Russia’s Strategy For Reclaiming What Was Lost

Russia’s Strategy

George Friedman

Townhall.com

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 reversed a process that had been under way since the Russian Empire’s emergence in the 17th century. It was ultimately to incorporate four general elements: Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus and Siberia. The St. Petersburg-Moscow axis was its core, and Russia, Belorussia and Ukraine were its center of gravity. The borders were always dynamic, mostly expanding but periodically contracting as the international situation warranted. At its farthest extent, from 1945 to 1989, it reached central Germany, dominating the lands it seized in World War II. The Russian Empire was never at peace. As with many empires, there were always parts of it putting up (sometimes violent) resistance and parts that bordering powers coveted — as well as parts of other nations that Russia coveted.

The Russian Empire subverted the assumption that political and military power requires a strong economy: It was never prosperous, but it was frequently powerful. The Russians defeated Napoleon and Hitler and confronted the far wealthier Americans for more than four decades in the Cold War, in spite of having a less developed or less advanced economy. Its economic weakness certainly did undermine its military power at times, but to understand Russia, it is important to begin by understanding that the relationship between military and economic power is not a simple one.

Economy and Security

There are many reasons for Russia’s economic dysfunction, but the first explanation, if not the full explanation, is geography and transportation. The Russians and Ukrainians have some of the finest farmland in the world, comparable to that of the American Midwest. The difference is transportation, the ability to move the harvest to the rest of the empire and its far away population centers. Where the United States has the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio river system that integrates the area between the Rockies and the Appalachians, Russia’s rivers do not provide an integrated highway to Russia, and given distances and lack of alternative modes of transport, Russian railways were never able to sustain consistent, bulk agricultural transport.

This is not to say that there wasn’t integration in the empire’s economy and that this didn’t serve as a factor binding it together. It is to say that the lack of economic integration, and weakness in agricultural transport in particular, dramatically limited prosperity in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. At the same time, the relative underdevelopment of the empire and union made it impossible for them to successfully compete with Western Europe. Therefore, there was an economic motivation within the constituent parts of the empire and the union to integrate with each other. There could be synergies on a lower level of development among these nations.

Economics was one factor that bound the Russian Empire and Soviet Union together. Another was the military and security apparatus. The Russian security apparatus in particular played a significant role in holding first the empire and then the union together; in many ways, it was the most modern and efficient institution they had. Whatever temptations the constituent republics might have had to leave the empire or union, these were systematically repressed by internal security forces detecting and destroying opposition to the center. It could be put this way: The army created the empire. Its alignment of economic interests was the weak force holding it together, and the security apparatus was the strong force. If the empire and union were to survive, they would need economic relations ordered in such a way that some regions were put at a disadvantage, others at an advantage. That could happen only if the state were powerful enough to impose this reality. Since the state itself was limited in most dimensions, the security apparatus substituted for it. When the security apparatus failed, as it did at the end of World War I or in 1989-1991, the regime could not survive. When it did succeed, it held it all together.

In the Russian Empire, the economic force and the security force were supplemented by an overarching ideology: that of the Russian Orthodox Church, which provided a rationale for the system. The state security apparatus worked with the church and against dissident elements in other religions in the empire. In the Soviet Union, the religious ideology was supplemented with the secular ideology of Marxism-Leninism. The Soviet Union used its security apparatus to attempt a transformation of the economy and to crush opposition to the high cost of this transformation. In some sense, Marxism-Leninism was a more efficient ideology, since Russian Orthodoxy created religious differentials while Marxism-Leninism was hostile to all religions and at least theoretically indifferent to the many ethnicities and nations.

The fall of the Soviet Union really began with a crisis in the economy that created a crisis in the security force, the KGB. It was Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB, who first began to understand the degree to which the Soviet Union’s economy was failing under the growing corruption of the Brezhnev years and the cost of defense spending. The KGB understood two things. The first was that Russia had to restructure (Perestroika) or collapse. The second was that the traditional insularity of the Soviet Union had to be shifted and the Soviets had to open themselves to Western technology and methods (Glasnost). Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was a reformer, but he was a communist trying to reform the system to save the party. He was proceeding from the KGB model. His and Andropov’s gamble was that the Soviet Union could survive and open to the West without collapsing and that it could trade geopolitical interests, such as domination of Eastern Europe, for economic relations without shattering the Soviet Union. They lost the bet.

The Soviet Collapse

The 1990s was a catastrophic period for the former Soviet Union. Except for a few regions, the collapse of the Soviet state and the security apparatus led to chaos, and privatization turned into theft. Not surprisingly, the most sophisticated and well-organized portion of the Soviet apparatus, the KGB, played a major role in the kleptocracy and retained, more than other institutions, its institutional identity. Over time, its control over the economy revived informally, until one of its representatives, Vladimir Putin, emerged as the leader of the state.

Putin developed three principles. The first was that the security system was the heart of the state. The second was that Moscow was the heart of Russia. The third was that Russia was the heart of the former Soviet Union. These principles were not suddenly imposed. The power of the KGB, renamed the FSB and SVR, slowly moved from a system of informal domination through kleptocracy to a more systematic domination of the state apparatus by the security services, reinstituting the old model. Putin took control of regional governments by appointing governors and controlling industry outside of Moscow. Most important, he cautiously moved Russia back to first among equals in the former Soviet Union.

Putin came to power on the heels of the Kosovo war. Russia had insisted that the West not go to war with Serbia, what was left of the former Yugoslavia. Russia was ignored, and its lack of influence left President Boris Yeltsin humiliated. But it was the Orange Revolution in Ukraine that convinced Putin that the United States intended to break Russia if someone like Yeltsin led it. Ukraine is economically and geographically essential to Russian national security, and Putin saw the attempt to create a pro-Western government that wanted to join NATO as Washington, using CIA-funded nongovernmental organizations pushing for regime change, attempted to permanently weaken Russia. Once the Orange Revolution succeeded, Putin moved to rectify the situation.

The first step was to make it clear that Russia had regained a substantial part of its power and was willing to use it. The second step was to demonstrate that American guarantees were worthless. The Russo-Georgian War of 2008 achieved both ends. The Russians had carried out an offensive operation and the Americans, bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, could not respond. The lesson was not only for Georgia (which, similar to Ukraine, had also sought NATO membership). It was also for Ukraine and all other countries in the former Soviet Union, demonstrating that Russia was again going to be the heart of Eurasia. Indeed, one of Putin’s latest projects is the Eurasian Union, tying together Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, a large economic and military part of the former Soviet Union. Add to this Ukraine and the former Soviet Union emerges even more.

Remaking the Union

For Russia, the recreation of a union is a strategic necessity. As Putin put it, the fall of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical catastrophe. Russia needs the economic integration, particularly given the new economic strategy of post-Soviet Russia, which is the export of raw materials, particularly energy. Aligning with states such as Kazakhstan in energy and Ukraine in grain provides Moscow with leverage in the rest of the world, particularly in Europe. As important, it provides strategic depth. The rest of the world knows that an invasion of Russia is inconceivable. The Russians can conceive of it. They remember that Germany in 1932 was crippled. By 1938 it was overwhelmingly powerful. Six years is not very long, and while such an evolution is unlikely now, from the Russian point of view, it must be taken seriously in the long run — planning for the worst and hoping for the best.

Therefore, the heart of Russian strategy, after resurrecting state power in Russia, is to create a system of relationships within the former Soviet Union that will provide economic alignment and strategic depth but not give Russia an unsustainable obligation to underwrite the other nations’ domestic policies. Unlike the Russian Empire or Soviet Union, Putin’s strategy is to take advantage of relationships on a roughly mutual basis without undertaking responsibility for the other nations.

In achieving this goal, the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were a godsend. Until 9/11, the United States had been deeply involved in peeling off parts of the former Soviet Union such as the Baltics and integrating them into Western systems. With 9/11, the United States became obsessed with the jihadist wars, giving Russia a window of opportunity to stabilize itself and to increase its regional power.

As the United States extracts itself from Afghanistan, Russia has to be concerned that Washington will supplement its focus on China with a renewed focus on Russia. The possible end of these conflicts is not in Russia’s interest. Therefore, one piece of Russian external strategy is to increase the likelihood of prolonged U.S. obsession with Iran. Currently, for example, Russia and Iran are the only major countries supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Russia wants to see a pro-Iranian Syria — not because it is in Moscow’s long-term interests but because, in the short run, anything that absorbs the United States will relieve possible pressure on Russia and give more time for reordering the former Soviet Union.

The crisis in Europe is similarly beneficial to Russia. The unease that Germany has with the European Union has not yet matured into a break, and it may never. However, Germany’s unease means that it is looking for other partners, in part to ease the strain on Germany and in part to create options. Germany depends on Russian energy exports, and while that might decrease in coming years, Russia is dealing with the immediate future. Germany is looking for other potential economic partners and, most important at a time when Europe is undergoing extreme strain, Germany does not want to get caught in an American attempt to redraw Russian borders. The ballistic missile defense system is not significant, in the sense that it does not threaten Russia, but the U.S. presence in the region is worrisome to Moscow. For Russia, recruiting Germany to the view that the United States is a destabilizing force would be a tremendous achievement.

Other issues are side issues. China and Russia have issues, but China cannot pose a significant threat to core Russian interests unless it chooses to invade maritime Russia, which it won’t. There are economic and political issues, of course, but China is not at the heart of Russia’s strategic concerns.

For Russia, the overwhelming strategic concern is dominating the former Soviet Union without becoming its patron. Ukraine is the key missing element, and a long, complex political and economic game is under way. The second game is in Central Asia, where Russia is systematically asserting its strength. The third is in the Baltics, where it has not yet made a move. And there is the endless conflict in the northern Caucasus that always opens the door for reasserting Russian power in the south. Russia’s foreign policy is built around the need to buy time for it to complete its evolution.

To do this, the Russians must keep the United States distracted, and the Russian strategy in the Middle East serves that purpose. The second part is to secure the West by drawing Germany into a mutually beneficial economic relationship while not generating major resistance in Poland or an American presence there. Whether this can be achieved depends as much on Iran as it does on Russia.

Russia has come far from where Yeltsin took it. The security forces are again the heart of the state. Moscow dominates Russia. Russia is moving to dominate the former Soviet Union. Its main adversary, the United States, is distracted, and Europe is weak and divided. Of course, Russia is economically dysfunctional, but that has been the case for centuries and does not mean it will always be weak. For the moment, Russia is content to be strong in what it calls the near abroad, or the former Soviet Union. Having come this far, it is not trying to solve insoluble problems.

That Huge Attack In Kabul Last Week Can All Be Blamed On One Simple Thing

That Huge Attack In Kabul Last Week Can All Be Blamed On One Simple Thing

Tom A. Peter

 

Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS) has been sharply criticized for failing to thwart last week’s series of coordinated attacks in the capital and given the Taliban an effective talking point.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has placed the most weight for the attack intelligence failures on NATO but hasn’t absolved NDS of fault, “I’m not blaming NATO for this. I’m simply asking a question as to the efficiency of our intelligence gathering systems, whether these systems are working all right,” he said in an interview with CNN.

The president’s question is one shared by many Afghans. Though the NDS is relatively well-regarded as an intelligence gathering body, many complain that nepotism and ethnic favoritism – issues that affect most Afghan government offices – could dangerously hobble the capability of the Afghan intelligence agency.

“I would say that there are a lot of people who came into the NDS through political ties. I would also say that there are people not just from one tribe, but from many tribes related to one group,” says Gen. Nazifa Zaki, a member of parliament from Kabul who sits on the internal security commission. “There are professional people who have worked for many years in intelligence, but they are now sidelined.”

How well do you know Afghanistan? Take our quiz.

In a nation that is a patchwork of ethnic groups, many with their own languages, about 70 percent of those at NDS hail from Panjshir or have ties with the Northern Alliance, a group that once opposed the Taliban, say NDS officials.

Additionally, in a recent editorial for the BBC’s Persian language service Amrullah Saleh, a former NDS director wrote that 90 percent of the leadership for Afghanistan’s security forces, which includes NDS, attained their positions through political appointments.

The problem of having an ethnically homogeneous spy organization comes into sharp relief against insurgent groups like the Taliban or Haqqani Network, which are almost exclusively Pashtun organizations and have only a handful of supporters from different ethnic groups. Prior to the most recent conflict, Pashtuns have been historic rivals of Panjshiris and the other ethnic groups that make up the Northern Alliance.

Just as the CIA has struggled to make inroads in the Middle East with a shortage of Arab-Americans and Arabic speakers – in 2009, only 22 percent of CIA personnel were not white and just 13 percent were proficient in a language other than English – NDS may face a similar problem in Afghanistan.

Despite a violent history between rival ethnic groups during Afghanistan’s civil war, the past 10 years have seen relative peace between ethnic groups here. Still, while communities mix regularly, barriers do exist.

A common complaint among Pashtuns is that other ethnic groups often fail to differentiate between Pasthuns belonging to the Taliban and the vast majority of Pashtuns who have no ties to the group.

“When they send Panjshiris to Pashtun areas the can’t do anything. They don’t know anything about the South or the East. They don’t know how Pashtuns talk or move. If you need information about a Pashtun, you should have a Pashtun to get that information. This is the problem,” says one NDS officer who is not authorized to speak with the media.

The NDS officer, himself a Pashtun, complained that several years ago he was approached by about 10 men who an insurgent organization had approached to recruit as suicide bombers. The men did not want to become bombers, but they were willing to go to the training camp and collect information for NDS. When he told his superiors, he says they ignored the lead.

Whether the incident was a product of ineffective leadership or Pashtun marginalization, incidents like these do not build confidence in the reputation for the NDS, when it comes to impartiality. Those inside the NDS say that having the organization dominated so heavily by Panjshiris, North Alliance supporters, and political appointees has created an environment where talent and professionalism are seldom rewarded.

“In the NDS or the military it should be really difficult to get a promotion, you shouldn’t get it overnight. You must work hard. But in the NDS someone will join today and tomorrow he will be a major. They just make fake papers and everything. Even if the guy is illiterate, he will become a major in the NDS,” says a former NDS officer who asked to be referred to as Gul Kaka because he is not authorized to speak with the media. “If they become higher ranking, they get more power, money, cars, and everything. They are misusing this.”

NDS officials say that the leadership is aware of the problems and is taking steps to create a more diverse staff. Even those who have voiced complaints, say that there are signs of progress, but add that it will take time.

Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this report.

Nabucco Is Toast

Hungary’s MOL Won’t Fund Nabucco Pipeline

WSJ

By VERONIKA GULYAS, GERGO RACZ and ALESSANDRO TORELLO

BUDAPEST—Plans for the massive Nabucco pipeline that would lessen European dependence on Russia were dealt a blow Tuesday when Hungarian oil and gas company MOL Nyrt Tuesday announced that it won’t finance the project in 2012.

A MOL statement released Tuesday afternoon said the company had "continuously" raised doubts about Nabucco. Given that these concerns "still exist," MOL "does not consider the further financing of the Nabucco International Co. sustainable and therefore it did not approve the 2012 annual budget of NIC."

While the EU continues to endorse Nabucco, the MOL statement marks the latest major blow to an EU priority that has been hit by high costs and uncertain gas supplies.

A spokesman for the Nabucco coalition said late Tuesday that the group had no comment on the latest MOL statement. (A Nabucco statement earlier Tuesday said the coalition had not been informed of a change in the status of MOL’s participation; MOL earlier Tuesday said it had major concerns about Nabucco, but didn’t mention a decision not to fund the project.)

MOL is now the second major shareholder to publicly reconsider its role in the Nabucco consortium, after Germany’s RWE AG‘s chief executive said earlier this year that it could scrap its plans for the long-discussed pipeline, which aims to lessen EU dependency on Russian gas.

MOL and RWE are two of the main shareholders in the consortium and their failure to support the project would put in serious doubt its feasibility. Austria’s OMV AG and three other companies are also part of Nabucco.

The company’s statement follows remarks by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban Monday that MOL is leaving the project. A Nabucco statement said the consortium has no indication of a change in MOL’s status.

Nabucco was originally designed as a 3,300 kilometer-long pipeline project to bring Caspian gas to Austria across Turkey and most of central Europe with the aim of easing the region’s dependence on Russian gas imports by opening up a "corridor" from Central Asia to the European Union.

But uncertainty about the amount of gas effectively available in the region for EU export by the end of the decade has dampened those expectations and prompted the consortium to scale down the project to roughly half its original size, ceding ground to competing projects.

The European Commission, which has executive powers in the EU, has strongly supported Nabucco as the best plan for such a corridor, but has recently been open to accepting other projects, saying the priority is to get Caspian gas to Europe, rather than the specific infrastructure to do that.

Marlene Holzner, a spokeswoman for European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, said Tuesday the commission has no indication about MOL dropping out of Nabucco, and didn’t comment directly on MOL’s statement.

Azerbaijan and BP PLC –which has a leading role in the consortium developing the Azeri field which would provide the gas for the EU– are working on two other, possibly complementary, pipelines that are in direct competition with Nabucco as they would follow a similar route.

The TANAP line would carry the gas across Turkey, while the South East Europe Pipeline would then take proceed through Central Europe, possibly all the way to one of Europe’s biggest gas hubs in Austria. The capacity of these alternative lines is roughly half that of Nabucco’s.

Nabucco’s prospects have also been challenged by the Russian-led South Stream pipeline, whose partners include European giants like Germany’s BASF and France’sÉlectricité de France . South Stream would not rely on the same Azeri gas, but would provide the commodity to the same end-markets in central Europe.

Write to Alessandro Torello at alessandro.torello@dowjones.com

Tyrants provide rebels with cause

Revolutions are born of unjust conditions.

BY ROBERT D. KAPLAN

The Columbia Daily Tribune

The Arab world, from North Africa to the Persian Gulf, is in a period of political upheaval. Large-scale, anti-regime violence defines Syria. Iran was in political turmoil in 2009. Myanmar is in domestic ferment. Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia is under continual, low-level pressure from pro-democracy demonstrators. Central Asia is quiet, but its Brezhnevite strongmen are more nervous than ever of the fever of rebellion. China’s rulers are equally insecure.

The world is in a state that potentially alters geopolitics but that geopoliticians have no direct answer for: Why do men revolt? The best answer comes not from a work of political science but from one of philosophy: "The Rebel," published in 1951 by the French Nobel laureate Albert Camus. "Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition," Camus wrote. "The very moment the slave refuses to accept the humiliating orders of his master, he simultaneously rejects the condition of slavery." In the early part of the Cold War, Camus had his eye on the assault on human dignity inflicted by Soviet communism, a system he intuited was impermanent. This won him the rebuke of Jean-Paul Sartre, that icon of the French intellectual left who worshipped Moscow. But in the way of a great classic, "The Rebel" has held up well for the more ambiguous circumstances of the present.

"The rebel’s aim is to defend what he is," Camus intoned: that is, to defend the fact he is not a slave. Truly, the regimes toppled in Tunisia and Egypt, decayed and reptilian, characterized by obscene cults of personality with little promise of political and economic reform, robbed people of their dignity and consequently made them feel like slaves. Every giant poster of former dictators Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak told people on the street that they were nothing. And the upshot was revolt. Syria now seethes with such resentment. Because the Chinese dictatorship has wrought dramatic economic development and consequent personal freedoms, China might follow a different path, with uprisings more the result of unsatisfied, rising expectations rather than of abject humiliation — and of the acute awareness of unfulfilled aspirations made possible by electronic media.

Camus follows with two arresting insights. The first is that rebellions happen when sacred traditions are discarded, for tradition provides "eternal answers and commentaries," offering solace in times of bad government and thus providing breathing space for the unpopular rulers themselves. Those secular Arab dictatorships were clearly without tradition and were kept going over the decades by a combination of repression and inertia. But when conditions became ripe for revolt, they were defenseless, in the sense they lacked an aura of traditional legitimacy in the eyes of the rebels.

Camus is not saying tyrants have no defenders among the population, only that among those who do choose to revolt, fear is absent because rebels, as Camus defines them, are revolting against a slavery imposed by those who have not, in the rebels’ eyes, earned their positions.

The collapse of the Soviet empire in Europe and the pressure upon alienating, traditionless tyrannies in the Middle East indicate that Camus is describing an eternal condition. In "The Castle" (1926), Franz Kafka asks: What will take the place of traditional authority? That question has been with the Middle East ever since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, when sheikhs and tribes still held considerable sway, and it has been with Russia since the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917. It is a question that the Bolshevik Revolution never really answered.

Kafka’s answer is that whereas illegitimate authority defends only the "remote," his rebel protagonist is defending "himself" — the individual, in other words. Camus would surely agree.

Camus’ second arresting insight is: "The most elementary form of rebellion … expresses an aspiration for order" because when the authorities do not respect the individual, disorder will reign — as tyranny becomes a masquerade for anarchy.

This is very different from the yearning for a "new human order" that the Hungarian-born intellectual Arthur Koestler discerned in Europe between the two World Wars that served as a prelude to fascism. Still, Camus intimates that by demanding order, he knows he is on extremely dangerous ground.

"When the throne of God is overturned, the rebel realizes that it is now his own responsibility to create the justice, order and unity that he sought in vain within his own condition." In other words, the toppling of kings and tyrants in and of itself does not always morally justify the rebel. To do that, the rebel must replace the old order with a new one that is more just, or at least more benign.

This is Camus’ most profound critique of communism: By declaring God dead, it was incumbent upon the new ideology to provide its own moral universe, which it signally failed to do. The Stalinist cult of personality was a demonstration of power, not of morality. Even China, with the cult of Mao Zedong dramatically weakened, has seen religion grow exponentially because of a yearning for morality.

Ideology leads to murder, Camus concludes, reviewing the history of the 20th century. Thus, "all of us, among the ruins, are preparing a renaissance beyond the limits of nihilism." Nihilism, a characteristic of both Nazism and communism, is a rejection of all principles in the belief that life is meaningless.

Camus’ philosophy challenges all those in revolt today from Syria to Russia and beyond. It is often not enough to topple a system; one needs a credible plan and path forward to erect a better regime.

Moreover, he writes, rebellion requires limits so as not to restrict the freedom of those not among rebel ranks. This is where Camus’ philosophy is aligned with traditional statesmanship and in opposition to other intellectuals whose celebration of revolt was narcissistic and therefore not linked to the restitution of law and order.

The geopolitical universe we inhabit now is one governed by Camus’ philosophy. Over the next decade, regimes in pivot states such as Syria, Iran, Russia, Myanmar and China likely will be challenged by their own people in ways that affect the global power system. The internal dynamics of these changes will be governed by the very order and discipline of those in revolt. If the rebels in Syria offer little but factional infighting that would provide an opening for further sectarian struggles, then President Bashar Assad might hold onto power for now.

If unrest elsewhere is similarly scattershot and lacking the virtue of a unifying idea, then old regimes might soldier on.

The fact is that tyrannies do not govern in a vacuum. They often do so from a base of at least some popular support. This is a truth alien to the American experience but not to Camus’. His very definition of a true rebel — someone possessing the wish to establish justice and virtue — fits well with the notion that the overthrow of tyranny must be earned by offering something better.

Camus’ nightmare is that rebellion can lead to even worse tyrannies than the ones we have. But, as he says, ever since the mythical Prometheus rebelled against Zeus in the deserts of Scythia, revolt has been a distinguishing characteristic of man. One task of geopolitics is to ascertain how close the various rebellions around the world come to Camus’ standard of virtue, for that will be a sign of how close they are to succeeding.

Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. This essay appeared April 18 at Stratford.com.

CHINA’S LAND BRIDGE TO TURKEY CREATES NEW EURASIAN POLITICAL POTENTIALS

[When China actually creates a New Silk Road, as opposed to Hillary’s pipedream, will Team Obama just give-up on the idea or keep pushing for it?]

The prospect of an unparalleled Eurasian economic boom has been further solidified following recent talks between Turkish and Chinese leaders. The first steps are being constructed with a number of little-publicized rail links envisioned to connect China and parts of Western Europe. It is increasingly clear to all nations concerned, especially China and Russia, that their natural tendency to develop these markets faces only one major hurdle: NATO and the US Pentagon’s Full Spectrum Dominance obsession. According to Engdahl, rail infrastructure is a major geopolitical tool for obviating that obstacle.

F. William Engdahl

China and Turkey are in discussions to build a new high-speed railway link across Turkey. If completed it would be the country’s largest railway project ever, even including the pre-World War I Berlin-Baghdad Railway link. The project was perhaps the most important agenda item, far more so than Syria during talks in Beijing between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Chinese leadership in early April.

The Marmaray Project includes the world’s deepest immersed tube tunnel. This is a section of tunnel being floated into position for the Oresund link in Denmark – similar processes are being used in Istanbul.  (source)

 

The proposed rail link would run from Kars on the easternmost border with Armenia, through the Turkish interior on to Istanbul where it would connect to the Marmaray rail tunnel now under construction that runs under the Bosphorus strait. Then it would continue to Edirne near the border to Greece and Bulgaria in the European Union. It will cost an estimated $35 billion. The realization of the Turkish link would complete a Chinese Trans-Eurasian Rail Bridge project that would bring freight from China to Spain and England. [1]

The Kars-Edirne line would reduce travel time across Turkey by two-thirds from 36 hours down to 12. Under an agreement signed between China and Turkey in October 2010, China has agreed to extend loans of $30 billion for the planned rail network. [2]  In addition a Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway connecting Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to Kars is under construction, which greatly increases the strategic importance of the Edirne-Kars line. For China it would put a critical new link in its railway infrastructure across Eurasia to markets in Europe and beyond.

Erdogan’s visit to Beijing was significant for other reasons. It was the first such high level trip of a Turkish Prime Minister to China since 1985. The fact that Erdogan was also granted a high-level meeting with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, the man slated to be next Chinese President, and was granted an extraordinary visit to China’s oil-rich Xinjiang Province also shows the high priority China is placing on its relations with Turkey, a key emerging strategic force in the Middle East.

Xinjiang is a highly sensitive part of China as it hosts some 9 million ethnic Uyghurs who share a Turkic heritage with Turkey as well as nominal adherence to the Turkish Sunni branch of Islam. In July 2009 the US government, acting through the National Endowment for Democracy, the regime-change NGO it finances, backed a major Uyghur uprising in which many Han Chinese shop owners were killed or injured. Washington in turn blamed the riots on Beijing as part of a strategy of escalating pressure on China. [3] During Uyghur riots in Xinjiang in 2009, Erdogan accused Beijing of “genocide” and attacked the Chinese on human rights, a dicey issue for Turkey given their Kurd ethnic problems. Clearly economic priorities from both sides have now changed the political calculus.

Building the world’s greatest market

With the end of the Cold War in 1990 the vast under-developed land space of Eurasia became open again. This space contains some forty percent of total land in the world, much of it prime unspoiled agriculture land; it contains three-fourth of the entire world population, an asset of incalculable worth. It consists of some eighty eight of the world’s countries and three-fourths of known world energy resources as well as every mineral known needed for industrialization. North America as an economic potential, rich as she is, pales by comparison.

The Turkish-China railway discussion is but one part of a vast Chinese strategy to weave a network of inland rail connections across the Eurasian Continent. The aim is to literally create the world’s greatest new economic space and in turn a huge new market for not just China but all Eurasian countries, the Middle East and Western Europe. Direct rail service is faster and cheaper than either ships or trucks, and much cheaper than airplanes. For manufactured Chinese or other Eurasian products the rail land bridge links are creating vast new economic trading activity all along the rail line.

Two factors have made this prospect realizable for the first time since the Second World War. First the collapse of the Soviet Union has opened up the land space of Eurasia in entirely new ways as has the opening of China to Russia and its Eurasian neighbors, overcoming decades of mistrust. This is being met by the eastward expansion of the European Union to the countries of the former Warsaw Pact.

The demand for faster rail transport over the vast Eurasian distances is clear. China’s container port activity and that of its European and North American destinations is reaching a saturation point as volumes of container traffic explode at double-digit rates. Singapore recently displaced Rotterdam as the world’s largest port in volume terms. The growth rate for container port throughput in China in 2006, before outbreak of the world financial crisis was some 25% annually. In 2007 Chinese ports accounted for some 28 per cent of world container port throughput. [4] However there is another aspect to the Chinese and, to an extent, the Russian land bridge strategies. By moving trade flows over land, it is more secure in the face of escalating military tensions between the nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, especially China and Russia, and NATO. Sea transport must flow through highly vulnerable narrow passageways or chokepoints such as the Malaysian Straits of Malacca.

The Turkish Kars-Edirne railway would form an integral part of an entire web of Chinese-initiated rail corridors across the Eurasian landmass. Following the example of how rail infrastructure transformed the economic space of Europe and later of America during the late 19th Century, the Chinese government, which today stands as the world’s most efficient railroad constructor, has quietly been extending its rail links into Central Asia and beyond for several years. They have proceeded in segments, one reason the vast ambition of their grand rail infrastructure has drawn so little attention to date in the West outside the shipping industry.

China builds Second Eurasian Land Bridge

By 2011 China had completed a Second Eurasian Land Bridge running from China’s port of Lianyungang on the East China Sea through to Kazakhstan’s Druzhba and on to Central Asia, West Asia and Europe to various European destinations and finally to Rotterdam Port of Holland on the Atlantic coast.

The Second Eurasian Land Bridge is a new railway connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic that was completed by China to Druzhba in Kazakhstan. This newest Eurasia land bridge extends west in China through six provinces—Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Xinjiang autonomous region, which neighbors respectively with Shandong Province, Shanxi Province, Hubei Province, Sichuan Province, Qinghai Province, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Inner Mongolia. That covers about 360,000 square kilometers, some 37% of the total land space of China. About 400 million people live in the areas, which accounts for 30% of the total population of the country. Outside of China, the land bridge covers over 40 countries and regions in both Asia and Europe, and is particularly important for the countries in Central and West Asia that don’t have sea outlets.

In 2011 China’s Vice Premier Wang Qishan announced plans to build a new high-speed railway link within Kazakhstan, linking the cities of Astana and Almaty, to be ready in 2015.  The Astana-Almaty line, with a total length of 1050 kilometers, employing China’s advanced rail-building technology, will allow high-speed trains to run at a speed of 350 kilometers per hour.

DB Schenker Rail Automotive is now transporting auto parts from Leipzig to Shenyang in northeastern China for BMW. Trains loaded with parts and components depart from DB Schenker’s Leipzig trans-shipment terminal in a three-week, 11,000 km journey to BMW’s Shenyang plant in the Liaoning province, where components are used in the assembly of BMW vehicles. Beginning in late November 2011, trains bound for Shenyang departed Leipzig once each day. “With a transit time of 23 days, the direct trains are twice as fast as maritime transport, followed by over-the-road transport to the Chinese hinterland,” says Dr. Karl-Friedrich Rausch, member of the management board for DB Mobility Logistics’ Transportation and Logistics division. The route reaches China via Poland, Belarus, and Russia. Containers have to be transferred by crane to different gauges twice—first to Russian broad gauge at the Poland-Belarus border, then back to standard gauge at the Russia-China border in Manzhouli. [5]

In May 2011 a daily direct rail freight service was launched between the Port of Antwerp, Europe’s second-largest port, and Chongqing, the industrial hub in China’s southwest. That greatly speeded rail freight transport across Eurasia to Europe. Compared to the 36 days for maritime transport from east China’s ports to west Europe, the Antwerp-Chongqing Rail Freight service now takes 20 to 25 days, and the aim is to cut that to 15 to 20 days. Westbound cargo includes automotive and technological goods, eastbound shipments are mostly chemicals. The project was a major priority for the Antwerp Port and the Belgian government in cooperation with China and other partners. The service is run by Swiss inter-modal logistics provider Hupac, their Russian partner Russkaya Troyka and Eurasia Good Transport over a distance of more than 10,000km, starting from Port of Antwerp through to Germany and Poland, and further to Ukraine, Russia and Mongolia before reaching Chongqing in China. [6]

The Second Eurasian Land Bridge runs 10,900 kilometers in length, with some 4100 kilometers of that in China. Within China the line runs parallel to one of the ancient routes of the Silk Road. The rail line continues across China into Druzhba where it links with the broader gauge rail lines of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the largest inland country in the world. As Chinese rail and highways have expanded west, trade between Kazakhstan and China has been booming. From January to October 2008, goods passing through the Khorgos port between the two nations reached 880,000 tons – over 250% growth compared with the same period a year before. Trade between China and Kazakhstan is expected to grow 3 to 5 fold by 2013. As of 2008, only about 1% of the goods shipped from Asia to Europe were delivered by overland routes, meaning the room for expansion is considerable. [7]

From Kazakhstan the lines go on via Russia and Belarus over Poland to the markets of the European Union.

Another line goes to Tashkent in Uzbekistan, Central Asia’s largest city of some two millions. Another line goes west to Turkmenistan’s capital Asgabat and to the border of Iran. [8]  With some additional investment, these links, now tied to the vast expanse and markets of China could open new economic possibilities in much-neglected regions of Central Asia. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) could provide a well-suited vehicle for coordination of a broad Eurasian rail infrastructure coordination to maximize these initial rail links. The members of the SCO, formed in 2001, include China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikstan, Uzbekistan with Iran, India, Mongolia and Pakistan as Observer Status countries.

Russia’s Land Bridge

Russia is well positioned to benefit greatly from such an SCO strategy. The First Eurasian Land Bridge runs through Russia along the Trans-Siberian Railway, first completed in 1916 to unify the Russian Empire. The Trans-Siberian remains the longest single rail line in the world at 9,297 kilometers, a tribute to the vision of Russian Sergei Witte in the 1890s. The Trans-Siberian Railway, also called the Northern East-West Corridor, runs from the Russian Far East Port of Vladivostok and links in Europe to the Port of Rotterdam some 13,000 kilometers. At present it is the less attractive for Pacific-to-Atlantic freight because of maintenance problems and maximum speeds of 55 km.

There are attempts to better use the Trans-Siberian Land Bridge. In January 2008 a long distance Eurasian rail freight service, the “Beijing-Hamburg Container Express” was successfully tested by the German railway Deutsche Bahn. It completed the 10,000 km (6,200 miles) journey in 15 days to link the Chinese capital to the German port city, going through Mongolia, the Russian Federation, Belarus and Poland. By ship to the same markets takes double the time or some 30 days.  This route, which began commercial service in 2010 incorporates a section of the existing Trans-Siberian Railway, a rail link using a broader gauge than either Chinese or European trains, meaning two offloads and reloads onto other trains at the China-Mongolia border and again at the Belarus-Poland border.

Were the Trans-Siberian railway passage across Russian Eurasian space to be modernized and upgraded to accommodate high-speed freight traffic, it would add a significant new economic dimension to the economic development of Russia’s interior regions. The Trans-Siberian is double-tracked and electrified. The need is minimally to improve some segments to insure a better integration of all the elements to make it a more attractive option for Eurasian freight to the west.

There are strong indications the new Putin presidency will turn more of its attention to Eurasia. Modernization of the First Eurasian Land Bridge would be a logical way to accomplish much of that development by literally creating new markets and new economic activity. With the bond markets of the United States and Europe flooded with toxic waste and state bankruptcy fears, issuance of Russian state bonds for modernization or even a new parallel high-speed rail Land Bridge linking to the certainty of growing freight traffic across Eurasia would have little difficulty finding eager investors.

Russia is currently in discussion with China and Chinese rail constructors who are bidding on construction of a planned $20 billion of new high-speed Russian rail track to be completed before the 2018 Russian hosting of the Soccer World Cup. China’s experience in building some 12,000 km of high speed rail in record time is a major asset for China’s bid. Significantly, Russia plans to raise $10 billion of the cost by issuing new railroad bonds. [9]

A Third Eurasian Land Bridge?

In 2009 at the Fifth Pan-Pearl River Delta Regional (PPRD) Cooperation and Development Forum, a government-sponsored event, the Yunnan provincial government announced its intention to accelerate construction of needed infrastructure to build a third Eurasian continental land bridge that will link south China to Rotterdam via Turkey over land. This is part of what Erdogan and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao discussed in Beijing this April. The network of inland roads for the land bridge within Yunnan province will be completed by 2015, said Yunnan governor Qin Guangrong. The project starts from coastal ports in Guangdong, with the Port of Shenzhen being the most important. It will ultimately go all the way through Kunming to Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Iran, entering Europe from Turkey. [10]

The route would cut some 6,000-km from the sea journey between the Pearl River Delta and Rotterdam and allow production from China’s eastern manufacturing centers to reach Asia, Africa and Europe. The proposal is for completing a series of missing rail and modern highway links totaling some 1,000 Km, not that inconceivable. In neighboring Myanmar a mere 300 km of railways and highways are lacking in order to link the railways in Yunnan with the highway network of Myanmar and South Asia. It will help China pave the way for building a land channel to the Indian Ocean.

The third Eurasian Land Bridge will cross 20 countries in Asia and Europe and have a total length of about 15,000 kilometers, which is 3,000 to 6,000 kilometers shorter than the sea route entering at the Indian Ocean from the southeast coast via the Malacca Straits. The total annual trade volume of the regions the route passes through was nearly US$300 billion in 2009. Ultimately the plan is for a branch line that would also start in Turkey, cross Syria and Palestine, and end in Egypt, facilitating transportation from China to Africa. Clearly the Pentagon’s AFRICOM and the US-backed Arab Spring unrest directly impacts that extension, though for how long at this point is unclear. [11]

The geopolitical dimension

Not every major international player is pleased about the growing linkages binding the economies of Eurasia with Western Europe and Africa. In his now famous 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, former Presidential adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski noted,

“In brief, for the United States, Eurasian geo-strategy involves the purposeful management of geo-strategically dynamic states…To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to prevent collusion and to maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”  Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, 1997, Basic Books, p. 40. See F. William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Wiesbaden, 2011, edition.engdahl, for details of the role of the German Baghdad rail link in World War I.

The “barbarians” that Brzezinski refers to are China and Russia and all in between. The “imperial geo-strategy” refers to US strategic foreign policy. The “vassals” are countries like Germany, Japan and other NATO allies of the US. That Brzezinski geopolitical notion remains US foreign policy today.

The prospect of an unparalleled Eurasian economic boom lasting into the next Century and beyond is at hand. The first sinews of binding the vast economic space have been put in place or are being constructed with these rail links. It is becoming clear to more people in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia including China and Russia that their natural tendency to build these markets faces only one major obstacle: NATO and the US Pentagon’s Full Spectrum Dominance obsession.  In the period prior to World War I it was the decision in Berlin to build a rail land link to and through the Turkish Ottoman Empire from Berlin to Baghdad that was the catalyst for British strategists to incite the events that plunged Europe into the most destructive war in history to that date. This time hopefully we have a chance to avoid a similar fate with the Eurasian development. More and more the economically stressed economies of the EU are beginning to look east and less to their west across the Atlantic for Europe’s economic future.

Notes

[1] Sunday’s  Zaman, “Turkey, China mull $35 bln joint high-speed railway project,” Istanbul, April 14, 2012.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Washington is Playing a Deeper Game with China”, by F. William Engdahl, Voltaire Network, 13 July 2009.

[4] UNCTAD, “Port and multimodal transport developments,” 2008.

[5] Joseph O’Reilly, “BMW Rides Orient Express to China,” Global Logistics, October 2011.

[6] Aubrey Chang, “Antwerp-Chongqing Direct Rail Freight Link Launched,” May 12, 2011.

[7] CNTV, “Eurasian land bridge,” March 12, 2011.

[8] Shigeru Otsuka, Central Asia’s Rail Network and the Eurasian Land Bridge, (Pdf file), Japan Railway & Transport Review 28, September 2001, pp. 42-49.

[9] CNTV, “Russian rail official: Chinese bidder competitive,” November 21, 2011.

[10] Xinhua, “Yunnan accelerates construction of third Eurasia land bridge,” 2009.

[11] Li Yingqing and Guo Anfei, “Third land link to Europe envisioned,” China Daily, July 2, 2009.

Report: NATO misleads with ‘Afghan-led’ label

A new report Wednesday by a Kabul-based think tank accuses international forces of misleading the public by calling military operations “Afghan-led” even in cases where NATO or U.S. forces are the only troops on the ground.

By HEIDI VOGT

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan —

A new report Wednesday by a Kabul-based think tank accuses international forces of misleading the public by calling military operations “Afghan-led” even in cases where NATO or U.S. forces are the only troops on the ground.

The charge cuts to the heart of a public perception battle being waged in Afghanistan, where international troops are eager to showcase successes by Afghan forces and to downplay the role played by international soldiers as NATO draws down forces and hands over security to Afghan control.

The United States and other nations that make up the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have already started pulling out troops with the goal of putting Afghans in charge of countrywide security by the end of 2014. The alliance wants to show that Afghans are up to the task so that the country does not descend into civil strife after 10 years of a NATO-led war against Taliban and al-Qaida militants.

“ISAF’s desire to present accounts of events as favorably as possible is to be expected, but sometimes this slips into propaganda, half-truths and, occasionally, cover up,” said British analyst Kate Clark, the author of the report by the Kabul-based think tank Afghan Analysts Network.

As the drawdown of foreign forces progresses, the international troops are expected to transition more and more into the role of supporting Afghan forces, rather than leading them.

A draft strategic partnership pact agreed by the U.S. and Afghanistan earlier this week said after 2014, U.S. forces will only fight in Afghanistan with the government’s approval.

In the transition, one phrase – “Afghan-led” – has become increasingly prevalent in NATO and U.S. news releases describing operations.

The report charges alleges that the term has been so loosely applied that it has, in at least once instance, been used for an assault conducted entirely by U.S. troops.

The report entitled “Death of an Uruzgan Journalist” focuses on the case of Afghan reporter Omaid Khpulwak, who was caught in a TV and radio broadcasting station known as the RTA building in July 2011 when it was attacked by insurgent suicide bombers as part of a larger attack on the southern city of Tarin Kot.

Khpulwak survived the initial blast but was shot by an American soldier who mistook him for an insurgent, according to a U.S. military investigation report made public by Australia’s “The Age” newspaper in January after a Freedom of Information Act request. The investigation also concluded that U.S. troops were the only ones to enter the building and that Afghan forces on the ground did not issue commands to those forces.

But a NATO news release a day after the attack said: “Afghan commandos and a combined team of Afghan national security forces responded unilaterally to insurgent attacks in Tarin Kot.”

Clark argues in her report that the messaging put out by the Afghan government and NATO and U.S. forces following the attacks in Uruzgan obfuscated the role of U.S. troops, leading Khpulwak’s family and others in Tarin Kot to suspect an intentional cover-up.

A spokesman for U.S. forces said it was still appropriate to call the Uruzgan response “Afghan-led” because Afghan forces were overseeing the entire response that day, which included defending against attackers at the governor’s compound and elsewhere in the city.

“The personnel that were at the RTA building were part of an Afghan-led response to the entire attack in Tarin Kot,” said Col. Gary Kolb. He said that any operation for which the command element is Afghan would be considered Afghan-led.

“Afghan-led is Afghan-led if we’re only providing a level of minimal support and they’re the ones making the decisions to do a particular response,” Kolb said.

But confusion appears to result from what qualifies as “minimal support.” In the case of Tarin Kot, U.S. forces made the decisions on the ground at the RTA building, entered the building and oversaw the operation to find the bombers hiding inside, according to the U.S. military investigation.

It’s a linguistic detail that will become increasingly important over the next few years as officials in the U.S. and other NATO countries will have to decide how quickly to remove troops from areas that have been handed over to Afghan control and how many to pull out.

The phrasing created confusion as recently as this month’s coordinated attacks on Kabul and three other eastern cities. Kabul city was one of the first areas to transition to Afghan control and NATO commander Gen. John Allen praised Afghan forces for fighting off the insurgents without having to call on international troops.

Of course, that was not the entire picture. The Afghan Crisis Response Unit – the quick reaction police force that led much of the response in the capital – has Norwegian and British special forces soldiers embedded in units. When a Greek and Turkish base came under fire, the NATO forces stationed there fired back, rather than waiting for Afghan forces to mount a defense, according to an AP reporter at the site at the time. And NATO air power was called in to finish off a standoff at two buildings and end the attack, Kolb said.

NATO and Afghan officials say Afghan forces have made great progress toward acting on their own and the response in the Kabul attacks shows that improvement.

“The Afghans did the majority of the operations,” Kolb said. “They were the ones doing the lead in the clearing operations, the ones scaling the building.”

And Afghan forces are taking charge of many more operations than they were a year ago.

A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry said that including conventional operations, about 60 percent are now Afghan-led. Gen. Dawlat Waziri said that this means Afghans are deciding when and where to strike, but that coalition forces help with air power or ground forces if needed.

“In all the provinces that we have transitioned to Afghan control, we are in the lead,” Waziri said. “We have the commanders, we have the units, we are making the plans.”

Afghan special operations forces conduct about 5 percent of their operations completely unilaterally, meaning that Afghans conduct them without international intelligence, advice, airpower or other support, said Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, another U.S. forces spokesman. And he noted that joint Afghan-U.S. special operations have been overseen by the Afghan government for months.

“Since December, all U.S. counterterrorism and special forces missions have been Afghan-led,” said Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, another U.S. forces spokesman. He did not provide details on exactly what made them so.

Real Questions On Bannu Jailbreak

source

Jihadis all over

by Mujahid Hussain

Involved in the murder-attempt on Gen Musharraf, Adnan Rasheed was also among the terrorists who escaped in the wake of attack on Bannu prison. The attackers presented a salute to Adnan Rasheed and garlanded him in the courtyard of the prison before galloping

After a lull, the al-Qaeda and the Taliban terrorists have re-launched attacks in Pakistan. These attacks falsify the myth that al-Qaeda and the Taliban sympathizers had been combed out in the wake of the security forces’ successful operation in the Tribal Areas.

As a matter of fact, the Taliban terrorists have pushed the security forces and the local Peace Lashkars out of the area. Now the Taliban are attacking the urban areas and the adjoining settlements at will. The recent example of the Taliban penetration is the release of hundreds of dangerous criminals from the prison of Bannu, situated on the periphery of the Tribal Belt.

Involved in the murder-attempt on the military dictator Gen Musharraf, Adnan Rasheed was also among of the dangerous terrorists who escaped in the wake of an organized attack on Bannu prison. The attackers presented a salute to Adnan Rasheed and garlanded him in the courtyard of the prison before galloping.

This incident sufficiently reflects upon how powerful, daring and well-planned and organized are the terrorists. After attacking and getting released their cronies, the Taliban terrorists celebrated their victory for almost two hours but the security forces and the local police remained ‘unaware’ of the entire scene.

It is unbelievable with how much ease the Tehreek-e-Taliban warriors conquered Bannu prison. The Federal and provincial governments did nothing else to suspend the terrified jail officials.

The Minister for Interior is tight lipped on the issue. He knows that the religious terrorists have gained extreme powers and they have thousands of volunteers to achieve their target.

Afterwards, a private school was attacked with hand grenade in Peshawar, resulting in the deaths of the children. The State machinery has become toothless in the face of Lashkar-e-Islami Group operating in the periphery of Peshawar.

On the other hand it is almost impossible to stem the increasing influence of the Taliban in Waziristan and they have benefited a lot from the on-going tense relations between Pakistan and the US and the former’s step to cut the NATO supply line.

However, the Pakistani media are all praise for the Taliban while the intellectuals are busy paying homage to them in sermons as the architect of the Muslims Renaissance.

Meantime, another sinister development is an escalation of anti-Shia violence. Pakistan’s coastal city of Karachi has already witnessed targeted killings of Shia Muslims. Of late, Shia Muslims have increasingly come under attack in Gilgit-Baltistan region and Balochistan province. The al-Qaeda is availing of the services of the banned Lashkar-e-Jhngvi and Sipah-e-Sihaba outfits, who have declared the killing of Shia as Halal (rightful) in their respective decrees.

After the incident of the Laal Mosque in Islamabad, local Taliban and the terrorists belonging to the Punjab province increased the frequency of attacks on security forces. The army headquarters and ISI offices in Rawalpindi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar and Faisalabad came under the attack. The army officials were targeted while the police training centres and FIA were also attacked.

Under the aegis of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Maulana Samiul Haq, Munawar Hasan, Hameed Gul, etc. the Defence of Pakistan Council and Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman’s Defence of Pakistan Campaign have in fact provided lifeline to the forces fighting the State machinery.

As a result, it appears Hakimullah Mehsood of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is more powerful than the Governor of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa and the Corps Commander of Peshawar. The Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa and other officials have taken refuge to save themselves from wrath of Hakeemullah and his companions.

Rumours are rife that several provincial government officials pay hefty protection money to Hakeemullah. He has exihibited his power in Peshawar several times.

Rift among various TTP factions is also vanishing fast and it is a bad omen for the State machinery. The local Peace Lashkars have failed to face the rising power of the Taliban. The henchmen of Mangal Baagh are slaughtering the deserters day in and day out and headless bodies being found in the periphery of Peshawar as a routine matter. Mangal Bagh used to be the recipient of the biggest financial assistance of the State but now he has become a pain in the neck.

Another hardened group associated with the al-Qaeda and Taliban and hard to ignore is the one carrying out its activities in Balochistan, Karachi, Kurram Agency and Northern Areas for the ethnic cleansing of Shia. This group comprises warriors from the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Muhmmad, who enjoy support from high officials of the Punjab government. Jundullah facilitates this group in Balochistan while it enjoys the support of Punjabi Taliban in Northern Areas. This group is targeting the Shia community with utmost ease. This group attacks the convoys of buses with Shia pilgrims leaving from Quetta for Iraq, Iran and Syria via Zahdan-Taftan Road.

The Federal and provincial governments assign security with these convoys. But the group attacks these convoys when the security cordon ends from Mansehra to Gilgit and Skardu.

There have been attacks on Shia community in Northern Area. Tehreek-e-Taliban has issued at least ten decrees for the killing of Shias and declaring it Islamic to enslave their women and children.

The central leadership of these groups is based in various cities of Punjab. The Punjab based leadership of these groups issues directives for such terrorist activities and the attackers are provided shelter in the Madarassas in south Punjab.

Last year when the Federal government ordered the provincial government to arrest the activists of Tehreek-e-Taliban hiding in specific religious Madarassas of Dera Ghazi Khn, Multan, Bahawalpur, Layyiah, Rahim Yar Khan and Muzaffargarh then the provincial Law Minister refused.

Meantime, the South Asia Free Media Association’s offices in Lahore and Islamabad have received threats and the pamphlets and posters declaring the journalists working for the organization as infidel are also being published and disseminated.

The writer is an investigative journalist, his recent book Punjabi Taliban has been published by Pentagon publishers India. He can be contacted at hussainmujahid@gmail.com

That’s A Lot of Hash!

3,320kg of hashish seized by ANF near Rawalpindi

By Web Desk

The truck driver, who was arrested, denied having any knowledge about contents of the consignment. PHOTO: AFP/FILE

RAWALPINDI: The Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) seized a hashish consignment of 3,320kgs during a drug bust near Rawalpindi on Wednesday.

The destination of the consignment has not been ascertained as yet.

The truck driver, who was arrested, denied having any knowledge about the contents of the consignment.

The hashish was concealed inside different packets, with labels of tea and other grocery items.

The ANF officials said that the consignment was worth billions of rupees.

Express News reported that the drug was being smuggled from the Darra Adam Khel area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Pakistan’s Idiotic De-radicalization Plan Using the Most Radical Militant Leaders

Pakistan army uses bullets, and classrooms to fight militancy

Reuters

Hafiz Saeed (above), suspected of masterminding an attack by Pakistan-based gunmen on India’s financial capital, Mumbai, in 2008 that killed 166 people, met government officials and pledged his support for the de-radicalisation drive, Pakistani officials said.— File Photo

GULIBAGH: Hazrat Gul spent two years in detention for allegedly aiding the Pakistani Taliban when they publicly flogged and beheaded people during a reign of terror in the scenic Swat Valley.    

Now he wiles away his time in pristine classrooms, a Pakistani flag pin on his crisp uniform, learning about word processing, carpentry and car repairs at the Mashal de-radicalisation centre run by the army.

Part of a carrot and stick approach to battling militancy in the strategic US ally, the aim is to cleanse minds of extremist thoughts through vocational training, and turn men like Gul into productive citizens who support the state.

The success of the programme will ultimately hinge, however, on the the ability of the government, widely seen as incompetent and corrupt, to help the de-radicalisation graduates find jobs.

“If a sincere leadership comes to this country, that will solve the problems,” said Gul, 42, one of the Mashal students. “Today the leadership is not sincere. The same problems will be there.”

Pakistan’s military drove militants out of Swat in 2009.

Mashal is in the building which used to be the headquarters of the militants from where they imposed there austere version of Islam.
Eventually, the army realised it couldn’t secure long-term peace with bullets alone.

So military officers, trainers, moderate clerics and psychologists were chosen to run three-month courses designed to erase “radical thoughts” of those accused of aiding the Taliban.

Students like Mohammad Inam, 28, a former assistant engineer, give the school a good report card.

“The environment is very good. Our teachers work very hard with us. They talk to us about peace, about terrorism and how that is not right,” said Inam, in the presence of a military officer. “God willing, we will go out and serve our country and our nation.”

School officials say about 1,000 people have graduated since the initiative began two years ago, and that only 10 per cent were not cleared for release.

Officials concede that their “students” are not hardened militants who killed. Mostly, they provided the Taliban with water, food or shelter, or beat people.

That was enough for a two-year detention, and some say abuse, in a country where the Taliban stage suicide bombings at will and have launched brazen attacks, including one on the army headquarters near the capital.

Even if the Mashal institute instills a new mindset and discipline in the students, graduates face an uncertain future.

The South Asian nation always seems to be on the verge of collapse and is often described as a failed state unable to cope with power cuts, widespread poverty and violence.

“The problem is the deprivation being faced by these individuals. There is no electricity. There are price hikes. There is no law and order or justice which prevails in the country,” said Major Khurram Bajwa, one of Mashal’s directors.

He pointed out how easy it is for the Taliban to recruit people. “It takes about two years to train an army officer, and one month to train a suicide bomber.”

ISLAMIST LEADER HELPING

Pakistan joined the US global war on militancy after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, but critics accuse Islamabad of actually fostering the security nightmare in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region by supporting militant groups it values as strategic assets. Pakistan denies the allegations.

The confusion was highlighted this month, when the United States put a $10 million bounty on an Islamist leader who Pakistani officials say has in fact been helping them turn militants away from a life as radicals.

Hafiz Saeed, suspected of masterminding an attack by Pakistan-based gunmen on India’s financial capital, Mumbai, in 2008 that killed 166 people, met government officials and pledged his support for the de-radicalisation drive, the officials said. Saeed’s organisation denied this.

PUBLIC BEHEADINGS

Pakistan’s military presents the Swat offensive and the campaign to root out extremism as a showcase of its success against militancy.

On the surface, the valley looks far more stable than it did in the Taliban days when Fazlullah, known as FM Mullah for his fiery radio sermons, was ordering his men to take to the streets and punish the “immoral”, or anyone who disagreed with his violent philosophy.

Residents of Swat, 160 km from Islamabad, crowd street markets. Girls schools that were blown up by the Taliban have reopened. A ski resort burned down by the Taliban has re-opened.

That is due in large part to a sense of security created by the thousands of Pakistani soldiers still stationed there.

But the army’s successes have been tarnished by allegations of human rights abuses.

Human Rights Watch says it has received credible reports of extrajudicial killings allegedly committed by soldiers or police in Swat. The army counters that it takes human rights seriously and has launched an investigation into the matter.