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Posted by admin in India Splitting, INDIA STATE SPONSORED TERRORISM IN PAKISTAN, INDIAN TERRORISM FROM CENTRAL ASIAN REPUBLICS, INDOPHILE NAWAZ SHARIF, US AGENT NAWAZ SHARIF-DRONE WAR SUPPORTER, US DRONE WAR ON PAKISTAN, US FOREIGN POLICY & INTERNATIONAL LAW, US Interference in Balochistan, US SPYING ON GLOBAL COMMUNITY on September 4th, 2013
US & India Joint Strategy to Destabilize Pakistan
William Engdahl is an award-winning geopolitical analyst and strategic risk consultant whose internationally best-selling books have been translated into thirteen foreign languages.
Developing Pakistan-China ties which can drastically change the economic map of the region are threatened by Pakistani separatism, which might suddenly transform into another ‘terror ground.’
As Washington continues sending its development assistance aid in the form of drones to bomb civilians illegally inside Pakistan’s borders, allegedly to go after Taliban fighters, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif recently completed a trip to Beijing where he met Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, his first foreign visit after the May elections. The Pakistani Federal Cabinet subsequently approved the start of negotiations and signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on developing a “China-Pakistan Economic Corridor”long-term plan, and an action plan between the development ministries of the two countries.
The core of the new agreements between China and neighboring Pakistan calls for accelerated development of a 2,000-km trade infrastructure corridor linking Gwadar Port on Pakistan’s Indian Ocean coast to Kashgar, the westernmost city in China’s Xingjiang province. Pakistan has offered China a‘trade and energy corridor’ via Gwadar, linked to inland roads. The plan would import oil from the Middle East, to refineries at Gwadar and sent on to China via roads, pipelines or railway.
A view of the Beijing-funded “megaport” of Gwadar, in southwestern Pakistan (AFP Photo)
Xinjiang is also the heart of China’s known oil resources and a transit area for major oil and gas pipelines. The development will cost billions of euros, which China reportedly has now pledged in the form of ‘soft loans’. The railway infrastructure will provide crucial links for transporting oil and gas from the Persian Gulf and minerals and food from Africa will be the heart of the newproject.http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_61094.shtm
However, in six months this area will “suddenly” become a major “terror ground” that conveniently will disrupt the rail infrastructure link. It reminds me of the German Berlin-Baghdad Rail link to the Ottoman Empire before WWI that was the major cause for Britain to ally with Czarist Russia and France in the Triple Entente that became WWI in 1914.
China’s needs for energy resources, food and minerals from the Gulf and Africa have boosted trade between the regions in the recent years. China’s trade with the UAE alone has grown 15-fold since 2000 to reach $37 billion. It is expected to reach $100 billion by 2015. Some 2,500 Chinese firms have offices in Dubai. China’s largest bank ICBC and the Bank of China also have branches in the Gulf sheikhdom where they are beginning to transact bilateral trade in Chinese renminbi rather than dollars.
The Chinese are currently upgrading some 600 kilometers of the China-Pakistan highway. The KKH was built in 1986 from Kashgar through Pakistan and the upgrade will make it suitable for heavy container traffic and linking it to Gwadar Port. China and Pakistan are also working to link Gwadar port and Xinjiang through a new Chinese-financed railway network. This will turn Gwadar Port and the KKH into a trade corridor for China and other Central Asians countries and create in Gwadar an energy, transport, and industrial hub providing direct and economical access to the Arabian Sea for both China and resource rich Central Asian states.
Gwadar is the world’s largest deep sea port. It lies in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan in the warm water Arabian Sea. The design and construction of the final stages of the port, which began in 2002, is being carried out in collaboration with China. It has an immense geostrategic importance at the entrance to the Persian Gulf and is a likely substitute for the Port of Dubai. In 2011 Pakistan invited China to build a Naval base at Gwadar, something the Pentagon is eyeing very closely. China has yet to respond on that.
It will generate billions of dollars in revenue for Pakistan and likely create about two million jobs.
Pakistan and China have signed agreements to help energy starved Pakistan to utilize the hydro-electric potential offered by the area by constructing the Diamer-Bhasha and Bunji dams.
China also wants to import gas from Iran by joining the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline that will pass through Gilgit Baltistan on the Pakistan border to Xinjiang in China.
Also Pakistan and China have signed agreements to develop entirely new industrial cities in various parts of Pakistan along the route of the rail link, including at Gwadar.
Close to the Straits of Hormuz, Gwadar has the potential to become the gateway to Central Asia and China. It’s at the junction of the world’s three most important strategic and economic regions–Middle East, South Asia and Central Asian states—giving it the potential, barring new wars, to generate billions in annual transit trade. As part of a shift in policy, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have recently been eagerly pursuing trade and economic links with China.
On January 30 this year, Pakistan turned over the management and operation of the Gwadar Port Authority to a Chinese company at the same time the Pakistan government signed up to the Iran–Pakistan gas pipeline, tying Pakistan, Iran and China more closely, something that caused pain in Washington.
The availability of a major alterative trade route that cuts distance and time from the present long and slow 8000 km route by ship from the Persian Gulf through the Malacca Strait to the eastern seaboard of China will give both the Gulf states, as well as parts of Africa where China is very active, and Asia, huge economic benefits.
Conveniently for Washington, which has no interest in fostering greater Chinese independence of energy supply, in recent months a growing militant separatist movement has erupted on the scene in Baluchistan, the Pakistan province where Gwadar is located.
In 2006 the US Armed Forces Journal published an article by Colonel Ralph Peters titled Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look. In the piece, which appears to bear uncanny relevance to subsequent Pentagon and US State Department policy in the region, Peters calls for the creation of aFree Baluchistan.
His call was echoed by US Pakistan “expert” Selig Harrison, who reportedly enjoys strong ties to the CIA. In 2006 after Peters published his sensational article Harrison wrote in Le Monde Diplomatique and the New York Times that a Free Baluchistan movement was “simmering.” The call by Peters and Harrison for a Free Baluchistan began four years after China began building the first phase of the Gwadar Port.
On June 15 this year, terror attacks including a suicide bombing of a bus filled with students and a gunfight in the city that left two dozen dead, hit the Baluchistan provincial capital of Quetta.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a militant separatist group, claimed responsibility. The BLA wasn’t acting alone. As the injured students were being rushed to hospital, they ran into an ambush by the ‘Pakistani Taliban’, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ).
The BLA has been involved in attacks on government oil fields and gas pipelines. The Pakistan government accuses India of being behind the BLA. India recently has been moving closer to the US and to Japan in a military alliance that has a distinct anti-China bent.
Further, on July 29, jihadist militants armed with rockets and heavy weapons launched a concerted assault on a major prison in Dera Ismail Khan, close to the South Waziristan tribal agency in northwestern Pakistan, along the route of the rail-highway-pipelines from Gwadar to Xinjiang, freeing an estimated 250 militants affiliated with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
Xinjiang has recently suffered from new rioting by separatist Muslim Uyghurs. In late June in Xinjiang, home to some 10 million Uyghurs, two terror attacks killed 35 people days ahead of the fourth anniversary of the July 5, 2009 riot in the capital Urumqi that left 197 people dead.
The Jihadist Uyghur terrorists apparently are being recruited in Turkey by an Uyghur independence organization, sent to Syria for combat experience and, if they survive, sent back to Xinjiang to carry out terror deeds there.
China’s official daily, Global Times, reported in early July that a Muslim Uyghur from Xinjiang, Memeti Alili was arrested in Xinjiang during the new wave of terrorist acts and riots.
The Chinese daily reported that the 23-year-old Alili confessed to police that he had been recruited as a student in Istanbul by something called the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Aili was arrested when returning to Xinjiang to complete his mission to “carry out violent attack and improve fighting skills.”He confessed that he had been assigned to return by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). ETIM is a terrorist group that aims to create an Islamist state in Xinjiang, which works alongside the East Turkistan Education and Solidarity Association (ETESA), an Istanbul-based exile group.
This picture taken on August 5, 2013 shows the shell of a burnt out bus being towed by a rescue vehicle along a street in Urumqi in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (AFP Photo)
Muslim Uyghur youth are being recruited to go to Istanbul to “study”, then recruited by ETIM and ETESA to fight as Jihadists in Syria with Al Qaeda and other jihad groups, according to China’s anti-terrorism authority. If they survive the Syrian battlefield training, the Uyghur jihadists are recycled back to Xinjiang in China, the end-point of the new Gwadar to China rail and road infrastructure “land bridge.”
The headquarters of ETESA, located in Istanbul include research, media, social affairs, education and women’s affairs departments. It aims to “educate and train Muslims” in Xinjiang and “set them free” by forming a Muslim state, according to a Chinese official. In 2004, in Washington Anwar Yusuf Turani established the East Turkistan Government in Exile. Washington seemed not to object, though many other countries did, including China.
The Istanbul link of ETIM and ETESA is no accident. Istanbul’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan openly backed the Uyghur separatists in 2009 during the riots, calling them fellow Turkic peoples.
Meanwhile, as if to further underscore how vulnerable any China-Pakistani energy and trade corridor from Gwadar to Xinjiang would be, on the eve of US Secretary of State Kerry’s visit to Islamabad to meet Pakistan’s Prime Minister just after the China deal of Pakistan, the US made several drone attacks inside Pakistan in the North Waziristan tribal region. They killed at least six people. It was the fourth US drone strike since Sharif was re-elected as Prime Minister in June, all in the crucial North Waziristan en route to Xinjiang. Despite Pakistan’s strong protests Washington refuses to halt the CIA-run drone attacks.
With the CIA drone attacks, the Baluchistan attacks of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Baloch Liberation Army, as well as Jihadists being sent into Xinjiang from Turkey and Syria, we can expect unrest to increase in Baluchistan province and upwards to Xinjiang as the huge China-Pakistan infrastructure plans materialize in coming months.
Disclaimer
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT or PTT.
India witnessed a peak power shortage of 9 per cent during the five years ending 2012 when over 50,000 MW new generation capacity was created, the Economic Survey said today.
“During the 11th Five Year Plan (2007—12), nearly 55,000 MW of new generation capacity was created. Yet, there continues to be a peak shortage of 9 per cent,” it said.
Peak power shortage is shortfall in generation capacity when electricity consumption is maximum.
The survey said the resources currently allocated to energy supply are not sufficient for narrowing the gap between energy needs and energy availability.
One of the key challenges remain resolving the energy bottlenecks. Further, the country’s excessive reliance on imported crude oil make it imperative to have an optimal energy mix that will allow it to achieve its long—run goal of sustainable development.
As on March 2011, the country’s estimated coal reserves were at about 286 billion tonnes, lignite at 81 billion tonnes, crude oil at 757 million tonnes and natural gas 1,241 billion cubic metre (BCM).
Electricity generation by power utilities during 2012—13 was targeted to go up by 6.05 per cent to 930 billion units.
The growth in power generation during April to December, 2012 was 4.55 per cent as compared to about 9.33 per cent during April—December, 2011.
The estimated hydro potential is about 1,45,000 MW. The total potential for renewable power generation from various sources other than large hydro projects stood at 89,760 MW.
Import dependence on crude oil is projected at 78 per cent while that in coal will be 22.4 per cent by 2016—17, Survey said.
An integrated power transmission grid helps to even out supply—demand mis—matches. The existing inter—regional transmission capacity of 27,750 MW connects the northern, western, eastern and north—easterns in a synchronous mode operating at the same frequency and southern region asynchronously operating in the same mode.
Synchronous inter—connection of the southern region with other regions is expected to be established by April, 2014.
Meanwhile, trading in electricity is enabled through traders and power exchanges that optimises generation resources by facilitating trade and flow of electricity across the country.
It has helped in sale of surplus power by distribution utilities and captive power plants on one hand, and purchase of electricity by deficit firms on the other hand to meet sudden increases in demand, it said.
The capacity addition during the 12th plan period (2012—17) is estimated at 88,537 MW comprising 26,182 MW in the central sector, 15,530 MW in the state sector and 46,825 MW in the private sector respectively.
The capacity addition target for the year 2012—13 was set at 17,956 MW. A capacity of 9,854 MW has been added till December 2012.
Upright Opinion
August 9, 2013
Dealing with India
By Saeed Qureshi
There is no apparent reason to discard this bombshell information disclosed by an Indian secret service operative. Ostensibly the atrocious aim behind these sinister plots was to project Pakistan as a terrorism sponsoring state and thus antagonize the international community against it.
India had been maliciously harping upon the bogey that the parliament building and Mumbai attacks carried out by the disparate militant groups and Ajmal Kasab band respectively, were sponsored by Pakistan and her intelligence outfits.
This was not for the first time that India had blamed the Pakistan based radical Islamic organizations for Mumbai calamity. Earlier, the Kashmiris freedom fighters were held responsible for the storming the Parliament building in New Delhi in December 2001. Some other similar attacks were also attributed to the Kashmir militants.
While India bracketed Pakistan government and its intelligence agencies as the accomplices in these activities with the militants, it conveniently forgets that Pakistan has also suffered enormously at the hands of these brutal radicals who treat India and Pakistan at par. They carry out suicide bombing and murderous ambushes to punish Pakistan for its partnership with United States in hunting down the perpetrators of the 9/11 mayhem.
In the aftermath of the parliament building episode, India demanded the unacceptable option of carrying out punitive air strikes on the chosen targets in Pakistan. For a neighbor to ask for such an unusual permission from the United Nations is as weird as it is lethal to the territorial integrity of a sovereign country. There seemed to be more than meets the eye in the Indian call for attacking the militants’ targets within Pakistan.
One would wonder if the Mumbai bloody melodrama was deliberately enacted to achieve the concealed yet coveted objective of having a walk over the territory of Pakistan and Kashmir and to glibly and indiscriminately bomb any place anywhere. In peace times, this untenable demand was made by India against such a neighbor that has gone a long way to normalize bilateral relations in all avenues with her.
Pakistan has already been under enormous burgeoning pressure from United States for using its armed forces to annihilate the radical Islamic militants in the regions starting from Afghanistan to the extreme periphery of Kashmir.
India wants the same leverage and queer rights that Israel is exercising against the Palestinians, in that she kills, at will, the vulnerable Palestinians indiscriminately. But is Pakistan what Palestine is?
Pakistan is a sovereign state in existence and a member of the United Nations. The state of Palestine is yet to appear and take a physical shape. The kind of rift between Israel and Palestine is anchored on legitimate demand for the statehood of an uprooted people. India and Pakistan are already two independent states resulting from the partition of India via an established international covenant. The incident of Mumbai is no parallel to the deep rooted and historical conflict between Israel and the Palestinian nation.
The 9/11 event is also no match to the Mumbai incident. The 9/11 event is a mega sized act of terrorism and the Mumbai is a much smaller local event. The United States has not been able to conclusively establish the identities of the 9/11 perpetrators. Similarly the Indian government had been far from being candid and unambiguous about the individuals or backdoor abettors actually responsible for the Mumbai carnage or attack on the parliament
But the whole context and narrative of the Indian blame game against Pakistan turns upside down after the submission of the statement by the Indian secret service operative in the Indian Supreme Court. It is for the international community to understand the Indian diabolic designs for staging such clandestine vicious operations and then putting blame on Pakistan.
An objective assessment would lead a dispassionate observer to the conclusion that no matter how much Pakistan stoops low before the Indian conditionalities for peaceful coexistence, India would not relent in asking for more. The reason is that Pakistan has always been a thorn in the side of India. India displayed its historic animus towards Pakistan by dismembering the latter in 1971.
There cannot be a more sublime cause than to go down fighting for safeguarding the national honor and territorial integrity. But if Pakistan surrenders hands down, history will judge Pakistani leaders as spineless betrayers to a country and a nation that was carved out with a dogged spirit for freedom despite a combined opposition and treachery from Indians and the British imperialists.
Let Pakistan fight on all fronts and fight to the last. To procure peace by becoming a protégé and a client state of India is ignominious and must be discarded. It’s time to talk plainly also to the Americans to not drag us too much in a quagmire that would ultimately devour us as a united country. However if genuine desire on the part of India for making durable peace with Pakistan is discernible then there may be no harm in giving such an effort yet another trial.
The writer is a senior journalist, former editor of Diplomatic Times and a former diplomat
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Posted by admin in India Secessionist Movements, India Splitting on June 3rd, 2013
By AMAN SHARMA
PUBLISHED: 14:34 EST, 8 May 2012 | UPDATED: 19:43 EST, 9 May 2012
On Tuesday, the government officially put a figure to the number of armed Naxal cadre as huge as 46,600. To fight them, nearly 94,000 paramilitary personnel have been posted in nine Naxal-hit states.
On top of that, nearly 1 lakh policemen are battling the Naxals in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand – two of the worst hit states.
Maoists get weapon training at an undisclosed location
But the numerical supremacy is no guarantee for success; the government seems to be still losing the ‘war’ against the Naxals.
In the past two years, the Maoists killed 483 security men while losing only 286 of their cadre. Home minister P. Chidambaram recently said there were 78 battalions – each comprising 1,200 men – of the CRPF, BSF, SSB and ITBP posted in various states to fight the Naxals.
This strength rose from just 37 battalions posted when he took over the ministry in 2009. ‘According to current estimates, the strength of the hardcore Naxals in the country is around 8,600.
In addition, there are around 38,000 ‘jan militia’, who carry rudimentary arms and also provide logistic support to the core group of the People Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA) of the CPI (Maoist),’ minister of state in the home ministry, Jitendra Singh, said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
A senior home ministry official claimed that this figure is based on inputs of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), interrogation reports of certain top Naxal leaders arrested over the past two years and seized Maoist literature.
‘Currently, neither the Maoists nor the security forces are in a position to overwhelm each other. The Maoists, however, have an edge because of the topography of the hideouts in deep forests,’ the official added.
The Maoist ‘army’ is reportedly made up of three components: the main force, a secondary force and a base force.
The main force has companies, platoons and special action teams besides an intelligence unit. The secondary force comprises special guerilla squads, while the base force is made up of the ‘jan militia’.
The main force is armed with AK-47s and INSAS rifles, mostly looted from the security forces. The lowerlevel Maoist cadre use double-barrel and single-barrel guns apart from countrymade weapons.
Their arms of choice, however, are claymore landmines to blow up vehicles. Former UP DGP and ex-BSF chief Prakash Singh said: ‘Though we are fighting a mini-army, its strength is not so daunting that it cannot be overwhelmed. It is possible to disintegrate it if there is the political will to do so.’
The bullet-ridden body of assistant police inspector Kruparam Majhi was found at a village about 22 km from Nuapada town in Orissa on Tuesday.
He was abducted by a group of Maoists from the outskirts of Dharmbandha village close to Chhattisgarh border while escorting a water tanker to the CRPF camp at Godhas where a combing operation was going on.
The news of the 40-yearold police officer’s death was confirmed by Nuapada subdivisional police officer (SDPO), Prafulla Kumar Patro. Although the police blamed the Maoists, no rebel group has so far claimed responsibility for the incident.
The incident comes just days after the Maoists released BJD legislator Jhina Hikaka, more than a month after they had kidnapped him.
Rakesh Dixit
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2141490/War-Maoist-army-46K-strong-winning.html#ixzz2V8gT728w
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