INDIA-US: A WIN-WIN PARTNERSHIP

A strong defence relationship with the US is in India’s interest especially as it seeks to reiterate its position in the Indian Ocean region. Ideologically-motivated opposition mostly from the Left must be countered with a dose of realpolitik

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s three-day trip to India ended on Wednesday with both countries announcing progress in some technology-sharing programmes but falling short on some key issues such as the joint development of a Indian aircraft carrier and the signing of at least one of the three so-called ‘foundational documents’ necessary to enhance bilateral defence cooperation. This, in a sense, encapsulates the state of the India-US defence relationship: While huge strides have been made, particularly in this decade, a lot more needs to be done to realise its full potential. In some cases, the bottlenecks are technical or bureaucratic and need time to be resolved. But in most others, the hold-up stems from political or ideological reasons. This is particularly the case for the three foundational documents, which the US says will help strengthen bilateral defence cooperation but which India has resisted for more than a decade.

After 10 years of debate and discussion, only one of these, the Logistics Supply Agreement, has now been finalised, according to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. And even that agreement is yet to be signed and no firm commitments have been made, although it has been reported that the officials may sign on the dotted line any time within a few weeks to a few months. This has already generated a colourful array of headlines on how the US military will now use Indian bases, not to mention the slew of think pieces that came out in the run up to Carter’s visit, chiding the Modi Government for falling into America’s embrace, discarding Delhi’s long held principles of non-alignment, and putting India on a dangerous collision course with old friends like Russia and powerful adversaries like China. One may even be forgiven for assuming that the agreement is some sort of a path-breaking initiative that will change the India-US dynamic. Yet, the agreement is actually a standard document that the US has signed with some 80 countries including its Nato partners as well as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Basically, it allows both parties to easily berth and re-fuel at each other’s bases without having to pay for these services every time. Such an arrangement is particularly convenient during joint military exercises (which the US and India have quite often), large multi-national operations such as the search for MH370, and also during multi-national humanitarian relief operations.

The last one, in fact, is a big consideration. In recent years, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief has become an important element for the Indian military and is a wonderful tool for this country’s power projection in the Indian Ocean region. The 2004 tsunami relief operation  during which India deployed 32 naval ships, seven aircraft and 20 helicopters over five rescue, relief and reconstruction missions that extended not only to its own affected States but also to Maldives (Operation Castor), Sri Lanka (Operation Rainbow), and Indonesia (Operation Gambhir) was the turning point. After the tsunami, India bolstered its HADR capabilities by acquiring a landing platform dock, INS Jalashwa, from the US in 2007. 

In between, in 2006, the Indian Navy launched Operation Sukoon to evacuate Indian, Sri Lankan and Nepalese citizens from Lebanon. In 2008, INS Rana and INS Kirpan were sent with aid to Myanmar after the devastating Cyclone Nargis. This was followed by Operation Safe Homecoming in Libya in 2011. INS Mysore, INS Aditya and INS Jalashwa brought thousands of Indians from Benghazi and Tripoli to Alexandria in Egypt from where they were flow back home by Air India. In 2013, when Typhoon Haiyan flattened large parts of the Philippines, the Indian Navy sent out a war ship with relief material. And then, of course, when Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared, both the Indian Navy and the Air Force participated in the global hunt. Last year, both were also involved in the evacuation of Indian nationals from Yemen (Operation Rahat), not to mention Indian assistance to the Maldives during the Male water crisis.

Now, some media reports have portrayed the LSA as a first of its kind arrangement, while the Opposition is already whipping up images of American soldiers overrunning Indian bases. The Left’s criticism doesn’t even deserve to be entertained because it is a template response to all things America. From the Congress, former Defence Minister AK Antony, who did precious little to ensure the military’s war preparedness, has now labeled the agreement as “anti-national”. This is absurd. American sailors and airmen already dock at Indian ports and access Indian resources. The agreement will only institutionalise such cooperation and put most of it on auto-pilot.

This also has raised concerns in some quarters: If America goes to war (especially against a country that is friendly with India), then India will be obligated to support its war-time efforts. In response, Defence Minister Parrikar has assured that the LSA has been tweaked the new pact is called the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement  so that Indian autonomy is not comprised. Also, it is worthwhile to recall that during the 1991 Gulf War, India had allowed US planes on their way to Iraq to refuel at Bombay’s Safar airport and others. And this was a generation before India and the US were to forge the defining partnership of the 21st century.

Coming back to the agreements, the second in line is the Communication and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement which will essentially improve interoperability between the two militaries. This will be a big plus during joint military operations which, again, is not necessarily a reference to war but includes anti-piracy efforts as well. Moreover, CISMOA will pave the way for Indian access to US defence high-tech. For example, had India signed the CISMOA earlier, its Boeing P-8I Poseidon multi-mission maritime aircraft (which was used to hunt for MH370) would have come equipped with the most advanced communication equipment. Now, it is true that India has been able to make the platform work well with indigenously developed hardware, but that’s hardly a reason to be deprived of the best technology in the market. CISMOA critics argue that agreement would expose sensitive Indian communications to the Americans. This is both defeatist, as clauses are built into the agreement to protect such information, as well somewhat silly: If the US, back in 1998, could hack into the Israeli Air Force system, one of the most advanced defence systems in the world, then it doesn’t need a bilateral agreement to get inside Indian systems.

The third agreement is the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement which will improve ease of access to geospatial data such as satellite images, maps and charts. This is possibly the most contentious as it supposedly involves ‘sovereignty issues’ (for example, ground sensors). Yet, the benefits of this agreement are manifold especially in multi-nation operations as well as in civilian operations. Now, India is also developing its own geo-satellite system called the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System. However, this isn’t fully operational yet and will only have limited coverage. 

In the final tally, India needn’t sign America’s template documents; instead, as it has done with the LSA, it should work with the US (which is also open to addressing Indian concerns) and find the middle path that best suits its interests. But as mentioned earlier, the problem isn’t technical but political  Will China be upset? Will Russia complain? Maybe they will but if Sri Lanka can sign the LSA and still be wooed by Beijing, and Russia sell helicopters to Pakistan because India has been buying hardware from the US and Israel, then there is no reason why India can’t sign an agreement that strengthens its military ties with the US while still maintaining its ties with other powers. Ultimately, all nations work in their own self-interest. India should too.

(This article was published in The Pioneer on April 14, 2016)

BEING PIVOT IN NUCLEAR SECURITY

India has an opportunity to take on a global leadership role against the spread of nuclear weapons. For that, it has to be more transparent about its own nuclear security and safety, especially as nuclear power becomes a bigger part of the country’s energy basket

The fourth Nuclear Security Summit comes at an important time in India’s own nuclear history and diplomacy. At one level, India, now no longer a nuclear pariah state, is seeking to integrate itself into the global non-proliferation architecture. It is seeking memberships to four of the main global nuclear clubs  the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement — as well hoping to play a more prominent role in nuclear diplomacy. India’s has already streamlined its export control lists so that they are more or less in sync with the lists maintained by the global technology control regimes. However, there are political issues that need to be addressed before India can accede to these clubs.

At another level, India is now looking to leverage nuclear power in a big way to fuel its domestic needs in a sustainable manner. Currently, nuclear is just a small segment in India’s energy basket  just 4.8 GW of the total installed power generation capacity of 240 GW. The plan is to increase those figures to 60GW of 1200GW by 2035. That still won’t be even 10 per cent of the total basket but it will be an important element nonetheless. It is against this backdrop that India’s role at the NSS must be seen.

To be held on March 31 and April 1 in Washington, DC this is the fourth and in all probability the final in a series of summits that aimed to secure nuclear weapons, fissile material, and nuclear facilities so that terrorists couldn’t use them to wreak havoc. The NSS was US President Barack Obama’s initiative, which built on his predecessor’s legacy.  After 9/11, the Bush Administration brought out two important nuclear security pacts  a 2005 amendment to the Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Material which requires states to physically protect nuclear materials on their territory, and the International Convention for the Suppression of Nuclear Terrorism which facilitates judicial actions related to nuclear terrorism.

In 2009, President Obama while speaking in Prague, said that nuclear terrorism was “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security” and announced “a new international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years.” In 2010, the first NSS was organised. Forty-seven nations, including India, and three international organisations participated. This was followed by another summit in 2012 in Seoul, and a third one in 2014 in The Hague. Except for the 2014 conference, India was represented by its Prime Minister at all others — an indication of the importance that New Delhi attaches to the NSS.

An interesting aspect of the NSS was that of the ‘house gift diplomacy’ wherein participants themselves bring to the table political commitments or national pledges on specific issues such as nuclear forensics or nuclear smuggling, instead of everybody having to sign on one master document. Since the Seoul summit, groups of participants have also come together with a bundle of pledges, making for some ‘gift basket diplomacy’.

At the first NSS in 2010, for example, India’s promised a Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership. This Centre is being set up in Bahadurgarh, Haryana, and is expected to begin operations from April 2017, though it has already been doing off-campus programmes and workshops since 2011. In December 2010, India also placed in a safeguarded facility its enriched uranium-based fuel used in the Apsara reactor. The reactor no longer uses Highly Enriched Uranium. In 2012, India made a voluntary contribution of a million dollars to the Nuclear Security Fund. However, India has not just joined any of the ‘gift baskets’ though it may reportedly join at least three this year.

Overall, the NSS process has produced mixed results  bringing some tangible deliverables to the table but still falling short of its larger goal. Among its achievements, the NSS lists the following: Removal and/or disposition of over 3.2 metric tonnes of vulnerable HEU and plutonium material; completely removing HEU from 12 countries; verified shutdown or successful conversion to low enriched uranium fuel use of 24 HEU research reactors and isotope production facilities in 15 countries including India; completion of physical security upgrades at 32 buildings storing weapons-usable fissile materials; and installation of radiation detection equipment at 328 international border crossings, airports, and seaports. 

An important deliverable, or gift basket rather, was the Strengthening Nuclear Security Implementation Initiative that was signed at 2014 summit by two-thirds of the participants, who pledged to meet follow the Atomic Energy Agency’s security recommendations and accept regular reviews of their nuclear security arrangements. Notably, India didn’t sign the initiative but that same year, it ratified an Additional Protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency which had been in the works for five years. This Additional Protocol  which will surely be highlighted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington this year  covers 20 facilities that include the Nuclear Fuel Complex in Hyderabad, the Tarapur atomic power plant, the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station, the Kakrapar Atomic Power Station, and both units of the Kudankulam power plant.

At the NSS this year, the focus will  understandably be on the big picture: The  deliberations haven’t produced a treaty and many of the commitments are vague with much wriggle room. There are also many areas like cyber threats to nuclear security that remain unresolved. Still, there is no doubt that the NSS process gave high-level political momentum to the issue of nuclear security.

Now, the question is: How to take the process forward? Five institutions are expected to take up the task — The IAEA; the Global Initiative to Counter Nuclear Terrorism (a group focused on exercising existing capabilities and sharing best practices); the UN (specifically a committee that enforces UNSC resolutions calling on states to prevent terrorists from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction); the international law enforcement organisation Interpol; and the G8 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction (a funding group). 

Additionally, a Nuclear Security Contact Group comprising of the Sherpas -- the senior officials who developed the summit outcomes and prepped their leaders -- will also be formed. They’ll ensure that past promises are effectively implemented. India will be in this group, which will also be open to those countries that weren’t part of NSS process.

India has an opportunity to take on a leadership role at this stage. However, for that, it has to be more transparent about its own nuclear security and safety. This is not to suggest that the security situation here is bad (although some international experts are of that opinion) but that the Government should allow for more transparency  not just to boost international confidence but also to allay concerns at home, especially now that nuclear power will be a bigger part of India’s energy basket.

 The shutdown at the Kakrapar Atomic Power Station in Surat, after the heavy water used to cool the nuclear reactor leaked, earlier this month, highlights the urgency of the situation. Indeed, in 2012, the Central Information Commission had directed the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited to release two reports on the safety assessment systems at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant. The nuclear operator responded with a court order staying the CIC’s directive and arguing that making the report public would hurt strategic interests. This was odd given that, after 2011 Fukushima accident, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board had already uploaded on its website a comprehensive report on the safety of our reactors.

(This article was published in The Pioneer on March 31, 2016)

WHAT HAPPENS IN PAKISTAN...

If America is serious about fighting the jihadi challenge that the San Bernardino terrorists pose, then it needs to focus its attention, not on Iraq and Syria, but on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan — the two major state sponsors of terror that it has mollycoddled for long

A day after the gruesome San Bernardino attack, US President Barack Obama’s address to the nation was ostensibly designed to reassure the American people that the Government was doing everything to keep them safe. Yet, it left many at unease — and rightly so. Early on in his speech, Mr Obama makes clear that, even though one of the attackers had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State hours before going on the rampage, there was nothing to link the attack in material terms to any foreign terrorist group. This is correct. But having made this assertion, oddly, the President then goes on to explain how his Government is working to defeat the Islamic State, while glossing over the fact that both terrorists, Tashfeen Malik and her husband Syed Rizwan Farooq, had links to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where they were presumably radicalised!

To be fair, Farooq’s path to radicalisation is still unclear. Born and raised in America, he seemed like a well-adjusted citizen, with a decent middle-class job    who raised no red flags — except that he sought and married a conservative woman like Malik. In fact, it increasingly seems like even though Farooq was, of course, also radicalised, it was Malik who was the mastermind.

Malik was born in Pakistan’s Punjab Province but taken to Saudi Arabia as a child in 1989, and raised in that country. While in Saudi Arabia, Malik’s father notably moved away from the relatively liberal Barelvi school of Sunni Islam that his family practiced in Pakistan and adopted the more puritanical Deobandi school. He also gradually distanced himself and his children from their family in Pakistan. Nevertheless, in 2007, Malik returned to Pakistan to study pharmacy at the Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan, also in the Punjab Province. After graduation in 2012, she enrolled at the conservative Al Huda International School in the same city where she studied Islam for a year. In 2014, she married Farooq, whom she had met online, and moved to the US.

Malik’s time in Multan, Punjab, in general, and the institutions she attended there in particular, offer some interesting clues about how she may have been radicalised. Once the spiritual heartland of South Asian Sufi Islam, Pakistani Punjab, especially its much poorer southern parts, has seen a steady flow of Saudi money in recent decades — an estimated $100 million — which has been used to destroy the region’s moderate brand of Islam and create in its place a hotbed for Sunni terrorism.

US diplomatic cables sent from Pakistan between 2009 and 2011, and released by Wikileaks, document how maulanas from radical madarssas, bankrolled by the Saudis, approached poor families with multiple children, convinced them that their poverty was the result of the un-Islamic worship of idols at Sufi shrines, and finally persuaded the parents that the only way to return to the path of true Islam was to give up one of their children to the cause — for which, of course, they were paid a fair amount of cash. This is how the radicals recruited children as young as seven or eight years of age, indoctrinated them, and then either sent them off for further jihadi training or employed them as preachers for the next generation of Islamists.

When the situation began to grow out of hand, with extremists imposing no-go zones in some parts etc, local leaders sought to intervene but found their hands were tied by the conservative elements within the bureaucracy that had been planted by the Zia-ul Haq regime in previous years. Additionally, Punjab was also the jihadi nursery where the ISI raised its anti-India outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Jaish-e-Mohammed. In fact, JeM chief Azhar Masood, who was released by India after the hijacking of IC-814, belonged to southern Punjab while Ajmal Kasab, coming in a generation later, was repeatedly mentioned in US diplomatic cables as a typical example of how the vicious cycle of Saudi-funded jihadi terror turns.

Malik’s own story mirrors this phenomenon as well — the small town of Karor Lal Esan where she was born, in Layyah district of south Punjab, was named after the mystic Hazrat Lal Esan who is believed to have recited a Quranic verse 10 million times while standing on one leg. However, the Multan that a the Saudi-bred Malik returned to in 2007 was already notorious for radical sectarian activity. So much so, that The New York Times reports, university officials in Multan cooperated with law enforcement and intelligence authorities to “monitor for extremist activity on campus”.

It was also during this time in 2007 that the bloody siege of Lal Masjid happened — according to official estimates, the confrontation between the radical clerics of the mosque and the Pakistani military led to 154 deaths (although unofficial figures are much higher). Tensions between the pro-Taliban Lal Masjid clergy, supported in no small measure by women militants of the adjoining Jamia Hafsa madarssa, were brewing since 9/11 when then President Pervez Musharraf announced Pakistani support for the US war against terror. Matters came to a head when Jamia Hafsa militants abducted Chinese nationals among others for running a neighbourhood brothel in 2006. The Musharraf Government had no choice but to crackdown — there was a week-long siege and intense firefights between Pakistani soldiers and the heavily-armed militants. The campus was secured after eight days but the episode sparked a fresh wave of militancy across Pakistan.

The Lal Masjid story is important here because it has been reported that Tashfeen Malik had connections with the mosque’s head priest, Maulana Abul Aziz, and his wife, who now leads Jamia Hafsa. US authorities have brought this to the notice of Pakistani officials through Mr Shahbaz Sharif, the Chief Minister of Punjab and the Prime Minister’s brother. The Sharifs have a long history of protecting Abdul Aziz who has also pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. On paper, he is a wanted man in Pakistan but that hasn’t stopped him from delivering public sermons and leading mass campaigns, as the Dawn newspaper reported last month.

There is no evidence yet to suggest if the Lal Masjid gang from Pakistan, instead of the Islamic State butchers from Syria or Iraq, provided material support to Malik and her husband for the San Bernardino attack but the possibility cannot be ruled out. Also, even if there was no direct support, there can be no two ways around the fact that Malik and Farooq derived their ideological nourishment from the putrid Sunni extremist eco-system that Saudi Arabia has spawned around the world and Pakistan cradled with special care.

If America is serious about fighting the jihadi challenge that the likes of Malik and Farooq pose, then it needs to focus its attention on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, not Iraq and Syria (which, arguably, are just symptoms, not the cause of jihadi terror). For too long, Washington, DC has mollycoddled these two major state sponsors of terror because first, they served its geo-political interests (although the disastrous Afghan campaign shows even that’s not entirely true) and second, the luxury of distance meant that America, unlike say India or Afghanistan, didn’t quite have to suffer the blowback of Saudi and Pakistani terror policies.

However, as global trends are change — the House of Saud, for example, is feeling the heat from the drop in oil prices — and America is, hopefully, realising that even its strongest homeland security systems cannot keep out the insidious jihadi ideology flowing from Saudi Arabia or that, in the words of a sharp Pakistani commentator, what happens in Pakistan no longer stays in Pakistan, there is an opportunity for a change in tact and policy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the Obama Administration at least is ready to take it up.

(This article was published in oped section of The Pioneer on December 10, 2015)

Fresh Winds May Blow Soon

Manmohan Singh and the Government he has only nominally led have frittered away the robust Vajpayee legacy in foreign affairs. If the BJP comes to power with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, it could bring tectonic, positive changes in the country’s international relations

 In recent weeks, at least two prominent Indian commentators have opined that if Mr Narendra Modi becomes Prime Minister, as is widely expected, his biggest impact will be felt not so much on India’s economic policy but its foreign policy agenda. On April 9, soon after the BJP released its election manifesto, Firstpost editor R Jagannathan observed, “If Modi were to become PM, foreign and security policy could be in for another churn”, and go through a “sea change”. The same day, C Raja Mohan, one of the country’s most respected journalists and foreign policy analysts, wrote in The Indian Express that the “vagueness” in the BJP manifesto should allow Mr Modi “considerable freedom to put his own stamp on India’s foreign policy”. 

The focus on Mr Modi in the foreign policy sphere is interesting, given that the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate does not have a particularly active profile in this regard. Almost all his time as a senior politician has been spent in Gujarat and he has no experience with the processes that guide India’s engagement with the world. To the casual observer, he may, therefore, seem like an untested hand in foreign policy matters, and more so since Mr Modi has focussed only limited attention on the subject during his election campaign. This is not unusual since  foreign policy is hardly a talking point during elections.

But even as Mr Modi holds the cards close to him in this case, comparisons with Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee have already begun. The last BJP Prime Minister, Mr Vajpayee is credited with taking India’s foreign policy to new highs — he tested nuclear weapons that initially led to international sanctions but eventually brought India nuclear legitimacy; he significantly improved the country’s relations with Pakistan despite the process being disrupted by the Kargil conflict; the joint declaration with China that he signed during his landmark trip to the Middle Kingdom in 2003 still forms the basic framework for border dispute talks; and, finally, it was under his leadership that New Delhi shrugged off its Cold War inhibitions and vitalised ties with the US. Indeed, when Mr Vajpayee demitted the Prime Minister’s Office, he left his successor a rich legacy of global engagement.

Unfortunately, Mr Manmohan Singh and the Government he only nominally led frittered away that legacy in this past decade. As the BJP manifesto notes, “The Congress-led UPA has failed to establish enduring friendly and cooperative relations with India’s neighbours. India’s relations with traditional allies have turned cold. India and its neighbours have drifted apart”. In response, the BJP has vowed to “build a strong, self-reliant and self-confident India” that will “regain its rightful place in the comity of nations”.

This has been interpreted by many as indicative of a “muscular” foreign policy under Mr Modi, although what exactly that means is unclear. What can be expected though is that, if Mr Modi takes up the top job, he will be a strong and decisive leader and craft a foreign policy that furthers the country’s “best national interests” (to use a phrase from the manifesto). 

Similarly, analysts have also been talking about what the BJP means when it says that it will “create a web of allies to mutually further our interests”. Does this mean India may shed its non-alignment policies under Mr Modi? This is highly unlikely. In recent years, India has forged a series of strategic partnerships with different countries while still holding onto its strategic autonomy. There is no reason to believe that a Modi-led Government will stray from that path. However, one can expect a greater emphasis on India’s role as an Asian power — particularly in the strengthening of relations with Japan, China and, to a lesser extent, Singapore and South Korea. 

India’s relations with Japan are already on the upswing and will get another big push if Mr Modi comes to power. Japan has been doing a lot of business with Mr Modi’s Gujarat and those experiences will be carried forward to the national level. Also, Mr Modi has a close personal relationship with Mr Shinzo Abe, the staunchly pro-India Prime Minister of Japan. In 2007, during his first term as Prime Minister, Mr Abe gave a warm welcome to Mr Modi in Tokyo; when Mr Modi returned to Japan in 2012, Mr Abe was in the Opposition, but the duo still met; months later in December that year, when Mr Abe returned to power, Mr Modi personally called to congratulate — a noticeable event given that Mr Modi was not a national leader.  Moreover, both men are portrayed as nationalists focussed on the country’s economic resurgence which makes their partnership almost natural.  

As regards China, alarmists have already raised red flags about Mr Modi’s comments, made in Arunachal Pradesh, on protecting India’s territorial integrity. They have been quick to assume that this means India may take on a provocative stance against China, which it can ill-afford, even though the Chinese themselves dismissed the statements as catering to domestic concerns during an election campaign. Also, there is reason enough to assume that under his leadership, India’s relations with China will realise their full potential, especially in trade. Mr Modi has travelled to China four times already and, in 2011, was received in the Great Hall of the People, a landmark event largely ignored by the Indian media.  

The BJP manifesto also says, “Instead of being led by Big Power interests, we will engage proactively on our own with countries in the neighbourhood and beyond.” This again has been interpreted as a snub to the West, particularly the US which finds no mention in the manifesto. But before reading too much into it, let’s not forget that no other country is individually named in the manifesto. Also, given Mr Modi’s reputation as a realist politician, one can be reasonably sure that he will not allow relations between the two countries to deteriorate on his watch. If anything, given Mr Modi’s emphasis on economic ties, one can expect a significant strengthening of trade relations between the two countries which have plateaued in recent years. However, the US’s earlier insult of Mr Modi will remain in the backdrop — so do not be surprised if he drops by Tehran on his way to Washington, DC.

Finally, there has been a lot of hullabaloo over the BJP’s promise to design an “independent strategic nuclear programme” by updating the current doctrine in keeping with the challenges of time. This was being widely seen as the party’s code for junking the ‘no first use’ principle; and Modi-baiters conveniently used this to fuel fears of ‘war-mongering’ by the man commonly described as a ‘Hindu nationalist strongman’ — no matter that there is consensus across India’s strategic community that the NFU needs to be revisited at the earliest.

Their bubble of vacuous commentary burst as soon as BJP president Rajnath Singh put to rest all speculation about the NFU being revised. It remains unclear why Mr Singh made such a definitive statement; the nuclear doctrine is not a major electoral plank — but it is hoped that, if Mr Modi comes to power, he will update India’s nuclear policy, as promised in his party manifesto.

(This op-ed was published in The Pioneer on April 17, 2014)

An Unnecessary Public Fracas

New Delhi has been credited with taking a strong stance on the Devyani Khobragade case. But there are discomfiting questions about why the Ministry of External Affairs allowed the matter to blow out of proportion in the first place

Even though the dust is yet to settle on the recent India-US diplomatic face-off, it is perhaps safe to assume that the storm has passed. Ms Devyani Khobragade, the Indian diplomat accused of visa fraud, has been moved from her position at the consulate in New York to India’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations — with the tacit approval of the US State Department — where she now enjoys full immunity from criminal prosecution. Washington, DC, has also exempt her from personal appearances in court and if everything goes according to plan, she will not have to deal with any more pesky law enforcement officials while in New York. Eventually, the Ministry of External Affairs will bring her home ostensibly with her “dignity restored”, as Mr Salman Khurshid promised Parliament last week.

As and when that happens, be prepared for yet another round of vacuous nationalism that can be matched in fervour only by the pointless patriotism that was once the staple at India-Pakistan cricket matches. Worse still, be prepared for a smug Ministry of External Affairs as it pats itself on the back for a job well done.

Indeed, South Block has mostly been praised by the media and the public at large for taking a strong stand on the Khobragade case which, as many commentators have rightly argued, stands on flimsy legal ground and violates diplomatic conventions. The diplomat’s arrest and incarceration, the primary bone of contention between India and the US, was a disastrous move on the part of the Americans, and even Washington has now sought to distance itself from the act by trying to pin the blame on the one Diplomatic Security Services agent who was responsible for apprehending Ms Khobragade. As for the charges against Ms Khobragade, any good lawyer worth his day in court will rip them to shreds — especially if he follows the same line of argument that the US itself has used on earlier occasions to invoke the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations so as to protect its own people in foreign shores.

Finally, as Mr Ashok Malik and Mr Abhijit Iyer-Mitra have explained in this newspaper over the past few days, the US State Department and India’s Ministry of External Affairs had an unwritten understanding regarding the employment of domestic staff. This was based on pragmatic considerations and diplomatic courtesies that went both ways. When the US cracked down on Ms Khobragade, India rightly viewed it as the latter reneging on its side of the deal.

Unacceptable as this breach in diplomatic code has been, New Delhi should have seen it coming. Twice before, our diplomats in New York have been pulled up by US authorities on this exact issue, and even though neither case was allowed to escalate, New Delhi should have been on guard. But clearly, South Block didn’t move fast enough to change the status quo, thereby putting our diplomats in a precarious position. This was the first mistake.

The second and far more damaging mistake has been the manner in which the Ministry of External Affairs allowed the matter to blow up in the public domain. Especially since much of this case is in the gray zone — a nudge-nudge-wink-wink agreement gone wrong is not exactly a compelling defence — it ideally should have been resolved away from the public eye. By allowing it to escalate into a full scale diplomatic crisis, New Delhi compounded Washington’s callousness and brought the crucial India-US bilateral under enormous strain. That this happened at a time when relations between the two countries had already hit a plateau of sorts — with the much-touted nuclear deal failing to take-off, the economic partnership seeming less attractive etc — has only made matters worse. Especially at the bureaucratic level, such an episode reinforces old notions of the two countries being in the different camps etc, and threatens the hard-won gains made in the bilateral over the past decade or so.

Also, New Delhi’s defence narrative of respect and dignity publicly pushed both parties onto the high moral ground. While on the one hand this exposed American double standards (the privileges they demand for their diplomats but do not care to accord to others is just one example), it also opened India to unnecessary criticism (no matter how flawed, prejudiced and ill-informed) about ‘slave labour’ and ‘class culture’. Sure, Indian society has its problems but so does every other society and nobody needs to be lectured on how to wash their dirty laundry.

So, why did the Ministry of External Affairs allow this case to blow up? Well, technically, it was Ms Khobragade’s father, a former IAS officer, who orchestrated the tamasha in India but it is highly unlikely that he did it all without the Ministry of External Affairs’s blessings. Yes, there were other factors too, such as a resentful foreign service cadre which played its part, but still the episode could not have so escalated without the express consent of the Ministry of External Affairs — which, of course, has now craftily presented this foreign policy fiasco as a foreign policy success!

Given the UPA’s poor track record in diplomacy and the Congress’s history of playing cynical politics, this begs the question: Under the garb of protecting national prestige, did the Ministry of External Affairs actually sacrifice our national interests so that the Congress-led regime could gain some easy brownie points in the run-up to the 2014 general election? Did the Congress seek to make up with cheap demagoguery what it has failed to offer in terms of good governance? Increasingly, this seems to be the case given how the Ministry of External Affairs is suddenly being hero-worshipped for baring its fangs and standing up to US bullying.

On a concluding note, however, it must be clarified that it is no one’s case that the Ministry of External Affairs should not have retaliated. To the contrary, it absolutely should have (more so, since the Richard family evacuation segment of this story is an insult to the India’s judicial system) — but not under the public glare. For instance, just like the common man knew nothing when American consular officials were given full diplomatic privileges over and above what was specified in the rule books, they didn’t have to be told when those measures were withdrawn. This would not have in any way blunted the Ministry of External Affairs’s diplomatic offensive but it would have saved the already strained India-US relationship from unnecessary pressure. But now, the whole thing just looks like a cheap pre-poll gimmick.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on December 26, 2013)

For Want Of Better Options

Drones remain the most effective weapon in the US’s counter-terror arsenal. Critics of the remote-controlled missile will do well to reconsider their contention the attacks lead to high civilian casualties and violate Pakistan’s sovereignty

On November 21, a US drone strike in the Hangu district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province killed six people including a senior leader of the Haqqani network and at least one more militant from the Al Qaeda-affiliated group. The strike came exactly 20 days after a similar drone attack took down another high-profile terror target, Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, in Miranshah, North Waziristan. In the intervening days, the Haqqani network’s main financier Nasiruddin Haqqani was shot dead by unidentified assailants in Islamabad. His brother, Sirajuddin, currently heads the network and was reportedly the target of the November 21 attack in Hangu, since he was seen at the seminary where the drones struck thrice last week. Also, the senior Haqqani leader who was killed in the strike, Maulvi Ahmed Jan, was Sirajuddin Haqqani’s trusted right-hand man.

Apart from the obvious observation that the attacks have put both the Haqqani network, and to a lesser extent the Pakistani Taliban (the two are affiliated but work independently) “on notice”, as a US official said recently, their relative success in eliminating high-profile targets has underlined the fact that America’s remote-controlled predator drones remain one of the most potent weapons in its counter-terrorism arsenal — their reputation as ‘joysticks’ used to play ‘video-game wars’ notwithstanding.

As expected, the Hangu strike has been usurped by the Government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as yet another opportunity to play to the gallery and whip up oodles of anti-American sentiment. Ruling party chief Imran Khan, always the showman, has kicked up a huge fuss about the strikes and blocked Nato supply routes into Afghanistan that run through the Province. Given Pakistan’s previous experience with this pressure tactic — remember, the routes were also shut after a US-Nato attack on the Salala outpost killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November 2011 but re-opened later without Islamabad being able to squeeze so much as an apology from Washington, DC — it is clear that Mr Khan’s passionate outbursts on the matter are, well, just that. He had responded in exactly the same manner when Mehsud was killed, no matter that the Pakistani Taliban has not only been responsible for the death of an estimated 43,000 Pakistanis but also does not recognise the democratically-elected, Government structure of which Mr Khan himself is a part!

But Mr Khan is not alone in his opposition to US drone strikes. There are many within Pakistan and outside who share his views, and criticise drone strikes based on a whole host of issues — legal, moral, political and strategic. It is difficult to do justice to the whole debate here but essentially, the anti-drone club puts forth two major arguments: First, drones strikes cause enormous civilian casualties without promising enough returns; second, they are a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. Both arguments are problematic.

In the first case, the number of civilian casualties caused by drone strikes is unclear and varies widely between a few hundred to several thousands. This is because of the covert nature of the drone strikes programme which makes it extremely difficult to put together verifiable data on the matter. The US Government does not officially release information on drone strikes while the Pakistani Government sometimes denies it, sometimes acknowledges it.

That leaves us with reports from external agencies such as the UN, think-tanks and advocacy groups, and the media — almost all of them are usually just as vague and unreliable, as foreigners have no direct access to the tribal areas of Pakistan where these attacks take place. Special permission is required from the Government, and even after such access is granted, journalists can only travel with official escorts. In fact, even Pakistani citizens cannot travel to these areas without permission and unless they have proven families ties to the region. This leads to a veritable information black hole, and ultimately a debate that is based on half-baked facts and mostly just fiction.

Occasionally, though, this black hole has been penetrated with reporters being able to conduct first-hand interviews of villagers in these remote areas. But even then they have found it near impossible to ascertain the exact number of civilians, when any, who are killed in a drone strike. There are two reasons for this. One, after such a strike occurs, the militants seal the area, remove the bodies and secretly bury them. Then, they slap the label of ‘martyr’ on all the deceased. Two, the locals live in an environment of constant and violent intimidation. Therefore, their testimonies, on the rare occasion that they are available, are often tainted.

Mr Guillaume Lavallee of the Agence France-Presse reported earlier this month that any local who dares to speak in support of drone strikes is abducted, tortured and murdered by the militants — their last moments caught on tape and distributed in the area. The news report quotes Gul Wali Wazir (not his real name) from South Waziristan tribal area who says: “They (the militants) will cut his throat or shoot him, they will film his false confession, kill him and leave the body on the road with a DVD and a note saying that anybody who supports America and drones will face the same fate. I have seen a dozen such dead bodies.”

That despite these circumstances, Mr Lavallee’s interviews have led him to conclude that “a sizeable number of people in the country’s tribal areas support them (drone strikes)” must be noted. The report quotes Safdar Hayat Khan Dawar, former head of the Tribal Union of Journalists, from the militant-infested North Waziristan who says that the missiles were the preferred solution to the problem of militancy, as opposed to Pakistani Army’s operations. “The military option, people hate it because the army don’t kill militants but civilians”, says Mr Dawar. His opinions are echoed by Nizam Dawar, director of the Tribal Development Network, who asks: “Those people who became internally displaced persons due to the military operation, those people who are victimised by the Taliban and the militants, all the families whose family members are beheaded because they were accused of spying for America — why would they oppose drone attacks?” A recent Pakistani Government report has also noted that only a small percentage of those killed are civilians.

If the civilian casualty argument stands on thin ice, the one on Pakistani sovereignty holds no water at all. We now have enough evidence to say with certainty that Pakistan’s military and political establishment bartered away the country’s sovereignty years ago when it gave the US explicit permission to carry out these attacks. Former President Pervez Musharraf had said at that time that the drone strikes would be no big deal “as things fall out of the sky in Pakistan all the time”. In fact, his Government even took credit for some of the early drone strikes,  pretending that they had been carried out by the Pakistani Air Force.

Over the years, as relations between Washington and Islamabad have become relatively tenuous, the degree to which Pakistani support now extends to the US drone programme may have dipped. But it has not diminished entirely. The drones do not just sneak into Pakistani airspace, point and shoot, and then flee. They study their targets for hours, sometimes days, before they attack; in the November 21 case, locals said that they knew about the hovering drones for days. This cannot be done without insider support. The Pakistani establishment may feign ignorance and even froth at the mouth over the drone strikes for domestic consumption, but that does not change the facts.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on November 28, 2013)

Futile Bid at Damage Control

Foreign policy will not be among the glorious legacies that Manmohan Singh will leave behind. But that will not be for want of trying, although on many occasions he blundered badly. Ties with Pakistan remain strained, since he has been repeatedly outsmarted 

Coming at the tail end of his almost decade-long prime ministerial tenure, Mr Manmohan Singh’s trip to the US for the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly should, ideally, have been about consolidating, if not celebrating, his foreign policy legacy. Instead, it turned out to be a last-ditch attempt to salvage his image. Be it his lacklustre speech to the General Assembly or his meetings with US President Barack Obama, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, each one of these was essentially just an exercise in damage control. Here’s how:

The Singh-Sharif Meet: That this one was even held in the first place is  a little victory for Mr Singh. The meeting was not confirmed until the very last minute, and exactly a day after it was finalised a terror attack in Jammu that claimed nearly a dozen lives, put tremendous pressure on the Prime Minister to call off the talk. Such incidents have been happening with increased frequency since Mr Nawaz Sharif was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Pakistan earlier this year. Earlier, we had the brutal beheading of two Indian soldiers in January. Since then, there has continued ceasefire violations along the Line of Control — and most in New Delhi believed that the time was not right for a high-level summit. But having still committed himself to the New York meet, Mr Singh was right in not caving to forces that wanted to disrupt the peace process. Unfortunately, this is pretty much the only positive take-away from the Singh-Sharif meet — and few are possibly more disappointed about this than Mr Singh himself.

Having spent his entire nine years in office nurturing the fond hope that he will be the one to script a landmark India-Pakistan peace deal, sometimes even at the cost of India’s security interests, in the final analysis Mr Singh has been able to do next to nothing. This is despite the fact that he inherited Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s legacy of vastly improved bilateral ties between the two countries. He clearly failed to carry it forward. In this context, the New York meeting was little more than a pointless conciliatory gesture from India that made the Pakistani Prime Minister (who came to power promising better ties with New Delhi) look good, and gave the latter the opportunity to bid Mr Singh farewell.

At best, it was also an excuse for some diplomatic amusement — and no, this is not a reference to Mr Sharif’s PJ about village women, but that he, of all people, would whine about India taking up Pakistan’s shenanigans with the US when it was he who had pleaded for Washington to intervene during the Kargil conflict.

The Singh-Obama Meet: This one came at a time when the India-US bilateral has slowed down significantly, having initially raced forth into the 21st century. The decade between 1998 and 2008 saw the India-US relationship come into its own with the world’s largest democracy forging a strong sense of fellowship with the world’s most powerful democracy and acknowledging each other as natural partners. For the first time, Washington’s India policy was dehyphenated from Pakistan while the landmark nuclear deal literally energised the India-US bilateral. In Washington, President George W Bush had used all his political capital to push through that deal while in New Delhi, Prime Minister Singh put his Government at stake. But, if in those years, India and the US were like teenagers in the throes of first love, as one analyst put it, post-2008 their relationship seems to have matured and settled into a humdrum routine. And so, ambitious plans for bilateral cooperation have got stuck in the bureaucratic maze that is as much Delhi as Washington — think of the nuclear liability clause, the tightening of the visa regime and restrictive trade practices. Unfortunately neither Mr Singh, who has already been reduced to a lame-duck Prime Minister, nor Mr Obama, whose Government is shutting down, was currently in a position to resolve any of these issues, even though now would have been the time to give the India-US bilateral that extra push so that it doesn’t plateau before reaching its full potential. And so, the nuclear negotiations, for one, have been left for a later date.

Still, the meeting was not as much of a failure as some had predicted it would be. President Obama, for instance, deserves credit for being graceful enough to spare Mr Singh the litany of complaints against Indian trade practices that American companies have thrown at him. Similarly, Prime Minister Singh, often derided for being soft on terror, deserves a word in praise for highlighting the issue of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, particularly the support that organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba receive from state actors in that country. Indeed, Mr Singh’s description of Pakistan as the “epicentre of terror” took many by surprise. Also, talks on defence co-operation between Ashton Carter and Shiv Shankar Menon have been positive, with the US offering a deal to India that, it claims, it has not offered to its Nato allies even.

The Singh-Hasina Meet: Though largely ignored in the international and the national media, this was possibly the most important of Mr Singh’s engagement, given that it was the only meeting that had the potential of immediate impact. While the Prime Minister’s discussions with Prime Minister Sharif and President Obama would have done little to change the ground realities of either the India-Pakistan or the India-US bilateral, his talks with Ms Hasina was crucial to India-Bangladesh relations, which are at a crossroads. This bilateral too has evolved significantly in the recent past, thanks primarily to Ms Hasina who has left no stone unturned to address India’s primary concerns regarding terror fugitives hiding in Bangladesh. But Mr Singh and his Government have failed to put the deliverables from their end — the land border agreement and the Teesta water deal — on the table. This has left Ms Hasina, who is bracing for a tough re-election battle later this year, in an uncomfortable position. The Prime Minister has promised to push these measures through during the Winter Session of Parliament. In the meantime, the progress made in the power-sharing deal — the two leaders will jointly inaugurate a power transmission system on October 5 — is good diplomacy. It will hopefully placate to some extent an otherwise very disappointed Ms Hasina.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on October 3, 2013)

Deal for Everybody and Nobody

The US-Russia deal on Syria will neither bring peace nor will it punish the Assad regime. Yet, it is being dubbed a success because it makes world leaders, who have failed to stop the killing of more than a lakh people, feel good about themselves

At a Press conference in London on September 9, US Secretary of State John Kerry was asked if there was anything the Assad regime could do to stop Western military intervention in Syria, which at the time seemed imminent. America’s top diplomat replied somewhat oddly: “Sure”, he said, adding, “He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn’t about to do it. And it can’t be done, obviously.”

The State Department downplayed Mr Kerry’s response saying that he was just being rhetorical. But Mr Kerry’s counterpart in Russia, a diplomat of far greater calibre, Mr Sergey Lavrov, seized the moment. He spoke to Mr Kerry in-flight and before the American had even landed in Washington, DC, the situation on the ground had shifted considerably: Russia had offered to convince Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, its friend and ally in Damascus, to hand over to the international community his chemical weapons stockpile — and in the process, had suddenly averted war, at least for the time being.

After that 14-minute-long in-flight  conversation on Monday (September 9) between Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov, things moved at breakneck pace. With America having consented to the deal, Mr Obama called off the scheduled Congressional vote on military intervention; Mr Kerry, Mr Lavrov and their posse of security aides hurriedly met in Geneva on Thursday to hammer out the details; the deal was finalised on Saturday and quickly accepted by the Assad regime which, by the way, until then had not even acknowledged the existence of its chemical weapons stockpile.

The following Monday, UN inspectors confirmed that chemical weapons were used in the August 21 attack in east Ghouta that triggered this international response, but stopped short of pinning the blame on the Assad regime; on Tuesday, all five permanent members of the UN Security Council met in New York to discuss the deal and negotiations will continue over the next few days.

Anyway, a final resolution that can be presented before the entire 15-member Council is not possible unless the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ Executive Council in The Hague approves a plan on how to deal with Syria’s chemical weapons. This plan is not expected until Friday at the earliest.

In the meantime, the deal, dubbed as the greatest US-Russia joint diplomatic effort since the unification of Germany, has already run into troubled waters. While the rest of the Western powers want military intervention in case of non-compliance to be part of the deal, Russia believes that such a clause would hamper the peace effort and make the Assad regime uncooperative — especially since there is no definite proof that it was Damascus that carried out the August 21 attack. Russia is also opposed to the draft resolution being covered by Chapter 7 of the UN Charter which gives the Security Council authority to enforce its decisions through the use of force or the imposition of sanctions. Instead, in case of non-compliance, it wants members to come back to the Security Council and seek a fresh mandate for military intervention. In all probability, UN diplomats will just draft a resolution whose deliberately vague language will appease all parties.

So let us assume that the UN Security Council will pass a resolution paving the way for the transfer and eventual destruction of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons. The question then is:How will it be implemented? The answer is President Assad will lead UN weapons inspectors to his stockpiles and then stand aside while they take over his weapons — even as a civil war rages in the backdrop.

If you are sceptical already, wait till we get to the details. First, there is no clarity on what will be covered under the chemical weapons tag and what kind of delivery systems will be neutralised since many of these systems also deliver conventional weapons. Second, there is no solid intelligence on the quantity of chemical weapons stocked in Syria and/or their exact locations. There were supposedly 42 sites before the war but now the regime has been moving the weapons all over the country. Third, after the chemicals have been located, it will still take several months, if not years, to destroy them (think of the nightmarish Iraqi experience). And it will require boots on the ground — apart from the UN inspectors, the Pentagon estimates at least 75,000 troops will be needed to secure the sites. Finally, of course, all of this will have to happen in the middle of a civil war wherein UN inspectors and foreign troops will be walking right into the heart of the Syrian battlefield with the Assad regime as their guardian angel.

This overt dependence on the Assad regime is one of the biggest pitfalls of the deal because Damascus has proven itself to be unreliable and untrustworthy. In the past three years, it has repeatedly made promises to buy time from the international community and then violated them. There is no reason to believe that President Assad will now cooperate with the West. Even Muammar Gaddafi, who voluntarily gave up his chemical weapons to end Libya’s international isolation, had put away a secret stash that was discovered unguarded in the middle of the desert after his death in 2011.

For all practical purposes, this Syria peace deal is ready to crash even before it gets off the ground. So why are world leaders scrambling all over the globe to bring this together? The answer is simple: Because it makes them, all of them — Messrs Putin, Obama and Assad — look good.

The deal is a diplomatic coup for Mr Putin who has resurrected Russia’s image from a Cold War relic to a 21st century superpower that is capable of protecting its allies and resisting the US-led West. It has also helped him reiterate Moscow’s influence in West Asia where it had been relegated to the position of a bit player vis-à-vis Washington.

Interestingly, Mr Putin had first suggested the deal to Mr Obama at the G-20 summit in St Petersburg (before the Kerry-Lavrov talk) but neither the US President nor British Prime Minister David Cameron, with whom the matter was also discussed, saw any merit in the idea. But clearly, the Russian President was a few steps ahead — which explains why at a Press conference soon after, he referred to a possible peace deal without giving any detail.

As for President Obama, the deal is the desperate face-saver he needed to extricate himself from the ‘Red Line’ narrative in which he had foolishly entwined himself. It also means he no longer has to go to a war he didn’t want to in the first place — that Nobel was beginning to feel heavy.

Finally, for President Assad, the deal allows him to also breathe easy now that the chances of a military intervention have been drastically reduced. It also means he can continue with his daily massacres, as long as he doesn’t use chemical weapons again — which works just fine for him.

In fact, the deal has effectively taken the spotlight away from the killings by conventional weapons and focussed it narrowly on chemical weapons. This brings us to the only losers in the deal: The people of Syria, who will continue to be butchered by both the regime and the rebel forces.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on September 19, 2013)

Al Qaeda isn't going away soon

The ‘Syria problem' is playing out in other post-Arab Spring countries, from Libya to Tunisia and Egypt, where the space vacated by despotic regimes has been taken over by Islamic militants. Terror organisations have a ready platform

In May, US President Barack Obama said that he was hoping to “refine and repeal” the mandate that he got from the Congress to fight the war on terror against Al Qaeda and its affiliates, as the core group was on the “path to defeat” and “this war, like all wars, must end”. Less than three months later, he has evacuated the US embassy in Sana’a, Yemen, shuttered as many as 19 diplomatic missions across West Asia and North and East Africa and issued a month-long global travel advisory, fearing an attack by the terror outfit that was supposedly retreating.

The two don’t square up, not even if you take into consideration the Benghazi factor. Last year, the American Ambassador to Libya and three others were killed when the US mission in Benghazi came under attack. It was later revealed that the US Government had intelligence about the attack but had ignored it, causing much embarrassment, especially to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was accused of a cover-up.

Against this backdrop, it is understandable that the Obama Administration has this time around taken extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of its citizens. But this also proves that the Al Qaeda still has the ability to mount a major terror attack on even well-guarded Western targets. 

Of course, questions may be asked about the quality of the threat perception that prompted Washington, DC, to take these unusual steps. But given the limited information in this regard that is available — we only know that the alerts were issued after intercepted electronic communication between Al Qaeda top bosses showed that chief Ayman al-Zawahiri had ordered the group’s head in Yemen, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, to attack Western targets —such questions can only lead to speculation and conspiracy theories regarding Edward Snowden’s former bosses at the National Security Agency.

Assuming that the threat is as significant as the US authorities believe it to be, there can be no denying that Al Qaeda and its affiliates remain strong and lethal. What’s more, there is ample evidence that the group will quite possibly grow stronger and more resilient in the immediate future. Recent developments in South and West Asia show that Al Qaeda will secure for itself more physical sanctuaries around the world in the next few years.

Historically, it is this access to safe havens that has been the group’s lifeline. As long as its leaders and operatives have a place to hide, Al Qaeda has repeatedly shown that it has the ability to adapt itself to changing circumstances, regroup and hit back with a renewed vengeance.

We are already seeing it in the AfPak region. Despite the fact that it has been at the receiving end of an international military campaign and its leaders have been hounded and hunted for more than a decade now, Al Qaeda has managed to survive because it continues to enjoy the hospitality of the Pakistani establishment. The extent to which Islamabad has shielded the terror outfit and others of its ilk is well delineated in the Abbottabad Commission report which shows how the entire state machinery looked the other way as Osama bin Laden built himself a veritable fortress on the outskirts of the national capital. Not only did he live there for nine years with many members of his family without anybody being the wiser, he also managed hands-on his global terror network from the Abbottabad residence — as we know from documents that were seized following the May 2011 US raid that killed him.

Now, with the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, the physical sanctuary that Al Qaeda has in Pakistan will quite possibly extend in full to Afghanistan again — and before you know it, the group’s central command, or what President Obama refers to as the ‘Al Qaeda Core’, will be back to its original strength.

Interestingly, the weakening of the Al Qaeda Core has been one of the biggest achievements of President Obama’s otherwise tepid counter-terrorism policy, and indeed it was this that led him to proclaim that the group had been virtually defeated.

But now it seems that even that one significant gain might be reversed and soon, especially if the new Government that will replace Hamid Karzai’s administration in 2014 in Afghanistan, is unable to keep the militants at bay. In this context, the nature and number of US troops that will stay back in Afghanistan (and we know for sure that there will be some kind of a residual force) will be crucial.

Outside of the AfPak region, events in West Asia have been equally disconcerting. Syria, particularly, seems to have been run over by Al Qaeda operatives who have captured the popular revolt against President Bashar al-Assad. In fact, the Syrian civil war has played an important role in energising the group in the Levant, much like how the latter received a boost from the war in Iraq in the previous decade, as security analyst Bruce Hoffman notes in his latest article.

Not only is Syria yet another safe-haven in-the-making for Al Qaeda, it is also in the heart of the Arab world (and, therefore, closer to the group’s financiers in the region). Equally importantly, it places the terror group at the doorsteps of its sworn enemy, Israel, and another enemy, though to a lesser extent, Jordan. The recently created Al Nusr front, Al Qaeda’s flag bearer in Syria, has already established its credentials as a deadly sectarian force in the country and can no longer be ignored as a “bunch of guys” that owe allegiance to the black banner. That, instead of helping crush this force, the Obama Administration is planning to arm the Syrian rebels, is deeply distressing.

The ‘Syria problem’ is playing out in other post-Arab Spring countries as well, from Libya to Tunisia and Egypt where the space vacated by despotic regimes has been taken over by Islamic militants. Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the region have taken advantage of the weak and unstable Governments that have come to power recently to expand their toehold in the Sinai and the Sahel (think of the Al Qaeda flags that have become a regular at Muslim Brotherhood rallies in Egypt).

In effect then, more than a decade after the war on terror was launched, Al Qaeda is stronger today than it was before, having expanded and strengthened its footprint around the world.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on August 8, 2013)