INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--- PAPER NO.406
B.RAMAN
Only twenty-nine members of the highly-reputed Greyhounds counter-insurgency action force of the Andhra Pradesh Police managed to escape a well-organised ambush in water laid on June 29,2008, by a group of Maoist terrorists as a party of 65 Greyhounds was returning to Andhra Pradesh by a boat after an unsuccessful combing operation for Maoists in the territory of Orissa. Thirty-four Greyhounds are missing and two others are reported to have been killed. It is not yet known whether the 34 missing were also killed or whether some of them had been captured by the Maoists, who have not made any claim so far.
2. The Greyhounds party, which had entered the territory of Orissa reportedly on information received by them about the plans of the Maoists to hold a meeting, was returning to Andhra Pradesh in a single motorised boat belonging to the Balimela hydel project. They were returning by the Sileru river. As the boat entered the Balimela reservoir in the territory of Orissa created by the hydel project, it was attacked by an unknown number of Maoists, who had taken up position on the surrounding hills. The Greyhounds, who were taken by surprise, tried to retaliate, but their return fire against the Maoists located on the hills above the reservoir was ineffective. The boat kept moving despite initially being hit by some bullets, but capsized after having been hit by one or more grenades thrown or fired from a launcher by the Maoists. All on board jumped into the water. While some swam to safety, others were not lucky. Their final fate is not yet known.
3. The boat had a three-member crew one of whom fell into the hands of the Maoists, but they released him unharmed.His interview by Suryanarayan Pattnaik of the "Times of India" ( July 1,2008) gives the most authentic account of the ambush. He is quoted as saying in the interview: " We were three staff in the boat that belongs to the Balimela hydro project. On Saturday (June 28) evening, we were just told to be ready to leave for some place the next day. We did not know the destination. Around 4 AM on Sunday, two policemen from Chiltrakonda police station came and we five left for Janbai to bring Greyhound personnel of AP. We came to know that they had gone to Papermetla in Orissa three days ago on an anti-Maoist operation. We reached Janbai where the Greyhounds policemen boarded the boat. We were 65 people on board then and left Janbai. The boat had hardly gone about 5 to 7 Kms when the Maoists started firing on the boat. While the boat was crossing a narrow waterway, one bullet hit it. Before the Greyhounds could act, the Maoists from the hills rained bullets on the boat. Though a few policemen retaliated, it bore little fruit.The Maoists then hurled grenades on the boat. A part of the vessel was damaged. The boat started sinking. We were helpless and all of us started jumping into the water to save our lives. I also jumped out of the boat. While I was swimming towards the bank, I desperately shouted that I was a civilian. My screaming worked. The extremists stopped firing at me, but they asked me to swim towards them. They were six in number, including two women. All were heavily armed. They took me into the deep forests of Gunupur hill. They grilled me for a few hours. After some time, they told me they would release me on condition that I should never help policemen in future."
4. From his account, the following facts emerge:
The Greyhounds party had gone into Orissa three days before the ambush. It is not clear how they went---by another boat or by road Three days of combing in Orissa territory did not lead to any Maoists. They decided to return to Andhra Pradesh. A request for a boat of the hydel project was made the previous night through the Orissa Police, but the project authorities were not told that the boat was for the Greyhounds. But since the request came through the Orissa Police,anyone aware of this should not have had any difficulty in guessing that the boat was being requisitioned for the travel of a police party.
The number of Maoists who successfully laid the ambush was small. They were not in their hundreds as reported by sections of the media.
The boatman did not find any Greyhounds personnel in the custody of the team of six Maoists, who captured and released him after interrogation. It is possible there were other Maoist groups in the area, which had also participated in the ambush of which the boatman was not aware.
5. Another "Times of India" report had stated that the Greyhounds had gone into Orissa on receiving information that the Maoists were to hold a meeting in Orissa territory. It is not clear whether the Greyhounds received this information from one of their sources or from the Orissa police.
6. Whatever be the case, it is evident that certain omissions of securitry precautions by the Greyhounds enabled the Maoists to mount this successful ambush. Since the Greyhounds were on an unsuccessful combing operation in Orissa territory for three days, while planning for their return to their base in Andhra Pradesh they should have taken into account the possibility that the Maoists would have come to know of their presence in Orissa territory and would be waiting for their return in order to mount an ambush. There was also a possibility of a leak of their return plans the previous night when the boatmen were alerted to be ready to take a party to Andhra Pradesh early in the morning.
7.These factors necessitated two precautions: Stationing of police parties on land on the surrounding hill tops as the boat was moving to prevent any ambush and avoiding the entire party of about 65 travelling by one boat at the same time. In an ambush on land, a police party, if its reflexes are good, has a reasonable chance of re-grouping and retaliating when ambushed. When ambushed on water particularly from a height, the chances of re-grouping and retaliating are low and nil if the boat is hit and capzises.
8. This ambush is definitely a set-back for the Greyhounds, but this need not dent their reputation as one of the best counter-insurgency police forces in India.Set-backs cannot always be avoided. The difference between a good force and a not so good force is that a good force learns from its mistakes and avoids repeating them. A not so good force does not. Being a good force, one can expect that the Greyhounds will draw the right lessons for their future operations.
9. The audacious manner in which the Maoists successfully mounted this ambush of a water-borne police party speaks of their continuing motivation, excellent reflexes and ability to plan and execute operations at short notice. The jihadi terrorism outside Kashmir is mainly urban terrorism.The Maoist terrorism is mainly rural terrorism. The jihadis attack hard and soft targets, the security forces as well as innocent civilians. Their attacks on civilians are indiscriminate. The Maoists focus on hard targets from the security forces and their perceived class enemies.Their terrorism is well-calibrated and selective in order not to create feelings of revulsion against them in the minds of the public. The muted public reaction to the Maoist ambush is indicative of the success of their methods.
10. The Greyhounds have become a legend with the police forces in the States affected by Maoist insurgency. There has been a lot of public adulation of the Greyhounds. As a result, the Andhra Pradesh Police have acquired the conviction that such forces are the real answer to terrorism. After a number of jihadi acts of terrorism in Hyderabad last year, the Andhra Pradesh police decided to raise a separate, but similar force tailor-made to deal with the urban jihadi terrorism. It has been named the Octopus.
11. The AP Police seem to have a fascination for such esoteric names for their special forces. Such forces alone cannot effectively deal with terrorism unless complemented by skillful political handling of the public grievances that give rise to terrorism and strengthening traditional policing in matters like urban and rural patrolling, police-community relations and successful investigation and prosecution of terrorism-related cases. The record of the AP Police in the investigation and prosecution of terrorism-related cases is quite poor.Unless their traditional policing improves, forces such as the Greyhounds and the Octopus alone cannot neutralise terrorism.
12. Annexed are some extracts from the chapter on Maoist terrorism in my book titled "Terrorism: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow" published this month by the Lancer Publishers of New Delhi (www.lancerpublishers.com ) (2-7-08)
(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 )
ANNEXURE ( Extracts from the chapter on Maoist terrorism in my book )
Our Intelligence Bureau (IB), which is largely an urban-based organisation, has very little capability for preventive intelligence collection in the rural areas. We have to depend on the rural police for this purpose. The ability of the rural police to collect intelligence depends to a considerable extent on its mobility (patrolling) and its relationship with the village communities in the affected areas. Fears caused by the frequent use of landmines with devastating effect by the Maoists and the failure of the States to provide the police with adequate mine detection and clearing capability have affected the mobility and rural patrolling. This has also an impact on police-community relationship. A police force, which is not able to remain in regular touch with the villagers, cannot collect much worthwhile intelligence.
The inability of the State to deal with the Maoist insurgency-cum-terrorism effectively so far can be attributed to the absence of a mix of political and operational strategies. The political strategy has to identify and address the root causes of the spreading Maoism. While the spread is alarming, it is not yet out of control. There are still large areas in the tribal belt where the people are not supporting the Maoists and are observing law and order. The State has so far failed to undertake a crash development of these areas, which have not yet been infected by Maoism, in order to prove to the people that they can achieve their justified economic and social objectives through peaceful means, without having to take up arms against the State. Simultaneously, there has to be an improvement in rural policing and intelligencecollection in order to thwart the efforts of the Maoists to bring these areas too under their sway.
The areas, which have already come under the effective control of the Maoists, need a different strategy, with the emphasis more on the professional and operational aspects of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency than on the political and economic. The objective is to wrest control of these areas from the Maoists. This would be possible only through expanding and strengthening the police presence in the areas, creating in the IB and the intelligence wings of the Police an improved capability for intelligence collection in the rural areas and strengthening the capability of the police and the para-military forces to counter the modus operandi of the Maoists such as their devastating use of landmines.
Concerned over the spread of Maoist terrorism and insurgency, suggestions are increasingly being made for giving the police a military edge through training in jungle warfare techniques etc. We should definitely improve the technical capabilities of the police in matters such as mine-detection and neutralisation, but we should not militarise the methods of operation of the police.
The growing interest in some of our officers----serving and retired---in the highly militarized British and American methods of dealing with insurgency and terrorism needs to be curbed. The former British occupying power in Malaya used and the current American occupying power in Iraq uses highly militarised methods. They were/are operating against foreign nationals in foreign territory and had/have, therefore, no qualms about the kind of methods they were/are using to suppress the insurgency-cum-terrorism.
Our Police and para-military forces are operating in our own territory against our own people. We have to temper effectiveness with self-restraint. We had to use the jungle warfare methods in Mizoram and certain areas of the North-East in the 1960s and the 1970s because of the involvement of Pakistan and China in keeping the insurgency sustained in those areas. We cannot unintelligently use those methods in our tribal heartland in Central India. Modernisation of the police forces' rural counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency capability, yes;but, militarisation, no.
While dealing with the Maoist insurgency, we have to make a distinction between the poor people who have legitimate causes for anger against the State and against those whom they perceive as the exploiting classes of society and the Maoist ideologues, who are trying to exploit this anger to achieve political power through the barrel of the gun. The ideologues must be made to realise that they cannot achieve their objective by using the rural poor as their cannon fodder. The State has to act firmly against them. At the same time, it is important to prevent the rural poor from letting themselves be used as the cannon fodder of the Maoist ideologues. This is only possible through appropriate anger containment and reduction measures. Unless they perceive the State as the protector of the poor and exploited classes and not of the exploiting classes, it would not be possible to wean them away from the Maoist ideologues.
A comprehensive strategy of anger containment and reduction on the one side and better counter-insurgency and security in the rural areas on the other is required. This strategy has to be worked out centrally with inputs from the affected States and co-ordinated in its implementation from the Centre. Such a comprehensive strategy is presently lacking.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
WORLD TIBET DAY: NEED TO BE ALERT ON JULY 6
B.RAMAN
Members of the Tibetan diaspora all over world observe two important anniversaries.
2. They observe March 10 every year as the Tibetan Uprising Day to mark the anniversary of the day in 1959 when His Holiness the Dalai Lama crossed over from Tibet into India after the collapse of the Tibetan revolt against the Chinese. Generally, this anniversary passes off peacefully, but this year, being the year of the Beijing Olympics, it took a dramatic turn with widespread demonstrations and incidents of violence in Lhasa and other Tibetan-inhabited areas of China. The resulting unrest continued for some weeks before the Chinese authorities were able to bring it under control. A few days after the event, some Tibetan girls living in New Delhi managed to forcibly enter the Chinese Embassy after breaking the security cordon of the police and created anxious moments for the police and the staff of the Embassy.
3. The Tibetans all over the world observe July 6 every year as the World Tibet Day to mark the birth anniversary of His Holiness. Usually, the observance is peaceful with photo exhibitions, films and talks. The observance of the World Tibet Day started in 1998 at the initiative of some American friends of the Dalai Lama with three objectives in view, namely: to create an annual worldwide event to help restore essential freedoms for those living in Tibet; to increase global awareness of the genocidal threats to the Tibetan people; and , to celebrate the unique beauty and value of Tibetan culture and thought.
4. The US-based Free Tibet Movement has issued instructions for the observance of the "World Tibet Day" on July 6,2008, in a similar manner as in the previous years. Since this year's World Tibet Day falls just a month before the Beijing Olympics, it would be necessary for the police force responsible for physical security outside the Chinese diplomatic mission in Delhi and consular missions in Mumbai and Kolkata to be extra vigilant to prevent the possibility of any incident similar to what happened in New Delhi in March last.
5.One should not rule out the possibility of fresh demonstrations in Tibet, where the public mood is still sullen (2-7-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India,New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Members of the Tibetan diaspora all over world observe two important anniversaries.
2. They observe March 10 every year as the Tibetan Uprising Day to mark the anniversary of the day in 1959 when His Holiness the Dalai Lama crossed over from Tibet into India after the collapse of the Tibetan revolt against the Chinese. Generally, this anniversary passes off peacefully, but this year, being the year of the Beijing Olympics, it took a dramatic turn with widespread demonstrations and incidents of violence in Lhasa and other Tibetan-inhabited areas of China. The resulting unrest continued for some weeks before the Chinese authorities were able to bring it under control. A few days after the event, some Tibetan girls living in New Delhi managed to forcibly enter the Chinese Embassy after breaking the security cordon of the police and created anxious moments for the police and the staff of the Embassy.
3. The Tibetans all over the world observe July 6 every year as the World Tibet Day to mark the birth anniversary of His Holiness. Usually, the observance is peaceful with photo exhibitions, films and talks. The observance of the World Tibet Day started in 1998 at the initiative of some American friends of the Dalai Lama with three objectives in view, namely: to create an annual worldwide event to help restore essential freedoms for those living in Tibet; to increase global awareness of the genocidal threats to the Tibetan people; and , to celebrate the unique beauty and value of Tibetan culture and thought.
4. The US-based Free Tibet Movement has issued instructions for the observance of the "World Tibet Day" on July 6,2008, in a similar manner as in the previous years. Since this year's World Tibet Day falls just a month before the Beijing Olympics, it would be necessary for the police force responsible for physical security outside the Chinese diplomatic mission in Delhi and consular missions in Mumbai and Kolkata to be extra vigilant to prevent the possibility of any incident similar to what happened in New Delhi in March last.
5.One should not rule out the possibility of fresh demonstrations in Tibet, where the public mood is still sullen (2-7-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India,New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
COUNT-DOWN TO BEIJING OLYMPICS
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.405
B.RAMAN
While the Falun Gong has kept up its public campaign against the Beijing Olympics due in August, the Tibetan supporters of the Dalai Lama have toned down their campaign. There has been pressure on His Holiness from the Western Governments not to create difficulties for the Chinese before and during the Olympics.
2. Not only officials connected with the so-called Government-in-exile of his Holiness based in Dharmsala in India, but even the radical Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), whose radicalism has increased since September last year due to the role played by some American citizens of Tibetan origin, who had migrated to the US from India, have been avoiding any anti-Olympics statements. The Chinese as well as the Dalai Lama's followers have toned their rhetoric against each other. Though the rhetoric has not completely disappeared from their propaganda against each other, the harsh words of the past have been toned down.
3. The Chinese have toned down their demonisation of His Holiness, but they continue to demonise the TYC by projecting it as a terrorist organisation, which allegedly advocates suicide terrorism. Lodi Gyari, the Washington DC based representative of the Dalai Lama, who leads the two-member team of the Dalai Lama in the on-again, off-again dialogue with Chinese officials, has become a new target of attack.Some Chinese columnists have been projecting him as a founding-leader of the TYC and hence as radical as the TYC.
4. Some Chinese columnists have expressed the view that the only way of making His Holiness give up what they see as his present policy of confrontation with Beijing is by having pressure exercised on him through his external supporters. By external supporters,they mean the US and the non-Governmental organisations and Congressmen in the US, who have been supporting him.
5. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) of the US continues to be an important target of attack. Its denial of any responsibility for the March,2008, uprising in the Tibetan-inhabited areas of China has not been accepted by the Chinese. They have a strong suspicion that the NED is behind the radicalisation of the TYC and that funds flow to the TYC from the NED through Lodi Gyari. The NED makes no secret of its financial contributions to various Tibetan organisations. Details of these contributions are available in its web site. Uncorroborated reports that the NED had organised a training camp for Buddhist monks from Myanmar and Tibet in techniques of political agitation in a camp in South Africa are bound to add to this suspicion.
6. While the Chinese authorities and columnists avoid any negative or critical references to India with reference to the activities of the Dalai Lama and his supporters, their concern and suspicions over the activities of the TYC could become a contentious issue if the involvement of American citizens of Tibetan origin in its activities in Indian territory increases.
7.The State-owned Xinhua news agency reported on June 30,2008, as follows: "The authorities announced Sunday that relevant central government departments will meet personal representatives of the Dalai Lama at his request in early July.The central authorities have kept a constant and clear policy towards the Dalai Lama, a government spokesman said. "Our door is always open for the dialogue with the Dalai Lama," he said, "(We) hope that the Dalai Lama would treasure this opportunity and give positive response to the requirements of the central authorities." This would be the second meeting since the March uprising. The first one was held in China on May 4,2008.
8. While the announcement on the second meeting was expected for some time, interestingly it coincided with the visit of Ms.Condoleezza Rice , the US Secretary of State, to Beijing and the quake-hit areas of the Sichuan province. During her stay in Beijing, she met President Hu Jintao on June 30,2008. She had also met Prime Minister Wen Jiabo. Her visit had nothing to do with the announcement since the Chinese had agreed to this second meeting even earlier. And yet, the fact that the Chinese chose to make the announcement during her visit is interesting.
9. The Chinese media reported that during her meeting with Hu, she told him that President George Bush was looking forward to his meeting with him during the forthcoming G-8 summit in Japan. She apparently did not refer to Bush's planned visit to Beijing to attend the inaugural function of the Olympics. One would have expected her to say that Bush was looking forward to meeting Hu in the G-8 summit and to participating in the Olympics inaugural ceremony. However, she confined her remarks only to the summit. From this, one should not jump to the interpretation that Bush may be having second thoughts on his participation in the inaugural function.. All it shows is that he is keeping his options open .
10. Despite the toning down of the war of words between Beijing and the followers of the Dalai Lama, Chinese concerns over the possibility of violent attacks by Tibetan youth to embarrass the Chinese have not subsided. While they do not anticipate any acts of violence by the Tibetans in Beijing itself, they do apprehend diversionary acts of violence not only in Lhasa, but also in New Delhi and Western cities where there is a strong Tibetan presence.A question often posed by them is: Can the Tibetan youth kidnap a Chinese diplomat and hold him hostage during the Olympics to draw attention to their cause? Such acts will not be in the interest of the Tibetan cause and will prove counter-productive.
11. The Chinese have worked out a comprehensive physical security plan for the Olympics and the implementation of this plan has already started. This plan covers all important aspects such as civil aviation security, other public transport security, security in the venues of the games and the places of stay of the teams and public security in all important places which are likely to be visited by the teams, journalists and foreign spectators. They are also exercising caution while processing the visa applications of all intending visitors to China till the Olympics are over.
12. Of all the Muslim groups, only the Uighurs of Xinjiang origin living in the West and Turkey have kept up their campaign against Beijing. Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda organisations, including those of Pakistan, which are members of the International Islamic Front of bin Laden, have been silent on the Beijing Olympics. Their silence need not necessarily mean that they have no plans to disrupt the Olympics at Beijing or create diversionary attacks against the Chinese in Pakistan and the Central Asian Republics, which have a strong Uighur diaspora with religious and ethnic links to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) or Group, which is also an Uzbek organisation, and the Islamic Movement of Eastern Turkestan. All the three of them have their headquarters in North Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. If there is an act of jihadi disruption during the Olympics---either in Beijing or in Shanghai, where the football matches are to be held, or in Hong Kong where the equitation events are to be held--- it will most probably emanate from North Waziristan. The Chinese are depending on the goodwill and co-operation of the Pakistani authorities to prevent any incident plotted from Pakistani territory.
13. One does not know whether a contingent from Denmark is participating in the Olympics. If it does, its security should be of the greatest concern to the Chinese security agencies---- particularly after the recent Al Qaeda-owned attempt to blow up the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, in which eight Muslims---mostly Pakistanis---were killed. Al Qaeda organised the suicide explosion to protest against the publication and re-publication of cartoons by the Danish media on the Holy Prophet. The anger against the Danish cartoons persists---in the minds of jihadi organisations as well as individual Muslims right across the Ummah. If the Danish contingent participates, its members will be interacting with Muslim athletes from all over the Ummah. Even if no jihadi organisation mounts an attack on the Danes, the possibility of anger-of-the-moment attacks on the Danes by individual Muslims has to be factored into in any plan for the protection of the Danes.
14. While the Chinese physical security is tight, one is not certain whether their preventive intelligence capabilities have been revamped and strengthened after the March uprising in Lhasa when they were taken completely by surprise. China has a large number of Muslim students from the Ummah. Those of them, who had left China in the months before the Olympics ostensibly to visit their relatives and returned just before the Olympics, would need special attention. (1-7-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
While the Falun Gong has kept up its public campaign against the Beijing Olympics due in August, the Tibetan supporters of the Dalai Lama have toned down their campaign. There has been pressure on His Holiness from the Western Governments not to create difficulties for the Chinese before and during the Olympics.
2. Not only officials connected with the so-called Government-in-exile of his Holiness based in Dharmsala in India, but even the radical Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), whose radicalism has increased since September last year due to the role played by some American citizens of Tibetan origin, who had migrated to the US from India, have been avoiding any anti-Olympics statements. The Chinese as well as the Dalai Lama's followers have toned their rhetoric against each other. Though the rhetoric has not completely disappeared from their propaganda against each other, the harsh words of the past have been toned down.
3. The Chinese have toned down their demonisation of His Holiness, but they continue to demonise the TYC by projecting it as a terrorist organisation, which allegedly advocates suicide terrorism. Lodi Gyari, the Washington DC based representative of the Dalai Lama, who leads the two-member team of the Dalai Lama in the on-again, off-again dialogue with Chinese officials, has become a new target of attack.Some Chinese columnists have been projecting him as a founding-leader of the TYC and hence as radical as the TYC.
4. Some Chinese columnists have expressed the view that the only way of making His Holiness give up what they see as his present policy of confrontation with Beijing is by having pressure exercised on him through his external supporters. By external supporters,they mean the US and the non-Governmental organisations and Congressmen in the US, who have been supporting him.
5. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) of the US continues to be an important target of attack. Its denial of any responsibility for the March,2008, uprising in the Tibetan-inhabited areas of China has not been accepted by the Chinese. They have a strong suspicion that the NED is behind the radicalisation of the TYC and that funds flow to the TYC from the NED through Lodi Gyari. The NED makes no secret of its financial contributions to various Tibetan organisations. Details of these contributions are available in its web site. Uncorroborated reports that the NED had organised a training camp for Buddhist monks from Myanmar and Tibet in techniques of political agitation in a camp in South Africa are bound to add to this suspicion.
6. While the Chinese authorities and columnists avoid any negative or critical references to India with reference to the activities of the Dalai Lama and his supporters, their concern and suspicions over the activities of the TYC could become a contentious issue if the involvement of American citizens of Tibetan origin in its activities in Indian territory increases.
7.The State-owned Xinhua news agency reported on June 30,2008, as follows: "The authorities announced Sunday that relevant central government departments will meet personal representatives of the Dalai Lama at his request in early July.The central authorities have kept a constant and clear policy towards the Dalai Lama, a government spokesman said. "Our door is always open for the dialogue with the Dalai Lama," he said, "(We) hope that the Dalai Lama would treasure this opportunity and give positive response to the requirements of the central authorities." This would be the second meeting since the March uprising. The first one was held in China on May 4,2008.
8. While the announcement on the second meeting was expected for some time, interestingly it coincided with the visit of Ms.Condoleezza Rice , the US Secretary of State, to Beijing and the quake-hit areas of the Sichuan province. During her stay in Beijing, she met President Hu Jintao on June 30,2008. She had also met Prime Minister Wen Jiabo. Her visit had nothing to do with the announcement since the Chinese had agreed to this second meeting even earlier. And yet, the fact that the Chinese chose to make the announcement during her visit is interesting.
9. The Chinese media reported that during her meeting with Hu, she told him that President George Bush was looking forward to his meeting with him during the forthcoming G-8 summit in Japan. She apparently did not refer to Bush's planned visit to Beijing to attend the inaugural function of the Olympics. One would have expected her to say that Bush was looking forward to meeting Hu in the G-8 summit and to participating in the Olympics inaugural ceremony. However, she confined her remarks only to the summit. From this, one should not jump to the interpretation that Bush may be having second thoughts on his participation in the inaugural function.. All it shows is that he is keeping his options open .
10. Despite the toning down of the war of words between Beijing and the followers of the Dalai Lama, Chinese concerns over the possibility of violent attacks by Tibetan youth to embarrass the Chinese have not subsided. While they do not anticipate any acts of violence by the Tibetans in Beijing itself, they do apprehend diversionary acts of violence not only in Lhasa, but also in New Delhi and Western cities where there is a strong Tibetan presence.A question often posed by them is: Can the Tibetan youth kidnap a Chinese diplomat and hold him hostage during the Olympics to draw attention to their cause? Such acts will not be in the interest of the Tibetan cause and will prove counter-productive.
11. The Chinese have worked out a comprehensive physical security plan for the Olympics and the implementation of this plan has already started. This plan covers all important aspects such as civil aviation security, other public transport security, security in the venues of the games and the places of stay of the teams and public security in all important places which are likely to be visited by the teams, journalists and foreign spectators. They are also exercising caution while processing the visa applications of all intending visitors to China till the Olympics are over.
12. Of all the Muslim groups, only the Uighurs of Xinjiang origin living in the West and Turkey have kept up their campaign against Beijing. Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda organisations, including those of Pakistan, which are members of the International Islamic Front of bin Laden, have been silent on the Beijing Olympics. Their silence need not necessarily mean that they have no plans to disrupt the Olympics at Beijing or create diversionary attacks against the Chinese in Pakistan and the Central Asian Republics, which have a strong Uighur diaspora with religious and ethnic links to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) or Group, which is also an Uzbek organisation, and the Islamic Movement of Eastern Turkestan. All the three of them have their headquarters in North Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. If there is an act of jihadi disruption during the Olympics---either in Beijing or in Shanghai, where the football matches are to be held, or in Hong Kong where the equitation events are to be held--- it will most probably emanate from North Waziristan. The Chinese are depending on the goodwill and co-operation of the Pakistani authorities to prevent any incident plotted from Pakistani territory.
13. One does not know whether a contingent from Denmark is participating in the Olympics. If it does, its security should be of the greatest concern to the Chinese security agencies---- particularly after the recent Al Qaeda-owned attempt to blow up the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, in which eight Muslims---mostly Pakistanis---were killed. Al Qaeda organised the suicide explosion to protest against the publication and re-publication of cartoons by the Danish media on the Holy Prophet. The anger against the Danish cartoons persists---in the minds of jihadi organisations as well as individual Muslims right across the Ummah. If the Danish contingent participates, its members will be interacting with Muslim athletes from all over the Ummah. Even if no jihadi organisation mounts an attack on the Danes, the possibility of anger-of-the-moment attacks on the Danes by individual Muslims has to be factored into in any plan for the protection of the Danes.
14. While the Chinese physical security is tight, one is not certain whether their preventive intelligence capabilities have been revamped and strengthened after the March uprising in Lhasa when they were taken completely by surprise. China has a large number of Muslim students from the Ummah. Those of them, who had left China in the months before the Olympics ostensibly to visit their relatives and returned just before the Olympics, would need special attention. (1-7-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Saturday, June 28, 2008
JIHADI ANARCHY IN PAKISTAN:THE FREE FOR ALL TRIBAL BELT
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO.404
B.RAMAN
After a three-month futile courtship with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan ( TTP) headed by Baitullah Mehsud of South Waziristan, the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) headed by Maulana Fazlullah of the Swat Valley in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and other jihadi organisations, the Pakistani Government headed by Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani has ordered a clean-up operation in the Khyber Agency and South Waziristan of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and in the Swat Valley. The operation started on June 28,2008, in the Khyber Agency.
2. While the resumed clean-up operation in South Waziristan and the Swat Valley is meant to put down recrudescence of jihadi terrorism by the TTP and the TNSM, which is a member of the TTP, the new clean-up operation in the Khyber Agency is designed to put down inter-sectarian, inter-tribal and inter-Mullah clashes, which have already caused a large number of deaths in the Khyber Agency and are threatening to spread to Peshawar, the capital of the NWFP. The Khyber Agency, which is adjoining Peshawar, has been seeing increasing attacks by local tribal jihadi groups on convoys carrying oil and other essential supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan from the Karachi port.
3. The courtship with the TTP, which was accompanied by a suspension of operations by the security forces and the TTP against each other and peace talks , has reportedly seen a 40 per cent increase in the infiltration of Taliban terrorists from the FATA and other areas into Eastern Afghanistan, thereby enabling the Neo Taliban of Afghanistan, headed by Mulla Mohammad Omar, to step up its attacks on the NATO forces. A wave of panic in Peshawar in the wake of forays by Khyber-based jihadis into the city for intimidating sections of the local population, including some Christians working in a local hospital, growing resentment in the Shia community of Pakistan over continuing attacks on Shias in the Kurram Agency of the FATA allegedly by Khyber-based Sunni terrorists and repeated expressions of serious concern by US commanders in Afghanistan over the casualties inflicted on NATO forces and members of the Afghan National Army (ANA) by infiltrators from Pakistani territory made the Government sit up and take notice of the deterioration in the situation right across the tribal belt and order action by the security forces even at the risk of a collapse of the peace talks, which could lead to a revival of acts of suicide terrorism in the non-tribal areas, including Islamabad, Rawalpindi and other cantonment towns and even in Punjab. While the courtship and the peace talks did not lead to real peace in the tribal belt, they did lead to a steep fall in acts of suicide terrorism in the non-tribal areas.
4. The decision to order the clean-up operation was taken after a meeting of some members of the Cabinet on June 25,2008, which was briefed on the deteriorating situation by Gen.Pervez Ashfaq Kiyani, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS). Normally, the alarming situation should have been discussed by the National Security Council (NSC), which is chaired by President Pervez Musharraf. The Gilani Government avoided requesting for a meeting of the NSC. Nor did it brief Musharraf about the decision to order a clean-up operation. However, Gen.Kiyani, at his own initiative, called on Musharraf on June 27,2008, briefed him on the proposed course of action and took his clearance before implementing the decision of the Cabinet.
5. Well-informed sources say that he has been finding himself in a difficult situation with the Cabinet giving instructions in national security matters without consulting Musharraf or even keeping him in the picture. However, Gen.Kiyani has been trying to be correct by frequently meeting Musharraf, who continues to be his direct boss as the President and the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The decision to relax restrictions on the movements of Dr.A.Q.Khan, the nuclear scientist, and on his interactions with the media also appears to have been taken by the Cabinet despite cautionary advice by Musharraf not to do so lest it add to US concerns over Pakistan.
6. The entire decision-making process in national security matters is in a mess, with too many cooks adding to the potency of the jihadi broth. While Gilani is the de jure Prime Minister, in matters relating to action against terrorism it is Rehman Malick, a close confidante of Asif Ali Zardari,the co-chairperson of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), who has been issuing confusing and contradictory instructions----sometimes to the Army, sometimes to the para-military forces such as the Frontier Corps (FC), sometimes to the Police and sometimes to the provincial Government of the NWFP. He is designated as the Adviser on Internal Security with the status of a Cabinet Minister. It is alleged by well-informed police sources that he takes his orders directly from Zardari without keeping Gilani in the picture. Thus, one has a strange situation with Gilani giving instructions without consulting Musharraf and with Malick issuing instructions at the instance of Zardari without consulting Gilani.
7.The NWFP Government was extremely unhappy over the manner in which Malick----on his own without consulting either Gilani or the provincial Government of the NWFP headed by the Awami National Party (ANP)--- announced the suspension of the peace deal negotiated by the provincial Government with the TNSM. When this caused friction in the ruling coalition at Islamabad of which the ANP is a member, he denied having issued any such order.
8. This growing confusion in the action against terrorism has resulted in a situation in which the Cabinet has reportedly ordered Gen.Kiyani to undertake the clean-op operation, but at the same time, instructed that he should use only the Frontier Corps (FC), which is increasingly infiltrated by pro-Taliban tribals, for this operation and should not use regular army troops. One does not know whether Musharraf approved of this or whether he instructed the COAS not to hesitate to use the Army if he considered it necessary to do so.
9. During his negotiations with the Government, Baitullah was demanding that the Army should be withdrawn from the FATA and that the responsibility for maintaining internal security should be re-entrusted to the FC. Even while ordering the clean-up operation, the Gilani Government has taken care not to hurt the sensitivities of Baitullah by ordering that the FC should be in the forefront of the clean-up operations and not the Army.
10. Last year,Musharraf inducted the Army in large numbers into South Waziristan and ordered it to act against the TTP because of reports of collusion between FC personnel and the TTP and the surrender of a large number of FC personnel including officers with their arms and ammunition to the TTP without putting up a fight. US commanders in Afghanistan make no secret of their doubts about the dependability of the FC, which they look upon as the secret protector of the Talibans of various hues, which have come up in the tribal belt.
11. There are Talibans and Talibans in the tribal belt-----some accepting the leadership of Baitullah and others not; some claiming to fight against the Americans and not against the Pakistan Army and others fighting against both; some consisting largely of Punjabis such as the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which is active in parts of the Swat Valley, and known locally as the Punjabi Taliban and others consisting largely of Pashtuns and hence locally known as the Pashtun Taliban; some such as the Pashtun Taliban claiming to be waging a jihad purely for local objectives such as the enforcement of the Sharia in the tribal belt and others such as the Punabi Taliban claiming to be fighting for the pan-Islamic objectives of Al Qaeda; some virulently anti-Shia and others not.
12. Whenever they are not operating against the Pakistani security forces and the Americans, they keep operating against each other, dubbing and killing each other as American agents. The tribal belt on the Pakistani side of the border is ablaze with inter-sectarian, inter-tribal and inter-Mullah clashes over who is a better Muslim and who is closer to Allah. Disputes over the distribution of the growing narcotics money from Afghanistan among themselves are adding to the gravity of the situation. It is jihadi anarchy of the worst kind, the like of which the history of Pakistan has not seen. Every Mullah, who is some Mullah, has his own FM Radio station through which he keeps instigating his followers to attack rivals and the security forces. To keep the FC inactive, these Mullahs allegedly give its officers a share of the narcotics money.
13. These radio stations have been instigating the Pakistani Taliban---Punjabi as well as Pashtun--- to attack American military and intelligence officers and NATO supply convoys in Pakistani territory. They have been calling for attacks on ships bringing NATO supplies to the Karachi port and on the Karachi offices of truck companies whose trucks are used by the NATO. They have been calling upon the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the Islamic Jihad Group (IJG) and the Chechens to step up their jihad in Russian and Central Asian territories to disrupt the movement of NATO supplies through this route.
14.The Khyber Agency, better developed than the other Agencies of the FATA,is inhabited mainly by the Afridi and Shinwari tribes. Like the Swat Valley, it used to attract a large number of domestic and foreign tourists. The Agency was relatively peaceful till 2003. Trouble broke out in 2003, when a a local tribesman by name Haji Namdar returned from Saudi Arabia after performing Haj and set up an organization called Amr bil maroof wa nahi anil munkir, meaning the organisation for the “Suppression of Vice and Promotion of Virtue” . He started a campaign against music, dance, films and the TV and started punishing Muslims who did not regularly attend prayers in the mosques He started an FM radio station on which Mufti Munir Shakir, a virulently anti-Shia Mullah from the Kurram Tribal Agency, used to make anti-Shia broadcasts.
15.Mufti Shakir formed an organisation of his own called the Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) with its headquarters in the Bara town of the Khyber Agency. To counter the activities of the Wahabi-Deobandi LI, Pir Saif-ur-Rahman, a Mullah from Afghanistan who had settled down in the Agency and who belonged to the more tolerant Barelvi sect with its advocacy of Sufi traditions, started his own organisation called the Ansar-ul-Islam (AI). The AI also started making FM broadcasts against the LI and its Wahabi-Deobandi followers. In 2006, the two organisations came to frequent clashes. Following this, a jirga of the local Afridi tribes was held and the two were forced to leave the Agency by the local tribesmen in February 2006.
16.Following their expulsion, one Mangal Bagh Afridi, a 35-year-old local tribal, who had fought in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen against the Soviet troops, took over the leadership of the LI, which established its control over the whole of the Bara sub-division of the Agency.In April 2008, the LI extended its control to the Jamrud region of the Bara sub-division after a series of bloody clashes with the local Kukikhel sub-tribes of the Afridi tribe.The main artery connecting Peshawar to Kabul goes via the Khyber Pass. The Agency has two sib-divisions called Bara and Landikotal. Bara borders Peshawar.
17. The leadership of the Ansar-ul-Islam was taken over by one Maulana Mehboobul Haq. It is not known whether he too is a Barelvi or a Deobandi. However, under his leadership, the AI continued with its policy of resisting the activities of the LI. This resulted in many clashes with a large number of fatalities in the Teerah Valley of the Agency. The Pakistani security forces, which were preoccupied with their operations against the Taliban in South Waziristan and the Swat Valley, did not intervene in the Khyber Agency. Taking advantage of this, the LI consolidated its hold in the Khyber Agency and started enforcing its ban on music etc and punishing Muslims not attending prayers in the neighbouring areas of Peshawar too. It kidnapped 16 Christians, but released them later without harming them. It claimed that it mistook them for Muslims indulging in unislamic way of life, but released them on coming to know that they were Christians.
18. Mangal Bagh denies any links with Al Qaeda or the TTP. He does not accept the leadership of Baitullah. He says his fight is not against the Pakistani authorities, but against Muslims who are not living the life of true Muslims. While supporting the Taliban's jihad against the NATO forces in Afghanistan, he denies that his men are involved in the jihad against the NATO forces. Following a scare in Peshawar that the LI was about to attack Peshawar and capture it, he said in an interview on June 26,2008: “I am not about to attack Hayatabad or any other part of Peshawar.Ours is a reformist organization trying to promote virtue and prevent vice. We have rid Bara of drug-traffickers, gamblers, kidnappers, car-snatchers and other criminals and we want to cleanse Jamrud as well of those selling drugs and liquor and running gambling dens. That was the reason for us to send our mujahideen to Jamrud to accomplish the job. Lashkar-e-Islam is now able to enforce its code of conduct in almost the whole of Khyber Agency except parts of Jamrud inhabited by Kukikhels and a two-kilometre stretch of territory in Maidan area of Tirah valley. We have 120,000 men under arms who at a short notice would be able to assemble in case of need. All I have to do is to make an announcement on our FM radio channel and my mujahideen volunteers would be ready to fight for the Lashkar-e-Islam. I have no links with Al Qaeda or Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. I didn’t send my fighters to fight on the side of Taliban in Waziristan, Swat and Darra Adamkhel. The Taliban (of Mullah Mohammad Omar) are waging a jihad in Afghanistan for a just cause against foreign forces in their homeland. However, there are so many Taliban groups (in Pakistan) that it is difficult to tell as to which one is genuine."
19. Peshawar has on three sides areas over which the Pakistani security forces have no effective control. The Khyber Agency is under the effective control of the LI, which does not form part of the TTP. The Darra Adamkhel and Mohmand areas are largely under the control of the TTP. This situation has caused alarm not only to the non-religious political parties and the administration, but also to the traditional religious parties of the pre-9/11 vintage, who find a new generation of Mullahs of different hues supplanting them and making them increasingly irrelevant. Compared to the newly-emerging Mullahs of today, the pre-9/11 vintage appears rather moderate.The Reuters has quoted the Jamiat -ul-Ulema-Islam chief Fazlur Rehman, a member of the ruling coalition, who used to support Al Qaeda and the Neo Taliban in the past, as warning as follows: " “It’s just a matter of months before news comes that the entire NWFP has slipped out of control.”
20. Nobody seems to be in effective control in the free-for-all tribal belt of Pakistan---- neither Musharraf nor Gilani nor Zardari nor Gen.Kiyani nor the provincial Government of the NWFP. It has to be seen to what extent, under these circumstances, the clean-up operation succeeds. ( 29-6-08)
(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
After a three-month futile courtship with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan ( TTP) headed by Baitullah Mehsud of South Waziristan, the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) headed by Maulana Fazlullah of the Swat Valley in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and other jihadi organisations, the Pakistani Government headed by Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani has ordered a clean-up operation in the Khyber Agency and South Waziristan of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and in the Swat Valley. The operation started on June 28,2008, in the Khyber Agency.
2. While the resumed clean-up operation in South Waziristan and the Swat Valley is meant to put down recrudescence of jihadi terrorism by the TTP and the TNSM, which is a member of the TTP, the new clean-up operation in the Khyber Agency is designed to put down inter-sectarian, inter-tribal and inter-Mullah clashes, which have already caused a large number of deaths in the Khyber Agency and are threatening to spread to Peshawar, the capital of the NWFP. The Khyber Agency, which is adjoining Peshawar, has been seeing increasing attacks by local tribal jihadi groups on convoys carrying oil and other essential supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan from the Karachi port.
3. The courtship with the TTP, which was accompanied by a suspension of operations by the security forces and the TTP against each other and peace talks , has reportedly seen a 40 per cent increase in the infiltration of Taliban terrorists from the FATA and other areas into Eastern Afghanistan, thereby enabling the Neo Taliban of Afghanistan, headed by Mulla Mohammad Omar, to step up its attacks on the NATO forces. A wave of panic in Peshawar in the wake of forays by Khyber-based jihadis into the city for intimidating sections of the local population, including some Christians working in a local hospital, growing resentment in the Shia community of Pakistan over continuing attacks on Shias in the Kurram Agency of the FATA allegedly by Khyber-based Sunni terrorists and repeated expressions of serious concern by US commanders in Afghanistan over the casualties inflicted on NATO forces and members of the Afghan National Army (ANA) by infiltrators from Pakistani territory made the Government sit up and take notice of the deterioration in the situation right across the tribal belt and order action by the security forces even at the risk of a collapse of the peace talks, which could lead to a revival of acts of suicide terrorism in the non-tribal areas, including Islamabad, Rawalpindi and other cantonment towns and even in Punjab. While the courtship and the peace talks did not lead to real peace in the tribal belt, they did lead to a steep fall in acts of suicide terrorism in the non-tribal areas.
4. The decision to order the clean-up operation was taken after a meeting of some members of the Cabinet on June 25,2008, which was briefed on the deteriorating situation by Gen.Pervez Ashfaq Kiyani, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS). Normally, the alarming situation should have been discussed by the National Security Council (NSC), which is chaired by President Pervez Musharraf. The Gilani Government avoided requesting for a meeting of the NSC. Nor did it brief Musharraf about the decision to order a clean-up operation. However, Gen.Kiyani, at his own initiative, called on Musharraf on June 27,2008, briefed him on the proposed course of action and took his clearance before implementing the decision of the Cabinet.
5. Well-informed sources say that he has been finding himself in a difficult situation with the Cabinet giving instructions in national security matters without consulting Musharraf or even keeping him in the picture. However, Gen.Kiyani has been trying to be correct by frequently meeting Musharraf, who continues to be his direct boss as the President and the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The decision to relax restrictions on the movements of Dr.A.Q.Khan, the nuclear scientist, and on his interactions with the media also appears to have been taken by the Cabinet despite cautionary advice by Musharraf not to do so lest it add to US concerns over Pakistan.
6. The entire decision-making process in national security matters is in a mess, with too many cooks adding to the potency of the jihadi broth. While Gilani is the de jure Prime Minister, in matters relating to action against terrorism it is Rehman Malick, a close confidante of Asif Ali Zardari,the co-chairperson of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), who has been issuing confusing and contradictory instructions----sometimes to the Army, sometimes to the para-military forces such as the Frontier Corps (FC), sometimes to the Police and sometimes to the provincial Government of the NWFP. He is designated as the Adviser on Internal Security with the status of a Cabinet Minister. It is alleged by well-informed police sources that he takes his orders directly from Zardari without keeping Gilani in the picture. Thus, one has a strange situation with Gilani giving instructions without consulting Musharraf and with Malick issuing instructions at the instance of Zardari without consulting Gilani.
7.The NWFP Government was extremely unhappy over the manner in which Malick----on his own without consulting either Gilani or the provincial Government of the NWFP headed by the Awami National Party (ANP)--- announced the suspension of the peace deal negotiated by the provincial Government with the TNSM. When this caused friction in the ruling coalition at Islamabad of which the ANP is a member, he denied having issued any such order.
8. This growing confusion in the action against terrorism has resulted in a situation in which the Cabinet has reportedly ordered Gen.Kiyani to undertake the clean-op operation, but at the same time, instructed that he should use only the Frontier Corps (FC), which is increasingly infiltrated by pro-Taliban tribals, for this operation and should not use regular army troops. One does not know whether Musharraf approved of this or whether he instructed the COAS not to hesitate to use the Army if he considered it necessary to do so.
9. During his negotiations with the Government, Baitullah was demanding that the Army should be withdrawn from the FATA and that the responsibility for maintaining internal security should be re-entrusted to the FC. Even while ordering the clean-up operation, the Gilani Government has taken care not to hurt the sensitivities of Baitullah by ordering that the FC should be in the forefront of the clean-up operations and not the Army.
10. Last year,Musharraf inducted the Army in large numbers into South Waziristan and ordered it to act against the TTP because of reports of collusion between FC personnel and the TTP and the surrender of a large number of FC personnel including officers with their arms and ammunition to the TTP without putting up a fight. US commanders in Afghanistan make no secret of their doubts about the dependability of the FC, which they look upon as the secret protector of the Talibans of various hues, which have come up in the tribal belt.
11. There are Talibans and Talibans in the tribal belt-----some accepting the leadership of Baitullah and others not; some claiming to fight against the Americans and not against the Pakistan Army and others fighting against both; some consisting largely of Punjabis such as the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which is active in parts of the Swat Valley, and known locally as the Punjabi Taliban and others consisting largely of Pashtuns and hence locally known as the Pashtun Taliban; some such as the Pashtun Taliban claiming to be waging a jihad purely for local objectives such as the enforcement of the Sharia in the tribal belt and others such as the Punabi Taliban claiming to be fighting for the pan-Islamic objectives of Al Qaeda; some virulently anti-Shia and others not.
12. Whenever they are not operating against the Pakistani security forces and the Americans, they keep operating against each other, dubbing and killing each other as American agents. The tribal belt on the Pakistani side of the border is ablaze with inter-sectarian, inter-tribal and inter-Mullah clashes over who is a better Muslim and who is closer to Allah. Disputes over the distribution of the growing narcotics money from Afghanistan among themselves are adding to the gravity of the situation. It is jihadi anarchy of the worst kind, the like of which the history of Pakistan has not seen. Every Mullah, who is some Mullah, has his own FM Radio station through which he keeps instigating his followers to attack rivals and the security forces. To keep the FC inactive, these Mullahs allegedly give its officers a share of the narcotics money.
13. These radio stations have been instigating the Pakistani Taliban---Punjabi as well as Pashtun--- to attack American military and intelligence officers and NATO supply convoys in Pakistani territory. They have been calling for attacks on ships bringing NATO supplies to the Karachi port and on the Karachi offices of truck companies whose trucks are used by the NATO. They have been calling upon the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the Islamic Jihad Group (IJG) and the Chechens to step up their jihad in Russian and Central Asian territories to disrupt the movement of NATO supplies through this route.
14.The Khyber Agency, better developed than the other Agencies of the FATA,is inhabited mainly by the Afridi and Shinwari tribes. Like the Swat Valley, it used to attract a large number of domestic and foreign tourists. The Agency was relatively peaceful till 2003. Trouble broke out in 2003, when a a local tribesman by name Haji Namdar returned from Saudi Arabia after performing Haj and set up an organization called Amr bil maroof wa nahi anil munkir, meaning the organisation for the “Suppression of Vice and Promotion of Virtue” . He started a campaign against music, dance, films and the TV and started punishing Muslims who did not regularly attend prayers in the mosques He started an FM radio station on which Mufti Munir Shakir, a virulently anti-Shia Mullah from the Kurram Tribal Agency, used to make anti-Shia broadcasts.
15.Mufti Shakir formed an organisation of his own called the Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) with its headquarters in the Bara town of the Khyber Agency. To counter the activities of the Wahabi-Deobandi LI, Pir Saif-ur-Rahman, a Mullah from Afghanistan who had settled down in the Agency and who belonged to the more tolerant Barelvi sect with its advocacy of Sufi traditions, started his own organisation called the Ansar-ul-Islam (AI). The AI also started making FM broadcasts against the LI and its Wahabi-Deobandi followers. In 2006, the two organisations came to frequent clashes. Following this, a jirga of the local Afridi tribes was held and the two were forced to leave the Agency by the local tribesmen in February 2006.
16.Following their expulsion, one Mangal Bagh Afridi, a 35-year-old local tribal, who had fought in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen against the Soviet troops, took over the leadership of the LI, which established its control over the whole of the Bara sub-division of the Agency.In April 2008, the LI extended its control to the Jamrud region of the Bara sub-division after a series of bloody clashes with the local Kukikhel sub-tribes of the Afridi tribe.The main artery connecting Peshawar to Kabul goes via the Khyber Pass. The Agency has two sib-divisions called Bara and Landikotal. Bara borders Peshawar.
17. The leadership of the Ansar-ul-Islam was taken over by one Maulana Mehboobul Haq. It is not known whether he too is a Barelvi or a Deobandi. However, under his leadership, the AI continued with its policy of resisting the activities of the LI. This resulted in many clashes with a large number of fatalities in the Teerah Valley of the Agency. The Pakistani security forces, which were preoccupied with their operations against the Taliban in South Waziristan and the Swat Valley, did not intervene in the Khyber Agency. Taking advantage of this, the LI consolidated its hold in the Khyber Agency and started enforcing its ban on music etc and punishing Muslims not attending prayers in the neighbouring areas of Peshawar too. It kidnapped 16 Christians, but released them later without harming them. It claimed that it mistook them for Muslims indulging in unislamic way of life, but released them on coming to know that they were Christians.
18. Mangal Bagh denies any links with Al Qaeda or the TTP. He does not accept the leadership of Baitullah. He says his fight is not against the Pakistani authorities, but against Muslims who are not living the life of true Muslims. While supporting the Taliban's jihad against the NATO forces in Afghanistan, he denies that his men are involved in the jihad against the NATO forces. Following a scare in Peshawar that the LI was about to attack Peshawar and capture it, he said in an interview on June 26,2008: “I am not about to attack Hayatabad or any other part of Peshawar.Ours is a reformist organization trying to promote virtue and prevent vice. We have rid Bara of drug-traffickers, gamblers, kidnappers, car-snatchers and other criminals and we want to cleanse Jamrud as well of those selling drugs and liquor and running gambling dens. That was the reason for us to send our mujahideen to Jamrud to accomplish the job. Lashkar-e-Islam is now able to enforce its code of conduct in almost the whole of Khyber Agency except parts of Jamrud inhabited by Kukikhels and a two-kilometre stretch of territory in Maidan area of Tirah valley. We have 120,000 men under arms who at a short notice would be able to assemble in case of need. All I have to do is to make an announcement on our FM radio channel and my mujahideen volunteers would be ready to fight for the Lashkar-e-Islam. I have no links with Al Qaeda or Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. I didn’t send my fighters to fight on the side of Taliban in Waziristan, Swat and Darra Adamkhel. The Taliban (of Mullah Mohammad Omar) are waging a jihad in Afghanistan for a just cause against foreign forces in their homeland. However, there are so many Taliban groups (in Pakistan) that it is difficult to tell as to which one is genuine."
19. Peshawar has on three sides areas over which the Pakistani security forces have no effective control. The Khyber Agency is under the effective control of the LI, which does not form part of the TTP. The Darra Adamkhel and Mohmand areas are largely under the control of the TTP. This situation has caused alarm not only to the non-religious political parties and the administration, but also to the traditional religious parties of the pre-9/11 vintage, who find a new generation of Mullahs of different hues supplanting them and making them increasingly irrelevant. Compared to the newly-emerging Mullahs of today, the pre-9/11 vintage appears rather moderate.The Reuters has quoted the Jamiat -ul-Ulema-Islam chief Fazlur Rehman, a member of the ruling coalition, who used to support Al Qaeda and the Neo Taliban in the past, as warning as follows: " “It’s just a matter of months before news comes that the entire NWFP has slipped out of control.”
20. Nobody seems to be in effective control in the free-for-all tribal belt of Pakistan---- neither Musharraf nor Gilani nor Zardari nor Gen.Kiyani nor the provincial Government of the NWFP. It has to be seen to what extent, under these circumstances, the clean-up operation succeeds. ( 29-6-08)
(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, June 26, 2008
CHINA DOING A MYANMAR IN SRI LANKA?
B.RAMAN
Is China doing a Myanmar in Sri Lanka by capitalising on the policy of President Mahinda Rajapaksa of diversifying Sri Lanka's geo-political options even while professing close friendship with India?
2.That seems to have been one of the concerns of the Government of India, which prompted a two-day visit to Sri Lanka by a team of senior advisers of Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh consisting of Shri M.K.Narayanan, the National Security Adviser, Shri Shivsankar Menon, the Foreign Secretary, and Shri Vijay Singh, the Defence Secretary, on June 20 and 21,2008, for talks with Mr.Rajapaksa and senior Sri Lankan officials and important Tamil leaders.
3. Officially, the visit was projected as a return visit to reciprocate a similar high-level visit to New Delhi in September last by a Sri Lankan delegation headed by Mr.Gothbaya Rajapaksa, the Defence Secretary, and as a preparatory visit before the forthcoming 15th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) to be held at Colombo from July 27 to August 3,2008.
4. Originally, the summit was to have been held at Kandy where the security-related problems would have been less than in Colombo. In March last, the Sri Lankan Government decided to have it in Colombo since, in its view, the infrastructure at Kandy would have been inadequate to host the summit.The shifting of the venue to Colombo has enhanced the security concerns of India.
5. Sri Lanka had successfully hosted the 6th SAARC summit at Colombo in 1991 and the 10th in 1998 and had provided effective security to the leaders of the participating countries. The 15th summit will be held at a time when a large number of the Sri Lankan security forces are engaged in an operation to re-capture the control of the Northern Province from the LTTE. Facing increasing pressure from the security forces, the LTTE has stepped up attacks with explosives on soft targets in areas in and around Colombo. Moreover, its bringing into action its planes for air strikes since March last year and the inability of the Sri Lankan security forces to identify where these planes are kept and wherefrom the air attacks are being launched and to intercept them have made the pre-summit security scenario in Colombo worrisome.
6. While the LTTE is unlikely to target the summit or its participants, the summit could provide it with an opportunity to create drama in order to prove its prowess and disprove the claims of the Government that the LTTE has been weakened beyond recovery. Will the Sri Lankan security forces be in a position to provide effective security to all the participants in general and to the Indian Prime Minister in particular? One of the purposes of the visit of the Indian team seems to have been to make an assessment in answer to this question.
7. Another purpose seems to have been to assess the implications to India of Mr.Rajapaksa's policy of bringing in other external state actors into Sri Lanka in order to give Sri Lanka a more geo-political wriggle room. In the past, India had to worry only about China, Pakistan and the US. Now, Mr.Rajapaksa has started courting Iran, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. Iran has started playing an important role in the oil refining sector and it is only a question of time before it starts demanding a role in the retail sale of oil, a sector in which the Indian Oil Corporation presently has a pre-eminent role. To counter the fears of the US and the Sunni Arab states over his flirting with Iran, he has also been trying to bring in Saudi Arabia in the oil sector. Malaysia emerged last year as the largest foreign investor in Sri Lanka.As a result of his moves, India is likely to find its political and economic influence in Sri Lanka gradually shrinking.
8. In view of India's improving relations with the US, it is not concerned as it would have been in the past over the increasing US activities in Sri Lanka and the increasing interest of the US Pacific Command in Sri Lanka. The US Navy is eyeing Colombo as a fall-back option in case the continuing use of the Karachi port for logistics and other purposes becomes difficult in view of the anti-US feelings in Pakistan. Presently, India is not highly concerned with the growing economic ties between Sri Lanka and Malaysia either. It can live with it.
9. What India is concerned is over the increasing activities of China and Pakistan, the entry of Iran and the expected entry of Saudi Arabia into Sri Lanka. While Pakistan's relations with Sri Lanka are largely focussed on military supplies and training, China's relations have greater strategic implications for India----covering military supplies and training, the construction of a modern port at Hambantota in the South and oil exploration in the Mannar area. The expected semi-permanent stationing of an increasing number of Chinese experts in these areas for carrying out these projects will add to the concerns of the Indian security bureaucracy.
10. The action of the Government of Myanmar in allowing the Chinese to have a semi-permanent presence in the Coco Islands brought the Chinese within monitoring distance of India's space establishments on the Eastern coast. The semi-permanent presence, which the Chinese are now getting in Sri Lanka, will bring them within monitoring distance of India's fast-breeder reactor complex at Kalpakam near Chennai, the Russian-aided Koodankulam nuclear power reactor complex in southern Tamil Nadu and India's space establishments in Kerala.
11. Reporting on the visit of the senior Indian officials to Colombo, the "Times of India" of June 23,2008, quoted an unnamed senior Indian official in New Delhi as stating as follows: " The story of Myanmar is being repeated in Sri Lanka. China is already all over the island nation, with a flurry of arms deals, oil exploration and construction projects like the Hambantota port."
12. The "Times of India" also reported as follows: " Colombo has signed a US $ 37.6 million deal with the Beijing-based Poly Technologies for a wide variety of arms,ammunition, mortars and bombs. Sri Lanka is also getting some Chinese Jian-7 fighters, JY 11-3D air surveillance radars, armoured personnel carriers, T-56 assault rifles ( a copy of AK-47), machine guns and anti-aircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and missiles."
13. The work on the Hambantota port is progressing fast with typical Chinese efficiency. Sri Lankan sources assert that it will be only a commercial port and not a potential naval base. One has to wait and see.
14.The Hambantota port construction is estimated to cost US $ one billion to be lent by the Exim Bank of China. The entire project is expected to be completed in 15 years in four phases. The first phase of construction, , which was started in October,2007, is estimated to cost US $450 million.The entire project, inter alia, provides for the construction of a gas-fired power plant project,a ship repair unit, a container repair unit, an oil refinery and a bunkering terminal. The bunkering terminal, which is expected to be completed in 39 months, provides for the terminal to handle up to 500,000 metric tonnes (mt) of oil products a year.
15.The "Daily News" of Sri Lanka reported on June 19,2008, as follows: ' A project proposal sent by the China Huanqiu Contracting and Engineering Corporation for building the bunkering facility and tank farm at the Hambantota harbour has been approved by the project committee and the cabinet-appointed negotiations committee."The total value of the project would be $76.5 million and it would be completed by 2010.A set of fuel tanks, bunkering facilities, aviation fuel storage facilities and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) storage facilities will be built under the project at Hambantota, about 230 km south of Colombo. The media has also reported that although the Hambantota port was initially planned as a service and industrial port, it is expected to be developed as a trans-shipment port at a later stage to handle 20 million containers per year.
16.Neither India nor China has so far started oil/gas exploration work in the one block each in the Mannar area awarded to them by the Rajapaksa Government without bidding as a gesture of goodwill. The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), which was offered the block allotted to India without bidding, said in September last that it was not interested in the assigned block, due to low prospectivity and the fact that Sri Lanka was asking for a big bonus in return for this gesture.The Sri Lankan Government said it would negotiate with the ONGC for a new oil block with greater prospectivity. It is not known whether the Chinese are satisfied with the block offered to them without bidding and , if so, when they would start the exploration.
17.Foreign oil companies have not so far been enthusiastic over the prospects of finding oil/gas in exploitable quantities in the Mannar area. Earlier this year, the Sri Lankan Government invited bids for three blocks. Of these, block No 1, which extends over an area of 3,338.10 square kilometers and is nearest to India, received bids from ONGC Videsh, Cairn India, and Niko Resources of Cyprus. ONGC Videsh is a subsidiary of the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation of India.Cairn India, is 69 per cent owned by Cairn Energy of London, which has been active in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.Canada-based Niko Resources is active in Canada, India and Bangladesh. Block No. 2 received bids from both Cairn India and Niko Resources while Block 3, the largest being 4,126.51 sq. km in size, received a bid only from Niko. None of these blocks received any bid from China. The Sri Lankan Government announced on June 6,2008, that after evaluation it has decided to accept the bid of Cairn India for block No. 1 and invited it to send its representatives to Colombo for negotiations. Fresh bids are to be invited for the other two blocks. The rules stipulate that for each block there should be a minimum of three bids before evaluation.
18.In response to an invitation issued by President Rajapaksa during his visit to Teheran in November, 2007. President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran paid a two-day official visit to Sri Lanka on April 28 and 29, 2008.Since last year, Sri Lanka has been facing economic difficulties due to the drying-up of economic assistance from countries of the European Union (EU) such as Germany because of what they perceive as the indifferent attitude of the Rajapaksa Government to complaints regarding the violation of the human rights of the Tamils and its refusal to seek a political solution to the problem. Instead of succumbing to the EU pressure on the subject, the Rajapaksa Government turned for increased assistance to other countries such as China and Iran, which did not raise human rights issues as a condition for such assistance. Assistance from Iran was of crucial importance to Sri Lanka because of the Government's inability to pay for its increasingly costly oil imports.The Goverenment of Ahmadinejad readily agreed to provide oil at concessional rates to Sri Lanka and to train a small team of officers of the Sri Lankan Army and intelligence in Iran. It also agreed to provide a low-interest loan to Sri Lanka to enable it to purchase defence-related equipment from China and Pakistan. In addition, it agreed to invest US $ 1.5 billion in energy-related projects in Sri Lanka. One of these projects is for the production of hydel power and the other to double the capacity of an existing oil refinery in Sri Lanka. Work on the construction of the hydel project started during Mr. Ahmadinejad's visit. Iranian engineers have already been preparing the project report for doubling the capacity of the refinery and for modifying it to enable it to refine in future Iranian crude to be supplied at concessional rates. The existing capacity is 50,000 barrels a day.
19.Mr.Abdul Hameed Mohamed Fowzie, Sri Lanka's Minister for Petroleum and Petroleum Resources Development, visited Riyadh in Saudi Arabia towards the end of March,2008. He announced at Riyadh on March 23,2008, that Saudi Arabia had agreed to train Sri Lankans in the field of exploration and refining of oil in the island. He told the media at Riyadh: “We had fruitful discussions with my counterpart here and we are happy that the Kingdom has agreed to cooperate with Sri Lanka in areas of mutual interests in the field of oil supply, exploration and investments.We have plans to improve our refining capacity from 50,000 to 100,000 barrels a day and getting Saudi expertise for the proposed expansion will facilitate the successful implementation of the project. Sri Lanka needs a cracker to convert crude into diesel and petrol which would cost the government some $400 million. I have requested my counterpart to recommend that the OPEC Fund assist us in the purchase of this plant."
20.Sri Lanka presently gets 70 per cent of its oil from Iran, 10 per cent from Saudi Arabia and 20 per cent from Malaysia and other countries.
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Is China doing a Myanmar in Sri Lanka by capitalising on the policy of President Mahinda Rajapaksa of diversifying Sri Lanka's geo-political options even while professing close friendship with India?
2.That seems to have been one of the concerns of the Government of India, which prompted a two-day visit to Sri Lanka by a team of senior advisers of Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh consisting of Shri M.K.Narayanan, the National Security Adviser, Shri Shivsankar Menon, the Foreign Secretary, and Shri Vijay Singh, the Defence Secretary, on June 20 and 21,2008, for talks with Mr.Rajapaksa and senior Sri Lankan officials and important Tamil leaders.
3. Officially, the visit was projected as a return visit to reciprocate a similar high-level visit to New Delhi in September last by a Sri Lankan delegation headed by Mr.Gothbaya Rajapaksa, the Defence Secretary, and as a preparatory visit before the forthcoming 15th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) to be held at Colombo from July 27 to August 3,2008.
4. Originally, the summit was to have been held at Kandy where the security-related problems would have been less than in Colombo. In March last, the Sri Lankan Government decided to have it in Colombo since, in its view, the infrastructure at Kandy would have been inadequate to host the summit.The shifting of the venue to Colombo has enhanced the security concerns of India.
5. Sri Lanka had successfully hosted the 6th SAARC summit at Colombo in 1991 and the 10th in 1998 and had provided effective security to the leaders of the participating countries. The 15th summit will be held at a time when a large number of the Sri Lankan security forces are engaged in an operation to re-capture the control of the Northern Province from the LTTE. Facing increasing pressure from the security forces, the LTTE has stepped up attacks with explosives on soft targets in areas in and around Colombo. Moreover, its bringing into action its planes for air strikes since March last year and the inability of the Sri Lankan security forces to identify where these planes are kept and wherefrom the air attacks are being launched and to intercept them have made the pre-summit security scenario in Colombo worrisome.
6. While the LTTE is unlikely to target the summit or its participants, the summit could provide it with an opportunity to create drama in order to prove its prowess and disprove the claims of the Government that the LTTE has been weakened beyond recovery. Will the Sri Lankan security forces be in a position to provide effective security to all the participants in general and to the Indian Prime Minister in particular? One of the purposes of the visit of the Indian team seems to have been to make an assessment in answer to this question.
7. Another purpose seems to have been to assess the implications to India of Mr.Rajapaksa's policy of bringing in other external state actors into Sri Lanka in order to give Sri Lanka a more geo-political wriggle room. In the past, India had to worry only about China, Pakistan and the US. Now, Mr.Rajapaksa has started courting Iran, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. Iran has started playing an important role in the oil refining sector and it is only a question of time before it starts demanding a role in the retail sale of oil, a sector in which the Indian Oil Corporation presently has a pre-eminent role. To counter the fears of the US and the Sunni Arab states over his flirting with Iran, he has also been trying to bring in Saudi Arabia in the oil sector. Malaysia emerged last year as the largest foreign investor in Sri Lanka.As a result of his moves, India is likely to find its political and economic influence in Sri Lanka gradually shrinking.
8. In view of India's improving relations with the US, it is not concerned as it would have been in the past over the increasing US activities in Sri Lanka and the increasing interest of the US Pacific Command in Sri Lanka. The US Navy is eyeing Colombo as a fall-back option in case the continuing use of the Karachi port for logistics and other purposes becomes difficult in view of the anti-US feelings in Pakistan. Presently, India is not highly concerned with the growing economic ties between Sri Lanka and Malaysia either. It can live with it.
9. What India is concerned is over the increasing activities of China and Pakistan, the entry of Iran and the expected entry of Saudi Arabia into Sri Lanka. While Pakistan's relations with Sri Lanka are largely focussed on military supplies and training, China's relations have greater strategic implications for India----covering military supplies and training, the construction of a modern port at Hambantota in the South and oil exploration in the Mannar area. The expected semi-permanent stationing of an increasing number of Chinese experts in these areas for carrying out these projects will add to the concerns of the Indian security bureaucracy.
10. The action of the Government of Myanmar in allowing the Chinese to have a semi-permanent presence in the Coco Islands brought the Chinese within monitoring distance of India's space establishments on the Eastern coast. The semi-permanent presence, which the Chinese are now getting in Sri Lanka, will bring them within monitoring distance of India's fast-breeder reactor complex at Kalpakam near Chennai, the Russian-aided Koodankulam nuclear power reactor complex in southern Tamil Nadu and India's space establishments in Kerala.
11. Reporting on the visit of the senior Indian officials to Colombo, the "Times of India" of June 23,2008, quoted an unnamed senior Indian official in New Delhi as stating as follows: " The story of Myanmar is being repeated in Sri Lanka. China is already all over the island nation, with a flurry of arms deals, oil exploration and construction projects like the Hambantota port."
12. The "Times of India" also reported as follows: " Colombo has signed a US $ 37.6 million deal with the Beijing-based Poly Technologies for a wide variety of arms,ammunition, mortars and bombs. Sri Lanka is also getting some Chinese Jian-7 fighters, JY 11-3D air surveillance radars, armoured personnel carriers, T-56 assault rifles ( a copy of AK-47), machine guns and anti-aircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and missiles."
13. The work on the Hambantota port is progressing fast with typical Chinese efficiency. Sri Lankan sources assert that it will be only a commercial port and not a potential naval base. One has to wait and see.
14.The Hambantota port construction is estimated to cost US $ one billion to be lent by the Exim Bank of China. The entire project is expected to be completed in 15 years in four phases. The first phase of construction, , which was started in October,2007, is estimated to cost US $450 million.The entire project, inter alia, provides for the construction of a gas-fired power plant project,a ship repair unit, a container repair unit, an oil refinery and a bunkering terminal. The bunkering terminal, which is expected to be completed in 39 months, provides for the terminal to handle up to 500,000 metric tonnes (mt) of oil products a year.
15.The "Daily News" of Sri Lanka reported on June 19,2008, as follows: ' A project proposal sent by the China Huanqiu Contracting and Engineering Corporation for building the bunkering facility and tank farm at the Hambantota harbour has been approved by the project committee and the cabinet-appointed negotiations committee."The total value of the project would be $76.5 million and it would be completed by 2010.A set of fuel tanks, bunkering facilities, aviation fuel storage facilities and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) storage facilities will be built under the project at Hambantota, about 230 km south of Colombo. The media has also reported that although the Hambantota port was initially planned as a service and industrial port, it is expected to be developed as a trans-shipment port at a later stage to handle 20 million containers per year.
16.Neither India nor China has so far started oil/gas exploration work in the one block each in the Mannar area awarded to them by the Rajapaksa Government without bidding as a gesture of goodwill. The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), which was offered the block allotted to India without bidding, said in September last that it was not interested in the assigned block, due to low prospectivity and the fact that Sri Lanka was asking for a big bonus in return for this gesture.The Sri Lankan Government said it would negotiate with the ONGC for a new oil block with greater prospectivity. It is not known whether the Chinese are satisfied with the block offered to them without bidding and , if so, when they would start the exploration.
17.Foreign oil companies have not so far been enthusiastic over the prospects of finding oil/gas in exploitable quantities in the Mannar area. Earlier this year, the Sri Lankan Government invited bids for three blocks. Of these, block No 1, which extends over an area of 3,338.10 square kilometers and is nearest to India, received bids from ONGC Videsh, Cairn India, and Niko Resources of Cyprus. ONGC Videsh is a subsidiary of the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation of India.Cairn India, is 69 per cent owned by Cairn Energy of London, which has been active in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.Canada-based Niko Resources is active in Canada, India and Bangladesh. Block No. 2 received bids from both Cairn India and Niko Resources while Block 3, the largest being 4,126.51 sq. km in size, received a bid only from Niko. None of these blocks received any bid from China. The Sri Lankan Government announced on June 6,2008, that after evaluation it has decided to accept the bid of Cairn India for block No. 1 and invited it to send its representatives to Colombo for negotiations. Fresh bids are to be invited for the other two blocks. The rules stipulate that for each block there should be a minimum of three bids before evaluation.
18.In response to an invitation issued by President Rajapaksa during his visit to Teheran in November, 2007. President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran paid a two-day official visit to Sri Lanka on April 28 and 29, 2008.Since last year, Sri Lanka has been facing economic difficulties due to the drying-up of economic assistance from countries of the European Union (EU) such as Germany because of what they perceive as the indifferent attitude of the Rajapaksa Government to complaints regarding the violation of the human rights of the Tamils and its refusal to seek a political solution to the problem. Instead of succumbing to the EU pressure on the subject, the Rajapaksa Government turned for increased assistance to other countries such as China and Iran, which did not raise human rights issues as a condition for such assistance. Assistance from Iran was of crucial importance to Sri Lanka because of the Government's inability to pay for its increasingly costly oil imports.The Goverenment of Ahmadinejad readily agreed to provide oil at concessional rates to Sri Lanka and to train a small team of officers of the Sri Lankan Army and intelligence in Iran. It also agreed to provide a low-interest loan to Sri Lanka to enable it to purchase defence-related equipment from China and Pakistan. In addition, it agreed to invest US $ 1.5 billion in energy-related projects in Sri Lanka. One of these projects is for the production of hydel power and the other to double the capacity of an existing oil refinery in Sri Lanka. Work on the construction of the hydel project started during Mr. Ahmadinejad's visit. Iranian engineers have already been preparing the project report for doubling the capacity of the refinery and for modifying it to enable it to refine in future Iranian crude to be supplied at concessional rates. The existing capacity is 50,000 barrels a day.
19.Mr.Abdul Hameed Mohamed Fowzie, Sri Lanka's Minister for Petroleum and Petroleum Resources Development, visited Riyadh in Saudi Arabia towards the end of March,2008. He announced at Riyadh on March 23,2008, that Saudi Arabia had agreed to train Sri Lankans in the field of exploration and refining of oil in the island. He told the media at Riyadh: “We had fruitful discussions with my counterpart here and we are happy that the Kingdom has agreed to cooperate with Sri Lanka in areas of mutual interests in the field of oil supply, exploration and investments.We have plans to improve our refining capacity from 50,000 to 100,000 barrels a day and getting Saudi expertise for the proposed expansion will facilitate the successful implementation of the project. Sri Lanka needs a cracker to convert crude into diesel and petrol which would cost the government some $400 million. I have requested my counterpart to recommend that the OPEC Fund assist us in the purchase of this plant."
20.Sri Lanka presently gets 70 per cent of its oil from Iran, 10 per cent from Saudi Arabia and 20 per cent from Malaysia and other countries.
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Saturday, June 21, 2008
OLYMPICS TORCH RELAY: INTRIGUING ABSENCE OF PANCHEN LAMA
B.RAMAN
AS REPORTED BY JAMES REYNOLDS OF THE BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION: " The Olympic torch has been carried through the Tibetan provincial capital of Lhasa amid heavy security on Saturday (June 21,2008). The 11km (seven mile) parade passed off smoothly, with the flame carried past apparently hand-picked spectators. There is a staggering security presence in the city, three months after violent protests broke out. Reporters representing about 30 international news organisations have been allowed into the city in a closely monitored group to cover the torch relay - widely considered the most sensitive leg of the flame's journey around the world and through China. Torch bearers in white-and-red track suits carried the Olympic flame through Lhasa's streets, beginning at Norbulingka, the former summer palace of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader now living in exile in India. We saw very clearly several dozen soldiers wearing riot gear - a reminder that Lhasa is not a normal city."
FROM A BBC COMMENTARY: "Our correspondent says he passed through at least six checkpoints as he was driven in an official convoy to the start of the relay. Each member of the crowd has a badge, suggesting that spectators were specially chosen or vetted for the ceremony, he says. "
AS REPORTED BY CHRIS BUCKLEY OF REUTERS FROM LHASA:"Chinese-appointed Tibetan leaders used the passing of the Olympic torch relay through the capital Lhasa on Saturday to defend Communist Party control of the remote Buddhist region and denounce the exiled Dalai Lama. The torch procession ended under tight security below the towering Potala Palace after having been run for just over two hours before a carefully-selected crowd, some three months after the region was convulsed by bloody anti-Chinese protests."Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it," Tibet's hardline Communist Party boss Zhang Qingli said at a ceremony at the end of the relay."We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique," he added. Police and troops lined the streets, closely watching the groups of residents chosen to cheer on the torch. Groups of students from Lhasa University waved Olympic banners, the Chinese national flag, as well as the hammer and sickle banner of the ruling Communist Party."
AS REPORTED BY THE AGENCE FRANCE PRESS (AFP):"The latest leg of the Olympic torch relay was held in the Tibetan capital Saturday, amid tight security after deadly riots against Chinese rule three months ago, as rights groups condemned the event. Hand-picked spectators cheered runners as they carried the torch through Lhasa for the relay, which ended in front of the Potala Palace, exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama's former chief residence.Paramilitary police watched the event closely from the ground and surrounding buildings, an AFP photographer witnessed, while the area was closed off to all but those given special passes for the relay. Tibetan singer Caidan Zhuoma ran the flame to the palace before it was combined with the special flame that was carried up the Tibetan side of Mount Everest during an earlier leg of the relay. The carefully-staged event ended apparently without incident after less than two hours, instead of the scheduled three, with no immediate reason given for the shortened period. Many locals were told to stay at home, and shops along the relay route in the remote, Himalayan city were closed to the public. "We are not supposed to leave the hotel to watch the relay, so we are staying inside," an employee at the Tibet International Hotel told AFP. Starting from Norbulingka, the former summer palace of the Dalai Lama, the torch was carried first by 75-year-old Tibetan mountaineering hero Gonpo. The Chinese Government shortened the original route in Tibet to just one day instead of three.It later cut the event from eight hours to three, citing last month's massive earthquake."
AS REPORTED BY THE US-FUNDED RADIO FREE ASIA: "Chinese authorities in Tibet and the northwestern region of Xinjiang, two of the most politically sensitive ethnic minority regions in the country, are tightly controlling who will be allowed to watch the Olympic flame pass on its way to start the Games in Beijing. The torch relay was originally scheduled to start from Lhoka (in Chinese, Shannan) prefecture on Friday and then enter Lhasa, which saw violent rioting and protests against Chinese rule in mid-March, but the initial leg of the torch's progress through the Himalayan region was canceled in favor of a single day event Saturday in Lhasa, sources said."All who are to participate in the relay of the Olympic torch will be placed in a hotel," a Tibetan source in Lhasa said."Most of the Tibetans selected hold some kind of leadership position. The authorities seem to be very worried about protests," he said, adding that restrictions on Tibetans in Lhasa were very intense. Tibetans had been threatened with the loss of their jobs and even pensions if they performed the usual offerings during the torch relay, he added. Travel agencies in Lhasa said thousands of armed police were patrolling the streets of Lhasa ahead of the rally, and that arrangements had been made for people from all work units and schools to travel to show their support.Detailed routes haven't been publicized in advance."
AS REPORTED BY THE STATE-OWNED XINHUA NEWS AGENCY OF CHINA:"The relay in Lhasa began at 9 am on Saturday morning at the square in front of the city's famous garden, the Norbu Lingka. A minute of silence was observed to remember the victims of the Wenchuan earthquake a month ago. Local authorities say the arrival of the flame is a great boost to the solidarity of the different ethnic groups in the autonomous region.Qin Yizhi, vice chairman of Tibet Autonomous Region, said, "The passage of the flame across Lhasa will further enhance the patriotism of all ethnic groups and stimulate their enthusiasm to make greater contribution to the social progress in Tibet. Let's stick to the Olympic spirit of peace, friendship and progress and hold high the Olympic torch symbolizing harmony and glory. Wish all the best to our country, and a great success to the Beijing Olympic Games."The first torch bearer was 72-year-old Gongbo, a noted Tibetan mountaineer. This run featured 156 torchbearers, 75 of them Tibetan. The route covered 9.3 kilometers and ended at Potala Square. During the two-hour relay, the flame kindled on the top of Mount Qomolangma (Everest) on May 8th reunited with the main torch."
AS REPORTED BY "THE HINDU" OF CHENNAI: "The Olympic flame passed through Lhasa in a joyful and peaceful atmosphere on Saturday." It then goes on to give details of the "joyful and peaceful atmosphere" as disseminated by Xinhua.
MY COMMENTS:
1. Even according to the official account as disseminated by Xinhua, there were156 torchbearers, of whom only 75 were Tibetans. The remaining 81 were not Tibetans.
2. It does not give the details of all the 75 Tibetans.
3.The Tibetan authorities had originally announced that the torch would be in Lhasa and the surrounding region of Tibet for three days. They cut it to one day lasting eight hours. Even these eight hours were cut short on June 21,2008, to less than three hours. The authorities seemed anxious to take the torch out of Lhasa as quickly as possible.
4. Originally, it had been indicated that the flame would be received at the Potala Palace by the communist party-appointed Panchen Lama. Instead, it was received by Zhang Qingli, the head of the Communist Party in Tibet. He was reported to have told protesting Tibetans in March last that the Communist Party was their Dalai Lama. No explanation has been forthcoming as to why the Panchan Lama was not present and why he was not given any role in the Lhasa functions for the torch relay.(22-6-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
AS REPORTED BY JAMES REYNOLDS OF THE BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION: " The Olympic torch has been carried through the Tibetan provincial capital of Lhasa amid heavy security on Saturday (June 21,2008). The 11km (seven mile) parade passed off smoothly, with the flame carried past apparently hand-picked spectators. There is a staggering security presence in the city, three months after violent protests broke out. Reporters representing about 30 international news organisations have been allowed into the city in a closely monitored group to cover the torch relay - widely considered the most sensitive leg of the flame's journey around the world and through China. Torch bearers in white-and-red track suits carried the Olympic flame through Lhasa's streets, beginning at Norbulingka, the former summer palace of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader now living in exile in India. We saw very clearly several dozen soldiers wearing riot gear - a reminder that Lhasa is not a normal city."
FROM A BBC COMMENTARY: "Our correspondent says he passed through at least six checkpoints as he was driven in an official convoy to the start of the relay. Each member of the crowd has a badge, suggesting that spectators were specially chosen or vetted for the ceremony, he says. "
AS REPORTED BY CHRIS BUCKLEY OF REUTERS FROM LHASA:"Chinese-appointed Tibetan leaders used the passing of the Olympic torch relay through the capital Lhasa on Saturday to defend Communist Party control of the remote Buddhist region and denounce the exiled Dalai Lama. The torch procession ended under tight security below the towering Potala Palace after having been run for just over two hours before a carefully-selected crowd, some three months after the region was convulsed by bloody anti-Chinese protests."Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it," Tibet's hardline Communist Party boss Zhang Qingli said at a ceremony at the end of the relay."We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique," he added. Police and troops lined the streets, closely watching the groups of residents chosen to cheer on the torch. Groups of students from Lhasa University waved Olympic banners, the Chinese national flag, as well as the hammer and sickle banner of the ruling Communist Party."
AS REPORTED BY THE AGENCE FRANCE PRESS (AFP):"The latest leg of the Olympic torch relay was held in the Tibetan capital Saturday, amid tight security after deadly riots against Chinese rule three months ago, as rights groups condemned the event. Hand-picked spectators cheered runners as they carried the torch through Lhasa for the relay, which ended in front of the Potala Palace, exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama's former chief residence.Paramilitary police watched the event closely from the ground and surrounding buildings, an AFP photographer witnessed, while the area was closed off to all but those given special passes for the relay. Tibetan singer Caidan Zhuoma ran the flame to the palace before it was combined with the special flame that was carried up the Tibetan side of Mount Everest during an earlier leg of the relay. The carefully-staged event ended apparently without incident after less than two hours, instead of the scheduled three, with no immediate reason given for the shortened period. Many locals were told to stay at home, and shops along the relay route in the remote, Himalayan city were closed to the public. "We are not supposed to leave the hotel to watch the relay, so we are staying inside," an employee at the Tibet International Hotel told AFP. Starting from Norbulingka, the former summer palace of the Dalai Lama, the torch was carried first by 75-year-old Tibetan mountaineering hero Gonpo. The Chinese Government shortened the original route in Tibet to just one day instead of three.It later cut the event from eight hours to three, citing last month's massive earthquake."
AS REPORTED BY THE US-FUNDED RADIO FREE ASIA: "Chinese authorities in Tibet and the northwestern region of Xinjiang, two of the most politically sensitive ethnic minority regions in the country, are tightly controlling who will be allowed to watch the Olympic flame pass on its way to start the Games in Beijing. The torch relay was originally scheduled to start from Lhoka (in Chinese, Shannan) prefecture on Friday and then enter Lhasa, which saw violent rioting and protests against Chinese rule in mid-March, but the initial leg of the torch's progress through the Himalayan region was canceled in favor of a single day event Saturday in Lhasa, sources said."All who are to participate in the relay of the Olympic torch will be placed in a hotel," a Tibetan source in Lhasa said."Most of the Tibetans selected hold some kind of leadership position. The authorities seem to be very worried about protests," he said, adding that restrictions on Tibetans in Lhasa were very intense. Tibetans had been threatened with the loss of their jobs and even pensions if they performed the usual offerings during the torch relay, he added. Travel agencies in Lhasa said thousands of armed police were patrolling the streets of Lhasa ahead of the rally, and that arrangements had been made for people from all work units and schools to travel to show their support.Detailed routes haven't been publicized in advance."
AS REPORTED BY THE STATE-OWNED XINHUA NEWS AGENCY OF CHINA:"The relay in Lhasa began at 9 am on Saturday morning at the square in front of the city's famous garden, the Norbu Lingka. A minute of silence was observed to remember the victims of the Wenchuan earthquake a month ago. Local authorities say the arrival of the flame is a great boost to the solidarity of the different ethnic groups in the autonomous region.Qin Yizhi, vice chairman of Tibet Autonomous Region, said, "The passage of the flame across Lhasa will further enhance the patriotism of all ethnic groups and stimulate their enthusiasm to make greater contribution to the social progress in Tibet. Let's stick to the Olympic spirit of peace, friendship and progress and hold high the Olympic torch symbolizing harmony and glory. Wish all the best to our country, and a great success to the Beijing Olympic Games."The first torch bearer was 72-year-old Gongbo, a noted Tibetan mountaineer. This run featured 156 torchbearers, 75 of them Tibetan. The route covered 9.3 kilometers and ended at Potala Square. During the two-hour relay, the flame kindled on the top of Mount Qomolangma (Everest) on May 8th reunited with the main torch."
AS REPORTED BY "THE HINDU" OF CHENNAI: "The Olympic flame passed through Lhasa in a joyful and peaceful atmosphere on Saturday." It then goes on to give details of the "joyful and peaceful atmosphere" as disseminated by Xinhua.
MY COMMENTS:
1. Even according to the official account as disseminated by Xinhua, there were156 torchbearers, of whom only 75 were Tibetans. The remaining 81 were not Tibetans.
2. It does not give the details of all the 75 Tibetans.
3.The Tibetan authorities had originally announced that the torch would be in Lhasa and the surrounding region of Tibet for three days. They cut it to one day lasting eight hours. Even these eight hours were cut short on June 21,2008, to less than three hours. The authorities seemed anxious to take the torch out of Lhasa as quickly as possible.
4. Originally, it had been indicated that the flame would be received at the Potala Palace by the communist party-appointed Panchen Lama. Instead, it was received by Zhang Qingli, the head of the Communist Party in Tibet. He was reported to have told protesting Tibetans in March last that the Communist Party was their Dalai Lama. No explanation has been forthcoming as to why the Panchan Lama was not present and why he was not given any role in the Lhasa functions for the torch relay.(22-6-08)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ISRAEL TARGETS IRAN'S NUCLEAR SITES?
B.RAMAN
Quoting US officials, the "New York Times" reported as follows on June 20,2008: " U.S. officials say Israel carried out a large militaryexercise this month that appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. More than 100 Israeli F-16and F-15 fighters took part in the maneuvers over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece in the first week of June. The exercise appeared tobe an effort to focus on long-range strikes and illustrates the seriousness with which Israel views Iran's nuclear program. Israeli officialswould not discuss the exercise. A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces would say only that the country's air force "regularly trains forvarious missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel." . A Pentagon official, who was briefed onthe exercise, said one goal was to practice flight tactics, aerial refueling and other details of a possible strike against Iran's nuclearinstallations and long-range conventional missiles. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a second goal was to send aclear message that Israel was prepared to act militarily if other efforts to stop Iran from producing bomb-grade uranium fail. "They wantedus to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know," the Pentagon official said. "There's a lot ofsignaling going on at different levels." Several U.S. officials said they did not believe Israel had decided to attack Iran or think such a strikewas imminent."
2. This could be part of a Psywar tactics jointly mounted by Israel and the US to make Iran co-operate with the efforts of the internationalcommunity to denuclearise its military capability without damaging its capability for civilian nuclear development.
3. Iran has been playing its own psychological game by sticking to its refusal to suspend the enrichment of uranium at its facility in Natanzwhile at the same time giving the impression of being willing to continue its talks on the subject with its Western interlocutors.
4. In this game, time is important in different senses for Israel and Iran. Understandably, Israel is getting impatient because, in its view,much time has already been wasted in pointless negotiations with Iran. This has enabled Iran to commission its uranium enrichment facility.It is now trying to expand the capacity of Natanz by installing more centrifuges for enrichment. The more the centrifuges and the richer thelevel and quantity of enrichment, the greater the danger of environmental damage if the Israeli Air Force strikes at it. If the environmentaldamage affects the health of the people of neighbouring Arab countries, local public opinion could further turn against the US and Israel.
5. In Iraq in the early 1980s and in Syria last year, Israel struck at nuclear facilities under construction. There was no such danger. Israelimilitary and intelligence experts must be telling their policy-makers that they have already delayed action too long and that they should atleast now strike at Iranian sites when they might still be able to prevent adverse effects on Iran's neighbours.
6. There is another reason why Israel cannot afford to waste more time. If they strike when Mr.George Bush is still in office---particularlybefore the Presidential elections in November--- Mr.Bush might hold the ring for them and see that the international community does not fallupon Israel. If they wait till next year, they may not be able to count on similar support from the next President---whether it is Mr.BarrackObama or Mr.John McCain. The next President will take at least six months from his inauguration in January to work out a coherent policyon Iran.
7. Apart from the risk of environmental damage, Israel will face another danger the like of which it did not face from Iraq or Syria. Iran is astrong military power with a capability to strike back at Israel through its Air Force and missiles. Moreover, Iran is a more ruthless powerthan Iraq or Syria. It may not hesitate to itself carry out or to have carried out through a surrogate an attack on the Strait of Hormuz in orderto block the flow of oil at a time when the economies of many countries, including India, are facing serious difficulties due to thesky-rocketing oil prices caused partly by normal market speculation and partly by nervousness over the possibility of an Israeli strike onIran. Israel would also face the danger of a retaliation by Hizbollah from its bases in the Lebanon.
8. Israel will have the following options:one, strike only at the nuclear sites and wait to see what is Iran's response in the hope of being ableto counter that response. Second, neutralise initially Iran's air and missile capabilities and then hit at its nuclear sites. Third, neutralisesimulataneously Iran's nuclear, air and missile capabilities.
9. The ideal time for an Israeli strike, if it decides to strike, will be between now and before the presidential election campaign picks upmomentum in the US. Once the US is in the midst of the campaign, the flexibility of response now available to the Bush administrationmight be reduced. An ideal time could be in August when the world attention will be on the Beijing Olympics with little attention paid to Iran.
10.Time is equally important for Iran because if it succeeds in preventing action by the US or Israel or both till January, the possibility of action might get reduced once a new President is in position----particularly if that President happens to be Mr.Obama. He is a very engagingand electrifying personality, but does not appear to have a stomach for strong action either against Iran or Pakistan or Al Qaeda or theTaliban or the Hizbollah. He may turn out to be another Jimmy Carter---lovable, but nothing more.
11. The two potential candidates are now working out their policy options before the campaign starts officially. One notices that both thecamps are talking in terms of policy responses in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and against Al Qaeda and the its associates as if each couldbe dealt with separately. They don't see a connecting thread. Instead, the debate should be on policy options available in response to twothreats which would confront the international community in the short and medium terms. These are, firstly, Iran's use of Hizbollah and theShia militant groups in Iraq to achieve its strategic purposes in the region and the dangers arising from its nuclear capability and thepossibility of the transfer of this capability to the Hizbollah. Secondly, Pakistan's use of Al Qaeda and the Pashtun Taliban to achieve itsstrategic objectives in Afghanistan and the Punjabi Taliban to achieve its strategic objective relating to Kashmir against India and thedangers arising from the possibility of these terrorist groups gaining access to Pakistan's nuclear expertise.
12. Everybody talks only of the dangers of Al Qaeda and its Pashtun and Punjabi associates getting hold of Pakistan's nuclear expertise.Nobody talks of the danger of the Hizbollah and the Shia terrorist groups of Iraq getting hold of Iran's nuclear expertise.
13. Whether what is going on presently is only a Psywar or whether there is a real possibility of an Israeli pre-emptive action, the effect onthe oil market will be the same---push up prices further. Oil prices are unlikely to come down till the present crisis over Iran's nuclearintentions is resolved in a manner, which reduces the concerns of Israel. India will suffer more from the surging oil prices than Chinabecause after 9/11, China has built up its strategic oil reserves. India has done very little in this direction. Our economy, which is alreadyconsiderably behind the Chinese economy, will lag further behind. (21-6-08)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and , presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Quoting US officials, the "New York Times" reported as follows on June 20,2008: " U.S. officials say Israel carried out a large militaryexercise this month that appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. More than 100 Israeli F-16and F-15 fighters took part in the maneuvers over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece in the first week of June. The exercise appeared tobe an effort to focus on long-range strikes and illustrates the seriousness with which Israel views Iran's nuclear program. Israeli officialswould not discuss the exercise. A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces would say only that the country's air force "regularly trains forvarious missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel." . A Pentagon official, who was briefed onthe exercise, said one goal was to practice flight tactics, aerial refueling and other details of a possible strike against Iran's nuclearinstallations and long-range conventional missiles. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a second goal was to send aclear message that Israel was prepared to act militarily if other efforts to stop Iran from producing bomb-grade uranium fail. "They wantedus to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know," the Pentagon official said. "There's a lot ofsignaling going on at different levels." Several U.S. officials said they did not believe Israel had decided to attack Iran or think such a strikewas imminent."
2. This could be part of a Psywar tactics jointly mounted by Israel and the US to make Iran co-operate with the efforts of the internationalcommunity to denuclearise its military capability without damaging its capability for civilian nuclear development.
3. Iran has been playing its own psychological game by sticking to its refusal to suspend the enrichment of uranium at its facility in Natanzwhile at the same time giving the impression of being willing to continue its talks on the subject with its Western interlocutors.
4. In this game, time is important in different senses for Israel and Iran. Understandably, Israel is getting impatient because, in its view,much time has already been wasted in pointless negotiations with Iran. This has enabled Iran to commission its uranium enrichment facility.It is now trying to expand the capacity of Natanz by installing more centrifuges for enrichment. The more the centrifuges and the richer thelevel and quantity of enrichment, the greater the danger of environmental damage if the Israeli Air Force strikes at it. If the environmentaldamage affects the health of the people of neighbouring Arab countries, local public opinion could further turn against the US and Israel.
5. In Iraq in the early 1980s and in Syria last year, Israel struck at nuclear facilities under construction. There was no such danger. Israelimilitary and intelligence experts must be telling their policy-makers that they have already delayed action too long and that they should atleast now strike at Iranian sites when they might still be able to prevent adverse effects on Iran's neighbours.
6. There is another reason why Israel cannot afford to waste more time. If they strike when Mr.George Bush is still in office---particularlybefore the Presidential elections in November--- Mr.Bush might hold the ring for them and see that the international community does not fallupon Israel. If they wait till next year, they may not be able to count on similar support from the next President---whether it is Mr.BarrackObama or Mr.John McCain. The next President will take at least six months from his inauguration in January to work out a coherent policyon Iran.
7. Apart from the risk of environmental damage, Israel will face another danger the like of which it did not face from Iraq or Syria. Iran is astrong military power with a capability to strike back at Israel through its Air Force and missiles. Moreover, Iran is a more ruthless powerthan Iraq or Syria. It may not hesitate to itself carry out or to have carried out through a surrogate an attack on the Strait of Hormuz in orderto block the flow of oil at a time when the economies of many countries, including India, are facing serious difficulties due to thesky-rocketing oil prices caused partly by normal market speculation and partly by nervousness over the possibility of an Israeli strike onIran. Israel would also face the danger of a retaliation by Hizbollah from its bases in the Lebanon.
8. Israel will have the following options:one, strike only at the nuclear sites and wait to see what is Iran's response in the hope of being ableto counter that response. Second, neutralise initially Iran's air and missile capabilities and then hit at its nuclear sites. Third, neutralisesimulataneously Iran's nuclear, air and missile capabilities.
9. The ideal time for an Israeli strike, if it decides to strike, will be between now and before the presidential election campaign picks upmomentum in the US. Once the US is in the midst of the campaign, the flexibility of response now available to the Bush administrationmight be reduced. An ideal time could be in August when the world attention will be on the Beijing Olympics with little attention paid to Iran.
10.Time is equally important for Iran because if it succeeds in preventing action by the US or Israel or both till January, the possibility of action might get reduced once a new President is in position----particularly if that President happens to be Mr.Obama. He is a very engagingand electrifying personality, but does not appear to have a stomach for strong action either against Iran or Pakistan or Al Qaeda or theTaliban or the Hizbollah. He may turn out to be another Jimmy Carter---lovable, but nothing more.
11. The two potential candidates are now working out their policy options before the campaign starts officially. One notices that both thecamps are talking in terms of policy responses in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and against Al Qaeda and the its associates as if each couldbe dealt with separately. They don't see a connecting thread. Instead, the debate should be on policy options available in response to twothreats which would confront the international community in the short and medium terms. These are, firstly, Iran's use of Hizbollah and theShia militant groups in Iraq to achieve its strategic purposes in the region and the dangers arising from its nuclear capability and thepossibility of the transfer of this capability to the Hizbollah. Secondly, Pakistan's use of Al Qaeda and the Pashtun Taliban to achieve itsstrategic objectives in Afghanistan and the Punjabi Taliban to achieve its strategic objective relating to Kashmir against India and thedangers arising from the possibility of these terrorist groups gaining access to Pakistan's nuclear expertise.
12. Everybody talks only of the dangers of Al Qaeda and its Pashtun and Punjabi associates getting hold of Pakistan's nuclear expertise.Nobody talks of the danger of the Hizbollah and the Shia terrorist groups of Iraq getting hold of Iran's nuclear expertise.
13. Whether what is going on presently is only a Psywar or whether there is a real possibility of an Israeli pre-emptive action, the effect onthe oil market will be the same---push up prices further. Oil prices are unlikely to come down till the present crisis over Iran's nuclearintentions is resolved in a manner, which reduces the concerns of Israel. India will suffer more from the surging oil prices than Chinabecause after 9/11, China has built up its strategic oil reserves. India has done very little in this direction. Our economy, which is alreadyconsiderably behind the Chinese economy, will lag further behind. (21-6-08)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and , presently, Director, Institute For TopicalStudies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
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