World needs a ‘Global Century’ (Pakistan Observer)

In the United States, there are many who believe that the 21st century should also be that of their country, the way the post-1945 world was till the 2008 Wall Street meltdown. Strategic thinkers spend countless hours of effort on devising ways of ensuring that Washington retain not simply its primacy but its dominance over world affairs. The fact that Hollywood has for long been the celluloid medium of choice for elites and the middle class across the globe has made the task of retaining US status as the prime power easier, as has the reality that the dollar is still the reserve currency of the world, with most international transactions taking place in that currency. This has enabled the US to use the money of savers in other countries to fund its lavish ways.

For a time, the Euro emerged as a challenger, but the strains within the European Union are these days becoming less possible to conceal, and hence the dilution of the “Europe Premium”, which lingered on across the globe more than a century after the 1914-1919 war which first weakened the relative position of that continent. Had the Chinese economy been as fast-growing as it had been till the send term of Premier Wen Jiabao, the Yuan ( RMB) would have emerged as a competitor to the dollar, but these days, the economy of China is slowing down, while its structural problems remain significant and difficult to resolve. However, the RMB has been placed inside the IMF basket of key currencies, a long-deserved move up the global currency ladder.

Whether for individuals or for countries, excessive ego and pride creates situations where action becomes rash and counter-productive. While the 2001 attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan was justified (although later tweaks in policy were less so), the invasion of Iraq by George W Bush in 2003 should have been followed almost immediately after the victory of US forces against the ramshackle military commanded by Saddam Hussein by a withdrawal from the country, leaving the people of Iraq free to fashion their own destiny. Instead, a semi-colonial administration was established under Paul Bremer, who knew less about Iraq than most schoolchildren.

The postwar disaster of US policy in Iraq was followed later by adventures elsewhere, the overall effect of which has been to weaken the US and the global economy and to lead the the conclusion by President Obama that his country could not alone impose its will over others, but needed to be more circumspect in geopolitical matters, a course that was the reverse of the muscular “intervene at all costs” policy of Senator John McCain. Since 2008 it became clear that US dominance was past. For at least the past two years, it has been obvious that the era of US primacy itself is coming to a close. Across the globe, players are active that are not in thrall to Washington, the most visible being Russia and its intervention in Syria. This columnist believes that Putin’s intervention was needed. A victory over Bashar Assad of the so-called “moderate opposition” would have led to the entire country being a safe haven for terrorists, rather than just the third of the country that is ruled by extremists now. The good news for the US is that it is still far and away the most advanced of the scientific and technological powers, and its economy is still the largest, at least a decade ahead of China, the challenger.

However, clearly the 21st century will no longer be American Century. Given the chaos of Iraq and the Wall Street meltdown, there has not even been an American Decade thus far during this period. Such a vacuum has given rise to calls for an Asian Century, with this continent taking over from where first Europe and later North America left off. However, despite its overall economic performance, the continent of Asia is riddled with countries that have lower than even moderate standards of human rights and freedoms. Even in India, the world’s most populous democracy, there are repeated legal assaults on freedom of speech, and to jail a citizen has remained as easy a task post-1947 as it was during the period when the Union Jack was fluttering above the Viceregal Palace in Delhi.

In many countries, there are restrictions of dress and diet, while overall, opportunities for advancement are much fewer for the economically disadvantaged than they are for the tiny fraction of the population which forms the elite. Public schooling and health is still in miserable shape, while there are hundreds of millions of desperately poor people in Asia, almost as much as in the rest of the world combined. In terms of intellectual attainmnts and technology, Asia still lags behind Europe and North America.

Whether it be the UK or other major economies in Europe, these have lost out by their obsessive focus on Europeans only as desirable migrants. A software engineer from Hyderabad would have contributed much more to an economy than a immigrant from some of the rural parts of Rumania, yet it is the latter that wins the right to enter and to work inside the UK, France or Germany. Unlike the EU, the US has been more open to immigration from Asia, and this has been to its benefit, no matter what Donald Trump may say. As for Asia,most countries in the world’s largest continent have extensive trade and other linkages with faraway countries, which is as it should be in this age of instant communication.

Hence, rather than an American Century getting replaced by an Asian Century, what makes more sense is to aim at a Global Century, when each part of the globe will be able to activate the synergies it has with each of the other parts. Those continents that sought to create barriers around themselves, such as Europe, will lose ground against those open to the entire world. This truth mandates the need for the 21st to be a Global Century.

—The writer is Vice-Chair, Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair & Professor of Geopolitics, Manipal University, Haryana State, India.

http://pakobserver.net/2016/03/18/world-needs-a-global-century/

Mr Jaitley, enforce mergers to repay debt (Sunday Guardian)

By M.D. Nalapat | 13 March, 2016

If Vijay Mallya furnishes proof of VVIP mischief, he merits leniency.

To trap the big fish rather than minnows, India needs a more liberal application of US-style laws that provide for immunity to suspects of a crime, provided they come up with incriminating evidence about bigger accomplices. As much as the businesspersons involved, toxicity is generated by high-level politicians and officials, who connive at fraud and who share in the loot of public institutions. If more such accomplices in high positions get outed, the faster will be this country’s trajectory towards a transparent and ethical system of governance. In the case of an individual who has been in the news these days, Vijay Mallya, the former boss of UB is known to be a perfect host. Those ministers, ex-ministers, officials and former officials, who have been his guests in any of the idyllic residences he (directly or otherwise) owns, return with smiles on their faces caused by Mallya’s exquisite hospitality and charm. After such an experience, who can blame them for signing cheques worth thousands of crores of rupees to fund shaky enterprises, especially if the money is not theirs but the taxpayer’s? India is presumed to have an independent media, which is why it is a surprise that thus far there have been no reports giving a comprehensive list of the political and official notables who have been regulars at the court of the King of Good Times.

Now that Vijay Mallya is in London, a city that has as much respect for billionaires as Zurich, he can stay put and look after the foreign businesses in his control, including many in the UK. He could exchange his India passport for that of one of the many countries that offer citizenship for the right price. An absent Mallya will be missed in India, but as most of his friends are frequent flyers, they will continue to have the opportunity of attending the get-togethers that he will continue to host abroad. Should he surprise his critics and return to India, he should reveal the identities of those who helped persuade the banking system to wear the garb of Santa Claus. If he furnishes proof of VVIP mischief, Vijay Mallya merits leniency, as would Lalit Modi, should the IPL founder agree to tell all. These individuals have already done what damage they could. Should they now atone by helping clean up the resultant debris by providing proof of the illicit help given by VVIP accomplices, it may even make sense to give them immunity on the US model.

Simply sending a businessperson to jail will not fill the gap in bank funds caused by his activities. Take the case of Subrata Roy, now entering his third year in prison. It may perhaps be easier for the former tycoon to come up with the moneys demanded of him should he operate out of prison, a location less than ideal in which to hammer out a satisfactory business deal. Of course, such a release seems unlikely, for India is a country in thrall to colonial values, and where prison is the default option to a huge number of transgressions, real or imagined. Except to members of the Communist parties of India, who in India at least are steadfast in standing by the doctrines which resulted in the collapse of the USSR, sending a businessperson to prison seems of less value to the country than getting back the moneys lost. Hence the focus needs to be on innovative ways in which such a recovery of moneys can take place. Recently, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs ordered the forcible merger of a spot exchange (NSEL) with a cash-rich company (FTIL), on the grounds that both were managed by the same individual. Interestingly, while this individual was—understandably—hit with the full rigor of the law following a meltdown in the spot exchange founded by him, none of the brokers and defaulters involved in suspect transactions seems to have been troubled by SEBI or other agencies. Surely a single individual could not have committed such mischief by himself. So why no action has been taken against any of the others involved in the meltdown of that particular exchange remains a mystery. Two months from now, the brokers suspected of having sold defective products to investors to make a killing will be able to erase evidence of those transactions under the Three Year Rule for keeping such records. Should SEBI permit this rather than undertake in time a comprehensive forensic audit of the suspect transactions in the now defunct spot exchange, the CBI will need to ask why. With its innovative decision on NSEL-FTIL, a novel precedent (of forced merger of two companies) has been set by the Corporate Affairs Ministry. A social activist, Madhu Kishwar, has suggested that the same route be followed in the case of Kingfisher Airlines through a merger of that entity with United Breweries. Indeed, such a coming together of the two would ensure that the airline revives. The merger precedent should be repeated in the case of UB and Kingfisher to save an airline that had a level of passenger comfort that was better than most competitors. Not just in the case of Kingfisher, but in other cases of loan default with commercial banks that involve financial recklessness rather than simply caused by adverse market conditions, similar mergers should be enforced on the NSEL-FTIL model so as to reduce NPAs without burdening the exchequer. Even if the profit-making units were technically foreign-owned, laws in India could be tweaked to get them merged with units run by the same managements as have wilfully defaulted on domestic bank loans.

Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley needs to expand the precedent set by his ministry in the case of the spot exchange company by ordering a similar merger of other units responsible for bank defaults to others linked to those who for too long have used the banking system in India as a personal piggybank. This, rather than further burdening the taxpayer, should be the way the Narendra Modi government nurses the banking system back to health through significant reductions in the NPAs now filling bank ledgers.

 http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/3726-mr-jaitley-enforce-mergers-repay-debt

After Syria, Putin may replace Obama in Iraq (Pakistan Observer)

WHAT a difference a single squadron of military aircraft makes if they are properly deployed. With just this force, Russia has managed to reverse the tide of victories that came the way of ISIS for nearly two years. In contrast, for close to two years the US and some of its allies were indulging in a game of shadow boxing with ISIS, landing a few light punches but refusing to deliver a knockout blow. The reason for this gentle treatment of a deadly foe is the fallacy which has been peddled by US and other think-tanks still fixated on a 1980s world, which is that Al-Qaeda and ISIS are different organisations and that ISIS is not a major threat. Instead, that it is a localised problem that can be eliminated after other strategic and tactical objectives have been fulfilled, such as the removal of President Bashar Assad of Syria.

In fact, ISIS is a huge threat, because of its ability to spread across multiple countries in different continents at the same time. This, plus the ability of this organisation to form itself into small uncoordinated groups, has made ISIS a grave threat that needs to be eliminated before it spreads across so many populations that removal of the virus will take decades. Because it is obvious and demonstrable that individuals in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait have been ensuring a generous supply of cash to anti-Assad fighters in Syria, to admit that there is no dividing line between the “moderate opposition” and Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Al Nusra would be to fuel public anger at home at way in which Washington, London and Paris are assisting those who are certain to come after these capitals once their objective of regime replacement in Damascus is achieved.

Despite, or perhaps because of the torrent of news and information that he or she is bombarded with daily, a voter in a major NATO member-state has been conditioned to look for the most consistent and loudly ubiquitous line, which is almost always that favoured by the strategic establishments of these countries. Amazing as it sounds, among those living in the US who have heard about a country named Syria, most believe that Bashar Assad and ISIS are allies rather than mortal foes of each other, just as they swallowed the falsehood that Saddam Hussein was the principal patron of Al-Qaeda rather than its bitterest foe in the Arab world. Christiane Amanpour of CNN and other such “government-issue journalists” in BBC, Al-Jazeera and elsewhere constantly repeat the fiction that Bashar Assad is responsible for all – or almost all – the deaths that have taken place in Syria because of the war that has consumed the country for five years.

Why the silence by NATO at the regional situation post Arab Spring (which itself was a movement fuelled by policies and programmes sponsored by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton)? Was the extermination of Christians in Syria (and in Iraq) over the past three years ignored by NATO because the Christian church in Syria is Orthodox rather than linked in theology and ritual to churches in major NATO states? To the present, Christians (and Yazidis, and Shia, and non-Wahabbi Sunnis) continue to be persecuted and murdered in areas occupied by “moderate opposition”, even while all such endangered categories are safe in territory controlled by Assad and his military, which is under daily attack by US and its allies through same lavishly funded “moderate opposition.”

Not having a complex of think-tanks funded out of moneys received from the GCC, Russia has refused to abide by the imaginary distinction between “extremist” and “moderate” opposition forces, a division that any individual with experience in those combat zones will testify is illusory. Although the US flailed against ISIS and Al Nusra for two years, it could do very little damage. It was only when Russia entered the war against the extremists that they were placed on the defensive, and began retreating from the lands conquered by them earlier, mostly through the “Afghan” expedient of paying off rival commanders so that they would abandon the fight and concede a walkover, the way so many cities in Iraq fell to the extremists. Despite its limited financial ability and the much smaller size of its military assets in the region, Moscow has reversed the tide of battle.

Of course, those relying on media in NATO member-states will not know this, for almost always the reverses of ISIS and Al Nusra are ascribed to US and allied military strikes rather than to actions carried out by the two most effective combatants against ISIS, Russia and Iran. However, within the region, the fact that NATO’s war on ISIS has been largely a flop show and that it is Russia and Iran than have turned situation around has been well known. The consequence is that throughout Arab world, those sections of population that detest and fear ISIS, Al Nusra and such other parts of the same ectoplasm regard Vladimir Putin as a hero and Obama as a failure.

Had Vladimir Putin not intervened militarily against ISIS and its cousins, Damascus and not Raqqa would have been the headquarters of Al Baghdadi’s men. Across the border, the success of Putin is generating a gust of discontent at the way in which the half-hearted tactics of Barack Obama, David Cameron and Francois Hollande are preventing the takeover of the vast swathes of territory in Iraq that have fallen under the control of fanatics. Should the present desultory campaign in Iraq continue, within six months it is likely that even Haider Al Abadi, who is as obedient to his NATO “friends” now as he was to Saddam Hussein two decades back, may decide that enough is enough, and that President Putin needs to be invited to send another squadron, this time to Iraq.

Once that switch in alliances takes place, it will not be long before other governments in the Middle East consider Russia a more reliable ally than the capitals that jettisoned decades-long allies on a whim since the Facebook-fuelled “Arab Spring” struck. By the time he leaves the White House next January, there may be very little US leverage left in the Middle East, a lack of credibility caused by a lack of will on the part of Barack Obama in using the massively available US military resources in the region to not simply harry ISIS but exterminate the organisation in the style of Vladimir Putin.

—The writer is Vice-Chair, Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair & Professor of Geopolitics, Manipal University, Haryana State, India.

http://pakobserver.net/2016/03/11/after-syria-putin-may-replace-obama-in-iraq/

The Bharat and India Two-Nation theory (Sunday Guardian)

By M.D. Nalapat | 5 March, 2016

‘Bharat’ and ‘India’ are not different, for both seek personal freedom and an end to the bullying control of government over too many aspects of their life.

Whether it be Jyoti Basu or Mulayam Singh Yadav, both ensured that their offspring became fluent in English even while both snuffed out opportunities for the poor to study a language that is a means towards economic opportunities across the globe. Unlike their language, there is much that is toxic in the legacy left behind by the British, such as centuries-old laws and administrative practices which constrict rather than empower the people. However, while these have been preserved and indeed added on to since 1947, there has been unceasing effort to do away with modern practices and outlook on the grounds that there is a Two Nation theory similar to that popularised by M.A. Jinnah in the 1930s. This is that there is “India” and there is “Bharat”, and that the twain can never co-exist. This is as fantastical as the notion that Indian culture is “Brahminic” rather than universal, and hence that much of the country’s ancient traditions in music, dance and even philosophy have a caste bias. 

The subliminal message of such falsehood is that almost all castes barring the Brahmin ought to stay far away from such cultural offerings. For long, such insidious efforts at separating Indian from Indian worked, creating the havoc of Partition and later, caste and communal violence. Fortunately, this effort to distance the overwhelming majority of Indians from their own culture and their own commonality is faltering. Today, exquisite performances in Bharatanatyam, for example, are performed by artistes who are Christian or Muslim or from the many societal divisions within the Hindu community. 

India’s culture—and indeed a language as perfect in its grammar and civilised expression as Sanskrit—is shared and owned by all the Indic peoples, irrespective of region, faith and other segmentation, as the many Muslims who are fluent in Sanskrit can testify.

India, i.e. Bharat is a single nation, whose people will no longer submit to being denied the freedoms and opportunities that exist in other parts of the globe. 

If “India” refers to urban and “Bharat” to rural, it needs to be remembered that three-fourths of the present population working in the farm sector will need to relocate to other work, most in the cities. Or that both cities and villages depend on each other for services and markets. If it is a question of values, then “Bharat” and “India” cannot be very different, for both seek personal freedom and an end to the bullying control of government over too many aspects of their life. While the bureaucracy may seek to fight this trend, each effort on their part to tighten the screws will be resisted or ignored, as is increasingly taking place now. “Minimum government” is an inevitability in the changing chemistry of the population of India. However, despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts, too much of his party seems to be as enamoured of the colonial state as the Nehrus have been, and show this by their frequent recourse to state agencies and authority in situations where the state ought never to intervene.

The way in which some elements within the ruling party are seeking to intimidate Vice-Chancellors into administrative action against campus rivals has harmed not just the ABVP but the BJP. The recent use of the Delhi police in JNU has made a hero out of Kanhaiya Kumar, just as similar action by the Gujarat police did in the case of Hardik Patel. The police are a surgical instrument, to be used only when all other options have proven to be ineffective. Unfortunately, in an increasing number of situations, an indulgent Ministry of Home Affairs is allowing the use of the police and other coercive agencies from the very start of a divergence between the approach of those in power and those who are the target of their fury. 

Ironically, in situations where the police need to be effectively used, they are rendered ineffective through ordering them not to resort to firing, teargas and even lathis, when all three are called for, as when externally-led elements in Haryana infiltrated a caste-based agitation and burnt railway stations, shops and houses, and even sabotaged water supply to the national capital, without the police giving the masterminds of such anti-national actions any trouble at all.

India, i.e. Bharat is a single nation, whose people will no longer submit to being denied the freedoms and opportunities that exist in other parts of the globe. Rather than evolve another variant of the Two Nation Theory and again seek to distance citizen from citizen, let those in power remember that the use of state agencies—except where essential, such as in enforcing accountability on those who have looted hundreds of crores of rupees—will boomerang. 

And let those outside the portals of power not forget that the chaos in the street and violence in the bylanes fomented by some of them will affect their own lives and those of their children far more than it will those comfortably ensconced, at least till 2019, in the fortresses of official privilege.

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/3584-bharat-and-india-two-nation-theory

Is Bernie Sanders a ‘rubber lion’? (Pakistan Observer)

SUPER Tuesday was a disappointment for Senator Bernie Sanders, who is seeking to wrest the Democratic Party nomination in the November US Presidential elections from a formidable opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The lady has a well-funded campaign and has several times over past years shown her ruthlessness and determination to achieve personal objectives. It is difficult, for example, to forget the exultation in her voice and on her face when informed of the way in which Libyan leader Muammar Kadhafi was butchered by a mob that included Special Forces from a key EU member-state. The bloodied, tortured visage of the man who had ruled his country for three decades was not enough to generate a twinge of shock in Hillary Clinton. She had wanted Kadhafi to die, now he was dead, and she was delighted.

During the ongoing campaign for her party’s nomination — a contest she lost to Barack Obama in 2008 – Hillary has been reticent in the number of ways she has attacked Senator Sanders, mainly mocking him for being a “single issue” candidate, that of opposing Wall Street. And certainly the Senator’s repeated references to Wall Street (whose toxicity is more known within college campuses than on the streets where voters live) have given the Clinton campaign a handle to belittle the program of their opponent, ignoring the fact that Sanders has a comprehensive economic plan. Of course, that plan would severely curb the power of the ultra rich donors to the Clinton campaign, which is why they are in a generous mood so that Hillary and not Sanders emerges as the Democratic Party nominee.

Had he chosen to, there are multiple ways in which Senator Sanders could have damaged Hillary Clinton. An example is the fact that as Secretary of State, she used unsecured email servers to send and receive sensitive messages relating to US policy. Several of these were sent through the Clinton Foundation servers. Now, the Foundation has multiple foreign donors, several of whose policies conflict with the interests of the people of the US. By sending emails on sensitive matters through these servers, Hillary Clinton potentially allowed such donors – through Clinton Foundation staff — access to top secret US policy positions, a factor that would have gladdened them sufficiently to make even more generous donations to the Foundation than they have. This is a clear conflict of interest as Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea are in effect employees of the Foundation (besides controlling the entity). Hillary Clinton ought to have given it a wide berth rather than allow it potential access to emails sent by her in the line of duty as Secretary of State of the United States. Had Bernie Sanders pointed this out, he may have secured far more votes in the Democratic primary elections than he has thus far.

However, inexplicably, he has dismissed the email controversy as of no consequence. Why he has handed over to his rival such an advantage is not explained, except by the inference that Senator Sanders is less a Dooer than a Talker. That while he gives speech after speech on the need to rein in the few who by their greed are destroying the US middle class and sending tens of millions in that country into poverty, all this is only talk. The mild way in which he has gone about challenging Hillary Clinton has given rise to the suspicion among his backers that Bernie Sanders is a “rubber lion”, and that despite the fiery talk, he is harmless to his foes.

A few days ago, Bernie Sanders secured an important endorsement. This was Tulsi Gabbard, the personable US House of Representatives member from Hawaii, who is the only believer of the ancient faith of Sanatan Dharma in the US Congress. According to Sanatan Dharma, there may be several paths, but the destination is the same, and all such paths lead to salvation. This is opposed to faiths that offer a unique path to salvation and make clear that no other way is permissible. Tulsi Gabbard is of South Pacific islander ethnicity, and in a context where non-white voters are overwhelmingly favouring Hillary Clinton, this fact could be used with advantage by Sanders.

As President of the US, Bill Clinton was responsible for many of the policies that have in later years proved to be a disaster. This includes the free pass he gave to uncontrolled greed in Wall Street, leading to the 2008 financial collapse under President George W Bush, who continued several of Clinton’s policies towards Wall Street. Bill Clinton was also responsible for measures which led to a huge increase in the prison population of the US, with a disproportionate number of inmates being from the African American community. However, despite all this, African Americans are flocking to the Clinton standard on a scale that, in the view of some observers, resembles the Indentured Labour groups of the past. A President Sanders is likely to do far more for African.

Americans (a talented community that has been repeatedly short changed in their own country) than another President Clinton, but because of the “rubber lion” approach of Senator Sanders towards Hillary Clinton, this fact is unknown to the electorate, which is being fed on a daily basis by slogans designed by highly paid executives in the Clinton campaign, of which there is no shortage Bernie Sanders could point to the fact that it was Bill Clinton who assisted the Taliban to come to power in Afghanistan, or who ensured through his policies that China rose to the level of a serious challenger of US primacy in Asia. He could point to the chain of disasters that have been the outcome of decisions taken by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including in Egypt, Libya and Syria, where the stand taken by the Democratic Party front runner has been the same as that of key donors to the Clinton Foundation.

Senator Sanders could have dusted off and highlighted the years of work he put in as a young campaigner for racial justice in the US while Hillary Clinton was flirting with rightwing groups and causes. Thus far, he has done very little to illustrate the chasm between himself and Hillary Clinton, which is why Democratic Party voters need to be forgiven for believing that Hillary better represents them than Bernie Sanders. The US Senator from Vermont has very little time left to convert himself from a “rubber lion” into the real thing, and unless he does so, by next month it may all be over for his campaign. The causes that Senator Sanders has for so long championed in a selfless manner deserve a better, a more pugnacious, fight than what is being offered during the Democratic Party primaries by Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton.

—The writer is Vice-Chair, Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair & Professor of Geopolitics, Manipal University, Haryana State, India.

http://pakobserver.net/2016/03/04/is-bernie-sanders-a-rubber-lion/

Ambassador Verma, don’t repeat Russia with India (Sunday Guardian)

By M.D. Nalapat | 27 February, 2016

Both Verma and his predecessor Nancy Powell have been known to make sounds which may be construed as directed against the incumbent government.

It is a surprise that several policymakers in Delhi believe that Hillary Clinton would be the best choice for India-US ties in the November 2016 Presidential elections. They look back with nostalgia at Bill Clinton, forgetting the reality. Which is that President Clinton worked obsessively at denuding the people of India of the security earned through the nuclear and missile programme. Not satisfied with this, Clinton ceaselessly worked at delinking Kashmir from the rest of India, going so far as to make a self-confessed votary of the Pakistan army the first ever Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia. In between, he nourished the Taliban, ensuring that these gentlemen were welcomed warmly during their frequent visits to Pakistan. 

Even after Osama bin Laden organised terror attacks during 1998 on US missions in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Bill Clinton did not give up his partiality towards the Taliban. 

It is another matter that after 9/11, both books as well as magazine accounts and interviews by US policymakers trod the make-believe track that it was the Northern Alliance that was the recipient of largesse from Washington, when in fact it was the Pakistan army and its Taliban associates that were being coddled and energised to try and destroy Ahmad Shah Massoud’s men in northwest Afghanistan.

In a display of proof that harmful policies are bipartisan in their application, President George W. Bush adopted the same approach towards the Taliban, whose representatives were welcomed in Washington even a few weeks before 11 September 2001. 

Later, obviously learning nothing from the campaign against the USSR in Afghanistan, President Bush handed over the sheriff’s badge to the very culprit who had provided a safe haven for Al Qaeda, the Pakistan army. Clinton and Bush made the error of ignoring Moscow’s interests while going about assisting in regime change in the Ukraine, expanding both the functions as well as the membership of NATO to unviable levels, and dissipating the pro-US mood of public opinion in Russia by battering Serbia into surrendering Kosovo. Although not as much as Yeltsin, who was in his own way as much of a pushover for the key member-states of NATO as Mikhail Gorbachev was while General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, for a time Vladimir Putin dallied with the idea of crafting an alliance with the US. That collapsed after it became obvious that it would not be a partnership of equals, but a relationship of master to vassal. 

It was around 2007 that Putin accepted that Russia was potentially too powerful a country to ever get accepted as friend and ally by the NATO alliance. To ensure good relations, it would have been needed for Putin to make Moscow as dependent on Washington as Seoul or Riyadh, something that the hyper-patriot from St Petersburg would not countenance, just as he refused to let pass repeated sermons from Washington on democracy and human rights, preachings that were avoided in the case of close US allies such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, both of which are transparent about being an autocracy. 

Is US envoy to India Richard Verma going the way of his predecessor, Nancy Powell? Both have been known by interlocutors to make sounds which may be construed as directed against the incumbent government. 

Verma is now repeatedly touting the virtues of “freedom of speech” in a context where opposition parties are daily alleging the snuffing out of that essentiality of democracy in India. Free speech is a right that is supported wholly by this columnist, who has not been reticent in pointing out the occasional lapses on the part of several members of Team Modi where it comes to civil liberties, including on matters of diet. But in a context where US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is visiting the country in a few weeks’ time and is expected (together with Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar) to lift the India-US relationship to an entirely new orbit, one far higher than any experienced between Delhi and Moscow during the Cold War years, to play a tune similar to the cacophony against Team Modi seems a trifle undiplomatic. The Obama administration needs to avoid a repeat in India of the Clinton administration’s 1990s mistakes in dealing with Russia, when a very feasible Moscow-Washington alliance got subverted into what subsequently became a 21st century version of the US-USSR Cold War. 

In a world where the US administration is not universally seen as comprising wholly of saints, it may actually do damage to Narendra Modi detractors with the public rather than good to get—albeit in diplomatic language—the endorsement of the personable and persuasive US ambassador to India. 

The matrix of evolving India-US relations in the time of PM Modi is sensitive, complex and likely to be historic, and given the high chance of such an outcome and its desirability in the global geopolitical context, perhaps the temptation needs to be resisted of converting the US embassy in Delhi into an advocacy NGO for opposition groups in full cry against Narendra Modi, who, incidentally, was elected in May 2014 as the Prime Minister of India by the voters of this democracy.

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/3494-ambassador-verma-don-t-repeat-russia-india 

Modi’s war on two fronts enters decisive phase (Sunday Guardian)

By MADHAV NALAPAT | NEW DELHI | 28 February, 2016

Pakistan GHQ is intensifying the efforts of its ‘non-terror front’.

Officials in India and in partner countries conducting the ongoing War on Terror on ISIS and similar elements warn that the concentration of Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) effort on a few students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) may be making them lose sight of a far bigger challenge to national security. This is “the intensification of the Non-Terror Front (NTF) by the Pakistan army’s GHQ at Rawalpindi and its associated organisations”, such as the ISI and numerous NGOs spread across both India as well as in Europe and the United States. Earlier, The Sunday Guardian had drawn attention to a coming “Summer of Discontent” that would witness an artificially created public unrest on a scale designed to “distract and weaken the agencies of the state” and to “throw cold water on the ‘India Story’ showcased by Prime Minister Modi to global investors” (Multiple groups plan hot summer for Modi, 7 February, 2015). Officials are dismayed at, for example, the “seeming reluctance of the Haryana authorities to accept that the recent violence (in the name of reservation for a particular community) was not accidental but deliberate”, or that “the most deadly acts of violence were planned and funded by cash originating from the narcotics industry in Punjab and Rajasthan”. They add that “planning for the violence took place in Dubai and Mumbai”, and that “there is proof via intercepts and travel records to identify the ringleaders behind the violence”. 

However, “these are being protected from enquiry by hawala dealers laundering narcotics cash, and who are close to the officials going slow on action against the ringleaders responsible for the sabotage, arson, loot, rape indulged in by an anti-national clique that acted under cover of the caste agitation”. The Jat community has done yeoman service to India in wartime and their patriotism is stellar. The community, as a whole, would never act in a way designed to weaken India, a country they have served with distinction. Hence, these officials point out, “those few—including many non-Jats—who were responsible for planning and funding the planned acts of violence seen in Haryana and Rajasthan need to be booked rather than allowed a free pass”. Not taking action “would embolden GHQ Rawalpindi to intensify violent stirs across the country”. 

The national and international officials spoken to point to violent incidents that have taken place also in Rajasthan as well as through a stir by Kapu leaders in Andhra Pradesh. These “show evidence of the presence of infiltrators in the ISI’s Non-Terror Wing (NTW), who are using the cover of the agitation to create violence and mayhem across a state that has once again caught the attention of investors globally”. Experts in Counter-Terror Operations (CTOs) express dismay “at the swift conclusion by Maharashtra authorities that the recent fire at a Make in India show was an accident”. According to them, it was providential that “hundreds were not killed in the fire and indeed there were zero casualties” thanks to the absence of panic by the audience and the efficiency of the fire brigade, but “such an outcome seems to have prevented a comprehensive enquiry into what was a devastating incident and to take strong action against those guilty of causing the fire”, even if this were caused only through negligence and not by design. They point out that “whether it is deliberate or accidental can only be found out by a comprehensive enquiry of the depth and reach of a potential counter-terror operation, rather than treating it as a routine matter” simply because there were zero casualties.

According to an international source, GHQ has a ten-point plan to create economic and social chaos in India “soon after the Union Budget gets passed”, and when the economy gets poised for take-off because of investor interest and confidence in a government headed by Narendra Modi. These are: (1) speculative fever funded by operators close to the hawala and narcotics lobby, leading to high prices of essential items; (2) focus on decline in job creation caused by Chicago School economic policies; (3) uptick in the generation of unrest in Kashmir; (4) fanning of radicalism in Punjab on the 1980s Zia-ul-Haq model; (5) terror attacks by ISI-linked groups; (6) efforts at restarting NSCN(K) violence in the Northeast; (7) infiltrating workers’ groups to press for violent action on the lines of the Haryana agitation; (8) use of NGOs to give a negative picture of the government, thereby affecting its morale and possibly its response; (9) campus unrest on an all-India scale; and (10) a global campaign to label India as a country that is intolerant of women, children, the underprivileged and minorities. 

According to those tracking such developments, “the narcotics lobby in India has promised funding for such operations” as the distraction created by such tumult draws attention away from them as well as serves to enervate and, in some cases, even paralyse the working of security agencies, including the police and paramilitary forces. 

Taking a cue from the disruption caused during the August 1974 railway strike of two million workers of this priceless national asset, GHQ Rawalpindi, through its platforms in India, “is looking into ways of ensuring that violent and complete strikes take place” in railways, banking and road transport industries, “thereby burying the India Story for a long time to come”. Unfortunately, the ascendancy of Milton Friedman economic theories in North Block and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has led for over a decade to policies that inhibit growth in the name of battling inflation. The RBI’s substitution of the Consumer Price Index for the Wholesale Price Index (which has been in negative territory for more than a year) has resulted in an interest rate policy that has choked demand and therefore private investment. If newspaper reports are correct, the Economic Advisor to the Ministry of Finance considers 70% of the population of this country to be well-off, something that will be news to hundreds of millions within or close to the margins of poverty defined in any rational way. As a consequence, there has been an absence thus far of the tax cuts and other investment-boosting mechanisms needed to achieve Prime Minister Modi’s wholly achievable target of at least 10 million jobs each year. Some experts worry that in actual fact, jobs have actually declined over the past two years, thanks to UPA-era policies that are yet to be jettisoned by North Block. It is estimated that even more jobs, 12 million annually, are needed to ensure that the young entering the job market be each given gainful occupations. Some officials in the economic ministries appear to be assuming that India is similar to 1970s South America (where there were authoritarian governments able to suppress dissent) and that therefore the effect on tens of millions of potentially volatile citizens of deflationary policies can be ignored. They need to understand that Prime Minister Modi is fully committed to democratic values and practices in sync with his call for “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas” and that therefore to create a policy matrix ignoring social impact is wrong. Such Chicago School types are ignoring even the factor of negative rural demand caused by two drought years and three drought seasons in their deflationary zeal. Such an approach is inadvertently feeding into GHQ’s plans to create unrest and chaos through its Non-Terror Wing. 

2016 is a year crucial for not simply the political fortunes of the BJP but the very future of India. This is a year where Prime Minister Modi will need to ensure the defeat of not only the Terror Front but the Non-terror front as well. This will require a close examination of existing personnel and policies and their replacement by those suited to the 21st century and to the human and security needs of the 1.26 billion people of India, whatever be their religion or state. Given the experience of Gujarat, where Year 3 and Year 4 of the Modi era saw remarkable improvements in the policy matrix, there is optimism that 2016 will witness the transformational change that voters in India have been anticipating since 2014.

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/3532-modi-s-war-two-fronts-enters-decisive-phase

Economics in Indian context (Pakistan Observer)

DESPITE several terror attacks worldwide, including in Mumbai, India’s growth story has not weakened. It will take a lot more than terror to slow them down. Faulty policy by both the Union Finance Ministry as well as the Reserve Bank of India are what is slowing down the economy of India, preventing the country from benefitting fully from the bounty presented by the steep fall in global commodity prices during the past year. In the case of most commodities, the benefits of the lower price has not been distributed to consumers, and has gone to either the government or to private conglomerates in the form of tax and profits. Not content with such a windfall, it is expected by economists that on February 29,the conservative, indeed hyer-cautious, officials in the Finance Ministry will ensure that tax rates not decline but actually increase, especially in the case of Service Tax. Throughout past two decades, it has been the service sector that has ensured greater levels of employment in the economy, thereby providing a safety valve to damp social unrest, especially amongst youth.

However, from the first years of the 2004-2014 Manmohan Singh government to the present Narendra Modi regime, the Golden Goose which is the Services sector is being taxed and regulated in such a way that growth within it is getting stifled. The Service Sector tax is implemented in so draconian a manner that it has to be paid immediately, despite situations where payment has not yet been received by the service provider, and in many cases may never be received at all. Very recently, senior managers of a travel portal faced imprisonment over a Service Tax dispute, thereby sending shivers across companies in India, a country that has almost as many regulations as it has people. Thus, the total tax paid at what is by global standards a moderate level of income comes to more than 45% of the income earned, clearly a disincentive to many and has become a cause for unaccounted payments rising in order to escape such an onerous tax burden.

The worst sufferers are honest taxpayers, who these days are wondering when the “Acche Din” (Good Days) promised by the BJP during the 2014 election campaign will arise. Of course, the overall economy is also the victim of a hyper-cautious and text bookish policy that has its intellectual roots in the economic theories of select universities in the United States, the country from which the present Economic Advisor to the Finance Ministry, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor and the head of Niti Aayog (which has replaced the Planning Commission in name and occupies the offices of the old agency). The BJP seems to have as profound a fascination for those who have spent decades in countries very different from India as the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi dispensation had, and predictably, the performance of such individuals in terms of actual results is dismal, although of course the “Pink Press” in India goes gaga over them, besotted as it is with the assumption that what is good for New York or London must be even more so for Mumbai or Kolkatta. Certainly there are “birds of passage” in other countries as well, including China and Pakistan.

Here we have among others in sensitive posts RBI Governor Rajan, who is reasonably transparent about the fact that his present sojourn in India is a temporary one, before he returns to the US. Under his watch, Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) of banks have ballooned alarmingly, in large part because the high interest rate regimen he has inflicted on industry and trade in India is resulting the several companies and units falling “sick” ie financially unviable. At the same time, foreign financial entities do unobstructed in India what they pay billions of dollars in compensation to US and UK authorities, who find and fine such practices as unethical and often criminal The tragedy for the people of India is that this country is in a “sweet spot” where the global economy is concerned. It is much better off vis-a-vis Europe, Africa and South America than it was two decade ago, and indeed is attracting the attention of investors worldwide, along with smaller competitors such as Vietnam.

Both China as well as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states are looking at making major investments in India, but are hesitating because of tax and regulatory problems that are still to be resolved. Even after a year, the BJP has still to get passed the Goods & Services tax in Parliament, nor has it succeeded in getting passed several other items of legislation important in creating a climate for massive investment, such as a Bankruptcy Law and a Land Bill to dilute some of the provisions of the law passed by Sonia-Manmohan (without opposition from the BJP), which has made the takeover of land for industrial or most other purposes by the state or central government close to impossible. Those who have studied the functioning of Narendra Modi in Gujarat say that there is a period of two years in which he adopts a “Wait and Study” approach to several issues before moving in decisively. They point to the fact that this period is coming to a close on May 25 this year, and are therefore expecting major changes in economic policy that would jump-start stalled platforms and sectors.

However, there are many who say that this two-year wait for policies on the economy that are as innovative as Modi’s approach to foreign policy has been too long, and that such a pause will make the repair of the faltering growth story more difficult. Very few expect an innovative budget, such as would place growth above a British-style focus on collection of revenue from the natives. Tax rates are expected to remain high, and indeed go up, including in the stricken “Golden Goose” sector, services. In the US, in most of Europe, in China and Japan, a policy of low interest rates is being enforced to try and energize the economy. India is the outlier, with a central bank insistent on rates that are murderously high, thereby causing the same potential damage to the economy as similar policies caused in South America in the 1970s.

Those who voted for Prime Minister Modi in 2014 are waiting for him to assert his innovativeness in economic policy, and fashion measures that make sense in the Indian context rather than which are based on the foreign textbooks favoured by those who have been placed in charge of economic policy in India and who refuse to understand the ground reality : that unless more jobs get created, many more jobs, the road ahead will be filled with troubles. Of course, by then they will be safely back in their US and other foreign universities, giving lectures to students there on why the Indian economy is doing so badly despite their efforts at rescuing the country. It’s never their fault!

—The writer is Vice-Chair, Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair & Professor of Geopolitics, Manipal University, Haryana State, India.

http://pakobserver.net/2016/02/26/economics-in-indian-context/

Erdogan seeks war between NATO and Russia (Sunday Guardian)

By M.D. Nalapat | 20 February, 2016

A second downing of a Russian military aircraft will certainly lead to a matching response from Moscow, something which Erdogan evidently looks forward to.

President R.T. Erdogan clearly believes in gambling. Aware that his own military is puny in comparison with that of the Russian Federation, Erdogan has been acting as bait, seeking to draw his partners in NATO into an armed conflict with Moscow. This is the logic of his call for a No Fly Zone across Turkey’s border with Syria, a plea endorsed by US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who during her tenure as Secretary of State made one disastrous decision after the other: for example, in Pakistan, by backing the military against then President A.A. Zardari, who in some respects resembles Bill Clinton but whose commitment to a moderate rather than an extremist course is undoubted; in Egypt, by backing the Muslim Brotherhood in taking over from Hosni Mubarak; in Libya, by being a cheerleader for the coalition which took out Gaddafi and handed over the country to extremist militias; and in Syria, where Hillary Clinton has backed the arming, training and funding of “moderate” fighters who are indistinguishable from the fanatics who flock to ISIS, Al Nusra and other ideological cousins of Al Qaeda. The Turkish supremo is going the way of Zia-ul-Haq, changing the chemistry of his country through his policies, in the process creating the conditions for civil war and civic unrest which are waiting to erupt within the coming year.

Given that the armaments industry is the only viable Russian export left standing after the collapse in oil prices, it is a high-risk strategy to taunt Vladimir Putin. A second downing of a Russian military aircraft will almost certainly lead to a matching response from Moscow, something which Erdogan evidently looks forward to, as he believes that the US and other NATO member-states will be treaty-bound to intervene in force, thereby getting into, at the least, an air war with Russia, which would result in several aircraft getting shot down. Such a spectacle would have the advantage to buyers of military equipment of demonstrating in actual combat the relative strengths of the types of aircraft used by the US, Russia and France. Despite its popularity with the Ministry of Defence in India, the Dassault Rafale does not appear to have distinguished itself in combat in Syria, as compared to the SU 35 and the SU 27, leaving some to wonder if India has made the right choice in the hyper-expensive deal to purchase fighter aircraft for the Indian Air Force. Indeed, the effort by the US, the UK and France against ISIS in Syria has been puny, with that organisation suffering reverses only after Putin sent in his air force to ensure that Bashar Assad won back most of the territory ceded to extremist fights (otherwise known as the “moderate opposition”). This was fully three years after videos first began to surface which showed “moderates” in Syria slicing away the heads of Christians and others they saw as theological or other foes.

Given the cliff-hanger state of the global economy, with prospects for a global depression gaining momentum despite efforts by central banks in East Asia, Europe and North America to stimulate spending via low (and even negative) interest rates, it is unlikely that there exists any appetite in NATO headquarters in Brussels for joining hands with the Turkish military in taking on Russia. The Turkish head of state seeks to overcome such diffidence by creating a fait accompli. By goading and provoking Russia, he expects a response sufficiently robust enough to result in an activation of the joint defence clause of NATO, when Turkish and Russian aircraft go at each other in the skies above Syria, Iraq and possibly Turkey itself. To get enticed into combat would be to adopt the ISIS playbook, as Russia is for now the main threat faced by the extremist group. Unfortunately for his country, Erdogan has converted the Turkish Air Force into the air arm of the extremists, going after the Kurds when these are among the most potent forces challenging ISIS on the ground, of course separately from Assad’s military and its Iranian allies. Just as in the 1990s, the US seems to be leaving the Kurds to their fate after having received substantial assistance from them in the otherwise lacklustre military campaign being waged by the US against ISIS, a campaign in which the role of the UK and France is derisory.  Hopefully, the Sarajevo of 1914 will not get repeated in Diyarbakir in 2016. 

This columnist has long favoured closer military-to-military ties between the US and India, including signing the three “foundation agreements” which had been consigned to cold storage by Manmohan Singh that would enable closer interaction between the two sides. Rather than expend billions of dollars in the purchase of junk such as the Admiral Gorshkov, the Indian Navy needs many more vessels on the USS Trenton model if it is to ensure that it has a force sufficient for the need of this country and its partners for freedom of navigation across the seas. The US is the only partner that has the capacity to assist the Indian military into becoming a global force at a cost that does not bankrupt the exchequer. Leaving aside the occasions on which he has deferred to the Clintonites that he has filled his administration with, Barack Obama has had almost as clear an understanding of ground realities as Donald Trump has demonstrated on the campaign trail. Hopefully, Erdogan will lose his high-stakes gamble to tilt the world towards a war between the globe’s most deadly militaries, and be left to his fate in case he continues on a policy of provoking Moscow in a manner designed to assist the extremists nurtured by him since 2012.

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/3385-erdogan-seeks-war-between-nato-and-russia

 

Pak GHQ activates new front in India (Sunday Guardian)

Accompanying terror strikes will be ‘death by a thousand revolts’.

There has been widespread national attention at the manner in which a small group called for the breakup and even the Wahhabisation of India on 9 February at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. They did this repeatedly, without obvious objection from the much larger number of attendees during the event. However, the impact of such cries on public opinion, reminiscent as they were of the frenzied and ultimately successful cries for the partition of India in the 1930s, was lost afterwards by hooliganism indulged in by hyper-patriots. However, the 9 February JNU event, soon followed by a similar do at Jadavpur University in Kolkata is worrying senior officials battling radicalism and terrorism worldwide, who fear that such calls on campuses for the vivisection of India may spread.

The source of their worry is contained in information detailed by a group of sources within Pakistan, who reveal that the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) unit of the Pakistan military has, since November 2014, begun to implement a plan designed to activate a “non-terror” front in India, in addition to the long-running terror front. This second front is expected by GHQ Rawalpindi to have a destructive effect on public morale and the ability of the governance system to take decisive action against the terror front and its affiliates—the hawala and narcotics industry, which has been growing unhindered in India since the United Front government took over from the Congress Party in 1996 and oversaw the introduction of policy measures designed to boost domestic opium production, as well as encourage the manufacture of chemicals designed to process narcotics, especially in states bordering Pakistan.

Once the economic liberalisation carried out by P.V. Narasimha Rao in the1990s gave promise of faster growth in India, among GHQ Rawalpindi’s core objectives in this country has been a meltdown of economic and societal vitality. This economy-focused strategy got accelerated in early 2003, when it became obvious that Pakistan-directed terror attacks by themselves were not sufficient to bring India to a state of insecurity and lack of confidence sufficient to prevent an adequate response to the ISI’s covert terror mission in India. Hence, followed repeated attacks on major metropolitan centres, as well as efforts to assassinate scientists, who are a key element in the wide “Knowledge Gap” between India and Pakistan. GHQ Rawalpindi has been particularly disconcerted by the increasing warmth between Washington and Delhi, especially the two militaries. GHQ Rawalpindi watched with dismay as Manmohan Singh began to change the parameters of engagement with Washington after the 2005 nuclear understanding with President George W. Bush. 

There has been a sharp acceleration of the ISI policy of “death to India by a thousand revolts” since Narendra Modi became the prospective Prime Minister by mid-2013. Once he took charge as PM in May 2014, the new PM gave promise of ushering in a period of 21st-century reform of the governance structure, which would hopefully raise to double digits the “natural” rate of growth of the country from the historical level of 2%. This may otherwise be termed the Nehru Rate of Growth in honour of the Prime Minister whose policies made such a situation inevitable. Soon afterwards, the concept of a non-terror “second front” against India was developed within GHQ and communicated to the ISI for implementation through its proxies and dupes in India. 

Sources within Pakistan reveal that the budget for the “second front” was “expanded five times” during 2013-15 by General Raheel Sharif. The aim was to “deepen the demonisation of Narendra Modi abroad and in the big cities of India”, both locations crucial to increasing India’s rate of growth to double digits. According to those who have worked with General Sharif, the all-powerful and hugely popular Chief of Army Staff (COAS) in Pakistan is “determined to ensure that the global India story gets derailed in the era of Modi”. Keeping alive international perceptions that India and Pakistan were a trigger away from nuclear war is seen by GHQ as important in discouraging investment within India and into India. Hence, there has been a particular focus on actions designed to derail India-Pakistan dialogue and instead promote tension through terror attacks by ISI proxies. “To befool (sic) Obama, General Sharif regularly speaks of peace and good relations with India. However, his true intent gets communicated to his staff, who are told to work on plans for strengthening the covert First (terror) and Second (popular unrest and revolt) fronts.”

In a bid to derail dialogue, in Arnia, in 2014, on the anniversary of 26/11 (the Mumbai terror attacks), a terror attack took place at an Army camp. Not coincidentally, both the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan were in Kathmandu at the time, looking towards overcoming the stoppage of Foreign Secretary-level talks announced by India in August 2014.

Rawalpindi GHQ, according to well-informed sources, is “very concerned at the rise in public support within Pakistan for peace with India, even if this means freezing the Kashmir dispute by both sides”. Public support within the tortured country for the hugely expensive (relative to Gross National Product) Pakistan military hinges on an inflating of the “India threat”, an objective helped by periodic breakdowns of communication and rise in border tensions between Delhi and Islamabad. In an effort at derailing dialogue, three more attacks occurred in succession by terrorists trained in Peshawar and Muzaffarabad. These took place on Army camps in India, on 5 December 2014 near Uri, on 20 March 2015 at Samba (which hit police installations as well) and 27 May 2015 in Tangdhar, just a day after the first anniversary of the Modi government.

However, neither Prime Minister Modi nor National Security Advisor Ajit Doval (who is reputed to be as close to the PM as BJP president Amit Shah and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley) fell into the GHQ trap by cutting off avenues for dialogue with the civilian establishment in Pakistan led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, “who knows that peace with India is essential for the growth and stability of Pakistan, but who has got no support from the international community for ensuring civil dominance over the military in Pakistan”, a source based in Karachi said.

Defying predictions that dialogue at such a level was stalled if not totally derailed by the terror attacks, both Nawaz Sharif and Modi met at Ufa in Russia on 10 July 2015 to the chagrin of the ISI, which was “pulled up” by GHQ for not doing enough to foul the atmosphere within both India and Pakistan for talks with each other. In order to goad India into precipitate action, such as would make Delhi look the aggressor rather than Rawalpindi, another ISI-linked terror attack got carried out on 27 July 2015 at Dina Nagar and another on 6 August on a BSF convoy in Udhampur. That same year, on the anniversary of 26/11, three terrorists fired on a Gorkha Rifles camp in Kupwara district, although their attempt to set on fire the oil depot was foiled by prompt action by the Gorkhas. 

Sources say that Prime Minister Modi has been getting detailed real time information from multiple sources about the goings-on in GHQ Rawalpindi and the intentions of General Sharif and his top advisors. Hence, despite pressure from those eager for a cutting off of contact between this country and Pakistan, the PM refused to be provoked. “Modi Sahab (sic) knows that decisive action against Pakistan needs coordinated action by India and the US”, hopefully with China adopting a neutral stance in its own interest. This can be assured “only after it becomes obvious that India has gone the extra mile to preserve peace, but has repeatedly been rebuffed by the Pakistan military through its proxies”. Hence the focus on diplomacy. To the dismay of the ISI, PM Modi met his counterpart Nawaz Sharif at Paris during the climate summit. This brief but intense interaction resulted in the NSAs of the two countries meeting at Bangkok on 6 December 2015 and working the modalities for External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to visit Pakistan on 8 December, ostensibly to attend the “Heart of Asia” security dialogue. This was followed by the unprecedented visit by Modi to Lahore on 25 December, Christmas Day, where the personal chemistry and bonhomie between him and Sharif was on display to the world. GHQ was not slow to react, igniting the Pathankot attack on 2 January 2016, which, fortunately, did not result in the mass casualties which had been planned for the operation by specially-selected “shock elements” of the terror groups nurtured by the ISI. However, even this attack did not result in the collapse of Prime Minister Modi’s innovative diplomacy towards the civilian leadership of Pakistan, nor goad him into copying the verbal aggression, which is a staple of television talk shows on both sides of the border.

Sources close to GHQ say that the failure to derail the India-Pakistan peace process resulted in an “intensification of the strategy of promoting unrest in India through agitations and violence directed against the security arms of the state”. The banking, railways and road transport industries are a particular focus of this campaign, and sources cognisant of the field situation say that the ISI is working to ensure that “soon after the Union Budget (for 2016-17) gets passed, strikes, go-slows and uncontrollable unrest will break out” in India, thereby damaging economic prospects. 

Since 2005, these sources claim that the ISI has been able to recruit across India over 16,000 (sixteen thousand) “volunteers and auxiliaries” (with the latter being unaware of the actual affiliation of the group they belong to). They add that “more than 80% of the new recruits are sleepers”, those who as yet have not participated in any covert activity and hence are under the police radar. Interestingly, according to these sources, such recruits belong “not only to Muslim organisations. Many are from the Sikh, Hindu and other communities, and are distributed across various professions and strata of society.” “Both the hawala networks, especially in the border states, and the narcotics industry work closely with the ISI to provide logistical support and protection for this expanding ‘non-terrorist’ network of the ISI.” A particular infowar focus “is to discredit those who point to the danger of GHQ intervention in the economics, sociology and politics of India as alarmist and paranoidal”, a ploy which seems to be working, judging by the number of those in the commentariat who refuse to accept that the country is facing a mortal threat from the Pakistan military, not just through non-conventional war but through other means.

The ISI has been getting help from individuals in foreign countries to paint a dismal picture of India, “many of whom are well-meaning and who do not realise that they are being manipulated in the name of women’s rights, child rights and minority freedoms by a Wahhabi organisation, whose core objective is the meltdown of the Indian state, thereby creating a vacuum which can be filled with radicals and result in chaos in a manner similar to what has happened in other countries where there has been a collapse of the governance mechanism”. Interestingly, they point out that several such meltdowns in governance and social cohesion in countries targeted by rival powers have been initiated by protest movements across college campuses that soon engulfed the streets. 

The 9 February 2016 rally in JNU appears to have been infiltrated by elements of the “non-terror” front of the ISI. However, it would be incorrect to state that the students’ union in the university knew of such a move, “as these take place covertly and under false flags”. Security experts fault the Delhi police for “using an AK 47 rather than a sniper rifle”, or in other words, widening the net of arrests and police action too broadly rather than zeroing in on the handful who have links with the ISI and its affiliates or dupes. 

Why were pro-separatist slogans relating to the terror campaign in Kashmir raised in the JNU and Jadavpur rallies? Why are such slogans getting repeated across several parts of India? According to sources within Pakistan, “the ISI is alarmed at the diminishing confidence even within Wahhabi segments in Kashmir of the prospect of separation from the Union of India”. “The ISI wishes to boost the confidence of pro-Pakistan elements in Kashmir (whom they wish to recruit in terror gangs that would be active across India). They try and do this by demonstrating that significant sections of the population in other parts of India support their struggle, and hence they ought not to give up.” Either by design or by coincidence, well-organised albeit theatrical shouts of “azaadi” by a few indoctrinated individuals were heard during the 9 February rally at JNU, which was attended without obvious protest at such slogans by some office-bearers of the JNU Students’ Union.

Contrary to selected media reports, it is extremely unlikely that any of the office-bearers of the students’ union at JNU are in sync with the slogans raised by pro-Pakistan elements on 9 February. Hence, security experts spoken to say that the arrest of JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar was a “gross error”. They say the move “had the effect of uniting the students”, as well as shifting the spotlight from the 1930s Partition of India-style slogans raised by a handful of motivated protestors at the rally to the clumsy tactics of the Delhi police. Although the authorities were justified in their alarm at what took place in the rally held in JNU (and in Jadavpur), the steamroller action taken by the Delhi police may have the effect of driving such groups underground, where they will be more difficult to uncover and eliminate. In the JNU situation, it may have been preferable for the police to “wait and watch” till more Pakistan-oriented elements emerged into the sunlight—investigating them quietly and later on, arresting them singly in subsequent days—rather than acting “prematurely and indiscriminately”, thereby netting not the required core elements, but relative innocents who were simply caught up in the excitement of the rally. It will take painstaking investigation into the call and visit records of the ringleaders of the 9 February rally at JNU before the unseen handlers of the youths responsible for seditious sloganeering and partition-oriented indoctrination get identified.

GHQ Rawalpindi has opened a second front in India that is in some respects even deadlier than the terror operations conducted by the organisation. These are the “non-terror” groups recruited and motivated by them to stage uprisings designed to damage the potency of the governance mechanism in India, and with that, any expectation of the high growth promised by Narendra Modi while on the campaign trail in 2013-14. A strategy designed to deal with the “Terror Wing” (ISI-TW) of the ISI may not be effective against the “Non-Terror Wing” (ISI-NTW). Unless better methods get worked out and put into operation, what is taking place may be the start of a protracted “non-terror” campaign waged on different platforms by the ISI across India through its agents, dupes and dummies, even as GHQ ensures an acceleration in terror strikes, as well as unrest in key economic sectors within the country to derail both economic prospects and an India-Pakistan detente.

Battling such a twin strategy, implemented through a network that now has considerable depth and sophistication within India, requires scrutiny also of seeming hyper-patriots, such as those who indulged in hooliganism against the media. Are any of such individuals financially or socially linked to narcotics and hawala networks in Rajasthan and Punjab? It needs to be remembered that GHQ, through the ISI, seeds sleepers in both the ruling as well as opposition parties, fortified by the financial, political, official and logistics backing of the multi-billion dollar hawala and narcotics lobby in India. Those hooligan elements seen across television screens in India and abroad beating up JNU students, no matter what their affiliation, significantly assisted the ISI in its campaign against India, exactly as those few calling for a second partition of India did on campus.

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/3422-pak-ghq-activates-new-front-india