Many well-meaning but misguided Pakistanis, such as Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, continue to question the wisdom of Pakistani nuclear tests and subsequent ballistic missiles development in response to India going nuclear in May 1998. As we listen to their arguments, some of which appear quite reasonable and valid, let's try and put them in perspective by reviewing what has become known as India's "Israel envy".
Prior to Mumbai terror attacks last year, Indian author Pankaj Mishra wrote as follows:
"Gung-ho members of India's middle class clamor for Israeli-style retaliation against jihadi training camps in Pakistan. But India can "do a Lebanon" only by risking nuclear war with its neighbor; and Indian intelligence agencies are too inept to imitate Mossad's policy of targeted killings, which have reaped for Israel an endless supply of dedicated and resourceful enemies."
The growing admiration of the Jewish state and the urge to emulate Israel often find expression in the Indian media. Those who argue for "doing a Lebanon" in Pakistan have once again found growing support in India with the government and the media joining the chorus of accusations of Pakistan's complicity in Mumbai attacks last year. Saber rattling also started with India's Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee not ruling out military strikes in Pakistan. President Obama came out in support of India's right "to protect themselves". Asked if India had the right to “take out” high-value targets inside Pakistan with or without the permission of Islamabad, as he is espousing, he said: “I think that sovereign nations, obviously, have a right to protect themselves". This is the same kind of language that former President Bush often used in support of Israel's attacks on Palestinians and Lebanese.
Last year, as the Israeli jets ruthlessly pounded Palestinian civilians' homes, schools, hospitals, clinics and refugee camps, and then the Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza as part of Israel's criminal assault on an unarmed Palestinian civilian population, who do not have their own military to protect them, many Indians openly wished they could do the same in Pakistan.
It is strange to see the growing admiration of Israel among the Hindu right-wing, in sharp contrast to RSS founder Madhav Golwalkar's support for Hitler and his genocide of Jews. This is how British Historian William Dalrypmle describes it:
Golwalkar looked for inspiration to the Nazi thinkers of 1930’s Germany. He believed an independent India should emulate Hitler's treatment of religious minorities, which he thoroughly approved of: "To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging of its Semitic Race, the Jews," he wrote admiringly in We soon after Kristallnacht. "Race pride at its highest has been manifested there. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures having differences going to the root to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by... The foreign races in Hindusthan [ie the Muslims] must adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture[… and] may [only] stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing -- not even citizen’s rights."
During Partition in 1947, the RSS was responsible for many horrifying atrocities against India's Muslims, and it was a former RSS swayamsevak, Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi for (in RSS eyes) “pandering” to the Muslims. In the aftermath of this, Nehru decided to deal with the threat he believed the Hindu Nationalists posed to the nation and denounced the RSS as a “private army which is proceeding on Nazi lines.”
Former UN diplomat and current Indian MP Sashi Tharoor described India's "Israel envy" and warned Indians against it in the following words:
Hamas is in no position to repay Israel's air and ground attacks in kind, whereas an Indian attack on Pakistani territory, even one targeting terrorist bases and training camps, would invite swift retaliation from the Pakistani army. And, at the end of the day, one chilling fact would prevent India from thinking that it could use Israel's playbook: The country that condones, if not foments, the terror attacks on India is a nuclear power.
Yet, when Indians watch Israel take the fight to the enemy, killing those who launched rockets against it and dismantling many of the sites from which the rockets flew, some cannot resist wishing that they could do something similar in Pakistan. India understands, though, that the collateral damage would be too high, the price in civilian lives unacceptable, and the risks of the conflict spiraling out of control too acute to contemplate such an option. So Indians place their trust in international diplomacy and watch, with ill-disguised wistfulness, as Israel does what they could never permit themselves to do.
Unfortunately, it is not just the average middle class urban Indian that suffers from "Israel envy". Indian strategists and military brass are also afflicted by it. Respected American South Asia expert Stephen Cohen of Washington's Brookings Institution recently told his audience: "Not a few Indian generals and strategists have told me that if only America would strip Pakistan of its nuclear weapons then the Indian army could destroy the Pakistan army and the whole thing would be over."
As we all know, no one came to the rescue of Gazans, or the Lebanese before them, and Israelis have, at least for now, essentially gotten away with mass murder and war crimes well documented by many international human rights advocacy groups. Many Israeli soldiers have also admitted to wanton disregard for civilian life and limb and the use of deadly force against unarmed Arab civilians as a matter of Israeli policy. Recently, Jewish-American Professor William I. Robinson of University of California Santa Barbara described Gaza as follows: "Gaza is Israel's Warsaw -- a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians. We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide,"
Do the critics of Pakistani nukes such as Hoodbhoy want to see India do to Pakistan what Israel has been doing to its neighbors? I certainly hope not!
Related Links:
Another Nuclear Anniversary
Can India "Do a Lebanon" in Pakistan?
India's Israel Envy
Gaza Compared With Nazi Concentration Camps
Gaza Bombing Witnesses Describe Horror
49 comments:
just shows racial facism element in india's Brahman ruling elites.
Indian govts after 1989 where never that strong as the ones that were elected before 1989. Hence they couldnt take decisive action against Pakistan for its blatant sponsoring of jihad against India in Kashmir and elsewhere in India. Looking back we Indians realized how much we missed a leader like Mrs. Indira Gandhi in the 1990s. If she were around probably Pakistan in its present form wouldnt be around. After Pak acquired nukes even conventional advantage India had was nullified but despite that India won the Kargil war initiated by Pak.
It is very frustrating for us Indians to see Pakistan get away every time they perpetrate terrorism against India. But then revenge happens in another way. Latest statistics indicate that for every Indian killed by Pakistani terrorists in India, two Pakistanis are killed by terrorists in Pakistan. Whether these terrorists are Indian trained or not I dont know but surely this is called justice by many.
India is waiting for Pakistan to commit that one crucial blunder of pressing the nuke button first. Rest assured that will wipe out Pakistan from the world forever. Yes India will be affected somewhat but the long term dividend for India and the rest of the world will be priceless.
Hoodbhoy is only wrong is the apportioning of blame for the failing state of Pakistan. The state, in it's current avatar, will rip itself apart with or without the bomb. Also with or without outside "assistance". When Jinnah did his little bait and switch - Islamic Republic ... err no Secular Homeland for Muslims - he laid the foundation for the chaos being witnessed today. Why grudge the mullahs their little emirates now? At least they're honest and consistent about what they wanted all along. Not so the duplicitous "elite" of Pakistan starting with the now-canonized can-do-no-wrong Quaid.
So, yes, India unfortunately has to deal with a psycho neighbor with a nuclear gun. But that psycho neighbor - while protecting and burnishing that nuclear gun, and chest-thumping all the while - is having its own body eaten inside out from a congenital cancer.
I think india has never bothered about pakistan as a great enemy but a nuisance value. India learnt bitter lesson with china in 1965 and always considers china as so called freind to be watched carefully
As far as pakistan goes, i think the communal cancer has already gone deep into the pakistan body and the chemo therapy recommended by american doctor is killing the cancer and also common citizen
Eternal laws has its own way of giving it back beyond ordinary intelligence of human being.
"Latest statistics indicate that for every Indian killed by Pakistani terrorists in India, two Pakistanis are killed by terrorists in Pakistan."
The worst curse for pakistan is the self destruction from the monester trained by them few decades back at the behest of its master usa which is now screwing its hell out of pakistan.
I met Pervez Hoodbhoy in 2001/02 while I was a grad student at Geroge Washington University in DC. It was a seminar hosted by a student organization on S Asia. To my horror, I couldn't believe what this guy was talking about. First he showed his poorly made "Bollywood" flick, a cut n paste job which showed how much we need to avoid a nuclear Pakistan and then he continuously opposed any Nuclear energy or weapons for Pakistan.
Let's leave the patriotism out of my comments, but if you use your brain, history tells us, When China tested it's Nuclear Weapon, it was awarded a permanent seat at the security council. No one raised any RED flags when India tested it's weapon. Israel, well, lets not even go there, after all we "muslims" are not the chosen people of God.And we dont run the US Govt.
Mr Hoodbhoy is a dispicable character, he seemed arrogant, unintelligent and quite anti muslim. I got no beef with his freedom of speech, and freedom of his belief. But For Gods's sake man, are you that dumb ?
With nuclear energy, there is so much more than just an atomic weapon.
Terrorism today, is not because of fundamentalists but a lack of leadership and virtually non existence of human rights.
these people are fighting for what our fore fathers fought for, Freedom, and a land for muslims. Look at the poor villagers who are breeding blue collar workers for the white collar elite, who make sure they never get out of their hoods. Who is joining Taliban, it's the poor folk's, thats the only way out they see.
Hoodbhoy, as much as I believe is an anti Pakistani, uses is western education, to destroy pakistan rather than build it.
Pakistan is not a third world country because it's poor, its the lack of ability to produce genuine leaders like Omar, Osman, Abu bakr that leaves us behind the developed world.
"Who is joining Taliban, it's the poor folk's, thats the only way out they see."
Well Saudis who carried out 9/11 werent poor nor are the people who fund Taliban..How come Taliban gets to pay its soldiers double than Afgan army or Pak army?..
About Pak's right about nuclear weapons and blah blah..
US and "Friends of Pak" are bank rolling debt-ridden Pak out of mess..and wat is Pak doing..increasing its nuclear stockpile..(from 60 warheads+)
How does that sounds to a donar?
I agree that certain western educated people tends to be over critical about their motherland due to their expectation of higher values / standards. Even india has got people like arundati roy, who does not have much following and people generally ignore or abuse.
In my perception, it does not matter. if those criticism has got some lesson which we can learn to correct ourself for better i think every body must do it rather than screaming at them.
Touch your heart and see yourself the state of pakistan after 62 years of independence.
Further this reminds of the story of the zen master who asked his student to empty all his thoughts to learn news. If a country or a person feels that he has got everything right then the chances of the that person growth could be nearing zero.
in fact some amount of insufficiency is the driver for growth and maturity.
It is strange to see the admiration of Israel among the Hindu right-wing, in sharp contrast to Golwalker's support for Hitler and his genocide of Jews. This is how British Historian William Dalrypmle describes it:
Golwalkar looked for inspiration to the Nazi thinkers of 1930’s Germany. He believed an independent India should emulate Hitler's treatment of religious minorities, which he thoroughly approved of: "To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging of its Semitic Race, the Jews," he wrote admiringly in We soon after Kristallnacht. "Race pride at its highest has been manifested there. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures having differences going to the root to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by... The foreign races in Hindusthan [ie the Muslims] must adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture[… and] may [only] stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing -- not even citizen’s rights."
During Partition in 1947, the RSS was responsible for many horrifying atrocities against India's Muslims, and it was a former RSS swayamsevak, Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi for (in RSS eyes) “pandering” to the Muslims. In the aftermath of this, Nehru decided to deal with the threat he believed the Hindu Nationalists posed to the nation and denounced the RSS as a “private army which is proceeding on Nazi lines.”
Source: http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:AbdXlWxtwkgJ:www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pr itchett/00generallinks/txt_dalrymple_review.doc+Dalrymple+Muslim+India+tolerance &cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Only poor take to Taliban???? Is that so? The Pakistanis in England bombings are NOT poor. Recently caught pakistanis AGAIN for terrorist attack plans are NOT poor.The pakistan who killed jews in US in temple near seattle is not poor.Riaz as I said many times -pakistans pathetic situation is not because of POOR but because of hypocrisy and religious preudices of its rich and middle class. They do not deserve any mercy!
Either way Pakistan is done as nation-yes few more troubles for India here and there and thats it.US is in its troubles and significantly no one is left to give funds to pakistan to survive too long. When you a dig that deep in dirty waters of religious hatred on jews and hindus and christians-any nation will perish.
Riaz,
Your concern of the radical wing in India is surprising given the fact that an equal or more number of fanatics thrive in Pakistan.
Of course, I don't need to tell you that. Hussain Haqqani, in his book, has explicitly written about the military-mullah complex which dominates the power structure in Pakistan and the scathing hatred they carry against India and kafirs. Two wrongs do not make it right. The number of reasonable people in India exceed those who share more radical views regarding their notorious neighbors.
Now, about nukes. No country, except Pakistan, wears the nukes on its sleeves and threatens to use them at a drop of a hat. This behavior is similar to that of a child who discovered a loaded pistol and now feels free to threaten anyone in return for some candy. Contrary to your view, the nukes in Pakistan protect the military-jihadi complex and not the state. The nuke proliferation from Pakistan proves this point.
Anonymous: You say my "concern of the radical wing in India is surprising given the fact that an equal or more number of fanatics thrive in Pakistan."
My concern is based on my experience...whether any radio or tv shows or the Internet boards, I see the right-wing urban middle class well-fed Indians with a little bit of money in their pockets constantly threatening Pakistan whenever any terrorist attacks happen in India. I have never seen regular Pakistanis threaten India in this way, eve when they suspect India's involvement in bombings in Pakistan.
It was only after a lot of saber rattling by Indians after Mumbai that Pakistan's Gen Kiyani responded with the threat of swift retaliation if India engaged in any misadventure against Pakistan.
Pakistani media, people and officials show a lot more restraint than their Indian counterparts.
Riaz,
You said, "I see the right-wing urban middle class well-fed Indians with a little bit of money in their pockets constantly threatening Pakistan whenever any terrorist attacks happen in India."
- It's a natural response given the fact that almost every terror trail leads to Pakistan. Indians are not alone when they say it. Ask, the Filipinos, the British, the Iranians, the Chinese, the Nepalis or the Bangladeshis. Any terrorist attack or a terror plot, when uncovered, often traced back to the land of the pure. Ironically, the sabre-rattling angers you but you are blind to the state-sponsored terrorism in your country.
You said "Pakistani media, people and officials show a lot more restraint than their Indian counterparts."
- That's not true. I'd like to make couple of points. Firstly, they may not because the suspicions are not supported by enough evidence. There are allegations and conspiracy theories. Thats it. Turns out the lahore attacks on Sri Lankan team were carried out by Pakistanis, not Indians, as confidently suggested in the Pak experts on the eve of the attacks. Secondly, despite lack of evidence, Pakistani middle-class does enough sabre rattling on their on numerous TV channels. The videos are all over the internet to see.
Anon:
It makes absolutely no sense to threaten an entire country even if some of its nationals may be involved in an act of terrorism. Nor does such a strategy work. That's what my post points out amply.
Besides, many of the high-profile terror allegations on Pakistanis have not stood up top the scrutiny of due process in court after serious allegations and arrests were made....such as recently in Britain. So, allegations themselves are not substitute for proof.
Pakistan is itself a victim of terror by people who cam from elsewhere or were inspired from outside Pakistan. Neither al Qaeda nor Taliban orgs are originally from Pakistan, though both have succeeded recruiting from Pakistan. Pakistani military is currently fighting these groups and people like you continue to make false allegations about their implication in terror. It is just ridiculous.
You should look for causes of terror in the injustices and inequalities in your nation or in occupied Kashmir rather than blame others.
Riaz,
From what we know, there are different terrorist groups for different purposes in Pakistan. The Pak army chose to fight the Taliban as a consequence of an outrage from the West and the carrot and stick policy followed by the US. However, the terror groups, such as LeT, JuD, HuM etc, in southern Punjab continue to thrive to foment trouble on the eastern border of Pakistan. This has been the sore point in the Indo-Pak composite dialog.
Here's a report from India Today on India army-air force debate over cold start:
The army and air force are battling it out over how to beat Pakistan in a flash war if and when that happens.
The Indian Air Force is not convinced about its role in the army's "cold start doctrine" for a future Indo-Pak war.
The strategy envisages the air force providing "close air support", which calls for aerial bombing of ground targets to augment the fire power of the advancing troops.
The growing tension between the two services is evident in a statement of air vice-marshal (retd) Kapil Kak, deputy director of the air force's own Centre for Air Power Studies.
"There is no question of the air force fitting itself into a doctrine propounded by the army. That is a concept dead at inception," Kak said.
A senior army officer disputes the notion of a conceptual difference between the two services. "The air force is supposed to launch an offensive under the doctrine by hitting targets deep inside enemy territory," he said. But he admitted the air force was hesitant about 'close air support'. 'Cold Start' is a post-nuclearised doctrine that envisages a "limited war" in which the army intends to inflict substantial damage on Pakistan's armed forces without letting it cross the threshold where it could think of pressing the nuclear button.
The doctrine intends to accomplish the task before the international community led by the US and China could intercede to end hostilities. Kak said, "The air force has the primary task of achieving 'air dominance' by which Pakistan's air force is put out of action allowing the army to act at will."
But he sees little necessity for the air force to divert frontline fighter aircraft for augmenting the army's fire power, a task that, in his opinion, can be achieved by the army's own attack helicopters and multiple rocket launchers that now have a 100-km range.
But he agrees the two services should work according to a joint plan. It means the air force would launch 'battlefield air strikes' to neutralise threats on the ground based on an existing plan. But that would be different from an army commander calling for air support on the basis of a developing war scenario.
That is not the only problem facing the doctrine. In the past few weeks, many have expressed doubts about the army's ability to launch operations on the basis of the new doctrine.
There are also apprehensions about the army's incomplete deployment of forces, lack of mobility and unattended infrastructure development.
But senior officers say the army has identified the units, which would constitute the eight division-strong independent battle groups out of its three strike corps. These battle groups would comprise mechanised infantry, artillery and armour.
"The forces have exercised as constituted battle groups at least six times since 2004. Each of the identified unit knows where they will be deployed," a senior General said.
According to him, the time for deployment has been cut down to "days". "No longer will the movement of troops require three months like it did when Operation Parakram was launched after the attack on Parliament in 2001," he said.
The army also debunks the idea that the troops lack mobility. Some armed forces observers have said only 35 per cent of the army is mobile inside the country.
They have, thus, concluded that even less numbers would be mobile inside the enemy territory.
The army officials, however, pooh pooh the criticism claiming 100 per cent of the Indian troops are mobile.
Israel is a colonial outpost in the Middle East (created in order to control the resource rich area through war generated dictatorships) that has been given a Jewish face for the purpose of maintainability in the area through solidarity building among Jews, by pitting them against Arabs. It has absolutely nothing to do with being a homeland for the Jews, except as manipulation. The same corporations that were helping Hitler eliminate the Jews later wholeheartedly supported the creation of Israel as if they had miraculously discovered God.
This colonial outpost's creation is historically linked to WASPS (the British colonials and later the U.S. power elite). Giving this outpost a Jewish face has served two functions for these elite:
1. Maintainability through Jewish population solidarity for perpetual war against the Arabs, something that an Arab outpost like Kuwait or the UAE could not have achieved because the underlying population would have rebelled, bringing to naught any Arab based colonial outpost that was created.
2. Scapegoating the Jews so that the blow-back of such inhumane policies written in Washington and translated into fact by the Israeli elite are seen by Arabs as being "caused by the Jews", which will have grave consequences for the Jewish population in the long run given how the Arabs are being victimized in the most barbaric and inhumane manner by these elite, now for over half a century.
The conflict has more to do with the political economy of the current world system dominated by the U.S. and not religion per se. However, if a real religious face to the conflict is to be located (given the religious preferences of the perpetrators and victims), the following is the most accurate picture:
A war started and perpetuated by the WASPS (White Anglo Saxon Protestant Christians), scapegoating the Jews and victimizing the Muslims.
In addition to the kind of conventional warfare fought in 1965 and 1971, any future India-Pakistan war is likely to have two new components of cyber war and missiles war.
Cyber War:
The potential cyber component will have a dramatic impact which could reverberate across the globe as the computers used in South Asia for outsourced work from the United States and Europe come under crippling attacks from hackers on both sides. Here is how Robert X. Cringeley describes it in a June 2009 blog post captioned "Collateral Damage":
"Forget for the moment about data incursions within the DC beltway, what happens when Pakistan takes down the Internet in India? Here we have technologically sophisticated regional rivals who have gone to war periodically for six decades. There will be more wars between these two. And to think that Pakistan or India are incapable or unlikely to take such action against the Internet is simply naive. The next time these two nations fight YOU KNOW there will be a cyber component to that war.
And with what effect on the U.S.? It will go far beyond nuking customer support for nearly every bank and PC company, though that’s sure to happen. A strategic component of any such attack would be to hobble tech services in both economies by destroying source code repositories. And an interesting aspect of destroying such repositories — in Third World countries OR in the U.S. — is that the logical bet is to destroy them all without regard to what they contain, which for the most part negates any effort to obscure those contents."
Missile War:
In a Dec 2008-Jan 2009 series of articles for UPI Asia, Hari Sud, an NRI Indian from Toronto, Canada, laid out very optimistic, wishful scenario of how an Indian attack on Pakistan would play out. Sud's scenarios include Israel's direct attack on Pakistani nukes, US help for both India and Israel, and much heavier losses inflicted on Pakistan than on India, resulting in near-total destruction of Pakistan's nukes, and major cities of Islamabad and Karachi, while Delhi and Mumbai escape unscathed.
Sud has scripted the war as any chauvinistic Indian would wish it to be, and it can be summed up as follows: Israelis are perfect, Indians are a close second, and Pakistanis can't even shoot straight.
In the end, Sud's carefully crafted script fulfills his fantasy of bringing Pakistan to its knees, begging for peace!
Needless to say, Sud's wishful thinking was set aside in New Delhi, saner minds prevailed in India, and India decided to back off and pursue diplomacy instead. But Sud's writings give a pretty good insight into the aggressive Indians' minds, and point to the probability of a serious miscalculation by Delhi.
Here are the links to Hari Sud's dreamy forecasts:
1. India ready to avenge Mumbai carnage
2. Israel Joins India
3. Losses and Gains
4. The Missile War
5. Pakistan Seeks Peace
Here is an Indian report which disregards any Pakistani indigenous contribution to its missile programs and gives China and North Korea the entire credit, and says nothing about Agni being a copy of US Scout missile as detailed by Gary Milhollin of Wisconsin Project. This might be a good way for the Indians not to feel too sorry for themselves. But the fact is that Pakistan has made tremendous progress in its domestic scientific research capabilities and indigenous industrial manufacture. The Indians have more access to foreign help than Pakistan and yet their program lags behind Pakistan:
With active help from China and North Korea, Pakistan has surged well ahead of India in the missile arena. The only nuclear-capable ballistic missile in India's arsenal which can be said to be 100% operational as of now is the short-range Prithvi missile.
Though the 700-km Agni-I and 2,000-km-plus Agni-II ballistic missiles are being "inducted" into the armed forces, it will take "some time" for them to become "fully-operational in the numbers required".
Defence sources said the armed forces were still in the process of undertaking the "training trials" of Agni-I and Agni-II to give them the requisite capabilities to fire them on their own.
Of the two, the progress report of Agni-I, tested for the first time in January 2002 to plug the operational gap between Prithvi (150-350 km) and Agni-II missiles, is much better. The Army has already conducted two "user training trials", one in October 2007 and other in March 2008, of the Pakistan-specific Agni-I missile.
The fourth test of 3,500-km Agni-III, which will give India the strategic capability to hit targets deep inside China, is also on the anvil now. But Agni-III, tested successfully only twice in April 2007 and May 2008, will not be ready for induction before 2012.
Then, of course, design work on India's most ambitious strategic missile with near ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) capabilities, the 5,000-km range Agni-V, which incorporates a third composite stage in the two-stage Agni-III, is also in progress. "We should be ready to test Agni-V by 2010-2011," said an official.
So, in effect, the missile report card is rather dismal at present. "Unlike Pakistan, our programme is indigenous. But a strategic missile needs to be tested 10 to 15 times, over a variety of flight envelopes and targets, before it can be said to be fully-operational. A missile cannot be dubbed ready just after three to four tests," said an expert.
Keeping this benchmark in mind, only Prithvi can be dubbed to be fully ready. Defence PSUs like Bharat Dynamics Ltd, Bharat Earth Movers Ltd and Mishra Dhatu Nigam Ltd, in fact, are stepping up production of the different Prithvi variants.
Army, for instance, has orders worth Rs 1,500 crore for 75 Prithvi-I and 62 Prithvi-II missiles, while IAF has gone in for 63 Prithvi-II missiles for over Rs 900 crore.
Navy, in turn, has ordered Dhanush missiles, the naval version of Prithvi, with a 350 km strike range, for its "dual-tasked" warships, INS Subhadra and INS Suvarna.
India wants to gatecrash into the very exclusive club of `Big-Five' countries like Russia, US and China, which have both ICBMs (missiles with strike ranges over 5,500-km) and SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles), before 2015.
The SLBM quest is specifically crucial since it's the most effective and secure leg of the "nuclear weapon triad", with land-based missiles and aircraft capable of delivering nuclear bombs constituting the first two components.
The initial range of K-15 SLBM being developed by DRDO will, however, be limited to 750-km, far less than the over 5,000-km range SLBMs brandished by the `Big-5' countries.
Here is the Risk report detailing foreign help in India's nuclear program:
Western companies have supplied India's controversial nuclear program for more than three decades. All of India's plutonium-making reactors and heavy water production plants are based on foreign designs.
Canada
Supplied the Cirus reactor, which produced plutonium for India's 1974 nuclear weapon test
Supplied India's first two power reactors at Rajasthan, which India copied to build unsafeguarded reactors
China
Sold at least 130 tons of heavy water to a German broker who smuggled the material to India for use in unsafeguarded nuclear reactors
France
Helped build the unsafeguarded Baroda and Tuticorin heavy water plants
Helped build the unsafeguarded Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) at Kalpakkam; trained Indian engineers in France and sent French engineers to work in India
Germany
Supplied unsafeguarded Nangal and Talcher heavy water plants; sold teleperm process control system to Hazira heavy water plant
German firm was fined $800,000 by the U.S. for illegally re-exporting U.S.-origin beryllium
German broker arranged illicit sales of more than 200 tons of heavy water to India
Supplied natural lithium useful in making tritium to boost nuclear bombs
Sold zircalloy pipes which are used as reactor fuel cladding
Norway
More than 26 tons of Norwegian heavy water was diverted to India through Romania and Switzerland
Soviet Union/Russia
Secretly sold at least 80 tons of heavy water to run unsafeguarded reactors
Sweden
Supplied specialized steel tube plates for heavy water reactors
Sold flash X-ray devices, which can be used for nuclear weapon development
Switzerland
Helped build the unsafeguarded Baroda and Tuticorin heavy water plants
United Kingdom
Supplied turbine generator designs used at several unsafeguarded reactors
Repaired damaged heavy water equipment at Madras reactor
United States
Supplied heavy water for Cirus reactor that made plutonium for India's first nuclear bomb
India's cryogenic rocket launch failed on April 15, according to the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8622602.stm>BBC</a>:
<i>India's bid to launch an advanced communications satellite into orbit for the first time by using a cryogenic engine has failed, scientists say.
The rocket took off as planned but the phase powered by the new engine failed to perform and deviated from its path.
Cryogenic engines are rocket motors designed for fuels that have to be held at very low temperatures to be liquid. They would otherwise be gas.
Officials say that only five countries in the world have this technology.
Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) Chairman K Radhakrishnan said that an investigation would now be held to find out what exactly went wrong.
Scientists say the mission failed because control of the two engines controlling the satellite was lost, resulting in loss of altitude and velocity.
Journalists at the scene of the launch said that scientists in the mission control area at Sriharikota in eastern India initially clapped and rejoiced after what appeared to be a successful launch - but their disappointment was apparent as the rocket deviated from its course.
India began developing cryogenic technology after Russia reneged on a deal to supply cryogenic engines in 1993 - following pressure from the United States, which believed India was using the technology to power missiles.
India hopes to emerge as a global player in the multi-billion dollar satellite launch market.</i>
On page 24 of the Non Proliferation Review Fall 1997, author Wyn Bowen writes as follows abut the Indian acquisition of Russian cryogenic engines as follows:
"The (George H.W. Bush)administration's most notable achievement was gaining the Soviet Union's adherence to MTCR in June 1990. Five months later, however,
the Russian Space Agency signed an
agreement to supply cryogenic
rocket engines and the associated
production technology to the Indian
Space Research Organisation
(ISRO). Although Moscow publicly
viewed the deal as consistent with
its pledge to adhere to the MTCR,
the administration perceived it as a
clear violation. This difference of
opinion resulted in the deterioration
of the administration’s missile nonproliferation
dialogue with Moscow.
56
Although Russia pledged its adherence
to the MTCR following the dissolution
of the Soviet Union,
Glavkosmos and Russia’s KB Salyut
design bureau continued with the deal
to supply the Salyut-designed cryogenic
technology to the Indian SLV
program. As a result, the U.S. administration
imposed sanctions on
the Russian and Indian entities and
subsequently linked Russia’s entry
into the satellite launch market, and
its participation in the international
space station, to the termination of
the ISRO deal.57 However, this approach
did not produce any concrete
results during the final months of the
Bush presidency, primarily because
of the strength of Russia’s military industrial
complex, which did not
want to jeopardize its freedom to
export space launch technology and
tactical missiles.58
Finally, it has emerged that
Russia continued transferring rocket
engine technology to India in 1993
after its agreements with the United
States to refrain from doing so. This
reportedly resulted in the completion
of 60 to 80 percent of the transfers
to India."
Here's an interesting call-in discussion on NOR Talk of the Nation about Mumbai with NY Times reporter Somini Sengupta.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99087002
Here's an interesting call-in discussion on NPR Talk of the Nation about Mumbai with NY Times reporter Somini Sengupta.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99087002
Here's an excerpt from a piece "Soldiers Tripping on Shanti" by UC Davis professor Sunaina Maira:
We left Israel to visit India after the wedding, and what did we see? Many things that were hopeful, including street protests against corruption and for women's education, and also some things that gave us pause—such as Israeli tourists in search of "shanti." Beginning about ten years ago, there has been a flood of young Israelis visiting India, usually after they finish their reserve duty in the Israeli military, flocking to Goa to do drugs or to Rajasthan to see the Pushkar fair. Some are in search of an Orientalized mystical culture and peaceful way of life that is labeled "shanti" culture in Israel—as if trekking in the Himalayas could absolve former soldiers from shooting children in Gaza or demolishing homes in the West Bank and Lebanon.
The sight of former Israeli soldiers flocking to India is strange for someone who grew up during the time when India did not have official relations with Israel, like other nations who supported the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. India's solidarity with the Palestinian movement began even before 1948, for Indian leaders opposed the 1917 Balfour Declaration to establish a Jewish state on Palestinian land. In fact, in 1946, Gandhi wrote that Jewish settlers "have erred grievously in seeking to impose themselves on Palestine with the aid of America and Britain and now with the aid of naked terrorism ... Why should they resort to terrorism to make good their forcible landing in Palestine?" Gandhi was referring to Zionist terrorist organizations, such as the Irgun and Stern gangs. It is ironic that today, a romanticized notion of Gandhian non-violent resistance is used as a weapon to condemn Palestinian resistance.
India was host to many PLO members and Palestinian students in exile who came to study in colleges all over India. India was in fact the first non-Arab nation to recognize the PLO in the United Nations, expressing solidarity with other anti-colonialist struggles during the Non-Aligned Movement era, as documented by Vijay Prashad in Namaste Sharon: Hindutva and Sharonism Under U.S. Hegemony. Even though India unofficially recognized Israel in this period by allowing an Israeli consulate in Bombay, Nehru's closeness to Arab nationalist leader Abdul Gamel Nasser led the Congress to distance itself from Israel. In fact, India voted to censure Zionism as Racism in the UN in 1975.
The landscape has changed since the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in India in 1988 and established official relationships between India and Israel, deepening the military and economic ties that were already in place. India now buys half of its arms from Israel, making it Israel's biggest customer. It is thus funding the Israeli occupation, because the Israeli economy rests on its defense industry, its main export, as well as the inflow of US tax dollars. The military agreements, collaboration on nuclear and missile defense, and sharing of intelligence has continued even with the new United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. India and Israel have found a shared enemy to target in their respective "anti-terrorism" operations, conflating Kashmir and Pakistan with Palestine, and also common agreement on a framework that has gained global currency with Bush's "war on terrorism," resulting in the new "India-Israel-US axis."
Here are some excerpts from an Op Ed in The Hindu on Wikileaks cables showing growing US and Israeli influence in New Delhi:
The publication and analysis of the US embassy cables accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks is ongoing, but what has been made available so far reveals a disturbing picture. The US has acquired an influential position in various spheres - strategic affairs, foreign policy and economic policies. The US has access to the bureaucracy, military, security and intelligence systems and has successfully penetrated them at various levels. The cables cover a period mainly from 2005 to 2009, the very period when the UPA government went ahead to forge the strategic alliance with the US.
--------
The volte face by the Manmohan Singh government in voting against Iran in the IAEA in September 2005 was one such crucial event. The cables illustrate how the US government exercised maximum pressure to achieve this turn around. The Indian government was told that unless India takes a firm stand against Iran, the US Congress would not pass the legislation to approve the nuclear deal.
------------
Other cables reveal how the United States succeeded in getting India to coordinate policy towards other countries in South Asia like Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The close cooperation with Israel under US aegis is also spelt out.
The success achieved in getting India's foreign policy to be "congruent" to US policy is smugly stated in an embassy cable that Indian officials are ‘loathe to admit publicly that India and the US have begun coordinating foreign policies'.
----------
One of the cables from the US ambassador to the American defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld spells out the agenda which the Americans hope to accomplish during the visit. The Defence Framework Agreement was the first of this type to be signed by India with any country. It envisages a whole gamut of cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries. It is evident from the cables that the US government and the Pentagon had been negotiating and planning for such an agreement from the time of the NDA government.
------------
The cables show the growing coordination of the security establishments of the two countries reaching a high level of cooperation after the Mumbai terrorist attack. The then National Security Advisor, M K Narayanan was seen by the Americans as eager to establish a high degree of security cooperation involving agencies such as the FBI and the CIA.
The cables also provide a glimpse of how the Americans are able to penetrate the intelligence and security apparatus. Among the forty cables which were first published by the British paper, The Guardian, there are two instances of improper contacts. In the first case a member of the National Security Advisory Board meets an American embassy official and offers to provide information about Iranian contacts in India and requests for his visit to the United States to be arranged in return. In another case the US embassy reports that it is able to get access to terrorism related information directly from a police official serving in the Delhi Police, rather than going through official channels.
---------------
The collaboration between the intelligence and security agencies of the two countries had already resulted in American penetration. Two cases of espionage had come up. During the NDA government, a RAW officer, Rabinder Singh was recruited by the CIA. When his links were uncovered, he was helped by the CIA to flee to the United States. During the UPA government a systems analyst in the National Security Council secretariat was found to have been recruited by the CIA, the contact having been established through the US-India Cyber Security Forum.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/resources/article1568273.ece
Here's a Defense News story on how Pakistan plans to counter India's ABMs:
ISLAMABAD - In response to India's pursuit of missile defenses, Pakistan has expanded its countermeasure efforts, primarily through development of maneuvering re-entry vehicles. The Army Strategic Forces Command, which controls Pakistan's ballistic missiles, has since at least 2004 said it wanted to develop such warheads; analysts now believe these are in service.
Mansoor Ahmed, lecturer at the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University, said that in addition to maneuverable warheads, multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) may be developed to stay ahead of India's "multilayered ballistic-missile defense system" and potential future countermeasures.
"This, coupled with submarine-launched, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, would ensure the survivability of its nuclear deterrent and enhance the effectiveness of its missile force that can beat any Indian defenses," he said.
-------------
He (Harsh Pant) further explained, "A missile defense system would help India blunt Pakistan's 'first use' nuclear force posture that had led Pakistan to believe that it had inhibited India from launching a conventional attack against it for fear of its escalation to the nuclear level. With a missile defense system in place, India would be able to restore the status quo ante, thereby making a conventional military option against Pakistan potent again."Such a missile defense system and a second-strike capability "would enhance the uncertainties of India's potential adversaries, regardless of the degree of effectiveness of missile interception, and would act as a disincentive to their resort to nuclear weapons," he said.
Asked whether Pakistan's countermeasures would be effective against such ABM systems, Pant replied, "most definitely."
He said, "According to various reports, Pakistan has been developing MIRV capability for the Shaheen-II ballistic missiles and [the] Shaheen-III missile is under development."
--------------
"Although the current capability of Pakistani missiles is built around radar seekers, the integration of re-entry vehicles would make these extremely potent and defeat the anti-ballistic missile defense systems. This would be especially true of Indian aircraft carriers that would become extremely vulnerable," he said.
------------
Analysts have for years speculated that the Navy will equip its submarines with a variant of the Babur cruise missile armed with a nuclear warhead. However, whether a cruise-missile-based arm of the nuclear triad at sea would be effective and survivable in the face of Indian air defenses is uncertain.
------------
When this was put to analyst Usman Shabbir of the Pakistan Military Consortium think tank, he said the interception of cruise missiles is not so simple."I think Babur will form the sea-based arm of the Pakistani nuclear deterrent" he said, "but the problem in targeting subsonic cruise missiles is that they are harder to detect due to their lower radar cross-signature, low-level navigation, and use of waypoints to circumvent more secure and heavily defended areas."
"By the time you detect them, there is not much time left to vector aircraft for interception."
However, Shabbir conceded it would be possible for an airborne interceptor to shoot down a missile like Babur. "An aircraft already on [patrol] might be lucky to pick it up on its own radar well in advance [if looking in the correct direction], or vectored to it by ground-based radar."
Here's a recent report from the-monitor.org on Pakistan's cluster bomb capability:
Pakistan states that it has “never used cluster munitions in any conflict to date.”
Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) produces and offers for export M483A1 155mm artillery projectiles containing 88 M42/M46 dual purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) grenades. The South Korean company Poongsan entered into a licensed production agreement with POF in November 2004 to co-produce K-310 155mm extended-range DPICM projectiles in Pakistan at Wah Cantonment. While the ammunition is being produced for Pakistan’s army, the two firms have said they will also co-market the projectiles to export customers. The Pakistani army took delivery of the first production lots in April 2008.
Jane’s Information Group reports that the Pakistan Air Weapons Center produces the Programmable Submunitions Dispenser (PSD-1), which is similar to the United States Rockeye cluster bomb, and dispenses 225 anti-armor submunitions. Jane’s states that the Pakistan National Development Complex produces and markets the Hijara Top-Attack Submunitions Dispenser (TSD-1) cluster bomb. It lists Pakistan’s Air Force as possessing BL-755 cluster bombs. The US transferred to Pakistan 200 Rockeye cluster bombs at some point between 1970 and 1995.
http://www.the-monitor.org/index.php/cp/display/region_profiles/theme/614
India has recently acquired 500 cluster bombs from the US, according to media reports.
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_india-strikes-deal-with-us-for-cluster-bombs_1479604
Here's an Indian blogger
Prashant Agrawal's fantasy to emulate American raid in Abbottabad that killed Bin Laden, as published by Wall Street Journal:
India’s prime minister greets the Mi-25 helicopters carrying Indian Navy MARCOS commandos. He shakes hands with the returning troops, congratulates and thanks them. For the photographers, he holds up his thumbs, “Mission Accomplished”-style. The MARCOS are returning from Pakistan where they took out some of India’s, and the world’s, most wanted terrorists.
That was the story that didn’t happen yesterday or the week before or the month before or the year before or the decade before that. It’s the story that some, perhaps many, Indians have wished to read. It hasn’t happened but the chances of it happening have gone up slightly.
How interesting!
I had heard of India’s “Israel Envy”, a phrase coined by former Indian minister Sashi Tharoor.
I guess the gung-ho Indians like this Indian blogger are now suffering from India’s “America Envy”.
http://www.riazhaq.com/2009/05/indias-israel-envy.html
Abbottabad and PNS Mehran are giving pause to Indian security establishment to think how they would deal with similar situation. Here's an Indian blogger Sudip Mukherjee:
1. What If India Is Attacked In Operation Geronimo Style?
Josy Joseph Times Of India Article
If someone were to sneak in and carry out a special forces raid, like the Americans did in Abbottabad to take out Osama bin Laden, the Indian response may not be very different from that of Pakistan, sources in the security establishment said.
In the wake of such a disappointing realization, the government has begun discussing ways to improve India's response mechanisms, including designating 'first responders' for such eventualities.
The Abbottabad raid is now under intense scrutiny by the security establishment at the highest levels, and by individual organizations such as intelligence agencies and the military. Each of them is studying it from their own perspective, but collectively their inputs "would help improve Indian security architecture", a senior official said.
Government at the highest levels is "seized of the reality" that Indian security response would not be very different from that of Pakistan, and is setting in motion reviews at various levels to improve its response mechanisms, a senior official involved in the exercise told. While the overall architecture of defence against intrusions is known, such as the role of IAF and Army, there are still huge gaps. What is not clear is "who would respond how and when if an Abbottabad-like intrusion" were to happen, he said.
Another official pointed out that the details of response of various agencies as soon as first shots were fired in Abbottabad are of great value to the security establishment. While the Kakul Military Academy and other security installations tightened their own security as soon as the gunshots rang out from the Abbottabad compound, there was no designated agency that was meant to reach the particular spot to take on the "intruder", the official said. Josy Joseph Times Of India Article
If someone were to sneak in and carry out a special forces raid, like the Americans did in Abbottabad to take out Osama bin Laden, the Indian response may not be very different from that of Pakistan, sources in the security establishment said.
In the wake of such a disappointing realization, the government has begun discussing ways to improve India's response mechanisms, including designating 'first responders' for such eventualities.
The Abbottabad raid is now under intense scrutiny by the security establishment at the highest levels, and by individual organizations such as intelligence agencies and the military. Each of them is studying it from their own perspective, but collectively their inputs "would help improve Indian security architecture", a senior official said.
----
2. India Prepares To Pre-empt Terror Attack On Its Air bases
'The (May 22) terror attack on Pakistan Navy air base at Mehran in Karachi was a wake-up call. In light of the incident, we are taking measures to improve security at all air bases across the country on top priority,' the Indian Air Force (IAF) chief, Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik, told reporters here on the margins of a conference here.
As the world's fourth largest air force after the US, Russia and China, the IAF has 60 operational air bases across the country under seven commands, with 170,000 personnel and 1,600 aircraft of different types, including fighters, transports and helicopters.
There was an article in Forbes magazine issue of March 4, 2002, by Steve Forbes titled "India, Meet Austria-Hungary" which compared India with the now defunct Austria-Hungary. Here is an excerpt from the text of that article:
Influential elements in India's government and military are still itching to go to war with Pakistan, even though Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has taken considerable political risks by moving against Pakistani-based-and-trained anti-India terrorist groups. Sure, Musharraf made a truculent speech condemning India's ``occupation'' of Kashmir, but that was rhetorical cover for cracking down on those groups. Washington should send New Delhi some history books for these hotheads; there is no human activity more prone to unintended consequences than warfare. As cooler heads in the Indian government well know, history is riddled with examples of parties that initiated hostilities in the belief that conflict would resolutely resolve outstanding issues.
Pericles of Athens thought he could deal with rival Sparta once and for all when he triggered the Peloponnesian War; instead his city-state was undermined and Greek civilization devastated.
Similarly, Hannibal brilliantly attacked Rome; he ended up not only losing the conflict but also setting off a train of events that ultimately led to the total destruction of Carthage. Prussia smashed France in 1870, annexing critical French territory for security reasons, but that sowed the seeds for the First World War. At the end of World War I the victorious Allies thought they had dealt decisively with German military power. Israel crushed its Arab foes in 1967, but long-term peace did not follow.
India is not a homogeneous state. Neither was the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It attacked Serbia in the summer of 1914 in the hopes of destroying this irritating state after Serbia had committed a spectacular terrorist act against the Hapsburg monarchy. The empire ended up splintering, and the Hapsburgs lost their throne. And on it goes.
Getting back to the present, do Indian war hawks believe China will stand idly by as India tried to reduce Pakistan to vassal-state status? Do they think Arab states and Iran won't fund Muslim guerrilla movements in Pakistan, as well as in India itself? Where does New Delhi think its oil comes from (about 70%, mainly from the Middle East)? Does India think the U.S. will stand by impotently if it starts a war that unleashes nuclear weapons?
1.Pakistan would develop , multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs)& maneuverable warheads through SHAHEEN3 BM & also future BM
2.Pakistan would develop submarine launched cruise missile i.e Babur cruise missile & CJ-10k in their future chinese Type 39B submarine ,which would give them sea based nuke deterrence & would ensure the survivability of its nuclear deterrent
3.Pakistan would produce more number of ballistic missiles & has increased production of nuclear fissile material like plutonium used for nuke bombs,so that it
would overwhelm india ABM shield ,by firing more missiles towards india
4.Pakistan would use of decoys (e.g., lightweight mylar balloons which, until re-entry, will travel on an identical trajectory with the heavier warheads), use of ablative materials or reflective coatings which limit the damage of directed energy weapons, launches of numerous harmless missiles early in an attack which might cause the defender reveal his defenses and expend valuable resources
5.Pakistan could acquire anti satellite weapon or jammers from chinato confuse india’s satellites,which also play a key role in India’s anti ballistic missile shield
6.Pakistan would rely more on cruise missiles like stealthy RAAD & babur for nuke deterrent they are harder to detect due to their lower radar cross-signature, low-level navigation,and use of waypoints to circumvent more secure and heavily defended areas.
7.Pakistan would seek help from from Beijing for high-altitude and anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defenses through HQ-9/ FD2000 deal
8.Pakistan would target india’s BMD Radar through long range anti radiation missile like brazilian MER-1 anti radiation missile
9.Pakistan could pursue hypersonic missile technology if they are ready to afford it.
10.Last but not least Pakistan could 1st strike ,as it fears if india 1st strike then their majority nuke detterent might be destroyed & rest if survive would be destroyed by india’s ABM shield
PLEASE NOTE
this are all my personal assumption ,well anyone having any better ideas apart from this can post
REGARDS
Here's an Op Ed by Indian diplomat and parliamentarian Sashi Tharoor on his recent visit to Pakistan:
I write these words in Lahore, in the midst of a brief but hugely interesting visit to Pakistan. As one who has always advocated hard-headed realism in dealing with our neighbour, while greatly respecting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s vision that the highest strategic interest of both countries lies in development and the eradication of poverty rather than in military one-upmanship, I have begun to think of how much we could both gain if we replaced our current narrative of hostility with one of hope.
What is the way forward for India? It is clear that we want peace more than Pakistan does, because we have more at stake when peace is violated: we cannot grow and prosper without peace, and that is the one thing Pakistan can give us that we cannot do without.
By denying us the peace we crave, Pakistan can undermine our vital national interests, above all that of our own development. Investors shun war zones; traders are wary of markets that might explode at any time; tourists do not travel to hotels that might be commandeered by fanatical terrorists. These are all serious hazards for a country seeking to grow and flourish in a globalising world economy.
Even if Pakistan cannot do us much good, it can do us immense harm, and we must recognise this in formulating our policy approaches to it. Foreign policy cannot be built on a sense of betrayal any more than it can be on illusions of love. Pragmatism dictates that we work for peace with Pakistan precisely so that we can serve our own people’s needs better.
So we must engage Pakistan because we cannot afford not to. And yet — the problem of terrorism incubated in Pakistan will not be solved overnight. Extremism is not a tap that can be turned off once it is open; the evil genie cannot be forced back into the bottle. The proliferation of militant organisations, training camps and extremist ideologies has acquired a momentum of its own. A population as young, as uneducated, as unemployed and as radicalised as Pakistan’s will remain a menace to their own society as well as to ours.
-----
Let us show a magnanimity and generosity of spirit that in itself stands an outside chance of persuading Pakistanis to rethink their attitude to us.
The big questions — the Kashmir dispute and Pakistan’s use of terrorism as an instrument of policy — will require a great deal more groundwork and constructive, step-by-step action for progress to be made. But by showing accommodativeness, sensitivity and pragmatic generosity, India might be able to turn the bilateral narrative away from the logic of intractable hostility in which both countries have been mired for too long.
The joker in the pack remains the Pakistani Army. Until the military men are convinced that peace with India is in their self-interest, they will remain the biggest obstacles to it. One hope may lie in the extensive reach of the Pakistani military apparatus and its multiple business and commercial interests.
Perhaps India could encourage its firms to trade with enterprises owned by the Pakistani Army, in the hope of giving the military establishment a direct stake in peace.
The world economic crisis should give us an opportunity to promote economic integration with our neighbours in the subcontinent who look to the growing Indian market to sell their goods and maintain their own growth. But as long as South Asia remains divided by futile rivalries and some continue to believe that terrorism can be a useful instrument of their strategic doctrines, that is bound to remain a distant prospect. If India and Pakistan can embrace an interrelated future on our subcontinent, geography can become an instrument of opportunity in a mutual growth story and history can bind rather than divide. It is a future worth striving for, in the interests of both our peoples.
http://www.asianage.com/columnists/geography-hope-787
Here's a DefenseNews report on Pakistan's rumored nuclear submarine project:
...Mansoor Ahmed, a lecturer at Islamabad’s Quaid-e-Azam University who specializes
in nonconventional weapons and missiles, believes the reports are the result of a
calculated leak by the Navy, and that a message may be being sent to India.
“This news … appears to be some kind of signaling to the Indians seeing as they are taking delivery of a new nuclear-powered
submarine from the Russians as well as their own Arihant Class SSBN,” he said.
“So Pakistan is signaling to the Indians that they are mindful of these developments and taking due measures in response.”
Ahmed said he has for some time believed Pakistan was working on a nuclear propulsion system for submarine applications and that Pakistan already has a functional submarine launched variant of
the Babur cruise missile.
The Babur cruise missile is very similar to the U.S. BGM-109 Tomahawk, and perhaps derives at least some technology from Tomahawks which crashed in Pakistan
during U.S. strikes on al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan in 1998. It can be armed with conventional or nuclear
warheads.
Ahmed believes Pakistan is now gearing up to build its own SSN/SSGN flotilla as a way
of deterring India and maintaining the strategic balance in South Asia.
However, in the long term in order to fully ensure the credibility of its deterrent Ahmed said he believes Pakistan should
build ballistic missile submarines.
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20120211/DEFREG03/302110003/Pakistani-Navy-Develop-Nuclear-Powered-Submarines-Reports?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
Here are excerpts of a Bloomberg piece by Indian journalist Pankaj Mishra on Pakistan's "unplanned revolution":
...I also saw much in this recent visit that did not conform to the main Western narrative for South Asia -- one in which India is steadily rising and Pakistan rapidly collapsing.
Born of certain geopolitical needs and exigencies, this vision was always most useful to those who have built up India as an investment destination and a strategic counterweight to China, and who have sought to bribe and cajole Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment into the war on terrorism.
Seen through the narrow lens of the West’s security and economic interests, the great internal contradictions and tumult within these two large nation-states disappear. In the Western view, the credit-fueled consumerism among the Indian middle class appears a much bigger phenomenon than the extraordinary Maoist uprising in Central India.
------------
Traveling through Pakistan, I realized how much my own knowledge of the country -- its problems as well as prospects -- was partial, defective or simply useless. Certainly, truisms about the general state of crisis were not hard to corroborate. Criminal gangs shot rocket-propelled grenades at each other and the police in Karachi’s Lyari neighborhood. Shiite Hazaras were being assassinated in Balochistan every day. Street riots broke out in several places over severe power shortages -- indeed, the one sound that seemed to unite the country was the groan of diesel generators, helping the more affluent Pakistanis cope with early summer heat.
Gangsters with Kalashnikovs
In this eternally air-conditioned Pakistan, meanwhile, there exist fashion shows, rock bands, literary festivals, internationally prominent writers, Oscar-winning filmmakers and the bold anchors of a lively new electronic media. This is the glamorously liberal country upheld by English-speaking Pakistanis fretting about their national image in the West (some of them might have been gratified by the runaway success of Hello magazine’s first Pakistani edition last week).
But much less conspicuous and more significant, other signs of a society in rapid socioeconomic and political transition abounded. The elected parliament is about to complete its five- year term -- a rare event in Pakistan -- and its amendments to the constitution have taken away some if not all of the near- despotic prerogatives of the president’s office.
Political parties are scrambling to take advantage of the strengthening ethno-linguistic movements for provincial autonomy in Punjab and Sindh provinces. Young men and women, poor as well as upper middle class, have suddenly buoyed the anti-corruption campaign led by Imran Khan, an ex-cricketer turned politician.
After radically increasing the size of the consumerist middle class to 30 million, Pakistan’s formal economy, which grew only 2.4 percent in 2011, currently presents a dismal picture. But the informal sector of the economy, which spreads across rural and urban areas, is creating what the architect and social scientist Arif Hasan calls Pakistan’s “unplanned revolution.” Karachi, where a mall of Dubai-grossness recently erupted near the city’s main beach, now boasts “a first world economy and sociology, but with a third world wage and political structure.”
Even in Lyari, Karachi’s diseased old heart, where young gangsters with Kalashnikovs lurked in the alleys, billboards vended quick proficiency in information technology and the English language. Everywhere, in the Salt Range in northwestern Punjab as well as the long corridor between Lahore and Islamabad, were gated housing colonies, private colleges, fast- food restaurants and other markers of Pakistan’s breakneck suburbanization....
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-22/pakistan-s-unplanned-revolution-rewrites-its-future.html
Here's an Indian Express story on how much Indians "like" Israel on Facebook:
Israel today said it's official India Facebook page has the most 'Likes' after that of the US and the United Kindgom.
The ISRAEL in INDIA Facebook page, launched by the Israelian Embassy in August, 2010, has received almost 20,000 'likes', a figure surpassed only by the pages of the US and the UK.
Two decades after India and Israel established full diplomatic relations, ties between the two nations are extending far beyond traditional diplomacy, the Embassy said in a statement.
Less than two years after the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi launched its activity on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other virtual platforms, Israel managed to gain “exceptional popularity” in the Indian social media arena, it said.
The Embassy also launched a new website recently, which provides frequent updates on Israeli activities in India as well as a fresh and young look at Israel's society, history, culture and economy. The Embassy also operates specialised websites in Hindi and Urdu.
“These results are impressive”, said Alon Ushpiz, Israel's Ambassador to India.
“They mirror the warmth and friendship that we Israelis feel across India and they are yet another indication of the immense potential that lies in our relationship”, he added.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/india-likes-israel-the-most-after-us-and-uk-embassy/962009/
Here's a Rediff report on Israeli help for India during Kargil:
In a startling revelation, the Israeli Ambassador in New Delhi, Mark Sofer, has said that his country had assisted India in 'turning around' the situation during the 1999 Kargil war with Pakistan.
In an interview with a weekly, the envoy disclosed how defence ties between the two countries got a boost after Kargil when Israel came to India's rescue at a critical time, helping turn around the situation on the ground.
'I think we proved to the Indian government that you can rely on us, that we have the wherewithal. A friend in need is a friend indeed,' he said.
He also disclosed that Indo-Israeli defence ties would go beyond mere selling-buying of arms.
'We do have a defence relationship with India, which is no secret. What is secret is what the defence relationship is? And with all due respect, the secret part will remain secret,' he said in the interview to Outlook weekly magazine.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/feb/08kargil.htm
In "Confront & Conceal" by David Sanger, there is a secret assessment of US scientist Gary Samore about the incompetence of Iranian nuclear scientists. Iranians have taken much much longer and still not achieved what the Brits, Indians and Pakistanis did in much shorter time to build nuclear capability.
http://books.google.com/books?id=vOJD_Kdn8BAC&pg=PA446&lpg=PA446&dq=confront+and+conceal+Iran+scientists+british+pakistani&source=bl&ots=3NMWivX0CU&sig=Kgf2gacp-TaN9-sGpiSQm2GJx_M&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zJtBUOvtBqXrigKzroHADw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=Iranian%20incompetence&f=false
Here's an excerpt of a Wall Street Journal review of "The Second Nuclear Age" by Paul Bracken:
His analysis of the role of nuclear weapons in the India-Pakistan rivalry is disturbing and illuminating. The two sides haven't used their weapons, but their arsenals have changed their military and political strategies in ways that make the region more explosive and crisis prone. Pakistan, unable to compete in conventional weapons with its larger and wealthier neighbor, is expanding the quantity, upgrading the quality and diversifying the designs of its arsenal. India, meanwhile, is investing heavily in capabilities that would allow it to spot Pakistani preparations for a nuclear strike, possibly to pre-empt with force.
Mr. Bracken says that nuclear and conventional strategy are closely tied for both countries. India is organizing its nonnuclear forces in ways intended to anticipate and offset Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. It is also investing in detection and surveillance technologies aimed at both monitoring the state of Islamabad's nuclear preparedness and revealing its conventional vulnerabilities. These Indian capabilities have in turn changed Pakistan's nuclear and conventional plans. Both sides thus derive important advantages from their nuclear arsenals. (For India, these advantages are supra-regional, as New Delhi looks nervously to a rising Beijing next-door.) Neither will ever give up nukes.
The author's own sense of the dynamics of a multipolar nuclear world is sometimes less than complete. He tries, for example, to analyze the impact of a nuclear Iran on the Middle East by confining his analysis to Israel, the United States and Iran. Missing are the inevitable and serious effects as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and other regional powers respond to the new situation.
Even so, Mr. Bracken's view is a powerful one. It holds little comfort for theorists of international relations, whatever their orientation. Liberals will be appalled by his picture of a future in which widespread nuclear weapons impede the growth of the law-based order they seek. Nuclear weapons embody traditional ideas of state sovereignty; a world in which they drive strategic decisions and political arrangements is one that won't be guided by international law and organized by liberal institutions. If you have a nuclear weapon, the United Nations and the International Criminal Court can't make you do anything you really don't want to do.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204349404578101310349648102.html?KEYWORDS=second+nuclear+age#articleTabs%3Darticle
Here are a few excerpts of an MIT doctoral thesis by Christopher Clary on future India-Pakistan conflict:
Conventional wisdom suggests that India has gained sufficient conventional superiority to fight and win a limited war, but the reality is that India is unlikely to be able to both achieve its political aims and prevent dangerous escalation.
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While India is developing limited options, my analysis suggests India's military advantage over Pakistan is much less substantial than is commonly believed.
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Most analyses do not account adequately for how difficult it would be for the navy to have a substantial impact in a short period of time. Establishing even a partial blockade takes time, and it takes even more time for that blockade to cause shortages on land that are noticeable. As the British strategist Julian Corbett noted in 1911, "it is almost impossible that a war can be decided by naval action alone. Unaided, naval pressure can only work by a process of exhaustion. Its effects must always be slow…."7 Meanwhile, over the last decade, Pakistan has increased its ability to resist a blockade. In addition to the main commercial port of Karachi, Pakistan has opened up new ports further west in Ormara and Gwadar and built road infrastructure to distribute goods from those ports to Pakistan's heartland. To close off these ports to neutral shipping could prove particularly difficult since Gwadar and the edge of Pakistani waters are very close to the Gulf of Oman, host to the international shipping lanes for vessels exiting the Persian Gulf. A loose blockade far from shore would minimize risks from Pakistan's land-based countermeasures but also increase risks of creating a political incident with neutral vessels.
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The air balance between India and Pakistan is also thought to heavily favor the larger and more technologically sophisticated Indian Air Force. While India has a qualitative and quantitative advantage, the air capabilities gap narrowed rather than widened in the last decade. The Pakistan Air Force has undergone substantial modernization since 2001, when Pakistan exited from a decade of US-imposed sanctions. With purchases from US, European, and Chinese vendors, Pakistan has both dramatically increased the number of modern fighter aircraft with beyond-visual-range capability as well as new airborne early warning and control aircraft. Meanwhile, India's fighter modernization effort has been languid over the last decade. India's largest fighter procurement effort—the purchase of 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft—began in 2001 and has been slowed considerably by cumbersome defense procurement rules designed to avoid the appearance of corruption.
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The ground forces balance has received the most attention from outside observers, in large part because the Indian Army has publicized its efforts at doctrinal innovation, most often referred to under the "Cold Start" moniker. However, India's ground superiority is unlikely to be sufficient to achieve a quick victory.
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The net result of this analysis is to conclude that India's limited military options against Pakistan are risky and uncertain. Pakistan has options to respond to limited Indian moves, making counter-escalation likely. At least in the near-term, Pakistan appears to have configured its forces in such a way as to deny India "victory on the cheap." Therefore, India might well have to fight a full-scale war that could destroy large segments of Pakistan's army to achieve its political aims, which would approach Pakistan's stated nuclear redlines. Such a conclusion should induce caution among Indian political elites who are considering military options to punish or coerce Pakistan in a future crisis. ...
web.mit.edu/cis/precis/2012spring/india_pakistan.html
Israeli Ambassador Mark Sofer in 08 said Israel helped India in turning around the situation in Kargil War by providing the much needed imagery of Pakistani army positions . ’We do have a defence relationship with India, which is no secret. What is secret is what the defence relationship is ? And with all due respeThis led to embassy level relations between India and Israel in 1992 . Everyone was startled when Israeli Ambassador Mark Sofer to an interview in 2008 said that Israel helped India in turning around the situation in Kargil War . Israel helped Indian Army by providing the much needed imagery of Pakistani army positions . ’We do have a defence relationship with India, which is no secret. What is secret is what the defence relationship is ? And with all due respect, the secret part will remain secret.” said Mark Sofer in an interview to Outlook Magazine.ct, the secret part will remain secret.” said Mark Sofer in an interview to Outlook Magazine.
Israel provided India with Laser Guidance Kits for dumb bombs (Mark 82, 83 etc.) as well as some Laser guided bombs. These kits were the reason that India could bomb Pakistan's major logistics base located on a very sharp ridge on the mountains. This attack with precision weapons significantly weekend Pakistan's military position Kargil. Later US followed with sale of similar equipment to India.
Here's a Haaretz story on an Israeli's impressions of India:
...From the perspective of a metropolis of 17 million people, Israel looks like a small, distant country with peculiar, almost trivial problems. When reasonably decent drinking water for the masses and clean air to breathe are goals beyond reach, the right of return or Hezbollah’s arsenal of rockets seem to be almost theoretical issues. It’s also a question of one’s angle of observation: For the Indians there is no Middle East, only “western Asia.”
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Since full diplomatic relations between Israel and India were established in 1992, the two have gradually but significantly moved closer together – primarily on the basis of growing economic trade, centering around sales by Israel’s defense industry to India.
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India is now the No. 1 export target of Israel’s defense industries. The two countries. Both India and Israel avoid revealing details about the scale and nature of their security trade. However, in 2012 Israel’s Defense Ministry announced that the country’s total defense exports stood at $7 billion annually. India’s share of that is probably between $1 billion and $1.5 billion. And the potential for growth exists.
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A partial list of the munitions that India has purchased from Israel in the past decade includes radar for the Arrow missile-intercept system, manufactured by Israel Aircraft Industries; sea-to-sea missiles manufactured by IAI and Rafael Advanced Weapons Systems; IAI warning planes, communications systems made by Elbit and ammunition manufactured by Israel Military Industries.
However, the potential of the transactions that have been discussed more recently is of a far greater scale. The projects include the upgrading of tanks and other combat vehicles, the supply of Barak-8 advanced missiles for protection of seagoing vessels and maritime facilities, and observation systems. India has expressed an interest in the technological progress embodied in the operational success of the Iron Dome system, manufactured by Rafael, in intercepting rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, though it’s doubtful that Iron Dome is appropriate for India’s needs.
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In the face of the missile arsenal – and the nuclear capability – of Pakistan, India’s hostile neighbor, India must maintain commensurate strategic deterrence. The Indian authorities might thus be interested in systems, now under development, for interception of longer-range missiles.
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At the moment, a huge deal is in the works. India wants to purchase advanced antitank missiles. The two suitors competing for the contract, which has an estimated worth of $1 billion, are Rafael’s Spike anti-tank guided missile and the Americans’ Javelin system.
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In my short visit, I found a preponderance of pessimism and gloom, tempered somewhat by expectation of change. The fate of 1.2 billion people hangs in the balance. The change might come from the general election in May, in which, according to forecasts, the BJP, the Hindi nationalist party, will defeat the ruling National Congress Party.
Even on a lightning visit, Delhi is a surprising mix for someone encountering the city for the first time. Opposite the office building housing the research institute, people are scavenging in garbage cans. The impression made by the beauty of the grand monuments is erased within minutes by a depressing encounter with the girls who knock on the windows of the car and beg at every major intersection, with infants in tow who look groggy, as though they are under the influence of anesthetics...
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On Sunday morning, a group of wild monkeys tranquilly crosses the road in the quarter where the foreign embassies are situated. The hotels look like fortified luxurious bastions from the period of the British Empire, and every foreigner is surrounded by a waiters and other staff members..
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http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.575486
Why quote a gora dalrymple?
Anon: "why quote a gora?"
Was your guruji Golwalkar gora? Was he not an admirer of gora Hitler and white supremacists?
Read what your guruji wrote in his book "We":
“To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging of its Semitic Race, the Jews."
“Race pride at its highest has been manifested there. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures having differences going to the root to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by… The foreign races in Hindusthan [ie the Muslims] must adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture[… and] may [only] stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing — not even citizen’s rights.”
This is in response to Naveen KS comments. You are mistaken. In a nuclear war both Pakistan and India will be wiped out. There are only limited Hindus who are just concentrated in India. In case India is destroyed there will be no Hindu state left in the world. But in case Pakistan goes, there are over one billion Muslims spread all over the world...When the dust of nuclear war will settle in about 30 years those Muslims will rush towards subcontinent and make it their abode...So be assured that the world will be more free and peaceful a place live, minus India...
Riaz,
From your posts, it is very obvious that you are obsessed about indians and hindus in particular. What happens in India is their own internal issue? So why worry about it.
Rather people like you could be focussing on making pakistan an economically developed country.
But that is not to happen. Without India, pakistanis have no identity of their own, so they have to fuss about what happens in India.
If India appoints Narendra Modi, what is your issue? If you are really concerned about muslims in India you should invite them to migrate to pakistan and live there.
BK: " it is very obvious that you are obsessed about indians and hindus in particular. What happens in India is their own internal issue? So why worry about it."
The fact that, unlike Pakistanis on Indian websites, you and your fellow Indians show up in large numbers to comment on Pakistani websites shows that you are far more obsessed with Pakistan...even some of your Indian leaders admit that Indians are obsessed with Pakistan...."I actually feel we give too much time in our minds to Pakistan," said Rahul Gandhi at a leadership meeting of the Indian National Congress in 2009.
The rise of the new media and the emergence of the "Internet Hindus", a term coined by Indian journalist Sagarika Ghose, has removed all doubts about many Indians' Pakistan obsession. She says the “Internet Hindus are like swarms of bees". "They come swarming after you" pouncing on any mention of Pakistan or Muslims.
As to this post you are commenting it, I suggest you read it again to comprehend it. It deals with the negative impact of India's Israel envy on Pakistan.
A very informative read indeed on Indo-Pak relations. I had to spend a lot of time reading the article and whole comments section but it was worth every second. Thank you very much Mr Riaz. Bless you!
The Power of Social Media: Emboldened Right-Wing Trolls Who are Attempting an Internet purge -
Yesterday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in a “town hall” meeting at the headquarters of Facebook in Menlo Park, California. At the event, Modi answered pre-screened queries from the audience and Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Facebook. During this conversation, the prime minister heralded the power of social media as a vehicle for democracy and good governence, before adding that it “allows for accountability instantly.” Modi declared, “I ask all world leaders not to avoid social media and to connect to it.” However, in his eulogy to the power of the internet, the prime minister appeared to have forgotten about an aspect of social media that doesn’t lend itself to either a functional democracy or accountability. It is a spectre that has been haunting journalists in India: that of internet trolls.
The internet is no stranger to trolls—users who post inflammatory, threatening or disruptive messages—with Twitter itself having admitted to not having proper policies in place to protect its users from harassment. The Indian Twitter troll, however, is an oddly specific creature. This troll belongs to a motley digital mob comprised of Hindutva converts, misogynists, minorities, Congress baiters and “sickular”—a pejorative portmanteau coined for those percieved as having a secular point of view—haters, all united by their atavistic chest-thumping bhakti—devotion—for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The use of social networking platforms by the BJP demonstrates their agility in using technology for the cause of “Hindu Rashtra.” Behind the apparently toxic rants of the Hindutva troll, there is a method and design. It is interesting to note that Modi hosted the 150 social networkers at his official residence on the occasion of the launch of the Digital India Campaign in Delhi. The prime minister could have easily taken up a digitally-enabled education or health project to kick-start his campaign; instead, he chose to meet people who have become a byword in online terror, hate and misogyny—a symbolism ignored by most, the press and the victims included. With Modi pushing for deepening of digitisation, the size and virtual power of his abusive online army will only increase in the days ahead in its political-ideological battle for a “Congress-mukt” Bharat, cold comfort for the likes of Ravish Kumar, Sagarika Ghose and the rest. -
http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/power-social-media-emboldened-right-wing-trolls
Christopher Clary
@clary_co
A bit of a tour d'horizon of India-Israel Aerospece Industries cooperation in the Indian Express the other day. "The reporter was in Israel at the invitation of the Embassy of Israel in New Delhi." A few highlights. /1
https://twitter.com/clary_co/status/1595067490694045697?s=20&t=eh-ePoRuzHrlqM1h0gCXlg
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From UAVs to refuellers: How Israel is helping India keep an eye on LAC
These days, Avi Bleser, vice-president of marketing for India at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), says he is working closely with the Indian Army and Indian Air Force to tailor solutions for their defence needs.
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/from-uavs-to-refuellers-how-israel-is-helping-india-keep-an-eye-on-lac-8272676/
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Christopher Clary
@clary_co
IAI is working closely with India on "the induction of Heron MK II, a state-of-the-art UAV that can fly at a height of 35,000 feet, cover a radius of 1000 km, see through dense clouds, work in bad weather & fly for 45 hours. It’s learnt that MK IIs are being deployed in Leh." /2
https://twitter.com/clary_co/status/1595067492157849600?s=20&t=eh-ePoRuzHrlqM1h0gCXlg
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Christopher Clary
@clary_co
"Last year, the Indian Army had also taken on lease Heron TPs, a Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) for all-weather missions, from IAI. Heron TP drones are one of the two drones made in Israel that can be armed, if needed." /3
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Christopher Clary
@clary_co
"The IAI and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) have signed a joint venture whereby IAI will not only offer UAVs to India, but also help HAL in manufacturing them in India." /4
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Christopher Clary
@clary_co
"Earlier this year, HAL signed [an MoU] with IAI to convert civil passenger aircraft into a multi-mission tanker transport for air refuelling with cargo & transport capabilities. The MoU also covers conversion of passenger planes into freighter aircraft." /end
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