tdaxp

"China pitching for FTA with India," Financial Express, 25 March 2005, http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=86137 (from The Acorn).

"US gives Pak F-16s, India gets F-16s plus plus," by C Raja Mohan and Pranab Dhal Samanta, Indian Express, 25 March 2005, http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=67213 (from The Acorn).

"Behind the Bugti frontlines," by Sherry Rehman, The News, 26 March 2005, http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/mar2005-daily/26-03-2005/main/main7.htm (from The Acorn).

India is Functioning, Pakistan is Non-Integrating. Again and again, New Delhi seeks to grow the world economy and create a global security regime. Again and again, Pakistan proves it is a failing state.

As India and America grow their security ties stratospherically

On missile defence, the classified briefing given to India by a Pentagon team last month was on the PAC 2 Plus system. This takes care of integration with radar systems being developed now by Raytheon. Such a briefing has only been given to Israel outside the NATO.

The Bush Administration is also proposing a major change in its non-proliferation policy towards India by offering cooperation in the area of commercial atomic energy generation—including nuclear reactor technology—for the first time in three decades.

This comes days after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice—she spoke to External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh in Myanmar today—had revealed a package of proposals aimed at addressing India’s security and energy needs.

Having opposed the natural gas pipeline with Iran, the Bush Administration believes it has an obligation to offer alternative options to India. It is in this context that Washington is proposing nuclear energy cooperation.

The Bush Administration is expected to shortly take up the possibility of such cooperation with the US Congress that has put in legislative constraints on the transfer of nuclear energy technology.

To top it all, the Bush Administration wants a dialogue on global issues with India aimed at increasing New Delhi’s role in international institutions such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and Group of Eight industrial countries.

China is pushing for a free trade agreement (FTA) with India which, it claims, would result in the biggest free trade region in the world.

Speaking to media persons at a round table on trade with China organised by the Federation of Indian Export Organisation, Chinese Ambassador to India Sun Yuxi said that while the Chinese government supported the proposed FTA, the business community and experts needed to have detailed discussions on the issue.

Referring to the recent meeting of the joint study group (JSG) on closer economic co-operation between India and China in New Delhi, Mr Yuxi said the Chinese representatives in the group had advocated the need to go in for an FTA between the two countries. “It is now for the Indian side to take a decision on the issue,” he said.

The Crumbling Islamic Republic
Secessionist Baluchistan in the South-West
Anarchic Tribal Regions in the Center-West
Disputed Kashmir in the North-East
Rump Pakistan in the Middle

Balochistan’s geo-strategic location has put it squarely back in the new great game for energy and shipping lines, and the colonial administrative structures left intact there since the 19th century feed into the ambiguity about state law that such tribal societies experience. Vital parts of the huge province are in the grip of an open civil war, administered under three crumbling legal systems, but the tragedy is that Islamabad is still sleeping, almost a hundred years removed from the reality of the backwater that could break away Pakistan’s long under-populated flank.

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As it stands, the military logic is as follows: if even a proportion of all 6,000 FC personnel stationed in Balochistan are transferred to Dera Bugti, to supplement the 600 odd men the FC has posted in Dera right now, they will of course win more than a pitched battle with the outnumbered Bugtis. What the military is finding hard to grasp is that they will still lose the war. Basically, the way the terrain is configured, it is almost impossible to win a final battle against hardened tribals that know the landscape, its secret gulleys, its dips and peaks. Anybody, who has followed the tortuous history of the Afghan resistance against the Soviets can see the parallels between the Salang highway bottlenecks and the negotiating power of the warlords, who routinely bartered their control of the supply route for political and fiscal exchanges. The only difference here is that the Baloch field commanders cannot be broken by cash and compromise, so they remain committed to their political objectives, and in this case they are engaged in battle against their own government, not a foreign power.