Shia team to bring back Indians recruited by ISIS

Maria Akram

Sep 16, 2014

ISIS jihadists marching through Raqqa in Syria.

NEW DELHI: A delegation of six members from Anjuman-e Haideri (AEH), a Shia committee from Delhi, will go to Iraq to provide help and appeal to Indian Muslims, who have allegedly joined ISIS, to come back. 

The Shia body is in touch with the Indian and Iraq governments and around 6000 volunteers are lined up to go to the war-torn country. 

Shia leader, Maulana Kalbe Jawwad Naqvi, in a news conference on Monday said that Zionists and their cohorts are reportedly engaged in training and financing the ISIS and other terrorist groups. 

"There are reports that the ISIS terrorists injured in Iraq are being ferried by helicopters for treatment in Israel." The delegation will do humanitarian work and doctors, nurses and engineers have been roped in to help. 

When AEH asked people to volunteer, over 2 lakh people signed up. "Not only Muslims, even people from different religions have come forward to volunteer. There are doctors and engineers in the list and these will be sent to Iraq." 

ISIS has attracted jihadists from across the world to join them like the Chechen jihadist above. 

The members of the committee said that anyone who supports ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaida isn't a Muslim as no religion allows anyone to kill innocent people. They have also urged the Indian government to take ISIS seriously as it has threatened to attack Kashmir. 

Members of AEH claim to have recently received a letter from Khairullah, deputy minister of foreign affairs, government of Republic of Iraq, thanking the committee and Indian government for volunteering to protect holy shrines in Iraq. 

US in first air strike near Baghdad on IS: Officials

Sep 16, 2014

WASHINGTON: The United States bombed the Islamic State near Baghdad, the first time the US has targeted the militants close to the Iraqi capital, US officials said Monday. 

A US defense official told AFP on condition of anonymity that American warplanes carried out one air strike near Baghdad and another near Mount Sinjar, in the north of Iraq, in the past 24 hours. 

The United States last month began a campaign of air strikes against IS positions in northern Iraq, but Monday's announcement that US warplanes had targeted the militants near Baghdad marks an escalation in the scope of the mission. 

"US military forces continued to attack ISIL (IS) terrorists in Iraq, employing attack and fighter aircraft to conduct two airstrikes Sunday and Monday in support of Iraqi security forces near Sinjar and southwest of Baghdad," US Central Command said in a statement. 

"The air strike southwest of Baghdad was the first strike taken as part of our expanded efforts beyond protecting our own people and humanitarian missions to hit ISIL targets as Iraqi forces go on offense, as outlined in the president's speech last Wednesday." 

The strikes destroyed six IS vehicles near Sinjar and an IS fighting position southwest of Baghdad that had been firing on Iraqi forces. 

"All aircraft exited the strike areas safely," the statement added. "These strikes were conducted under authority to protect US personnel and facilities, support humanitarian efforts, and help Iraqi forces on the offensive against ISIL terrorists." 

They bring the number of US air strikes across Iraq to 162. The news comes as the world's top diplomats pledged to support Iraq in its fight against IS by "any means necessary", including "appropriate military assistance." 

The international community is scrambling to contain the IS jihadists, who have rampaged across Iraq and Syria and could number as many as 31,500 fighters, according to the CIA.

Satellite Imagery Shows Chinese Aircraft Carrier Liaoning in Drydock

Imagery shows Liaoning, J-15 mockup at Dalian shipyard

James Hardy and Sean O’Connor

IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly, September 14, 2014

Airbus Defence and Space imagery shows Liaoning pierside at Dalian following refit in the adjacent dry dock. The absence of most flight deck markings, particularly those delineating take-off and landing areas, is indicative of surface refinishing undertaken during the refit. (PLEIADES © CNES 2014, Distribution Airbus DS/Spot Image/IHS)

Satellite imagery provided by Airbus Defence and Space has confirmed media reports that Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning recently undertook a four-month maintenance period in the Dalian shipyard, which refurbished the ship after its acquisition from Ukraine.

The Kuznetsov (Orel) (Project 1143.5/6)-class carrier, which completed its first sea trials in the South China Sea in January, was shown alongside at Dalian in 26 July imagery. The absence of markings shows that the flight deck had been repainted, but no other maintenance work is visible.

The flight deck surface has been stripped and repainted at least once before, following Liaoning ‘s first sea trials in August 2011.

The images of the Dalian shipyard throw up a number of interesting issues. One is the presence of a Shenyang J-15 combat aircraft mockup in a ship assembly area next to the dry dock where Liaoning underwent maintenance. This may be the calibration model that made an appearance on the carrier’s flight deck in early 2012 and it could be there as part of the maintenance programme that Liaoningwas undergoing when the July 2014 images were taken.

The alternative is that the mockup is part of China’s future carrier programme, although this seems unlikely as there are no signs of carrier construction at the Dalian shipyard. In January 2014 a senior Chinese Communist Party official from Dalian was reported as saying that the city could build a second carrier in “six years” and also claimed that China would eventually acquire four aircraft carriers.

In 2013 the Dalian shipyard and Shanghai’s Jiangnan-Changxing shipyard produced sections of aircraft carrier hulls as an exercise to demonstrate their capacity to do so. Since then, there has been no sign of carrier construction at either site, although it is possible - and likely - that blocks are being fabricated in hangars before being positioned in dry docks.

*** The “Myth” behind China’s Territorial Claims: Implications for Northeast Indias

Namrata Goswami 

September 9, 2014 

The latest official map1of China shows large chunks of Indian Territory, especially in Arunachal Pradesh (AP), inside that country’s borders. This has triggered sharp responses from AP’s Chief Minister and also the central government. In November 2013, when President Pranab Mukherjee visited AP, the Chinese foreign ministry asserted that Arunachal Pradesh was established largely on three areas of China's Tibet region -- Monyul, Loyul and Lower Tsayul -- and termed it as ‘illegal’ occupation by India.2 China claims that “these three areas located between the illegal ‘McMahon Line’ line and the traditional customary boundary between China and India have always been Chinese territory”.3 Earlier in 2006, the Chinese ambassador to India claimed in New Delhi that the “whole of what you call the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory”.4

Crosschecking Chinese Territorial Claims

Figure I: Historical ‘Monyul’, ‘Loyul’ and ‘Tsayul’ regions and China’s “traditional customary boundary”

Source and Copyright: Namrata Goswami

‘Monyul’, ‘Loyul’ and ‘Tsayul’ that are claimed as ‘areas of China’s Tibet’ are historical Tibetan allusions for the regions south of the Eastern Tibetan frontier as opposed to China’s claimed ‘customary boundary line’. International boundaries based on delimited borders are a western concept of the modern sovereign state and did not exist traditionally in the historical East. The barren plateau of Tibet with its bleak and dry landscape ends at the towering southern barrier of the Himalaya mountain ranges watershed, where the regions of ‘Monyul’, ‘Loyul’ and ‘Tsayul’ were located (See Figure I). In sharp contrast, beyond the watershed, began the thickly forested borderlands inhabited by ethnic groups of the heavily rain-fed tropical Eastern Himalayas. The Tibetans historically defined the collective ethnic groups living in a section of the Himalayan region with a generic ethnonym -- ‘Monyul,’5 which was the ancient name for the southern borderlands, including the later Kingdom of Bhutan

which was then renamed Drukyul and its people the Drukpa after the mythical Bhutanese Thunder Dragon - Druk. Some of the ‘Monba’, the ethnic groups of earlier ‘Monyul’ region, were excluded from Bhutan’s borders in the east (See Figure I). The ethnic groups of ‘Loyul’ region would be the ‘Lopa/Lhoba’ and ‘Tsayul’ region were the ‘Idu Lhoba’ and the ‘Dengpa’. These exonyms like ‘Monba’ was deprecating and ‘Lopa’ was highly pejorative 6of archaic origin and usage in the Tibetan language, however, listed as such in the ethnic groups of China today7. The Chinese government does not officially recognize the ‘Dengpa’ as an ethnic minority and continues to use the old offensive Tibetan exonym for the people of ‘Tsayul’.

The Chinese claim that these three areas, located between the McMahon Line and the traditional customary boundary between China and India, have always been Chinese territory (See Figure 1).8 Historically, the Tibetan authorities did not have direct administrative control over the southern regions and borderlands beyond. Tibetan agents started appearing along the frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, engaging in mutual pillaging expeditions with non-Tibetan and non-Buddhist ethnic groups using tactics of threats, intimidation and violence. 

As an illustration: In the 1930s, Tibetan raiding parties from the outpost at Medog organized hundreds of ‘Memba’(immigrants from Eastern Bhutan) settlers armed to the teeth who travelled down the Siang River looting and enslaving ‘Lopa’ villagers along both the riverbanks (See Figure I). The roles were reversed down the Subansiri River (See Figure I), where Tibetans paid ‘protection money’ (usually goods of value and other valuables) to the ‘Lopa’ for safe passages for pilgrimage to the most sacred Buddhist sites through the territories of the ‘Lopa’. The arrangement often broke down due to ‘nonpayment’ by the Tibetans resulting in retaliatory attacks by the ‘Lopa’ on Tibetan pilgrims.9

INDIA: IMPORTANCE OF LEADING INDIAN OCEAN NEIGHBOURS – ANALYSIS

By N Sathiya Moorthy,Observer Research Foundation

SEPTEMBER 14, 2014

The Rashtrapati Bhavan is the official residence of the president of India 

Upturned, as the Indian Ocean strategic community across the world tend to do in the context of an emerging India, the map of the nation and its southern Sri Lankan neighbour looks caricatured like the woman with a flowing hair wearing a crown at an angle. Sri Lanka is the crown, India the woman, and southern Tamil Nadu State a check on that woman’s beautiful face. Distant Maldivian archipelago, if one extended artistic imagination even further/farther, would look like strands of that long hair waving in the breeze of the Ocean, away from the head and the crown. But they are all still there.

Nowhere else did it make immediate resonance than during the proceedings of the recent three-day ‘Sri Lanka Defence Seminar-2014′, and two days of symposium, organised by the nation’s General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University (KDU) in August. The title and proceedings of Defence Seminar this year reflected a designed movement away from security concerns to development imperatives of the nation.

Nothing more reflected the clear shift in the priorities than the deliberate decision for Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa not to deliver the key-note address at the Defence Seminar. At the KDU symposium, Secretary Rajapaksa, a brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, was conspicuous by his absence. In the more-publicised Defence Seminar – and naturally, so – Treasury Secretary P B Jayasundara was the key-note speaker. Both Jayasundara and others, barring External Affairs Minister G L Peiris, spoke exclusively about growth and development, trade and investments. From among the Sri Lankan speakers, Prof Peiris dealt extensively with the UNHRC probe.

Neighbourhood equation

Picturesque as the imagery is, the ‘inverted map’ also speaks volumes for the geo-strategic reality that it evokes. In the 21st century context, it also speaks of and for a neighbourhood equation as never before in this part of the Indian Ocean. It is also the most visible and possibly volatile part, if one were to go by the prognosis and prescription of the western strategic community and the governments that feed them, and feed on them, in return.

In reality, it is the most peaceful part, particularly compared to the South-East Asian, West Asian and African parts of the Indian Ocean. There are no neighbourhood issues of the kind in the seas to the south of India. There are plenty of them in the other two. Piracy is also rampant off South-East Asia and Africa. There are no choke-points near the India-Sri Lanka-Maldives tri-junction as there are in the Malacca Strait or the Hormuz Strait.

ARMY ACCOMPLISHING WHAT J&K GOVT FAILED TO DO

Swapan Dasgupta in Usual Suspects

14 September 2014 

It is terribly bad form to “play politics” with human suffering, especially if they are a consequence of natural disasters. Yet, even before the waters have receded from human habitations in Jammu & Kashmir, a fierce battle that goes well beyond the normal blamegame played by political parties, appears to have started.

You just have to surf the news channels to get a sense of where it is all heading. The TV reportage is marked by a discernible political schism. There is complete unanimity over the fact that once again the Indian Army has come out with flying colours. Its attempts to get some elementary relief to the affected peoples and evacuate those who have been stranded away from their homes have been much appreciated. At the same time, there has been some understandable criticism of the inability of the State Government to back the Army’s efforts by managing temporary relief camps and khichri kitchens.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s argument that he was hamstrung by the collapse of the civil administration because the floods also disrupted life in Srinagar has some merit. However, the claim that State functionaries were too busy attending to their own families to venture out to the larger community cannot be used as a justification for the National Conference-Congress Government’s larger failure. What distinguishes Government functionaries from the rest is their larger social responsibility. Take that away and the whole basis of a modern state collapses.

Under British rule, the handling of both man-made and natural disasters left a lot to be desired. This was not necessarily because all colonial administrators were heartless, blood-sucking monsters. Many of them, in fact, were exemplary human beings blessed with notions of Christian charity and compassion for the poor. The problem was that the colonial State never really saw itself as a development agency. Its principal function was the maintenance of law and order, dispensing some elementary justice and collecting revenue. Consequently, its long arm never reached the deep interiors of India. The best such a state could do in the event of floods, famines and earthquakes was to set up a few camps, rush some officials from the Health department to prevent epidemics and leave the rest to charitable organisations (those were the days before NGOs constituted a separate industry).

India Should Leverage the Tectonic Shift in the Global Economic Order

Prof. R Vaidyanathan (Member, VIF Advisory Board)

Source Link

As per Angus Maddison’s pioneering OECD study, India and China had nearly 50 percent of the global GDP as late as the1820‘s.1 Hence, India and China are not emerging or rising powers. They are merely retrieving their original position or re-emerging markets. In 1990, the share of G-7 in world GDP [on PPP base] was 51 % and that of the emerging markets was 36 %. But in 2014 it is the reverse. [See Chart 1].

The crisis faced by the West is primarily due to forgetting a six letter word called ‘saving’ which is a result of forgetting another six letter word called ‘family’. The West has nationalized families over the last sixty years. Old age, ill health, single mother, child care everything is the responsibility of the State. When family is a ‘burden’ and children an ‘encumbrance’, society can be said to be in a state that should cause concern. Actually, for long household savings has been negative in the USA

Table -- 1 Overall Debt and Components as % of GDP

Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook-2012

We find from Table -- 1 that the Debt to GDP ratio is above 300% in many developed countries. Importantly, the Household Debt to GDP ratio is significantly high in many G-7 countries like US, UK, Canada etc. and comparatively low in countries like China and India. Saving is still not forgotten in these countries. Also, the credit card culture could be a major reason for such high levels of indebtedness in the developed countries.

Why PM Modi will miss Digital India target without 100% broadband

By Telecom Lead

September 13, 2014

Source Link

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been talking about his vision to build a new country through Digital India initiative.

However, PM Modi will miss Digital India targets if there’re no significant changes in the present mindset of telecom ministry and the decision makers. This is because the foundation of Digital India will be 100 percent broadband and telecom access to Indians.

India has missed its broadband targets in several occasions earlier and will continue to miss the new targets because of less participation from private players and lack of efficiency of government companies. Indian telecom ministry does not even know how to encourage private players to invest in rural and urban broadband.

There are several examples.

The BWA (broadband wireless access) targets – 4G or LTE now – given to Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio Infocomm – to achieve roll outs in five years is an example. Poor 3G connectivity — even in metro circles in Mumbai and Delhi — is yet another example.

This correspondent who lives in Patparganj, just 9 km from Connaught Place, New Delhi, does not even get enough 3G connectivity. My home town in Wadakanchery panchayat, Trichur, Kerala, where you can see 2 cinema theatres, 5 hospitals, several auditoriums, bar-cum-restaurants, football ground, two well known schools, etc. does not give you seamless broadband. In nearby places, broadband is still a dream. I cannot even offer jobs in my digital media start-up to my friends there due to lack of broadband connectivity.

As per BWA guideline set by the Congress led UPA Government and several DoT and TRAI officials, Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Jio Infocomm can launch 4G services in the fifth year of bagging the wireless broadband license. This means, even after receiving spectrum, the company can wait for years to understand and learn the eco-system.

On the other hand, the government did not offer spectrum to Sunil Mittal-promoted Bharti Airtel for its spectrum refarming programs in Delhi and Kolkatta. Airtel wants compensation from the telecom ministry. It indicates lack of focus of the new government.

Modi’s Digital India

The government feels that Digital India can be achieved through a combination of projects in India — telecom and broadband connectivity, mobile banking, e-governance, active participation of Indians, etc.

The main problem is connected to the decision makers who are going to implement this. The success will depend on the execution ability of government employees and the acceptance of both rural and urban Indians. This has to be delivered through a number of government employees.

Afghan Taliban Fighters Infiltrating Back Into Their Birthplace - the City of Kandahar

Taliban sneak back into Kandahar, dressed as grape farmers

May Jeong

The Guardian, September 14, 2014

Afghan troops march through Ma’sum Ghar camp in Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan. Photograph: Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters/Corb

The men were dressed as migrant workers. Over the course of two or three days, as many as 600 of them made their way through the checkpoints dotted around the southern Afghanistan province of Kandahar. Many of them hauled trolleys carrying crates of freshly picked grapes as they headed towards the outlying district of Zheri, some 24 miles (38km) west of Kandahar city.

Some of the men shared idle banter with the police officers, speaking laconically of this year’s grape harvest in neighbouring districts. The police officers let them pass; if they had looked more carefully they may have spotted the guns and ammunition hidden under the shipments of grapes.

"That is how the Taliban came to us,” explained the local police commander of Zheri district, Daad Gul, his voice weary.

Most of the news from Afghanistan in recent months has focused on the struggle for power in Kabul in the aftermath of a hotly disputed presidential election, but in Kandahar the struggle is one for survival. A dozen interviews in the restive southern region have revealed a growing resentment at the political deadlock and a sharp worsening of the security and economic situation on the frontlines of the civil war.

Battles against the Taliban in recent weeks have been more intense than previously reported, local elders and security officials said: according to one estimate around 400 people died when Taliban infiltrators fought Afghan troops in Zheri for a dozen days in August.

"The bodies were everywhere," said an elder from the area who asked not to be named. "In streams, orchards, people’s gardens, my own garden, on the side of the road, in front of the mosque." The smell of rotting flesh, he said, had hung in the air for several days after the fighting stopped. On some days, he could still feel it on the tip of his nose, he said. A US soldier stands at a police checkpoint near Kandahar airfield. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

The villagers collected the bodies and buried them beneath the grape vines, slow and gruelling work that took them four days to complete. “There was fighting for nearly two weeks,” said Haji Salwar Khan, an elder from the district. “But the people are not upset at the Taliban. It is their job to attack. The people are upset at the politicians. They are the only ones not doing their jobs.”

Neither of the two candidates in the 14 June election runoff, former finance minister Ashraf Ghani and former foreign minster Abdullah Abdullah, has admitted defeat.

Instead, Abdullah has boycotted the UN-sponsored audit, and Ghani remains obstinately against compromise of any kind. International donors have threatened to pull funding should the current gridlock continue, to no avail.

Russia Is Seriously Concerned About Threat Posed by Islamic State

By: Mairbek Vatchagaev

September 11, 2014 05:14 PM Age: 3 days

North Caucasus IS fighters threatening Russian government (Source: YouTube screen grab)

Russian observers reacted quite strongly to an Internet video released by the Islamic State, the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that is operating in Iraq and Syria as well as Lebanese border areas, in which militants are threatening to launch a war in the Caucasus. The video was first reported by the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Al-Arabia TV channel (alarabiya.net, September 2).

The video, which lasts only 1 minute and 42 seconds, displays a group of militants inside an airplane hangar at the Tabaka military airport in Syria’s Raqqa province, which was captured by insurgents, with several of them climbing on an old, long-ago decommissioned Soviet MiG-21 jet. The video starts with threats against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with a militant promising to fly to him in his own jets. At one minute, three seconds into the video, a militant sitting in a car next to the jet, apparently responding to the North Caucasian cameraman’s request, starts addressing Vladimir Putin personally, in Arabic, threatening that the jets the Russian leader sent to help President al-Assad will fly back to Russia to liberate Chechnya and the entire Caucasus. Another militant, sitting in the cockpit of the MiG, declares that the insurgents plan to liberate Chechnya and the Caucasus “by the grace of Allah.” The video is accompanied by a Russian translation (YouTube, September 2; unian.net, September 3).

One would think that a statement by a random Arab militant would not concern Russian analysts, especially given that such statements have been made previously (fondsk.ru, March 23, 2013). However, people in Russia took the statement much more seriously than it deserved at first sight. The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, reacted first. Drawing the attention of others to the video, the Chechen leader stated on his personal Instagram webpage: “Terrorists from Syria who call themselves ‘the Islamic State’ have made a childish threat to start a war in Chechnya and the Caucasus.” Kadyrov, of course, felt obliged to show that an ordinary militant could not have made a statement like that on his own, but only on the orders of the United States. “The militants in Syria and Iraq by themselves are nothing to be worried about,” he wrote. “They are bandits who are trained and armed by the U.S.A. and by the West to destroy strong and resource-rich Islamic countries.” Kadyrov also felt it necessary to mention Putin’s name in one way or another. “I declare with all responsibility that whoever had the idea of threatening Russia and uttering the name of the president of our country, Vladimir Putin, will be eliminated right where he made that statement” (instagram.com, September 3).

Kadyrov achieved several goals with this posting. First, he dismissed the idea that the Syrian militants are capable of carrying out attacks. Second, he demonstrated his patriotism against the backdrop of Western and American sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, by accusing the US of supporting the Islamists. Third, he emphasized once again his personal allegiance to the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.

Russia and China Set to Clash Over Kyrgyzstan’s Energy

By: Georgiy Voloshin

September 11, 2014 

On the eve of a new round of anti-Russian sanctions unveiled by the European Union on September 9, Gazprom’s CEO, Alexei Miller, kicked off a two-day visit to Kyrgyzstan. The head of the Russian natural gas giant and Vladimir Putin’s close advisor had previously visited the country twice in August and April 2014, but Gazprom’s representatives are known to have been actively lobbying for the company’s local interests since last December (RIA Novosti, September 9; kginform.com, September 8).

In mid-April, Gazprom officially become the single owner of Kyrgyzstan’s national gas operator, KyrgyzGas. Although the amount paid for the takeover was purely symbolic—$1—Moscow has since publicly committed itself to repaying KyrgyzGas’s debt to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, both of which remain the major suppliers of natural gas to their small Central Asian neighbor. One of Gazprom’s initial and most important promises has been to modernize the Kyrgyz Republic’s gas infrastructure by investing more than $540 million into its complete overhaul. Despite the mounting pressure on the Russian economy, whose growth prospects are close to zero this year, the gas firm has repeatedly said that it intends to go forward with its financial obligations toward Kyrgyzstan (rbc.ru, April 10).

Miller’s latest visit to Bishkek actually sheds some new light on Russia’s strategy for Kyrgyzstan’s troubled energy sector. Given recurrent gas shortages throughout the country, especially in the south, Kyrgyzstani President Almazbek Atambayev earlier asked Moscow for assistance in the construction of a north-south pipeline. While this project has already been discussed at length for some time now, Russia’s interest in its implementation does not have a long history. It is clear that as Bishkek is readying itself to join the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, which is expected to become the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) as of next January, Kyrgyzstan’s strategic significance for Moscow will only grow. This obviously makes the Kremlin more receptive to Bishkek’s economic needs (tks.ru, September 4).

According to Alexei Miller, Gazprom has identified six different routes for the future north-south pipeline that is planned to run from Issyk-Kul province to the region of Osh. The length of the pipeline may reach 600 kilometers and its full throughput capacity would be approximately 240 million cubic meters per annum. Meanwhile, the cost of construction may well exceed $1.2 billion—more than twice the amount of Russia’s total investments into the Kyrgyzstani gas industry within the next five years. “Kyrgyzstan’s population has access to natural gas only in 25 percent of the entire territory so that the development of local distribution networks is and will be a top priority for us in the near future,” said Miller (Fergananews.com, September 9; Gazprom.ru, September 8).

Kremlin Said to Be Developing Plan for Partitioning Georgia

By: Paul Goble

September 2, 2014

Border between Abkhazia and rest of Georgia 

Since the start of this year, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea and pushed for Ukraine’s “federalization.” The severe international concern caused by these actions was further compounded last month (August 2014) by Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s statement in Yalta that after Moscow subdues Ukraine, it will move against other post-Soviet countries in order to rebuild the Russian Empire (see EDM, August 14). Not surprisingly, many countries in the region have thus been forced to consider where the Kremlin might move next and what means it might employ against them—from demands for “federalization” to open aggression.

The proportion of the titular nationality is now greater in all the post-Soviet republics than it was in 1991 (except for the Russian Federation). Yet, none of these countries (even those that are more ethnically homogeneous than at any time in their history, such as Azerbaijan and Armenia) is free from the Soviet inheritance of the presence of significant ethnic minorities or separate regional groups. Moscow has a long history of playing with or supporting such minority communities as a means of reining in the governments of these countries (for a useful recent survey of this problem, see alternatives-economiques.fr, September 1).

Sometimes, these minorities are ethnic Russians, as in Ukraine and Kazakhstan; at other times, they are regional groups as in Tajikistan (see EDM, June 13) and Belarus; and at still others, there is a combination of the two as in Uzbekistan in the case of Karakalpakstan (see EDM, August 12) or Latvia in the case of Latgale. But there is no country on Russia’s periphery that is more ethnically and regionally complex than Georgia—indeed, it has been described in this regard as “the Soviet Union writ small” and was already subject to a Russian invasion and Moscow-sponsored ethnic engineering regarding Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Consequently, it is not surprising that Moscow is focusing on it and is said to be developing a new plan for that country’s dismemberment and absorption into a new Russian Empire.

Last week, while commenting on the recent presidential elections in Abkhazia, Giyai Gvazava, the Georgian official who, from Tbilisi’s point of view is de jure the head of that breakaway Georgian region, said that the Kremlin is developing “a major plan for the division of Georgia.” According to Gvazava, Moscow aims to break Georgia apart into two states: an expanded Abkhazia in the west that would include the Samegrelo district, and a separate entity that would include the remaining Georgian territories in the east (apsny.ge, August 25).

He added that “the Russian special services are [already] doing everything they can to spark separatism in Samegrelo.” To that end, Gvazava suggested, the Abkhazians and their allies “will not be very crude” in their relations with the residents of the Gal district, although human rights there, of course, will continue to be violated.” Moreover, he continued, the pro-Moscow forces will do what they can to prompt the Georgian residents of that area to leave, thus making it easier for separatists to achieve their goals.

Prepare for a dangerous Pakistan

ByDr Ramesh Tamiri

11 Sep , 2014

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/prepare-for-a-dangerous-pakistan/

Pakistan’s neurotic obsession to change the status quo in Kashmir, seek parity with India by resorting to cross-border terrorism to check its ascendency to a regional power and chase strategic depth in Afghanistan has pushed Pakistan in to a state of chronic instability. Far from hurting India its policies have put the very future of the state at stake. The jihadi assets it reared over the years as tools of for pursuing its strategic policies have turned against it and have been indulging in systematic assaults on the symbols of the army and the state. There are genuine fears that nuclear weapons may fall in to jihadi hands either through subterfuge or directly in connivance with a section of the Pakistan army. Pakistan faces isolation internationally and has come to be a identified as a dangerous place posing serious threats to regional and international peace.

For Pakistan army a military defeat is not a defeat but giving up and accepting the status quo and India’s supremacy is defeat. It sees victory in the ability to continue fighting India.

Why does Pakistan behave abnormally or to put it differently what is the basis of its flawed strategic culture? C.Christine Fair’s brilliantly researched book-‘Fighting to the end-The Pakistan Army’s way of war’(2014), breaks new ground in scholarship on Pakistan. It provides revealing insights in to Why Pakistan is hell bent upon pursuing such strategic policies which hurt it the most. She makes three formulations.

One, Pakistan army’s view on defeat is different from what normally it should be. For Pakistan army a military defeat is not a defeat but giving up and accepting the status quo and India’s supremacy is defeat. It sees victory in the ability to continue fighting India. A former Pakistani general is on record having said that army would always prefer to take a calculated risk and be defeated than to do nothing at all.

Secondly, Pakistan’s apprehensions about India are not security driven but mainly ideological and military in scope. This implies that any appeasement through territorial concessions will only serve to encourage it to pursue anti-Indian objectives with even greater hostility. Lastly, Fair draws Pakistan’s analogy with what Charles Glaser describes a ‘Greedy state’.

China’s Borderline Belligerence

by Brahma Chellaney

September 12, 2014 

http://chellaney.net/2014/09/12/chinas-borderline-belligerence/ 

 (Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author of Asian Juggernaut; Water: Asia’s New Battleground; and Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.)

A Project Syndicate column internationally syndicated.

In recent years, the People’s Liberation Army has been taking advantage of its rising political clout to provoke localized skirmishes and standoffs with India by breaching the two countries’ long and disputed Himalayan frontier. The PLA’s recent intensification of such border violations holds important implications for President Xi Jinping’s upcoming visit to India – and for the future of the bilateral relationship. In fact, such provocations have often preceded visits to India by Chinese leaders. Indeed, it was just before President Hu Jintao’s 2006 visit that China resurrected its claim to India’s large northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Likewise, prior to Premier Wen Jiabao’s trip to India in 2010, China began issuing visas on loose sheets of paper stapled into the passports of Kashmir residents applying to enter China – an indirect challenge to India’s sovereignty. Moreover, China abruptly shortened the length of its border with India by rescinding its recognition of the 1,597-kilometer (992-mile) line separating Indian Kashmir from Chinese-held Kashmir. And Premier Li Keqiang’s visit last May followed a deep PLA incursion into India’s Ladakh region, seemingly intended to convey China’s anger over India’s belated efforts to fortify its border defenses.

Now, China is at it again, including near the convergence point of China, India, and Pakistan – the same place last year’s PLA encroachment triggered a three-week military standoff. This pattern suggests that the central objective of Chinese leaders’ visits to India is not to advance cooperation on a shared agenda, but to reinforce China’s own interests, beginning with its territorial claims. Even China’s highly lucrative and fast-growing trade with India has not curbed its rising territorial assertiveness.

By contrast, Indian prime ministers since Jawaharlal Nehru have traveled to China to express goodwill and deliver strategic gifts. Unsurprisingly, India has often ended up losing out in bilateral deals.

Particularly egregious was Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 2003 surrender of India’s Tibet card. Vajpayee went so far as to use, for the first time, the legal term “recognize” to accept what China calls the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) as “part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China.” That opened the way for China to claim Arunachal Pradesh (three times the size of Taiwan) as “South Tibet” and reinforced China’s view of territorial issues: Whatever area it occupies is Chinese territory, and whatever territorial claims it makes must be settled on the basis of “mutual accommodation and understanding.”

Vajpayee’s blunder compounded Nehru’s 1954 mistake in implicitly accepting, in the Panchsheel Treaty, China’s annexation of Tibet, without securing (or even seeking) recognition of the then-existing Indo-Tibetan border. In fact, under the treaty, India forfeited all of the extraterritorial rights and privileges in Tibet that it had inherited from imperial Britain.

Silk route to Beijing

C Raja Mohan

September 15, 2014

Putting in place a strategy to modernise India’s internal connectivity and strengthen its maritime infrastructure is critical for any effective Indian response to China’s silk road initiative.

China’s decision to postpone President Xi Jinping’s visit to Pakistan has got much attention in New Delhi. But this in no way marks a major change in Beijing’s policy towards Islamabad. President Xi is likely to travel to Islamabad sooner rather than later and reaffirm the depth of Beijing’s commitment to Islamabad. Delhi, however, is in danger of missing the significance of a more important change in Xi’s itinerary for the subcontinent. Instead of Pakistan, Xi has gone to the Maldives and also keeps his original date with Sri Lanka.

Thanks to its preoccupation with the defence of the contested northern frontiers with Pakistan and China, Delhi does not pay adequate attention to the emerging maritime dynamic to the south of the subcontinent. China’s interest in the island states of the Indian Ocean is relatively new and could turn out to be rather consequential.

As China’s economic interests in the Indian Ocean expanded rapidly in recent decades, Beijing’s naval interest and profile in the littoral also grew steadily. Sceptics say China’s naval priority is the western Pacific, where it is locked in intensifying territorial disputes with its Asian neighbours. They note Beijing’s determination to contest America’s longstanding naval primacy on its eastern sea board.

Others insist that Beijing is pursuing a two-ocean strategy rather than limiting itself to the western Pacific. Since the end of 2008, the Chinese navy has deployed its naval units on a continuous basis for anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. This has provided the Chinese navy with valuable experience in conducting “far sea operations”.

Beijing sees the sea lines of communication (SLOCs), which move massive amounts of energy and mineral resources from the Middle East and Africa to China through the Indian Ocean, as vital lifelines. Securing these SLOCs has emerged as a major justification for China’s growing naval activity in the Indian Ocean.

Over the last decade, Beijing has also focused on building maritime infrastructure in the Indian Ocean. Its investment in the development of new ports at Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, and Kyaukphyu in Myanmar, has generated much concern in India about China’s long-term intentions in the Indian Ocean.

Wahhabism in South Asia

ByMaj Gen Afsir Karim

13 Sep , 2014

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/wahhabism-in-south-asia/

A few decades ago, a few Muslims followed this brand ofIslam in South Asia, but after the advent of al-Qaeda, Wahhabism spread and Militant Islamist groups spread the theology of Wahhabism, which justified severe punishments, such as beheading and stoning to death of people who did not strictly follow the Sharia. The Wahhabis operating in South Asia advocate ban on music, a prominent attribute of the subcontinent’s Sufi Islam. They want all Muslims to observe prayer rituals introduced by them.

Saudi Arabia pumps millions of petrodollars into the madrasas and mosques of the subcontinent to propagate the Wahhabi theology; this helps the Taliban in Afghanistan and the separatist movement of Kashmir financially directly and indirectly. The growing conflict between the Shia and Sunni sects across the world is a direct result of the increasing influence of Wahhabism.1

The JEI, the main Islamic political party in Bangladesh, aims to convert Bangladesh into an Islamic state. It is not only against democracy but also against all modern thought and culture…

The signatures of fundamentalist Islam are clearly visible in many parts of Bangladesh, despite the crackdown on fundamentalist groups by the Awami League government. Violence has been increasing against women and the secular sections of the society in the name of religion. Several bomb attacks have taken many innocent lives, revealing plans to create violence and disorder in the society.

The JEI, the main Islamic political party in Bangladesh, aims to convert Bangladesh into an Islamic state. It is not only against democracy but also against all modern thought and culture, and it advocates violence against those who oppose radical Islamic laws. The JEI operates with the help of a vast network of madrasas in Bangladesh, which provide it recruits from backward and poor segments of the population.

The Jama’at ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), another major Islamist group that shares the ideology of the JEI, is largely responsible for spreading violence and the fundamentalist ideology in Bangladesh. The JMB is reported to have strong influence amongst the teachers and students of some 25,000 madrasas. The militants and activists from this group, along with the JEI, have been cooperating with al-Qaeda in the past.

The Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS), the student wing of the Jamaat-e- Islami Bangladesh, is one of the largest Islamist student organisations in South Asia. It is a highly active extremist group that maintains a close liaison with fundamentalist groups operating in several Islamic countries; it is an active member of the International Islamic Federation of Student Organisation (IIFSO) and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY).

Religious fundamentalism is being sponsored by powerful Islamic institutions both within and outside the country…

Do the Scots really want to stop running Britain?

By William Dalrymple

13 Sep 2014

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In an impassioned plea, William Dalrymple, whose forebear signed the Act of Union in 1707, argues that staying in Britain makes his country richer

When I was growing up on the coast of East Lothian, my father always used to point to a venerable clump of gnarled and weather-beaten old beech trees which ran almost vertically up the slope of North Berwick Law.

You could see the magnificent old trees for miles around – from Arthur’s Seat, above Holyrood and what is now the Scottish Parliament, and on clear days from further afield still, from the peaks of the Pentlands, and the heather slopes of the Lammermuirs. The trees had weathered some 300 winters, and many of them showed battle scars from the autumn gales that would rush up the steep incline of the Heugh from the Firth of Forth, and do their best to blow them down. The beech trees are still there, though their numbers have been dwindling. When I last counted them, towards the end of August, there were only five left; many, many fewer than there were in my childhood.

There is something sadly appropriate about that, for the reason my father would point out the trees was that they were planted by his (eight times) great-grandfather, Sir Hew Dalrymple, to celebrate the Act of Union in 1707 – a treaty whose articles he had helped draft and push through the Scottish Parliament. The Union, I was told, was part of our family history: among the 30 commissioners who drew up the Act of Union there were no less than three Dalrymples, one of whom was my direct forbear.

Hew Dalrymple was a wily lawyer who rose through his own wits and canny pragmatism to run the Scottish legal establishment as lord president. He was a passionate Scottish patriot but, characteristically, he fought for the Union for entirely pragmatic reasons. He realised Scotland was a small, poor nation surrounded by much bigger, richer and more powerful ones. On its own it was likely to be bullied and used as a pawn in the interests of other powers – notably the on-going struggle between England and France. Its own political, economic and military limitations had just been made painfully clear by its catastrophic attempts to keep up with the English by planting a colony at Darien in modern Panama, where almost every would-be colonist had perished or been taken prisoner by the Spanish – as big a catastrophe for Scots investors then as the collapse of RBS in our own time.

Hew believed that on its own Scotland would have little influence on the councils that then governed the world; but attached to the rest of Britain, he believed passionately that it would benefit from a place at the top table, gain employment for its people and free it from conflict and competition with its powerful southern neighbour.

Islamic State not invincible: Need to take Russia, China on board

Sandhya Jain

September 15, 2014

As Dawlat al-Islamiyah f’al-Iraq w Belaad al-Sham (Daesh or Islamic State) beheaded British aid worker David Haines [Sept 14] and threatened to kill another British hostage, the West realises it cannot defer confronting this menace. Amidst its countless victims, the Daesh has beheaded two American and one Syrian journalist in just the past month. Euphoric over easy victories in large swathes of Iraq and Syria (it now controls 11 oil wells), it has threatened some Western capitals, the latest being Portugal, being part of the Iberian Peninsula covering Spain (Andalus). Yet, some complex political issues could stymie an effective Western response led by the United States.

First is Muslim hostility. Islamic scholar Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, chairman, International Union of Muslim Scholars, has opposed the coalition of 40-odd nations cobbled together by the US. In a comment in Arabic on his Twitter account, he said, “I have completely different ideas and methods from IS. On the other hand, I do not accept the United States action to fight against them because the US follows its own interests, not Islamic values”.

Equally pertinent is the composition of the US coalition - while Washington is keen to include Beijing, it ignores Moscow, Iran, and the Syrian government of Bashir al-Assad. In the circumstances, it is difficult to envisage success. Within the West, there is growing support for a political settlement that ends the West-backed Syrian civil war and accepts President Assad provided he accommodates Sunnis in his government.

It bears mention that Sunnis fear the new (Sunni) Islamic caliphate on account of its extreme interpretation of Islamic law; they have suffered many beheadings and atrocities at its hands. They are wary of US intervention because US action against Saddam Hussein ended Sunni dominance of Iraq and plunged the country into severe sectarian strife which enhanced the influence of Shiite Iran. In Lebanon, the Iran-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah became dominant after Sunni leader Rafik Hariri was assassinated in 2005. And in Egypt and Syria, Sunni Islamists were disillusioned when the revolts against the regimes failed.

Armed Clashes Intensify Over the Weekend Between Ukrainian and Rebel Forces in the Eastern Ukrainian; Russian Drones Flying Over Ukrainian Stronghold of Mariupol

Heavy fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels over the weekend

Anthony Faiola and Daniela Deane

Washington Post, September 15, 2014

Pro-Russian rebels ride on an armored personnel carrier during a parade in Luhanks, eastern Ukraine, on Sept. 14, 2014. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)

KIEV, Ukraine — Heavy fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists

was reported over the weekend, with the Ukrainians claiming hundreds of cease-fire violations, including an assault by more than 200 rebels near Donetsk airport.

The situation in eastern Ukraine remains tense,” the Ukraine Crisis Center reported in Kiev. “Terrorists continue to provoke military action.”

They said rebels had broken the shaky cease-fire 249 times and had shelled Ukrainian military positions 49 times. It said two drones were spotted over the weekend, one traveling towards the strategic port city of Mariupol, where heavy fighting had recently been reported.

The United States is concerned about renewed fighting in eastern Ukraine since the cease-fire went into effect Sept. 5 and has no details about the content of a Russian convoy that entered and left Ukraine over the weekend, a State Department official said.

The recent heavy fighting has claimed several civilian casualties, according to spokesmen from the break-away Donetsk People’s Republic, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported Monday. Almost 3,000 people have died in the brutal five-month-old conflict.

Russia still has about 25,000 troops along its long border with Ukraine, and more than 3,000 soldiers inside the country, according to the Ukrainian government. Russia denies sending troops.

The U.S. and other NATO countries are starting military exercises in Ukraine today. Ukraine has recently sought to join the NATO alliance, a move Russia has condemned.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is due to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a conference on Iraq taking place in Paris Monday. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied supporting the rebels in eastern Ukraine, something the West insists is fomenting the crisis.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, are discussing deploying more monitoring specialists to Ukraine to observe the fragile cease-fire, the Crisis Center reported.

The OSCE said a monitoring team was on patrol in an area of Donetsk Sunday when mortar shells exploded close to the team, which was then forced to immediately leave the area.

The Ukrainian prime minister accused Russia Saturday of planning to destroy his country and said that only NATO membership would enable Ukraine to defend itself from this external aggression.

The U.S. and the E.U. have imposed heavy sanctions on Russia, including fresh ones last week, because of its involvement in the confict. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told members of the country’s ruling party Monday that Russia is being tested by the sanctions, but that it must respond calmly.

“When a series of our partners, if they can be called that, test Russia’s strength through sanctions and all kinds of threats, it is important not to succumb to the temptation of so-called easy solutions and to preserve and continue the development of democratic processes in our society, our state,” Medvedev said in a televised speech.

Russia quickly annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea at the beginning of the conflict.

Strategist: Defeating ISIL Requires ‘Effects Based’ Bombing Campaign

by KRIS OSBORN 

SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

Source Link

A key architect of the air bombardment strategy in the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom said the U.S. military must have significant success with its efforts to destroy the Islamic State from the air.

On Wednesday night, President Obama’s announced that the U.S. will lead a coalition to step up targeted airstrikes against ISIL. As the mission shifts from humanitarian support and protecting U.S. personnel to more aggressive strikes aimed at a much wider set of targets, some analysts have questioned if the U.S. will need ground combat troops or if air power will suffice.

The U.S. has utilized air bombing strategies to support friendly forces, such as the Iraqi Security Forces, hoping to advance on the ground.

Attacking ISIL is not similar to dismantling a country’s military such as the initial bombing campaigns in the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom. It’s more similar to the airstrikes the U.S. and allied forces have executed against insurgent and Taliban leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade.

A dispersed group of fighters deliberately blending in with the civilian population and travelling in small groups in vehicles like pick-up trucks and armored vehicles has proven difficult or high-risk to pinpoint from the air with even the best precision-guided weaponry.

Even so, one of the authors of the air-power strategy called “effects-based” warfare, said using some of those same concepts may still apply when attacking a mobile insurgent terrorist group such as ISIL.

Retired Air Force Col. John Warden, known for his strategic involvement in creating and implementing effects based warfare, helped the George H.W. Bush administration prepare for the use of precision air-power in the Gulf War.

The Scary Amount of Oil Money ISIS Makes Every Day

Kelsey Harkness 

September 11, 2014 

Source Link

President Obama, laying out his strategy last night to defeat the Islamist jihadists known as ISIS, stressed that “it will take time to eradicate a cancer” such as the terrorist group represents in the Middle East. 

One hurdle in the way of Obama’s intention to work with allies to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS (also known as ISIL and the Islamic State) is the brutal organization’s control of oil fields in Iraq and Syria. 

ISIS uses that oil wealth to help finance its terror operations. 

According to the Iraq Energy Institute, an independent, nonprofit policy organization focused on Iraq’s energy sector, the army of radical Islamists controls production of 30,000 barrels of oil a day in Iraq and 50,000 barrels in Syria. 

By selling the oil on the black market at a discounted price of $40 per barrel (compared to about $93 per barrel in the free market), ISIS takes in $3.2 million a day. 

Eric Bolling, a co-host of “The Five” on Fox News, cited these numbers on Tuesday’s show to explain “why we can’t wait” to counter ISIS. 

The Daily Signal independently confirmed Bolling’s statistics with the Iraq Energy Institute. 

James Phillips, veteran expert in Middle Eastern affairs at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal that the revenue gives ISIS a “solid economic base that sustains its continued expansion.” 

The oil revenue, which amounts to nearly $100 million each month, allows ISIS to fund its military and terrorist attacks — and to attract more recruits from around the world, including America. 

To be successful in counterterrorism efforts, Phillips said, the U.S. and its allies must “push the Islamic State out of the oil fields it has captured and disrupt its ability to smuggle the oil to foreign markets.” 

Here’s how Phillips said the ISIS oil operation works: 

ISIS sells oil to consumers in territory it controls, roughly the size of Maryland, inside Syria and Iraq. The terrorist group also sells oil to a network of smugglers that developed in the 1990s during Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s rule; that network smuggled oil out of Iraq into Turkey to avoid sanctions imposed by the United Nations. 

ISIS also reportedly sells oil, through middlemen, to the Assad regime in Syria that is trying to quell rebellion there. When it comes to making a fast buck, the Middle East has no shortage of “strange bedfellows” willing to do business with each other. 

In his speech last night, Obama promised to “redouble” efforts to cut off the Islamic State’s funding. 

If the U.S. and its allies are to succeed on that front, Phillips said, they should focus “intently on cutting the oil revenues that make up a large portion of that funding.”