Geopolitical Analysis

(See M.K. Kaul’s answer on Maharaj K. Kaul’s Blog, and see Heidi’s comment ‘Democracy and slow progress‘ on the Humanitarian Texts).

By K.N. Pandita

The hornlock on Indo-Us nuclear deal does not portend well for the coalition government. As things unfold, the real problem is not in what the US wants India to do or not to do in regard to her nuclear capability: the real trouble lies in both sides trying to understate their motivation; one pushing the deal and the other obstructing it. What are kept under wraps are political undercurrents of the entire issue.

The comrades, no less than their opponents, are aware of immense potential lying in the deal’s womb capable of transforming India’s economy and quality of life drastically once things start moving. Raising the quality of life also means gradual erosion of their constituency. This weighs heavy on their mind.

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By K.N. Pandita

Observers anticipate United States’ move to wriggle out of Afghan imbroglio. Face saving is the pre-requisite. The latest is that of goading two concerned states, Afghanistan and Pakistan, into organizing a joint peace assembly (jirga) of the Pushtun leaders on both sides of the Durand Line. It is they who are crucial to what ultimately unfolds in the volatile region where Taliban and Al-Qaeda warriors remain entrenched.

The deliberations of the jirga in Kabul last week, largely understated by the media, have much significance for us in Kashmir.

Relations between Pakistan and Karzai government are not cordial. They trade accusations and counter-accusations: US is skeptical of Pakistan’s intentions ever since Islamabad lost the crucial lever in Afghan crisis following American attack on Afghanistan and dismemberment of Taliban regime.

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By K.N. Pandita

A 35-minute telephonic talk between President Bush and General Musharraf last week triggered a lovely controversy in the print media. It appears that each side wanted to convey something more than what was talked on the line. The purpose was served by the media as usual. Did Bush really want to reassure Musharraf that the provocative utterances of the running presidential candidate Obama could at best be his personal views and not the state policy of the US?

The world knows that in the US a running presidential candidate has to deal with all the questions and situations that the US will be required to deal with if he is voted to the White House. What a running presidential candidate says in his public speeches reflects the basics of his political party’s manifesto. Obviously, if he emerges victorious at the hustling, he shall have to implement the policy, domestic as well as foreign, as enunciated by him during his election campaign. Nobody will agree with President Bush that what Obama said about Pakistan could at best be his personal observations. Obama is as much serving national interests of his country as does George Bush.

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K.N. Pandita

Nearly sixty years after the apostle of peace departed from the stage, Gandhi has found favour with the UN, which will, henceforth, observe October 2, his birthday, as International Day of Non-Violence. Rightfully, the Indian nation will feel proud for clinching this unique recognition by world community.

With this honour coming to the country, it is all the more important that India becomes a pro-active member of world peace movement and makes substantial contribution befitting the status world body will be giving to the Father of the Nation. Of course, the UN requires to be sensitised to the truth that by keeping the second largest populated country in the world out of the Security Council structure means depriving the world of a mighty force capable of throwing in its weight in favour of world peace. We hope this realization will dawn upon the UN sooner than later.

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By K.N. Pandita

In Pakistan some religious activists have staged demonstrations to express their resentment against the British government conferring knighthood on Salman Rushdie.

Rushdie’s Satanic Verses was published simultaneously with the occurrence of Islamic revolution of Iran. Late Ayatollah Khumeini had projected himself as the champion of Islamic World and claimed that now was the historic time of Islam’s ascendancy. Having smashed Iran’s monarchy, he now tried to find justification for his act in declaring that monarchy was not the tradition of Islam and as such questioned the status of the Saudi monarchy. The unfortunate episode of Saudi security forces firing in Ka’aba during the pilgrimage in 1979-80 on Iranian pilgrims and killing nearly five hundred of them has been described a sequel to the anti-monarchy campaign of Khumeini.

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K.N. Pandita,

Cold war era ended in 1991. Close on its heels emerged a new phase of rivalry among big powers, which historians and political punditry deviously call New Great Game. In reality it is a long and ruthless rivalry between the US and the Russian Federation for controlling the new and vast hydrocarbon sources in Central Asia and the Caspian region. Did the collapse of the Soviet Union leave the lone super power really free to dictate terms of future course of world history? By a strange quirk of destiny, the nascent independent states of former Soviet Central Asia have assumed much more importance in the new scheme of things than what they enjoyed during the Soviet era.

As early as 1998, Clinton administration eyed Central Asian energy resources to offset over-sized dependence of the US and her western allies on energy supplies from the Gulf States. Big American oil cartel like Unocal rued the transportation of Turkmen (Daulatabad) gas across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Persian Gulf and invested quite a bit in surveying the pipeline route. They even initiated secret negotiations with the Taliban whom Washington had begun to befriend.

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K.N. Pandita

The much publicized IPI gas pipeline project is seen by the US as a strategy of nibbling at its uncontested oil and gas monopoly of the Gulf region. Moreover the US and her western allies are in no mood to give Iran a free hand in regional strategy.

For more than two centuries, western commentators have been hinting at Moscow’s lurking desire of finding a corridor to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Some go to the length of attributing 1979 Soviet incursion into Afghanistan essentially to that lurking desire.

Russia’s access to the warm waters in the contemporary situation when Afghanistan is bogged down with fundamentalist Taliban insurgency, Pakistan with deepening domestic crisis and Iran quite defiant on nuclear issue, seems next to impossible.

But alternatives have to be found and worked out. The contours of the “New Great Game” are indicating a re-thinking on the part of Russia, Iran and India to explore the possibility of a Southern Silk Route.

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By K.N. Pandita

We may be tempted to make a short but pointed comparative study of the rise and handling of armed Islamist insurgency in two contiguous regions of Karakorum, namely Kashmir and Uighur dominated Xinjiang, the Eastern province of China. The ground situation in the two regions shows some similarity between the two but in many ways they are dissimilar. Both have predominant Sunni population and both have been nursing independence from respective dominant powers viz. China and India. In both the regions Islamists trusted combat tactics as the means of achieving their objective. Both the regions obviously look to the Muslim world for its response and reaction.

However, among the dissimilarities, we find that in Kashmir two sovereign states, India and Pakistan have been laying claim to Kashmir on geographical, historical, religious and political basis. In Kashmir the insurgents are mainly divided into two groups one opting for separation from India and accession to Pakistan and the other struggling for independence. Another marked difference is that while the people in Indian part of Kashmir have tasted democratic and egalitarian arrangement for last half a century, Uighurs have not had that luxury.

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By K.N. Pandita

With the turn of the century, India stumbled on the ambitious concept of “Look East” … a phrase variously interpreted and mostly ascribed to her eastward expansion of trade and business enterprises.

Unrelenting hostility of her immediate western neighbour, raging conflict in Afghanistan and escalating anti-American and anti-Arab acrimony of Iranian hardliner regime are among factors driving India to find new markets and land and sea roots to her east.

But “Looking East” being easier said than done, India had perforce, to reckon with far more pragmatic and workable international relations policy of the Asiatic giant straddling across other continents besides Asia, of course.

“Look East” policy has not yielded sizeable dividends, and at best she was obliged to play the second fiddle to China. In 2006 China’s quantum of trade with South East Asian countries was to the tune of 160 billion US dollars while that of India for the same year was less than $ 30 billion.

On board the Soviet bandwagon during cold war era and championing the unrewarding non-alignment movement, India, unwittingly abandoned her prospect of potent Asian power leaving the field open for China to make deep inroads into the politics and economies of South East Asian countries. For lethargy prone India, it is too late to run a competitive race.   Continue Reading…

The Great Oil Game: A New Phase

by K.N. Pandita

Pakistan will be investing about seven billion US dollars in next eight years to improve road and rail infrastructure and create a network that links China and the South Asian countries to the Gawadar port on Mekran coast by 2014.

The up coming oil mega-city on the shoreline of Baluchistan has two components viz. the petrochemical city and the biggest refinery with storage complexes and warehouses in the region.

When the project of developing Gawadar as a deep-sea port was undertaken in 2004, Beijing provided 80 per cent of 248 million US Dollars as the initial development cost of the port. Sino-Pak planners expect the port to initially generate revenue of 23.6 billion US dollars, with a capacity to reach 42.2 billion.

On February 8, 2007, Port of Singapore Authority (SPA) signed an agreement with Gawadar Port Authority (GPA) and the Concession Holding Company (CHC), a subsidiary of PSA. Close to the Strait of Hormuz, Gawadar deep-sea port is likely to be at the convergence of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.  Continue Reading…

The World and Energy Issue, by K.N. Pandita

A century ago in 1905, the British, for the first time, smelt oil in Southern Iran. That was a period of great rivalry between the two imperial powers, Great Britain and Czarist Russia, struggling for supremacy in Asia.

Sustained researches enabled the British entrepreneurs to explore, extract and exploit this precious mineral wealth in a way that within a short time, it began to control world economy and the destiny of mankind. Today, we are closely bound to the oil and gas that regulate the life of modern human society.

A short survey of oil as the source of energy gives rise to a curious question. Is it a boon or a curse for humanity? Has it made our lives more comfortable or more complicated? At the end of the day will it lead humanity to happiness or to misery and catastrophe? These questions are asked in many circles but the answer is too baffling.

As regards the benefits of this source of energy, there is hardly any doubt in anybody’s mind. The way it has transformed our life is a marvel of research and innovation. Nothing can compare it. Given the space, further researches could be more promising.

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Another step forward, by K.N. Pandita

Peace loving peopled heaved a sigh of relief with the cold war coming to an end. World War II had plunged humanity into a gloom when two super power controlled blocs often made confrontational moves.

The debate is not whether the communist system was good or bad. The fact is that it could not sustain itself and had to leave the stage. China, another giant communist country wisely adapted to the demands of the new era and gave a new turn to the entrenched ideology.

But geo-strategies unfolding in post-cold war era that began around 1990 or to be precise with the induction of Perestroika and Glasnost are not reassuring in any way. One is forced to think that cold war may be reappearing humanity but in different form viz. rise of terrorism, emergence of sub-regional identities, new geographical areas of competition and political rivalry, realignment of economic forces, trans-national corporations achieving new markets and new clientele.

World leadership will have to rise to meet these challenges. Europe has at least recast itself into a loose Union that would be a step forward in catching up with the changing socio-political and economic order. Today the EU is perhaps the most effective organization that has emerged out of enormous experience of western societies. Its impact on future shape of mankind will be immense.

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The Asian phenomenon, by K.N. Pandita

Active Islamic radicalism coupled with terror is now more than two decades old. It emerged as a forceful reaction to the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan in 1979. Ever since those fateful days it has changed its skin. It boomeranged on those who provided it logistics, obviously for political ends.

Victimized nations have condemned it as brutality against humanity. Islamists have called it a legitimate struggle for freedom from oppression and loot of their natural resources and re-establishment of Islamic identity. Both hold on tenaciously to their respective stances. In the process, violence consumes innocent and precious lives.

Muslims have a grudge against the Europeans. They feel that the Europeans supported Israel grab their land in the Middle East. They also say the US and its western allies have been controlling their hydrocarbon reserves and oil transportation routes to their detriment.

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by K.N. Pandita

Now-a-days much is said about the new world order. Everybody has his or her own perception of the new order. It means there is no one final definition of the term.

The term became common after the end of the cold war in 1991. Politicians and professors of political science began using it extensively in their speeches and writings. Surely, each of them had his or her individual perception.

Let us focus on it. Did the new order appear after the implosion of the erstwhile Soviet Union, which supported and propagated a particular social and political system for nearly seventy years after the World War II? Was the new concept born out of incredible revolution in science and technology in the post World War II? Was the concept a cumulative lesson derived from the disastrous conflicts that appeared in the post World War II setting? Questions like these are part of the discussion we propose to open.

One would like to point towards a very important phenomenon while discussing the subject matter. We have seen the rise of demand for recognition of identities over the decades that followed the World War II. There are religious, ethnic, linguistic, cultural and other identities that have raised their head.

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By K.N. Pandita, New Delhi, 10/01/07

Conversion

Sir,

Apropos of ‘Obscured By Myth’ (ToI 10 Jan 07), geographical compartmentalization of Islamic socio-political construct including conversions is not the right way of understanding a process so emphatically recommended by the Qur’an and tradition. If caste system was the basis for Indian conversions, nothing of the sort existed in Iran, Central Asia, Egypt, Sudan, or Mesopotamia etc. overrun by Arabs and converted to Islam. Furthermore, it is not a good logic to juxtapose Brahmanism to Islam while discussing Islamic conversion. A faith concentrating on individual for moral and ethical advancement is different from a faith with ordained mission of expansion. The fault of not reaching the precise sources of Islamic conversions lies in the inability of the writers, like the one in question, to be familiar with the historical accounts of the Muslim scholars recorded in their own language, Arabic or Farsi. Two Farsi histories on the subject, namely Baharistan-i-Shahi (English translation 1991) and Tohfatu’’l-Ahbab (unpublished MS), both written by Muslim scholars around the middle or the beginning of the 16^th century, give us admirably vivid description of the philosophy and modus operandi of Islamic conversions in Kashmir.

By K.N. Pandita – Foreign Secretary level talks between India and Pakistan in New Delhi are just concluded. What actually transpires between the parties in such high level talks is seldom made public. However, clues come in trickles and the entire gamut comes under focus sooner or later.

The process of bilateral talks on a number of outstanding issues between the two neighbours has been going on for a long time. Given the nature of their strained relations for so many decades, nothing startling is to be expected from these talks.

While the talks are on or off, Pakistani side cannot step out of Kashmir obsession. It is now habitual for them to reiterate that no progress in talks is possible unless Kashmir issue is resolved. “Resolving” Kashmir issue is Pakistan’s other way of saying that India should handover Kashmir to her.

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By K.N. Pandita – “You will be brought down to your knees if Pakistan does not cooperate with you. Remember my words if Pakistan and ISI are not with you, you will lose in Afghanistan”, thundered General Pervez Musharraf in his September 30, 2006 interview with the BBC. Evidently, he had two-week (September 4 – 17) ‘Operation Mudesa’ in Panjwai district of Kandahar in mind in which NATO forces were reported to have killed 1100 Taliban. Many of the 160 captured were Pakistani nationals who made startling revelations about the support structure that sustains terror and insurgency in South Afghanistan.

A week after the General’s bluster, one NATO Commander said, “Our boys in Southern Afghanistan are hurting because of what is coming out of Quetta.” The Canadian Commander, who was in charge of ‘Operation Mudesa said, “It is time to tell Musharraf you are either with us or with our enemy”.

On October 10, a leaked document prepared by Defence Academy, a British think-tank linked to its Ministry of Defence, said that ISI indirectly backed terrorism by supporting religious parties in Pakistan.

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By K.N. Pandita

Will there be a realization in the ummah of what has befallen it with death sentence for Saddam given by a court whose judges are appointed not by the people of Iraq but by an external aggressor?

The ummah has once again lost the opportunity of wriggling out of the shackles of conservatism and stepping into the era of modernity and internationalism.

Saddam, when in power, was the symbol of a new Islam desirous of separating politics from religion. Prior to him, such efforts were either not made or made but faced with failure. History will record that he also failed but not because of his “wrongs”. Iraq has been conquered, devastated and may be even fragmented. The barbarous Hulagu had done her little less harm way back in mid-13th century.

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By K.N. Pandita – On November 6, 2006, Tajiks will vote for the presidential candidate. To some it is unbelievable that Tajikistan, the only republic of Central Asian region, which got engulfed in a civil and a fratricidal war after it decided to opt out after the demise of the Soviet Union, is now struggling to institutionalise her democratic political arrangement.

Large scale turmoil in Afghanistan, the state with which she has more than five hundred miles of common border to her south, had its impact on Tajik political situation. With a few pockets like Garm where radical Islamists wanted a theocratic state to replace the given model, internal as well as external forces interplayed and forged a disastrous civil war, which came to an end only five years later after an armistice of sorts was signed.

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By K.N. Pandita, edited by Daily Excelsior – Ascribing it to the horse’s mouth, sections of Pakistani press recently made a disclosure that in the aftermath of 9/11, Washington conveyed to Islamabad a threat of attacking and destroying terrorist camps on her territory with or without her formal consent. Stunning as the news was, its mystery deepened further as bizarre and conflicting deniability flowed from US State Department spokesperson(s).

US – Pakistan relations have seldom run along an even and discreetly intended path. Nevertheless, given the contours of a culture of contemporary realpolitik, both countries have been opportunistically exploiting each other with or without success. In totality, this relationship demonstrates the acme of heartless diplomacy based on acutely selfish interests on either side entailing denials, understatements, circumlocutions and even benign lies. Once General Zia defended his managerial style by telling the American Ambassador that his (Zia’s) faith “permitted him to lie for a good cause”. The Ambassador later remarked privately “and he had lied to us about his nuclear programme”.

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