B.RAMAN
( To be read in continuation of my earlier article of January 2 titled “PLA, THE BAROMETER OF US-CHINA RELATIONS” at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers43%5Cpaper4258.html )
As Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, gets ready to visit China from January 9 to 12 and as President Hu Jintao’s State visit to Washington DC on January 19 approaches, the People’s Liberal Army (PLA) of China seems to have mounted a psychological warfare against the US by disseminating through the Internet and through the “ People’s Forum” columns of the Party-controlled “People’s Daily” two unverified and unverifiable news items which would add to the concerns of the US and ultimately of India too.
2. The first item, originating from the Japanese media, but disseminated in China without any comments regarding its authenticity, relates to a possible reconsideration by the PLA of the “no first use of the nuclear weapons” policy in order to provide for contingencies where China may undertake a pre-emptive nuclear strike. On January 6, the “People’s Forum” section of the “People’s Daily” carried the following report under the title “Chinese Forces Drop No First-Use Policy ?” attributing it to the Japanese Kyodo news agency without any comments on its authenticity: “ The Chinese military will consider launching a pre-emptive atomic strike if the country finds itself faced with a critical situation in a war with another nuclear state, internal documents showed Wednesday. The newly revealed policy, called "Lowering the threshold of nuclear threats," may contradict China's strategy of no first use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances, and is likely to fan concern in the United States, Japan and other regional powers about Beijing's nuclear capability. The People's Liberation Army's strategic missile forces, the Second Artillery Corps, "will adjust the nuclear threat policy if a nuclear missile-possessing country carries out a series of airstrikes against key strategic targets in our country with absolutely superior conventional weapons," according to the documents, copies of which were obtained by Kyodo News. China will first warn an adversary about a nuclear strike, but if the enemy attacks Chinese territory with conventional forces the PLA "must carefully consider" a pre-emptive nuclear strike. The documents suggest the Second Artillery Corps educate its personnel in worst-case scenarios for conflicts with other nuclear states. Akio Takahara, a professor of contemporary Chinese politics at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Public Policy, said an adjustment of the PLA's nuclear threat policy as spelled out in the documents runs counter to President Hu Jintao's pledge that China will not launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike under any circumstances. "It is uncertain whether such policy adjustment represents a policy shift or has been in existence from before," Takahara said. "But a pre-emptive strike as assumed (in the documents) would apply to an extreme situation such as war with the United States, and that is almost inconceivable today. I think President Hu is aware of that."
3. This item was carried by the “People’s Daily” along with another unauthenticated item regarding China’s success in the development of a Stealth aircraft based on a pretended photograph of the Stealth aircraft that started circulating in China’s military-related blogs at the beginning of this year. This item, as reported in the “People’s Forum” under the title “Does China Intentionally Leak The Image of J-20?” said: “A photograph of what is reported to be a new Chinese stealth fighter and "carrier-killer" missile has prompted concerns that a tilt in the balance of military power in the western Pacific towards China may come sooner than expected. The emergence of the hi-tech weaponry - which would make it more difficult for the US navy and air force to project power close to Taiwan and elsewhere on China's coastline - comes at a politically sensitive time. Later this month, President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, will hold a summit in Washington aimed at patching up their differences after a niggling year in bilateral relations. The photograph, of what appears to be a prototype J-20 jet undergoing runway tests, has been circulating on the internet since last week, fuelling speculation that China's fifth-generation fighter may fly ahead of forecast.”
4. It added: “The defence ministry has yet to comment on the image, which seems to have been shot from long-distance near the Chengdu aircraft design institute. The photographer is also unknown, which has added to the mystery about its origins and authenticity as well as the motive of the distributor. But defence analysts believe this is the first glimpse of the twin-engined, chiselled-nosed plane that mixes Russian engine technology with a fuselage design similar to that of the US air force's F-22 "stealth" fighter, which can avoid detection by radar. If confirmed, it would be an impressive step forward for the Chinese air force, which until now has largely depended on foreign-made or designed planes. "I'd say these are, indeed, genuine photos of a prototype that will make its maiden flight very soon," said Peter Felstead, the editor of Jane's Defence Weekly. The J20 is likely to be many years from deployment, but the US defence secretary, Robert Gates - who visits Beijing next week - may have to revise an earlier prediction that China will not have a fifth generation aircraft by 2020. It is not the only challenge to US superiority in the region.”
5. It further said: “China has refurbished a Ukranian aircraft carrier and wants to build its own by 2020. A more immediate threat is posed by China's adaptation of an intermediate-range ballistic missile - the DF-21D - to target US aircraft carriers. This project is also further advanced than previously believed. Admiral Robert Willard, the US navy's commander in the Pacific, warned last month that the weapon - nicknamed the "carrier killer' - had reached "initial operational capability". Faced by this threat US battle groups are likely to take a more withdrawn position if there is a standoff over Taiwan than they did in 1996, when the USS Nimitz sailed through the strait. "The main implication of China deploying this system is that it would certainly make the US navy pause before deciding to project naval power into the South China Sea region during a time of tension," said Felstead. But China's ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, said today that his country had no ambitions to rival US military power in the western Pacific region.”
6. The “People’s Forum” added: “While China's economy grows rapidly and the US remains sluggish, fears of a shift in the balance of power are likely to grow. It will not happen overnight and worldwide, but China appears to be steadily pushing the US back from its shores in a strategy know as "area denial". The government has not confirmed this approach. Chinese nationalists want their country to be more assertive, but they say the priority is to improve defence of an increasingly wealthy coastal region. The "area denial" strategy can be seen as China trying to manage its own market and routes to main trading partners such as South Korea and Japan. "We don't need the US to be the policeman in the west Pacific area," said Song Xiaojun, a former naval officer who now edits military magazines. "China's priority is to develop its near sea defence, because our economy is concentrated on the coast. But we have to reconsider the concept of 'near sea' to fit a modern age in which military threats can come from far away. China must improve its defences, but that does not mean we are a threat. Only arms merchants would say that to persuade the US to raise military spending. The US is far ahead," he said.
7. The second item regarding the Stealth aircraft also appears to have been taken from foreign media, but the “People’s Forum” section does not identify the newspaper or magazine from which it was taken
8.The dissemination of these items has come in the wake of the recent comments by PLA officers and the Chinese Defence Minister Liang Guanglie regarding the possibility of regional conflicts. The greater interest taken by the US during 2010 in developments in the South China and East China Seas and what the Chinese see as the more assertive US policy in the Korean Peninsula are seen by the PLA as containing the possible seeds of a regional military conflict into which China might find itself sucked. The Chinese thus see the Taiwan issue, the South China and East China Sea developments and the tension in the Korean peninsula as capable of triggering a regional military conflict if China and the US do not conduct themselves with maturity and responsibility.
9. While trying to avoid an escalation of tensions over military-related issues in its relations with the US, China has to be prepared for contingencies where a regional military conflict of a conventional nature becomes unavoidable due to reasons beyond its control. That is the message the PLA has been seeking to convey. ( 7-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Thursday, January 6, 2011
SPREADING ROOTS OF EXTREMISM IN PAKISTAN
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO.702
B.RAMAN
The roots of extremism are spreading in Pakistan. This is obvious from the assassination of Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, by a policeman belonging to the Elite Force of the Punjab Police at Islamabad on January 4.
2.The event is even more worrisome than the brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto at Rawalpindi on December 27,2007, because of the mixed reactions that it has evoked. Benazir's assassination evoked widespread shock and grief all over Pakistan. There were no reported incidents of people welcoming her assassination. The assassination of Taseer has been condemned by some and welcomed by others. Many---not necessarily confined to the clergy--- have welcomed it as a well-deserved punishment by God because of his criticism of the blasphemy law.
3. Was Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of Taseer, acting alone or was he part of a conspiracy? It is too early to know the answer to this question. Will we ever know? Will the truth behind the assassination of Taseer ever be found out or will it be covered up as were the assassinations of Benazir in 2007 and her brother Murtaza Bhutto in 1996 or the death of Zia-ul-Haq under mysterious circumstances in a plane crash in 1988? Many instances of death and destruction at the hands of extremists in Pakistan remain undetected either because of poor investigation or because of a lack of courage to investigate lest the investigator himself become a target of the extremists or because of a deliberate cover-up.
4. The result: The difficulty in identifying the roots of extremism and eradicating the problem and in quantifying the extent of the threat posed by extremism to Pakistan itself in the first instance and then to the rest of the world. The winds of Islamic extremism generally blow from Pakistan. There are pockets of Islamic extremism in other countries too---Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Indonesia to give some examples. There are more instances of extremism spreading to other parts of the world from Pakistan than from these countries. If one has to counter Islamic extremism ideologically one has to start destroying its roots in Pakistan. Islamic extremists from all over the world tend to look upon Pakistan as the ultimate sanctuary not only because of the favourable terrain in the tribal belt, but also because of their confidence that they will enjoy public and state support in Pakistan.
5.Many institutions in Pakistan have turned out to be the spawning grounds of extremism and terrorism---- mosques, madrasas, the Army, the Air Force, the US-trained Special Services Group (SSG), the Elite Force of the Punjab Police etc. Some of these such as the SSG and the Elite Force were specially raised and trained to deal with extremism and terrorism and to protect the VIPS. They have turned out to be the breeding grounds of the evils they were meant to fight. Ilyas Kashmiri, the head of the so-called 313 Brigade allied with Al Qaeda, reportedly started his career in the SSG before he gravitated to terrorism.
6. One has reasons to worry as to which are the other institutions which might have already been infected, though not detected so far. How about Pakistan's nuclear and missile establishment? What faith can one place in Pakistan's assurances that this has remained unaffected by extremism. Tomorrow, if a threat erupts unexpectedly from the nuclear and missile establisment, what form will it take? Leakage of material and technology to the terrorists? Seizure of material and establishments by extremist trojan horses in order to use them for intimidation? Both possibilities are there, but a definitive assessment is rendered difficult because of a lack of data.
7. While the Pakistan Army has taken some action against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Pashtun belt, the Pakistani authorities have not taken any action to confront extremism ideologically. Their pretense of reforming and modernizing the madrasas has allowed the madrasas to continue to produce extremism and terrorism. Their education system has received very little attention. More money has flown from the US for providing arms and ammunition to the Armed Forces than for improving and expanding the education system. The interest taken in the initial months after 9/11 in the modernization of the madrasas and for improving the education system has petered out.
8. No attempt has been made to reduce the influence of Wahabi clerics in the Armed Forces and the Police. The clerics were introduced by Zia-ul-Haq. Their influence remains strong. The Wahabised clergy provide the religious justification for acts of extremism and terrorism. In 1993, the Clinton Administration placed Pakistan for six months in a list of suspected state sponsors of terrorism and forced Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, to sack Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, the then chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and some of his colleagues, who were suspected of being mixed up with the Afghan Mujahideen. In October 2001, before starting the operations against Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban under Operation Enduring Freedom, the administration of George Bush forced Gen.Pervez Musharraf to remove from the post of ISI Director-General Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, who was suspected of being mixed up with Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Since then, there has been no action against any other officer of the ISI despite strong suspicions of their being mixed up with the Jalaluddin Haqqani group and despite evidence of the role of the ISI in the terrorist attacks against the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai.
9. As a result, the ISI has gone back to its old ways of inaction against extremist and terrorist organizations and the breeding grounds of extremism. The administration of Barack Obama might have stepped up the Drone strikes in the tribal belt, but it has not been able to make the Pakistan Army and intelligence act firmly against the breeding grounds of extremism. There has hardly been any action by the Pakistani authorities to counter extremism ideologically. Factories of extremism and jihad are once again sprouting, providing a never-ending flow of new recruits to the extremist and terrorist organizations.
10. The assassination of Taseer is a wake-up call not only for the Pakistani authorities, but also for the international community. Extremism is again on the forward march in Pakistan.A comprehensive strategy to force Pakistan to act firmly against the breeding grounds of extremism is the urgent need of the hour. ( 6-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
The roots of extremism are spreading in Pakistan. This is obvious from the assassination of Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, by a policeman belonging to the Elite Force of the Punjab Police at Islamabad on January 4.
2.The event is even more worrisome than the brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto at Rawalpindi on December 27,2007, because of the mixed reactions that it has evoked. Benazir's assassination evoked widespread shock and grief all over Pakistan. There were no reported incidents of people welcoming her assassination. The assassination of Taseer has been condemned by some and welcomed by others. Many---not necessarily confined to the clergy--- have welcomed it as a well-deserved punishment by God because of his criticism of the blasphemy law.
3. Was Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of Taseer, acting alone or was he part of a conspiracy? It is too early to know the answer to this question. Will we ever know? Will the truth behind the assassination of Taseer ever be found out or will it be covered up as were the assassinations of Benazir in 2007 and her brother Murtaza Bhutto in 1996 or the death of Zia-ul-Haq under mysterious circumstances in a plane crash in 1988? Many instances of death and destruction at the hands of extremists in Pakistan remain undetected either because of poor investigation or because of a lack of courage to investigate lest the investigator himself become a target of the extremists or because of a deliberate cover-up.
4. The result: The difficulty in identifying the roots of extremism and eradicating the problem and in quantifying the extent of the threat posed by extremism to Pakistan itself in the first instance and then to the rest of the world. The winds of Islamic extremism generally blow from Pakistan. There are pockets of Islamic extremism in other countries too---Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Indonesia to give some examples. There are more instances of extremism spreading to other parts of the world from Pakistan than from these countries. If one has to counter Islamic extremism ideologically one has to start destroying its roots in Pakistan. Islamic extremists from all over the world tend to look upon Pakistan as the ultimate sanctuary not only because of the favourable terrain in the tribal belt, but also because of their confidence that they will enjoy public and state support in Pakistan.
5.Many institutions in Pakistan have turned out to be the spawning grounds of extremism and terrorism---- mosques, madrasas, the Army, the Air Force, the US-trained Special Services Group (SSG), the Elite Force of the Punjab Police etc. Some of these such as the SSG and the Elite Force were specially raised and trained to deal with extremism and terrorism and to protect the VIPS. They have turned out to be the breeding grounds of the evils they were meant to fight. Ilyas Kashmiri, the head of the so-called 313 Brigade allied with Al Qaeda, reportedly started his career in the SSG before he gravitated to terrorism.
6. One has reasons to worry as to which are the other institutions which might have already been infected, though not detected so far. How about Pakistan's nuclear and missile establishment? What faith can one place in Pakistan's assurances that this has remained unaffected by extremism. Tomorrow, if a threat erupts unexpectedly from the nuclear and missile establisment, what form will it take? Leakage of material and technology to the terrorists? Seizure of material and establishments by extremist trojan horses in order to use them for intimidation? Both possibilities are there, but a definitive assessment is rendered difficult because of a lack of data.
7. While the Pakistan Army has taken some action against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Pashtun belt, the Pakistani authorities have not taken any action to confront extremism ideologically. Their pretense of reforming and modernizing the madrasas has allowed the madrasas to continue to produce extremism and terrorism. Their education system has received very little attention. More money has flown from the US for providing arms and ammunition to the Armed Forces than for improving and expanding the education system. The interest taken in the initial months after 9/11 in the modernization of the madrasas and for improving the education system has petered out.
8. No attempt has been made to reduce the influence of Wahabi clerics in the Armed Forces and the Police. The clerics were introduced by Zia-ul-Haq. Their influence remains strong. The Wahabised clergy provide the religious justification for acts of extremism and terrorism. In 1993, the Clinton Administration placed Pakistan for six months in a list of suspected state sponsors of terrorism and forced Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister, to sack Lt.Gen.Javed Nasir, the then chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and some of his colleagues, who were suspected of being mixed up with the Afghan Mujahideen. In October 2001, before starting the operations against Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban under Operation Enduring Freedom, the administration of George Bush forced Gen.Pervez Musharraf to remove from the post of ISI Director-General Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, who was suspected of being mixed up with Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Since then, there has been no action against any other officer of the ISI despite strong suspicions of their being mixed up with the Jalaluddin Haqqani group and despite evidence of the role of the ISI in the terrorist attacks against the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai.
9. As a result, the ISI has gone back to its old ways of inaction against extremist and terrorist organizations and the breeding grounds of extremism. The administration of Barack Obama might have stepped up the Drone strikes in the tribal belt, but it has not been able to make the Pakistan Army and intelligence act firmly against the breeding grounds of extremism. There has hardly been any action by the Pakistani authorities to counter extremism ideologically. Factories of extremism and jihad are once again sprouting, providing a never-ending flow of new recruits to the extremist and terrorist organizations.
10. The assassination of Taseer is a wake-up call not only for the Pakistani authorities, but also for the international community. Extremism is again on the forward march in Pakistan.A comprehensive strategy to force Pakistan to act firmly against the breeding grounds of extremism is the urgent need of the hour. ( 6-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
MY THOUGHTS ON SALMAN TASEER’S ASSASSINATION
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--- PAPER NO.701
B.RAMAN
The assassination of Salman Taseer, the liberal Governor of Punjab, by one of his police security guards at an Islamabad shopping centre on January 4 because of the Governor’s criticism of the blasphemy law draws attention once again to the penetration of the Pakistani security forces by Islamic extremist elements.
2.Earlier, evidence of such penetration came in the involvement of low-level army and Air Force officers in the two unsuccessful attempts to kill Gen.Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December 2003, and in the assassination of 19 officers of the US-trained Special Services Group (SSG) by a Pashtun Army officer belonging to the SSG, whose younger sister was reportedly among the 300 girls killed during the SSG raid on the Lal Masjid in Islamabad between July 10 and 13, 2007.
3.The Pashtun officer blew himself up during dinner at the headquarters mess of the SSG at Tarbela Ghazi, 100 kms south of Islamabad, on the night of September 13, 2007. An army soldier Naik Arshad Mahmood was among those sentenced to death in the case relating to the attempts to kill Musharraf . He was executed. The investigation brought out that some of the plotting against Musharraf was carried out in Air Force barracks in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi area. While a joint Al Qaeda-Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM)—Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) team motivated by Abu Faraj al-Libbi was suspected in the attempts to kill Musharraf, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was suspected in the assassination of the SSG officers by one of their colleagues.
4.In 1995, a plot by the HUJI led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar to assassinate Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, and Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff, with the complicity of some commissioned officers of the Army was discovered and neutralized in time.
5.Thus, the involvement of personnel of the security forces in plots against political and military leaders is nothing new in Pakistan, but there are some significant differences between the earlier incidents and the assassination of Salman Taseer. In the earlier three incidents, the security forces personnel involved came from the Armed Forces and were from the Deobandi-Wahabi-Salafi sects. In the assassination of Taseer, the culprit is from the Elite Force of the Punjab Police specially raised and trained to fight against terrorism and to protect VIPs. Media reports from Pakistan claim that he is from the Barelvi sect, which has till now been considered more tolerant than the Deobandi-Wahabi-Salafi sects.
6.One extremist organization in Pakistan which has recruits from all sects, including the Barelvis, is the Hizbut-Tehrir(HT) which is believed to have many followers in the Armed Forces as well as the Police. Though the Pakistani intelligence agencies apprehend a major threat to their national security and to the security of their VIPs from the HT, there has so far been no instance of the actual involvement of the HT in such plots. All of those involved in such plots in the past, came from either Al Qaeda or the TTP or the JEM or the HUJI or the 313 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri against whom also there was some suspicion in connection with the unsuccessful attempts to kill Musharraf.
7.All fundamentalist elements in Pakistan----whether Deobandi or Wahabi or Salafi or Barelvi---- consider it as their religious obligation to kill those opposing the blasphemy law and the law declaring the Ahmediyas as non-Muslims. Many individual Muslims also believe so even if they do not belong to any of these organizations.
8.Salman Taseer and Senator Sherry Rehman, both of the Pakistan People’s Party and both close friends of Benazir, had incurred the wrath of the extremist elements because of their public criticism of the blasphemy law in the wake of a sentence of death passed against a Christian woman for allegedly insulting the Holy Prophet. Senator Sherry Rehman has in fact moved a private member’s bill--- which has not been supported by any political party, including her own--- to amend the blasphemy law in order to remove its obnoxious features. Taseer was the only liberal leader of the PPP to have supported her in public.
9.Sherry Rehman had said in a message circulated through the Internet as follows: “The mullahs have announced a million man march and given me a public deadline of 6th Jan to take back the amendment bill, or else. They said they will stop at "nothing then to protect namoos I risalat". (honour of the Prophet).I do not have state security but am quite clear that I will not take the bill "back" as demanded by some extremists, most recently when they openly declared myself and Taseer waajibul qatl. ( meaning “deserve to be killed” ) .” One feels concerned for her security.
10.The” Daily Times” of Lahore has reported as follows: “The killer of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer has revealed that some of his colleagues were also involved in the plan to assassinate the governor, a private TV channel reported on Tuesday. Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri told a joint investigation team that some of his colleagues were aware of his plan and he had asked them to arrest him alive. He told the team during investigation that he had no remorse on killing Taseer and that was why he laid down his weapon after shooting him. The channel reported that he was removed from the Punjab Police Special Branch three years ago for having extremist views. He belongs to the Barelvi sect and is the disciple of Golra Sharif. It is learnt that some former security squad officials would also be questioned. Qadri had joined the Punjab Police five years ago and was inducted into the Elite Force some time ago. After obtaining clearance from the authorities, he was put on the security squad of VVIPs and of the governor.”
11.The “Dawn” of Karachi has reported as follows: “’ The Elite Force guard who gunned down Punjab Governor Salman Taseer is said to be associated with ‘Dawat-i-Islami’, a non-political and non-violent religious group with Barelvi leaning. This was disclosed by a colleague of Mumtaz Qadri, the self confessed assassin. Qadri, 26, son of Malik Bashir, joined Punjab police and got Elite Force training in 2006-7. He was posted to the Elite Force wing in Rawalpindi in 2008. …A police officer said Qadri had been assigned guard duty with Mr Taseer during the governor’s visits to Islamabad and once with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. On Tuesday, Qadri left the Police Lines at around 7.30am to report for duty. Police took his five brothers and father into custody from their house soon after he had confessed to the crime. In addition, 25 police officers and a muharar (record-keeper) of Elite Force who had prepared the list of personnel, including Qadri, for duty during the governor’s visit were also taken into custody and shifted to Islamabad for investigation. Investigators also confiscated the cellphones of the security personnel deployed for the governor’s security. A police party went to the house of Qadri in Muslim Town late in the night and found some religious books in his room.”
12.It is unMuslim to be a liberal. That is the message that Qadri and those behind him in the conspiracy (if there was a larger conspiracy) have sought to convey through the assassination of Taseer. It is unlikely to have any major impact on the political situation in Pakistan, but it will have an impact on the will of the Pakistani political leadership and civil society to confront the extremists. The fight against extremism in Pakistan will remain a losing battle unless and until all political forces and the civil society come together on this issue and the Army whole-heartedly backs them. One sees no sign of that. (5-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
B.RAMAN
The assassination of Salman Taseer, the liberal Governor of Punjab, by one of his police security guards at an Islamabad shopping centre on January 4 because of the Governor’s criticism of the blasphemy law draws attention once again to the penetration of the Pakistani security forces by Islamic extremist elements.
2.Earlier, evidence of such penetration came in the involvement of low-level army and Air Force officers in the two unsuccessful attempts to kill Gen.Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December 2003, and in the assassination of 19 officers of the US-trained Special Services Group (SSG) by a Pashtun Army officer belonging to the SSG, whose younger sister was reportedly among the 300 girls killed during the SSG raid on the Lal Masjid in Islamabad between July 10 and 13, 2007.
3.The Pashtun officer blew himself up during dinner at the headquarters mess of the SSG at Tarbela Ghazi, 100 kms south of Islamabad, on the night of September 13, 2007. An army soldier Naik Arshad Mahmood was among those sentenced to death in the case relating to the attempts to kill Musharraf . He was executed. The investigation brought out that some of the plotting against Musharraf was carried out in Air Force barracks in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi area. While a joint Al Qaeda-Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM)—Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) team motivated by Abu Faraj al-Libbi was suspected in the attempts to kill Musharraf, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was suspected in the assassination of the SSG officers by one of their colleagues.
4.In 1995, a plot by the HUJI led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar to assassinate Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, and Gen.Abdul Waheed Kakkar, the then Chief of the Army Staff, with the complicity of some commissioned officers of the Army was discovered and neutralized in time.
5.Thus, the involvement of personnel of the security forces in plots against political and military leaders is nothing new in Pakistan, but there are some significant differences between the earlier incidents and the assassination of Salman Taseer. In the earlier three incidents, the security forces personnel involved came from the Armed Forces and were from the Deobandi-Wahabi-Salafi sects. In the assassination of Taseer, the culprit is from the Elite Force of the Punjab Police specially raised and trained to fight against terrorism and to protect VIPs. Media reports from Pakistan claim that he is from the Barelvi sect, which has till now been considered more tolerant than the Deobandi-Wahabi-Salafi sects.
6.One extremist organization in Pakistan which has recruits from all sects, including the Barelvis, is the Hizbut-Tehrir(HT) which is believed to have many followers in the Armed Forces as well as the Police. Though the Pakistani intelligence agencies apprehend a major threat to their national security and to the security of their VIPs from the HT, there has so far been no instance of the actual involvement of the HT in such plots. All of those involved in such plots in the past, came from either Al Qaeda or the TTP or the JEM or the HUJI or the 313 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri against whom also there was some suspicion in connection with the unsuccessful attempts to kill Musharraf.
7.All fundamentalist elements in Pakistan----whether Deobandi or Wahabi or Salafi or Barelvi---- consider it as their religious obligation to kill those opposing the blasphemy law and the law declaring the Ahmediyas as non-Muslims. Many individual Muslims also believe so even if they do not belong to any of these organizations.
8.Salman Taseer and Senator Sherry Rehman, both of the Pakistan People’s Party and both close friends of Benazir, had incurred the wrath of the extremist elements because of their public criticism of the blasphemy law in the wake of a sentence of death passed against a Christian woman for allegedly insulting the Holy Prophet. Senator Sherry Rehman has in fact moved a private member’s bill--- which has not been supported by any political party, including her own--- to amend the blasphemy law in order to remove its obnoxious features. Taseer was the only liberal leader of the PPP to have supported her in public.
9.Sherry Rehman had said in a message circulated through the Internet as follows: “The mullahs have announced a million man march and given me a public deadline of 6th Jan to take back the amendment bill, or else. They said they will stop at "nothing then to protect namoos I risalat". (honour of the Prophet).I do not have state security but am quite clear that I will not take the bill "back" as demanded by some extremists, most recently when they openly declared myself and Taseer waajibul qatl. ( meaning “deserve to be killed” ) .” One feels concerned for her security.
10.The” Daily Times” of Lahore has reported as follows: “The killer of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer has revealed that some of his colleagues were also involved in the plan to assassinate the governor, a private TV channel reported on Tuesday. Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri told a joint investigation team that some of his colleagues were aware of his plan and he had asked them to arrest him alive. He told the team during investigation that he had no remorse on killing Taseer and that was why he laid down his weapon after shooting him. The channel reported that he was removed from the Punjab Police Special Branch three years ago for having extremist views. He belongs to the Barelvi sect and is the disciple of Golra Sharif. It is learnt that some former security squad officials would also be questioned. Qadri had joined the Punjab Police five years ago and was inducted into the Elite Force some time ago. After obtaining clearance from the authorities, he was put on the security squad of VVIPs and of the governor.”
11.The “Dawn” of Karachi has reported as follows: “’ The Elite Force guard who gunned down Punjab Governor Salman Taseer is said to be associated with ‘Dawat-i-Islami’, a non-political and non-violent religious group with Barelvi leaning. This was disclosed by a colleague of Mumtaz Qadri, the self confessed assassin. Qadri, 26, son of Malik Bashir, joined Punjab police and got Elite Force training in 2006-7. He was posted to the Elite Force wing in Rawalpindi in 2008. …A police officer said Qadri had been assigned guard duty with Mr Taseer during the governor’s visits to Islamabad and once with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. On Tuesday, Qadri left the Police Lines at around 7.30am to report for duty. Police took his five brothers and father into custody from their house soon after he had confessed to the crime. In addition, 25 police officers and a muharar (record-keeper) of Elite Force who had prepared the list of personnel, including Qadri, for duty during the governor’s visit were also taken into custody and shifted to Islamabad for investigation. Investigators also confiscated the cellphones of the security personnel deployed for the governor’s security. A police party went to the house of Qadri in Muslim Town late in the night and found some religious books in his room.”
12.It is unMuslim to be a liberal. That is the message that Qadri and those behind him in the conspiracy (if there was a larger conspiracy) have sought to convey through the assassination of Taseer. It is unlikely to have any major impact on the political situation in Pakistan, but it will have an impact on the will of the Pakistani political leadership and civil society to confront the extremists. The fight against extremism in Pakistan will remain a losing battle unless and until all political forces and the civil society come together on this issue and the Army whole-heartedly backs them. One sees no sign of that. (5-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Monday, January 3, 2011
TASKS FOR R&AW'S NEW LEADERSHIP
B.RAMAN
The Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), India's external intelligence agency, has a new leadership since December 31. It is headed by Sanjeev Tripathi, an Indian Police Service officer of the UP cadre, who joined the organisation on deputation in the 1970s and was subsequently absorbed permanently into the Research & Analysis Service (RAS).
2.When K.C.Verma, an IPS officer who was inducted into the R&AW on deputation as its chief from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) on January 31,2009, took premature retirement by a month on December 31,2010, the toss as his successor was between Tripathi and Anand Arni, a direct recruit to the RAS when the late R.N.Kao was the chief. With the selection of Tripathi, an RAS officer from the deputationist quota of the RAS, as the chief, officers from the direct recruits quota have to wait for at least two years more before one of them could hope to become the proud head of the organisation. By 2009 when Verma was inducted as the chief, the initial batches of direct recruits to the RAS cadre had reached the required level of seniority and experience to be considered for the post of the chief. They have already waited for two years before one of them could hope to become the chief and they may have to wait for at least two years more.
3. It would be difficult for me to express a preference between Tripathi and Arni because both of them had worked for some years as my colleagues in the divisions headed by me. I hold both of them equally in great esteem and have equal affection for them.Both of them had a very good record of man management and got along well with their colleagues in the organisation as well as with other brother intelligence afficers in the other agencies. Both of them distinguished themselves as good operatives in the field as well as in the headquarters.
4. Arni had worked with me for a longer time in the late 1980s and the early 1990s when Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had started using terrorism as a weapon against India----initially in Punjab and subsequently in J&K and the rest of India. Arni's role in dealing with the aggravation of the threats to our national security as a result of this would make any intelligence agency proud of him. I consider him without any fear of contradiction as one of the boldest operatives with tremendous initiatve produced by the R&AW since its inception in 1968. He understood Pakistan better than many other officers of the organisation and his analysis of the situation in Pakistan and of the Pakistani personalities used to be remarkably accurate in retrospect.
5.Good man management and team work used to be Tripathi's forte. These should stand him and the organisation in good stead in improving morale and esprit de corps in the organisation. If Tripathi and Arni work in tandem, the organisation could scale new heights under their stewardship. The organisation has had ups and downs since Maj.Rabinder Singh, an alleged mole of the Central Intelligence Agency, gave the slip to the counter-intelligence division in 2004 and fled to the US. The disastrous public image of the organisation as a result of this suffered further set-backs in the subsequent years due to inter-personal frictions at the senior levels and a critical press, which highlighted many negative traits in the organisation---some true, some exaggerated and some incorrect.
6. It is important for the organisation to win back public trust. An intelligence agency, which is looked down upon by the people whose security it is supposed to protect, cannot produce useful results. It is easy to lose credibility, but difficult to regain it. The R&AW lost its credibility in 2004 when Rabinder Singh fled to the US--- just as the MI-6, the British external intelligence agency, lost its credibility in the 1960s when Kim Philby and two others, working for the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency, fled to the USSR. It took the MI-6 years to regain its credibility.
7.The R&AW should draw the right lessons from its bad public image since 2004 and move forward to regain the trust of the public. This will be the most important task of Tripathi, Arni and other senior officers. A spell of honest introspection will be required to get out of this bad patch. This introspection should cover not only what went wrong in the past, but also how to prevent a recurrence of it.
8. The R&AW has to develop a three-front intelligence capability ---against Pakistan, China and terrorism. It already has this capability, but there is much scope for improvement.Only an honest and critical introspection by the R&AW's senior leadership itself will be able to identify the deficiencies and provide answers as to how to remove them. External audits of the performance are necessary, but no external audit can throw the spotlight on the weaknesses and gaps as effectively as an internal audit done honestly and ruthlessly,
9. It is hoped that one of the first steps of the new leadership will be to have such an introspective exercise. The R&AW has done great work in the past, to which officers such as Tripathi and Arni had considerably contributed. It is capable of similar great work in the difficult years to come with the right critical approch and self-correcting action. The best corrective action is self-induced and not imposed from outside. (4-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi )
The Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), India's external intelligence agency, has a new leadership since December 31. It is headed by Sanjeev Tripathi, an Indian Police Service officer of the UP cadre, who joined the organisation on deputation in the 1970s and was subsequently absorbed permanently into the Research & Analysis Service (RAS).
2.When K.C.Verma, an IPS officer who was inducted into the R&AW on deputation as its chief from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) on January 31,2009, took premature retirement by a month on December 31,2010, the toss as his successor was between Tripathi and Anand Arni, a direct recruit to the RAS when the late R.N.Kao was the chief. With the selection of Tripathi, an RAS officer from the deputationist quota of the RAS, as the chief, officers from the direct recruits quota have to wait for at least two years more before one of them could hope to become the proud head of the organisation. By 2009 when Verma was inducted as the chief, the initial batches of direct recruits to the RAS cadre had reached the required level of seniority and experience to be considered for the post of the chief. They have already waited for two years before one of them could hope to become the chief and they may have to wait for at least two years more.
3. It would be difficult for me to express a preference between Tripathi and Arni because both of them had worked for some years as my colleagues in the divisions headed by me. I hold both of them equally in great esteem and have equal affection for them.Both of them had a very good record of man management and got along well with their colleagues in the organisation as well as with other brother intelligence afficers in the other agencies. Both of them distinguished themselves as good operatives in the field as well as in the headquarters.
4. Arni had worked with me for a longer time in the late 1980s and the early 1990s when Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had started using terrorism as a weapon against India----initially in Punjab and subsequently in J&K and the rest of India. Arni's role in dealing with the aggravation of the threats to our national security as a result of this would make any intelligence agency proud of him. I consider him without any fear of contradiction as one of the boldest operatives with tremendous initiatve produced by the R&AW since its inception in 1968. He understood Pakistan better than many other officers of the organisation and his analysis of the situation in Pakistan and of the Pakistani personalities used to be remarkably accurate in retrospect.
5.Good man management and team work used to be Tripathi's forte. These should stand him and the organisation in good stead in improving morale and esprit de corps in the organisation. If Tripathi and Arni work in tandem, the organisation could scale new heights under their stewardship. The organisation has had ups and downs since Maj.Rabinder Singh, an alleged mole of the Central Intelligence Agency, gave the slip to the counter-intelligence division in 2004 and fled to the US. The disastrous public image of the organisation as a result of this suffered further set-backs in the subsequent years due to inter-personal frictions at the senior levels and a critical press, which highlighted many negative traits in the organisation---some true, some exaggerated and some incorrect.
6. It is important for the organisation to win back public trust. An intelligence agency, which is looked down upon by the people whose security it is supposed to protect, cannot produce useful results. It is easy to lose credibility, but difficult to regain it. The R&AW lost its credibility in 2004 when Rabinder Singh fled to the US--- just as the MI-6, the British external intelligence agency, lost its credibility in the 1960s when Kim Philby and two others, working for the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency, fled to the USSR. It took the MI-6 years to regain its credibility.
7.The R&AW should draw the right lessons from its bad public image since 2004 and move forward to regain the trust of the public. This will be the most important task of Tripathi, Arni and other senior officers. A spell of honest introspection will be required to get out of this bad patch. This introspection should cover not only what went wrong in the past, but also how to prevent a recurrence of it.
8. The R&AW has to develop a three-front intelligence capability ---against Pakistan, China and terrorism. It already has this capability, but there is much scope for improvement.Only an honest and critical introspection by the R&AW's senior leadership itself will be able to identify the deficiencies and provide answers as to how to remove them. External audits of the performance are necessary, but no external audit can throw the spotlight on the weaknesses and gaps as effectively as an internal audit done honestly and ruthlessly,
9. It is hoped that one of the first steps of the new leadership will be to have such an introspective exercise. The R&AW has done great work in the past, to which officers such as Tripathi and Arni had considerably contributed. It is capable of similar great work in the difficult years to come with the right critical approch and self-correcting action. The best corrective action is self-induced and not imposed from outside. (4-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi )
CHINA'S ADVANCING SKILLS IN ENGINEERING & INNOVATION
B.RAMAN
Two articles in the New Year, which highlight China's advancing skills in engineering and its plans to emerge as the world's second leading innovator after the US, deserve to be carefully read, analysed and assessed by Indian policy-makers. In our justified preoccupation with China's growing military strength and its unrelenting modernisation of its armed forces, we should not overlook its continuous upgradation of its engineering skills. While we may be for the present ahead of China in information technology, the Chinese are far, far ahead of us in engineering skills.Unless we draw up medium and long-term plans for improving the quality of our engineering education and the quality of the performance of our engineers, we will lag far behind China in this field too as we are lagging behind in economic development. The two articles---one titled "When Innovation, Too, is made in China" carried by the "New York Times" on January1 and the other titled " China Wows World With Engineering" carried by the Chinese Party controlled "People's Daily" on January 4---- are annexed for easy reference. (4-1-11)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE I
When Innovation, Too, Is Made in China (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/bu...gewanted=print)
By Steve Lohr
AS a national strategy, China is trying to build an economy that relies on innovation rather than imitation. Clearly, its leaders recognize that being the world’s low-cost workshop for assembling the breakthrough products designed elsewhere — think iPads and a host of other high-tech goods — has its limits.
So can China become a prodigious inventor? The answer, in truth, will play out over decades — and go a long way toward determining not only China’s future, but also the shape of the global economy.
Clues to the Chinese approach emerge from a recent government document containing goals for drastically increasing the nation’s production of patents. It offers a telling glimpse of how China intends to engineer a more innovative society.
The document, published in November by the State Intellectual Property Office of China, is called the “National Patent Development Strategy (2011-2020).” It discusses broad economic objectives as well as specific targets to be attained by 2015.
In a recent interview, David J. Kappos, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, pointed to the Chinese targets for 2015 and called them “mind-blowing numbers.”
According to a translation of the document provided by the patent office, China’s goal for annual patent filings by 2015 is two million. That number includes “utility-model patents,” which typically cover items like engineering features in a product and are less ambitious than “invention patents.” In the American system, there are no utility patents.
In 2009, about 300,000 applications for utility patents were filed in China, roughly equal to its total of invention patents, which have been growing slightly faster than utility filings in recent years. But even if just half of China’s total filings in 2015 are for invention patents, the national plan calls for a huge leap, to one million, by 2015. By contrast, patent filings in the United States totaled slightly more than 480,000 in the 12 months ended in September, according to the patent office.
China’s patent surge has been evident for years. In October, Thomson Reuters issued a research report, forecasting that China would surpass the United States in patent filings in 2011. “It’s happening even faster than we expected,” said Bob Stembridge, an intellectual-property analyst at Thomson Reuters.
Yet if the trend is not surprising, the ambition of the Chinese plan is striking. The document indicates, for example, that China intends to roughly double its number of patent examiners, to 9,000, by 2015. (The United States has 6,300 examiners.)
China also wants to double the number of patents that its residents and companies file in other countries. Recent Chinese filings in the United States, Mr. Kappos says, are mainly in fields that China has declared priorities for industrial strategy, including solar and wind energy, information technology and telecommunications, and battery and manufacturing technologies for automobiles.
To lift its patent count, China has introduced an array of incentives. They include cash bonuses, better housing for individual filers and tax breaks for companies that are prolific patent producers.
“The leadership in China knows that innovation is its future, the key to higher living standards and long-term growth,” Mr. Kappos says. “They are doing everything they can to drive innovation, and China’s patent strategy is part of that broader plan.”
China’s strategy is guided and sponsored by the state. Should that be a source of concern for the United States, and perhaps a trade issue? Or is the plan likely to resemble past efforts by other governments to give their companies an edge in global competition?
In the 1980s, the Japanese government was widely viewed as the master practitioner of industrial policy, and Japan Inc. seemed poised to overrun one American industry after another, including computers.
As we know, it didn’t turn out that way, partly because of steps taken by the American government and industry. A semiconductor trade agreement was intended to pry open the Japanese market, and I.B.M. invested in a crucial but then-struggling supplier, Intel.
More important, however, Japan never became a force in a particularly unruly, imaginative side of computing: writing software. Generalizations are risky, but it seems that Japan, as a society, has not produced enough of that kind of innovative skill, despite being a formidable patent generator. (In that area, Japan is still slightly ahead of the United States by some measures, though Japan’s patent filing pace is slowing.)
To call Japan’s industrial policy an outright failure would be simplistic. In some industries — autos, machine tools and consumer electronics, for example — it has done quite well.
“They are still in the game in those industries and going gangbusters — and we are not,” said Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., president of the Economic Strategy Institute and a former United States trade negotiator. Still, just how strong a hand government policy had in those successes is open to debate.
The Chinese patent strategy document is filled with metrics, right down to goals for patents owned per million people. It speaks of an innovation-by-the-numbers mentality, much like a student who equates knowledge with scores on standardized tests.
“It is a brute-force approach at this stage, emphasizing the quantity of innovation assets more than the quality,” said John Kao, an innovation consultant to governments and corporations.
But it would be a mistake, Mr. Kao said, to assume that China will necessarily follow a path similar to Japan’s. China, he says, is not only much bigger than Japan, but it also has a more individualistic entrepreneurial society, despite its Communist government. Someday, he predicts, China will have its entrepreneurial equivalents of Steven P. Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.
DESPITE China’s inevitable rise, Mr. Kao said, the United States has a comparative advantage because it is the country most open to innovation. “American culture, more than any other, forgives failure, tolerates risk and embraces uncertainty,” Mr. Kao says.
Many innovative products and technologies, he says, will be made elsewhere. “But America’s future lies in being the orchestrator — the systems integrator — of the innovation process,” Mr. Kao said. “Look at Silicon Valley. It is a place where smart people from all nations, all languages and all ethnic groups come together. It’s the capital of innovation assembly.”
ANNEXURE II
China wows world with engineering ( http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/7249100.html )
The country surprised the world with its engineering and technical feats in 2010, when it completed several monumental projects high in the sky, deep in the seas and in-between.
China last year completed 15 successful space launches, including that of its second lunar probe, Chang'e-2, which will determine a site for the country's first unmanned moon landing around 2013.
The Long March launch vehicles also sent five Beidou navigation satellites into orbit. The launches were part of the country's plan to have 12 Beidou navigation satellites form a network covering the Asia-Pacific region before 2012. The system will have 35 navigation satellites by 2020, when it will rival the United States' Global Positioning System.
On the ground, China became a strong player in the global high-speed railway industry in 2010 by innovating upon technologies previously imported from Germany, France and Japan.
The Ministry of Railways announced the nation's high-speed railway network last year reached 7,531 km, becoming longer than any other countries'.
The network's top service speed became the world's fastest at 380 kilometers an hour since the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway opened in October.
It set new operation speed records twice in 2010.
In September, a China-made fast train reached 416.6 km an hour on the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway. Two months later, a train on the 1,318-km-long Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway beat that record by reaching 486.1 km an hour.
Sources with CSR Corp Ltd, a major domestic train manufacturer, said in December that an experimental train is being developed that would challenge the 574.8 km an hour speed traveled by a specially configured version of France's TGV in 2007.
The country also made great achievements in the deep sea, becoming the fifth country to develop deep-diving technology capable of going beyond the 3,500-meter mark.
The domestically developed submersible Jiaolong planted a Chinese flag on the bottom of the South China Sea during a 3,759-meter-deep dive in July.
The vessel, designed to reach a depth of 7,000 meters and operate in most of the planet's oceans, is considered the world's only manned submersible that can theoretically reach those depths. Japan's Shinkai 6500 can dive for 6,500 meters. The other three countries with deep-diving technology are the United States, France and Russia.
And 2010 was the year China overtook the United States in developing the fastest supercomputer.
The Tianhe-1A can perform 2,507 trillion calculations a second and is 29 million times faster than the earliest supercomputers.
In addition, the water level of the largest hydroelectric project, the Three Gorges Dam, had increased to 175 meters as of October 2010, enabling it to generate electricity at maximum capacity.
The slew of mega-projects were made possible by the country's mammoth spending on research and development.
According to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), China's investment in innovation nearly doubled from 34 billion euros ($44.56 billion) in 2006 to 65.7 billion euros in 2009.
By Bao Daozu, China Daily
Two articles in the New Year, which highlight China's advancing skills in engineering and its plans to emerge as the world's second leading innovator after the US, deserve to be carefully read, analysed and assessed by Indian policy-makers. In our justified preoccupation with China's growing military strength and its unrelenting modernisation of its armed forces, we should not overlook its continuous upgradation of its engineering skills. While we may be for the present ahead of China in information technology, the Chinese are far, far ahead of us in engineering skills.Unless we draw up medium and long-term plans for improving the quality of our engineering education and the quality of the performance of our engineers, we will lag far behind China in this field too as we are lagging behind in economic development. The two articles---one titled "When Innovation, Too, is made in China" carried by the "New York Times" on January1 and the other titled " China Wows World With Engineering" carried by the Chinese Party controlled "People's Daily" on January 4---- are annexed for easy reference. (4-1-11)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
ANNEXURE I
When Innovation, Too, Is Made in China (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/bu...gewanted=print)
By Steve Lohr
AS a national strategy, China is trying to build an economy that relies on innovation rather than imitation. Clearly, its leaders recognize that being the world’s low-cost workshop for assembling the breakthrough products designed elsewhere — think iPads and a host of other high-tech goods — has its limits.
So can China become a prodigious inventor? The answer, in truth, will play out over decades — and go a long way toward determining not only China’s future, but also the shape of the global economy.
Clues to the Chinese approach emerge from a recent government document containing goals for drastically increasing the nation’s production of patents. It offers a telling glimpse of how China intends to engineer a more innovative society.
The document, published in November by the State Intellectual Property Office of China, is called the “National Patent Development Strategy (2011-2020).” It discusses broad economic objectives as well as specific targets to be attained by 2015.
In a recent interview, David J. Kappos, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, pointed to the Chinese targets for 2015 and called them “mind-blowing numbers.”
According to a translation of the document provided by the patent office, China’s goal for annual patent filings by 2015 is two million. That number includes “utility-model patents,” which typically cover items like engineering features in a product and are less ambitious than “invention patents.” In the American system, there are no utility patents.
In 2009, about 300,000 applications for utility patents were filed in China, roughly equal to its total of invention patents, which have been growing slightly faster than utility filings in recent years. But even if just half of China’s total filings in 2015 are for invention patents, the national plan calls for a huge leap, to one million, by 2015. By contrast, patent filings in the United States totaled slightly more than 480,000 in the 12 months ended in September, according to the patent office.
China’s patent surge has been evident for years. In October, Thomson Reuters issued a research report, forecasting that China would surpass the United States in patent filings in 2011. “It’s happening even faster than we expected,” said Bob Stembridge, an intellectual-property analyst at Thomson Reuters.
Yet if the trend is not surprising, the ambition of the Chinese plan is striking. The document indicates, for example, that China intends to roughly double its number of patent examiners, to 9,000, by 2015. (The United States has 6,300 examiners.)
China also wants to double the number of patents that its residents and companies file in other countries. Recent Chinese filings in the United States, Mr. Kappos says, are mainly in fields that China has declared priorities for industrial strategy, including solar and wind energy, information technology and telecommunications, and battery and manufacturing technologies for automobiles.
To lift its patent count, China has introduced an array of incentives. They include cash bonuses, better housing for individual filers and tax breaks for companies that are prolific patent producers.
“The leadership in China knows that innovation is its future, the key to higher living standards and long-term growth,” Mr. Kappos says. “They are doing everything they can to drive innovation, and China’s patent strategy is part of that broader plan.”
China’s strategy is guided and sponsored by the state. Should that be a source of concern for the United States, and perhaps a trade issue? Or is the plan likely to resemble past efforts by other governments to give their companies an edge in global competition?
In the 1980s, the Japanese government was widely viewed as the master practitioner of industrial policy, and Japan Inc. seemed poised to overrun one American industry after another, including computers.
As we know, it didn’t turn out that way, partly because of steps taken by the American government and industry. A semiconductor trade agreement was intended to pry open the Japanese market, and I.B.M. invested in a crucial but then-struggling supplier, Intel.
More important, however, Japan never became a force in a particularly unruly, imaginative side of computing: writing software. Generalizations are risky, but it seems that Japan, as a society, has not produced enough of that kind of innovative skill, despite being a formidable patent generator. (In that area, Japan is still slightly ahead of the United States by some measures, though Japan’s patent filing pace is slowing.)
To call Japan’s industrial policy an outright failure would be simplistic. In some industries — autos, machine tools and consumer electronics, for example — it has done quite well.
“They are still in the game in those industries and going gangbusters — and we are not,” said Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., president of the Economic Strategy Institute and a former United States trade negotiator. Still, just how strong a hand government policy had in those successes is open to debate.
The Chinese patent strategy document is filled with metrics, right down to goals for patents owned per million people. It speaks of an innovation-by-the-numbers mentality, much like a student who equates knowledge with scores on standardized tests.
“It is a brute-force approach at this stage, emphasizing the quantity of innovation assets more than the quality,” said John Kao, an innovation consultant to governments and corporations.
But it would be a mistake, Mr. Kao said, to assume that China will necessarily follow a path similar to Japan’s. China, he says, is not only much bigger than Japan, but it also has a more individualistic entrepreneurial society, despite its Communist government. Someday, he predicts, China will have its entrepreneurial equivalents of Steven P. Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.
DESPITE China’s inevitable rise, Mr. Kao said, the United States has a comparative advantage because it is the country most open to innovation. “American culture, more than any other, forgives failure, tolerates risk and embraces uncertainty,” Mr. Kao says.
Many innovative products and technologies, he says, will be made elsewhere. “But America’s future lies in being the orchestrator — the systems integrator — of the innovation process,” Mr. Kao said. “Look at Silicon Valley. It is a place where smart people from all nations, all languages and all ethnic groups come together. It’s the capital of innovation assembly.”
ANNEXURE II
China wows world with engineering ( http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/7249100.html )
The country surprised the world with its engineering and technical feats in 2010, when it completed several monumental projects high in the sky, deep in the seas and in-between.
China last year completed 15 successful space launches, including that of its second lunar probe, Chang'e-2, which will determine a site for the country's first unmanned moon landing around 2013.
The Long March launch vehicles also sent five Beidou navigation satellites into orbit. The launches were part of the country's plan to have 12 Beidou navigation satellites form a network covering the Asia-Pacific region before 2012. The system will have 35 navigation satellites by 2020, when it will rival the United States' Global Positioning System.
On the ground, China became a strong player in the global high-speed railway industry in 2010 by innovating upon technologies previously imported from Germany, France and Japan.
The Ministry of Railways announced the nation's high-speed railway network last year reached 7,531 km, becoming longer than any other countries'.
The network's top service speed became the world's fastest at 380 kilometers an hour since the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway opened in October.
It set new operation speed records twice in 2010.
In September, a China-made fast train reached 416.6 km an hour on the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway. Two months later, a train on the 1,318-km-long Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway beat that record by reaching 486.1 km an hour.
Sources with CSR Corp Ltd, a major domestic train manufacturer, said in December that an experimental train is being developed that would challenge the 574.8 km an hour speed traveled by a specially configured version of France's TGV in 2007.
The country also made great achievements in the deep sea, becoming the fifth country to develop deep-diving technology capable of going beyond the 3,500-meter mark.
The domestically developed submersible Jiaolong planted a Chinese flag on the bottom of the South China Sea during a 3,759-meter-deep dive in July.
The vessel, designed to reach a depth of 7,000 meters and operate in most of the planet's oceans, is considered the world's only manned submersible that can theoretically reach those depths. Japan's Shinkai 6500 can dive for 6,500 meters. The other three countries with deep-diving technology are the United States, France and Russia.
And 2010 was the year China overtook the United States in developing the fastest supercomputer.
The Tianhe-1A can perform 2,507 trillion calculations a second and is 29 million times faster than the earliest supercomputers.
In addition, the water level of the largest hydroelectric project, the Three Gorges Dam, had increased to 175 meters as of October 2010, enabling it to generate electricity at maximum capacity.
The slew of mega-projects were made possible by the country's mammoth spending on research and development.
According to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), China's investment in innovation nearly doubled from 34 billion euros ($44.56 billion) in 2006 to 65.7 billion euros in 2009.
By Bao Daozu, China Daily
Sunday, January 2, 2011
BEHIND POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY IN PAKISTAN: PASHTUNS, PETROL & MUSHARRAF
B.RAMAN
Pashtuns, petrol and Gen.Pervez Musharraf are behind the decision of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) headed by UK-based Altaf Hussain announced on January 2 to leave the federal coalition headed by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) at Islamabad, thereby reducing it to a minority in the Federal Parliament. Interestingly, the MQM has not yet left the provincial coalition in Sindh with the PPP. It apparently wants to continue to have a share of the power in Sindh, while renouncing power in the federal government as a populist measure to respond to the anger of the Mohajirs in Karachi over the failure of the Governments in Sindh as well as in Islamabad to protect them against attacks by the Deobandi extremist Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) and pro-Taliban Pashtuns.
2. The Mohajirs, who constitute the largest single ethnic group in Karachi, are the refugees from Uttar Pradesh, the erstwhile undivided Bombay State and Bihar in India, who migrated to Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur in Sindh, when Pakistan was formed in 1947 and their descendents. Pakistan was largely the creation of the Muslim elite from these areas of India, who belonged to the tolerant Barelvi sect of Sunni Islam. In the initial years after the formation of Pakistan, when Karachi was the capital, the Mohajir elite of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) dominated political power in Pakistan.
3. After the Army under Ayub Khan seized power in the late 1950s, the Mohajirs found themselves increasingly marginalized by a combination of the Punjabis and Pashtuns, who belonged to the extremist Deobandi sect. After the capital was shifted from Karachi to Islamabad, the Mohajirs practically lost all political power and were reduced to insignificance in the federal bureaucracy.
4. Zia-ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977 after overthrowing Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, made overtures to the Mohajirs in order to use them to counter the Pakistan People’s Party led by Benazir Bhutto and the Sindhi nationalists, who had started a movement for the independence of Sindh. Thus was born the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM), which was subsequently re-named as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in order to erase the impression that it was an ethnic political grouping of the Mohajirs only. After changing its name, it has been trying to project itself as a pan-Pakistan party representing all ethnic groups of Pakistan. Despite its change of name, it remains a largely Mohajir party with very little following outside Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur.
5. Since it owed its birth to Zia, it remained loyal to the Army so long as Zia was in power. After the death of Zia in 1988 and the coming into power of the PPP-led Government headed by Benazir Bhutto, attempts were made by Benazir to wipe out the MQM as a political force in Karachi---initially with the help of the police and the Intelligence Bureau and subsequently with the help of the Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence too ( ISI). The MQM under Altaf Hussain fiercely resisted the attempts of the federal Government under Benazir and then Nawaz Sharif to wipe it out in Karachi. The years between 1989 and 1994 saw a virtual civil war situation prevailing in Karachi.
6. The federal Government failed in its efforts to crush the MQM. Ultimately overtures were made to Altaf Hussain, who had fled to London, in order to bring the MQM into the political mainstream. Violence subsided, but the basic suspicions between the Mohajirs and the Sindhis of the PPP and between the Mohajirs and the Punjabis of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) remained.
7. In the meanwhile, a new complicating factor entered the picture in Karachi-----the influx of a large number of Pakistani and Afghan Pashtuns into Karachi in the 1980s. This influx has continued since then resulting in Karachi becoming the largest Pashtun city in Pakistan. The Mohajirs still constitute the largest ethnic group in Karachi, but are facing increasing demographic challenges from the Pashtuns. A triangular struggle for political power--- involving the Sindhis, the sons of the soil, who have been reduced to a minority in Karachi, the Pashtuns and the Mohajirs---- has become the defining characteristic of Karachi. The Sindhis support the PPP and the Sindhi nationalist parties, the Mohajirs back the MQM and the Pashtuns were behind the Awami National Party (ANP), which heads the ruling coalition in the Khyber Pakhtunkwa (KP) Province and is part of the ruling coalition in Islamabad.
8.The situation has been further complicated by the influx of pro-Taliban Pashtuns from the KP and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) into Karachi since the Army started its operations against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2008 and the US stepped up its Drone strikes in the FATA in the beginning of 2009. The fresh influx of the Pashtuns with pro-Taliban sympathies has created fears in the minds of the MQM leaders not only of the likely Talibanisation of Karachi with the Deobandi-Wahabi combine overwhelming the Barelvis, but also regarding a conspiracy encouraged by the Sindhis of the PPP to reduce the Mohajirs to a minority in Karachi with the help of the Pashtuns. Karachi is still a Mohajir city, but there are fears in the minds of the Mohajirs that there is a conspiracy to make it a Pashtun-Sindhi city.
9. Since the PPP-led Government headed by Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani came to office in Islamabad in 2008, there has been mounting violence in Karachi due to ethnic clashes between the Mohajirs and the Pashtuns and sectarian clashes between the Barelvis and Deobandis and Sunnis and Shias.
10. According to the “Daily Times” of Lahore of January 1, during 2010, at least 705 people, including 488 political and religious leaders and activists, fell prey to targeted killings in Karachi. In addition,74 others died in explosions all over Karachi during the year. As against 779 people who died due to ethnic and sectarian violence in Karachi during 2010, only 427 people died due to the acts of suicide terrorism by the Pakistani Taliban in the entire non-Pashtun belt of Pakistan and 797 in the Pashtun belt. This would give an indication of the seriousness of the situation in Karachi, which is considered the economic capital of Pakistan. The situation in Karachi has been as serious as that in the Pashtun belt and much more serious than that in the non-Pashtun belt.
11. Whereas the international community was concerned over the Taliban violence in the Pashtun and non-Pashtun belts and exercised pressure on the Pakistan Government to act against the Taliban, it showed a disturbing lack of concern over the equally serious situation in Karachi, which the MQM has been attributing to the influx of Talibanised Pashtuns into Karachi.
12. The MQM has been complaining that the Karachi Police and Rehman Malik, a confidant of President Asif Ali Zardari, who is the Interior Minister in charge of the Police, are not doing anything against the mounting violence in Karachi and has been demanding that the responsibility for the restoration of law and order in Karachi should be handed over to the Army.
13. It is the anger of the MQM over the perceived inaction of the PPP-led Government against violence in Karachi which led to the initial split between the MQM and the PPP. The “Daily Times” wrote in a commentary on January 3: “Add in the ANP factor that is buoyant on the back of an understanding wink and nod of the PPP’s rather permissive approach to their expansionist design in Karachi — remember Karachi is the biggest Pashtun city of Pakistan — and the MQM’s ire will be better understood. After all, the MQM has been making an unending noise of Karachi’s Talibanisation, implicitly echoing fears of a growing campaign to curtail if not neutralise the MQM’s political influence in Karachi. It is an interesting mix. The MQM wrested control of Karachi from the erstwhile religious denomination of the largely middle-class Jamaat-e-Islami, that is now only a shadow of its past self in Karachi, but the same control is now under serious threat by another strain of the religious denomination built around the Pashtun-Salafi nexus. Those who might gain politically from such facilitation will be the secular-minded ANP with some advantage to the predominantly politico-religious parties. In all this, the PPP stands to benefit indirectly on a strategic scale. If the MQM can be balanced sufficiently in Karachi, or at least embroiled in a debilitating power struggle at its base, it is likely to cede space to the PPP in the rest of Sindh, especially the larger cities of Hyderabad and Sukkur.”
14. Even though the MQM’s anger over the Government’s failure to act against the anti-Mohajir Pashtun violence is the main reason for its disenchantment with Zardari and Gilani, it did not want to make it appear that ethnic reasons were responsible for quitting the coalition. It tried to give moral and economic pretexts for its decision to quit. It initially asked its two Ministers in the Federal Cabinet to quit in protest against the Government’s failure to control widespread corruption. It has now decided to leave the coalition itself at the centre in protest against the increase in petrol prices introduced by the federal Government.
15. After announcing its decision to leave the federal coalition, the MQM has made overtures to the pro-Musharraf political parties such as the Pakistan Muslim League (Qaide Azam) headed by Shujjat Hussain. If the MQM remains firm on its decision to leave the coalition and sit with the opposition, there could be political instability in Pakistan resulting in a fresh jockeying for power of which the Army and pro-Musharraf political forces could be the beneficiary.
16. Pakistan's governing coalition held 181 seats - including the MQM's 25 - in the 342-member parliament. The MQM's departure leaves the PPP well below the 172 seats needed to retain its majority.
17. If the PPP agrees to cancel the increase in petrol prices and revamp the Police in Karachi, it may still be able to win back the MQM. But will it do so? The fact that the MQM has not yet left the coalition in Sindh shows that it may still be amenable for a face-saving compromise.
18. The Army under Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani is likely to maintain a watching brief for the present without intervening. However, if it suspects that Nawaz Sharif could be a beneficiary of the split between the PPP and the MQM, it might try to bring the MQM, the pro-Musharraf forces and other opportunistic elements together in order to keep Nawaz out.
19.The British and the US intelligence keep in close touch with the MQM. Altaf is obliged to the British for giving him political asylum in the UK despite his being an absconding suspect in an alleged murder case of Karachi. Any increased political instability in Karachi and any increase in the presence of pro-Taliban Pashtuns could affect the movement of logistic supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan from the Karachi port. The US and the UK are, therefore, likely to exercise pressure on Altaf and Zardari to patch up their differences.( 3-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Pashtuns, petrol and Gen.Pervez Musharraf are behind the decision of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) headed by UK-based Altaf Hussain announced on January 2 to leave the federal coalition headed by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) at Islamabad, thereby reducing it to a minority in the Federal Parliament. Interestingly, the MQM has not yet left the provincial coalition in Sindh with the PPP. It apparently wants to continue to have a share of the power in Sindh, while renouncing power in the federal government as a populist measure to respond to the anger of the Mohajirs in Karachi over the failure of the Governments in Sindh as well as in Islamabad to protect them against attacks by the Deobandi extremist Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) and pro-Taliban Pashtuns.
2. The Mohajirs, who constitute the largest single ethnic group in Karachi, are the refugees from Uttar Pradesh, the erstwhile undivided Bombay State and Bihar in India, who migrated to Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur in Sindh, when Pakistan was formed in 1947 and their descendents. Pakistan was largely the creation of the Muslim elite from these areas of India, who belonged to the tolerant Barelvi sect of Sunni Islam. In the initial years after the formation of Pakistan, when Karachi was the capital, the Mohajir elite of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) dominated political power in Pakistan.
3. After the Army under Ayub Khan seized power in the late 1950s, the Mohajirs found themselves increasingly marginalized by a combination of the Punjabis and Pashtuns, who belonged to the extremist Deobandi sect. After the capital was shifted from Karachi to Islamabad, the Mohajirs practically lost all political power and were reduced to insignificance in the federal bureaucracy.
4. Zia-ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977 after overthrowing Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, made overtures to the Mohajirs in order to use them to counter the Pakistan People’s Party led by Benazir Bhutto and the Sindhi nationalists, who had started a movement for the independence of Sindh. Thus was born the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM), which was subsequently re-named as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in order to erase the impression that it was an ethnic political grouping of the Mohajirs only. After changing its name, it has been trying to project itself as a pan-Pakistan party representing all ethnic groups of Pakistan. Despite its change of name, it remains a largely Mohajir party with very little following outside Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur.
5. Since it owed its birth to Zia, it remained loyal to the Army so long as Zia was in power. After the death of Zia in 1988 and the coming into power of the PPP-led Government headed by Benazir Bhutto, attempts were made by Benazir to wipe out the MQM as a political force in Karachi---initially with the help of the police and the Intelligence Bureau and subsequently with the help of the Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence too ( ISI). The MQM under Altaf Hussain fiercely resisted the attempts of the federal Government under Benazir and then Nawaz Sharif to wipe it out in Karachi. The years between 1989 and 1994 saw a virtual civil war situation prevailing in Karachi.
6. The federal Government failed in its efforts to crush the MQM. Ultimately overtures were made to Altaf Hussain, who had fled to London, in order to bring the MQM into the political mainstream. Violence subsided, but the basic suspicions between the Mohajirs and the Sindhis of the PPP and between the Mohajirs and the Punjabis of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) remained.
7. In the meanwhile, a new complicating factor entered the picture in Karachi-----the influx of a large number of Pakistani and Afghan Pashtuns into Karachi in the 1980s. This influx has continued since then resulting in Karachi becoming the largest Pashtun city in Pakistan. The Mohajirs still constitute the largest ethnic group in Karachi, but are facing increasing demographic challenges from the Pashtuns. A triangular struggle for political power--- involving the Sindhis, the sons of the soil, who have been reduced to a minority in Karachi, the Pashtuns and the Mohajirs---- has become the defining characteristic of Karachi. The Sindhis support the PPP and the Sindhi nationalist parties, the Mohajirs back the MQM and the Pashtuns were behind the Awami National Party (ANP), which heads the ruling coalition in the Khyber Pakhtunkwa (KP) Province and is part of the ruling coalition in Islamabad.
8.The situation has been further complicated by the influx of pro-Taliban Pashtuns from the KP and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) into Karachi since the Army started its operations against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2008 and the US stepped up its Drone strikes in the FATA in the beginning of 2009. The fresh influx of the Pashtuns with pro-Taliban sympathies has created fears in the minds of the MQM leaders not only of the likely Talibanisation of Karachi with the Deobandi-Wahabi combine overwhelming the Barelvis, but also regarding a conspiracy encouraged by the Sindhis of the PPP to reduce the Mohajirs to a minority in Karachi with the help of the Pashtuns. Karachi is still a Mohajir city, but there are fears in the minds of the Mohajirs that there is a conspiracy to make it a Pashtun-Sindhi city.
9. Since the PPP-led Government headed by Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani came to office in Islamabad in 2008, there has been mounting violence in Karachi due to ethnic clashes between the Mohajirs and the Pashtuns and sectarian clashes between the Barelvis and Deobandis and Sunnis and Shias.
10. According to the “Daily Times” of Lahore of January 1, during 2010, at least 705 people, including 488 political and religious leaders and activists, fell prey to targeted killings in Karachi. In addition,74 others died in explosions all over Karachi during the year. As against 779 people who died due to ethnic and sectarian violence in Karachi during 2010, only 427 people died due to the acts of suicide terrorism by the Pakistani Taliban in the entire non-Pashtun belt of Pakistan and 797 in the Pashtun belt. This would give an indication of the seriousness of the situation in Karachi, which is considered the economic capital of Pakistan. The situation in Karachi has been as serious as that in the Pashtun belt and much more serious than that in the non-Pashtun belt.
11. Whereas the international community was concerned over the Taliban violence in the Pashtun and non-Pashtun belts and exercised pressure on the Pakistan Government to act against the Taliban, it showed a disturbing lack of concern over the equally serious situation in Karachi, which the MQM has been attributing to the influx of Talibanised Pashtuns into Karachi.
12. The MQM has been complaining that the Karachi Police and Rehman Malik, a confidant of President Asif Ali Zardari, who is the Interior Minister in charge of the Police, are not doing anything against the mounting violence in Karachi and has been demanding that the responsibility for the restoration of law and order in Karachi should be handed over to the Army.
13. It is the anger of the MQM over the perceived inaction of the PPP-led Government against violence in Karachi which led to the initial split between the MQM and the PPP. The “Daily Times” wrote in a commentary on January 3: “Add in the ANP factor that is buoyant on the back of an understanding wink and nod of the PPP’s rather permissive approach to their expansionist design in Karachi — remember Karachi is the biggest Pashtun city of Pakistan — and the MQM’s ire will be better understood. After all, the MQM has been making an unending noise of Karachi’s Talibanisation, implicitly echoing fears of a growing campaign to curtail if not neutralise the MQM’s political influence in Karachi. It is an interesting mix. The MQM wrested control of Karachi from the erstwhile religious denomination of the largely middle-class Jamaat-e-Islami, that is now only a shadow of its past self in Karachi, but the same control is now under serious threat by another strain of the religious denomination built around the Pashtun-Salafi nexus. Those who might gain politically from such facilitation will be the secular-minded ANP with some advantage to the predominantly politico-religious parties. In all this, the PPP stands to benefit indirectly on a strategic scale. If the MQM can be balanced sufficiently in Karachi, or at least embroiled in a debilitating power struggle at its base, it is likely to cede space to the PPP in the rest of Sindh, especially the larger cities of Hyderabad and Sukkur.”
14. Even though the MQM’s anger over the Government’s failure to act against the anti-Mohajir Pashtun violence is the main reason for its disenchantment with Zardari and Gilani, it did not want to make it appear that ethnic reasons were responsible for quitting the coalition. It tried to give moral and economic pretexts for its decision to quit. It initially asked its two Ministers in the Federal Cabinet to quit in protest against the Government’s failure to control widespread corruption. It has now decided to leave the coalition itself at the centre in protest against the increase in petrol prices introduced by the federal Government.
15. After announcing its decision to leave the federal coalition, the MQM has made overtures to the pro-Musharraf political parties such as the Pakistan Muslim League (Qaide Azam) headed by Shujjat Hussain. If the MQM remains firm on its decision to leave the coalition and sit with the opposition, there could be political instability in Pakistan resulting in a fresh jockeying for power of which the Army and pro-Musharraf political forces could be the beneficiary.
16. Pakistan's governing coalition held 181 seats - including the MQM's 25 - in the 342-member parliament. The MQM's departure leaves the PPP well below the 172 seats needed to retain its majority.
17. If the PPP agrees to cancel the increase in petrol prices and revamp the Police in Karachi, it may still be able to win back the MQM. But will it do so? The fact that the MQM has not yet left the coalition in Sindh shows that it may still be amenable for a face-saving compromise.
18. The Army under Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani is likely to maintain a watching brief for the present without intervening. However, if it suspects that Nawaz Sharif could be a beneficiary of the split between the PPP and the MQM, it might try to bring the MQM, the pro-Musharraf forces and other opportunistic elements together in order to keep Nawaz out.
19.The British and the US intelligence keep in close touch with the MQM. Altaf is obliged to the British for giving him political asylum in the UK despite his being an absconding suspect in an alleged murder case of Karachi. Any increased political instability in Karachi and any increase in the presence of pro-Taliban Pashtuns could affect the movement of logistic supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan from the Karachi port. The US and the UK are, therefore, likely to exercise pressure on Altaf and Zardari to patch up their differences.( 3-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
Saturday, January 1, 2011
PLA, THE BAROMETER OF US-CHINA RELATIONS
B.RAMAN
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China is the barometer of US-China relations. When anything negative happens, it has greater impact on the military-military relations between the two countries than on the economic relations. While the PLA rules out the danger of any global military conflict involving China and the US, it does not rule out the danger of regional conflicts. According to the PLA, the US views China as a major strategic opponent. While there could be tactical improvements in the military-military relations, any enduring and strategic improvement would depend upon the US permanently stopping arms sales to Taiwan, removing discriminatory legislations affecting sensitive US exports to China and stopping the alleged intrusion of US naval ships and planes into the areas that China looks upon as its exclusive economic zones. China is still only a regional power but with global influence. While its relations with the US are important, its relations with its neighbours are equally important. It must improve its relations with them if it wants to keep them away from embracing the US. These are some of the points figuring in year-end discussions in China on the significance of the forthcoming visit to China by Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, which will be followed by a State visit to Washington DC by President Hu Jintao.
2.The new year will see Gates visiting China from January 9 to 12 and President Hu visiting Washington on January 19. Will these two important visits reduce the tensions that had cropped up in the relations between the US and China during 2010 ? The tensions were initially due to the decision of the administration of President Barack Obama to sell a new package of arms to Taiwan and subsequently due to the open interest taken by the US in the South China Sea dispute between China and some ASEAN countries and the joint naval exercises by the US and South Korea after the sinking of a South Korean naval ship by North Korea in March last year.
3. Beijing retaliated against the US decision to sell arms to Taiwan by suspending the on-going military-military dialogue between the two countries. A series of military exchange programs planned by both sides were cancelled , including a visit to China by Gates, exchange of visits between Chen Bingde, Chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and Admiral Mike G. Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and exchange of visits by warships of the two countries.
4. However, Beijing did not allow its anger over the sale of arms to Taiwan come in the way of the visit of President Hu Jintao to Washington in April last year to attend the nuclear security summit. It also did not carry out its initial threats to impose sanctions against US companies selling military equipment to Taiwan in disregard of the Chinese protests.
5. The reaction from the Chinese military leadership to these developments was, however, stronger than the reaction from the political leadership. Apart from stepping up military exercises in the Yellow Sea and the adjoining coastal areas as a counter to the joint US-South Korean naval exercises, the PLA remained strongly opposed to an early resumption of the military-military exchanges. It is believed that it was largely the opposition from the PLA leadership to a visit by Gates which stood in the way of a visit by him to China after attending a conference in Singapore (the Shangri-La Dialogue) in June last.
6. In October, there were indications that the PLA leadership was relenting in its opposition to resuming the military exchanges with the US. Liang Guanglie,State Councillor and the Chinese Defence Minister, met Gates in Hanoi for the first time last year in the margins of an ASEAN-sponsored Defence Ministers’ conference. During the meeting, Liang Guanglie reportedly invited Gates to visit China in early 2011 and Gates accepted it. In December, Ma Xiaotian, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the PLA, and Michele Flournoy, the US Under Secretary of Defense, jointly chaired the 11th China-US defense consultation in Washington, D.C.
7. It was announced subsequently that at the invitation of Liang Guanglie, Gates will be visiting China from January 9 to 12, 2011. The Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and the Research Center on Sino-US Relations of the Tsinghua University jointly held a workshop to discuss the relationship between the armed forces of the US and China. The dates on which this workshop was held are not known, but the “PLA Daily” had carried a report in three instalments on this Workshop on December 29,30 and 31.
8.A perusal of the salient points of the speeches made in the Workshop as reported by the “PLA Daily” would indicate that even though the PLA leadership had lifted its opposition to the resumption of military exchanges with its US counterpart, it still has mental reservations on the scope for such exchanges. Some of these salient points are given below:
• Rear Admiral Yang Yi (former director of the Institute for Strategic Studies of the National Defense University of the PLA): The military contacts are the “wind vane” of the China-US relations. China and the US hold different points of departure in military exchanges. The US, through these exchanges, wants to learn about the goings-on in the PLA and the intention of the Chinese military, whereas China adheres to the stance that the military ties must serve the overall situation and should not dance to the baton of the US. China should never slack down its efforts to realize its strategic goals despite the alleged concerns of the US. However, it could hold strategic communication with the US.
• Prof. Wang Baofu ( of the National Defense University of the PLA): Why the China-US military relations are so fragile? The reason is that the military affairs are sensitive. When something wrong occurs in the China-US relations, the military contacts are prone to be suspended. Comparatively speaking, the impact of negative developments on the military-military relations is more than that on the economic relations. China-US military relations are still developing as reflected in progress made in the contact and negotiation on the nuclear weapons and the outer space issues.
• Prof. Ouyang Wei ( of the National Defense University of the PLA): The root cause for the lack of military co-operation between China and the US is the absence of strategic mutual trust. China-US relations are complex involving both competition and cooperation. Such relations concern both local and overall relationships which are asymmetrical. In many cases the local relations are confrontational while the overall ones are not necessarily so. China should behave as a regional power having global influence. It should be concerned not only with its own security , but also with the security of other countries. We need to consider the issues concerning multiple countries from the perspective of global strategy, instead of considering them from the bilateral perspective. I propose a concept of “East Asia Economic and Security Community” to make East Asian countries dependent in economy and trustful in security. From this standpoint, the China-Japan relations can also realize the situation of “seeking common ground while reserving differences”. Thus, the influence of the Japan-US alliance can be mitigated. “
• Maj. Gen. Peng Guangqian (Deputy Secretary-General of the National Security Policy Committee of the China Association of Policy Science Study): The paradox confronting the current China-US military relations is that globalization deepens interest inter-dependence on the one hand and exacerbates the interest friction on the other. The interest inter-dependence may lower the risk of a world war to some extent, but it does little to prevent small-scale conflicts, let alone root out the cause for war. The balance of nuclear power deterrence may cut down the risk of an all-round nuclear war, but can’t prevent the outbreak of conventional war. The US has already put China in the position of a major potential strategic opponent challenging its interests in future. In addition, the eastward movement of the US military strategic deployment focus from Europe to the Asia-Pacific region and the adjustment with Guam as the new military strategic hub are basically completed. The US has been verifying its combat ability and theory through a series of test-oriented actual-combat exercises, including the US-South Korea (ROK) military exercises and the US-Japan military exercises.
9.In a commentary on Gates’ visit carried on December 29, the “PLA Daily” said: “Some experts pointed out that a visit might not be enough to completely eliminate the three major obstacles impeding the development of military relationship between the two sides. “US arms sale to Taiwan, relevant bills passed by the US Congress to restrict exchanges between the two militaries and frequent reconnaissance to the exclusive economic areas of China by US warships and warplanes have been the hurdles that hinder the effort to establish mutual trust and develop cooperation between the two militaries,” said retired Chinese Rear Admiral Yang Yi. Military relationship has always been seen as a “wind vane” or “barometer” that reflects state-to-state relationship. Experts think that Gates’ visit can not only push forward the military cooperation between the two sides but also promote and supplement the China-US relationship.”
10. In a year-end interview disseminated by the State-owned Xinhua news agency on December 29, the Chinese Defence Minister Liang Guanglie said:"Without the military of more than two million troops...China will be a weak country. A major aspect of its strong national power, I think, is a strong defense. Despite growing national power and global influence, the international situation remains complex, while more and more unstable factors are shadowing China's security. A war which involves the whole country is impossible at the moment, but there is a possibility that a mishap or accident might ignite regional conflicts. To enhance our comprehensive national power, (we have to ensure) our core interests are not hampered. We have to put the nation's sovereignty and security in the top position, that is the common understanding of the whole Party (Communist Party of China) and all the people."
11. As China prepares to receive Gates, the PLA is making sure that its views and perceptions are taken note of in matters concerning US-China relations. The conventional wisdom has been that in military matters, the Party decides and the PLA implements. In matters concerning the relations with the US, the party decides but with the concurrence of the PLA. The PLA is not just a subordinate without a mind of its own. It has a mind of its own and is prepared to express it in public and not necessarily only within the confines of the party or the Central Military Commission. That is the message that has been coming out. (2-1-11)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )
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