NEPAL POLITY

Nepal: Maoist winning political game

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:49:55 PST

By Deepak Gajurel

Courtesy: Telegraph Weekly

The opposition (read Nepali Congress and CPN-Unified Marxists Leninists) has been given yet another blow from the Maoist side. The Maoist-led Bhattarai government is all set to legalize the ownership certified by the 'People's' government's seized lands. Thousands of land-transactions that were certified by the Maoists during the decade-long armed conflict have now been given legal status, as per government's recent decision to this effect.

Opposition parties are 'doing their duty' of 'pressurizing' the government to take back that decision. As a result, the elusive 'peace process' has been stalled. 'Constitution making' too is not making any visible headway. 'Major' parties blame each other for not doing the desired, and agreed upon, tasks. Opposition parties are disrupting the House proceedings as usual.

Various works to be carried out under 'peace process' were stalled earlier because of the Maoist's intra-party disputes. Months have gone by, but no progress as such had been achieved in the past and once again the same is being repeated. Oppositions, especially the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML, are in a dilemma. They neither give up all stocks to Maoist, nor are they in a position to do anything they pursue.

Maoist has been achieving what the party desires, especially after the election of the Constituent Assembly, or after the non-political and non-ethical abolition of Monarchy from the country.

The parliamentary parties, who believe in ballot, in a loud voice, used to claim 'bringing the terrorists (read Maoists) into the mainstream political process.' Yes, Maoists came into political helm through people's ballot, bagging majority of the votes at time of the CA elections held April 10, 2008. Maoist, the largest party in the CA with more seats than Nepali Congress and CPN-UML combined, is in a position to dictate the political course since last four years. It's parliamentary parties' turn to push 'demands' to the perusal of the Maoist for its implementation. And the Maoist does not even see the need to heed to their demands. Obviously, Maoists have been using others by dragging into their own terms.

The so called 'Loktantrik forces' as they boast for themselves, NC and the UML, have been put into an awkward position, politically and morally. It is because politics is the game of power. Whatever a powerful does becomes correct. And Maoists are doing just that. Keep it up ... the 'former rebels'!

Maoists are doing as per its declared policy and strategies. One should remember that Maoist's official declared policy was to abolish Monarchy, its main enemy, from Nepal and establish 'people's republic.' In addition, it was, and still is, Maoist's declared policy to 'destroy' old Nepal's all systems, political, cultural, economic and otherwise, and to create a 'New Nepal', meaning People’s Republic on lines with what the North Korea is at the moment. Most importantly, Maoists have not given up violence. In principle, this party is still holding guns. The shadow of the guns is seen everywhere in the country, even upon NC and UML, others also not spared.

By now, it should be clear to any sane person that 'Loktantrik' parties have been living in a fantasy. And it is them who are creating an illusion that Maoists have entered into the 'mainstream political course.' The outcome of an illusion is never realistic. Thus is the situation for parliamentary parties, especially for Nepali Congress and Unified Marxists Leninists.

It is no surprise that the Maoists are working on its own chartered party’s line. This party is pushing all others to the wall and forcing them all to reach to a 'national consensus' on their terms and desires. And the Maoist's terms are to annihilate their declared 'enemies.' Since Monarchy has already been sidelined, though undemocratically, it's now the turn for a new 'enemy,' the parliamentary parties, those who believe in ballot, and denounce violence.

It seems that Nepali Congress and UML, including other newly made 'republican' parties, have still not realized the Maoist's strategy, of destroying all its enemies, real or virtual. So, it will be interesting to watch the politics of this nation in the days ahead.

Published in Telegraph Weekly, January 25, 2012

http://www.telegraphnepal.com/views/2012-01-26/nepal:-maoist-winning-political-game.html

The Pentagon Since 9/11: By the Numbers

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:23:25 PST

By Christopher Hellman

$869 billion for Iraq, $487 billion for Afghanistan, and everything else your almost $8 trillion in military spending bought you in the last decade.

The killing of Osama bin Laden did not put cuts in national security spending on the table, but the debt ceiling debate finally did. And mild as those projected cuts might have been, last week newly minted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was already digging in his heels and decrying the modest potential cost-cutting plans as a "doomsday mechanism" for the military. Pentagon allies on Capitol Hill were similarly raising the alarm as they moved forward with this year's even larger military budget.

None of this should surprise you. As with all addictions, once you're hooked on massive military spending, it's hard to think realistically or ask the obvious questions. So, at a moment when discussion about cutting military spending is actually on the rise for the first time in years, let me offer some little known basics about the spending spree this country has been on since September 11, 2001, and raise just a few simple questions about what all that money has actually bought Americans.

Consider this my contribution to a future 12-step program for national security sobriety.

Let's start with the three basic post-9/11 numbers that Washington's addicts need to know:

1. $5.9 trillion: That's the sum of taxpayer dollars that's gone into the Pentagon's annual "base budget," from 2000 to today. Note that the base budget includes nuclear weapons activities, even though they are overseen by the Department of Energy, but—and this is crucial—not the cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nonetheless, even without those war costs, the Pentagon budget managed to grow from $302.9 billion in 2000 to $545.1 billion in 2011. That's a dollar increase of $242.2 billion or an 80 percent jump ($163.6 billion and 44 percent if you adjust for inflation). It's enough to make your head swim, and we've barely started.

2. $1.36 trillion: That's the total cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars by this September 30th, the end of the current fiscal year, including all money spent for those wars by the Pentagon, the State Department, the US Agency for International Development, and other federal agencies. Of this, $869 billion will have been for Iraq, $487.6 billion for Afghanistan.

Add up our first two key national security spending numbers and you're already at $7.2 trillion since the September 11th attacks. And even that staggering figure doesn't catch the full extent of Washington spending in these years. So onward to our third number.

3. $636 billion: Most people usually ignore this part of the national security budget, and we seldom see any figures for it, but it's the amount, adjusted for inflation, that the US government has spent so far on "homeland security." This isn't an easy figure to arrive at because homeland security funding flows through literally dozens of federal agencies and not just the Department of Homeland Security. A mere $16 billion was requested for homeland security in 2001. For 2012, the figure is $71.6 billion, only $37 billion of which will go through DHS. A substantial part, $18.1 billion, will be funneled through—don't be surprised—the Department of Defense, while other agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services ($4.6 billion) and the Department of Justice ($4.1 billion) pick up the slack.

Add those three figures together and you're at the edge of $8 trillion in national security spending for the last decade-plus and perhaps wondering where the nearest group for compulsive-spending addiction meets.

All of this brings another simple question to mind: Are we safer?

Now, for a few of those questions I mentioned, just to bring reality further into focus:

How does that nearly $8 trillion compare with past spending?

In the decade before the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon base budget added up to an impressive $4.2 trillion, only one-third less than for the past decade. But add in the cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and total Pentagon spending post-9/11 is actually two-thirds greater than in the previous decade. That's quite a jump. As for homeland security funding, spending figures for the years prior to 2000 are hard to identify because the category didn't exist (nor did anyone who mattered in Washington even think to use that word "homeland"). But there can be no question that whatever it was, it would pale next to present spending.

Is that nearly $8 trillion the real total for these years, or could it be even higher?

The war cost calculations I've used above, which come from my own organization, the National Priorities Project, only take into account funds that have been requested by the president and appropriated by Congress. This, however, is just one way of considering the problem of war and national security spending. A recent study published by the Watson Institute of Brown University took a much broader approach. In the summary of their work, the Watson Institute analysts wrote, "There are at least three ways to think about the economic costs of these wars: what has been spent already, what could or must be spent in the future, and the comparative economic effects of spending money on war instead of something else."

By including funding for such things as veterans benefits, future costs for treating the war-wounded, and interest payments on war-related borrowing, they came up with $3.2 trillion to $4 trillion in war costs, which would put those overall national security figures since 2001 at around $11 trillion.

I took a similar approach in an earlier TomDispatch piece in which I calculated the true costs of national security at $1.2 trillion annually.

All of this brings another simple, but seldom-asked question to mind:

Are we safer?

Regardless of what figures you choose to use, one thing is certain: we're talking about trillions and trillions of dollars. And given the debate raging in Washington this summer about how to rein in trillion-dollar deficits and a spiraling debt, it's surprising that no one thinks to ask just how much safety bang for its buck the United States is getting from those trillions.

Of course, it's not an easy question to answer, but there are some troubling facts out there that should give one pause. Let's start with government accounting, which, like military music, is something of an oxymoron. Despite decades of complaints from Capitol Hill and various congressional attempts to force changes via legislation, the Department of Defense still cannot pass an audit. Believe it or not, it never has.

Members of Congress have become so exasperated that several have tried (albeit unsuccessfully) to cap or cut military spending until the Pentagon is capable of passing an annual audit as required by the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990. So even as they fight to preserve record levels of military spending, Pentagon officials really have no way of telling American taxpayers how their money is being spent, or what kind of security it actually buys.

And this particular disease seems to be catching. The Department of Homeland Security has been part of the "high risk" series of the Government Accountability Office since 2003. In case being "high risk" in GAO terms isn't part of your dinner table chitchat, here's the definition: "agencies and program areas that are high risk due to their vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or are most in need of broad reform."

Put in layman's terms: No organization crucial to national security spending really has much of an idea of how well or badly it is spending vast sums of taxpayer money—and worse yet, Congress knows even less.

Which leads us to a broader issue and another question:

Are we spending money on the right types of security?

This June, the Institute for Policy Studies released the latest version of what it calls "a Unified Security Budget for the United States" that could make the country safer for far less than the current military budget. Known more familiarly as the USB, it has been produced annually since 2004 by the website Foreign Policy in Focus and draws on a task force of experts.

As in previous years, the report found—again in layman's terms—that the United States invests its security dollars mainly in making war, slighting both real homeland security and anything that might pass for preventive diplomacy. In the Obama administration's proposed 2012 budget, for example, 85 percent of security spending goes to the military (and if you included the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that percentage would only rise); just 7 percent goes to real homeland security and a modest 8 percent to what might, even generously speaking, be termed nonmilitary international engagement.

Significant parts of the foreign policy establishment have come to accept this critique—at least they sometimes sound like they do. As Robert Gates put the matter while still secretary of defense, "Funding for non-military foreign affairs programs...remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military...[T]here is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security." But if they talk the talk, when annual budgeting time comes around, few of them yet walk the walk.

So let's ask another basic question:

Has your money, funneled into the vast and shadowy world of military and national-security spending, made you safer?

Government officials and counterterrorism experts frequently claim that the public is unaware of their many "victories" in the "war on terror." These, they insist, remain hidden for reasons that involve protecting intelligence sources and law enforcement techniques. They also maintain that the United States and its allies have disrupted any number of terror plots since 9/11 and that this justifies the present staggering levels of national security spending.

Undoubtedly examples of foiled terrorist acts, unpublicized for reasons of security, do exist (although the urge to boast shouldn't be underestimated, as in the case of the covert operation to kill Osama bin Laden). Think of this as the "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you" approach to supposed national-security successes. It's regularly used to justify higher spending requests for homeland security. There are, however, two obvious and immediate problems with taking it seriously.

First, lacking any transparency, there's next to no way to assess its merits. How serious were these threats? A hapless underwear bomber or a weapon of mass destruction that didn't make it to an American city? Who knows? The only thing that's clear is that this is a loopholethrough which you can drive your basic mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored vehicle.

In the vast majority of cases, the plots we know about were broken up by "law enforcement" or civilians, in no way aided by the $7.2 trillion that was invested in the military.

Second, how exactly were these attempts foiled? Were they thwarted by programs funded as part of the $7.2 trillion in military spending, or even the $636 billion in homeland security spending?

An April 2010 Heritage Foundation report, "30 Terrorist Plots Foiled: How the System Worked," looked at known incidents where terrorist attacks were actually thwarted and so provides some guidance. The Heritage experts wrote, "Since September 11, 2001, at least 30 planned terrorist attacks have been foiled, all but two of them prevented by law enforcement. The two notable exceptions are the passengers and flight attendants who subdued the ‘shoe bomber' in 2001 and the ‘underwear bomber' on Christmas Day in 2009."

In other words, in the vast majority of cases, the plots we know about were broken up by "law enforcement" or civilians, in no way aided by the $7.2 trillion that was invested in the military—or in many cases even the $636 billion that went into homeland security. And while most of those cases involved federal authorities, at least three were stopped by local law enforcement action.

In truth, given the current lack of assessment tools, it's virtually impossible for outsiders—and probably insiders as well—to evaluate the effectiveness of this country's many security-related programs. And this stymies our ability to properly determine the allocation of federal resources on the basis of program efficiency and the relative levels of the threats addressed.

So here's one final question that just about no one asks:

Could we be less safe?

It's possible that all that funding, especially the moneys that have gone into our various wars and conflicts, our secret drone campaigns and "black sites," our various forays into Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and other places may actually have made us less safe. Certainly, they have exacerbated existing tensions and created new ones, eroded our standing in some of the most volatile regions of the world, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the misery of many more, and made Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places, potential recruiting and training grounds for future generations of insurgents and terrorists. Does anything remain of the international goodwill toward our country that was the one positive legacy of the infamous attacks of September 11, 2001? Unlikely.

Now, isn't it time for those 12 steps?

Chris Hellman, a TomDispatch.com regular, is a Senior Research Analyst at the National Priorities Project. He is a member of the Unified Security Budget Task Force and the Sustainable Defense Task Force. Prior to joining NPP, he worked on military budget and policy issues for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and the Center for Defense Information. He is also a ten-year veteran of Capitol Hill, where as a congressional staffer he worked on defense and foreign policy issues.

Note on further reading: Check out the latest National Priorities Project report, "US Security Spending Since 9/11." For full details of the 2012 homeland security request, see the "Homeland Security Mission Funding by Agency and Budget Account" appendix to the FY2012 budget (PDF); for the Government Accountability Office's "High Risk" series, click here; and to read the Institute of Policy Studies' "A Unified Security Budget (USB) for the United States,"click here (PDF).

Courtesy: motherjones.com

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/pentagon-911-numbers-military-spending

Washington's New Focus: China

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:55:18 PST

By Michael T. Klare

From now on, the primary focus of American military strategy will not be counterterrorism, but the containment of China.

When it comes to China policy, is the Obama administration leaping from the frying pan directly into the fire? In an attempt to turn the page on two disastrous wars in the Greater Middle East, it may have just launched a new Cold War in Asia—once again, viewing oil as the key to global supremacy.

The new policy was signaled by President Obama himself on November 17th in anaddress to the Australian Parliament in which he laid out an audacious—and extremely dangerous—geopolitical vision. Instead of focusing on the Greater Middle East, as has been the case for the last decade, the United States will now concentrate its power in Asia and the Pacific. "My guidance is clear," he declared in Canberra. "As we plan and budget for the future, we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region." While administration officials insist that this new policy is not aimed specifically at China, the implication is clear enough: from now on, the primary focus of American military strategy will not be counterterrorism, but the containment of that economically booming land—at whatever risk or cost.

The Planet's New Center of Gravity

The new emphasis on Asia and the containment of China is necessary, top officials insist, because the Asia-Pacific region now constitutes the "center of gravity" of world economic activity. While the United States was bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the argument goes, China had the leeway to expand its influence in the region. For the first time since the end of World War II, Washington is no longer the dominant economic actor there. If the United States is to retain its title as the world's paramount power, it must, this thinking goes, restore its primacy in the region and roll back Chinese influence. In the coming decades, no foreign policy task will, it is claimed, be more important than this.

In line with its new strategy, the administration has undertaken a number of moves intended to bolster American power in Asia, and so put China on the defensive. These include a decision to deploy an initial 250 US Marines—someday to be upped to 2,500—to an Australian air base in Darwin on that country's north coast, and the adoption on November 18th of "the Manila Declaration," a pledge of closer US military ties with the Philippines.

At the same time, the White House announced the sale of 24 F-16 fighter jets to Indonesia and a visit by Hillary Clinton to isolated Burma, long a Chinese ally—the first there by a secretary of state in 56 years. Clinton has also spoken of increased diplomatic and military ties with Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—all countries surrounding China or overlooking key trade routes that China relies on for importing raw materials and exporting manufactured goods.

As portrayed by administration officials, such moves are intended to maximize America's advantages in the diplomatic and military realm at a time when China dominates the economic realm regionally. In a recent article in Foreign Policy magazine, Clinton revealingly suggested that an economically weakened United States can no longer hope to prevail in multiple regions simultaneously. It must choose its battlefields carefully and deploy its limited assets—most of them of a military nature—to maximum advantage. Given Asia's strategic centrality to global power, this means concentrating resources there.

"Over the last 10 years," she writes, "we have allocated immense resources to [Iraq and Afghanistan]. In the next 10 years, we need to be smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy, so that we put ourselves in the best position to sustain our leadership [and] secure our interests... One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment—diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise—in the Asia-Pacific region."

Such thinking, with its distinctly military focus, appears dangerously provocative. The steps announced entail an increased military presence in waters bordering China and enhanced military ties with that country's neighbors—moves certain to arouse alarm in Beijing and strengthen the hand of those in the ruling circle (especially in the Chinese military leadership) who favor a more activist, militarized response to US incursions. Whatever forms that takes, one thing is certain: the leadership of the globe's number two economic power is not going to let itself appear weak and indecisive in the face of an American buildup on the periphery of its country. This, in turn, means that we may be sowing the seeds of a new Cold War in Asia in 2011.

The US military buildup and the potential for a powerful Chinese counter-thrust have already been the subject of discussion in the American and Asian press. But one crucial dimension of this incipient struggle has received no attention at all: the degree to which Washington's sudden moves have been dictated by a fresh analysis of the global energy equation, revealing (as the Obama administration sees it) increased vulnerabilities for the Chinese side and new advantages for Washington.

The New Energy Equation

For decades, the United States has been heavily dependent on imported oil, much of it obtained from the Middle East and Africa, while China was largely self-sufficient in oil output. In 2001, the United States consumed 19.6 million barrels of oil per day, while producing only nine million barrels itself. The dependency on foreign suppliers for that 10.6 million-barrel shortfall proved a source of enormous concern for Washington policymakers. They responded by forging ever closer, more militarized ties with Middle Eastern oil producers and going to war on occasion to ensure the safety of US supply lines.

In 2001, China, on the other hand, consumed only five million barrels per day and so, with a domestic output of 3.3 million barrels, needed to import only 1.7 million barrels. Those cold, hard numbers made its leadership far less concerned about the reliability of the country's major overseas providers—and so it did not need to duplicate the same sort of foreign policy entanglements that Washington had long been involved in.

Now, so the Obama administration has concluded, the tables are beginning to turn. As a result of China's booming economy and the emergence of a sizeable and growing middle class (many of whom have already bought their first cars), the country's oil consumption is exploding. Running at about 7.8 million barrels per day in 2008, it will, according to recent projections by the US Department of Energy, reach 13.6 million barrels in 2020, and 16.9 million in 2035. Domestic oil production, on the other hand, is expected to grow from 4.0 million barrels per day in 2008 to 5.3 million in 2035. Not surprisingly, then, Chinese imports are expected to skyrocket from 3.8 million barrels per day in 2008 to a projected 11.6 million in 2035—at which time they will exceed those of the United States.

The US, meanwhile, can look forward to an improved energy situation. Thanks to increased production in "tough oil" areas of the United States, including the Arctic seas off Alaska, the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and shale formations in Montana, North Dakota, and Texas, future imports are expected to decline, even as energy consumption rises. In addition, more oil is likely to be available from the Western Hemisphere rather than the Middle East or Africa. Again, this will be thanks to the exploitation of yet more "tough oil" areas, including the Athabasca tar sands of Canada, Brazilian oil fields in the deep Atlantic, and increasingly pacified energy-rich regions of previously war-torn Colombia. According to the Department of Energy, combined production in the United States, Canada, and Brazil is expected to climb by 10.6 million barrels per day between 2009 and 2035—an enormous jump, considering that most areas of the world are expecting declining output.

Whose Sea Lanes Are These Anyway?

From a geopolitical perspective, all this seems to confer a genuine advantage on the United States, even as China becomes ever more vulnerable to the vagaries of events in, or along, the sea lanes to distant lands. It means Washington will be able to contemplate a gradual loosening of its military and political ties to the Middle Eastern oil states that have dominated its foreign policy for so long and have led to those costly, devastating wars.

Indeed, as President Obama said in Canberra, the US is now in a position to begin to refocus its military capabilities elsewhere. "After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly," he declared, "the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia-Pacific region."

For China, all this spells potential strategic impairment. Although some of China's imported oil will travel overland through pipelines from Kazakhstan and Russia, the great majority of it will still come by tanker from the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America over sea lanes policed by the US Navy. Indeed, almost every tanker bringing oil to China travels across the South China Sea, a body of water the Obama administration is now seeking to place under effective naval control.

By securing naval dominance of the South China Sea and adjacent waters, the Obama administration evidently aims to acquire the twenty-first century energy equivalent of twentieth-century nuclear blackmail. Push us too far, the policy implies, and we'll bring your economy to its knees by blocking your flow of vital energy supplies. Of course, nothing like this will ever be said in public, but it is inconceivable that senior administration officials are not thinking along just these lines, and there is ample evidence that the Chinese are deeply worried about the risk—as indicated, for example, by their frantic efforts to build staggeringly expensive pipelines across the entire expanse of Asia to the Caspian Sea basin.

As the underlying nature of the new Obama strategic blueprint becomes clearer, there can be no question that the Chinese leadership will, in response, take steps to ensure the safety of China's energy lifelines. Some of these moves will undoubtedly be economic and diplomatic, including, for example, efforts to court regional players like Vietnam and Indonesia as well as major oil suppliers like Angola, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia. Make no mistake, however: others will be of a military nature. A significant buildup of the Chinese navy—still small and backward when compared to the fleets of the United States and its principal allies—would seem all but inevitable. Likewise, closer military ties between China and Russia, as well as with the Central Asian member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), are assured.

In addition, Washington could now be sparking the beginnings of a genuine Cold-War-style arms race in Asia, which neither country can, in the long run, afford. All of this is likely to lead to greater tension and a heightened risk of inadvertent escalation arising out of future incidents involving US, Chinese, and allied vessels—like the one that occurred in March 2009 when a flotilla of Chinese naval vessels surrounded a US anti-submarine warfare surveillance ship, the Impeccable, and almost precipitated a shooting incident. As more warships circulate through these waters in an increasingly provocative fashion, the risk that such an incident will result in something far more explosive can only grow.

Nor will the potential risks and costs of such a military-first policy aimed at China be restricted to Asia. In the drive to promote greater US self-sufficiency in energy output, the Obama administration is giving its approval to production techniques—Arctic drilling, deep-offshore drilling, and hydraulic fracturing—that are guaranteed to lead to further Deepwater Horizon-style environmental catastrophe at home. Greater reliance on Canadian tar sands, the"dirtiest" of energies, will result in increased greenhouse gas emissions and a multitude of other environmental hazards, while deep Atlantic oil production off the Brazilian coast and elsewhere has its own set of grim dangers.

All of this ensures that, environmentally, militarily, and economically, we will find ourselves in a more, not less, perilous world. The desire to turn away from disastrous land wars in the Greater Middle East to deal with key issues now simmering in Asia is understandable, but choosing a strategy that puts such an emphasis on military dominance and provocation is bound to provoke a response in kind. It is hardly a prudent path to head down, nor will it, in the long run, advance America's interests at a time when global economic cooperation is crucial. Sacrificing the environment to achieve greater energy independence makes no more sense.

A new Cold War in Asia and a hemispheric energy policy that could endanger the planet: it's a fatal brew that should be reconsidered before the slide toward confrontation and environmental disaster becomes irreversible. You don't have to be a seer to know that this is not the definition of good statesmanship, but of the march of folly.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, aTomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. A documentary movie version of his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available from the Media Education Foundation

Courtesy: Motherjones.com

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/military-strategy-shift-counterterrorism-middle-east-china

The Strait of Hormuz Isn't the Only Place Where Tensions Are Rising

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:47:00 PST

By Michael T. Klare

As demand rises and supplies dwindle, disputes over energy resources will dominate world affairs.

Welcome to an edgy world where a single incident at an energy "chokepoint" could set a region aflame, provoking bloody encounters, boosting oil prices, and putting the global economy at risk. With energy demand on the rise and sources of supply dwindling, we are, in fact, entering a new epoch—the Geo-Energy Era—in which disputes over vital resources will dominate world affairs. In 2012 and beyond, energy and conflict will be bound ever more tightly together, lending increasing importance to the key geographical flashpoints in our resource-constrained world.

Take the Strait of Hormuz, already making headlines and shaking energy markets as 2012 begins. Connecting the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, it lacks imposing geographical features like the Rock of Gibraltar or the Golden Gate Bridge. In an energy-conscious world, however, it may possess greater strategic significance than any passageway on the planet. Every day, according to the US Department of Energy, tankers carrying some 17 million barrels of oil—representing 20 percent of the world's daily supply—pass through this vital artery.

So last month, when a senior Iranian official threatened to block the strait in response to Washington's tough new economic sanctions, oil prices instantly soared. While the US military has vowed to keep the strait open, doubts about the safety of future oil shipments and worries about a potentially unending, nerve-jangling crisis involving Washington, Tehran, and Tel Aviv have energy experts predicting high oil prices for months to come, meaning further woes for a slowing global economy.

The Strait of Hormuz is, however, only one of several hot spots where energy, politics, and geography are likely to mix in dangerous ways in 2012 and beyond. Keep your eye as well on the East and South China Seas, the Caspian Sea basin, and an energy-rich Arctic that is losing its sea ice. In all of these places, countries are disputing control over the production and transportation of energy, and arguing about national boundaries and/or rights of passage.

In the years to come, the location of energy supplies and of energy supply routes—pipelines, oil ports, and tanker routes—will be pivotal landmarks on the global strategic map. Key producing areas, like the Persian Gulf, will remain critically important, but so will oil chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca (between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea) and the "sea lines of communication," or SLOCs (as naval strategists like to call them) connecting producing areas to overseas markets. More and more, the major powers led by the United States, Russia, and China will restructure their militaries to fight in such locales.

You can already see this in the elaborate Defense Strategic Guidance document, "Sustaining US Global Leadership," unveiled at the Pentagon on January 5th by President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. While envisioning a smaller Army and Marine Corps, it calls for increased emphasis on air and naval capabilities, especially those geared to the protection or control of international energy and trade networks. Though it tepidly reaffirmed historic American ties to Europe and the Middle East, overwhelming emphasis was placed on bolstering US power in "the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean and South Asia."

In the new Geo-Energy Era, the control of energy and of its transport to market will lie at the heart of recurring global crises. This year, keep your eyes on three energy hot spots in particular: the Strait of Hormuz, the South China Sea, and the Caspian Sea basin.

The Strait of Hormuz

A narrow stretch of water separating Iran from Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), thestrait is the sole maritime link between the oil-rich Persian Gulf region and the rest of the world. A striking percentage of the oil produced by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE is carried by tanker through this passageway on a daily basis, making it (in the words of the Department of Energy) "the world's most important oil chokepoint." Some analysts believe that any sustained blockage in the strait could trigger a 50 percent increase in the price of oil and trigger a full-scale global recession or depression.

American leaders have long viewed the Strait as a strategic fixture in their global plans that must be defended at any cost. It was an outlook first voiced by President Jimmy Carter in January 1980, on the heels of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan which had, he told Congress, "brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world's oil must flow." The American response, he insisted, must be unequivocal: any attempt by a hostile power to block the waterway would henceforth be viewed as "an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America," and "repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

Much has changed in the Gulf region since Carter issued his famous decree, known since asthe Carter Doctrine, and established the US Central Command (CENTCOM) to guard the Strait—but not Washington's determination to ensure the unhindered flow of oil there. Indeed, President Obama has made it clear that, even if CENTCOM ground forces were to leave Afghanistan, as they have Iraq, there would be no reduction in the command's air and naval presence in the greater Gulf area.

It is conceivable that the Iranians will put Washington's capabilities to the test. On December 27th, Iran's first vice president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said, "If [the Americans] impose sanctions on Iran's oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz." Similar statements have since been made by other senior officials (and contradicted as well by yet others). In addition, the Iranians recently conducted elaborate naval exercises in the Arabian Sea near the eastern mouth of the strait, and more such maneuvers are said to be forthcoming. At the same time, the commanding general of Iran's army suggested that the USS John C. Stennis, an American aircraft carrier just leaving the Gulf, should not return. "The Islamic Republic of Iran," he added ominously, "will not repeat its warning."

Might the Iranians actually block the strait? Many analysts believe that the statements by Rahimi and his colleagues are bluster and bluff meant to rattle Western leaders, send oil prices higher, and win future concessions if negotiations ever recommence over their country's nuclear program. Economic conditions in Iran are, however, becoming more desperate, and it is always possible that the country's hard-pressed hardline leaders may feel the urge to take some dramatic action, even if it invites a powerful US counterstrike. Whatever the case, the Strait of Hormuz will remain a focus of international attention in 2012, with global oil prices closely following the rise and fall of tensions there.

The South China Sea

The South China Sea is a semi-enclosed portion of the western Pacific bounded by China to the north, Vietnam to the west, the Philippines to the east, and the island of Borneo (shared by Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia) to the south. The sea also incorporates two largely uninhabited island chains, the Paracels and the Spratlys. Long an important fishing ground, it has also been a major avenue for commercial shipping between East Asia and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. More recently, it acquired significance as a potential source of oil and natural gas, large reserves of which are now believed to lie in subsea areas surrounding the Paracels and Spratlys.

With the discovery of oil and gas deposits, the South China Sea has been transformed into a cockpit of international friction. At least some islands in this energy-rich area are claimed by every one of the surrounding countries, including China—which claims them all, and has demonstrated a willingness to use military force to assert dominance in the region. Not surprisingly, this has put it in conflict with the other claimants, including several with close military ties to the United States. As a result, what started out as a regional matter, involving China and various members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), has become a prospective tussle between the world's two leading powers.

To press their claims, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines have all sought to work collectively through ASEAN, believing a multilateral approach will give them greater negotiating clout than one-on-one dealings with China. For their part, the Chinese have insisted that all disputes must be resolved bilaterally, a situation in which they can more easily bring their economic and military power to bear. Previously preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has now entered the fray, offering full-throated support to the ASEAN countries in their efforts to negotiate en masse with Beijing.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi promptly warned the United States not to interfere. Any such move "will only make matters worse and the resolution more difficult," he declared. The result was an instant war of words between Beijing and Washington. During a visit to the Chinese capital in July 2011, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen delivered a barely concealed threat when it came to possible future military action. "The worry, among others that I have," he commented, "is that the ongoing incidents could spark a miscalculation, and an outbreak that no one anticipated." To drive the point home, the United States has conducted a series of conspicuous military exercises in the South China Sea, including some joint maneuvers with ships from Vietnam and the Philippines. Not to be outdone, China responded with naval maneuvers of its own. It's a perfect formula for future "incidents" at sea.

The South China Sea has long been on the radar screens of those who follow Asian affairs, but it only attracted global attention when, in November, President Obama traveled to Australia and announced, with remarkable bluntness, a new US strategy aimed at confronting Chinese power in Asia and the Pacific. "As we plan and budget for the future," he told members of the Australian Parliament in Canberra, "we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region." A key feature of this effort would be to ensure "maritime security" in the South China Sea.

While in Australia, President Obama also announced the establishment of a new US base at Darwin on that country's northern coast, as well as expanded military ties with Indonesia and the Philippines. In January, the president similarly placed special emphasis on projecting US power in the region when he went to the Pentagon to discuss changes in the American military posture in the world.

Beijing will undoubtedly take its own set of steps, no less belligerent, to protect its growing interests in the South China Sea. Where this will lead remains, of course, unknown. After the Strait of Hormuz, however, the South China Sea may be the global energy chokepoint where small mistakes or provocations could lead to bigger confrontations in 2012 and beyond.

The Caspian Sea Basin

The Caspian Sea is an inland body of water bordered by Russia, Iran, and three former republics of the USSR: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. In the immediate area as well are the former Soviet lands of Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. All of these old SSRs are, to one degree or another, attempting to assert their autonomy from Moscow and establish independent ties with the United States, the European Union, Iran, Turkey, and, increasingly, China. All are wracked by internal schisms and/or involved in border disputes with their neighbors. The region would be a hotbed of potential conflict even if the Caspian basin did not harbor some of the world's largest undeveloped reserves of oil and natural gas, which could easily bring it to a boil.

This is not the first time that the Caspian has been viewed as a major source of oil, and so potential conflict. In the late nineteenth century, the region around the city of Baku—then part of the Russian empire, now in Azerbaijan—was a prolific source of petroleum and so a major strategic prize. Future Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin first gained notoriety there as a leader of militant oil workers, and Hitler sought to capture it during his ill-fated 1941 invasion of the USSR. After World War II, however, the region lost its importance as an oil producer when Baku's onshore fields dried up. Now, fresh discoveries are being made in offshore areas of the Caspian itself and in previously undeveloped areas of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

According to energy giant BP, the Caspian area harbors as much as 48 billion barrels of oil (mostly buried in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan) and 449 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (with the largest supply in Turkmenistan). This puts the region ahead of North and South America in total gas reserves and Asia in oil reserves. But producing all this energy and delivering it to foreign markets will be a monumental task. The region's energy infrastructure is woefully inadequate and the Caspian itself provides no maritime outlet to other seas, so all that oil and gas must travel by pipeline or rail.

Russia, long the dominant power in the region, is pursuing control over the transportation routes by which Caspian oil and gas will reach markets. It is upgrading Soviet-era pipelines that link the former SSRs to Russia or building new ones and, to achieve a near monopoly over the marketing of all this energy, bringing traditional diplomacy, strong-arm tactics, and outright bribery to bear on regional leaders (many of whom once served in the Soviet bureaucracy) to ship their energy via Russia. As recounted in my book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, Washington sought to thwart these efforts by sponsoring the construction of alternative pipelines that avoid Russian territory, crossing Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey to the Mediterranean (notably the BTC, or Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline), while Beijing is building its own pipelines linking the Caspian area to western China.

All of these pipelines cross through areas of ethnic unrest and pass near various contested regions like rebellious Chechnya and breakaway South Ossetia. As a result, both China and the US have wedded their pipeline operations to military assistance for countries along the routes. Fearful of an American presence, military or otherwise, in the former territories of the Soviet Union, Russia has responded with military moves of its own, including its brief August 2008 war with Georgia, which took place along the BTC route.

Given the magnitude of the Caspian's oil and gas reserves, many energy firms are planning new production operations in the region, along with the pipelines needed to bring the oil and gas to market. The European Union, for example, hopes to build a new natural gas pipeline called Nabucco from Azerbaijan through Turkey to Austria. Russia has proposed a competing conduit called South Stream. All of these efforts involve the geopolitical interests of major powers, ensuring that the Caspian region will remain a potential source of international crisis and conflict.

In the new Geo-Energy Era, the Strait of Hormuz, the South China Sea, and the Caspian Basin hardly stand alone as potential energy flashpoints. The East China Sea, where China and Japan are contending for a contested undersea natural gas field, is another, as are the waters surrounding the Falkland Islands, where both Britain and Argentina hold claims to undersea oil reserves, as will be the globally warming Arctic whose resources are claimed by many countries. One thing is certain: wherever the sparks may fly, there's oil in the water and danger at hand in 2012.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, aTomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. His newest book, The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources, will be published in March.

Courtesy: Motherjones.com

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/energy-wars-strait-hormuz-iran-sanctions

We're Number One in Global Weapons Sales

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:26:08 PST

By William Astore

But at what cost to ourselves and the rest of the world?

Perhaps you've heard of "Makin' Thunderbirds,"a hard-bitten rock & roll song by Bob Seger that I listened to 30 years ago while in college. It's about auto workers back in 1955 who were "young and proud" to be making Ford Thunderbirds. But in the early 1980s, Seger sings, "the plants have changed and you're lucky if you work." Seger caught the reality of an American manufacturing infrastructure that was seriously eroding as skilled and good-paying union jobs were cut or sent overseas, rarely to be seen again in these parts.

If the US auto industry has recently shown sparks of new life (though we're not making T-Birds or Mercuries or Oldsmobiles or Pontiacs or Saturns anymore), there is one form of manufacturing in which America is still dominant. When it comes to weaponry, to paraphrase Seger, we're still young and proud and makin' Predators and Reapers (as in unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones) and Eagles and Fighting Falcons (as in F-15 and F-16 combat jets), and outfitting them with the deadliest of weapons. In this market niche, we're still the envy of the world.

Yes, we're the world's foremost "merchants of death," the title of a best-selling exposé of the international arms trade published to acclaim in the US in 1934. Back then, most Americans saw themselves as war-avoiders rather than as war-profiteers. The evil war-profiteers were mainly European arms makers like Germany's Krupp, France's Schneider, or Britain's Vickers.

Not that America didn't have its own arms merchants. As the authors of Merchants of Death noted, early on our country demonstrated a "Yankee propensity for extracting novel death-dealing knickknacks from [our] peddler's pack." Amazingly, the Nye Committee in the US Senate devoted 93 hearings from 1934 to 1936 to exposing America's own "greedy munitions interests." Even in those desperate depression days, a desire for profit and jobs was balanced by a strong sense of unease at this deadly trade, an unease reinforced by the horrors of and hecatombs of dead from the First World War.

We are uneasy no more. Today we take great pride (or at least have no shame) in being by far the world's number one arms-exporting nation. A few statistics bear this out. From 2006 to 2010, the US accounted for nearly one-third of the world's arms exports, easily surpassing a resurgent Russia in the "Lords of War" race. Despite a decline in global arms sales in 2010 due to recessionary pressures, the US increased its market share, accounting for a whopping 53 percent of the trade that year. Last year saw the US on pace to deliver more than $46 billionin foreign arms sales. Who says America isn't number one anymore?

For a shopping list of our arms trades, try searching the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute database for arms exports and imports. It reveals that, in 2010, the US exported "major conventional weapons" to 62 countries, from Afghanistan to Yemen, and weapons platforms ranging from F-15, F-16, and F-18 combat jets to M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Cobra attack helicopters (sent to our Pakistani comrades) to guided missiles in all flavors, colors, and sizes: AAMs, PGMs, SAMs, TOWs—a veritable alphabet soup of missile acronyms. Never mind their specific meaning: they're all designed to blow things up; they're all designed to kill.

Rarely debated in Congress or in US media outlets is the wisdom or morality of these arms deals. During the quiet last days of December 2011, in separate announcements whose timing could not have been accidental, the Obama Administration expressed its intent to sell nearly $11 billion in arms to Iraq, including Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter-bombers, and nearly $30 billion in F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, part of a larger, $60 billion arms package for the Saudis. Few in Congress oppose such arms deals since defense contractors provide jobs in their districts—and ready donations to Congressional campaigns.

Let's pause to consider what such a weapons deal implies for Iraq. Firstly, Iraq only "needs" advanced tanks and fighter jets because we destroyed their previous generation of the same, whether in 1991 during Desert Shield/Storm or in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Secondly, Iraq "needs" such powerful conventional weaponry ostensibly to deter an invasion by Iran, yet the current government in Baghdad is closely aligned with Iran, courtesy of our invasion in 2003 and the botched occupation that followed. Thirdly, despite its "needs," the Iraqi military is nowhere near ready to field and maintain such advanced weaponry, at least without sustained training and logistical support provided by the US military.

As one US Air Force officer who served as an advisor to the fledging Iraqi Air Force, or IqAF, recently worried:

"Will the IqAF be able to refuel its own aircraft? Can the Iraqi military offer adequate force protection and security for its bases? Can the IqAF provide airfield management services at its bases as they return to Iraqi control after eight years under US direction? Can the IqAF ensure simple power generation to keep facilities operating? Will the IqAF be able to develop and retain its airmen?... Only time will tell if we left [Iraq] too early; nevertheless, even without a renewed security agreement, the USAF can continue to stand alongside the IqAF."

Put bluntly: We doubt the Iraqis are ready to field and fly American-built F-16s, but we're going to sell them to them anyway. And if past history is a guide, if the Iraqis ever turn these planes against us, we'll blow them up or shoot them down—and then (hopefully) sell them some more.

Our Best Arms Customer

Let's face it: the weapons we sell to others pale in comparison to the weapons we sell to ourselves. In the market for deadly weapons, we are our own best customer. Americans have a love affair with them, the more high-tech and expensive, the better. I should know. After all, I'm a recovering weapons addict.

Well into my teen years, I was fascinated by military hardware. I built models of what were then the latest US warplanes: the A-10, the F-4, the F-14, -15, and -16, the B-1, and many others. I read Aviation Week and Space Technology at my local library to keep track of the newest developments in military technology. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I went on to major in mechanical engineering in college and entered the Air Force as a developmental engineer.

Enamored as I was by roaring afterburners and sleek weaponry, I also began to read books likeJames Fallows's National Defense (1981) among other early critiques of the Carter and Reagan defense buildup, as well as the slyly subversive and always insightful Augustine's Laws (1986) by Norman Augustine, later the CEO of Martin Marietta and Lockheed Martin. That and my own experience in the Air Force alerted me to the billions of dollars we were devoting to high-tech weaponry with ever-ballooning price tags but questionable utility.

Perhaps the best example of the persistence of this phenomenon is the F-35 Lightning II. Produced by Lockheed Martin, the F-35 was intended to be an "affordable" fighter-bomber (at roughly $50 million per copy), a perfect complement to the much more expensive F-22 "air superiority" Raptor. But the usual delays, cost overruns, technical glitches, and changes in requirements have driven the price tag of the F-35 up to $160 million per plane, assuming the US military persists in its plans to buy 2,400 of them. (If the Pentagon decides to buy fewer, the cost-per-plane will soar into the F-22 range.) By recent estimates the F-35 will now cost US taxpayers (you and me, that is) at least $382 billion for its development and production run. Such a sum for a single weapons system is vast enough to be hard to fathom. It would, for instance, easily fund all federal government spending on education for the next five years.

The escalating cost of the F-35 recalls the most famous of Norman Augustine's irreverent laws: "In the year 2054," he wrote back in the early 1980s, "the entire defense budget will [suffice to] purchase just one aircraft." But the deeper question is whether our military evenneeds the F-35, a question that's rarely asked and never seriously entertained, at least by Congress, whose philosophy on weaponry is much like King Lear's: "O, reason not the need."

But let's reason the need in purely military terms. These days, the Air Force is turning increasingly to unmanned drones. Meanwhile, plenty of perfectly good and serviceable "platforms" remain for attack and close air support missions, from F-16s and F-18s in the Air Force and Navy to Apache helicopters in the Army. And while many of our existing combat jets may be nearing the limits of airframe integrity, there's nothing stopping the US military from producing updated versions of the same. Heck, this is precisely what we're hawking to the Saudis—updated versions of the F-15, developed in the 1970s.

Because of sheer cost, it's likely we'll buy fewer F-35s than our military wants but many more than we actually need. We'll do so because Weapons ‘R' Us. Because building ultra-expensive combat jets is one of the few high-tech industries we haven't exported (due to national security and secrecy concerns), and thus one of the few industries in the US that still supports high-paying manufacturing jobs with decent employee benefits. And who can argue with that?

The Ultimate Cost of Our Merchandise of Death

Clearly, the US has grabbed the brass ring of the global arms trade. When it comes to investing in militaries and weaponry, no country can match us. We are supreme. And despite talk of modest cuts to the Pentagon budget over the next decade, it will, according toPresident Obama, continue to grow, which means that in weapons terms the future remains bright. After all, Pentagon spending on research and development stands at $81.4 billion, accounting for an astonishing 55 percent of all federal spending on R&D and leaving plenty of opportunity to develop our next generation of wonder weapons.

But at what cost to ourselves and the rest of the world? We've become the suppliers of weaponry to the planet's hotspots. And those weapons deliveries (and the training and support missions that go with them) tend to make those spots hotter still—as in hot lead.

As a country, we seem to have a teenager's fascination with military hardware, an addiction that's driving us to bust our own national budgetary allowance. At the same time, we sell weapons the way teenage punks sell fireworks to younger kids: for profit and with little regard for how they might be used.

Sixty years ago, it was said that what's good for General Motors is good for America. In 1955, as Bob Seger sang, we were young and strong and makin' Thunderbirds. But today we're playing a new tune with new lyrics: what's good for Lockheed Martin or Boeing or [insert major-defense-contractor-of-your-choice here] is good for America.

How far we've come since the 1950s!

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), is a TomDispatch regular.

Courtesy: Opednews.com

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=144604

South Asia Predictions for 2012

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:29:02 PST

By Atlantic Council

The South Asia Center receives guidance and support from many experts throughout the world. Our senior fellows, guest-speakers, Center patrons, and visitors contribute heavily to the Center’s mission to “wage peace,” and engage the international community in the region. The Center asked our contributors the simple, but key question, “What you do expect in 2012?” Click on the names below to read their responses, and if you want to see what our experts said last year, click here.

What Our Experts Think:

Shikha Bhatnagar, South Asia Center Associate Director, Atlantic Council

Mohan Guruswamy, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council

Zahid Hussain, Pakistan Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center

Ayesha Jalal, Council Nonresident Senior Fellow

Sunjoy Joshi, Director, Observer Research Foundation

Shuja Nawaz, South Asia Center Director, Atlantic Council

Jonathan Paris, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council

Ahmed Rashid, Pakistan journalist and author of Decent into Chaos and Taliban

Barbara Slavin, Resident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council

Moeed Yusuf, South Asia Adviser, United States Institute of Peace

Shikha Bhatnagar

US-Pakistan relations will continue to spiral/plummet downwards due to lack of creative thinking from either party. However, India-Pakistan relations will remain stable and may even improve slightly if some of the recent economic measures move forward.

Manmohan Singh will continue to hold power, although it will continue to weaken, and Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru/Gandhi dynasty, will officially assume presidency of the Congress Party.

Shikha Bhatnagar is an Associate Director with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

Mohan Guruswamy

So what is my prediction? It is simply this. India will still be among the fastest growing nations in the world. Maybe even faster than China? But the GDP growth would slow down even further, maybe by another 1% or another $45 billion in terms of opportunity cost? Maybe we can live with that? But money lost is money lost.

Mohan Guruswamy is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center. Guruswamy heads the Centre for Policy Alternatives, an independent and privately funded think tank in New Delhi.

Zahid Hussain

[The] worsening political crisis will lead to fresh elections in Pakistan, but change of government may not restore stability.

Zahid Hussain is an award-winning journalist and writer, a senior editor with Newsline and a correspondent for The Times of London, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. He is a Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Ayesha Jalal

Calls for early elections and hopes of initiating change through the ballot box notwithstanding, a reference to the voters in both India and Pakistan will throw up a fragmented result and the continuation of coalition governments in the foreseeable future, making the problems of governance in the subcontinent increasingly more intractable. The regions in both countries are set to trump the center.

Ayesha Jalal is a non-resident senior fellow with the South Asia Center and is also the Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University and a MacArthur Fellow.

Sunjoy Joshi

West Asia - Besides the variety of strains of the Arab Spring and the selective impulse in the West for regime change, Iran will dominate the discourse on West Asia. Iran, often perceived as being driven by an Imperial urge to dominate and control its neighbourhood, may infact be a victim of profound sense of insecurity that stems froms its neighbourhood, inimical and different (Pakistan and the Arab states) who, Iran fears will inevitably seek to politically and (more importantly) culturally subjugate it. Faced with a large, politically aware and youthful population under economic pressure, the regime will continue trying to balance multiple political needs - regime stability, external security and economic development.

In 2012, Iran will, due to a confluence of factors, repeatedly try to signal its willingness to negotiate. However, the US may remain trapped by its domestic as well as strategic percepts and will probably miss the opportunity to craft a culturally sensitive and politically deft response. Israel, the Arab states and Pakistan (each for their own reasons) will all present narratives that will make responding positively difficult.

Bangladesh - The Sheikh Hasina government will continue to lose popular support because of its abject failure to fulfill promises made to the people. BNP will gain in strength. This will be played out in the streets more often in the new year causing wide spread disruptions in major cities and increase the level of anxiety and instability as a whole.

The Sheikh Hasina government's repressive measures against party opponents will further galvanize the opposition. With little investment in public infrastructure despite a consistent economic growth of 6 plus per cent, crucial issues like employment, infrastructure development and poverty alleviation will remain largely unaddressed.

Pakistan - Pakistan will remain political unstable. The civil-military relationship will remain at odds with public spats. The next big spat on the horizon could be over the appointment of the new ISI chief or the extension of Shuja Pasha's tenure. PPP's influence is likely to erode rapidly as Zardari and Gillani blunder along, without really delivering anything substantial in terms of economic development. The government's predicament is going to become more acute as gas and power supply crises becomes a major issue in the coming summer months. The erosion in the texture of the relationship is unlikely to be replaced by its growing and strong relationship with China There will be a more persuasive attempt to better relationship with India, at least on the economic side but there are increasing hiccups on the way.

India - India’s challenge remain mostly domestic and its increased and more democratic expressions will often be chaotic and at the cost of national progress. 2012 will witness India actually having to bear the economic cost of plurality in policy making and the slowdown (relative) in rate of growth coupled with social schemes will strain ability of the government to cater to large and diverse demands. Pakistan will remain a unresolved issue and the increasing Chinese influence would necessitate India entering into a number of coalitions which will stretch the strategic and ideological reach of India.

Sunjoy Joshi is the Director of the Observer Research Foundation, Delhi, India. He is a Visiting Associate at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London, as well as Distinguished Visitor to the Programme on Energy and Sustainable Development, University of Stanford, USA.

Shuja Nawaz

In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may choose to step down. Pakistan will try muddling through, but the civil military divide and an assertive Supreme Court may claim more victims, starting with the Prime Minister. Afghanistan will witness an assertive President Karzai, especially in his dealing with the United States. Troop withdrawals may speed up.

Shuja Nawaz is the Director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

Jonathan Paris

Before I present my predictions for 2012, let me begin with a paragraph from my South Asia Center predictions in January 2010: "In addition to the obvious trouble spots – Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – the countries that will preoccupy the Obama administration in the coming year are the PITEY nations: Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and Yemen…. The big question for Egypt is the coming of a post-Hosni Mubarak government. If President Mubarak can hold on for another year, Egypt will remain a stable, moderate and pro-U.S. country anchoring the Middle East in relative peace. If, however, a succession crisis emerges this year while Iran is still under Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, the Middle East could be in for some turmoil." (Note: my 2010 prediction on Egypt’s succession crisis was ahead by a year as Tahrir Square erupted on Jan. 25, 2011.) See “South Asia in 2010: A Pivotal Year”, The New Atlanticist, Jan. 6, 2010.

For 2012, I expand my predictions beyond South Asia to include, again, the Middle East. Since I have been doing a good deal of research on the future of Europe these past 18 months, I make a few brief remarks about the prospects for some of the European countries close to the Middle East/South Asia.

Starting with the PITEY countries, Pakistan will muddle through in 2012. As I concluded in my Prospects for Pakistan Report in 2010 , the US will have an increasingly difficult time getting Pakistan to promote US interests. This is not the same thing as predicting the rise of an Islamist government. I simply mean that the US is and will continue to be unpopular in the Pakistan street, and President Zardari appears to be the least anti-American of any possible alternative ruler.

Pakistan’s neighbor, Afghanistan, will do better than expected in 2012 as the Afghan Army picks up momentum. The real crunch won’t happen until the following year, when Afghan and Pakistani troops start clashing along the border, with the more experienced Pakistan army prevailing. It wouldn’t surprise me to see negotiations between the NATO forces, Karzai’s government and the Taliban under either or both auspices of Pakistan and Qatar. But watch out for the Haqqani network to play a spoiler role.

Iran is going to heat up this year. Internally, the regime appears brittle. Regionally, Iran will continue to be on the defensive as the Arab Spring is more of a threat than a benefit for the regime. Iran’s strategic ally, Assad, will either leave Syria or retreat into the mountains in northeast Syria, where he will wage continued resistance and Syria will likely be weak and divided. The Iranians may maintain some access via the Assad hideaway to Hezbollah, but it will not be like the old days. Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah will either leave the stage or maintain a low profile.

Internationally, the sanctions will be ratcheted upwards and one of two things will happen. Either Iran will freeze its nuclear program (unlikely) or it will provoke a military response. I am very skeptical that Iran will be close to having nuclear weapons at the end of 2012. I leave it to the reader to work out why.

Egypt will be tempestuous and unstable. The economy will be in even more dire straits than at the beginning of 2012. The military and the Islamic parties will continue to spar and negotiate at the same time. The more secular political parties and the Tahrir Square movement will struggle in the elections but will remain a force on the street. Young and female Egyptians will not lie down and watch their country go backwards to a medieval state. The 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty will remain in letter but not in substance as cooperation will diminish due to populist sentiments on the Egyptian street across the board from secular to fundamentalist. But all is not bleak even on that front as the Egyptian public will gradually and grudgingly conclude that peace, or at least non-war, is not such a bad idea as compared to a seventh Israeli-Egyptian war.

Turkey’s regional leadership aspirations will come down a notch or two as Erdogan’s health problems, Kurdish problems and economic problems dent his popularity. The West will become increasingly disenchanted with Erdogan’s brinksmanship and mercurial personality, while the Arab countries, especially the ones with surging Islamic parties, will look to the AKP as a kind of role model, apart from disagreements over Sharia law.

Bahrain and Yemen will continue to muddle through. The Khalifas will remain in power in Bahrain. I am not as sure about the Saleh family in Yemen. The Arab monarchies will hang in there. Algeria will be facing challenging times when President Bouteflika leaves the scene, but it is less likely that the army will lose control in 2012 than sometime after 2012.

Hamas will reach an agreement with the PA in the first half of the year and then sever the agreement in the second half of the year. Netanyahu will call for elections sometime in 2012 or early 2013. If what I predict happens in Iran, a dovish party will eventually gain enough seats to form a coalition, just barely, to replace the current Netanyahu government.

Turning to the north Mediterranean, Italy will do surprisingly well in 2012 as it brings its deficits down and successfully refinances its enormous debt coming due in 2012. Growth will remain elusive, however.

The other ‘club med’ countries will struggle, especially Greece. Spain will battle high unemployment amidst an increasingly unpopular austerity program. France will no longer have a triple A rating as it comes to grip with its rising public debt, lack of job creation, slow growth, pervasive welfare state, and long term immigration issues.

Germany’s economy will continue to hum, despite some blips, but Germany will encounter increasing resistance to its austerity mantra from the club med countries. The Nordic countries will thrive.

The euro will hold, and the recession in continental Europe and the UK will be mild, with the economy ending 2012 in an upswing. I am NOT picking the US President for 2012.

Jonathan Paris is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center . He is also an associate fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College London

Ahmed Rashid

The talks between the US, the Afghan government and the Taliban will make progress allowing for a more peaceful situation before Nato pull out in 2014. However the internal political, ethnic and economic crisis in Afghanistan will worsen.

Pakistan-US relations will remain fraught despite a temporary patch up in the spring. Pakistan will remain at odds with the US on its plans for Afghanistan. Pakistan internal economic, social and political crisis will worsen despite elections that will be bought forward to the autumn of this year.

Overhanging the region will be the strong possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran which the US will back and will create enormous problems for the US in its relations with both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Ahmed Rashid is a renowned Pakistan journalist and writer. He is the author of Descent into Chaos and a recently updated edition of Taliban.

Barbara Slavin

There will be no war with Iran, but there will be some nail-biting moments courtesy of both Iran, and Israel, which reserves for itself the right to strike Iran without telling the US in advance. Oil prices will stay above $100 a barrel even though the Obama administration will postpone implementing new sanctions that could curtail European imports of Iranian oil. Iran will continue creeping toward the nuclear weapons threshold but will not cross the line.

Barbara Slavin is resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. Ms. Slavin is an expert on U.S. foreign policy and the author of a 2007 book on Iran entitled Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation.

Moeed Yusuf

As far as the Af-Pak theater is concerned, 2012 will be filled with more crises, more finger pointing, and more mudslinging from all sides involved. But there is a reasonable likelihood of a parallel positive movement on the reconciliation front which is just about the last thing holding partnerships like the US-Pakistan one together for now.

Moeed W. Yusuf is the South Asia adviser at the United States Institute of Peace. He works at the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention and is responsible for managing the Institute’s Pakistan program.

ABOUT THE SOUTH ASIA CENTER

The Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center was launched in 2009, under the leadership of Shuja Nawaz. The Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan as well as on relations between these countries and China, Central Asia, Turkey, the Arab world, Europe and the United States. It seeks to foster partnerships with key institutions in the region to establish itself as a forum for dialogue between decision makers in South Asia, the U.S. and NATO and continues to “wage peace” in the region.. These deliberations cover internal and external security, governance, trade, economic development, education and other issues. The Center remains committed to working with stakeholders from the region itself, in addition to partners and experts in the United States and Europe to offer comprehensive analyses and practicable recommendations for policymakers.

Courtesy: Atlantic Council

http://www.acus.org/event/south-asia-predictions-2012

World Peace Is Hanging By A Thread

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:48:41 PST

By Fidel Castro

Yesterday I had the satisfaction of having a pleasant conversation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I had not seen him since 2006, more than five years ago, when he visited our country to participate in the 14th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement of Countries in Havana. During the summit, Cuba was elected for the second time as president of the organization for a three-year term.

I had become gravely ill on July 26, 2006, a month and a half prior to the summit, and could barely sit up in bed. Many of the most distinguished leaders who participated in the event were kind enough to visit me. Chavez and Evo visited me several times. One afternoon four visitors came by whom I will always remember: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; an old friend, Abdelaziz Buteflika, the president of Algeria; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran; and the vice minister of Foreign Affairs and current Foreign Minister of China, Yang Jiechi, on behalf of the leader of the Communist Party and the president of China, Hu Jintao. It was really an important time for me; I was in the midst of intense physiotherapy on my right hand that I had seriously injured when I fell in Santa Clara.

With all four I spoke about some of the difficulties facing the world at the time; problems that have become progressively more complex.

During our meeting yesterday, I noted that the Iranian president was absolutely calm and tranquil, completely unconcerned about the Yankee threats and, fully confident in the capacity of his people to confront any aggression and in the effectiveness of their arms -- which, in large part, they produce themselves -- to inflict an unpayable price on its aggressors.

In reality, we hardly spoke about the topic of war. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was focused on the ideas he had presented at the Main Hall of the University of Havana during his conference on the struggle of humankind: "Moving towards reaching and achieving peace, security, respect and human dignity as a fundamental desire of all human beings throughout history."

I am convinced that Iran will not commit any rash actions that might contribute to setting off a war. If a war were to be unleashed, it would inevitably be completely as a result of the recklessness and congenital irresponsibility of the Yankee Empire.

I believe that the political situation surrounding Iran and the associated risks of a nuclear war that involves us all -- regardless of whether one possess nuclear weapons -- are extremely delicate because they threaten the very existence of our species. The Middle East has become the most troubled region on the planet, the same region that produces the energy resources vital for the world's economy.

The destructive power and the mass sufferings caused by some of the weapons used in World War Two led to a strong movement to ban weapons such as asphyxiating gas and others. Nevertheless, conflicting interests and the huge profits made by arms manufacturers led to the production of crueler and more destructive weapons; modern technology has now added the means and material to build weapons that if used in a world war would lead to extinction.

I support the opinion, undoubtedly shared by all those with a basic sense of responsibility, that no country big or small has the right to possess nuclear weapons.

They never should have been used to attack two defenseless cities such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing and irradiating with horrible and long-lasting effects hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, in a country that had already been militarily defeated.

If fascism indeed forced the allied nations against Nazism to compete with this enemy of humanity in the production of such weapons, once the war ended and the United Nations was created, the first duty of this organization should have been to prohibit nuclear weapons without exception.

However, the United States, the strongest and richest power, forced the rest of the world to follow its lead. Today, they have hundreds of satellites that spy and monitor the entire world from outer space. Their naval, air and land forces are equipped with thousands of nuclear weapons; and they control the world's finances and investments at their whim via the International Monetary Fund.

Analyzing the history of each Latin American nation, from Mexico to Patagonia, by way of Santo Domingo and Haiti, one can observe that each and every country, without exception, has suffered for 200 years, from the beginning of the 19th century up until today. And, in one way or another, they are increasingly suffering the worst crimes that power and force can commit against the rights of a people. Brilliant Latin American writers are emerging in an increasing number. One of them, Eduardo Galeano, author of the book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent that describes the aforementioned, has just been invited to open the prestigious Casa de Las Americas Awards as a recognition to his outstanding body of work.

Events happen incredibly fast; but technologies report them to the public even faster. On any given day, like today, important news comes out a dizzying pace. A cable report dated from January 11 states: "The Danish presidency of the European Union confirmed on Wednesday that a new series of more severe European sanctions against Iran, because of its nuclear program, will be discussed on January 23. The new sanctions will not only target the oil industry but also the Central Bank."

During a meeting with international journalists, Danish Foreign Minister Villy Soevndal said that "We will increase sanctions against the oil industry in addition to sanctions against financial structures." This clearly demonstrates that, in order to impede nuclear proliferation, Israel can go on accumulating hundreds of nuclear warheads while Iran is not allowed to produce 20% enriched uranium.

Another article, from a respected British news agency, states that "China gave no hint on Wednesday of giving ground to U.S. demands to curb Iran's oil revenues, rejecting Washington's sanctions on Tehran as overstepping..."

The sheer tranquility with which the United States and civilized Europe carry out this campaign with incredible and systematic acts of terrorism is enough to shock anybody. Just look at these lines reported by another important European news agency: "The murder on Wednesday of Iranian nuclear specialist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan [a scientist at the Natanz nuclear plant] was the fourth attack to kill a leading scientist in the country in almost exactly two years."

On January 12, 2010: "Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a particle physics professor at Tehran University is killed when a booby-trapped motorcycle explodes outside his home in the capital."

On November 29, 2010: "Two attacks target leading Iranian nuclear scientists on the same day. Majid Shahriari, a key member of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, is killed in Tehran by a limpet bomb attached to his car. His colleague Fereydoon Abbasi Davani is also targeted by a bomb attached to his car, but escapes." The car was parked in front of the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran where both men worked as professors.

On July 23, 2011: "Gunmen shoot dead Dariush Rezaei-Nejad, a senior scientist who is reportedly associated with the defense ministry, and wound his wife as they waited for their child outside a Tehran kindergarten."

On January 11, 2012 -- the same day that Ahmadinejad traveled from Nicaragua to Cuba to give a conference at the University of Havana -- scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, "a deputy director at the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, is killed in a car bomb blast outside the [Allameh Tabatabai] University in east Tehran." As in previous years "Iran once again accused the United States and Israel."

The killings represent a systematic and selective slaughter of brilliant Iranian scientists. I have read articles by known Israeli sympathizers who write about crimes carried out by Israeli intelligence services in cooperation with the United States and NATO as if they were the most normal occurrence.

At the same time, Moscow news agencies report that "Russia warned that in Syria a similar scenario is developing as to that in Libya, and added that this time the attack will be launched from neighboring Turkey.

"The secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, said the West wants to "punish Damascus not as much for repressing the opposition, but because it is unwilling to sever ties with Tehran."

"NATO members and some Persian Gulf states, operating according to the Libya scenario, intend to move from indirect intervention in Syrian affairs to direct military intervention....This time the main strikes forces will not be provided by France, the U.K. or Italy, but possibly by neighboring Turkey."

"Washington and Ankara are now assumed to be negotiating a "no-fly" zone over Syria, where Syrian armed insurgents can be trained and concentrated, added Patrushev."

News is not only coming out of Iran and the Middle East, but also from other parts of Central Asia near the Middle East. These reports show the great complexity of the problems that can arise from this dangerous region.

The United States has been led by its contradictory and absurd imperial policy to get involved in serious problems in countries such as Pakistan, whose borders with Afghanistan were drawn up by the colonialists without taking into account culture or ethnicities.

In Afghanistan, which defended its independence against English colonialism for centuries, drug production has multiplied in the wake of the Yankee invasion. Meanwhile, European soldiers, supported by drone airplanes and armed with sophisticated US weapons, carry out deplorable massacres that increase the people's hatred and ward off any possibilities of peace. All this and other dirty actions are also reported by Western news agencies...

"WASHINGTON, January 12, 2012 -- US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called the actions of four U.S. marines who urinated on corpses in Afghanistan 'utterly deplorable.' The video of the act was circulated in the Internet.

"'I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable,'

"'This conduct is entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military and does not reflect the standards of values our armed forces are sworn to uphold.'"

In reality, Panetta neither confirms nor denies the action, and anyone, including the Secretary of Defense himself, may harbor doubt.

But it is also extremely inhumane that men, women and children, or an Afghani combatant fighting against the foreign occupation, be murdered by bombs dropped by drone planes. Another very serious incident: dozens of Pakistani soldiers and officials who safeguarded the country's borders have been killed by these bombs.

Afghani President Karzai stated that the outrage committed against the bodies was "simply inhumane." He asked for the US government "to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime."

Meanwhile Taliban spokespersons declared that "over the last ten years, hundreds of similar acts have been carried out that were not reported""

One even feels sorry for those soldiers, thousands of kilometers away from their family, friends and country, sent to fight in countries that they might not have even heard of during their school days, where they are assigned the task of killing or dying to enrich transnational companies, arms manufacturers and unscrupulous politicians who each year squander funds needed to feed and educate the uncountable millions of hungry and illiterate people around the world.

Many of these soldiers, victims of the trauma suffered, end up taking their own lives.

Is it an exaggeration to say that world peace is hanging by a thread?

Courtesy: Opednews.com

http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/World-Peace-Is-Hanging-By-by-Fidel-Castro-120122-947.html

Why Is India Silent on the War Threat Against Iran?

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:11:07 PST

By Ramtanu Maitra

Since November, the United States and its allies, Britain and France in particular, have been mounting political and military pressure on Iran. Not a day goes by without a leader of these Western countries issuing a fresh threat against Tehran. On a daily basis, harsh statements are broadcast from Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv asserting the need for an immediate military strike, ostensibly to prevent Iran from going nuclear. Both the United States and the EU have imposed crippling sanctions. There are reports that the Pentagon has assigned nearly 15,000 troops to Kuwait and ordered to two aircraft carriers to stay in the region, to be joined soon by a third. On Jan. 10 Britain’s Ministry of Defence announced that the Type 45 destroyer HMS Daring, which employs a “stealth” design to help avoid detection, is to join the British presence in the region.

Whether, or when, the West will eventually decide to strike is moot, though some observers point out that, in fact, the West has already unleashed a covert war against Iran, and there is little doubt that the sanctions are tantamount to the imposition of war-time conditions.

Meanwhile, leaders in some countries, Russia in particular, have on more than one occasion warned that an actual war or slipping inadvertently into a military confrontation, with Iran would be catastrophic. By contrast, India — a nation with almost 1.2 billion people that is adjacent to Iran, has a strong historic relationship with that country, and is currently involved in several significant economic projects there — has remained silent. It is actually astonishing that New Delhi hasn’t made a peep; much less suggested that the Westerners ought to back off. Why?

Is it because the Indian leaders, guided by their bureaucrats on all strategic matters that do not involve Pakistan, are incapable of grasping the gravity of the situation? Or are they just plain unwilling to criticize the Western powers to whom they have hitched their wagon in the expectation that it would fetch the Manmohan Singh government oodles of foreign exchange reserves, military hardware and help secure a permanent seat in the much-overrated UN Security Council? Especially in light of the fact that the India-Iran relationship goes back thousands of years, the current situation shows how incapable India has become of considering itself even a regional power.

If New Delhi does not grasp the gravity of the situation, it could be that the stodgy, and dodgy, Manmohan Singh government is either sitting on the fence, afraid to issue statements that might make Washington and London angry, or it has its head buried in earth, ostrich-fashion. Therefore, it is necessary to give a nudge to Manmohan Singh, now trudging the last few miles of his dull-as-grey political career, and see which side of the fence he lands on. Hence, it is time to point out to the unwieldy Indian government that if a war breaks out, it would be yet one more war in the region involving the old colonial forces. The 10 years of war that is ongoing in Afghanistan has already worsened the security situation in Eurasia, a part of the world where India has a lot at stake.

A military conflict that involves Iran will have many more consequences. It would not only choke the oil that is extracted there and passes through Gulf waters to buyers, but it could also unleash sectarian warfare within the Muslim community, causing increased security threats to the region — and India’s past record does not evoke confidence that it would be able to handle sectarian disturbances without further dividing the nation. Those are, perhaps, some of the important reasons why both Russia and China, two real powers in the region where India is located, oppose any military attack on Iran.

Economic Destruction of Iran

The mood in Iran is now both defiant and fearful. The economic pressure brought on Tehran by the Western forces is crippling the nation’s oil-based economy. Just recently, US President Barack Obama signed a new defense appropriations bill into law, in which congressional conservatives inserted draconian sanctions prohibiting transactions with the Central Bank of Iran or with anyone doing business with the CBI. Prohibiting transactions with Iran’s Central Bank would preclude long-term oil sales contracts. If most countries bow to these sanctions, Iran will be forced to sell its oil either only to those countries with the courage to defy Washington or rely solely on spot market sales for cash. If it comes to that, some analysts claim that Iran’s oil revenues will be reduced by as much as one-third, fundamentally jeopardizing the Iranian economy. Sanctions cannot overthrow the government — and both London and Washington know that — but they cause immense suffering to the people, of which the war-parties care less.

Speaking at a Jewish Community Center in New York on Jan. 18, President Obama gloated that he had mobilized the world and built an “unprecedented” sanctions regime targeting Iran to state “unequivocally that we’re not going to tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of this Iranian regime.” Obama continued: “We’ve been able to organize folks like China and Russia that previously would have never gone along with something like this,” referring to the support for sanctions from fellow UN Security Council permanent members. “And it’s been so effective that even the Iranians have had to acknowledge that their economy is in a shambles,” Obama stated. “When I came into office, Iran was united and the world was divided. And now what we have is a united international community that is saying to Iran, you’ve got to change your ways.”

Recently, the British colonials trotted out their defence secretary, Philip Hammond, who may know a few things about medical equipment manufacture, where he worked earlier in his boosted career. But he neither knows, nor seems to care what the consequences for a vast section of Asia would be if a war is launched against Iran. At the Atlantic Council in Washington, Hammond told the audience that Britain will not tolerate an enforced closure of the 34-mile Strait of Hormuz, where 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through: “We are an integrated part of the naval task force in the Gulf, and one of the missions of that task force is to ensure that those shipping lanes remain open. Any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz would be illegal and we need to send a very clear message to Iran that we are determined that the Strait remains open.”

With Cameron and Sarkozy cheering, Obama’s gloating about the destruction of the Iranian economy and his simultaneous staging of troops in Kuwait shows the mindset of the old colonials seeking to eliminate yet another adversary using military power. At the same time, it is evident that Washington has not yet settled on starting a fight with Iran. Despite the fact that the bankrupt United States has little capability to wage yet another long war, some administration officials continue to state that “all options are on the table,” but invariably add that the military option is a terrible one.

How Tehran May Respond

But Kenneth M. Pollack, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and a neo-con who fully backed the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, points out why a war could still break out. He urges the braying colonialists across the Atlantic and a US president whose only agenda seems to be getting re-elected to look at the situation from Tehran’s eyes and acknowledge the realities.

In a recent article in the Washington-based magazine, New Republic, Pollack said: “…What the Iranians see is a concerted, undeclared war being waged against them by a coalition of the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and some European states. The fact that all of these countries are not necessarily always coordinating their actions is doubtless lost on the Iranian leadership. They are under cyber attack by the Stuxnet virus. Someone is killing their nuclear scientists in the streets of Tehran and blowing up their missile facilities. The United States and Europeans have ratcheted up their contacts with the Iranian opposition. The Iranians believe that foreign elements are also making contact with dissident groups like the Kurds, the Baluch, and the Arabs in Khuzestan. The United States has ratcheted up its efforts to broadcast into Iran to undermine the regime’s control over information. Washington is building up the military capabilities of states in the Gulf Cooperation Council. The Saudis are funding proxies to fight against Iran’s proxies from Bahrain to Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen. And the Americans and Europeans are waging economic warfare in the form of increasingly crippling sanctions.”

Pollack implies that these actions may have convinced the leadership in Tehran that an all-out undeclared covert war has been launched and that Iran must take some retaliatory actions to get out of this dragnet. That is how, says Pollock, a war may start. This would not be an accidental war — the concerted moves by the US and a range of allies are leading to it.

That the process to start a war has already begun is understood in both Moscow and Beijing. Since the beginning of this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been publicly and repeatedly articulating Russia’s worries. On Jan. 18, Lavrov said an attack on Iran would be a “catastrophe” for the region and urged world powers to adopt a policy of non-intervention in the Middle East and North Africa. “It is impossible to list all the consequences [of an attack],” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an annual address. “But I have no doubt that it would pour oil on the still-smoldering fire of Sunni-Shia confrontation, which would lead to a chain reaction.” Lavrov added: “As for how likely such a catastrophe is, you need to ask those who constantly mention this as an option.” He also said that Russia would “do everything” in its power to prevent an attack on Iran.

From Beijing, we heard through a news report that in December Major General Zhang Zhaozhong of China’s National Defense University said: “China will not hesitate to protect Iran, even with a third world war.” The news report also quotes Professor Xia Ming paraphrasing Zhaozhong’s statement and clarifying: “not hesitating to fight a third world war would be entirely for domestic political needs.” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei told reporters on Jan. 11: “China has noted the tough reactions made by the relevant countries over this event (imposition of crippling sanctions on Iran:ed) and is concerned over the development of the situation.”

Recently, a senior Chinese diplomat, Chen Xiaodong, also pointed out that war over the Iranian nuclear issue would bring disaster to the world economy and urged all nations involved to exercise restraint and prevent hostilities. “We urge all relevant nations to remain calm, exercise restraint, refrain from taking actions that will intensify the situation and make common efforts to prevent war,” Chen said. “Everyone knows that 40 percent of the oil shipped daily to every part of the world goes through the Strait of Hormuz, so once war starts in this region not only will the relevant nations be affected and attacked, it would also ... bring disaster to a world economy deep in crisis.”

New Delhi’s latest perfidy

Yet New Delhi remains silent, while working feverishly to keep getting Iranian oil without bucking the sanctions diktat imposed by the Americans. On Jan 11, India committed another cynical act that Tehran could not help but notice with dismay. Ignoring the hardline Netanyahu government’s central role in the gang-up on Iran — even the war party in the United States has made efforts in recent days to warn these hardliner Zionists not to act independently against Iran — External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna went to Tel Aviv to sign one of the country’s largest arms deals [ever?].

While India refuses to buck the western countries by opposing the sanctions against Iran and help prevent its economic destruction, it went merrily along to fatten the wallet of Iran’s stated adversary, Israel. The deal with Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd (IAI) for the purchase of $1.1 billion worth of missiles, anti-missile systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, intelligence and other systems was done with a bit of hush-hush. In a brief notice to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, IAI announced that it has signed a four-year $1.1 billion arms deal with an un-named Asian country. The systems that would be sold were not named, but the IAI announcement said that advances would be paid in exchange for guarantees in the same amount.

I hope Manmohan Singh received a Thank You note from Cameron and Obama.

The author is South Asian Analyst at Executive Intelligence Review

Courtesy: Vijayvaani.com

http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=2153

Nepal: Maoists Engage In High Drama Once Again

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:47:41 PST

By S. Chandrasekharan

It looked that Nepal was almost reaching the end game with most of the issues relating to the peace process and the new constitution completed within the final dead line of end May given by the Supreme Court while allowing the extension last time.

Despite an extreme position taken in the Palungtar plenum to go for a People’s revolt, it looked that Chairman of the UCPN (Maoist) had realised particularly after his resignation in 2009 that a moderate position rather than an extreme one would make him a “national leader” acceptable to all.

Thus, he had steadily moved to complete the peace process and constitution making without creating any major hurdle as it was well known that without the cooperation of the Maoists, the peace process and the draft of a new constitution cannot be completed.

The ideal situation would have been for a “consensus government” and since this was not feasible- given the lack of trust among the political parties, the next best thing was that a Maoist led government would prove successful. This was the expectation of the people.

Dahal had also led the ‘Dispute resolution Sub Committee’ to resolve almost all of the outstanding disputes – 198 out of 200 with only two major disputes on State Structure and form of Governance remaining to be solved.

Now all of a sudden, what we now see is a stalled peace process and a resumption of the “Blame game.”

As before, at the time when the crucial decisions are to be taken to meet the dead line, the Maoists had a prolonged Central Committee meeting to sort out their internal disputes over the very same issues which had already been decided earlier.

In this cc meeting which ended on 15th Jan, as usual two reports were placed ( not three this time as Bhattarai, now Prime Minister- did not produce one), one taking a moderate line by Chairman Dahal and another by the so called hard line group led by Mohan Baidya.

Dahal is said to have given in to the Baidya group and agreed to form a ‘respectable army integration’ and a people oriented, anti imperialistic and anti feudal constitution. He had also agreed to discuss the group entry into the Nepalese Army once again ( he had earlier accepted individual entries after prolonged discussion), an armed role for the combatants so integrated and creating positions in proportion of their numbers in the security bodies so created. There is a contradiction here, as an armed role or positions in the security setup will not arise if the “bulk entry” is to be accepted.

There is no way other parties would agree to go back on the decision taken on the mode of integration into the Nepal Army, though there could be adjustments on the positions for the PLA combatants.

Worse still, Dahal agreed in the central committee to withdraw his decisions in the sub committee of the Constitutional Assembly which he headed on the ground that his party did not approve of his decisions. Surely this position will again be not acceptable to other parties who had argued and reasoned in many meetings to come to such decisions!

It looks that the Maoists are orchestrating “very deep differences” to bring other parties to their line of thinking both in the peace process and in constitution making! There is thus the High Drama again!

Not to be outdone, the Nepali Congress has gone back on its approval in principle of a directly elected President as the chief executive. Instead they are now insisting on a directly elected presidential system, but with a prime minister elected by and accountable to the parliament. Thus, the executive powers are to be shared between the prime minister and the president.

What they are insisting is a hybrid model, with the president elected, a cabinet named by the president but responsible to the Parliament and not to the President.

Why has the Nepali Congress suddenly realised that an executive president with all powers is not good for the stability of the country and why did they not raise this issue much earlier? It is not clear.

What is said in the Nepalese media is that if the Maoists win the elections with Prachanda leading as President, this will lead to instability in the country and the Maoists will succeed in their agenda for a complete restructuring of the country and the society!

This shows that the Nepali Congress does not seem to have confidence in themselves in winning the elections and are giving up the fight even before it has started.

Time is running out. The Supreme Court had rejected the petitions filed by the Special Committee of the Constituent Assembly and the Government seeking a revision of its earlier ruling against the extension of the assembly.

The CA has the option of completing at least a skeleton of the constitution before the dead line or allow itself to be dissolved by end May to a political vacuum and uncertain political future.

The choice is theirs and people in Nepal will not forgive them if they do not put their act together.

Courtesy: SAAG

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org

Expect Chinese Attack Against India by 'June/July 2012': Col. Dr. Anil Athale Warns

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:08:23 PST

By MEMRI

In a recent article, former Indian Army officer Dr. Anil Athale warned that China is carefully orchestrating security-related incidents against India. Such incidents include Chinese military incursions into Indian territory in the Western and North-Eastern border regions of India, recent mistreatment of Indian diplomats and businessmen in China, recurring disputes on the issuance of visas, and diplomatic rows involving Chinese attempts to question Indian sovereignty in Jammu & Kashmir.

Colonel (retired) Anil Athale, who is an author of the official history of the 1962 India-China conflict and now coordinator of the Indian Initiative for Peace, Arms Control & Disarmament (a think tank based in the city of Pune), warned that the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is failing to prepare the country's armed forces to fight a likely war against China, which he warns could come as early as June/July 2012. He said that such a war could be like Pakistan's Kargil war, the 1999 conflict which originated after Pakistani troops and jihadists marched into Kashmir.

"It is time India woke up. Luckily, we do have some time. At the moment the Himalayan passes are frozen and no military operations are possible. The likely threat will only emerge in June/July 2012. It must be made clear that one is not talking of an all-out war. What we must accept is a short, sharp, attack by the Chinese, more in the nature of a slap!" he wrote in a recent article.

The article, titled "Expect a Chinese attack by June/July", was published by rediff.com, a leading Indian news and community portal.

Following are excerpts from the article:[1]

"On December 14, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Told Parliament That His Government Does not Share the View That China Plans to Attack India"

"Last year when this author wrote about a Kargil-style foray by China in the near future, the idea was more in the realm of speculation. But the events of the last few months seem to move the likelihood from the speculative to the possible.

"But it seems that New Delhi is in deep slumber or has no time to pay attention to such 'minor' issues like national security when all attention is focused on the upcoming assembly election in [the northern state of] Uttar Pradesh…."

"This is an attempt by a student of history to give a wake-up call."

"What makes matters even worse than 'normal' in Delhi today is the inefficiency that has crept in all decision-making due to the 'Diarchy' that prevails in Delhi [i.e. a reference to decision making led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Congress party's boss Sonia Gandhi in whose hands real power resides]. For those unfamiliar with the term – this was the system in British India when the rulers of the princely states had all the trappings of power but the British resident exercised the real power…."

"[The ruling] United Progressive Alliance resembles that model with real power in the hands of the Gandhi dynasty while the prime minister has all the trappings of power. What this has done is the pivotal position of the Prime Minister's Office and its job of co-ordination and enforcement of the will of the government on the State machinery is severely compromised.

"In case of vital decisions on security issues, this can lead to disasters.

"The portents indeed are ominous. On December 14, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told Parliament that his government does not share the view that China plans to attack India.

"Exactly half a century ago, another Indian prime minister [Jawaharlal Nehru] stuck to a similar view, until November 21, 1962. Broadcasting to the nation that day, that prime minister lamented that in this hour of peril, our heart goes to the people of Assam! [the northeastern region which faced a Chinese attack]

"As Jawaharlal Nehru spoke to the nation, the civil administration in Tezpur had begun to burn documents and currency in the government treasury, prison doors were thrown open, and everyone made a beeline to get across the Brahmaputra [river] by whatever means. The stage was being set for surrendering all territory north of the Brahmaputra to the Chinese.

"To the people of my generation, the memories of that day give goose pimples even today. The unfortunate similarities do not end there…"

"One of the Horror Stories of the 1962 Conflict with China was the Way India Made a Frenzied Effort to Arm the Soldiers with Modern Weapons [without Ammunition and Training]"

"[The] morale of the army was badly affected. As someone who has studied that conflict, including the famed Henderson Brooks Report [a classified report on India's defeat], one can say without any contradiction that 'loss of morale' was the single biggest cause of our debacle in 1962 [in the war with China]…."

"One of the horror stories of the 1962 conflict with China was the way India made a frenzied effort to arm the soldiers with modern weapons. The insistence on 'indigenous' production of arms and inability of the local R&D[Research & Development]/factories starved Indian soldiers of tools of war."

"So, what do we do?

"Brand new rifles (the 7.62 SLR) were airdropped at Dirang Zong, of course without ammunition! As if the soldiers are robots who can instantly master new weapons and begin using [them]!

"Our army's modernization is stuck in red tape of the deepest hue. Import of the critical lightweight howitzer, so important to provide artillery support to infantry in the mountains, is stuck in the courts/CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] clearances and what not.

"Anyone familiar with the armed forces remembers the phrase often used by superiors while giving orders, 'I do not care whether you beg, borrow or steal! I want this done!'

"It is time to remind the defense minister [A. K. Antony] that the country expects him to deliver security and efficiency. His primary job is to ensure honor and safety of the country, and not his honor, that must come last, always and every time.…"

"The Likely Threat will Only Emerge in June/July 2012; What We must Accept is a Short, Sharp, Attack by the Chinese…"

"It appears that China is carefully choreographing incidents … [against] India. First, there were several instances of Chinese troops crossing the border, marking their presence. We have dismissed these as 'minor' incidents.

"Then there was the verbal spat and exchange of notes over the Indian foray into oil exploration in Vietnam waters. The New Year saw ill-treatment of an Indian diplomat. Earlier, there were cases of Indian diamond merchants being imprisoned in China. All these could well be dismissed as minor incidents that involve local officials.

"If similar incidents were to take place on the India-Pakistan border, they are not to be taken seriously because in Pakistan nobody is in control of the armed forces or civilian officials.

"But China is NOT Pakistan – the People's Liberation Army [PLA], the media (including the Internet) are all under tight party/government control in China.

"India would be making a grave error of judgment if it considers these incidents as non- serious. There seems to be a design behind these orchestrated events, especially the forays by the PLA.

"What we must accept is a short, sharp, attack by the Chinese, more in the nature of a slap!

"To those who claim that Indo-Chinese trade is too big – one needs to remind them that as a proportion of overall Chinese trade with the world, it is of very little consequence! It is time the ministry of defense cleaned up its act [and] got cracking in building up the Indian Army's military capability to face the Chinese threat."

Endnotes:
[1] www.rediff.com (India), January 9, 2012. The text of the article has been lightly edited for clarity.

Courtesy: The Middle East Media Research Institute

http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/6009.htm

Counter revolution that it was in Nepal: Ex-Army Chief Katawal

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:32:06 PST

Telegraphnepal.com

The former Chief of the Nepal Army Staff, Rukmangad Katwal, has begun talking like a political leader.

Highly ambitious and equally controversial, former CoAS Katwal spoke his inner mind wherein he took to task all those who had associated themselves in the last popular movement, 2005-6.

Katwal is an intimate friend of the former Indian Army Chief, Deepak Kapoor.

Says Katwal, the movement of 2005-6 was not at all a revolution as is being given to understand instead it was “a counter revolution”.

A new dimension has been coined to the NOIDA sponsored drama staged in 2005 by Nepal’s seven party alliances which was in effect presumably to do away with the Nepali monarchy and nothing more than that, claim informed analysts.

Continues Katwal by stating that “can the revolution be taken as a real revolution worth the name which fails miserably to transform the nation on economic and social terms”?

Interestingly, Katwal questions that for whom the revolution? Those who were in the power corridors of Nepal themselves talk of waging yet another revolution. What do all these mean?

Understandably, Katawal was referring to the Maoists party-a section of which prefers to go once again for a grand revolution. Say, for example, the hardliner panel of Mohan Baidya.

Katwal’s distaste against the Maoists remains now no longer a secret.

He further alleged that the Maoists had been misusing the national exchequer in the name of awarding financial assistance to the ones who had become the victim of conflict during the people’s war.

He clarifies thus: How can the conflicting parties, the State and the People’s Army, be taken as the victims of conflict?

Weren’t they the warring sides from their respective quarters?

Maoists cadres can in no way be taken as conflict victim, Katwal opined.

Talking of the present day political parties, Katwal says that the “people who had come to the streets to sideline the Nepali monarchy in the past may once again come to stage a fresh revolution against the parties who have failed to deliver”.

Smells of his love and honour for the sidelined monarchy.

In his concluding remarks, Katwal kept on criticising the Nepal Maoists.

Katwal made these observations in Bhairahawa yesterday, January 22, 2012 while talking to local media men there.

Courtesy: telegraphnepal.com

India’s Insecurity

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:27:12 PST

By Sanjay Kumar

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Indo-China war. Yet while China seems to have moved on, India is still seemingly nursing its wounds. Indeed, the sad fact is that it has been unable to reconcile the psychological trauma inflicted during its infancy as a nation.

This is reflected in the attitude of India towards its neighbour, and the way it allows even small issues to mar bilateral relations. Despite rhetorical flourishes over how the two countries are natural partners in growth, Sino-India relations are increasingly complicated. The two nations are engaging with each other on boundary issues, undertaking regular high-level political contacts and seeing bilateral trade soar. But although they both believe in a multi-polar world, their distrust for each other seems to be increasing.

Take the example of a recent dispute concerning Indian traders in China. Two traders were held hostage in Yiwu because the company they were representing failed to honor its business commitments.

The media and some other groups in India hyped the issue to such an extent that it placed a further strain on political ties. This is despite the fact that India has had numerous similar issues with other nations, including Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The difference in those cases, though, is that disputes don’t become potential political flashpoints.

Unfortunately, the latest incident was marked by jingoism, and there was no real attempt by the mainstream media to understand the problem. Instead of an informed and enlightened debate, most of the coverage sought to create hysteria. This forced the government to intervene and engage at the political level.

At times, India seems to display a kind of siege mentality in dealing with its neighbour – it acts as if it’s being encircled in the region by a rising China. And it all seems to boil down to its 1962 defeat.

Compounding the problem is the fact that the political leaderships of both countries are very quick to talk about their shared history and vision for global development, but fail to get to the root of disagreements that exist now. As a result, despite having robust economic and cultural ties, mutual trust between the two is diminishing rather than increasing.

It’s time we moved forward and accepted the differences between us so that a new understanding can be forged. According to an old saying, there can’t be two tigers on a mountain. But in geostrategic terms these days there’s enough space for the two tigers to exist together with their own distinct identity and spheres of influence.

Courtesy: The Diplomat

http://the-diplomat.com/indian-decade/2012/01/20/indias-insecurity/

काइदाको चुटकिला !

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:02:08 PST

प्रतिपक्षी एउटा ठूलो दलका एकजना नेताले माघ ८ गते व्यवस्थापिका-संसदमा भनेछन्‍

'... माओवादीले मुठभेड खोजेको हो ?

'क्या काइदाको चुटकिला !

माओवादीले मुठभेड कोसँग गर्ने ?

बन्दूकविहिन सँसदवादीहरुले निजी सेना र बन्दूक सहितको माओवादीसँग मुठभेड (भिडन्त) गर्ने ?

जवाफ हाजिर छ:

१. माओवादीसँग निजी सेनाको बथान र बन्दूकको चाङ्ग छ ।

२. सरकारमा हालीमुहाली रहेकाले राष्ट्रिय सेना पनि प्रकारान्तरले माओवादीकै अधिनमा छ । र माओवादी अघि जस्तो सजिलै सरकार छाडेर हिँड्‍नेवाला देखिन्न ।

३. सँसदवादीहरुसँग यसबेला बन्दूक मात्र नभएको होइन, यिनीहरु राजनीतिक तथा नैतिक रुपमा पनि लगभग समाप्त भैसकेका छन्‍ ।

४. 'जनशक्ति' का बलमा माओवादीसँग भिड्‍ने कल्पना सँसदवादीहरुको हो भने २०६२-६३ को 'जनआन्दोलन' मा 'लाखौँको जनसागर' माओवादीले नै भेला पारिदिएको थियो भन्ने त दुबै पक्षले स्वीकारिसकेकै हुन्‍ । 'जनसागर ओराल्ने' सँसदवादीको हुँकारमा कति दम थियो र छ भन्ने त सम्बन्धितहरुले राम्रै बुझेको हुनुपर्छ ।

५. राजनीतिक, आर्थिक, बाहुबल, हतियारको तागत र तर्क शक्तिका हिसाबले गाउँ, टोल, शहर, नगर, महानगर, देशै भरी माओवादीका अगाडि 'अरु' रुझेको मुसोको हैसियतमा छन्‍ भन्ने कत्तिको बुझेका छन्‍ कुन्नी 'मुठभेड' को कुरा गर्नेले ?

यति बुझ्‍दा-बुझ्‍दै पनि मुठभेड गर्ने वा भिडन्तको हाँक दिने रहर भए एक फेरा कोशिश गरे हुन्छ । परिणाम 'जे त होला' !

When Wen came

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:50:53 PST

By Yubaraj Ghimire

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to Kathmandu may have rescued Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai from a huge embarrassment, but no one believes that it was the motive of the official visit — which was less than five hours in duration. Unlike earlier high-level Chinese visits, Wen’s was below the radar. There were no cheering crowds. There was no international media covering the event. From the airport, Wen went to the prime minister’s office, and then to the president’s office for a courtesy call — and he was off to Qatar.

Bhattarai was criticised by many, including his own party leaders, that his untimely disclosure of Wen’s three-day visit (earlier proposed from December 20) was the reason behind Beijing eventually calling it off. After Wen’s visit, Bhattarai called some journalists to his residence to claim that he was the only statesman after B.P. Koirala, the first elected prime minister, who could negotiate both with China and India on equal footing. Within minutes after Wen’s aircraft took off on January 11, Deputy Prime Minister and Maoist leader Narayan Kaji Shrestha claimed that it was a “historically successful visit”.

Apart from promising to give 12 billion Nepali rupees as enhanced grant, China advised Nepali leaders to maintain good and friendly relations with India and wished them success in finalising the peace process and constitution delivery on time.

Nine days after the visit, Bijay Gachedar, a deputy prime minister, got the same piece of advice from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Delhi — that Nepal must develop friendly ties with China. What was behind this gesture from India? Of course, Delhi has often said that it is up to Nepal to decide the kind of relations it wants with Beijing, but quite often Delhi has also made its displeasure known to the rulers in Nepal over the perceived or real use of “China card” against India.

Since 2005, India has played a lead role in Nepal, something which western countries have accepted and which China showed indifference to. How should Nepal interpret India’s recent recommendation that enough space be given to China? Does it mean that if Nepal fails to complete the peace process and the drafting of the constitution by May 28, China and India, and not so much an India-led Western equation, will be playing a constructive role? If so, then China has reasons to smile over its successful diplomacy in Nepal.

By all accounts, the peace process is falling apart. Except for the Maoists, every political party in the country is saying that the peace process cannot be delinked from the drafting of the constitution any longer. As per the latest agreement signed between the Maoists and the four big parties, the government should have returned all the property that the former insurgents had seized during the years of conflict (1996-2006) and set up commissions to try human rights violation cases. Not only have these not been implemented, but there have been bigger complications.

Bhattarai has instructed the office of the land revenue to legalise the transfer of all land during the years of conflict, which means allowing Maoist occupants to continue possessing the land which was supposed to have been restored to its rightful owners. The office of the “Peoples Liberation Army” has told the government that combatants would not vacate cantonments if ranks were not given to its satisfaction. Much against the earlier agreement that not more than two combatants opting for integration in the Nepal army would make it to the rank of major and above, the Maoists are now demanding 443 officer-level positions, including that of lieutenant-general, something which the technical task force that worked out the previous agreement says “cannot be done under any circumstances”. Bhattarai is either endorsing the latest party line or is helpless to overrule “the PLA”. The casualty, no doubt, is the peace process.

Amid all this Beijing possibly realises that a stable Nepal under any political dispensation is preferable to a chaotic Nepal under Maoist leadership.

Courtesy: Indian Express

Balochistan: Is US backing London’s plan to dismember Pakistan?

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:47:57 PST

By Ramtanu Maitra / vijayvaani.com

Those who think Pakistan’s only problem is the rising tide of jihadism in that country are grossly mistaken. There are indications that the London-led project to separate Balochistan from Pakistan has now been given an impetus. The objectives are many. To name a few: It would weaken a belligerent Pakistan; create a buffer between Pakistan and Afghanistan; secure a strong foothold along the southeastern borders of Iran; and undo China’s long-term plan to link up the Karakoram Highway in the north to the Arabian Sea, by a land bridge running through Balochistan.

The British plan to separate Balochistan is a longstanding one. Britain’s Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) arranged a seminar on the Balochistan province of Pakistan in collaboration with the so-called Balochistan Rights Movement on June 27, 2006 in the House of Commons. The seminar was a one-sided attack on Pakistan for “colonizing” Balochistan and suppressing the Baloch people. Its chairman Stephen Twiggs, is a member of parliament from Enfield Southgate, who chairs Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a Westminster-based pro-Israel lobby group working within the Labour Party. Twiggs has been involved with the FPC from its inception in 1998, and as a member of the board from 1998 to 2006. FPC wields considerable influence in Westminster, and is also consulted routinely by the Foreign Office and Downing Street on matters relating to the Middle East. Tony Blair is known to consult its members about Middle East policy.

In June 2006, Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Defense accused British intelligence of “abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran [Balochistan]”, according to the Press Trust of India, Aug. 9, 2006. Ten British MPs were involved in a closed-door session of the Senate Committee on Defense regarding alleged MI6 support to Baloch separatists. Also of relevance are reports of CIA and Mossad support to Baloch rebels in Iran and Southern Afghanistan.

US military analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, writing in the June 2006 issue of The Armed Forces Journal, suggested that Pakistan should be broken up, leading to the formation of a separate country, “Greater Balochistan” or “Free Balochistan.” The latter would incorporate the Pakistani and Iranian Baloch provinces into a single political entity.

Fresh cry to break up Pakistan

Although at the time, for the George W. Bush Administration, and later the Obama Administration, the dismemberment of Pakistan had taken a back seat—not because Pakistan was an ally, but to ensure help from Islamabad’s security and military apparatus in finding a way out of the Afghan mess—it is likely that the option to create an independent Balochistan was very much on Washington’s agenda for a long while. Now, as relations between the United States and Pakistan have soured to a point that many in Washington consider that the differences between the two are irreconcilable, particularly on security matters, the pro-British Obama Administration has seemingly joined hands with the “break up Pakistan” faction in Washington.

US expert on Balochistan, Selig Harrison, writing for The National Interest, Feb. 1, 2011, urged the Obama Administration to create an independent Balochistan, and laid out the steps that the United States should take to make that happen. He said that Washington should do more to support anti-Islamist forces along the southern Arabian sea coast. First, it should support anti-Islamist Sindhi leaders of the Sufi variant of Islam, with their network of 124,000 shrines. Most important, it should aid the 6 million Baloch insurgents fighting for independence from Pakistan in the face of growing ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) repression. Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baloch territory; an independent Balochistan would serve US strategic interests, in addition to the immediate goal of countering Islamist forces.

Subsequently, M. Chris Mason, a retired diplomat with long service in South Asia, and a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, in an article titled, “Solve the Pakistan problem by redrawing the map,” for the Toronto Globe and Mail on Dec. 21, 2011, let it all hang out. “The permanent solution to the Pakistan problem,” he wrote, “is not more of this chest-beating appeasement. The answer lies in 20th-century history. In 1947, when India gained independence, a British Empire in full retreat left behind an unworkable mess on both sides of India—called Pakistan—whose elements had nothing in common except the religion of Islam. In 1971, this postcolonial Frankenstein came a step closer to rectification when Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, became an independent state.

“The answer to the current Pakistani train wreck is to continue this natural process by recognizing Baluchistan’s legitimate claim to independence. Baluchistan was an independent nation for more than 1,000 years when Great Britain notionally annexed it in the mid-19th century. The Baluchis were never consulted about becoming a part of Pakistan, and since then, they have been the victims of alternating persecution and neglect by the Pakistani state, abuse which escalated to genocide when it was discovered in the 1970s that most of the region’s natural resources lie underneath their soil. Since then, tens of thousands of Baluchis have been slaughtered by the Pakistani army, which has used napalm and tanks indiscriminately against an unarmed population.

“Changing maps is difficult only because it is initially unimaginable to diplomats and politicians. Although redrawing maps is the definition of failure for the United Nations and the US State Department, it has, in fact, been by such a wide margin the most effective solution to regional violence over the past 50 years that there is really nothing in second place. Among the most obvious recent examples (apart from the former Soviet Union) are North and South Sudan, Kosovo, Eritrea, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, East Timor and Bangladesh.

“An independent Baluchistan would, in fact, solve many of the region’s most intractable problems overnight. It would create a territorial buffer between rogue states Iran and Pakistan. It would provide a transportation and pipeline corridor for Afghanistan and Central Asia to the impressive but underutilized new port at Gwadar. It would solve all of NATO’s logistical problems in Afghanistan, allow us to root the Taliban out of the former province and provide greater access to Waziristan, to subdue our enemies there. And it would contain the rogue nuclear state of Pakistan and its A.Q. Khan network of nuclear proliferation-for-profit on three landward sides.”

Other players in the fray

Twiggs’ orchestrations in the FPC are not the only Israeli footprints in the new-fangled Great Game to create a buffer-state between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Pakistan and Iran. The Iranian government accuses Jundullah, a terrorist group that has carried out myriad terrorist actions in the area bordering the Sunni-majority Balochistan-Sistan province of predominantly Shi’a Iran over the last decade. Jundullah came into existence in Balochistan in 2003, and Iran has claimed that it was working hand-in-glove with the US, Israel, and al-Qaeda, perpetrating acts of terrorism and supporting separatism. Jundullah planned its terrorist acts against Iran from military camps in Pakistan, Tehran claimed.

More evidence of Israeli involvement, however, becomes visible on the Baloch diaspora’s website, Government of Balochistan (GOB) in Exile. The website says the Baloch diaspora established the newly formed “democratic, liberal and secular” government in Jerusalem in 2006. Its address is: The World Baloch Jewish Alliance Building: P.O. Box 5631: Jerusalem, Israel.

Another arch-enemy of Pakistan, India, which would like to weaken Islamabad’s influence in Afghanistan and promote its own, has long been accused by the Pakistani security agencies of aiding and abetting the Baloch secessionists with a wink and a nod from Washington. New Delhi vehemently refutes those accusations. Nonetheless, a cable from the US Embassy in Islamabad, leaked by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, disclosed that there was enough evidence of Indian involvement in Waziristan and other tribal areas of Pakistan, as well as Balochistan.

The Express Tribune, which is part of the International Herald Tribune group, reported on Dec. 3, 2010, that, according to the WikiLeaks cable, a draft of a presentation shared with the US by Pakistan’s National Security Advisor Mahmud Ali Durrani, stated that Pakistani parliamentarians were also told that India and Russia were involved in the insurgency in Balochistan. The Express Tribune reported that ISI chief Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha said that India has established nine training camps along the Afghan-Balochistan border, where it is training members of the Baloch Liberation Army. He also claimed that “India and the UAE (reportedly due to its opposition to construction of the Gwadar Port) were funding and arming the Baloch. Pasha also claimed that the Russian government was directly involved in funding/training/supporting the insurgency.”

The article also said “former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had also raised the point with US officials in September 2007.” According to a memo, he had asked the US to intervene against “the ‘deliberate’ attempt of Kabul and New Delhi to destabilize Balochistan.”

Why Balochistan?

President Obama has clearly stated that the drive to build up American military presence in the Asia-Pacific region stems from identifying two enemies of the United States—China and Iran. While Iran is the immediate one, China is potentially the greater bête noire.

Prior to, or after, issuance of those statements, a number of developments have occurred rapidly in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Besides Washington’s distancing itself from Islamabad, the US has begun openly to court the Taliban, an avowed Wahhabite enemy of Shi’a Iran. Vice President Joe Biden has reminded us recently that President Obama had never identified the Taliban as an enemy. The Taliban has also opened an office in Qatar, a vassal-emirate of Britain, and where the US has military installations; they hope to negotiate with the US/NATO to resolve the Afghanistan imbroglio, and to stake a claim in Kabul. The American plan is seemingly to wean the Taliban away from Pakistan, and bring to power in Kabul a force that is avowedly anti-Iran. Since Iran has been identified by Obama and his Administration as its enemy, the enemy of Iran, the Taliban, may soon become Washington’s friend.

In order to bring pressure on Iran, the US has also tripled the size of the Shindand Air Base in western Afghanistan, about 20 miles from the Iranian border. Having been in the works since the Fall of 2010, completion of the “Far East Expansion” makes the base second in size only to Bastion Field in Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The project is part of a $500 million military construction effort to support Regional Command West, and turn Shindand into the premier flight-training base in Afghanistan. The expansion is slated to become the new living and work area for more than 3,000 Coalition forces and government contractors. Their relocation will make possible the construction of a new 1.3-mile NATO training runway, scheduled to begin early 2012.

So, what is now on Washington’s mind? To begin with, the Obama Administration may have concluded that in order to “deal” with Iran, the US/NATO would like to create a “trouble-free” Afghanistan, which, in Washington’s book, means putting Kabul, and, in essence, all of Afghanistan, under the control of the “friendly” Afghan Taliban and separating the group from its loose ties with Pakistan.

It also means that if and when Balochistan becomes an independent country, London and Washington will secure a direct access to Central Asia using the Arabian Sea. Such an arrangement would smooth US/NATO logistical requirements and pose a permanent threat to the security of Iran’s Strait of Hormuz, a stone’s throw from the western tip of Balochistan. In the interim, a vigorous secessionist movement unleashed within Balochistan will enable the anti-Iran crusaders to weaken Iran’s northeastern region through irregular warfare.

In the long term, perhaps, the London-Washington objective is to prevent China from coming into the Arabian Sea in the south from the Karakoram Highway in the North, thus establishing a supply line which would enable a faster development of its western part bordering Central Asia. London and Washington believe that by preventing the economic development and security of western China, they would be in a position to set up satrapies on the southern flank of Russia, another potential major enemy.

The China angle

One of the first indications of China’s long-term interest in Pakistan was construction of the Karakoram Highway (KHH), or “Friendship Highway,” jointly, by the governments of Pakistan and China, completed in 1986. It connects the northern areas of Pakistan to the ancient Silk Road. It runs approximately 1,300 km from Kashgar in the Xinjiang region of China, to Havelian in the Abbottabad District of Pakistan. An extension of the highway meets the Grand Trunk Road at Hasan Abdal, west of Islamabad. The highway cuts through the collision zone between the Asian and Indian continents, where China, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India come within 250 kilometers of each other.

On June 30, 2006, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Pakistani Highway Administration and China’s state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) to rebuild and upgrade the KKH. According to S. Fredrick Starr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, a new North-South phase of the corridor is underway. Examples of this thrust are: the rebuilding of the KKH; the new route running from southwest Xinjiang across Tajik Badakhshan; the planned US highway bridge over Pansh, linking Tajikistan with Afghanistan’s main north-south routes; the improvement of existing highways from the Urals and western Siberia to Central Asia, and their extension to Afghanistan; and developing road and rail routes from Iran’s port of Bandar-Abbas, north across Turkmenistan and Tajikistan to Russia.

China, meanwhile, has integrated its western and central regions, and is now in a position to use the KKH and other links for expanding trade with West and South Asia. To further strengthen the KKH, a railway line alongside it, connecting Pakistan and western China, is now under consideration as an integral part of the TEC (Trade and Energy Corridor) project. The railroad is intended not only for trade but also to transport oil and gas by tankers, in case a pipeline is not a viable option. This rail track will be linked to Gwadar, where oil-refining and storage facilities are now under construction. (Source: “Prospects of Pakistan becoming a trade and energy corridor for China”: Fazal-ur-Rahman.) In other words, China envisions the Gwadar Port to become a trans-shipment hub for the landlocked Central Asian states, Afghanistan, and Western China.

The second leg of China’s Pakistan policy is the development of Gwadar Port on Pakistan’s Makran coast in Balochistan, not far from the Strait of Hormuz. The Gwadar Port project got underway soon after 9/11. On March 22, 2002, China flew in Vice Premier Wu Bangguo to lay the foundation stone, and the first phase of the project was completed in 2005. The overall cost is estimated at $1.16 billion; the Chinese contribution to finance the first phase was $198 million, while Pakistan invested $50 million.

Since the completion of Phase I, Pakistan has taken some interesting decisions. On Feb 1, 2007, Islamabad allowed the Gwadar Port Authority (GPA) to sign a 40-year agreement with the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA), one of the biggest port operators in the world, and its subsidiary Concessional Holding Company, for development and operation of the tax-free port and duty-free trade zone. The concessions given to the operators had already been approved by Shaukat Aziz, former prime minister of Pakistan, on Jan. 23, 2007.

However, a decade-long war in Afghanistan and rapid deterioration of security conditions within Balochistan, have stymied progress in the development of the Gwadar Port. According to Pakistani Sen. Ismail Buledi, the Port of Singapore Authority is relying only on government cargo, thus grossly deviating from the master plan of the government. He added that the port should be given to China, so it can be operated according to the master plan. “If the Gwadar Port is marketed well, the regional ports will lose considerable business,” he said. “It is time we took right decisions. Otherwise Gwadar Port may lose this opportunity to the fast developing Iranian port of Chabahar.”

It is evident that in the Chinese scheme of things, the key to the success of its Pakistan policy lies with the Gwadar Port. In choosing a port site to link up with the KKH, Gwadar’s location is ideal. It is on the Arabian Sea coast in the southwestern tip of Pakistan’s strife-torn province of Balochistan, and faces the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz. However, it seems that both London and Washington are ready to use their muscles to prevent China from achieving that goal.

The author is South Asian Analyst at Executive Intelligence Review

Courtesy: vijayvaani.com

http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=2144

Messages of Chinese Premiere Wen's emergency Nepal visit

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:15:55 PST

By Deepak Gajurel

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao made an emergency 'stopover' to Nepal on January 14, 2012. Though the 'visit' was for a few hours, it gave a number of serious messages to Nepal and outsiders playing in Nepal.

What were the messages Beijing left for our present rulers?

Are the Chinese signaling 'something' to others who have made a 'space' in Nepal?

Please click on the following link to listen to or download an analysis from Sino-Nepal perspective. The radio talk show (MP3 audio format: 6.4 MB file size) was broadcast live by Radio Sagarmatha on Poush 30, 2068 (January 14, 2012).

http://www.box.com/s/t496ptfntr5c4uky9h90

Comments/suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Nepal: India maneuvering Baidya camp through Mahara

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:09:08 PST

Dr. Rishi Raj Baral, Communist Scholar/Nepal Maoist party

Dr. Rishi Raj Baral, a veteran literary expert and Marxist critique, is affiliated with the Unified Maoist party. He is the Vice Chairman of Ichchhuk Cultural Academy chaired by Senior Vice Chairman of Unified Maoist, Mr. Mohan Baidya 'Kiran'. He is also the Chief Editor of Samayabaddha-a magazine published in vernacular Nepali language and The Next Front, an online magazine. Dr. Baral, a close associate and strong supporter of Vice Chairman Baidya represents the hardliner faction led by the Kiran.

Sujit Mainali for The Telegraph Weekly and its online edition telegraphnepal.com talked to this firebrand communist scholar on several aspects of intra-party rift that his party is plagued with right now and his party's relations with the Indian regime. Below the excerpts of his exclusive interview: Chief Editor

Q1: When did you meet Mohan Baidya 'Kiran' very recently?

Dr. Baral: Two days ago (January 11, 2012). We were together at a meeting organized by Ichchhuk Cultural Academy to discuss about its future course of actions.

Q2: Do you find any changes in him that day?

Dr. Baral: I found him pretty optimist towards the latest political development observed in our party. Chairman Prachanda has exhibited his leaning towards the political course floated and strongly advocated by Mohan Baidya some days ago. However, during my conversation with Baidya, I cautioned him not to take Prachanda's commitment at its face value. He had betrayed us after Kharipati meeting and the Palungtarplenum and therefore we cannot simply trust the verbal assurances of Chairman Prachanda.

I found Baidya very serious towards my observations. He, in an implied manner, hinted that if Prachanda once again duped us, then our political course will be different forever and stones will be left unturned to allow Prachanda to cooperate with us once again.

Q3: Can you tell us what he said during the conversation?

Dr. Baral: He told me that Prachanda has committed to follow the political line chartered by Palungtar plenum. He also has exhibited commitment towards the installment of People's Federal Republic, drafting of People's Constitution and staging of People's Revolt, if need be. Baidya informed me that Prachanda too had agreed to ask for the resignation of Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai as well. I found him optimist towards Chairman Prachanda assurance.

Q4: Some days ago, it was widely rumored that Unified Maoist party was on the verge of a vertical split. But now, the intraparty wrangling has been settled down, we have been told, in a dramatic manner. Don’t you think it sounds absurd? How can you say that the internal rift inside your party is not a mere drama staged in a calculated manner to hoodwink the opponent(s)?

Dr. Baral: I don’t think that the dispute has been settled down inside the party. I still suspect on the very intention of Chairman Dahal. He is very cunning and avaricious person and he is also a smart conspirator as well. I think he has come closer with the Baidya again to regain his waning hold inside the party structure.

In the previous Central Committee (CC) meeting, Prachanda saw the CC members from his own panel supporting Mohan Baidya on several issues including calling back Bhattarai from government, returning back the properties of feudals previously captured by the party during civil war, etc. Chairman Dahal rightly acknowledged that if the same situation prevails longer, then the Baidya camp will soon become dominant in the entire party structure very soon. Hence, in a hasty manner, he came closer to Baidya.

But I don’t think Prachanda and Baidya are united on ideological grounds. They have made some compromise(s) for short term only. Baidya too does not believe that Prachanda is fully committed towards the Nepali revolution and Nepali nationalism.

Q5: Mr. Baral, you mean to say that sharp differences still exist in between Prachanda and Baidya panel?

Dr. Baral: Hundred percent Yes! Some days ago, the rift inside the party was very intense and had attained a new height. It was largely supposed that the Unified Maoists was going to split within a few days. But now the issues have been settled down temporarily. It may sound absurd, however this is the reality.

Q6: Why such unusual events happen inside your party very frequently? Can you please explain its real cause, if you can?

Dr. Baral: The sub-faction existing inside the Baidya camp is responsible for this situation.

There are two groups inside the Baidya panel. One group wants to bring back Chairman Prachanda to the revolutionary line while the other group thinks it as a futile effort. The latter group believes that Prachanda has already become a revisionist and rightist-opportunist. This group dreams to reorganize the revolutionary party and wants to begin the revolution again from the grassroots level. Whenever the second sub-faction inside the Baidya camp become influential and comes to surface, it looks as if party is going to split within some days.

Q7: Can you please name some leaders who represent the hardliner sub-faction inside the Baidya panel?

Dr. Baral: Let me not disclose their names. I am extremely sorry for this. My ethics doesn’t allow me.

Some leaders and members of Constituent Assembly (CA) from the Baidya panel too have begun living a lavish lifestyle. Therefore, they are opposing the idea of staging revolt against the party leadership immediately, fearing that they may lose the material benefits which they are enjoying right now.

If the CA gets dissolved, then the Unified Maoist party will witness the vertical split within a week. This is for sure and rest assured.

There is another class inside the Baidya panel which is harshly suppressed and marginalized by the party's upper echelon leadership. This class is more revolutionary. This class, which encompasses the overwhelming majority of the party cadres, is urging for reorganizing the party in order to make it more vibrant one and revolutionary in real sense.

Q8: Do you think that the Unified Maoist will split eventually?

Dr. Baral: I prefer to use the word 'reorganizing the party' rather than using the notion of 'splitting the party'. I strongly believe that the Maoist party will be reorganized sooner than later. The leaders with reactionary, revisionist, rightist and perfidious tendencies should be immediately expelled from the party. Action should be taken against the traitors and the puppet of Indian expansionism. Earlier the better. If this does not happen, then the Baidya panel itself will see a vertical split. Take it for granted.

Q9: How strong the Baidya Panel is inside the party? Can you guess?

Dr. Baral: If Vice-Chairman duo Bhattarai and Narayan Kaji Shrestha 'Prakash' withdraw their support from the Prachanda panel, then the Baidya camp will be the strongest faction in the whole party structure, including the Steering Committee, Central Committee, Politburo, parliamentary front and State Committee.

There are about 92 out of 238 parliamentarians of our party who strongly adhere to the revolutionary political line floated by Mohan Baidya. Out of 142 members of the Central Committee (CC), 55 members are the declared adherents of our panel. While talking about the military wing of our party, the Division Commanders have been made avarice and corrupt by Chairman Dahal. Besides them, the Deputy Division Commanders and other members of Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) settled in middle and lower rung strongly adhere to the revolutionary political line. Baidya panel has strongest hold in Shaktikhor, Holeri, Dahaban and Western Division of the PLA. Apart from this, the party cadres and leaders who had fought Civil War are all with us. The newcomers who swarmed inside our party very recently for fulfilling their vested interests are with Prachanda. Baidya panel is very strong on ideological, cultural and military fronts of the party. Dr. Bhattarai's influence in PLA is almost cipher.

Q10: How much optimist are you towards the ongoing political development happening inside the country?

Dr. Baral: Nepali nationalism is now under serious threat. National economy is becoming fragile and weak associated with a slide. Political courses of Kathmandu are being chartered in Washington and largely in New Delhi. Chinese sensitivities are being largely ignored.

Situation is not so good. If we need to strengthen our sovereignty, empower the Nepali population and boost the Nepali economy, the revolutionaries and nationalists should dissociate themselves from the rightist and the traitors.

Q11: Dr. Baral, you made quite interesting remarks. Can you please shed some more light on the maneuvering of alien forces in the politics of Nepal?

Dr. Baral: Indian expansionism has become a threat to Nepal and the Nepali revolution. This has now become an open fact. No longer remains a secret.

Let me tell you something about how India is now maneuvering inside our party? India is exerting its influence from three different fronts.

Firstly, it is using its longstanding subservient disciples like Baburam Bhattarai and Ram Karki to strengthen Indian grip inside our party. To a large extent, India has bagged successes in this regard already.

Secondly, it is using the close associates of Chairman Prachanda and trying to take Chairman in their firm grip. It is being widely discussed inside the party that Barsaman Pun 'Ananta', the incumbent Finance Minister, is working as an intermediary between the Indian establishment and Chairman Prachanda. Ananta's excessive hobnobbing with the India's intelligence wing has further raised suspicions about his much hidden intentions. Some months ago, we found him presenting working papers at a seminar organized by Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)-the Indian Intelligence Agency.

Let me tell you that the Indian establishment had preferred Ananta as the Finance Minister in the cabinet of Dr. Bhattarai. This had created massive uproar inside our party, if you recall those days. It is said that Dr. Bhattarai had made Ananta the Finance Minister under the direct instructions of New Delhi for serving the economic interest(s) of the latter in Nepal.

Thirdly, India is trying to maneuver inside Baidya camp through Krishna Bahadur Mahara. This front of maneuvering is most dangerous and frightening. Mahara, in a willing manner, is trying to present and project himself as a close friend of both India and China. But we took him as a person with excessive South leaning who is now assigned the tasks of producing Indian puppet(s) even inside the Baidya camp and demolish this camp once and for all. If Mahara succeeds in his malicious mission, whole Nepali population will be converted into the puppets of Indian expansionism. This is for sure, and hence, this issue should be taken more seriously by the countrymen.

Q12: Can you please tell us what might be the immediate plan of India in Nepali politics?

Dr. Baral: India wants Baidya camp to join the incumbent government for making Dr. Bhattarai’s tenure successful and shielding the waning political credentials of their man in Nepal. India wants the continuation of the incumbent government led by Bhattarai.

Q13: To which extent India may go for materializing this plan? Do you have any idea?

Dr. Baral: As usual, India has again come to the forefront of Nepali politics. The recent so-called agreement reached between Chairman Dahal and Baidya was the result of India's maneuvering. India has asked its stalwarts inside our party to mend fence with Baidya camp and to persuade the latter to join Bhattarai government. Without any hesitation and doubt, I can tell that the idea of the so-called agreement was floated by New Delhi. The stalwarts of the expansionism are now vigorously trying their best to materialize the grand design of India in Nepali politics. Let all of us admit this fact.

Slaver like behavior of Dr. Bhattarai towards India is of the highest order and no other person inside our party has so far exceeded this man in this regard. In the past, we used to accuse him for being excessively loyal towards Indian expansionism on ideological grounds. After assuming the post of Prime Minister, he signed BIPPA with India and Four Points' Agreements with Unified Madheshi Front. His deeds have now proved him as compliant of the Indian expansionism. Therefore, India wants the continuation of this government and Krishna Bahadur Mahara is assigned to achieve this purpose.

Courtesy: Telegraphnepal

http://www.telegraphnepal.com/opinion/2012-01-18/nepal:-india-maneuvering-baidya-camp-through-mahara.html

Nepal: China’s clear message

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:58:29 PST

By N. P. Upadhyaya

Kathmandu: Nepal government, if it is worth the name, for the first time tasted the Chinese grand slap.

The Chinese Prime Minister, who has the capability and the ability to change the world equation if it so desires, as political scientist Deepak Gajurel claims, must have thought to teach a deserving lesson to the Nepalese ruling elite, more so who emerged to the surface in an artificial manner after the New Delhi sponsored 12 point " Sabotage Nepal" agreement .

And he took the tutorial in a befitting manner thus in the process Premier Wen summarily hinted to the redundant cluster of Nepali leaders that "China attaches great importance to the people (stress added) and the country but not to those who have proved themselves as to be the marionettes of the friend across the border". At least the people in general take this gained through experience.

Premier Wen's meet with the Nepali leaders in "multitude" must have been well understood by Nepal's august leaders. He made all Nepali leaders to queue themselves and granted “audience” in series.

In doing so, Premier Wen wanted to remind the Nepali ruling elites that China will be in Nepal for all time to come what may and that Beijing too has abundant interest in Nepal's constitution draft and peace process. This is what he told. This does mean that Premier Wen in a direct manner sent the meaningful signals that any move taken by Nepal will be under close scrutiny of the Chinese regime as such activities may have profound impact on its prime security interests.

The most hilarious and the interesting act of the Chinese Prime Minister could be his weird and wonderful political acumen to manage to force the bunch of Nepali leaders, who met him in crowd which they in effect deserved, to spell out in chorus that " Nepal stands for One China Policy and that the Tibet Autonomous Region is an integral part of mainland China and also that Nepal will not allow its soil to be used by anti-China elements".

Fantastic.

The prime job of the Chinese visit was accomplished. In fact, Premier Wen wanted to get real commitments from the erratic Nepali leaders wherein he bagged considerable success which though remains yet to be tested in deeds. Should this mean that Nepali leaders will henceforth not talk double as usual?

As regards the financial assistance that Premier Wen provided to Nepal could have easily been sent to Nepal through his own flip-flop and over smart flamboyant Ambassador Yang Houlan, however, Wen himself came to see and recognise those Nepali "faces" who have remained instrumental in damaging their own country under "alien" instructions whose reverberation his own country’s soft underbelly, read Tibet, felt over these past troubled changed years.

China must have felt that she has no stable friend in Nepal. Premier Wen saw for himself. Nor China should expect this to take a formal shape at least for some years more. Weak diplomats make the country’s diplomacy to take slide.

As regards Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's not even five hours stay in Nepal is concerned, what could be fairly said of it that Premier Wen who is handling the 'world politics' may have thought not to misuse his precious moments in Nepal together with the tainted leaders who have already lost their political credentials. This is the general feeling in Nepal to which China perhaps understands better.

Beijing now is concentrating its entire efforts in building its strong presence in South Asia, is also in the process of having its heavy attendance, visible indeed, in the South China Sea and more so Beijing is slowly but very steadily penetrating in the Asia-Pacific region for having its vocal say by openly competing with the world biggest developed country-the United States. China is already in the Gulf. China's core interests must not be disturbed by the Obama administration in the Asia and Pacific reason, say Nepali sharp brains. Fiery speeches being made by Hilary Clinton and President Obama will further exacerbate the friction in between the two competing rivals. Very freshly, Beijing appears to heal the wounds of the Iranians. Its strong presence in the Gulf is for sure henceforth. For sure, China has already become a headache for the lone Super Power. Chinese presence in African continent appears now to have become a permanent affair.

Under these back ground, the four hours stay of Premier Wen in Kathmandu was more than needed. For Beijing, Nepali politics is no more than a pea-nut comparatively speaking.

Beijing has some more important jobs to be accomplished. Nepal is in its least priority. At best, Beijing can easily deploy its strong contingent of Red Army along the adjoining Nepal-China borders if things begin deteriorating in Kathmandu which is already in the pipeline.

Now it remains to be seen as to how the Indo-US Axis takes this visit and what clandestine measures it takes to tease China further. The process must have already begun, analysts presume.

Yet analysts hope that Nepali ruling elites will correct their habits.

Courtesy: Telegraphnepal.com

http://www.telegraphnepal.com/analysis/2012-01-19/nepal:-chinas-clear-message.html

China vs. India: the battle for Buddha

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:47:17 PST

By Jason Overdorf

LUMBINI, Nepal — For a few short hours, as dancers imported from Kathmandu leapt and twirled for the bemused president of this tiny Himalayan republic, the sleepy, provincial town of Lumbini, in western Nepal, became the focus of the great chess game underway between India and China.

After a sudden, unannounced, and brief visit from Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in Kathmandu, Nepalese President Ram Baran Yadav had flown in to take the stage here — at the birthplace of Buddha — to inaugurate “Visit Lumbini Year 2012” on behalf of Nepal tourism.

But as he set fire to a symbolic, Olympic-style “peace flame,” more than a few observers were wondering about the fortuitous timing of the event, which coincided, like the flourish of a magician's cape, with the preventive detention of hundreds of Nepalese Tibetans in the capital.

The detention of Tibetans is nothing new, of course. And Nepal is always rife with rumors and conspiracy theories. But for the past several months a curious mystery has unfolded around Lumbini — the latest beachhead in the quiet battle for Buddha underway between China and India.

With competing conferences, organizations, and cultural tours, both China and India have sought to leverage their historical ties with Buddhism for so-called soft power in the region.

India seeks to use its common cultural heritage to overcome China's ethnic ties to the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, and China seeks to limit the damage from its repression of religious freedom in Tibet and its incessant sparring with the Dalai Lama.

“This is part of China's effort to use Buddhism to gain an entry into Nepal, [and] to show to their Buddhists that they're showing equal attention to Buddhism outside the country,” Jayaveda Ranade, formerly additional secretary for East Asia with the Indian government, said of a Chinese proposal for the development of Lumbini.

Yadav, Nepal's president, made no mention of China before the crowd gathered at Buddha's birthplace, though in Kathmandu Wen pledged more than $140 million in aid for the building of infrastructure and other projects. Wen also agreed to consider Nepal's request to extend the 1,200 mile Qinghai-Tibet railwayonward to Kathmandu and Lumbini.

“Both sides started worrying about this once the Dalai Lama started giving intimations of mortality, shall we say,” said Jabin Jacob, assistant director of the New Delhi-based Institute of Chinese Studies, an independent think tank.

“If the Dalai Lama is disappearing from the scene or he is going to be stepping back from the political scene, as he already has, then there is this huge resource lying out there untapped,” he said.

India and China: their claims to Buddhism

Born Prince Gautama Siddhartha in what is today Nepal, the Buddha achieved enlightenment, gained his spiritual following, and died (or achieved final nirvana) in India. As a result, Bodhgaya, Sarnath and Kushinagar, located in the north Indian state of Bihar, remain major pilgrimage centers for believers from around the world.

But in India Buddhism was subsumed by Hinduism, and New Delhi has done little to spread the wealth from tourism to Lumbini — which most view as less significant than the three pilgrimage sites in India. So as Nepal's tourism ministry seeks to lure 500,000 visitors to Lumbini in 2012, expectations of Indian support are not too high — though India claims to be “more than happy” to contribute.

“Most of the inter-governmental bodies are dysfunctional,” said Aditya Baral, director of the publicity department of the Nepal Tourism Board.

At the same time, even though China is notorious for its suppression of Tibetan Buddhism, and India is home to the exiled Dalai Lama, in its other forms Buddhism is reportedly the fastest-growing religion in China and accounts for only a tiny, neglected minority in the land where it originated.

And China's largesse, at least on paper, or in rumor, appears to know no bounds.

“Nearly 40 percent of Chinese believe in Buddhism. Several of the Chinese leaders themselves are practicing Buddhists, despite being members of the Communist Party,” said Shrikanth Kondapalli, a professor of Chinese studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

“So from that point of view it's quite natural for China to be interested in Buddhist projects,” he said.

According to Ranade, China held its first World Buddhist Forum in 2006 in an effort to project its handpicked candidate, Gyaltsen Norbu, as the legitimate Panchen Lama, after secret police allegedly kidnapped and spirited away the boy chosen by the Tibetans in 1995.

A second conference in 2009, for which the concluding ceremony was held in Taiwan, was aimed at convincing neighboring Buddhist nations that China had embraced the religion, despite its continued opposition to the Dalai Lama.

Similarly, Beijing has undertaken other cultural intiatives, such as the displaying of tooth and hair relics of the Buddha in a traveling exhibition in Myanmar.

“All of this is to keep the Dalai Lama in his place,” said Jacob. “It's to ensure that they have a handle on his succession, an influence on his succession, and that they will be seen as legitimately intervening in that succession.”

At the same time, India has sought to build on the goodwill it receives naturally as home to the exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhism and reach out to other sects.

In 2007, for instance, the loan of an extensive collection of Buddhist art and artifacts from India's National Museum subtly reinforced the message that the religion traveled from India to China and beyond in conjunction with an East Asia Summit where Beijing had sought to shoulder out New Delhi.

Together with representatives from Singapore, China, Japan and Thailand, India has undertaken a $1 billion project to develop a modern university in the ancient Buddhist learning center of Nalanda, in modern day Bihar, under the leadership of Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen.

Beginning this summer, however, the struggle for soft power has begun to seem as though it were scripted by John Le Carré.

The plot thickens in Lumbini

For Lumbini, the story begins in July, when China's state-run People's Daily reported that a peculiar Hong Kong-based outfit called the Asia Pacific Exchange & Cooperation Foundation (APECF) had signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) to create a “special cultural zone” in Lumbini.

Touting a planned investment of $3 billion, APECF claimed to have the full support of the Nepal government for its scheme to build roads, telecommunications networks and tourist facilities in the area.

The dusty, one-horse town of Lumbini could certainly use the money. But at nearly one-tenth of Nepal's entire gross domestic product, $3 billion was a stupendous sum — and, some suspect, a wholly fictional one: a carnival barker's cry, crude propaganda, or a “trial balloon” to gauge how Nepal might react.

The answer was swift.

Soon afterward UNIDO and Nepal, by turns, disavowed the project. It surfaced that both Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the Maoist leader popularly known by his nomme de guerre Prachanda, or “Fearless,” and the controversial Paras Bir Bikram Shah Dev, Nepal's former crown prince, held positions on APECF's board of directors.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) blasted APECF's scheme as a threat to Lumbini's status as a World Heritage site. And Culture Secretary Modraj Dotel resigned in protest over alleged pressure to approve the project.

“What to me was worrying was the wheeling and dealing through which they had managed to get both Prince Paras and Prachanda, an unholy alliance from opposite ends of the spectrum,” said Kul Chandra Gautam, a former assistant secretary general of the UN who has publicly criticized the project.

“All kinds of shady deals happen in Nepal, and for our most influential political leader to be made part of this venture to me sounded very fishy.” (Prince Paras is no longer listed as a board member by APECF's website).

For Indian foreign policy think tanks, APECF — nominally a non-governmental organization (NGO) — was an obvious clandestine arm of the Chinese government.

Its Lumbini project was a transparent attempt to leverage Buddhism to station platoons of People's Liberation Army engineers within a stone's throw of the Indian border. And the bizarre snafu of the fake agreement with UNIDO was simply another example, apparently, of the inscrutability of Chinese espionage.

So, too, it goes in New Delhi.

This week, Beijing's special representative Dai Bingguo is in New Delhi hoping to flag off a “golden period” for India-China relations. But it's lucky he made it at all, in the wake of the latest Indian salvo in the battle for Buddha.

In November, Beijing scrapped Dai's planned visit to discuss an outstanding dispute over China's borders with Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir in protest over an Indian rival to its own World Buddhism Conference. Organized by the Asoka Mission, another NGO that receives government funding, the meeting brought Buddhist leaders from around the world together with the Dalai Lama the same week that Dai was to arrive for talks.

“Clubbed with the South China Sea dispute, clubbed with the Yellow Sea incident where the Chinese opposed the USS George Washington into that region and a host of other problems that China had with the US and their neighbors, including even with India, it did cost [Beijing] some soft power,” said professor Kondapalli.

“The convention decided to set up an international Buddhist institution somewhere in India, to codify the Buddhist scriptures and so forth,” he said.

Coincidence? Representatives of the Indian government say so. But just as in Lumbini, there are plenty of people ready to concoct a master plan behind the chaos.

Courtesy: Globalpost

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/120118/nepal-buddhism-dalai-lama-china-tibet

New Dalit Reflects on New Nepal’s ‘Pajerobaad’

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:52:44 PST

By Dipak Gyawali

New Nepal is rapidly heading towards its innate “tarkik nishkarsha”, i.e. a messy conclusion that confounds normal political logic and which will create more problems than it promises to solve. And the reasons are embarrassingly obvious: the street protests of spring 2006 were inspired more by alien concerns and forces than the political needs of the country; the architecture it gave birth to was based on fantasy theories reflecting very little of Nepali socio-economic reality; and the solutions it sought had nothing to do with the real problems facing her citizens or their aspirations. The result is that the political masters of New Nepal are focused less on finishing an un-writeable constitution or stabilizing the 12-point Delhi-imposed ceasefire and more on populist vaudeville known in Nepali as nautanki.

A ground-level view of the coming mess was provided to me recently at the neighbourhood newspaper kiosk by an acquaintance, one of the movers and shakers behind the now politically active Chhetri Samaaj. He waxed eloquent about how he was a ‘New Dalit’ in New Nepal. As an un-reconstituted constitutional monarchist, he was a politically marginalized figure. As a Chhetri, the largest and most widespread ethnic group in Nepal, he had been ‘othered’ and deprived of an identity in a land united by his forbears and served by him loyally. His religion and culture too had been knocked off their pedestals, and his history was being erased by the government headed by Brother No. 2. However, unlike Old Dalits, he was not going to let anyone keep him down for long, come what may! What made his tirade against the current dispensation intriguing was his take on current events and the indication of the direction protests might take in the coming spring.

Constitution making was in limbo, he argued, not because the ‘revolutionaries’ have not had the time to sort out the contentious issues: it was so because they had no idea what was to replace the foundations they had destroyed and because transition itself was a lucrative business that needed stretching as far as it would. Federalism as advocated ethnic populism was unworkable because, no matter how one drew the boundaries, it would ‘other’ over two-thirds of the population therein. On the form of governance, having sidelined the monarchy which was an institution outside of competitive electoral politics, the current crop of leaders have put every institution – bureaucracy, judiciary and army included – on the partisan auction block. It is a recipe for unending political instability, more so because the issue is not whether a prime minister or a president is directly elected and has executive authority. It is about the separation and balance of powers; but to put in place such a system, there is no trust among the big party protagonists. None are confident that the capture of power by one, even with ballots and not bullets, will not result in the marginalization of others; and the partisan fight will then morph into whose electoral or judicial mandate is more legitimate. And there is no statesman in the observed political firmament with any ethical stature even to propose something halfway acceptable, especially when all parties and their bosses have packed the CA with murderers, embezzlers, passport sellers and the like.

Bereft of substance, the current dispensation hopes to distract rising popular anger by nautanki forms such as removing King Tribhuban’s statue, widening the capital’s roads and promising to end power cuts with diesel power plants and imports from an already power-starved India. What angered my ‘othered’ friend with the road-widening program were its blatant bulldozing by disregarding due process and the ignoring of pedestrian needs. “Have the Maobaadis become Pajerobaadis so soon that they can only think of roads for cars and not for people who need to walk?” he asked. “And should this be their priority or that of an elected municipality? Their mandate to rule has long run out even to make the constitution they were supposed to make!” He was convinced this was all about feeding the official budget to their party thugs. Pajerobaad, named after the Japanese luxury SUVs, was the most iconic veniality that discredited the parliament of Democracy-1 in the 1990s and had contributed to the Maoist uprising.

The politics of pelf is most obvious in the electricity sector reeling under the kind of worsening power cuts that happen only in war-torn countries, not one which was supposed to have received “peace dividends” since six years past. That is time enough to have actually built and commissioned a major power plant! The significant reform effort that would have set things in the right direction, the proposed new electricity act first tabled by Prachanda’s government and subsequently re-tabled by all those following, is still languishing in the parliament. The reasons have to do with opposition by party trade unions in the NEA and assorted rent-seeking hydrocrats in cahoots with trading houses that would benefit from importing diesel plants and selling hydro licenses to Indian companies.

This love of “200 MW diesel plant” is nothing new: it was the main motivating factor behind the push for the eventually aborted Arun-3. The only publicly available study on the economics of diesel is found in a 1992 study by the NEA, which showed that the electricity from the Hetauda diesel plant cost about eighteen rupees per unit in FY 2045/46, and that was when the cost of diesel was close to single digits with the dollar buying only half of today’s rupees. Even if ordered today, it would take two years to commission, but there would be no transport, storage or paying capacity to handle the voluminous diesel it would consume.

That same story applies to import from India: if all went well, and India had the surplus power to export, putting in place a 400kV transmission capacity could not be done before two years. In that time, for only two-thirds of the cost of Indian imports the roughly two dozen Nepali hydro developers are more than capable and willing to add at least a hundred megawatts every two years to the national grid (as are Nepal’s solar enthusiasts); but no party is willing to support them because it does not fill party coffers. It is quite obvious that the real political interest is in the shower of benefits from the twelve billion in the diesel plant’s procurement.

The naked anti-socialist Pajerobaad of the current dispensation is seen in their attempt to smother community electricity. The Nepali Kangress energy minister in the Madhav Nepal government closed down the NEA department facilitating rural communities in this direction: Baburam’s government has recently closed down the government’s support to the program under the 20:80 scheme. And these parties call themselves democratic socialists and communists! Again the answer is obvious: NEA trade union opposition and the shower of procurement benefits from conventional donor-supported centralized ruralelectrification whose political economy is the complete opposite of community-led efforts.

All of these and many other shenanigans by the parties in power since the street protests of April 2006 confirm the observation of my ‘othered’ New Dalit friend: “What Jana Andolan-2 gave us was the neo-feudalism of party aristocrats, the same characters who destroyed Democracy-1 in the 1990s!”

Courtesy: New Spotlight

http://www.spotlightnepal.com/Opinion.aspx?ArticleID=2567&IssueID=39

Washington Moves The World Closer To War

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:03:31 PST

By Paul Craig Roberts

Since my January 11 column and the news alert posted on January 14, more confirmation that Washington is moving the world toward a dangerous war has appeared. The Obama regime is using its Ministry of Propaganda, a.k.a., the American media, to spread the story that President Obama, Pentagon chief Panetta, and other high US officials are delivering strong warnings to Israel not to attack Iran.

For someone as familiar with Washington as I am, I recognize these reports for what they are. They are Br'er Rabbit telling Br'er Fox "please don't throw me in the briar patch."

If you don't know the Uncle Remus stories, you have missed a lot. Br'er Rabbit was born and raised in the briar patch.

What these "leaked" stories of Washington's warnings and protests to Israel are all about is to avoid Washington's responsibility for the war Washington has prepared. If the war gets out of hand, and if Russia and China intervene or nukes start flying, Washington wants the blame to rest on Israel, and Israel seems willing to accept the blame. Nikolai Patrushev, who heads Russia's Security Council, has apparently been deceived by Washington's manipulation of the media. According to the Interfax news agency, Patrushev condemned Israel for pushing the US towards war with Iran.

You get the picture. The helpless Americans. They are being bullied by Israel into acquiescing to a dangerous war. Otherwise, no more campaign contributions.

The facts are different. If Washington did not want war with Iran it would not have provided the necessary weapons to Israel. It would not have deployed thousands of US troops to Israel, with a view toward the American soldiers being killed in an Iranian response to Israel's attack, thus "forcing" the US to enter the war. Washington would not have built a missile defense system for Israel and would not be conducting joint exercises with the Israeli military to make sure it works.

If Washington did not want Israel to start the war, Washington would inform the Israeli government in no uncertain words that an Israeli strike on Iran means that the US will NOT veto the UN's denunciation of Israel and the sanctions that would be placed on Israel as a war criminal state. Washington would tell Israel that it is good-bye to the billions of dollars that the bilked American taxpayers, foreclosed from their homes by fraudulent mortgages and from jobs by offshoring, hand over by compulsion to Israel to support Israel's crimes against humanity.

But, of course, Washington won't prevent the war that it so fervently desires. Neither will Washington's NATO puppets. "Great" Britain does as it is told, subservient and occupied Germany, bankrupt France, Italy occupied with US air bases with a government infiltrated by the CIA, bankrupt Spain and Greece will all, in hopes of an outpouring of US dollars and devoid of any dignity or honor, support the new war that could end life on earth.

Only Russia and China can prevent the war.

Russia took the first step when the newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister for military affairs, Demitry Rogozin told a press conference in Brussels that Russia would regard an attack on Iran as "a direct threat to our security."

Washington is counting on subverting Russia's opposition to Washington's next war. Washington can time the attack on Iran right after the March elections in Russia. When Putin wins again, the treasonous Russian opposition parties, financed by the CIA, will unleash protests in the streets. The subservient and utterly corrupt Western media will denounce Putin for stealing the election. The orchestrated protests in Russia will turn violent and discredit, if not prevent, any Russian response to the naked aggression against Iran.

For Rogozin's warning to be effective in preventing war, China needs to enter the fray. Washington is banking on China's caution. China deliberates and never rushes into anything. China's deliberation will serve Washington's war.

It is possible that the crazed neocon Washington government will have one more "victory" before Russia and China comprehend that they are next on the extermination list. As this date cannot be far off, life on earth might expire before the unpayable debts of US and EU countries come due.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.

Courtesy: opednews.com

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Washington-Moves-The-World-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-120116-292.html

Nepal and its neighbors: Yam yesterday, yam today

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:33:07 PST

Banyan, The Economist

VISITS by heads of government are rare in Kathmandu. So the four-hour stopover by China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, on Saturday stirred much debate and was analysed minutely. It comes at a time when Nepal’s relations with its two giant neighbours, India and China, are under more scrutiny than usual.

The plot’s variations can be so subtle that it can be worth looking back over the slow history of foreign relations in the region. Kathmandu has received influences from both north and south since the first millennium AD, but its primary orientation has long been towards India. During the 17th and early 18th centuries the city’s spectacular monuments were built on the proceeds of trade between India and China, trade which was to wither in later centuries.

The modern state of Nepal was formed by conquest in the mid-18th century. In 1775 the conqueror, the king Prithvi Narayan Shah, dictated a few pages of advice to his heirs from his deathbed. He described the country’s situation as like that of “a yam between two boulders”. It had good reason to feel vulnerable. The British East India Company was gobbling up independent kingdoms on the Indian plains to the south.

Nepal has never taken its independence for granted. “Like a yam between two boulders” has been on the lips of Nepali commentators and politicians ever since King Pritvhi’s time. Meanwhile every other Himalayan state has been consumed by the two giants—save for Bhutan, which is in most ways controlled by India.

In this context modern Nepal is often characterised as a “small” country, notwithstanding its medium-sized population of around 30m people. Nepal has traditionally used relations with China to balance India’s often domineering influence.

For long periods during the past few centuries Tibet—immediately to the north—has been under some form of control from Beijing. In 1792, for instance, when Nepal invaded Tibet it provoked a powerful counterblow from China. William Kirkpatrick, the British officer sent to mediate, put it like this at the time:

“The court of Pekin [Beijing], resenting certain encroachments which had been made by the Government of Nepaul upon the rights of the Lama of Tibet, whom the Emperor of China had, for some time past, taken under his protection, or, in other words, had subjected to the Chinese yoke, came to the resolution of chastising the aggressor, orthe Robber, as the Rajah of Nepaul was contemptuously styled in the Chinese dispatches.”

Chinese troops almost reached Kathmandu. And Chinese power in Tibet is no less of an issue today. Mr Wen’s visit had been postponed since December, apparently due to Chinese concerns over protests among Kathmandu’s large Tibetan community. In the event the visit was kept secret until the last moment, and hundreds of “Tibetan-looking” people were arrested as a precautionary measure. It proceeded to pass without incident.

Nepal co-operates closely with China over Tibet. The Tibetan community in Kathmandu is said to be infiltrated by Chinese intelligence and Nepali police frequently suppress protests against China. Anyway, many Nepalis tire of Tibetan activism. “We’ve got enough problems,” says one middle-class professional. It is often said that Tibetan exiles in Nepal are relatively prosperous, and should refrain from causing trouble with the neighbours.

The agreement signed during Mr Wen’s visit includes $1.18 billion worth of budgetary aid to Nepal over three years, plus various other, smaller chunks of cash to support the security sector and the peace process. There was talk of “soft loans” and Chinese involvement in major infrastructure projects. Six cargo terminals will be built at road crossings along the border. There will be 30km cross-border grazing rights granted to pastoral communities. The joint statement proclaimed that relations between the two countries had reached “new heights”.

Nepal’s prime minister, Baburam Bhattarai, is pursuing a still grander ambition. He thinks Nepal can find a better place in the emerging world order by reprising its historical role as “a vibrant bridge” between India and China. In contrast to its neighbours, economic development has so far eluded Nepal. Mr Bhattarai asked the Chinese to extend their railway network through Kathmandu and as far as Lumbini, close to the Indian border. He also wants to develop special economic zones with transport links to both countries.

It has long been understood that modern India feels threatened by Nepal’s links with China. (For example, Nepal’s road network has been partly constrained by Indian planning for a Chinese invasion, and there is concern in some quarters in India over the possible strategic value of a Chinese rail link.) It would have been with these sensitivities in mind that the Nepali press made much of Mr Wen’s reported remarks to Mr Bhattarai: “We [China] and India have been developing very cordial relations in the recent times and it would be better and fruitful for Nepal to maintain good relations with India.”

At the height of their power in India the British questioned whether Nepal was to be regarded as fully independent. Since the British left in 1947 independent India has also intervened frequently in Nepal’s affairs. Nepal lies south of the main Himalayan ridgeline and Indian officials see it, strategically and culturally, as falling within their sphere of influence. Nepali politicians have long invited Indian involvement by turning to the Indian government for support against their rivals. There are significant Nepali-speaking communities native to India and well over 1m Nepali citizens who work there. The two countries enjoy an open border. In 2009 a prime minister of Nepal, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, lost his job partly through insensitivity to India’s strategic concerns.

Yet economic ties between India and China are growing rapidly. For Nepal, one of the poorest and most politically turbulent countries in Asia, reviving its ancient, formerly profitable role as a link between the two giants might offer economic growth and political stability. And growth and stability in the Himalaya would surely be a win-win-win. India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, is expected in Kathmandu in the coming months—the first visit by an Indian premier since the 1990s.

Courtesy: The Economist

http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2012/01/nepal-and-its-neighbours

Chinese PM in Nepal: A short visit but a long trail?

noreply@blogger.com (DEEPAK GAJUREL) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:26:19 PST

By Nihar Nayak

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China paid a short visit to Nepal (lasting four and a half hours) on January 14, 2012, stopping over on his way to the Persian Gulf. During the visit China announced an RMB 750 million (US $ 120 million or Nepalese Rs 9.7 billion) grant to Nepal. The amount will be spent on mutually identified projects under a new bilateral Agreement on Economic and Technical Cooperation . China also announced a one-time grant of $20 million, to be spent on the rehabilitation of former Maoist combatants. It also increased its annual assistance to Nepal from RMB 150 million to RMB 200 million. An eight-point joint statement was also issued during the visit. The statement notes that the two countries agreed to “further promote Nepal-China friendly relations of comprehensive partnership of cooperation featuring everlasting friendship on the basis of the five principles of peaceful Coexistence”.

The visit came about at a time when China is concerned about the ongoing political instability in Nepal and is looking for new political partners after the fall of the monarchy. The last Chinese Premier to visit Nepal was Zhu Rongji in May 2001, while Nepal was witnessing an armed struggle by the Maoists and the King was ruling the state. China is apprehensive that the Tibetan refugees may take advantage of Nepal’s instability and strengthen their position within the country. Moreover, the Chinese are not comfortable with the multiparty system of Nepal, with the parties numbering around 32, and would like to have an abiding relationship with any force eager to work with them. India’s successful engagement with the latest Maoist-led government has added to Chinese concerns leading it to cultivate Nepal even more proactively.

This has also led China to realign its foreign policy towards Nepal. It has increased the number of its political, economic, military and academic delegations to Nepal since 2008, posted one of its better diplomats as Ambassador to Kathmandu, increased people-to-people contacts, opened more customs posts at the borders, increased annual grant assistance and, most importantly, strengthened its engagements at the institutional level leading to greater interaction with the Nepalese army, bureaucracy, police and armed police (mostly deployed along the borders). During Wen Jiabao’s visit, the Chinese side pledged RMB 10 million for strengthening the Nepal Police and RMB four million for an Armed Police Force college. According to Xinhua, in 2010, the number of bilateral personnel exchangeswith Nepal reached 74,000.

Nepal occupies a special position in Chinese foreign policy, even if it is depicted as a country of ‘peripheral’ concern by Chinese sources. First, because, among the South Asian states, Nepal shares the longest border with China after India and a large part of this border is inadequately guarded due to the nature of the terrain (mountainous). Not surprisingly, the joint statement re-emphasizes strengthening ‘border area management’. Second, geographically, Nepal has remained the southern gateway for Tibet. Since time immemorial, Nepal has been maintaining closer economic and cultural linkages with Tibet than China. Third, India has maintained a strong historical, geographic, cultural and economic relationship with Nepal and both countries share an open and peaceful border.

Therefore, China’s policy towards Nepal has been different from its policies towards the rest of the South Asian countries. China also has three major strategic interests in Nepal: firstly, containing Tibetan refugees south of the Himalayas and stopping their anti-China activities; second, neutralising India’s influence in Nepal and setting up a pro-China regime in Kathmandu, for which China has scaled up its policy of engagement in recent years and adopted even soft diplomatic measures, i.e., people-to-people contacts, cultural relations, scholarships to students, economic aid and spreading of Chinese Buddhism in Nepal; and third, investing in strategically important infrastructure like airports and important highways. Chinese investments in Lumbini, and Pokhara airports are a point of reference in this regard. The Chinese must be happy that they have finally got the Government of Nepal to agree to Chinese investment in the Pokhara airport during Wen Jiabao’s visit.

Strangely, the visit by the Chinese Prime Minster was shrouded in secrecy. The visit was not mentioned by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs till the evening of January 15, 2012, while his five-day visit to three Gulf countries – Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates – was announced earlier. The Foreign Ministry did not also mention the eight-point joint statement even two days after the agreement was signed. The Embassy of China in Kathmandu also chose not to post anything about the visit or this agreement on its website even 48 hours after the visit: it only cited a news report by Xinhua.

Perhaps, the Chinese establishment was apprehensive of protests/demonstrations by Tibetan refuges in Nepal during the Premier’s visit. An earlier scheduled visit, which was to take place on December 20, 2011, was reportedly cancelled because China was not impressed with the security arrangements in Nepal. Chinese intelligence reportedly came up with information that there could be some demonstrations with black flags and attempts at self-immolation by some Tibetan refugees.

Following the cancellation of the earlier visit, the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister of Nepal, Bijaya Gachhadar, had visited China to reassure the Chinese establishment that there would be no disturbance by Tibetan refugees during the Chinese Premier’s visit. Special instructions were given by China to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Ministry of Nepal not to disclose news of the intended visit. China also asked Nepal to allow only a limited numbers of journalists to cover the visit once the visit was announced.

Surprisingly, no media house in Nepal reacted to the decision. There were instructions from the Chinese embassy not to discuss the visit in the media in advance. There was no mention even about the financial and development aid that China was going to give to Nepal. Since the Nepalese government had sent in a request for a credit line of $5 billion (over Rs. 400 billion) from China prior to the scheduled visit in December, China did not perhaps want much discussion on this subject, lest it aroused public expectations and forced China to commit more than it decided to offer. This, in a way, indicates the indifferent and condescending manner in which China wants to behave with its small neighbours like Nepal. All the arrangements for the visit were dictated by China.

Historically, China has behaved as a bully in its dealings with its neighbours, especially when it felt that it cannot actively control developments in its periphery and that this could lead to an eventual reduction of its sphere of influence in the neighbourhood. At present, apart from the election of a pro-China leader in Taiwan, China is not quite comfortable with the developments in its immediate periphery. It is not very happy about political developments in Myanmar. Its assertive policy vis-à-vis India has also not been effective. Moreover, Tibet remains China’s soft underbelly, and of late, it has been feeling insecure due to the absence of a credible political partner in Nepal. To add to the Chinese worries, the Tibetan refugees have taken advantage of the situation in Nepal and have undertaken several protests against China in recent years. If the Nepalese political instability prolongs, Chinese micromanagement and intervention in Nepal will increase in future.

Courtesy: IDSA

http://idsa.in/idsacomments/ChinesePMinNepalAshortvisitbutalongtrail_NiharNayak_180112