15 years after the Kargil war, the Army hasn’t forgotten anything. It’s now better prepared with its men, machine & surveillance War or peace, Army has learnt its tough lessons

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140726/main7.htm
Azhar Qadri

Dras (Kargil), July 25
At the icy height of 10,760 ft, Dras welcomes its few visitors with a rusting, faded signboard: second coldest inhabited place in the world (temp: -60C on 09 Jan ’95). It is a place caught in a time warp which is slowly getting introduced to modern civilisation. The freezing winter, with mercury nose-diving to minus 45 degrees Celsius this year, is not the only highlight of “The Gateway to Ladakh”.



A soldier walks at a war memorial ahead of the Vijay Diwas celebrations in Dras, about 160 km east of Srinagar. Tribune Photo: Yawar Kabli

Army Chief General Bikram Singh addresses a gathering at the Kargil War Memorial in Dras on Friday. PTI

The Dras valley, which starts eastwards from the base of Zoji La and located 150 km from Srinagar city, was the epicentre of the 1999 Kargil war. Lost in the wilderness of its rugged surroundings , Dras is a tough place to live and a hard-to-imagine site of India's fourth war with Pakistan when a massive military mobilisation of infantry and artillery units snaked over an arduous mountainous track, crawling to an altitude of 11,649 feet to cross the Zoji La — a pass of blizzards.

The people here —believed to be of Central Asian ancestry who speak Balti and Dardi — live a simple life, which has remained unchanged with the changing times.

The fight is for survival, to live through a winter which cuts off this region from the entire world and restricts its residents to their thick-walled mud and stone houses.

The place is now witnessing the first glimpses of development. It has got macadam roads, a poor cellular network provided by only one service-provider and some slow speed Internet cafes frequented mostly by tourists.

Dras has become a transit point for bikers on way to Leh and its handful of motels and eateries serve visitors very basic cuisines.

There’s a tourist reception centre with no one at the counter. The only noticeable feature in the town is a signpost which points towards Tiger Hill, the famed souvenir of Kargil war, and eight minarets of four mosques.

Nearly 12 km from Dras town is Mushkoh - a narrow valley of wild yellow flowers with a strong enchanting fragrance. Mushkoh valley, also a battle site during the 1999 war, is less than a km wide and nearly 20 km long before the road ends at a forward artillery camp and becomes a no-go zone for civilians.

CAPTIVE IDEOLOGUES - History beyond Marxism and Hindutva

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1140726/jsp/opinion/story_18640785.jsp#.U9L6r_mSxIM

Politics and Play - Ramachandra Guha

In October 1984, I got my first academic job at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Kolkata (then Calcutta). A week after I joined, a friend from Chennai (then Madras) sent me a petition on the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka, which he hoped some of my colleagues would sign. The first person I asked was a senior historian of Northeast India, whose work I knew but with whom I had not yet spoken. He read the petition, and said: “As Marxists, the question you and I should be asking is whether taking up ethnic issues would deviate attention from the ongoing class struggle in Sri Lanka.”

My colleague was known to be a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Yet I was struck by the way in which he took it for granted that I must be a party man too. Although this was our first meeting, he immediately assumed that any new entrant to the Centre must, like him and almost all the other members of the faculty, be a Marxist as well.

In the 1980s, Marxism occupied a dominant place in the best institutes of historical research in India. There were three reasons for this. One was intellectual, the fact that Marxism had challenged the conventional emphasis on kings, empires and wars by writing well-researched histories of peasants and workers instead. Indian history-writing was shaped by British exemplars, among them such great names as E.P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm, Marxist pioneers of what was known as ‘history from below’.

The second reason for Marxism’s pre-eminence was ideological. In the 1960s and 1970s, anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa were led by Communist parties. Figures such as Ho Chi Minh and Samora Machel were icons in India (as in much of the Third World). These fighters for national freedom were supported by Soviet Russia and Communist China, but opposed by the United States of America and the capitalist world more generally. To be a Marxist while the Cold War raged, therefore, was to be seen as identifying with poor and oppressed people everywhere.

The third reason why there were so many Marxist historians in India was that they had access to State patronage. In 1969, the Congress split, and was reduced to a minority in the Lok Sabha. To continue in office, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sought, and got, the support of MPs of the Communist Party of India. At the same time, several former Communists joined the Congress and were rewarded with cabinet positions. Now the ruling party began leaning strongly to the left in economic policy — as in the nationalization of banks, mines and oil companies —and in foreign policy, as in India’s ‘Treaty of Friendship’ with the Soviet Union.

Why Rafale is a Big Mistake

http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Why-Rafale-is-a-Big-Mistake/2014/07/25/article2346825.ece
By Bharat Karnad

Published: 25th July 2014

Why would India buy the Rafale combat aircraft rejected by every other interested country—Brazil, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, Singapore, and even the cash-rich but not particularly discriminating Saudi Arabia and Morocco?

The French foreign minister Laurent Fabius’s one-point agenda when he visited New Delhi was to seal the deal for Rafale, a warplane apparently fitting IAF’s idea of a Medium Multi-role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) in the service’s unique typology, which includes “light” and “heavy” fighter planes as well, used by no other air force in the world. Alas, the first whiff of corruption led the previous defence minister, A K Antony, to seize up and shut shop, stranding the deal at the price negotiation committee stage. It is this stoppage Fabius sought to unclog.

France’s desperation is understandable. Absent the India deal, the Rafale production line will close down, the future of its aerospace sector will dim, and the entire edifice of French industrial R&D sector based on small and medium-sized firms—a version of the enormously successful German “Mittelstand” model—engaged in producing cutting-edge technologies could unravel, and grease France’s slide to second-rate technology power-status.

More immediately, it will lead to a marked increase in the unit cost of the aircraft—reportedly of as much as $5-$10 million dollars to the French Air Force, compelling it to limit the number it inducts. With no international customers and France itself unable to afford the pricey Rafale, the French military aviation industry will be at a crossroads. So, for Paris a lot is at stake and in India the French have found an easy mark, a country willing to pay excessively for an aircraft the IAF can well do without.

Consider the monies at stake. Let’s take the example of Brazil, our BRICS partner. For 36 Rafales the acquisition cost, according to Brazilian media, was $8.2 billion plus an additional $4 billion for short-period maintenance contracts, amounting to nearly $340 million per aircraft in this package and roughly $209 million as the price tag for a single Rafale without maintenance support. Brazil insisted on transfer of technology (ToT) and was told it had to pay a whole lot extra for it, as also for the weapons for its Rafales. But the Brazilian air force had doubts about the quality of the AESA (active electronically scanned array) radar enabling the aircraft to switch quickly from air-to-air to air-to-ground mode in flight, and about the helmet-mounted heads-up-display. Too high a price and too many problems convinced the government of president Dilma Rousseff that the Rafale was not worth the trouble or the money and junked the deal, opting for the Swedish Gripen NG instead.

India puts foot down at WTO

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1140726/jsp/business/story_18655596.jsp#.U9L6nfmSxIM

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

New Delhi, July 25: India told the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on Friday it would only back a world-wide reform of customs rules if its demands on food security were implemented in the same time frame. “India is of the view that the Trade Facilitation Agreement must be implemented only as part of a single undertaking, including the permanent solution on food security,” Indian ambassador Anjali Prasad told a WTO meeting. “My delegation is of the view that the adoption of the trade facilitation protocol be postponed till a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security is found.” South Africa and Argentina supported India’s stand. The WTO was supposed to finalise the protocol by July 31 under an agreement reached among trade ministers in Bali last December. Some estimates say the reforms in customs rules can add $1 trillion to the world economy and create 21 million jobs. US ambassador to the WTO, Michael Punke, said Delhi’s stance could derail the whole process of world trade liberalisation. “Today we are extremely discouraged that a small handful of members in this organisation are ready to walk away from their commitments at Bali, to kill the Bali agreement.” India, however, said, “The country’s expectations have been belied by the developments after the Bali ministerial. A clear will to engage in areas of interest to developing countries is conspicuously absent. To make matters worse, persistent efforts are being made to subvert the mandate by divesting it of its core elements.” In a statement made in Geneva, where the 160 members of the WTO are meeting, India emphasised that a solution to the food subsidy issue was “important so that millions of farmers and poor families do not have to live in constant fear. To jeopardise the food security of millions at the altar of a mere anomaly of rules is unacceptable”. “India is suggesting that let us start work in the right earnest on these issues and review the progress in October. The Committee on Agriculture can do back-to-back meetings for this,” a senior commerce ministry official said. India feels a permanent deal on food stockpiling must be in place by the end of 2014, not by 2017 as previously agreed. “While there has been progress on Trade Facilitation Agreement, other decisions, including a decision on public stockholding have been sidelined,” commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed Parliament in a written reply today. “Till there is an assurance and visible outcomes... India would find it difficult to join the consensus on the trade protocol,” she added. On missing the deadline of July 31, the ministry official said: “We can defer the time... We are not saying that we want to postpone it to eternity.” On the allegations that India was blocking the WTO’s Bali deal, the official said: “We have not blocked the deal. If that will be the interpretation, God knows how many times WTO has been blocked.” “No body said the WTO was blocked in 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, or in 2013. Every time some country — a developed one — put its foot down and said no,” the official added. India is concerned that no movement has taken place on finding a permanent solution and developed countries could run away with an agreement on trade facilitation if the two are not linked. The current WTO norms limit the value of food subsidies at 10 per cent of the total value of foodgrain production. However, the support is calculated at the prices that are over two-decade old. “The developed nations must be told in clear terms that the issue of farmers’ security and welfare of the poor is not negotiable,” Assocham said.

India’s neighbours fare better on key human development indicators

Published: July 26, 2014 00 

Ajai Sreevatsan

India also has the worst gender inequality in the region

In the two decades since the early 1990s when India liberalised its economy, countries like Nepal and Bangladesh have improved their human development indicators at a faster clip than India.

Though India ranks marginally higher than many of its South Asian neighbours in the 2014 UNDP Human Development Report released on Thursday, the country has fallen behind most of its immediate neighbours on key health and quality of life indicators, an analysis of health indices from nearly two decades of HDI numbers reveal.

Regional record

For example, in 1995, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan were languishing far behind India in infant mortality. However, by 2010, all of them except Pakistan had caught up and surpassed India’s figure of 48 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Every other country in the region (except Pakistan) also spends a higher proportion of its national income on public health care. After Bangladesh surpassed India on a range of health indicators in 2003, India’s public expenditure on health actually fell. The UPA-I government kept health allocation at or less than one per cent of the GDP for the next five years.

In the meantime, private expenditure on healthcare shot up. A 2011 analysis by the medical journal The Lancet found that out of pocket expenditure on health in India is close to 78 per cent — in stark contrast with the Maldives (14%), Bhutan (29), and Sri Lanka (53%).

Among the seven SAARC nations (data for Afghanistan is unavailable), an average Indian is least likely to be vaccinated as a child, most likely to suffer from malnutrition (nearly half of those under 5), and has the lowest life expectancy.

Gender inequality

Somewhat unsurprisingly, India also has the worst gender inequality in the region (sharing the 127th place with Pakistan). The gulf between workforce participation of men and women is one of the widest in India among the seven countries.

What the human development reports show in essence is India’s failure to properly utilise the wealth created by its expanding economy, which doubled twice in the last two decades.

This is reflected in the supplementary surveys carried in the 2014 report, which indicates that among SAARC nations Indians are least satisfied with the standard of living (only 47% are satisfied).

However, their trust in the national government is quite healthy (with 54% answering yes).

 Printable version | Jul 26, 2014 6:46:50 AM | http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/indias-neighbours-fare-better-on-key-human-development-indicators/article6250277.ece

FDI Options: 49 percent or less versus 51 percent and more

Sanjay Sethi

09/07/2014 

Source Link

The issue of FDI in defence has attracted much attention and serious debate since the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion proposed 49 percent FDI in cases where there is no technology transfer, 74 percent with technology transfer and 100 percent when it came to state of-the-art technology. The prominent voices on the subject can be grouped into two camps. The conservatives want the cap to be at 49 percent and no more in view of the security concerns related to the sector. The realists, on the other hand, believe that the real funds will come in only if investors get to control their investments. The government’s decision on the subject will be influenced by many a stakeholders who are affected by the extent to which FDI is permitted, apart from the quest for self-reliance. 

The conservatives broadly include the trade unions, Defence Public Sector Undertakings and the Ordnance Factories Board, and surprisingly even certain sections of the domestic private sector. The Government Employees National Confederation, which claims to represent government employees working in the central and state government including local bodies, have submitted a memorandum to the Raksha Mantri on June 16, 2014 regarding their concerns on hike in FDI[i]. The Confederation in its letter to the Raksha Mantri have stated that “the major reason for reluctance in encouraging the Private Sector into defence production and welcome FDI in the sector is on account of concern for the Defence PSUs and the Ordnance Factories… it is clear that ... the role of the Defence PSUs and the Ordnance Factories would only be further marginalised”. 

Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry(FICCI), which includes innovation majors Larsen & Toubro and Tata Power (strategic electronics division), has rejected the notion that raising FDI will stimulate domestic manufacturing. The FICCI believes that control should always remain in Indian hands (or cap at 49 percent), the foreign OEM must bring in "key technologies as required in the priority list of the Ministry of Defence", the foreign company's home government must provide "in-principle permission to share technology with Indian partner"; intellectual property rights generated by the joint venture must reside in India, amongst other conditions[ii]. While the idea of retaining control stands to reason, but foreign companies need to be really desperate to yield to such stated requirements. 

CII in past has vociferously demanded for increase in FDI, even up to 100 percent. One of its reports, “Creating a Vibrant Domestic Defence Manufacturing Sector” has projected that defence and aerospace sector has the potential of creating one million new jobs in the country and increased FDI will only expedite this process[iii]. However, recently they too have chosen to be guarded in their recommendations and have issued a statement that, "CII is hopeful that the present government is going to roll out a forward looking FDI policy in the defence sector at the earliest."[iv]. The industry which has since long complained regarding the inadequacy of the extent to which FDI is permitted, is apparently divided and almost conservative in the final moments of reckoning. However, at the same time there are strong domestic players with sound order books, who have urged the government to consider 51 to even 100percent FDI. 

The realists on the other hand reason that the present limit of 26 percent FDI has barely attracted FDI worth only $4.94 million in the sector in past 14 years. This is despite the fact that in the year 2013 India was the seventh most popular FDI destination in the world and it attracted $25.5 billion in FDI inflows in the year 2012 alone[v]. Therefore, while India clearly emerges as an attractive destination for FDI, the scanty FDI in defence is obviously as a consequence of restrictive policies in the sector. FDI Confidence Index of the country is very high but that of defence as a sector is extremely low. 

Moreover, arguments from the national security perspective also need to be seen in the correct perspective. The interesting reality is that for a foreign firm, refusal to accept 26 percent stake, can lead to retaining of 100 percent stake. An arms producer, who refuses to accept the current restrictive FDI terms and conditions, stands a chance to bag the complete order to supply the required weapons when imported. 

Pakistan Decreases its UN Peacekeeping Contributions

By Ankit Panda

July 24, 2014

Source Link

Plus, Afghanistan’s national unity government, the BJP gets strict with its members and more. Mid-week links. 

A few curated mid-week links on South Asia:

Pakistan, usually one of the greatest troop contributors to overseas U.N. missions, has reduced its troop commitment to U.N. multilateral operations by 32 percent over the past year. The main driver of this decrease is its domestic military campaign to stamp out militants in the country’s tribal areas. The total number of U.N. peacekeepers worldwide numbers around 98,000. According to the United Nations, Pakistan contributed 10,680 in 2009. As of the first half of 2014, it contributes just 7,203 troops. Where it once used to be the top contributor to U.N. peacekeeping missions, it is now third after Bangladesh and India. Similarly, Pakistan slipped a few places in its contribution to U.N. police missions. It went from contributing 916 personnel in 2010 to just 567 in 2014. India and Bangladesh, two other major contributors to U.N. peacekeeping efforts, were constantly reducing their commitments to the United Nations, but have started increasing their contributions since 2013.

Over at Foreign Policy, Srinjoy Bose and Niamat Ibrahimi take a look at why Afghanistan’s national unity government is a risky proposition for the fledgling democracy:

There are, however, both short- and-long-term concerns with a proposed unity government. For starters, a unity government is a band-aid solution to a more long-term problem. It entails reconfiguring the elite alignments that make up the electoral coalitions. An important aspect of coalition building is the promise of government posts and ministerial portfolios; failure to keep promises may well lead to dissolution of the coalition. It is far from clear how the two candidates will keep their promises since a unity government in Kabul cannot accommodate all groups that comprise the two main electoral coalitions.

If you missed it, Srinjoy Bose offered a detailed perspective on both the April 5 general elections in Afghanistan and the subsequent run-off election on June 14 for The Diplomat.

India’s new BJP government outlined a set of “dos and don’ts” for its members of parliament. The efforts highlight an attempt by the Modi government to instill a degree of discipline onto India’s new ruling party. Party members were reprimanded for tardiness at official meetings by Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu. “The Prime Minister was here at 9.25 am sharp. But I can see that people are still trooping in. I would urge members to take these meetings as seriously as we do,” he told a group of MPs.

Counter Pak Nuke Tactics

By Manpreet Sethi

24th July 2014 

Source Link

In Pakistan’s nuclear strategy, the primary task of its nuclear weapons is not to deter that of India’s, but to avoid an engagement with a superior military capability. Rawalpindi is aware of the risk of having to confront India as long as it pursues terrorism. But, it believes its nuclear weapons provide a shield that constrains India from militarily punishing it.

India has responded to this strategy by suggesting and illustrating (with Kargil) that there is space to fight a conventional war even in the presence of nuclear weapons. Over time, India has also tweaked its military doctrine to make this viable. This has obviously disturbed Pakistan. For, if an Indian conventional response can still be tailored to remain below Pakistani red lines, then its nuclear weapons have obviously failed.

Pakistan cannot afford this. It has to keep its nuclear weapons relevant and in the face of India, and the world, if it has to prevent a military offensive provoked by self-sponsored terrorism. It is in this context that the idea of battlefield use of nuclear weapons, or what are colloquially called tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs), comes in handy. The very nature of such weapons projects a lowering of the nuclear threshold. The objective is to reclaim the space that India maintains exists for a conventional war despite the presence of nuclear weapons.

In playing this game, Pakistan is not seeking to exploit the military aspect of the TNW. It has no illusions about the military effectiveness of the weapon. At the same time, Pakistani decision makers well understand that escalation control, even in the event of a single use of a tactical nuclear weapon, could well have profoundly tragic consequences. But, the policy of brinkmanship is used by the country for deterrence. In TNW, Rawalpindi has found another tool of keeping India, and by extension the international community, on the edge. In its scheme of things, Pakistan would not have to use the TNW, but only the threat of their use, to deter India.

Pakistan is using its TNWs, therefore, to send a political signal, not to win on the battlefield. In fact, it realises that in order to prevail even in a tactical situation, it would need a large TNW arsenal, which may be beyond the capacity of its fissile material accumulation. But, the purpose of the threat to use low-yield nuclear weapons on military targets is not to cause battlefield damage of a substantive nature, but to threaten to create a new situation that deters India from a conventional response.

Pakistan’s strategy of exploiting the political potential of TNWs is based on two assumptions. One, their use would bring about a sufficient material and psychological shift in hostilities to stun India into a halt. Confronted with the prospect of further escalation, the nature of Indian polity would choose war-termination over escalation. This, Pakistan believes, would checkmate India’s ability to exploit its superior conventional capability since it would not have the will to act. A second assumption that Pakistan makes is that TNW use would not be seen as provocation enough by India, or the rest of the world, to merit a nuclear response that would lead to further escalation. So, the international community will stop India from continuing its conventional campaign or undertaking nuclear retaliation. As is evident, Pakistan is not miscalculating India’s capability, but its credibility to act.

MH17: China Defends Russia, Criticizes the West

By Zachary Keck

July 24, 2014

Source Link

China’s state media has strongly condemned the Western response to MH17, and largely backed Russia. 

After an initial degree of hesitancy, China’s state media has come out strongly in favor of Russia regarding the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17.

A number of editorials in Chinese state media in recent days have strongly condemned the Western response to the downing of MH17. The nationalistic Global Times, for instance, featured an editorial on Monday that ostensibly called for full disclosure from Russia, as well as an extensive and fair investigation led by either the United Nations or the International Civil Aviation Organization. Much of the editorial, however, was a scathing critique of Western efforts to implicate Russia in the attack.

”The West has fingered Russia as the main suspect in the tragedy. Under such circumstances, any hesitation on Russia’s part will provoke more blame from the West,” the Global Times editorial said. “If there is no result to the investigation, Russia will, by default, be named the perpetrator. Therefore, letting the facts of the case speak suits Russia’s interests.”

The Global Times’ editors continued:

“The Western rush to judge Russia is not based on evidence or logic. Russia had no motive to bring down MH17; doing so would only narrow its political and moral space to operate in the Ukrainian crisis. The tragedy has no political benefit for Ukrainian rebel forces, either.

“Russia has been back-footed, forced into a passive stance by Western reaction. It is yet another example of the power of Western opinion as a political tool.”

More generally, the GT editorial board opined: “The West has successfully put itself in a position to dictate ‘political correctness’ in international discourse. Those unwilling to work with Western interests will often find themselves in a tough position.”

An earlier Global Times editorial, which was published on its English-language website on Saturday, offered a more subtle defense of Russia. Similar to the position taken by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the GT’s Saturday editorial said that the ongoing fighting in Ukraine had caused the attack, indirectly implicating the Ukrainian government.

China Conducts Third Anti-Missile Test

By Zachary Keck

July 24, 2014

Source Link

China’s military conducted a successful land-based anti-missile test this week, following similar ones in 2010 and 2013. 

China’s military has conducted its third anti-missile test, according to state-run media.

On Wednesday the People’s Liberation Army conducted a “land-based anti-missile technology experiment,”Xinhua reported, citing China’s Ministry of Defense. The report said that the Defense Ministry also said that the test “achieved the desired objectives,” without providing any additional details.

This is the third test of its kind that China has announced. In January 2013, state media cited the PLA as saying that it had successfully conducted a “land-based mid-course missile interception test.” The reports at the time said that the test had involved highly sensitive technologies used for “detecting, tracking and destroying a ballistic missile flying in the outer space.”

Chinese state media reported the same thing in January 2010 following China’s first test. At the time, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson had assured the world that “The test was defensive in nature and targeted at no country.” Xinhua also clarified that the test “would neither produce space debris in orbit nor pose a threat to the safety of orbiting spacecraft.”

According to Global Security, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that the first anti-ballistic missile test in 2010 had used a SC-19 missile launched from the Korla Missile Test Complex in western China to successfully intercept a CSS-X-11 medium-range ballistic missile that was launched from the Shuangchengzi Space and Missile Center approximately 1,100 kilometers away from Korla.

Global Security also noted that the SC-19 missile had also acted as the “payload booster” for many of China’s direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) tests, including the one in 2007 in which China shot down one of its own weather satellites.

Similarly, following the 2010 test, Jeffrey Lewis noted that while China is trying to separate its anti-satellite and missile defense systems, “the technology is fundamentally the same: the development of kinetic energy interceptors — so called ‘hit-to-kill’ technologies that use a bullet to hit a bullet.” Notably, the 2007 ASAT test and the first ballistic missile defense test were both conducted on the same day—January 11. The second missile defense test was also conducted in the month of January.

Chinese Military Building Large SIGINT Listening Post in Hong Kong

July 25, 2014

China builds listening station in Hong Kong

Ian Cameron

IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly

A view of the geodesic dome atop Hong Kong’s tallest mountain - the 957 m-high peak of Tai Mo Shan - belonging to the PLA, plus an antenna mast alongside. The facility is protected by security cameras and razor wire-topped fences. Source: Gordon Arthur

The existence of a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) communications installation atop Hong Kong’s tallest mountain - the 957 m-high peak of Tai Mo Shan - recently came to light.

Construction began around 2010, with a geodesic dome first appearing in satellite imagery in 2011. The facility has been operational for approximately three years.

The installation sits inside a fenced compound that also includes a Civil Aviation Department terminal area radar and Hong Kong Observatory weather radar. The Hong Kong government has admitted giving the PLA a plot of land measuring 9,300 m² on which the army has constructed a geodesic dome, antenna mast, two large buildings, and a basketball court for use by the resident garrison.

The PLA has installed security cameras and also tinted building windows to reduce observation. On two occasions IHS Jane’s has observed PLA vehicles ascending Tai Mo Shan to deliver supplies or replacement staff. Personnel wearing PLA Navy-style uniforms have been observed inside the compound.

The PLA has refused to explain the facility’s purpose, claiming that “military secrecy” means it is “not appropriate for disclosure”, although it is extremely likely that it is an electronic and signals intelligence (ELINT/SIGINT) facility. If so, the facility will be similar in purpose to a British radar station based on Tai Mo Shan and used to monitor mainland China until the colony was returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

The PLA occupies 18 military sites in Hong Kong covering 2,700 hectares that were transferred from the British Army as Military Installations Closed Areas (MICA) in 1997. The Tai Mo Shan radar site does not appear on official lists of PLA installations.

A 19th site is a controversial new military berth set aside for PLA warships on prime Hong Kong Island waterfront.

A Hong Kong government spokesman said: “The Garrison Law provides that the government of the HKSAR [Hong Long Special Administrative Region] shall support the Hong Kong Garrison in its performance of defence functions. It is inappropriate to disclose the details of any defence operations.” He also refused to say whether other secret military sites existed in the territory.

ISIL Is Now a ‘Full Blown Army’ in Iraq

Ben Watson

July 23, 2014

Source Link

During an often heated exchange on Capitol Hill, a State Department official told House lawmakers that the brutal extremist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, is no longer “simply a terrorist organization—it is now a full-blown army.”

“ISIL is worse than al-Qaeda,” said Brett McGurk, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Iraq and Iran. “ISILis no longer simply a terrorist organization. It is now a full-blown army seeking to establish a self-governing state through the Tigris and Euphrates valley in what is now Syria and Iraq.”

McGurk’s appearance Wednesday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee was his second this year on the growing extremist threat facing Iraq and in turn, the United States. 

“Since that last hearing, [ISIL] has done precisely what [the Obama administration] predicted it would: it has taken over most of Western Iraq, it has turned its sights on Baghdad, and it may be preparing to launch attacks against the United States,” said Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif. 

Since McGurk’s last appearance before Congress, ISIL has continued to plague Iraq with violence. In Baghdad late Tuesday, a suicide bomber detonated a truck packed with explosives at a checkpoint killing 31 and injuring another 58. ISIL militants claimed responsibility for the attack. More than 5,500 civilians have died in Iraq fighting this year alone, the United Nations said last week.

“We did see this coming,” said Royce, noting that the Iraqi government has been urgently requesting drone strikes againstISIL camps since August 2013. “And that makes it even more troubling that the administration didn’t do what was necessary to prevent [ISIL] from taking over such a large swath of Iraq.”

But McGurk pushed back against many lawmakers who have called for U.S. drone strikes to take out ISIL fighters as they proceeded south into Iraq from Syria.

“The first principle and the president’s policy is that we want to enable local actors to be able to secure their own space as best we can. That was also the desire of the Iraqi government,” McGurk said. U.S. surveillance flights have increased from one per month to now more than 50 per day, he added. “The information we have now on these networks is night and day from where it was in May when the request from the Iraqis first came in. And there is a significant risk, Mr. Chairman, of taking any military action without that level of granularity.”

Elissa Slotkin, Acting Principle Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, also cautioned against U.S. military action.

“There will not be an exclusively U.S. military solution to ISIL,” Slotkin said at Wednesday’s hearing. “Iraqis must do the heavy lifting.”

U.S. Warned Iraqi Government 3 Days Before ISIS Began Offensive That Captured City of Mosul; Iraqis (As usual) Dithered

July 24, 2014

Officials: U.S. knew 3 days before Mosul fell that Islamic State was moving forces

Hannah Allam, McClatchy News

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration knew an attack was in the works three days in advance of the Islamic State’s offensive in northern Iraq, but U.S. efforts to mount a response were hampered by the Iraqi government’s insistence that it could handle the threat, two top U.S. architects of Iraq policy said Wednesday.

The officials faced bipartisan criticism from the House Foreign Affairs Committee as members accused the Obama administration of taking insufficient steps to counter the expansionist goals of the Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS or ISIL, an al Qaida spinoff that now operates freely throughout most of eastern Syria and across the vast swaths of northwestern Iraq that it seized last month.

Brett McGurk, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Iraq and Iran who just returned from a seven-week trip to Baghdad, and his counterpart at the Defense Department, Elissa Slotkin, a former Iraq director for the National Security Council, told the panel that the U.S. government had tracked the Islamic State but was caught off guard by the scope of the extremists’ offensive and the rapid collapse of the American-trained Iraqi security forces.

“ISIL is no longer simply a terrorist organization,” McGurk said. “It is now a full-blown army seeking to establish a self-governing state through the Tigris and Euphrates Valley in what is now Syria and Iraq.”

McGurk said the United States warned the Iraqi government on June 7 that American intelligence had received “early indications that ISIL was moving in force from Syria into Iraq and staging forces in western Mosul.” He said U.S. officials had sought the urgent deployment of Kurdish peshmerga militia forces to eastern Mosul to stop the extremists’ advance, but that the idea was blocked by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s administration.

“The government of Baghdad did not share the same sense of urgency and did not approve the deployments,” McGurk said. “Iraqi military commanders promised to send nine brigades of force to Mosul in response to our warnings and we stressed, however, that the forces would not arrive in time.”

McGurk described the resulting events as “catastrophic.”

Within days, the Islamic State had captured Mosul with little resistance from the security forces. Four or five divisions of the Iraqi army simply dissolved. McGurk and Slotkin blamed poor leadership rather than a lack of fighting capability for the breakdown and called for an overhaul of Iraq’s defense forces.

CAN ISLAMIC STATE SURVIVE? WHAT CAN US DO? – ANALYSIS

By Matthias Baun Brubaker Christensen

JULY 24, 2014 

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The Islamic State (formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham) emerged out of the ashes of two conflicts. It was born as a result of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and then used the power vacuum created by the civil war in Syria to create a base out of which it could create the foundations for an emerging state. However, how likely are they to succeed in their goal of establishing a functioning state? In answering this question, it is crucial to understand their strategy: do they only operate based on ideological fervor, or does their strategy contain elements of realism? Machiavelli taught us that a successful prince should learn to be both a fox and a lion, does IS have the ability to act as both?

Machiavelli’s recommendations for Princes

The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. Machiavelli, The Prince.

What did Machiavelli mean in his masterpiece, which for long has been essential reading on the reading list for all first year political science students? In the animal kingdom, a lion is the symbol of ultimate strength. It is the most powerful mammal on land that is feared by all other animals. However, the lion has a weakness, it is not intelligent enough to recognize the danger of traps.

A fox is also a predator, living off preying on other animals. However, the fox is cunning and calculating. It recognizes dangers when it feels uncomfortable in a new setting. A fox does not necessarily attack if it judges that it could result in it being in danger.

A temporary alliance of convenience

Evidence from the ground in Syria shows that there is a common understanding between the Assad regime and IS that their inaction towards each other is of mutual benefit. There is enough proof for one to state that Assad is not targeting the areas controlled by ISIS, but chooses to hit more moderate opposition held areas instead. The immediate enemy of Assad and IS are the same, as Frederic C. Hof puts it, “Whatever Bashar al-Assad and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi may think of one another personally, their top tactical priority in Syria is identical: destroy the Syrian nationalist opposition to the Assad regime.“

In the meantime, the Islamic State is pushing further and further into the areas held by the anti-Assad. IS has shown itself to be a shrewd opportunist. It has developed a strategy of reaping the ripe fruits sown by other militant groups. They largely go into areas already weakened by fighting between the SA and the various groups making up the more moderate opposition. Currently in Aleppo, the Syrian Army is trying to use its most effective strategy: set up a siege around the areas held by the opposition, and starve them both materially and physically. In the meantime, IS is operating closer and closer to the suburbs of the city and the opposition fears that the two forces together might eventually lead to complete control by IS and the Syrian army.

With Friends Like These, ISIS Is Doomed

Jacob Siegel

07.24.14

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The Islamic State is no longer a juggernaut, it’s a motley alliance of factions just waiting to betray each other.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — At the mention of Caliph Ibrahim, leader of the self-declared Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Abu Mustafa points at his chest and nods. “Ibrahim my friend,” he says.

Abu Mustafa says proudly that Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, has been peaceful since its conquest by the fighters of what used to be known as ISIS. He tells me his own ties to them go back to the days after the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he fought against the Americans alongside ISIS’s progenitor, Al Qaeda in Iraq. He says the Americans arrested him eight times; an Internet search of his real name turns up one prison record. 

“Life in Mosul is very normal,” says Abu Mustafa. Christians there are treated well, prices are low and people are safe and happy he says, a description completely at odds with news reports and first-hand accounts describing a rein of terror against anyone in the city who hasn’t sworn loyalty to the caliph.

He seems to believe what he’s saying and performs the group’s public relations not just to blow smoke into the journalist’s eyes, but because he honestly hopes to see the caliph succeed in conquering Baghdad. And then, after the victory, he expects to see the caliphate destroyed. 

“All we are doing now is just a liberation,” Abu Mustafa says. “After the liberation of Baghdad the Islamic state will be finished. The Sunni rebels are only using them against the corruption of the government.”

This is a view more common than one might expect among the Sunni Iraqis who have taken up arms against the government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, although it rarely is voiced so brazenly from inside the capital. They look at ISIS not as a religious prophecy come true or an end unto itself but as a weapon that will be used up after it is has done their work. 

“They stay together only to fight the enemy,” and that is Maliki, says Najim al Kasab, an Iraqi political analyst with contacts among the Sunni insurgent groups. “The main force keeping them together is Maliki himself. If Maliki is replaced, the Sunni armed groups will turn on ISIS,” Kasab says. 

This may well be wishful thinking. Maliki’s greatest political skill has been his ability to hang on to power. And even if he goes, it is far from certain the Sunni groups will have the wherewithal to defeat the caliph and his fanatics, many of whom are veteran foreign fighters. But such talk does underscore the political grievances – and the cynicism – within the alliance that follows, for the moment, the black flag of ISIS.

The Caliph is just playing a role for his time,” says Abu Mustafa, “then we will be done with him.”

When Caliph Ibrahim proclaims from his Islamic State in Mosul that Rome and Spain are next to be conquered, his words may inspire young jihadists watching the speech on YouTube, but many of his allies in Iraq are focused on matters much closer to home. 

Israel and Saudi Arabia: A Changing Region, a Possible Partnership?

Yoel GuzanskySigurd Neubauer

July 24, 2014 

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"Saudi Arabia and Israel’s shared interests not only focus on their desire to curb Iranian influence..."

Only days prior to the eruption of the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, the former director of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki Al Faisel, published an op-ed in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper in which he reiterated the Kingdom’s support of the Middle East peace process and of the Arab Peace Initiative in particular. Prince Turki, who previously also served as ambassador to the United States, outlined what his dream of a two-state solution may mean for Saudi Arabia and Israel, Washington’s two most important regional allies. “Let me dream . . . Imagine if I could get on a plane in Riyadh, fly directly to Jerusalem, get on a bus or taxi, go to the Dome of the Rock Mosque or the Al-Aqsa Mosque, perform the Friday prayers, and then visit the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” Turki is not only the first Saudi official to publish an op-ed in an Israeli newspaper, but his piece also breaks ground as he recognizes the Jewish people’s historic ties to the land of the Bible while opposing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank by arguing, “And what a pleasure it would be to be able to invite not just the Palestinians but also the Israelis I would meet to come and visit me in Riyadh, where they can visit my ancestral home in Dir’iyyah, which suffered at the hands of Ibrahim Pasha the same fate as Jerusalem did at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the Romans.”

Although the prince’s op-ed should be considered a clear olive branch to Israel, it also clearly reaffirms the Arab League’s well-known position: normalization with Israel is contingent upon an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Furthermore, despite Turki’s positive rhetoric in support of a two-state solution, it can also be argued that Israel and Saudi Arabia, each with its own logic, seem to prefer to maintain a dual policy that on one hand, accepts the lack of normalization, but on the other, maintains active, albeit tacit, ties.

Within a regional context, Saudi Arabia and Israel both actively oppose Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and seek to curb Iranian attempts to secure regional hegemony. Saudi Arabia and Israel are also perturbed by signs of a possible U.S. shift away from the Middle East. However, in spite of converging interests, full diplomatic relations are not on the table as long as there is no significant political breakthrough between Israel and the Palestinians, as Turki outlines in his op-ed. At the same time, a framework for the prospects of bilateral relations was established in 1982 when King Fahd officially abandoned the Kingdom’s policy of rejecting Israel’s right to exist. A decade later, following the Madrid conference of 1991, a number of rapprochement efforts were underway as the two countries participated in five working groups dealing with regional issues. The Abdullah initiative of 2002, the basis for the Arab Peace Initiative, went a step further, promising Israel “normal relations” with the Arab and Muslim world if it met a number of conditions related to withdrawing to its 1967 borders and reaching a solution on the Palestinian refugee issue that would be in accordance with the UN General Assembly resolution 194.

Apart from Abdullah’s Peace Initiative, Saudi Arabia has remained on the sidelines of attempts to promote the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Oman and Qatar, which are generally outside the consensus in the Gulf Cooperation Council, had formal—albeit partial—relations with Israel. Israel had diplomatic missions in both countries that were ultimately closed in the wake of the second intifada and the Israel-Hamas war of 2008.

Obsessing About Gaza, Ignoring Syria (And Most Everything Else)

JEFFREY GOLDBERG

JUL 23 2014

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Trying to understand why Syrian deaths no longer seem to matter. 

Destruction in Aleppo (Reuters)

The responses to what I write about the Hamas war fall into several categories. My least favorite sort of response is the kind that invokes Hitler in some way. Here is an e-mail that is representative: “I hope Hitler kills you and your family.” (Yes, it was written in the present tense.) Then there are the messages from those who seek the elimination of Israel. These run along the lines of, “Jeffrey wants blood, give him more Palestinian blood!” (I’m not sure if this tweet was riffing off the blood libel or not.) Like many people, I am legitimately shocked (not “shocked, shocked” but actually shocked) by the level of grotesque anti-Jewish invective seemingly (though not actually) prompted by the war, particularly in Europe. I’ve been getting mail like this for a long time, so it is the intensity and volume, rather than the content, that is so surprising.

One of my other least-favorite types of responses comes from the opposite end of the spectrum, from people who ask me why the media is so biased against Israel, and then cite the work of this reporter or that reporter—in this war, usually someone currently stationed in Gaza—who appears, to my interlocutor, to have an anti-Israel agenda. It’s a question I’ve seen for years, and it is usually asked by people who believe that Israel only has public relations problems, as opposed to actual problems, in addition to public relations problems.

I can’t speak with great knowledge about the reporters from European and other overseas outlets (I do have an understanding of the sympathies of many British reporters), but I tend to think that journalists from American outlets are doing a fine job in dangerous conditions of covering a horrible war. It is true that Hamas makes it difficult to report on matters it would rather not see come to light (this is why you see so few photos, if any, of armed Hamas fighters). It is also true that reporters in the field could do a more thorough job of asking Hamas leaders harder questions (such as, Why are you rejecting ceasefire offers; why did you place your command bunkers under hospitals; and so on), but working conditions are very difficult, and they are trying the best they can. (I’ve covered various of these mini-Middle East wars in the past, and, believe me, working conditions makes it difficult enough just to write down what you’re seeing six inches in front of your face.) In any case, these questions are sometimes best raised by analyzers and editorialists.

There is another question about media coverage that has been bothering me, however, one of proportionality. I was struck, over the weekend, by the lack of coverage of the Syrian civil war, in which the death count recently passed 170,000. By Sunday night, it had become clear that the weekend in toll in Syria would stand at roughly 700 dead—a larger number, obviously, than the weekend toll in Gaza (and more than the total number of deaths in this latest iteration of the Gaza war to date.) I tweeted the following in response to this news out of Syria: “I sincerely hope the @nytimes covers the slaughter in Syria – 700 dead in 48 hours – in tomorrow’s paper. Very important story as well.”

Israel Provoked This War

By HENRY SIEGMAN

July 22, 2014 

It’s up to President Obama to stop it. 

not only because it is always election time in the United States, but because successive polls have established that American Jews vote constantly and overwhelmingly Democratic for a wide variety of domestic and international reasons, but support for Netanyahu’s policies is not one of them.

It’s up to President Obama to stop it. 

There seems to be near-universal agreement in the United States with President Barack Obama’s observation that Israel, like every other country, has the right and obligation to defend its citizens from threats directed at them from beyond its borders.

But this anodyne statement does not begin to address the political and moral issues raised by Israel’s bombings and land invasion of Gaza: who violated the cease-fire agreement that was in place since November 2012 and whether Israel’s civilian population could have been protected by nonviolent means that would not have placed Gaza’s civilian population at risk. As of this writing, the number killed by the Israel Defense Forces has surpassed 600, the overwhelming majority of whom are noncombatants.

Israel’s assault on Gaza, as pointed out by analyst Nathan Thrall in the New York Times, was not triggered by Hamas’ rockets directed at Israel but by Israel’s determination to bring down the Palestinian unity government that was formed in early June, even though that government was committed to honoring all of the conditions imposed by the international community for recognition of its legitimacy.

The notion that it was Israel, not Hamas, that violated a cease-fire agreement will undoubtedly offend a wide swath of Israel supporters. To point out that it is not the first time Israel has done so will offend them even more deeply. But it was Shmuel Zakai, a retired brigadier general and former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division, and not “leftist” critics, who said about the Israel Gaza war of 2009 that during the six-month period of a truce then in place, Israel made a central error “by failing to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians in the [Gaza] Strip. … You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they are in and expect Hamas just to sit around and do nothing.”

This is true of the latest cease-fire as well. According to Thrall, Hamas is now seeking through violence what it should have obtained through a peaceful handover of responsibilities. “Israel is pursuing a return to the status quo ante, when Gaza had electricity for barely eight hours a day, water was undrinkable, sewage was dumped in the sea, fuel shortages caused sanitation plants to shut down and waste sometimes floated in the streets.” It is not only Hamas supporters, but many Gazans, perhaps a majority, who believe it is worth paying a heavy price to change a disastrous status quo.

The answer to the second question — whether a less lethal course was not available to protect Israel’s civilian population — is (unintentionally?) implicit in the formulation of President Barack Obama’s defense of Israel’s actions: namely, the right and obligation of all governments to protect their civilian populations from assaults fromacross their borders.

Israel and Saudi Arabia: A Changing Region, a Possible Partnership?

"Saudi Arabia and Israel’s shared interests not only focus on their desire to curb Iranian influence..."

Yoel GuzanskySigurd Neubauer

July 24, 2014

Source Link

Only days prior to the eruption of the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, the former director of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki Al Faisel, published an op-ed in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper in which he reiterated the Kingdom’s support of the Middle East peace process and of the Arab Peace Initiative in particular. Prince Turki, who previously also served as ambassador to the United States, outlined what his dream of a two-state solution may mean for Saudi Arabia and Israel, Washington’s two most important regional allies. “Let me dream . . . Imagine if I could get on a plane in Riyadh, fly directly to Jerusalem, get on a bus or taxi, go to the Dome of the Rock Mosque or the Al-Aqsa Mosque, perform the Friday prayers, and then visit the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” Turki is not only the first Saudi official to publish an op-ed in an Israeli newspaper, but his piece also breaks ground as he recognizes the Jewish people’s historic ties to the land of the Bible while opposing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank by arguing, “And what a pleasure it would be to be able to invite not just the Palestinians but also the Israelis I would meet to come and visit me in Riyadh, where they can visit my ancestral home in Dir’iyyah, which suffered at the hands of Ibrahim Pasha the same fate as Jerusalem did at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the Romans.”

Although the prince’s op-ed should be considered a clear olive branch to Israel, it also clearly reaffirms the Arab League’s well-known position: normalization with Israel is contingent upon an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Furthermore, despite Turki’s positive rhetoric in support of a two-state solution, it can also be argued that Israel and Saudi Arabia, each with its own logic, seem to prefer to maintain a dual policy that on one hand, accepts the lack of normalization, but on the other, maintains active, albeit tacit, ties.

Within a regional context, Saudi Arabia and Israel both actively oppose Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and seek to curb Iranian attempts to secure regional hegemony. Saudi Arabia and Israel are also perturbed by signs of a possible U.S. shift away from the Middle East. However, in spite of converging interests, full diplomatic relations are not on the table as long as there is no significant political breakthrough between Israel and the Palestinians, as Turki outlines in his op-ed. At the same time, a framework for the prospects of bilateral relations was established in 1982 when King Fahd officially abandoned the Kingdom’s policy of rejecting Israel’s right to exist. A decade later, following the Madrid conference of 1991, a number of rapprochement efforts were underway as the two countries participated in five working groups dealing with regional issues. The Abdullah initiative of 2002, the basis for the Arab Peace Initiative, went a step further, promising Israel “normal relations” with the Arab and Muslim world if it met a number of conditions related to withdrawing to its 1967 borders and reaching a solution on the Palestinian refugee issue that would be in accordance with the UN General Assembly resolution 194.

Apart from Abdullah’s Peace Initiative, Saudi Arabia has remained on the sidelines of attempts to promote the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Oman and Qatar, which are generally outside the consensus in the Gulf Cooperation Council, had formal—albeit partial—relations with Israel. Israel had diplomatic missions in both countries that were ultimately closed in the wake of the second intifada and the Israel-Hamas war of 2008.

On several occasions, Saudi Arabia has announced that it does not have any intention of offering another peace initiative that could be interpreted as a gesture towards Israel, and the kingdom has even pressured its Gulf Cooperation Council allies to follow suit. Similarly, over the past couple of years, the GCC states have declined to comply with the Obama administration’s request to carry out confidence-building measures toward Israel in order to create a supportive regional atmosphere for the Israeli-Palestinian political process, but demanded instead that an Israeli settlement freeze had to be in place first.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia and its GCC allies recognize Israel’s military power, its close ties with Washington and in particular, its influence in the U.S. Congress. When it comes to normalizing ties, however, the GCC states apparently see the value in maintaining some level of coordination with Israel. However, “normal relations”—the Saudis’ preferred phrase—are not possible as long as there is no meaningful breakthrough in the political process between Israel and the Palestinians.