INDIA/PAKISTAN: Trade, Travel Across Divided Kashmir Stalled

February 28, 2009 by

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS

Athar Parvaiz

SRINAGAR, Feb 28 (IPS) – Trade and travel between the Indian and Pakistan parts of Kashmir, as part of confidence building measures (CBMs) between the two rival countries, appear to have become a casualty of the Nov. 26-29 terror attacks on the port city of Mumbai.

This is despite the fact that, immediately after the attacks, India’s foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee had vowed that the ‘Kashmir-centric CBMs’ would not be affected by the terror strikes which left 180 people dead.

Trade between the divided parts of Kashmir, which had started in October 2008, was already faltering thanks to the lack of infrastructure and facilities, which, according to traders, may have come up but for the renewed acrimony between India and Pakistan over the Mumbai attacks.
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Filed Under: Diplomacy, Geopolitics, Report

POLITICS-PAKISTAN: Court Ruling May Deepen Political Crisis

February 26, 2009 by

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS

Analysis by Beena Sarwar

KARACHI, Feb 26 (IPS) – The political chasm in crisis-riddled Pakistan has deepened after a Supreme Court ruling barred from political office opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and his younger brother Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab – the country’s most populous and powerful province.

The Sharifs’ Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) party had joined hands with President Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to defeat political parties supporting former president Pervez Musharraf in elections last February, and force his resignation six months later.

But the alliance between Pakistan’s two main political parties fell apart, mainly over the restoration to office of chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Choudhry – whose dismissal by Musharraf in 2007 sparked unrest led by the legal fraternity.
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Filed Under: Politics

OBAMA & PAKISTAN : RELUCTANCE TO CALL A SPADE A SPADE

February 18, 2009 by

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.498

Global Geopolitics Net Sites
February 18, 2009

B.RAMAN

A book titled “The Inheritance” written by David Sanger, a correspondent of the “New York Times, and published recently has received much attention because of its disclosures about how the previous administration of George Bush realised that Gen. (now retired) Pervez Musharraf was playing a double game with the US—- pretending to act against the Taliban and covertly using it as strategic asset. It also refers to a reported intercept of a telephone conversation of Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the present chief of the Army Staff, in which he referred to jJallaluddin Haqqani, a Taliban commander, as a strategic asset.
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Filed Under: Geopolitics, Security, Terrorism

INDIA’S SRI LANKA PROBLEM : KEEPING THE FINGERS CROSSED

February 9, 2009 by

Global Geopolitics Net Sites
February 9, 2009

B.RAMAN

( Written exclusively for the online journal of a US university at their request. Cannot be reproduced till they publish it—B.Raman, 9-2-09)

The success of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces in inflicting a series of defeats on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) since the middle of 2006 and in restoring the writ of the State over 95 per cent of the territory in the Tamil majority Eastern and Northern provinces, which was under the control of the LTTE, has been greeted in India with a mix of satisfaction and concern.

The satisfaction arises from the expected total defeat of the LTTE’s insurgent force, which had succeeded in virtually establishing a State within a State with its paraphernalia of an administrative structure and a so-called Army, Navy and Air Force. Its naval and air capabilities posed a threat not only to the national security of Sri Lanka, but also to the security of India and the region as a whole.
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Filed Under: Commentary, Conflict, Geopolitics, Insurgency

RIGHTS-CHINA: Path to Modernisation Disastrous – Charter 08

February 9, 2009 by

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS

By Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Feb 9 (IPS) – When China’s human rights record comes up for review before a key United Nations panel on Monday, this nominally communist country will have two contrasting accounts of its human rights situation.

A report submitted by the government appraises human rights progress in China as a continuous improvement of people’s living standards and their economic betterment.

The enormous reduction in poverty the country has made over the past decades is highlighted as the core of its human rights achievements. “The Chinese people who once lacked basic necessities, are now enjoying relative prosperity,” the document states.

But a petition signed by hundreds of Chinese intellectuals, ordinary people and even some government officials, calls the world’s attention to China’s lack of human rights, claiming “the decline of the current system has reached the point where change is no longer optional”.
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Filed Under: Development, History, Human Rights, Politics

A.Q.KHAN LET LOOSE ONCE AGAIN: DANGERS AHEAD

February 7, 2009 by

Global Geopolitics Net Sites
February 7, 2009

B.RAMAN

( To be read in continuation of my article of July 6,2008, titled “A. Q. KHAN GAGGED, THREATENED WITH IN CAMERA TRIAL” at
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers28/paper2760.html )

How trustworthy is Pakistan? This question, which has always been bothering the mind of the international community, should acquire even greater compelling urgency after the news broke out in Islamabad that Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Aslam of the Islamabad High Court has freed on February 6,2009, A.Q.Khan, Pakistan’s nuclear scientist, from the house-arrest in which he was placed by former President Pervez Musharraf in 2004 after the US and other Western countries gathered evidence of his involvement in the proliferation of nuclear technology and equipment to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
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Filed Under: Commentary, Geopolitics, Security

PRO-LTTE WEB SITES TARGET INDIA AS THE VILLAIN

February 2, 2009 by

Global Geopolitics Net Sites
February 1, 2009

B.RAMAN

In a desperate attempt to secure a pause in the fighting in the Vanni area of Northern Sri Lanka in order to be able to regroup, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has been emulating the tactics of human shields or human buffers used by the Hizbollah in the Lebanon in 2006 and by the Hamas in Gaza recently to slow down the Israeli military strikes.

2. While refusing to let the civilians in the areas still controlled by it to move to the safe zones proclaimed by the Sri Lankan Government under the pretext that the civilians cannot be forced to move against their will unless there is an internationally-guaranteed ceasefire, it has activated the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in the West and Australia to demonstrate in large numbers in the streets to highlight the plight of the civilians. It has mobilised the support of foreign human rights organisations on this issue. Impressive demonstrations were held by large numbers of Sri Lankan Tamils in different Western cities on January 31,2009.

3. At the same time, pro-LTTE web sites have been highlighting the protests launched by some political parties and by some sections of students and lawyers in Tamil Nadu against the alleged violations of the human rights of the Sri Lankan Tamils and their calls for Indian intervention in support of the Sri Lankan Tamils. They have been trying to project as if the protest campaign in Tamil Nadu has been gathering momentum.

4. Some of the pro-LTTE web sites in the Tamil language have been carrying inflammatory articles projecting India as the villain for allegedly providing military assistance to Sri Lanka in its counter-terrorism campaign against the LTTE. They indirectly admit that during the last two years the LTTE has suffered a series of set-backs and attribute these set-backs to the assistance allegedly given by India to the Sri Lankan Army.

5. One such article calls upon the members of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora abroad to hold continuous demonstrations outside Indian diplomatic missions in protest against India’s role in Sri Lanka. The pro-LTTE web sites have been directing their criticism against the Government of India as well as the Congress (I), which is projected as the “Sonia Congress”. Some of the criticism is personally directed at Mrs.Sonia Gandhi.

6. They have been accusing the Congress (I) of taking vengeance on the Sri Lankan Tamil community for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. (1-2-2009)

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

Copyright © 2009 B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group (www.southasiaanalysis.org)


Filed Under: Conflict, Politics, Report