Current Events :
Tribune News Service
Jammu, June 2
The Army today dedicated a community centre to Dehri village located close to the Line of Control (LoC) in Mendhar sector.The project was executed by the Army under the Border Area Development Programme (BADP) to meet the long-pending demand of the villagers.The community centre was handed over by Army officials to Nazir Hussain, sarpanch of the village, in the presence of tehsildar, BDO and Mendhar SDPO.
Manohar Parrikar stressed that the army will not go in the civilian areas without the AFSPA being in place.
“My department’s role comes into the picture when the army is asked to proceed and act in a certain area. At that time, the army requires protection,” Mr Parrikar told IANS in an interview, referring to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that is in place in what are termed “disturbed areas”.
Asked about the possibility of revoking the AFSPA, the defence minister said that the subject came under the home ministry, adding it was needed by the army to “proceed and act” in certain areas. He also said immunity to soldiers should be total.
The minister stressed that the army will not go in the civilian areas without the act being in place.
“If that act is not there, the army will not take action. For carrying out counter terror operations, the army requires that power. That power comes from such laws; AFSPA is a major one,” he said.
“If that is not there, the army will not go to a civilian area for operations. The home ministry should decide on the basis of that, after assessing the situation,” Mr Parrikar maintained.
“If the army is required, this act has to be there; otherwise the army cannot operate. Jawans cannot be made to face standard laws,” he contended.
New Navy Chief, Admiral Sunil Lanba (on right) shakes hand with outgoing chief Robin K Dhowan after a Guard of Honour at South Block, in New Delhi, on Tuesday. PTI photo
New Delhi, May 31
Vice Admiral Sunil Lanba took charge as the new Chief of the Naval Staff on Tuesday, as his predecessor Admiral RK Dhowan retired from service.“I am sure under his leadership, the Indian Navy will execute every task,” Dhowan said.Addressing the personnel on parade yesterday, Vice Admiral Lanba complimented the personnel of the command, who notwithstanding the constrains of the service, had worked with synergy and teamwork in ensuring that ships, submarines and aircraft were maintained in a high state of combat readiness at all times.In keeping with the fragile maritime environment of the region, he said there was a need to be ever vigilant in all quarters and all fronts, adding that he had no doubt that fire power from units of fleet, flotillas and squadrons could be delivered appropriately should the need arise.Pointing towards the International Fleet Review held recently at Visakhapatnam, Vice Admiral Lanba said presence of 50 countries in the review clearly indicated the growing stature of the country in the region.He added that many countries had expressed the desire to cooperate and exercise with the Indian Navy, which was indicative of professionalism, training and sound culture displayed by the service.He also urged for change and apprised the personnel on the steps taken by WNC in addressing the long standing issue of shortage of married accommodation.Born on July 17, 1957, Vice Admiral Sunil Lanba was commissioned on January 1, 1978 into the Executive Branch of Indian Navy.During his long and distinguished service spanning nearly 38 years, he has served in a variety of Command, operational and staff appointments.Vice Admiral Lanba’s Sea Command includes commanding the minesweeper INS Kakinada, frigate INS Himgiri and Executive Officer of INS Viraat, the aircraft carrier.Before taking over as FOC-in-C, Western Naval Command, he was FOC-in-C, Southern Naval Command, Vice Chief of the Naval Staff and Commandant, National Defence College.Vice Admiral Lanba is a qualified specialist in navigation and direction course.He attended the course at the Royal College of Defence Studies in UK.Vice Admiral Lanba, who is a recipient of Param Vishist Seva Medal and Ati Vishist Seva Medal, is married to Reena Lanba and the couple has a son and two daughters. — ANI
Vice Admiral Luthra, a specialist in Navigation and Direction and an alumnus of National Defence Academy, has very rich operational and staff experience over a career spanning three and a half decades. He has served as Navigating Officer of INS Betwa (Frigate), INS Dunagiri (Frigate), INS Gomati (Frigate) and INS Viraat (Aircraft Carrier). During his illustrious career, he commanded three frontline warships namely, INS Khukri (Corvette), INS Talwar (Frigate) and INS Viraat (Aircraft Carrier). He is also an alumnus of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington and the Naval War College, USA.
He has held important staff appointments such as Deputy Naval Attaché to High Commission of India, London, Fleet Navigating Officer of the Western Fleet, Command Plans Officer Headquarters, Eastern Naval Command, Principal Director Naval Plans and Asst Chief of Naval Staff (Policy & Plans). He has also been the Flag Officer Commanding Western Fleet, Director General of Naval Operations and Deputy Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (Operations). He was Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Naval Command at Kochi, prior to his appointment as the C-in-C of the Western Naval Command.
Vice Admiral Luthra is a recipient of Athi Vishist Seva Medal and Vishist Seva Medal for distinguished service.
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, May 28
The Indian Army launched a massive summer exercise with troops over the complete month of May in the riverine terrain of Punjab, involving over 13,000 troops and several components of artillery guns, tanks and infantry combat vehicles as a part of its efforts to project its battle supremacy on the Western Front, said a spokesperson of Vajra Corps Headquarters, Jalandhar.Under the aegis of Vajra Corps, all ranks of the Panther Division commenced collective training by honing up basic battle procedures and drills at tactical and operational levels. The troops built the momentum of training gradually with increased combat tempo involving rapid mobilisation and execution of battle plans in conjunction with the Air Force, said the spokesperson.A large number of innovations and modifications carried out by units and formations to enhance combat power were validated in the field. During the exercise, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communication systems were put to test in a network- centric battlefield environment supported by required operational logistics.“The exercise entered its culmination phase in May end and was witnessed by Western Army Commander Lt Gen KJ Singh. Beside interacting with soldiers and officers involved in the exercise, the Army Commander witnessed various battle maneuvers by infantry troops, mechanised infantry, tanks, artillery, special forces troops and surveillance detachments,” the spokesperson further added.The focus of the exercise was to validate operational and transformational effectiveness of various formations of Panther Division and achieving joint and seamless coordination among all the forces in the Indian Army in a NBC Warfare scenario so as to deliver the enemy a lethal punch with full might at a lightning speed, he further added.
Tribune News Service
Dehradun, May 25
The portals of Hemkunt Sahib and Lokpal Mandir in Chamoli district of Garhwal were opened to pilgrims around 10 am today.A large number of pilgrims participated in the prayers on the opening of these shrines. Head priest Jassa Singh recited the ardas before opening of the portal of Hemkunt Sahib. It was followed by Sukhmani Sahib path and shabad kirtan. Kadha prasad was also distributed on the occasion.Earlier, batches of Sikh pilgrims started their forward journey from Ghangaria in the wee hours for Hemkunt Sahib. The Shri Hemkunt Gurdwara Trust has made all arrangements for the smooth conduct of the yatra. The pilgrims are being provided with accommodations and food facilities at Rishikesh, Srinagar, Joshimath and Govindghat.On other hand, the portals of Lokpal Mandir in the close vicinity of Hemkunt Sahib were also opened. Kushal Singh Chauhan from Bhuyundar village performed the first puja at the mandir.
The US #DeepState has had a fine run, but will now discard Saudi Arabia as it is no longer useful to them, says Rajeev Srinivasan.
The #28pages scandal has apparently dropped off the front pages in the US, but it is odd that the official account of 9/11 would have an entire chapter redacted out of it, especially one that allegedly deals with the Saudi role.
The fact that it has been kept secret suggests that powerful people want to hide something. The fact that successive US presidents have not bothered to release the information suggests that there is bipartisan consensus, which the #DeepState, more powerful than presidents, wishes to maintain.
The #DeepState, shorthand for the military-industrial-media-academia-church elites who actually control the US, and whose primary objective is its own self-preservation (and not necessarily the US’s national interest) is much in the limelight these days because Hillary Clinton epitomises it, and Donald Trump’s entire campaign positioning is that he isn’t part of it (at least not yet).
The question, then, is why the #DeepState is shielding the Saudis. For the longest time, the answer appeared to be contained in George Kennan’s pithy statement, although it may have been apocryphal (and I paraphrase): ‘The US has 8% of the world’s population, and enjoys 50% of its resources. The goal of US foreign policy is to keep it that way.’
Thus, during the Cold War and later, America went on foreign adventures, and spilled its blood, sweat and tears, principally to protect its access to other peoples’ oil and gas. There was a comfortable certainty that the US and the Saudis would see eye to eye, even when OPEC sharply upped oil prices in 1973. Or even later, when the Saudis used their clout as the biggest producer to maintain oil prices at very high levels, and the US went along.
The rationale was not far to find: It only cost the Saudis $2 or so to dig the stuff out of the ground (incremental cost, that is), and so they made almost monopoly profits when the selling price per barrel soared to $120. Which, we could see, was convenient for the American military ecosystem, because the Saudis were also some of the biggest arms buyers in the world.
Thus, if Saudi profits went up, they would buy more American weapons, America had a dependable ally in West Asia, and the recycled petrodollars could be borrowed by the Americans. And the Americans were assured of oil supplies. All told, a terrific positive feedback loop.
But this cosy equilibrium was upset by the arrival of fracking, and the resultant boom in American production, which now makes it the world’s biggest oil producer. This disruptive technological innovation, of course, is also the prime reason behind the collapse in oil prices over the last couple of years. Significantly, the US ceased to need Saudi Arabia as a supplier.
The result has been swift: After decades of favouring the Saudis in their internecine struggles with Iran across the Sunni-Shia divide, the Americans began to reverse course. Iran, long in the doghouse, and famously one of the ‘Axis of Evil’, has been rehabilitated, and their oil is beginning to appear on world markets, and that will also keep a lid on prices.
Two other intriguing points to note: first, the proxy war in Yemen, with Iran and the Saudis supporting opposite sides, is not going well for the Saudis. That means all the expensive weaponry they have bought cannot even bring them victory against a rag-tag bunch of Houthi rebels supported by Iran. It is also possible that the US weapons have been kill-switched or degraded.
Second, the Saudis are perhaps feeling the economic pinch, as they went to the markets for the first time in years with a $10 billion bond offering, and they are also putting their crown jewels, Aramco, on the market, in what is expected to confirm its standing as the world’s most valuable company at over $1 trillion in market capitalisation.
Thus, there are a few possibilities: One is that the US simply doesn’t need the Saudis any more, and are throwing them under the bus. Second, the increasing influence of Saudi-induced fundamentalism is now beginning to worry the #DeepState, as Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS are all threatening to hurt its interests. In particular, the influx of Syrian, Iraqi and Libyan migrants (mixed with ISIS and other terrorists) may have a material impact on Europe, their civilisational ally.
That means, I suspect, that the Saudis are toast. But why has the US been so chummy with them so far? Of course, there is the allure of defence purchases, but there has to be something more. Here’s a conjecture (and I admit I have no proof of this): I claim that #DeepState saw an interesting opportunity when the Saudi-led OPEC went on its price-gouging spree.
That was the opportunity to effect a massive transfer of wealth from poor, developing nations. Indeed, that is exactly what happened: the 1973 oil price hike and the price floor maintained thereafter extorted several trillion dollars from poor countries and into the pockets of the Saudis and other OPEC members.
How did this benefit #DeepState? Well, because they could appropriate all this transfer of wealth from poor developing nations in one fell swoop by selling lots of weapons to the Saudis. And they could then go around lecturing said poor, unsuspecting developing nations while laughing all the way to the bank. Machiavellian, for sure.
I came up with this hypothesis because I read a similar suggestion that the British quite consciously let Tipu run riot in Malabar, raiding temples and looting the gold saved from the age-old trade in spices. Then once he had brought it all to Srirangapatnam, the British sallied forth as saviours, defeated him, and took the gold. And said very rude things about Tipu.
Thus the British smelled of roses, got great optics, got rid of a competitor, and got the gold: A very fine tactic indeed. They probably even quietly encouraged Tipu on his campaigns into Malabar, but ended up with great PR.
Similarly, I suspect #DeepState let it be known to the Saudis that they were fine with the price-gouging so long as they bought the weapons, thus recycling petrodollars. A marvellous win-win: The military-industrial complex hums along, the Saudis are tied to the Americans, and when it comes time to actually deploy the weapons, the Saudis discover that the weapons don’t quite work — as they seem to be finding out disastrously in Yemen. Kill-switch, maybe?
All this trade in oil would be in dollars, as agreed by all, so that the US’s ability to manage the dollar as a reserve currency, and print as much as they wished, would be maintained, which also allowed them to soak up a lot of savings from Japan and later China. Notably, there is a school of thought that Muammar Gaddafi was liquidated especially because he wanted gold for his oil, not dollars.
So if my hunch is correct, #DeepState has had a fine run, but will now discard Saudi Arabia as it is no longer useful to them.
But then perhaps I overestimate them. It has come to light that the Pakistanis have been running rings around the CIA. Apparently the Pak ISI poisoned the CIA station chief, Mark Kelton, in retaliation for the bin Laden execution.
Earlier, they had outed another CIA station chief, and forced him to escape by climbing into a visiting dignitary’s plane. And more disconcertingly, they had the woman station chief and seven of her colleagues blown up by a Jordanian double agent in Khost in 2009.
Maybe #DeepState is not so smart after all, and the Saudis will have the last laugh, as they have re-created Islam in their own image, a dire long-term threat to their fellow Meso-Semitic faith, Christianity.
IMAGE: US President Barack Obama and Saudi King Salman following their meeting at the Erga Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, April 20, 2016. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Majid Jahangir
Tribune News Service
Srinagar, May 17
The Indian and Pakistani armies exchanged fire along the Line of Control (LoC) in north Kashmir’s Uri sector on Monday night.Srinagar-based defence spokesman Col NN Joshi said the violation was initiated by Pakistan in the Kamalkote sector of Uri, nearly 120 km from Srinagar, and it was responded “appropriately”.“There was small arms firing in Uri last night. The firing from across was appropriately retaliated. There is no report of any casualty so far,” said the defence spokesman, adding that the firing was of “localised nature”. The firing started around 9.45 pm and continued for half an hour, Colonel Joshi said.Sources said the Indian Army lodged a protest over the ceasefire violation with its Pakistani counterpart in Uri through a hotline today.The violation — the first in the Uri sector this year — took place at a time when militants have stepped up efforts to sneak into the Valley from across the LoC. There have been instances in the past where Indian posts have been targeted by the Pakistani army to help militants sneak into Kashmir.Soon after the ceasefire violation, the Army carried out massive searches in the Kamalkote forest area.Since India and Pakistan announced the ceasefire on the border in 2003, there have been many major and minor violations along the LoC in Kashmir. The last major ceasefire violation took place in October 2012 at Churanda in Uri, which left three civilians, including a woman, dead.Last year, there were many ceasefire violations and also an air space violation by Pakistan in the Nowgam sector, in which a Junior Commissioned Officer of the Army and two BSF jawans were killed.This year, the police said 18 militants had infiltrated into the Valley till April. Last year, 35 militants had infiltrated into Kashmir from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Dhaka, May 14
Bangladesh today accused Pakistan of breaching the post-1971 liberation war agreement by not taking back thousands of its stranded citizens, affecting the validity of the treaty.“Under the 1974 agreement (among Dhaka, new Delhi and Islamabad), Pakistan was obligated to take back its stranded citizens from Bangladesh. They did not fulfil their obligation over the decades,” Law Minister Anisul Huq said. He said Bangladesh, on the other hand, complied with the treaty allowing the defeated Pakistani soldiers’ repatriation.Thousands of Urdu-speaking Muslims, dubbed as ‘Biharis’, who migrated to the former East Pakistan after partition in 1947, continued to stay in makeshift homes called Bihari camps in Bangladesh since 1971 and waited for decades to go to Pakistan but the subsequent governments in Islamabad declined to take them. — PT
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 11
Thirty-three years after their induction, the ageing Sea Harriers, once the mainstay of Navy’s air warfare capability, today gave way to the modern supersonic Russian MiG 29K fighter aircraft.”We have great pride in inducting supersonic multi-role MiG 29K aircraft with cutting-edge technology into the 300 squadron,” Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral RK Dhowan told reporters on the sidelines of an event organised in Goa to “de-induct” Sea Harriers.Built by British Aerospace, Sea Harriers joined the Navy in 1983 and today was their last flight at the ceremonial function. The jets have stunning ability to take off and land vertically, like a helicopter, and fly like a jet and bomb targets. These were based to fly off from the deck off the seaborne aircraft carrier, the INS Viraat, which is being decommissioned at the end of the year.The jets were part of the India Navy Air Squadron (INAS) 300, which has now been equipped with the Russian-built twin-engine MiG 29K that can fly off from the carrier INS Vikramaditya. This INAS 300 has gallantry awards, including one Maha Vir Chakra, four Vir Chakras and one Nau Sena Medal.The first three Sea Harriers, flying via Malta, Luxor and Dubai, led by Lt Cdr Arun Prakash, landed at Dabolim on December 16, 1983. This was followed by the first deck landing on the carrier, INS Vikrant, on December 20, 1983. “The Indian Navy has emerged as a multi-dimensional network force which is ready to take on any challenge in the maritime domain of the Indian Ocean region in the 21st century,” Dhowan said.Dhowan lauded the stellar role played by the squadron in the defence of the country and acknowledged the professionalism of the pilots. “Today is also the day to salute the pilots who flew Sea Harrier aircraft, which made a mark for itself by protecting our seas,” he added. On completion of the Air display, “washing down of the Sea Harriers” was carried out and a first-day cover was also released by Dhowan to mark the occasion. Sea Harriers were inducted in the Indian Navy following phasing out of then obsolete Seahawks.
(With PTI inputs)
