India - Recognizing Pakistan’s Paradigm Shift, by Shairee Malhotra

India - Recognizing Pakistan’s Paradigm Shift, by Shairee Malhotra

India’s new government must acknowledge the change in internal Pakistani politics, and be innovative.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to leaders of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries to attend his swearing-in ceremony has been termed a “foreign policy masterstroke.” The highlight was arguably Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s attendance, despite a delay in accepting the invitation.

Modi’s BJP party has in the past criticized the ex-UPA government’s Pakistan policy as too soft, and had vowed in the run-up to elections to take a tough stance against Pakistan. However, Indian leaders must recognize the psychological underpinnings of the Pakistani state, which is central to taming the famously fractious relationship.

Pakistan’s military has built the identity of the Pakistani state in opposition to India, and this perpetuation and sustainment of the Indian threat is what has made the Pakistan Army the most powerful and omnipresent institution in its polity. This siege mentality has legitimized its rule in the eyes of ordinary Pakistanis and enabled it to extract the exorbitant funding and revenues that it does, consequently derailing pro-democracy forces and civil society. The military’s unprecedented monopoly over Pakistani politics, and the inflated revenue that the myth of the Indian threat derives explains the lack of incentive for the army to better relations with India.

While a tough line on Pakistan may have been appropriate for New Delhi a few years ago, in recent years the state of affairs seems to have somewhat altered. There is a growing realization in Pakistan that India no longer poses the largest threat to the country, and in this realization lies Pakistan’s greatest hope of becoming a “normal” country, and not the dysfunctional security state that it currently is. The biggest security risks are those stemming from within the country, and not from external sources like India, a realization that frames the military as part of the problem, rather than the solution. Perhaps nothing can better capture Pakistan’s miscalculations and militancy culture than Mohsin Hamid’s catchphrase, “To fight India, we fought ourselves.”

The Army itself is starting to see the light; evident in its new doctrine’s shift in threat assessment, as militant groups they once propelled turn against the state and attack its security apparatuses. According to acclaimed Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid, “The anti-India rhetoric that has been part of Pakistan’s entire make-up for over 50 years has now dramatically altered even within the army, which recognizes that we have to deal with the Taliban threat.” Indeed, even Pakistan’s feared Inter-Services Intelligence has acknowledged that homegrown militants have surpassed India as Pakistan’s greatest threat.

Additionally, there is a growing perception that engaging with India is an opportunity to resuscitate Pakistan’s stagnant economy, as evident in Islamabad’s recent overtures to New Delhi on liberalized trade deals, as well as its three-year economic reform agenda program with the IMF that emphasizes trade ties with India.

The new Indian government needs to acknowledge this gradual and much-needed change in Pakistani mindset; and adopting a tough posture towards Pakistan, something that many in India believe to be imperative and long overdue, would be the wrong step for the new government to take. Thus, Modi’s move to invite leaders of neighbouring countries, including Nawaz Sharif, has been pragmatic and welcomed.

As Shekhar Gupta of the Indian Express concedes, “Many Pakistan-watchers, particularly in India, allow our contempt, fear and distrust of the Pakistani army to so cloud our judgment, we fail to see a fundamental, and virtuous change.” Pakistan Punjab’s Chief Minister Najam Sethi stated in an interview with CNN-IBN’s Karan Thapar, “The Pakistani Army no longer considers India to be an existential threat. The paradigm in this country is changing and the sooner the people of India and the Indian establishment realize this, the better it will be for the peace process.”

“Getting tough” will not be a viable approach to deal with a neighbor that has historically operated on the paranoia premise that India’s prime aim is to destroy it. Jingoistic language and calls for sterner belligerent action on the part of Indian leaders, even in the event of a terrorist attack, are self-defeating; and risk a reversal of this welcomed change in attitude in Pakistan. They will only exacerbate the situation and play right into the hands of the Army, sustaining its ubiquitous status. Suspension of talks should not be an option, as this will only satisfy militants and Islamist hardliners that their destabilization tactics are working. The new BJP government must accurately gauge the situation and envisage the overall direction of its Pakistan policy, rather than respond to events in an episodic and ad-hoc manner as the previous government did.

Pakistan is a complex country with several centers of powers – the Army, the civilian establishment, the ISI, religious groups, and extremist forces. Sharif’s delay in confirming his presence at Modi’s ceremony, and the recent Taliban attack on the Indian consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, demonstrate the complexities. India needs to be aware that such activities will continue because several players in Pakistan are averse to good relations with India. However, this must not stop the Modi government from continuing to seek closer ties with a Pakistan that is growing out of its existential negative perception of India.

India-Pakistan relations are at a pivotal point in history. As India experiences a change of guard in New Delhi, the first Pakistan government to experience a transfer of power from one civilian regime to another is marking a year in office. The timing is good for the bilateral relationship to move beyond conventional differences, and capitalize on the enormous economic potential of the relationship. India must adopt a constructive and robust, rather than belligerent and reckless, approach to Pakistan, especially in light of this progressive narrative change in internal Pakistani politics. It must be innovative in “normalizing” its relations with Pakistan and review other tactics, including collaborative attempts with other states to diplomatically pressure and stabilize Pakistan, support for civilian structures and accelerated economic engagement. Under the leadership of an assertive and dynamic Modi, India is now well positioned to take these steps.

Shairee Malhotra works at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations in Mumbai, India. She has an MA in International Relations from Queen Mary, University of London. 

 http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/india-recognizing-pakistans-paradigm-shift/

Gilgit Baltistan- Nexus of a New Asian Economic Corridor, by Senge H. Sering

Gilgit Baltistan- Nexus of a New Asian Economic Corridor, by Senge H. Sering    June 05, 2014

Both Pakistan and India are showing signs of opening this remote area to trade and investment.

History was made the day Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, flew to New Delhi to attend the swearing in of India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Both leaders are proponents of open borders and the growth of South-Central Asia (SCA) trade. In the past, both countries have formulated policies to promote trade corridors, whose benefit extended to Afghanistan as well. Further, Pakistan enjoys trade relations with its other neighbors, Iran and China. However, the last remaining regions yet to benefit from open borders are Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan and Ladakh in India.

Gilgit-Baltistan and Ladakh – with a combined area larger than Syria – is a resource-rich landscape of multiple ethno-linguistic heritages. Surrounded by Afghanistan, China, India and Pakistan, this region’s strategic value has been understood for centuries as the crossroads between east and west. The capital of Gilgit-Baltistan, Gilgit, and the capital of Ladakh, Leh, both lie on the ancient Silk Road and have played a role as the sole hub cities connecting Punjab, Tibet, Xinjiang and Russia. In modern times, Gilgit-Baltistan has the potential to provide a critical linkage between resource-rich Central Asia and the Middle East with eager consumer markets in India and China. Further, impact studies suggest great demand for tourism in this Himalayan area, which is renowned among Western mountaineers and adventurers. Reviving commerce, tourism and culture through the mountainous corridors of Gilgit-Baltistan and Ladakh will therefore have a lasting impact on the Eurasian continent.

However, many experts have noted the Pakistani military leadership’s continued ambivalence, despite popular demand in Gilgit-Baltistan and Ladakh to revive links through the Skardo-Kargil, Chorbat-Nubra, Gultari-Drass and Astore-Srinagar roads. An estimated 300,000 individuals are affected by the closure of these roads. Locals protest the singling out of their regions for continued economic and cultural isolation at a time when trade is opening between India and Pakistan in the provinces of Sindh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Kashmir.

Many locals have said that the Line of Control (LOC) dividing Gilgit-Baltistan and Ladakh is akin to the Berlin War. They point to the U.N. United Declaration of Human Rights, which entitles every society, through national effort and international cooperation, to economic, social and cultural freedom. The Declaration clarifies that the state, in accordance with its organization and its resources, must ensure each member of its society benefits from this protection. Pakistan’s effort to open trade in other corridors along the Indo-Pakistani border clearly shows the nation has the means to do so, yet lacks the will to accommodate the people of Gilgit-Baltistan.

The barriers established since 1948 have forced locals to protest, often bringing tens of thousands of people into the streets. On May 22 this year, thousands of people once again poured into the streets and clashed with police, leading to 10 injured including local leader, Syed Haider Shah, who campaigns under the banner “Open Borders Movement (OBM).”

OBM has popular support among numerous sections of Gilgit-Baltistan, including Ladakh’s refugees residing in Pakistan. Much like the situation between North and South Korea, multiple generations of families have sought reunification to no avail. Sensing that a cross-LOC trade revival is a popular household slogan in Gilgit-Baltistan, the Awami Action Committee (AAC), a conglomerate of 22 local political parties, also adopted this demand in its charter. In the past three months, the AAC has staged successful sit-ins, commercial shutdowns, and large demonstrations in all seven districts of Gilgit-Baltistan, with the intent to pressure the Pakistani government to heed to their demands.

Sharif, in his previous tenures, made efforts to open the Skardo-Kargil route with support from the then prime minister of India, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He is expected to succeed this time, in an important initiative projected to bring economic renewal to hundreds of thousands of people. During a recent talk with Vajpayee, Sharif expressed the desire to pick up the thread of their earlier peace dialogue from the 1990s. One also sees light at the end of the tunnel after the BJP’s vice president, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, whose party came to power with a landslide victory, called the opening of the Skardo-Kargil road a regional priority. If Pakistan’s military continues to support Sharif, then both leaders are on their way to create an important legacy for the people of SCA, and lasting ties between the two countries.

Senge H. Sering comes from Gilgit-Baltistan and currently runs the Washington D.C. based Institute for Gilgit Baltistan Studies.

http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/gilgit-baltistan-nexus-of-a-new-asian-economic-corridor/

Is China losing Hong Kong?

Is China losing Hong Kong?

JUNE 5, 2014

As tens of thousands of people converged on Hong Kong’s Victoria Park on Wednesday night for an annual ceremony of remembrance and protest over the events of June 4, 1989, it was natural to wonder whether China wasn’t losing the battle to win over the people of Hong Kong.

Under the terms of the territory’s handover from British rule in 1997, China promised significant autonomy under the “one country, two systems” model. At the time, many here were happy to see the British go, but that sentiment has since gradually eroded.

China has promised the territory universal suffrage and genuine democracy in 2017, when the job of chief executive, the most powerful political role in Hong Kong, next comes up for grabs.

But many here fear that Beijing will fix the contest, to ensure one of its local allies wins. There are also growing concerns that China is gradually diluting Hong Kong’s cherished civil liberties and media freedom, while a massive influx of tourists and immigrants from mainland China has caused growing local resentment.

The resentment undermines any hope Beijing might have of persuading the people of Taiwan to ever join mainland China under a similar “one country, two systems” model, and it is a constant reminder of a democratic spirit among Chinese people that refuses to go away.

Those emotions were very visibly on show Wednesday. Organizers said 180,000 people converged on Victoria Park to remember the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people died at the hands of the Chinese military. If that estimate of the crowd was accurate, it would represent the largest gathering at the annual ceremony. Sadness at events that occurred 25 years ago is gradually being replaced by anger.

People held up candles as organizers read an elegy to those who died, and they chanted their desire to end one-party dictatorship and build a democratic China, as well as bring to account those responsible for the killings.

Wearing bandannas that read “hope is with the people, change begins through struggle,” student leaders said the Chinese Communist Party was scared of its own people. But they also drew a direct link between events in China in 1989 and their own struggle for democracy now.

“Hong Kong people should stand up for democracy,” said student leader Zhou Wing Hong. “Democracy in Hong Kong is also threatened terribly, just like it was in China in 1989.”

Organizers said that although the Communist Party was using “every means at their disposal… to eradicate everything that is June 4,” they would continue the struggle indefinitely.

 “We can never accept that a Chinese regime massacred its young, slanders them as rioters, refuses to admit guilt and rejects responsibility to seek the truth,” a leading member of the organizing alliance, Mak Hoi Wah, said in an elegy to the dead.

Organizers vowed to the crowd — which included people of all ages —that they would pass “the spirit” of the protest on to the next generation.

“The evil claw of communist dictatorship is digging its way into our city, suppressing freedom, stepping up interference, manipulating the promised democratic elections,” organizing chairman Lee Cheuk Yan said in a “declaration” during the ceremony. “Hong Kong’s way out lies in forceful resistance in defense of our liberty, human rights, the rule of law and a genuine election system. We must also rise in support of our Chinese brethren in their struggle for these same values. The struggle is a common struggle: to pass on the baton of universal civilizing values to the next generation, to work for the end of one-party dictatorship and to build a democratic China.”

A  torch was lighted as people repeated their determination to “fight to the end” and bring democracy to China. Then people bowed their heads for a moment of silence as mournful music was played.

For the first time Wednesday, a pro-Beijing group tried to organize a rival event — screening a video just outside the park purporting to show “the truth of June 4.” It claimed that protesters had seized weapons, shot soldiers dead and set military vehicles on fire. Images of bleeding soldiers and burning tanks were shown. But no one seemed to pay any attention, with a few dozen armed police officers guarding the video screen. Journalists far outnumbered onlookers. Those who stopped were unimpressed.

“It is twisted history,” said a 63-year-old businessman, who said he had immigrated to Canada after 1989 and gave his name only as L. K. “My children have grown up enjoying democracy and are very open-minded.”

Later, protesters jeered at the video, which was still playing on a loop, as they left the park and headed home on the metro.

Washington Post

http://tacstrat.com/content/index.php/2014/06/05/is-china-losing-hong-kong/

MQM - has the machine begun to creak? By Nadeem F. Paracha

MQM - has the machine begun to creak?
By Nadeem F. Paracha

The future of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement is at best uncertain, but not necessarily bleak. Ever since the late 1980s, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has aptly been described as ‘a well-oiled electoral machine’.

In Karachi – the country’s largest city and an MQM stronghold – the party’s electoral dynamics have evolved in such a manner that during national and provincial elections, most of what is required to run a successful campaign and contest an election begins to almost automatically fall into place.

Same is the case now with the protest aspect of the party’s politics. The city of Karachi begins to shut down even before (or any) call for a shutdown or a strike is given by the party, and when Karachiites believe that an event has occurred that might ruffle the party’s feathers.

In both circumstances, the MQM operates like a machine that automatically gets switched on to do the needful during an election or a protest. Much of the city of Karachi falls in line, as if instinctively.

Unlike the populist Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), that has always had an overriding degree of spontaneity and an impulse in its ranks and support, the MQM is quite the opposite.

The MQM is a highly structured and well-organised unit that, ironically, is a counterpoint to the chaotic nature of the sprawling metropolis it draws a bulk of its support from.

The party’s edifice and inner-workings reflect the psychological and emotional disposition of the man who formed it – first in 1978 as a student organisation and then in 1984 as a mainstream political party: Altaf Hussain.

For long most of the people who worked closely with Altaf Hussain have considered him to be a ‘control freak;’ a man who is obsessed with maintaining discipline and order in the party – two things that for more than three decades now have eluded the city in which his party is a major political force.

Altaf Hussain: Obsessed with discipline?
But Karachi’s topsy-turvy and edgy nature is not entirely missing in the party’s temperament.

The constant flux that this city’s politics, economics and sociology are always in, has often seen the MQM use its strict disciplinary and organised aspects to systematically swamp, encircle and then absorb anything emerging from this flux, whether as a political and economic advantage to be gained or as a perceived threat to the party’s supremacy in the city.

Karachi: Edgy and chaotic.
In the first few years of its existence or between 1984 and 1992, its rise as a Mohajir (Urdu-speaking) nationalist party was so dramatic and sudden, that it’s early electoral sweeps in Karachi and the consequent political and economic resurgence of the middle and lower-middle-class Urdu-speakers of Karachi, left most of the party’s potential detractors shell shocked.

Since Karachi’s resources and ethnic balance had begun to come under great stress due to the unchecked influx of a large number of Afghan refugees in the early 1980s who had begun to pour in after Pakistan hopped into the Afghan Civil War, the crime rate and incidents of sectarian and ethnic violence in the city witnessed an almost three-fold growth and jump.

By the mid-1980s, Karachi, once called the ‘city of lights’ and ‘gateway to Asia,’ and a popular destination to do business in and seek out all kinds of modern pleasures, had become acerbic.

Its once radiant and famous cosmopolitan veneer began to erode, giving birth to a rumbling dark underbelly feeding on an anarchic black economy that revolved around guns, drugs, kidnapping and murder.

Suspicion and paranoia gripped the city’s populace, as one ethnic group began to accuse the other of trying to marginalise them and steal the city’s dwindling economic resources.

It was during this creeping malaise that the MQM was born.

A party that claimed to look after the economic and political interests of the Mohajirs in a city where they were the majority ‘ethnic’ group but supposedly being sidelined through violence and economic malpractice by the Punjabis and the Pukhtuns.

It was thus only natural for the party to get infected by certain side-effects of the malaise that it was born into. That’s why the party’s highly disciplined and organised electoral popularity and presence ran parallel to a more elusive and darker manifestation of its agenda.

The MQM’s sudden popularity also came with a heightened sense of paranoia; a feeling that the party had to grow a militant wing as well if it is to retain its political gains in an environment where the state and the government seemed helpless to contain Karachi’s changing rules of business.

These rules did not emerge from the parliament, a court of law or from a government’s cabinet. They had evolved from the city’s new underbelly.

In 1992, the state finally decided to step in.

By then, the MQM’s street power, electoral supremacy and militancy had all become willing hostages to the power plays between the country’s two major parties, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the moderate right-wing, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

The MQM thought it was being clever by extracting economic and political influence for itself by jumping to and fro between these two parties as they, apart from fighting each other, were also locked in a complex tussle for power with intelligence agencies trying to influence electoral politics in Pakistan.


Altaf Hussain with PPP Chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, in 1989.

With PML-N leader, Nawaz Sharif in 1992.
Throughout the 1990s this complex wrangle saw the fall of two PPP and two PML-N governments, the ouster of two ‘establishmentarian’ Presidents, and a growing rift between the military and the politicians.

It also saw Pakistan reeling from a collapsing economy, ethnic violence and a more intense and ferocious rise of sectarian and sub-sectarian violence.

But did the MQM benefit from a tactic that it thought was a clever ploy?

Instead, between 1992 and 1999, it faced at least three full-fledged operations by the military, para-military and police forces.

Its legitimate electoral rise, as well as its many illegitimate militant attributes began to be seen as parasitic and problematic by the government and the state and they set out to clear Karachi from this freakish political anomaly that, interestingly, was still an awkward enigma and hard to understand outside of Sindh and beyond the province’s troubled capital, Karachi.

A grandmother of a slain MQM worker wails over his body during the first operation against the party in 1992.
Contributing to this lack of understanding was not really the fact that (during the three operations against the MQM), the PPP and PML-N governments and state agencies had constantly highlighted only the more militant dimensions of the MQM through state-owned media.

What was more confusing to understand for those living outside of Sindh’s two largest cities, Karachi and Hyderabad, was the whole notion of ‘Mohajir nationalism’ upon which the MQM was founded and due to which it attracted support in the Mohajir-majority areas of Sindh.

After all, unlike the country’s four major ethnicities (Punjabi, Sindhi, Pukhtun and Baloch), the Urdu-speakers were not an ethnic whole with a shared history, culture, myths or, since a majority of Mohajirs had migrated from India to Pakistan, they were not ‘people of the soil.’

The two greatest waves of Mojairs (which in Urdu means refugees), that migrated to Pakistan after its creation in 1947 came from various parts of North India and East Punjab.

The Urdu-speakers among them mostly settled in Sindh, whereas the Punjabi-speakers entered the Pakistan side of Punjab.

The Urdu-speakers came from various parts of India that were distinct in their respective cultures. That’s why conceiving them as an ethnic whole was problematic and even improbable.

During the first two decades of Pakistan’s creation, the Urdu-speakers rose to become an integral part of the country’s initial elite classes (along with the Punjabis). But from the early 1960s onwards they were nudged out by the Pukhtuns in this respect and found themselves feeling scattered and lost.

Though socially their disposition was liberal, in the absence of having a cohesive ethnic identity in a country where ethnic politics was gaining strength, the Mohajirs politically aligned themselves with the conservative groups that were repulsed by ethnic politics and explained Pakistan as a united national entity held together by a common majority religion.

This arrangement lasted till the late 1970s and it was also the reason that had created the contradictory anomaly in Karachi that saw the liberal and cosmopolitan city of Karachi vote for right-wing religious and conservative parties in elections.

But all that began to change with the emergence of the MQM.

The Mohajir dichotomy between social liberalism and political conservatism was dissolved and replaced with a new identity-narrative concentrating on the formation of Mohajir nationalism that was socially and politically liberal but fiscally conservative and provincial in outlook.

The project was a success; first expressed in the manner the MQM broke the electoral hold of religious parties in Karachi and the subsequent invention of the Mohajirs of Sindh as a distinct ethnic group.

By 1992, the MQM had become Sindh’s second largest political party (second to the PPP).

A 1990s poster.
But as the city’s economics and resources continued to come under stress due to the increasing migration to the city from within Sindh, KP and the Punjab, corruption in the police and other government institutions operating in Karachi grew two-fold.

The need to use muscle to tilt the political and economic facets of the city towards a community’s interests became prominent.

Thus emerged the so-called militant wings in the city’s prominent political groups.

These cleavages saw the MQM ghettoising large swaths of the city’s Mohajirs in areas where it ruled supreme.

The results were disastrous. It replaced the pluralistic and enterprising disposition of the Mohajirs with a besieged mentality that expressed itself in an awkwardly violent manner attracting the concern and then the wrath of the state and two governments (in the 1990s).
In 2002, the MQM began to regenerate itself after the crises of the preceding decade when it decided to end hostilities with the state by allying itself with the General Musharraf dictatorship (1999-2008).

The party now added two more dimensions to Mohajir nationalism.

It began to explain the Mohajirs as ‘Urdu-speaking Sindhis’ who were connected to the Sindhi-speakers of the province in a spiritual bond emerging from the teachings of Sindh’s ‘patron saint’, Shah Abdul Latif.

This was MQM’s way of resolving the Mohajirs’ early failures to fully integrate into Sindhi culture.

The other dimension that emerged during this period among the Mohajir community (through the MQM), was to address the disposition of the Mohajir identity in the (urban) Mohajir-majority areas of Sindh.

This dimension explains Mohajir nationalism in the context of Pakistan’s status of being a Muslim-majority state.

It expresses Mohajir nationalism through a version of socio-political liberalism based on the modern reworking of 19th century ‘rational and progressive Islam’ (of the likes of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan). It sees spiritual growth as a consequence of material growth (derived from modern free enterprise, science, the arts and the consensual de-politicisation of faith).

On the ground, MQM’s success as a constructive party during the Musharraf regime saw the party largely neutralising its so-called militant wings. But whereas this helped Karachi to enjoy a much-awaited spat of progress and peace during this period, it also opened up spaces for various other political groups to replace MQM’s hegemony in the city’s underbelly.

When the country’s economy began to slide again in 2007, the economic boom of the early 2000s in Karachi had already attracted an unprecedented number of migrants from the Punjab, KP and from within Sindh.

The gloss of Musharraf’s regime began to evaporate and Karachi’s resources once again came under duress.

A struggling legitimate economy again gave way to the dictates of the underbelly that was now populated by those who had begun to nudge out the MQM factor and hold over those instruments and businesses that the underbelly uses to draw money and political patronage in a collapsing economy.

The MQM’s response was one of panic and of a sudden realisation that the Mojair majority in Karachi had shrunk from being 51 per cent in 1981 to 48 per cent in 1998 to approximately 41 per cent in 2008.

Though the MQM was part of the PPP-led coalition government that followed Musharraf’s ouster, its street-power in the city had begun to be usurped by the more clandestine militant arms of the PPP and the Pukhtun nationalist party, the ANP. The ANP had become a minor force in Karachi because the Pukhtun population in Karachi now stood at about 20 per cent.

Desperate to regroup itself to retrieve what it had lost in the city’s underbelly during the Musharraf regime, the MQM behaved rather erratically as a coalition partner.

Then, after 2010, the situation in Karachi became even worse when sectarian and extremist organisations began to set up their own shady shops in the city.

The ANP’s influence was almost wiped out by the strong-armed tactics of these groups and the PPP’s elusive militant group began being ripped apart by vicious infighting.

As the more aggressive new entrants in Karachi’s underbelly continue to strengthen their hold over whatever assets and profits the city’s illegitimate sides have to offer, the MQM has gone into a tailspin.

Cracks have begun to appear within the party’s leadership. Some want it to continue evolving the way it was during the Musharraf regime, whereas some want it to revive itself as a purely Mohajir nationalist party.

The future of the party is at best uncertain, but not necessarily bleak. Because not only did it survive a decade of crackdowns in the 1990s, its electoral machine still seems well-oiled and highly functional.

http://defence.pk/threads/mqm-has-the-machine-begun-to-creak.317583/

China again rejects legal challenge

China again rejects legal challenge
Thursday, June 5th, 2014
MANILA, Philippines –The United Nations arbitral tribunal has ordered China to defend its territorial claims in the South China Sea by submitting evidence within six months despite Beijing’s refusal to respond to the Philippines’ legal challenge to those sweeping claims.

The UN Permanent Court of Arbitration said in a statement issued in The Hague on Tuesday that the arbitral tribunal had directed China to submit by Dec. 15 its response to the Philippine memorandum submitted on March 30, detailing its case that seeks to nullify the Chinese claims and clarify maritime entitlements in the disputed waters.

It was the first international case filed against China related to territorial disputes in the 3.5-million-square-kilometer sea where islands, islets, reefs and shoals are believed to be sitting atop vast oil and gas reserves.

China has rejected the order, saying it has no plans to take part.

Aside from China and the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam claim overlapping parts of the South China Sea, with Beijing saying it has sovereignty over virtually all of the resource-rich waters. China’s disputes with the Philippines and Vietnam have worsened recently, especially after it deployed an oil rig early last month in waters also claimed by Hanoi, sparking violent anti-China protests in Vietnam.

Next armed conflict

There have been fears the territorial disputes could spark Asia’s next armed conflict, although analysts say a major fight is unlikely given that major instability could shatter the region’s bullish economies.

Beijing’s aggressive moves in the disputed waters, which straddle one of the world’s busiest sea lanes, were “dangerous conduct and intimidation” that rachets tension and could undermine the economically vibrant region, said US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzky, who is visiting Manila with American business executives.

China has warned the United States to stop meddling.

It has said all along it will not participate in the arbitration proceedings initiated by the Philippines in January last year, preferring a bilateral approach to resolve the conflicts.

Beijing informed the tribunal on May 21 that it “does not accept the arbitration initiated by the Philippines” and that its issuance of a comment on the case should “not be regarded as China’s acceptance of or participation in the proceedings.”

Philippine officials on Wednesday reiterated a call to China to join the arbitration as a peaceful and durable solution to resolve the long-raging territorial disputes.

China’s stance unchanged

Charles Jose, spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs, said, “We continue to urge China to reconsider its decision not to participate in the arbitration proceedings. We also wish to reiterate that arbitration is a peaceful, open and friendly resolution mechanism that offers a durable solution to the disputes in the South China Sea.”

But China’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Beijing’s “stance of not accepting and not participating in the relevant Philippines’ arbitration case has not changed.”

The Philippines is seeking confirmation of its right to exploit waters within a 370-km exclusive economic zone, as allowed under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, its lawyers have said.

In giving China time to respond to the Philippines’ filing, the tribunal said on Monday that it was fulfilling its obligation to assure each party “a full opportunity to be heard and to present its case.”

The UN tribunal issued the order after a meeting at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the Netherlands, on May 14 and 15, or a month and a half since Manila submitted its memorandum.

Tribunal’s jurisdiction

As the tribunal described it, the document covers “matters relating to the jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal, the admissibility of the Philippines’ claim, as well as the merits of the dispute.”

Noting China’s May 21 rejection, the tribunal suggested it would continue hearing the Philippine complaint even without Beijing’s involvement.

“The arbitral tribunal will determine the further course of the proceedings, including the need for, and scheduling of any other written submissions and hearings, at an appropriate later stage, after seeking the views of the parties,” the tribunal said.

The Philippine case asks the UN tribunal to invalidate China’s “nine-dash-line” claim over the South China Sea. That refers to a rough Chinese demarcation on its official maps of its territorial claims that cover virtually the entire South China.

The Philippines charges that the nine-dash-line claim is an “excessive declaration of territory” that extends well beyond China’s exclusive economic zone, encroaching on the West Philippine Sea, part of the South China Sea within Manila’s own economic exclusion zone.

If China continues to shun the arbitral panel, the tribunal is likely to schedule a hearing and rule based solely on the Philippines’ pleading.

“China has a right to be heard, that’s why the court issued the procedural order. If they will still refuse to participate, the court might decide based on the Philippines’ submission,” Jose said.

International support

The Philippines’ legal action has gained support from the international community, including allies the United States and Japan, for being a peaceful means to resolve the increasingly tense territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

The Philippine arbitration case is closely watched by the other claimant states, including Vietnam, which last month said it was considering legal action against China after Beijing moved a deep-water oil rig into the East Sea, part of the South China Sea within Hanoi’s exclusive economic zone.

China earlier said that the Philippine legal action has “seriously damaged” relations between Manila and Beijing.–With a report from AP

UN court tells Beijing: Prove your sea claims | Inquirer Global Nation

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China is clearly a coward for backing out in the international tribunal. They want to settle the issue by bullying and brute force not through the peaceful means of arbitration based on international law. They are trying to deceive the world by claiming excessive territories based on their own flimsy historical accounts. China knows their deceitful claim could not win in international arbitration and obviously, would not want to participate to lose. Especially because if it lose the case to the Philippines, it will automatically lose to the other claimants. 

http://defence.pk/threads/un-court-tells-beijing-prove-your-sea-claims.317582/

A New Great Wa:r What the Wests experimentation may trigger

A New Great War: What the Wests experimentation may trigger

 – JUNE 4, 2014   BY PETER APPS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – After more than a decade focused on combating Islamist militancy, Western military planners are once again contemplating potential war between major powers – and how to prevent one happening by accident.

Although the Cold War rivalry with Moscow has never been forgotten, current and former Western officials say Russia’s annexation of Crimea has NATO powers tearing up strategic assumptions and grimly considering both conventional and nuclear fights.

As late as March, most NATO powers – with the exception of eastern members such as the Baltic States long worried by Moscow – had assumed Europe itself faced no imminent military threat.

It is still the case that few believe Russia would attack any NATO state, but, in order to deter, Western officials say they must consider and plan for the contingency.

The threat to U.S. allies in the Pacific from a stronger China has also focused military minds on how to contain the risks there, and ensure any localized conflict does not spill over into global war.

In a major foreign policy speech at the West Point military academy last month, President Barack Obama spoke mostly on counterterrorism and the Afghanistan withdrawal. But while he said the risk from other nations was now much lower than before the Berlin Wall fell, he made clear it still existed.

“Regional aggression that goes unchecked, whether in southern Ukraine or the South China Sea or anywhere else in the world, will ultimately impact our allies and could draw in our military,” he told graduating cadets.

Tensions with Moscow and Beijing have increased faster than almost anyone in government in Washington expected. They are expected to dominate a meeting between Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Normandy for the 70th anniversary of D-Day later this week.

Last weekend’s annual Shangri-La Dialogue strategic conference in Singapore, meanwhile, showcased the growing gulf between Washington and Beijing on issues from regional maritime disputes to cyber security.

In recent weeks, current and former officials say, the Obama administration has been insistently reassuring allies and signaling foes where Washington’s true red lines are.

Washington might not be prepared to act militarily in Ukraine but an attack on a NATO state such as one of the Baltics or a formal Asian ally like Japan, the Philippines or Australia would commit it irrevocably to war. Those treaty obligations are not new, but U.S. officials say it is important to make clear that they are taken extremely seriously.

They hope that will reduce the risk of an accidental war where a state takes action wrongly assuming other powers will not respond.

“It’s not that the leadership in Russia or China is looking for a war – and the United States certainly isn’t,” says Kathleen Hicks, a U.S. undersecretary for defense until last July who now works for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“The real worry is miscalculation.”

GREAT WAR

One hundred years after the start of World War One, books on the period have become increasingly popular in Washington, Whitehall and NATO headquarters in Brussels, current and former officials say, and not purely for their historical interest.

In June 1914, the killing of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb nationalist triggered actions and alliances that brought war in barely a month.

Now, experts say flashpoints could range from a clash over disputed South China Sea islands or ethnic strife in Russia’s former Soviet neighbors to a wrongly attributed cyber attack.

Even as Washington reassures allies, Moscow and Beijing have asserted their might against Ukraine and Vietnam which lack such formal alliances. The risk, experts say, is that they become overconfident and misjudge.

“The parallels with 1914 can definitely be overstated,” said Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College.

“But they do show us that war can start through unintended consequences and an economically interdependent world does not necessarily stop it from happening.”

As in 1914, no one really knows what a modern great war would be like.

While much military thinking assumes conflict would remain conventional, nuclear powers have kept their atomic war planning up to date, maintaining target lists for mutually assured destruction, current and former officials say.

Cyber attacks, some experts say, could be almost as destructive, as could the effects on global trade in an unprecedentedly interconnected world.

Meanwhile, some of the systems supposed to prevent conflict may be starting to weaken.

WEAKENED LINKS

U.S. officials had embarked on a campaign to build formal and informal communications channels with Beijing, mimicking the hotlines and procedures set up with Russia.

Moscow and Washington have used those systems themselves in recent months to notify each other of missile tests and reconnaissance flights over each other’s territory.

Links with Russia, however, have weakened this year as NATO states canceled conferences and military exchanges with Moscow in protest at the annexation of Crimea.

Contacts with China have also deteriorated in the last month, particularly since Washington indicted five Chinese officials for cyber espionage, a charge Beijing denies.

A near collision between U.S. and Chinese warships in January, a mock Russian attack on a U.S. destroyer in the Black Sea in April and periodic confrontations between long-range bombers and other aircraft show the risks, experts warn.

Last week on Japan and China accused each other of “dangerous” and “over the top” actions after warplanes came within a few dozen meters.

Any additional challenge to the West, some analysts say, is that both Russia and China know Washington would struggle to handle simultaneous confrontations.

U.S. forces are spread around the world while Moscow’s and Beijing’s, while smaller, are almost exclusively focused on their immediate neighborhood. Since 2008, they have increased military spending 30 and 40 percent respectively, according to London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The 2012 Asia “pivot”, which saw the U.S. Navy in particular moving to increase its Pacific footprint, aimed to make crisis response easier.

In Europe, in contrast, NATO has little developed thinking beyond its post-Crimea strategy of putting small numbers of U.S. troops and jets on the frontline in eastern member states they fear Moscow might target next.

Until Ukraine, European states had viewed their primary military focus as occasional intervention, peacekeeping and counterinsurgency in the Middle East and Africa.

“We are in uncharted territory,” said one senior Western official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It means … reconstituting high end fighting skills and properly thought through doctrine for both conventional and nuclear deterrence.”

http://tacstrat.com/content/index.php/2014/06/04/a-new-great-war-what-the-wests-experimentation-may-trigger/

The Altaf Bhai losing grip, by Shirley Anderson

The Altaf Bhai losing grip, by Shirley Anderson
 – JUNE 4, 2014
Altaf Hussain must have felt untouchable when the British government decided to grant him a burgundy passport in 2002, a decade after he ran away from Pakistan to seek political asylum from the “brutality” of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s first government.

It is now widely speculated that Whitehall’s benevolence followed a letter Hussain wrote 12 days after 9/11 to then British prime minister Tony Blair, offering “unlimited resources” for human intelligence to monitor activities of madrasas, fundamentalists and Taliban-led organisations in Pakistan. He had also asked for Pakistan’s premier spy agency – the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) — to be disbanded, or “it will continue to produce many Osama bin Ladens and Talibans in future.”

Little did the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) head honcho know that he would himself blow his perceived impregnability about 10 years later, courtesy of his characteristic recklessness.

If 1992 was the most dangerous year in Hussain’s life, 2013 could safely be termed as catastrophic for his political pre-eminence. Damning media reports by leading world organisations, such as the BBC, the Guardian and the New York Times, about Hussain and his questionable activities have seriously dented his public persona. The vehemence with which his party cadre used to defend him has also decreased to an extent. He no longer remains untouchable.

Investigations were already underway against Hussain for alleged money laundering worth millions of pounds, as well as the 2010 murder of a former ally and party convener Imran Farooq, when he attracted the wrath of thousands by making an inflammatory speech after the May election, threatening to unleash violence against his opponents.

The British police had to open dedicated lines to note down complaints and issue crime reference numbers. The situation became so serious that Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the British minister responsible for Pakistan, had to state in the House of Lords: “The Metropolitan Police Service has received an unprecedented number of complaints about the alleged comments made by Mr Altaf Hussain. The metropolitan police are now formally investigating those comments and in due course will take any appropriate action.”

Reports suggesting that British authorities have gagged Hussain after his telephonic tirade are abound in the Pakistani media. They largely remain unsubstantiated. However, Hussain’s frequency to pick up the phone and rant for hours has subsided dramatically. One reason for that could be the results of the recent election wherein governments in Islamabad and Sindh do not need the MQM as an ally. It is a unique situation for a regional party that has always pillioned with power but postured as the opposition.

Farooq’s murder case might take a while to get resolved and Hussain might not be brought in on incitement-of-violence charges, but the money laundering accusation is progressing fast, seemingly to the detriment of Hussain and many of his closest aides. Recent raids on his mansion in Mill Hill, the party’s international headquarters in Edgware, and at the Acton Town house of his 70-year-old financial wizard, have made Hussain so nervous that he felt forced to pick up the phone yet again to address his followers. This time, he accused the British police and the “western establishment” of conspiring to kill him. His accusations, it appears, have not gone well with his former “protectors”.

Sibghatullah Qadri (QC), a well known barrister of Pakistani origin, whom Hussain and his comrades routinely consult on legal matters, describes the year 2013 as increasingly difficult for Hussain.
“There is no denying the fact that trouble is at his door and he may find it hard to dispel it.” Qadri opines that Hussain has only himself to blame for his troubles. “He has thrown caution to the wind. He has said things that he should not have and now he must be prepared to face the consequences. Even murderers are not killed under the British legal system. How could he accuse the police of such a conspiracy?”

Hussain is lucky, in a sense, as some of the most damning paperwork regarding his “questionable activities” is now locked away in the family division of the London High Court. Accusations made by his former wife, Faiza Gabol, in her divorce case can’t be accessed by a third party — that is, the media. But those privy to the contents of the divorce papers, privately claim Hussain had admitted to things that could further damage his politico-social credentials even amongst his staunchest supporters.

Pakistani journalists who have reported on Hussain still find it uneasy to talk about him.
“He might be down but he is definitely not out,” says one. Others say they have done enough to divert the attention of law enforcement agencies towards him. “The ball is rolling now. We have done what we could. Now it’s the responsibility of the British authorities…” quips a Pakistani journalist based in London.
Hussain’s aides, who were recently picked up by the Metropolitan Police and then released on police bail, are due back for further interrogation in early 2014. If Hussain and company succeed in avoiding the money laundering charges, there is a strong likelihood they will face the music for serious tax evasion — a crime that could make them state guests for a few years.

Shirley Anderson is a pseudonym. The writer’s real name has been withheld on request for security reasons.
http://tacstrat.com/content/index.php/2014/06/04/the-altaf-bhai-losing-grip/