Posts by RakeshKrishnan:
Pakistan in the US, the US in Pakistan: Self-denial is the biggest threat to world peace
June 1st, 2016
By Rakesh Krishnan Simha.
One of the ironies of being a Pakistani living abroad, especially in the West, is having to pose as Indian. According to Asghar Choudhri, the chairman of Brooklyn’s Pakistani American Merchant Association, a lot of Pakistanis can’t get jobs after 9/11 and after the botched Times Square bombing of 2010, it’s even worse. “They are now pretending they are Indian so they can get a job,” he told a US wire service.
That is because while Indians are highly integrated immigrants – besides being the highest educated and best paid of all ethnic groups in the US – Pakistanis have taken part in terrorist activities in the very lands that gave them shelter. (Even the frequent Gallup surveys conducted in the US, found out repeatedly that the biggest threat to the international security and peace are: nr. 3 Saudis; nr. 2 Pakistanis, and nr.1 – surprise, surprise – the US itself.)
From Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 (8 years before Bin Laden) and is now serving a 240-year prison sentence to Mir Aimal Kansi, who shot dead CIA agents and was later executed by lethal injection, to Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square “Idiot Bomber”, there is a long line of Pakistanis who have left a trail of terror.
The San Bernardino, California, attack of December 2015 by a Pakistani American couple was the most spectacular in recent times. The husband was American-born raised and yet he chose to launch a terror act against the people of the United States.
But while Pakistanis wear an Indian mask for Western consumption, back home it’s business as usual.
Two incidents amply demonstrate that Pakistanis have learnt nothing. One was the widespread outrage across the country over Osama Bin Laden’s killing by American commandos. In response to America’s exposure of Bin Laden’s hiding place, Pakistan moved to shut down the informant network that lead the Americans there.
The other was the unholy fracas over CIA shooter Kansi’s execution. The day after Kansi was sentenced to death by an American court, four Americans were shot dead on the streets of Pakistan. His funeral was attended by the entire civilian administration in his hometown Quetta, the local Pakistani Corps Commander, and the then Pakistani ambassador to the United States.
Thousands of mourners turned out as Quetta city shuttered down. Kansi’s coffin, draped in black cloth with verses from the Koran embroidered on it in gold, was carried on the shoulders of young men some 10 miles from the airport to his family’s home in Quetta. In Islamabad, the capital city, lawyers and university students poured out on the streets.
Misplaced sympathy
The irony of outpourings of support for hardened terrorists is that Pakistan is seriously impacted by terrorism. A global study by the London-based Institute for Economics and Peace ranks Pakistan fourth on the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) list, behind Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria.
According to the study, “Terrorism remains highly concentrated with most (58 per cent) of the activity occurring in just five countries — Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria.”
It mentions the most fatal terrorist attack in Pakistan, of 2014: “Assailants detonated an explosives-laden vehicle and then stormed the Army Public School in Peshawar city, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. At least 150 students and staff were killed and 131 were wounded in the attack. All seven assailants were either killed by security forces or detonated their explosives-laden vests.”
The gunmen belonged to the terrorist group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is also known as the Pakistani Taliban because it is based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is an offshoot of the original Taliban which was created by Pakistan as a weapon to be used against Afghanistan and India.
State sponsored terror
That Pakistan is a state sponsor of terror is well known. In Hillary Clinton’s words to Islamabad, if you harbour snakes in your backyard, don’t expect them to only bite your neighbour.
It was Pakistan’s demagogue dictator General Zia-ul-Haq who declared that “we will bleed India with a thousand cuts”. The reckoning was that since Pakistan can never hope to win a war against India, then India must be hit with terrorism. To this effect, Pakistan first supported Kashmiri and Sikh separatists, armed them and provided them safe bases on its territory.
When both these terror campaigns failed, Pakistan created an alphabet soup of home grown terror groups such as the Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami. These two were complemented by the Haqqani network and the original Taliban, which has now split into dozens of splinter groups, some of which are still controlled by the Pakistan military and its chief intelligence agency, the ISI.
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of US, Mike Mullen has described the Haqqani Network as the “veritable arm of Pakistan’s ISI”. Mullen said the ISI was supporting the Haqqani network, which attacked the US embassy in Kabul in September 2011 and also the September 2011 NATO truck bombing which injured 77 coalition soldiers and killed five Afghan civilians.
In a November 2014 interview to the BBC, the adviser to the Pakistani Prime Minister on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz said Pakistan should not target militants like the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network, which do not threaten Pakistan’s security.
Indeed, Pakistan is one of the few countries in the world which believes in good terrorists (who attack the West, India and Israel) and bad terrorists (who target Pakistan). An example of a ‘good’ terrorist group is the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which regularly conducts mass rallies and congregation, advocating jihad in Kashmir. For its December 2014 rally, Pakistan ran two special trains to carry the crowd to Lahore. India’s foreign ministry termed this as “nothing short of mainstreaming of terrorism”. The congregation was held near Pakistan’s national monument, the Minar-e-Pakistan, where 4000 policemen provided security.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is the group responsible for the November 2008 Mumbai terror attack, which led to the deaths of 156 innocent people. On December 3, 2008 Indian officials named Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhavi, a top leader of the Lashkar, as one of four possible major planners behind the attacks. Four days later, Pakistani armed forces arrested Lakhvi in a raid on a training camp near Muzafarabad in Pakistani Kashmir.
Destroying evidence
Pakistan doesn’t want to bring terrorists like Lakhavi to justice because that would expose its sponsorship of terror groups. After India produced evidence of the Lashkar’s hand in the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan did the predictable. In order to claim that none of these guys were technically within Pakistan, the ISI asked the terrorists involved in the attack to leave the country.
But it turned out to be a big mistake as one of these terrorists was caught in Saudi Arabia, which presented him on a platter to India. During his interrogation by Indian investigators, the terrorist revealed he was one of the key people tasked with training the 10 Mumbai attackers. He said he was in the control room near the international airport in Karachi from where Lakhavi was directing the attackers. He also said that after Lakhvi’s arrest in December 2008, the Pakistanis destroyed the control room in Karachi.
Pathankot denial
The January 2016 attack on an air force base in Pathankot, India, in which seven Indian security guards and six terrorists were killed, will give you an idea of how Pakistan continues to deny links with terror groups on its own soil.
After the Indians allowed a Pakistani investigation team to visit the air base, the Pakistanis raised the outrageous claim that the attack was carried out by India to defame Islamabad. This has a parallel in 9/11 deniers in Muslim countries where everyone seems to be convinced that Israel and the US were behind the Twin Tower attacks.
According to the Indian Express newspaper, the Pakistani investigators were given a full transcript of the telephonic conversations between the terrorists and their Pakistani handlers along with their identity. The Indian side gave the Pakistanis “the links of Pakistani officials, believed to be ISI personnel, with the handlers of the terrorists”. They were provided with “electronic and forensic evidence regarding the slain terrorists’ Pakistani links, name of the terrorists and several other critical evidence after an exhaustive probe conducted” by India.
The Pakistani team was given concrete proof that a senior terrorist leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammed was in constant touch with the terrorists and giving them necessary instructions during the three-day carnage.
And yet Pakistan claims it was a stage managed attack by India.
Pakistan’s image
The stark reality is that Pakistan has now become synonymous with terror. An unfortunate fallout of the country’s long association with terror is that ordinary Pakistanis worldwide appear tainted. A broad survey released on June 27, 2012 by the United States-based Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes says that in a number countries, including China, as well as several Muslim countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Lebanon, the majority populations negatively view Pakistanis.
Pakistan is not only a universally disliked country but the Pakistanis themselves have learnt nothing from their history, continuing to support the very actors who are responsible for Pakistan’s negative image.
It is a measure of Pakistan’s penchant for exporting terrorists, counterfeit currency and drugs that India has constructed a 1400 km long steel fence across its border with its wayward western neighbour. The floodlit fence, which is patrolled 24/7, can be seen from space as a bright orange line snaking from the coast to Kashmir.
Iran is also building a 700 km steel and concrete security fence along its border with Pakistan “to prevent border crossing by terrorists and drug traffickers”. When complete it will make Pakistan the most fenced-in country in the world.
In four of the five predominantly Muslim nations covered by the survey, over half gave Pakistan negative ratings. Jordan (57 percent), Lebanon (56 percent), Tunisia (54 percent) and Egypt (53 percent) had an unfavourable opinion of Pakistan. The only exception was Turkey, where attitudes were divided (43 percent negative and 37 percent favourable).
In East Asia, 52 percent of Chinese saw Pakistan unfavourably, as did 59 percent in Japan and 59 percent in India. The Chinese statistic is not surprising as Pakistan-trained Chinese Uighur Muslims have launched terror strikes in their remote province in China. Japan deported around 15,000 Pakistanis after 9/11.
Beaten, corrupt military most loved
Every country has an army but the Pakistan Army has a country. The Pakistani military is the most corrupt institution in the land, with a finger in every national pie. Army officers get prime plots of land post-retirement at a third of the market price. It is certainly a case of generals fattening at the expense of an increasingly poor population.
The Pakistani military has lost fours against India. After every war, Pakistan has lost territory, face and the credibility of its fighting forces. And yet Pakistanis rate this military very highly.As many as 77 percent said the military has a good influence on the country.
The media came next with a 68 percent rating, followed by religious leaders at 66 percent.
With religious zealots getting a solid two-thirds rating, is it any surprise that support for using the Pakistani military to fight extremist groups has declined over the last three years? Opposition to using the army to fight extremist organisations is especially high in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (where 54 percent opposed) and Baluchistan (50 percent).
Biting the hand that feeds
India does not get any aid from the United States and yet among all 21 nations Pew surveyed, Indians seemed most favourably disposed towards it. Only 12 percent said they had unfavourable opinion of the United States. On the other hand, 80 percent of Pakistanis had a negative opinion of America, with 74 percent regarding it as an enemy country.
American aid efforts were seen in a negative light by Pakistanis although the country continues to get billions of dollars of US aid. Around four-in-ten (38 percent) said US economic aid was having a mostly negative impact on Pakistan, while just 12 percent believed it was mostly positive. Similarly, 40 percent thought American military aid was having a mostly negative effect, while only 8 percent said it was largely positive.
This is a snapshot of Pakistan, where the arrow of time is travelling backwards, taking them into a cycle of medieval madness. Where the death of a terrorist merely means he will be instantly replaced by a hundred clones.
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Currency dictatorship – the struggle to end it
January 19th, 2016By Rakesh Krishan Simha.
India and the BRICS are giving the US dollar the boot? Is it really so?
The last time a country decided to dump the dollar in the oil business, the US destroyed it. Now India, the world’s third largest economy, and Iran have agreed to settle their outstanding oil dues in rupees. What’s more, the two countries may conduct all future trade in their national currencies.
This follows an agreement between Iran and India in mid-2011 in which both sides decided to settle 45 per cent of India’s oil import bill in rupees and the remaining 55 per cent in euros. In March 2012 the two countries inked the Rupee Payment Mechanism that allowed India to buy crude oil in its national currency. Iran then used the funds to buy products from Indian manufacturers.
Ironically, it is the US itself which is responsible for the dollar’s elimination from India-Iran trade. The Rupee Payment Mechanism was set up to skirt American economic sanctions on Tehran. Iranian oil forms a significant portion of India’s energy requirements. Similarly, the Iranians rely upon India for steel, medicines, food and chemicals.
Replacing the dollar
India and the US may have come closer in recent years, but that hasn’t blinded New Delhi to the toxic nature of America’s currency as well as manipulation by Britain.
The US is literally writing its own cheque with its unrestrained printing of the dollar, the bedrock of America’s post-war hegemony. It is the reserve currency status of the dollar that allows the US to fund its endless wars and topple governments with impunity.
Across the Atlantic, the Bank of England is involved in interest rate fixing of an order of magnitude that makes corruption in developing countries look puny by comparison.
Such financial manipulations and currency debasements are negatively and cyclically impacting the global economy. In fact, it suits the West to have periodic booms and busts because it keeps the emergent economies in turmoil. It keeps poor countries poor and the emergent ones stuck in what’s known as the “middle income trap”.
In hi luminary piece, Geopolitics of Technology, prof. Anis Bajrektarevic very accurately diagnoses: “the hydrocarbons and its scarcity phychologization, its monetization (and related weaponization) is serving rather a coercive and restrictive status quo than a developmental incentive. That essentially calls not for an engagement but compliance. It finally reads that the fossil fuels’ consumption (along with the policy of currency-choice and prizing it) does not only trigger one CC – Climate Change, but it also perpetuates another global CC – planetary Competition and Confrontation (over finite resources) – to which the MENA calamities are only a tip of an iceberg. Therefore, this highly addictive petrol – USD construct logically permits only a (technological) modernization which is defensive, restrictive and reactive. No wonder that democracy is falling short.”
India’s central bank has invested a significant proportion of its approximately $500 billion reserves in dollar denominated assets. Any sharp depreciation in the value of the dollar entails significant losses to this massive holding. In this backdrop, the idea of de-dollarisation has resonated with the country’s leadership in recent times.
In 2010, the Reserve Bank of India proposed floating the rupee as an alternative global currency. In a study titled ‘Internationalisation of Currency: The Case of the Indian Rupee and the Chinese Renminbi’, the bank said the dollar was likely to lose its predominance as the global reserve currency in the foreseeable future.
“The Indian rupee is rarely being used for invoicing of international trade,” the study pointed out. It argued that India needs to proactively take steps to increase the role of the rupee in the region. Also, the strength of the growing Indian economy has raised the issue of greater internationalisation of the Indian rupee.
Group remedy
Indian negotiators have actively pushed dollar-free trade at the annual meetings of the BRICS group. This group of five major economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – is actively engaged in speeding up the process of increasing mutual trade in national currencies.
The $100 billion BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) and a reserve currency pool worth over another $100 billion are both aimed at weakening the western chokehold on global financial flows.
According to India’s K.V. Kamath, the first president of NDB, exchange rate differences increased the cost of hard-currency loans to emerging and developing countries by 15-20 per cent. In his view, using local currencies would eliminate that risk and ease the burden.
The BRICS have already launched a Contingency Reserve Arrangement to enable the five member states to swap currencies. Another key advantage of using national currencies in trade and investment is that businesses do not have to hedge against two different currencies. Transition to trade in national currencies will also protect countries from the volatility of a particular currency.
China’s action plan
Meanwhile, the Chinese have surprised everyone with the speed with which the renminbi has acquired global acceptance. In a paper titled ‘The Renminbi Bloc is Here’, Arvind Subramanian and Martin Kessler of the US-based Peterson Institute for International Economics provide a dramatic picture of how the renminbi is growing in strength while the US dollar weakens.
Firstly, they say the renminbi is already the dominant reference currency in India and South Africa. Secondly, since mid-2010 the renminbi has made dramatic strides as a reference currency compared with the dollar and euro.
“The renminbi has now become the dominant reference currency in East Asia, eclipsing the dollar and the euro….The currencies of South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand now more closely track the RMB than the dollar. The dollar’s dominance as reference currency in East Asia is now limited to Hong Kong (by virtue of the peg), Vietnam and Mongolia.”
And they provide this chilling assessment: “The dollar and the euro still play a greater role beyond their natural spheres of influence than does the renminbi but that is changing in favour of the renminbi.”
Why chilling? The India-Iran rupee trade, Russia-Iran rouble trade and the worldwide acceptance of the renminbi will slowly erode the prestige of the US dollar, which will have dire consequences for American prosperity.
As a country that greatly benefits from – and exploits – the dollar’s reserve currency status, the end of dollar dominance will mean a sharp decline in American incomes and the ability to project power overseas.
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Geometric variable of a love triangle – India, Russia and the US
February 11th, 2015
By Rakesh Krishnan.
The Modi-Obama romance won’t last as India’s relationship with the US does not have the kind of strategic dimension and weight that marks New Delhi’s ties with Moscow.
**** ***** ******
Russia is a country with which India has had a strategic relationship for decades. America is a place where Indians migrate to for a better lifestyle. That is how Indians view the world’s two leading powers. It’s as simple as that. US President Barrack Obama’s recent visit to India will not change that reality, and those speculating about dramatic changes in India’s foreign policy are either fools or amateurs – or both.
“Good relations with the US reflect aspiration, ties with Russia are hard reality,” says Bharat Karnad, professor of national security studies at the Centre for Policy Research. “No substantive shift in policy is on the anvil, certainly nothing at the expense of India’s relations with Moscow, especially because, unlike the US, Russia has partnered, and continues to partner, India in strategically sensitive technology projects ranging from missiles, ship submersibles, ballistic, nuclear submarines to the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft,” he told Defense News.
Over the decades a clutch of US presidents has visited India. Likewise, Indian prime ministers have been to America. But the dynamics of the India-US relationship hasn’t changed much. And why would it? The US is the leader of the western world whose prosperity largely rests on the domination of the rest of the world. India, on the other hand, is a member of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping that aims to end the American-led bloc’s dominance.
Modi’s operandi
So the question arises – why did Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Obama hastily arrange this Republic Day romance? The US position is easy to figure out. Having banned Modi from entering the country for a decade – a decision the Americans arrived at because of intense lobbying by Indian leftists, Indian Christians, American evangelical groups and Indian Muslim organisations – the US wanted to get into the newly elected and highly popular leader’s good books. You don’t remain on not speaking terms with the leader of the world’s second most populous country at a time when the most populous country (China) and the country with the most nuclear bombs (Russia) are growing closer.
Modi’s reason to forgive and forget the snub – which rankles every patriotic Indian – cannot be explained by the Hindu philosophy of “My Guest is my God”. Modi is too hardnosed for that kind of claptrap. It’s got to do with the fact that had Modi’s relationship with the US not thawed quickly after becoming prime minister, then taking its cue from the US the rest of the world too would have continued to treat him as an untouchable.
The Indian media would have willingly done their masters’ bidding and gone after Modi. The CIA plants would have once again raked up false stories about Modi’s involvement in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots. That Indian courts have cleared him does not matter to these anti-national elements. Therefore, it was internal politics that forced the new prime minister to invite Obama to the parade.
There is another key reason why an India-US romance is like spring in the Tundra – the Americans meddle in India’s internal affairs and the Russians do not. Or, as our chairman here, prof. Anis Bajrektarevic used to say: “Biology and geopolitics share one basic rule: comply or die.”
On January 27, hours before boarding his flight to Saudi Arabia, Obama walked into territory he had no business to be. “Every person has the right to practise their faith, how they choose or to practise no faith at all, and to do so free from persecution and fear,” he preached to an audience of young Indians.
Obama was, of course, referring to the ruling BJP’s programme to reconvert Indian Muslims and Christians to Hinduism. It is no doubt a controversial issue but the US has absolutely no locus standi in the matter. Having almost annihilated the Native American race and ghettoised its black population, the US has no moral legitimacy left. In fact, wouldn’t it be great if Obama spoke about religious tolerance in Saudi Arabia as well. But no US president ever does that. Clearly, such sermonising is directed at soft states such as India.
Also, it was extremely churlish of a head of state to offer such a parting shot after enjoying Indian hospitality and adulation. Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited India a number of times but when was the last time he embarrassed his hosts like the Americans did?
Obama’s parting shot is no trivial issue. N.V. Subramanian, editor, Newsinsight, says: “It is traced to the US’ new ambassador to India, Richard Verma, who prompted its inclusion in the presidential speech likely at the instigation of US embassy staffers who were part of the earlier campaign against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The government has taken this protocol deviation in stride.”
Plus, the fact that Obama raised the touchy subject during a trip meant to build bridges is a pointer to the pressure the US leadership is under from American churches to press forward the case for the wholesale conversion of Indians to a particularly virulent form of evangelical Christianity. The danger for India is that these churches are directly connected with Indian Christian groups.
Vicious circle
Every time a US leader visits India, the media goes into a frenzy about how the visit is going to reshape the India-US relations. One tends to forget that such visits in the past had not produced much. Remember Jimmy Carter? When that lameduck American president visited India in 1978 the government renamed a village in Haryana after him. Whether Carterpuri is still around or has reverted to being Daulatpur Nasirabad is irrelevant, but after Ronald Reagan replaced Carter, India’s relationship with the US nosedived.
This time the Indian leadership didn’t go overboard. But the clueless Indian media has been speculating whether New Delhi’s relations with Washington will acquire a strategic edge. For those who anticipated a flood of American military technology into India’s manufacturing sector, here’s news – all that the US is offering is technology for developing a medium range drone. Yes, they are throwing India a toy.
The editor of an Indian magazine told this writer that he had come to know from “top government sources” that the Obama administration would offer India the F-35 stealth fighter and perhaps even the super secret F-22. He was politely told that India has no use for the failed F-35 and that US law prohibits the export of the F-22 stealth interceptor or its technologies. Besides, Russia and India are jointly developing the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft that is likely to be superior to the two American jets.
The reality is Indian military equipment will continue to be heavily Russia-centric. As well as stealth fighters, India and Russia are working together on high-octane weapons projects such as the Arihant nuclear submarine and BrahMos supersonic cruise missile. Then there’s the much feared Akula class nuclear attack submarine that Moscow has leased to the Indian Navy. A second nuclear powered submarine is expected to be leased soon. As Russian ambassador Alexander Kadakin says, no country except Russia will offer a nuclear submarine to India.
And finally, why is it that every American president when he comes to India says he, his wife, family, friends, teacher, butler and essentially the whole of the US is inspired by Gandhi? Whereas back home they are inspired by generals such as Alexander the Great, George Patton and George Washington. At any rate, it is a big lie. For, if indeed the US is inspired by Gandhi, it wouldn’t be fighting wars 24/7.
Unfortunately, no Indian takes offence to westerners constantly hyphenating India and Gandhi as if the country didn’t have any great leader in its over 5000 years of recorded history. On the contrary, many Indians seem to love it. This is exactly what the West wants – to box India in a peaceful mindset and emasculate its warlike spirit. For, if Indians remain peaceniks then it would be easier for the West to penetrate it yet again. Obama is sticking to that tired old script.
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