Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ
Ukraine is under a massive Russian assault. Kiev is under siege. Russian President Vladimir Putin's main objective is to keep Ukraine permanently out of NATO, the western nations' military alliance. Putin says the West has broken its promise to not expand NATO after the end of the Cold War. Ukraine is complaining that the West has left Ukraine at the mercy of Russia's powerful military after it agreed to give up its nuclear weapons under firm security assurances contained in the Budapest Memorandum.
When Ukraine became independent in the early 1990s, it was the third-largest nuclear power in the world with thousands of nuclear arms. In the years that followed, Ukraine made the decision to denuclearize completely based on security guarantee from the U.S., the U.K. and Russia, known as the Budapest Memorandum. Ukrainian analyst Mariana Budjeryn explained in an interview with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly as follows:
"It is clear that Ukrainians knew they weren't getting the exactly - sort of these legally binding, really robust security guarantees they sought. But they were told at the time that the United States and Western powers - so certainly, at least, the United States and Great Britain, they take their political commitments really seriously. This is a document signed at the highest level by the heads of state".
NATO Expanded:
In a meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, the US Secretary of State James Baker gave “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
The US and Western European nations have added 14 former East Bloc nations and former Soviet Republics as NATO members in spite of repeated protests by the Russians. Putin's anger boiled over when the US supported a coup in 2014 that removed pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych from power in Ukraine. In a leaked taped conversation, US assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland can be heard discussing with the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, the plans to replace Mr. Yanukovych.
Broken Promises:
Russia and Ukraine are both nursing grievances against the West. Russians feel aggrieved because the West has continued the NATO expansion to include several countries on its border where NATO has based US forces. Russians see these forces as a serious threat to its national security. Ukrainians resent the fact that they were persuaded by the West to give up thousands of nuclear weapons in the 1990s which could have prevented the Russian invasion of their country. The bottom line is that the Ukrainians are now facing the might of the powerful Russian military alone. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech that Ukraine has been “left alone” to defend against the Russian invasion. “Today, I asked the twenty-seven leaders of Europe whether Ukraine will be in NATO. I asked directly. Everyone is afraid. They do not answer", he added.
Lesson For Pakistan:
Commenting on Ukraine, Russian analyst Alexey Kupriyanov told Indian journalist Nirupama Subramanian: "For us, Ukraine is the same as Pakistan for India". What he failed to mention is that Pakistan has developed and retains its nuclear arsenal while Ukraine gave up its nukes in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. Many Ukrainians now regret this decision. Ukrainians know that no country with nuclear weapons has ever been physically invaded by a foreign military. They now understand the proven effectiveness of nuclear deterrence. They realize that all the talk about "rules-based order" is just empty rhetoric. The reality is the Law of the Jungle where the strong prey on the weak. The US military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have shown that Washington is just as guilty of violating the "rules-based order" as Moscow.
How are India and Pakistan doing 70 years after independence? What are their successes and failures? What challenges do they face? What does future hold for them? Can Pakistani democracy evolve and grow to serve all of its people? How will Hindu Nationalist Modi's rise impact South Asia? Is India's secular democracy under threat? Could it lead to war? Is there a way to manage tensions between the two rivals? Will there ever be durable peace in South Asia?
Has deposed PM Nawaz Sharif really accepted the Supreme Court verdict disqualifying him? Should he really accept the verdict as Al Gore accepted Bush v Gore verdict after 2000 US presidential elections and go home quietly? What does Nawaz Sharif hope to achieve by his daily political rallies as he makes his way from Islamabad to Lahore in a long convoy of vehicles? Will his continuing public attacks on the judiciary undermine democracy in Pakistan?
What is at the root of the Korea crisis? Is it Kim Jong Un's fear of regime change if he agrees to denuclearize? What lessons have Kim and others learned from the way US first denuclearized Saddam and Gaddafi and then removed them that led to their deaths? Is President Donald Trump's fiery rhetoric making the crisis worse? Should Trump listen to the advice of US allies to cool it?
Viewpoint From Overseas host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)
Why are Indian soldiers publicly speaking out against poor food and airing other grievances on social media? How is India's massive defense budget spent? Why do Indian soldiers lives are almost a decade shorter than their civilian counterparts? Why is the suicide rate high in the Indian military? Is it due to high stress levels from long deployments in areas such as Kashmir where they face hostile civilian populations?
Indian Soldier Tej Bahadur Yadav with his food
Why is President-Elect Donald Trump discrediting the US intelligence agencies he will soon inherit? What compromising (Kompromat) information did the Russian intelligence service allegedly collect on President-Elect Trump during his visits to Moscow? Why are Trump's cabinet nominees breaking with major policies and key views expressed by Candidate Trump during the election campaign? Are they the voice of the "Deep State" in their rejection of Trump's radical departure from established US policies on national security and other matters?
Why have several Pakistani social media activists gone missing in Pakistan? What did they do? Who picked them up and why? Why have other critics not met the same fate? What redlines did they cross?
What is the significance of Pakistan's nuclear second strike capability demonstrated by test firing Babar 3 cruise missile from a submarine in the Indian ocean last week? How will it deter a potential massive nuclear attack on Pakistan's land-based nukes? Does it raise or lower risks of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan.
Viewpoint From Overseas host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with panelists Misbah Azam and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)
Israel does not trust Iran just as Pakistan does not trust India. While Israel is preparing for eventual nuclear-armed Iran in the future, Pakistan is threatened by India's growing nuclear triad and atomic arsenal today. So what are Israel and Pakistan doing to deter potential nuclear attacks by their regional rivals? They are both building sea-based nuclear second strike capability with diesel-electric submarines equipped with air-independent propulsion (AIP).
Israel's Submarine Fleet:
Israel has just taken delivery of the 5th of 6 Dolphin II class AIP-equipped submarines built by Germany. More than 225 feet long, the diesel-electric Dolphin II class is part attack submarine, part nuclear strike ship and part commando taxi. Each sub has 10 tubes. Four of these tubes are larger 26-inch tubes—the size is rare for a Western-built submarine—capable of launching small commando teams or firing larger nuclear-capable cruise missiles. The remaining six tubes measure at 21 inches, according to Real Clear Defense.
Israel's German-built Dolphin Class AIP Sub
Several German defense ministry officials interviewed by German news magazine Der Spiegel believe that Israel intends for these submarines to carry nuclear weapons. The missiles can also be launched “using a previously secret hydraulic ejection system,” the magazine reported.
Diesel-Electric AIP Vs Nuclear-Powered Subs:
A key requirement for submarines is to be stealthy—and the Dolphin II is indeed very quiet. The trick is in the submarine’s air-independent propulsion fuel cells, which provide power under the surface as the diesel engines—used for running on the surface—rest and recharge.
This system is quieter than the nuclear-powered engines on American and Russian submarines, which must constantly circulate engine coolant. Nuclear submarines are virtually unlimited in terms of range, and are better used for deep-water operations. But Israel has no need for nuclear-powered subs when quiet diesel subs can do the same job, according to Real Clear Defense.
Pakistan's AIP Submarine Fleet:
The details of Pakistan's planned submarine fleet are not clear yet. However, Pakistan too is acquiring a fleet of AIP-equipped diesel-electric submarines.
Pakistan Navy operates a fleet of five diesel-electric submarines and three MG110 miniature submarines (SSI). The nucleus of the fleet includes two Agosta-70 and three modern Agosta-90B submarines. Pakistan's third Agosta-90B, the S 139 Hamza, was constructed indigenously and features the DCNS MESMA (Module d'EnergieSous-Marin Autonome) air-independent propulsion (AIP) system. Pakistan retrofitted the two earlier Agosta-90B vessels with the MESMA AIP propulsion system when they underwent overhaul in 2011, according to Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Model of Chinese-made S20 Sub Ordered by Pakistan
Pakistan is expanding and modernizing its underwater fleet with 8 additional AIP-equipped submarines ordered from China. Whether the Chinese submarines are the S-20 export derivative of the Type-039A/Type-041 Yuan-class submarine, or a bespoke design, is unclear. But the Yuan has also been mentioned, and according to government officials. If the deal transpires, it will be the largest ever Sino-Pakistani deal. Mansoor Ahmed of Quaid-e-Azam University's Department of Defense and Strategic Studies, believes the submarines will each cost $ 250 million to $325 million.
Mansoor Ahmed told Defense News that AIP-equipped conventional submarines "provide reliable second strike platforms, [and] an assured capability resides with [nuclear-powered attack and nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines], which are technically very complex and challenging to construct and operate compared to SSKs, and also very capital intensive."
Balance of Terror as Deterrence:
Let's hope that nuclear deterrence works and the world never again sees the use of the growing stockpile of nukes in South Asia, the Middle East or anywhere else. Here's the full video of a recent interview with Pakistan's General Khalid Kidawi on Pakistan 2nd strike capability:
I think senior American analyst and South Asia watcher Stephen Cohen summed up the current situation in South Asia when he said: "The alphabet agencies—ISI, RAW, and so forth—are often the chosen instrument of state policy when there is a conventional (and now a nuclear) balance of power, and the diplomatic route seems barren."
I see little likelihood of full-scale war between India and Pakistan. The best way for the two nuclear armed neighbors to proceed is sustained diplomatic engagement to resolve all outstanding issues including Kashmir. If the diplomatic route remains barren, there will be continuation of covert and proxy wars in the region.
The story of how India acquired nuclear weapons gets almost no attention in the Western media as they continue to focus on nuclear proliferation by Pakistan's AQ Khan.
The nuclear proliferation narrative in the mainstream American and European media begins with A.Q. Khan's network rather than the actors in North America and Europe as the original proliferators of nuclear weapons equipment, materials and technology to India in 1960s and 1970s. These nuclear exports from US to India continued for several years even after the Indian nuclear test in 1974.
The real story, as recounted by Paul Leventhal of The Nuclear Control Institute, begins with the US and Canada supplying nuclear reactors and fuel to India in 1960s. As the story unfolds, we learn that the spent fuel from Canadian Cirus reactor was reprocessed into bomb-grade plutonium using a reprocessing plant provided by an American-European consortium, and later used to explode India's first atom bomb at Pokhran in 1974. This is the key event in South Asia that led to Pakistan's pursuit of nuclear weapons culminating in nuclear tests by both India and Pakistan in 1998.
Here are some key excerpts from Paul Leventhal's presentation to Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington DC on December 19, 2005:
CIRUS (Canadian reactor supplied to India) holds a very special place in nonproliferation history and the development of US nonproliferation policy. This needs to be understood if we are to do the right thing in working out a new nuclear relationship with India.
My own personal involvement in this history and policy began with a telephone call I received 31 years ago on a May morning in 1974 when I was a young staffer on the U.S. Senate Government Operations Committee. It was from a Congressional liaison officer of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission who said he was calling to inform me that India had just conducted a nuclear test and to assure me that "the United States had absolutely nothing to do with it."
At that time, I was working on legislation to reorganize the AEC into separate regulatory and promotional agencies. I had begun investigating the weapons potential of nuclear materials being used in the U.S. Atoms for Peace program, both at home and abroad. The official wanted me to know there was no need to consider remedial legislation on nuclear exports because the plutonium used in India's test came not from the safeguarded nuclear power plant at Tarapur, supplied by the United States, but from the unsafeguarded Cirus research reactor near Bombay, supplied by Canada. "This is a Canadian problem, not ours," he said.
It took me two years to discover that the information provided me that day was false. The United States, in fact, had supplied the essential heavy-water component that made the Cirus reactor operable, but decided to cover up the American supplier role and let Canada "take the fall" for the Indian test. Canada promptly cut off nuclear exports to India, but the United States did not.
In 1976, when the Senate committee uncovered the U.S. heavy-water export to India and confronted the State Department on it, the government's response was another falsehood: the heavy water supplied by the U.S., it said, had leaked from the reactor at a rate of 10% a year, and had totally depleted over 10 years by the time India produced the plutonium for its test.
But the committee learned from Canada that the actual heavy-water loss rate at Cirus was less than 1% a year, and we learned from junior-high-school arithmetic that even a 10%- a-year loss rate doesn't equal 100% after 10 years. Actually, more than 90% of the original U.S. heavy water was still in the Cirus reactor after 10 years, even if it took India a decade to produce the test plutonium---itself a highly fanciful notion.
We also learned that the reprocessing plant where India had extracted the plutonium from Cirus spent fuel, described as "indigenous" in official U.S. and Indian documents, in fact had been supplied by an elaborate and secret consortium of U.S. and European companies.
Faced with this blatant example of the Executive Branch taking Congress for the fool, the Senate committee drafted and Congress eventually enacted the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Paul Leventhal's story about India's diversion of civilian nuclear programs to build weapons is corroborated by other sources such as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the Wisconsin Project.
Unfortunately, not much has changed in Washington since 1974 as the duplicitous US policy of "non-proliferation" continues to this day. Washington never talks about the Israeli nuclear weapons and the US administration continues to raise objections to the Chinese sale of nuclear power plants to Pakistan which is suffering from crippling energy deficits. Meanwhile, the 2009 US-India nuclear deal legitimizes India as a nuclear weapons state and encourages continuing Indian buildup of its nuclear arsenal even as the US targets Iran for its alleged efforts to build nuclear weapons.
US private contractor Blackwater, renamed Xe after it gained notoriety in Iraq, is now facing charges of secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support. The New York Times is reporting that "Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees".
There have been strong rumors swirling about the arrival of Blackwater personnel in Pakistan in recent months. The rumors and the opposition have gained strength with a November 4 report in the Nation newspaper alleging the arrival of 202 Blackwater personnel in Islamabad.
“Of the 274 passengers, who boarded Pakistan’s national flag carrier-PIA, flight PK-786 from Heathrow Airport UK, 202 were foreigners but they were fluently speaking Urdu language,” the paper said. The report quoted officials on duty at Shaheed Benazir International Airport Islamabad as saying, “We had instructions to allow the foreigners entry without custom procedure.”
It seems that the Blackwater personnel have been on Pakistani soil for years before the current rumors surfaced. From a secret division at Blackwater's North Carolina headquarters, it has assumed a role in Washington's most important counterterrorism program: the use of drones to kill Al Qaeda's leaders, according to government officials and current and former employees who talked with the New York Times.
The division's operations are carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where Blackwater contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by C.I.A. employees. They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said.
Last month, the CIA disclosed that it had hired Blackwater to kill senior al-Qaida leaders. The targeted assassination program has come under strong criticism in Washington. However, German publication Der Spiegel has learned that the level of cooperation between the CIA and the paid mercenaries at Blackwater has been deeper than previously known. The firm has also been heavily involved in CIA's secret rendition program of kidnapping, jailing and torturing terrorism suspects, according to persistent reports.
In addition to the increasing drone attacks and rising suspicions about the role of the CIA, there are new and explosive revelations about the role and the strength of Blackwater contractors in the region. A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine have alleged that Blackwater chief Erik Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life." The number of US contractors working for the US military and the CIA in the region exceeds the total strength of the US troops and CIA personnel, according to estimates by Jimmy Scahill who has researched and written extensively about Blackwater. The presence of over 80,000 US military and intelligence contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan makes the level of privatization of war unprecedented.
There have also been credible reports by Jeremy Scahill in the Nation that Blackwater has been working with US special forces JSOC on American forward operating bases (FOBs) in various parts of Pakistan, including Karachi, on "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive actions inside and outside Pakistan.
The stakes are now much higher in Pakistan than in Afghanistan or Iraq. The elite commandos of US Navy Seals, mentioned recently by Seymour Hersh in his New Yorker article, are reportedly part of a US team allegedly training to "secure" Pakistani nukes. Blackwater, renamed Xe, was founded in 1998 by former Navy Seals. Xe is on record as saying it has prepared tens of thousands of security personnel to work in hot spots around the world, without naming such hot spots. Soon after 911 terrorist attacks, the Bush-Cheney administration deployed private security firms on an unprecedented scale. Almost overnight, Blackwater transformed itself into a huge business funded to the tune of $1 billion by US taxpayers. The company obtained 70 percent of its contracts without going through the normal bidding process.
With the resources and backing of the US government agencies, Blackwater, aka Xe, has developed a lot of clout using a combination of large bribes and US government pressure. Given the well-known and widespread lack of transparency in Pakistan, is it possible that Blackwater is using the same combination of money and power to persuade Pakistani politicians and officials to allow it operate with impunity? Only time will tell. But the signs are clearly troubling.
Here's a video about Blackwater mercenary army activities:
Here's another video clip about Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill:
