Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

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RayC
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by RayC »

One has to understand the strategic importance of Afghanistan or Iraq before one can surmise that the West will quit the area!
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

Chiron ji, no I have not ignored this. In an earlier post I have mentioned that TSP may actually threaten to turn to Iran and PRC if USA abandons it. I have also mentioned that, in considering so-called "hard national interests" from Iranian side, we should not rule out Iran covertly helping out a section of the Talebs -even across "Shia-Sunni" divide. I have mentioned that it is only Russia who may have any interest in preventing advancement of the Talebs.

But the Iranian scenario may get complicated with a future possible trend towards "democratization". In the typical theocratic scenario, neither "pro-open-democracy" nor theocratic authoritarianism will win. But in between the two a kind "Kemalization" which controls both theocracy and liberal democracy through a Bonapartist figure, is more likely.

History shows that those who start out thinking they can manage Jihadism in their own interests - almost always end up retreating if not being gobbled up by the theocracy.

None of Iran, Russia and PRC may be in a position to resist eventual disintegration of their peripheral regions in contact with the Jihadis. For each of them are limited by commitments to international image and state-behaviour, also having assets to lose in conflicts. Jihadis on the other hand are never constrained by such restrictions - because they swear by a particular ideology which cannot be touched. Jihadis have no nation to defend, no population to protect (they can enslave whenever they need one), no international commitments, no ideological pressure to justify their theology supported actions. They have no commitment to observe basic human rights, whereas those who are victims of the Jihadis will have to be constrained by "human rights" considerations. The world community will impose severe penalties on retaliations that cross self-imposed "rights" limits all the while the Jihadis are allowed a free run.

Have you noticed that there has not been a single publicly visible demand for trial of the Talebs as war-criminals for what they did during their rule in AFG? Only very few faiths are given this luxury if they carry out their atrocities in the name of their religion.

It is not whether the West or Russia, PRC, Iran do not wish to retreat before the Talebs or leave AFG. But it is about how far they can "afford" to (both material as well as non-material costs) not retreating.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by svinayak »

brihaspati wrote:
Have you noticed that there has not been a single publicly visible demand for trial of the Talebs as war-criminals for what they did during their rule in AFG? Only very few faiths are given this luxury if they carry out their atrocities in the name of their religion.
Most important observation.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

Trying to figure out the possible strategic planning behind the timing of the so-called surge in AFG, starting from my year-old hypotheiss about the basic US target of withdrawal with face, I was looking for clues that I might have missed. Here is a bit that seems to fit in : even if it is a rumour/psyops- created by any one of US, KSA, Taleb or Israeli intelliegence - secret negotiations.
An Afghan source in Kabul reports that U.S. Ambassador in Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry is holding secret talks with Taliban elementsheaded by the movement's foreign minister, Ahmad Mutawakil, at a secret location in Kabul.
According to the source, the U.S. has offered the Taliban control of the Kandahar, Helmand, Oruzgan, Kunar and Nuristan provinces in return for a halt to the Taliban missile attacks on U.S. bases.
Source: Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), November 22, 2009
Negotiations in Autumn, 2009 would be appropriate for arranging for the "surge" after overwintering, as the spring approaches. A massive campaign buildup and public displays of fighting from both sides, with some necessary casualties to preserve the image will be part of the game then. But each side will then represent the conflict as victory for themselves to their respective constituencies. The British command openly gave the signal perhaps for the Talebs to "melt away" from the cities, thereby signaling that part of the plan obviously remains to highlight the "clearing of the cities" which would be of political value in global and western media. These urban areas are where most of the media images are going to be sourced from, and a less visible presence of the Talebs would be reassuring for the western public. The open announcement indicates that not all Taleb factions are hunky-dory with the idea, (or their POWI controllers within ISI pressurized them) so that the public message was given in the hope that they have a rethink.

The Talebs on the otherhand, will "melt away" mostly, into the fastness of the ranges and the countryside where they really rule, and represent to their following that ultimately the USA will withdraw for good, and that the Talebs are going to take back the cities and full power.

I would say USA+UK would be in a hurry, and they will claim quick success in "clearing operations". Once that is done, a formal process of inducting "good Taleban" into a national giovernment of consensus will start. Once this is in place, Talebs wil be back in control in Helmand. But everyone saves their face.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by Hari Seldon »

B-ji,

its been amply clear that the overt and covert support and sponsorship the anglo-saxons have given the global jeehard is precisely what has allowed the same to grow to such monstrous proportions and is also precisely what is 'imposing the human rights' kinda constraints on anti-jeehard holier wars.

IMO, when push comes to shove the likes of PRC will shove 'int'l image considerations' out the window and consider the 'mongol solution' (i.e. genocide) as the only surety against jeehardy terror. Just because Yindia has moralistic qualms, doesn't mean the chinis have 'em too.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by Atri »

from pune blast thread...
derkonig wrote:If a millenium could not enlighten the masses, fat chance it will happen any time soon. The wellbeing & survival of the Indic civilization can not mortgaged to the fond hope of the masses seeing thru the evil being perpetrated by the non-Indics on this land.
Not completely true, the Indic revival was cut-short by British intervention.. Of course, British intervention also facilitated Indic revival in other way.. But the revival which was happening in 18th century would not have fetched the current map of Indic India.. The borders would have been quite inside. British intervention ensured much contiguous boundaries of Dharmic India in 1947. The region of Audh, Bengal, Hyderabad, Kashmir, extreme north east (Arunachal) and Andamans would not have been under Dharmic Indian territory, if 18th century revival had continued. Of course, Lahore, Attock, Multan and Sindh would have been under Dharmic control.

Anyways, point is its not that all is lost, nor it is the case that aal ij well..

Communism and Islam were never accepted by Indian masses. When the constraints will start hurting, there will be an outburst.. the question is, will there be an outburst until it becomes too much to bear? OR will Indics take a pre-emptive action to prevent the impending disasters..

I have been rising this voice since my first posts on BRF... Bengal remains a cause of worry for me, and not the upper gangetic plains.. Interestingly, people of bengal have accepted Communism and Islam without any hassles.. the behaviour of bengal remains to be seen..
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by Mahendra »

But the revival which was happening in 18th century would not have fetched the current map of Indic India.. The borders would have been quite inside. British intervention ensured much contiguous boundaries of Dharmic India in 1947. The region of Audh, Bengal, Hyderabad, Kashmir, extreme north east (Arunachal) and Andamans would not have been under Dharmic Indian territory, if 18th century revival had continued. Of course, Lahore, Attock, Multan and Sindh would have been under Dharmic control.
Speculation onlee saar
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by Atri »

Mahendra wrote:
But the revival which was happening in 18th century would not have fetched the current map of Indic India.. The borders would have been quite inside. British intervention ensured much contiguous boundaries of Dharmic India in 1947. The region of Audh, Bengal, Hyderabad, Kashmir, extreme north east (Arunachal) and Andamans would not have been under Dharmic Indian territory, if 18th century revival had continued. Of course, Lahore, Attock, Multan and Sindh would have been under Dharmic control.
Speculation onlee saar
not necessarily. .

If you look at the trend emerging power equilibrium in India after third battle of Panipat, here is the scenario

1. Region to the west of Sindhu controlled by Pathans
2. Regions from Sindhu to Haryana controlled by Sikhs (this includes Sindh and Jammu)
3. Region from Haryana, Delhi, Bundelkhand, Gujarat, Malwa, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra, Karnataka, most of Tamil nadu controlled by Marathas.
4. Rajasthan controlled by Rajput kings, subservient to Marathas
5. Rohilkhand controlled by Marathas (najib's descendent was ousted and rohilkhand ravaged by Shinde as revenge of Panipat)

6. Oudh-Bengal controlled by Nawab of Lucknow
7. AP - controlled by Nizam of Hyderabad.
8. Assam and northeastern plains would have remained Indic (descendants of Lachit roy)

May be, Nizam would have been eliminated by Peshwas of pune (they nearly eliminated him 3-4 times, and forgave him owing to their myopia), just like Hyder-ali and Tipu were eliminated by them (with help of Nizam and British).

All of this with an assumption that someone like Madhavrao Peshwa ruled the region at least for 40 years in good health. The death of this excellent prince was the biggest dent to India's revival in 18th century.. If he had lived for 20 years more, India would surely have been totally different. First things first, EIC would have been liquidated from India (he shows this intent in many of his letters in his last year of life). This young peshwa died at the age of 27 from tuberculosis. He ascended throne at age of 15, after panipat battle, and recaptured all the regions lost in the battle within span of few years before dying..

The point is, India was showing a trend of consolidation, with or without intervention of British. The scientific attitude was being slowly acquired by Indian princes and knowledgeable men in their retinue. In spite of this, the current map of India (with Kashmir, ladakh, arunachal, andamans) was not in making if that consolidation were to be completed.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by ramana »

Chiron, Can you post this in your blog and put a map showing the situation after Panipat III?

Thanks, ramana
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by Sanku »

Chiron wrote:This young peshwa died at the age of 27 from tuberculosis. He ascended throne at age of 15, after panipat battle, and recaptured all the regions lost in the battle within span of few years before dying...
....

Sorry to make a statement normally uncharacteristic of me, but some times, just sometimes, I actually feel that India is truly carrying a burden of Karmic misdeeds, we must have done something terribely wrong to suffer such weird set of fateful losses

A Peshwa from TB, a Hemchandra Vikramaditya from a random eye shot, a Guru Gobind Singh bursting a artery from a old wound from a random physical exercise, a lost Deendayal Upadhaya a missing Netaji.

So much and yet such slips..... Sigh
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by svinayak »

Sanku wrote: This young peshwa died at the age of 27 from tuberculosis. He ascended throne at age of 15, after panipat battle, and recaptured all the regions lost in the battle within span of few years before dying...

Sorry to make a statement normally uncharacteristic of me, but some times, just sometimes, I actually feel that India is truly carrying a burden of Karmic misdeeds, we must have done something terribely wrong to suffer such weird set of fateful losses

A Peshwa from TB, a Hemchandra Vikramaditya from a random eye shot, a Guru Gobind Singh bursting a artery from a old wound from a random physical exercise, a lost Deendayal Upadhaya a missing Netaji.

So much and yet such slips..... Sigh
The key is not to depend on few monarchy or leaders. Indians have to move forward in large mass of opinions(correct) in history. National interest has to be indoctrinated in the masses.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by Sanku »

Yes of course, but India being India will always anoint a leader for itself and look up to it, and expect the leader to "lead" with vision, the loss of such leaders is traumatic for India.

This is in my opinion a part of India in the same way as the river Swaraswati is -- cant help it.

(note this is not feudal behavior as normally understood this is different)
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

Hari Seldon-ji,
I would just cautiously consider the possibility that both Iran and PRC may not be in a position to resist Jeerhad on their peripheral areas in the most important timespan of the next 30 years. The plains Chinese lack the "genocidic martial lineage" of the highland Mongols. They were badly defeated by the "central Asian" "barbarians" many times. In fact in the final days they lost power to the Manchurians whom they consider disdainfully as non-Chinese to a certain extent. In WWII they were constantly retreating before the Japanese. Chiangs army constantly moved south. The Red Army claimed leading the defence of the country in the north after escaping through the Long March, but we can easily see that they were not even successful in penetrating the Manchurian territory until the Russians overran it. Even then Mao did not get entry initially and had to wait for Stalins twists and turns.

What I know of the initial tug-o-war between Jihadis and the Chinese in the early days of Islamic expansion in central Asia, the Chinese quickly lost control over their peripheral regions. Something you see in the current Muslim predominance in the north-west. In the initial stages, they were even finding it difficult to contain the Tibetans and sought Kashmir (then still Hindu) and Chola alliances to fight Islamics and Tibetans. They build walls - which should indicate the thinking to a certain extent. They will make a lot of noise, but how far they will be able to sustain before something like Islamic Jeerhad, is a matter that history rather sneakers about.

In the next 20 years, thats when the post cultural revolution, baby gen will turn 60. Thats when their full impact on politics will be felt. I have a nagging suspicion that In the next 20-30 years PRC itself may be too involved facing its own politics out to look to tackle Jihadis.

Same intense reactions could destabilize Iran too.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

I have repeatedly tried to point out that Bengalis are highly subversive. :P Their main problem appears to be with upper-Indian hegemony not with Hinduism or Bharatyia civilization. Nimai Chaitanya was born in Bengal. People ususally carefully avoid mentioning that he once led a torch-light procession against the Qazi of Nadia. Vivekananda was not a pro-Islamic inspite of stray comments. Read Pulin Das's (the founder of the most effective semi-mass organization of Dhaka Anushilon Samiti) comments in his autobiography against Islamists.

As far as we know, Abhiroop Sen and Vishwaroop Sen - the descendants of Laksmnan Sen continued to keep eastern Bengal free of Islamics for some time after the reported invasion fo Nadia. Islamist control over Bengal delta is a much later phenomenon. Some degree of expansion happened in the late 1300's along what is now Sylhet or then SriHatta under adventurers like Shah Jalal - the so-called Sufi who was not averse to taking up arms against the local rulers when they resisted him. The history of these narratives have not been looked into properly. Most Sufi's have spectacular successes not very far from centres of then Islamic militray garrisons - in this case the northern power centre of then Gaur. (Similar is the story of the famous Sufi founder at Ajmer). Moreover late 1300's start a period of extreme aridity in India, and the delta region could have suffered with emasculation of local rulers.

Islamization proper seems to have begun in earnest only under the Mughals. Now what signal would be given by a Rajput scion invading Bengal as a servant of a Muslim adventurer? Even then one of the key figures of resistance against teh Mughals, Raja Pratapaditya of Jessore (Jashohar) - a Hindu to boot - made quite a bit of effort. The history of conversion of the elite Hindu in now BD appears to be coming mostly from the Mughal period - which is an indication of the late Islamization. But thinsg were murky at this stage - with a lot of upper Indian Hindu illustrious serving the Islamics - we cannot find much to blame the then Hindus of Bengal in terms of resistance.

But surprisingly, there appears to be remnant pockets of semi-independence in the rmoter, forested, drier regions of WB. My childhood was spent partly in the badlands between Orissa, South Bihar and the so-called red-soil areas of Bengal. One can find few traces of penetration of Islamists here. The Islamism in WB we now see is mostly concentrated along the Ganges for very obvious reasons. This does not make Bengalis naturally pro-Islamic. In fact my prediction is that they will turn up some of the staunchest anti-Islamists in the future. It is easier to go from one extreme to the other rather than settle for the middle. :mrgreen:

The communists were a narrow part of the radical tendencies pre-Partition. The major forces were the nationalist "left", who were mostly descended from the Anushilon group (the commies mostly descended from Jugantor - and therefore in one sense descended from Aurobindo! patterns anyone?!). Unfortunately the major strength of the Anushilonites were in the east and they were badly split due to the Partition. (Their successors still represent a major political force in BD, with alleged deep involvement in the coup that ultimately went against Mujib, and whose members had been slaughtered by the Mujib gov on suspicion of trying to usher in a "socialist revolutionary uprising"). This resulted in the "communists' of the Stalinist affiliation and the British Communist influenced foundation of the CPI appearing as the dominant trend in post Partition WB.

That generation is almost on the point of replacement.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by svinayak »

brihaspati wrote:I have repeatedly tried to point out that Bengalis are highly subversive. :P Their main problem appears to be with upper-Indian hegemony not with Hinduism or Bharatyia civilization. Nimai Chaitanya was born in Bengal. People ususally carefully avoid mentioning that he once led a torch-light procession against the Qazi of Nadia.
I think it is due to long decades and years of colonization of the mind than any other region in the country
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by RamaY »

thanks to Acharya-ji - X-Posting from China thread.

India and Geopolitics

Can't believe that US administration was entertaining these thoughts post 9/11.
White house and administration strategy in the new strategic document for the problems facing Islam in 2003: Carl Rove (advisor to President GWBush in 2003) argued, 'Islam was one of the world's great empires' which had 'never reconciled... to the loss of power and dominion'. In response, he said, 'the United States should recognize that, although it cannot expect to be loved, it can enforce respect'.

This probably requires that an Islamic nation with a political center with WMD capability be propped up and given a UNSC seat and work for the interest of the western power. But this requires India not be in the strategic location with such military power. Hence there is a long-term plan to undermine the power of India from inside and from outside using Kashmir and other Islamic subversive activities. Kashmir may have come as a opportunity and not really sought before but has become important now since it is seen as pinning the Indian ambition and expansion down.

Now it becomes clear Indian subcontinent is allowed to have a nuclear Islamic state but not ME. I guess India should donate a couple of bums to persia and kosavo :evil:
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by Pranav »

Sanku wrote:Yes of course, but India being India will always anoint a leader for itself and look up to it, and expect the leader to "lead" with vision, the loss of such leaders is traumatic for India.

This is in my opinion a part of India in the same way as the river Swaraswati is -- cant help it.

(note this is not feudal behavior as normally understood this is different)
Masses with vision are needed to support leaders with vision.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by Masaru »

RamaY wrote:
White house and administration strategy in the new strategic document for the problems facing Islam in 2003: Carl Rove (advisor to President GWBush in 2003) argued, 'Islam was one of the world's great empires' which had 'never reconciled... to the loss of power and dominion'. In response, he said, 'the United States should recognize that, although it cannot expect to be loved, it can enforce respect'.

This probably requires that an Islamic nation with a political center with WMD capability be propped up and given a UNSC seat and work for the interest of the western power. But this requires India not be in the strategic location with such military power. Hence there is a long-term plan to undermine the power of India from inside and from outside using Kashmir and other Islamic subversive activities. Kashmir may have come as a opportunity and not really sought before but has become important now since it is seen as pinning the Indian ambition and expansion down.
Well this penchant for tactical brilliance couched in pseudo strategic verbiage is what endears the pure-landers to the free-landers at a more abstract plane going beyond the alliance of convenience terms.

On a different note one should note that these solutions are proposed because of the enduring weakness of the internal sociopolitical structure of India. The 'J & K opportunity' that Rove is raving about, and purelanders have implemented in their 1000 year 1000 cut strategy is arising out of the presence of a large restive minority wallowing in a oxymoronic sense of victimhood and superiority complex at the same time. The longing of this group to be part of this 'great empire' and the clueless rest not having any comprehension of their fate in this future setup is what gives strategists opportunity to plan such strategies. The same logic could be extended albeit to a much lesser extent (as it is devoid of any religious/racial context) in case of PRC which uses assorted commies, naxals and maoists to act on its behalf internally.

To a significant extent the blame for the current mess lies with the society in general and GoI in particular which has failed to address internal issues in any consistent manner. Outside agents are exploiting the fault lines as always to achieve their strategic goals vis a vis TSP, PRC or as in this case 'the great empire of RoP'. If J&K is used to pin down and bleed the country, creative solutions are the order of the day from local decision makers. But except for periodic bouts of irrational love making sessions with pure-landers interspersed with increasingly brazen attacks, little else is seen from GoI.

Either the 1947 solution and or the pacification model followed in Punjab/ LTTE insurgency by giving free hand to security forces or a mix of both could be followed. Failure to decisively act in 1947 has created the present mess and by doing nothing and hoping the problem will go away by treating with placebos just makes it worse by the day.
Last edited by Masaru on 22 Feb 2010 07:42, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by RamaY »

^^^

This brings us to the fundamental question I raised before.

In 1947 India got partial independence only. Independence in real terms means that India finds its roots (culture, heritage, history and ideology). But after 1947, India got independence from Mughal empire, that too by accepting the partition, but not from western colonialism. The overt colonialism that existed for 200 years prior to 1947 has become a covert one after 1947.

The so-called independent India accepted western models of democracy, secularism, IAS/IPS in place of British empire. The only change is that currently we have President of India instead of Governer General of India.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by Masaru »

In 1947 India got partial independence only. Independence in real terms means that India finds its roots (culture, heritage, history and ideology). But after 1947, India got independence from Mughal empire, that too by accepting the partition, but not from western colonialism. The overt colonialism that existed for 200 years prior to 1947 has become a covert one after 1947.

The so-called independent India accepted western models of democracy, secularism, IAS/IPS in place of British empire. The only change is that currently we have President of India instead of Governer General of India.
The western model of democracy, bureaucratic structure are proven models of governance which were adopted after independence. They could have been better adapted to the local context, but inventing a wholly new governance structure was probably thought to be too risky. 1947 marked an almost clean break of association with the British people/politics as far as India was concerned. The in coming rulers were free to choose whatever system of governance they deemed fit. The fact that they didn't dismantle/sufficiently reform the colonial structure reflects on their intellectual myopia, lack of vision, confusion about their cultural heritage along with the innate belief in the superiority of the system that the British bequeathed. Most other colonized societies go through a period of detoxification which never happened in the case of India. For ex. when Korea got independence after 35 odd years of Japanese colonial rule it systematically dismantled any vestige of that era including tearing down buildings and erasing the Macaulay like effort of cultural indoctrination/history re-writing prevalent during colonial rule.

However, it is not the residual colonial governance structure, but the revisionist agenda of some who want to return to the Mughal era, which is the more pertinent problem. This has already resulted in a trifurcation, and is behind the J&K issue which is increasingly metastasizing into other parts of the country. A very superficial example in contrast between residual hold of the English and Mughal colonial power would be to consider the naming of cities and politics behind it. While changing the english names of cities are done without narry a whimper, would it be the same if the names are derived from Mughal/Afghan invaders? (context: does one find cities/roads named after ex Imperial Japanese Army generals in PRC?, or after 3rd Reich officers in Israel/France/Poland/Russia or Germany) .
Last edited by Masaru on 22 Feb 2010 07:45, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by RamaY »

Masaru garu,
but inventing a wholly new governance structure was probably thought to be too risky.
What invetion you are talking about? The "Indic" version of governace has been there for eons. But it was not Kosher enough for the INC colonial leadership.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by Masaru »

-Delete-
Last edited by Masaru on 21 Feb 2010 13:37, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by RayC »

RamaY

OK. The current system is lousy.

What is your ideal of a governance system?
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by RamaY »

RayC ji,

We have gone thru that in previous iteration of Strategic Scenarios and Civilizational threads. It is worth revisiting though. Pls give me some time so I can summarize my thoughts. This is serious topic and I do not want to give knee jerk responses.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by RayC »

RamaY wrote:RayC ji,

We have gone thru that in previous iteration of Strategic Scenarios and Civilizational threads. It is worth revisiting though. Pls give me some time so I can summarize my thoughts. This is serious topic and I do not want to give knee jerk responses.
Good.

Await your response!

We are aware of our history and proud of it.

Now we must juxtapose that with the modern environment. That is what interests me.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

Why did the Talebs, or pseudo-Talebs prodded by their ISI-Pakjabi handlers or whatever - need to behead the Sikhs?

Many are trying to interpret this as a possible tactic to disrupt the proposed one-way initiative for "talks". The basic argument behind this line is that public opinion in India will go against "talks" because of this "outrage". But the GOI has already shown its determination that no amount of "public outrage" is going to sway it as far as talks are concerned. The only other justification left is that such outrages specifically against "Sikhs" would motivate the GOI to retreat, as Sikhs are seen to be influential in strategic and military sectors. But Sikhs also have a representation in certain quarters as staunchly resistant ones to violence or genocidic moves on them by others. But such outraes could actually trip the wire for the Sikhs and raise a thirst for legitimate vengeance? Are the Talebs or their handlers really in a position to face up to Indian army at this stage? Will the NATO troops or US ones come to their rescue? Seems weird and absurd.

The only calculation that could actually be working is that, the GOI may actually fear exactly such swings of "public opinion" or sense of retaliation among the Sikhs, and hence would quicken up the pace of "negotiations".

As the "western front" falls quieter, with the seemingly smooth clearance of the Talebs from urban areas in AFG, and possible plans set in motion for eventual Taleb rehabilitation into AFG power, we will see an increasing acceleration of the Jihadis being freed up for their Ghazwas to the east against India.

Hopefully, Indian intelligence is not being fed the wrong signals by "doubles" (both state and non-state) about this gradual shift deliberately to enhance the GOI stress towards concessions on J&K.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by Rudradev »

brihaspati wrote:Why did the Talebs, or pseudo-Talebs prodded by their ISI-Pakjabi handlers or whatever - need to behead the Sikhs?
Related to this: Why did Ilyas Kashmiri have to open his mouth and try to take credit for the Pune blast... as well as for any forthcoming terrorism during IPL/Commonwealth Games, on behalf of the 313 brigade?

My guess is this. The Americans have told the Pakis: hit India as much as you want, but do it through groups that can be ostensibly linked to "Pakistani Taliban", Al-Qaeda etc. Don't do it through LeT otherwise India will submerge us with dossiers and stop cooperating. If you let the responsibility for hitting India reside with groups that are being targeted as part of the US War on Terror, then Manmohan Singh can play along with the fiction of "India and Pakistan are both victims of the same terrorist groups".
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by ramana »

Politicsparty on
Baba Ramdev

and his upcoming plans.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

Rudradev wrote
My guess is this. The Americans have told the Pakis: hit India as much as you want, but do it through groups that can be ostensibly linked to "Pakistani Taliban", Al-Qaeda etc. Don't do it through LeT otherwise India will submerge us with dossiers and stop cooperating. If you let the responsibility for hitting India reside with groups that are being targeted as part of the US War on Terror, then Manmohan Singh can play along with the fiction of "India and Pakistan are both victims of the same terrorist groups".
True. It is quite possible. But that again brings me to the crucial question : why would POGWI (Paki occupation government of western India) go on hitting out in such public outrages? When as has been apparently outlined here in page after page, that POGWI gains nothing concrete - no territorial expansion, no concession on J&K, no real chance of stalling FDI's and economic resurgence in the global arena, no real prospect of breaking up western strategic tie-ups, no real chance of retaliatory foolhardiness on IM - from Indian side?

We have tried to discount here each and every "pragamtic" objective that we can imagine for POGWI to try to achieve by continuous public outrages through terror in India. That leaves us at a loss to explain why POGWI continues to behave so.

I think it is because we model POGWI by criteria of rationality we are used to expect in ourselves. POGWI has its own system of rationality - but the axioms of that rationality are different from ours. POGWI's values systems are different and hence the "values" which it tries to maximize to decide on "rational" behaviour are different.

POGWI or POWI society itself can only survive by enhancing its Islamic identity because any concessions to cultural/historical elements of the subcontinent will show commonality with India, especially the much larger and older context of India where Islam did not exist and had no positive impact. Without Islam, POWI has no basis for any claim coming even close to separate nationhood. But then that leavs POWI in a greater dilemma. If Islam is the sole basis of nationhood, there are far greater claimants of "Islamism" as centres of Islamic identity - like KSA or Iran. So POWI is forced to try to take over the leadership of Islmaism in the world to claim a right for distinct existence. The only way, in which an ideology which is a snaphot of a particularly narrow historical period of 7th century Arabia can hope to dominate in a modern, technology and open scientific query based world - is by coercion.

So POWI is caught in this overwhelming trap of carrying out coercive measure on the world, and in its neighbourhood, in the prescribed formats of classical Islamic doctrine - Ghazwas and Jihads. They have to carry out terror in this particular format to show that they are acting in the pure Islamic way. Terror in India is a necessary part of survival for POWI and any POGWI that will come in the future - even if it has no immediate concrete benefits. On the otherhand, if the victims do not hit back with even worse nightmares of Ghazwa or Jihad like genocidic, culture erasing invasions - in the long run there is the hope for POWI society that eventually, at some opportune moment the lands (and the women) of the Kufr can be appropriated!
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

Recently I have been following the suddenly accelerating reaction of the Islamists in BD to AL led governments crackdown on the Jamaat and their student front, the Chattra Shibir (literally meaning - Student [war]Camp - as shibir is traditionally used in the context of "armed/army/battlefield" tent). The reaction from Islamists appear to have been triggered off from the BDR "mutiny" period, and intensified with the reopening of execution procedure for the convicted in the MR assassination case. Now the student front has gone on a rampage at Rajshahi uni campus (which they have gone on doing for the large part of BD history) in the classic Islamic procedures of maiming (specifically slicing of tendons, amputating hands, or blinding), bleeding to death (jabai) etc. The Jamaat initially tried to defend by trying to point the finger the other way and not their student front, and now seems to have decided to fight it out politically. Many of their leaders are also going to be prosecuted in the war-crimes tribunals to be set up shortly.

The interesting part here would be played by the army, the paramailitary and police. The police were strangely absent while the Islamist student front were out on the rampage. This added to the shaky paramilitary history of now renamed and reorganized BDR, and the past role of the army whose upper echelons appeared to have returned to Islamist and Paki influences soon after liberation of BD - all point towards the possible routes that a resurgence by Islamism can take place in BD. The Paki spokesperson who visited BD immediately before the BDR uprising made a strange request : that the AL led gov go slow on the "71 war crimes trials" as it could mean "trouble". Obviously the POGWI were in the "know".

I have long thought on the real benefits of formation of BD to India. I am aware of all the short term benefits that have been forwarded. But long term? But what is done is done.

Given the current context, would it be a better option to allow the Islamists to destabilize BD? So that we can take it eventually back into the society where it really belongs? Where we would have the means and the circumstances to seal off foreign interventions and Islamism for good and solidify our eastern flank?
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by svenkat »

FWIW,I felt Bji's analysis on Islam was exaggerated.Also Bji,Rudradev were not taking into account the diviersity in Indian civilisation.

But looking at Anglo-American perfidy and Pakbarianism,if MMS Govt gives into pressure(indications are not very clear still) on tangible issues and terror from Pak,we are in for serious trouble.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

krishnapremi-ji,
all the conflicts that Islamists are having now with the rest of the world and among themselves are essentially the conflicts of trying to retain and implement a particular space, time and society that existed in the past in the greatest possible details within modern societies. If you go down to highly detailed specifications of how a society should live based on a particular historical experience, it will trap you into an everlasting conflict of adjustment.

I do not want to go into a detailed analysis of Islamism, but my context was simply how it shapes and explains the continued behaviour of POGWI, as well as POWI soicety that maintains such a superstructure - where India is concerned. All the other so-called pragamatic reasons have been discounted.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by vera_k »

brihaspati wrote:Given the current context, would it be a better option to allow the Islamists to destabilize BD? So that we can take it eventually back into the society where it really belongs? Where we would have the means and the circumstances to seal off foreign interventions and Islamism for good and solidify our eastern flank?
The Bangladesh government is performing far better than the Pakistan government and even the Indian government in many respects (check their HDI indicators). Why would we want to spoil a good thing?
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

But a separate independent BD with an Islamist network intact will always be open to manipulation from both Islamist as well as non-Islamic but anti-India forces. I was not suggesting active destabilization but over the long term Islamist destabilization of BD provides the right excuses to do away with the "base" for external interventions that India cannot do much to stop at present.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by ramana »

Seminar, Jan 2010 article

Engagement sans Entanglement

One view of prospective Indian Foreign Policy.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

X-posting from the "Turkey" thread: as it is also otherwise relevant for the future strategic scenario within India:

somnath wrote
Of course the real grotesque assertion from you was the most revealing:

Quote:
Turkey has the potential to become an alternative ideal replacing TSP for the IM.


So Indian muslims today have Pak as their ideal? Which Indian muslim are we referring to? APJ Abdul Kalam? Or Sania Mirza? Or Zaheer Khan? Or maybe AR Rahman? Or Azim Premji? these are well known public figures...So what about my friend Sxxxx - ex fund manager, now a derivatives structurer in a large bank (surprise, surprise on Indian equities!!)..He finds Pak as the ideal? A couple of years back, MJ Akbar wrote very perceptibly - "every muslim in India must thank Allah every day for one benediction, that he was left in 1947 on this side of the border, not in Pakistan" - I am paraphrasing, but the gist is that - it was made in a lecture in Jamia Millia, and was greeted by spontaeneous applause..Most Indians feel simlarly, Muslims or non-muslims..We do not need to have any country to be an exemplar for muslims in India - not Pak, not turkey, they have enough role models internally..

I thought I would ignore this comment. But then it was brought up again to notice because of a recent post. So you found 5 named+1 unnamed+1 interesting persons only? Here is an article you may just find interesting. http://www.ssig.kpkk.gov.my/ssig/kcent/ ... 0Swami.pdf. I chose his article for a reason - most Islamophiles or psecs will find it dificult to dub him "hindutvawadi" or "in the loony fringe". Actually as he tries to show: it all started with Turkey!

As things turned out, the Khilafat movement collapsed, strengthening rather than dissolving communal boundaries through its use of pan-Islamic themes...In 1921, fired by the pan-Islamic rhetoric of the Khilafat movement and the communal zeal it unleashed, Muslim peasants in the Malabar attacked their British-backed landlords, in the main Hindus. Scores are believed to have died in the violence that followed. From here on, the progress of India’s independence movement would be scarred by communal warfare, culminating in the horrors of the Partition of India—and the murderous riots which have periodically erupted afterwards.

Of course, Khilafat was not the sole driving force behind the hardening of communal identities in south Asia. In Jammu and Kashmir, where both Islamist mobilisations and jihadi violence would acquire growing momentum after the first quarter of the last century, it had almost no impact at all. There, as Chitralekha Zutshi has argued, state policies were the principal factor contributing to the “articulation of antagonistic communitarian identities”."

Of course the author remains true to the tradition of always finding justifications for Islamist violence in "economic" factors and "legitimate counter violence from memories of Hindu inflicted trauma". So in Kashmir, a "Hindu repression" from state authorities has to be invented which should delight the coiner of the category of "loony fringe".
None the less, it remains a key moment, and the idea of the restoration of the caliphate a central concern for modern jihadi organisations. Yet, Khilafat is remains seminal historical moment because the three distinct elements involved in the making of India’s ghazi-jihadi tradition so visibly intersected here: the impact of global change, the changing concerns and character of Indian Muslims’ relationship with Islam and, finally, India’s domestic political struggles. All three are helping to shape the course of the jihad that is now underway.
SIMI was formed in April, 1977, as an effort to revitalise the SIO. Building on the SIO’s networks in Uttar Pradesh, SIMI reached out to Jamaat-linked Muslim students’ groups in Andhra Pradesh, Bengal, Bihar and Kerala. In post-Partition India, however, the Jamaat gradually transformed itself into a cultural organisation committed to propagating neoconservative Islam amongst Muslims. It set up networks of schools and study circles, devoted to combating growing post-independence influence of communism and socialism. A student wing, the Students Islamic Organisation, was set up in 1956, with its headquarters at Aligarh. As Muslims in north India were battered by communal violence the Jamaat slowly moved away from Maududi’s hostility to secularism. It began arguing that the secular state needed to be defended, as the sole alternative was a Hindu-communalist regime.
The bolded part could serve as an alternative possible explanation to the motivation behind the speech which was applauded to. From that viewpoint : the main task is to contain the "Hindu" and preserve the base of Islamism in India. Pakistan as a tool has failed - but the aims and ideals of Pakistan remain and alternative bases for expansion are valuable. Isn't it the same speaker who went on to promote the idea of "Harit Pradesh" to enhance and preserve "Muslim interest in India"?
From the outset, SIMI made clear its belief that the practice of Islam was essentially a political project. In the long term, SIMI sought to re-establish the caliphate, without which it felt the practice of Islam would remain incomplete. Muslims comfortable living in secular societies, its pamphlets warned, were headed to hell. Ideologies other than Islam were condemned as false and sinful.

Maududi’s [The key ideologue behind formation of Pakistan] writings played a considerable role in shaping SIMI’s notion of its historic, vanguard role.[...]Winds from the west gave this project an increasingly hard edge. SIMI’s leadership was drawn to Islamist regime of General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq’s in Pakistan, and threw its weight behind the United States-backed mujahideen fighting the Soviet Union and the socialist regime in Afghanistan. It also developed a broad common front with forces of Sunni reaction in west Asia.
[...]
Interestingly, the Jammu and Kashmir Islami Jamaat-e-Tulba—the student wing of the Jammu and Kashmir Jamaat-e-Islami—was undergoing a similar process of transformation. Formed in 1977, the IJT was to develop transnational linkages with neoconservative Islamist groups and, in much the same manner and much the same time SIMI. At the outset, the IJT reached out to Saudi Arabia—based neoconservative patronage networks for help. In 1979, the IJT was granted membership of the World Organisation of Muslim Youth, a controversial Saudi—funded body which funded many Islamist groups that later turned to terrorism. The next year, the IJT organised a conference in Srinagar, which was attended by dignitaries from across west Asia, including the Imam of the mosques of Mecca and Medina, Abdullah bin-Sabil. By the end of the decade, the IJT had formally committed itself an armed struggle against the Indian state. Its president, Sheikh Tajamul Husain—now a mid-ranking leader of the secessionist movement—told journalists in Srinagar that Kashmiris did not consider themselves Indian, and forces stationed there were an “army of occupation”.21

Jamaat leaders in India demonstrated more concerned than the state apparatus, and sought to distance themselves from SIMI. Much of the Jamaat rank-and-file, though, was incensed at what they saw as the organisation’s betrayal of Maududi’s authentic Islamism. In 1982, the Jamaat formally distanced itself from SIMI, but members of both organisations in practice retained a cordial relationship. Interestingly, while the SIO insists on peaceful means, its ideological agenda is not dissimilar to that of SIMI. One official publication, for example, points to SIO’s heritage of Salafi neo-conservatism, saying it represents “Ibn Abdul Wahab’s belief, Syed Qutb’s smile at the gallows, and Syed Maududi’s revolutionary call”. Husain also called for the establishment of an Islamic state, through the medium of a revolution. A year later, in 1981, Husain reiterated his call to followers to evict the Indian “occupation”.
Part of the reason for SIMI’s spectacular growth after 1982 lay in precisely this heritage and the support that its material manifestations—Islamists organisations the Kuwait-based World Association of Muslim Youth and the Saudi Arabia-funded International Islamic Federation of Student Organisation—were able to provide. Given that Qutb’s notion of revolution inspired the assassins of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat—and legions of Islamist terror cells after—the violence implicit in the ideology is evident. Generous funding from west Asia helped it establish a welter of magazines—Islamic Movement in Urdu, Hindi and English, Iqra in Gujarati, Rupantar in Bengali, Sedi Malar in Tamil and Vivekam in Malayalam—that propagated the idea of an Islamic revolution. SIMI also set up a special wing, the Tehreek Tulba e-Arabiya, to build networks among madrasa students, as well as the Shaheen Force, which targeted children .
[...]
As Irfan Habib, Iqtidar Alam Khan and KP Singh have observed in a seminal 1976 essay, the conditions of Muslims were not what Islamists “regarded as their principal grievances”.24 Indeed, Islamists wished for “preservation of Muslim separateness, not the end of Muslim backwardness, as their basic aim” Rather, their objective was to use discrimination as a tool with which to legitimise Islamism..

In a 1996 statement, SIMI declared that since democracy and secularism had failed to protect Muslims, the sole option was to struggle for the caliphate.31 Soon after, it put up posters calling on Muslims to follow the path of the eleventh-century conqueror Mahmood Ghaznavi, and appealed to god to send down a latter-day avatar to avenge the destruction of mosques in India.32
When 25,000 SIMI delegates met in Mumbai in 2001, at what was to be its last public convention, the organisation for the first time called on its supporters to turn to jihad.
Soon after the convention, al-Qaeda carried out its bombings of New York and Washington, D.C. SIMI activists organised demonstrations in support of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin-Laden, hailing him as a “true mujahid,” and celebrating the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. By the time of SIMI’s 1999 Aurangabad convention, many of the speeches delivered by delegates were frankly inflammatory. “Islam is our nation, not India,” thundered Mohammad Amir Shakeel Ahmad, one of over a dozen SIMI-linked Lashkar operatives arrested in 2005 for smuggling in military-grade explosives and assault rifles for a planned series of attacks in Gujarat.
Look at the numbers quoted in the article - fourteen in one instance - double the number quoted in the post above.

And finally -
As I have noted, the jihad is drawing numbers of highly-educated, successful young Muslims—the class that ought to have abiding an abiding stake in a prosperous India and a globalising world. Shibli Peedical Abdul, a top SIMI leader arrested in March, 2008, was a computer engineer at a multinational firm in Bangalore, and often travelled abroad on business. So, too, was Yahya Khan, one of Abdul’s recruits who participated in a SIMI-linked cell planning to bomb foreign tourists in Goa. However, even-handed treatment of Muslim and Hindu chauvinism is at some distance from a meaningful campaign to combat communalism. Third, politicians—Hindu or Muslim, Left or Right—must begin to articulate a coherent ideological response to Islamism. Even as India’s political and clerical orders have been maintaining a discreet silence on this question, the reach and influence of Islamism is increasing.
... Many found in the Lashkar’s Hafiz Mohammad Saeed venomous agenda manifesto for praxis: “the Hindu is a mean enemy and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by our forefathers, who crushed them by force. We need to do the same”.7
there are numerous references to the target of restablishment of the "Caliphate" in the article - coming from this author it could not be coming from the "loony fringe".
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

If we track the activities of the Jamait-Ulema-e-Hind, we can perhaps see a potential trend I had tried to explore quite a while back in the "Red Menace" thread. This is about thinking carefully, as to what happens when the "Left" is forced to retreat - from an area - who fills that region up? My conjecture was that in the areas where Left now dominates, it will be Islamists who will fill up the space when Left is forced out.

Here is a dated report from Nandigram : http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article16126. The group interviews, Samad — Jamait-ulema i Hind and Convenor, BUPC, Etimkhana, Nandigram. BUPC is the acronym for Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee (Land Alienation/dispossession Resistance Committee) - the umbrella organization that was at the forefront of the movement.
But what was more serious was that at a meeting organized on 25th March by the Jamait-ulema i Hind in Sonachura, in the presence of Siddikullah Chowdhury, a state level leader (photo attached) of the organization said that murder should be replied by murder, rape by rape.
At the political level, in 2006, a CPI member had been elected MLA, and the area has traditionally been considered a left area. But people have lost faith in the Left Front, and its talk about restoring normalcy and peace. This however does not mean that people have automatically become supporters of the Trinamool Congress or the Jamait-ulema I Hind. We got an impression by talking to many of the victims as well as the common people that BUPC provided them with a platform for raising their voices against the unilateral decision to take over land for industrialization. Buddadev Mondal, who helped our team in all its work, described himself as a non-party independent activist. A lot of women said that there with the BUPC while also acknowledging their leftist politics.
Praveen Swami's article referred to in my previous post also alludes to the corresponding attempts to provide alternatives and fill up the space left after "Left" is forced out.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

e-Ariana has a sequence of posts of interest for OWI and us. Here is the first about "capital flow" out of AFPAK. Officials puzzle over millions of dollars leaving Afghanistan by plane for Dubai
KABUL - A blizzard of bank notes is flying out of Afghanistan—often in full view of customs officers at the Kabul airport—as part of a cash exodus that is confounding U.S. officials and raising concerns about the money's origin.

The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where many wealthy Afghans now park their families and funds, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. So long as departing cash is declared at the airport here, its transfer is legal.
In the meantime, the money continues to flow. Cash declaration forms filed at Kabul International Airport and reviewed by The Washington Post show that Afghan passengers took more than $180 million to Dubai during a two-month period starting in July. If that rate held for the entire year, the amount of cash that left Afghanistan in 2009 would have far exceeded the country's annual tax and other domestic revenue of about $875 million.
The cash flown out of Kabul includes a wide range of foreign currencies. Most is in U.S. dollars, euros and -- to the bafflement of officials -- Saudi Arabian riyals, a currency not widely used in Afghanistan.
[...]
One theory is that some of the Arab nation's cash might come from Saudi donations that were supposed to go to mosques and other projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But, the American official said, "we don't really know what is going on."

Efforts to figure out just how much money is leaving Afghanistan and why have been hampered by a lack of cooperation from Dubai, complained Afghan and U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Dubai's financial problems, said a U.S. official, had left the emirate eager for foreign cash, and "they don't seem to care where it comes from." Dubai authorities declined to comment.
Obviously, AFG and Kabul is providing a relatively well-protected conduit under existing government/security protection through which cash can be moved to safe houses in ME from OWI and AFG. Others routes could be more difficult. The question is why does this money need to be transferred out of the region?

First, if "high" officials are involved, then they are stashing away a nest egg fearing impending collapse of some sort for their privileged order. This does not necessarily means us rejoicing that the Jihadi parallel gov is collapsing. It simply means the potential for existing official regimes to fall.

Second possibility - the money is being sent to buy things of "interest". But typically, such monetary transactions for arms and ammunition had traditionally never really needed official airport channels. Does it mean that the arms deals etc are now being moved to the safety of more secure locations in ME, such as Dubai as pressures on non-ME spots have increased? Or that the nature of these deals have to be kept more securely covered compared to general such underhand deals which would be well-penetrated by western security agencies?

For me, this discounts the possibility of adopting the "financial incentive" being suggested by some, as an indirect tool for India to continue to have a role in AFG bypassing POGWI pressure on the west to keep India out. Any such money will not be actuallyused where it should, and a large part actually either go into private nest-eggs or fund Jihad back on India. Add to it the identification in common Afghan mind of India with their local-elite's corruption.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

What does BBC want us to think about the "arrest" of senior, but known to be close to ISI - Taleb leaders in OWI? And why?

What lies behind Pakistan's Taliban arrests?
The argument goes that the recent arrests are part of an American strategy to drive a wedge in the Taliban movement and engage the more "moderate" elements for some kind of a power-sharing deal. The arrests of top Taliban leaders will hurt the morale of their foot soldiers, and minimise their ability to regroup if they disperse in the wake of the US-led offensive. These leaders could then be set free as part of a deal with the Taliban, and allowed to lead the movement into a process of integration with the wider Afghan society.

If peace is held and reconstruction begins quickly, analysts say the influence of Taliban may shrink drastically as they would be forced to compete with tribal, regional and political entities. If that happens, Pakistani influence in Afghanistan will also decline. Is Pakistan ready for this? Others argue that the leaders reportedly arrested so far have all been close to Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, and as such are more pragmatists than ideologues. If they have not been arrested with negotiations in mind, their detention may not only close down crucial channels of communication with the Taliban, they may also leave the movement in the hands of more rigid and brutal second-generation leaders.

The fine print here is that Pakistan is unlikely to be naive enough not to see that by eliminating their proteges in the Taliban movement, they will be cutting off their influence over the only group they can hope to befriend in an otherwise hostile, pro-India Afghanistan.

The arrests may just be indicative of a Pakistani decision to settle for a reduced role in Afghanistan.
But those very same observations could also actually be turned around to come to completely different conclusions - but why is BBC not interested in exploring all possible angles? The crucial message appears to be an injunction to believe that POGWI is at the ends of its breath, and it is scaling down its Jihadi antics. But the facts as observed need not imply this.

For example, if these senior Talebs are such reliable assets of the ISI, they could simply have been taken into "protective custody". For at least three diffierent reasons -

(1) to protect them from being snatched up by the USA - who will then use those Talebs for their own strategic needs, and ISI will lose an important bargaining chip.

(2) to protect them from facing up to younger, more reckless and radical Taleb second rung who could eliminate seniors on the excuse that they were not efficient enough/collaborating with the enemy....

(3) to provide the seniors a good excuse of not being on the spot in helmand and face the music with the rest of the Talebs.

If ISI or POGWI has moved on the seniors with any of these considerations in mind, the whole structure of the argument from the BBC article comes tumbling down.
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Re: Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

Post by brihaspati »

The third aspect of the supposed current drive against supposed Taleb with supposed POGWI+ISI collaboration that piques my curiosity is : how far does all this relate to the international drug trade?

Probably not many remember the minor stir that was created when the Afghan drug kingpin Haji Bashir Noorzai was arrested in New York in 2005, and whose trial was completed in January, 2008. When the Taliban was removed cleared from the urban areas, by the U.S. during 2001, Noorzai was entrusted with some $20 million of the Taliban’s cash for “safekeeping,” according to the History Commons.

Noorzai turned himself in to U.S. military forces, questioned by U.S. officials, was released and quietly disappeared into Pakistan after an associate was killed by U.S. forces. In a 2002 CBS News account, Noorzai reportedly said, “I spent my days and nights comfortably. There was special room for me. I was like a guest, not a prisoner.” Noorzai resurfaced in Peshawar, with a Pakistani passport allegedly furnished by the ISI, and began to operate drug-processing laboratories that turned raw opium into finished heroin bound for European and U.S. markets. USA Today reported in 2004, that “according to House International Relations Committee testimony this year, Noorzai smuggles 4,400 lbs. of heroin out of the Kandahar region to al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan every eight weeks.” Ahmed Rashid documented, that the Pentagon had a list of twenty-five or more drug labs and warehouses in Afghanistan but refused to bomb them because some belonged to the CIA’s new NA [Northern Alliance] allies. The United States told its British allies that the war on terrorism had nothing to do with counter-narcotics. Instead, drug lords were fêted by the CIA and asked if they had any information about Osama bin Laden. Thus, the United States sent the first and clearest message to the drug lords: that they would not be targeted. (Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, New York: Viking, 2008, pp. 320-321).

In 2006 The Guardian reported that senior political figures in Kabul, including the president’s brother, Walid, and deputy interior minister for counternarcotics General Muhammad Daud, are heavily involved in the illicit trade. According to one official, “He [Daud] moves competent officials from their jobs, locks cases up and generally ensures that nobody he is associated with will get arrested for drugs crime.” The Interior Ministry according to published sources didn’t just fail to take down the warlords, “it became a major protector of drug traffickers.”Similarly the governor of Helmand province, Sher Mohammed Akhunzada, a close friend and ally of Karzai, as personally profiting from the opium trade. British counternarcotics officials told Rashid that Akhunzada “was accused of favoring his cronies with prime real estate parcels and commanded hundreds of well-paid gunmen, while the police force was undermanned and unpaid and mullahs, aid workers, teachers, and women activists who opposed poppy cultivation were being gunned down.”

It appears that Helmand, under the nominal control of the Karzai government and US+NATO forces was the conduit for opium sales flowing towards the drug labs in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan from other provinces, particularly those from the far northern provinces of Mazar and Badakhshan, run by U.S.-backed warlords favored by Special Forces’ “unconventional warfare” proponents.

Hameedullah, an opium smuggler and government employee told The Guardian, “The Taliban benefit from the poppy because the farmers pay them taxes. And when the government destroys the fields, the people support the Taliban,” he said. “The government also benefits from the poppy–we pay officials so they won’t destroy our land. Two years ago we paid them so they only destroyed two jeribs (1 acre) of my land.” …“The Taliban say we are doing the jihad and you are making money so you should support us. Smugglers give a lot: three Land Cruisers in Sangin a few weeks ago.” “If we don’t plant opium then smugglers don’t make money. If we [the smugglers] don’t make money the Taliban and police don’t make money. The Taliban and the officials have a very strong relationship–if they don’t then how can we do so much trade and travel to so many districts?” (Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, “Life in Helmand, where rich rewards are reaped by poppy farmers, police and the Taliban,” The Guardian, 22 December 2008).

According to economist Loretta Napoleoni, by the 1990s Pakistan hoped to create “a trans-Asian axis, under Pakistani hegemony, stretching from the eastern border with China, inclusive of Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics, to the oil-producing regions of the Caspian Sea.” The Benazir gov did so with U.S. blessings as a means to destabilize Russia as part of US plans for Chechnya by CIA-trained Afghan-Arab veterans aided and abetted by ISI and Saudi Arabia. The plan, according to Napoleoni, was “to divert Russian attention” by encouraging an “Islamist insurgency in Chechnya, forcing the Russians to fight in the Caucasus.” (Loretta Napoleoni, Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks, London: Pluto Press, 2003, pp. 92-93). The US+NATO encouraged what Napoleoni terms “the expansionism of Muslim countries such as Pakistan and religious colonisation by Saudi Arabia” across the region.

International drug trafficking syndicates connected to Pakistan’s ISI and the CIA are reported to have been operational assets during the November Laskhar-e-Toiba (LET) assaults in Mumbai. Dawood's D-Company enjoys protected status afforded by the ISI and his extensive smuggling networks along the Indian coast were used to infiltrate LET operatives into Mumbai. But investigative journalist Jeffrey R. Hammond reported on December 19, that Ibrahim associate “Mohammed Ali continues smuggling operations out of Mumbai for Ibrahim’s crime syndicate, D-Company, completely unmolested by Indian investigators and law enforcement.”

James Risen reported, that Noorzai was in Quetta when the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks occurred, and he returned soon after to Afghanistan, according to his lawyer. In November 2001, he met with men he described as American military officials at Spinboldak, near the Afghan-Pakistani border, Fisher, his lawyer, said. Small teams of U.S. Special Forces and intelligence officers were then operating in Afghanistan, seeking the support of local tribal leaders against the Taliban. Noorzai was taken to Kandahar, where he was detained and questioned for six days by the Americans about Taliban officials and operations, according to his lawyer. He agreed to work with them and was released. In January 2002, he handed over 15 truckloads of weapons, including about 400 anti-aircraft missiles, that had been hidden by the Taliban inside his tribe’s territory, Fisher said. (”Afghan’s arrest shines light on dark side of U.S. terror fight,” International Herald Tribune, February 2, 2007)

But when State Department official Robert Charles suggested placing Noorzai on President Bush’s list of foreign narcotics kingpins, at the time no Afghan heroin traffickers were on the list which Charles thought was “a glaring omission.” He suggested three names, including Noorzai’s, but said his recommendation was met with an awkward silence during an interagency meeting. He said there was resistance to placing any Afghans on the list because countering the drug trade there was not an administration priority. Charles persisted, and in June 2004, Noorzai became the first Afghan on the list. (Risen)

A former analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Julie Sirrs, traveled undercover to Afghanistan in 1998 after al-Qaeda’s East African embassy attacks and learned that the Taliban regime, then a darling of the Clinton administration and the multinational oil giant Unocal, was being courted by Washington as a force for “regional stability.” Sirrs reveals that the regime “was being kept in power significantly by bin Laden’s money and the narcotics trade.”

In 2004, Gail Sheehy reported in The New York Observer that for her trouble, Sirrs had her security clearances revoked and was subsequently hounded out of the DIA. Unocal, a California-based company, had been courting the Taliban to build a massive pipeline system across Afghanistan that would connect the vast oil and natural-gas reserves of Turkmenistan to ports in Pakistan. The American energy giant partnered with a Saudi company, Delta Oil Co. Ltd., and promised the Taliban that it could expect up to $100 million in transit fees from the proposed $4.5 billion project. …Ms. Sirrs said she believed that her information was discounted because it was damaging to the Taliban. “The State Department didn’t want to have anything to do with Afghan resistance, or even, politically, to reveal that there was any viable option to the Taliban,” she said. (Gail Sheehy, “Ex-Spook Sirrs: Early Osama Call Got Her Ejected,” The New York Observer, March 14, 2004)

In the introduction to Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié’s book Forbidden Truth, Wayne Madsen writes: “Yet the links [to 9/11] do not merely end with the greater bin Laden family–they involved the House of Saud, the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence agency, other wealthy Saudi bankers and merchants, Islamic charities and madrassas, U.S. oil tycoons, and U.S. defense contractors like The Carlyle Group.”

Turkish networks, along with Russians’, are the main players in these fields; they purchase the opium from Afghanistan and transport it through several Turkic speaking Central Asian states into Turkey, where the raw opium is processed into popular byproducts; then the network transports the final product into Western European and American markets via their partner networks in Albania. The networks’ banking arrangements in Turkey, Cyprus and Dubai are used to launder and recycle the proceeds, and various Turkish companies in Turkey and Central Asia are used to make this possible and seem legitimate. The Al Qaeda network also uses Turkey to obtain and transfer arms to its Central Asian bases, including Chechnya. (”The Hijacking of a Nation,” National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, November 29, 2006). Since the 1960s, the Turkish state has utilized far-right and Islamist surrogates against the "left". Openly fascist political formations such as the National Action Party (MHP), the organization’s terrorist wing, the Grey Wolves and various Islamist “green gangs” such as the Army-controlled Turkish Hizbullah, have all been implicated in state terrorism and the international narcotics trade.

This latter was a source of worry for me when a clamour went up for tying the love-knot with Turkey by India.

Is it possible to consider the hypothesis that the current operations and "filtering" of Talebs in POWI and AFG is also an attempt creating a "better" and more efficient next generation of "drug producers/processors/trafiickers" who can be used to generate money for off-budget undercover and expansionist objectives in Asia - where both the Islamists and the "west" collaborate? Is it possible that D-company is still tolerated in Mumbai because of US pressure and backing or that Indian agencies hope to repeat the US performance? And both countries land up in massive public outrages for the sake of "intelligence and counterintelligence"? Is this the reason that GOI stalls about taking action because US warns of greater losses if the D-company or similar outfits are neutralized?
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