Monthly Archives: August 2018

Even as Trump takes the hard line against Pakistan backing certain terror groups, there are many US generals who do not wish to antagonise Afghanistan’s neighbour.

A US Army team at Dover Air Force Base carries the remains of Sgt. Jonathon Michael Hunter killed by a car bomb in Kandahar on August 2. AFP

Maj Gen Ashok K. Mehta (retd)The legendary Trump tantrums and tweets have so convulsed the White House that a four-star Marine General, John Kelly, in charge of Homeland Security, had to be transferred to the White House as Chief of Staff to maintain dignity and decorum and keep strategic policy-making insulated from chaos. Take Afghanistan, or Af-Pak. Inter-agency wrangles — between Pentagon, State Department, national security establishment and the CIA — have delayed the Af-Pak policy document. It was due in April but was put on hold as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wanted to re-hyphenate Afghanistan with Pakistan.Gen John Nicholson, US Commander, Resolute Force, in Kabul, who was in Delhi last month, had been told to expect the strategic directive latest by July 18. Instead, on July 19, in a stormy meeting of top generals at the White House presided over by Trump, he demanded to know why the war in Afghanistan was not being won even after 16 years, 2,740 US lives and USD 1 tn. According to one insider account, Trump wanted Nicholson sacked and replaced with his National Security Advisor, serving Lt Gen HR McMaster. The President’s NSC has met thrice seeking out-of-the-box ideas. Trump had famously told visiting President Xi Jinping over dinner that he had left the war-fighting to the generals.At the July 19 meeting, Trump did not encounter any unconventional thinking, but was presented three widely accepted options — status quo, ramping up force levels, investing in a political solution. It seems he is incensed with Pakistan for consistently ‘not cooperating’ — after reviewing punitive policy recommendations made by Sen. John McCain, chairman, Senate Armed Forces Committee, following a brief visit last month to Pakistan; former Congressman Larry Pressler; and Lisa Curtis, Senior Director for South and Central Asia at the White House NSC. Trump is likely to get tough with Pakistan.The message loud and clear from the White House was conveyed last week by McMaster to Pakistani generals. That Trump will not tolerate any support to terrorists, Pakistan has to change its paradoxical policy of supporting the Taliban, Haqqanis and other groups and has to stop those providing safe havens and support bases to these groups. The bottom line is changing the behaviour of the deep state, which no US Administration has been able to achieve. Trump wants to win an unwinnable war hoping a tough and punitive policy on Pakistan’s non-compliance may open the door for better or worse in bringing a chastened Taliban/Haqqani network to the negotiating table. At the last count, the Taliban were in control of 95 of Afghanistan’s 407 districts.While McMaster is echoing Trump’s hard line, there are many generals, including Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Dunford who do not wish to antagonise Pakistan and doubt whether a punitive approach can alter the behaviour of the Rawalpindi generals. Eventually, the hard line could prevail but how it gets operationalised will be worth watching.The security situation in Afghanistan is worsening by the day as Kabul awaits Trump’s Ten Commandments. While at the strategic level there is a stalemate, at the tactical level advantage is with the Taliban and their affiliates. Earlier in the year, National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar, speaking at the IDSA, New Delhi, had said that the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) were losing on an average 29 soldiers a day fighting Taliban, Haqqanis and the ISIS. In comparison, Indian losses in Kashmir for all of 2016 were 95 combatants. Last three months have witnessed the most horrendous attacks ever — biggest truck bomb explosion in Kabul and the largest assault on an army camp in Balkh province killing hundreds of civilians and soldiers. These have sapped the confidence of Afghans who came on the streets demanding security from the National Unity government (NUG) riven with differences and afflicted by corruption. Meanwhile, the NUG has evolved a four-year (2017-2020) roadmap for enhancing ANSF fighting capabilities as agreed at the Warsaw Nato summit this May. The Americans and the West pay almost the entire cost of Afghanistan security and economy.Pentagon’s latest report on Afghanistan states that India is the most reliable friend of the Kabul regime. Prime Minister Modi has repeatedly said that India will stick with Afghanistan through thick and thin. During last week’s US-India Forum at New Delhi, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj lauded sacrifices made by the US in preserving the gains of the last 16 years, including peace, security and democracy in Afghanistan. New Delhi’s development assistance for Afghanistan is worth USD 3 bn and is the largest to any country other than Bhutan.Pakistan is the stick in the mud. Atmar had made plain that defeat of the Taliban was possible only if the Taliban and Haqqani sanctuaries were dismantled. He claimed that the Afghan Special Forces were the best in the world and the war could be taken to the sanctuaries. Senator Ted Poe has listed two legislations, one declaring Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism and the other withdrawing the privileged status of Most Favoured Non-Nato Ally. Trump advisers are convinced that only coercion and raising the costs for Pakistan will work. Besides curtaining funding, hard options such as surgical strikes against sanctuaries and targeted drone strikes to take out the Taliban and Haqqani leadership are on the table.Since 2004, when drone strikes first started against Pakistan, 428 strikes have taken place, the last on July 3 in South Waziristan against ISIS targets. On June 13, US drones struck in Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunwa, killing Abu Baqar Haqqani, in Pakistan beyond the drone-permissible tribal belt area. This is the second attack outside the agreed drone-strike areas, the last being in Balochistan which took out Taliban supremo Mullah Mansour last year. It is estimated that approximately 1,200 to 1,600 terrorists have been killed in drone attacks. Will the drone strikes extend to Taliban and Haqqani sanctuaries on Pakistani soil? Will Afghanistan Special Forces assisted by US Rangers conduct surgical strikes against safe havens? A Trump authorisation for either or both these options can be a game-changer. While admiring the chocolate cream dessert at the banquet for Xi, Trump informed him that Cruise Missiles had just attacked the Syrian airbase from where chemical attacks were launched by Assad forces in Syria. How far can Trump go to tame Pakistan to get out of Afghanistan? The long awaited policy directive will conceal more than it will reveal!The writer is a founder-member of the Defence Planning Staff.

AFP file

Beijing, August 9

The countdown to a military conflict between India and China has begun and New Delhi should come to senses and withdraw troops from Doklam before it’s too late, a Chinese daily said on Wednesday.An editorial in the state-run China Daily told India that the “clock is ticking away”. The piece was latest addition to the hostile commentaries in the Chinese media. The newspaper said “India will only have itself to blame” if it didn’t withdraw troops from Doklam where its troops are locked in a stand-off with the Chinese Army since mid-June.(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)“The countdown to a clash between the two forces has begun, and the clock is ticking away the time to what seems to be an inevitable conclusion,” it said.“As the standoff … enters its seventh week, the window for a peaceful solution is closing.” China has warned India of serious consequences if Indian troops were not pulled back from Doklam, which Beijing calls Donglang and claims is its territory.India has proposed to China to simultaneously pull back from Doklam, which India and Bhutan say belongs to Thimpu. Beijing has refused. The newspaper said India had ignored China’s stern warnings. “Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear will have got the message. Yet New Delhi refuses to come to its senses and pull its troops back to its own side of the border.” — IANS

MESSAGE: The Doklam standoff with China conveys a disturbing message

M. K. Bhadrakumar

IF you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately. So I think it’s a cost-benefit ratio.” These are words by James Mattis, US Secretary of Defence. It is a powerful statement about the no-man’s land where diplomacy and military power intersect in a country’s foreign policy. The point is, it is never easy to judge the measured activism with which military power is used in support of foreign policy. The preference for hard power may have seductive appeal — and diplomacy may look an elusive idea — but, historically, it is not without containing some irony. Bismarck’s “blood and iron” didn’t turn out to be the solution to the German question. It led instead to the ruin of Germany. Suffice to say, the so-called Doklam standoff with China conveys a stark and disturbing message. The government had a choice to resort to diplomacy or use military force. It chose the latter. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, “China had notified the Indian side in advance out of goodwill… on May 18 and June 8 respectively and the Indian side didn’t make any response.” Instead, when the Chinese began building the road on June 16, within forty-eight hours Indian troops intervened to stop the work. From all appearances, India didn’t blunder into the standoff. It was a political decision to project military power across the international border. The Indian troops simply crossed the Sikkim-China boundary to get across to the Bhutan-China border. Delhi claims that it is safeguarding Bhutan’s interests. Bhutan has not endorsed the Indian intervention publicly, but that causes no embarrassment to Delhi. The Indian commentators laud the government for showing exemplary restraint in the face of strident Chinese statements. But in reality the government owes no explanation to anyone for its action. The nearest analogy would be the “surgical strikes” against Pakistan — an unapologetic display of “muscular diplomacy”. Prime Minister Modi’s remarks on June 26 in Washington during his visit to the US regarding the “surgical strikes” put things in perspective. He said no country in the world questioned India’s action. Thereupon, he went on to say that India, while following international laws and norms, is also capable of taking “the toughest of steps for our sovereignty, security, peace, our people, and progress. Whenever the need arises we have done it and the world will never be able to stop us.” When he said this, Modi had known — although we hadn’t at that point in time — that the Indian forces had crossed the international border into Doklam, and there was a standoff, which was already into the second week. Therefore, it is futile to measure the standoff with coffee spoons on a daily basis in terms of a mutual “Doklam thaw”. Perhaps, the most significant remark that External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj made in her speech in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday was that the Doklam standoff is not a stand-alone issue. The minister was quoted as saying, “We are not negotiating only on Doklam, we are talking about bilateral relations in entirety. And a solution will also emerge from it.” Clearly, our pundits have let their imagination run berserk by analysing the Doklam standoff in terms of India “calling the Chinese bluff”; India “standing up to China’s bullying”; or India “giving China a bloody nose.” Such puerile thesis misses the point that this is a profoundly serious standoff, which India got into with great deliberation, stemming from a hugely consequential political decision. The Chinese statements have duly assessed that India did not blunder into this standoff, but acted with a purpose. What objective(s) would the government have had? Conceivably, there are four dimensions. One, Delhi would have hoped to send a message to Beijing on the lines Modi spoke in Washington – and, that he spoke from American soil carried its own resonance. Two, India hoped to bring forward from the backburner the issue of the “trijunction” where the borders of Sikkim, Bhutan and China meet. There are differences in interpretation, which have security implications. Three, succinctly put, India regarded itself to be a stakeholder in the China-Bhutan border negotiations and assertively sought a say in the two countries’ discourse. Four, importantly, India hoped that the Doklam standoff would lead to an enhanced strategic communication regarding each side’s core interests and vital concerns.    However, the border issue also devolves upon the fact that there has been no consultation since the Special Representatives in December 2012 agreed on the so-called Common Understanding to the effect that “There is mutual agreement on the basis of the alignment of the India-China boundary in the Sikkim sector as provided by the convention between China and Great Britain relating to Tibet and Sikkim signed in 1890.”  India hopes to negotiate from a position of strategic advantage insofar as its military presence in Sikkim is discernibly superior to China’s on its side of the border — and India’s “muscular diplomacy” over Doklam testified to it. Basically, India keeps an ambivalent stance with regard to the 1890 treaty — neither disavowing it nor acknowledging the delimitation of the India-China border in the Sikkim sector as established in the treaty, which China keeps emphasising as sacrosanct. How far India’s “muscular diplomacy” impressed the Chinese will only be known in the fullness of time. A partial Indian drawdown may have taken place, but China sticks to its unequivocal stance that there is no room for negotiation so long as Indian troops remained in Doklam. The chances of China retreating from this red line appear remote. There are facile assumptions being voiced that India can leverage China’s interest in the Indian market. But then, China’s exposure in the Indian market is miniscule in comparison with its profound interdependency vis-à-vis the United States — and yet Beijing asserts its core interests in the South China Sea. An $11.2 trillion economy with $3685 billion foreign trade (2016 figures) does not critically depend on the Indian market where China’s cumulative FDI flow is a paltry $1.63 billion and trade turnover stands at $71.48 billion.  A Xinhua commentary on Friday (the day after Sushma Swaraj spoke in Parliament) all but ruled out any “face-saving” formula. It hinted at Beijing’s grit to blunt India’s “muscular diplomacy”, lest it became precedent-setting in future. Equally, Beijing intends to pursue its future relations with Bhutan as a truly sovereign, independent state and seems confident that Thimpu shares this interest. All in all, September could be the month to watch — unless there is a complete Indian withdrawal by then. Meanwhile, storm clouds are gathering.— The writer is a former ambassador

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To keep the camaraderie alive, Citizen of Noida, paid homage to their 36 Martyrs, on Independence Day, at Shaheed Smarak Memorial in Sector 29 Noida. It is the only, triservice memorial in our country dedicated to the Nation by Services chiefs in 2002.

The chairman, Lt General Bakshi (V) PVSM, laid the first wreath followed by families of the martyrs, heads of institutions,residents of Noida, students and members of sanstha. It was a sight to watch as some of them stood in solemn silence and paid homage to the soldiers unknown to them including granddaughter of Col VN Thapar. The national Flag and flags of three services were fluttering majestically and adding to the great ambience of the memorial.

Cdr N Mahajan(V)

Director, Shaheed Samarak Sanstha, Noida

M 305 Sec 25 Noida

9818315422

Harish Khare

Seventy years ago, two nations were created in the Indian sub-continent.  A new nation, Pakistan, was carved out; this ‘moth-eaten’ new nation was to be home to the Muslims of the British India. A truncated India became the successor state to the British imperial order, its pretensions, its institutions, its boundaries and its flawed control model. The grand hope was that after these cartographic rearrangements in the East and the West,  the two new states and their newly endowed citizens would rediscover the joys of  civilizational co-existence. That hope got definitely belied by all the bloodshed, dislocation, riots, violence, massacres that attended the Partition. Seventy years later the two nations are yet to find a modus vivendi to live in benign comfort with each other.  In 1971, India helped Pakistan’s eastern wing to discover its separate national identity; consequently, Pakistan became a much more compact nation. It is much more a natural state today than it was before 1971. And, it now has a huge historic grievance against India to sustain its national narrative; it continues to define itself as a nation — internally and externally — in hostile terms towards India.For seventy years, we in India had permitted ourselves a glorious air of grand superiority over Pakistan. As long as Jawaharlal Nehru lived, his aura, political legitimacy, global stature, mass popularity and dedicated leadership gave us in India a new sense of collective equanimity. We were imaginatively engaged in creating a new India, building its new “temples” and inculcating a scientific temper in this ancient land of medieval superstition and ignorance. For seventy years, or most part of it, we could legitimately assure ourselves that we were better than Pakistan. We have had a Constitution and its elaborate arrangements; we were a democracy and held free and fair elections to choose our rulers; we had devised a dignified political culture of peaceful transfer of power among winners and losers after each election at the Centre and in the States;  we had committed ourselves to egalitarian  social objectives; we were determined not to be a theocratic State; we were proudly secular and  we put in place procedures and laws to treat our religious and linguistic minorities respectfully; we had  leaders who drew their legitimacy and authority from popular mandates;  our armed forces stayed in the barracks; we had a free and robust judiciary;  a mere high court judge in Allahabad  could unseat a powerful prime minister. And, when a regime tried to usurp the democratic arrangement, the citizens threw the offending rulers out at the first opportunity. For seventy years, we had every reason to believe that we were superior to Pakistan. Above all, we were not Pakistan. In recent decades, we became even more smug about our superiority as we have unthinkingly bought into the Western narrative that Pakistan was a “failing state” or a “failed state” — that too with nuclear weapons. What we have failed to appreciate is that Pakistani elites, too, have devised a working political culture best suited to its genius. Pakistani elites are not untroubled by inequities and inequalities in the land. We may bemoan that the Army has emerged as the senior partner in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi axis; nonetheless, it is a state that remains unwavered in its animosity towards us but still runs a coherent foreign policy and maintains internal order. Its elites have perfected the art of taking the Western leaders for a ride and have seen off super-powers’ intervention in neighbouring Afghanistan. There is a certain kind of stability in Pakistan’s perennial instability. Seventy years later we in India find ourselves itching to move towards a Pakistani model, notwithstanding our extensive paraphernalia of so many constitutional institutions of accountability. In recent years, we no longer wish to define ourselves as a secular nation; our dominant political establishment is exhorting us to shed our ‘secular’ diffidence and to begin taking pride in us being a Hindu rashtra. Just as in Pakistan, the dominant religion has come to intrude and influence the working of most of our institutions.For seventy years our political class looked down upon Pakistan for its inability to keep its Generals in their place. Seventy years on, we are ready to ape those despised “Pakis.”  Our Army was never so visible or as voluble as it is now; our armed forces are no longer just the authorised guardians of our national integrity, they are also being designated as the last bulwark of nationalism. Consequently, as in Pakistan, we no longer allow any critical evaluation of anything associated with the armed forces. Those who do not agree with the armed forces’ performance or profile stand automatically denounced as ‘anti-national.’ What is more, we are thoughtlessly injecting violence and its authorised wielders as instruments of a promised renaissance. Seventy years later, we are cheerfully debunking all those great patriots and towering leaders who once mesmerised the world in the 20th century world and who were a source of our national pride and who had forged an inclusive political community across the land by instilling in us virtues of civic togetherness. As Pakistan has done, we too now seek national glory and garv  from re-writing our history books to cater to our religious prejudices. Just as Pakistan has institutionalized discrimination, we too are manufacturing  a ‘new normal’ in which it is deemed normal and natural to show the minorities their place at the back of the room.  Seventy years later, the most complex legacy of the Partition — Kashmir — remains unresolved.  It continues to bleed both Pakistan and India, financially, politically and spiritually.  All these years we had allowed ourselves to believe that for Pakistani elites the Kashmir dispute provides a dubious platform of a meretricious coherence; not to be left behind, we in India are increasingly content to use the Kashmir problem to help us redefine the content and contours of our edgy and brittle  nationalism.  Worse, Kashmir continues to take a toll on our collective sensitivities. As a nation, we are getting comfortable in the use of violence and coercion to resolve differences at home and abroad. Seventy years ago we were determined to be different from Pakistan; seventy years later we are unwittingly beginning to look like Pakistan. Mohammed Ali Jinnah must be permitting himself a crack of a smile at our unseemly hurry to move away from Jawaharlal Nehru and his founding legacy.  

India and China have been locked in a face-off in the Doklam area of the Sikkim sector for the last 50 days. AFP file

Beijing, August 10

China will make no “compromise” on ending the Doklam standoff, top PLA analysts said, as they launched a propaganda blitz on a group of Indian journalists here on how New Delhi has “misjudged” Beijing’s resolve by sending troops to what it claims to be Chinese territory.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

India and China have been locked in a face-off in the Doklam area of the Sikkim sector for the last 50 days after Indian troops stopped the Chinese People’s Liberation Army from building a road in the area.

China claimed it was constructing the road within its territory and has been demanding immediate pull-out of the Indian troops from Doklam. Bhutan says Doklam belongs to it but China claims sovereignty over the area. China also claims that Thimphu has no dispute with Beijing over Doklam.

Top Chinese military experts and South Asia scholars, during an interaction with the media, said the Chinese government, people and the military were “angry” over India’s “dangerous” move in Doklam which is not an Indian territory.

“China so far has not used the world ‘invasion’. We have only used words like ‘trespass’ or ‘incursion’ and that is the goodwill of China,” Senior Colonel Zhou Bo said.

“We hope for the best but we—the Chinese government and the military—do not have any room to make any compromise on the matter. So for the well-being of the two peoples and the amity of the two countries, India must withdraw unconditionally,” he said.

His hardline comments were echoed by Senior Colonel Zhao Xiaozhou, Director at the Centre on China-America Defense Relations of the Academy of Military Science, who said Beijing has no room for compromise on the Doklam standoff.

“If you want this issue to be resolved, the Indian Army must pull back or otherwise this issue can only be resolved by the use of force,” Zhao asserted.

The Chinese military scholars also kept on harping that India has “trespassed” into Chinese territory and there was no basis for it to send its soldiers when Bhutan has “not invited” New Delhi to act on its behalf.

The Chinese military scholars also raked up the issue of Kashmir.

“Pakistan is a friend of China. If China crosses the Indian border or the India-China border on behalf of Pakistan I don’t know how you will react to that,” Zhao said. His comments came a day after a top Chinese Foreign Ministry official also raised the Kashmir issue.

Needling India, Wang Wenli, Deputy Director General of the Boundary and Ocean Affairs of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had raised the Kashmir issue and also referred to the Kalapani dispute between India and Nepal.

“We think it is not doable for the Indian side to use tri-junction as an excuse,” she had said, referring to Indian External Affairs Ministry’s assertion that the road building at the China, India and Bhutan tri-junction in the strategic narrow Chicken’s Neck area changes the status quo.

“The Indian side has also many tri-junctions. What if we use the same excuse and enter the Kalapani region between China, India and Nepal or even into the Kashmir region between India and Pakistan,” she had said.

The Chinese military experts said India’s actions have “severely affected” the political trust between the two countries and New Delhi had to face the “consequences” of its “dangerous” move as it “misjudged” the resolve of Beijing in defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity. PTI