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Southasian Briefs
India/Burma
bilash rai |
What copters?
Following increasingly strident attacks by human-rights activists
over the past couple of months, the New Delhi government recently
denied – as “completely baseless” –
reports that India was planning on selling a number of helicopters
to the Burmese junta. Such a deal would have contravened an
arms embargo sponsored by the European Union that has been
in place since 1988, and would have taken place in an environment
of heightened international concern with the situation in
Burma.
The rebuttal was prompted by
a report published by the international watchdog Amnesty International,
backed by several European rights groups, alleging that New
Delhi was preparing to sell a number of its indigenously developed
Advanced Light Helicopters to Rangoon. Although the helicopters
were manufactured in India, the Amnesty report said that the
machines would not function without crucial components built
in the EU, and urged European officials to refuse sale of
any related part to India should the deal go through. Rights
groups have long warned that any sale of military hardware
to Rangoon only helps the junta in its longstanding war against
the country’s minority communities.
Bangladesh/India
Come to Shillong!
Despite New Delhi’s current border-fencing programme
along the Indo-Bangladeshi frontier – coupled with the
on-again-off-again relationship between the Indian Northeast
and the worries over ‘Bangladeshi migrants’ –
an agreement was recently struck to work towards stepping
up tourism between Bangladesh and three states in the Northeast.
The deal, between the Tour Operators Association of Bangladesh
and the state governments of Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya,
will now push the four bodies to urge their respective central
governments to do two things: to set up a consular service
in Shillong, and to start the long-discussed bus service between
that city and Dhaka. “We need to revive our shared traditions
and culture,” said Meghalaya Tourism Minister Charles
Pyngrope at the signing, “which is one way to make our
region more peaceful.”
India/Bangladesh
Taka from Dhaka
The Indian government recently indicated that it was considering
changing its current policy in order to allow direct foreign
investment by Bangladeshi investors – albeit on a selective
basis and following ‘security’ checks. New Delhi
currently prohibits any direct investment from both Pakistan
and Bangladesh, but Minister of State for Commerce Jairam
Ramesh has now made it clear that Indian policymakers were
considering loosening the reigns on the latter.
“Hopefully Bangladeshi
businessmen will receive some good news in this regard soon,”
Ramesh said, while attending the first meeting of the new
India-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry in late
July. “Such a blanket ban makes no sense, especially
since Indian companies themselves want to invest in Pakistan
and Bangladesh,” he continued. Despite the good feelings
following the recent resumption of bilateral trade talks with
Islamabad, Ramesh made no mention of whether New Delhi is
rethinking its policy on Pakistani investment.
Afghanistan/Pakistan
Best of luck
Hamid Karzai recently gave a public pardon to a 14-year-old
boy from South Waziristan who had been caught attempting to
assassinate a provincial governor. When originally detained
in June, the boy, known only as Rafiqullah, was wearing a
vest made of 30 kilograms of explosives, and admitted to crossing
over the international border into the Afghan province of
Khost in an attempt to kill Governor Arsala Jamal.
At an event called to mark
the event, there were good feelings all around, as even Jamal
himself said he felt bad for Rafiq. “I feel sorry for
him,” he said, while posing for photos with his intended
killer-child. “In Khost, the Taliban don’t have
the support of the masses. They don’t have the ability
to fight with our security forces face-to-face. That’s
why they are going for these extreme tactics.”
Rafiq’s parents had
sent him to study in a madrassa in Pakistan, where he reported
being shown videos of suicide bombers and told to undertake
the assassination mission. (Exact reasons for the assassination
attempt remain unclear, although Jamal has now escaped three
assassination attempts.) During the public pardon, President
Karzai said that the boy had been “deceived by the enemy
of Islam” while at the madrassa. He subsequently wished
Rafiq the “best of luck”, and sent him on his
way.
Pakistan/India
 afp |
| A 2004 rally |
Dawood, or wouldn’t?
India’s most wanted man, Dawood Ibrahim, was reportedly
captured, along with several of his closest aides, by Pakistani
security forces on 2 August. As befits a man with such a long
history of acting secretively and with impunity – coupled
with the extensive rumours of his alleged collaboration with
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence – the truth
was a very long time in coming. This evidently led to a ripple
of expectation among Indian and US intelligence services.
The detention of an injured
Dawood, as well as that of his top lieutenants Chhota Shakeel,
Tiger Memon and Javed Chikna, was said to have taken place
following a shootout in either Karachi or Quetta (even verification
of any such shootout could not be confirmed). By deadline,
however, there was still no confirmation about what –
or even whether anything – had actually happened.
All four of the figures comprise
the leadership of Bombay’s D-Company mafia, and are
alleged to have been involved in the 1993 serial bomb blasts
in that city. The US, meanwhile, wants to interrogate Dawood
on alleged links with al-Qaeda. But even as the press-relations
frenzy continued to bubble over, Pakistani officials kept
saying that they simply had no idea where Dawood was; indeed,
if he was in fact in Pakistan, they would like to be informed
of his whereabouts, so that he could be arrested. Dawood’s
son, meanwhile, confidently stated that his father was not
in Pakistan at all, and that he is “well wherever he
is”. It increasingly appears so.
Bangladesh/India
Well, then again…
After years of denying the presence of Indian militant bases
in Bangladeshi territory, in mid-August Dhaka finally conceded
the possibility. During a two-day summit between the home
secretaries of both countries, the interim government in Dhaka
even agreed to set up a joint initiative to deal with information
about militants operating in either country.
Under the current set-up, the
only way that India and Bangladesh have been able to exchange
information on militants or fugitives thought to be ‘sheltering’
across the border has been through meetings between intelligence
officers with the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Bangladesh
Rifles. This approach, however, has rarely led to detentions.
For New Delhi, a particularly sore point has been Dhaka’s
insistence that top militant leaders, such as the United Liberation
Front of Asom (ULFA)’s Paresh Baruah, have not been
hiding out in Bangladesh. Baruah and others now must be fast
counting
their options.
India/Pakistan
CBM’s on the
horizon
Two official commissions set up by Manmohan Singh earlier
this year have now given their recommendations on how to expand
relations across the Line of Control, and New Delhi looks
set to propose a slate of new confidence-building measures
for Kashmir. In mid-August, a meeting chaired by Home Secretary
Madhukar Gupta discussed how to implement the new CBMs, which
include several that could have taken place years ago.
For instance, one of the decisions
taken was to set up direct electronic communication between
offices in Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, with an eye towards
speeding up the processing of travel documentation. (Currently,
officials meet just once a month to exchange documents by
hand.) It was also decided that people under 10 or over 60
years of age would not need any verification to travel across
the Line of Control. All of these plans will now need to be
discussed in Islamabad before there is an actual breakthrough.
Some topics under discussion
have already been agreed upon between India and Pakistan,
including the opening up of a cross-LOC truck service, and
the widening of various roads across the frontier. Not discussed
were committee recommendations dealing with setting up telephone
services across the LOC, and the possibility of granting multiple-entry,
one-year visas to merchants and traders. One official promised
that all such recommendations would eventually be discussed
“in order of priority”. Meanwhile, a committee
headed by Indian Defence Secretary Shekhar Dutt recommended
that his government withdraw 20,000 troops from Jammu &
Kashmir, particularly those that had been deployed in 2001
as part of Operation Parakram. While Dutt’s panel agreed
with the government’s current stance of not withdrawing
any soldier involved in counter-insurgency operations, those
included are reportedly largely without work at the moment.
Nonetheless, their continued use of public spaces, such as
hospitals, orchards, schools and private buildings continues
to rankle the local population.
Tibet/India
 tyc |
Hungry for freedom
After 33 days, an ‘indefinite’ hunger strike by
Tibetan refugees in New Delhi was called off in mid-August,
seemingly amidst much confusion. Fourteen members of the Tibetan
Youth Congress (TYC), which had organised the strike, were
reportedly in critical condition at a hospital in the capital.
When the strike began on 8
July, the TYC was demanding a direct response from the Beijing
government on human-rights violations in Tibet. (No such response
has been given.) The strike was ultimately halted following
urgent requests from Indian lawmakers, including the peripatetic
George Fernandes, as well as the Dalai Lama himself. Regardless
of these high-level interventions, however, things appeared
to get a bit out of hand.
The strike had been part of
a larger mass effort for Tibet, the TYC-led so-called People’s
Movement, which had been initiated as a one-year countdown
to China’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics. A football
match between Indian and Tibetan teams was also to be part
of the movement, but similarly ran into problems when the
New Delhi government refused to allow the Tibetan team access
to three different venues, including the state-run Jawaharlal
Nehru Stadium. (The game eventually happened at an alternative
venue, and the Tibetans swept the Indians 6-0.)
Despite the fact that an estimated
10,000 Tibetans and supporters had converged on Delhi during
the preceding weeks, however, the campaign as a whole was
also called off with the end of the hunger strike, to the
frustration of many. “When I first heard TYC leaders
asking for public support in our settlement, I thought something
is going to happen this time. They even told us of leading
a possible march into Tibet, or storming into the Chinese
Embassy here in Delhi,” said Tsering Choeden, from the
Bylakuppe Tibetan Settlement, far to the south in Karnataka.
“But they don’t seem to have any plan; it’s
been just a day, and they have already told us to go back.
I am frustrated. When I decided to take part in this campaign,
I gave up everything and made up my mind to do anything for
Tibet.”
Nepal/India
HIV spilling from India
Researchers recently estimated that almost 40 percent of Nepali
women and girls rescued from brothels in India are HIV positive.
The report, by the Harvard School of Public Health, also found
that one in seven of the girls in the study had been trafficked
to India before she was 15 years old (the youngest was seven);
of those, HIV levels were a third higher, at 60 percent. The
report’s authors surmised that the higher prevalence
of this latter group could be due to a belief, evidently still
widespread, that having sex with a virgin can cure HIV/AIDS.
The study is part of a growing
concern with how India’s high HIV/AIDS levels are spilling
across its borders into neighbouring populations. There are
currently around 2.5 million people living with AIDS in India,
the third-highest caseload in the world, after South Africa
and Nigeria. While Nepal still has a relatively low incidence
of HIV, that number is currently rising, which many attribute
directly to sex trafficking.
Bhutan/India
Water, money, power
In late July, India and Bhutan signed an implementation agreement
for another massive hydroelectric plant, the Punat Sangachu
Wan project. The agreement took place during a three-day visit
to Bhutan by Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Punat Sangachu Wan will be the latest in a string of crossborder
investments that New Delhi has made in Bhutan’s hydroelectric
sector. The first three were the Chukha, Huricha and Tala
projects, which together have cost INR 50 billion and cumulatively
produce 1400 megawatts of energy. Punat Sangachu is now slated
to nearly double both of these figures: it is estimated to
cost more than INR 35 billion, and produce 1095 MW all by
itself.
As with the other projects,
once the new installation is up and running, nearly all of
the energy Panat Sangachu produces will be sold directly to
India. There is no indication yet, however, as to whether
this new surfeit of power will convince officials in New Delhi
or Thimphu to pay any more heed to their counterparts in Dhaka.
Energy-starved Bangladesh has for months been pleading with
both capitals to let it in on a bit of the Druk hydro riches,
but has yet to receive any response.
Nepal/India
Bihar, August 2007 |
Damn embankments
In the face of some of the worst monsoon-fed waterlogging
in years, members of Nepal’s interim Parliament from
the Tarai plains have been bringing up longstanding grievances
of illegally constructed embankments directly across the border
in India. The MPs complain that when these embankments burst,
they inundate communities in Nepal. More than 300 Nepali villages
have thus gone underwater during this monsoon season’s
extraordinary inundation, according to the parliamentarians.
The politicians point particularly
at three constructions, at Mahali Sagar, Purna Giri and Laxmanpur,
and are demanding that Kathmandu officials talk with their
counterparts in New Delhi. A poll subsequently conducted by
the media found that a majority of Nepalis in the affected
areas advocated going across the border and tearing down the
embankments if India does not listen to their complaints.
Meanwhile, the Bihar government
has again raised time-honoured crossborder grievances of its
own. With more than 6000 villages underwater in the state,
officials in Patna have placed the blame on Nepal for having
not built enough adequate dams and flood-control mechanisms
upstream from Bihar. (Alternatively, they also blame Nepal
for having opened the sluice gates of non-existent dams.)
Flooding this year has affected millions in Bihar, and hundreds
of thousands in Nepal. A bit of crossborder cooperation could
undoubtedly have helped the situation this year, but everyone
needs to keep in mind that the rains will be coming again
next year, and the next, and the next…
Burma/India
Now to Mandalay!
Nearly a year after it was first officially announced, a new
crossborder bus service is almost up and running between Moreh,
in Manipur, and Mandalay, Burma’s second-largest city.
Manipur Transport Minister Langpoklakpam Jayantakumar says
that the new buses are aimed at bolstering the recently flagging
bilateral trade between the two countries, and have long been
a key demand by the Indo-Myanmar Border Traders’ Union.
Although the service was first
announced back in September 2006, during a trip to Burma by
Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh, the plan has
since been caught up in the Burmese bureaucracy. During his
late-July announcement, however, Jayantakumar said that all
of the required authorities had all signed off on the project.
On the new bus, it will take around 12 hours to travel from
Moreh to Mandalay, which would also be a leg of the proposed
Trans-Asia Highway and Trans-Asian Rail Link.
Tibet
Baking the plateau
What else could go wrong in Tibet? While suffering under an
outsider’s regime for a half century, the people of
Tibet have simultaneously been largely locked out of mainland
China’s much-heralded economic boom. And now this: Tibet
has been dubbed the planet’s fastest-warming area, due
to global warming.
Chinese scientists recently
announced that the average temperature in Tibet is rising
around 0.3 degrees Celsius every decade, and even faster in
the western part of the high plateau. Throughout mainland
China, the average temperature is rising, but at roughly a
tenth of the pace that Tibet is seeing, around 0.4 degrees
Celsius every century. Around the globe, this rate was recently
pegged at about 0.74 degrees Celsius over the last hundred
years.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences
has also warned that melting glaciers in Tibet could seriously
imperil the Ganga and Indus rivers, which flow down into Southasia.
Researchers with the Academy recently found that some of the
highest glaciers in Tibet have already shrunk by around 17
percent over the past four decades, and that the high-altitude
Qingtu Lake, which used to be as deep as 40 metres, has recently
disappeared altogether. In June, Chinese researchers had warned
that the warming could wipe out Tibetan glaciers entirely
by the end of the century. China’s longest rivers, the
Yangtze and the Yellow, which originate in Tibet, are also
imperilled.
Recent aerial imagery has shown
that wetlands at the head of the Yangtze have decreased by
nearly 40 percent over the last 40 years. These two rivers
alone are responsible for bringing fresh water to hundreds
of millions, and together irrigate around half of China’s
farmland.
India
New Delhi v Kyoto
The New Delhi government has taken its first steps towards
creating a national plan for dealing with the effects of global
climate change in India. In late July, Manmohan Singh chaired
a meeting of top officials and experts from across the country,
dubbed the National Council for Climate Change. That group
was subsequently vested with the responsibility of coming
up with a preliminary national-policy plan by this coming
October. Both India and China are currently under increasing
pressure to make cuts in their greenhouse-gas emissions before
an international meeting scheduled for December.
Recent reports have warned
that India could be one of the worst-affected countries in
the world from the impact of global climate change. Focus
will now be placed on how to deal with melting Himalayan glaciers,
as well as how to regenerate the country’s degraded
forests. As with the United States, India has long resisted
international attempts to get it to cut its greenhouse-gas
emissions, saying that doing so would be harmful to its economy.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, the country is not required to do
so. But that is expected to change following the December
meeting, which is set to come up with an international framework
to go beyond Kyoto’s 2012 end date.
Region
Too much fun
An Israeli insurance firm recently introduced a new policy
for parents of backpackers who have psychotic incidents while
traveling in Southasia. Rescuing stray Israelis has evidently
been a booming business in recent times. Every year, more
than 50,000 young Israelis go abroad after completing mandatory
military service. Many of them head to either South America
or Southasia, about two-thirds to the latter; around 90 percent
take drugs at some point during their trip. According to an
organisation called War on Drugs, around 2000 Israeli backpackers
every year subsequently suffer mental illness due to either
drugs or ‘spiritual confusion’.
The new GBP 100 insurance policy
will now cover the cost of ‘rescue’, a trip back
to Israel and a three-month treatment course. The idea to
offer ‘psychotic’ insurance was initiated by Hilik
Magnum, who has been running a search-and-rescue company for
such cases for more than a decade. His business, which now
employs 22 people, began working solely in the Himalaya, and
subsequently branched out into what he calls “an intelligence
operation”.
India/Pakistan
Sixfold dreams
Officials from India and Pakistan recently announced their
intentions to increase bilateral trade to USD 10 billion by
2010. While clearly a worthwhile goal, it was impossible to
ignore what seemed to be a dramatic overzealousness in the
declaration. Not only would this require a sixfold increase
over current trade levels within three years; but the two-day
secretary-level summit where the agreement was announced was
the first of its kind in more than a year and a half.
Nonetheless, the weight of
the agreement appeared to have been felt by both of the top
trade officials, Syed Asif Shah and G K Pillai, who acknowledged
that they would need to work together strenuously to reduce
current trade barriers. As such, they promised to allow banks
to open crossborder branches, increase the number of legally
tradable goods, reduce current tariffs and improve trade infrastructure.
Indeed, the sudden burst of
crossborder synergy appeared to leave both secretaries glowing.
“We agreed on almost all issues,” Shah later exulted
(though this did not extend to the current spat over who actually
developed – and who will get to export – the so-called
Super Basmati strain of rice, which will remain contentious).
New Delhi also confirmed its willingness to move forward with
granting Islamabad’s ‘wish list’ of tradable
goods, without maintaining its own previous demands of allowing
trade access to Afghanistan, or Pakistan giving India Most
Favoured Nation status.
In theory, attaining trade
levels of USD 10 billion by 2010 is very doable. Much trade
between the two countries goes by way of the Gulf, or through
smuggling. Regularising this trade could take the two countries
closer to the USD 10 billion mark than anyone might imagine.
Cumulative direct bilateral trade currently stands at less
than USD 300 million per year – a miniscule amount compared
to the USD 200 billion combined trade of the two countries
with the rest of the world. Islamabad and New Delhi are now
set to undertake large-scale infrastructure-development at
the Atari-Wagah customs post, at which point nothing should
be impossible for the two neighbours.
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