Washington, May 22

Pakistan has raised with the World Bank the alleged violation of the Indus Waters Treaty by India, which inaugurated the Kishanganga hydro project in Kashmir, as the multilateral lender sought opportunities within the treaty to find an amicable resolution of the issue.The four-member Pakistani delegation, led by Attorney General Ashtar Ausaf Ali, met the World Bank officials here yesterday, days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the 330 MW Kishanganga hydroelectric project in Jammu and Kashmir.The inauguration of the hydroelectric project was held amid protests from Pakistan, which claims that the dam on a river flowing into Pakistan will disrupt water supplies.Pakistan’s Foreign Office had, on Friday, voiced concern over the inauguration of the hydroelectric project, saying inauguration without resolution of dispute between the two countries will tantamount to violation of the Indus Waters 1960 that regulates the use of waters in the shared rivers.”The Indus Waters Treaty is a profoundly important international agreement that provides an essential cooperative framework for India and Pakistan to address current and future challenges of effective water management to meet human needs and achieve development goals,” a World Bank spokesperson told PTI.”The meetings are discussing concerns raised by the Pakistan delegation and opportunities within the treaty to seek an amicable resolution,” the spokesperson said.No other details about the nature of Pakistani grievances were made available by the World Bank officials.The discussions are scheduled to continue today.Pakistani daily Dawn said the talks would cover four key points: the height of the dam built on the Kishanganga River, its capacity to hold water, Pakistan’s demand for setting up a court of arbitration to settle the dispute and India’s counter-demand for an international expert.Islamabad had been raising objections over the design of the hydel project, saying it is not in line with the criteria laid down under the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) between the two countries. But, India says the project design was well within parameters of the treaty.The project, located at Bandipore in North Kashmir, envisages diversion of water of Kishan Ganga river to underground power house through a 23.25-km-long head race tunnel to generate 1713 million units per annum.The Kishanganga project was started in 2007 but on May 17, 2010, Pakistan moved for international arbitration against India under the provisions of the Indus Waters Treaty.The Hague-based International Court of Arbitration allowed India in 2013 to go ahead with construction of the project in North Kashmir and upheld India’s right under the bilateral Indus Waters Treaty to divert waters from the Kishanganga for power generation in Jammu and Kashmir.The international court, however, decided that India shall release a minimum flow of nine cubic metres per second into the Kishanganga river (known as Neelam in Pakistan) at all times to maintain environmental flows.  PTI 

Ajay Banerjee in New DelhiIn the heat of May in Rajasthan, a squadron of helicopters flew a few metres above ground, attempting to evade ‘enemy radars.’ On ground, in a separate corridor, moved a column of T-90 tanks in attack formation. The Indian Army’s tested ‘Air Cavalry’ – a concept the US introduced in 1965. The US’ first ‘Air Cavalry’ division arrived in Vietnam in August and September 1965. Airmobile operations used helicopters to fly over difficult terrains and move behind enemy lines to air-assault targeted objectives. The ‘air cavalry’ was tried during the four-week exercise ‘Vijay Prahar’ conducted by the Jaipur-headquartered South Western Command at the Mahajan field firing ranges near Suratgarh. The concept of ‘Air Cavalry’ employing attack and weaponized helicopters has been validated, a statement from the South Western Command said at the end of the exercise on May 9. The exercise was aimed at designing an offensive battle on the principles of a ‘deep air-land battle’ with real-time intelligence-surveillance and reconnaissance using space-based technology. It used the elements of the Mathura-based 1 Strike Corps, about 25,000 troops, tanks, UAVs, IAF fighter jets and attack helicopters. It included a component of fighting and surviving in battle after a tactical nuclear weapon is fired by the enemy.Manoj Joshi, Distinguished Fellow at the Observor Research Foundation (ORF) National Security Programme, disagrees with the use of attack helicopters beyond the ‘forward edge’ of the battle. With fluid battle conditions, defining the ‘forward edge’ would be tough. In the era of shoulder-fired missiles, a low-flying armed copter cannot be used in an offensive style. There are other ways to use a copter, he said. He cited the example of Soviet helicopters being hit during the Afghan invasion (1979-1989) by the Mujahideen who had US-supplied Stinger missiles. The battle of Karbala in Iraq in 2003 led to the destruction of many American attack copters. The US used the ‘air cavalry’ to some good use, but lost about 5,000 men in Vietnam despite the fact there were no shoulder-fired missiles then, he said.

Why ‘Air Cavalry’ now?

The Army first experimented it in the 1980s. Starting 2019, the Army and the IAF, will start adding the new-age attack copters and the number will go up 230 copters over the next decade. Lt Gen Cherish Mathson, Commander of the South-Western Command, said after the exercise: “We have been working on this (air cavalry) in consonance with the air force.”In 2014, the Ministry of Defence accepted the need to have 39 armed helicopters which will fly overhead when ground-based Strike Corps elements move in for an attack.

Tactical N-strike

In the second week of February this year, the US Congress heard director of National Intelligence Dan Coats on possible worldwide threats. He warned how Pakistan continues to develop short-range tactical weapons.The Indian assessment says tactical nukes are an option for Pakistan if the ‘Cold-Start’ doctrine — a strike by armoured units deep inside Pakistan — is operationalized. A tactical nuke is small warhead targeted at ground forces. The Army is gearing itself to fight and win in the battle field ‘contaminated’ by a nuclear strike. “It a real threat. we must keep practising it”, says Lt Gen KJ Singh (retd),  a former Western Army Commander, who was in 63 Cavalry, a 1971 war decorated regiment.Almost all the Russian-origin T-90 and T-72 tanks — the prime fighting machines on the western front — have been fitted with a specialized kit to allow troops to survive and even carry forward with a counter-attack in case of tactical nuclear strike.

New Delhi, May 17

Security agencies were keeping their fingers crossed over a fresh unilateral ceasefire announced by the Centre during Ramzan beginning today, as a similar exercise nearly two decades ago witnessed the killings of 129 people, including 43 security personnel, according to officials.The security agency officials felt a need to monitor the situation closely as terror groups had used such a window as an opportunity to regroup themselves and carry out more attacks on security establishments.The Centre yesterday announced that security forces would not launch any operation in the state during the holy month of Ramzan but they reserved the right to retaliate, if attacked.The announcement came ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday.“It is important to isolate the forces that bring a bad name to Islam by resorting to mindless violence and terror,” a Home Ministry spokesperson had said yesterday.During his Independence Day address last year, Modi had said bullets or abuses would not resolve the Kashmir issue and that it could be addressed by embracing every Kashmiri.Quoting data, the officials said that during the unilateral ceasefire, popularly known as NICO—‘Non Initiation of Combat Operations’, which was announced on November 19, 2000 and came into effect on November 28, terrorists carried out three ‘fidayeen’ (suicide) attacks on Army cantonment, police control room and Srinagar airport, and two massacres.The previous ceasefire, which was announced by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and extended twice—January 24, 2001 and on February 22 of the same year—also witnessed an attack on former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah.From November 19, 2000 to May 23, 2001, 44 terrorists were killed by the security forces. During the period, 42 civilians also died which included massacre of six Sikh civilians at Mehjoor Nagar in Srinagar on February 3, 2001 and 15 civilians by Lashker-e-Toiba terror outfit at Morha Salui in Rajouri district on February 10.During this period, the first Kashmiri ‘fidayeen’ suicide bomber Afaq Ahmed Shah blew himself along with an explosive-laden car outside Badami Bagh Cantonment area on December 25, killing four security personnel.According to the officials, the number of terrorists killed during the period was 44, civilians 42, Army (six), police (24) and other security forces (13).This included a ‘fidayeen’ attack by terrorists at the Jammu and Kashmir Police control room on February 9, in which 12 people—eight policemen and four militants—were killed.During the period, nine security force personnel were killed in two land mine blasts in Pulwama and Kaigam on January 18, and 15 policemen and two civilians were killed in an ambush at Morha Chatru in Rajouri district on March 2, 2001.The NICO ended on May 23 after Vajpayee chaired a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security. — PTI

Vijay Mohan

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 13

As part of welfare measures for its personnel deployed in anti-Naxal operations (ANO), the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force (ITBP) has not only reduced their tenure of deployment in affected areas but will also offer them choice postings thereafter.“These issues along with other welfare schemes came up for discussions during the visit of ITBP Director General RK Pachnanda to an operationally deployed battalion last week,” a senior ITBP officer said.The DG has decided that personnel completing two years of deployment in Maoist-affected areas will have the choice of either continuing at their present location or opt for a transfer, he added.Further, it was also projected that considering the difficulties and stress involved in an ANO tenure, a posting of choice may be given to all officers and men and the same has been agreed to in principle.The ITBP, which is responsible for the peace time management of the 3,488 km-long mountainous border with China, has eight battalions deployed for anti-Naxal operations in Chhattisgarh.One battalion comprises over 1,000 personnel. The ITBP is one of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) under the Home Ministry that are deployed for anti-Naxal operations in addition to their regular charter.In addition, the ministry has also issued new guidelines on posting of CAPF personnel who are “care-givers” to disabled dependents. Such personnel may be exempted from the routine exercise of transfer or rotational postings, subject to administrative constraints.This follows a Delhi High Court order of January 2018 directing the Home Minister to formulate a policy for posting of such personnel.Consequently, the Home Ministry has issued directions recently to all CAPFs that guidelines and provisions of tenures and other rules for peace and field postings may be relaxed by the competent authority on merits so as to meet the requirement of care-givers.

Washington, May 8

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday pulled out of the landmark nuclear deal with Iran, an Obama-era accord which he has repeatedly criticised.”It is clear to me that we cannot prevent Iran’s nuclear bomb. The Iran deal is defective at its core. Therefore, I am announcing today that the United States would withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal,” Trump said.Moments later he signed a fresh set of sanctions against Iran and warned countries against any cooperation with Iran on its nuclear weapons programme.Ever since his election campaign, Trump has frequently criticised the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA.The Iran nuclear deal was reached in Vienna in July 2015 between Iran and the P5 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council) plus Germany and the European Union.Trump’s decision would have global ramifications, straining Iranian economy and heightening tensions in the Middle East. PTI

The security forces, including personnel from the Rashtriya Rifles (RR), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the state police cordoned off Drabgam village receiving a tip-off about holed-up militants. ANI

Our Correspondent

Srinagar, April 30  

Two Hizbul Mujahideen militants, including Sameer Ahmed Bhat, alias Sameer Tiger, were killed in the Pulwama encounter on Monday, said officials.

Earlier, two Army men, including a major, were injured in the gunfight between militants and security forces in Drubgam village of Pulwama, officials said.

The two militants were trapped in the area, the officials added.

Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in Drabgam area after receiving information about the presence of two to three militants in the area, a police official said.(Read: Sameer Tiger found death waiting in village he called home)As the security forces were closing in, the militants opened indiscriminate fire on them, the official said.

The civilian was killed when security forces were trying to chase away a stone-pelting mob, they said.

Civilians wanted to throng the encounter site so that the militants could run away, an official said.

Around noon, security personnel, who were fighting stone pelting from the civilians, fired at heavily at the house, thereby creating an explosion, officials said.

About an hour later, the first militant, identified as Aaquib Mushtaq, was killed. He was a local resident belonging to Pulwama’s Rajpora area.

One of the injured is a Major-rank officer, who has hit by a bullet in the arm. Both the injured soldiers were evacuated to the Army’s 92 base hospital for treatment, the officials said.The civilian killed in the clashes was identified as Shahid Ahmad Dar, they said, adding that the circumstances in which the 25-year-old youth was killed are being ascertained. With Agencies

Jammu, April 21

Havildar Charanjeet Singh, 42, grievously injured in the Sunderbani sector on April 17 during ceasefire violation by Pakistan troops, succumbed to his injuries on Friday. He was cremated with full military honours at his native village Kalsian in Nowshera sector on Saturday. Hundreds of people from Kalsian and adjoining villages paid their last respects to the soldier, who is survived by his wife Neelam Kumari. “Havildar Charanjeet Singh sustained bullet injuries, was evacuated and provided intensive medical care in military hospitals. Despite all efforts, the gallant soldier succumbed to his injuries in the early hours of Friday,” a defence spokesperson said. — TNS

MK Bhadrakumar

THE developments over Syria during the past 10 days have been breathtaking. In the eyes of some observers, the cascading tensions between the two superpowers — the US and Russia — harked back to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. But that is a stretch. There is no ideological struggle today; Syria is not Cuba; nor is Russia the Soviet Union or the world bipolar. The leitmotif, if at all, lies in geopolitics.Fundamentally, the precipitate situation has a lot to do with the United States’ unipolar predicament. The failure of the wars in Afghanistan and Syria underscored that the US has lost the capacity to impose its will abroad despite being the biggest military power. The Harvard professor who invented the term “soft power”, Joseph Nye, wrote recently that the US has to relearn the “lessons of using power with others as well as over others.” He added, “In other words, the US will have to use its soft power to create networks and institutions that will allow it to cooperate with China, India, Japan, Europe, and others to deal with transnational problems… that no country can solve unilaterally. That will require overcoming the unilateral policies and attitudes associated with the rise of Trump.”However, the problem is more deep-rooted than the rise of Donald Trump. The American elites, with very few exceptions, are in a denial mode regarding the decline of the US’ influence after nearly a century of global hegemony and over the shift in global power away from the West after a history of five centuries of dominance. Trump accentuates this contradiction because although his support base in the 2016 election roots for “America First”, he actually represents Wall Street interests. And American capitalism is fuelled by wars. The highly contrived Russia-collusion hypothesis worked well so far for the “swamp” to nudge Trump incrementally toward the trodden path of the military-industrial complex and Wall Street. Barack Obama also faced a similar predicament — in Libya and Afghanistan; in proclaiming a “pivot” strategy in Asia; in ramping up NATO as the vehicle for the New American Century project; in the deployment of US missile defence system to Central Europe; and, in piloting the regime change in Ukraine in 2014 — which turned the tide of the West’s relations with Russia. Obama’s master plan to resuscitate the Western alliance system and to re-establish the US’ trans-Atlantic leadership was never in doubt.In fact, the Syrian conflict is Barack Obama’s legacy. The new element that Trump has introduced is his virtual handover of the endgame to the generals. First he began saying he wanted American troops in Syria to return home “where they belong” — and end the US’ wasteful Middle Eastern wars that cost $7 trillion so far. But when his generals objected, pleading there is unfinished business still, he’s swung to the other extreme by seizing a rumoured chemical attack in Douma and ordering the Pentagon to plan an attack on the Syrian regime. And Trump then took a de tour to announce that the attack would be deferred. By Thursday, Trump had tweeted: “Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all!”Was he playing a video game, as the former US Deputy of State Nicholas Burns put it? The US domestic politics indeed becomes a moot point where a wave of support is steadily building up for the Democrats in the November elections to the Congress. In the foreign policy arena too, like in a Salvador Dali painting, all this rather becomes the stuff of a surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed world order. The present crisis has morphed into an inflection point. Trump is all but jettisoning his foreign policy instincts and is also opting to play safe. Clearly, a limited US strike on the Syrian government cannot hope to achieve anything significant. The Syrian troops and their allies have quietly evacuated the major air bases and relocated elsewhere. In effect, the Syrian regime has all but won the seven-year conflict. All major cities and main population centres — Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia, Homs and Hama — are under the regime’s control. These regions spanning the fertile lands along the western coast and the northwest of the country were once dubbed cynically  “useful Syria” by the French colonialists, as distinct from the vast inhospitable deserts and infertile regions to the east and northeast where the US and its Kurdish allies (who form around 10 per cent of Syria’s population) are operating.The only plausible explanation for the ecstatic interest in London and Paris for the US-British-French attack on Syrian regime is their collective frustration and anger that the entire regime-change enterprise has collapsed. The capture of East Ghouta, a set of suburbs of Damascus to the east, by government forces a week ago from Salafi jihadi militia has infuriated the Western intelligence. (Douma, where the alleged chemical attack took place last Sunday, is one of three districts of East Ghouta, and was dominated by the Saudi Arabian proxy, Army of Islam.) Then, there is the overarching Western concern that the resurgence of Russian power on the global stage, especially in the Middle East, needs to be countered before it is too late.Without doubt, Trump’s earlier decision to drawdown the US forces in Syria is fundamentally correct. The point is, a narrow exercise of deterrence — the current “one-time shot, as US Defence Secretary James Mattis described the wave of attacks on Saturday — will not alter the balance of power in Syria. It seems improbable that Trump has any interest, either, to commit resources for “nation-building” in Syria. The futility of reversing the history of political failure in Syria under Obama’s watch is at once apparent — except through a large-scale invasion of Syria. Again, it is already apparent that the European Union is badly divided on the US-UK-French operation. Above all, Trump will come under fire for not seeking Congressional approval and acting without mandate from the UN Security Council, leave alone wait for the chemical investigation team to report back from Syria.Conceivably, a fair amount of “mil-to-mil” US-Russia consultations took place through the most recent days regarding “deconfliction” procedures. From all appearance, Moscow was notified in advance about the US strike on Syria. However, the heart of the matter is that Saturday’s strike is hugely symbolic and cannot be shrugged away as a “stand-alone” event. Moscow will suspect that a pre-designed scenario is being implemented and Russia itself is threatened.The writer is a former ambassador