The Indian Panorama

Tag: Iraq

  • CIA director David Petraeus quits over extramarital affair

    CIA director David Petraeus quits over extramarital affair

    WASHINGTON (TIP): David Petraeus, the retired four-star general renowned for taking charge of the military campaigns in Iraq and then Afghanistan, abruptly resigned on November 9 as director of the CIA, admitting to an extramarital affair. The affair was discovered during an FBI investigation, according to officials briefed on the developments.

    They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter. It was unclear what the FBI was investigating or when it became aware of the affair. Petraeus’ resignation shocked Washington’s intelligence and political communities. It was a sudden end to the public career of the bestknown general of the post 9/11 wars, a man credited with salvaging the US conflict in Iraq and sometimes mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate. His service was effusively praised on November 9 in statements from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Petraeus, who turned 60 on Wednesday, told CIA employees in a statement that he had met with President Barack Obama at the White House on November 8 and asked to be allowed to resign.

    On Friday, the president accepted. Petraeus told his staffers he was guilty of “extremely poor judgment” in the affair. “Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours.” He has been married for 38 years to Holly Petraeus, whom he met when he was a cadet at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York. She was the daughter of the academy superintendent.

    They have two children, and their son led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan. Obama said in a statement that the retired general had provided “extraordinary service to the United States for decades” and had given a lifetime of service that “made our country safer and stronger.” Obama called him “one of the outstanding general officers of his generation.” The president said that CIA deputy director Michael Morell would serve as acting director.

    Morell was the key CIA aide in the White House to President George W Bush during the Sept 11, 2001, terror attacks. “I am completely confident that the CIA will continue to thrive and carry out its essential mission,” Obama said. The resignation comes at a sensitive time.

    The administration and the CIA have struggled to defend security and intelligence lapses before the attack that killed the US ambassador to Libya and three others.

    It was an issue during the presidential campaign that ended with Obama’s re-election on Tuesday. The CIA has come under intense scrutiny for providing the White House and other administration officials with talking points that led them to say the Benghazi attack was a result of a film protest, not a militant terror attack.

    It has become clear that the CIA was aware the attack was distinct from the film protests roiling across other parts of the Muslim world. Morell rather than Petraeus now is expected to testify at closed congressional briefings next week on the Sept 11 attacks on the consulate in Benghazi. For the director of the CIA, being engaged in an extramarital affair is considered a serious breach of security and a counterintelligence threat.

    If a foreign government had learned of the affair, the reasoning goes, Petraeus or the person with whom he was involved could have been blackmailed or otherwise compromised. Military justice considers conduct such as an extramarital affair to be possible grounds for court martial. Failure to resign also could create the perception for the rank-and-file that such behavior is acceptable.

    At FBI headquarters, spokesman Paul Bresson declined to comment on the information that the affair had been discovered in the course of an investigation by the bureau. Holly Petraeus is known for her work helping military families. She joined the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to set up an office dedicated to helping service members with financial issues.

    Though Obama made no direct mention of Petraeus’ reason for resigning, he offered his thoughts and prayers to the general and his wife, saying that Holly Petraeus had “done so much to help military families through her own work. I wish them the very best at this difficult time.” Petraeus, who became CIA director in September 2011, was known as a shrewd thinker and hard-charging competitor.

    His management style was recently lauded in a Newsweek article by Paula Broadwell, coauthor of the biography, “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.” The article listed Petraeus’ “rules for living.” No. 5 was: “We all make mistakes.

    The key is to recognize them, to learn from them, and to take off the rear view mirrors – drive on and avoid making them again.” Petraeus told his CIA employees that he treasured his work with them “and I will always regret the circumstances that brought that work with you to an end.” The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said Petraeus’ departure represented “the loss of one of our nation’s most respected public servants.

    From his long, illustrious Army career to his leadership at the helm of CIA, Dave has redefined what it means to serve and sacrifice for one’s country.” Other CIA directors have resigned under unflattering circumstances.

    CIA director Jim Woolsey left over the discovery of a KGB mole and director John Deutch left after the revelation that he had kept classified information on his home computer. Bush sent Petraeus to Iraq in February 2007, at the peak of sectarian violence, to turn things around as head of U.S. forces. He oversaw an influx of 30,000 US troops and moved troops out of big bases so they could work more closely with Iraqi forces scattered throughout Baghdad.

  • Hard work ahead for re-elected Obama

    Hard work ahead for re-elected Obama

    On November 5, 2008, Barack Obama, an African-American, made history when he was elected the 44th president of the United States. The world’s oldest democracy had finally broken the race ceiling and a ‘man of color’ was set to occupy the White House.

    This year, on November 6, that part of history did not matter. President Obama was re-elected by a convincing majority and will now join the ranks of two-term U.S. presidents. And when he completes his second term in 2016, Obama would still be under 56.

    The challenges for Obama are stark and complex — both in the domestic context and on the external front. On the home front, the economic stasis and related unemployment figures (7.9 percent) will need urgent attention, more so against the backdrop of campaign promises about getting America back on track. The ‘fiscal cliff’ looms large and a divided U.S. Congress will not make for easy or amicable consensus on tax cuts and public spending.

    The foreign and security policy challenges are no less daunting and time critical. For a president who assumed office in January 2009 even as the United States was waging two wars — Iraq and Afghanistan — the radar screen is cluttered, particularly in relation to Asia. Iran looms large and Af-Pak has the 2014 deadline drawing closer.
    The China factor is the overarching presence in the continent and it is no coincidence that Beijing is set to elect its own president, Xi Jinping this week. With a new hand on the tiller, Beijing’s orientation towards the U.S. against the backdrop of the Obama Asian pivot will be the critical determinant in defining the geo-strategic texture of the Asian region.

    While seeking to restore economic vitality in the domestic context, Obama will have to concurrently establish U.S. credibility as a security guarantor with its anxious allies in Asia. Both East Asia and South East Asia are in a dilemma about how best to balance their own relations with an assertive China and a reticent United States. West Asia remains wary with an Arab Spring that has turned into a sullen autumn.

    South Asia is the more intractable nettle for the U.S. given the tenacity of the terror complex that inhabits the Af-Pak swathe and the obduracy of a nuclear armed Rawalpindi which remains inflexible about nurturing the forces of right-wing Islamic religious extremism.

    It merits recall that in March 2009, in his maiden address on this issue, Obama asserted: “We have a clear and focused goal – to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future … to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: we will defeat you.”

    The Abbottabad operation of May 2011 that eliminated Osama bin Laden was one of the major successes in Obama’s first term and played no small role in burnishing the profile of the U.S. president as a competent commander-in-chief. But as Libya demonstrated, the footprint of anti-U.S. sentiment that takes recourse to terror and pre-meditated violence has gone global and the goal of March 2009 may still remain elusive — even after 2014.

    Paradoxically, while China and Japan had good reason to weigh the pros and cons of an Obama or Romney victory, for India either outcome would have seen a continuity in the bilateral relationship. The U.S.-India relationship has moved from prickly estrangement to tentative engagement since 2008 and bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress apropos imparting greater content is widespread.

    While differences over issues like Iran will persist, for India there is comfort in working with an Obama administration that has already invested four years into the fine print of the partnership. Given the fact that India will be preparing for its own general election in early 2014, the next 12 months are the only window left for the UPA government led by Manmohan Singh to pursue the big-ticket issues with the United States.

    New Delhi can derive satisfaction from the reality that it has the comfort of continuity in the White House and has been spared the vagaries of a new U.S. administration getting its own team into place — a process that can be time-consuming and contested. If Manmohan Singh can find the political will to engage with President Obama and pursue the many stalled bilateral initiatives with the United States, hopefully the next year will be more meaningful for a partnership that seems to have been adrift for some time.

    If the campaign trail was a hard slog, the tough part for Obama begins now.

  • Obama becomes 14th US Prez to win a 2nd Term

    Obama becomes 14th US Prez to win a 2nd Term

    NEW YORK (TIP): President Obama won a second term November 6 night and became the 14th US President to win a second term. He promised his thrilled supporters at the victory celebrations in Chicago that for the United States of America “the best is yet to come.” He congratulated his opponent Mitt Romney and said, “In the weeks ahead I am looking forward to sitting down with Gov. Romney to discuss how we can move this country forward.”

    In a victory speech studded with the soaring rhetoric that first drew voters to him in 2008, Obama reminded the electorate what was still on his agenda — immigration reform, climate change and job creation.
    “Tonight, you voted for action not politics as usual.” he told supporters in Chicago. “You elected us to focus on your job, not ours.”

    Obama told Romney supporters that “I have listened to you… you have made me a better president.” He added, “I return to the White House more determined, more inspired than ever.

    The election is a validation, if not an overwhelming mandate, in support of the president’s policies of the last four years, which included a major overhaul of the healthcare system and a drawdown of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
    Top Republican lawmaker John Boehner said on Thursday he would not make it his mission to repeal the Obama administration’s healthcare reform law following the re-election of President Barack Obama.

    “The election changes that,” Boehner, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, told ABC news anchor Diane Sawyer when asked if repealing the law was “still your mission.”

    “It’s pretty clear that the president was re-elected,” Boehner added. “Obamacare is the law of the land.”
    Obama built a coalition of young people, minorities, and college educated women and won by turning out supporters with a carefully calibrated ground operation to get out the vote in crucial states like Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin.
    He thanked those who voted “whether you voted for very first time, or waited in line for a very long time — by the way we have to fix that,” he joked.

    He thanked Vice President Joe Biden, whom he called “America’s best happy warrior” and first lady Michele Obama.
    “Sasha and Malia,” he said addressing his two daughters. “You’re growing up to be two strong, smart, beautiful young women…I’m so proud of you. But I will say for now, one dog is probably enough,” he said riffing on his promise of a puppy four years ago.

    Prior to the president’s speech, Mitt Romney conceded gracefully in Boston.

    “I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes….but the nation chose another leader,” Romney told heart broken supporters at his Boston headquarters.

    “I pray the president will be successful in guiding our nation,” Romney said before running mate Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and their families joined Romney on the podium.

    Obama’s lease on the White House was renewed with a crucial victory in Ohio.

    Celebrations erupted in Obama’s home town of Chicago, in New York’s Time Square and outside the White House, while Romney’s Boston headquarters went mournfully quiet.

    “We’re all in this together. That’s how we campaigned, and that’s who we are. Thank you,” Obama tweeted even before formally announcing his victory.

    After a campaign for the White House and both houses of Congress that cost more than $6 billion, the make up of all three branches remains very much the same as it was before the election. Obama remains in the White House, Democrats retain control of the Senate and Republicans continue to control the House.

    The participants were themselves history making, the first black president running against the first Mormon presidential nominee to make it the general election. But for the most part the election turned not the politics of identity but of the economy.

    The election took place against the backdrop of a slow economic recovery. From its outset, both campaigns knew the race would come down to the economy, and both tried to tailor their appeals to middle class families struggling with inflation and unemployment.

    Obama routinely reminded voters he had inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression and pointed to policies he led, including the auto bailout, and signs of improvement including a drop in the unemployment rate.

    Obama portrayed Romney as an out of touch millionaire intent on helping the rich at the expense of the middle class when they were hurting the most. That impression seemed to stick with voters who nationally said by 55 to 40 percent that they believed the economic system favors the wealthy rather than being fair to most people, according to exit polls.

    The candidates also tangled over health care, abortion, and taxes, leading to a bevy of negative ads.
    The campaign was the most expensive in history, with each candidate raising nearly $1 billion a piece.

  • No Light at the End of the Tunnel

    No Light at the End of the Tunnel

    Whatever the outcome of Presidential election, the average American will find nothing to cheer him. The indication is clear from the debates that we have been witness to. It is just a blame game in which each tries to outdo the other. There is a competition to make tall claims about improving the lot of Americans and secure the future of America. But can either party do it?

    Given the scenario, it appears well nigh impossible for any one to lift the country out of the morass it has got stuck in to. One will need courage and statesmanship to take some tough decisions to bring succor to the common man. One, US involvement in wars abroad must end. Imagine, the cost-material and human.

    Material cost runs into trillions of dollars. The fact is US has to borrow money from the market and pay interest on it to meet the cost of the military engagements abroad. An already battered economy gets battered further. The debt keeps growing by the hour. And then the human loss. Thousands of US soldiers have died fighting in wars abroad, leaving their families devastated.

    We had made a mistake by engaging ourselves in Vietnam. We thought we had learnt our lesson and that we will never ever again tread that path. But we made a mistake again. This time in Iraq. We kept shouting from the rooftop Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) but we never found any. We were responsible for making a whole people miserable. That nation continues to remain in a permanent state of conflict and misery. We lost our men in war there. And then we turned to Afghanistan. We are trapped there We talk of bringing back home our soldiers by 2014. But already there is a louder talk in one quarter that Afghanistan cannot be left to fend for itself.

    We are ready to go in to another war; this time with Iran. Republicans have made their intentions clear that they will go against Iran to support Israel and Israel keeps repeating Iran is on threshold to acquire nuclear weapons. However, it will be suicidal for US to get involved in another war.

    The common man, the average man does not see anything to cheer him in times to come. Nor will he be enthused about who occupies the White House for the next four years, beginning 2013. For him, there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

  • Al-Qaida still active, says Obama

    Al-Qaida still active, says Obama

    WASHINGTON (TIP): US President Barack Obama has conceded that al-Qaida is still active, despite the fact that its top leadership has been decimated in the last few years. “It’s true that al-Qaida is still active, at least sort of remnants of it are staging in other parts of North Africa and the Middle East,” Obama told the Comedy Central “The Daily Show” in an interview.

    “We’ve been able to do is to say we ended the war in Iraq, we’re winding down the war in Afghanistan, we’ve gone after al-Qaida and its leadership,” he said. Earlier in the day, his spokesman said that al-Qaida remains the number one enemy of the US, even as strength of this terrorist organization has been considerably weakened and many of its top leadership killed.

    “Al Qaida remains our number-one enemy and our number- one foe. That is why we focus so much of our attention on al-Qaida and its affiliates, because the struggle against al-Qaida continues, and the (US) President has been focused on it since the day he took office,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters. “This President, when he came into office, made clear his intention of refocusing our efforts on those who attacked the United States of America and killed Americans on September 11th, 2001. And he has kept that promise,” he said.

    “Our efforts against al-Qaida have inarguably led to success and progress, but the work is not done. Al-Qaida central and a leadership there has been devastated by our efforts and the efforts of our allies,” Carney said.

  • Obama nominates Dunford to head NATO forces in Afghanistan

    Obama nominates Dunford to head NATO forces in Afghanistan

    WASHINGTON: Gen Joseph Dunford, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps and a combat veteran who led a regiment in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has been nominated by President Barack Obama as his new commander to International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Dunford would replace Gen John Allen, who has now been nominated as next Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), Obama said. Praising Allen for his contribution in the war against terrorism in Afghanistan, Obama said he has personally relied on his counsel and is grateful for his devotion to US national security. “For more than a year, General Allen has served with distinction as the commander of US forces and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, seeing us through a critical period in our military efforts and in Afghanistan’s transition,” a statement from Obama said.

    “During his tenure in Afghanistan, General Allen established his credibility with our NATO allies and ISAF partners as a strong and effective military leader,” Obama said. Under Allen the US has made important progress towards its core goal of defeating al-Qaida and ensuring they can never return to a sovereign Afghanistan, Obama said. If confirmed by the Senate, General Dunford will preside over the withdrawal of most of the 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan expected by the end of 2014. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, in a statement praised Gen Allen for his successes in Afghanistan. “General John Allen took command in the summer of 2011 as we were arresting and reversing insurgent momentum in key areas throughout the country. He immediately strengthened areas of success, taking them to new levels, while identifying elements of the campaign that required revision,” he said.

    Dempsey said like Allen, Gen Dunford is one of the most experienced and capable leaders in our military and nation. “Intelligent and forthright, Gen. Dunford is one of our most highlyregarded senior officers. He is an infantry officer with more than 35 years of exceptional leadership at every level, including multiple commands and, in particular, command of 5th Marine Regiment during the initial invasion of Iraq,” he said. Allen, he said, achieved remarkable progress in war against terrorism during his stint in the country but noted that much work remains to be done. Allen added his leadership and moral courage to a fight that is as much about will as it is about operations and tactics, he added

  • Nothing to cheer the common man in Presidential debates

    Nothing to cheer the common man in Presidential debates

    Whatever the outcome of Presidential election, the average American will find nothing to cheer. The indication is clear from the two debates that we have been witness to. It is just a blame game in which each tries to outdo the other. There is a competition to make tall claims about improving the lot of Americans and secure the future of America. But can either party do it? Given the scenario, it appears well nigh impossible for any one to lift the country out of the morass it has got stuck in to. One will need courage and statesmanship to take some tough decisions to bring succor to the common man. One, US involvement in wars abroad must end. Imagine, the cost-material and human.

    Material cost runs into trillions of dollars. The fact is US has to borrow money from the market and pay interest on it to meet the cost of the military engagements abroad. An already battered economy gets battered further. The debt keeps growing by the hour. And now the human loss. Thousands of US soldiers have died fighting in wars abroad, leaving their families devastated. We had made a mistake by engaging ourselves in Vietnam. We thought we had learnt our lesson and that we will never ever again tread that path. But we made a mistake again. This time in Iraq. We kept shouting from the rooftop Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) but we never found any. We were responsible for making a whole people miserable. That nation continues to remain in a permanent state of conflict and misery. We lost our men in war there. And then we turned to Afghanistan. We are trapped there We talk of bringing back home our soldiers by 2014. But already there is a louder talk in one quarter that Afghanistan cannot be left to fend for itself.

    We are ready to go in to another war; this time with Iran. Republicans have made their intentions clear that they will go against Iran to support Israel and Israel keeps repeating Iran is on threshold to acquire nuclear weapons. It will be suicidal for US to get involved in another war. The common man, the average man does not see anything to cheer him in the debates that are taking place. Nor will he be enthused about who occupies the White House for the next four years, beginning 2013.

  • As i see It: US losing IED war in Afghanistan

    As i see It: US losing IED war in Afghanistan

    Although the surge of insider attacks on United States-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces has dominated coverage of the war in Afghanistan in 2012, an even more important story has been quietly unfolding: the US loss to the Taliban of the pivotal war of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Some news outlets published stories this year suggesting that the US military was making progress against the Taliban IED war. These failed to provide the broader context for seasonal trends or had a narrow focus on US fatalities. The bigger reality is that the US troop surge could not reverse the very steep increase in IED attacks and attendant casualties that the Taliban began in 2009 and which continued through 2011.

    Over the 2009-11 period, the US military suffered a total of 14,627 casualties, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System and iCasualties, a non-governmental organization tracking Iraq and Afghanistan war casualties from published sources. Of that total casualties in Afghanistan, 8,680, or 59%, were from IED explosions, based on data provided by the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). The proportion of all US casualties caused by IEDs continued to increase from 56% in 2009 to 63% in 2011. The Taliban IED war was the central element of its counter-strategy against the US escalation of the war. It absorbed an enormous amount of the time and energy of US troops, and demonstrated that the counterinsurgency campaign was not effective in reducing the size or power of the insurgency. It also provided constant evidence to the Afghan population that the Taliban had a continued presence even where US troops had occupied former Taliban districts.

    US Pentagon and military leaders sought to gain control over the Taliban’s IED campaign with two contradictory approaches, both of which failed because they did not reflect the social and political realities in Afghanistan. JIEDDO spent more than US$18 billion on high-tech solutions aimed at detecting IEDs before they went off, including robots and blimps with spy cameras. But as the technology helped the US-NATO command discover more IEDs, the Taliban simply produced and planted even larger numbers of bombs to continue to increase the pressure of the IED war.

    The counter-insurgency strategy devised by General David Petraeus and implemented by General Stanley A McChrystal, on the other hand, held that the IED networks could be destroyed once the people turned away from the Taliban. They pushed thousands of US troops out of their armored vehicles into patrols on foot in order to establish relationships with the local population. The main effect of the strategy, however, was a major jump in the number of catastrophic injuries to US troops from IEDs.

    In an August 30, 2009, initial assessment, McChrystal said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) could not succeed if it is unwilling to share risk at least equally with the people. In an interview with USA Today in July 2009, he argued that the best way to defeat IEDs would be to defeat the Taliban’s hold on the people. Once the people’s trust had been gained, he suggested, they would inform ISAF of the location of IEDs. McChrystal argued that the Taliban were using the psychological effects of IEDs and the coalition forces’ preoccupation with force protection to get the US-NATO command to reinforce “a garrison posture and mentality”.

    McChrystal ordered much more emphasis on more dismounted patrols by US forces in fall 2009. The Taliban responded by increasing the number of IEDs targeting dismounted patrols from 71 in September 2009 to 228 by January 2010, according data compiled by JIEDDO. That meant that the population had more knowledge of the location of IEDs, which should have resulted in a major increase in IEDs turned in by the population, according to the Petraeus counter-insurgency theory. The data on IEDs show that the opposite happened. In the first eight months of 2009, the average rate of turn-ins had been 3%, but from September 2009 to June 2010, the rate averaged 2.7%. After Petraeus replaced McChrystal as ISAF commander in June 2010, he issued a directive calling for more dismounted patrols, especially in Helmand and Kandahar, where US troops were trying to hold territory that the Taliban had controlled in previous years. In the next five months, the turn-in rate fell to less than 1%. Meanwhile, the number of IED attacks on foot patrols causing casualties increased from 21 in October 2009 to an average of 40 in the March- December 2010 period, according to JIEDDO records. US troops wounded by IEDs spiked to an average of 316 per month during that period, 2.5 times more than the average for the previous 10-month period

    The Taliban success in targeting troops on foot was the main reason US casualties from IEDs increased from 1,211 wounded and 159 dead in 2009 to 3,366 wounded and 259 dead in 2010. The damage from IEDs was far more serious, however, than even those figures suggest because the injuries to dismounted patrols included far more traumatic amputation of limbs – arms and legs blown off by bombs – and other more-severe wounds than had been seen in attacks on armored vehicles.

    A June 2011 Army task force report described a new type of battle injury – Dismount Complex Blast Injury. This was defined as a combination of traumatic amputation of at least one leg, a minimum of severe injury to another extremity, and pelvic, abdominal, or urogenital wounding. The report confirmed that the number of triple limb amputations in 2010 alone had been twice the total in the previous eight years of war. A study of 194 amputations in 2010 and the first three months of 2011 showed that most were suffered by Marine Corps troops, who were concentrated in Helmand province, and that 88% were the result of IED attacks on dismounted patrols, according to the report. In January 2011, the director of JIEDDO, General John L Oates, acknowledged that US troops in Helmand and Kandahar had seen an alarming increase in the number of troops losing one or two legs to IEDs.

    Much larger numbers of US troops have suffered moderate to severe traumatic brain injuries from IED blasts mostly against armored vehicles. Statistics on the total number of limb amputations and traumatic brain injuries in Afghanistan were excised from the task force report. In 2011, US fatalities from IEDs fell to 204 from 259 in 2010, and overall fatalities fell to 418 from 499. But the number of IED injuries actually increased by 10% to 3,530 from 3,339, and the overall total of wounded in action was almost the same as in 2010, according to data from iCasualties. The total for wounded in the first eight months of 2012 is 10% less than in the same period in 2011, whereas the number of dead is 29% below the previous year’s pace. The reduction in wounded appears to reflect in part the transfer of thousands of US troops from Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where a large proportion of the casualties have occurred, to eastern Afghanistan. The number of IED attacks on dismounted patrols in the mid-July 2011 to mid-July 2012 period was 25% less than the number in the same period a year earlier, according to JIEDDO.

    The Pentagon was well aware by early 2011 that it wasn’t going to be able to accomplish what it had planned before and during the troop surge. In a telling comment to the Washington Post in January 2011, JIEDDO head General Oates insisted that the idea that “we’re losing” the IED fight in Afghanistan was “not accurate”, because, “The whole idea isn’t to destroy the network. That may be impossible.” The aim, he explained, was now to disrupt them, a move of the goalposts that avoided having to admit defeat in the IED war. And in an implicit admission that Petraeus’s push for even more dismounted patrols is no longer treated with reverence in the ISAF command, the August 2010 directive has been taken down from its website.

  • Iraq set to become India’s strategic energy partner: IEA Chief Economist

    Iraq set to become India’s strategic energy partner: IEA Chief Economist

    NEW DELHI (TIP): Iraq, which is set to become one of the major oil producers in the world, could also become India’s strategic energy partner, International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Chief Economist Fatih Birol said. Speaking to Business Line after the release of IEA’s report on ‘Iraq Energy Outlook’ Birol said Iraq’s role in the global oil market was growing rapidly. Currently, half of Iraq’s oil exports go to Asia. This situation will change by 2020, when exports to Asia will account for 80 per cent of Iraq’s oil exports. Two major oil importers in Asia – China and India – will have the largest share by end of this decade. Today, Iraq produces three million barrels a day of crude oil and, according to IEA’s Iraq Energy Outlook, the country’s oil production is expected to grow by over 5 million barrels a day to 2035, he said. Incidentally, Iraq recently replaced Iran as India’s second largest crude oil supplier.

    According to IEA Iraq Energy Outlook, by 2020, crude oil production is expected to more than double to 6.1 million barrels a day to reach 8.3 million barrels a day by 2035. Birol said by 2020, China will account for almost 2 million barrels of oil a day sourcing from Iraq, while India will be getting close to 1.5 million barrels a day. Twenty years down the line, Iraq will have reached GDP levels of what Saudi Arabia is today, he said. On whether Iraq will be able to meet the demand shortfall created due to geo-political issues in Iran, he said, “Iraq will be able to sustain it, because it has vast and low-cost oil resources. Iraq is on its way to become the second largest exporter of oil globally.

    The largest exporters today are Saudi Arabia, followed by Russia.” Asked if the flush of oil from Iraq will result in bringing down prices, Birol said, “If Iraq is able to sustain the developments, then it will.

    But, if it remains lower than expectations or developments weaken due to any kind of political uncertainty, the prices may be $15 a barrel higher than expected in 2035.” International crude oil prices are well over $105 a barrel today. On becoming a gas supplier to the world, Birol said natural gas could play a more important role in Iraq’s future for its power generation. He said there was a huge potential for Indian companies to invest in Iraq in not only oil and gas exploration but also in areas such petrochemicals, IT, engineering and infrastructure. The overseas investment arm of ONGC, ONGC Videsh Ltd, is the sole licensee of Block-8, a large on-land exploration Block in Western Desert, Iraq. The company is currently renegotiating the contract with Iraq.

  • Iraq VP Tariq al-Hashemi sentenced to death in absentia

    Iraq VP Tariq al-Hashemi sentenced to death in absentia

    BAGHDAD (TIP): Iraq’s fugitive vice-president Tariq al-Hashemi has been sentenced to death in absentia after a court found him guilty of running death squads.

    The ruling came as at least 92 people were killed and more than 350 injured in more than 20 attacks across Iraq.
    Hashemi was the most senior Sunni Muslim in the predominantly Shia Iraqi government until he was charged last December and went on the run.

    The charges against him sparked a political crisis in Iraq.

    Hashemi declined to comment on the court ruling after talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Ankara, according to the Associated Press news agency.

    The vice-president said in a statement that he would soon “tackle this issue”.

    Other Sunni politicians have denounced Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki – who issued the warrant for Mr. Hashemi – as a dictator, accusing him of deliberate provocation that risked plunging the country back into sectarian conflict.
    Correspondents say the fragile coalition government of Sunnis, secularists and Shia has appeared to be in danger of collapse ever since.

    Sunni insurgents linked to al-Qaeda have been blamed for much of the recent violence in Iraq.
    The Iraqi government issued the warrant for Hashemi’s arrest on 19 December 2011, the day after the last US troops left the country.

    He fled first to the largely autonomous Kurdish north of the country, and from there to Qatar and on to Turkey.
    Prosecutors said Hashemi was involved in 150 killings. During his trial in absentia in Baghdad, some of his former bodyguards said Mr. Hashemi had ordered murders.

    He says the charges against him are politically motivated and has accused Mr. Maliki of fuelling sectarianism. On Sunday, September 9, an Iraqi court found Hashemi and his son-in-law guilty of two murders and sentenced him to death by hanging. The judge dismissed a third charge for lack of evidence.

    Although violence has decreased since its peak in 2006 and 2007, attacks have escalated again after the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq at the end of last year, amid increasing political and sectarian tensions. The Iraqi government has been hampered by divisions between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish political groups. The Iraqi government said July 2012 was the deadliest month in nearly two years, with 325 people killed. Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, and many Sunnis believe they are being penalized by Shias, who have grown in influence since the US invasion. Sunnis have accused Mr. Maliki of taking an authoritarian approach to government.

  • Anti-Islam Film ‘Innocence of Muslims’ Film Maker’s Real Identity Found

    Anti-Islam Film ‘Innocence of Muslims’ Film Maker’s Real Identity Found

    NEW YORK (TIP): An AP report says that Federal authorities have identified a southern California man once convicted of financial crimes as the key figure behind the anti-Muslim film that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Middle East, a U.S. law enforcement official said Thursday, September 13.

    Attorney General Eric Holder said that Justice Department officials had opened a criminal investigation into the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other diplomats killed during an attack on the American mission in Benghazi. It was not immediately clear whether authorities were focusing on the California filmmaker as part of that probe.

    A federal law enforcement official said Thursday that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was the man behind “Innocence of Muslims,” a film denigrating Islam and the Prophet Muhammad that sparked protests earlier in the week in Egypt and Libya and now in Yemen. U.S. authorities are investigating whether the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya came during a terrorist attack.

    The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation, said Nakoula was connected to the persona of Sam Bacile, a figure who initially claimed to be the writer and director of the film. But Bacile quickly turned out to be a false identity and the Associated Press traced a cellphone number used by Bacile to a southern California house where Nakoula was found.

    Bacile initially claimed a Jewish and Israeli background. But others involved in the film said his statements were contrived as evidence mounted that the film’s key player was a southern Californian Coptic Christian with a checkered past.

    Nakoula told The Associated Press in an interview outside Los Angeles Wednesday that he managed logistics for the company that produced “Innocence of Muslims,” which mocked Muslims and the prophet Muhammad.

    Nakoula denied that he was Bacile and insisted he did not direct the film, though he said he knew Bacile. But federal court papers filed against Nakoula in a 2010 criminal prosecution said that he had used numerous aliases in the past. Among the fake names, the documents said, were Nicola Bacily, Robert Bacily and Erwin Salameh, all similar to the Sam Bacile persona. Other aliases described in the documents included Ahmad Hamdy, Kritbag Difrat and PJ Tobacco.
    During a conversation outside his home, Nakoula offered his driver’s license to show his identity but kept his thumb over his middle name, Basseley. Records checks by the AP subsequently found that middle name as well as other connections to the Bacile persona.

    The AP located Bacile after obtaining his cellphone number from Morris Sadek, a conservative Coptic Christian in the U.S. who had promoted the anti-Muslim film in recent days on his website. Egypt’s Christian Coptic populace has long decried what they describe as a history of discrimination and occasional violence from the country’s Arab majority.
    Pastor Terry Jones, of Gainesville, Fla., who sparked outrage in the Arab world when he burned Qurans on the ninth anniversary of 9/11, said he spoke with the movie’s director on the phone Wednesday and prayed for him. Jones said he has not met the filmmaker in person but added that the man contacted him a few weeks ago about promoting the movie. Jones and others who have dealt with the filmmaker said Wednesday that Bacile was hiding his real identity.

    “I have not met him. Sam Bacile, that is not his real name,” Jones said. “I just talked to him on the phone. He is definitely in hiding and does not reveal his identity. He was quite honestly fairly shook up concerning the events and what is happening. A lot of people are not supporting him. He was generally a little shook up concerning this situation.”

    The YouTube account under the username “Sam Bacile,” which was used to publish excerpts of the provocative movie in July, was used to post comments online as recently as Tuesday, including this defense of the film written in Arabic: “It is a 100 percent American movie, you cows.”

    Nakoula, who talked guardedly about his role, pleaded no contest in 2010 to federal bank fraud charges in California and was ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and ordered not to use computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer.
    Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Leigh Williams said Nakoula set up fraudulent bank accounts using stolen identities and Social Security numbers; then, checks from those accounts would be deposited into other bogus accounts from which Nakoula would withdraw money at ATM machines.

    It was “basically a check-kiting scheme,” the prosecutor told the AP. “You try to get the money out of the bank before the bank realizes they are drawn from a fraudulent account. There basically is no money.”

    Prior to his bank fraud conviction, Nakoula struggled with a series of financial problems in recent years, according to California state tax and bankruptcy records. In June 2006, a $191,000 tax lien was filed against him in the Los Angeles County Recorder of Deeds office. In 1997, a $106,000 lien was filed against him in Orange County.

    American actors and actresses who appeared in “Innocence of Muslims” issued a joint statement Wednesday saying they were misled about the project and alleged that some of their dialogue was crudely dubbed during post-production.
    In the English-language version of the trailer, direct references to Muhammad appear to be the result of post-production changes to the movie. Either actors aren’t seen when the name “Muhammad” is spoken in the overdubbed sound, or they appear to be mouthing something else as the name of the prophet is spoken.

    “The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer,” said the statement, obtained by the Los Angeles Times. “We are 100 percent not behind this film and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose. We are shocked by the drastic rewrites of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred.”

    One of the actresses, Cindy Lee Garcia, told KERO-TV in Bakersfield that the film was originally titled “Desert Warriors” and that the script did not contain offensive references to Islam.

    She wants her name cleared.

    “When I found out this movie had caused all this havoc, I called Sam and asked him why, what happened, why did he do this? I said, ‘Why did you do this to us, to me and to us?’ And he said, ‘Tell the world that it wasn’t you that did it, it was me, the one who wrote the script, because I’m tired of the radical Muslims running around killing everyone,’” she said.

    Garcia said the director, who identified himself as Bacile, told her then that he was Egyptian.
    The person who identified himself as Bacile and described himself as the film’s writer and director told the AP on Tuesday that he had gone into hiding. But doubts rose about the man’s identity amid a flurry of false claims about his background and role in the purported film.

    Bacile told the AP he was an Israeli-born, 56-year-old Jewish writer and director. But a Christian activist involved in the film project, Steve Klein, told the AP on Wednesday that Bacile was a pseudonym and that he was Christian.
    Klein had told the AP on Tuesday that the filmmaker was an Israeli Jew who was concerned for family members who live in Egypt.

    Officials in Israel said there was no record of Bacile as an Israeli citizen.

    When the AP initially left a message for Bacile, Klein contacted the AP from another number to confirm the interview request was legitimate; then Bacile called back from his own cellphone.

    Klein said he didn’t know the real name of the man he called “Sam,” who came to him for advice on First Amendment issues.

    About 15 key players from the Middle East – people from Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, and a couple of Coptic Christians from Egypt – worked on the film, Klein said.

    “Most of them won’t tell me their real names because they’re terrified,” Klein said. “He was really scared and now he’s so nervous. He’s turned off his phone.”

    An official of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Los Angeles said in a statement Thursday that the church’s adherents had no involvement in the “inflammatory movie about the prophet of Islam.” An official identified as HG Bishop Serapion, of the Coptic Orthodox of Los Angeles, said that “the producers of this movie should be responsible for their actions. The name of our blessed parishioners should not be associated with the efforts of individuals who have ulterior motives.”

    The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, said Klein is a former Marine and longtime religious-right activist who has helped train paramilitary militias at a California church. It described Klein as founder of Courageous Christians United, which conducts protests outside abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques.
    It quoted Klein as saying he believes that California is riddled with Muslim Brotherhood sleeper cells “who are awaiting the trigger date and will begin randomly killing as many of us as they can.”

    In his brief interview with the AP, the man identifying himself as Bacile called Islam a cancer and said he intended the film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion.

    But several key facts Bacile provided proved false or questionable. Bacile told the AP he was 56 but identified himself on his YouTube profile as 74. Bacile said he is a real estate developer, but Bacile does not appear in searches of California state licenses, including the Department of Real Estate.

    Hollywood and California film industry groups and permit agencies said they had no records of the project under the name “Innocence of Muslims,” but a Los Angeles film permit agency later found a record of a movie filmed in Los Angeles last year under the working title “Desert Warriors.”

    A man who answered a phone listed for the Vine Theater, a faded Hollywood movie house, confirmed that the film had run for a least a day, and possibly longer, several months ago, arranged by a customer known as “Sam.”
    Google Inc., which owns YouTube, pulled down the video Wednesday in Egypt, citing a legal complaint. It was still accessible in the U.S. and other countries.

    Klein told the AP he vowed to help make the movie but warned the filmmaker that “you’re going to be the next Theo van Gogh.” Van Gogh was a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after making a film that was perceived as insulting to Islam.

    “We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen,” Klein said

  • Obama accepts Democratic Party’s nomination: Says ‘Our problems can be solved’

    Obama accepts Democratic Party’s nomination: Says ‘Our problems can be solved’

    President Obama assured Americans at the Convention of a better tomorrow. “Our challenges can be met. The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place. And I’m asking you to choose that future.”

    CHARLOTTE, NC (TIP): President Obama took the stage shortly before 10:30 p.m. Thursday, September 6 and accepted his party’s nomination. A week after his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, accepted his party’s nomination, Obama promised Americans, wary of giving him another term, that “our problems can be solved” if only voters will grant him four more years.

    “Know this, America: Our problems can be solved,” he told thousands of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. “Our challenges can be met. The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place. And I’m asking you to choose that future.

    ” His appeal aimed to build on a rousing speech from Michelle Obama and former president Bill Clinton. The first lady assured disenchanted voters who backed her husband in 2008 but are wary or wavering today that four years of political knife fights and hard compromises had not stripped her husband of his moral core. And Clinton cast the current president as the heir to the policies that charged the economy of the 1990s and yielded government surpluses. “I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy. I never have,” Obama told the cheering crowd in the Time Warner Cable Arena and a television audience expected to number in the tens of millions. “You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth. And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over a decade.

    ” Obama’s main vulnerability is the stills puttering economy with a stubbornly high unemployment rate at 8.3 percent nearly four years after he took office vowing to restore it to health. In Charlotte, he ridiculed the Republican approach championed by Mitt Romney. “All they have to offer is the same prescriptions they’ve had for the last thirty years: Have a surplus? Try a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning!” he said, to laughter and cheers from the crowd.

    And it was with ridicule, too, that he portrayed Romney and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan as heirs to George W. Bush’s foreign policy, and unfit to manage America’s relations with the world. “My opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy, but from all that we’ve seen and heard, they want to take us back to an era of blustering and blundering that cost America so dearly,” he said. “After all, you don’t call Russia our number one enemy-not al Qaeda, Russia unless you’re still stuck in a Cold War mind warp, he said. “You might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you can’t visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally. My opponent said it was “tragic” to end the war in Iraq, and he won’t tell us how he’ll end the war in Afghanistan. I have, and I will.” (In fact, Romney has supported an Obama endorsed, NATO-approved timetable to withdraw the alliance’s combat troops by the end of 2014.) The speech reflected Obama’s drive to convince voters to see the election as a choice, and not as a referendum on an embattled incumbent whose job approval ratings are below the 50-percent mark, a traditional danger zone.

    “On every issue, the choice you face won’t be just between two candidates or two parties. It will be a choice between two different paths for America. A choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future,” he said. At the same time, he did not spell out in detail his plans for a second term should he get one–even as he acknowledged that he is not the candidate he was when he pursued his history-making 2008 drive for the White House. “You know, I recognize that times have changed since I first spoke to this convention. Times have changed-and so have I,” he said. “If you turn away now-if you buy into the cynicism that the change we fought for isn’t possible, well, change will not happen.” Obama’s speech came after an evening studded with stars, from Hollywood’s Scarlett Johansson, who pressed young voters to register and cast ballots in November, to James Taylor, who quipped: “I’m an old white guy and I love Barack Obama” in between renditions of his folksy classics. And he was preceded onstage by Vice President Joe Biden, who gave a long-form version of this memorable reelection slogan: “Osama Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.”

    In addition to the economy, the president highlighted his support for access to abortion, and offered his longest remarks on the fight against climate change in recent memory. “Yes, my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s future. And in this election, you can do something about it.” Obama had moved his speech from nearby Bank of America Stadium into the Time Warner Cable Arena citing concerns about the weather. Republicans charged he merely feared not being able to fill the 74,000-seat space. Democrats countered that they had more than 65,000 ticket holders.

  • Democratic convention calls for Obama re-election

    Democratic convention calls for Obama re-election

    CHARLOTTE, NC (TIP): The US Democratic Party launched its National Convention September 4 as it seeks to convince voters that President Barack Obama deserves a second term.
    The chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, brought the gala into session with a strike of the gavel at 5 P.M. ET.

    Schultz, who is also the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, said that throughout the next three days, “we will demonstrate we need to keep President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden four more years.”
    We will keep tabs on the convention all night. I’ll be joined by NPR’s Liz Halloran, and photographer Becky Lettenberger will bring us some of the sights.

    If Ted Strickland delivered the strongest attack on Mitt Romney, Gov. Deval Patrick delivered the best defense of Barack Obama.

    “If we want to win elections in November and keep our country moving forward, if we want to earn the privilege to lead, it’s time for Democrats to stiffen our backbone and stand up for what we believe,” he said.

    He added:”This is the president who delivered the security of affordable health care to every single American after 90 years of trying. This is the president who brought Osama bin Laden to justice, who ended the war in Iraq and is ending the war in Afghanistan. This is the president who ended “don’t ask, don’t tell” so that love of country, not love of another, determines fitness for military service. Who made equal pay for equal work the law of the land. This is the president who saved the American auto industry from extinction, the American financial industry from self-destruction, and the American economy from depression. Who added over 4.5 million private sector jobs in the last two-plus years, more jobs than George W. Bush added in eight.

    “The list of accomplishments is long, impressive and barely told—even more so when you consider that congressional Republicans have made obstruction itself the centerpiece of their governing strategy. With a record and a vision like that, I will not stand by and let him be bullied out of office—and neither should you, and neither should you and neither should you.”

    First Lady Michelle Obama and former President Bill Clinton are among those who will address the three-day jamboree in Time Warner Cable Arena, Charlotte, North Carolina.
    A recent opinion poll shows Mr. Obama maintains a thin lead over the Republican nominee Mr. Mitt Romney.

    With November’s election looming, the president will aim to recapture the political spotlight over the next few days, after last week’s Republican convention. Throughout this campaign, there’s been a lot of talk about whether President Obama would be able to rekindle the kind of fervor he sparked in 2008.

    Mr. Obama is expected to answer Republican attacks that his economic policies have failed, and present himself to voters as an experienced and caring alternative to Mr. Romney.Shortly after the convention opened, delegates cheered their backing for the party’s new platform in an open voice vote.

    Among the changes found in the text of the party’s 2012 platform was the removal of language from the Middle East section referring to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. That message was replaced with a passage referring to the party’s “unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security” and Mr. Obama’s “steadfast opposition to any attempt to delegitimize Israel”.

    The change prompted criticism from Republicans and Mitt Romney, who accuse Mr. Obama of “selling out” a key US ally.
    Tuesday’s first session saw a series of Democratic governors, members of Congress, mayors and electoral candidates speak in support of Mr. Obama and his policies, most notably his much-criticized healthcare reform law.

    A video tribute to the late Senator Edward Kennedy included clips from his 1994 Senate debate with Mr. Romney, and independent Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee argued that his former party – the Republicans – had lost their way and had forfeited the label of conservative.

    Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said the next president would set the tone for the next 40 years.
    “It will be the president’s leadership that determines how we as a nation meet the challenges that face the middle class. It is the president’s values that shape a future in which the middle class has hope,” he said.
    Mrs. Obama’s address at the end of Tuesday’s session will highlight the president’s character and praise his attributes as a father and husband.

    Her remarks will inevitably be compared and contrasted with those by would-be first lady Ann Romney, who gave a glowing tribute to her husband last week to the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida.
    The Democratic convention is likely to highlight the party’s diversity, with young black and Hispanic party members set to deliver speeches.Julian Castro, the Latino Mayor of San Antonio, Texas, will give the keynote address immediately before Mrs. Obama. But a number of the country’s top Democratic figures will not attend.
    Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is missing a Democratic convention for the first time in more than 40 years on account of ethical guidelines preventing cabinet heads from participating in political activities.
    Nor will California Governor Jerry Brown and former Vice-President Al Gore be present, both citing personal commitments.

    A number of Democratic congressional candidates and incumbents have also declined to attend, as they are engaged in tough battles for election in November.

    The Democratic gathering will see Mr. Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden formally re-nominated as the party’s presidential and vice-presidential candidates on Wednesday.

    Later that evening, there will be speeches from Elizabeth Warren, who is fighting Republican incumbent Scott Brown in a high-profile race for a Massachusetts Senate seat, and former President Clinton.The convention culminates on Thursday with speeches from Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden.The gala also offers the Democrats the chance to make a high-profile pitch to voters in North Carolina, a state that narrowly voted for Mr. Obama in 2008, but is now firmly up for grabs.

    As they did four years ago, the Democrats will take the event outside the convention centre for the president’s prime-time speech, taking over a 74,000-seater stadium in Charlotte for the final night of speeches.

    Organizers are working to ensure a full house for Mr. Obama’s speech. But organizers are concerned that thunderstorms forecast to hit Charlotte during the convention could keep people away.

    Meanwhile, Republicans were quick to seize on a remark Mr. Obama made on Monday, in which he told a local Colorado news station that he would give himself an “incomplete” grade on the economy.

    Vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan told CBS News that the US should be “bouncing out of” the recent recession. “We’re not creating jobs at near the pace we could,” he said.

    A Gallup opinion poll on Monday suggested the convention had given the Republicans only the slightest of boosts, with 40% saying they were now more likely to vote for Mr. Romney but 38% of respondents describing themselves as less likely to.Mr. Obama maintained a lead over Mr. Romney of one percentage point – as he had done before the event

  • As I SEE IT: Don’t be Limited by NAM Anyhow

    As I SEE IT: Don’t be Limited by NAM Anyhow

    If the US/West, despite their attachment to alliance-based politics, actively explore partnerships with India on issues of shared interest, India, despite its antipathy for military alliances and its “nonaligned” predilections, should have no difficulty in responding positively if it is in our national interest. There should be no tension between our reaching out to the West and the value we carefully place on our NAM links: sovereign equality of states; respect for territorial integrity, a peaceful, equitable and …

    (August 26 to 31) provides an occasion for some general reflections on the movement, its salience today and India’s role in it. For those who have always decried the movement for spurning the camp of democracy and freedoms, dismissing it as a collection of countries that still cling in varying degrees to sterile and outmoded habits of thinking is easy.

    GEOPOLITICS

    For others who believe that nonalignment was the right political and moral choice between two excessively armed blocks intent on self-aggrandizement under the facade of ideology, there is lingering nostalgia for the heydays of the movement. For still others, while the movement’s nomenclature may appear disconnected from post Cold War international realities, its spirit of conserving independence of judgment and freedom of choice for its members remains relevant.

    Indian commentators who sneer at nonalignment because its rationale has disappeared with the end of the East-West polarization do not scoff at NATO’s continued existence even after the Soviet Union’s demise, not to mention its expansion numerically and operationally. NATO is now formally present in our neighborhood in Afghanistan. If India does not discard its nonaligned affiliations completely and, at the same time, supports the continued presence of NATO in our region, by what logic is the first deprecated and the second endorsed?

    The Cold War’s end has not eliminated the fundamental distortion plaguing the post-1945 world- its excessive domination by the West. For developing countries the Soviet collapse brought no relief in terms of strengthening multilateralism, more democratic international decision making, more respect for the principle of sovereignty of countries etc. On the contrary, democracy, human rights and western values in general became tools for further consolidating the West’s grip on global functioning. The immediate result was US unilateralism, sidelining the UN, doctrines of pre-emptive defense, regime change policies, military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan etc. Despite the huge costs these policies imposed on their protagonists, the open military intervention in Libya under the so-called right to protect and the covert one in Syria show that geopolitical domination remains the central driving force of western policies.

    NAM, never too united because of external political, military and economic inducements, finds its solidarity unglued further because today many developing countries feel less attached to its agenda because of their improved economic condition ascribed to globalization and the self-confidence gained from a perception of a shift of global economic power towards the East The West has also encouraged the Least Developed Countries to differentiate their problems from other developing countries, and by projecting the emerging economies as a separate category, developing-country solidarity has been further impaired.

    MOVEMENT

    The western policy of sanctioning and isolating specific developing countries for their geopolitical defiance has resulted in greater activism by some countries within NAM to resist the West’s “imperiousness”. This has created the perception that NAM has slipped into the hands of anti-western diehards, diminishing thereby its international image. The West is questioning the credibility of a movement chaired today by a country it reviles like Iran.
    NAM has lacked internal cohesion because many member countries are militarily tied to the US in various ways- military aid, regime protection, military bases etc. Egypt has been the largest recipient of US military aid. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the Philippines are NAM members. The current connivance between Islamic Gulf regimes/Arab League and the West to topple a nationalist, secular Syrian regime, totally ignoring the Israeli dimension, shows how politically confused NAM has become. That NAM in its majority voted against Syria in a recent UNGA resolution underlines this further.

    INDIA

    India’s own experience of NAM in areas of its core national interests has been most unsatisfactory, which is enough reason to shed any undue sentimental or ideological attachment to the movement. India’s NAM leadership did not shield it from US/western technology-related sanctions for decades; in the 1962 conflict with China, NAM did not back India’s position; on Kashmir, India has had to lobby within the movement against attempts at interference; it received no understanding from NAM on its nuclear tests and the sanctions that followed etc. India has therefore no obligation to support any individual NAM country on problems it confronts internationally and should be guided solely by what is best for its own interests.

    While extracting whatever is possible from it, India should treat its NAM membership as merely one component of its international positioning. While being clear sighted about NAM’s limitations, for India it is nonetheless diplomatically useful to mobilize the movement to counter one-sided, inequitable western prescriptions on key issues of trade, development, intellectual property rights, technology, environment, climate change, energy etc, and build pressure for consensus solutions.

    If the US/West, despite their attachment to alliance-based politics, actively explore partnerships with India on issues of shared interest, India, despite its antipathy for military alliances and its “nonaligned” predilections, should have no difficulty in responding positively if it is in our national interest. There should be no tension between our reaching out to the West and the value we carefully place on our NAM links: sovereign equality of states; respect for territorial integrity, a peaceful, equitable and just world order; and the progress of developing countries through socio-economic development.

    As a founding-member of the Non-Aligned Movement, India has consistently striven to ensure that the Movement moves forward on the basis of cooperation and constructive engagement rather than confrontation, and straddles the differences of the traditional North-South divide. India’s broad approach to the NAM Summit in Tehran would be oriented towards channeling the Movement’s energies to focus on issues that unite rather than divide its diverse membership.

    (The author is a former Foreign Secretary of India. He can be reached at sibalkanwal@gmail.com)