29 December 2014

Make in India essentials

Written by Gulzar Natarajan
December 29, 2014 
The more important concern is the difficulty faced by informal firms in accessing credit. But this is more a matter of informality than access to credit.

The prime minister has declared his goal of “Make in India” with “zero defect” (quality) and “zero effect” (on the environment). As a vision statement, there could not be anything more appropriate. But walking the talk is, arguably, the challenge.

India’s manufacturing has been a puzzle. Since the late 1970s, even as its peers in East Asia have greatly diversified into manufacturing, the sector’s share has stagnated at around 15 per cent of the GDP. It is not that past governments have not tried to revive manufacturing. For decades now, not just the Centre, the states too have had an industrial policy. At some time or the other, many states have even pursued it vigorously. Some of these policies have also been well designed. But the results have been universally disappointing.

This alone should be adequate to chasten us about the task at hand. The revival of our stagnant manufacturing sector is arguably the biggest economic challenge India is facing. Unfortunately, the problem is complex and intractable, demanding several, often diffuse, sets of solutions.

So what is holding back India’s manufacturing? The potential candidates are obvious, though their relative importance is contentious. Sorely deficient infrastructure, inhospitable business environment, corruption, poor quality of human resources, problems with access to timely and adequate credit, difficulty of getting land, high burden of taxation and restrictive labour regulations would figure prominently on any list.

In an ideal world, public policy would be tailored to address all these problems. But in the real world, governments have limited resources and face serious administrative and political limitations. Further, many of these are intimately linked to the country’s stage of development.

One way to prioritise among them is to do a differential diagnostic of the various constraints facing the sector to identify those primarily responsible for holding back manufacturing growth. In other words, such binding constraints are those factors whose relaxation generates the greatest bang for buck. This approach was popularised by economists Dani Rodrik, Andres Velasco and Ricardo Hausmann in the early 2000s and has since been embraced by many countries across the world in designing their industrial policies. In their own words, growth diagnostics is simply “a strategy for figuring out the policy priorities”. Simple as it sounds, in the context of India’s manufacturing sector, it is a formidable exercise. Here is a simplified diagnostic analysis of the sector.

Infrastructure tops the list of most surveys on doing business in India. In particular, chronic deficiencies in transportation and power impose prohibitive costs and lower business competitiveness. Multiple enterprise surveys have identified electricity as the biggest constraint. Further, India lags behind on every measure of transport connectivity. Though there have been considerable recent successes spurred by private participation, much needs to be done.

A new resolve for the New Year

Written by Javed Anand
December 29, 2014 

They killed and died with the absolute conviction that their “virtuous mass murder” would guarantee them a permanent place in paradise.

It’s time Muslims seriously considered making a long overdue New Year’s resolution: bidding farewell to the state of denial, saying “no more” to conspiracy theories.

How does the mere condemnation of the cold-blooded massacre of schoolchildren in Peshawar by a suicide squad of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) help? A host of maulanas and maulvis promptly expressed outrage, denounced the savagery, asserted that those guilty of such heinous crimes cannot be called Muslims. “This is not Islam,” they said. But the unrepentant TTP has no doubt it is more-Muslim-than-thou.

Within hours of the shooting spree, it released a photo (taken earlier) in which the soon-to-turn-mass-murderers could be seen staring straight at the camera, with a banner in the backdrop proclaiming Islam’s core article of faith: “La ’ilaha ’illa-llah, Muhammadun rasulu-llah (There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God)”. The very next day, it quoted out of context a hadith (saying) of the Prophet that a boy with pubic hair is no longer a child. Thus, according to the TTP, the butchery was entirely halal.

No doubt, the killers must have prayed prior to the carnage, beginning with the words, “Bismillahirrahmanirrahim (In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most compassionate)”. They killed and died with the absolute conviction that their “virtuous mass murder” would guarantee them a permanent place in paradise.

No doubt, the TTP, other “good terrorists” and “bad terrorists” from Pakistan, the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis), the Boko Haram in Nigeria, the al-Shahab in Kenya and Allah knows who else, are plotting their next barbaric deed. Sooner than later, will there be mere condemnation one more time, repeat “this is not Islam” declarations?

This surely is no cure for the malaise within today’s lived Islam. To cry out not-in-my-name is one thing. But to insist that the perpetrators of terror cannot be Muslims is to deny personal agency, evade moral responsibility for what some Muslims do in the name of a shared faith. Perhaps Muslims should heed the Friday sermon of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq at Srinagar’s Jama Masjid a day after the killings. He said: “The Peshawar attack was barbaric and gruesome. It has become incumbent on Islamic scholars and religious preachers to introspect and look for reasons that cause certain elements to commit such crimes and thus defame Islam.”

BOTH TROUBLED AND TROUBLESOME

29 December 2014 

Pakistan is a state in perpetual turmoil. Call it a failed one or a nation fighting demons from within, the hard reality is that neither Islamabad nor Rawalpindi will find relief unless both stop patronising and arming terror groups

In its stature, Pakistan lacks the attributes essential for a nation. As a modern state too, it has hardly evolved beyond the pointers fed by its Western-educated elite or military despots. Thus, systemic insensitivity has been firmly grounded there since its existential quest made South Asia a hotbed of violence. Although there are people who have a longing to dislodge this state of affairs to taste normalcy, that has remained a pipe dream.

The recent attack by the Pakistani Taliban on a military school in Peshawar that killed over 142 people (mostly school children), has out-classed the barbaric worst. Hence, it shall not be any longer about the trusted playboy-cricketer turned Imran Khan or puppet Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s romantic notions about the good and bad Taliban. The world has its reckoning; The Taliban are one, and its believers can shoot kids at point-blank range and burn books — in their efforts to give humanity an unsustainable jolt.

While a mourning majority in Pakistan was genuinely in grief after a pack of savage Taliban attackers shamed humanity in Peshawar, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a Lashkar-e-Tayyeba terrorist charged in 26/11 Mumbai attacks, was given bail by a lower court in no time. Although he remains behind bars on technicality, it is only a matter of time before he walks free.

This shows the way of life in a country, where a MA Jinnah too was forgotten during his lifetime — albeit in a personified form, his portrait still hang on the walls of representative Government offices of the land he forcefully shaped as a country. Then, he won with his fragile ego that was in straight confrontation with Jawaharlal Nehru and the prospect of free and united India, where he could have just a nonchalant position.

So, he dreamt for the future of a new country with millions of flaws to be never repaired. Jinnah was a shrewd legal mind, but he committed a blunder by giving passage to fundamentalist elements in mainstream politics. The processes kept maligning with successions of dynastic/feudal//arrogant democratic leaderships and in its counter — replacements by Islamic military dictators. In that long stretch of mockery drill, Pakistan lost a chance to give the basic traction to ‘real democracy’, standing round the corner. Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote couplets for his homeland, Iqbal Bano gave her mesmerising voice to those verses with pain and dismay — and ironically, these all were taking place years after Pakistan was made a country on the line of religion, to pacify the elite of the Muslim community. There was no culture of consensus then, and things have hardly changed now — the common masses continuing on the fringe.

The ideological grounds were rather artificially created and made sharper with underlyings of ‘hate India’ campaigns — the added poisons came at the height of the Cold War, when the US found in Pakistan a dumping ground to park its highly mechanised arms to counter the might of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in Central Asia, and in Afghanistan particularly. The Pakistani state fell prey to the American might, and it also pursued a ‘double-game theory’ by receiving the easy petro-currency from the Gulf to the ‘Arabisation’ of an strategic terrain of South Asia.

A law that failed to keep pace with time

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ANIL MALHOTRA
December 29, 2014

The Hindu“Leaving the current state of affairs to the outmoded colonial position of the CRPF Act makes it an unjust and arbitrary process subject to bias and misuse.” Picture shows members of the force in Jharkhand in 2013. File Photo: Manob Chowdhury

Even though the Code of Criminal Procedure 1973 repeals the CrPC of 1898, legislative changes have not followed in the Central Reserve Police Force Act, 1949

From fighting insurgents in Kashmir, the Maoists in Chhattisgarh, and terrorists in strife-stricken areas to acting as troubleshooters in sensitive areas, guarding the borders of Punjab and maintaining law and order during times of emergency, the 230 battalions of India’s largest Central Armed Police Force, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), are staunch sentinels. But despite the valiant services that they perform for the nation, they get a raw deal. Gallant soldiers must get their due and the first step towards this is to examine their rights and the laws that govern them.

The Central Reserve Police Force Act, 1949 (CRPF Act), an Act that provides for the constitution and regulation of an armed CRPF, is a colonial inheritance of the Crown’s Representative Police Force Law, 1939. Despite 67 years of independence and the framing of our own Constitution, we have retained certain provisions in the CRPF Act which are violative of fundamental freedoms — the right to equality, equal protection in public employment, and the right to protection of life and personal liberty. These ought to be granted to members of the CRPF in course of their duties and service to the nation. Fundamental rights provided by the Constitution, which have evolved over a period of time, need to find recognition in the CRPF Act.

According to the Act, the extent of heinous offences are to be judged by the Commandant of a Battalion by exercising powers of a judicial magistrate conferred by the Central Government. All trials are to be held in accordance with the procedure laid down in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 (CrPC). Even though CrPC 1973 repeals CrPc 1898, legislative changes have not followed in the CRPF Act. This leaves no option but to read down the CRPF Act by assuming applicability of CrPC 1973 to confer a presumption of constitutionality on the pre-constitutional CRPF Act. However, this does not make palatable the exercise of judicial powers by the Commandant of Battalion, as CrPC 1973 clearly separates the judiciary from the executive in line with Article 50 that mandates this separation.

However, the CRPF Act follows CrPC 1898. The provisions of this code invested executive officers with judicial powers to try as a magistrate all offences not punishable with death. The 41st Report of the Law Commission of India, which was submitted in September 1969, recommended the separation of the judiciary from the executive on an all-India basis to ensure improvements in the quality of justice by having judicial magistrates, who were appointed by the High Courts. Dispensing with the arbitrary exercise of discretionary powers and acting in a manner consistent with known principles of law was desired. After being discussed by a joint select committee and being approved by both Houses of Parliament and the President, CrPC 1973 came into force. Consequently, all functions relating to appreciation of evidence, imposition of punishment, detention in custody, inquiry or trial, came to be exercised by a judicial magistrate under the CrPC 1973, and all ministerial functions were left to the executive magistrates. Since then, all judicial magistrates are appointed by the High Courts and special judicial magistrates can be notified by the High Courts, if they possess such qualification or experience in relation to legal affairs as the High Courts’ rules may specify. However, executive magistrates can be appointed by the State governments to perform executive functions.Further authorisations

For a nationalism beyond religion

RAKESH SOOD
December 29, 2014 

The Pakistan Army must ask itself whether it is an army for Islam or for Pakistan in the face of an enemy which professes the same faith, and paints the military establishment as the infidel for joining hands with the Americans

Nearly a fortnight has passed since the massacre at the Army Public School in Peshawar which shocked Pakistan with its naked brutality and left over 130 children dead. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack even as the gunfight continued. The coffins of the children have been lowered into the earth, the dust has settled; wailing has given way to silent grief. But hard questions remain.

Pakistan is no stranger to terrorist inflicted violence. Earlier in June, Uzbek militants locked down Karachi airport in a 10-hour gun battle in which nearly 40 people died. The naval dockyard in Karachi was targeted in September when militants sought to hijack a Pakistani naval vessel. And in 2011, militants had penetrated the security perimeter of the Mehran naval base destroying several warplanes before a Pakistani commando force secured it a good 16 hours later. The Pakistan Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi was targeted in a brazen attack in 2009 where, after killing a number of personnel including a brigadier and a colonel, militants held more than 40 people hostage for over 18 hours before the siege was broken. In recent years, hotels, market places, government offices, school buses for girls, hospitals, churches and mosques, have all been scenes of terrorist violence and suicide bombings which have claimed hundreds of innocent lives.

Turning point?

Even so, many feel that the Peshawar school massacre may be a turning point for Pakistan. The initial statement from Islamabad was unequivocal that “there will be no differentiation between good and bad Taliban” and underlined the Pakistan government’s resolve “to fight until the last terrorist is eliminated.” The Pakistan Army and the Air Force intensified strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) region claiming that more than 150 militants have since been killed. But can the Pakistan Army or specifically the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) be weaned away from its dependence on the “good Taliban” or the “reliable” jihadi groups which were its policy instruments in India and Afghanistan?

The linkages between the ISI and the numerous jihadi groups spawned in the madrassas in Pakistan have been an open secret. Intrepid authors have written about it and films have documented its sinister growth. In 2011, the chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the Haqqani group “as a veritable arm of the ISI.” This was after evidence emerged, linking it to attacks on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, a NATO outpost and the U.S. Embassy, in quick succession. The ISI and the Haqqani group were also behind the attack on the Indian Embassy in 2008. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had famously chided Pakistan publicly when she cautioned it saying “you cannot keep snakes in your backyard and expect them to only bite your neighbours.” Yet, neither the cautionary warnings nor the growing incidents of violence at home seem to have dampened the ISI’s ardour in its long-standing romance with jihadi groups. With the U.S. officially ending its combat operations in Afghanistan in a few days, is the Peshawar massacre shock enough to end this nexus, or will the temptation to continue a little longer prevail?

Playing with fire

Sony PlayStation back online after three-day outage

December 29, 2014

APHeavy traffic might continue to cause problems for customers, said Sony. File Photo

Sony has said that its PlayStation Network is back online after three days of disruptions that began on Christmas. However, heavy traffic might continue to cause problems for customers, the company said on Sunday.

A group of hackers called Lizard Squad or someone claiming to speak for it took credit for the disruptions. In a blog post on Saturday night, Sony vice president Catherine Jensen added that “PlayStation Network and some other gaming services were attacked over the holidays with artificially high levels of traffic to disrupt connectivity and online gameplay.”

Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, which also went down on Thursday, was back online on Friday, although the company reported continuing problems. So far, there’s no evidence to link these episodes with last month’s attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment. The FBI has blamed that attack on North Korea, which was furious about Sony’s “The Interview,” a movie comedy about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

AirAsia flight believed to have crashed in sea: rescue official

December 29, 2014

Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia launch search-and-rescue operation near Belitung island in the Java Sea

The AirAsia flight carrying 162 people that went missing after its pilot failed to gain permission to alter course to avoid a storm is believed to have crashed into the sea, a senior Indonesian rescue agency official said on Monday.

"Based on our coordinate estimation, initial estimation is in the water," Soelistyo, head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency, said of the missing plane's likely location.

"It can be expanded based on evaluation," he told reporters on Monday.

CIA Drone Strikes in Northern Pakistan Targeted Leader of Punjabi Taliban

Bill Roggio
December 27, 2014

US targets emir of Punjabi Taliban in pair of drone strikes in North Waziristan

Asmatullah Muawiya (center), from a March 2013 video. Osama bin Laden is to Muawiya’s left, and Rasheed Ghazi, the slain leader of the Lal Masjid, is to his right. Image from the SITE Intelligence Group.

The US targeted a dual-hatted Pakistani Taliban leader and al Qaeda commander in one of two drone strikes that took place today in Pakistan’s jihadist haven of North Waziristan.

The CIA-operated, remotely piloted Predators or Reapers launched two airstrikes in the Shawal area of North Waziristan, killing nine people, including four “foreigners,” a term used to describe members of al Qaeda or other foreign jihadist groups, The New York Times reported. The Shawal Valley is a known haven for a host of jihadist groups, including al Qaeda and a multitude of Pakistani Taliban groups.

The first strike targeted a vehicle as it traveled in the Shawal area, killing four “Uzbeks,” a Pakistani security official told the Times. The Uzbeks are likely members of the al Qaeda and the Taliban-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

The second strike targeted “a compound in Kund Sar in the Shawal Valley,” where Asmatullah Muawiya was sheltering, the Times reported. Five people were killed in the attack, but it is unclear if Muawiya was among them.

Muawiya is the emir of the Movement of the Taliban in Punjab, which is more commonly called the Punjabi Taliban. He is also known to be the commander of what Osama bin Laden described as one of several al Qaeda military “companies.” [See LWJ report, Bin Laden docs hint at large al Qaeda presence in Pakistan].

Muawiya broke with the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan in the summer of 2013 when he decided to halt attacks against the Pakistani government and focus his group’s efforts in Afghanistan. The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan claimed to have expelled Muawiya, but the Punjabi Taliban commander denied that he was subservient to the group to begin with. [See Threat Matrix report, Did the TTP ‘expel’ Asmatullah Muawiya?]

The Shawal Valley, which is administered by Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadar and spans both North and South Waziristan, is a known haven for al Qaeda and other terror groups operating in the region. A number of Taliban, Pakistani, and foreign terrorist groups gather in the Shawal Valley and then enter Afghanistan to fight US, NATO, and Afghan government forces.

The Hatred Comes Home

Ajai Sahni

In a barbaric act of terror, a seven-member suicide squad of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) killed at least 133 school children and nine staff members, including the Principal, in an attack at the Army Public School (APS), Peshawar (capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, KP) on December 16, 2014. Another 121 persons, including 118 students and three staffers sustained injuries. The attack, which started at about 10 am (PST), ended after more than eight hours, when the seven-member suicide squad was eliminated. Nine personnel of the Special Services Group (SSG), a special operations force of the Pakistan Army, including two of its officers, sustained injuries during the operation. An estimated 1,100 students and staff members were inside the school at the time of the attack, of which some 960 were rescued.

Schools and children have been targeted by terrorists before, but there was a qualitative escalation in the Peshawar atrocity. In the past, major incidents in which mass fatalities have been inflicted on children have been hostage cases, where terrorists had no qualms about accepting casualties among children, but did not engage in the deliberate and premeditated slaughter of children. Such incidents prominently included the Ma'alot massacre in Israel, where terrorists of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine took 115 persons hostage at the Netiv Meir Elementary School on May 15, 1974. After a protracted standoff, 25 hostages, including 22 children, were killed and another 68 were injured, when Security Forces (SF) sought to mount a rescue on the second day of the crisis.

The worst such incident, of course, was at Beslan in Russia, where over 1,100 persons, including 777 children, were held hostage by Chechen separatists loyal to the warlord Shamil Basayev. The incident commenced on September 1, 2004, and on the third day of the standoff, SFs stormed the building. 385 hostages were killed, including 186 children.

At Peshawar, however, the terrorists initiated the attack with a clear objective of killing as many children as possible. Indeed, Muhammad Khorasani, spokesperson for the Maulana Fazlullah-led faction of the TTP, declared, in the immediate wake of the Peshawar incident, “Our six fighters successfully entered the army school and we are giving them instructions from outside. The suicide bombers had been given orders to allow the youngest students to leave but to kill the rest." Children as young as five-years were killed in the attack.

The first and natural response in Pakistan, and, indeed, across the world, at the utter brutality of the attack, and the systematic, intentional and cold blooded execution of children, was shock and horror. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, many commentators concluded that this tragedy would be a watershed in Pakistan's history of complicity in Islamist terrorism, a turning point where the fiction of a distinction between the 'good Taliban and bad Taliban' would finally be abandoned. Indeed, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared, the day after the Peshawar attack, "We announce that there will be no differentiation between 'good' and 'bad' Taliban and have resolved to continue the war against terrorism till the last terrorist is eliminated."

Pakistan’s New Leaf?


DEC 22, 2014 

NEW DELHI – As US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton bluntly told Pakistan in 2011 that “you can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors.” But her warning (“eventually those snakes are going to turn on” their keeper), like those of other American officials over the years, including presidents and CIA chiefs, went unheeded.

The snake-keeper’s deepening troubles were exemplified by the recent massacre of 132 schoolchildren in Peshawar by militants no longer under the control of Pakistan’s generals. Such horror is the direct result of the systematic manner in which the Pakistani military establishment has reared jihadist militants since the 1980s as an instrument of state policy against India and Afghanistan. By continuing to nurture terrorist proxies, the Pakistani military has enabled other militants to become entrenched in the country, making the culture of jihad pervasive.

The Peshawar massacre was not the first time that the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism became a terror victim. But the attack has underscored how the contradiction between battling one set of terror groups while shielding others for cross-border undertakings has hobbled the Pakistani state.

As a result, the question many are asking is whether, in the wake of the Peshawar killings, the Pakistani military, including its rogue Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, will be willing to break its ties with militant groups and dismantle the state-run terrorist infrastructure. Unfortunately, developments in recent months, including in the aftermath of the Peshawar attack, offer little hope.

On the contrary, with the military back in de facto control, the civilian government led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is in no position to shape developments. And, despite the increasing blowback from state-aided militancy, the generals remain too wedded to sponsoring terrorist groups that are under United Nations sanctions – including Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) and the Haqqani network – to reverse course.

Reliance on jihadist terror has become part of the generals’ DNA. Who can forget their repeated denial that they knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden before he was killed by US naval commandos in a 2011 raid on his safe house in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad? Recently, in an apparent slip, a senior civilian official – Sharif’s national security adviser, Sartaj Aziz – said that Pakistan should do nothing to stop militants who do not intend to harm Pakistan.

The nexus among military officers, jihadists, and hardline nationalists has created a nuclear-armed “Terroristan” that will most likely continue to threaten regional and global security. State-reared terror groups and their splinter cells, some now operating autonomously, have morphed into a hydra. Indeed, as the country’s civilian political institutions corrode, its nuclear arsenal, ominously, is becoming increasingly unsafe.

Pakistan military given carte blanche in fight against militants

By Tom Hussain
December 26, 2014

A victim is carried away from the scene in a coffin after more than 100 people -- mostly children -- were killed in a Taliban assault on an army-run school in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014. PPI/Zuma Press/TNS

A victim is carried away from the scene in a coffin after more than 100 people -- mostly children -- were killed in a Taliban assault on an army-run school in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Tuesday, 

General: Attack on school galvanized Pakistan's military

In a nation that’s had a long and complex relationship with the Taliban, the recent military school massacre of nearly 150 people, most of them children, “is a tipping point,” says Pakistan’s senior national representative to the international coalition at U.S. Central Command.

Security personnel cordon off the venue and conduct an operation against militants after militants attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014. More than 100 people -- mostly students -- were killed and dozens others injured in the attack. PPI/Zuma Press/TNS

Pakistan likely to execute dozens of convicts

Pakistan plans to execute 55 people in the coming days, after their mercy petitions were recently rejected by the country's president Mamnoon Hussain, reports say.

Abdul Raziq, Kandahar Chief of Police, speaks to the assembled locals of Kajran in Daykundi Province during a shura on October 22, 2013.

DoD photo by Cpl. Mark Doran, Australian Defence Force/Released. DOD file photo

Afghan commander orders attacks on insurgents in Pakistan

The police chief in Afghanistan’s southern province of Kandahar has ordered his forces to attack Pakistani-based Tehrik-i-Taliban insurgents inside Pakistan, adding fuel to rising tensions along the countries’ shared border.

In this April 23, 2011, file photo, women in Peshawar, Pakistan, take part in a rally against U.S. drone strikes in Pakistani tribal areas. Mohammad Sajjad/AP

US drone strikes kill at least 7 militants, Pakistan says

Pakistani intelligence officials say a suspected U.S. drone fired missiles at two compounds in the North Waziristan tribal region, killing at least seven alleged militants.

ISLAMABAD (Tribune Content Agency) — Ten days after Taliban militants massacred 148 mostly children at an army-run school in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar, the nation’s politicians this week gave the military two years’ carte blanche to wage, as it saw fit, the decisive phase of the country’s protracted civil war with Islamist terrorists.

Taliban publicize training camp in northern Afghanistan

By BILL ROGGIO CALEB WEISS
December 21, 2014

Just one week after overrunning a district in the northern province of Jawzjan, the Afghan Taliban are now touting the existence of a training camp in neighboring Faryab province.

The Taliban publicized the training camp, which they claimed is in the northern province of Faryab, in an hour-long video that was released on Dec. 18 on their official propaganda website, Voice of Jihad. The Taliban said the video was produced by "The workers of Multimedia Branch of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan's Cultural Commission" and created to "notify us about the ongoing situation in Faryab province, Mujahideen military advancements and other noticeable achievements."

In the video, Taliban fighters are shown undergoing weapons training. Some fighters are instructed in firing rifles from a moving vehicle, a tactic commonly used by the Taliban in assassinations of government officials. One target at the range used by the Taliban is labeled "Obama killer." A Taliban commander who is said to be the group's senior trainer for the province is shown on the video.

Qari Sahib Salahuddin, who is also known as Ayyubi and is described as "the Jihadi in-charge of the province," is interviewed at the end of the video. The video purports to show tribal elders and policemen meeting with Taliban officials, attacks against Afghan security forces, and policemen who have been captured by the Taliban. In one scene, a Taliban religious official gives a speech to hundreds of Taliban fighters before they depart for an operation.

The Taliban are known to have had safe havens in Faryab province in the past. In April 2011, the International Security Assistance Force announced a special operations raid against what it described as "a Taliban safe haven known for improvised explosive device activity and weapons cache sites" near the village of Khwaja Kinti in the district of Qaisar. [See LWJ report, Special operations forces raid 'Taliban safe haven' in Afghan north.]

The Taliban and the allied Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) which has integrated its forces in the Taliban's command structure in the Afghan north, maintain a strong presence in the provinces of Badakhshan, Baghlan, Balkh, Faryab, Jawzjan, Kunduz, Samangan, Sar-i-Pul, and Takhar, and have established suicide training camps in the north over the past several years. ISAF identified the presence of camps in Sar-i-Pul and Samanganprovince. In March 2011, an ISAF special operations team captured an IMU commander who ran camps in Samangan.

The Taliban have made inroads in Faryab despite the relatively small Pashtun population there; more than 80 percent of the population in the province is Turkmen or Uzbek, while Pashtuns make up just over 10 percent.

Taliban take control of district in Jawzjan

One week before the Taliban released the video of their operations in Faryab, the jihadist group stormed the district of Khamyab in Jawzjan and forced Afghan security personnel to flee. The loss of Khamyab to the Taliban was confirmed by Fakir Muhammad Jawzjani, the provincial chief of police.

"Our soldiers went there to take on the Taliban in Khamyab. There was fighting against the Taliban, but our forces were compelled to withdraw. When the soldiers were returning to [the provincial capital] Sheberghan, they came across the Taliban, who were waiting for them, and the soldiers came under attack again," Jawzjani told RFE/RL.

According to the commander of a local arbaki, or tribal militia, "the Taliban had brought up extra fighters from the Akcha district for the assault on Khamyab." This may mean that the Taliban control Akcha as well, but it is unclear.

The Taliban have stepped up attacks against Afghan and Coalition forces in the capital of Kabul and the provinces as the US and allied forces withdraw the bulk of their forces and have ended the combat mission. As part of their effort to regain control of the country, the Taliban have seized control of several districts in the provinces.

Images from the Taliban's video of operations in Faryab:

Pakistan’s New Leaf?


DEC 22, 2014 3

NEW DELHI – As US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton bluntly told Pakistan in 2011 that “you can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors.” But her warning (“eventually those snakes are going to turn on” their keeper), like those of other American officials over the years, including presidents and CIA chiefs, went unheeded.

The snake-keeper’s deepening troubles were exemplified by the recent massacre of 132 schoolchildren in Peshawar by militants no longer under the control of Pakistan’s generals. Such horror is the direct result of the systematic manner in which the Pakistani military establishment has reared jihadist militants since the 1980s as an instrument of state policy against India and Afghanistan. By continuing to nurture terrorist proxies, the Pakistani military has enabled other militants to become entrenched in the country, making the culture of jihad pervasive.

The Peshawar massacre was not the first time that the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism became a terror victim. But the attack has underscored how the contradiction between battling one set of terror groups while shielding others for cross-border undertakings has hobbled the Pakistani state.

As a result, the question many are asking is whether, in the wake of the Peshawar killings, the Pakistani military, including its rogue Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, will be willing to break its ties with militant groups and dismantle the state-run terrorist infrastructure. Unfortunately, developments in recent months, including in the aftermath of the Peshawar attack, offer little hope.

On the contrary, with the military back in de facto control, the civilian government led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is in no position to shape developments. And, despite the increasing blowback from state-aided militancy, the generals remain too wedded to sponsoring terrorist groups that are under United Nations sanctions – including Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) and the Haqqani network – to reverse course.

Reliance on jihadist terror has become part of the generals’ DNA. Who can forget their repeated denial that they knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden before he was killed by US naval commandos in a 2011 raid on his safe house in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad? Recently, in an apparent slip, a senior civilian official – Sharif’s national security adviser, Sartaj Aziz – said that Pakistan should do nothing to stop militants who do not intend to harm Pakistan.

The nexus among military officers, jihadists, and hardline nationalists has created a nuclear-armed “Terroristan” that will most likely continue to threaten regional and global security. State-reared terror groups and their splinter cells, some now operating autonomously, have morphed into a hydra. Indeed, as the country’s civilian political institutions corrode, its nuclear arsenal, ominously, is becoming increasingly unsafe.

Coming out of the cold

December 26, 2014


President Barack Obama’s Republic Day visit to India will be seen as the symbol of a growing warmth in US-India relations. Pakistan army chief General Raheel Sharif’s visit to Washington last month also symbolised a rapprochement between Pakistan and the US. He spent a whole week on the official visit, received warmly by civilian leaders such as Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Deputy Secretary of Defence Bob Work and the US special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Dan Feldman, as well as military leaders, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Martin Dempsey, and the Central Command (Centcom) chief, General Lloyd Austin. During the visit, General Sharif was conferred the US Legion of Merit “in recognition of his brave leadership and efforts to ensure peace in the region”.

The contrast with the situation only two years ago, in the wake of the Osama bin Laden raid, is striking. How can we explain this?

First, the situation had started to improve in 2012-2013, after the US decided to resume the financial support that had been suspended in 2011. This was in exchange for the possibility of using Pakistan’s roads again. Such access was vital as the US pulled out of Afghanistan. Once again, Pakistan was able to extract geopolitical rent from its location on the map.

Second, and more importantly, the US has been greatly appreciative of the North Waziristan operation initiated by General Sharif in June, under the name of Zarb-e-Azb, the sword used by Prophet Mohammad in the battles of Badr and Uhud. By mid-November, the army claimed “1,198 terrorists have been killed, 356 injured, 227 have been arrested”, while 42 officers and security forces personnel had been killed and 155 injured in the operation. Further, it claimed “11 private jails, 191 secret tunnels, 39 IED factories, 4,991 various types of ready-made IEDs, 132 tonnes [of] explosive material, 2,470 sub-machine guns, 293 machine guns, 111 heavy machine guns have also been recovered during the operation”.

Senior journalist Zahid Hussain, who went to Miramshah and Mir Ali in November, underlined the magnitude of the operation. According to him, it was “unique in many ways”, partly because “the role of intelligence has contributed hugely to the targeting precision of militant sanctuaries”. The army also claimed that the Haqqani network had not been spared, something Washington was bound to approve of. Indeed, Lieutenant General Joseph Anderson, an American senior commander of the Nato forces based in Afghanistan, told The Washington Post in mid-November that the North Waziristan operation had “disrupted” the network’s “efforts here and has caused them to be less effective in terms of their ability to pull off an attack here in Kabul”. And General Austin, after welcoming General Sharif in Washington, lauded the Pakistan army for its “commitment, professionalism and achievement in the fight against terror” and in Operation Zarb-e-Azb.

Infantry: Poor, Poor, Pitiful Us

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htinf/articles/20141223.aspx

December 23, 2014: A Chinese newspaper recently published an article pointing out that, despite all the increased Chinese defense spending not much of it was getting to the infantry. The troops have new camouflage uniforms and assault rifles, but none of the high tech protective gear, rifle accessories, protective gear and communications found on American troops. To demonstrate this the article listed the function and cost of everything a Chinese infantryman carried into combat versus his American counterpart. The cost of equipping a Chinese soldier was under $1,600 versus nearly $18,000 for the American one. The Chinese do without protective vests, high-tech rifle scopes, personal radio, night-vision goggles and GPS. In Chinese infantry companies there are only two radios, a few night vision goggles and not all troops carry compasses with them. Some are known to buy GPS devices with their own money.

These disparities are no secret to Chinese infantry, most of whom have Internet access and have read Chinese language military sites that provide details of what Western troops carry into combat and what a difference is makes. The Chinese infantry are not happy about this disparity and that was apparently why this article appeared despite the heavy censorship of mass media in China.

Leaderless in 2015 The biggest risk for the existing order is not China replacing the US at the top of the table

V. Anantha Nageswaran 

Sony’s ‘The Interview’ takes in $1 million on christmas day 03:01 PM IST Pakistan court issues arrest warrant for hardliner cleric 02:45 PM IST J&K: Pakistan violates ceasefire along IB in Jammu, Kathua 02:35 PM IST Legal loopholes, weak evidences led to Lakhvi’s bail: anti-terror court 02:17 PM IST Gold rises on jewellers buying; global cues Editor's picks Narendra Modi, NDA still popular with India: survey April-December bank credit growth the lowest on record Why Twitter is a polarizing platform DIIs are driving the market rally, while FIIs sell Does a 20% cut in healthcare spending hurt India? 

Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP I am writing this column with the full awareness that I had not come anywhere near predicting that the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index would crest 2,000 points. Having gotten stocks, oil and gold wrong in the last two years for the most part, I venture to write the outlook for 2015. If one scoured through the headlines over the weekend at, say, www.prudentbear.com , one would have noticed their grim tone. Dow Jones stock index has had its worst week since 2011. Qatar stocks entered a bear market and Dubai erased gains for 2014. Greek bonds had their worst week since the euro crisis. The 10-year Greek government bond yield was as low as 5.57% early in September and, as of Friday, it had reached 9.15%. It appears that, for most participants in financial markets, the planet Saturn is transiting through the eighth house of their horoscope. 

The United Arab Emirates had noted that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries would not budge even if the price of crude oil were to drop to $40 per barrel. That was an interesting observation. I had noted previously that the pain threshold for most shale oil production was $42 per barrel and not the higher figure of $80 per barrel, cited often. Clearly, major oil producers who are allies of the US are willing to let the price of oil drop to as much as $40 per barrel. There is ample scope for the law of unintended consequences to take effect here. Big risks for global financial markets in 2015 will be Europe, China and a US stock market crash, and not necessarily in that order. The European crisis is far from over and anti-European sentiment is rising in many European nations including in Italy. 

The outcome for the single currency, especially if the European Central Bank proceeds with some form of asset purchases with Germany being a reluctant signatory to it, is far from clear. Obviously, EUR/USD at around 1.25 is still expensive. So are European stocks at current levels. The surprise pocket in the past four months (until last week) has been China stocks. They were down for the year until the first week of August. However, to my surprise, Shanghai and Shenzhen stock indices had rallied hard in the next four months and were up by about more than 40% year-to-date in end-November, eclipsing the performance of stocks in India and Indonesia, which have been the star performers in Asia until then. China’s outperformance is rather bizarre and inexplicable. Most commentary has cited monetary policy easing by the People’s Bank of China as the reason for the rally in China stocks. 

I remain unpersuaded. The collapse in the prices of many commodities that serve as raw materials in the production process are clearly suggestive of Chinese overcapacity and pruning of production. For household consumption to replace investment as the driver of economic growth, employment and income gains have to be strong. There cannot be a seamless transition from investment led growth to consumption led growth without a rather painful interlude. My outlook for China economic growth and China stocks is rather negative. The threat of a substantial depreciation of the Chinese yuan is non-trivial too. The US economy has been held out to be the lone exception by many. Yours truly has been a sceptic of that narrative. Its employment generation record, especially since 2009, has been far from stellar. 

2014 proves success for China’s diplomacy


In 2014, the world experienced a new round of turbulence and instability following the international financial crisis. Conflicts in some regions kept flaring up, the road to global economic recovery remained treacherous, and the transformation of the international order gained momentum. The call for peace and development was stronger, so was the call for cooperation and change and for building a community of shared interests and destiny.

In 2014, the central leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) with Comrade Xi Jinping as the general secretary accelerated comprehensive reform and advanced the rule of law, and it led the 1.3 billion Chinese people in a relentless effort to realize the Chinese dream of great national renewal. On the external front, China remained committed to pursuing peaceful development and win-win cooperation and played a constructive role in upholding peace, stability and development in both our region and the world.

On the diplomatic front, we explored new theories and practices for conducting international relations, participated in global economic and financial governance, engaged in friendly exchanges with countries in all major regions, and worked for the peaceful resolution of hotspot issues in some regions. These efforts created an enabling environment for China's domestic development. Building on the good start last year, we have continued to achieve major progress in China's diplomacy this year.

At the recently concluded Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs, Xi pointed out that we need to pursue win-win cooperation, promote a new type of international relations featuring win-win cooperation, and continue to follow the win-win strategy of opening-up and a win-win approach in all aspects of our external relations including political, economic, security and cultural fields.

This important exposition is a synthesis of the new diplomatic theories and practices we have developed in our relations with major countries, neighboring countries and developing countries. It has enriched China's long-established diplomatic principles of equality, mutual benefit, opening up and win-win cooperation, and added a new dimension to realism-based traditional theory of international relations.

The Elusive Chinese Dream


By JEFFREY N. WASSERSTROM
DEC. 26, 2014

 
In 1989, Chinese cities were rocked by huge protests, most notably the Tiananmen Square crackdown, while in Europe, the Berlin Wall fell and talk of a global Marxist-Leninist extinction began. Many observers, both in China and abroad, assumed that the Chinese Communist Party was on its last legs.

How wrong we were. A quarter-century later, the party — the world’s largest political organization, with 86 million members — seems as robust as ever. China’s geopolitical clout is greater than it has ever been in modern times, and the size of its economy has just surpassed that of the United States.

The party has, in President Xi Jinping, a strong leader who often strikes a supremely self-confident tone. He makes bold claims to islands in the East and South China Seas that neighboring countries insist are theirs. He chides Mikhail S. Gorbachev for having failed to be “manly” enough to hold the Soviet empire together. And he encourages the state media to promulgate the idea that the “Chinese dream” — a grand process of national resurgence that will return China to the position of global centrality it enjoyed before a “century of humiliation” at the hands of the West, and Japan, between 1842 and 1949 — is about to be realized. And he insists that, when it is, this will satisfy not just his aspirations but those of “each Chinese person.”

Mr. Xi’s self-assurance is not surprising, but his words and deeds betray a deep vein of insecurity. The talk of 1.3 billion people dreaming the same “Chinese dream” can’t hide the fact that China’s leaders continue to be plagued by nightmares not unlike those that haunted them in 1989.

China Steps In as World's New Bank

DEC 25, 2014

Thanks to China, Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund, Jim Yong Kim of the World Bank and Takehiko Nakao of the Asian Development Bank may no longer have much meaningful work to do.

Beijing's move to bail out Russia, on top of its recent aid for Venezuela and Argentina, signals the death of the post-war Bretton Woods world. It’s also marks the beginning of the end for America's linchpin role in the global economy and Japan's influence in Asia.

What is China's new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank if not an ADB killer? If Japan, ADB's main benefactor, won't share the presidency with Asian peers, Beijing will just use its deep pockets to overpower it. Lagarde's and Kim’s shops also are looking at a future in which crisis-wracked governments call Beijing before Washington. 

China stepping up its role as lender of last resort upends an economic development game that's been decades in the making. The IMF, World Bank and ADB are bloated, change-adverse institutions. When Ukraine received a $17 billion IMF-led bailout this year it was about shoring up a geopolitically important economy, not geopolitical blackmail.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's government doesn't care about upgrading economies, the health of tax regimes or central bank reserves. It cares about loyalty. The quid pro quo: For our generous assistance we expect your full support on everything from Taiwan to territorial disputes to deadening the West’s pesky focus on human rights.

This may sound hyperbolic; Russia, Argentina and Venezuela are already at odds with the U.S. and its allies. But what about Europe? In 2011 and 2012, it looked to Beijing to save euro bond markets through massive purchases. Expect more of this dynamic in 2015 should fresh turmoil hit the euro zone, at which time Beijing will expect European leaders to pull their diplomatic punches. What happens if the Federal Reserve’s tapering slams economies from India to Indonesia and governments look to China for help? Why would Cambodia, Laos or Vietnam bother with the IMF’s conditions when China writes big checks with few strings attached?

Beijing’s $24 billion currency swap program to help Russia is a sign of things to come. Russia, it's often said, is too nuclear to fail. As Moscow weathers the worst crisis since the 1998 default, it’s tempting to view China as a good global citizen. But Beijing is just enabling President Vladimir Putin, who’s now under zero pressure to diversify his economy away from oil. The same goes for China’s $2.3 billion currency swap with Argentina and its $4 billion loan to Venezuela. In the Chinese century, bad behavior has its rewards.

If ever there were a time for President Barack Obama to accelerate his "pivot" to Asia it's now. There's plenty to worry about as China tosses money at rogue governments like Sudan and Zimbabwe. But there’s also lots at stake for Asia's budding democracies. The so-called Washington consensus on economic policies isn't perfect, but is Beijing's model of autocratic state capitalism with scant press freedom really a better option? With China becoming Asia's sugar daddy, the temptation in, say, Myanmar might be to avoid the difficult process of creating credible institutions to oversee the economy.

China Steps In as World's New Bank

DEC 25, 2014

Thanks to China, Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund, Jim Yong Kim of the World Bank and Takehiko Nakao of the Asian Development Bank may no longer have much meaningful work to do.

Beijing's move to bail out Russia, on top of its recent aid for Venezuela and Argentina, signals the death of the post-war Bretton Woods world. It’s also marks the beginning of the end for America's linchpin role in the global economy and Japan's influence in Asia.

What is China's new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank if not an ADB killer? If Japan, ADB's main benefactor, won't share the presidency with Asian peers, Beijing will just use its deep pockets to overpower it. Lagarde's and Kim’s shops also are looking at a future in which crisis-wracked governments call Beijing before Washington. 

China stepping up its role as lender of last resort upends an economic development game that's been decades in the making. The IMF, World Bank and ADB are bloated, change-adverse institutions. When Ukraine received a $17 billion IMF-led bailout this year it was about shoring up a geopolitically important economy, not geopolitical blackmail.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's government doesn't care about upgrading economies, the health of tax regimes or central bank reserves. It cares about loyalty. The quid pro quo: For our generous assistance we expect your full support on everything from Taiwan to territorial disputes to deadening the West’s pesky focus on human rights.

This may sound hyperbolic; Russia, Argentina and Venezuela are already at odds with the U.S. and its allies. But what about Europe? In 2011 and 2012, it looked to Beijing to save euro bond markets through massive purchases. Expect more of this dynamic in 2015 should fresh turmoil hit the euro zone, at which time Beijing will expect European leaders to pull their diplomatic punches. What happens if the Federal Reserve’s tapering slams economies from India to Indonesia and governments look to China for help? Why would Cambodia, Laos or Vietnam bother with the IMF’s conditions when China writes big checks with few strings attached?

Beijing’s $24 billion currency swap program to help Russia is a sign of things to come. Russia, it's often said, is too nuclear to fail. As Moscow weathers the worst crisis since the 1998 default, it’s tempting to view China as a good global citizen. But Beijing is just enabling President Vladimir Putin, who’s now under zero pressure to diversify his economy away from oil. The same goes for China’s $2.3 billion currency swap with Argentina and its $4 billion loan to Venezuela. In the Chinese century, bad behavior has its rewards.

Counter-terrorism in Central Asia requires international cooperation

By Galymzhan Kirbassov 
December 26

The following is a guest post from Galymzhan Kirbassov, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at SUNY Binghamton. 

With most eyes on Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, it is easy to miss the fact that Central Asia is also facing an increasingly complex security situation. 

First, the impressive victories and territorial gains of the Islamic State against Iraqi and Syrian governments have made the group even more attractive to foreign fighters from Central Asia. According to severalreports, more than a thousand Central Asian citizens have joined and even have been establishing ethnic sub-groups within the Islamic State; there are also newly released propaganda videos about Kazakh child soldiers within the Islamic State. The head of the KNB, Kazakhstan’s intelligence agency, recently reported (English here) that 300 Kazakhstani citizens joined the Islamic State, half of whom were women. Analysts predict that these fighters will pose significant security threats to Central Asian nations upon their repatriation. 

Second, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan will benefit insurgent and terrorist groups currently operating in the Waziristan region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Terrorist groups, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, whose ultimate goal is to be operational in Central Asia again, are likely to relocate to the north and reestablish bases closer to the region. These armed groups often operate across borders and fund their activities through transnational drug trafficking. The fact that the opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in 2014 was at a record high according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, despite the U.S. spending $7.6 billion on counter-narcotics, indicates that insurgency and terrorism is likely to thrive in the near future. 

To counter these threats, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian governments have been reevaluating their national counter-terrorism strategies. Counter-terrorism cooperation under the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has its limits because not all the Central Asian governments are members of the organizations. Also these strategies have been mainly established to counter terrorism within the member states, not the ones stemming from other regions. 

Studies suggest that an integrated long-term strategy is an effective way to combat geographically dispersed and decentralized international terrorism. This comprehensive strategy has two parts: integration across actors and integration across policies.