Should New Delhi, at this delicate moment when it needs friends, antagonise one of its closest partners?

Barely had the dust settled on the India-Pakistan standoff last week, when US President Donald Trump announced that America would terminate India (and Turkey)’s status as beneficiary countries under its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) programme.

Certainly, the timing is awful. Even if the GSP decision has long been in the making, and much of it is a decision by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, the fact is that Trump’s announcement comes hot on the heels of the Americans brokering a deal with Pakistan to release Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman and return him home to India.

The US led from the front, along with France and Germany, to push for the return of the captured IAF pilot. In exchange, India would de-escalate and not retaliate against the Pakistan Air Force’s actions.

Within 60 hours of his capture, Abhinandan was home. Both India and Pakistan claimed victory – the former, because it had struck Pakistani territory outside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, within kissing distance of Islamabad and Rawalpindi; the latter, because it had achieved an element of surprise by breaching the LoC in broad daylight, shooting down an Indian MiG-21 and capturing an IAF pilot.

The weekend intervened and the world moved on. PM Narendra Modi returned to domestic politics, challenging anyone to go against the narrative on Pakistan spun by the BJP.

Then, out of the blue Tuesday morning, Trump announced India’s eviction from the GSP list. India tried to moderate the blow, saying it won’t really affect India’s exports. But the fact remains that the political signalling is terrible.

Apart from helping bring back Abhinandan, the US is leading the charge to ban Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar at the UN Security Council. The Chinese have clearly indicated they won’t play ball on that front.

Should New Delhi, at this delicate moment when it needs friends, antagonise one of its closest partners? It boggles the mind why the Modi government would not find a way to soothe Trump’s feelings on allegedly unfair trade and e-commerce decisions that promote domestic Indian companies over foreign ones.

At a time when it should be pulling out the red carpet and arranging roses, the Modi government is chastening an important partner and ally because of domestic Swadeshi Jagran Manch considerations.

The SJM has openly said that domestic industry is being swamped by e-retail American and Chinese giants and that they should be curbed.

Could there be another reason why Modi has not been attentive to Trump, still the most powerful leader in the world?

Speculation that both leaders hardly have a rapport has been rife for some time. The fact that they are alike in so many ways should have helped them get along better. But Trump and Modi seem to be growing farther and farther apart in recent months.

Trump’s fairly simple line of thinking is quite clear. His India decision indicates that he is, above all, interested in money matters. He personally ramped up the confrontation with the Chinese, because he believed Beijing was taking unfair advantage of US’ open trade policies, to the extent that both sides have now agreed that it is important to sit down and talk.

Like the Chinese, Modi definitely believes there is a Modi way of doing things – the recent strikes on Pakistan are proof. But with the Indian economy still so fragile after the upheaval of demonetisation, antagonising a good friend abroad who comes to your aid in a variety of other ways, may not be the best diplomacy.

Because of the US, Modi was able to tell his domestic audiences that he got Wing Commander Abhinandan back in rapid time; no other government, not even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had been able to do this during Kargil. (At the time, Group Captain Kambampati Nachiketa, who was shot down by the Pakistanis, was returned only after eight days.)

Still, two lessons have emerged from the recent India-Pakistan crisis.

First, the Narendra Modi government will now milk the crisis for all its worth in the coming Lok Sabha elections. All those who ask legitimate questions of the government will be deemed anti-national. Union minister Piyush Goyal’s recent tirade against an India Today journalist is an example. It was even more surprising because the TV channel has been largely supportive of the government’s security and foreign policies.

The message to the media in the run up to the polls is clear: Either you are with us, or against us.

Second, the international community is so consumed with its own troubles that it has little patience for two poor nations with their fingers on the nuclear button. It largely agrees with PM Modi’s argument that Pakistan is a recalcitrant state and uses both nuclear weapons as well as terrorism in the most toxic of ways to achieve its goals. It will largely leave Modi to deal how he likes with Pakistan.

But it will not hesitate to intervene if things reach a flashpoint.

Now that the crisis is over, the US has returned to talks with the Taliban, the British are back to being consumed by their impending departure from the European Union, the National People’s Congress in Beijing is on course and the OIC has carved out a middle path by asking India and Pakistan to settle Kashmir.

Notice, though, South African comedian Trevor Noah’s recent comments that war between the two neighbours would be “most entertaining”, as he moved his torso to Bollywood music on his show.

Although Noah has since apologised for his remarks, his comments are an indication of the belief that India-Pakistan leaders are still so childish they don’t understand adult, big-picture concerns about war.

One thing is for sure. After last week’s strikes, the detested hyphenation that India took such pains and so many years to get rid of, with its western neighbour, is back.

source: The Print

HIGHLIGHTS

• At OIC, Pakistan failed in getting Kashmir included in the final joint communique
• Pakistan did not attend the OIC meeting over special honour to Sushma Swaraj
• Pakistan tried its best to get OIC to withdraw its invitation to India but to no avail

Pakistan may have won the battle at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) but, India has won the war. While Pakistan claimed victory for getting a separate resolution on Kashmir passed by the OIC, it failed in getting Kashmir included in the final joint communique, the Abu Dhabi Declaration.

The joint declaration or the final draft is the only document that the host (UAE) drafts and presents for discussion. It is the only document which is adopted by all the 57 member nations at the OIC.

Despite numerous assertions, the forum and the host country did not give in to Pakistan’s demands to include Kashmir in the final draft.

India Today TV has learnt through sources privy to the goings on at the conference that Pakistan used the forum to protest in every session on various issues related to India. The first protest happened during the second session when the Pakistani delegation led by Raja Ali Ejaz, Pakistan’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, argued with the OIC for extending invitation to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj as the guest of honour.

An official present in the meeting said, “They made their displeasure abundantly clear during the second session of the first day [March 1], blasting the OIC for inviting India. They were referring to some resolution in their Parliament.”

Pakistan, on Friday (March 1), had announced that it will not attend the 46th session of the OIC’s Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM), hosted by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Abu Dhabi.

During the joint session of Parliament in Pakistan, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said, “A joint resolution has been passed by Parliament, signed by all parties, which demands that Pakistan refrain from attending the OIC meeting. In light of this resolution, I will not attend the meeting.”

That was the first diplomatic win for India.

Pakistan tried its best to get OIC to withdraw its invitation to India but to no avail. Pakistan did not just protest at the forum, the country’s delegation reached out to the UAE and Saudi Arabia and even called for an emergency meeting of the OIC “Contact Group on J&K” in Jeddah on February 27 to get the invitation withdrawn.

Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua and President of AJK or “Azad Kashmir” Masood Khan were also present in the emergency meeting. Their argument was the alleged human rights violations against Kashmiris and minorities in India.

While they tried to make a strong case on why India should not be invited, but the arguments failed to convince the host.

Sushma Swaraj was invited by her UAE counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Sources tell India Today TV that Pakistan was conveyed that there will be no change in the decision to “invite” India. Pakistan was also informed that Sushma Swaraj would be “welcomed with full honour” accorded to a guest.

Despite its insurmountable pressure on all the Islamic nations, the second and bigger blow came when Pakistan could not get ‘Jammu and Kashmir’ mentioned in the joint declaration of the 46th session of OIC.

The Abu Dhabi Declaration has no mention, not even a passing reference, of Jammu and Kashmir. Much diplomatic effort was put in by India to ensure that it is kept out of the joint communique.

Sources say that UAE and Saudi Arabia had a very important role to play in ensuring the “guest” is not “embarrassed”.

The Pakistani delegation was also seen engaged in serious conversations with various foreign ministers, particularly the Saudi foreign minister. However, their efforts could only get them success in separate resolutions on Kashmir, India-Pakistan peace process, the recent air space violations, minorities’ situation in India and destruction of religious place.

An official explained, “The resolutions don’t reflect or need a consensus. They are essentially national positions of individual countries. Many countries move resolutions of their own interest, most go unopposed.”

The last session of the last day (March 2) was a clincher for India. The session to adopt the final document, the Abu Dhabi Declaration, witnessed some hysterical scenes.

When the joint declaration was to be adopted, there were only two countries that stood in protest. Iran and Pakistan. Iran protested the paragraph which spoke of “Iranian occupation of three Emirati islands”, calling the process undemocratic and unfair.

Sources confirmed to India Today TV that the Pakistani delegation was unhappy about the lack of opportunity to get their views into the Abu Dhabi Declaration. So, while Pakistan has been calling its diplomatic maneuverings a grand success, it is India, an outsider, that won the day.

In the history of all the “joint declarations” at the OIC, the 2016 Tashkent Declaration was the only time when Kashmir was omitted from the final document.

source: India Today

The last few days have reminded us that no war can be won without good diplomacy.

War is politics by other means, said Karl Von Clausewitz, the Prussian military strategist in the eighteenth century. As societies change, and politics changes, so does the nature of war, and the battlefields wars are fought on. The two weeks since the Pulwama attack has shown us that the battlefield is now also on television and social media. If the war has to be won or lost, it must also be fought on these new fronts. As tensions and tempers peaked after the Pulwama attack, bloodlust, and the thirst for revenge was let loose on Kashmiris living in other parts of the country — violence that went unchecked by the very highest levels of government, as though finding some enemy to target was better than finding none. But those clamouring for revenge from the safety of their homes, urging our forces into battle, confident that India has the upper hand militarily have since been chastened, as the harsh reality of the costs of war dawned with Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman’s capture by the enemy. Those who were euphoric that India has sought ‘revenge’ for the terror attack that killed over 40 CRPF jawans on 14 February 2019 by launching air strikes at a Jaish-e-Mohammed camp inside Pakistan twelve days later, swung to despondency as Islamabad announced it had captured the Indian Air Force pilot alive, the next day, again only to be released as a ‘goodwill’ gesture by the Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan. Videos of the pilot, and of Imran Khan’s speech swirled on timelines and newsfeeds. The media is a tool and a weapon rolled into one, and nowhere was this more evident as in the last 48 hours during which India won and lost so quickly.

Today, as a nation, India is thankful that its Air Force pilot is returned safe. Even 48 hours in enemy captivity (Geneva Conventions, notwithstanding) was 48 hours too many. In defending India’s military infrastructure as Pakistan retaliated against Indian air strikes, Varthaman disregarded the risks to his own life, was loyal to his pledge to defend the country, and is now rightfully, a hero to us all. Now that he is back, and the shrill, bloodthirsty rhetoric of the past week is behind us, it is a good time to take serious stock and address uncomfortable realities that have been brought home. Undoubtedly, India has shown it is now prepared to use conventional combat strategies to target terror, albeit still unsure of whether governments or militaries are ready to pay the cost in human life. The tension over the pilot’s detention by Pakistan not even a day after euphoria tells us that is not an easy question to answer.

But perhaps most importantly, the last few days have reminded us that no war can be won without good diplomacy. As international condemnation for the Pulwama attack came in swiftly, India stepped up its diplomatic efforts urging the world community to proscribe the Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist — a demand that has been consistently blocked by China at the UN Security Council. Today, statements from Beijing in the wake of the Pulwama attack show that even China may just find it hard to look the other way as Pakistan obfuscates on action against Azhar, and the prospect that India can act militarily becomes a real one. Numerous news reports have indicated that Wing Commander Varthaman’s release was a result of direct intervention by the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates who spoke to the Pakistani leadership amidst growing international concern over an escalating conflict between two nuclear armed countries.

In diplomacy, language matters, and the strong vocabulary of isolating Pakistan diplomatically that found wings after the Uri attack of 2016, might need to be re-configured. After all in spite of India’s insistence on dealing with Pakistan and resolving the Kashmir dispute ‘bilaterally,’ without outside intervention, perhaps we need to ask if isolation and mediation — as antithetical as they sound — could be two sides of the same coin? And if they are, how does India manage that vocabulary? After all, if it wasn’t for India’s diplomatic efforts to ‘isolate’ Pakistan on the world stage as a sponsor of terrorism, would Wing Commander Varthaman’s release — obviously mediated by countries that wield significant influence on Islamabad — be secured so quickly? By tweeting his expectation of ‘reasonably attractive’ news from India and Pakistan on Thursday, US President Donald Trump made public what most good Indian diplomats would have tried to avoid. Trump’s tweet was followed up by another confirmation from Shaikh Zayed of the UAE who made telephone calls to Indian and Pakistani prime ministers to “stress importance of dealing wisely with recent developments and giving priority to dialogue and communication.”

Conventional wisdom says be careful what you wish for, and perhaps that wisdom will be handy for India’s political leaders to keep in mind today as word games abound. The framework of ‘diplomatic isolation’ comes with its own inherent risks — it re-hyphenates India and Pakistan globally, and draws attention to a conflict India insists can be resolved bilaterally. But could this policy of isolation then open the door for Pakistan to internationalise Kashmir and push its own agenda to get foreign powers to mediate, negating decades of Indian foreign policy? While those who support a more muscular Pakistan policy applaud Prime Minister Modi’s decision to make such a dramatic shift, the reality is that the danger of military escalation between India and Pakistan raised a far louder alarm globally than repeated terror attacks have. After all, this is the first time that two nuclear armed neighbours have violated each other’s airspace.

That the roller coaster of India Pakistan relations is on a steep slide downwards is visible to everyone. Pulwama is not the first provocation India has faced from terror groups that find sanctuary in Pakistan and it is unlikely to be the last. That there is anger — across India — its people, its military, its politicians across party lines — over the impunity with which terrorists strike in Kashmir at will is also clear as day. It is this anger that seemingly resulted in such a paradigm shift in India’s Pakistan policy, and the decades old doctrine of strategic restraint. This shift poses another set of equally valid questions. Launching air strikes, contravening at least two decades of strategic restraint that both former Prime Ministers Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh’s saw as wise, was a bold, risky gamble with ramifications that will outlast the current government. Given the long term implications of this, should any Indian government make such dramatic moves that bring with them the danger of military escalation without transparency? If not with the public, then at least with the political opposition?

Wars are easy to enter, difficult to exit — as is evident from successive US efforts to extricate their troops from Afghanistan. The West’s fight against Al Qaeda and later ISIS has told us that air strikes and conventional armies have not been any match for terror groups that exist because of a combination of ideological motivation and state patronage. A very real terror threat needs more than just muscle flexing that could backfire — it needs intelligent strategies. While nation states fight conventional wars with conventional armies, the enemy is not conventional, and fights asymmetrically. Undoubtedly the fight against cross border terrorism and Pakistan’s support to groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is an important one, and India must continue to find world support for ways to pressurise Pakistan into doing more to control and combat them. As noises from Islamabad are made, threatening it will link Kashmir to the Afghanistan peace process, India needs to find ways to fight that blackmail, especially through economic and diplomatic means. It can only be through well crafted, considered diplomacy that takes a global community into confidence and finds ways to work with them against a common threat, towards a shared objective.

We are lucky today that Wing Commander Varthaman has returned unharmed, and that there was no further escalation that could have led to mass casualties — military or civilian on either side. His story has ended well, but as he comes home, I am reminded of another. Villagers in the Bulandshahr District of UP often cross the makeshift, stubby, still incomplete local memorial of a soldier killed while foiling terrorists trying to infiltrate along the Line of Control in Kashmir’s Nowgam in April 2016. As Sepoy Vishal Chaudhary’s family wept over the body returned to them, the rest of his community was unclear whether to mourn or celebrate. After all, Chaudhary was now a martyr who died fighting to protect his country from the onslaught of terror. In death on the battlefield, his ordinary life was elevated from the prosaic and mundane, to the heroic.

This elevation is part of a larger intellectual mechanism at work — intended to rationalise the horrors of conflict, and to justify what we now refer to as ‘war mongering’ — bloodlust that is only satisfied by the show of strength against the enemy, irrespective of its results.

From the trenches of battle in World War 1, British soldier Wilfred Owen asked:

“If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.”

The symbolism of war lies ultimately not in victory or defeat alone, but in how we as a public convince ourselves of the need for a heroic call to arms. The bloody, horrific Pulwama attack brought both rationale and justification home, together. But as a nation and as a people, if India places primacy on human life, it must remember that winning the peace is as important as winning the war. And to do so, it must evolve conversations not only across the border, but also within the country — conversations that bring down the pitch and create space for dialogues that can lead to resolution.

source: Orf online

U.S., Saudi Arabia and the UAE may have been behind Pakistan’s decision to announce the release of Abhinandan Varthaman.

source: The Hindu

Multi-pronged diplomacy is vital to compel Pakistan to end its support for terrorist groups

source: The Hindu

Overhaul of the Islamic world vis-a-vis India will take some time, but as long as MBZ and Modi are concerned, the journey has begun.

hen the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha came to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nayhan in 2017, asking permission to build a Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi, they brought two designs with them. The first was a box-like structure with a recessed temple, like the one in New Jersey, US, while the other was a regular temple with a ‘shikhara’, like the one in London, UK.

Diplomatic sources said Mohammed bin Zayed, or MBZ as he is popularly known, pointed out that if a temple had to be built in the UAE, it should have all the trappings. So the UAE ruler gave permission to build a temple that looked like one, the sources said, as well as donated 55,000 square metres of land for the complex, for which Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone last year.

The same MBZ has now pushed for India to be the “guest of honour” at the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), a gathering of 57 states that represents the Islamic world. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj will speak at the plenary on March 1 in Abu Dhabi and then return home, as India is neither a member nor an observer, despite having the third largest Muslim population in the world.

At the OIC plenary, Sushma Swaraj is bound to run into her Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, even as India and Pakistan remain at loggerheads since the Pulwama terror attack in which 44 CRPF jawans were killed.

Certainly, the invitation to India is significant. It comes 50 years after the OIC invited India’s Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to attend the conference in Rabat, Morocco, as a member, only to withdraw the invite after Pakistan’s Yahya Khan objected.

Yahya used the Ahmedabad riots that had just taken place and in which more than 600 Muslims were killed, to deny India the opportunity. India could not be trusted with its Muslim population, he had then said. The OIC had no option but to fall in line.

Today’s OIC, and especially the UAE’s MBZ who has issued the invite and with whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi has formed a special relationship, is a totally different country.

The Indian working population in the UAE is about 3.3 million, one-third of its total population. The UAE has promised a $75 billion fund for infrastructure development and promised to participate in India’s strategic oil reserve in Mangalore. Alleged fraudsters like Rajiv Saxena, who recently got bail, and middlemen Christian Michel in the AgustaWestland case have been extradited by the UAE to India. MBZ has visited India four times since Modi came to power, including as chief guest for the Republic Day in 2017.

There is absolutely no doubt that India’s pivot to the Gulf is underpinned by the UAE, which in turn is underlined by the special relationship between Modi and MBZ.

Here’s more: Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, considers the Emirati MBZ as “something of a mentor,” sources said. It is hardly a coincidence that when MBS flew back to Riyadh from Pakistan last week after being wooed by Prime Minister Imran Khan, he broke journey in Abu Dhabi en route to Delhi for his visit.

With MBZ investing so heavily in the relationship with India, it is clear that the emergency OIC meeting called by Pakistan Tuesday to discuss the Jammu and Kashmir issue is likely to fall flat. Moreover, the OIC communiqué at the end of the March 1-2 meeting is unlikely to have any critical remarks about India.

The UAE sheikh certainly isn’t inviting India to the OIC meeting one day and then proceeding to insult her the next. It is almost certain that the Saudi prince was last week carrying a message from Pakistan to India, to open talks and not avenge the CRPF killings.

Meanwhile, the US has moved a proposal in the UN Security Council to ban Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar, which could take up to a couple of weeks. The world’s big powers are hoping that diplomacy will prevail and that China will fall in line.

None of this means that the UAE and Saudi Arabia – which, along with Pakistan, were the only three countries in the world to recognise the Taliban in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s – have ended their relationship with Pakistan. Late last year, the Saudis gave Imran Khan $6 billion in aid, while the UAE gave $3 billion. MBS promised he would invest another $20 billion when he went to Pakistan last week.

One way of looking at India’s expanded diplomatic presence is that as long as Delhi and the world continue to jaw-jaw, the chances of war-war are reduced.

But in the dry, desert wind blowing across the Gulf, something is changing. And from all accounts, MBZ is leading that change.

Certainly, the Abu Dhabi ruler seems like a colourful character. In the wake of 9/11, the anecdote in Abu Dhabi goes, MBZ’s father, the senior Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nayhan, asked him if he (MBZ) would go to Afghanistan to fight on behalf of Muslims and against America. When MBZ expressed shock and horror, the father pointed out that just “because they are not true Muslims”, don’t be afraid to engage in battle.

MBZ, of course, didn’t go to war in Afghanistan, but he never forgot. Ever since, he is said to be obsessed with the idea of Islam being hijacked by extremist Muslims. He is also said to want a way out of the conundrum which keeps India out of the OIC despite its 185 million Muslim population – even Russia has observer status.

The invitation to Sushma Swaraj to speak is a first step. It is also a signal to the Pakistani establishment that the rest of the Muslim world doesn’t approve of the terrorist organisations on its soil.

The overhaul of the Islamic world vis-a-vis India, courtesy the OIC, will take a long time, but as long as MBZ and Modi are concerned, the journey has begun.

source: The Print

In this episode of ‘Hum Bhi Bharat’, Arfa Khanum Sherwani discusses Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to India.

New Delhi: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday offered intelligence sharing and other cooperation with India in fighting extremism and terrorism, as New Delhi tackled rising tensions with Pakistan following a suicide bombing last week on Indian paramilitary soldiers in disputed Kashmir.

Soon after the Pulwama attack in Kashmir, Salman signed a $20 billion-worth pact with Pakistan. In this context, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s enthusiastic reception of the crown prince has been criticised by a section of political parties.

Arfa Khanum Sherwani discuss Modi’s balancing act, in conversation with Tamliz Ahmad, Siddharth Varadarajan and Vivek Katju.

source: The Wire

Abrogating the longstanding treaty would globally dent the view that Indian diplomacy upholds the ethical.

Water is meant to douse fires, yet it is the one natural resource that has, time and again, either been a cause for global conflict or been weaponised by enemy states to score victory.

In the case of decades of volatile India-Pakistan relations, the Indus Waters Treaty – brokered by the World Bank and signed in 1960, to allocate waters of six rivers of the Indus River System that originates in Tibet – has safeguarded against such weaponisation on the subcontinent.

This holds especially true when tensions over Kashmir peak, as they have today. The treaty allocated waters from three western rivers – the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab – to Pakistan, and three eastern rivers – the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej – to India.

It also mandated that India and Pakistan meet twice a year, arrange technical visits to project sites and share details of water flow and quantum used – essentially setting up a mechanism to exchange information and manage potential disputes.

In the wake of the Uri attack in 2016, Delhi suspended the bi-annual talks and promised to ‘fast-track’ projects to use hitherto unutilised water of the eastern rivers allocated to India via three national projects (declared in 2009) – the multipurpose Shahpurkandi and Ujh dams, and the Beas-Sutlej river-linking project.

Why was India’s share unused?

Available data suggests that just under 10% of India’s share lies unused and is allowed to flow into Pakistan. However, even in 2016, this announcement begged the question of why water allocated to India was being ‘wasted’ and not used internally for either power generation or agriculture, given that the rivers fall entirely within India’s jurisdiction, and their use-up is at India’s discretion.

After cabinet minister Nitin Gadkari tweeted on Thursday that India would ‘stop our share’ of Indus waters to Pakistan – exactly a week after the Pulwama attack – that question still stands.

Diplomatic sources who have worked closely on India-Pakistan ties, and experts who deal with water-sharing disputes, indicate that a possible reason for not having done so all these years was to avoid an explosion of new water wars within the country.

Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Haryana have already locked horns over access to and use of water from these three rivers, internally. It took nearly 40 years and the intervention of the Centre for the governments of Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab to finally sign an agreement on the implementation of the Shahpur Kandi dam project in September 2018.

Under the current agreement and plan, the project has a capacity to produce 206 megawatts of hydroelectricity, to be shared between the two states and irrigate over 37,173 hectares of land, of which 5,000 hectares are in Punjab and the rest in the Kathua region of Jammu. It is expected to become operational in 2020.

The Ujh dam on the Ravi river is also a source of contention for Punjab as are the Beas-Sutlej and Sutlej-Yamuna link canals. The latter are essentially river-linking projects that aim to distribute river waters across Jammu Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal and Rajasthan more equitably.

Spinning Gadkari’s tweets as action against Pakistan

To have spun Gadkari’s tweets as action against Pakistan in the aftermath of the Pulwama attack, as several prominent BJP leaders and subsequent media reports did, required a kind of mental gymnastics that defies both research and reason; it also gives those who advocate the abrogation of the Indus Waters Treaty a fresh boost.

It assumes that the Indian public – eager to see a strong response against Pakistan for its support to terror groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammed that claimed responsibility for Pulwama – would be so easily fooled into believing that using ‘our share of water’ more effectively was actually a strong act of retaliation.

In fact, it was nothing but wrapping in a bow and recycling a two-year-old announcement of an even older decision and presenting it as, not only new, but strong international action.

India’s role as a responsible global leader

While Pakistan’s duplicity on fighting terror is proof that it doesn’t honour its own global obligations, calls to abrogate the Indus Waters Treaty are knee-jerk emotional responses that don’t factor in long-term and wide- ranging consequences for India in the world.

For a nation that sees itself as a responsible global leader, an emerging economy and an aspirant for the UN’s highest table, India must honour its treaty commitments over a resource that everyday lives depend on.

This is not the only transboundary water agreement India has signed, but the Indus Waters Treaty between two openly hostile nations is held up as a gold standard globally – an example for other warring nation-states to follow in the interest of civilian populations which suffer the consequences of war.

Sabre-rattling aside, as an upper riparian nation, any move by India towards abrogation would alarm other countries which have rights of use over water from rivers that flow down from India and are already embroiled in longstanding water disputes (54 of Bangladesh’s 230 rivers flow through India).

It would also signal other upper riparian countries that treaties don’t matter and they can continue with projects that arrest water from flowing into lower riparian states without any real consequence (China already has several projects damming the Brahmaputra that India is concerned about).

So, New Delhi must ask itself whether it wants to stand similarly accused and lose a great moral force that it currently enjoys on the world stage.

source: The Wire

The Saudis, Israelis and New Delhi didn’t want the two visits to take place so close to each other, given that the two countries are seen to be sworn diplomatic antagonists.

New Delhi: Saudi Arabia crown prince Mohammed bin Salman will be arriving in India from Malaysia for a fleeting 24-hour visit on 19 February as he looks to not be seen hyphenating Riyadh’s close ties with Pakistan, which he is also visiting on this trip.

However, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was also set to visit India on 11 February, has cancelled his day-long trip, said sources.

The visit of MBS, as the Saudi crown prince is popularly known, is expected to bolster the strongman image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Central Intelligence Agency in US reportedly concluded in November 2018 that it was MBS who had ordered the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018, despite strong denials by the Saudi government.

According to the Washington Post, US officials had expressed confidence in the CIA’s assessment despite the fact that this enormously complicates America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.

The reasons for Netanyahu’s cancellation are not clear. In the last two years, Prime Minister Modi and the Israeli PM have already made one trip each to the other’s country. Earlier this month, Israeli national security adviser Meir Bin Shabbat had visited India for talks with his counterpart Ajit Doval.

Sources said the Saudis, the Israelis and New Delhi didn’t want the two visits to take place so close to each other, considering Saudi Arabia and Israel are seen to be sworn diplomatic antagonists.

Diplomatic visits

February will see the last hurrah of diplomatic visits to India before the upcoming election season — Argentinean President Mauricio Macri will visit on 18 February; besides trips by the former Sri Lanka president Chandrika Kumaratunga to New Delhi, her rival and successor Mahinda Rajapaksa to Bengaluru and former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed to New Delhi.

Kumaratunga’s proposed talks with Modi will be interesting, especially since India seems to be humouring Rajapaksa despite his intense machinations in recent months in trying to topple the elected government of Ranil Wickramasinghe.

Rajapaksa is seen to be close to BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who has seemingly endeared himself to Modi because of his relentless pursuit of the National Herald case against former Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

But it is the visit of MBS which is drawing all the eyeballs these days.

The Saudi crown prince will be in the national capital for a mere 24 hours — in on 19 February evening and out on 20 February evening — but Ministry of External Affairs sources said he is bringing with him anything from 500-800 people in their own private jets.

Whatever the size of the delegation, fact is that Saudi Arabia has emerged as India’s fourth largest trading partner — after the US, China and UAE — primarily because it is also a top supplier of crude oil, along with Iraq and Iran.

Bilateral trade now stands at $27.48 billion, of which India’s imports are $22.06 billion.

There is also talk of the Saudis interested in putting together an Investment Fund for India, on the lines of the UAE.

The Saudi crown prince who is being heavily criticised by Saudi Arabia’s closest allies such as the UK after journalist Khashoggi’s murder — the CIA said that MBS had ordered the killing — is also being wooed by Islamic nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan. He will be visiting the three nations, besides India, on this trip.

Diplomatic sources in New Delhi told ThePrint that Modi had persuaded MBS to come to India after they both met at the November 2018 G20 summit in Argentina.

In Pakistan, MBS is expected to sign pacts worth $14 billion, besides $3 billion in currency support and a loan of another $3 billion in deferred payments for oil imports signed by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan.

source: The Print