The Rise of Naval Dragon

With recent intervention of  INS Airawat in Vietnamese Coastal Area in South China Sea, Chinese had told its neighbour and rival of its arrival in the race of Naval Supermacy. Before this incident it has been reported in Chinese Communist Party's dossier that China has been pushing ahead with construction of a mega-sized nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to be completed in 2020.

Japan had also voiced its over China's growing assertiveness and widening naval reach in nearby waters and the Pacific and over what it called the "opaqueness" of Beijing's military budget.

China has been embroiled in separate spats over islands -- with Japan as well as with several Southeast Asian nations including Vietnam and the Philippines -- which have flared up again over the past year.


China's defence spending was not transparent, saying that the defence budget publicly announced by China "is widely seen as only part of what Beijing actually spends for military purposes.Opaqueness in its defence policies and military movements are concerns for the region, including Japan, and for the international community, and we need to carefully analyse them. China is expected to expand its routine activities in the South China Sea, East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

 

"Considering the recent modernisation of China's maritime and air forces, the areas affected by the capabilities will likely expand beyond its nearby waters," the Japanese defence paper said.

A source close to Chinese military affairs said on March 27 that China has been promoting the construction of a 93,000-ton atomic-powered carrier under a plan titled the "085 Project." The nation also has a plan to build a 48,000-ton non-nuclear-powered carrier under the so-called "089 Project," added the source. The source made such remarks based on government a dossier that reveals that China Central Military Commision recently approved the two projects. The dossier also contained specifications of the aircraft carriers.China had so far been known to be pushing ahead with construction of a non-nuclear-powered carrier, but not an atomic-powered one.

They have purchased Varyag  was to be an Admiral Kuznetsov clas multirole aircraft carrier of the Soviet Union. Her construction stopped by 1992, with the ship structurally complete but without electronics. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ownership was transferred to Ukraine; the ship was laid up, unmaintained, then stripped. In early 1998, she lacked engines, a rudder, and much of her operating systems, and was put up for auction.It was purchased at auction for US$20 million by Chong Lot Travel Agency, a company widely believed to be a front for Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).The ship is docked in Dalian and painted PLAN grey. Defense news and intelligence sources indicated that the ship had been refitted and would be put through sea trials in mid-2011 and in June 2011 the chief of China's General Staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) confirmed that China's first aircraft carrier was under construction. On August 10, 2011 the ship began her first sea trials.

Once the proposed Chinese carriers are deployed, the radius of the Chinese Navy range is expected to reach Guam, where a U.S. base is located. Thus, military experts are worried about China moves prompting an arms race in Northeast Asia.

The dossier said the construction of the nuclear-powered carrier will be completed in 2020. China State Shipbuiling Corp Jiangnan shipyard located on Changxing Island near Shanghai, will be responsible for its design and construction. The size is similar to former Soviet’s unfinished atomic-powered carrier Ulyanovsk, the dossier states. China reportedly secretly purchased the design of Ulyanovsk from Russia. When the nuclear-powered carrier is finished, China will own an aircraft carrier which is on par with the U.S.à newest of such vessels, the 97,000-ton atomic-powered USS Ronald Reagan, which recently docked at Busan Port to participate in a joint exercise between the South Korean and U.S. militaries.

According to the dossier, China plans to construct a non-atomic-powered carrier as a transition stage to building the larger nuclear-powered one. The non-atomic-powered carrier, due to be completed in 2010, will be a mid-sized carrier with a standard displacement of 48,000 tons and a full-load displacement of 64,000 tons and will be able to carry 30-40 Chinese-built J-10 fighters, which China fielded in December last year. The Chinese authorities are reportedly overhauling J-10 fighters to be loaded onto the new aircraft carriers. Until the work is complete, the new carriers are going to handle 10-20 Russian-made Su-33 fighters.

The non-nuclear-powered carrier is reported to be a revised version of Ukraine Varyag, which China purchased in 1998. A shipyard in Dalian is in charge of its design and construction. After the new carrier is completed, Varyag will be used for military training only.

Remarks made by Zhang Yunchuan, Minister of the Commission on Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, to reporters after the National People Congress (NPC) on March 16 - "The construction of an aircraft carrier with China-developed technology will be completed by 2010" - support the dossier information as reported by the source.

A general-ranked official at South Korea, Ministry of National Defense said, "China plan to push ahead with construction of atomic-powered aircraft carrier has not been widely known. However, it is sufficiently to predict that the nation will ultimately pursue the ownership of such a vessel."

China had fuelled Sri Lankan war

Sri Lanka, the once self-trumpeted `island of paradise,` turned into the island of bloodshed more than a quarter-century ago. But even by its long, gory record, the bloodletting since last year is unprecedented. The United Nations estimates that some 1,200 noncombatants are getting killed each month in a civil war that continues to evoke a muted international response even as hundreds of thousands of minority Tamils have fled their homes or remain trapped behind the front line.

With the world preoccupied by pressing challenges, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Defense Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a naturalized U.S. citizen, press on with their brutal military campaign with impunity. The offensive bears a distinct family imprint, with another brother the president`s top adviser.

Chinese military and financial support as in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Burma and elsewhere has directly aided government excesses and human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. But with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly emphasizing that the global financial, climate and security crises are more pressing priorities for U.S. policy than China`s human rights record, which by her own department`s recent admission has `remained poor and worsened in some areas,` Beijing has little reason to stop facilitating overseas what it practices at home repression.

Still, the more China insists that it doesn`t mix business with politics in its foreign relations, the more evidence it provides of cynically contributing to violence and repression in internally torn states. Sri Lanka is just the latest case demonstrating Beijing`s blindness to the consequences of its aggressive pursuit of strategic interests.

No sooner had the United States ended direct military aid to Sri Lanka last year over its deteriorating human rights record than China blithely stepped in to fill the breach a breach widened by India`s hands-off approach toward Sri Lanka since a disastrous 1987-90 peacekeeping operation in that island-nation.

Beijing began selling larger quantities of arms, and dramatically boosted its aid fivefold in the past year to almost $1 billion to emerge as Sri Lanka`s largest donor. Chinese Jian-7 fighter jets, antiaircraft guns, JY-11 3D air surveillance radars and other supplied weapons have played a central role in the Sri Lankan military successes against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (or `Tamil Tigers`), seeking to carve out an independent homeland for the ethnic Tamils in the island`s north and east.

Beijing even got its ally Pakistan actively involved in Sri Lanka. With Chinese encouragement, Pakistan despite its own faltering economy and rising Islamist challenge has boosted its annual military assistance loans to Sri Lanka to nearly $100 million while supplying Chinese-origin small arms and training Sri Lankan air force personnel in precision guided attacks.

China has become an enabler of repression in a number of developing nations as it seeks to gain access to oil and mineral resources, to market its goods and to step up investment. Still officially a communist state, its support for brutal regimes is driven by capitalist considerations. But while exploiting commercial opportunities, it also tries to make strategic inroads. Little surprise thus that China`s best friends are pariah or other states that abuse human rights.

Indeed, with its ability to provide political protection through its U.N. Security Council veto power, Beijing has signed tens of billions of dollars worth of energy and arms contracts in recent years with such problem states from Burma and Iran to Sudan and Venezuela.

In the case of Sri Lanka, China has been particularly attracted by that country`s vantage location in the center of the Indian Ocean a crucial international passageway for trade and oil. Hambantota the billion-dollar port Chinese engineers are now building on Sri Lanka`s southeast is the latest `pearl` in China`s strategy to control vital sea-lanes of communication between the Indian and Pacific Oceans by assembling a `string of pearls` in the form of listening posts, special naval arrangements and access to ports.

China indeed has aggressively moved in recent years to build ports in the Indian Ocean rim, including in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma. Besides eyeing Pakistan`s Chinese-built port-cum-naval base of Gwadar as a possible anchor for its navy, Beijing has sought naval and commercial links with the Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar. However, none of the port-building projects it has bagged in recent years can match the strategic value of Hambantota, which sits astride the great trade arteries.

China`s generous military aid to Sri Lanka has tilted the military balance in favor of government forces, enabling them in recent months to unravel the de facto state the Tamil Tigers had run for years. After losing more than 5,594 square km of territory, the Tigers now are boxed into a 85-square-km sliver of wooded land in the northeast.

But despite the government`s battlefield triumphs, Asia`s longest civil war triggered by the bloody 1983 anti-Tamil riots is unlikely to end anytime soon. Not only is the government unable to define peace or outline a political solution to the Tamils` long-standing cultural and political grievances, the rebels are gearing up to return to their roots and become guerrilla fighters again after being routed in the conventional war.

While unable to buy peace, Chinese aid has helped weaken and scar civil society. Emboldened by the unstinted Chinese support, the government has set in motion the militarization of society and employed control of information as an instrument of war, illustrated by the muzzling of the media and murders of several independent-minded journalists. It has been frenetically swelling the ranks of the military by one-fifth a year through large-scale recruitment, even as it establishes village-level civilian militias, especially in conflict-hit areas.

With an ever-larger, Chinese-aided war machine, the conflict is set to grind on, making civil society the main loser. That is why international diplomatic intervention has become imperative. India, with its geostrategic advantage and trade and investment clout over a war-hemorrhagic Sri Lankan economy that is in search of an international bailout package, must use its leverage deftly to promote political and ethnic reconciliation rooted in federalism and genuine interethnic equality. More broadly, the U.S., European Union, Japan and other important players need to exert leverage to stop the Rajapaksa brothers from rebuffing ceasefire calls and press Beijing to moderate its unsettling role.

China's declaration of support for the Sri Lankan government against the LTTE, apart from sticking out like a sore thumb in the eyes of the world, has further fuelled India`s mortal distrust of its largest and most powerful neighbour. While India has a much more nuanced position over the issue owing to its domestic compulsions, an unfettered China is supporting Colombo and, in the process, authenticating India's fear about Beijing extending its influence in the Indian Ocean.

According to government sources, Beijing's support to Colombo cannot be viewed in isolation because it follows a series of initiatives aimed at influencing the Sri Lankan government. These include selling huge quantities of arms to Colombo last year and boosting aid almost five times to $1 billion. In fact, China is now the largest donor to Lanka. Its Jian-7 fighter jets, anti-aircraft guns and JY-11 3D air surveillance radars played a key role in the Sri Lankan military successes.

China came to rescue of Colombo after the US stopped direct aid to Sri Lanka because of its dismal human rights record. What's worse, said strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney, Beijing has also roped in its ally Pakistan for providing military assistance to Lanka. Pakistan's own economy is in tatters, but it has increased its annual military assistance to Sri Lanka to $100 million at Beijing's behest. It is also well known that its air force trained its Sri Lankan counterpart in precision-guided attacks.

"The Chinese are courting Sri Lanka because of its location in the Indian Ocean -- a crucial international passageway for trade and oil. Chinese engineers are currently building a billion-dollar port in the country's southeast, Hambantota, and this is the latest `pearl' in China's strategy to control vital sea-lanes of communication between the Indian and Pacific Oceans by assembling a `string of pearls' in the form of listening posts, special naval arrangements and access to ports,''said Chellaney.

The Chinese are building a highway, developing two power plants and putting up a new port in the hometown of President Mahinda Rajapakse. Delhi is also feeling hard done-by by Beijing's support to Colombo over the issue of LTTE because it believes China is driving home an unfair advantage it has over India in the crisis. "Unlike in our case, there is no moral dimension to the crisis for China. We have to think about the humanitarian situation and conditions after the offensive is over. There is no domestic compulsion for China but our involvement is much more intricate,'' said a source.China, in fact, continues to aggressively pursue its strategic interests by building ports in the Indian Ocean rim, including in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. According to Chellaney, Beijing has sought naval and commercial links with the Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar. "However, none of the port-building projects it has bagged in recent years can match the strategic value of Hambantota,'' said Chellaney.

China is using the ongoing crisis in Sri Lanka to expand its sphere of influence and that has impacted India’s response to the situation, said Home Minister P Chidambaram. “China is fishing in troubled waters. That is a lone, discordant voice among all of the global community,” he told Hindustan Times on Friday.

China is encouraging the Sri Lankan offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) while the rest of the world, including India, has called for a cessation of hostilities to enable civilians to escape. Fighting for a separate state for Tamil-speaking people, the LTTE has been declared a terrorist outfit by United Nations.

"China is acting with a clear agenda,” said Chidambaram. “Our policies take account of the Chinese calculations.” He said Pakistan also might have wanted to seek a foothold on the southern (maritime) border of India, but internal issues were holding it back. “They are not in a position to do something adventurous now,” he said.

The comments are significant as Lanka’s importance for Beijing is in the sea-lanes of communication in the north Indian Ocean through which Chinese trade and energy supplies flow.

“They want to secure the lanes by building strategic and defense ties with Colombo,” said Sujit Dutta, head of the East Asia Programme of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis.

Senior Chinese naval officials have often stated that “the Indian Ocean isn’t India’s” despite no such claim by New Delhi. In the conversation that spanned a range of political and security issues Chidambaram expressed satisfaction over his 150 days in office. He replaced Shivraj Patil on December 1, 2008 in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. He was finance minister till then.

“Our intelligence gathering and sharing are far more effective now than six months ago. State governments are responding to the situation with utmost urgency and are better equipped to deal with it should another terrorist attack take place,” he said.

The Home Hinister said India is trying to put pressure on Colombo and the LTTE to cease hostilities. "It’s a humanitarian crisis. We want the killings to stop. Unfortunately, neither the Sri Lankan government nor the LTTE is willing to listen to the international community,” he said.

Chidambaram said the advances made by the Taliban in Pakistan were “extremely worrisome” for India. “Large sections of Pakistan are under the control of the Taliban,” he said. However, the Home Minister did not endorse former NSA Brajesh Mishra’s fears that the Taliban could “get their hands” on nuclear weapons. “My impression is that there are adequate systems in Pakistan to secure them,” he said.

“Read my lips. We’ve made substantial progress…I am not at liberty to disclose details as some procedural formalities are still underway,” he said.

INDO-NEPAL RELATIONS- FUTURE PROSPECTS

- Prakash A.Raj

The purpose of this paper is to assess the likely prospects of Indo-Nepal relations in the twenty first century in view of changes in strategic equations and globalization not only in the region but also worldwide. Brief review of Indo-Nepal relations in the later half of twentieth century (1950- 1999) Nepal was being ruled by Rana oligarchy till 1950 when there was a revolution in which the Nepalese people and King Tribhuwan participated succeeding in overthrowing the Ranas and bringing democracy to the country. King Tribhuwan fled to India and the Indian Government supported the democratic forces in Nepal. Had it nor been for support from India it would have been difficult for the democratic forces in Nepal to succeed in ending the despotic regime. Most of the leaders of Nepali Congress were living in India and had close rapport with leaders of freedom movement in India. There was a time in the 1950’s when India had paramount influence in not only international relations but also in domestic affairs of Nepal. Prime Minister Nehru stated in the Indian Parliament on 1950 “…we have had from immemorial times, a magnificent frontier that it so say, the Himalayas. …The principal barrier to India lies on the other side of Nepal and we are not going to tolerate any person coming over that barrier.” (1). Nehru had re-iterated in 1954 “foreign policy of the Nepalese Government should be co-ordinated with the foreign policy of India”.(2) B.P. Koirala became the first Prime Minister of Nepal after elections were held for the Parliament in 1958. However, King Mahendra dismissed Koirala in a coup in December 1960 and assumed the powers himself. Prime Minister Nehru was unhappy and said the step represented a “setback for democracy”. Anti-monarchial forces protesting against this step launched a movement inside the borders of Nepal and in India. As the movement was gathering momentum, Sino-Indian border conflict was to start in 1962 that was to have a profound impact on relations between Nepal and India as well. The Indian Government did not do anything to stop such activities from the Indian soil initially. The Chinese Defence Minister Chen Yi in a statement said that the Chinese people would help Nepal if it were to be attacked. (3) The Chinese signed an agreement to construct a road linking Kathmandu with the Chinese border and assisted Nepal in constructing a ring road around the capital city and in setting up some industries. The Indians who had always regarded Nepal as their own backyard were unhappy but were unable to prevent the construction of the road to the border. King Mahendra also started the Panchayat System in 1962 under which powers were concentrated in the monarchy and political parties were banned. King Mahendra was very successful in the realm of foreign affairs as Nepal was able to assert its independent identity and reduce its dependence on India. On the other hand, when the Chinese were agreed to construct parts of East-West Highway being constructed along the Terai in southern part of Nepal, there were protests from the Indian side as they didn’t want the Chinese working too close to their borders. They offered to build those parts themselves. The King respected Indian sensitivity in this regard and parts of the highway in far eastern and far western sectors were built under Indian assistance. Nepal had established diplomatic relations with many countries and exchanged residential diplomatic missions in Kathmandu and their respective capitals. On the other hand, India continued to regard its relations with Nepal

as being “special”. This was mainly due to open border between the two countries and the Treaty of Friendship signed in 1950. King Birendra succeeded his father in 1972 and he attempted to gather international support to declare Nepal as a “Zone of Peace”. More than 100 countries supported Nepal’s proposal except India. K.V.Rajan, former Indian Ambassador to Nepal states the Zone of Peace proposal being a “thinly disguised attempt to bury Nepal’s security obligations to India under the 1950 Treaty.” (4) Nepal had purchased anti-aircraft guns, medium range SSMs, and assault rifles from China in 1988 that was regarded by India as “provocative” and a contravention of 1950 Treaty. India declared a blockade of goods to Nepal after delays in renewing Trade and Transit Treaty between the two countries that caused hardship to the people. The popular movement against the Panchayat system gathered momentum and the King had to dismantle party less system and to transfer sovereignty to Parliament in 1990.

There was an elected Government of Nepali Congress throughout most of the 1990’s headed by Girija Koirala. India made the Trade Treaty with Nepal different from Transit Treaty and made Nepal’s access to the sea guaranteed for all times, not something that had to be renewed every seven years as in the past. The hijacking of Indian Airlines aircraft from Kathmandu Airport on Christmas Eve in 1999 and its landing in Kandahar airport in Taliban ruled Afghanistan was to make profound changes in Indo-Nepal relationship. India expressed concern about threat to its security by foreign forces operating from Nepalese soil. The beginning of new millennium also marked two events, which were to affect Nepal profoundly. The first was royal massacre in June 2001 when

Crown Prince Dipendra who is supposed to have committed suicide massacred the entire family of King Birendra including the Queen. His brother Prince Gyanendra succeeded him. The second was growth in the Maoist insurgency in the country.

Future Prospects

It is essential to examine future prospects of Indo-Nepal relations from strategic and economic perspective. Such recent developments in the world arena as the end of Cold War, emergence of the United States as the sole superpower, strategic partnership between India and the United States as common allies against international terrorism and increasing economic clout of two of Nepal’s immediate neighbours, India and China are bound to affect Indo-Nepal relations as well. The relevance of non-aligned movement today is less than it was during the days of the Cold War. Steps taken in the past few years in normalizing Indo-Pak and Sino-Indian relations and above all, extension of Chinese railway network to Lhasa in Tibet are esp ecially important in this context. Strategic Perspective India on the eve of the new millennium faced problems with some of its neighbours. Afghanistan was a country with which it had friendly relations till the end of 1980’s was ruled by hostile Taliban regime. It had a long-standing dispute on the Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan and was facing cross border raids by Islamic militants based in Pakistan. Some of the militants were Taliban. The hijacking of Indian Airlines aircraft

from Nepal represented a serious setback to its security interests. The Taliban were in friendly terms with Pakistan, which felt its “strategic depth” had increased in relation to India. Sino-Indian relations had not been normalized, as there were still boundary problems in Northeast and Aksai Chin area of Ladakh in Kashmir. The hijacking incident from Nepal must have come as a shock to India. The territory of the only Hindu kingdom

in the world, that India had assumed would remain in friendly hands, was used to conduct terrorist attack against the airline of the country having the largest Hindu population. S.D.Muni of JNU has said that monarchy as an institution in Nepal had done precious little in accommodating legitimate security and economic interests and concerns in Nepal . However, a Government formed after elections to the Parliament was in power in Nepal at the time of hijacking. This indicates biased attitude of some Indian intellectuals about Nepal as many of the security concerns of the Indians were generated during the rule of Nepali Congress Government than during the Panchayat era when the monarch was the paramount power in the country.

Attacks by Al Quaida in New York and Washington on 9/11/2001 and retaliation by the US in Afghanistan against the Taliban led to commonality of interests between India and the US in fighting international terrorism. India, the US and Israel were branded as common enemy by the Taliban. Pakistan also sided with the US and provided valuable support in destroying Taliban. India and the US had become strategic allies. When the Maoist insurgency escalated, the US provided arms assistance to Nepal. India did not protest as it had when arms were purchased by Nepal in 1988. As both of Nepal’s immediate neighbours, India and China and Pakistan, a fellow SAARC member sharing the same sub-continent are now nuclear powers; Nepal’s strategic importance in the

region has increased. This is especially so as South Asia is likely to contain a high conflict potential area in the near future due to India and Pakistan as nuclear powers due to existence of missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons (6) Nepal has not remained unaffected due to fallout from nuclear radiation in the region caused by nuclear tests in Pokhran in Rajasthan or Baluchistan or Sinkiang.

The Annual Report on Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 published by the US Department of State had the following to say about Nepal

“Limited government finances, weak border controls and poor security infrastructure have made Nepal a convenient logistic and transit point for some outside militants and international terrorists. The country also possesses a number of relatively soft targets that make it a potentially attractive site for terrorist operation”.

There are indications that India is now concerned about impact of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. The insurgency in Nepal has spilled over to Uttaranchal state in India. There also appears to be a nexus between the Maoist in Nepal with similar outfits as People’s War Group in Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand , Bihar and Orissa. The annual report of Indian Defence Ministry for 2002-03 states “”the growing influence and grip of the Maoists throughout the country, particularly the terai areas bordering India and their links with Indian left extremist outfits are a cause of serious concern” . India is linked with its northeastern part by “Chicken’s Neck”, a narrow strip of territory between Nepal and Bangladesh. If insurgency in Jhapa district of Nepal were to spread to Chicken’s

Neck, India’s control of the entire Northeast might be endangered. It may be remembered that India is fighting many separatist insurgencies in such states as Nagaland and Manipur in the northeast. (A meeting of Chief Ministers of states affected movements similar to the Maoists in Nepal was organized in September 2004 in Delhi. It was attended by Chief Ministers and senior officials of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatrisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, and Maharastra. The meeting expressed concern about linkages between Maoists in Nepal and similar outfits in India and emphasized better co-ordination between security and intelligence agencies and noted with concern Maoist threats to assassinate Indian leaders with human bombs

A peaceful resolution of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal is also in India’s strategicinterests. It was precisely because of open Indo-Nepal border that the Maoist insurgency could spread so fast as the insurgents could often take shelter across the border. Many of the security concerns of the Indians could have been addressed had the border been better regulated by such means as record keeping of movements and residents in areas close to

the border provided identity cards that could be used while crossing the border. India has so far been to reluctant to regulate the open Indo-Nepal border but there are indications that it is now changing.

Economic Perspective

An article published in the Herald Tribune by Robert Radtka, Vice President of Asia Society in the US (10) raises interesting questions about economic development in two of Nepal’s neighbours, India and China. Radtke believes that economies of India and China that are competing with each other might become more complimentary in the future. He concludes China may believe it has more to gain by establishing amicable relationship with India. Steps taken in recent years in normalizing Sino-Indian relations should also interest Nepal. Both India and China have enjoyed impressive growth rates in the past decade. Both are on their way to become economic giants. Nepal is situated just north of heavily populated states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in India, which had remained relatively backward. Tibet Autonomous Region is sparsely populated but will be linked

with eastern part of China by railway. Nepal is already linked with Tibet by Kodari Highway built in the 1960’s. A second highway is being constructed now that will link Kathmandu by Rasuwa to Keyrong. Nepal should be able to take advantage of its proximity to both Indian and Chinese markets. China was able to get foreign investment of $54 billion in 2003, which was ten times more than that received by India. While the strength of the Chinese economy is in manufacturing, that of India is in services. India has made tremendous progress in IT sector in recent years and has developed outsourcing market for the US and some countries of western Europe. Nepal could also benefit from such development.Nepal could also be an attractive destination for FDI from India. It is already the largest investor in Nepal. Indian investors have identified such advantages offered by Nepal such as attractive incentives, Government’s positive attitude towards investors, low cost locations, cheap labour cost, easily trainable workforce as some of the factors which will make it attractive to Indian investors. (12). Indian investment in Nepal is 36% of FDI and includes such sectors as tourism, consumer durables, garments and carpets. Such Indian companies as Dabur, Colgate and Hindustan Lever have set up factories in Nepal

with the objective to export their finished products to India.

Tourism and hydropower development are two sectors in which Nepal enjoys comparative advantage and could be attractive for Indian investors. Nepal is an attractive destination for Indian tourists who visit the country for pilgrimage and sightseeing. An increasing number of young Indians are also visiting the country for honeymoon and adventure tourism. It could also attract more tourists during summer in order to get away from the heat of the Indian plains during summer. Lack of adequate number of airline seats had been a major impediment. However, such private airlines from India as Air Sahara and Jet Air have started flying to Nepal in 2004 and some private Nepalese airlines such as Cosmic Air might soon start flying to some Indian cities. There are also

prospects of developing health tourism. There is scope for co-operation in hotel management between India and Nepal. Nepal is one of the countries selected by China for sending tourists. There are already Chinese tourists visiting Nepal. There are prospects that a large number of Chinese tourists would be visiting Nepal and India to such places as Lumbini, Bodhgaya, Sarnath and Kushinagar for pilgrimage tourism as they have more disposable income due to economic development. There are already many Indians visiting Manasarovar via Nepal for pilgrimage.Nepal has one of the highest potential for development of hydroelectric power as variation in altitude and adequate amount of water are present to an extraordinary degree. It is estimated that Nepal enjoys a power generating capacity of 83,000 MW. Demand for consumption of electric power in North India has increased dramatically in recent years. There are prospects for co-operation between Nepal and India in this sector. (13). Bilateral and multilateral donor agencies are interested in funding hydroelectric power development projects in Nepal when they are assured that there exists a market in India. There has been some apprehension in Nepal that India is unwilling to be dependent upon such a vital source of energy outside its own borders. Nepal’s experience in utilizing water resources in co-operation with India has not always been encouraging. Kosi Project was the first major river project. It was primarily a flood control project that benefited Bihar and there was very small amount of power produced that could benefit Nepal in view of size of project. Similarly, Gandak Project utilizing another major river of Nepal was primarily for irrigation that benefited UP and Bihar in India and gave some benefits to Nepal as well. An Indian columnist has written about Nepal’s potential to become an economic

bridge between India and China in view of opening of new rail line to Lhasa from eastern China by 2006 that could be extended to Shigatse on one hand and the possibility of linking railhead south of the border with India

The leadership in India in two decades after the Indian independence consisted of older people associated with Indian National Congress or Socialists. Many of these leaders came from north Indian states of UP and Bihar. On the other hand, many of the Nepalese leaders had close links with India as they had studied in such north Indian cities as Varanasi, Allahabad and Kolkotta. Some were even born there. However, the leadership in both India and Nepal in the beginning of the new millennium has come from a different background. Parties that are more regional than national now rule the two Indian states in the Gangetic Plains. The coalition government in New Delhi in the recent past has also included representatives of many parties, which are regional. Similarly, new leadership in Nepal is younger and does not have the same linkage with UP and Bihar as in the past as there are more educational institutions inside Nepal itself and due to opportunities for studies in foreign countries other than India. The leftist leadership in Nepal now may have close rapport with those in West Bengal. This could generate new perspective in Indo-Nepal relationship. In a nutshell it could be said that one of the major issues concerning Indo-Nepal relations is what has been alleged insensitivity to India’s security concerns as a former Indian Ambassador has written.. Actually, Nepal should not allow its territory to be used against any of its two neighbours. On the other hand, there is ample scope for cooperation in harnessing water resources of Nepal benefiting both the countries provided it is transparent and benefits are distributed equitably.

India joins race for land in Africa, China way ahead

After years of competing for overseas oil and mines to fuel their still-growing economies, India and China are silently scouring the world for their next great need: farmland to grow food.

The destination: Africa, where economies are poor and land is cheap.

Buying farmland abroad is not new, but it has gained urgency after a worldwide spike in food prices through 2007 and 2008.

So, more than a dozen companies from India, backed by the government, invested about $2 billion (Rs 10,000 crore) in leasing land and installing plants in Ethiopia last year to produce sugar, tea and several other crops. That number is expected to double to $4 billion this year, said Gurjit Singh, India’s ambassador to Ethiopia.

While India is just warming up, China and rich Gulf states that face graver land and water shortages have been aggressively acquiring land across Africa and some parts of Asia, said a report prepared bythe Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

There are others.

Last May, South Korea joined the race, buying 690,000 hectares — about five times the size of Delhi — in Sudan to grow wheat.Land worth between $20 billion and $30 billion (Rs 100,000 crore and 150,000 crore) was bought in Africa and Asia over the past three years, said Joachim von Braun, director general of IFPRI, who authored the report.

How much land has been sold? Between 15 million and 20 million hectares, which is more than all of Germany’s farmland, said Braun.

“Many governments, either directly or through state-owned entities and public-private partnerships, are in negotiations for, or have already closed deals on, arable land leases, concessions, or purchases abroad,” said the IFPRI report titled ‘Land Grabbing by Foreign Investors in Developing Countries: Risks and Opportunities’.

Unlike earlier, when companies from the developed world bought land for profit, the new deals are driven by spiralling shortages in emerging economies such as India or China, where rising incomes are pushing up demand for food so fast that governments fear domestic production could eventually fall short.

Currently, India’s annual food grain production of 230 million tonnes is just about what the country needs. By 2020, the Planning Commission estimates the demand to grow to 240 million tonnes. There are also forecasts that put the figure as high as 250 million tons.

But economists say, unlike China, India need not look to farmland elsewhere to meet that demand, because it can fill the gap by increasing farm productivity, said Mahendra Dev, chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, a government organisation that recommends procurement prices for major farm produce.

Still, the Indian government and several companies have intensified the chase for farmland abroad. “Even farmers from Andhra Pradesh have gone and invested in land in Kenya,” said Dev.

Behind India's Bomb: The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Deterrence

The Indian nuclear tests of May 11 and 13, 1998, shook an unsuspecting world. Long at the forefront of the movement for universal nuclear disarmament, India had continually chastised the five declared nuclear powers (the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom) for not moving to eliminate their nuclear arsenals as called for by the 1970 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. After demonstrating its own nuclear capacity in 1974, India had refrained from testing for more than two decades. And apparently, neither the emergence of a government in New Delhi led by the right-of-center Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nor the Indian elites' deep reservations about the global nonproliferation regime had disturbed this quiescence. Indian decision-makers had indicated that they would not carry out nuclear tests until they had completed a lengthy "strategic review" of security threats and how best to cope with them.Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee authorized a series of nuclear tests beneath the desert sands of Rajasthan. While the aftershocks were still registering on seismographs around the world, he proclaimed India a nuclear-weapons state. Fifteen days later, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, claiming he had no choice but to match an adversarial neighbor, ordered Pakistan's own series of tests in the Chagai Hills of Baluchistan and declared that his country, too, had nuclear arms.

The tests spurred immediate global condemnation. In all, 152 nations -- large and small, developed and developing -- voiced their opposition. So did numerous international organizations, including the g-8 major industrialized democracies, the Regional Forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Organization of American States, the Nordic Council of Ministers, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. They all saw the tests as a double setback: for peace in South Asia and for international efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and control dangerous technology.

The consequences for American policy toward South Asia were also severe. The explosions derailed an initiative by the United States to put its relations with both India and Pakistan on sounder footing. The relationship between the United States and India had been in a rut throughout much of the Cold War, when the United States was the leader of the West and India a leader of the nonaligned movement, which it helped found in 1955. With those divisive categories now largely in the past, President Clinton saw India and the United States -- fellow democracies with highly developed entrepreneurial economies -- as natural partners.

With Pakistan, too, the Clinton administration had sought a fresh start. For decades, Pakistan had been a U.S. ally on the frontline of the struggle against the Soviet Union. That preoccupation had inhibited the United States and Pakistan from making common cause in other areas, especially fostering moderation and democracy in the Islamic world. The more complex and subtle geopolitics that came with the end of the Cold War provided a more variegated basis for bilateral relations.

The explosions in the Rajasthan desert, therefore -- in addition to prompting Pakistan to detonate a few of its own nuclear bombs two weeks later -- set off corresponding explosions in capitals around the world. Foreign diplomats, academics, pundits, and policymakers quickly and sharply criticized India for bucking the trend toward nuclear restraint. The open declarations of India and Pakistan as nuclear weapons powers, many asserted, would unravel the carefully woven fabric of the nonproliferation regime by encouraging other states to acquire nuclear weapons. They might even propel the subcontinent toward nuclear war.

The condemnations belittled New Delhi's stated reason for testing -- namely, a growing threat from its powerful neighbor, China. China had not made any overt threats across the border, so what could be the problem? Foreigners instead generally ascribed the tests to what they saw as petty motivations: a desire to elevate India's international status and an attempt to bolster the BJP-led government's fortunes.

Three years on, however, little evidence has emerged to support these proffered motives. The quest for global status has been a staple of Indian foreign policy since the country's emergence as an independent state in 1947, and India's basic nuclear capability dates back more than 20 years; it is hard to link these essentially constant factors to a significant policy shift. As for the notion that the tests were designed to boost a sagging government's fortunes, informed analysts of Indian politics know that the fate of a governing coalition in New Delhi depends much more on the allocation of scarce resources such as ministerial positions than on arcane matters of national security and strategy. Even some ardent critics of the Indian nuclear weapons program now concede as much. In his new book India: Emerging Power, the noted South Asian security analyst Stephen P. Cohen echoes many commentators in attributing the tests to a blend of status-seeking and domestic politics, but he also acknowledges that these factors alone were not sufficient to drive India to explode five nuclear bombs.

It now appears that the real reason for the tests was indeed fear of the long-term security threat posed by China and Pakistan, coupled with bureaucratic pressures emanating from within India's scientific-technological complex. Yet only a handful of Western analysts have recognized these motivations, and even fewer have been willing to concede the legitimacy of India's strategic concerns. In fact, until recently no systematic book-length treatment of the subject was available. Now Ashley Tellis' India's Emerging Nuclear Posture -- carefully researched, meticulously documented, and tightly argued -- ably fills this void. It is not merely a tour d'horizon of the likely future of the Indian nuclear weapons program, but a tour de force on the subject of nuclear proliferation in general.

DETERRENCE "LITE"

Tellis has paid excruciating attention to detail, scouring both regional and international sources from journalism to the policy world to academia. Relying on a massive collection of evidence, he shows how growing perceptions of a security threat from China and Pakistan led Indian decision-makers toward overt weaponization and the abandonment of the country's long-held posture of nuclear ambiguity. He documents how China's security assistance to Pakistan during the 1990s, especially in the realms of nuclear weapons design and ballistic missile technology, made Pakistan a virtual strategic surrogate for China in South Asia -- and how India's security establishment took note of and sought to counter this emerging threat.

Although Tellis emphasizes the critical role of external threats in precipitating the full development of India's nuclear and missile programs, he also provides a nuanced discussion of the influence of key bureaucratic constituencies. He shows how India's atomic energy establishment, Defense Research and Development Organization, and space research program boosted and sustained both the nuclear and missile enterprises. But Tellis also delves within these institutions, demonstrating how a complex interaction among elected representatives, civilian strategists, key military officers, and the leaders of India's strategic technological enclaves drove the decision-making process.

The most important proposition that emerges from Tellis' analysis is the primacy of the political, understood broadly rather than narrowly. Key decisions resulted not from bureaucratic turf battles or complex institutions but from the preferences and choices of India's elected elites acting in concert with critical members of various military and technological entities.

India, China Compete For Dominance In Indian Ocean

This battered harbor town on Sri Lanka's southern tip, with its scrawny men selling even scrawnier fish, seems an unlikely focus for an emerging international competition over energy supply routes that fuel much of the global economy.

An impoverished place still recovering from the devastation of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Hambantota has a desolate air, a sense of nowhereness, punctuated by the realization that looking south over the expanse of ocean, the next landfall is Antarctica.

But just over the horizon runs one of the world's great trade arteries, the shipping lanes where thousands of vessels carry oil from the Middle East and raw materials to Asia, returning with television sets, toys and sneakers for European consumers.

These tankers provide 80 percent of China's oil and 65 percent of India's — fuel desperately needed for the two countries' rapidly growing economies. Japan, too, is almost totally dependent on energy supplies shipped through the Indian Ocean.

Any disruption — from terrorism, piracy, natural disaster or war — could have devastating effects on these countries and, in an increasingly interdependent world, send ripples across the globe. When an unidentified ship attacked a Japanese oil tanker traveling through the Indian Ocean from South Korea to Saudi Arabia in April, the news sent oil prices to record highs.

For decades the world relied on the powerful U.S. Navy to protect this vital sea lane. But as India and China gain economic heft, they are moving to expand their control of the waterway, sparking a new — and potentially dangerous — rivalry between Asia's emerging giants.

China has given massive aid to Indian Ocean nations, signing friendship pacts, building ports in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as Sri Lanka, and reportedly setting up a listening post on one of Myanmar's islands near the strategic Strait of Malacca.

Now, India is trying to parry China's moves. It beat out China for a port project in Myanmar. And, flush with cash from its expanding economy, India is beefing up its military, with the expansion seemingly aimed at China. Washington and, to a lesser extent, Tokyo are encouraging India's role as a counterweight to growing Chinese power.

Among China's latest moves is the billion dollar port its engineers are building in Sri Lanka, an island country just off India's southern coast.

The Chinese insist the Hambantota port is a purely commercial move, and by all appearances, it is. But some in India see ominous designs behind the project, while others in countries surrounding India like the idea. A 2004 Pentagon report called Beijing's effort to expand its presence in the region China's "string of pearls."

No one wants war, and relations between the two nations are now at their closest since a brief 1962 border war in which China quickly routed Indian forces. Last year, trade between India and China grew to $37 billion and their two armies conducted their first-ever joint military exercise.

Still, the Indians worry about China's growing influence.

"Each pearl in the string is a link in a chain of the Chinese maritime presence," India's navy chief, Adm. Sureesh Mehta, said in a speech in January, expressing concern that naval forces operating out of ports established by the Chinese could "take control over the world energy jugular."

"It is a pincer movement," said Rahul Bedi, a South Asia analyst with London-based Jane's Defense Weekly. "That, together with the slap India got in 1962, keeps them awake at night."

"We cannot take them at face value. We cannot assume their intentions are benign," said Raman.

But Zhao Gancheng, a South Asia expert at the Chinese government-backed Shanghai Institute for International Studies, says ports like Hambantota are strictly commercial ventures. And Sri Lanka says the new port will be a windfall for its impoverished southern region.

With Sri Lanka's proximity to the shipping lane already making it a hub for transshipping containers between Europe and Asia, the new port will boost the country's annual cargo handling capacity from 6 million containers to some 23 million, said Priyath Wickrama, deputy director of the Sri Lankan Ports Authority.

Wickrama said a new facility was needed since the main port in the capital Colombo has no room to expand and Trincomalee port in the Northeast is caught in the middle of Sri Lanka's civil war. Hambantota also will have factories onsite producing cement and fertilizer for export, he said.

Meanwhile, India is clearly gearing its military expansion toward China rather than its longtime foe, and India has set up listening stations in Mozambique and Madagascar, in part to monitor Chinese movements, Bedi noted. It also has an air base in Kazakhstan and a space monitoring post in Mongolia — both China's neighbors.

India has announced plans to have a fleet of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines at sea in the next decade and recently tested nuclear-capable missiles that put China's major cities well in range. It is also reopening air force bases near the Chinese border.

Encouraging India's role as a counter to China, the U.S. has stepped up exercises with the Indian navy and last year sold it an American warship for the first time, the 17,000-ton amphibious transport dock USS Trenton. American defense contractors — shut out from the lucrative Indian market during the long Cold War — have been offering India's military everything from advanced fighter jets to anti-ship missiles.

"It is in our interest to develop this relationship," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a visit to New Delhi in February. "Just as it is in the Indians' interest."

Officially, China says it's not worried about India's military buildup or its closer ties with the U.S. However, foreign analysts believe China is deeply concerned by the possibility of a U.S.-Indian military alliance.

Ian Storey of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore said China sent strong diplomatic messages expressing opposition to a massive naval exercise India held last year with the U.S., Japan, Singapore and Australia. And Bedi, the Jane's analyst, added "those exercises rattled the Chinese."

India's 2007 defense budget was about $21.7 billion, up 7.8 percent from 2006. China said its 2008 military budget would jump 17.6 percent to some $59 billion, following a similar increase last year. The U.S. estimates China's actual defense spending may be much higher.

Like India, China is focusing heavily on its navy, building an increasingly sophisticated submarine fleet that could eventually be one of the world's largest.

While analysts believe China's military buildup is mostly focused on preventing U.S. intervention in any conflict with Taiwan, India is still likely to persist in efforts to catch up as China expands its influence in what is essentially India's backyard. Meanwhile, Sri Lankans — who have looked warily for centuries at vast India to the north — welcome the Chinese investment in their country.

"Our lives are going to change," said 62-year-old Jayasena Senanayake, who has seen business grow at his roadside food stall since construction began on the nearby port. "What China is doing for us is very good."

Whose asset is Himalayan Water resources??

Pakistan and India may have entered the fifth round of composite talks to resolve old disputes in a bid to improve ties, but the two sides still remain bitterly engaged in conflicts over resources - water, for the time being, topping the agenda.

For the two nuclear-armed neighbors who have fought three wars since independence in 1947, rivers flowing to Pakistan from the Indian-administered part of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir have emerged as a recent bilateral flashpoint.

At a time of global financial crisis and food scarcity, and when its own rivers are drying up, India has announced ambitious plans to build water reservoirs on Kashmiri rivers allotted to Pakistan by a 1960 World Bank-mediated agreement known as the Indus Water Treaty. In accordance with the Treaty - sponsored by the UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Canada - India and Pakistan were given control of three rivers each, originating from Jammu and Kashmir.

The Treaty made a simple and straightforward attempt to let both adversaries share the available water resources by allotting the eastern rivers (Ravi, Sutlej and Beas) to India and the western rivers (Jhelum, Chenab and Sindh) to Pakistan.

However, nothing between India and Pakistan is straightforward or simple.

India's construction of a 450-megawatt Baglihar hydel project on the Chenab River, which flows from Jammu and Kashmir into Pakistan, has ignited a fresh war of words. Flanked by tight security, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Jammu and Kashmir on 7 October to launch the start of the controversial project.

The 470-feet high, 317-meter wide dam, with a storage capacity of 15 billion cusecs of water, has significantly reduced water flow to agriculture-dependent Pakistan, according to Pakistani officials.

At present, Pakistan is weighing its options of filing simultaneous complaints with the World Bank and the International Court of Arbitration against India for violating the Treaty, citing unauthorized use of the Chenab River. Speaking to reporters after unsuccessful negotiations over the issue, Pakistani Water Commissioner Jamat Ali Shah said, "India is neither willing to compensate Pakistan's massive water losses nor consider bringing any change to the physical structure of the dam."

According to India's NDTV.com, when Pakistan took its complaint about the Baglihar hydel project to the World Bank in 2005, an expert from the organization appointed to the case gave India the green light, with some minor modifications to the project. The Baglihar hydel is expected to boost the power sector of Jammu and Kashmir, which suffers from severe electricity shortages.

"Being a lower riparian, Pakistan is hit hard by the water shortage with enormous loss in energy sector and agriculture-related businesses, in addition to imminent food inflation," Irfan Shahzad, a development expert and columnist for Pakistan's daily Dawn newspaper, told ISN Security Watch.

During the launch of the project in Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian prime minister said Pakistan's concerns had been addressed adequately, despite claims to the contrary by new Pakistani President Asif Zardari, who brought up the case before the UN General Assembly in New York recently.

"Pakistan would be paying a very high price for India's move to block Pakistan's water supply from the Chenab River," Zardari said, warning India "not to trade important regional objectives for short-term domestic goals."

To fill the newly constructed dam, Pakistani officials say India has consistently obstructed the Chenab's flow into their country. The Indus River System Authority, Pakistan's water distribution body, claims to have received only 19,351 cusecs on 9 October and 10,739 cusecs on 11 October from the Chenab River when it should be receiving a minimum of 55,000 cusecs.

Pakistan's top negotiator on water issues, Jamaat Ali Shah, told ISN Security Watch that Islamabad was seeking compensation for the loss of over 0.2 MAF (million acre feet) of water last month from the Ravi, Sutlej and Chenab rivers.

Shah's Indian counterpart, G Aranganathan, rejects Pakistan's assertion, instead blaming what he called "faulty" water gauges.

Punjab's irrigation secretary, Babar Hassan Bharwana, told ISN Security Watch from Lahore that there is expected to be a total loss of 321,000 MAF of water, bringing some 405 canals and 1,125 distributaries to dead levels and affecting 13 million acres of agricultural land on which rice, wheat, sugarcane and fodder crops are grown.

Pakistan is also receiving a major hit on the energy front as hydropower meets most of its household and industrial energy needs, officials say. Since early October, the biggest power generation center on the Tarbela Dam has been working at one-tenth of its capacity, allegedly owing to the reduced water flow from the Chenab River.

"We are forced to the disrupt electricity supply for 10 to 12 hours daily to manage the growing power shortage in the country," Water and Power Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf told ISN Security Watch.

The decision to allow India to proceed with the project "will most likely influence any future interpretation of the Indus Water Treaty," Pakistan's Dawn newspaper quoted Salman MA Salman, a lead counsel of the World Bank, as saying.

Water warfare

Like most of the disputes between India and Pakistan, the row over water resources is rooted in history.

On 1 April 1948, less than a year after the partition of the subcontinent and the creation of the separate states of India and Pakistan, Delhi stopped the flow of water from the canals on its side, denying water to some 5.5 percent of the sown area and almost 8 percent of the cultivated area. On 4 May 1948, India agreed to the Inter-Dominion Agreement with Pakistan, which allowed for the continuation of water supplies for irrigation purposes until the Pakistani side managed to develop alternative water resources.

Some time after this, then-Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited American expert David Lilenthal to survey the situation, but his observations, which bolstered Pakistan's arguments, failed to earn recognition from Delhi. Later, the World Bank sponsored several rounds of talks in Washington from 1952 to 1960, eventually resulting in the signing of the Indus Water Treaty.

The alarm bells again rang in 1984 when India announced plans to build the barrage on the Jhelum River at the mouth of Wullar Lake, the largest fresh water lake, near the town of Sopore in the disputed Kashmir Valley. India calls it the Tulbul Navigation Project, while Pakistan refers to it as the Wullar Barrage. Owing to Pakistani protests, India has stopped construction work on the project.

Then, in 1992, Pakistan first learned of plans for another controversial water reservoir, the Baglihar Dam on the Chenab River, which was also allotted to Pakistani by the 1960 treaty.

While the accord gave India full rights to use water from the eastern rivers by building dams and barrages, it allowed limited irrigation use of water from the western river earmarked for Pakistan. The Treaty barred India from interfering "with the water of these rivers except for domestic use and non-consumptive use, limited agriculture use and limited utilization for generation of hydro-electric power." The treaty also barred India from storing any water or constructing any storage works on the western rivers that would result in a reduced flow of water to Pakistan.

The water dispute has been on the agenda of the composite dialogue, but no progress has been made. While talks have yet to yield results, Pakistan is accusing India of attempting to use water as a geostrategic tool, former Pakistani foreign secretary Tanvir Ahmad Khan told ISN Security Watch.

A failed treaty

Neither country is satisfied with the Indus Water Treaty, and both are desperate for more water. Pakistani officials criticize it privately for being biased toward India and experts seek its renegotiation.

Indian scholar and writer PR Chari believes that "[n]egotiating an Indus Water Treaty 2 would be a huge Confidence Building Measure (CBM) as it would engage both countries in a regional economic integration process."

Dr Robert G Wirsing, a member of the faculty of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii and an expert on South Asian affairs, said in a lecture in Islamabad that the Treaty had inherent weaknesses. "The solution to water disputes is heavily tied with the fate of Jammu and Kashmir," he said.

Throughout the checkered history of Pakistan-India relations, the only accord that has withstood wars, near wars and terror attacks is the Indus Water Treaty, Senator Mushahid Hussain, chairman of the Pakistani Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pointed out, emphasizing the Treaty's significance.

"India's intransigence on Chenab is being seen as a threat to Pakistan's lifeline, and if India does not relent, the letter and spirit of the peace process plus the bonhomie with the new government in Islamabad would be undermined," he told ISN Security Watch.

Still, with the ongoing composite dialogue, greater awareness exists between the two sides – both keen to keep relations normal and avoid another war. Certainly, there are more doves in both countries than there were a decade ago, and hopefully, this revived water resource conflict can be resolved without either side drying up.

According to the Indus Water Treaty the waters of the Western rivers belong to Pakistan and the waters of the Eastern Rivers belong to India–at least in theory. By illegally occupying Kashmir with a forged article of accession (which is ostensibly lost now–and was never shown to either Pakistan or the UN), India now controls all the rivers. Water wars are not part of some sci-fi movie–they are happening now.

By using Bait Mehsud and Karzai to distract Pakistani, India is now unleashing water damage, first by inundating Pakistan with too much water, and then by starving the farmer by witholding the water at a critical time.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008 By Khalid Mustafa ISLAMABAD: Punjab, the food basket of entire Pakistan, has sustained a huge monetary loss amounting to almost Rs37 billion in the wake of a blockade of Chenab River by India.

According to a senior official in the Punjab irrigation department, over 10 million acres of land in the province has been affected and the standing paddy crop in the area has suffered a lot, as it was the time of maturity and the province badly needed the last watering, which could not be completed just because of the blatant violations of Indus Waters Treaty 1960 by India and continuing to fill up the dead shortage of Baglihar HPP beyond August 31, 2008.

Under the treaty, India cannot reduce the flow in Chenab River below 55,000 cusecs between 21st June and August 31, 2008, whereas Pakistan had been receiving a discharge of as low as 20,000 cusecs during August-September 2008.

The official further said that the government had projected the rice production at 5.7 million tonnes, but the reduction in flows in Chenab River at this point of time will reduce the production by 15 to 20 per cent. This means that rice production will come down from the expected target of 5.7 million tonnes to 4.7 million tonnes.The News

India was currently spending around $200 billion on the construction of water tunnels to the Indus River, which could turn parts of Pakistan into a barren land

Indus water Treaty

India is going ahead with the controversial Baghliar Dam on River Chenab, while Pakistan government, after raising belated objections, has still not taken the decisive steps that are necessary to have this project stopped. Its pathetic proof was seen at the fourth round of the so-called Composite Dialogue between the two countries held in Islamabad from 19-21 May 2008. According to the officials, “The contentious issue of the Baghliar Dam could not find place in the agenda of the foreign ministers’ talks despite Pakistan’s insistence.” The Water Bomb by Majid Nizami

• Indian Aqua bomb-Pakistan’s future water wars in Kashmir
• Indus Water Treaty, Kalabagh, Kashmir, & Gurdaspur
•  The Kalabagh Dam dropped without discussion in parliament
• Water wars: India attacks Pakistan with Water again-flash floods 57 villages

Lt Gen (r) Hameed Gul has said that India has so far built 62 dams and hydro-electric units on Pakistani rivers to deprive Pakistan of water and render into a desert. He said Pakistan was being deprived of water under an international conspiracy to conquer it. At this stage, some insane people were opposing construction of Kalabagh Dam in Pakistan, he added. He said that Shaukat Aziz’s influx in Pakistan was also part of the conspiracy as he formulated such policies, which put the country into crisis. He said that Shaukat Aziz created food shortage. He said the mujahideeen damaged Baglihar Dam and it could not be reconstructed.Hameed Gul, however, warned that the mujahideen would damage all dams. Sindh Water Council Chairman Hafiz Zahoor-ul-Hassan Dahr said that when the dispute on water would not be resolved, there would be conflict between the two countries. He said, “India is not building dams under the Indus Water Treaty but on the Pakistani rivers.” He said that the food shortage would be forty per cent next year that would increase starvation in the country. He warned, “Pakistan can become Somalia and Ethopia,” he added.

Crisis deepens as India blocks Chenab flow By Khaleeq Kiani

ISLAMABAD, Sept 14: India has closed Chenab water flow and as a result the shortage in Pakistan has become more severe.

Sources told Dawn on Sunday that the water blockade by India could adversely affect the Kharif crops, particularly cotton and sugarcane which were in maturity stage and required final watering, and the sowing of Rabi crops early next month.

They said that the Pakistan Indus Water Commission had taken up the matter with the federal government and convened a meeting on Tuesday to take stock of the situation and try to reach a diplomatic solution with New Delhi.

If the Chenab closure prolongs, the sowing of Rabi crops, particularly wheat, would be hit severely. The government had to import more than two million tons of wheat this year despite a record production of more than 23 million tons.

The water shortage could force Pakistan to import more wheat next year, adding to the foreign exchange pressure and worsening its balance of payments crisis. The authorities are already estimating more than 35 per cent shortage of irrigation water during the next Rabi season following a decline in the melting of snow in Northern Areas, higher withdrawals by provinces during Kharif and increased hydropower generation.

The sources said India’s unilateral decision to stop the Chenab flows had put additional pressure on the irrigation system of Pakistan, which used to receive more than 23,000 cusecs a day until last week, but it had now been brought down to almost zero.

Meanwhile, the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) has convened a meeting of its technical committee on Sept 20 to ascertain the overall water availability for the Rabi season, beginning on Oct 1.

Irsa’s advisory committee will meet on Sept 25 to finalise provincial shares for Kharif on the basis of estimates to be put forth by the technical committee, Irsa chairman Bashir Ahmed Dahar told Dawn.

Responding to a question, he said Irsa had powers and capacity to resolve the issues of water sharing and discharges in consultation with the provincial governments and it had never sought federal government’s intervention to prevail upon one province or the other to accept its decisions.

Exercising these powers, Irsa has increased releases from the Mangla reservoir for Punjab’s final watering by 10,000 cusecs to about 39,000 cusecs. On the other hand, Punjab continued to draw about 49,000 cusecs from Tarbela against its share of about 40,000 cusecs.

Once higher releases from Mangla reached the system, Punjab’s share from Tarbela would be reduced to 40,000 cusecs, the sources said. Irsa had asked Punjab last week to reduce withdrawal by 8,000 cusecs from Chashma-Jhelum canal, but it continued to draw about 18,000 cusecs till Sunday.

The sources said releases in CJ-Link would be reduced to 10,000 cusecs on Monday or Tuesday to preserve reasonable resources in the Indus System for Rabi crops.

To a question he said that 10 million acres land in areas of Sialkot, Gujranwala, Sheikhupura, Hafizabad, Faisalabad, Okara, Lahore, Pak Patan, Vehari and Bawalnaghar have been affected. Out of 10 million acres of land, 5.6 million acres of land has adversely been affected in the areas of Sialkot, Gujranwala, Jhang, Faisalabad and Sheikhupura.

When contacted, Pakistan Commissioner of Indus Water Syed Jamaat Ali Shah, who was on his way to Lahore after attending the meeting in Islamabad held on Tuesday with Minister for Water & Power, Raja Pervez Ashraf in the chair over the interference of flows of River Chenab at Marala head works in Pakistan, said that Pakistan has the option to move Neutral Expert or Court of Arbitration seeking for penalty against India for violation of the treaty.

“First the issue will be taken up at the level of Permanent Commission of Indus Waters (PCIW) for solution once and for all and incase of failure, Pakistan has the option to move Neutral Expert and Court of Arbitration.”

He said that Neutral Expert under the treaty can be moved for compensation of water loss and Arbitration Court for financial loss in case India refuses to pay the compensation.

In the forthcoming meeting of PCIW, he said that Pakistan would come up with solid proof based on undeniable data about the blatant violation of the treaty committed by India.

To another query, Shah said that India has stored 0.2 million acre feet of water for Baglihar project to make it operational in the current month of September.

He vowed that he is to soon visit the site of the Bagluhar project as he has sought dates for the visit from Indian Commission of Indus Water to this effect. However, he said that the Indian Commission is still unmoved over the demand of Pakistan seeking the data of inflows in Chenab River. “My counterpart has so far shown inability in letting us know about the exact inflows of the Chenab River.”

Meanwhile, a very crucial meeting on the reduction in flows of River Chenab at Marala head works was held in the Ministry of Water & Power under the Chairmanship of Minister for Water & Power, Raja Pervez Ashraf. The meeting was attended by senior officers of Ministry of Water & Power, Foreign Office PCIW, Law & Justice, WAPDA, Irrigation Department, Punjab and the related institutions.

The meeting was apprised that India had committed a blatant violation of the Indus Water Treaty by reducing Chenab flows to Pakistan and continuing to fill up the dead shortage of Baglihar HPP beyond August 31, 2008.

Pakistan Commissioner for Indus Water (PCIW) gave a detailed presentation on the issue and informed that he had already taken up the issue with his Indian counterpart. This was followed by a comprehensive discussion. The members were apprised that the initial filling of dead storage of Baglihar Plant in AJ&K on river Chenab resulted in to a substantial reduction of water at Marala.

This has caused a massive agricultural loss to vast areas of Marala command canals. It has also resulted in early depletion of Mangla dam reserves so as to mitigate some of the adverse affects on certain canals. The overall loss to the national economy (loss of water, damage to agricultural crops, overconsumption of energy for running tube wells, etc) had thus been colossal, which are being assessed by the Government of Punjab.