Maj Gen Ashok K Mehta (retd)

Military commentator

President Trump is so deeply distracted by the Covid pandemic, sparring globally with China and his re-election campaign, that the Afghanistan peace process consummated on February 29 has gone off the radar. Still last month, both President Ashraf Ghani and chief of the High Peace Council for Reconciliation, Abdullah Abdullah, spoke virtually to the international community about reconciliation and the intra-Afghan dialogue. A deal struck between Ghani and Abdullah in May led to Ghani being accepted by Abdullah as President and Abdullah named head of the reconciliation process with some of Abdullah’s people made government ministers.

Speaking on June 11, Ghani mentioned Afghanistan no longer has a ‘two-headed government’, paid rich tributes to American tax-payers and soldiers, adding Afghanistan would shift focus from security to development. On the peace process, he said while 3,000 of the 5,000 Taliban were released, very few of the 1,000 Afghan soldiers had been freed. He said General Bajwa visited Kabul on June 9 and there was the closest alignment with Pakistan, adding that both agreed on India’s importance in the peace process. The Afghan talks team was inclusive and Abdullah had been elected by the Loya Jirgah to lead it. General David Petraeus who was among the audience, said the US force level below the 8,600 combatants — 4,800 soldiers were taken out as part of the US deal with Taliban — was unacceptable.

On June 24, Abdullah, attired in a Bond Street suit, observed that Taliban violence was mounting, with 422 attacks in last two weeks, resulting in 291 Afghan soldiers killed and 515 wounded. He said 75 per cent of the Taliban prisoners were released and intra-Afghan talks, scheduled for March 10, were likely to start in end-June, but the agenda had not been drawn. He emphasised that the US troop withdrawal was ‘condition-based’ and that even if the foreign forces withdraw prematurely, the Taliban could not take out the government though only US commando forces, air and logistics support were available. While a mutually hurting stalemate was missing, the Taliban was divided over the talks. When asked who was the final decision-maker, he admitted it was President Ghani.

The Taliban have received an image makeover; recognised by the US as Islamic Emirate — not Republic as Kabul would like; Trump speaking to co-founder of Taliban, Mullah Baradar; its deputy military leader Sirajuddin Haqqani carrying a US bounty of 10 million dollars being published in an Op-ed of New York Times (February 20); and the Taliban promulgating a second three-day Ramzan ceasefire.

In 2010, Taliban control extended to 90% of Afghanistan; today, out of 421 districts, they control only 74 and hold just 22 of them. They have been unable to take and hold any provincial capital, even Konduz, which they have sought thrice. Serious differences exist between Baradar and the deputy head of Taliban’s Qatar office, Sher Stenakzai. Hardliners among the Taliban who worry they will lose their pay and perks are ambivalent about integration with Afghan security forces. Questions remain on the Taliban commitment to the peace agreement with US as the UN Report of 2019 on terrorism confirms that the Taliban have not severed contact with the Al Qaeda and other militant groups (as required by agreement), adding that 615 Pakistani nationals are fighting in Afghanistan. Doubts about the Taliban acceptance of Afghan Constitution, power sharing and cessation of hostilities abound. In a rare message during Ramzan, supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, said: “US should not waste this opportunity to end its longest war”. Emboldened by the deal, Taliban had launched since the agreement till May, 3,800 attacks with Kabul suffering an average attrition of 68 soldiers daily.

While Mullah Yakub, son of the founder of Taliban, Mullah Omar, has been appointed military commander, which may create friction with Haqqani, four unnamed Taliban stalwarts have been included in the talks team.

According to all but the blind, Pakistan continues to remain in significant control of Taliban through sanctuaries, training, armaments and logistics it provides. Rawalpindi’s obsession with strategic depth, friendly government in Kabul or a government more amenable to its strategic concerns than it is to India’s, is the bottomline. Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy is circumscribed by five Noes: no two-front situation; no Taliban in full control of Kabul; no hasty US withdrawal; no Islamic Emirate and no support for Pakistani Taliban. These concerns stem from deep insecurities from India. Changing Rawalpindi behaviour in Afghanistan will require combined pressure from the US, the international community and FATF. But it has two friends in the P5 in the UNSC it can count on — China and Russia.

India has taken a backseat in Afghanistan despite its 3 billion dollar investment in its development, which has won it affection and popularity, but no political influence. Despite myriad advice on opening lines with Taliban whose role in a future government in Kabul is inevitable, New Delhi has consistently stuck to no contact with Taliban, a terrorist organisation, till it is earnestly engaged in an intra-Afghan dialogue. Both the US and Kabul have been telling India it will have an important role in the peace process. India has ceaselessly repeated the mantra of Afghan-owned, Afghan-driven and Afghan-controlled peace process when it knows the Americans and Europeans are piloting it. On July 5, India signed five agreements with Kabul under its new development partnership. In his Afghan policy enumerated in 2017, Trump had called India the key development partner in Afghanistan. Nearly 135 days after the accords with Taliban and Afghanistan, as agreed, the US has vacated five bases, retaining Bagram and Kandahar. 420 dangerous Taliban prisoners not being released is being attributed to deadly attacks this month reflecting its bargaining leverage.

The historic peace deal is actually a US troop extrication agreement sans admission of military failure, the price for which is being paid by the Afghans who curse the Taliban for sparing foreign troops but killing fellow Afghans. US Central Command’s General Frank Mckenzie’s avowal that full withdrawal will take place as per agreement (May 14, 2021) and will depend on the Taliban has to be taken with a pinch of salt. US elections, not the Taliban or situation in Afghanistan, will dictate the pace of US withdrawal.

G Parthasarathy

Chancellor, Jammu Central University & former High Commissioner to Pakistan

Negotiations for complete withdrawal of Chinese troops in Ladakh are continuing in what is likely to be a long-drawn out process. The ground situation in Ladakh will change, around mid-November, when the winter commences. While several reasons have been given for the intrusions in Ladakh, there is one inescapable reality. China does not respect the inviolability of what India regards as its existing borders. At the same time, China refuses to present a detailed map on where in its view, the borders/LAC, emanating from the 1962 conflict, lie.

Any negotiations on resolving the border issue are meaningless, until China presents India with its maps, depicting its version of the LAC. It periodically extends its borders, triggering conflict and tensions. It has no interest in serious negotiations on the border issue, even though the guiding principles for resolving differences were agreed to in 2002, between PMs Vajpayee and Wen Jia Bao. India has, therefore, to be prepared for border tensions, as long as this situation continues. While another flare-up cannot be ruled out, we should decide how we are going to deal with China politically, diplomatically and militarily. Chinese media reports depict a sense of Chinese disdain for India’s policies and capabilities.

Complementing China’s hostility are its long-term policies to ‘contain’ India through supply of nuclear weapon designs and development of plutonium facilities to Pakistan. This is complemented by China’s continuing supply to Pakistan, of fighter aircraft, tanks, missiles, radars, UAVs, howitzers, frigates, submarines, etc. China has also extended unprecedented support to Pakistan in international forums, including the UNSC on the issue of J&K. China also deals directly with governments in PoK. It undertakes construction of roads and hydel projects across PoK. Moreover, it continues to support leaders and parties in South Asia that are none too friendly towards India, as it is doing in Nepal and has attempted earlier, in Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Bangladesh.

China received an unexpected jolt to its policy of coercively violating the maritime boundaries of all its neighbours, including Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. Leaders of the 10 ASEAN member states demanded on June 27 that territorial and other differences in the South China Sea should be settled in accordance with the provisions of the UN Convention of the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). They asserted: ‘UNCLOS sets out the legal framework within which all activities in the oceans and seas must be carried out.’ China has crudely used maritime military power to enforce its illegal claims. The primary motive for such behaviour is that the maritime space China is seeking contains 11 billion barrels of untapped oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. China now faces ASEAN countries that have objected to its bullying and territorial ambitions in the South China Sea. India, on the other hand, has settled its maritime boundaries with all its eastern neighbours.

The strongest statement against China for its bullying was by US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who averred on July 13: ‘Beijing uses intimidation to undermine the sovereign rights of Southeast Asian coastal states in the South China Sea, bully them out of offshore resources, assert unilateral dominion, and replace international law with might makes right.’ Beijing’s approach has, however, been clear for years. In 2010, then-PRC foreign minister Yang Jiechi told his ASEAN counterparts that ‘China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact.’ This Chinese predatory worldview has no place in the 21st century. The US has simultaneously resorted to a display of military power. It has deployed two aircraft carriers in the South China Sea, directly challenging China’s coercive policies. Adding to China’s woes are the pressures from the US and others, for its actions in curbing democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, which are clearly in violation of China’s 1997 agreement with the UK. The US and Japan are also considering moves to dilute their existing economic relationships with China, even as China seeks to build a new relationship with Iran, involving an investment of $400 billion in the petroleum sector.

India needs to activate the recently established Quad for formulating a strategic framework to deal with China’s challenges and territorial ambitions in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. The Quad should associate Indonesia and Vietnam on issues of maritime security, across the Straits of Malacca. We should, similarly, work with the US 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, and France, which has a naval base in Djibouti, to cooperate in guaranteeing the security of energy supplies. India’s credibility will be vastly enhanced by supplying Vietnam Brahmos missiles that it has for long asked us, for its maritime security, in the face of continuing Chinese attacks. There is also need for a more focused effort on the well-documented accounts of China’s atrocities on its over one million Muslims, who are detained in concentration camps, prisons, and forced labour, while being subjected to electrocution, water-boarding and beatings. In the ultimate analysis, India will have to make it clear to China that seeking territorial gain by refusing to spell out the contours of the LAC would not work to its advantage.

Peace has returned to the Galwan valley, for the present. Our Parliament and people would justifiably want more details of the implications of what has transpired during the Chinese incursion into Ladakh. One looks forward to these issues being discussed frankly in our Parliament. A national consensus is imperative, if we are to successfully deal with the challenges a growingly assertive China presents to India and the world.

The story of the Seventh Fleet Task Force 74 led by the world’s longest warship, USS Enterprise, sailing into the Bay of Bengal to help Pakistan during India’s war for liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 was fresh in the nation’s collective consciousness for long. But that memory got eclipsed on Monday with the Nimitz carrier strike group getting deployed by the US for a ‘passex’ or passing exercise in the very same Bay of Bengal during India’s standoff with China. A new chapter in geopolitics is getting written in Washington, New Delhi and Beijing. The message of the unscheduled exercise, involving the US and Indian naval ships, is not the understated ‘improvement in interoperability’, but the deeper investment by the American establishment in Indo-US military ties. Earlier, as the US flotilla set sail into the Indian waters, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper significantly issued a warning, ‘Don’t underestimate the strength of free democracies.’

Meanwhile, in Washington, the US House of Representatives on Monday unanimously passed an amendment to the National Defence Authorisation Act decrying Chinese incursion in the Galwan valley of Ladakh and growing territorial assertiveness. If by the Ladakh incursion, China attempted to project its power in the neighbourhood and teach India a lesson for refusing to kowtow to its Belt and Road Initiative or gulp down the ignominy of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, it has achieved neither. Instead, China has only succeeded in formalising India’s strategic ties with the US into a mutually beneficial military relationship, wherein the eastern neighbour proves to be a cause of common concern.

Often a country’s foreign policy choices are forced upon it by a lack of options. Chinese aggression, intransigence and refusal to de-escalate have forced India to abandon its long-held hopes of an Asian century, where China and India could have been partners in prosperity. India will soon appreciate that it is easier to be hostile than be cautious and in this context, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar’s statement is of great consequence: India has to shed its caution and step out confidently to articulate its interests.

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 23

Five months after the Supreme Court allowed permanent commission for Short Service Commission (SSC) women officers, the Ministry of Defence has issued a formal order allowing women to be permanent commissioned officers in eight additional streams in the Army.

Women SSC officers are presently allowed a permanent commission in the Judge and Advocate General (JAG) and Army Education Corps (AEC) branches.

The order specifies grant of permanent commission to SSC women officers in eight additional streams of the Indian Army:  Army Air Defence (AAD), Signals, Engineers, Army Aviation, Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (EME), Army Service Corps (ASC), Army Ordnance Corps (AOC) and Intelligence Corps.

Called the government sanction letter, it was issued on Thursday for grant of permanent commission to women officers in the Army, paving the way for empowering women officers to shoulder larger roles in the organisation.

The Army Headquarters had set in motion a series of preparatory actions for conduct of the Permanent Commission Selection Board for Women Officers.

The board will be scheduled as soon as all SSC women officers exercise their option and complete requisite documentation.

The decision will apply to those who had joined as SSC officers, but were not given an option during their service tenure to opt for permanent commission.

Their male counterparts from same batches and streams went on to become permanent commission officers. SSC officers – men or women – join for a period of 10 or 14 years following which an option is given if they want to be permanent commission officers.