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Monday, August 31, 2009
How not to capture Osama
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Sneaking US Occupation Of Islamabad
Pakistan was reported to have expelled the head of an American NGO
providing cover to Blackwater operations on Pakistani soil. Now this
deported American, Crag Davis, is back in Pakistan. And he is not
alone. Close to 2, 000 Hummers have arrived at a Pakistani port that
are not destined for Afghanistan. The world's biggest US embassy is
under construction in Islamabad. As if this is not enough, the US
embassy has hired a huge number of houses across the Pakistani capital
to serve as unofficial local franchises. Welcome to the silent
American occupation of Pakistan, with the blessing of the elected
Pakistani politicians and a silent Pakistani military.
Before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was given orders to the
contrary, press reports of August 6 show that its spokesman, Mr.
Basit, on August 5, at the Karachi Press Club, had already given out
the fact of the 1, 000 US Marines coming to Pakistan for the
protection of the new, imperial US embassy in islamabad .Now we are
seeing houses being barricaded for US personnel all across the capital
and we know of the 300 plus 'military trainers' already ensconced in
Tarbela. In addition we have the notorious Blackwater (now hiding
under a new label, Xe Worldwide) and the rather obvious CIA front-
company, Creative Associates International, Inc. (CAII), operating not
only in Peshawar but now in Islamabad also it transpires – and a
recent reflection of this was the sealing off of the road in Super
Market [a stone throw away from the houses of senior Pakistani
officials] last week right in front of a school!
Whatever the US embassy gives out or the terrified Pakistani
leadership echoes, the reality is that there is a questionable and
increasingly threatening US armed presence in Pakistan and this may be
augmented soon by an ISAF/NATO presence. Incidentally, to add to the
suspicions of the US presence, reports are coming in of around 3, 000
Hummer vehicles, fully loaded, awaiting transportation from Port
Qasim. Will some of these go to the Pentagon's assassination squads,
who may take up residence in some of the barricaded Islamabad houses
and with whom the present US commander in Afghanistan was directly
associated? Ordinary officials at Pakistani airports have also been
muttering their concerns over chartered flights flying in Americans
whose entry is not recorded – even the flight crews are not checked
for visas and so there is now no record-keeping of exactly how many
Americans are coming into or going out of Pakistan. Incidentally the
CAII's Craig Davis who was deported has now returned to Peshawar! And
let us not be fooled by the cry that numbers reflect friendship since
we know what numbers meant to Soviet satellites.
Now another threat, in the making for some time, is becoming more
overt. Pakistan's precious and fertile agricultural land is up for
grabs to the highest foreign bidder. Pakistan is not alone in being
targeted thus by rich countries with little or no food resources. The
UN has already condemned this purchase of agricultural land as a form
of neo-colonialism. Over the past five years in a hardly-noticed wave
of investment, rich agricultural land and forests in poor countries
are being snapped up by buyers from cash-rich countries. Leading this
grab of poor country resources are the rapidly industrializing states
and the oil-rich countries who have, between 2006-2009, either
directly through governments or through sovereign wealth funds and
companies, already grabbed or are in the process of grabbing between
37 to 49 million acres of developing countries' farmland (a July 2009
report by Robert Schubert of Food and Water Watch).
Wealthy countries like Japan and South Korea are acquiring farmlands
abroad for food security while oil-rich countries are seeking cheap
water and cultivated crops to be shipped home. The land buyers from
the oil-rich arid countries are seeking water as much as land because
by buying or leasing land with sufficient water, they can divert their
own domestic irrigation water to municipal water supplies. The foreign
land purchases destabilize food security since land given to foreign
investors cannot be used to produce food for local communities – the
foreign investors' intent being to take the food back to their own
food-scarce countries. Many of the land purchases comprise tens of
thousands of acres which are then turned into single-crop farms – and
these dwarf the small-scale farms common in the developing world,
where nearly nine out of ten farms (85 per cent) are less than five
acres. Such land grabs have now been recognised as harming the local
communities by dislodging smallholder farmers, aggravating rural
poverty and food insecurity. With Gulf countries importing 60 per cent
of their food on average, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are leading the
investments into Asia and Africa to secure supplies of cereals, meat
and vegetables. The rise in demand for food imports for the GCC comes
at a time when exportable agricultural surplus worldwide has declined.
How does all this impact Pakistan? Pakistan has rich agricultural land
and adequate water although the latter's distribution has been subject
to political machinations. There has also been a seemingly deliberate
effort by successive ruling elites to undermine the country's
agricultural potential and nowhere is this more brazenly evident than
at present with power outages preventing crucial water supply through
tubewells; and many rich lands being converted into housing colonies!
Then we have had artificially created sugar and wheat shortages –
'artificial' because for the last few years our wheat and sugarcane
crops have been bountiful. As for the wonderful local fruit, that is
also being diverted to feed external populations through exports that
are not only depriving the locals of their land's bounty but also
raising local prices so only the rich elite can consume what is left.
Now it has come out that we are selling land to the Gulf states,
thereby undermining our local agriculture further. Abraaj Capital and
other UAE entities have acquired 800, 000 acres of farmland in
Pakistan (we have learnt no lessons from the sale of the KESC and the
PTCL). Qatar Livestock is investing $1 billion in corporate farms in
Pakistan. But all this produce will be taken out, so the argument that
this foreign investment will bring in new technologies into our
agricultural sector does not hold. In any case, one does not have to
sell one's land to foreign forces to acquire new technology which is
available in the open market and the government can help local farmers
acquire it. Not surprisingly, the Gulf countries are pleased with
Pakistan's rulers bending over backwards to accommodate their needs at
the expense of the ordinary Pakistani – for none of the food produced
on these lands will be available cheaply for Pakistanis; it will go to
feed the Gulf populations. Gulf countries are happy because their
imported food bill will cost 20-25 per cent less, positively impacting
on their present high inflation rate. We may import this food from
them for a price, just as our government has now decided to import
sugar from the UAE. Of course the UAE itself imports sugar so the
absurdity should be abundantly clear to all, including our
profiteers!
In the visibly servile mindset of our leaders, instead of offering
incentives on a similar scale to local farmers, Islamabad is offering
legal and tax concessions, with legislative cover, to foreign
investors in the form of specialized agricultural and livestock 'free
zones' and may also introduce legislation to exempt such investors
from government-imposed tax bans. The most worrisome aspect of such
wheeling-dealing is the government's decision to develop a new
security force of 100, 000 men spread across the four provinces to
ensure stability of the Arab investments. This will cost the Pakistani
state around $2 billion in terms of training and salaries and the real
fear is that this force will be used to forcibly eject local small
farmers from their lands. Concerns have been further heightened
because no labour laws will be applicable to corporate agricultural
companies and there will be no sales tax or customs duties on import
of agricultural machinery by these investors. Nor will their dividends
be taxed and 100 per cent remittances of capital and profits will be
permitted. So where is there even an iota of advantage for the
ordinary Pakistani as opposed to the rulers?
With the US increasingly occupying Pakistan with their covert and
overt armed presence, and the Gulf states taking over our rich
agricultural lands our rulers are voluntarily making us a colony again
– as we were under the British who used our men to fight their wars
and our cheap labor to ship the finished produce back to Britain!
Have we come full circle after 62 years of our creation?
HPC 'Imran, Benazir had a roaring affair at Oxford'; Zardari’s Resignation Whispers Louder
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
2 Killings Stoke Kashmiri Rage at Indian Force
By LYDIA POLGREEN
SHOPIAN, Kashmir - On a sunny late spring afternoon, Asiya and Nilofar Jan left home to tend to their family's apple orchard. Along the way they passed a gantlet of police camps wreathed in razor wire as they crossed the bridge over the ankle-deep Rambi River.
Nilofar Jan's husband, Shakeel Ahmad Ahanger, left, with Nilofar's father. Nilofar and Asiya Jan vanished on May 29.
Little more than 12 hours later their battered bodies were found in the stream. Asiya, a 17-year-old high school student, had been badly beaten. Blood streamed from her nose and a sharp gash in her forehead. She and her 22-year-old sister-in-law, Nilofar, had been gang raped before their deaths.
The crime, and allegations of a bungled attempt by the local police to cover it up, set off months of sporadic street protests here in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. It is now the focal point for seemingly bottomless Kashmiri rage at the continuing presence of roughly 500,000 Indian security forces. The forces remain, though the violence by separatist militants whom they came here to fight in the past few years has ebbed to its lowest point in two decades.
"India says Kashmir is a free part of a free country," said Majid Khan, a 20-year-old unemployed man who has joined the stone-throwing mobs. "If that is so, why are we being brutalized? Why are women gang raped?"
India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, and the Himalayan border region remains at the heart of the 62-year rivalry between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
Settling the Kashmir dispute is crucial to unlocking the region's tensions, something the United States hopes will eliminate Pakistan's shadowy support for militant groups and allow its army to shift attention toward fighting Taliban militants.
Despite Kashmiri rage and the damage to India's image, the Indian government has bridled at any outside pressure to negotiate a solution, let alone reduce its force level here. Caught in the middle are Kashmir's 10 million people. The case of Asiya and Nilofar is only the latest abuse to strike a chord with Kashmiris, who say it is emblematic of the problems of what amounts to a full-scale occupation.
Kashmir has its own police force, but it works in close tandem with the Indian forces here and is seen by many as virtually indistinguishable from them. Four Kashmiri officers are suspected of trying to cover up the crime.
Kashmiri activists and human rights groups say that rapes by men in uniform, extrajudicial killings and a lack of redress are endemic, not least because security forces are largely shielded from prosecution by laws put in place when Indian troops were battling a once-potent insurgency here. Both local and national security forces here operate with impunity, they say.
The question for India, Kashmiris say, is whether the huge security presence is doing more harm than good.
"Maybe at some point in time when the militants were in the thousands it made sense to have so many soldiers here," said Mehbooba Mufti, leader of a major opposition party here. "But at this point they are not helping in any way. Their mere presence has become a source of friction."
Indian government officials point to statistics showing a decline in infiltration from Pakistan as proof that their tough methods have worked.
According to the government, 557 civilians died in 2005 in what the government calls "terrorist" violence in Jammu and Kashmir, which is India's full name for the area. By 2008 that number had plummeted to 91. The number of militants killed has fallen by nearly two-thirds, while the deaths of security personnel in the region have been more than halved. Where tens of thousands of armed men once roamed, government officials now estimate there are as few as 500.
Analysts say that other events have also played a role in reducing militancy and infiltration. Secret talks between India and Pakistan over Kashmir made progress but broke down in 2007, when Pakistan's president at the time, Pervez Musharraf, began losing his grip on power.
In addition, after two decades of militant separatism, in December 2008 voters ignored separatist calls for a boycott and cast ballots in huge numbers in state assembly elections. It was a hopeful sign that Kashmiris believed they could influence their destiny by peaceful means.
The election brought Omar Abdullah, the scion of Kashmir's most famous political family, to power as chief minister of the state. He promised to roll back the laws that shielded Indian security forces in Kashmir from oversight, and to put Kashmir's police force, rather than federal police and troops, at the forefront of securing the region. But that has not happened, and the details of the Shopian killings have fed the darkest and most personal fears of Kashmiris as the investigation into the deaths has stalled.
"Who does not see their wife in Nilofar, their daughter in Asiya?" said Abdul Rashid Dalal, who lives in Shopian.
Nilofar and Asiya Jan had walked to the orchard around 3:30 p.m. on Friday, May 29. When Shakeel Ahmad Ahanger, Nilofar's husband, came home at 7:30 p.m., the two had not yet returned. He went to search for them but found no trace.
By 9:30 p.m. he was frantic. He went to the police station, and along with several officers scoured their route, including the shallow bed of the Rambi River. The police called off the search at 2:30 a.m., urging Mr. Ahanger to return at daybreak. After his dawn prayers, he went back to the bridge with police officials.
"Look, there is your wife," the local police chief said to Mr. Ahanger, pointing at a body lying prone on some rocks in a dry patch in the middle of the stream.
He rushed to her, but she was dead. Her dress had been hiked up, exposing her midriff. Her body was bruised. "I knew immediately something very bad had happened to her," Mr. Ahanger said. His sister was found a mile downstream. Their bodies were taken for autopsies, but the cause of death seemed clear to residents who have longed lived in the shadow of the security forces.
"Two girls disappear next to an armed camp," said Abdul Hamid Deva, a member of a committee of elders set up in response to the killings. "Their bodies then mysteriously appear in a river next to the camp. It does not take much imagination to know what is likely to have happened."
Men at the grave of Nilofar Jan, including her father, squatting. Four officers are accused of a cover-up in the case.
Town residents gathered at the hospital for the autopsy results. Initially a doctor said the women drowned. But the crowd rejected the conclusion; the stream was barely ankle deep. Residents pelted the hospital with stones. A second team of doctors was called in. They confirmed that the women had been raped.
"What was done to these women even animals could not have done," the gynecologist who examined the women told the crowd, weeping as she spoke, according to witnesses.
Two men who had been at a shop near the bridge would later tell investigators they saw a police truck parked on the bridge and heard women crying for help.
Initially, the chief minister, Mr. Abdullah, also told reporters that the women had drowned. Later security officials said that advisers had misinformed him. A few days later he acknowledged that the women had come to harm and appointed a commission to investigate. But investigators say that crucial evidence has been lost and that they are no closer to finding the culprits despite the arrest of four local police officers on suspicion of a cover-up.
Kuldeep Khoda, the director general of Kashmir's police force, admitted that his forces had made mistakes. "There is a prima facie feeling there was destruction of evidence, whether deliberate or inadvertent," Mr. Khoda said. "The investigation is going on and the results of that investigation will come."
Indian government officials say that the security forces here are needed to head off more insurgent violence or a Pakistani invasion. "If there would not be a war that is fought by external forces, our soldiers would not be there," said a senior Indian intelligence official, referring to groups in Pakistan.
But residents of Shopian say the security forces are the only threat. "The only thing I can do now is hope justice will be done," said Mr. Ahanger, Nilofar's husband, who is struggling to care for his 2-year-old son, Suzain. "Nobody is safe in Kashmir - even a child, an elderly man, a young girl. Nobody is safe."
SHOPIAN, Kashmir - On a sunny late spring afternoon, Asiya and Nilofar Jan left home to tend to their family's apple orchard. Along the way they passed a gantlet of police camps wreathed in razor wire as they crossed the bridge over the ankle-deep Rambi River.
Nilofar Jan's husband, Shakeel Ahmad Ahanger, left, with Nilofar's father. Nilofar and Asiya Jan vanished on May 29.
Little more than 12 hours later their battered bodies were found in the stream. Asiya, a 17-year-old high school student, had been badly beaten. Blood streamed from her nose and a sharp gash in her forehead. She and her 22-year-old sister-in-law, Nilofar, had been gang raped before their deaths.
The crime, and allegations of a bungled attempt by the local police to cover it up, set off months of sporadic street protests here in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. It is now the focal point for seemingly bottomless Kashmiri rage at the continuing presence of roughly 500,000 Indian security forces. The forces remain, though the violence by separatist militants whom they came here to fight in the past few years has ebbed to its lowest point in two decades.
"India says Kashmir is a free part of a free country," said Majid Khan, a 20-year-old unemployed man who has joined the stone-throwing mobs. "If that is so, why are we being brutalized? Why are women gang raped?"
India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, and the Himalayan border region remains at the heart of the 62-year rivalry between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
Settling the Kashmir dispute is crucial to unlocking the region's tensions, something the United States hopes will eliminate Pakistan's shadowy support for militant groups and allow its army to shift attention toward fighting Taliban militants.
Despite Kashmiri rage and the damage to India's image, the Indian government has bridled at any outside pressure to negotiate a solution, let alone reduce its force level here. Caught in the middle are Kashmir's 10 million people. The case of Asiya and Nilofar is only the latest abuse to strike a chord with Kashmiris, who say it is emblematic of the problems of what amounts to a full-scale occupation.
Kashmir has its own police force, but it works in close tandem with the Indian forces here and is seen by many as virtually indistinguishable from them. Four Kashmiri officers are suspected of trying to cover up the crime.
Kashmiri activists and human rights groups say that rapes by men in uniform, extrajudicial killings and a lack of redress are endemic, not least because security forces are largely shielded from prosecution by laws put in place when Indian troops were battling a once-potent insurgency here. Both local and national security forces here operate with impunity, they say.
The question for India, Kashmiris say, is whether the huge security presence is doing more harm than good.
"Maybe at some point in time when the militants were in the thousands it made sense to have so many soldiers here," said Mehbooba Mufti, leader of a major opposition party here. "But at this point they are not helping in any way. Their mere presence has become a source of friction."
Indian government officials point to statistics showing a decline in infiltration from Pakistan as proof that their tough methods have worked.
According to the government, 557 civilians died in 2005 in what the government calls "terrorist" violence in Jammu and Kashmir, which is India's full name for the area. By 2008 that number had plummeted to 91. The number of militants killed has fallen by nearly two-thirds, while the deaths of security personnel in the region have been more than halved. Where tens of thousands of armed men once roamed, government officials now estimate there are as few as 500.
Analysts say that other events have also played a role in reducing militancy and infiltration. Secret talks between India and Pakistan over Kashmir made progress but broke down in 2007, when Pakistan's president at the time, Pervez Musharraf, began losing his grip on power.
In addition, after two decades of militant separatism, in December 2008 voters ignored separatist calls for a boycott and cast ballots in huge numbers in state assembly elections. It was a hopeful sign that Kashmiris believed they could influence their destiny by peaceful means.
The election brought Omar Abdullah, the scion of Kashmir's most famous political family, to power as chief minister of the state. He promised to roll back the laws that shielded Indian security forces in Kashmir from oversight, and to put Kashmir's police force, rather than federal police and troops, at the forefront of securing the region. But that has not happened, and the details of the Shopian killings have fed the darkest and most personal fears of Kashmiris as the investigation into the deaths has stalled.
"Who does not see their wife in Nilofar, their daughter in Asiya?" said Abdul Rashid Dalal, who lives in Shopian.
Nilofar and Asiya Jan had walked to the orchard around 3:30 p.m. on Friday, May 29. When Shakeel Ahmad Ahanger, Nilofar's husband, came home at 7:30 p.m., the two had not yet returned. He went to search for them but found no trace.
By 9:30 p.m. he was frantic. He went to the police station, and along with several officers scoured their route, including the shallow bed of the Rambi River. The police called off the search at 2:30 a.m., urging Mr. Ahanger to return at daybreak. After his dawn prayers, he went back to the bridge with police officials.
"Look, there is your wife," the local police chief said to Mr. Ahanger, pointing at a body lying prone on some rocks in a dry patch in the middle of the stream.
He rushed to her, but she was dead. Her dress had been hiked up, exposing her midriff. Her body was bruised. "I knew immediately something very bad had happened to her," Mr. Ahanger said. His sister was found a mile downstream. Their bodies were taken for autopsies, but the cause of death seemed clear to residents who have longed lived in the shadow of the security forces.
"Two girls disappear next to an armed camp," said Abdul Hamid Deva, a member of a committee of elders set up in response to the killings. "Their bodies then mysteriously appear in a river next to the camp. It does not take much imagination to know what is likely to have happened."
Men at the grave of Nilofar Jan, including her father, squatting. Four officers are accused of a cover-up in the case.
Town residents gathered at the hospital for the autopsy results. Initially a doctor said the women drowned. But the crowd rejected the conclusion; the stream was barely ankle deep. Residents pelted the hospital with stones. A second team of doctors was called in. They confirmed that the women had been raped.
"What was done to these women even animals could not have done," the gynecologist who examined the women told the crowd, weeping as she spoke, according to witnesses.
Two men who had been at a shop near the bridge would later tell investigators they saw a police truck parked on the bridge and heard women crying for help.
Initially, the chief minister, Mr. Abdullah, also told reporters that the women had drowned. Later security officials said that advisers had misinformed him. A few days later he acknowledged that the women had come to harm and appointed a commission to investigate. But investigators say that crucial evidence has been lost and that they are no closer to finding the culprits despite the arrest of four local police officers on suspicion of a cover-up.
Kuldeep Khoda, the director general of Kashmir's police force, admitted that his forces had made mistakes. "There is a prima facie feeling there was destruction of evidence, whether deliberate or inadvertent," Mr. Khoda said. "The investigation is going on and the results of that investigation will come."
Indian government officials say that the security forces here are needed to head off more insurgent violence or a Pakistani invasion. "If there would not be a war that is fought by external forces, our soldiers would not be there," said a senior Indian intelligence official, referring to groups in Pakistan.
But residents of Shopian say the security forces are the only threat. "The only thing I can do now is hope justice will be done," said Mr. Ahanger, Nilofar's husband, who is struggling to care for his 2-year-old son, Suzain. "Nobody is safe in Kashmir - even a child, an elderly man, a young girl. Nobody is safe."
Thursday, August 13, 2009
‘Swat operation model for containing extremism’
Daily Times
* Zardari for early completion of damage assessment in Malakand
* Govt to submit Malakand Pilot Project to FODP partners next week
ISLAMABAD: The social, political and security situation resulting from the military operation in Swat can serve as a model for containing extremism and violence, President Asif Ali Zardari said on Monday.
"A dispassionate and analytical study of the how and why of Malakand will help devise strategies that can prevent a similar situation from occurring in the rest of the country. If they do reoccur, the present scenario will help devise a means to effectively resolve them," he told a meeting of ambassadors, diplomats and experts from the US, the UK and other key partners of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FODP). The FODP are helping Pakistan evolve a comprehensive rehabilitation plan for Swat and Malakand.
Fast job: Briefing journalists after the meeting, President's spokesman Farhatullah Babar said Zardari had asked the FODP delegates to consider the provision of justice, governance and poverty alleviation in Malakand in addition to rebuilding schools, hospitals, agriculture and infrastructure. The president also called for early assessment of the damage in the conflict-hit area, adding it should be inventory-based.
The president urged the meeting to consider the FODP initiative as a long-term engagement between the international community and Pakistan. He said the FODP was not a donors' club, adding it was "a vehicle to combat militancy and extremism". He also inquired about the international community's aid pledges for the rehabilitation of the internally displaced persons and directed the officials concerned to pursue the matter and get the pledges translated into reality.
Next week: Following the FODP meeting in Tokyo on April 17, Babar said the government had established a working group on Swat and Malakand, tasking it to prepare a "Malakand Pilot Project". He said the Malakand Pilot Project would be presented to all FoDP partners next week. The project envisages a five-year plan to rehabilitate and reconstruct Swat while addressing the deep-rooted causes of extremism and militancy, he added.
The president said the quadrilateral meeting between the leaders of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Russia in Dushanbe last week had discussed the illicit drug trade, adding they had agreed that it financed militancy and must be curbed to defeat extremism. High Commissioner of UK Robert Edward Brinkley, Ambassador of Turkey Mustafa Babur Hizlan and UN representative Jean Arnault were among those present at the meeting.
Gojra attacks were pre-planned: HRCP
Daily Times
* Report says policemen had heard anti-Christian announcements from mosques
* Attackers belonged to Sipah-e-Sahaba, other extremist outfits
LAHORE: Last week's attacks on the Christian community in Gojra were not a spontaneous reaction to allegations of blasphemy but planned in advance, a fact-finding mission of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said on Tuesday.
The mission's report said announcements made from mosques in Gojra on July 31 urged Muslims to gather and "make mincemeat of the Christians" over allegation of desecration of the Holy Quran a week earlier. Witnesses told HRCP that when they informed the police about the announcements, the police officials also confirmed hearing the announcements.
On August 1, around 1,000 people gathered in the area and marched towards Christian Colony the HRCP said, adding that a police contingent present in the neighbourhood did not try to stop the mob, which included a number of masked men.
Witnesses said the attackers appeared trained for rioting and arson, the commission reported.
The protesters carried inflammable substances and torched more than 40 houses of Christian families in less than half an hour, with many houses looted before being set on fire.
They claimed that a number of attackers belonged to the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba and other extremist organisations.
The regional police officer told HRCP that many of the attackers had come from outside the district, possibly Jhang.
It said the local administration's inaction was intriguing, adding that the tragic incidents were a "comprehensive failure" by the government to protect minorities.
Amid the assaults, the commission also noted that some Muslims in the neighbourhood provided shelter to Christian women fleeing the violence.
Mullen creates Pak-Afghan Coordination Cell
* Cell established to focus on related conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan
* Meant to draw in experts experienced on Afghanistan
LAHORE: Far from the prestigious windowed offices on the outerring of the Pentagon, a new war room focusing entirely on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan sits deep inside a cavernous basement, the LA Times reported on Monday.
Created by Navy Adm Michael G Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell is intended to bring together the Pentagon's top strategy and intelligence experts. The cell is also a visible symbol of how much the related conflicts have become Mullen's war.
Stripped of cubicle walls and lined with desks, the cavernous room with fluorescent lights looks something like an old-style newsroom or steno pool - save for the addition of classified phones and computers at each workstation.
"Adm Mullen understands the Pentagon has to change from planning wars to fighting them," said Army Maj Gen Michael T Flynn, who served as Mullen's intelligence officer, then joined the command in Afghanistan.
Intent: The intent is to draw in experts on Afghanistan - from all the military services as well as civilians - who have experience in the country and expertise on Afghan politics, the insurgency, narcotics and other issues. The initiative will create a bench of experts who will eventually rotate back and forth between the US and Afghanistan. Army Brig Gen Scott Miller, head of the coordination cell, said, "Mullen understands it is going to take his personal involvement if we are not going to just do business as usual."
By law, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs has no official power to directly oversee troops. Still, Mullen's hand can be seen throughout the new US military strategy for the two countries.
He has repeatedly reminded military services of the Obama administration's sense of urgency. And he has brought an assertive approach, pushing them to shift their best officers and key equipment to the region.
The new strategy includes sending 21,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan. But it also makes a much deeper commitment to counterinsurgency. To implement it, Mullen worked with Defence Secretary Robert M Gates to oust the previous US commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen David D McKiernan. Mullen's top aide, Army Gen Stanley A McChrystal, was installed in his place.
McChrystal has put in place tough new rules backed by Mullen aimed at minimising civilian casualties and is emphasising that the military's priority is protecting civilians, not killing insurgents - even if that means some areas of Afghanistan remain under Taliban control for the time being.
Military officials say Mullen has not just been moving top officers to Afghanistan, but has also been spurring the services to make changes deeper in the ranks. Mullen has demanded that officers graduating from the National Defence University prepare to deploy to Afghanistan. Mullen wants the university's best students to fill key vacancies in Afghanistan.
Roughly half of the recommendations adopted by the White House in its review were originally from the strategy review ordered by Mullen - including the idea of looking at Afghanistan and Pakistan as an interrelated problem.
Indian Ocean: Ruling the Waves
After decades of investment and planning, India has finally acquired the ability to indigenously build and operate a nuclear-powered submarine, a feat accomplished by only five other countries, Harsh V Pant comments for ISN Security Watch.
By Harsh V Pant for ISN Security Watch
The INS Arihant, as the nuclear submarine is called, will now undergo up to two years of testing and sea trials before being accepted for service by the Indian Navy.
Indian naval expansion is being undertaken with an eye on China, and Arihant notwithstanding, India has nautical miles to go before it can catch up with its powerful neighbor, which has made some significant advances in the waters surrounding India.
Just a few months back, China's growing naval capability was on full display as it paraded its nuclear-powered submarines for the first time as part of the celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) navy. Gone is the reticence of yore when China was not ready to even admit that it had such capabilities. Chinese commanders are now openly talking about the need for nuclear submarines to safeguard the nation's interests, and the Chinese navy, once the weakest of the three services, is now the focus of attention of the military modernization program that is being pursued with utmost seriousness.
China's navy is now considered the third-largest in the world, behind only the US and Russia and superior to the Indian navy in both qualitative and quantitative terms. The PLA navy has traditionally been a coastal force, and China has had a continental outlook to security. But with a rise in its economic might since the 1980s, Chinese interests have expanded and acquired a maritime orientation with intent to project power into the Indian Ocean.
China is investing far greater resources in the modernization of its armed forces in general and its navy in particular than India seems either willing to undertake or capable of sustaining at present. China's increasingly sophisticated submarine fleet could eventually be one of the world's largest, and with a rapid accretion in its capabilities, including submarines, ballistic missiles and GPS-blocking technology, some are suggesting that China will increasingly have the capacity to challenge the US.
Senior Chinese officials have indicated that China would be ready to build an aircraft carrier by the end of the decade as it is seen as being indispensable to protecting Chinese interests in oceans. Such intent to develop carrier capability marks a shift away from devoting the bulk of the PLA's modernization drive to the goal of capturing Taiwan.
With a rise in China's economic and political prowess, there has also been a commensurate growth in its profile in the Indian Ocean region. China is acquiring naval bases along the crucial choke-points in the Indian Ocean, not only to serve its economic interests but also to enhance its strategic presence in the region.
China realizes that its maritime strength will give it the strategic leverage that it needs to emerge as the regional hegemon and a potential superpower - and there is enough evidence to suggest that China is comprehensively building up its maritime power in all dimensions.
It is China's growing dependence on maritime space and resources that is reflected in the country's aspiration to expand its influence and to ultimately dominate the strategic environment of the Indian Ocean region. China's growing reliance on bases across the Indian Ocean region is a response to its perceived vulnerability, given the logistical constraints that it faces due to the distance of the Indian Ocean waters from its own area of operation.
Yet, China is consolidating power over the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean with an eye on India - something that comes out clearly in a secret memorandum issued by the PLA General Logistic Department director: "We can no longer accept the Indian Ocean as only an ocean of the Indians [...]. We are taking armed conflicts in the region into account."
Given the immense geographical advantages that India enjoys in the Indian Ocean, China will find it very challenging to exert as much sway in the Indian Ocean as India can. But all the steps that China will take to protect and enhance its interests in the Indian Ocean region will generate apprehensions in India about Beijing's real intentions, thereby engendering a classic security dilemma between the two Asian giants.
Tensions are inherent in such an evolving strategic relationship as was underlined in an incident earlier this year when an Indian kilo class submarine and Chinese warships, on their way to the Gulf of Aden to patrol the pirate-infested waters, reportedly engaged in rounds of manoeuvring as they tried to test for weaknesses in each others' sonar systems. The Chinese media reported that its warships forced the Indian submarine to the surface, which was strongly denied by the Indian navy.
Unless managed carefully, the potential for such incidents turning serious in the future remains high, especially as Sino-Indian naval competition is likely to intensify with the Indian and Chinese navies operating far from their shores. The battle to rule the waves in the Indian Ocean may have just begun.
Harsh Pant is a lecturer at King's College London. His research interests include WMD proliferation, US foreign policy and Asia-Pacific security issues.
Malalai Joya: The woman who will not be silenced
Enraged by Taliban oppression Malalai Joya became a women's rights activist, and after the US-led invasion, took on the new regime as an MP. But speaking out has come at a cost. She tells Johann Hari why death threats won't stop her exposing ugly truths about Afghanistan.
The story of Joya is the story of another Afghanistan - the one behind the burka, and behind the propaganda
I am not sure how many more days I will be alive," Malalai Joya says quietly.
The warlords who make up the new "democratic" government in Afghanistan have been sending bullets and bombs to kill this tiny 30-year-old from the refugee camps for years - and they seem to be getting closer with every attempt. Her enemies call her a "dead woman walking". "But I don't fear death, I fear remaining silent in the face of injustice," she says plainly. "I am young and I want to live. But I say to those who would eliminate my voice: 'I am ready, wherever and whenever you might strike. You can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of the spring.'"
The story of Malalai Joya turns everything we have been told about Afghanistan inside out. In the official rhetoric, she is what we have been fighting for. Here is a young Afghan woman who set up a secret underground school for girls under the Taliban and - when they were toppled - cast off the burka, ran for parliament, and took on the religious fundamentalists.
But she says: "Dust has been thrown into the eyes of the world by your governments. You have not been told the truth. The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women. Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords. [That is] what your soldiers are dying for." Instead of being liberated, she is on the brink of being killed.
The story of Joya is the story of another Afghanistan - the one behind the burka, and behind the propaganda.
I "We are our sisters' keepers"
I meet Joya in a London apartment where she is staying with a supporter for a week, to talk about her memoir - but even here, her movements have to be kept secret, as she flits from one safe house to another. I am told not to mention her location to anyone. She is standing in the corridor, small and slim, with her hair flowing freely, and she greets me with a solid handshake. But, when our photographer snaps her, she begins to giggle girlishly: the grief etched on to her sallow face melts away, and she laughs in joyous little squeaks. "I can never get used to this!" she says.
Then, as I sit her down to talk through her life-story, the pain soaks into her face once more. Her body tightens into a tense coil, and her fists close.
Joya was four days old when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. On that day, her father dropped out of his studies to fight the invading Communist army, and vanished into the mountains. She says: "Since then, all we have known is war."
Her earliest memory is of clinging to her mother's legs while policemen ransacked their house looking for evidence of where her father was hiding. Her illiterate mother tried to keep her family of 10 children alive as best she could. When the police became too aggressive, she took her kids to refugee camps across the border in Iran. In these filthy tent-cities lying on the old Silk Road, Afghans huddled together and were treated as second-class citizens by the Iranian regime. At night, wild animals could wander into the tents and attack children. There, word reached the family that Joya's father had been blown up by a landmine - but he was alive, after losing a leg.
There were no schools in the Iranian camps, and Joya's mother was determined her daughters would receive the education she never had. So they fled again, to camps in western Pakistan. There, Joya began to read - and was transformed. "Tell me what you read and I shall tell you what you are," she says. Starting in her early teens, she inhaled all the literature she could - from Persian poetry to the plays of Bertolt Brecht to the speeches of Martin Luther King. She began to teach her new-found literacy to the older women in the camps, including her own mother.
She soon discovered that she loved to teach - and, when she turned 16, a charity called the Organisation for Promoting Afghan Women's Capabilities (OPAWC) made a bold suggestion: go to Afghanistan, and set up a secret school for girls, under the noses of the Taliban tyranny.
So she gathered her few clothes and books and was smuggled across the border - and "the best days of my life" began. She loathed being forced to wear a burka, being harassed on the streets by the omnipresent "vice and virtue" police, and being under constant threat of being discovered and executed. But she says it was worth it for the little girls. "Every time a new girl joined the class, it was a triumph," she says, beaming. "There is no better feeling."
She only just avoided being caught, again and again. One time she was teaching a class of girls in a family's basement when the mother of the house yelled down suddenly: "Taliban! Taliban!" Joya says: "I told my students to lie down on the floor and stay totally silent. We heard footsteps above us and waited a long time." On many occasions, ordinary men and women - anonymous strangers - helped her out by sending the police charging off in the wrong direction. She adds: "Every day in Afghanistan, even now, hundreds if not thousands of ordinary women act out these small gestures of solidarity with each other. We are our sisters' keepers."
The charity was so impressed with her they appointed her their director. Joya decided to set up a clinic for poor women just before the 9/11 attacks. When the American invasion began, the Taliban fled her province, but the bombs kept falling. "Many lives were needlessly lost, just like during the September 11 tragedy," she says. "The noise was terrifying, and children covered their ears and screamed and cried. Smoke and dust rose and lingered in the air with every bomb dropped."
As soon as the Taliban retreated, they were replaced - by the warlords who had ruled Afghanistan immediately before. Joya says that, at this point, "I realised women's rights had been sold out completely... Most people in the West have been led to believe that the intolerance and brutality towards women in Afghanistan began with the Taliban regime. But this is a lie. Many of the worst atrocities were committed by the fundamentalist mujahedin during the civil war between 1992 and 1996. They introduced the laws oppressing women followed by the Taliban - and now they were marching back to power, backed by the United States. They immediately went back to their old habit of using rape to punish their enemies and reward their fighters."
The warlords "have ruled Afghanistan ever since," she adds. While a "showcase parliament has been created for the benefit of the US in Kabul", the real power "is with these fundamentalists who rule everywhere outside Kabul". As an example, she names the former governor of Herat, Ismail Khan. He set up his own "vice and virtue" squads which terrorised women and smashed up video and music cassettes. He had his own "private militias, private jails". The constitution of Afghanistan is irrelevant in these private fiefdoms.
Joya discovered just what this meant when she started to set up the clinic - and a local warlord announced that it would not be allowed, since she was a woman, and a critic of fundamentalism. She did it anyway, and decided to fight this fundamentalist by running in the election for the Loya jirga ("meeting of the elders") to draw up the new Afghan constitution. There was a great swelling of support for this girl who wanted to build a clinic - and she was elected. "It turned out my mission," she says, "would be to expose the true nature of the jirga from within."
II "I would never again be safe"
As she stepped past the world's television cameras into the Loya jirga, the first thing Joya saw was "a long row with some of the worst abusers of human rights that our country had ever known - warlords and war criminals and fascists".
She could see the men who invited Osama bin Laden into the country, the men who introduced the misogynist laws later followed by the Taliban, the men who had massacred Afghan civilians. Some had got there by intimidating the electorate, others by vote-rigging, and yet more were simply appointed by Hamid Karzai, the former oilman installed by the US army to run the country. She thought of an old Afghan saying: "It's the same donkey, with a new saddle."
For a moment, as these old killers started to give long speeches congratulating themselves on the transition to democracy, Joya felt nervous. But then, she says, "I remembered the oppression we face as women in my country, and my nervousness evaporated, replaced by anger."
When her turn came, she stood, looked around at the blood-soaked warlords on every side, and began to speak. "Why are we allowing criminals to be present here? They are responsible for our situation now... It is they who turned our country into the centre of national and international wars. They are the most anti-women elements in our society who have brought our country to this state and they intend to do the same again... They should instead be prosecuted in the national and international courts."
These warlords - who brag about being hard men - could not cope with a slender young woman speaking the truth. They began to shriek and howl, calling her a "prostitute" and "infidel", and throwing bottles at her. One man tried to punch her in the face. Her microphone was cut off and the jirga descended into a riot.
"From that moment on," Joya says, "I would never again be safe... For fundamentalists, a women is half a human, meant only to fulfil a man's every wish and lust, and to produce children and toil in the home. They could not believe that a young woman was tearing off their masks in front of the eyes of the Afghan people."
A fundamentalist mob turned up a few hours later at her accommodation, announcing they had come to rape and lynch her. She had to be placed under immediate armed guard - but she refused to be protected by American troops, insisting on Afghan officers.
Her speech was broadcast all over the world - and cheered in Afghanistan. She was flooded with support from the people of her country, delighted that somebody had finally spoken out. One dirt-poor village pooled its cash to send a delegate hundreds of miles across the country to explain how pleased they were.
An extremely old woman was brought to her in a rickety wheelbarrow, and she explained she had lost two sons - one to the Soviets, one to the fundamentalists. She told Joya: "I am almost 100 years old, and I am dying. When I heard about you and what you said, I knew that I had to meet you. God must protect you, my dear."
She handed over her gold ring, her only valuable possession, and said: "You must take it! I have suffered so much in my life, and my last wish is that you accept this gift from me."
But the US and Nato occupiers instructed Joya that she must show "politeness and respect" for the other delegates. When Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador, said this, she replied: "If these criminals raped your mother or your daughter or your grandmother, or killed seven of your sons, let alone destroyed all the moral and material treasure of your country, what words would you use against such criminals that will be inside the framework of politeness and respect?"
She leans forward and quotes Brecht: "He says, 'He who does not know the truth is only a fool. He who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a criminal.'"
The attempts to murder her began then with a sniper - and have not stopped since. But she says plainly, with her fist clenched: "I wanted the warlords to know I was not afraid of them."
So she ran for parliament - and won in a landslide. "I would return again to face those who had ruined my country," she explains, "and I was determined that I would stand straight and never bow again to their threats."
III "In every corner is a killer"
Joya looked out across the new Afghan parliament on her first day and thought: "In every corner is a killer, a puppet, a criminal, a drug lord, a fascist. This is not democracy. I am one of the very few people here who has been genuinely elected." She started her maiden speech by saying: "My condolences to the people of Afghanistan..."
Before she could continue, the warlords began to shout that they would rape and kill her. One warlord, Abdul Sayyaf, yelled a threat at her. Joya looked him straight in the eye and said: "We are not in [the area he rules by force] here, so control yourself."
I ask if she was frightened, and she shakes her head. "I am never frightened when I tell the truth." She is speaking fast now: "I am truly honoured to have been vilified and threatened by the savage men who condemned our country to such misery. I feel proud that even though I have no private army, no money, and no world powers behind me, these brutal despots are afraid of me and scheme to eliminate me."
She says there is no difference for ordinary Afghans between the Taliban and the equally fundamentalist warlords. "Which groups are labelled 'terrorist' or 'fundamentalist' depends on how useful they are to the goals of the US," she says. "You have two sides who terrorise women, but the anti-American side are 'terrorists' and the pro-American side are 'heroes'."
Karzai rules only with the permission of the warlords. He is "a shameless puppet" who will win next month's presidential elections because "he hasn't yet stopped working for his masters, the US and the warlords... At this point in our history, the only people who get to serve as president are those selected by the US government and the mafia that holds power in our country."
Whenever she would despair in parliament, she would meet yet more ordinary Afghan women - and get back in the fight. She tells me about a 16-year-old constituent of hers, Rahella, who ran away to an orphanage Joya had helped to set up in her constituency. "Her uncle had decided to marry her off to his son, who was a drug addict. She was terrified. So of course we took her in, educated her, helped her." One day, her uncle turned up and apologised, saying he had learnt the error of his ways. He asked if she could come home for a weekend to visit her family. Joya agreed - and when she got back to her village, Rahella was forced into marriage and spirited away to another part of Afghanistan. They heard six months later that she had doused herself in petrol and burned herself alive.
There has been an epidemic of self-immolation by women across the "new" Afghanistan in the past five years. "The hundreds of Afghan women who set themselves ablaze are not only committing suicide to escape their misery," she says, "they are crying out for justice."
But she was not allowed to raise these issues in the supposedly democratic parliament. The fundamentalist warlords who couldn't beat Joya at the ballot box or kill her chanced upon a new way to silence her. The more she spoke, the angrier they got. She called for secularism in Afghanistan, saying: "Religion is a private issue, unrelated to political issues and the government... Real Muslims do not require political leaders to guide them to Islam." She condemned the new law that declared an amnesty for all war crimes committed in Afghanistan over the past 30 years, saying "You criminals are simply giving yourselves a get-out-of-jail free card." So the MPs simply voted to kick her out of parliament.
It was illegal and undemocratic - but the President, Hamid Karzai, supported the ban. "Now the warlord criminals are unchallenged in parliament," she says. "Is that democracy?"
We in the West have been fed "a pack of lies" about what Afghanistan looks like today. "The media are 'free' only if they do not try to criticise warlords and officials," she says in her book, Raising My Voice. As an example, she names a specific warlord: "If you write anything about him, the next day you will be tortured or killed by the Northern Alliance warlords." It is "a myth" to say girls can now go to school outside Kabul. "Only five per cent of girls, according to the UN, can follow their education to the 12th grade."
And it is "false" to say Afghan culture is inherently misogynistic. "By the 1950s, there was a growing women's movement in Afghanistan, demonstrating and fighting for their rights," she says. "I have a story here" - she rifles through her notes - "from The New York Times in 1959. Here! The headline is 'Afghanistan's women lift the veil'. We were developing an open culture for women - and then the foreign wars and invasions crushed it all. If we can regain our independence, we can start this struggle again."
Many of her friends urge her to leave the country, before one of her wannabe-assassins gets lucky. But, she says, "I can never leave when all the poor people that I love are living in danger and poverty. I am not going to search for a better and safer place, and leave them in a burning hell." Apologising for her English - which is, in fact, excellent - she quotes Brecht again: "Those who do struggle often fail, but those who do not struggle have already failed."
Today, she fights for democracy outside parliament. But, she says, any Afghan democrat today is "trapped between two enemies. There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns." She wants to help the swelling movement of ordinary Afghans in between, who are opposed to both. "With the withdrawal of one enemy, the occupation forces, it [will be] easier to fight against these internal fundamentalist enemies."
If she were president of Afghanistan, she would begin by referring all the country's war criminals to the International Court of Justice at the Hague. "Anybody who has murdered my sisters and brothers should be punished," she says, "from the Taliban, to the warlords, to George W Bush." Then she would ask all foreign troops to leave immediately. She says that it is wrong to say Afghanistan will simply collapse into civil war if that happens. "What about the civil war now? Today, people are being killed - many, many war crimes. The longer the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan doing what they are doing, the worse the eventual civil war will be for the Afghan people."
The Afghan public, she adds, are on her side, pointing to a recent opinion poll showing 60 per cent of Afghans want an immediate Nato withdrawal. Many people in Afghanistan were hopeful, she says, about Barack Obama - "but he is actually intensifying the policy of George Bush... I know his election has great symbolic value in terms of the struggle of African-Americans for equal rights, and this struggle is one I admire and respect. But what is important for the world is not whether the President is black or white, but his actions. You can't eat symbolism."
US policy is driven by geopolitics, she says, not personalities. "Afghanistan is in the heart of Asia, so it's a very important place to have military bases - so they can control trade very easily with other Asian powers such as China, Russia, Iran and so on.
"But it can be changed by Americans," she adds. She is passionate now, her voice rising. "I say to Obama - in my area, 150 people were blown up by US troops in one incident this year. If your family had been there, would you send even more troops and even more bombs? Your government is spending $18m (£11m) to make another Guantanamo jail in Bagram. If your daughter might be detained there, would you be building it? I say to Obama - change course, or otherwise tomorrow people will call you another Bush."
IV "It's hard to be strong all the time"
"It's not good to show my enemies any weakness, [but] it's hard to be strong all the time," Joya says with a sigh, as she runs her hands through her hair. She has been speaking so insistently - with such preternatural courage- that it's easy to forget she was just a girl when she was thrust into fighting fundamentalism. She was never allowed an adolescence. The fierce concentration on her face melts away, and she looks a little lost. "Yes, my mother is proud of me," she says, "but you know how mothers are - they worry. Whenever I speak to her on the phone, the first sentence and the last sentence are always 'Take care'."
Two years ago, she got married in secret. She can't name her husband publicly, because he would be killed. Her wedding flowers had to be checked for bombs. She will only say that they met at a press conference, "and he supports everything I do". She has not seen him "for two months", she says. "We meet in the safe houses of supporters. I cannot sleep in the same house two nights running. It is a different home every evening."
Where does this courage come from? She acts as if the answer is obvious - anyone would do it, she claims. But they don't. Perhaps it comes from her belief that the struggle is long and our individual lives are short, so we can only advance our chosen cause by inches, knowing others will pick up our baton. "When I die, others will come. I am sure of that," she says.
She certainly has a strong sense of belonging to a long history of Afghans who fought for freedom. "My parents chose my first name after Malalai of Maiwand. She was a young woman who, in 1880, went to the front line of the second Anglo-Afghan war to tend the wounded. When the fighters were close to collapse, she picked up the Afghan flag and led the men into battle herself. She was struck down - but the British suffered a landmark defeat, and, in the end, they were driven out."
When she ran for office, she had to choose a surname for herself, to protect her family's identity. "I named myself after Sarwar Joya, the Afghan poet and constitutionalist. He spent 24 years in jails, and was finally killed because he wouldn't compromise his democratic principles... In Afghanistan we have a saying: the truth is like the sun. When it comes up, nobody can block it out or hide it."
Malalai Joya knows she could be killed any day now, in our newly liberated Warlord-istan. She hugs me goodbye and says, "We must keep in touch." But I find myself bleakly wondering if we will ever meet again. Perhaps she senses this, because she suddenly urges me to look again at the last paragraph of her memoir, Raising My Voice. "It really is how I feel," she says. It reads: "If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice." I look up into her face, and she is giving me the bravest smile I have ever seen.
The safety inadequacies of India's fast breeder reactor
By Ashwin Kumar and M. V. Ramana
- India's Department of Atomic Energy plans to build a large fleet of fast breeder nuclear reactors in the coming years.
- However, many other countries that have experimented with fast reactors have shut down their programs due to technical and safety difficulties.
- The Indian prototype is similarly flawed, inadequately protected against the possibility of a severe accident.
Currently, only one fast reactor operates in the country--a small test reactor in Kalpakkam, a small township about 80 kilometers (almost 50 miles) south of Chennai. The construction of a larger prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) is underway at the same location. This reactor is expected to be completed in 2010 and will use mixed plutonium-uranium oxide as fuel in its core, with a blanket of depleted uranium oxide that will absorb neutrons and transmute into plutonium 239. Liquid sodium will be used to cool the core, which will produce 1,200 megawatts of thermal power and 500 megawatts of electricity. The reactor is to be the first of hundreds that the DAE envisions constructing throughout India by mid-century.
However, such an expansion of fast reactors, even if more modest than DAE projections, could adversely affect public health and safety. While all nuclear reactors are susceptible to catastrophic accidents, fast reactors pose a unique risk. In fast reactors, the core isn't in its most reactive--or energy producing-- configuration when operating normally. Therefore, an accident that rearranges the fuel in the core could lead to an increase in reaction rate and an increase in energy production. If this were to occur quickly, it could lead to a large, explosive energy release that might rupture the reactor vessel and disperse radioactive material into the environment.
Many of these reactors also have what is called a "positive coolant void coefficient," which means that if the coolant in the central part of the core were to heat up and form bubbles of sodium vapor, the reactivity--a measure of the neutron balance within the core, which determines the reactor's tendency to change its power level (if it is positive, the power level rises)--would increase; therefore core melting could accelerate during an accident. (A positive coolant void coefficient, though not involving sodium, contributed to the runaway reaction increase during the April 1986 Chernobyl reactor accident.) In contrast, conventional light water reactors typically have a "negative coolant void coefficient" so that a loss of coolant reduces the core's reactivity. The existing Indian fast breeder test reactor, with its much smaller core, doesn't have a positive coolant void coefficient. Thus, the DAE doesn't have real-world experience in handling the safety challenges that a large prototype reactor will pose.
More largely, international experience shows that fast breeder reactors aren't ready for commercial use. Superphénix, the flagship of the French breeder program, remained inoperative for the majority of its 11-year lifetime until it was finally shuttered in 1996. Concerns about the adequacy of the design of the German fast breeder reactor led to it being contested by environmental groups and the local state government in the 1980s and ultimately to its cancellation in 1991. And the Japanese fast reactor Monju shut down in 1995 after a sodium coolant leak caused a fire and has yet to restart. Only China and Russia are still developing fast breeders. China, however, has yet to operate one, and the Russian BN-600 fast reactor has suffered repeated sodium leaks and fires.
When it comes to India's prototype fast breeder reactor, two distinct questions must be asked: (1) Is there confidence about how an accident would propagate inside the core and how much energy it might release?; and (2) have PFBR design efforts been as strict as necessary, given the possibility that an accident would be difficult to contain and potentially harmful to the surrounding population?
The simple answer to both is no.
The DAE, like other fast-reactor developers, has tried to study how severe a core-disruptive accident would be and how much energy it would release. In the case of the PFBR, the DAE has argued that the worst-case core disruptive accident would release an explosive energy of 100 megajoules. This is questionable.
The DAE's estimate is much smaller when compared with other fast reactors, especially when the much larger power capacity of the PFBR--and thus, the larger amount of fissile material used in the reactor--is taken into account. For example, it was estimated that the smaller German reactor (designed to produce 760 megawatts of thermal energy) would produce 370 megajoules in the event of a core-disruptive accident--much higher than the PFBR estimate. Other fast reactors around the world have similarly higher estimates for how much energy would be produced in such accidents.
The DAE's estimate is based on two main assumptions: (1) that only part of the core will melt down and contribute to the accident; and (2) that only about 1 percent of the thermal energy released during the accident would be converted into mechanical energy that can damage the containment building and cause ejection of radioactive materials into the atmosphere.
Neither of these assumptions is justifiable. Britain's Atomic Energy Authority has done experiments that suggest up to 4 percent of the thermal energy could be converted into mechanical energy. And the phenomena that might occur inside the reactor core during a severe accident are very complex, so there's no way to stage a full-scale experiment to compare with the theoretical accident models that the reactor's designers used in their estimates. In addition, important omissions in the DAE's own safety studies make their analysis inadequately conservative. (Our independent estimates of the energy produced in a hypothetical PFBR core disruptive accident are presented in the Science and Global Security article, "Compromising Safety: Design Choices and Severe Accident Possibilities in India's Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor" and these are much higher than the DAE's estimates.)
Turning to the second question: In terms of the stringency of the DAE's design effort, the record reveals inadequate safety precautions. One goal of any "defense-in-depth" design is to engineer barriers to withstand the most severe accident that's considered plausible. Important among these barriers is the reactor's containment building, the most visible structure from the outside of any nuclear plant. Compared to most other breeder reactors, and light water reactors for that matter, the design of the PFBR's containment is relatively weak and won't be able to contain an accident that releases a large amount of energy. The DAE knows how to build stronger containments--its newest heavy water reactor design has a containment building that is meant to withstand six times more pressure than the PFBR's containment--but has chosen not to do so for the PFBR.
The other unsafe design choice is that of the reactor core. As mentioned earlier, the destabilizing positive coolant void coefficient in fast reactors is a problem because it increases the possibility that reactivity will escalate inside the core during an accident. It's possible to decrease this effect by designing the reactor core so that fuel subassemblies are interspersed within the depleted uranium blanket, in what is termed a heterogeneous core. The U.S. Clinch River Breeder Reactor, which was eventually cancelled, was designed with a heterogeneous core, and Russia has considered a heterogeneous core for its planned BN-1600 reactor. The DAE hasn't made such an effort, and the person who directed India's fast breeder program during part of the design phase once argued that the emphasis on the coolant void coefficient was mistaken because a negative void coefficient could lead to dangerous situations in an accident as well. That might be true, but it misses the obvious point that the same potentially dangerous situations would be even more dangerous if the void coefficient within the core is positive.
Both of these design choices--a weak containment building and a reactor core with a large and positive void coefficient--are readily explainable: They lowered costs. Reducing the sodium coolant void coefficient would have increased the fissile material requirement of the reactor by 30-50 percent--an expensive component of the initial costs. Likewise, a stronger containment building would have cost more. All of this is motivated by the DAE's assessment that "the capital cost of [fast breeder reactors] will remain the most important hurdle" to their rapid deployment.
Lowered electricity costs would normally be most welcome, but not with the increased risk of catastrophic accidents caused by poorly designed fast breeder reactors.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
India's Baloch connection
Momin Iftikhar
Reference to Balochistan in the joint communiqué at Sharm el-Sheikh has raised quite a furore in India where experienced observers have begun calling it Manmohan Singh's Balochistan Blunder. Understandably in Pakistan it is a welcome development where since long there has been increasing complaints concerning an Indian hand in raking trouble in Balochistan through Afghanistan.
India is feverishly pumping money and weaponry of all kinds to troublemakers in Balochistan; becoming the patron saint of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). Runaway Baloch dissidents, including Brahamdagh Bugti, are based in Kabul and are well known among the defence and intelligence circles in New Delhi. India's consulates in Iran and Afghanistan are actively involved in stirring insurgency in Balochistan and FATA. According to Christine Fair of RAND Corporation, "having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Kandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Balochistan".
According to Foreign Policy magazine, quoting a former intelligence official who has served in both countries, "the Indians are up to their neck in supporting the Taliban against the Pakistani government in Afghanistan and Pakistan...The same anti-Pakistani forces in Afghanistan, also shooting at American soldiers, are getting support from India." All this is happening under the gaze of the US and NATO, and apparently with their tacit knowledge. The resultant "collateral damage" to US/NATO servicemen is getting beyond acceptable limits and there is a diminishing acceptance of the manner in which the Indian operation in Balochistan and FATA/NWFP seems to be causing unintended consequences. Through mention in the Joint Communiqué the Indians may be acknowledging their failure in botching an operation that has begun to bleed the acquiescing spectators for whom the unintended pain has crossed the threshold of forbearance. Indian interference in Balochistan and FATA is an established phenomenon by now, known to all and sundry. Why not accept the ground reality that is no longer a secret and use it ("some information on threats in Balochistan and other areas") as a bargaining chip in parleys with Pakistan, the Indians seem to be postulating.
India is already deeply involved in organising a sizeable and well orchestrated vitriolic campaign to drum up support for the terrorist and anti-state activities of a clutch of Baloch terrorists, using Harbiyar Marri as a figurehead. With placing of Balochistan in a bilateral context we can expect strengthening of the propaganda from India seeking to internationalise the cause of the vested interests in Balochistan. It is instructive to note that during 2006 the Indian government did make uncalled-for comments while the security forces were involved in internal security operations in the province.
Ever since the blueprints for Gwadar development went to the drawing boards the strategically located province has seen the evolution of a maelstrom of conflicting foreign interests, seeking a foothold to promote their respective interests. Needless to say, with Indian protégées ruling the roost in post-Taliban Afghanistan, it has acquired a commanding presence and an attendant potential to brew trouble in Pakistan. By putting Balochistan in the bilateral context, the Indians may be tacitly acknowledging their well exposed interference in the province. But on the other hand they may be contriving to shift focus from the human rights abuses in Kashmir by drumbeating about the handling of the security situation in Balochistan where India is relentlessly manoeuvring to set alight the fires of instability and violence.
The writer is a freelance contributor.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Skeletons in the Generals’ cupboards
It is time for the truth about command failures during the Kargil war to be made public.
Praveen Swami
"Generalship unparalleled in the history of warfare," 15 Corps Commander Lieutenant-General Kishan Pal said of his contribution as a commander of India's forces during the Kargil war.
As India observes the tenth anniversary of that, we have been reminded of the need for nations to remember the valour of soldiers. But nations must also learn from the mistakes of those who sent soldiers to their death — or will be fated to repeat them.
Early in May 1999, three officers were having lunch in Kargil when news of Pakistan's offensive in the Yaldor sector arrived. None was surprised at the news: each had warned their superiors of India's vulnerabilities in Kargil, only to find themselves overruled.
Kargil-based 121 Brigade Commander Surinder Singh, his subordinate Colonel Pushpinder Oberoi, and 70 Brigade Commander Devinder Singh have not been featured in any of the many television commemorations of the war — but in their unheard testimonies lies the story of staggering command failures that went unpunished.
On August 25, 1998, Major R.K. Dwivedi, the Brigade-Major of the Kargil-based 121 Brigade, sent out a letter marked 124/GSD/VIS. To this letter were attached the contents of Brigadier commander Surinder Singh's scheduled briefing of Army chief General V.P. Malik on the situation in Kargil.
In terse military shorthand, the briefing paper warned of a "push [by] militants across the L[ine] (of) C[ontrol]. Pakistan, it said, could "engage NH [National Highway] IA with AD [Air Defence] w[ea]p[o]ns", "t[ar]g[e]t selected f[or]w[ar]d posts," and "hit Kargil and outlying vill[age]s".
Paragraph 8, marked "Enhanced Threat Perception," recorded the intelligence foundations of these fears. The document recorded the arrival of fresh Pakistan troops at forward positions around Olthingthang. Fresh heavy and medium guns had been inducted into the sector, paragraph 6 (b) noted. Later, in paragraph 15, the document pointed out that "infilt[ration] routes [were] available through Mashkoh Valley, from Doda side to Panikhar, Yaldor and through nalas [streams]". Forty-five Pakistani irregulars, paragraph 20 noted, had already moved across the LoC.
Brigadier Surinder Singh's apprehensions were anchored in a growing mass of intelligence on Pakistan's offensive intent.
Intelligence Bureau Director Shyamal Datta had, on June 2, 1998, issued a personally-signed alert on the training of large numbers of Pakistani irregulars. Based on intelligence provided by the Intelligence Bureau's Leh station, Mr. Datta's note recorded increased military activity along the LoC, notably near posts code-named Chor, Hadi, Saddle, Reshma, Masjid, Dhalan and Langar — the very posts which served as base camps for Pakistani forces during the Kargil war.
Later, Intelligence Bureau informants reported the deployment of M-11 missiles on the Deosai Plains and the laying of fresh minefields. The RAW, for its part, said new Pakistani troops — the 164 Mortar Regiment, the 8 Northern Light Infantry and the 69 Baloch Regiment — had been pumped into the area. In effect, a full brigade had moved in, a posture indicating offensive intent.
Military Intelligence spies made similar determinations. In June 1998, the Kargil Brigade Intelligence Team reported that supplies of ammunition were being dumped, and that terrorists had been seen in Skardu, Warcha and Marol, awaiting infiltration through the Kargil sector.
On August 30, 1998, Major KBS Khurana of the 1/S23 Intelligence and Field Security Unit at Kargil sent out a hand-written note, marked 1/10/6, referring to disturbing information provided by a source code-named 3820SC. "It has been revealed," Major Khurana wrote, "that 500 Afghan militants have been brought to Gurikot, NJ 7959, to be further inducted into India in the near future".
Early in January 1999, Colonel Oberoi called the attention of 3 Infantry Division Commander Major-General VS Budhwar to significant weaknesses in India's forward defences, on the basis of an exercise code-named "Jaanch." In his January 30, 1999 letter, Colonel Oberoi stated enemy action could render "some posts untenable." It proceeded to call for forces being permanently stationed on Point 5165-metres, Pariyon ka Talab and Point 4660-metres — now famous as Tiger Hill.
Less than a month later, on February 9, 1999, troops of the 5 Para Regiment spotted movement on the top of Point 5770, a strategic height in the southern Siachen area. Again, on March 4, between eight and ten Pakistan soldiers were seen removing snow from a concrete bunker to west of the summit of Point 5770. That evening, shots were exchanged in the area — the first fire-contact of the Kargil war. The officer who reported the Pakistani intrusion, Major Manish Bhatnagar, was removed from the area, and the loss of the peak hushed up.
Finally, in April, 1999, local commanders conducted an exercise to test the impact of a Pakistani attack — ironically enough, just as the intruders were entrenching themselves in the Kargil heights.
Major General Mohinder Puri, commander of the 8 Division which would soon lead the battle in Dras, played the role Pakistan's Army chief, while 70 Brigade's Devinder Singh acted as the General-Officer Commanding of Pakistan's 10 Corps area. Towards the fag end of the exercise, the group gamed a brigade-strength assault on the stretch between Zoji La and Kargil. Pakistan could, the exercise demonstrated, occupy large stretches. Lieutenant-General Pal and Northern Army Commander Hari Mohan Khanna dismissed the idea.
Like Lieutenant-General Pal, Major-General Budhwar was dismissive of his subordinates' concerns. Early in 1999, the 9 Mahar Regiment was moved from its counter-infiltration positions along the Yaldor Langpa, and stationed near Leh. The 26 Maratha Light Infantry, charged with protecting the Mashkoh-Dras stretch, was also pulled back.
Brigadier Surinder Singh protested. In an August 12, 1998 letter, marked 101/GS (Ops)/ANE/R, he warned of the paucity of troops. "While the combating of an insurgency is an important role for the B[riga]de," Brigadier Singh noted, "we must not loose sight of our primary role, that of ensuring the sanctity of the LoC and integrity of own territory. All the forces which can be spared for the anti-infilt[ration] role from integral t[roo]ps are already deployed."
Despite losing approximately a quarter of its troops, to commitments elsewhere, the 121 Brigade did what it could — a fact subsequently suppressed by the official Kargil Review Committee.
Troops were withdrawn from the Mashkoh area for just 80 days in the winter of 1999, down from 177 days in 1997 and 116 days in 1998. Yaldor was left undefended for 64 days from February to April, where troops had been withdrawn for 120 days in 1997 and 119 days in 1998. Kaksar, another key area, was undefended for just 38 days, where it was left open for over 200 days in previous years. In Dras and Yaldor, Colonel Oberoi ordered troops to prepare fresh bunkers, preparing for what most local commanders believed was an inevitable onslaught.
General Budhwar and his subordinates seemed to inhabit different worlds. His pet project was building a zoo for Leh city. In June 1998, General Budhwar's office demanded of field commanders "that various types of wild animals/birds are procured and despatched to zoo at Leh at your earliest." "No representation," the Colonel concluded sternly, "will be entertained."
Even after fighting broke out, top commanders refused to engage with reality. At a meeting of the Unified Headquarters in Srinagar on May 24, 1999, Lieutenant-General Pal insisted that there "were no concentration of troops on the Pakistani side and no battle indicators of war or even limited skirmishes." Paragraph 4(v) of the minutes of the meeting records his claim that the "situation was local and would be defeated locally:" an appalling miscalculation.
During the war, repeated efforts were made to hush up failures. Major Bhatnagar, fresh from Siachen, was ordered to push his battle-fatigued and frost-bitten troops up Point 5203-metres in Batalik. He asked for time to prepare his unit — only to find himself court-martialled. Major Ajit Singh, ordered to make a near-suicidal attempt to retake Point 5353 in Dras after the formal end of hostilities, was also court-martialled. He was sacrificed to protect higher commanders from responsibility for their failure to recapture the key position. Major Singh won his legal battle and retired with honour — but even today, the peak remains under Pakistan's occupation.
Colonel Oberoi was cashiered for his failure to defend against the intrusions — intrusions he had warned of, but was not given resources to act against. Brigadier Surinder Singh, too, was sacked. Brigadier Devinder Singh, lauded in India's official history of the Kargil war — he "himself operated ahead to keep abreast of the developments during each battle and to inspire his battalions to give of their best" — was passed over for promotion. Many of the officers have moved the courts for justice, but given the slow pace of the Indian judicial system, it will likely be years before their pleas are ruled on.
"The truth about what went wrong, where and why should not embarrass anyone," the former Union Defence Minister George Fernandes said on August 14, 2002, "and it is a must so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past."
Perhaps the time has come for the man who now occupies his office to order that the whole truth be told.
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