party. This was led by four individuals very close to her: Arjun Singh, Natwar Sigh,N D Tiwari and Sheila Dixit, all of whom were given high positions later by a grateful Sonia.
The split in the Congress Party weakened it sufficiently to enable the BJP led by Atal Behari Vajpayee to become a powerful force in Parliament from 1996 onwards, finally culminating in the first BJP-led government getting installed in 1998. Vajpayee has remained grateful to Sonia Gandhi since then, and during his years in power, has shown her every consideration, something that was reciprocated when Sonia Gandhi took effective charge of the government through installing Manmohan Singh as PM in 2004. Both Sonia and Vajpayee remember their friends, and ensure that they are rewarded for their loyalty.
It was expected that a culture friendly to business would take root after Modi became PM in 2014, but thus far,the punitive powers of the taxman and other agencies linked to the Finance Ministry have only grown rather than been reduced. Instead of focussing attention on job creation through generation of higher output, the focus has been on getting a larger and larger share out of a diminishing cake of investment. As a consequence of such an approach, which is almost the same as what it was under Chidambaram, growth has fallen to less than 6% and the worry is that it will get further reduced in subsequent quarters. The overall business outlook remains gloomy. Several companies have had to stagger payments due to other enterprises, and there is therefore a funds crunch. At the same time, tax demands are raining like confetti on individuals and companies, and stories of harassment are gaining ground.
Modi’s most trusted minister is Arun Jailtley, who is both Finance as well as Corporate Affairs Minister since the new PM took office. Jaitley has incredible reserves of charm, and is loved by journalists in Delhi for his habit of ensuring that they be given information so as to write exclusive stories. He is easily the most popular minister where mediapersons are concerned. However, apart from his ministerial responsibilities, Jaitley also has to deal with a host of political problems together with his close friend, BJP President Amit Shah. Both Shah and Jaitley are known in Delhi as the right and left hands of Prime Minister Modi, and seldom does a situation arise when one or the other (or usually both) are not by his side. Modi trusts Jaitley and has in multiple instances chosen those recommended by the present Union Finance Minister for top posts.
This far, job growth has been below expectations. Banks in India are wary of lending money, because of the bad debts that they have accumulated as a consequence of giving loans to well-connected individuals who have no intention of paying pack the banks. There are individuals in India who fly around in chartered jets but who owed several billions f dollars each to banks in India that are vulnerable to political influence. Thus far,almost all of them have escaped any penal action, although the talk in Delhi is that Mdi s planning to make an example of some of the biggest defaulters. In India, crooked businesspersons get back the value of the equity they have invested very quickly.This is by over-invoicing imports and under-invoicing exports. Once they get back (illegally) the money they have invested, they run their companies in a corrupt fashion, looking only to swell their foreign bank accounts rather than ensure the healthy growth of the enterprises in their control. The Times of India is reporting that illegal cash by Indian nationals has jumped up in recent years, and are these days being parked in tax havens in East Asia that are outside the reach of US and UK authorities. European countries are known for confiscating funds at short notice.
An example is the cash they took from Libya. Few of the deposits made by Libya during the Kaddafy period have been returned to Libyan hands. They have in effect been confiscated. Hence, more and more, London and Geneva are being passed over in favour of Macau and Hong Kong for keeping undeclared wealth. Prime Minister Modi resorted to the drastic measure of demonetisation on November 8, 2016 in order to reduce illegal cash flows, but this seems not to have been as effective as government economists were expecting would be the case. On the other hand, it has done severe damage to the informal sector, which generates more than 70% of India’s jobs. Overall, the slowing trend in growth continues. Much of the global prestige of Modi comes from his image as the Deng Xiaoping of India, who can launch the country onto a fast growth trajectory. He has less than two years left in his present term to make that hope a reality.

Trump going the Ariel Sharon way (Pakistan Observer)

Geopolitical Notes From India | M D Nalapat
 
LET it be admitted that this columnist is an admirer of the Jewish people and fully supports the right of Israel to exist in safety. However, he is not among those who believe that the leaders of the (tiny in territory but large in global importance) state which came into being as a consequence of the devilish conduct of Nazi Germany, especially during the World War-II were always correct. They made several mistakes,including Yitzhak Rabin, but none more so than Ariel Sharon, who in 1982 inserted the Israeli Defence Forces into the civil war in Lebanon. This was between the Maronite Christians and the Shia, and Sharon ensured that the troops under his command took the side of the Maronite Christians.
The chain of events that such an intervention resulted in has had a severe impact on the security of Israel, which is the only country in the world where terror groups that are Shia seek to regularly strike. Israel would have been better served by adopting a more nuanced and neutral position rather than taking sides. Now, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is similarly taking sides in the ongoing rivalry (indeed, conflict) between the Shia and Wahabbi groups within the Middle East. The motivation for this has been his obsession with Iran, a country that admittedly gives substantial backing to groups in Lebanon and elsewhere that effect strikes against Israel.
However, Iran is not the only country giving such backing. In a greater or lesser way, almost every state in the Middle East has within it groups (and sometimes governments) that seek to promote those groups that resort to violence against the population of Israel. Less than 80% of the total amount of donations going to anti-Israel groups comes from within countries other than Iran, and yet the refrain of the Netanyahu government has been that it is only Iran that is the threat. The Prime Minister of Israel would have been delighted, had President George W Bush used force in an effort to effect regime change in Iran. Indeed, between 2001 and 2007, it was indeed possible without harsh collateral damage to US interests to take out the military in Iran through the use of air and naval power.
However, since then, Tehran has built up its retaliatory capacity, with the consequence that any conflict between the US and Iran would ensure a knockdown effect on the region, including on regimes that have for generations been allied with London and thereafter Washington. Given that, the nuclear deal reached between Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani were a plus for the US, in that it has considerably slowed down the development of indigenous nuclear technology in Iran and made the achievement of nuclear weapon capacity close to impossible during the period that the agreement is in active operation. Obama clearly calculated that the post-agreement integration of Tehran with Europe and the US would ensure that the politics of the country became less theological and more conventional, as indeed would fit better the genius of the people of this ancient country than armed confrontation with the Jewish state.
Even as the Republican Party candidate for the US Presidency, Donald John Trump declared himself opposed to the nuclear agreement with Iran signed by the US as well as the EU with Tehran. However, once in office, the administration re-certified the agreement rather than disavow it, despite heartburn in some quarters about the change of stance. Indeed, there is no reason to walk away from the Iran nuclear agreement, in view of the fact that President Hassan Rouhani has ensured Teheran’s compliance with its numerous intrusive conditions, despite having got back much less in the way of concessions than was promised during the negotiations. Of course, the agreement is opposed by Israel as well as Saudi Arabia, which for different reasons seeks to overthrow the regime in Teheran at the earliest, ideally through the deployment of the US military.
The impact of such a move on oil prices, international trade and the overall economy does not seem to have figured in the calculations of those goading Donald Trump to launch cruise missiles and worse against the largest Shia-majority country in the world. Such a step would result in the US joining Israel as a global target of terror groups within the Shia community, an outcome that would be as destructive to US security as Sharon’s intervention in Lebanon has been for the State of Israel. Should the US withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, there would be little incentive for President Rouhani to continue with the agreement. Should he do so, the EU would seek to get further concessions from Iran, including in the form of withdrawal by Tehran of regional conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, as well as the imposition of terms that would be even more consequential than was agreed upon in 2015. Kim Jong Un of North Korea would draw the conclusion that the US and its European allies are unreliable partners in any agreement, as indeed they showed itself to be in Libya in 2011.
Despite Muammar Kadhafi surrendering all WMD (or because of that), France and the UK led the charge against his government that ended in the gruesome murder of the Libyan dictator and much of his family and friends. Billions of dollars of reserves disappeared into the vaults of NATO powers, while the country itself has become a symbol of chaos and insurgency from the relative tranquillity it enjoyed during the decades when Kadhafi was in charge. Given the significant weakening of Rouhani’s position within the councils of governance in Tehran should Trump tear up the nuclear deal, it is a certainty that a withdrawal by Washington would soon result in the unravelling of the entire agreement. This would result in tensions between Iran and NATO, not to mention a spike in friction between the GCC and Teheran.
Overall, not simply regional but global stability would be impacted as a consequence of the US doing what President Trump has hinted will be the case, which is (after the Paris climate agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the tossing of the Iran nuclear deal into the nearest available White House waste paper basket. The chain of events that this will cause may result in the same consequences for the US as are being endured by Israel for more than three decades, which is to face the full fury of terror from not just Wahabbi but Shia groups. Walking away from the Iran deal would be as big a mistake for the US as intervening in the Lebanese civil war has been for Israel.

Monday 18 September 2017

Cash from Mideast may be helping Kim Jong Un ignore sanctions (UPI)

By M D Nalapat

Despite U.S. envoy to the U.N. Nikki Haley's confidence in the efficacy of U.N. sanctions on North Korean behavior, sources close to the core of the Kim Jong Un regime claim that the supreme leader has succeeded in setting up a "capillary" system that remains unaffected by sanctions.
Such a system feeds into the largely cash-based informal economy and affiliated unregistered sectors, from which assistance gets channeled to the North Korean nuclear and missile program.
U.N. sanctions affect only the formal sector, which in the case of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, has only a limited role in the overall economy. Those privy to the thinking of the Pyongyang regime say that fresh sources of cash for the nuclear and missile program have been developed since 2013, mainly from the Middle East, that have resulted in an acceleration of efforts at achieving the objective of having the capacity to reach the U.S. mainland through missile-borne thermonuclear weapons.
The capital of Nepal is among the locations where a North Korean embassy is located, and it is, together with Phuket and Abu Dhabi, the preferred location for secret meetings between representatives of the DPRK and GHQ Rawalpindi, with whom Pyongyang has long had numerous "under- and over-the-radar" contacts.
Those familiar with Kim's leadership style, say he is far from an amateur but is instead a "thoughtful and brilliant individual, very similar in attitude and objectives to his grandfather," Kim Il Sung. They say that the young leader spends hours each day studying reports from across the world, especially from the United States, China, Japan and South Korea, so as to ensure that the regime's "master plan for Korean unification gets fulfilled before his 50th year."
Kim Jong Un was born in 1984 and assumed charge of the DPRK in 2011. The previous South Korean administration led by Park Geun-hye had framed its policies on the assumption that Kim Jong Un was unpopular and could be toppled, either through assassination or a coup organized by the military and security forces of the North.
Those familiar with his working style say such calculations are unrealistic, and that Kim Jong Un enjoys wide support within the DPRK, "much more than his father Kim Jong Il," who was regarded as being "too much trusting" of the promises of South Korean politicians, "especially of President Roh Tae-woo." They say that the slew of reform measures introduced by the new leader have ensured strong support, especially among the youth. At the same time, his staring down of the United States "has ensured the sincere support of the military, especially its middle and lower ranks."
A source with knowledge of the inner workings of the Kim regime claims that Kim Jong Il, even while his father Kim Il Sung was still alive, "leaned in favor of working out an agreement with South Korean President Roh that would potentially involve the eventual shutting down of the nuclear weapons program." However, they claim that "pressure from the Bill Clinton administration," which was opposed to the Sunshine Policy as carried out by the peacenik president, ensured the disgrace of Roh and "the withdrawal by his successor Kim Young Sam of most of the concessions offered by Roh," thereby killing the chances for a nuclear deal between the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the DPRK.
By the time Kim Jong Il took over full power in 1994, Kim Young Sam was president of South Korea and "the [Clinton-inspired] withdrawal from the terms of peace offered by Roh Tae-woo was in full swing," thereby causing Kim Jong Il to change his stance from supporting a deal to waiting for better terms than were offered by Kim Young Sam, "who was entirely in the hands of the U.S. administration, so far as policies toward the DPRK were concerned."

Perhaps as a consequence of the earlier history of harsh conditions sought by the United States "under the inspiration of Japan," Kim Jong Un has, from the start of his assumption of office in 2011, the same mistrust of the United States that his grandfather Kim Il Sung had, believing somewhat improbably that Washington wants to ensure that "Tokyo becomes the overlord of the noble and mighty Korean race, because they know that the Japanese will always do the bidding of the U.S., while we Koreans have a will of our own."

Mideast cash flows
According to those familiar with the supreme leader's style of functioning and his approach toward issues, by 2013 the grandson of the DPRK founder was in full charge of the state. Over the preceding two years, Kim Jong Un removed (sometimes by execution) those he suspected of looking askance at his declared efforts at charting a course different from that of his father.
Since that time, "our brilliant and courageous supreme leader," they said, "has worked at multiplying alternative sources of financing and supply for the missile and nuclear programs." Part of the funding for both has come from dedicated information technology warriors able to penetrate financial systems across the globe to pecuniary advantage. Such money-raising methods focus on "zones less sensitive to U.S. radar, such as Africa and parts of Asia, rather than most of Europe, "although Ukraine is an exception."
However, an alternative track has developed. Increasingly, funding for the program has come from high net worth individuals in the Middle East, many of whom have been connected to DPRK cash supply chains through individuals in Pakistan who have long had an association with the DPRK. "Patriotic [Middle Eastern] individuals wish to revenge themselves on the U.S. for its domination of Arab countries, and regard the development of our [the DPRK's] nuclear defensive program as being a means of ensuring such revenge."
Apparently,the calculation of those active in providing clandestine funding for Pyongyang's strategic strike force is that a fully developed nuclear offensive capability (by the DPRK against the United States) will at the least divert the attention of Washington from the Middle East to East Asia, thereby "giving an opportunity for local patriotic forces [within the Gulf Cooperation Council] to take control of regimes from those controlled by the U.S. warmongers."
It may be mentioned that Army GHQ Rawalpindi, with its reach into a network of hawala operators, is certainly a potentially effective conduit for the channeling of substantial amounts of cash to North Korea, presumably after Pakistan army officers and associates keep a part of the proceeds for themselves and for funding GHQ operations in Afghanistan and India.
Especially after 2013, the Pakistan army has reduced its clandestine operations with its U.S. counterparts, even while it has significantly ramped up such linkages with the Peoples Liberation Army, "which has a different perception regarding the DPRK than that held by the U.S. security establishment."
Indeed, it is clear that Russia and China do not realistically need to fear an attack even by a fully nuclearized North Korea, lines of communication between both and Pyongyang having remained substantial since the 1950s. Both Russia and China are vital to the survival of the ecosystem maintaining the Pyongyang regime and it would be unimaginable for either to be a military target of the DPRK. In contrast, Japan and the United States would be the most likely targets for offensive actions by the DPRK. However, the contacts spoken to repeat that Kim Jong Un would order an attack "only if it is clear that Japan and the U.S. are about to attack" North Korea.
They say that Kim is no warmonger, but a leader "devoted to the peaceful reunification of the Korean people and the global rise of the Korean people." The expectation is that the window for such reunification would open, "once the U.S. and Japan desist from interfering in a matter involving only the Korean race," presumably because of worry that in retaliation for such intervention, North Korean nukes would land on U.S. cities. Clearly,the bargaining position of Pyongyang with Seoul would get boosted, were the former to gain WMD capability of the highest order. Although verification of such claims is difficult, those contacted say that already "missiles that can reach California and Alaska" have been perfected, together with "tested" warheads, and that "this knowledge was made available last month to Tokyo and Washington through intentional dissemination of technical details."
Although there are credible reports of outside assistance to the North Korean missile and nuclear program, this is denied by those spoken to. They say that it is an insult to Korean brains to say that the DPRK needs help from "other races" in order to move ahead with the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and thermonuclear warheads, "which technology is after all six decades old."
The sources familiar with the workings of the Kim regime core claim that although the Russian and Chinese governments are "regrettably imposing U.N. sanctions", "ordinary Russians and Chinese who are opposed to U.S. hegemony ignore such rules and ensure help to us." Such informal channels have created multiple small supply lines, the way that Ho Chi Minh created a capillary system for ferrying materiel and fighters to South Vietnam in the 1970s, despite the merciless bombing of highways, rivers and much else by the United States, acting under the direction of Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger.
The persons contacted reveal that the Middle East is a location that has influential individuals who are "very sympathetic to the mission of the supreme leader to show the U.S. hegemons they can no longer rule the world." They admit that "some of our friends in Pakistan have been helpful in connecting such [Mideast HNI] elements to the informal cash network that feeds the nuclear and missile program. They, however, deny any link between such individuals and the Pakistan military, saying that the military in that country "will not stray from what Washington and Beijing want them to do, which is to assist in cruel and unjust sanctions." Despite such denials, however, there seems to have developed another A.Q. Khan-style network operating within Pakistan, this time supplying the North Koreans not so much technology and components, as access to Middle Eastern cash, although it is likely that there exists clandestine to and fro flows of such items as well between the DPRK and Pakistan.

No trust in U.S. promises
One fact seems clear from the discussion held with elements considered privy to the thinking of the DPRK leadership. This is that (1) any trust in U.S. assurances of safe conduct following the election of President Donald Trump has dwindled to zero, and that (2) Pyongyang will therefore press ahead with the nuclear and missile program without pause, irrespective of international diplomacy. (3) That Middle Eastern individuals opposed to the United States and its allies have started to be involved in ensuring that sufficient cash gets funneled toward DPRK entities, including those not registered or regarded as such, so as to ensure a supply of brainpower and materiel that would improve DPRK delivery systems and thermonuclear warheads within Trump's term in office. (4) That the George W. Bush administration missed an opportunity to take out through force the DPRK's strategic capability (as it did in the case of Iran), the way Israel has occasionally acted in the case of its neighbors and may do so again.
The successor Barack Obama administration remained focused less on significant practical concessions than the provision of verbal guarantees of safe conduct that were shown to have been worthless in Iraq, Libya and Syria. In other words, "they offered just promises but expected in return not just words but irreversible action from us."
The North Koreans believe that NATO pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his followers to (in effect) commit mass suicide rose substantially after his stock of chemical weapons was destroyed "with a part [according to these sources] kept apart to use occasionally so as to blame Assad for their use by [NATO] proxies."
(5) Kim Jong Un believes that only a capacity for mutually assured destruction between the United States and the DPRK will protect the country from a U.S.-Japan attack. As for South Korea joining the United States and Japan in a future conflict, the calculation within the leadership core in Pyongyang is that "the Korean people would revolt against the South Korean government, were Seoul to join Japan and the U.S. in attacking the heart of the Korean nation."
This may be an incorrect assessment, given the willingness of the South Korean military to take on the North. (6) Kim Jong Un is fixated on the same objective sought by his grandfather, which was to unify the peninsula under his leadership, and believes that nuclear capability would help ensure this without a war with the South.

Nearly immune from U.S. attack
As time (and the nuclear program) moves ahead, the window for success at an affordable price in U.S., Japanese and South Korean lives in a military operation designed to destroy the North Korean nuclear and missile program seems to be closing. Kim Jong Un believes the Trump administration's fiery rhetoric to be a bluff, and thus far, events are bearing out such a view. Focusing exclusively on U.N. sanctions on the formal economy of the DPRK, the United States seems unaware of the way in which a vast and secretive sanctions-proof capillary network has been set up by the Pyongyang leadership to ensure that the nuclear and missile program meets the objective of reducing large parts of cities on both U.S. coasts to radioactive rubble.
In other words, Kim Jong Un is dismayingly close to reaching a stage that would ensure immunity from attack from the United States and Japan. This would leave Pyongyang free to administer jabs and pinpricks at both, the way a nuclearized Pakistan has been doing with India since the 1980s, beginning with the fomenting of the Khalistan insurgency and the revival of the Kashmir troubles.
Russia and China would watch from the sidelines as Japan and the United States experience the effects of asymmetrical warfare from a regime that makes itself immune through possession of deadly retaliatory force. Trump has a very short time to act, while his country will have generations to rue the fact, should he lose his nerve and allow the DPRK to evolve into a perpetual threat to the population and interests of Japan and the United States.

Sunday 17 September 2017

GHQ assists Kim Jong Un to ignore U.N. sanctions (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat 

Increasingly, funding is coming from individuals in Middle East, many of whom are connected to North Korean cash supply chains through individuals linked to GHQ Rawalpindi.
 
The capital of Nepal is among the locations on the globe where a North Korean embassy is located, and it is, together with Phuket and Abu Dhabi, the preferred location for secret meetings between representatives of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and GHQ Rawalpindi, with whom Pyongyang has long had numerous “under and over the radar” contacts. Those familiar with the leadership style of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, say that he is a “thoughtful and brilliant individual, very similar in attitude and objectives to his grandfather”, Kim Il Sung. They say that the young leader “spends hours each day studying reports from across the world, especially from the United States, China, Japan and South Korea”, so as to ensure that his “master plan for Korean unification gets fulfilled before his 50th year”. Kim Jong Un was born in 1984 and assumed charge of the DPRK in 2011. The previous South Korean administration led by Park Geun-hye had framed its policies on the assumption that Kim was unpopular and could be toppled, either through assassination or a coup organised by the military and security forces of the North. Those familiar with the working style of the Supreme Leader say that such views are unrealistic, and that Kim Jong Un enjoys wide support within the DPRK, “much more than his father Kim Jong Il”, who was regarded as being “too much trusting (of the promises of South Korean politicians), especially of President Roh Tae-woo”. A source with knowledge of the inner workings within the Kim regime claims that Kim Jong Il, even while his father Kim Il Sung was still alive, “leaned in favour of working out an agreement with South Korean President Roh that would potentially involve the eventual shutting down of the nuclear weapons program”. However, “pressure from the Bill Clinton administration”, which was opposed to the Sunshine Policy as carried out by the peacenik President, ensured the disgrace of Roh, and “the withdrawal by his successor Kim Young Sam of most of the concessions offered by Roh”, thereby killing the chances for a nuclear deal between the Republic of Korea (RoK) and the DPRK. By the time Kim Jong Il took over full power in 1994, Kim Young Sam was President of South Korea and “the (Clinton-inspired) withdrawal from the hand of peace offered by Roh Tae-woo was in full swing”, thereby causing Kim Jong Il to change his stance from supporting a deal to waiting for better terms than were offered by Kim Young Sam, “who was entirely in the hands of the US administration, so far as policies towards the DPRK were concerned”.
Perhaps as a consequence of the earlier history of harsh conditionalities sought by the US “under the inspiration of Japan”, Kim Jong Un has,  from the start of his assumption of office (in 2011), the same mistrust of the US that his grandfather Kim Il Sung had, believing that Washington wants to ensure that “Tokyo becomes the overlord of the noble and mighty Korean race, because they know that the Japanese will always do the bidding of the US, while we Koreans have a will of their own”.

GHQ ENSURES MIDEAST CASH

According to those familiar with the Supreme Leader’s style of functioning and his approach towards issues, by 2013 the grandson of the DPRK founder was in full charge of the state. Over the preceding two years, Kim Jong Un had removed (sometimes by execution) those he suspected of looking askance at his declared efforts at charting a course different from that of his father. Since that time, “our brilliant and courageous Supreme Leader (their description) has worked at multiplying alternative sources of financing and supply for the missile and nuclear programs”. According to analysts tracking the clandestine financial operations of the Pakistan army, while part of the funding for both has come from dedicated Information Technology warriors able to penetrate financial systems across the globe to pecuniary advantage, a new source of money has opened up, thanks to elements linked to GHQ. The IT operations focus on “zones less sensitive to US radar, such as Africa and parts of Asia, rather than most of Europe, “although Ukraine is an exception”. However, increasingly, funding for the program has come from High Net Worth individuals in the Middle East, many of whom have been connected to DPRK cash supply chains through individuals linked to GHQ Rawalpindi. “Patriotic (Middle Eastern) individuals wish to revenge themselves on the US for its domination of Arab countries, and regard the development of our (the DPRK’s) nuclear defensive program as being a means of ensuring such revenge,” say Korean sources. The calculation of those active in providing clandestine funding for Pyongyang’s strategic strike force is that a fully developed nuclear offensive capability (by the DPRK against the US) will at the least pull away attention by Washington from the Middle East to East Asia, thereby “giving an opportunity for local patriotic forces (within the GCC) to take control of regimes from those controlled by the US warmongers”. GHQ Rawalpindi, with its network of hawala operators, is an effective conduit for the channelling of substantial amounts of cash to North Korea, presumably after its officers and associates keep a part of the proceeds for themselves and for funding GHQ operations in Afghanistan and India.
Especially after 2013, the Pakistan army has reduced its clandestine operations with its US counterparts, even while it has significantly ramped up such linkages with the Peoples Liberation Army, “which has a different perception regarding the DPRK than that held by the US security establishment”. Indeed, it is clear that Russia and China do not realistically need to fear an attack even by a fully nuclearised North Korea, lines of communication between both and Pyongyang having remained substantial since the 1950s. Both Russia and China are vital to the survival of the ecosystem  maintaining the Pyongyang regime, and it would be unimaginable for either to be a military target of the DPRK. In contrast, Japan and the US would be the most likely targets for offensive actions by the DPRK. However, the contacts spoken to repeat that Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un would order an attack “only if it is clear that Japan and the US are about to attack” (the DPRK). They say that Kim is no warmonger, but a leader “devoted to the peaceful re-unification of the Korean people and the global rise of the mighty Korean people”. The expectation is that the window for such re-unification would open, “once the US and Japan desist from interfering in a matter involving only the Korean race”, presumably because of worry that in retaliation for such intervention, North Korean nukes would land on US cities. Although verification of such claims is difficult, those contacted say that already, “missiles that can reach California and Alaska” have been perfected, together with “tested” warheads, and that “this knowledge was made available last month to Tokyo and Washington through intentional dissemination of technical details”.
Although there are credible reports of outside assistance to the North Korean missile and nuclear program, this is denied by those spoken to. They say that it is “an insult to Korean brains” to say that the DPRK needs help from “other races” in order to move ahead with the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and thermonuclear warheads, “which technology is six decades old”. They claim that although the Russian and Chinese governments are ”regrettably sincere” about imposing UN sanctions, “ordinary Russians and Chinese who are opposed to US hegemony ignore such rules and ensure help to us”. Such informal channels have created “multiple small supply lines”, the way that Ho Chi Minh created a capillary system for ferrying materiel and fighters to South Vietnam in the 1970s, despite the merciless bombing of highways, rivers and much else by the US, acting under the direction of Nobel Peace Prize awardee, Henry Kissinger. The contacted persons claim that the Middle East is a location that has influential individuals who are “very sympathetic to the mission of the Supreme Leader” and admit that “some of our friends in Pakistan have been helpful in connecting such (Mideast HNI) elements to us”. They, however, deny any link between such individuals and the Pakistan military, saying that the military in that country “will not stray from what Washington and Beijing want them to do, which is assist in sanctions”. Despite such denials, however, there is clearly another A.Q. Khan network operating within Pakistan, this time supplying the North Koreans not so much technology and components, as access to Middle Eastern cash, although it is likely that there exists clandestine to and fro flows of such items as well between the DPRK and Pakistan.

NO TRUST IN U.S. PROMISES

One fact seems clear from the discussion held with elements considered privy to the thinking of the DPRK leadership. This is that (1) any residual trust in US assurances of safe conduct following the election of Trump has now dwindled to zero, and that (2) Pyongyang will therefore press ahead with the nuclear and missile program without pause, irrespective of international diplomacy. (3) That Middle Eastern individuals opposed to the US and its allies are involved in ensuring that sufficient cash get funnelled towards DPRK entities (including those not registered or regarded as such), so as to ensure a supply of brainpower and materiel that would improve DPRK delivery systems and thermonuclear warheads within the term in office of President Donald J. Trump. (4) That the George W. Bush administration missed an opportunity to take out through force the DPRK’s strategic capability (as it did in the case of Iran), the way Israel has occasionally acted in the case of its neighbours and may do so again. The successor Barack Obama administration remained focused less on significant practical concessions other than the provision of verbal guarantees of safe conduct that were already shown to have been worthless in Iraq, Libya and Syria. In other words, “they offer just promises but expect in return not just words but action from us”. The North Koreans believe, for example, that NATO pressure on Bashar Assad and his followers to (in effect) commit mass suicide rose substantially after his stock of chemical weapons was destroyed “with a part (according to these sources) kept apart to use occasionally so as to blame Assad for their use by (NATO) proxies”. (5) Supreme Leader Kim believes that only a capacity for Mutual Assured Destruction between the US and the DPRK will protect the country from a US-Japan attack. As for South Korea, the calculation is that “the Korean people would revolt against the South Korean government, were the Seoul regime to join Japan and the US in attacking the brave Korean nation”, although this may be an incorrect assessment, given the willingness of the South Korean military to take on the North. (6) Kim Jong Un is fixated on the same objective sought by his grandfather, which was to unify the peninsula under his leadership, and believes that nuclear capability would help ensure this without a war with the South.

NEARLY IMMUNE FROM U.S. ATTACK

As time (and the Pyongyang nuclear program) moves ahead, the window for success at an affordable price in US, Japanese and South Korean lives in a military operation designed to destroy the North Korean nuclear and missile program seems to be closing at speed. Supreme Leader Kim believes the Trump administration’s fiery rhetoric to be a bluff, and thus far, events are bearing out such a view. Focusing exclusively on UN sanctions on the formal economy of the DPRK, the US seems largely unaware of the way in which a vast and secretive sanctions-proof capillary network has been set up by the Pyongyang leadership to ensure that the nuclear and missile plans meet the objective of reducing large parts of cities on both US coasts to radioactive rubble. In other words, Kim Jong Un is dismayingly close to reaching a stage that would ensure immunity from attack from the US and Japan. This would leave Pyongyang free to administer jabs and pinpricks at both, the way a nuclearised Pakistan has been doing with India since the 1980s, beginning with the fomenting of the Khalistan insurgency and the revival of the Kashmir troubles.
Russia and China would watch from the sidelines as Japan and the US experience the effects of asymmetrical warfare from a regime that makes itself immune through possession of deadly retaliatory force.

Saturday 16 September 2017

Syed Waseem Rizvi heals the wounds of history (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

History has to be based on facts and not geopolitically convenient fictions such as that Aurangzeb was actually a patron of the Hindus, rather than their scourge.
 
The Wahhabis would like the world to believe that the tenets of Islam are intolerant, when in fact the opposite is the case. All human lives are children of the Almighty, and not simply those who believe in the verities expressed with such eloquence in the Holy Quran. Compassion, beneficence and mercy are the virtues that are sought to be inculcated in the community of believers through the message revealed to Prophet Muhammad 16 centuries ago. However, what Wahhabi theology does is to seek to mainstream the opposite of such values, creating in the process an exclusivist, hate-filled vision of the world that is in perpetual internecine conflict. Unfortunately, for more than a century, the UK and later the US backed and boosted Wahhabism in order to achieve specific geopolitical objectives. Initially, the theology was deployed against the Turks and their empire, through creating an opinion within Arab communities that the Sufi doctrine favoured by the Caliphate was a perversion of the true faith, rather than an embodiment of its virtues. Indeed, an inversion of reality took place, with Wahhabism being touted as the faith in its “purest” form. Subsequently, Wahhabism was put into service in the 1960s against Arab nationalists such as Ahmed ben Bella and Gamal Abdel Nasser, and finally in the 1980s against the USSR in Afghanistan. The CIA, out of consideration for its (dog-wagging) ISI tail, declined the assistance of Pashtun nationalists in its battle against the Soviet invaders, preferring instead Pashtun and Arab Wahhabi groups nurtured by the Pakistan army, which since the time of Zia-ul-Haq in the 1970s has seen itself as the principal Wahhabi sword bearer against infidels. Decades later, in 2001, President George W. Bush made the same error, brushing aside the offer of help from Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in favour of a renewed alliance with Pervez Musharraf and his toxic army. Much of the difficulties that the world has been experiencing since owe their origins to the fateful Bush post-9/11 decision to anoint a lead arsonist as the principal fire-fighter. 
Jawaharlal Nehru, in effect, sought to inculcate a collective guilt on the Hindus of India for the murder of Mahatma Gandhi. This had been perpetrated by an individual whom this columnist believes to have been a dupe of a section of the colonial bureaucracy. The conspirators, although discovered by the authorities, were allowed to commit their fell deed. The Viceroy-turned-Governor-General wasted less than a minute after the shooting before correctly identifying the killer as a Hindu, although this indiscretion has been sought to have been passed off as a stray remark. Nehru kept in place the numerous acts of discrimination against Hindus that had been perpetrated by the colonial authorities (such as the takeover of temples), and since then, he and his successors have only added more items to the list, making India among the few countries (Bahrain being another) where the majority community has been discriminated against. To the credit of the Congress Party led by Sonia Gandhi, they have been open about such a bias, for example by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh admitting to the tilt with pride. History has to be based on facts and not geopolitically convenient fictions (such as that Aurangzeb was actually a patron of the Hindus, rather than their scourge). Several temples were destroyed during the Mughal era and alternative houses of worship built atop their ruins. The wound that this has created in the psyche of a community that is almost a billion strong needs to be healed, and the surest path to such an outcome would be to restore the Ram and Krishna janambhoomis to their pristine state, and to do the same at the Vatican of the Hindu community, which is Varanasi. These three rectifications and these three alone would suffice to ensure that a wound, which has for generations had the capacity to engineer destructive splits within the national fabric, gets healed. While Wahhabis, who always look to create tensions, would oppose such moves, yet the compassion and mercy that suffuses the Holy Quran would get perfectly met by such an act of beneficence by the Muslim community towards their Hindu brothers and sisters. 
That Muslims are overall as moderate as any other community in India has been shown by the welcome they have accorded to the Supreme Court decision to do away with the triple talaq and its attendant injustices to Muslim women. Another example of fealty to the divine virtues extolled in the Holy Quran has been shown by the efforts of Shia Wakf Board Chairperson Syed Waseem Rizvi to ensure an amicable resolution of the Ram Janambhoomi dispute, through ensuring both that Hindu sentiments get respected and simultaneously, prayer facilities for Muslims be not simply retained, but enhanced, they being non-existent at that location at present. Should a similar spirit of accommodation be found at Mathura and Varanasi as well, our Hindu and Muslim communities would join together exactly as they ought to have a century ago, before Mahatma Gandhi decided to side with the Wahhabis in the matter of the Khilafat agitation, thereby strengthening that group over the rest of a vibrant community in a way that directly led to the 1947 partition of India. 
Both Hindus and Muslims should ignore the fanatics within their midst and ensure that an understanding be reached by the moderate majorities of both faiths on those three locations, so that the unity so needed between Hindus and Muslims becomes as hard as a diamond. The efforts at conciliation of Syed Waseem Rizvi indicate that such an outcome is possible, and indeed, that it could be near.