WHY THE OIL DEAL IS NO BIG DEAL

To tackle the supply glut in the oil market, producers need to cut, not cap, their current production. This is not happening even in a best case scenario wherein Iran and Iraq fall in line with Saudi Arabia, Russia, Qatar and Venezuela, and everybody commits to a global deal

On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia and Russia, along with Qatar and Venezuela, decided to freeze their oil production at January 2016 levels, so as to stabilise oil prices, which have plunged in the past two year because of a supply glut. From a high of $115 per barrel in 2014, prices were down to $27 per barrel this January, and if the markets continue to be so awash in oil, it is possible that the prices would go down to $20 a barrel.

The impact of this price drop on oil-producing and exporting countries, which depend heavily on petrodollars to fuel their economy, needs no explanation. Indeed, the situation had become so dire that even resource-rich Saudi Arabia was feeling the pinch. This forms the backdrop to Tuesday’s deal.

The deal is the first in 15 years between members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and a country that is not part of the cartel. The deal also gains significance because the two countries leading this agreement, Russia and Saudi Arabia, are generally not on the same geo-political plane. In fact, for months, they have been competing with each other in the oil market. While Riyadh has recently stepped into Moscow’s turf and sold oil to eastern Europe, Russia has jumped Saudi Arabia in oil exports to China. Outside the oil market, the two nations are also on opposite sides in the Syrian civil war.

However, while on paper the deal seems like a major development, on the ground, it may not be that big a deal after all. There are two reasons for this.

Missing Pieces: The deal does not include Iran and Iraq — yet. These are the other major oil producers in the world, and without their cooperation, the supply side of the oil price mechanism cannot be controlled. Indeed, the activation of the deal itself is pegged to the assumption that the other players will fall in line.

Iran: Having just been freed from Western sanctions (following an agreement with the P5+1 powers on its nuclear programme) which previously curtailed its oil exports, Iran, the Opec’s the fifth-largest producer, is now looking to leverage its proverbial black gold so as to resuscitate its economy. In the words of Iran’s Opec envoy Mehdi Asali, it is, therefore, “illogical” to expect the country to freeze production.

Indeed, oil production has already been boosted, and by the end of Iranian calendar year (March 20), it is expected that production will reach a record high of 5,00,000 barrels a day. On Monday, Iran sent off its first Europe-bound crude cargo in four years. And over the next 48 hours, it exported more than 7.1 million crude barrels, setting a new record, according to the Managing Director of Iranian Oil Terminals.

Still, on Wednesday, Opec president Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, who is also the Qatari Minister of Industry and Energy, met with Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh to discuss a freeze by Tehran. They were joined by the Venezuelan Oil Minister and the Iraqi Oil Minister. While Iran did not commit to a freeze, it still took a positive stance on the issue. “The decision ... to stabilise the market and prices for the benefit of producers and consumers, is supported by us,” Mr Zanganeh told the official news agency after the meeting.

This means that while Iran may have publicly dismissed the idea of a production freeze for now, it may eventually still agree to some sort of a special capping arrangement. This will be for two reasons — First, Iran too is adversely affected by the  low prices, and second, it will only be able to increase production overnight to a certain level; beyond that, it will require large-scale, long-term investment, forcing its production abilities to plateau in the meantime. Hence, if the other producers make a good enough offer to Iran at the point, Iran is expected to at least consider it in all seriousness.

Iraq: In the popular imagination, Iraq may have been written off as besieged by the Islamic State terror group, but on the ground, it has made some significant recoveries and simultaneously also ramped up oil production. In January, Iraq’s output was a record 4.35 million barrels a day, and the International Energy Agency estimates that this figure may still increase. Sure, there are doubts about transporting the oil out of the country but even then, Iraq remains a major player. For now, Iraq is amenable to the deal and can be expected to officially join in, if the others also commit to a cap or a cut.

Inadequate measures: The second reason why the deal isn’t going to be a gamechanger is that even in a best case scenario, with Iran and Iraq on board, it is unlikely to change the oil price trajectory in a significant manner. This is  because the deal proposes a cap, not a  cut, in current production levels. In other words, even if the deal is implemented, the market will still have a over-supply of oil.

In this context, it in interesting to note that most Opec countries, such as Russia and Venezuela, are already pumping record high levels of oil. They are stretched to the maximum, and would have had to slow down even without a deal.

And then there is America’s shale oil factor: To understand the US’s role, one needs to go back a few steps. Historically, the OPEC cartel has managed to keep a strangle-hold on oil prices because demand far outstripped supply. The shale oil boom in the US, however, threatened to change that dynamic. Opec responded by striking at the one major weak point in the shale story: The relatively high-cost of production. The oil cartel pumped up production and deliberately depressed oil prices, hoping that American shale would become unprofitable in comparison.

While the shale industry did feel the pressure, the impact wasn’t as intense as Opec had calculated especially as shale prices continued on a downward path. Any let up at this point in the Opec’s efforts to keep oil prices low will give US shale companies just the breather they are looking for to get back into business.

Past experiences: A third problem with any Opec deal is cheating. In general, Opec members are not particularly transparent with their production figures and this leads to mistrust within the group. Non-Opec members are no better either. The last time there was a global deal of this sort — in 2001, when Saudi Arabia convinced Mexico, Norway and Russia to commit to production cuts — Russia went back on its word and, in fact, raised exports.

This oped was published in The Pioneer on February 18, 2016

IN NAYPYIDAW, DEMOCRACY DAWNS

Last week, Myanmar took one of its most definitive steps towards democracy: It swore in a Parliament comprised mostly of civilian lawmakers, brought to power through a largely free and fair election. However, the new Government still faces many challenges

Ruled by the military junta for five decades, and under a semi-military Government that secured its mandate though a rigged election for the last five years, Myanmar last week took one of its most definitive steps towards becoming a functional democracy: It swore in a new Parliament comprised mostly of civilian lawmakers brought to power through a largely free and fair election. In the 664-seat legislature, political icon and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, which won a landslide victory in the parliamentary election held last year on November 8, has 390 members, while the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, which was previously in charge, has only 42.

However, this does not mean that the military has been marginalised in Parliament since Army-appointed representatives still hold 25 per cent of the seats that were not open for election. But even factoring in this block of unelected members, it is noteworthy that the NLD still has a clear 50 per cent majority in Parliament.

The much-awaited big decision now is: Who will be the next President? NLD chief Suu Kyi is barred from taking the top job, as her sons hold British passports and the Constitution of Myanmar prohibits those with foreign nationals in their immediate family from the Presidency. This clause was specifically inserted to keep Ms Suu Kyi out of the presidential palace and it is possible that in due course of time, the Constitution will be amended.

But for now, there is no clarity on who will be the next leader. Ms Suu Kyi, who has long expressed her desire to be President, is holding back channel talks with the military and The New York Times has reported that the NLD may be offering the Chief Minister’s post in three key States to the USDP. But it’s difficult to tell how these talks are progressing. If the talks fail at least for the time being (keeping the option open for Ms Suu Kyi to take over the presidency later in the term), the focus will be on a proxy President: Ms Suu Kyi has no clear deputy in the party but more importantly, she has already said that irrespective of who wears the President’s tag, it is she who will be the leader of any NLD Government.

Either way, the new Government faces many challenges. First is Government formation. Having been in opposition for so many years, NLD members have no experience in national governance or institutional reform. This will make it enormously difficult for the new Government to guide the country through this crucial period of transition and deliver meaningful change and progress. The public, of course, has high expectations and it will be a huge setback to the democratic process if the Government fails to deliver, and at the end of the next five years, there is much public resentment.

Second, the NLD will have to carefully manage its relations with the military, which remains a powerful force. Ms Suu Kyi has done this with aplomb in recent years. She has a good working relationship with outgoing President Thein Sein  an important factor in the steady democratic transition of the past five years. Remember, when the parliamentary election was held in 2010, Ms Suu Kyi’s NLD, having been unlawfully denied the opportunity to form the Government even after having won the election in 1990, had boycotted. However, since 2012, after election laws were reformed, the NLD participated in several by-elections, all of which it won.

So, to that end, the NLD is off to a safe start. However, one mustn’t undermine the challenges ahead. For one, the possibility of a proxy President will add another variable to the mix and there is no telling how that it will affect the carefully-set equation between the NLD and the old military establishment. Moreover, the military is expected to keep the key portfolios of Defence, Home and Border Operations. This will further complicate matters of day-to-day governance and can easily become a source of friction. It could even lead to a full confrontation that may undermine Myanmar’s democratic transition especially since the military still has emergency powers.

Outside politics, the big issue for the new Government is fructifying the peace process with the ethnic armed groups. The Thein Sein Government made major progress in this regard last year when it signed a peace deal with the ethnic armed groups. However, fighting has continued despite the agreement to cease fire and violent clashes in Shan and Kachin States are threatening to undermine the peace process. This could lead to large-scale economic turbulence that Myanmar is hardly prepared to deal with. 

Also, the situation in Rakhine State, where most Muslim Rohingya are disenfranchised, remains volatile. At home, any decision of the NLD Government on this issue will be viewed through a nationalist lens but outside Myanmar, it will be seen as test of character for the peace laureate-politician. Notably, Ms Suu Kyi has maintained a studied silence on the Rohingya issue which hasn’t gone unnoticed in the international community.

Another long term challenge before the new Government will be dealing with China. Myanmar was close to becoming a Chinese satellite state when the junta decided to the reverse course. This has led to some cooling of ties between China and Myanmar but the latter is still deeply entrenched and unlikely to back away without a fight.

Ms Suu Kyi and the NLD will need deft diplomatic skills to shepherd Myanmar’s ongoing re-engagement with the West, without rocking the boat with a more assertive China that is presumable concerned about its interests being harmed. For this geo-political re-orientation to succeed, the Western countries must also understand that while do have a significant role to play in bringing positive change in Myanmar, and the new Government will, of course, dip into the large reservoir of support and goodwill but everybody needs to be cognizant of domestic and regional sensitivities.

This is also where India comes into play. Myanmar stands at the crossroads of India’s Neighbourhood First and Act East policies; and it is crucial to the development of India’s own North-Eastern States as well as its relations with South East Asia. However, India is still only a minor player in Myanmar despite its longstanding historical and civilisational ties. Though New Delhi has been pragmatic enough to do business with the junta since the 1990s, this has been far below potential. Meanwhile, other regional powers such as Singapore and Thailand, not to mention China, have soared ahead.

India has a lot of catching up to do but a good place to start will be accelerating the transport connectivity projects that are already in the pipeline. At the top of the list is the Rs2,904-crore Kaladan project, which includes a 225km-waterway on the Kaladan River from Sittwe Port to Kaletwa and from there, a 62km-roadway from Kaletwa to the India-Myanmar border. The India-Myanmar-Thailand highway and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor are the two other important projects that require immediate attention.

This article was published in The Pioneer on February 8, 2016

THE OTHER TERROR ATTACK ON INDIA

While the Pathankot assault is being analysed threadbare, Mazar-e-Sharif has pretty much fallen off the radar even though the latter is an important indicator of how the Afghan security situation is evolving since US-led forces ended combat operations in that country

In the haze of the Pathankot saga, the simultaneous attack on the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, has received limited attention.  And almost all of that has focused on the Jaish-e-Mohammed-Afzal Guru connection that seems to link the two episodes.

Now, while there is no doubt that both incidents were designed to rollback recent progresses on the India-Pakistan front as well as the India-Afghanistan front, and that in the larger picture they are inextricably linked, it is important to look at them individually for a more nuanced understanding. The Pathankot attack, of course, is being analysed threadbare but Mazar-e-Sharif has pretty much fallen off the radar — though the latter is an important indicator of how the security situation in Afghanistan is evolving especially since US-led forces officially ended combat operations in the country at the end of 2014.

The January 4 attack on the Indian consulate, which claimed the life of one policeman and injured 11 others, comes at a time when such incidents have unfortunately become the norm, with 2015 being the bloodiest year for Afghanistan since 2001. Indeed, 2015 was also the year that saw the Taliban take control of a major urban centre for the first time since the Americans had chased them out of Kabul. In September, the northern hub of Kunduz was under Taliban control for two weeks, after which Afghan forces, with US air support, were able to take back the city. The episode was not just a strategic or political loss, it also dealt a severe psychological blow.

Worse still, after Kunduz, the Taliban have continued to attack high-profile targets: In December, a suicide bomber detonated his device outside Bagram air field killing six US airmen. Weeks later, militants dressed in Army fatigues penetrated Kandahar airport; that same day, the Taliban overran a district centre in Helmand, the southern Province which borders Pakistan and was an insurgent stronghold. In recent months, Helmand has been the site of fierce fighting between the Taliban and Afghan soldiers, and the former have, worryingly, been able to make significant inroads into the Province.

In fact, this Sunday, the Taliban were able to break through the frontlines of the strategically important Sangin district, and it wasn’t until Tuesday that Afghan forces, assisted by British soldiers, were able to take back important buildings in the area. However, fighting continues in Marjah, another town of the embattled Province, where one American soldier was killed and two others injured on Tuesday, prompting a dozen American airstrikes on Wednesday.

Outside Helmand, in Kabul, there was yet another bomb blast on Tuesday night  bringing the total number of militant attacks in the capital city to four before even the first week of the New Year was over. Three of these attacks have happened over 48 hours: The day of the Mazar-e-Sharif attack saw a Taliban truck bomb strike a heavily-guarded residential compound in Kabul that was housing foreign contractors, killing two and wounding more than 30 civilians; and a separate bomb went off near the airport in the capital city.

Clearly, the hard-won gains of this past decade-and-a-half remain under threat, and may still be reversed. This is exactly what many security analysts had predicted when the Obama Administration had announced its ill-advised troop withdrawal plan in the first place. Of course, what was supposed to be a ‘withdrawal’ plan eventually became a ‘drawdown’ with more than 9,000 US soldiers remaining in Afghanistan even after 2014, when combat operations were officially ended, military bases handed over, and flags lowered.

Then, after the fall of Kunduz, there was a major shift in October 2015 when President Obama announced that instead of just 1,000 troops remaining in Afghanistan after 2016, more than 5,500 will stay in the country at least through 2017. Whether this course correction will be enough to fix the policy mistakes of the past, we’ll know over the course of this year.

An important factor here will, of course, be the performance of the Afghan Army which has proved its mettle as a fighting force but still needs better equipment and more training. Another factor will be internal dynamics of the Taliban itself. After the death of the group’s long-time head Mullah Omar was announced last year (two years after his actual demise), the Afghan Taliban has been in a flux.

The new leader, Mullah Mansour, has struggled to consolidate his control. In November 2015, a rival splinter group emerged under Mullah Rasool and the two factions have fought some bloody battles in Zabul, Herat and Farah Provinces.

Additionally, several foot soldiers have abandoned the Taliban tag, preferring instead to fly the banner of the Islamic State terror group, whose actual ground presence is hotly debated but its jihadi lure remains undeniable. Now, the Islamic State and the Taliban are now fighting each other — for example, earlier this week the Taliban captured the Batikot and Chaparhar districts of Nangarhar Province from the Islamic State, which, however, retains control of Nazyan district.

In the short term, this power jostling will lead to more violence and bloodshed. Already, there is a consensus that the recent bombings in Kabul and the Taliban’s heightened efforts to takeover Helmand Province are a fallout of Mullah Mansour’s desperate attempts to establish his position, especially in the run-up to the peace talks, scheduled for January 11 in Islamabad. Notably, the talks were cancelled last year after Mullah Omar’s death was announced, and since then there has been no structured dialogue.

In the long term, a fractured Taliban will be a weaker Taliban; making it easier, for instance, to coerce one group of fighters into a peace settlement while another can be militarily defeated. While deft diplomacy will be key, and Kabul’s international allies will be expected to do their part in this context, the focus for now has to be on ensuring that the Afghan forces have the upper hand on the ground.

If the militants, already on a resurgent-high, come to the negotiating table emboldened by battle wins, they will have no reason to concede, and Afghanistan will hurtle towards a civil war. However, if the Afghan forces and their international support team can take advantage of the instability within their primary enemy, they should be able rollback the recent losses. A small window of opportunity might just have opened up, after all.

This article was published in the Oped section of The Pioneer on January 7, 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)

TOO MANY COOKS FOR SYRIAN BROTH

The Russia-Turkish confrontation on Tuesday won't spark a war but it may disrupt the global coalition that’s slowly coming together to fight the Islamic State. The situation is fast evolving, and India must decide if it's comfortable sitting out of the defining conflict of this time

The downing of a Russian military jet by Turkish forces on Tuesday was only the latest flashpoint in the increasingly internationalised Syrian crisis, which, of course, is fundamentally linked to the global threat posed by the Islamic State terror group. The confrontation came less than two weeks after the Paris attack, which claimed more than 130 lives and the aftermath of which continues to unravel with France and neighbouring Belgium on high alert. In between, a Russian commercial jet that had just departed from the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh was bombed over the Sinai peninsula. Before that there were terror attacks, linked to the Islamic State, in Lebanon and Turkey.

Though the incident sent alarm bells ringing in world capitals — after all, it was the first time since the end of the Cold War that a Russian fighter plane was shot down by a Nato member state — and sparked a flurry of World War III headlines, it was actually not that surprising. There had been a similar scare in October when Turkey brought down what was thought to be a Russian aircraft but turned out to be a drone. More recently, Turkey has repeatedly complained about Russian jets, carrying out missions in Syria, violating its airspace. Besides, given how crowded the Syrian airspace is these days, with American, British, French, Arab, Turkish and Russian jets in the sky, it was only a matter of time before such a kerfuffle transpired.

But while this is a matter of concern, it is unlikely to lead to an escalation between Turkey and Russia. Sure, Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken a hard stance against Turkey, calling the attack a “stab in the back” and accusing the Government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of conspiring with the Islamic State, but it makes no sense for him to launch a full scale attack given that he already has his hands full with the mess in Ukraine and consequent Western sanctions. Besides, if Russia really wants revenge, its much more likely to do so indirectly — by propping up the Kurds. And so it is no surprise that on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said in no uncertain terms that Moscow does not “intend to wage a war on Turkey”.

Similarly, US President Barack Obama statement supporting Turkey’s right to protect its sovereignty in this context notwithstanding, there is no reason to worry that Nato will jump in to battle to defend Turkey — this is simply not that big an issue. Also, if Turkey had a problem with its airspace being violated, it has more than made its point by shooting down a Russian jet. Hence, immediately after the emergency meeting that Turkey called with its Nato allies, Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg, while expressing support for Turkey, also called for “de-escalation” and “diplomacy”. 

The more serious concern following Tuesday’s incident is, therefore, not a Nato-Russia confrontation but the atmosphere of acrimony and brinkmanship that it has fuelled. In recent days, following the Paris attack, the West and Russia have been inching towards greater cooperation against the Islamic State: Russia, which had mostly been attacking rebels groups fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since it began military operations in September, had begun striking Islamic State targets as well. The Vienna talks, held a day after the Paris attack, had also made more progress than expected.

Meanwhile, French President  François Hollande has been lobbying world powers, with some degree of success it would seem, to put up a united front against the Islamic State. He will be in Moscow on Thursday and visited Washington, DC, on Tuesday to discuss greater cooperation (though, notably, Mr Lavrov cancelled his trip to Istanbul after the shooting). Importantly, the UN Security Council also passed a resolution earlier this week, calling for all necessary action to be taken against the Islamic State. Though this was a goodwill gesture rather than a firm commitment, it indicated a rare convergence of interests.

The current Turkey-Russia episode threatens these gains — and one can hardly write off the possibility that this precisely may have been Ankara’s game plan all along. There can be no two ways about the fact that the Islamic State was able to grow into the monster that it is today because Ankara facilitated the transfer of arms, funds and foreign fighters to rebel groups in Syria, including the Islamic State, in a desperate bid to bring down the Assad regime. Some Turkish officials have also been found to have links with Islamic State leaders and there have been strong allegations of elements within the Turkish Government benefitting from the Islamic State’s illicit activities particularly in oil trade. Moreover, Ankara has used the Islamic State as a weapon in its longstanding dispute with the Kurds, who are the only force on the ground that have been able to push back the Islamic State.

This brings us to the fundamental differences between Turkey and Russia in their approach to the Islamic State and the Syrian conflict: While Turkey’s primary aim is removal of the Assad regime, Russia’s is the exact opposite. Fighting the Islamic State is not a priority for either, though Russia doesn’t mind bombing the terror targets these days while Turkey has been strengthening them all along. Yet, it’s hard to imagine how a solution can be crafted without Russia and Turkey on the same page — and this is just looking at two of the many stakeholders in the conflict.

On a different note, it might be worth asking: What, if any, is India’s role here? Even if one assumes that India is not directly impacted by the conflict, at least for the time being, it still has major interests in West Asia, be they trade and investments, diaspora and remittances, and of course oil and energy security. Moreover, India is an aspiring Great Power that wants to have a say in the international system and is actively campaigning for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council.

Yet, in the five years since the war in Syria broke out, India has contributed precious little to the conflict resolution process. It has made clear that it is opposed to foreign military intervention and regime change from the outside, and that a political solution is the only answer; it has also maintained its diplomatic relations with Damascus, an old Delhi friend. But while these are wise policy positions, they are not prescriptive measures.

At the multilateral level, India participated in two major initiatives regarding the Syrian conflict. In both cases, there was little to write home about. First, in 2011, it joined hands with its IBSA partners — Brazil and South Africa, all of whom were temporary members of the UNSC at that time — to push for a statement calling for the immediate halt of violent in Syria. The statement was the first that the world body had issued on what was then a six-month-long conflict and, to that extent, was a modest success for all three members. However, the delegation that they led to Syria soon after was a failure. In early 2014, India was one among the 30 countries that participated in the Geneva-II talks but here too, then External Affairs Minister, Mr Salman Khurshid, mostly just reiterated New Delhi’s known positions on the issues. Perhaps, it is no surprise then that India hasn’t been invited to the ongoing Vienna talks.

To be fair, India has good reason to not want to get its hands dirty: The situation is a mess and India doesn’t really face any immediate pressing threats that it cannot handle from home. That said, India has strong relations with almost all the regional and major powers, enormous goodwill in much of West Asia, and finally, civilisational ties with the region. Should it not leverage these assets to making meaningful contribution? Equally importantly, can an aspiring global power afford to sit out of what is possibly the defining crisis of our times?

(This article was published in the oped section of The Pioneer on November 26, 2015)

RE-DEFINING INDIA-AFRICA TIES

Perhaps it is early to conclude about the India-Africa summit, but one thing is sure: The forum gave an assessment of ties as they exist today, and also indicated of what the relationship will look like in the years to come

As the curtains are drawn on the Third India-Africa Forum Summit, New Delhi’s largest diplomatic outreach in several decades, we need to ask: Was this just another grand gathering of world leaders or will the conference emerge as a milestone that redefined India’s engagement with the African continent? Of course, it is still too early to offer a definitive answer, given that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is having bilateral consultations even today (October 30), but it will be fair to say that the summit produced a fair assessment of India-Africa ties as they exist today, and also offered some important indicators of what the relationship will look like in the years ahead.

In the first case, there was an honest acknowledgement of the fact that, while India’s ties with the African continent go back thousands of years and have grown enormously in recent years, they are still under-developed. As Mr Modi himself said at the plenary session on October 29, India hasn’t always been as attentive towards its African partners as it should have been, and on some occasions it has fallen short of expectations. Consequently, India hasn’t been able to fully leverage its inherent advantages in the continent.

That said, there was also genuine appreciation for India’s role in the emergence of a post-colonial Africa and its continued support as a development partner. As is well-known, Indian and African leaders worked together to fight against foreign rule and bring freedom and prosperity to their people. In fact, at its 1928 annual session in Calcutta (present-day Kolkata), the Indian National Congress officially linked the Indian freedom struggle to the global fight against imperialism. Later, a newly-independent India, under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, continued to lead the global anti-colonial struggle from the front. It promoted the African cause at international forums, placed the anti-colonial movement at the heart of the Non-Aligned Movement and also provided active support to African liberation groups.

By the time most African nations gained sovereignty, India had also established itself as a strong development partner within the model of South-South cooperation. The ITEC programme, which continues with much success till date, has trained and skilled hundreds of Africans in a wide variety of fields and subjects, in India. In fact, many African ITEC alumni are national leaders today — for example, the President of Nigeria, Mr Muhammadu Buhari, was trained at the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington, Tamil Nadu; and so was Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, who governed from 1999 to 2007.

The other, more recent, tool of Indian diplomacy in Africa has been the concessional lines of credit. Launched in 2004 and disbursed through the Export Import Bank, these soft loans have a host of activities — from mega infrastructure projects, such as roads, railways and power plants, to relatively smaller projects in food processing and IT training, and everything in-between. For example, in Angola, a $40 million Line of Credit has helped modernise the country’s rail system workshop and improve the supply of railway rolling stock, while in Malawi, a $30 million LOC is funding the One Village One Product Programme and the Small Holder’s Irrigation Programme, which bring agricultural plants and equipments from Indian factories to Malawian farms. Similarly, Indian lines of credit have helped set up a hydro-electric plant in Burundi, rice and maize plantations in Cameroon, a technology park in Cape Verde and a cement plant in the Central African Republic.

This brings us to the second aspect: Where does the India-Africa partnership go from here? Of course, we will continue to upgrade some of the core elements such as education, skill development, agriculture and medicine. We can also expect to see, for example, heightened cooperation in the energy sector. Already, in the decade between 2005 and 2015, India’s oil import from Africa has gone up from zero to more than 25 per cent of its total import bill. India is also investing in the Africa’s emerging oil and gas sector. State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation has stakes in an offshore gas field of Mozambique, in the Greater Nile Oil Project in Sudan and in one of the blocks of the joint development zone of Nigeria-Sao Tome and Principe.

Another area that should open up for greater cooperation is defence. Peacekeeping will, of course, remain an important element, but direct military ties must get a boost. Currently, India has military-to-military cooperation (mostly training) with more than 30 African nations. Indian defence training teams are deployed in countries like Botswana, Zambia, Lesotho and Seychelles. In Namibia, two ITEC experts are on deputation from the Ministry of Defence as advisors in civil and ICT-related works while in Nigeria, India helped set up the defence academy. Gradually, the private sector is also joining in — mostly with non-lethal military supplies.  Another aspect of defence cooperation includes anti-piracy missions and counter-terrorism operations. India has already played an active role in the former. 

A fairly new dimension to the India-Africa partnership will be cooperation in the related fields of climate change and renewable energy. It will be interesting to see how India and the African nations negotiate their positions at the upcoming UN climate change conference in Paris. Prime Minister Modi announced on Thursday that a Solar Group of nations (comprising states that have huge potential for solar energy, and this includes almost all of Africa) will be introduced at that summit. There have also been reports of a similar grouping of coastal nations, focusing on blue economies. These are interesting ideas, but only time will tell how they are implemented on the ground.

This article was published in the Oped page of The Pioneer on October 30, 2015

A TIGHTROPE WALK IN WEST ASIA

President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Palestine and Israel, the first by an Indian head of state, is a diplomatic milestone that is equally reflective of how much India’s foreign policy has changed since 1947 and how much it hasn’t

President Pranab Mukherjee’s trip to Palestine and Israel is, of course, historic, given that no other Indian head of state has ever visited either before. While the trip to Palestine was important to reiterate India’s continued support for the Palestinian cause and its commitment to a ‘balanced’ West Asia policy, especially when bilateral ties with Israel are growing strong, the tour of Israel was a natural development. Ties between India and Israel have not only become robust, expanding from defence into agriculture and water management, education and hi-tech, but also more open, particularly under the Modi Government.

Even security cooperation is no longer brushed under the carpet, as is evident from Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s India’s visit in February and the first joint military exercise, announced only days before President Mukherjee’s visit. Importantly, in his address to the Knesset, Mr Mukherjee expressed his gratitude to Israel “for rushing critical defence supplies in 1999”. While Israeli assistance to India during the Kargil war — a turning point in the bilateral which was established only in 1992 — is well-known, this is the first time that there has been such a high-profile, public acknowledgement of the same by the Government of India.

Similarly, in the backdrop of a spate of terror attacks in Israel, President Mukherjee’s blanket condemnation of all forms of terrorism was befitting the situation. It focused on the big picture but without taking sides in a complicated regional issue.

While these are welcome developments, if you were, however, looking for signs that the visit signalled an evolution in India’s foreign policy or a maturation of its world view, you’d be disappointed. Indeed, if there is one major takeaway from the President’s tour, it is this: The more things change, the more they stay the same. And so it has been, that despite the geo-politics of West Asia and the international order in general having changed significantly, that despite India’s relatively recent establishment of ties with Israel having added an entirely new dimension to the narrative, the President of India’s foreign policy pronouncements seem to have been mothballed since 1947.

Sample this: In this speech at Al Quds University in Ramallah, Mr Mukherjee reiterated how India has always been at the “forefront of promoting the Palestinian cause” and noted with pride that, “India voted against the partition of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly in 1947” — in other words, India voted against the establishment of the State of Israel. While the vote is a fact of history, did the President really need to highlight it, given that Israel has emerged as one of India’s most important partners, and that, only hours later, Mr Mukherjee himself was to travel to the Jewish state? Some may argue that it was important for Mr Mukherjee to highlight India’s pro-Palestine stance to ‘balance’ India’s ties with Israel. Even if this is the case (it isn’t, for President himself said that India’s ties with Israel and Palestine are independent of the other), surely there are better ways to do the ‘balancing act’ without highlighting one’s own mistakes from the past.

India’s vote on the UN partition plan (which came only six months after India had favoured the minority plan at the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine which recommended an Arab state and a Jewish state) was the result of the Congress’s ideological support for the Arabs at the time. Two factors had led to the crystallisation of this ideological tilt within the party and thereby within the Indian foreign policy establishment: First, Mahatma Gandhi wasn’t comfortable with the Zionist movement and viewed the establishment of Israel as a colonial project, being imposed on the ‘Palestinian people’, by the same British empire that he was fighting at home. In doing so, he ignored the well-established fact that Jews had continuously lived in the region for thousands of years and were as much ‘Palestinian’ as the Arabs; but given the Mahatma’s political stature at the time, his views set the tone for all. Second, worried that the Congress would lose public support to the Muslim League, already a veritable political force at that time, the Mahatma and other senior leaders of the party resorted to several Muslim appeasement tactics: Pandering to the Arabs, without any diplomatic reciprocation from Arab states was one of them.

Almost 70 years later, India has made some course corrections — establishing diplomatic ties with Israel being the most significant. Yet, it is disappointing to see that even as we acknowledge these new developments, we refuse to do so wholeheartedly. And so it is that we hold on to outdated policy pronouncements in public, even though in practice, we have all but discarded them. It is true that India’s support for the Palestinian cause today is mostly lip-service, limited to routine budgetary allocations, the occasional gift or two, and some grandstanding at the UN. It is equally true that even though sometimes this posturing takes on anti-Israel hues, Israel itself isn’t particularly perturbed, partly because its own take on the Palestinian issue isn’t that much different from India’s (both want a two-state solution in keeping with the relevant UN resolutions etc) and partly because the Palestinian issue isn’t a really an irritant in bilateral ties. However, this issue isn’t about Israel or even Palestine. This is about the Government of India being pragmatic and confident enough to stand up for its own interests.

Again, some may argue that maintaining lip-service to the Palestinian cause is in India’s interests but that argument also stands on a slippery slope, particularly since Indian politicians often tend to over-compensate. For example, during the last Gaza war, some Left parliamentarians demanded that India snap diplomatic ties with Israel. Before that, in 2011, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while addressing the UN General Assembly, had called for the establishment of a Palestinian state — with East Jerusalem as its capital. This was an unnecessary addition to India’s official position that has been carried forward till this day. It is not in keeping with ground realities and will prove to be a diplomatic headache for India, if and when there is a resolution to the Palestinian question.

Similarly, President Mukherjee underlined how India had “spearheaded” the international campaign for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood in 2012, and congratulated the people of Palestine on the unfurling of their national flag at the United Nations on September 30. No doubt, both of these were symbolic victories for the Palestinian leadership but they were also meaningless in terms of delivering peace and prosperity to the Palestinian people.

Of course, none of these pronouncements will change the ground realities in New Delhi, Jerusalem or Ramallah, but at some point, India needs to ensure that in its efforts to maintain its policy status quo, it doesn’t become party to a farce.  

This article was published in Oped page of The Pioneer on October 15, 2015