Pakistan: South Asia’s failing state

July 24, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net
Thursday, July 24, 2008

This article has been published on Global Geopolitics Net with permission by the author.

© Copyright 2008 Susenjit Guha. All rights reserved.

By Susenjit Guha

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen’s warning to Pakistan – to clean up its act or else – came as no surprise.

But the recently announced US$750 billion aid package over five years for development of schools, roads and clinics – part of a bill introduced last Tuesday by Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Biden and Republican Senator Richard Lugar – in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas as an alternative tack to combat terrorism in light of the failure of Pakistan’s armed forces to do so, could have come much earlier.

The rugged hilly terrain of Waziristan in Pakistan ’s northwest falls inside the FATA, where Pakistan ’s Frontier Corps is fighting. Imposing the government’s will on the Taliban and al-Qaida appears to be a losing battle.

Peshawar , the nearest principal city in the North West Frontier Province , threatened to fall to them recently like the surrounding rugged regions.

Are the Pakistani armed forces, supposedly knowing the terrain like the back of their hands, totally inept, or are they sympathizing with the militants deliberately to mislead the United States and NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan ?

The Pakistani armed forces are a demoralized lot, having lost more troops than the United States and NATO forces have in Afghanistan . Stepped-up terrorism inside Pakistan in the recent past has already taken 2,000 civilian lives.

The United States has used Pakistan ’s armed forces – which were more powerful than the elected democratic governments – by showering them with arms as part of a strategic partnership. And the arms and aid were used in good measure to build a surrogate army from left-in-the-lurch Afghans who are now known as the Taliban, by Pakistan ’s intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence. Pakistan ’s ISI and the armed forces, while in power, used them to create trouble in neighboring India .

Military rule in Islamic Pakistan ratcheted up a non-existent threat from a Hindu-majority India . Lack of public acceptance made them co-opt Islamic religious hardliners who shared a loathing for India for “occupying” Kashmir .

And the armed forces were always at odds with a multi-religious India where the minority Muslim population was second only to Indonesia ’s. Only Indian Muslims in South Asia have enjoyed uninterrupted democratic rights for over 60 years.

Be it the brief 1999 Kargil conflict or the 1971 genocide in East Pakistan, or even the previous two wars against India , the aggressor was always the Pakistani army. Kargil proved once again that Pakistani armed forces can subvert democratically elected governments by keeping them in the dark. The United States decided to overlook this aspect of the military and the ISI while using them for strategic alliances during the Cold War and more recently for the War on Terror.

Even the world’s finest fighting forces can morph into dispirited losers if their leaders and the military intelligence repeatedly use the institution to satisfy vengeance and jealousy.

The beating they are taking in FATA betrays demoralization.

FATA, predominantly Pashtun with refugees from Afghanistan – civilians left in the lurch by the United States after the Soviets pulled out – is also the most neglected region in Pakistan , with unit incomes less than the national average. Run by the NWFP governor through tribal elders, military governments from Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq onward urged tribes to emphasize their Islamic rather than Pashtun identity.

The Bush administration preferred to cover up Pakistan with Musharraf and his uniform even when accusations flew about ISI’s hand in terror strikes on Indian soil.

The ISI’s obsession with covert games is now coming home to roost.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly accused Pakistan of turning a blind eye toward cross-border movements of the Taliban and along with the Indians – who had pretty good evidence – held the ISI responsible for the ghastly killings at the gates of the Indian Embassy in Kabul on July 7.

Kabul is close to Jalalabad, where the Taliban is strong and has been hand in glove with the Pakistani army and the ISI.

Some sections of the Taliban may still be loyal to ISI, which kept them as stock in trade for trouble against India , but other groups have turned against them and the Pakistani armed forces. Faulty data leading to large numbers of civilian deaths by U.S. unmanned drones are also swelling recruitment of fresh fighters.

Pakistan ’s interior minister, during an interview with BBC’s Nik Gowing, was at pains to justify the short span of civilian rule for not being able to make the militants walk the talk as yet. But will he succeed when the United States is getting impatient and blurring innocent civilian and militant targets?

A poll by the U.S.-based International Republican Institute released on July 18 suggested that 71 percent of Pakistanis were for political talks and 61 percent believed education and development to be antidotes for extremism, while a mere 9 percent preferred force.

The belated US$750 billion performance-related aid package may perhaps be too late to save an ailing state from total failure, since it may lose out to an inevitable foreign troop presence in Pakistan.

About the Author:

Susenjit Guha is a writer and journalist based in Kolkata, India. He contributes a weekly commentary and analysis for UPI Asia and has written on Indian and global political issues for such online publications as Online Opinion (Australia) and Foreign Policy in Focus (USA) and M.J. Akbar’s Blog (India).

Author’s contact email address: sguha60@yahoo.com

Filed Under: Asia, Featured, Geopolitics, Politics

The Strategic Vulnerabilities of Oil Dependence

July 21, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net
Monday, July 21, 2008

© Copyright 2008 Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. All rights reserved.

Originally Published by FDD Policy Briefings

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

America’s dependence on oil is its Achilles’ heel in the battle against terrorism, a fact that has not escaped the terrorists. Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders have declared the oil supply a top target, while plots by al-Qaeda and other groups have demonstrated their desire to disrupt world energy markets. A catastrophic attack on key facilities would devastate the world economy, but disruptive attacks that fall short of that are also a powerful tool of asymmetric warfare. This significant weakness should factor heavily in current political debates about alternatives to oil.

Terrorist Targeting

Osama bin Laden initially considered the Islamic world’s oil wealth off limits as a military target. In his 1996 declaration of war against the West, he asked his followers "not to include it in the battle" because he saw oil as "a great Islamic wealth and a large economical power essential for the soon to be established Islamic state." This did not stop Islamic militants from attacking foreign oil workers, as two separate attacks in Saudi Arabia in May 2004 demonstrate.

Then, in a December 2004 audiotape, bin Laden reversed his earlier promise. Declaring Western countries’ purchase of oil at then-market prices "the greatest theft in history," he stated: "Focus your operations on it [oil production], especially in Iraq and the Gulf area, since this [lack of oil] will cause them to die off [on their own]." Since then, al-Qaeda’s public statements have frequently reflected the group’s desire to damage world oil markets. Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a December 2005 video: "I call on the holy warriors to concentrate their campaigns on the stolen oil of the Muslims, most of the revenues of which go to the enemies of Islam." Sawt al-Jihad, the online magazine of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, noted in February 2007 that "cutting oil supplies to the United States, or at least curtailing it, would contribute to the ending of the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan."

Nor is the desire to attack oil targets limited to public pronouncements. Terrorists have targeted key facilities in Saudi Arabia—which is critical to worldwide production because it holds 25% of the world’s proven reserves, produces almost 10 million barrels per day, and is the only country able to maintain excess production capacity of around 1.5 million barrels per day (or a "swing reserve") to keep world prices stable. Gal Luft and Anne Korin of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security have noted that this spare capacity "makes Saudi Arabia the world’s only guarantor of liquidity in the oil market," and warn that the country may be particularly vulnerable to attacks because production is dependent on a limited number of hubs:

Over half of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves are contained in just eight fields, among them the world’s largest onshore oil field—Ghawar, which alone accounts for about half of the country’s total oil production capacity—and Safaniya, the world’s largest offshore oilfield. About two-thirds of Saudi Arabia’s crude oil is processed in a single enormous facility called Abqaiq, 25 miles inland from the Gulf of Bahrain. On the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia has just two primary oil export terminals: Ras Tanura—the world’s largest offshore oil loading facility, through which a tenth of global oil supply flows daily—and Ras al-Ju’aymah. On the Red Sea, a terminal called Yanbu is connected to Abqaiq via the 750-mile East–West pipeline.

Saudi Arabian police made a worrisome discovery in September 2005. A 48-hour shootout at a villa in the seaport of al-Dammam ended on September 6 after Saudi police introduced light artillery. Newsweek reported that when police searched the compound in the aftermath, they found not only "enough weapons for a couple of platoons of guerrilla fighters," but also forged documents that would have provided the terrorists with access to some of the country’s key oil and gas facilities. Saudi interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz confirmed to the daily newspaper Okaz that the cell had planned to attack oil and gas facilities, and stated, "There isn’t a place that they could reach that they didn’t think about."

On February 24, 2006, terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula tried to attack the refinery at Abqaiq operated by the state-owned Saudi Aramco. A statement by Saudi Arabia’s interior ministry explained that two cars tried to enter through one of the facility’s side gates, and that a firefight broke out when security officers challenged them. The vehicles were laden with explosives, and the interior ministry claimed that they "exploded near the entrance." Saudi security adviser Nawaf Obaid told the Arab News shortly after the attack that it was "another indication of how tight and impenetrable the existing Saudi security system is at the main petroleum infrastructure around the country." However, written evidence submitted to Britain’s House of Commons by Neil Partrick, a senior analyst in The Economist Group’s Economist Intelligence Unit, notes that "other sources create a more disturbing impression than this apparently efficient ‘counter-terror interception’ would suggest." Partrick writes:

Apparently the first of three perimeter fences of the Abqaiq facility was broached by men dressed in ARAMCO uniforms and driving ARAMCO vehicles. Only as they approached the second perimeter fence were they shot at. The fact that insurgents either had inside assistance from members of the formal security operation of the state-owned energy company to the extent that … they gained vehicles and uniforms, or that security was sufficiently [lax] that these items could be obtained and entry to the site obtained, is seriously concerning.

Indeed, in a 2007 interview with The Futurist, former CIA director James Woolsey said that if the terrorists had gotten within mortar range of the facility, "they could have taken out the sulfur clearing towers. Robert McFarlane, President Reagan’s National Security advisor, tells us that would take six or seven million barrels of oil a day off line for probably over a year."

There have been other signs of terrorists targeting Saudi Arabia’s oil, including the interior ministry’s April 2007 announcement that it had "foiled an al Qaeda-linked plot to attack oil facilities and military bases," and its arrests of over 700 suspected militants in the first half of 2008, along with allegations that they were "plotting attacks on oil industry installations."

Catastrophic Terrorism

Could a catastrophic attack against Saudi oil production actually succeed? Past attempts against Saudi facilities provide reason for concern. Moreover, such a catastrophic attack could be executed using tactics that al-Qaeda has successfully employed in the past. Consider, for example, how an airplane was used as a guided missile on September 11, 2001. It would be difficult to safeguard major facilities against such an attack. Thus, former CIA case officer Robert Baer wrote in his 2003 book Sleeping with the Devil: "A single jumbo jet with a suicide bomber at the controls, hijacked during takeoff from Dubai and crashed into the heart of Ras Tanura, would be enough to bring the world’s oil-addicted economies to their knees, America’s along with them."

In addition to the offshore loading facility at Ras Tanura, the Abqaiq processing facility is also an obvious target. Baer writes:

At the least, a moderate-to-severe attack on Abqaiq would slow average production there from 6.8 million barrels a day to roughly a million barrels for the first two months postattack, a loss equivalent to approximately one-third of America’s current daily consumption of crude oil. Even as long as seven months after an attack, Abqaiq output would still be about 40 percent of preattack output, as much as 4 million barrels below normal—roughly equal to what all of the OPEC partners collectively took out of production during the devastating 1973 embargo.

Nor do terror groups necessarily need to carry out a dramatic attack inside Saudi Arabia to have a significant effect on the oil supply. The world has a limited number of chokepoints, narrow channels by which oil reaches global markets. The Energy Information Administration has noted that "[t]he blockage of a chokepoint, even temporarily, can lead to substantial increases in total energy costs." Thus, these chokepoints are another of the energy supply’s vulnerabilities. Al-Qaeda has carried out attacks at sea in the past, most notably the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Luft and Korin warn that if terrorists attacked an oil tanker in a critical chokepoint, "the resulting explosion and spreading stain of burning oil could shut down the channel for weeks, with a profound impact on global markets and the maritime insurance industry."

If an attack is successfully executed according to one of these scenarios, the substantially reduced worldwide supply of oil would be joined by an inflated risk premium. Julian Lee, a senior energy analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies in London, told the Guardian in 2004 that following a significant loss of Saudi oil, "it would be difficult to put an upper limit on the kind of panic reaction you would see in the global oil markets." The ramifications would be not only economic but also military: Sawt al-Jihad may well be correct that such an attack could spell doom for the U.S. ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Disruptive Terrorism

In addition to catastrophic attacks, terrorists can disrupt the global oil supply by targeting specific nodes of production networks. In contrast to catastrophic terrorism, this approach does not require significant resources, a large organization, or complex planning.

Disruptive attacks on oil production are regularly conducted by a variety of terrorist and insurgent groups throughout the world. For example, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has been waging a campaign of pipeline, refinery, and oil field attacks since its February 2006 declaration of "total war" against the oil companies operating in Nigeria. The group’s recent activities show the effect that disruptive attacks can have on global markets. Saudi Arabia pledged to produce an extra 200,000 barrels of oil per day beginning in July 2008 to curb record prices, yet MEND and its copycats were able to knock more than that offline in a single week: an attack on Shell’s Bonga field coupled with two attacks on Chevron’s Abiteve Olero crude oil line cut Nigeria’s output by about 400,000 bpd. Though the Nigerian facilities will be repaired, this demonstrates how disruptive attacks can scotch the market’s supply expectations.

Iraq also demonstrates the potential impact of disruptive attacks. Since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, there have been over 450 attacks on Iraq’s pipelines, oil installations, and oil personnel. Though none of these attacks could be categorized as catastrophic, only in 2008—five years after Saddam Hussein’s regime fell—has Iraq been able to return to a production level of 2.5 million bpd. (It produced an average of 2.3 million barrels of oil per day during the last five years of Saddam’s rule.)

Saudi Arabia has gone to great lengths to guard against attacks on its oil infrastructure. As of 2005, precautions included a $1.5 billion energy security budget, round-the-clock helicopter and F-15 patrols, and the deployment of National Guard battalions. Moreover, most observers believe that disruptive attacks against Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure would not be crippling. Kevin Rosser, an analyst with Control Risks Group, has stated: "There’s quite a bit of redundancy built into the [Saudi] network. So even if you manage to stage a successful attack against a single node or maybe even more than one, it wouldn’t be enough to disable the entire system. It’s actually quite resilient to losing one piece." Kyle Cooper, an energy analyst at CitiGroup Global Markets, has noted: "Saudi Arabia has multiple facilities—if one were damaged, it’s most likely another one would be able to come on line very quickly and replace the lost production."

But others think that indirect attacks (as opposed to catastrophic strikes on Ras Tanura or Abqaiq) could have a significant effect on Saudi production. John Robb, the author of Brave New War, has constructed a scenario detailing how attacks on Saudi power generation could have a "downstream" effect on the country’s oil production:

The electricity cell was the first to take action with an attack on one of the two high voltage power lines from the Ghazlan power complex. Since Ghazlan provides over 40% of the power in the eastern province and the electrical network is sparse (and except for a single connection to the central region, isolated), this attack caused over voltages that resulted in a system wide blackout that lasted two days. Oil production from the province was cut in half as systems (refineries, pumping stations, port facilities, etc.) that supported the huge Ghawar oil field were unable to acquire the power necessary for full production.

While analysts disagree over the extent, it is clear that disruptive attacks influence global oil markets and thus provide terrorists with another means of damaging the U.S. (and global) economy.

Conclusion

Disruptions of the global oil supply will harm the U.S. and its allies. The situation appears to be growing more rather than less perilous: Luft and Korin noted in their contribution to Francis Fukuyama’s 2007 compilation Blindside that the growing worldwide demand for oil has reduced OPEC’s spare capacity from seven million barrels a day in 2002 to only two million barrels today (less than 2.5% of the market). "As a result," they write, "the oil market today resembles a car without shock absorbers: the tiniest bump can send a passenger to the ceiling." Moreover, the world is projected to have 1.25 billion cars on the road in 2030, a dramatic increase from 700 million today.

Blindside was sponsored by The American Interest magazine, based on a May 2006 conference that probed the nature of uncertainty—or, in Fukuyama’s words, "why the future is inherently difficult to anticipate, and how to mitigate our blindness to its vicissitudes." Amidst other contributors’ discussions of such low probability yet high impact events as an asteroid hitting the earth or a massive outbreak of avian flu, Luft and Korin warned that a severe oil shock generated by a terrorist attack is "an eminently predictable catastrophe if ever there was one."

Indeed it is: an eminently predictable catastrophe that would dramatically change the global order, in ways that most policymakers have probably never contemplated. There are a great many reasons for the U.S. to pursue alternatives to oil. The threat of terrorism should be a part of the discussion—and it also adds urgency to the equation.

— Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is the vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the author of My Year Inside Radical Islam.

Filed Under: Americas, Energy, Featured, Security

KHAN GATE – NEW COVER UP BID

July 21, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net
Monday, July 21, 2008

© Copyright 2008 James Crickton. All rights reserved.

By JAMES CRICKTON
London based Research Analyst with a MNC

Now that North Korea has expressed readiness to be forthcoming on its N-enterprise, it should be possible for the world to unravel the nuclear black-markets pioneered and sustained by Abdul Qadeer Khan and his unnamed associates in Pakistan with official patronage. Khan has so far been kept away from the international investigators. He has been claiming for a while that his proliferation activities had the full backing of successive army chiefs of Pakistan.

Both the ‘conditional’ pardon given by President Pervez Musharraf and the ground reality that nothing moves in Pakistan without a general wink or nod from the General Headquarters of the army in the garrison town of Rawalpindi lend credence to Khan’s claim that he is not alone. Howsoever powerful and ingenious he might be, Khan could not have despatched centrifuges to North Korea on board a military aircraft in the year 2000 without the knowledge of the military and the military dominated intelligence agency ISI. At that time Gen Musharraf was the army chief besides being the chief executive of the country.

The Pakistan-North Korea nuclear axis goes back to the time Benazir Bhutto was the prime minister in 1994. In the run upto the elections that have brought about the transition of Pakistan from military rule to quasi – democracy, she had proudly spoken of her own N-connection. And even declared that if voted to power, she would allow Khan to appear before the IAEA for questioning. She immediately came under pressure from the establishment and was forced to dilute her commitment. A few days later Benazir was assassinated. Who assassinated her remains a mystery? It is possible that vested interests felt ill at ease with Benazir’s offer of letting Khan to inquisition by US authorities or IAEA. Such access to Khan could have put the entire Pak story under the lens.

Patently, it is unfair to apportion all the credit (blame?) for Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence to keep India at bay to Khan. Another US-trained Plutonium scientist, Munir Ahmad Khan, who was senior to him, deserves to be hailed for the success Pakistan had notched on the nuclear front. Bad luck to him was that General Zia-ul-Haq disliked him because of his close association with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who could rightfully claim, on the political side, the title of father of Pakistan’s bomb. Zia pump primed the Khan enterprise as a counter foil to Munir Ahmed. Some experts hold a different view. According to them, the wily general wanted to let Munir Ahmed carry out his enterprise beyond the preying eyes of the West. And for this reason deliberately made Khan the visible face of Pakistan’s programme to act as some sort of a decoy. That Khan being a megalomaniac did his best to create an aura for himself and even boasted of fathering an Islamic bomb is another matter.

Munir Ahmed directed Pakistan bomb project between two positions at the IAEA- first between 1957 and 1972 as a staff member initially, then as a member of the Board of Governors and later on as IAEA Board Chairman from 1986 to 1987.

A recent study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) shows that Pakistan has followed what in business parlance can be termed as insider trading. Khan is the best known example. Writing in the Defence Journal (May 2004), Usman Shabbir, termed Munir Ahmed as the ‘Unsung Hero’ of Pak bomb project. He and others have also gone on record to say that many Pakistani scientists and engineers gained crucial knowledge about enrichment process through education, training and internships in European firms some times under the aegis of UNESCO.

Tens of scientists were trained in Europe, in particular in Belgium and Germany, says a study on assessing Pakistan’s Nuclear Reprocessing Capabilities

IISS strategic dossier on Nuclear Black-markets leaves no doubt that Pakistan’s N- goal was and is a state sponsored and promoted enterprise. Pakistan embassies were systematically used and so were the Pakistan born foreign nationals. Says IISS: “From the early 1970s until at least the late 1990s Pakistan embassies around the world, in particular in Europe were key components of the network and used diplomatic pouches to send material home”.

Put differently, Islamabad can’t shield itself behind Khan; the earlier it comes out of shadows the better for the world. Because, circumstantial evidence shows that Pakistan’s N- imports and exports were centralised. A British intelligence report in 2003 reportedly listed no less than 95 Pakistani organisations and government bodies including diplomatic posts abroad as players in the country’s N- imports.

While on the subject of involving Pakistani- born foreign nationals, the IISS report observes, “Through financial or ideological incentives, Pakistan enlisted the contribution of foreign nationals of Pakistan origin. A Q Khan made extensive use of this method, asking several of his countrymen to come back to Pakistan, collect information, or assist with the procurement of spare parts”. Khan also made extensive use of personnel connections invoking ‘IOUs’. These techniques brought success to its enterprise in the past and ensured the longevity of the network despite regime changes.

NEW INSIDERS

Lately Pakistan establishment is invoking these time tested old practices to ‘guard’ itself from any intrusive campaign to unravel Mush-Khan mystery. There are reports that specially selected and trained young Pak scientists are being placed at the IAEA headquarters and some think tanks in the United States working on non-proliferation issues.

Primarily their task is to help Pak nuclear and defence establishment to effectively deal with key issues at various fora like nuclear watch dog, IAEA, and Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) besides the usual suspects like CTBT and FMCT. Sources in London, Washington and Dubai said that these new Pak Nuclear foot-soldiers did their post-graduation and received hands on training in Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and Strategic Plans Division (SPD) as also Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA).

Some of these young scientists are said to have been sent to the London-based South Asian Strategic Stability Institute (SASSI) for a short warm up. It may be patently unfair to say all young Pak scientists at SASSI come under the tainted category. But there is the talk that after the internship, these youngsters may be posted to Pak embassies to represent PAEC, which offers perfect cover.

Meanwhile there are reports from Pakistan itself that Islamist fundamentalists sympathetic to Jihadis are finding their way into the Pakistan nuke laboratories. These reports need to be thoroughly verified before a view could be taken. At this stage, this much can be said. Given the milieu in which Pakistan finds itself today, the jihadi infiltration into the country’s scientific laboratories, if true, doesn’t come as a surprise.

The United States is said to be monitoring these developments though it doesn’t appear to have achieved any significant breakthrough just as it has not had any success thus far in getting access to the Khan confessions and details of Pak government investigations into the Khan proliferation enterprise.

By 1983 itself, the United States came to believe that Beijing might have helped Pakistan overcome some difficulties in its nuclear campaign. Five years later in 1998, first steps were initiated in Pak-Iran nuclear cooperation. This much is clear since according to US ambassador to Pakistan, Robert Oakley and Assistant Secretary of Defence, Henry Brown, General Mirza Aslam Beg, the army chief, had threatened to transfer nuclear technology to Iran if Washington cut off arms sales to Pakistan.

Benazir Bhutto, as prime minister (1988-90 and 1993-96) was in the Iran-Pak N-loop. Her Security Affairs Advisor Major General Imtiaz Ali and her Military Secretary Zulfiqar Ali reportedly encouraged meetings between Khan and Iran.

The point is whether it is with Iran or with Libya or for that matter with North Korea, Khan did not make a solo effort even if he had cut corners here and there to improve his bank balance. As of now there is no light on the contours of this broad based network or on the extent and depth of cooperation with China. From all accounts, it is clear that nuclear cooperation with China was initiated by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in May 1976. It remains one of the most closely held state secrets of Pakistan. And it is said to be a cause of friction in Sino-American relations.

One doesn’t know whether all members of the Khan network have been identified and put under the scanner. Approximately some 50 individuals may have been actively involved in the network, according to the deposition of David Albright before the Subcommittee on international terrorism and non-proliferation of the US House Committee on International Affairs.

Another report puts the number of persons investigated world wide at 38. How many of them are from Pakistan is unknown as also whether everyone who assisted Khan in Pakistan is named as of now. There is need to trace and question his associates in other countries.

Needless to say, all this calls for a world wide effort and cooperation from the countries concerned. Since North Korea is forthcoming to speak, it is in Pakistan’s interest to let the world unravel the Khan mystery it has gift wrapped over the years as a matter of state policy.

WASHINGTON TRACK

Given the difficult times it is passing through, socially, ethnically and economically, it is in Pakistan’s own interest to come clean on what we may call the Khan Gate. It should allow as much broad based probe as is possible and give up the age old practice of taking shelter under one pretext or the other. If for no other reason, just to prevent the possibility of fundamentalist Islamists gaining access to N-technology since Talibanisation of Pakistan’s countryside is a reality. Certainly the civilised world will be more than willing to lend a helping hand to Pakistan to start on a clean slate.

A related issue that only Washington can answer is how much of Pakistan’s clandestine activity is known to the United States. Three years ago, in September 2005, Ruud Lubbers, who was Dutch prime minister, publicly stated that CIA had made them to free Khan, not once, but twice in 1975 and again in 1986. The Lubbers allegation remains unanswered till date, surprisingly. The CIA is not unaware of Khan contacts and activities either.

George Tenet, a former CIA director, in his book, ‘At the Centre of the Storm”, says Khan had contacts in China, North Korea and through out the Muslim world. His caveat is interesting though – “A Q Khan is at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden. (But) it is extremely difficult to know exactly what he was upto or to what extent his efforts were conducted at the behest and with the support of Pakistani government”.

But there is one aspect of the Khan Bomb factory that United States cannot say it was not unaware off. And Pakistan government cannot attribute to the greed of the discredited scientist. Before 1985, the year Pressler Amendment came on the American statute, Islamabad placed an order for 40 F-16 aircraft. It wanted to use these aircraft as delivery vehicles for its nuclear weapons. That the US did not configure these aircraft for nuclear delivery is a fact. But the moot question is: Was it a deliberate policy action? Those in the know of these things, say it could be a deliberate decision. Truth if any, only Washington knows. Islamabad knows.

Filed Under: Asia, Conflict, Featured, Nuclear Weapons, Politics, Security

THE SECOND RESURGENCE OF TALIBAN

July 20, 2008 By

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO. 413

Global Geopolitics Net
Sunday, July 20, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

By B. Raman

The Neo Taliban of Afghanistan has demonstrated a dual capability—- as a terrorist organization specializing in suicide terrorism and as a conventional guerilla force capable of conventional set-piece battles involving attack-stand-and fight tactics.

2. Its capability as a terrorist organization has remained unimpaired for the last two years. So far this year, it has already committed 73 acts of suicide terrorism as compared to 137 during the whole of last year.

3. Its acts of suicide terrorism are almost as numerous as those witnessed in Iraq, but not as deadly due to the poor training of the suicide bombers.

4. It demonstrated its capability for set-piece conventional battles involving the engagement of large forces during the fighting season of 2006-07. The Taliban units engaged in many of those battles in Afghan territory were trained, motivated and led by Mulla Dadullah.

5.The death of Mulla Dadullah in Afghan territory in an incident in May, 2007, impaired its conventional capability. It faced difficulty in finding a suitable replacement for him. This had an impact on the ground situation during the summer of 2007. The much-threatened (by the Taliban) and much-dreaded (by the NATO forces) summer offensive did not materialize.

6. As the NATO commanders were hoping that the tide has started turning against the Taliban, it is showing signs of a second resurgence of its conventional prowess. One has already seen two instances of this. The first was its audacious attack on the Kandahar prison on June 13,2008, during which it took the NATO and Afghan National Army (ANA) forces totally by surprise and rescued about 400 imprisoned Taliban cadres and took them away in motor vehicles without being intercepted by the Canadian forces deployed for the security of this area.

7. The second instance was on July 13, 2008, when an estimated 200 jihadi fighters , who had taken shelter, without being detected, in a village called Wanat in the Kunnar province in Eastern Afghanistan managed to attack and over-run an outpost jointly manned by US and ANA forces, after killing nine US soldiers. The US has since vacated this indefensible area, which has reportedly been occupied by the jihadi fighters.

8. What should be worrying is not the occupation of this area by the jihadis, but their ability to keep their movement, assembling in the village and preparations for the attack a secret and the tenacity with which they reportedly fought despite the US outpost calling for air strikes to disperse them.

9. The identity of the fighters and their commander is not yet certain. The Taliban, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Gulbuddin Heckmatyar’s Hizbe Islami and Al Qaeda are known to be active in this area—–with greater activity by the Hizbe Islami than others. There have also been reports from tribal sources in Pakistan that the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), which has been operating in tandem with Maulana Fazlullah’s Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) in the Swat Valley of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), has now moved some of its trained cadres to the Kunnar province to fight along with the Hizbe Islami. However, the JEM is essentially a terrorist organization with very little conventional capability.

10. The kind of conventional capability, which was exhibited during the 2006-07 fighting season and is being exhibited now, could come only from either serving or retired Pashtun soldiers of the Pakistani and Afghan armies and those trained by them.

11. In a report carried by it on July 18, 2008, the “Financial Times” of London has quoted Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as saying that the July 13’s “well co-ordinated” attack by hundreds of insurgents against a US military outpost near the border with Pakistan demonstrated that the enemy in Afghanistan had “grown bolder, more sophisticated, and more diverse”.

12. He added: “We’re seeing a greater number of insurgents and foreign fighters flowing across the border with Pakistan, unmolested and unhindered. We simply must all do a better job of policing the border region and eliminating the safe havens, which serve today as launching pads for attacks on coalition forces.”

13. An agency report carried by the “News” of Pakistan on July 17, 2008, has quoted Admiral Mullen as further saying as follows: “The group that launched the attack trained in safe havens in Pakistan. We see this threat accelerating, almost becoming a syndicate of different groups who heretofore had not worked closely together.”

14. Till recently, Al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), another Uzbek group, were content with keeping their role confined to training the jihadis of the Taliban, the various Pakistani organizations and volunteers from outside. They were not participating in actual battles due to their small number, which they wanted to conserve for operations outside this region. There have been reports that their number has now been bolstered by the arrival of not only experienced fighters from Iraq, but also fresh recruits from the Central Asian Republics, Chechnya and Turks and members of the Uighur diaspora from Turkey.

15. The Pentagon is reported to have ordered an enquiry into the July 13 fiasco in order to establish the identity of the jihadi forces which attacked the outpost, how the outpost was taken by surprise and how the intelligence agencies failed to detect the movement and assembling of the jihadis near the outpost. It has been reported that the jihadis managed to plan and carry out the attack within two days of the outpost being set up.

16. The US forces should re-examine their present policy of setting up thinly-manned outposts in apparently indefensible areas. They only hand over a seemingly spectacular victory on a platter to the jihadis. They should reverse this tactics and inveigle the jihadis into setting up their presence in such areas and then attack and kill them with superior force. The objective in such isolated areas should be not territorial control, but inflicting heavy attrition on the jihadis.

17.The jihadi battles presently going on in Pakistan’s tribal belt and in Afghanistan have serious security implications for India. Mehsuds, Wazirs and Afridis were the tribals used by the Pakistan Army in 1947-48 to capture what is now called the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). The Pakistan Army again used them before and during the war of 1965. Zia-ul-Haq used them for suppressing a Shia revolt in Gilgit in 1988.

18. President Bush often says with some validity that if the US troops withdraw from Iraq without defeating Al Qaeda, the Arab terrorists now operating in Iraq could move over to Europe and the US and step up terrorism.

19. If the US and other NATO forces fail to prevail over the jihadis in the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal belt, these tribals, fresh from their victories in that region, would move over to Kashmir to resume their jihad against India. What we are now seeing in Kashmir is the beginning of the end of one phase of the jihad involving jihadis of the 1980s vintage. We might see the beginning of a new phase involving better-trained and better-motivated jihadis of the latest stock.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and ,presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

Filed Under: Asia, Featured, Geopolitics

Muslims & The Pre-Election Political Scene

July 18, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net
Friday, July 18, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

by B. Raman

As the date (July 22, 2008) for the vote of confidence from the Lok Sabha in the Manmohan Government nears and as the possibility of a premature election to the Lok Sabha looms large, a question often debated is the attitude of the Indian Muslims to the Indo-US nuclear deal. Do they regard it as anti-Muslim because of the perceived anti-Muslim policies of the administration of President George Bush? That is the question which has been raised again and again by the critics of the deal and of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.

2. In this connection, it would be pertinent to take note of the attitude of the Muslims in the Ummah as a whole since that could have an impact on the attitude of the Indian Muslims. The strongest criticism of India’s developing relations with the US came from sections of the Muslims of the Ummah immediately after the visit of Bush to India in March, 2006. The criticism was not specific relating to the nuclear deal. It was more in relation to what they saw as India’s co-operation with the US and Israel in the war against jihadi terrorism. They noted with anger and surprise the reluctance of different political formations in India—in the rulling alliance as well as in the opposition— to criticise the allegedly inhuman conditions in which Muslims arrested in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other parts of the world on suspicion of belonging to Al Qaeda were kept in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba and denied the basic human rights and the benefits of the due process of the law. Even the former Tony Blair Government of the UK, which was very supportive of the policies of the Bush Administration, expressed its discomfort over the conditions in which the Muslim detenus were kept in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and in May 2006 publicly called for winding up the Centre and transfering the detenus to the custody of the American civilian authorities from the custody of the military authorities. A similar demand has been voiced by many other democratic countries, by the International Committee of the Red Cross and by all human rights organisations of the West without exception. India’s silence in this matter as well as over the repeated air strikes by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, which killed a large number of civilians, was an important source of anger. This silence was seen as the inevitable outcome of the growing Indo-US strategic relationship.

3. It was in this context that in the last week of April, 2006, Osama bin Laden projected the global jihad being waged by Al Qaeda as directed against a joint conspiracy of the Crusaders, the Jewish people and the Hindus against Islam and the Muslims. However, this characterisation has not been repeated by him since then and the anger over India’s silence has not found renewed expression. However, one could not conclude from this that the anger has dissipated.

4. Similarly, the silence of the leftist parties—particularly of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)— over the renewed campaign of repression by the Chinese authorities against the Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang province bordering Pakistan is being discussed by the various Muslim chat groups in the Internet. They have noted that not only the leftist parties, but even the Indian political class as a whole and the Indian elite have maintained a silence over the recent public execution of two Uighurs, the arrest of about 80 others and the forcible closure of 40 mosques by the Chinese on the ground that they had been started without permission and had become the den of terrorist elements despite the fact that many of these details were carried by the State-controlled media of China. One can legitimately justify this silence on the ground that this was an internal matter of China, but they have noted the energetic manner in which Indian public opinion reacted to the repression of the Tibetans, but maintained a discreet silence on the repression of the Muslims.

5. If the unabated concerns of Israel over Iran’s nuclear programme leads to an Israeli air strike against Iran’s nuclear establishments with Iranian retaliation against Israel, the consequences of this clash could have an impact of the forthcoming election campaign in India due to a surge of anger in the Indian Muslim community. Al Qaeda and other pro-Al Qaeda Sunni organisations have kept silent over the dangers of a US military strike against Iran. In his messages of last year, Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s No.2, implied that Iran, which colluded with the US in its invasion and occupation of Iraq, cannot expect the Sunnis to come to its help against the US.

6. However, if Israel—and not the US— attacks Iran, the Sunnis could rally to the support of Iran. The Indian Muslim community is unlikely to remain untouched by the anger of the Ummah against Israel. India’s close strategic relations with Israel built up over the years by the previous as well as the present Governments could affect the attitude of the Muslims, upsetting the electoral calculations of different political formations.

7. In this connection, one notices that the Government of India has already taken a strong stand earlier this week against any military action against Iran.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)

Filed Under: Asia, Featured, Politics

ECONOMY: Little to Cheer on U.S. Independence Day

July 4, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net / IPS
Friday, July 04, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Abid Aslam

WASHINGTON, Jul 4 (IPS) – The world’s biggest economy marked Independence Day Friday with little cause for economic cheer. Job losses are the worst in nearly six years and a de facto recession appears to have gripped all sectors.

Statistics released in the run up to the Jul. 4 national holiday offer little hope of an early turnaround. Developing and wealthy countries alike are feeling the effects of the slowdown here.

Economic woes top the list of voters’ concerns in this election year, according to numerous opinion polls. Job losses, in particular, are causing anxiety and contributing to the lowest levels of consumer confidence about the future in more than a decade.

”Far too many Americans will spend this holiday out of work and struggling to provide for their families because of the failed policies of the last eight years,” Barack Obama, the Democratic contender for the presidency, said Thursday.

Said John McCain, Obama’s Republican rival: ”Washington can no longer abdicate its responsibility to act. Our focus must be clear: enact policies to create jobs today.”

Employers have jettisoned nearly half a million workers — 438,000 — so far this year, the Labour Department said on Thursday. In June alone, they laid off 62,000 jobs, more than economists had predicted and the sixth straight month of net job losses for the economy.

Massive job losses overwhelmed the few gains seen in health care, education, the hospitality industry, and the government.

The economy needs to generate more than 100,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with new entrants into the job market.

A day earlier, leading payroll processor Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) said non-farm private firms jettisoned 79,000 workers last month, the biggest job loss since November 2002.

The national unemployment rate held steady at 5.5 percent — a full percentage point higher than a year ago, according to the Labour Department. Nationwide, there were 8.5 million people last month, up from 7 million a year ago.

The government’s figures likely understate the problem, however, as they exclude people who have given up looking for a job, and those knocked out of full-time employment and into part-time jobs against their will.

Many economists say the unemployment rate likely will continue to rise well into 2009, topping 6 percent along the way.

June’s ”decrease in employment was broad based across industrial sectors and suggests continued weakness in employment,” said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomics Advisers LLC, which crunched ADP’s payroll data for Wednesday’s report.

Goods-producing companies dominated last month’s bloodletting with 76,000 workers let go — the sector’s nineteenth consecutive month of decline. The manufacturing sector offloaded 44,000 workers for its twenty-second straight month of job losses, ADP said.

But the services sector, which had continued to grow steadily as other parts of the economy stalled, posted its first jobs decline since November 2002, laying off 3,000 workers, according to ADP.

The private Institute for Supply Management (ISM) confirmed the reversal of fortunes on Thursday, announcing in a widely anticipated report that its services sector index fell to 48.2 in June from 51.7 in May. A reading below 50 reflects contraction.

The ISM manufacturing index for June rose unexpectedly to 50.2 but the group said this was just a spurt and warned that unsold goods were piling up and likely would lead to further retrenchment.

The purchasing managers’ association blamed the downturn mainly on rising costs of fuel, food, and raw materials.

Factory orders for capital goods — machines and other products used in making other products — also are falling, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday, providing further indication that businesses faced with dwindling profits are paring their spending on plant and production capacity. The department also reported an increase in unsold goods.

The U.S. housing recession, now in its third year, continues to claim livelihoods in the home-building industry and among finance firms specialising in home sales and mortgage lending.

ADP’s payrolls review ”suggests no lessening of the recent strain on employment in these industries,” said Prakken.

Builders have axed 349,000 jobs in the past two years and housing finance firms cut 3,000 jobs last month alone, according to ADP.

Worse is to come. Countrywide Financial Corp. said last week 7,500 jobs would be cut as Bank of America Corp., the second-largest U.S. bank, acquires the troubled mortgage lender.

What’s more, job losses are spreading to other parts of the service economy. Starbucks, that symbol of business expansion, said it would close 600 of its U.S. coffee shops in the year ahead — or nearly one in every five stores opened in the past two years. The company said it would serve termination notices to 12,000 employees, about 7 percent of its global workforce.

Airline employees also are bracing for job losses, as are workers for Chrysler and other U.S. automakers, some of which said this week their sales had fallen to 15-year lows.

More pain is to come, economists say, and it will be felt around the world.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have issued multiple warnings since late last year that a stagnating U.S. economy is dragging down other countries and could lead to global recession.

Latin America and countries linked to the feeble U.S. dollar have been hit hard but losses also have struck major traders China and India. Economic woes in the rich countries also could sap the world’s aid-dependent poorest countries, the IMF has warned.

International experts had hoped governments with sizeable currency reserves and those with relatively little dependence on U.S. aid, investment, or export markets might ride out the storm. But the IMF warned this week that runaway commodity prices were eating into some countries’ finances.

Filed Under: Americas, Economy, Politics