Category Archives: Asian Security

The myth of a homogeneous China

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El falso multiculturalismo chino
Brahma Chellaney  – 16/08/2009 LA VANGUARDIA

A menos que China deje de imponer la homogeneidad cultural y la asfixia étnica, sufrirá problemas internos

Tras envolver militarmente la región de Xinjiang, rica en petróleo, es posible que las autoridades chinas hayan sofocado la revuelta uigur. Sin embargo, este episodio, el más mortífero de las manifestaciones de minorías étnicas registradas a lo largo de decenios – junto con el levantamiento que tuvo lugar en la meseta tibetana-muestra los costes políticos de la absorción étnica forzosa y hace trizas el espejismo de una China monolítica. Las políticas de absorción forzosa en Tíbet y Xinjiang, ricos en petróleo, dieron comienzo después de que el hombre fuerte del país, Mao Tse Tung, creara un corredor de enlace entre las dos regiones rebeldes engullendo la zona india de Aksai Chin, de 38.000 km2,parte del Estado de Jammu y Cachemira. En la actualidad, alrededor de un 60% del territorio de la República Popular China comprende territorios que no habían estado bajo el gobierno directo de la dinastía Han. El tamaño de China, de hecho, es el triple del que poseía bajo la última dinastía Han, la dinastía Ming, que cayó a mediados del siglo XVII. En el sentido territorial el poder Han se halla en su cenit, circunstancia simbolizada por el hecho de que la Gran Muralla se construyó a modo de perímetro de seguridad del imperio Han. 

La absorción manchú en el seno de la sociedad Han y la dilución de la población autóctona en la Mongolia interior significa que los tibetanos y los grupos étnicos musulmanes de lenguas túrquicas de Xinjiang sean los únicos grupos que quedan como núcleos resistentes. 

Sin embargo, los acontecimientos sucedidos desde el año pasado se alzan como penoso recuerdo ante los ojos de las autoridades chinas en el sentido de que su estrategia de colonización étnica y económica de la tierra tibetana y uigur está atizando un notable malestar. Mientras por una parte los esfuerzos gubernamentales para extender el uso de la lengua, cultura y poderío comercial Han han alimentado el resentimiento local, por otra el desarrollo económico en esas regiones – orientado a la explotación de sus ricos recursos-ha contribuido a marginar a la población autóctona. Mientras se deja a la población local el empleo en trabajos serviles, los colonos Han se reservan los empleos bien pagados y directivos, símbolo de la ecuación entre colonizados y colonizadores. 

Factor aún más importante, la misma supervivencia de las principales culturas de etnia no Han se ve amenazada. Desde el adoctrinamiento en la escuela y la reeducación política forzosa a la reducción drástica del suelo cultivable y de la vida monástica, el hecho es que las políticas chinas han contribuido a infundir sentimientos de sojuzgamiento y resentimiento en la población de Tíbet y Xinjiang. 

Afin de sinologizar los territorios poblados por minorías, la multifacética estrategia de Pekín comprende seis factores: alterar cartográficamente las fronteras del suelo patrio de ciertas etnias; inundar demográficamente culturas no Han, al modo como la expansión del gobierno Han sobre Manchuria, Mongolia interior y Taiwán se logró ampliamente mediante la migración durante un prolongado periodo de tiempo; reescritura de la historia para justificar el control chino; colonización económica; puesta en práctica de una hegemonía cultural susceptible de difuminar las identidades locales, y mantenimiento de la represión política. 

En el plano demográfico, Pekín no intenta un exterminio étnico en estas regiones, sino una asfixia étnica. Esta estrategia, consistente en asfixiar a la población autóctona mediante la campaña migratoria, equivale a la aniquilación cultural. 

Un primer paso en esta dirección fue la reorganización cartográfica de las regiones de residencia de minorías. Mediante una división electoral de Tíbet de acuerdo con sus propios intereses, Pekín situó la mitad de la meseta de Tíbet y casi el 60% de la población tibetana bajo jurisdicción Han en las provincias de Qinghai, Sicuani, Gansu y Yunan. El desmembramiento cartográfico de Tíbet creó el marco destinado a diluir étnicamente a los tibetanos, tanto en las áreas separadas como en el resto del Tíbet, rebautizado como "región autónoma de Tíbet". 

En el caso de la Mongolia interior, se hizo lo contrario: se amplió para incluir áreas Han como la región de Henao a fin de reducir a los mongoles a una minoría e impedir cualquier demanda o aspiración (inspirándose en el deseo de China de unificación con Taiwán) en el sentido de la unificación de las dos Mongolias. 

En la actualidad, las lenguas tibetana y uigur están desapareciendo ya de las escuelas locales a medida que las autoridades las retiran del currículo académico. Y, como parte integrante de la estrategia de absorción forzosa, las familias de las minorías étnicas son obligadas a enviar al menos a un miembro de la familia a trabajar en fábricas situadas en distantes provincias Han o a enfrentarse de lo contrario a una multa de dos mil yuanes, alrededor de doscientos euros. Se anima sobre todo a las jóvenes de minorías a trasladarse a provincias Han y casarse con un Han como parte del programa de absorción patrocinado por el Estado. La rápida sinologización, sin embargo, no ha hecho más que agudizar el sentido de identidad y ansia de libertad tibetana y uigur. 

La principal idea directriz del sistema chino sigue siendo la uniformidad, como señala el eslogan del presidente Hu Jintao relativo a una "sociedad armoniosa" concebida para reforzar la cuestión de la adhesión social. Apenas es de extrañar que la respuesta pública de Hu al malestar uigur consistiera en pedir a las autoridades locales que "aislaran y asestaran un golpe" a los agitadores, en lugar de ir a las causas del descontento. 

Mientras India aplaude la diversidad, China rinde tributo a un monoculturalismo artificialmente impuesto, aunque incluye oficialmente 56 nacionalidades, la nacionalidad Han (que, según el último censo del 2000, representaba el 91% de la población total) y 55 grupos étnicos minoritarios. China intenta no sólo restar importancia a su diversidad étnica, sino ocultar las brechas culturales y lingüísticas existentes en el seno de la mayoría Han, no sea que las divergencias históricas norte-sur afloren nuevamente. 

Los Han (divididos en siete o más grupos distintos desde el punto de vista lingüístico y cultural) serán cualquier cosa salvo un grupo homogéneo. Las principales lenguas de China aparte de las empleadas en territorios de minorías, incluyen el mandarín, el hakka (hablado en varias áreas del sur), el gan (provincia de Jiangxi), el wu (provincia de Zhejiang), el xiang (provincia de Hunan), el yue (sobre todo en la provincia de Guangdong), el pinghua (vástago yue), el min del sur (hokkien/ del taiwanés) y el min del norte. 

No obstante, los comunistas se han valido del mito de la homogeneidad para atizar el nacionalismo Han. Este mito, concebido en un principio para unificar a los no manchúes en contra de la dinastía manchú Qing, fue ideado por Sun Yat-Sen, un cantonés que encabezó el movimiento republicano que tomó el poder en 1911. La posterior imposición de la lengua del norte, el mandarín, contribuyó a instaurar una lingua franca en una sociedad diversa, pero casi un siglo después no es el mandarín sino las lenguas locales las que se siguen hablando comúnmente. 

Actualmente, gracias a la mayor conciencia de la realidad derivada de los avances en las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación, los hakka, los sichuaneses, los cantoneses, los shanghaineses, los fujianeses, los swatoweses, los hunaneses y otras comunidades clasificadas oficialmente como Han reafirman sus identidades distintivas y su patrimonio cultural. 

Los problemas internos de China no desaparecerán a menos que sus gobernantes dejen de imponer la homogeneidad cultural y renuncien a la asfixia étnica como estrategia del Estado llevada a la práctica en áreas de minorías. Tras el levantamiento tibetano en el 2008, el año 2009 será recordado como el de la revuelta uigur. Si se considera que el año próximo se cumplirá el LX aniversario de la ocupación china de Tíbet, el centro de atención se situará en los desafíos internos de China. Mientras el crecimiento económico aminora su ritmo y el malestar interno aumenta a una cadencia similar a la del PIB chino, tales desafíos se extienden de hecho al corazón de la propia China. 

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, profesor de Estudios Estratégicosdel Centro de Investigación en Ciencia Política de Nueva Delhi. Autor de ´El monstruo asiático: el auge de China, India y Japón´ 

Traducción: JoséMaría Puig de la Bellacasa

China-India Border Talks

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A Fruitless Dialogue 

Brahma Chellaney

The New Indian Express, August 17, 2009

The broadening of the Sino-Indian border talks into an all-encompassing
strategic dialogue is an unmistakable reminder that the negotiations stand
deadlocked. Yet neither side wants to abandon the fruitless process.

In the period since the border negotiations began
nearly three decades ago, the world has changed fundamentally. Indeed, with its
rapidly accumulating military and economic power, China itself has emerged as a great
power in the making. The longer the negotiating process continues without
yielding results, the greater the space Beijing
will have to mount strategic pressure on India and leverage its position. After
all, China
already holds the military advantage on the ground. Its forces control the
heights along the long 4.057-kilometer Himalayan frontier. Furthermore, by
building new railroads, airports and highways in Tibet,
China is now in a position
to rapidly move additional forces to the border to potentially strike at India at a time
of its choosing.

Diplomatically, China
is a contented party, having occupied what it wanted — the Aksai Chin plateau,
which is almost the size of Switzerland
and provides the only accessible Tibet-Xinjiang route through the Karakoram passes of the Kunlun Mountains.
Yet it
chooses to press claims on additional Indian territories as part of a grand
strategy to gain leverage in bilateral relations and, more importantly, to keep
India
under military and diplomatic pressure.

At the core of its strategy is an apparent resolve to indefinitely hold off
on a border settlement with India
through an overt refusal to accept the territorial status quo. In not hiding
its intent to further redraw the Himalayan frontiers, Beijing only helps highlight the futility of
the ongoing process of political negotiations. After all, the territorial
status quo can be changed not through political talks but by further military
conquest. Yet, paradoxically, the political process remains important for Beijing to provide the façade of engagement behind which
to seek India’s
containment.

Keeping India
engaged in endless talks is a key Chinese objective so that Beijing can continue its work on changing the
Himalayan balance decisively in its favor through a greater build-up of
military power and logistical capabilities. That is why China has sought to shield the negotiating
process from the perceptible hardening of its stance towards New Delhi.

Let’s be clear: Chinese negotiating tactics have shifted markedly over
the decades. Beijing originally floated the swap idea — giving up its claims in
India’s northeast in return for Indian acceptance of the Chinese control over a
part of Ladakh — to legalize its occupation of Aksai Chin. It then sang the
mantra of putting the territorial disputes on the backburner so that the two
countries could concentrate on building close, mutually beneficial relations. But
in more recent years, in keeping with its rising strength, China has escalated border tensions
and military incursions while assertively laying claim to Arunachal Pradesh.
According to a recent report in Ming Pao, a Hong Kong paper with close ties to the
establishment in Beijing, China is seeking “just” 28 percent
of Arunachal. That means an area nearly the size of Taiwan.

In that light, can the border talks be kept going
indefinitely? Consider two important facts.

First, the present border negotiations have been going on continuously
since 1981, making them already the longest and the most-barren process between
any two countries in modern history. It seems
the only progress in this process is that India’s
choice of words in public is now the same as China’s. “Both countries
have agreed to seek a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable settlement of
this issue,” Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna told Parliament on
July 31. “The matter, of course, is complex and requires time and lots of
patience.” It was as if the Chinese foreign minister was speaking. Isn’t it odd
for India
to plead for more time and patience after nearly three decades of negotiations?

Second, the authoritative People’s Daily — the
Communist Party mouthpiece that reflects official thinking — made it clear in a
June 11, 2009 editorial: “China
won’t make any compromises in its border disputes with India.” That reflects the Chinese
position in the negotiations. But when Beijing
is advertising its uncompromising stance, doesn’t New Delhi get the message?

So the key question is: What does India
gain by staying put in an interminably barren negotiating process with China? By
persisting with this process, isn’t India
aiding the Chinese engagement-with-containment strategy by providing Beijing the cover it
needs? While Beijing’s strategy and tactics are
apparent, India
has had difficulty to define a game-plan and resolutely pursue clearly laid-out
objectives. Still, staying put in a barren process cannot be an end in itself
for India.

India indeed has retreated to an
increasingly defensive position territorially, with the spotlight now on China’s Tibet-linked claim to Arunachal Pradesh than
on Tibet’s
status itself. Now you know why Beijing invested so much
political capital over the years in getting India
to gradually accept Tibet
as part of the territory of the People’s Republic. Its success on that score
has helped narrow the dispute to what it claims. That neatly meshes with China’s
long-standing negotiating stance: What it occupies is Chinese territory, and
what it claims must be on the table to be settled on the basis of give-and-take
— or as it puts it in reasonably sounding terms, on the basis of “mutual
accommodation and mutual understanding.”

As a result, India
has been left in the unenviable position of having to fend off Chinese territorial
demands. In fact, history is in danger of repeating itself as India gets sucked into a
1950s-style trap. The issue then was Aksai Chin; the issue now
is Arunachal. But rather than put the focus on the source of China’s claim —
Tibet — and Beijing’s attempt to territorially enlarge its Tibet annexation to
what it calls “southern Tibet,” India is willing to be taken ad infinitum
around the mulberry bush.

Take the period since the border talks were “elevated” to
the level of special representatives in 2003. India
first got into an extended exercise with Beijing
to define general principles to govern a border settlement, despite China’s
egregious record of flouting the Panchsheel principles and committing naked
aggression in 1962. But no sooner had the border-related principles been
unveiled in 2005 with fanfare than Beijing
jettisoned the do-not-disturb-the-settled-populations principle to buttress its
claim to Arunachal.

Yet, as the most-recent round of talks highlighted this
month, India has agreed to
let the negotiations go off at a tangent by broadening them into a diffused strategic
dialogue — to the delight of Beijing.
This not only opens yet another chapter in an increasingly directionless
process, but also lets China
condition a border settlement to the achievement of greater Sino-Indian strategic
congruence. Worse still, New Delhi is to observe
2010 — the 60th anniversary of China
becoming India’s neighbor by
gobbling up Tibet — as the
“Year of Friendship with China”
in India.

About the author: Brahma Chellaney is
professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

http://bit.ly/1n3vYW

India’s wishful thinking on Pakistan

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Dangerous fallacies

Brahma Chellaney

DNA newspaper, August 5, 2009

By appreciatively citing the example set by his sphinx-like
predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who reversed India’s
Pakistan policy at least
half a dozen times during his six years in office, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
is seeking to take India
on a similar roller-coaster ride. In fact, Singh’s latest statements in
Parliament reveal eight dangerous misconceptions on Pakistan.

One, political geography is unalterable. “We
cannot wish away the fact that Pakistan
is our neighbor,” Singh says. But political maps
are not carved in stone. Didn’t Indira Gandhi change political geography in
1971? The most-profound global events in recent history have been the
fragmentation of several states, including the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. When
Pakistan looks increasingly decrepit, Singh
says “a stable, peaceful and prosperous Pakistan”
is in India’s
“own interest.”

Two, India and Pakistan are locked by a shared
destiny. Therefore, “our objective must be a permanent peace with Pakistan,
where we are bound together by a shared future and a common prosperity.” How can
a plural, inclusive and democratic India share a common future with a theocratic,
militarized and radicalized Pakistan?
In fact, Pakistan, with its
“war of a thousand cuts,” poses an existential threat to the very principles
and values on which India
is founded.

Three, the alternative
to a policy seeking to placate a terror-exporting adversary is war. “There
is no other way unless we go to war.” That draws on the classic argument of
appeasers that the only alternative to appeasement is provocation or conflict.
The simple truth is that between bending backwards and waging aggression lie a
hundred different options.

Four, India
cannot emerge as a great power without making peace with Pakistan. “It is in our vital interest, therefore, to try again to
make peace with Pakistan.”
By linking India’s global
rise to the placation of Pakistan,
Singh has hyphenated India
with that country even more strikingly than any international actor. Actually,
to say that the country cannot emerge as a major power without making peace
with an adversary wedded to waging war by terror is to go against the grain of
world history and to encourage the foe to hold India’s progress hostage. Does
Singh wish to egg on Pakistan
to have its cake and eat it too — wage unconventional war while enjoying the
comfort offered by Indian-initiated conciliation and peace talks? While India should
make efforts to build better relations with its regional foes on the basis of
“verify and trust” (not “trust and verify,” as Singh wants), its own global
rise is not dependent on adversarial goodwill.

Five, as India has nothing to hide and indeed “our
conduct is an open book,” it can let Pakistan include any issue in the bilateral
agenda. It was such logic that encouraged Pakistan
to turn its terror target, India,
into an accused on Baluchistan. Singh’s
attempt to rationalize that blunder, though, threatens to exacerbate matters.
Not “afraid of discussing any issue”
extends an invitation to Pakistan
to place on the bilateral agenda any subject it wants, including a matter
internal to India.

Six, if Pakistan merely acknowledges what is
incontrovertible, that is enough for India to change policy course. The
policy change at Sharm-el-Sheikh, according to Singh, was prompted by Pakistan’s submission of a dossier in response
to India’s
dossier. That Pakistan has
yet to begin dismantling its state-run terror complex against India was
overlooked. Indeed, an enthusiastic Singh even agreed that India will “share real-time, credible and
actionable” intelligence with Pakistan
on future terrorist threats. In other words, India
is to alert Pakistan
in time to the terror actions being planned by its state institutions and their
front organizations, given that the Pakistani Army, the ISI, the
Lashkar-ei-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad constitute a seamless jihad web.

Seven, high-level
dialogue and “meaningful” dialogue can be delinked. “We can have a meaningful dialogue with Pakistan
only if they fulfill their commitment, in letter and spirit.” However, at the
level of prime minister, foreign minister and foreign secretary, India will
continue its dialogue with Pakistan on “all outstanding issues,” irrespective
of whether Pakistan demonstrates its anti-terror bona fides or not.

Eight, diplomacy of
hope and prayer makes sense. “I hope and pray that the leadership in Pakistan will have the strength and the courage
to defeat those who want to destroy, not just peace between India and Pakistan,
but the future of South Asia.” Wishful
thinking has long hobbled Indian foreign policy. Now, in the glaring absence of
holistic, institutionalized decision-making, prayers are being added to the
wishes.

The writer is
professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/main-article_dangerous-fallacies_1279726 

Are India’s defence acquisitions in a mess?

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India needs a major cleanup 

Brahma
Chellaney

The Economic Times, July 31, 2009

From
castigating the government for frenetically importing weapons without any
long-term vision to pointing out that gaps in India’s
defences remain unplugged, the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General
(CAG) of India
have helped highlight the rot that has set in. India is the only large country
that relies on imports to meet basic defence needs, to the extent that it has
become the world’s biggest arms buyer. But despite the ever-growing arms
imports — a money-spinning business for many Indian politicians, civil servants
and defence officers — India pursues an increasingly feckless policy towards
China and has seen its military edge against quasi-failed Pakistan erode to the
point that recurring cross-border terror strikes are met with terror-emboldening
inaction.

Instead of remaining
incorrigibly dependent on imports and serving as a dumping ground for
obsolescent weapons, shouldn’t India
build a military with the strategic reach and combat edge to deter regional
adversaries? Consider some disturbing examples.

No sooner
had the first batch of the British Hawk jet trainers been inducted — an
antiquated system in which India
invested $1.7 billion ostensibly to help minimize crashes — than a Hawk
crashes. The 2007 induction of a 1971-vintage amphibious transport ship junked
by the US navy and sold to India for $50
million kills an Indian officer and five sailors due to a gas leak on board. The
CAG says the 2005 contract for six Scorpenes saddled India with a questionable
submarine-design system and resulted in $72 million in “undue financial
advantage” to the French vendor, plus “other unquantifiable benefits”. Now, at
a price “60% more expensive than for a new one”, according to the CAG, India is buying from Moscow a refurbished Soviet-era aircraft
carrier that had been rusting since a mid-1990s boiler-room explosion.

The defence of India is becoming an unremitting scandal.
Clearly, India
needs a major cleanup. To facilitate that, a three-year import moratorium is a
must. In the process, without compromising India’s defence, some $20 billion
will be saved in that period.

(c) Economic Times, 2009.

After Tibet, Xinjiang exposes China’s Achilles’ heel

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Chinese Checkers

 

Brahma Chellaney

DNA newspaper

July 10, 2009

 

By blanketing the oil-rich Xinjiang with troops, China’s rulers may have subdued the Uighur revolt, which began in Urumqi, the regional capital, and spread to other heavily guarded cities like Kashgar. But this deadliest case of minority rioting in decades — along with the 2008 uprising across the Tibetan plateau — shows the costs of forcible absorption, laying bare China’s Achilles’ heel.

 

About 60 per cent territory of the People’s Republic comprises territories that historically had not been under direct Han rule. In fact, the Great Wall was built as the Han empire’s outer security perimeter. Today, Xinjiang and Tibet, by themselves, make up nearly half of China’s landmass.

 

The ruling Chinese Communist Party had gone to unusual lengths to block any protests from flaring during this symbolically important year marking the 60th anniversary of its coming to power — an occasion the party is preparing to celebrate with the biggest-ever party. The 20th anniversary of “June 4”, the date of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protesters, went by without any incident because of heavy security in Beijing. A security siege in Tibet similarly ensured that the 50th anniversaries of the Tibetan national uprising against the Chinese occupation and the Dalai Lama’s consequent flight to India passed off peacefully in March. A confident Beijing went to the extent of provocatively observing March 28 this year — the 50th anniversary of its declaration of direct rule over Tibet — as “Serf Emancipation Day”, as if it just realized it liberated Tibetans from serfdom half a century ago.

 

The Uighur uprising — in the 60th-anniversary year of the Chinese annexation of East Turkestan (renamed Xinjiang) — thus is a rude jolt to what is now the world’s largest, oldest and strongest autocracy.

 

The Manchu assimilation into Han society and the swamping of the locals in Inner Mongolia have left only the Tibetans and the Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang as the holdouts. But the events since last year have come as a painful reminder to the Chinese leadership that its policies in Tibet and Xinjiang aren’t working. Economic development in those regions, largely geared at exploiting their resource wealth, has only helped marginalize the natives. While the locals get the menial work to do, the Han settlers run the show and hold the well-paying jobs, symbolizing an equation between the colonized and the colonizers.

 

More importantly, the very survival of the major non-Han cultures in China is now threatened. From school-level indoctrination and forced political re-education to draconian curbs on native farmland and monastic life, Chinese policies have helped instil feelings of subjugation and resentment in Tibet and Xinjiang. Demographically, what Beijing is pursuing there is not ethnic cleansing but ethnic drowning. This strategy to ethnically drown the natives through the “Go West” Han-migration campaign is akin to cultural annihilation. The Tibetan and Uighur languages already are disappearing from local schools. Rapid Sinicization of their pristine environment, however, has only sharpened the Tibetan and Uighur sense of identity and yearning for freedom.

 

We may never get to reliably know the number of casualties and arrests in Xinjiang. At the first sign of trouble in Tibet or Xinjiang, Beijing cuts off local Internet and cellphone services and imposes a security lockdown through curfews and virtual martial law. Few believe the official death toll in the Xinjiang violence. After all, Beijing had insisted that only 13 people were killed in spring 2008 in Tibet despite the Tibetan government-in-exile documenting some 220 deaths.

 

There are important parallels between the Tibet and Xinjiang violence. The ethnic uprisings in both regions erupted after authorities tried to disperse peaceful protesters in the local capital — Lhasa and Urumqi — where Han Chinese now outnumber the natives. And just as Beijing was quick to accuse the Dalai Lama of inciting the Tibetan rebellion, it has blamed the Xinjiang bloodshed on exiled Uighur leaders, specifically the Washington-based Rebiya Kadeer. But Kadeer, an ex-businesswoman, is no advocate of violence, although she spent six years in a Chinese jail and two of her sons are still imprisoned in Xinjiang.

 

The policies of forced assimilation in Tibet and Xinjiang began after Chairman Mao Zedong created a land corridor link between the two rebellious regions by gobbling up India’s 38,000-square-kilometre Aksai Chin. This area — almost the size of whole Switzerland — started coming under Chinese control through furtive encroachment in the 1950s, before Mao consolidated and extended China’s hold by waging open war on India in 1962. Aksai Chin provides the only accessible Tibet-Xinjiang passageway through the Kunlun Mountains.

 

China’s ethnic problems won’t go away unless it stops enforcing cultural homogeneity. After the 2008 Tibetan uprising, 2009 will go down as the year the Uighur revolted, sullying Communist China’s 60th birthday.

 

The writer is the author of Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan.

 

(c) DNA, 2009.

Obama’s China-centric Asia policy

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Courting The Dragon

Washington’s Asia policy gives Beijing pride of place

 

Brahma Chellaney

The Times of India, July 2, 2009

 

The key reason why India ranks lower in the policy profile of the Barack Obama administration than it did under President George W Bush is that America’s Asia policy is no longer guided by an overarching geopolitical framework. In fact, after nearly six months in office, Obama’s approach on Asia lacks a distinct strategic imprint and thus appears fragmented. His administration may have a policy approach towards each major Asian country and issue, but still lacks a strategy on how to build an enduring power equilibrium in Asia.

The result is that Washington is again looking at India primarily through the Pakistan prism. That translates into a US focus on India-Pakistan engagement, revived attention on the Kashmir issue and counter insurgency in the Af-Pak region, including implications for U.S. homeland security. For instance, not content with making Islamabad the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world, Obama wants victim India to come to the aid of terror-exporting Pakistan, including by offering new "peace" talks and redeploying troops, even if it means more terrorist infiltration.

In a recent Asia-policy speech in Tokyo to a small group, of which this writer was a member, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg did not mention India even in passing — as if India wasn’t part of Asia. Whether one agreed or differed with Bush’s foreign policy, at least its Asia component was driven by a larger geopolitical blueprint. By contrast, the best that can be said about Obama’s Asia policy is that it seeks to nurture key bilateral relationships — with China at the core of Washington’s present courtship — and establish, where possible, trilateral relationships.

The upshot is that the Obama team has just unveiled a new trilateral security framework in Asia involving the United States, China and Japan. While announcing this initiative, Washington failed to acknowledge another trilateral — the one involving the U.S., India and Japan. It is as if that trilateral has fallen out of favour with the new U.S. administration, just as the broader US-Australia-India-Japan "Quadrilateral Initiative" — founded on the concept of democratic peace — ran aground after the late-2007 election of the Sinophile Kevin Rudd as the Australian prime minister.

At a time when Asia is in transition, with the spectre of power disequilibrium looming large, it has become imperative to invest in institution-building to help underpin long-term stability. After all, Asia is not only becoming the pivot of global geopolitical change, but also Asian challenges are playing into international strategic challenges. But the Obama administration is fixated on the very country whose rapidly accumulating power and muscle-flexing threaten Asian stability.

This is not to decry deeper U.S. engagement with China at a time when Washington’s dependence on Beijing to bankroll American debt has only grown. From being allies of convenience in the second half of the Cold War, the U.S. and China now have emerged as partners tied by such close interdependence that economic historians Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick have coined the term, ‘Chimerica’ — a fusion like the less-convincing ‘Chindia’. An article in China’s Liaowang magazine describes the relationship as one of "complex interdependence" in which America and China "compete and consult" with each other.

But China’s expanding naval role and maritime claims threaten to collide with U.S. interests, including Washington’s traditional emphasis on the freedom of the seas. U.S.-China economic ties also would stay uneasy: America saves too little and borrows too much from China, while China sells too much to the U.S. and buys too little. Yet, such is its indulgence towards China that Washington holds Moscow to higher standards than Beijing on human rights and other issues, even though it is China that is likely to mount a credible challenge to America’s global pre-eminence.

The new U.S.-China-Japan trilateral re-emphasises Washington’s focus on China as the key player to engage on Asian issues. Slated to begin modestly with dialogue on non-traditional security issues before moving on to hard security matters, the latest trilateral already is being billed as the centrepiece of Obama’s Asia policy. Such is its wider significance that it is touted as offering a new framework for deliberations on North Korea to compensate for the eroding utility of the present six-party mechanism.

Despite its China-centric Asia policy, the Obama team, however, has not thought of a U.S.-China-India trilateral, even as it currently explores a U.S.-China-South Korea trilateral. That is because Washington now is looking at India not through the Asian geopolitical prism but the regional, or Af-Pak, lens — a reality unlikely to be changed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming stop in New Delhi more than five months after she paid obeisance in Beijing. While re-hyphenating India with Pakistan and outsourcing its North Korea and Burma policies to Beijing, the U.S. wants China to expand its geopolitical role through greater involvement even in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The point is that India’s role will not diminish in Asia just because the Obama administration fails to appreciate its larger strategic importance.

The writer is professor, Centre for Policy Research.

 

(c) The Times of India, 2009.

Obama’s China itch

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Dancing with the dragon

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Japan Times

Nearly six months after U.S. President Barack Obama entered the White House, it is apparent that America’s Asia policy is no longer guided by an overarching geopolitical framework as it had been under President George W. Bush. Indeed, Washington’s Asia policy today appears fragmented. The Obama administration has developed a policy approach toward each major Asian subregion and issue, but still has no strategy on how to build enduring power equilibrium in Asia — the pivot of global geopolitical change

China, India and Japan, Asia’s three main powers, constitute a unique strategic triangle. The Obama administration has declared that America’s "most important bilateral relationship in the world" is with China, going to the extent of demoting human rights to put the accent on security, financial, trade and environmental issues with Beijing.

But it has yet to fashion a well-defined Japan policy or India policy. While a narrow East Asia policy framework now guides U.S. ties with Japan, Washington is again looking at India primarily through the Pakistan prism. That translates into a renewed U.S. focus on India-Pakistan engagement, resurrection of the Kashmir issue and preoccupation with counterinsurgency in the "Afpak" region, including implications for American homeland security.

Obama’s choice of ambassadors says it all. While Obama named John Huntsman — the Utah state governor and a rising Republican star seen even as a potential 2012 rival to the president — as his ambassador to China, he picked obscure former Congressman Timothy Roemer as envoy to India and a low-profile Internet and biotechnology lawyer, John Roos, as ambassador to Japan. Obama underlined China’s centrality in his foreign policy by personally announcing his choice of Huntsman. In contrast, Roemer and Roos were among a slew of ambassadors named in an official news release.

Huntsman has old ties with China, but Roemer and Roos hardly know the countries to which they have been named as ambassadors. Having served on the 9/11 investigation commission, Roemer, though, fits with the Afpak and homeland-security policy frame in which India is being viewed by the Obama team.

Whether one agreed with the Bush foreign policy or not, at least its Asia component was driven by a larger geopolitical blueprint. By contrast, the best can be said about Obama’s Asia policy is that it seeks to nurture key bilateral relationships — with China at the core of Washington’s present courtship — and establish, where possible, trilateral relationships.

The upshot of this is that the Obama team has just unveiled a new trilateral security-cooperation framework in Asia involving the United States, China and Japan. While announcing this initiative, the Obama administration has failed to acknowledge another trilateral — the one involving the U.S., Japan and India.

It is as if the U.S.-Japan-India trilateral has fallen out of favor with the new U.S. administration, just as the broader U.S.-India-Japan-Australia "Quadrilateral Initiative" — founded on the concept of democratic peace and conceived by then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — ran aground after the late-2007 election of Kevin Rudd as the Australian prime minister. Without forewarning New Delhi or Tokyo, the Sinophile Rudd publicly pulled the plug on that nascent initiative, which had held only one meeting.

Now the Obama administration seems intent to bring down the U.S.-Japan-India trilateral. While announcing the new U.S.-China-Japan trilateral, it did not forget to cite the U.S.-Australia-Japan and U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilaterals. But there was no mention of the U.S.-Japan-India trilateral, as if that Bush-endorsed enterprise had become history like Bush.

At a time when Asia is in transition, with the specter of power disequilibrium looming large, it has become imperative to invest in institution-building to help underpin long-term power stability and engagement. After all, Asian challenges are playing into global strategic challenges. But the Obama administration is fixated on the very country whose rapidly accumulating power and muscle-flexing threaten Asian stability.

The U.S., of course, has every reason to engage China more deeply at a time when its dependence on Beijing to bankroll American debt has only grown. Just as America and the Soviet Union achieved mutually assured destruction (MAD), America and China are now locked in MAD — but in economic terms. The two today are so tied in a mutually dependent relationship for their economic well-being that attempts to snap those ties would amount to mutually assured financial destruction. Just as the beleaguered U.S. economy cannot do without continuing capital inflows from China, the American market is the lifeline of the Chinese export juggernaut.

From being allies of convenience in the second half of the Cold War, the U.S. and China now have emerged as partners tied by such interdependence that economic historians Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick have coined the term, "Chimerica." An article in China’s Liaowang magazine describes the relationship as one of "complex interdependence" in which America and China "compete and consult" with each other. Together, the two countries make up 31 percent of global GDP and a quarter of world trade.

But China’s expanding naval role and maritime claims threaten to collide with U.S. interests, including Washington’s traditional emphasis on the freedom of the seas. U.S.-China economic ties also are likely to remain uneasy: America saves too little and borrows too much from China, while Beijing sells too much to the U.S. and buys too little. Yet, such is its indulgence toward Beijing that Washington seeks to hold Moscow to higher standards than Beijing on human rights and other issues, even though it is China that is likely to mount a credible challenge to America’s global pre-eminence.

The new U.S.-China-Japan trilateral re-emphasizes Washington’s focus on China as the key player to engage on Asian issues. Slated to begin modestly with dialogue on nontraditional security issues before moving on to hard security matters, this latest trilateral is being billed as the centerpiece of Obama’s Asia policy. Such is its wider significance that it is also touted as offering a new framework for deliberations on North Korea to compensate for the stalled six-party talks.

Despite its China-centric Asia policy, the Obama team, however, has not thought of a U.S.-China-India trilateral, even as it currently explores a U.S.-China-South Korea trilateral. That is because Washington now is looking at India not through the Asian geopolitical framework but the subregional lens — a reality unlikely to be changed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming stop in New Delhi six months after she paid obeisance in Beijing. While re-hyphenating India with Pakistan and outsourcing its North Korea and Burma policies to Beijing, Washington wants China to expand its geopolitical role through greater involvement even in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It is shortsighted of the Obama team to lower the profile of India and Japan in America’s Asia policy. Tokyo may be ceding political capital and influence in Asia to Beijing, and India’s power might not equal China’s, but Japan and India together can prove more than a match. The Japan-India strategic congruence with the U.S. is based as much on shared interests as on shared principles.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.
 
The Japan Times: June 25, 2009
(C) All rights reserved

India’s increasingly combustible neighborhood

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The Tyranny of India’s Geography

            Strategic
Imperative/Brahma Chellaney

Covert magazine,
June 1-14, 2009

The arc of failing or troubled states in which India is wedged is becoming more
combustible than ever. To India’s
west, the situation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt is getting from bad to
worse. Rapid Talibanization and spreading militancy threaten to devour Pakistan.
To compound matters, the political border between Afghanistan
and Pakistan
has now ceased to exist in practice. The so-called Durand Line, in any event,
was a British-colonial invention that left the large Pashtun community divided
into two. Today, that line exists only in maps. On the ground, it has little
political, ethnic and economic relevance. Its disappearance seems irreversible.
The international reluctance to come to terms with this reality is because of
the fundamental, far-reaching issues such action would throw open. It is
simpler to just keep up the pretense of wanting to stabilize Pakistan and Afghanistan within their existing
political frontiers.

To India’s east are the problem states of Burma and
Bangladesh — the first facing a humanitarian disaster in the face of widening
U.S.-led sanctions and the ruthlessness of its military regime, and the second
in danger of becoming another Pakistan owing to a rising tide of Islamic
fundamentalism there. Bangladesh is not a Brunei
or a Bhutan
but the world’s seventh most populous nation. In addition to the
millions of Bangladeshis that already have settled in India illegally, many Bangladeshis have moved
internally from rural areas to Dhaka as “climate refugees,” driven out by
floods, cyclones and saltwater incursion from the Bay of
Bengal. India
is likely to get not only more economic refugees from Bangladesh, but also an influx of
climate refugees due to global warming.

For India, the ethnic expansion of Bangladesh beyond its
political borders not only sets up enduring trans-border links but it also
makes New Delhi’s already-complex task of border management more onerous. As highlighted
by Indian census figures, Indian districts bordering Bangladesh have become
Bangladeshi-majority areas. It is perhaps the first time in modern history that
a country has expanded its ethnic frontiers without expanding its political
borders.

The troubled situation in Burma
has brought thousands of political and ethnic refugees to India, now an important hub of the
pro-democracy campaign by exiles. Even as the junta has scheduled national
elections in 2010, Burma
remains one of the world’s most isolated and sanctioned nations. The U.S.-led
sanctions approach is actually pushing Burma
into the strategic lap of China,
which values that country as an entryway to the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean. Having strategically penetrated
resource-rich Burma, Beijing is busy completing the Irrawaddy Corridor
involving road, river, rail and energy-transport links between its Yunnan province and Burmese
ports. For India,
such links constitute strategic pressure on the eastern flank.

To India’s
south, the Sri Lankan military’s bloody triumph over the Tamil Tigers has left
an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. Even amid military success, Colombo seems unable to
define peace or outline a political solution to the Tamils’ long-standing
cultural and political grievances. India can hardly overlook the fact
that what tilted the military balance in favour of Sri Lankan forces was the
infusion of Chinese weapon systems — from Jian-7 fighterjets to anti-aircraft
guns. For China, a major quid pro quo to such arms supplies has been the
contract for Hambantota, the billion-dollar port Chinese engineers are building
on Sri Lanka’s southeast. In fact, with Chinese encouragement, Pakistan — despite its own faltering economy —
has boosted its annual military assistance loans to Sri Lanka to nearly $100 million.

To India’s
north, Nepal
remains internally torn and, consequently, a happy hunting ground for Pakistani
and Chinese intelligence. Nepal
is not just another neighbour for India but a symbiotically linked
state with close cultural affinity and open borders that permit passport-free
passage. The Indo-Nepal equation is deeper than between any two European Union
members. Indeed, ever since the Chinese annexation of Tibet eliminated the outer buffer, Nepal has served as an inner buffer between India and China. The fall of the Maoist-led
government is just the latest chapter in a blemished and rocky experiment since
1990 to build democracy in Nepal.

Given such a troubled neighborhood, it is hardly a surprise
that India’s
internal security is coming under growing pressure.

Belittling India

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From Bush love to Obama autograph

 

Brahma Chellaney

Covert magazine, April 15-30, 2009

 

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has said he has “great respect” for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh but differs “with his policies, particularly his special love for America.” The way Singh rode roughshod over national institutions, including Parliament, and rammed the controversial Indo-U.S. nuclear deal down the country’s throat did create an impression, however specious, that he was beholden to Washington. In fact, Singh has made not a single statement on the deal — not even to Parliament — even since the much-vaunted deal came to fruition in October 2008.

 

That silence has to do with the fact that the conditions and riders the U.S. Congress attached while ratifying the deal demolished the solemn assurances Singh had made to Parliament. What may be even more painful for Singh is that the geopolitical advantages the deal was trumpeted to help usher in — including greater U.S. support for India vis-à-vis China and Pakistan — have been belied by the events since, especially the change of administration in Washington. Consequently, as Singh’s term in office ends, there isn’t much of a legacy he can boast of.

 

Actually, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya would have been more accurate had he referred to Singh’s “special love” for the U.S. president, whoever the incumbent. That personal foible has been highlighted both by Singh’s April 2 meeting with Barack Obama in London, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit, and by his September 25, 2008 joint news conference at the White House with George W. Bush. In London, to the surprise of the Americans present, Singh began his bilateral meeting by asking for Obama’s autograph for his daughter on a book authored by Obama. Addressing Obama, Singh quoted his daughter as saying: “I would cherish [it] if you could get Mr. Obama to autograph the book.” Singh went on to tell Obama: “You are much loved and respected in India.”

 

Later that day, when Obama was asked straightforwardly at a news conference what “America is doing to help India tackle terrorism emanating from Pakistan,” he began by calling Singh “a wonderful man” and then disclosed that he and Singh had discussed terrorism “not simply in terms of terrorism emanating from Pakistan… But we spoke about it more broadly…” Here is Obama showering Pakistan with billions of dollars in additional U.S. aid. But Singh, rather than focus on the Pakistani-scripted terror attacks in India, discusses the terrorism challenge “more broadly,” and indeed begins his meeting by seeking Obama’s autograph for his daughter. What happens if Obama’s Pakistan gamble doesn’t pay off?

 

Now consider Singh’s September 25, 2008 news conference with Bush. Singh started by reading a prepared statement. Almost every paragraph in that ended with a schmaltzy tribute to Bush:

 

·                           “And the last four-and-a-half years that I have been prime minister I have been the recipient of your generosity, your affection, your friendship. It means a lot to me and to the people of India.”

 

·                           “In these last four-and-a-half years, there has been a massive transformation of India-United States relations. And Mr. President, you have played a most-important role in making all this happen.”

 

·                           “And when history is written I think it will be recorded that President George W. Bush made an historic goal in bringing our two democracies closer to each other.” 

 

·                           “And when this restrictive regime ends I think a great deal of credit will go to President Bush. And for this I am very grateful to you, Mr. President.” 

 

·                           “So, Mr. President, this may be my last visit to you during your presidency, and let me say, Thank you very much. The people of India deeply love you…”

 

               This will go down in history easily as the most-fawning statement ever made by an Indian prime minister about a foreign leader. America and India, the world’s most-powerful and most-populous democracies, need to build close strategic ties, founded on shared political values and mutual respect and understanding. Singh’s record, however, shows he was unable to pursue such an objective without conducting himself in a manner belittling India, even if inadvertently.

 

(c) Covert, 2009.

For Barack Obama, ignorance is bliss when it comes to the Afpak region

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India’s re-hyphenation with Pakistan returns in US policy

 

From Obama’s call for Indo-Pakistan dialogue to Holbrooke’s second visit in seven weeks, US policy has returned to its traditional position of looking at India through the subcontinental prism while ignoring its security concerns

 

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age, April 8, 2009

Despite America’s broken policy on Pakistan, President Barack Obama has unveiled the largest-ever US aid package for that country. Indeed, Islamabad is being made the biggest recipient of US aid in the world. If military, non-military and counterinsurgency aid and reimbursements to the Pakistani military were totalled, Pakistan — under Obama’s latest proposals — would overtake Israel and Egypt as the single largest recipient of American aid.

To supposedly mend a wrecked policy, Obama is doing more of what helped create the failure — dispensing rewards upfront. He has decided to shower billions of dollars in additional aid on Pakistan without even defining benchmarks for judging progress.

Worse yet, the Obama administration has neither acknowledged Pakistan’s role in staging terrorist strikes in India nor made the slightest effort to help bring the Pakistan-based planners of the unparalleled Mumbai attacks to justice. In the detailed, inter-agency “Afpak” policy unveiled by Obama, there is not even a passing mention of Pakistan’s use of proxies to wage a terror war against India. In other words, when Washington refuses to even recognize the problem, can New Delhi really expect the US to be of any help?

 

In fact, Washington is doing the opposite — making light of Indian concerns vis-à-vis Pakistan by asking New Delhi to adopt a flexible approach toward Islamabad so that the US can win greater Pakistani military cooperation on the Afghan front. Put simply, Washington is making short shrift of India’s interests in order to pursue its narrow regional agenda, centred on Obama’s resolve to extricate the US from the war in Afghanistan.

 

But make no mistake: Obama, through his rewards-in-advance policy, is only emboldening the Pakistani military establishment to continue its war by terror against the Indian republic.

 

Asked bluntly at his G-20 London summit news conference what “America is doing to help India tackle terrorism emanating from Pakistan”, Obama’s reply, while evasively long-winded, was revealing. He began by calling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh “a wonderful man”, just as he had described his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, as “marvellous”. But unlike Sarkozy, Singh had begun his bilateral meeting by asking for Obama’s autograph.

Obama then disclosed that he and Singh had discussed terrorism “not simply in terms of terrorism emanating from Pakistan… But we spoke about it more broadly…” Obama went on to say that “at a time when perhaps the greatest enemy of both India and Pakistan should be poverty, that it may make sense to create a more effective dialogue between India and Pakistan.”

This was before he meandered into a professorial sermon on energy efficiency and “reducing our carbon footprint”.

So the question he was asked went unanswered. The truth is that Obama has no intent to help pull India’s chestnuts out of the Pakistan-kindled fire; rather he wants India’s help on his misbegotten Afpak policy. Indeed, that policy is set to make things more difficult for India by reinforcing America’s dependence on the terror-procreating Pakistani military establishment — not only for the transport of the extra war supplies to meet the US military “surge” in Afghanistan, but also for help to negotiate with and co-opt the Afghan Taliban leadership that the Pakistani intelligence has long sheltered in the Quetta area.

How blind Obama and his special representative, Richard Holbrooke, are to the realities on the ground is evident from their separate claims that the hub of terrorism is Pakistan’s border region with Afghanistan. Little surprise the Afpak policy paper concludes by saying “the international community must work with Pakistan to disrupt the threats to security along Pakistan’s western border”. Holbrooke, ingenuously, has even linked terror attacks in India to elements operating from that ungoverned border area.

It is past time the Obama team faced up to the fact that the real problem is not at the Pakistani frontiers with Afghanistan. Rather it is the sanctuaries deep inside Pakistan that continue to breed and export terrorism. None of the 10 terrorists who attacked Mumbai last November came from Pakistan’s tribal belt. India is being targeted by Punjabi terror groups, like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, operating from Pakistan’s heartland with the military’s connivance.

Yet the naïveté in Washington is astonishing. Almost every Obama policy assumption has an Alice in Wonderland ring to it.

Take, for example, the decision to disburse $3 billion in additional military aid to Islamabad in the name of a “Pakistani Counterinsurgency Capability Fund”. The attempt to get the Pakistani military to focus on counterinsurgency misses the point that what the Obama administration calls insurgents remain prized proxies for the Pakistani generals.

Or take the Obama policy premise that the “surge” can be used, Iraq-style, as a show of force to cut deals with the “good” terrorists. This surge-and-bribe assumption overlooks the fact that the Afghan militants, with cosy sanctuaries across the borders, have more leeway than their Iraqi counterparts.

Also, the new rewards being doled out disregard the reality that the Pakistani generals have little incentive to lend genuine cooperation at a time when Obama has barely disguised his exit strategy. The generals and their surrogates — the Taliban — just need to patiently wait out the American exit to reclaim Afghanistan.

Through his policy contradictions, Obama has tied himself up in knots. His policy rejects his predecessor’s institution-building approach in Afghanistan as an attempt to create “some sort of Central Asian Valhalla”. Yet it proposes $7.5 billion in civilian aid for an increasingly Talibanized Pakistan to win hearts and minds there — a Valhalla even more distant.

The upshot of Obama’s blinkered approach is India’s re-hyphenation with Pakistan in US policy. This is so evident from Holbrooke’s recurring visits to New Delhi and American calls — from the president down — that India reopen dialogue with Islamabad, even if it has to countenance more Pakistan-scripted terror attacks.

For long, Washington has realized that the best way to handle India is to massage its ego. It was thus claimed that in deference to India’s sensitivities, Kashmir had been removed from Holbrooke’s job description and that his mission would stay restricted to the Afpak belt.

 

In reality, Washington took India and Kashmir out of Holbrooke’s agenda only publicly. As Holbrooke has shown by coming to New Delhi twice in seven weeks — this time with the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman — India is very much part of his mandate. In fact, Washington’s proposals for troop reductions and de-escalation clearly bring in the Kashmir dispute.

 

Obama’s aides contend it is impossible to disentangle Kashmir from any effort to win Pakistani cooperation. So the way forward, they argue, is to work on Kashmir behind the scenes while pretending the issue is not on the agenda.

 

Still, asked by a Senate committee about tension reduction in Kashmir, Centcom chief, General David Petraeus, admitted last week: “Together with my great diplomatic wing man, Ambassador Holbrooke, this effort actually has started”. And National Security Adviser James Jones, while keeping up the pretence that there is no problem on Pakistan’s eastern side, earlier declared “we do intend to help both countries … build more trust and confidence so that Pakistan can address the issues that it confronts on the western side”.

 

When India is deeply immersed in an election process, why has Holbrooke come a second time in quick succession, knowing New Delhi is anything but happy about his visit? The reason is that he is using this interregnum to show his turf includes India. But more than a turf-defining mission, what Holbrooke desperately needs is a primer on the roots of terrorism, lest he continue to betray his abysmal ignorance.

 

(c) The Asian Age, 2009.