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Posted by Mahi Ali in India -US Joint Export to Pakistan: Terrorism on August 20th, 2013
Upright Opinion
August 17, 2013
As If Sikandar was a Hercules Unchained
By Saeed Qureshi
That mind boggling spectacle that the whole of Pakistan and the world beyond had witnessed on the Jinnah Avenue in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on August 15, can be found only in action movies and in fiction books. The five hour’s standoff between the police and para military network on one side and a lone individual on the other is absurd, intriguing and mind boggling.
It defies any rational explanation by any stretch of imagination that a single person with a tiny short physique can prevail and defiantly kicks around for several hours in full public view. He roams about the vast space at his will brandishing two Kalashnikovs (sub machines guns) and firing at random periodically. It appeared as if the ionic warrior Hercules was chasing the defeated fleeing army. Or else he was a gladiator throwing gauntlets to his rivals in a Roman Colosseum.
If the objective of allowing a free hand to Sikandar to catch him alive then in that case this gory dram could have dragged on for several hours till he would have dropped on the gourd overtaken by fatigue and exhaustion. The standing order of the interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to not kill him and catch him alive was like the proverbial catching of duck by placing a burning candle on its head until it would turn the bird blind with the melting wax. Is there some logic in minister’s orders to negotiate with him and not kill him? Nevertheless the government and security forces looked paralyzed and dysfunctional.
The police, the elite forces, the paratroopers and the commandoes all were in a state of limbo over the daring frolicking of a miserable and dissipated individual keeping them at bay. Was it a rank cowardice and wishing for a providential help and miracle to happen to drive away the menace?
If that is the poor level of crisis management of the police and intelligence agencies and even army then what would happen if a group of die hard terrorists assails the capital and wreaks havoc. And such frightening possibility cannot be ruled out. If the bomb blasts and massacres are going on elsewhere in the country and particularly in tribal zones, how come Islamabad can remain immune from such dreadful incidents?
The police remained confused and stood by, Sikandar was unyielding and Zamurud Khan was stupid. The family of Sikandar consisting of two young children and the burqa-clad wife seemed to be caught in a weird and scary situation as one could figure out from the boy’s frightened eyes and shades of fears cast over his face. The tiny minds would not comprehend as to what was going on with their father running around in the arena and firing and hurling challenging epithets on the crowd gathered around him.
We have seen the snake charmers, the fake healers, the monkey dancing shows and the jugglers in cattle shows and public places amusing the crowds with their antics and tricks. Here on Jinnah Avenue, it was not different except that the magicians, the jugglers, the quacks perform for an hour or so and then move away. Yet this melodrama on the capital’s widest road continued for several hours while the public and the protectors of human life just watched it like dummies. They had no clue how long that thriller would continue and what would be the drop scene.
This incident is a matter of grave concern for the law and order enforcement agencies to ponder how drastically and miserably they failed to address a potentially serious threat with a matching fast track strategy and action. If it would be finally to shoot at his legs because of the physical scuffle between the daredevil Zamurud and the stubbornly defiant Sikandar, then it could have been done even in the first few minutes.
But the explanation from the authorities including the interior minister, that they did not want to hurt the offender’s’ family is as unconvincing and frivolous as it is ridiculous. The failure of an otherwise brutal police force to nab an outraged and defiant culprit posing persistent threat to the lives of the onlookers speaks volumes for the bizarre counter insurgency strategies.
Now the paramount questions staring right in the face of police, security and intelligence agencies would be how could an ordinary person carry with him two dangerous weapons and roam about in the red zone of the capital? What was the purpose of his being armed with such prohibited bores?
Was there a sinister plot behind the smokescreen of the family to use these weapons for a crime or to be hand-over to an intended person or party? The most incisive question is how to preempt or ward off such intrusions and incursions by the terrorists and public enemies for future?
The senior hierarchy in the ministry of interior should be sternly interrogated why such glaring and most horrendous security laps occurred, all the more in the vicinity of important government offices and buildings? Did Sikandar have license for these weapons and if so who issued him these permits for patently prohibited calibers?
Chief Justice of Supreme Court Honorable Iftikhar Muhammad
The writer is a senior journalist, former editor of Diplomatic Times and a former diplomat
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Posted by Shahroz Bashir in INDIA-AN EVIL NATION, INDIAN SABRE RATTLING BITS THE DUST, INEPT INDIAN NAVY on August 17th, 2013
Video of the catastrophe shows a fireball engulfing the dock where the Indian navy submarine was berthed. Emergency crews are working to rescue the sailors, but military officials have not released the number of sailors that may be trapped in the vessel.
MUMBAI – Eighteen Indian sailors were trapped and some were killed after an explosion and fire on a diesel-powered submarine berthed at a base in Mumbai on Wednesday.
Defense Minister A.K. Antony said crew members inside the Russian-built INS Sindhurakshak had died. He gave no details.
The explosion just after midnight was likely an accident, but an investigation was under way to establish the cause, the navy said.
“There are some people who are trapped on board, we are in the process of trying to rescue them,” navy spokesman P.V.S. Satish said. “We will not give up until we get to them.”
Kamal Kishore / Reuters
The Russian-built INS Sindhurakshak is seen here in 2006.
The incident raised memories of the explosion on the Russian nuclear attack submarine Kursk which sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea in 2000, killing all 118 crew members.
The Indian vessel, which returned from an upgrade in Russia earlier this year, had suffered a similar accident in 2010 in which one sailor was killed while it was docked in the southern port of Visakhapatnam.
Typically, such a submarine is fitted with torpedoes and missiles. Torpedoes are launched underwater to attack other submarines while missiles are used for long ranges above water. There was no immediate word on the status of the weapons on board the Sindhurakshak.
“Lot of things are in very close proximity, there is fuel, there is hydrogen, there is oxygen, there are weapons with high explosives on board,” said retired Indian navy chief Arun Prakash.
“So a slightest mistake or slightest accident can trigger off a huge accident. The question of sabotage – I mean, all possibilities have to be considered – but sabotage is probably the last possibility.”
Three people who were near the submarine at the time of the explosion were injured and being treated in hospital, spokesman Satish said.
Vikalp Shah / Reuters
Flames from the INS Sindhurakshak burn in Mumbai, India, late on Wednesday.
Posted by mansoor.syed in INDIAN SABRE RATTLING BITS THE DUST on August 17th, 2013
In an event Indian Defence Minister AK Antony has called a “shocking tragedy,” 18 sailors aboard an Indian submarine called the INS Sindhurakshak are feared dead after two huge explosions occurred on a submarine berthed in Mumbai after midnight on Thursday. No bodies have yet been recovered, as divers are currently working to refloat the partially submerged submarine.
The cause of the explosions is still being determined and sabotage has not yet been ruled out. “A board of inquiry will cover the entire spectrum of the incident, we cannot rule out sabotage at this stage but all the indicators at this point do not support that theory,” Navy chief Admiral DK Joshi said.
What makes this explosion even more tragic is that it occurred on the heels of two landmark events for the South Asian power’s naval ambitions. The Indian Navy recently announced progress in its efforts to build ahomegrown nuclear-powered submarine as well as an aircraft carrier in quick succession. After over two decades of research and development in a particularly challenging area of defense technology, India announced on August 12 that the nuclear reactor in its first indigenously built nuclear-powered submarine, the INS Arihant, had achieved criticality in a crucial step before becoming fully operational. With the move, India joins a select group of countries with the technology to build a nuclear reactor compact enough to fit into a submarine. Currently, only the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain possess nuclear submarines.
The Arihant will be fitted with K-15 nuclear-tipped missiles that will be able to hit targets 700km away, completing India’s nuclear triad – the ability to fire nuclear missiles by land, air and sea. India already has the ability to launch nuclear missiles from land, with the Prithvi and Agni missiles, as well as from air from its French Mirage and Russian Su-30 MKI fighter jets. Indeed, having a second strike capability from sea is considered critical for India which has a declared “no first use” nuclear policy. The possession of a submarine with nuclear-tipped missiles would enable India to develop a credible deterrence policy with the ability to launch a counterattack following a first strike. Nuclear submarines also have an edge over conventional diesel-powered submarines as they can stay under water for longer periods making their detection more difficult.
On August 13, India launched its first indigenously built aircraft carrier – the INS Vikrant – which will have a displacement of 37,500 tons when completed in 2018. With its launch, India becomes the fifth country after the U.S., Britain, France and Russia to have the capability to develop its own aircraft carrier. Built at the Cochin Shipyard in the southern state of Kerala, the Vikrant will carry Russian-made MiG-29K fighter jets and a set of helicopters. India already has the INS Viraat, a vintage British-built aircraft carrier, in its fleet and will acquire another Russian-made aircraft carrier, the INS Vikramaditya, in 2014, once the warship completes its sea trials.
The moves are part of India’s plans to develop a blue-water navy, with the ability to project power beyond the confines of the Indian Ocean into the South and East China seas. To achieve this, India is building three more nuclear submarines and two more aircraft carriers. India’s naval build-up coincides with growing tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in the South China Sea, where a slew of territorial disputes are ongoing between China and several Southeast Asian nations, as well as with Japan. With a more robust naval presence, New Delhi seeks to protect its commercial interests, including plans to jointly explore potential oil and gas reserves with Vietnam in the South China Sea.
India’s NavalIndia’s naval plans also coincide with the so-called U.S. pivot to Asia, wherein Washington has sought to boost its naval deployments to the Asia-Pacific. The U.S. has encouraged a greater Indian naval presence in the region, fueling concerns in China, which sees New Delhi’s naval build-up as part of broader efforts to contain Beijing. India’s latest progress in building indigenous aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines will further raise hackles in China prompting it to speed up its own naval modernization efforts.
While these developments are larger than any one event, the explosion at Mumbai’s dockyard in the early hours this morning nonetheless casts a shadow over the progress made by the Indian Navy.
Posted by Rana Tanveer in Afghan -Taliban-India Axis, ANAY WALEY GHAZWA-I-HIND KAY JAANBAZ, GENOCIDE & DISCRIMINATION OF SIKHS IN INDIA, Hindu India, HIndu Terrorism, Hindus Ignore Rape, India, India Hall of Shame, INDIA'S HINDUISM, Makaar Dushman, Suppression of Women in Hindu India on August 17th, 2013
The Indian government tried to make this year’s Independence Day a special one, despite the country’s economic woes. That was never going to be easy, with the rupee continuing its long slide to record lows. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged the problems of India’s economy in his speech at the Red Fort, the Muslim-Mughal-era citadel in the center of Delhi. “Economic growth has slowed down at present, and we are working hard to remedy the situation,” Singh said as he marked the anniversary of the end of British rule in 1947.
In the days before the Aug. 15 holiday, the government tried to change the subject by publicizing some impressive military breakthroughs. The country activated the atomic reactor for its first Made-in-India nuclear submarine over the weekend, for instance, and followed that up with the launch of its first home-developed aircraft carrier. The 37,500-ton ship won’t actually be operational for several more years, so the debut seemed timed to provide a nice setup for Independence Day.
Then disaster struck. A day before the holiday, an explosion rocked a diesel-powered Indian navy submarine docked in Mumbai. The blast and the fire that followed left 18 Indian sailors dead. India is “deeply pained that we lost the submarine,” the Prime Ministers aid in his speech. “We pay homage to the brave hearts we have lost.”
At the same time that it was trying to use military wins to distract from the country’s economic problems, the government was trying to stem the currency’s weakness. Over the past few weeks, the finance ministry and the central bank have announced measures to prop up the rupee. The Reserve Bank of India yesterday cut the amount Indian companies can invest abroad: The limit had been 400 percent of a company’s net worth, but on Aug.14 the central bank lowered that to 100 percent.
The RBI also curtailed the amount of money Indians can send overseas: The annual limit had been $200,000, and the central bank cut that to $75,000. The central bank has also tried to make foreign-exchange deposits more attractive to local banks by exempting non-rupee deposits of Indians abroad from requirements to keep 4 percent in cash and invest 23 percent in government-approved securities.
The government is trying to discourage Indians from buying gold, too. The country is the world’s largest consumer of the glittery metal—and all the gold comes from abroad. That’s a major source of the country’s trade problems. Last month the government increased tariffs on gold and other precious metals while also increasing taxes on gold. Not everyone is impressed. In a report published on Aug. 14, HSBC (HBC) economist Leif Eskesen called the steps “a new set of plumbing measures” to curb oil, gold, and nonessential imports and open up for more external debt financing. “Will this be enough to fix the leaks?” he wrote. “We do not think so. Ultimately structural reform implementation is the solution.”
Einhorn is Asia regional editor in Bloomberg Businessweek’s Hong Kong bureau. Follow him on Twitter @BruceEinhorn.
Reference
Extremism is what matters all else is secondary
Ayaz Amir
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
From Print EditionIslamabad diary
Punjab, heart and soul of Pakistan, will it also now be the death of Pakistan? Dangerous thought but relevant question because the land of the five rivers, now also the land which rules the rest of troubled Pakistan, has its head buried deep in the sand, conscious of every problem under the sun except what is destroying this country: extremism, terrorism and the by-product of these two, sectarianism.Not theoretical sectarianism… with that most societies can live…but murderous sectarianism, its work accomplished by the bullet and the bomb. So much so that the Shiite community is on the verge of mentally exiting from the ideological confines of a republic confused by nothing so much as its ideology.Spectacular jailbreaks which reveal as much about Taliban skill and daring as the bankruptcy of our defences, or random killings across the country…but it’s much more than that. Consider the sweep of Taliban strategy. They strike at targets in the Frontier – Bannu, DI Khan – and just when we think the problem is the Frontier, there is an incident across the Line of Control and, overnight, a crisis with India, thus diverting, like nothing else could, the attention of the Pakistan Army.Not just strategy but grand strategy, Mumbai on a smaller scale: just when the army is engaged in the west, pull its attention to the east.Yet we are still thinking what to do….still, Allah be praised, trying to stitch together that exercise in metaphysics called our counter-terrorism policy. Pity the strain on our minds because the government of the mini-mandate, in essence a Punjabi government, is still not mentally ready to grasp the true dimensions of this problem.It is not ready to accept the fact that Taliban terrorism is no longer just about the American presence in Afghanistan or the Emirate of North Waziristan. Its sources, its support bases, are now spread across the country, not least in the sacred land of the five rivers.But to strike at these madressahs and watering holes in Punjab, to take up this fight in earnest, is to court the hostility of conservative Punjab. And conservative Punjab, retail-bazaar Punjab, middle-class Punjab, is from where the big or small mandate draws its primary strength.This is a paralysis of politics. It is about evenly matched by a creeping paralysis on the military front. For all practical purposes the army chief is now a lame-duck chief, his over-extended term ending in November. He has done good things including resuscitating army morale after the disasters of the Musharraf years, although one wishes he could have kept some check on the business skills of his brothers.Of what use present pomp and glory if in years to come what is remembered about him are the exploits of his near and dear ones? Musharraf did a lot of good too. But in today’s climate is anyone willing to say a kindly word about him? In a Republic like ours we never seem to learn. And our paladins never seem to know when to depart.So there we have it: a government to all appearances with all the authority it needs, a prime minister certainly with more authority than his predecessors or even Musharraf, but heads buried deep in the sand, and an army command ruefully contemplating the evening sun as it is about to set.This is a vacuum of the deepest sort, government and command at a standstill. Chaudhry Nisar, the interior minister, is an able man but he talks too much, a loudspeaker constantly on. Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Sipah-e-Sahaba, the tentacles of what we have started calling the Punjabi Taliban, are all in Punjab. The frontlines of extremism may be in the Frontier. But the ‘strategic depth’ of this phenomenon is now in Punjab. From the attitude of the Punjab government, which claims infallibility for itself, one wouldn’t suspect this at all.Forget about formulating a policy on terrorism. That can wait. Mosque loudspeakers in Punjab now defy the Loudspeaker Ordinance, as they defy common sense. If the interior ministry tackles this nuisance first maybe its words come to merit greater credibility.Surprising thing is that where the government wants to act, and where its heart is, it can act very fast. Look at the circular debt payoffs to power producers. No questions asked and no list of who’s been given what. Nandipur power project, its cost jacked up and up, but government unfazed. When it comes to interests close to the bone, all innocence disappears and alacrity is the watchword. When it comes to extremism and terrorism, probably because there is no immediate profit in this, it is either (for more meditation) a trip to Murree, favourite summer destination, or the way of the ostrich.The Taliban are inhibited by no such compulsions, minds distracted by no Nandipur adventures. They are focused utterly on the destabilisation of the Pakistani state and the spread of extremist thought. This is what makes this an unequal contest. The Republic has resources and guns and the atom bomb. But it lacks leadership and what leadership there is, gifts of a wayward destiny, is without conviction.One thing is for sure, and this can be the first commandment of war. Expect no Battle of Stalingrad, no Vietnam, no victories in the mountains, from a leadership which has most of its money parked abroad. This is a contradiction in terms, not resolvable by platitudes. Similarly, an army command infected by that most alluring of fancies, love of real estate, can lead a nation in no life-and-death struggle. Call this the second commandment.How many houses did Churchill own? Only Chartwell Manor which he bought with his money from his books and journalism. And after the war, imagine this, he couldn’t afford to keep the house and a consortium of businessmen bought it and the arrangement was that as long as he and his wife lived they would pay nominal rent and after their deaths the estate would go to the National Trust. On Churchill’s death in 1965 his wife decided to hand over the house to the National Trust immediately. How many suits did Stalin possess? How extensive was Ho Chi Minh’s wardrobe?So what are we talking about? In normal times none of this would have mattered. The Sharifs could have doubled their Raiwind estate and army chiefs could have more private homes than they have become accustomed to. But the Taliban are at the gates and they have the initiative and a better sense of strategy, a better sense of the indirect approach, than the Military Operations Directorate.For most of us this is the only country we are likely to have. We have already made a cult of the ‘internally-displaced person’ (IDP). The greatest Partition of the last century fell to our lot. Dismemberment we have experienced. How many more traumas can we go through, especially when the space for traumas is shrinking? The IDPs of the Khyber Agency can find refuge near Peshawar, those of North Waziristan in Kohat. To which kingdom on the hill will the IDPs of Punjab go?So the luxury of half-measures is not ours to afford because time is slipping by, and time is not on our side. And please select a proper army chief, a fighting man, not a desk-bound general, or someone keen on remaking his fortune. If the Sharifs fumble this, and they will have their own calculations, then forget about Churchill. Let the spirit of appeasement guide us as we respectfully approach the Taliban, peace-offerings in hand and ingratiating smiles on our lips.Tailpiece: Two excellent columns on terrorism I have just read, one by Ayesha Siddiqa, the other by Tariq Mahmud, former interior secretary. This means we have people who understand the problem. Why are our bonzes so dumb?Email: [email protected]
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