B.RAMAN
There is a need for the US to pay more attention to Balochistan as part of its Af-Pak strategy in order to pacify the Pashtun militancy encouraged by Al Qaeda and the Talibans operating in the Pashtun belt on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Balochistan is one of the areas of Pakistan where the influence of the mullas (clergy) is limited. The Balochs have no love for either the Army or the Mullas. The present struggle of the Baloch nationalists is directed against both the Army and the Mullas. The success of the nationalists would provide the US-led NATO forces with a rear base, free of the extremist virus, from which they could operate against Al Qaeda and the Talibans. A progressive and developed Balochistan could be an important component of the ideological struggle against Wahabised Islamic extremism, which today controls large areas of Pakistani Punjab and the Pashtun belt.
2. A Baloch component of the Af-Pak strategy should pay attention to the following aspects:
* Allocation of more American funds for the economic and educational development of Balochistan and the improvement of its infrastructure.
* The US should pay more attention to new ideas such as using the Chinese-constructed Gwadar port for providing logistic supplies to the NATO forces in Afghanistan, thereby reducing the present dependence on the Karachi port and truck movements from Karachi to Afghanistan. A US interest in Gwadar could achieve two objectives. It could seek to keep the Chinese Navy out of this area, thereby reducing the security concerns of the Gulf States and it could make Gwadar serve the economic interests of Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics and not merely of Western China. There is already some support even in Government circles in Balochistan to the idea of an American role in the further development of the Gwadar port. Talking to the local media on January 2, Balochisan’s Chief Minister Muhammad Aslam Raisani said that the provincial government was ready to provide security to NATO supplies if they were transported through the Gwadar port. Raisani said that the NATO forces would have to invest $1.5 billion for the construction of roads to facilitate the transportation of oil to Afghanistan through the Gwadar port. He added that the Afghan Transit Trade through Gwadar could promote trade and business in Balochistan besides opening new opportunities for employment. According to him, the Afghan Transit Trade through Gwadar Port was the need of hour for the development of the port.
* Greater US attention to the human rights situation in Balochistan and to the aspirations of the Baloch nationalists. After having kept its eyes closed to the deteriorating human rights situation in Balochistan all these years, the US is showing some signs---still inadequate--- of concern over the suppression of the Balochs. This became evident from a “New York Times” report of December 30,2010, according to which, the US has been voicing concern over reports from human rights groups that Pakistan’s security forces are holding thousands of political separatists without charge. Citing a State Department report to Congress, the “NY Times” said the Barack Obama administration was alarmed by reports that separatists, mostly from Balochistan, had been detained over the past decade and were being held incommunicado. Some of the missing were guerrillas and others civilians. The State Department report, obtained by the paper, said that some American officials think that the Pakistanis have used the pretext of war to imprison members of the Baloch nationalist opposition. The report urged Pakistan to address the issue and other rights abuses, the paper said. “There continue to be gross violations of human rights by Pakistani security forces,” the report said. “The Pakistani government has made limited progress in advancing human rights and continues to face human rights challenges.” The Reuters news agency had reported that in late September last year the US had asked Pakistan for information about a video posted on the Internet purporting to show men in Pakistani military fatigues lined up in a firing squad shooting bound and blindfolded men.
3. The worsening human rights situation in Balochistan has aroused serious concern in Pakistan itself. The “Daily Times” of Lahore wrote as follows on January 7: “The sorry saga of Balochistan’s struggle for rights continues. Two more bullet-riddled bodies of Baloch Students Organisation-Azad (BSO-A) have been found in Pasni Road in Turbat on Wednesday. One of them Qambar Chakar, 25, was deputy organiser of BSO-A in Shal zone and had been picked up from near his residence in Turbat on November 27, 2010. The other one, Ilyas Baloch, 24, was a student of Balochistan University and had been picked up by unidentified persons 16 days ago near Ormara, while he was on his way to Gwadar. Each of them had received three bullets and their bodies bore signs of torture. These young men might have simply disappeared never to be found again, but there has been a visible shift in tactics on the part of the security agencies during the past few months. Earlier, Baloch activists, mostly moderate nationalists or student activists, simply disappeared from the scene, without a trace. Now they reappear – dead and their bodies disfigured. Perhaps the thinking behind this policy is that it would frighten the Baloch into submission. Or because the pressure is mounting on the security agencies to produce the missing persons, which they are now doing in this form to silence the protesting relatives. There cannot be a bigger miscalculation. Instead of cowering the Baloch, this brutality is spreading their cause and strengthening their resolve even more. On the other hand, the international community is gradually waking up to the reality of Pakistani security forces’ excesses in Balochistan. Human rights agencies have consistently reported that thousands of Baloch activists have been rounded up during the last decade. Just recently The New York Times revealed that a US State Department report has shown concern over enforced disappearances in Balochistan as well as extra-judicial killings in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Reportedly, the US refused to impart training to half a dozen army units charged with killing suspects. According to this news report, the US had privately confronted Pakistan with evidence of human rights abuses by its security forces. If this pattern of abuse continues, Pakistan should prepare for a tragedy like East Pakistan.”
4. Speaking in the National Assembly on January 7,Lt-Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz Sharif), who used to be the Governor of Balochistan, warned the Government that its indifference towards Balochistan would augur well neither for the province nor for the country’s integrity. He drew attention to the issue of custodial killings allegedly by the Frontier Corps (FC) which, he said, had paralysed most of southern and central Balochistan and also the issue of reappearance of FC posts which had been removed earlier after the present Government came to power in Islamabad in 2008. He said a strike was being observed in most parts of southern and central Balochistan in protest against the killing of two youths whose mutilated bodies had been found. He said the bodies of seven youths had been found over the past few days. They were reported to have been picked up by FC personnel in raids on their homes. Gen (retd) Qadir Baloch said he had been voicing concern over such actions which had been reported by international media and taken up by the US Congress and other forums. But “our own government is unmoved”.
5.The Government headed by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which initially showed signs of a more sympathetic approach to Baloch aspirations, has proved itself to be no different from the previous Government of Gen.Pervez Musharraf which unleashed a policy of military suppression of the Balochs. The Army dictates the policies of the Government in Balochistan.
6. The Balochs could play an important role in the ideological campaign against Wahabised Islam and in countering the activities of the Afghan Taliban from Balochistan. Just as the Pakistan Army has been suppressing the Shias of the Kurram Agency of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) who are resisting the ingress of the Jallaludin Haqqani network into their areas, it has been suppressing the Baloch nationalists instead of acting against the Afghan Taliban, which has been operating from the Afghan refugee camps in Balochistan.
7. It is time for the US to correct its Af-Pak strategy in order to pay more attention to the Baloch component. Closing its eyes to what has been going on in Balochistan will prove to be detrimental to the US interests in the region. (9-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
THE SAMJAUTA EXPRESS EXPLOSION: THE FOLLOW-UP
B.RAMAN
"According to American investigators, the LET (Lashkar-e-Toiba) and Al Qaeda were responsible for the Samjauta Express blast and the HUJI( Harkatul-Jihad-Al-Islami) for the Mecca Masjid blast (in Hyderabad).If the American investigators, who have better sources in Pakistan, are correct, how can our investigators claim that some arrested Hindus were responsible for these incidents? Justice and fairplay demand a thorough investigation into the two different versions that have emerged from Indian and American investigators. While the American investigators have blamed the LET, Al Qaeda and the HUJI, Indian investigators have blamed the Abhinav Bharat. Both cannot be correct." So I wrote in an article of August 7,2010, titled ARREST OF SOME HINDUS AS TERRORISTS: CURIOUSER & CURIOUSER at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers40%5Cpaper3971.html .
2.Since then, there has been a significant development in the investigation of the case relating to the explosion on the night of February 18,2007, in the Samjauta Express, a twice-weekly train service connecting Delhi and Lahore. There were 68 fatalities. While most of them were poor Pakistani nationals returning home after visiting their relatives in India, some Indian nationals were also killed. The incident took place a day before the then Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri was to arrive in New Delhi to resume peace talks, which were disrupted as a result of the explosion.
3.The case has not yet been fully investigated. The investigation was initially being handled by the Haryana Police without much progress, but was subsequently taken over by the newly-created National Investigation Agency (NIA), which came into being after the Mumbai terrorist strikes of 26/11 by the LET. According to media reports, Swami Aseemanand alias Jatin Chatterjee alias Swami Onkarnath, said to be an activist of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), who has been arrested and was being interrogated in police custody, has confessed to a magistrate about his role along with some other activists in the explosions at Malegaon in Maharashtra,Ajmer Sharif, a Sufi shrine in Rajasthan, the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh and the Samjauta Express. He is reported to have described them as acts of retaliation against Muslims triggered off by the attacks by jihadi terrorists in the Akshardam temple in Ahmedabad in 2002 and in the Sankatmochan temple in Varanasi in 2006. His confessional statement has reportedly been recorded by the Magistrate under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) after following procedural formalities as laid down under the law to remove any effect of police pressure on him to confess. One of these formalities is to transfer him from police to magisterial custody for some time before recording his confession. Since he made the confession even after any possible police pressure on him was removed, it will be taken as a voluntary confession made without any pressure on him and with the full knowledge of the implications of his confession. This confession will remain an important piece of evidence unless subsequently, under the advice of his lawyer or on his own, he retracts from it.
4. Generally, courts do not convict a person on the basis of a confessional statement made to a magistrate unless independently corroborated by other evidence. The NIA has to collect further independent evidence---particularly about the others involved, the details of the training given, the procurement of the explosive material, the fabrication of the improvised explosive devices (IED) and their actual planting. But the significance of the voluntary confessional statement is that it will have greater credibility than the intelligence collected by the American investigators. What the Americans have collected is intelligence, which may or may not be correct. What the NIA has obtained is a confessional statement under the law by a suspect, which will be presumed to be correct unless proved otherwise by evidence adduced by the defence. The defence can still adduce the US reports blaming the LET, the HUJI and Al Qaeda to convince the trial court that it should not rely on the confessional statement, but it will be up to the court to decide on the acceptability of the confession.
5. The confession points the needle of suspicion for the first time at some extremist elements in the Hindu community supporting the Hindutva ideology for organising the explosion on the train. It cannot be brushed aside as of no value or as the result of a political conspiracy to malign the Hindutva groups. The value at present is limited till corroborative evidence is obtained, but it is an important break-through in the investigation.
6. The confession would create embarrassment both for the Indian investigating agencies and for the Hindutva groups. The investigating agencies will be embarrassed because they were initially projecting the train explosion as the work of Pakistan-inspired jihadi terrorists. The Hindutva groups will be embarrassed because the suspects who have come to notice so far in respect of all these four incidents were known supporters of the Hindutva ideology. Despite the embarrassment, the Indian investigating agencies should press ahead with the investigation till they come to a logical conclusion facilitating the prosecution of those arrested. We should not create an impression that we follow double standards----by condemning terrorism emanating from Pakistan and the Indian Muslim community and acting firmly against it and by playing down terrorism emanating from sections of the Hindu community. ( 8-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
"According to American investigators, the LET (Lashkar-e-Toiba) and Al Qaeda were responsible for the Samjauta Express blast and the HUJI( Harkatul-Jihad-Al-Islami) for the Mecca Masjid blast (in Hyderabad).If the American investigators, who have better sources in Pakistan, are correct, how can our investigators claim that some arrested Hindus were responsible for these incidents? Justice and fairplay demand a thorough investigation into the two different versions that have emerged from Indian and American investigators. While the American investigators have blamed the LET, Al Qaeda and the HUJI, Indian investigators have blamed the Abhinav Bharat. Both cannot be correct." So I wrote in an article of August 7,2010, titled ARREST OF SOME HINDUS AS TERRORISTS: CURIOUSER & CURIOUSER at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers40%5Cpaper3971.html .
2.Since then, there has been a significant development in the investigation of the case relating to the explosion on the night of February 18,2007, in the Samjauta Express, a twice-weekly train service connecting Delhi and Lahore. There were 68 fatalities. While most of them were poor Pakistani nationals returning home after visiting their relatives in India, some Indian nationals were also killed. The incident took place a day before the then Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri was to arrive in New Delhi to resume peace talks, which were disrupted as a result of the explosion.
3.The case has not yet been fully investigated. The investigation was initially being handled by the Haryana Police without much progress, but was subsequently taken over by the newly-created National Investigation Agency (NIA), which came into being after the Mumbai terrorist strikes of 26/11 by the LET. According to media reports, Swami Aseemanand alias Jatin Chatterjee alias Swami Onkarnath, said to be an activist of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), who has been arrested and was being interrogated in police custody, has confessed to a magistrate about his role along with some other activists in the explosions at Malegaon in Maharashtra,Ajmer Sharif, a Sufi shrine in Rajasthan, the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh and the Samjauta Express. He is reported to have described them as acts of retaliation against Muslims triggered off by the attacks by jihadi terrorists in the Akshardam temple in Ahmedabad in 2002 and in the Sankatmochan temple in Varanasi in 2006. His confessional statement has reportedly been recorded by the Magistrate under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) after following procedural formalities as laid down under the law to remove any effect of police pressure on him to confess. One of these formalities is to transfer him from police to magisterial custody for some time before recording his confession. Since he made the confession even after any possible police pressure on him was removed, it will be taken as a voluntary confession made without any pressure on him and with the full knowledge of the implications of his confession. This confession will remain an important piece of evidence unless subsequently, under the advice of his lawyer or on his own, he retracts from it.
4. Generally, courts do not convict a person on the basis of a confessional statement made to a magistrate unless independently corroborated by other evidence. The NIA has to collect further independent evidence---particularly about the others involved, the details of the training given, the procurement of the explosive material, the fabrication of the improvised explosive devices (IED) and their actual planting. But the significance of the voluntary confessional statement is that it will have greater credibility than the intelligence collected by the American investigators. What the Americans have collected is intelligence, which may or may not be correct. What the NIA has obtained is a confessional statement under the law by a suspect, which will be presumed to be correct unless proved otherwise by evidence adduced by the defence. The defence can still adduce the US reports blaming the LET, the HUJI and Al Qaeda to convince the trial court that it should not rely on the confessional statement, but it will be up to the court to decide on the acceptability of the confession.
5. The confession points the needle of suspicion for the first time at some extremist elements in the Hindu community supporting the Hindutva ideology for organising the explosion on the train. It cannot be brushed aside as of no value or as the result of a political conspiracy to malign the Hindutva groups. The value at present is limited till corroborative evidence is obtained, but it is an important break-through in the investigation.
6. The confession would create embarrassment both for the Indian investigating agencies and for the Hindutva groups. The investigating agencies will be embarrassed because they were initially projecting the train explosion as the work of Pakistan-inspired jihadi terrorists. The Hindutva groups will be embarrassed because the suspects who have come to notice so far in respect of all these four incidents were known supporters of the Hindutva ideology. Despite the embarrassment, the Indian investigating agencies should press ahead with the investigation till they come to a logical conclusion facilitating the prosecution of those arrested. We should not create an impression that we follow double standards----by condemning terrorism emanating from Pakistan and the Indian Muslim community and acting firmly against it and by playing down terrorism emanating from sections of the Hindu community. ( 8-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Thursday, January 6, 2011
PLA’S PSYWAR AGAINST US
B.RAMAN
( To be read in continuation of my earlier article of January 2 titled “PLA, THE BAROMETER OF US-CHINA RELATIONS” at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers43%5Cpaper4258.html )
As Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, gets ready to visit China from January 9 to 12 and as President Hu Jintao’s State visit to Washington DC on January 19 approaches, the People’s Liberal Army (PLA) of China seems to have mounted a psychological warfare against the US by disseminating through the Internet and through the “ People’s Forum” columns of the Party-controlled “People’s Daily” two unverified and unverifiable news items which would add to the concerns of the US and ultimately of India too.
2. The first item, originating from the Japanese media, but disseminated in China without any comments regarding its authenticity, relates to a possible reconsideration by the PLA of the “no first use of the nuclear weapons” policy in order to provide for contingencies where China may undertake a pre-emptive nuclear strike. On January 6, the “People’s Forum” section of the “People’s Daily” carried the following report under the title “Chinese Forces Drop No First-Use Policy ?” attributing it to the Japanese Kyodo news agency without any comments on its authenticity: “ The Chinese military will consider launching a pre-emptive atomic strike if the country finds itself faced with a critical situation in a war with another nuclear state, internal documents showed Wednesday. The newly revealed policy, called "Lowering the threshold of nuclear threats," may contradict China's strategy of no first use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances, and is likely to fan concern in the United States, Japan and other regional powers about Beijing's nuclear capability. The People's Liberation Army's strategic missile forces, the Second Artillery Corps, "will adjust the nuclear threat policy if a nuclear missile-possessing country carries out a series of airstrikes against key strategic targets in our country with absolutely superior conventional weapons," according to the documents, copies of which were obtained by Kyodo News. China will first warn an adversary about a nuclear strike, but if the enemy attacks Chinese territory with conventional forces the PLA "must carefully consider" a pre-emptive nuclear strike. The documents suggest the Second Artillery Corps educate its personnel in worst-case scenarios for conflicts with other nuclear states. Akio Takahara, a professor of contemporary Chinese politics at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Public Policy, said an adjustment of the PLA's nuclear threat policy as spelled out in the documents runs counter to President Hu Jintao's pledge that China will not launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike under any circumstances. "It is uncertain whether such policy adjustment represents a policy shift or has been in existence from before," Takahara said. "But a pre-emptive strike as assumed (in the documents) would apply to an extreme situation such as war with the United States, and that is almost inconceivable today. I think President Hu is aware of that."
3. This item was carried by the “People’s Daily” along with another unauthenticated item regarding China’s success in the development of a Stealth aircraft based on a pretended photograph of the Stealth aircraft that started circulating in China’s military-related blogs at the beginning of this year. This item, as reported in the “People’s Forum” under the title “Does China Intentionally Leak The Image of J-20?” said: “A photograph of what is reported to be a new Chinese stealth fighter and "carrier-killer" missile has prompted concerns that a tilt in the balance of military power in the western Pacific towards China may come sooner than expected. The emergence of the hi-tech weaponry - which would make it more difficult for the US navy and air force to project power close to Taiwan and elsewhere on China's coastline - comes at a politically sensitive time. Later this month, President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, will hold a summit in Washington aimed at patching up their differences after a niggling year in bilateral relations. The photograph, of what appears to be a prototype J-20 jet undergoing runway tests, has been circulating on the internet since last week, fuelling speculation that China's fifth-generation fighter may fly ahead of forecast.”
4. It added: “The defence ministry has yet to comment on the image, which seems to have been shot from long-distance near the Chengdu aircraft design institute. The photographer is also unknown, which has added to the mystery about its origins and authenticity as well as the motive of the distributor. But defence analysts believe this is the first glimpse of the twin-engined, chiselled-nosed plane that mixes Russian engine technology with a fuselage design similar to that of the US air force's F-22 "stealth" fighter, which can avoid detection by radar. If confirmed, it would be an impressive step forward for the Chinese air force, which until now has largely depended on foreign-made or designed planes. "I'd say these are, indeed, genuine photos of a prototype that will make its maiden flight very soon," said Peter Felstead, the editor of Jane's Defence Weekly. The J20 is likely to be many years from deployment, but the US defence secretary, Robert Gates - who visits Beijing next week - may have to revise an earlier prediction that China will not have a fifth generation aircraft by 2020. It is not the only challenge to US superiority in the region.”
5. It further said: “China has refurbished a Ukranian aircraft carrier and wants to build its own by 2020. A more immediate threat is posed by China's adaptation of an intermediate-range ballistic missile - the DF-21D - to target US aircraft carriers. This project is also further advanced than previously believed. Admiral Robert Willard, the US navy's commander in the Pacific, warned last month that the weapon - nicknamed the "carrier killer' - had reached "initial operational capability". Faced by this threat US battle groups are likely to take a more withdrawn position if there is a standoff over Taiwan than they did in 1996, when the USS Nimitz sailed through the strait. "The main implication of China deploying this system is that it would certainly make the US navy pause before deciding to project naval power into the South China Sea region during a time of tension," said Felstead. But China's ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, said today that his country had no ambitions to rival US military power in the western Pacific region.”
6. The “People’s Forum” added: “While China's economy grows rapidly and the US remains sluggish, fears of a shift in the balance of power are likely to grow. It will not happen overnight and worldwide, but China appears to be steadily pushing the US back from its shores in a strategy know as "area denial". The government has not confirmed this approach. Chinese nationalists want their country to be more assertive, but they say the priority is to improve defence of an increasingly wealthy coastal region. The "area denial" strategy can be seen as China trying to manage its own market and routes to main trading partners such as South Korea and Japan. "We don't need the US to be the policeman in the west Pacific area," said Song Xiaojun, a former naval officer who now edits military magazines. "China's priority is to develop its near sea defence, because our economy is concentrated on the coast. But we have to reconsider the concept of 'near sea' to fit a modern age in which military threats can come from far away. China must improve its defences, but that does not mean we are a threat. Only arms merchants would say that to persuade the US to raise military spending. The US is far ahead," he said.
7. The second item regarding the Stealth aircraft also appears to have been taken from foreign media, but the “People’s Forum” section does not identify the newspaper or magazine from which it was taken
8.The dissemination of these items has come in the wake of the recent comments by PLA officers and the Chinese Defence Minister Liang Guanglie regarding the possibility of regional conflicts. The greater interest taken by the US during 2010 in developments in the South China and East China Seas and what the Chinese see as the more assertive US policy in the Korean Peninsula are seen by the PLA as containing the possible seeds of a regional military conflict into which China might find itself sucked. The Chinese thus see the Taiwan issue, the South China and East China Sea developments and the tension in the Korean peninsula as capable of triggering a regional military conflict if China and the US do not conduct themselves with maturity and responsibility.
9. While trying to avoid an escalation of tensions over military-related issues in its relations with the US, China has to be prepared for contingencies where a regional military conflict of a conventional nature becomes unavoidable due to reasons beyond its control. That is the message the PLA has been seeking to convey. ( 7-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
( To be read in continuation of my earlier article of January 2 titled “PLA, THE BAROMETER OF US-CHINA RELATIONS” at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers43%5Cpaper4258.html )
As Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, gets ready to visit China from January 9 to 12 and as President Hu Jintao’s State visit to Washington DC on January 19 approaches, the People’s Liberal Army (PLA) of China seems to have mounted a psychological warfare against the US by disseminating through the Internet and through the “ People’s Forum” columns of the Party-controlled “People’s Daily” two unverified and unverifiable news items which would add to the concerns of the US and ultimately of India too.
2. The first item, originating from the Japanese media, but disseminated in China without any comments regarding its authenticity, relates to a possible reconsideration by the PLA of the “no first use of the nuclear weapons” policy in order to provide for contingencies where China may undertake a pre-emptive nuclear strike. On January 6, the “People’s Forum” section of the “People’s Daily” carried the following report under the title “Chinese Forces Drop No First-Use Policy ?” attributing it to the Japanese Kyodo news agency without any comments on its authenticity: “ The Chinese military will consider launching a pre-emptive atomic strike if the country finds itself faced with a critical situation in a war with another nuclear state, internal documents showed Wednesday. The newly revealed policy, called "Lowering the threshold of nuclear threats," may contradict China's strategy of no first use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances, and is likely to fan concern in the United States, Japan and other regional powers about Beijing's nuclear capability. The People's Liberation Army's strategic missile forces, the Second Artillery Corps, "will adjust the nuclear threat policy if a nuclear missile-possessing country carries out a series of airstrikes against key strategic targets in our country with absolutely superior conventional weapons," according to the documents, copies of which were obtained by Kyodo News. China will first warn an adversary about a nuclear strike, but if the enemy attacks Chinese territory with conventional forces the PLA "must carefully consider" a pre-emptive nuclear strike. The documents suggest the Second Artillery Corps educate its personnel in worst-case scenarios for conflicts with other nuclear states. Akio Takahara, a professor of contemporary Chinese politics at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Public Policy, said an adjustment of the PLA's nuclear threat policy as spelled out in the documents runs counter to President Hu Jintao's pledge that China will not launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike under any circumstances. "It is uncertain whether such policy adjustment represents a policy shift or has been in existence from before," Takahara said. "But a pre-emptive strike as assumed (in the documents) would apply to an extreme situation such as war with the United States, and that is almost inconceivable today. I think President Hu is aware of that."
3. This item was carried by the “People’s Daily” along with another unauthenticated item regarding China’s success in the development of a Stealth aircraft based on a pretended photograph of the Stealth aircraft that started circulating in China’s military-related blogs at the beginning of this year. This item, as reported in the “People’s Forum” under the title “Does China Intentionally Leak The Image of J-20?” said: “A photograph of what is reported to be a new Chinese stealth fighter and "carrier-killer" missile has prompted concerns that a tilt in the balance of military power in the western Pacific towards China may come sooner than expected. The emergence of the hi-tech weaponry - which would make it more difficult for the US navy and air force to project power close to Taiwan and elsewhere on China's coastline - comes at a politically sensitive time. Later this month, President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, will hold a summit in Washington aimed at patching up their differences after a niggling year in bilateral relations. The photograph, of what appears to be a prototype J-20 jet undergoing runway tests, has been circulating on the internet since last week, fuelling speculation that China's fifth-generation fighter may fly ahead of forecast.”
4. It added: “The defence ministry has yet to comment on the image, which seems to have been shot from long-distance near the Chengdu aircraft design institute. The photographer is also unknown, which has added to the mystery about its origins and authenticity as well as the motive of the distributor. But defence analysts believe this is the first glimpse of the twin-engined, chiselled-nosed plane that mixes Russian engine technology with a fuselage design similar to that of the US air force's F-22 "stealth" fighter, which can avoid detection by radar. If confirmed, it would be an impressive step forward for the Chinese air force, which until now has largely depended on foreign-made or designed planes. "I'd say these are, indeed, genuine photos of a prototype that will make its maiden flight very soon," said Peter Felstead, the editor of Jane's Defence Weekly. The J20 is likely to be many years from deployment, but the US defence secretary, Robert Gates - who visits Beijing next week - may have to revise an earlier prediction that China will not have a fifth generation aircraft by 2020. It is not the only challenge to US superiority in the region.”
5. It further said: “China has refurbished a Ukranian aircraft carrier and wants to build its own by 2020. A more immediate threat is posed by China's adaptation of an intermediate-range ballistic missile - the DF-21D - to target US aircraft carriers. This project is also further advanced than previously believed. Admiral Robert Willard, the US navy's commander in the Pacific, warned last month that the weapon - nicknamed the "carrier killer' - had reached "initial operational capability". Faced by this threat US battle groups are likely to take a more withdrawn position if there is a standoff over Taiwan than they did in 1996, when the USS Nimitz sailed through the strait. "The main implication of China deploying this system is that it would certainly make the US navy pause before deciding to project naval power into the South China Sea region during a time of tension," said Felstead. But China's ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, said today that his country had no ambitions to rival US military power in the western Pacific region.”
6. The “People’s Forum” added: “While China's economy grows rapidly and the US remains sluggish, fears of a shift in the balance of power are likely to grow. It will not happen overnight and worldwide, but China appears to be steadily pushing the US back from its shores in a strategy know as "area denial". The government has not confirmed this approach. Chinese nationalists want their country to be more assertive, but they say the priority is to improve defence of an increasingly wealthy coastal region. The "area denial" strategy can be seen as China trying to manage its own market and routes to main trading partners such as South Korea and Japan. "We don't need the US to be the policeman in the west Pacific area," said Song Xiaojun, a former naval officer who now edits military magazines. "China's priority is to develop its near sea defence, because our economy is concentrated on the coast. But we have to reconsider the concept of 'near sea' to fit a modern age in which military threats can come from far away. China must improve its defences, but that does not mean we are a threat. Only arms merchants would say that to persuade the US to raise military spending. The US is far ahead," he said.
7. The second item regarding the Stealth aircraft also appears to have been taken from foreign media, but the “People’s Forum” section does not identify the newspaper or magazine from which it was taken
8.The dissemination of these items has come in the wake of the recent comments by PLA officers and the Chinese Defence Minister Liang Guanglie regarding the possibility of regional conflicts. The greater interest taken by the US during 2010 in developments in the South China and East China Seas and what the Chinese see as the more assertive US policy in the Korean Peninsula are seen by the PLA as containing the possible seeds of a regional military conflict into which China might find itself sucked. The Chinese thus see the Taiwan issue, the South China and East China Sea developments and the tension in the Korean peninsula as capable of triggering a regional military conflict if China and the US do not conduct themselves with maturity and responsibility.
9. While trying to avoid an escalation of tensions over military-related issues in its relations with the US, China has to be prepared for contingencies where a regional military conflict of a conventional nature becomes unavoidable due to reasons beyond its control. That is the message the PLA has been seeking to convey. ( 7-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
SPREADING ROOTS OF EXTREMISM IN PAKISTAN
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO.702
B.RAMAN
The roots of extremism are spreading in Pakistan. This is obvious from the assassination of Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, by a policeman belonging to the Elite Force of the Punjab Police at Islamabad on January 4.
2.The event is even more worrisome than the brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto at Rawalpindi on December 27,2007, because of the mixed reactions that it has evoked. Benazir's assassination evoked widespread shock and grief all over Pakistan. There were no reported incidents of people welcoming her assassination. The assassination of Taseer has been condemned by some and welcomed by others. Many---not necessarily confined to the clergy--- have welcomed it as a well-deserved punishment by God because of his criticism of the blasphemy law.
3. Was Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of Taseer, acting alone or was he part of a conspiracy? It is too early to know the answer to this question. Will we ever know? Will the truth behind the assassination of Taseer ever be found out or will it be covered up as were the assassinations of Benazir in 2007 and her brother Murtaza Bhutto in 1996 or the death of Zia-ul-Haq under mysterious circumstances in a plane crash in 1988? Many instances of death and destruction at the hands of extremists in Pakistan remain undetected either because of poor investigation or because of a lack of courage to investigate lest the investigator himself become a target of the extremists or because of a deliberate cover-up.
4. The result: The difficulty in identifying the roots of extremism and eradicating the problem and in quantifying the extent of the threat posed by extremism to Pakistan itself in the first instance and then to the rest of the world. The winds of Islamic extremism generally blow from Pakistan. There are pockets of Islamic extremism in other countries too---Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Indonesia to give some examples. There are more instances of extremism spreading to other parts of the world from Pakistan than from these countries. If one has to counter Islamic extremism ideologically one has to start destroying its roots in Pakistan. Islamic extremists from all over the world tend to look upon Pakistan as the ultimate sanctuary not only because of the favourable terrain in the tribal belt, but also because of their confidence that they will enjoy public and state support in Pakistan.
5.Many institutions in Pakistan have turned out to be the spawning grounds of extremism and terrorism---- mosques, madrasas, the Army, the Air Force, the US-trained Special Services Group (SSG), the Elite Force of the Punjab Police etc. Some of these such as the SSG and the Elite Force were specially raised and trained to deal with extremism and terrorism and to protect the VIPS. They have turned out to be the breeding grounds of the evils they were meant to fight. Ilyas Kashmiri, the head of the so-called 313 Brigade allied with Al Qaeda, reportedly started his career in the SSG before he gravitated to terrorism.
6. One has reasons to worry as to which are the other institutions which might have already been infected, though not detected so far. How about Pakistan's nuclear and missile establishment? What faith can one place in Pakistan's assurances that this has remained unaffected by extremism. Tomorrow, if a threat erupts unexpectedly from the nuclear and missile establisment, what form will it take? Leakage of material and technology to the terrorists? Seizure of material and establishments by extremist trojan horses in order to use them for intimidation? Both possibilities are there, but a definitive assessment is rendered difficult because of a lack of data.
7. While the Pakistan Army has taken some action against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Pashtun belt, the Pakistani authorities have not taken any action to confront extremism ideologically. Their pretense of reforming and modernizing the madrasas has allowed the madrasas to continue to produce extremism and terrorism. Their education system has received very little attention. More money has flown from the US for providing arms and ammunition to the Armed Forces than for improving and expanding the education system. The interest taken in the initial months after 9/11 in the modernization of the madrasas and for improving the education system has petered out.
8. No attempt has been made to reduce the influence of Wahabi clerics in the Armed Forces and the Police. The clerics were introduced by Zia-ul-Haq. Their influence remains strong. The Wahabised clergy provide the religious justification for acts of extremism and terrorism. In 1993, the Clinton Administration placed Pakistan for six months in a list of suspected state sponsors of terrorism and forced Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, to sack Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, the then chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and some of his colleagues, who were suspected of being mixed up with the Afghan Mujahideen. In October 2001, before starting the operations against Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban under Operation Enduring Freedom, the administration of George Bush forced Gen.Pervez Musharraf to remove from the post of ISI Director-General Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, who was suspected of being mixed up with Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Since then, there has been no action against any other officer of the ISI despite strong suspicions of their being mixed up with the Jalaluddin Haqqani group and despite evidence of the role of the ISI in the terrorist attacks against the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai.
9. As a result, the ISI has gone back to its old ways of inaction against extremist and terrorist organizations and the breeding grounds of extremism. The administration of Barack Obama might have stepped up the Drone strikes in the tribal belt, but it has not been able to make the Pakistan Army and intelligence act firmly against the breeding grounds of extremism. There has hardly been any action by the Pakistani authorities to counter extremism ideologically. Factories of extremism and jihad are once again sprouting, providing a never-ending flow of new recruits to the extremist and terrorist organizations.
10. The assassination of Taseer is a wake-up call not only for the Pakistani authorities, but also for the international community. Extremism is again on the forward march in Pakistan.A comprehensive strategy to force Pakistan to act firmly against the breeding grounds of extremism is the urgent need of the hour. ( 6-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
The roots of extremism are spreading in Pakistan. This is obvious from the assassination of Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, by a policeman belonging to the Elite Force of the Punjab Police at Islamabad on January 4.
2.The event is even more worrisome than the brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto at Rawalpindi on December 27,2007, because of the mixed reactions that it has evoked. Benazir's assassination evoked widespread shock and grief all over Pakistan. There were no reported incidents of people welcoming her assassination. The assassination of Taseer has been condemned by some and welcomed by others. Many---not necessarily confined to the clergy--- have welcomed it as a well-deserved punishment by God because of his criticism of the blasphemy law.
3. Was Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of Taseer, acting alone or was he part of a conspiracy? It is too early to know the answer to this question. Will we ever know? Will the truth behind the assassination of Taseer ever be found out or will it be covered up as were the assassinations of Benazir in 2007 and her brother Murtaza Bhutto in 1996 or the death of Zia-ul-Haq under mysterious circumstances in a plane crash in 1988? Many instances of death and destruction at the hands of extremists in Pakistan remain undetected either because of poor investigation or because of a lack of courage to investigate lest the investigator himself become a target of the extremists or because of a deliberate cover-up.
4. The result: The difficulty in identifying the roots of extremism and eradicating the problem and in quantifying the extent of the threat posed by extremism to Pakistan itself in the first instance and then to the rest of the world. The winds of Islamic extremism generally blow from Pakistan. There are pockets of Islamic extremism in other countries too---Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Indonesia to give some examples. There are more instances of extremism spreading to other parts of the world from Pakistan than from these countries. If one has to counter Islamic extremism ideologically one has to start destroying its roots in Pakistan. Islamic extremists from all over the world tend to look upon Pakistan as the ultimate sanctuary not only because of the favourable terrain in the tribal belt, but also because of their confidence that they will enjoy public and state support in Pakistan.
5.Many institutions in Pakistan have turned out to be the spawning grounds of extremism and terrorism---- mosques, madrasas, the Army, the Air Force, the US-trained Special Services Group (SSG), the Elite Force of the Punjab Police etc. Some of these such as the SSG and the Elite Force were specially raised and trained to deal with extremism and terrorism and to protect the VIPS. They have turned out to be the breeding grounds of the evils they were meant to fight. Ilyas Kashmiri, the head of the so-called 313 Brigade allied with Al Qaeda, reportedly started his career in the SSG before he gravitated to terrorism.
6. One has reasons to worry as to which are the other institutions which might have already been infected, though not detected so far. How about Pakistan's nuclear and missile establishment? What faith can one place in Pakistan's assurances that this has remained unaffected by extremism. Tomorrow, if a threat erupts unexpectedly from the nuclear and missile establisment, what form will it take? Leakage of material and technology to the terrorists? Seizure of material and establishments by extremist trojan horses in order to use them for intimidation? Both possibilities are there, but a definitive assessment is rendered difficult because of a lack of data.
7. While the Pakistan Army has taken some action against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Pashtun belt, the Pakistani authorities have not taken any action to confront extremism ideologically. Their pretense of reforming and modernizing the madrasas has allowed the madrasas to continue to produce extremism and terrorism. Their education system has received very little attention. More money has flown from the US for providing arms and ammunition to the Armed Forces than for improving and expanding the education system. The interest taken in the initial months after 9/11 in the modernization of the madrasas and for improving the education system has petered out.
8. No attempt has been made to reduce the influence of Wahabi clerics in the Armed Forces and the Police. The clerics were introduced by Zia-ul-Haq. Their influence remains strong. The Wahabised clergy provide the religious justification for acts of extremism and terrorism. In 1993, the Clinton Administration placed Pakistan for six months in a list of suspected state sponsors of terrorism and forced Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, to sack Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, the then chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and some of his colleagues, who were suspected of being mixed up with the Afghan Mujahideen. In October 2001, before starting the operations against Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban under Operation Enduring Freedom, the administration of George Bush forced Gen.Pervez Musharraf to remove from the post of ISI Director-General Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, who was suspected of being mixed up with Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Since then, there has been no action against any other officer of the ISI despite strong suspicions of their being mixed up with the Jalaluddin Haqqani group and despite evidence of the role of the ISI in the terrorist attacks against the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai.
9. As a result, the ISI has gone back to its old ways of inaction against extremist and terrorist organizations and the breeding grounds of extremism. The administration of Barack Obama might have stepped up the Drone strikes in the tribal belt, but it has not been able to make the Pakistan Army and intelligence act firmly against the breeding grounds of extremism. There has hardly been any action by the Pakistani authorities to counter extremism ideologically. Factories of extremism and jihad are once again sprouting, providing a never-ending flow of new recruits to the extremist and terrorist organizations.
10. The assassination of Taseer is a wake-up call not only for the Pakistani authorities, but also for the international community. Extremism is again on the forward march in Pakistan.A comprehensive strategy to force Pakistan to act firmly against the breeding grounds of extremism is the urgent need of the hour. ( 6-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
MY THOUGHTS ON SALMAN TASEER’S ASSASSINATION
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--- PAPER NO.701
B.RAMAN
The assassination of Salman Taseer, the liberal Governor of Punjab, by one of his police security guards at an Islamabad shopping centre on January 4 because of the Governor’s criticism of the blasphemy law draws attention once again to the penetration of the Pakistani security forces by Islamic extremist elements.
2.Earlier, evidence of such penetration came in the involvement of low-level army and Air Force officers in the two unsuccessful attempts to kill Gen.Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December 2003, and in the assassination of 19 officers of the US-trained Special Services Group (SSG) by a Pashtun Army officer belonging to the SSG, whose younger sister was reportedly among the 300 girls killed during the SSG raid on the Lal Masjid in Islamabad between July 10 and 13, 2007.
3.The Pashtun officer blew himself up during dinner at the headquarters mess of the SSG at Tarbela Ghazi, 100 kms south of Islamabad, on the night of September 13, 2007. An army soldier Naik Arshad Mahmood was among those sentenced to death in the case relating to the attempts to kill Musharraf . He was executed. The investigation brought out that some of the plotting against Musharraf was carried out in Air Force barracks in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi area. While a joint Al Qaeda-Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM)—Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) team motivated by Abu Faraj al-Libbi was suspected in the attempts to kill Musharraf, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was suspected in the assassination of the SSG officers by one of their colleagues.
4.In 1995, a plot by the HUJI led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar to assassinate Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, and Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff, with the complicity of some commissioned officers of the Army was discovered and neutralized in time.
5.Thus, the involvement of personnel of the security forces in plots against political and military leaders is nothing new in Pakistan, but there are some significant differences between the earlier incidents and the assassination of Salman Taseer. In the earlier three incidents, the security forces personnel involved came from the Armed Forces and were from the Deobandi-Wahabi-Salafi sects. In the assassination of Taseer, the culprit is from the Elite Force of the Punjab Police specially raised and trained to fight against terrorism and to protect VIPs. Media reports from Pakistan claim that he is from the Barelvi sect, which has till now been considered more tolerant than the Deobandi-Wahabi-Salafi sects.
6.One extremist organization in Pakistan which has recruits from all sects, including the Barelvis, is the Hizbut-Tehrir(HT) which is believed to have many followers in the Armed Forces as well as the Police. Though the Pakistani intelligence agencies apprehend a major threat to their national security and to the security of their VIPs from the HT, there has so far been no instance of the actual involvement of the HT in such plots. All of those involved in such plots in the past, came from either Al Qaeda or the TTP or the JEM or the HUJI or the 313 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri against whom also there was some suspicion in connection with the unsuccessful attempts to kill Musharraf.
7.All fundamentalist elements in Pakistan----whether Deobandi or Wahabi or Salafi or Barelvi---- consider it as their religious obligation to kill those opposing the blasphemy law and the law declaring the Ahmediyas as non-Muslims. Many individual Muslims also believe so even if they do not belong to any of these organizations.
8.Salman Taseer and Senator Sherry Rehman, both of the Pakistan People’s Party and both close friends of Benazir, had incurred the wrath of the extremist elements because of their public criticism of the blasphemy law in the wake of a sentence of death passed against a Christian woman for allegedly insulting the Holy Prophet. Senator Sherry Rehman has in fact moved a private member’s bill--- which has not been supported by any political party, including her own--- to amend the blasphemy law in order to remove its obnoxious features. Taseer was the only liberal leader of the PPP to have supported her in public.
9.Sherry Rehman had said in a message circulated through the Internet as follows: “The mullahs have announced a million man march and given me a public deadline of 6th Jan to take back the amendment bill, or else. They said they will stop at "nothing then to protect namoos I risalat". (honour of the Prophet).I do not have state security but am quite clear that I will not take the bill "back" as demanded by some extremists, most recently when they openly declared myself and Taseer waajibul qatl. ( meaning “deserve to be killed” ) .” One feels concerned for her security.
10.The” Daily Times” of Lahore has reported as follows: “The killer of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer has revealed that some of his colleagues were also involved in the plan to assassinate the governor, a private TV channel reported on Tuesday. Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri told a joint investigation team that some of his colleagues were aware of his plan and he had asked them to arrest him alive. He told the team during investigation that he had no remorse on killing Taseer and that was why he laid down his weapon after shooting him. The channel reported that he was removed from the Punjab Police Special Branch three years ago for having extremist views. He belongs to the Barelvi sect and is the disciple of Golra Sharif. It is learnt that some former security squad officials would also be questioned. Qadri had joined the Punjab Police five years ago and was inducted into the Elite Force some time ago. After obtaining clearance from the authorities, he was put on the security squad of VVIPs and of the governor.”
11.The “Dawn” of Karachi has reported as follows: “’ The Elite Force guard who gunned down Punjab Governor Salman Taseer is said to be associated with ‘Dawat-i-Islami’, a non-political and non-violent religious group with Barelvi leaning. This was disclosed by a colleague of Mumtaz Qadri, the self confessed assassin. Qadri, 26, son of Malik Bashir, joined Punjab police and got Elite Force training in 2006-7. He was posted to the Elite Force wing in Rawalpindi in 2008. …A police officer said Qadri had been assigned guard duty with Mr Taseer during the governor’s visits to Islamabad and once with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. On Tuesday, Qadri left the Police Lines at around 7.30am to report for duty. Police took his five brothers and father into custody from their house soon after he had confessed to the crime. In addition, 25 police officers and a muharar (record-keeper) of Elite Force who had prepared the list of personnel, including Qadri, for duty during the governor’s visit were also taken into custody and shifted to Islamabad for investigation. Investigators also confiscated the cellphones of the security personnel deployed for the governor’s security. A police party went to the house of Qadri in Muslim Town late in the night and found some religious books in his room.”
12.It is unMuslim to be a liberal. That is the message that Qadri and those behind him in the conspiracy (if there was a larger conspiracy) have sought to convey through the assassination of Taseer. It is unlikely to have any major impact on the political situation in Pakistan, but it will have an impact on the will of the Pakistani political leadership and civil society to confront the extremists. The fight against extremism in Pakistan will remain a losing battle unless and until all political forces and the civil society come together on this issue and the Army whole-heartedly backs them. One sees no sign of that. (5-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
The assassination of Salman Taseer, the liberal Governor of Punjab, by one of his police security guards at an Islamabad shopping centre on January 4 because of the Governor’s criticism of the blasphemy law draws attention once again to the penetration of the Pakistani security forces by Islamic extremist elements.
2.Earlier, evidence of such penetration came in the involvement of low-level army and Air Force officers in the two unsuccessful attempts to kill Gen.Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December 2003, and in the assassination of 19 officers of the US-trained Special Services Group (SSG) by a Pashtun Army officer belonging to the SSG, whose younger sister was reportedly among the 300 girls killed during the SSG raid on the Lal Masjid in Islamabad between July 10 and 13, 2007.
3.The Pashtun officer blew himself up during dinner at the headquarters mess of the SSG at Tarbela Ghazi, 100 kms south of Islamabad, on the night of September 13, 2007. An army soldier Naik Arshad Mahmood was among those sentenced to death in the case relating to the attempts to kill Musharraf . He was executed. The investigation brought out that some of the plotting against Musharraf was carried out in Air Force barracks in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi area. While a joint Al Qaeda-Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM)—Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) team motivated by Abu Faraj al-Libbi was suspected in the attempts to kill Musharraf, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was suspected in the assassination of the SSG officers by one of their colleagues.
4.In 1995, a plot by the HUJI led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar to assassinate Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, and Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff, with the complicity of some commissioned officers of the Army was discovered and neutralized in time.
5.Thus, the involvement of personnel of the security forces in plots against political and military leaders is nothing new in Pakistan, but there are some significant differences between the earlier incidents and the assassination of Salman Taseer. In the earlier three incidents, the security forces personnel involved came from the Armed Forces and were from the Deobandi-Wahabi-Salafi sects. In the assassination of Taseer, the culprit is from the Elite Force of the Punjab Police specially raised and trained to fight against terrorism and to protect VIPs. Media reports from Pakistan claim that he is from the Barelvi sect, which has till now been considered more tolerant than the Deobandi-Wahabi-Salafi sects.
6.One extremist organization in Pakistan which has recruits from all sects, including the Barelvis, is the Hizbut-Tehrir(HT) which is believed to have many followers in the Armed Forces as well as the Police. Though the Pakistani intelligence agencies apprehend a major threat to their national security and to the security of their VIPs from the HT, there has so far been no instance of the actual involvement of the HT in such plots. All of those involved in such plots in the past, came from either Al Qaeda or the TTP or the JEM or the HUJI or the 313 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri against whom also there was some suspicion in connection with the unsuccessful attempts to kill Musharraf.
7.All fundamentalist elements in Pakistan----whether Deobandi or Wahabi or Salafi or Barelvi---- consider it as their religious obligation to kill those opposing the blasphemy law and the law declaring the Ahmediyas as non-Muslims. Many individual Muslims also believe so even if they do not belong to any of these organizations.
8.Salman Taseer and Senator Sherry Rehman, both of the Pakistan People’s Party and both close friends of Benazir, had incurred the wrath of the extremist elements because of their public criticism of the blasphemy law in the wake of a sentence of death passed against a Christian woman for allegedly insulting the Holy Prophet. Senator Sherry Rehman has in fact moved a private member’s bill--- which has not been supported by any political party, including her own--- to amend the blasphemy law in order to remove its obnoxious features. Taseer was the only liberal leader of the PPP to have supported her in public.
9.Sherry Rehman had said in a message circulated through the Internet as follows: “The mullahs have announced a million man march and given me a public deadline of 6th Jan to take back the amendment bill, or else. They said they will stop at "nothing then to protect namoos I risalat". (honour of the Prophet).I do not have state security but am quite clear that I will not take the bill "back" as demanded by some extremists, most recently when they openly declared myself and Taseer waajibul qatl. ( meaning “deserve to be killed” ) .” One feels concerned for her security.
10.The” Daily Times” of Lahore has reported as follows: “The killer of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer has revealed that some of his colleagues were also involved in the plan to assassinate the governor, a private TV channel reported on Tuesday. Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri told a joint investigation team that some of his colleagues were aware of his plan and he had asked them to arrest him alive. He told the team during investigation that he had no remorse on killing Taseer and that was why he laid down his weapon after shooting him. The channel reported that he was removed from the Punjab Police Special Branch three years ago for having extremist views. He belongs to the Barelvi sect and is the disciple of Golra Sharif. It is learnt that some former security squad officials would also be questioned. Qadri had joined the Punjab Police five years ago and was inducted into the Elite Force some time ago. After obtaining clearance from the authorities, he was put on the security squad of VVIPs and of the governor.”
11.The “Dawn” of Karachi has reported as follows: “’ The Elite Force guard who gunned down Punjab Governor Salman Taseer is said to be associated with ‘Dawat-i-Islami’, a non-political and non-violent religious group with Barelvi leaning. This was disclosed by a colleague of Mumtaz Qadri, the self confessed assassin. Qadri, 26, son of Malik Bashir, joined Punjab police and got Elite Force training in 2006-7. He was posted to the Elite Force wing in Rawalpindi in 2008. …A police officer said Qadri had been assigned guard duty with Mr Taseer during the governor’s visits to Islamabad and once with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. On Tuesday, Qadri left the Police Lines at around 7.30am to report for duty. Police took his five brothers and father into custody from their house soon after he had confessed to the crime. In addition, 25 police officers and a muharar (record-keeper) of Elite Force who had prepared the list of personnel, including Qadri, for duty during the governor’s visit were also taken into custody and shifted to Islamabad for investigation. Investigators also confiscated the cellphones of the security personnel deployed for the governor’s security. A police party went to the house of Qadri in Muslim Town late in the night and found some religious books in his room.”
12.It is unMuslim to be a liberal. That is the message that Qadri and those behind him in the conspiracy (if there was a larger conspiracy) have sought to convey through the assassination of Taseer. It is unlikely to have any major impact on the political situation in Pakistan, but it will have an impact on the will of the Pakistani political leadership and civil society to confront the extremists. The fight against extremism in Pakistan will remain a losing battle unless and until all political forces and the civil society come together on this issue and the Army whole-heartedly backs them. One sees no sign of that. (5-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Monday, January 3, 2011
TASKS FOR R&AW'S NEW LEADERSHIP
B.RAMAN
The Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), India's external intelligence agency, has a new leadership since December 31. It is headed by Sanjeev Tripathi, an Indian Police Service officer of the UP cadre, who joined the organisation on deputation in the 1970s and was subsequently absorbed permanently into the Research & Analysis Service (RAS).
2.When K.C.Verma, an IPS officer who was inducted into the R&AW on deputation as its chief from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) on January 31,2009, took premature retirement by a month on December 31,2010, the toss as his successor was between Tripathi and Anand Arni, a direct recruit to the RAS when the late R.N.Kao was the chief. With the selection of Tripathi, an RAS officer from the deputationist quota of the RAS, as the chief, officers from the direct recruits quota have to wait for at least two years more before one of them could hope to become the proud head of the organisation. By 2009 when Verma was inducted as the chief, the initial batches of direct recruits to the RAS cadre had reached the required level of seniority and experience to be considered for the post of the chief. They have already waited for two years before one of them could hope to become the chief and they may have to wait for at least two years more.
3. It would be difficult for me to express a preference between Tripathi and Arni because both of them had worked for some years as my colleagues in the divisions headed by me. I hold both of them equally in great esteem and have equal affection for them.Both of them had a very good record of man management and got along well with their colleagues in the organisation as well as with other brother intelligence afficers in the other agencies. Both of them distinguished themselves as good operatives in the field as well as in the headquarters.
4. Arni had worked with me for a longer time in the late 1980s and the early 1990s when Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had started using terrorism as a weapon against India----initially in Punjab and subsequently in J&K and the rest of India. Arni's role in dealing with the aggravation of the threats to our national security as a result of this would make any intelligence agency proud of him. I consider him without any fear of contradiction as one of the boldest operatives with tremendous initiatve produced by the R&AW since its inception in 1968. He understood Pakistan better than many other officers of the organisation and his analysis of the situation in Pakistan and of the Pakistani personalities used to be remarkably accurate in retrospect.
5.Good man management and team work used to be Tripathi's forte. These should stand him and the organisation in good stead in improving morale and esprit de corps in the organisation. If Tripathi and Arni work in tandem, the organisation could scale new heights under their stewardship. The organisation has had ups and downs since Maj.Rabinder Singh, an alleged mole of the Central Intelligence Agency, gave the slip to the counter-intelligence division in 2004 and fled to the US. The disastrous public image of the organisation as a result of this suffered further set-backs in the subsequent years due to inter-personal frictions at the senior levels and a critical press, which highlighted many negative traits in the organisation---some true, some exaggerated and some incorrect.
6. It is important for the organisation to win back public trust. An intelligence agency, which is looked down upon by the people whose security it is supposed to protect, cannot produce useful results. It is easy to lose credibility, but difficult to regain it. The R&AW lost its credibility in 2004 when Rabinder Singh fled to the US--- just as the MI-6, the British external intelligence agency, lost its credibility in the 1960s when Kim Philby and two others, working for the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency, fled to the USSR. It took the MI-6 years to regain its credibility.
7.The R&AW should draw the right lessons from its bad public image since 2004 and move forward to regain the trust of the public. This will be the most important task of Tripathi, Arni and other senior officers. A spell of honest introspection will be required to get out of this bad patch. This introspection should cover not only what went wrong in the past, but also how to prevent a recurrence of it.
8. The R&AW has to develop a three-front intelligence capability ---against Pakistan, China and terrorism. It already has this capability, but there is much scope for improvement.Only an honest and critical introspection by the R&AW's senior leadership itself will be able to identify the deficiencies and provide answers as to how to remove them. External audits of the performance are necessary, but no external audit can throw the spotlight on the weaknesses and gaps as effectively as an internal audit done honestly and ruthlessly,
9. It is hoped that one of the first steps of the new leadership will be to have such an introspective exercise. The R&AW has done great work in the past, to which officers such as Tripathi and Arni had considerably contributed. It is capable of similar great work in the difficult years to come with the right critical approch and self-correcting action. The best corrective action is self-induced and not imposed from outside. (4-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi )
The Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), India's external intelligence agency, has a new leadership since December 31. It is headed by Sanjeev Tripathi, an Indian Police Service officer of the UP cadre, who joined the organisation on deputation in the 1970s and was subsequently absorbed permanently into the Research & Analysis Service (RAS).
2.When K.C.Verma, an IPS officer who was inducted into the R&AW on deputation as its chief from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) on January 31,2009, took premature retirement by a month on December 31,2010, the toss as his successor was between Tripathi and Anand Arni, a direct recruit to the RAS when the late R.N.Kao was the chief. With the selection of Tripathi, an RAS officer from the deputationist quota of the RAS, as the chief, officers from the direct recruits quota have to wait for at least two years more before one of them could hope to become the proud head of the organisation. By 2009 when Verma was inducted as the chief, the initial batches of direct recruits to the RAS cadre had reached the required level of seniority and experience to be considered for the post of the chief. They have already waited for two years before one of them could hope to become the chief and they may have to wait for at least two years more.
3. It would be difficult for me to express a preference between Tripathi and Arni because both of them had worked for some years as my colleagues in the divisions headed by me. I hold both of them equally in great esteem and have equal affection for them.Both of them had a very good record of man management and got along well with their colleagues in the organisation as well as with other brother intelligence afficers in the other agencies. Both of them distinguished themselves as good operatives in the field as well as in the headquarters.
4. Arni had worked with me for a longer time in the late 1980s and the early 1990s when Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had started using terrorism as a weapon against India----initially in Punjab and subsequently in J&K and the rest of India. Arni's role in dealing with the aggravation of the threats to our national security as a result of this would make any intelligence agency proud of him. I consider him without any fear of contradiction as one of the boldest operatives with tremendous initiatve produced by the R&AW since its inception in 1968. He understood Pakistan better than many other officers of the organisation and his analysis of the situation in Pakistan and of the Pakistani personalities used to be remarkably accurate in retrospect.
5.Good man management and team work used to be Tripathi's forte. These should stand him and the organisation in good stead in improving morale and esprit de corps in the organisation. If Tripathi and Arni work in tandem, the organisation could scale new heights under their stewardship. The organisation has had ups and downs since Maj.Rabinder Singh, an alleged mole of the Central Intelligence Agency, gave the slip to the counter-intelligence division in 2004 and fled to the US. The disastrous public image of the organisation as a result of this suffered further set-backs in the subsequent years due to inter-personal frictions at the senior levels and a critical press, which highlighted many negative traits in the organisation---some true, some exaggerated and some incorrect.
6. It is important for the organisation to win back public trust. An intelligence agency, which is looked down upon by the people whose security it is supposed to protect, cannot produce useful results. It is easy to lose credibility, but difficult to regain it. The R&AW lost its credibility in 2004 when Rabinder Singh fled to the US--- just as the MI-6, the British external intelligence agency, lost its credibility in the 1960s when Kim Philby and two others, working for the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency, fled to the USSR. It took the MI-6 years to regain its credibility.
7.The R&AW should draw the right lessons from its bad public image since 2004 and move forward to regain the trust of the public. This will be the most important task of Tripathi, Arni and other senior officers. A spell of honest introspection will be required to get out of this bad patch. This introspection should cover not only what went wrong in the past, but also how to prevent a recurrence of it.
8. The R&AW has to develop a three-front intelligence capability ---against Pakistan, China and terrorism. It already has this capability, but there is much scope for improvement.Only an honest and critical introspection by the R&AW's senior leadership itself will be able to identify the deficiencies and provide answers as to how to remove them. External audits of the performance are necessary, but no external audit can throw the spotlight on the weaknesses and gaps as effectively as an internal audit done honestly and ruthlessly,
9. It is hoped that one of the first steps of the new leadership will be to have such an introspective exercise. The R&AW has done great work in the past, to which officers such as Tripathi and Arni had considerably contributed. It is capable of similar great work in the difficult years to come with the right critical approch and self-correcting action. The best corrective action is self-induced and not imposed from outside. (4-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi )
CHINA'S ADVANCING SKILLS IN ENGINEERING & INNOVATION
B.RAMAN
Two articles in the New Year, which highlight China's advancing skills in engineering and its plans to emerge as the world's second leading innovator after the US, deserve to be carefully read, analysed and assessed by Indian policy-makers. In our justified preoccupation with China's growing military strength and its unrelenting modernisation of its armed forces, we should not overlook its continuous upgradation of its engineering skills. While we may be for the present ahead of China in information technology, the Chinese are far, far ahead of us in engineering skills.Unless we draw up medium and long-term plans for improving the quality of our engineering education and the quality of the performance of our engineers, we will lag far behind China in this field too as we are lagging behind in economic development. The two articles---one titled "When Innovation, Too, is made in China" carried by the "New York Times" on January1 and the other titled " China Wows World With Engineering" carried by the Chinese Party controlled "People's Daily" on January 4---- are annexed for easy reference. (4-1-11)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE I
When Innovation, Too, Is Made in China (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/bu...gewanted=print)
By Steve Lohr
AS a national strategy, China is trying to build an economy that relies on innovation rather than imitation. Clearly, its leaders recognize that being the world’s low-cost workshop for assembling the breakthrough products designed elsewhere — think iPads and a host of other high-tech goods — has its limits.
So can China become a prodigious inventor? The answer, in truth, will play out over decades — and go a long way toward determining not only China’s future, but also the shape of the global economy.
Clues to the Chinese approach emerge from a recent government document containing goals for drastically increasing the nation’s production of patents. It offers a telling glimpse of how China intends to engineer a more innovative society.
The document, published in November by the State Intellectual Property Office of China, is called the “National Patent Development Strategy (2011-2020).” It discusses broad economic objectives as well as specific targets to be attained by 2015.
In a recent interview, David J. Kappos, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, pointed to the Chinese targets for 2015 and called them “mind-blowing numbers.”
According to a translation of the document provided by the patent office, China’s goal for annual patent filings by 2015 is two million. That number includes “utility-model patents,” which typically cover items like engineering features in a product and are less ambitious than “invention patents.” In the American system, there are no utility patents.
In 2009, about 300,000 applications for utility patents were filed in China, roughly equal to its total of invention patents, which have been growing slightly faster than utility filings in recent years. But even if just half of China’s total filings in 2015 are for invention patents, the national plan calls for a huge leap, to one million, by 2015. By contrast, patent filings in the United States totaled slightly more than 480,000 in the 12 months ended in September, according to the patent office.
China’s patent surge has been evident for years. In October, Thomson Reuters issued a research report, forecasting that China would surpass the United States in patent filings in 2011. “It’s happening even faster than we expected,” said Bob Stembridge, an intellectual-property analyst at Thomson Reuters.
Yet if the trend is not surprising, the ambition of the Chinese plan is striking. The document indicates, for example, that China intends to roughly double its number of patent examiners, to 9,000, by 2015. (The United States has 6,300 examiners.)
China also wants to double the number of patents that its residents and companies file in other countries. Recent Chinese filings in the United States, Mr. Kappos says, are mainly in fields that China has declared priorities for industrial strategy, including solar and wind energy, information technology and telecommunications, and battery and manufacturing technologies for automobiles.
To lift its patent count, China has introduced an array of incentives. They include cash bonuses, better housing for individual filers and tax breaks for companies that are prolific patent producers.
“The leadership in China knows that innovation is its future, the key to higher living standards and long-term growth,” Mr. Kappos says. “They are doing everything they can to drive innovation, and China’s patent strategy is part of that broader plan.”
China’s strategy is guided and sponsored by the state. Should that be a source of concern for the United States, and perhaps a trade issue? Or is the plan likely to resemble past efforts by other governments to give their companies an edge in global competition?
In the 1980s, the Japanese government was widely viewed as the master practitioner of industrial policy, and Japan Inc. seemed poised to overrun one American industry after another, including computers.
As we know, it didn’t turn out that way, partly because of steps taken by the American government and industry. A semiconductor trade agreement was intended to pry open the Japanese market, and I.B.M. invested in a crucial but then-struggling supplier, Intel.
More important, however, Japan never became a force in a particularly unruly, imaginative side of computing: writing software. Generalizations are risky, but it seems that Japan, as a society, has not produced enough of that kind of innovative skill, despite being a formidable patent generator. (In that area, Japan is still slightly ahead of the United States by some measures, though Japan’s patent filing pace is slowing.)
To call Japan’s industrial policy an outright failure would be simplistic. In some industries — autos, machine tools and consumer electronics, for example — it has done quite well.
“They are still in the game in those industries and going gangbusters — and we are not,” said Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., president of the Economic Strategy Institute and a former United States trade negotiator. Still, just how strong a hand government policy had in those successes is open to debate.
The Chinese patent strategy document is filled with metrics, right down to goals for patents owned per million people. It speaks of an innovation-by-the-numbers mentality, much like a student who equates knowledge with scores on standardized tests.
“It is a brute-force approach at this stage, emphasizing the quantity of innovation assets more than the quality,” said John Kao, an innovation consultant to governments and corporations.
But it would be a mistake, Mr. Kao said, to assume that China will necessarily follow a path similar to Japan’s. China, he says, is not only much bigger than Japan, but it also has a more individualistic entrepreneurial society, despite its Communist government. Someday, he predicts, China will have its entrepreneurial equivalents of Steven P. Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.
DESPITE China’s inevitable rise, Mr. Kao said, the United States has a comparative advantage because it is the country most open to innovation. “American culture, more than any other, forgives failure, tolerates risk and embraces uncertainty,” Mr. Kao says.
Many innovative products and technologies, he says, will be made elsewhere. “But America’s future lies in being the orchestrator — the systems integrator — of the innovation process,” Mr. Kao said. “Look at Silicon Valley. It is a place where smart people from all nations, all languages and all ethnic groups come together. It’s the capital of innovation assembly.”
ANNEXURE II
China wows world with engineering ( http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/7249100.html )
The country surprised the world with its engineering and technical feats in 2010, when it completed several monumental projects high in the sky, deep in the seas and in-between.
China last year completed 15 successful space launches, including that of its second lunar probe, Chang'e-2, which will determine a site for the country's first unmanned moon landing around 2013.
The Long March launch vehicles also sent five Beidou navigation satellites into orbit. The launches were part of the country's plan to have 12 Beidou navigation satellites form a network covering the Asia-Pacific region before 2012. The system will have 35 navigation satellites by 2020, when it will rival the United States' Global Positioning System.
On the ground, China became a strong player in the global high-speed railway industry in 2010 by innovating upon technologies previously imported from Germany, France and Japan.
The Ministry of Railways announced the nation's high-speed railway network last year reached 7,531 km, becoming longer than any other countries'.
The network's top service speed became the world's fastest at 380 kilometers an hour since the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway opened in October.
It set new operation speed records twice in 2010.
In September, a China-made fast train reached 416.6 km an hour on the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway. Two months later, a train on the 1,318-km-long Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway beat that record by reaching 486.1 km an hour.
Sources with CSR Corp Ltd, a major domestic train manufacturer, said in December that an experimental train is being developed that would challenge the 574.8 km an hour speed traveled by a specially configured version of France's TGV in 2007.
The country also made great achievements in the deep sea, becoming the fifth country to develop deep-diving technology capable of going beyond the 3,500-meter mark.
The domestically developed submersible Jiaolong planted a Chinese flag on the bottom of the South China Sea during a 3,759-meter-deep dive in July.
The vessel, designed to reach a depth of 7,000 meters and operate in most of the planet's oceans, is considered the world's only manned submersible that can theoretically reach those depths. Japan's Shinkai 6500 can dive for 6,500 meters. The other three countries with deep-diving technology are the United States, France and Russia.
And 2010 was the year China overtook the United States in developing the fastest supercomputer.
The Tianhe-1A can perform 2,507 trillion calculations a second and is 29 million times faster than the earliest supercomputers.
In addition, the water level of the largest hydroelectric project, the Three Gorges Dam, had increased to 175 meters as of October 2010, enabling it to generate electricity at maximum capacity.
The slew of mega-projects were made possible by the country's mammoth spending on research and development.
According to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), China's investment in innovation nearly doubled from 34 billion euros ($44.56 billion) in 2006 to 65.7 billion euros in 2009.
By Bao Daozu, China Daily
Two articles in the New Year, which highlight China's advancing skills in engineering and its plans to emerge as the world's second leading innovator after the US, deserve to be carefully read, analysed and assessed by Indian policy-makers. In our justified preoccupation with China's growing military strength and its unrelenting modernisation of its armed forces, we should not overlook its continuous upgradation of its engineering skills. While we may be for the present ahead of China in information technology, the Chinese are far, far ahead of us in engineering skills.Unless we draw up medium and long-term plans for improving the quality of our engineering education and the quality of the performance of our engineers, we will lag far behind China in this field too as we are lagging behind in economic development. The two articles---one titled "When Innovation, Too, is made in China" carried by the "New York Times" on January1 and the other titled " China Wows World With Engineering" carried by the Chinese Party controlled "People's Daily" on January 4---- are annexed for easy reference. (4-1-11)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE I
When Innovation, Too, Is Made in China (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/bu...gewanted=print)
By Steve Lohr
AS a national strategy, China is trying to build an economy that relies on innovation rather than imitation. Clearly, its leaders recognize that being the world’s low-cost workshop for assembling the breakthrough products designed elsewhere — think iPads and a host of other high-tech goods — has its limits.
So can China become a prodigious inventor? The answer, in truth, will play out over decades — and go a long way toward determining not only China’s future, but also the shape of the global economy.
Clues to the Chinese approach emerge from a recent government document containing goals for drastically increasing the nation’s production of patents. It offers a telling glimpse of how China intends to engineer a more innovative society.
The document, published in November by the State Intellectual Property Office of China, is called the “National Patent Development Strategy (2011-2020).” It discusses broad economic objectives as well as specific targets to be attained by 2015.
In a recent interview, David J. Kappos, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, pointed to the Chinese targets for 2015 and called them “mind-blowing numbers.”
According to a translation of the document provided by the patent office, China’s goal for annual patent filings by 2015 is two million. That number includes “utility-model patents,” which typically cover items like engineering features in a product and are less ambitious than “invention patents.” In the American system, there are no utility patents.
In 2009, about 300,000 applications for utility patents were filed in China, roughly equal to its total of invention patents, which have been growing slightly faster than utility filings in recent years. But even if just half of China’s total filings in 2015 are for invention patents, the national plan calls for a huge leap, to one million, by 2015. By contrast, patent filings in the United States totaled slightly more than 480,000 in the 12 months ended in September, according to the patent office.
China’s patent surge has been evident for years. In October, Thomson Reuters issued a research report, forecasting that China would surpass the United States in patent filings in 2011. “It’s happening even faster than we expected,” said Bob Stembridge, an intellectual-property analyst at Thomson Reuters.
Yet if the trend is not surprising, the ambition of the Chinese plan is striking. The document indicates, for example, that China intends to roughly double its number of patent examiners, to 9,000, by 2015. (The United States has 6,300 examiners.)
China also wants to double the number of patents that its residents and companies file in other countries. Recent Chinese filings in the United States, Mr. Kappos says, are mainly in fields that China has declared priorities for industrial strategy, including solar and wind energy, information technology and telecommunications, and battery and manufacturing technologies for automobiles.
To lift its patent count, China has introduced an array of incentives. They include cash bonuses, better housing for individual filers and tax breaks for companies that are prolific patent producers.
“The leadership in China knows that innovation is its future, the key to higher living standards and long-term growth,” Mr. Kappos says. “They are doing everything they can to drive innovation, and China’s patent strategy is part of that broader plan.”
China’s strategy is guided and sponsored by the state. Should that be a source of concern for the United States, and perhaps a trade issue? Or is the plan likely to resemble past efforts by other governments to give their companies an edge in global competition?
In the 1980s, the Japanese government was widely viewed as the master practitioner of industrial policy, and Japan Inc. seemed poised to overrun one American industry after another, including computers.
As we know, it didn’t turn out that way, partly because of steps taken by the American government and industry. A semiconductor trade agreement was intended to pry open the Japanese market, and I.B.M. invested in a crucial but then-struggling supplier, Intel.
More important, however, Japan never became a force in a particularly unruly, imaginative side of computing: writing software. Generalizations are risky, but it seems that Japan, as a society, has not produced enough of that kind of innovative skill, despite being a formidable patent generator. (In that area, Japan is still slightly ahead of the United States by some measures, though Japan’s patent filing pace is slowing.)
To call Japan’s industrial policy an outright failure would be simplistic. In some industries — autos, machine tools and consumer electronics, for example — it has done quite well.
“They are still in the game in those industries and going gangbusters — and we are not,” said Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., president of the Economic Strategy Institute and a former United States trade negotiator. Still, just how strong a hand government policy had in those successes is open to debate.
The Chinese patent strategy document is filled with metrics, right down to goals for patents owned per million people. It speaks of an innovation-by-the-numbers mentality, much like a student who equates knowledge with scores on standardized tests.
“It is a brute-force approach at this stage, emphasizing the quantity of innovation assets more than the quality,” said John Kao, an innovation consultant to governments and corporations.
But it would be a mistake, Mr. Kao said, to assume that China will necessarily follow a path similar to Japan’s. China, he says, is not only much bigger than Japan, but it also has a more individualistic entrepreneurial society, despite its Communist government. Someday, he predicts, China will have its entrepreneurial equivalents of Steven P. Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.
DESPITE China’s inevitable rise, Mr. Kao said, the United States has a comparative advantage because it is the country most open to innovation. “American culture, more than any other, forgives failure, tolerates risk and embraces uncertainty,” Mr. Kao says.
Many innovative products and technologies, he says, will be made elsewhere. “But America’s future lies in being the orchestrator — the systems integrator — of the innovation process,” Mr. Kao said. “Look at Silicon Valley. It is a place where smart people from all nations, all languages and all ethnic groups come together. It’s the capital of innovation assembly.”
ANNEXURE II
China wows world with engineering ( http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/7249100.html )
The country surprised the world with its engineering and technical feats in 2010, when it completed several monumental projects high in the sky, deep in the seas and in-between.
China last year completed 15 successful space launches, including that of its second lunar probe, Chang'e-2, which will determine a site for the country's first unmanned moon landing around 2013.
The Long March launch vehicles also sent five Beidou navigation satellites into orbit. The launches were part of the country's plan to have 12 Beidou navigation satellites form a network covering the Asia-Pacific region before 2012. The system will have 35 navigation satellites by 2020, when it will rival the United States' Global Positioning System.
On the ground, China became a strong player in the global high-speed railway industry in 2010 by innovating upon technologies previously imported from Germany, France and Japan.
The Ministry of Railways announced the nation's high-speed railway network last year reached 7,531 km, becoming longer than any other countries'.
The network's top service speed became the world's fastest at 380 kilometers an hour since the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway opened in October.
It set new operation speed records twice in 2010.
In September, a China-made fast train reached 416.6 km an hour on the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway. Two months later, a train on the 1,318-km-long Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway beat that record by reaching 486.1 km an hour.
Sources with CSR Corp Ltd, a major domestic train manufacturer, said in December that an experimental train is being developed that would challenge the 574.8 km an hour speed traveled by a specially configured version of France's TGV in 2007.
The country also made great achievements in the deep sea, becoming the fifth country to develop deep-diving technology capable of going beyond the 3,500-meter mark.
The domestically developed submersible Jiaolong planted a Chinese flag on the bottom of the South China Sea during a 3,759-meter-deep dive in July.
The vessel, designed to reach a depth of 7,000 meters and operate in most of the planet's oceans, is considered the world's only manned submersible that can theoretically reach those depths. Japan's Shinkai 6500 can dive for 6,500 meters. The other three countries with deep-diving technology are the United States, France and Russia.
And 2010 was the year China overtook the United States in developing the fastest supercomputer.
The Tianhe-1A can perform 2,507 trillion calculations a second and is 29 million times faster than the earliest supercomputers.
In addition, the water level of the largest hydroelectric project, the Three Gorges Dam, had increased to 175 meters as of October 2010, enabling it to generate electricity at maximum capacity.
The slew of mega-projects were made possible by the country's mammoth spending on research and development.
According to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), China's investment in innovation nearly doubled from 34 billion euros ($44.56 billion) in 2006 to 65.7 billion euros in 2009.
By Bao Daozu, China Daily
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