China recently released an
unclassified analysis of the Indian military situation. This is a first
for China, which has, in the last decade, increasingly come into
conflict with India over where the Tibetan border should be and whose
fleet should be dominant in the Indian Ocean. The last time China and
India fought was in 1962, when China won a brief battle to decide a
dispute over where the Tibetan border really should be. All has been
quiet since then, mainly because of Cold War politics (Russia and China
began feuding and India became a Russian client while still maintaining
ties with the West). After 1991, with the Soviet Union gone, Russia and
China became the best of pals (despite dormant Chinese claims on Russian
territory) while India drew closer to the West and remained the largest
customer for Russian weapons. The big change has been the huge growth
in the Chinese economy, which is now the second largest in the world.
China spends three times as much as India does on defense. Chinese
leaders are not elected (the country is still a communist police state)
and have used nationalism (rebuilding the old Chinese empire) to
maintain power. This means adjusting the Tibet border (which a
temporarily independent Tibet adjusted in India’s favor in 1914) and
moving the rapidly growing Chinese fleet into the Indian Ocean (to
safeguard vital Chinese trade routes). Despite all this, the Chinese
analysis still sees Pakistan as India’s major military threat, despite
India officially shifting its effort to confront China in the last few
years. Pakistan has attacked India several times in the last half
century and lost every time. The Pakistani military is poorly equipped
and really only good for fighting Pakistanis. It’s not very good at that
either and India has decided the Chinese are more of a threat. The new
Chinese study is apparently an effort to make the Pakistanis feel
better, if only because Pakistan is a major customer for Chinese
weapons.
In southwest Pakistan (Baluchistan) a terrorist truck bomb was used against a police station, killing five policemen.
May 11, 2013: National elections were held in Pakistan,
despite Islamic terrorists and tribal rebels trying to halt the process.
Over a thousand casualties (including at least 200 dead) were suffered
by candidates, voting officials and civilians in the last month. There’s
always some of that, but it was worse this time because each new
government is expected to do something about Islamic terrorism and
tribal unrest and they don’t.
Nawaz Sharif and his party (the Moslem League) won the
election. This returns Sharif to power after being ousted by the
military in 1999. Five years ago Nawaz Sharif, who tried to remove
Pervez Musharraf as head of the armed forces in 1999, and was himself
removed by the army in turn, tried to return Pakistan (from exile) and
overthrow Musharraf. He was arrested at the airport. Many of Sharifs
followers had earlier been rounded up. Sharif had earlier agreed to stay
out of the country for ten years (until 2010). This was partly to avoid
going to prison for corruption. Sharif eventually got in and
established himself and his party as a viable contender.
While Musharraf was disliked for being a dictator, the
political parties don't offer much of an alternative. The Islamic
parties fear they are losing support, because of the continuing Taliban
and al Qaeda violence. Musharraf had ordered elections when he saw
rising popular anger against him and the military. He lost power in the
2008 elections. He has since been arrested for corruption and abuse of
power. Musharraf is unlikely to make a comeback. Nawaz Sharif, on the
other hand, belongs to a powerful family from Punjab and has temporarily
made the corruption charges go away. The wealthy feudal families
dominate the economy, politics and the military in Pakistan and less
than a hundred of these clans control about half the economy. They are
very powerful and determined to keep things that way.
The corruption is still there but Sharif, who got his start
working for military dictator Muhammad Zia who ruled from 1977 until his
death in 1988). Zia was notable for establishing Islamic terrorism and
Islamic radicalism as official state policy, along with being the
longest lasting military dictator in Pakistani history. In effect, Zia
is most responsible for the mess Pakistan is currently in but is
considered a national hero because he was in charge during the 1980s as
billions in American and Saudi money poured in to sustain Afghan
refugees from the war with Russia in neighboring Afghanistan. Those
refugees supplied tribal warriors who kept fighting the Russians until
the Russians tired of the enterprise and left in 1989. Pakistanis
officers and officials stole lots of that money and infected the
refugees with Islamic radicalism, which led to Pakistan creating the
Taliban in the 1990s. With that as a background, Nawaz Sharif now has to
deal with the growing threat (to Pakistan) of Islamic radicalism and
the Pakistani military (to depose him once more). The corruption in the
economy and politics makes it difficult to rule Pakistan but there is
the hopes that Nawaz Sharif might get it right the second time around.
That’s no guarantee of success, especially since Sharif and his clan
still wallow in corruption, but in Pakistan hope is often the only thing
you’ve got.
Sharif’s party did surprisingly well, gaining 46 percent of
the seats in parliament. Sharif has said nice things about Islamic
radicalism and advocates yet another attempt to make peace with the
Pakistani Taliban (which has been at war with Pakistan for most of the
last decade). With all that Sharif says he wants to maintain good
relations with the United States while reducing Pakistani efforts
against Islamic terrorism. That is something that is unpopular with
America, India and China. Many Pakistanis see the Islamic radicals not
as potential saviors but as another bunch of criminals plundering the
country. It is a fact that the Taliban often steal and have made a lot
of money extorting ransoms and protection money from the military. The
Islamic terrorist assassins know where officers and their families live
and have powerful branches in major cities (especially Karachi). While
many Taliban are intent on turning Pakistan into a religious
dictatorship, many others have tasted the good life all this extortion
cash can bring. This terror campaign has caused the military to back off
on its efforts to shut down the Islamic terror groups (mainly the
Taliban) at war with Pakistan. Can Sharif turn this around? Probably
not, but the hope is that he can. In one sense hope has been fulfilled
because this election marks the first time in Pakistani history that one
elected government has followed another without being interrupted by a
period of military dictatorship.
May 10, 2013: A long time British reporter (Declan Walsh) in
Pakistan (who has worked for major British and American newspapers) was
expelled. This was apparently the military expressing its displeasure at
his stories revealing how the military tried to blame some of its air
strikes on American UAV operations. Walsh was lucky, for his Pakistani
counterparts are often murdered for saying things the military does not
want said.
May 9, 2013: In northeast India (Assam) police arrested a
senior Maoist leader (Anukul Chandra). Police are not sure if Chandra
(and two less senior Maoist leaders arrested in the area last month) are
simply trying to escape the increasingly effective anti-Maoist campaign
in eastern India, or are in the northeast to help with the Maoist
effort to expand their operations into the tribal territories of the
northeast. There, tribal separatists have been fighting the government
for decades but in the last few years most of them have made peace.
May 7, 2013: For the first time since the Taliban declared war
on polio vaccination a year ago, there has been a case of polio in the
tribal territories. It occurred in North Waziristan, an unofficial (but
very real) sanctuary for Islamic terrorists where resistance to
vaccination has been most effective. Polio can only exist in a human
host and one case means there will be others.
In Bangladesh two days of violence by Islamic religious
(madrassa) students, demanding the imposition of Islamic law led to 28
deaths, most of them Islamic radicals. Islamic radicalism is growing in
popularity in Bangladesh but is still very much a minority activity.
Incidents like this, and the mess Islamic radicals have made in
Pakistan, make it difficult for Islamic radicals to expand their base of
popular support.
May 6, 2013: More gunfire on the Afghan border although this
time Pakistan insists the Afghan’s fired first. Last week an Afghan
policeman was killed in a similar incident. This violence is all about
an ongoing dispute about exactly where the international border is.
Recently Pakistan built some new border posts forward of previous ones
but still, according to Pakistan, on Pakistani territory. This has led
to shooting between Afghan and Pakistani border guards. There’s also a
tribal rivalry element to all this. Most of the Afghan-Pakistani border
is occupied by Pushtun tribes. This frontier, still called the “Durand
Line” (an impromptu invention of British colonial authorities) was
always considered artificial by locals, because the line often went
right through Pushtun tribal territories. However, the Afghans are more
inclined to accept the Durand Line, and fight to maintain it. The
Pakistanis believe absolute control of the border is impossible, and
their attempts to stop illegal crossings cause additional trouble (as
tribesmen do not like excessive attention at border crossing posts).
This recent violence is also linked to years of anger over Afghan
Taliban and other terrorists hiding out in Pakistan and Islamic
terrorists (fighting the Pakistani government) hiding out in
Afghanistan. This has led to regular Pakistani shelling of suspected
terrorist camps in Afghanistan, which often kills innocent (or
semi-innocent) Afghan civilians. The Afghans protest and the Pakistanis
refuse to halt the shelling and rocket fire or even admit that they are
doing it.
May 5, 2013: Indian and Chinese officers met to resolve yet
another border dispute and a bit of Chinese aggression. China agreed to
withdraw its intruding troops while India agreed to remove some border
posts that had annoyed the Chinese. Both nations declared victory, but
the Chinese got more out of the deal. It was all about twenty or so
Chinese troops who have been camped out 19 kilometers inside Indian
Kashmir since April 15th. China said their troops were not
inside India, something India disputed. Neither country seemed eager to
escalate this, or resolve it. China said it would withdraw if India
would abandon an observation post in the mountains that overlooked
Chinese positions. The Indian outpost was in Indian territory but the
Chinese don’t like being watched. The Indians refused and pointed out
that there had been three other Chinese incursions recently, but these
troops did not linger. India sees all this as the Chinese way of
applying pressure on India to withdraw from territory claimed by India.
Once more, this tactic worked.
Heavy fighting continues in the Pakistani tribal territories
(near the Khyber Pass). The most recent battles today left 16 Islamic
terrorists and two soldiers dead in the Tirah Valley. This time troops
overran a major camp and captured a lot of weapons, ammo and equipment.
Pakistani troops have spent six weeks fighting Taliban gunmen there. The
army has been using regular troops as well as SSG commandos and
pro-government tribesmen. So far nearly 150 terrorists have been killed
along with about 40 soldiers and tribal allies. The army has been trying
to clear the Taliban from this border area since 2009, but have been
unable to keep the Taliban from returning. When pressed hard enough, the
Taliban retreat across the border into camps and villages in
Afghanistan. They are sometimes attacked there, but because the
Pakistani Taliban are not attacking anyone in Afghanistan, the local
security forces concentrate on those who do (mainly the Afghan Taliban
and the Haqqani Network, which is based in North Waziristan, an official
terrorist sanctuary the Pakistani government refuses to shut down.)
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