PM: “India’s security has never been stronger than it is today”

By Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 24th May 13

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today presented a detailed justification of his security and defence policies over the last nine years, stating that the army had been enlarged and provided with new equipment; the Indian Air Force (IAF) provided with “cutting edge” capabilities; and the navy “fully equipped to operate at great distances from our shores.”

“India’s security has never been stronger than it is today and our international relationships have never been more conducive to our national development efforts,” said the PM.

The PM spoke at the foundation stone laying ceremony of the Indian National Defence University (INDU), which will come up at Binola, Gurgaon, in the vicinity of the national capital. In 1999, the Kargil Review Committee, headed by K Subrahmanyam, had noted that the military needed an academic institution that would deal primarily with subjects related to national security.

So far, military training institutions have obtained accreditation from multiple universities. Cadets who complete the three-year training course at the National Defence Academy (NDA) in Khadakvasla get an undergraduate degree from the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Officers who complete the Staff College Course at Wellington, Tamil Nadu, get a masters degree from Madras University. Now these institutions, and others like the National Defence College (NDC) New Delhi, and the College of Defence Management (CDM) Secunderabad, will be academically affiliated to INDU.

A serving three-star general from the army, navy or air force will head INDU, which will be modelled along the lines of Indian Institutes of Management and Technology (IIMs/IITs). Two-third of INDU’s students will be from the military, with the rest drawn from government, police organisations and civilians. The teaching faculty will consist equally of military officers and civilians.

The PM noted the importance of training both military and civilians in national security studies through this quote from the biography of British General, Charles George Gordon: “The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools, and its thinking done by cowards.”

INDU, he said, would not just teach “our thinkers and policymakers to understand the complexities of war and conflict,” but also educate military professionals about “the interplay between all attributes of national power.”

Senior officers note that the military does not have a well-developed academic tradition or structure, even in national security studies. Officers are allowed “study leave”, which is a one-year or two-year academic sabbatical on full pay, but rarely obtain qualifications that equip them for professional advancement.

“INDU is long overdue, but the challenge will be to create a world class defence university in a country that does not have a deep tradition of national security study and debate. INDU can only be successful if its initial faculty is chosen carefully, without the constraints of the University Grants Commission and other government bodies. Reputed national security academics from all over the world must be co-opted as visiting faculty, to lay a strong foundation for INDU,” says Lieutenant General VR Raghavan, a retired general with an outstanding academic reputation.

Broadsword book review: The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth, by Mark Mazzetti

Title            :   The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at                                the Ends of the Earth
Author         :   Mark Mazzetti

Publisher     :   The Penguin Press, New York, 2013-05-15

Page length :    381

Cost            :    USD 29.95 (Rs 1,662)

The Way of the Knife tells the riveting tale of how America’s efforts in the War on Terror fundamentally transformed the US national security establishment. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), fearing retribution from US investigators for its growing reliance on torture, morphed into a killing unit that launched Hellfire missiles from Predator drones at terrorists sheltering in no-go areas. Meanwhile the Pentagon, a killing machine that was starved for targets, increasingly focused on setting up its own intelligence units that would locate Al Qaeda targets for Special Forces strikes.

It tells the story of how functional boundaries between national security organisations got blurred as agencies like the CIA and the Pentagon that were structured primarily to combat conventional threats struggled to take on new enemies like Al Qaeda, the Iraqi resistance and the Taliban.

And it tells --- like never before --- the inside story of the Predator drone, which changed from an intelligence gathering to a killing machine after an incident in 2000 when an early unarmed Predator spotted who analysts agreed was bin Laden dismounting from a convoy at the Al Qaeda training camp at Tarnak Farm near Kandahar. But it would take six hours for a Tomahawk missile to be launched from an American submarine in the Arabian Sea, and to travel to Tarnak --- by when Osama would be long gone. Clearly, the Predator had to not just see but to kill as well. The first Predator-launched Hellfire missile was tested successfully in Feb 2001 and the rest, as they say, is history.

Mazzetti recounts in intricate details the moral and ethical debates within the CIA as the Predator fleet effectively provided the intelligence agency with its own air force. Controlled remotely through satellite signals transmitted from US-based operations centres, the Predator was a weapon of war that required nobody to go to war. Richard Clarke, the Counterterrorism Coordinator for the president, argued in favour of the drone, “(I)f the Predator gets shot down, the pilot goes home and f*#ks his wife. It’s OK. There’s no POW issue here.”

The author, Mark Mazzetti, Pulitzer Prize winning national security correspondent of The New York Times, has long enjoyed deep access to the CIA and the Pentagon, which are the prime focus of this book. While such linkages generate priceless inside information they can also damage the objectivity that is central to a journalist’s or author’s worth. Mazzetti has faced sharp criticism for unquestioningly accepting the word of his sources. After the killing of Osama bin Laden, he indirectly justified the use of torture by gullibly reporting the official line that Osama had been tracked down thanks to information obtained through torture. Soon after that Mazzetti’s colleague, the widely respected columnist Maureen Dowd, asked him to fact-check a column that she was writing on the movie, Zero Dark Thirty. Mazzetti emailed Dowd’s pre-publication draft to the CIA’s spokesperson, with the message, “see, nothing to worry about,” and “this didn't come from me... and please delete after you read.”

Nevertheless it is hard not to be impressed by how Mazzetti weaves together a ringside view of multiple events into the larger theme of this book: how organisations adapt during acute stress, making cynical calculations, ethical compromises and functional adjustments to safeguard their corporate interests. A discredited CIA, facing the blame for 9/11, launched a detention-and-interrogation programme that violated every ethical canon except those in its lawyers’ books. So much so that, in June 2003, CIA lawyers advised the White House against issuing even a bland statement of support on a day that the UN had set aside to support torture victims, knowing that the interrogation methods it was using were widely considered torture. After a scathing internal report on its interrogation methods in May 2004, CIA officers became convinced that they would be called to account some day. That was when the CIA adopted armed drones and targeted killings as its new direction. As Mazzetti writes, “Killing by remote control was the antithesis of the dirty, intimate work of interrogation.”

The Way of the Knife also offers an exciting account of the secret war in the tribal areas of South and North Waziristan, detailing the double and triple game that the Pakistan Army was playing there. A web of American agents operating from bases guarded by the Pakistan Army could see that their protectors were also their prison wardens. Repeatedly striking peace deals with Waziri militants, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan was dictating terms to the men in khaki, setting timings for their convoys and other moves. A nice portrait is of the spider at the centre of the web, ISI chief Lt Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, a “rumpled and unpretentious (man)… with sad, hollow eyes and stooped shoulders… (who) golfed obsessively and went everywhere trailing a cloud of cigarette smoke.”

Written in the terse, readable prose of a professional reporter who is trained not to waste a word, this book is a must for serious students of international security and Pakistan in particular. The lack of atmosphere and colour in the writing is compensated for by a wealth of anecdotal detail. And given how carefully Mazzetti was servicing his contacts, most those anecdotes would be correct.

Defence ministry comes to private firms’ aid

By Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 18th May 13

Private sector companies in defence have been asking the ministry of defence (MoD) for protection against foreign exchange risk variation (ERV), a benefit that defence public sector undertakings (DPSUs) have always enjoyed. Accepting the plea, MoD has approached the finance ministry to approve ERV protection for the private sector.

Defence Minister A K Antony told Business Standard on the sidelines of a defence function, “We have taken up a case with the finance ministry for private-sector defence companies to be protected from ERV. Now the ball is in the finance ministry’s court.”

India’s private-sector defence companies have stepped up the campaign for ERV protection after being seriously hit by the rupee’s fall from Rs 44 a dollar in October 2010 to below Rs 56 just a few months later. Even “indigenous” defence systems contain many imported components and sub-systems, so any depreciation in the rupee’s value raises production costs in India and hits profitability.

Private-sector companies say, given that defence contracts run 5-10 years from signing to conclusion, a significant degree of ERV volatility is almost inevitable.

In MoD tenders, private Indian companies are expected to compete against foreign vendors, which are not affected by ERV; and against DPSUs, which already enjoy MoD protection. Earlier this year, industry body Ficci had sent a detailed paper to MoD, seeking a level playing field for the private sector.

Ficci had suggested that all bidders, including DPSUs, submit their commercial bids on a multi-currency format, with imported components quoted in foreign exchange (forex), and components sourced in India quoted in rupees. Since 2006, foreign vendors and private Indian companies have been submitting multi-currency bids. But DPSUs bid entirely in rupees, while separately indicating the forex component of the bid.

The winner of a contract, i.e. the L-1 (lowest-cost) vendor, is selected by reducing all quotes to their rupee value on the day of opening of the bids. For this, the forex component in the bids of foreign vendors and private Indian companies are converted to Indian rupees at the selling rate of State Bank of India, Parliament Street, New Delhi.

The Defence Procurement Procedure of 2006 (DPP-2006) and subsequent revisions mandate that a DPSU winning a contract would enjoy ERV protection on the forex content that it had indicated in its bid.

DPP-2011 provided similar ERV protection to private Indian companies, but only for global tenders, i.e. acquisitions categorised as ‘Buy (Global)’. In acquisitions that are confined to domestic vendors, i.e. ‘Buy (Indian)’ category, no ERV protection is provided to anyone. But DPSUs get ERV protection in single-vendor cases, or when they are nominated for production. According to Ficci, “it needs to be seen how this will be interpreted in case of private companies”.

Ficci also points out that DPSUs can gain a bidding advantage by converting their forex component into Indian rupees at an arbitrary lower rate, thus submitting a lower rupee bid. Ficci has requested that the exchange rate used be the one prevailing on the day bids are opened.

MoD has grappled for long with ERV issues. In 2003, a committee headed by Shashanka Bhide of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) had recommended that MoD must invariably hedge the forex component of defence contracts against fluctuation. That recommendation remains ignored to this day.

The Bhide committee determined that hedging forex risk would add two per cent to the cost of a defence contract, but not hedging was likely to cost an extra 4-5 per cent. This loss would naturally be larger during markedly negative periods for the rupee, like in the past three years.

DPP-2013, which has been revealed only in outline so far, was expected to address ERV issues, but the highlights that MoD has announced so far are silent on ERV.

If the finance ministry accepts the MoD proposals on ERV reform, it is likely these would be promulgated as an amendment to the soon-to-be-announced DPP-2013.

First of eight Indian Navy P8I aircraft arrive in India: official MoD release posted below

ARRIVAL OF FIRST INDIAN NAVAL P-8I LRMRASW AIRCRAFT AT INS RAJALI

New Delhi: Vaisakha 25, 1935

                                                                                                         Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Indian Naval Aviation received a major fillip with the arrival of the first of eight Boeing P-8I Long Range Maritime Reconnaissance and Anti Submarine Warfare (LRMRASW) aircraft at Naval Air Station Rajali (Arakkonam) on 15 May 2013. The remaining seven aircraft would be delivered over the next two years.

The P-8I aircraft, based on the Boeing 737-800(NG) airframe, is the Indian Naval variant of the P-8A Poseidon that Boeing has developed for the US Navy. The aircraft is equipped with foreign & indigenous sensors for Maritime Reconnaissance, Anti Submarine operations and Electronic Intelligence missions. The aircraft is fully integrated with state of the art sensors and highly potent Anti Surface and Anti Submarine weapons.

These LRMRASW aircraft have been procured under the contract signed in 2009. The Indian Navy is in process of procuring an additional four P-8I aircraft under the option clause. The P-8I aircraft would greatly enhance India's maritime surveillance capability in the Indian Ocean Region. Vice Admiral Bimal Kumar Verma, Chief of Staff (Eastern Naval Command) received the aircraft in a function organized at INS Rajali.

What underlies the reasonable new China?

A view of the McMahon Line, courtesy Ajai Shukla

By Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 15th May 13

Is China’s apparent willingness to take meaningful steps towards resolving the Sino-Indian boundary dispute merely a ploy to ensure the success of Premier Li Keqiang’s visit on 19-20^th May? Or is there new recognition in Beijing, reinforced perhaps by the recent border incident at Daulat Beg Oldi in Ladakh, that an unsettled border with many potential flashpoints is a recipe for serial tensions with New Delhi.

Or is Beijing dangling the carrot of an early boundary settlement to entice New Delhi to accept the “border defence cooperation agreement” that China has proposed? That proposal would effectively freeze troop levels and border infrastructure at current levels, making China’s current advantage permanent.

On Monday, Qin Gang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Information Department chief briefed Indian journalists in Delhi. He indicated that --- with China and India having agreed in April 2005 on the “Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question” --- the two countries now needed to take the next step.

“We need to redouble efforts to push ‘Framework’ negotiations so that we can reach a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution at an early date,” said Qin.

 The “Framework” that Qin refers to is the second stage of a boundary settlement, envisioned in the ongoing dialogue between Special Representatives of the two countries. This “Framework” will form the basis for the third and final stage of actually delineating a new Sino-Indian boundary.

India has consistently pushed for a “Framework” agreement to be finalized and the border delineated. But China has stonewalled for years, declaring that the border agreement was a “complicated issue” that was “left over from history” and best left for “future generations to resolve.”

Since President Xi Jinping’s election, however, Beijing has sent subtle signals of change. In March, Xi carefully said, “The boundary question is a complex issue left from history, and solving the issue won’t be easy.” Given Beijing’s careful semantics, China-watchers consider this a significant step forward from the earlier Chinese position that the boundary question, “will take time to resolve.”

And a gushing commentary in Xinhua on May 10, entitled “China, India capable of achieving win-win results, resolving disputes”, presented an unusually glowing summary of two friendly neighbours marching in lockstep towards a rosy future.

Why, analysts wonder, have Beijing --- and New Delhi --- changed their tune so dramatically just days after the resolution of a three-week-long mini-crisis over the occupation of Indian territory near Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) by an armed Chinese patrol? At an off-the-record media briefing last week, a senior Indian official termed the Chinese incursion at DBO a “political signal,” apparently indicating that Beijing was signalling the need to move towards a settlement.

Sceptics hold that Beijing hardly needs a border incident to send such a signal. New Delhi has been keen to resolve the boundary issue, while Beijing has dragged its feet. Through 15 rounds of the Joint Working Group and Experts Group meetings, China has refused to exchange maps with India in which both sides mark their perceptions of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) along the Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh borders.

This has allowed China to extend its writ deeper and deeper into India. Since the 1962 war, China has extended its control over the entire Galwan River and Chip Chap River valleys in Ladakh.

Any Chinese offer to agree on a “Framework” for resolving the boundary dispute is to be welcomed, though it would still leave the contentious and painstaking task of actually defining --- sector by sector --- where the boundary runs. This would involve specifying each boundary landmark, marking those on a mutually agreed map, and then constructing hundreds of boundary markers on the ground, all along the border.

Only after completing this process should New Delhi accept Beijing’s proposal for a “border defence cooperation agreement.” India can accept constraints on its border build up only after the reason for such a build up is removed. With the border settled, it would suit New Delhi to freeze troop levels and border infrastructure at their current levels, or even to reduce deployment on the difficult Himalayan border. But a freeze on India’s military capability must follow a boundary settlement, not precede it.

Nawaz Sharif is back

by Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 14th May 13

Pakistan’s army would have noted how distressingly unpredictable politics can be. In early 2000, having just been booted out as prime minister by his army chief, General Pervez Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif contemplated life in prison, a lenient sentence from complaisant judges who had earlier hanged Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. But then Saudi Arabia gave Mr Sharif asylum, General Musharraf’s hubris brought down his regime, and Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and her husband’s ineptitude reopened the doors of opportunity. Nawaz Sharif must be chortling at the thought that amongst those watching his resurrection is General Musharraf, under house arrest in Islamabad. The wheel has turned full circle.

Pakistan-sceptics --- a group that should logically include everyone familiar with that country’s modern political history --- will say that the wheel will inevitably turn again. Given Mr Sharif's animosity with the military; his stated aim to improve relations with India; and the likelihood that the new prime minister will prove unable to resolve Pakistan’s deep-rooted economic, social, ethnic and security problems, there is every likelihood that the new PM and his Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), or PML(N), will soon be publicly reviled, allowing Pakistan’s khaki-clad saviours to intervene again.

But the last five years have eroded this logic. Firstly, a new political consensus to block the army from politics is evident from the fact that the immeasurably incompetent Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) government completed its full five-year term. On several occasions when President Zardari defied the generals, Mr Sharif prevented them from driving a wedge between the two main parties. Secondly, the generals today need political cover from a popular elected government for their intensifying confrontation with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the “bad Taliban” that the military is fighting in the tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Thirdly, as was evident from the rambunctious “jalsas” or jamborees across Pakistan last month, the aam Pakistani (and especially the aam Punjabi) has taken to the tamasha of electoral politics in a manner that does not brook denial. Finally, since October 12, 1999, when General Musharraf overthrew Mr Sharif, the judiciary and media have become powerful pro-democracy players that pack real power on the Pakistani street.

There is, however, a new cloud over that sunny scenario for democracy. The emergence of Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) transforms a two-major-party political landscape into a three-major-party one. Given that the PTI is supported by young Pakistan, Mr Khan will only grow in strength in the years to come. So far his conservative, anti-American stance aligns with the military’s outlook and he has never said anything to disturb the generals. The appointment of Pakistan’s most visceral anti-India and pro-military hawk, Shireen Mazari, as PTI Spokesperson is worrying for those who wonder which is the real Imran Khan: the polished, western-oriented liberal; or the jehadi-hugging, America-bashing, military proxy?

Either way, Imran Khan presents Nawaz Sharif with his first dilemma. The PTI has emerged the largest party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Mr Khan has declared that he would not join forces with the PML(N). This is hardly surprising given the two parties’ similar, conservative outlooks and agendas; Mr Khan would calculate that, in alliance, the larger PML(N) would swallow the PTI, buying its members with money or position. Either Mr Sharif must allow the strategic Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to be governed by the PTI, which would constrain Islamabad’s freedom to target the jehadi networks entrenched there. Alternatively Sharif would have to cobble together a weak coalition under the PML(N) to rule in Peshawar. That would allow him to claim political influence beyond his Punjabi heartland, but the coalition would face crippling opposition from the powerful PTI.

Mr Sharif would do well in conceding Peshawar to Imran Khan. Over the coming months, Pakistan’s new political masters will learn, like the army before them, that compromise and negotiations with the pan-Islamist jehadis the Tribal Areas are destined to fail. It is important that Mr Khan and the PTI be a part of this learning process, given that the PTI’s election manifesto blamed every problem in the Tribal Areas on the “American war on terror.” As an opposition politician, Mr Khan would need only to find fault with the way the government was pursuing talks. As the chief minister in Peshawar (were he not to shirk that challenge) he would confront the truth that jehadi terrorism in the Tribal Areas feeds on a range of factors that include the American presence in Afghanistan, but also issues that are deeply embedded within the fabric of modern-day Pakistan and the ideologies and practices of its establishment.

More than any Pakistani leader before him, Nawaz Sharif comes to power with a positive mandate on India. This reflects a growing belief within Pakistan in better relations with India, a sentiment that easily survived vocal Indian hostility last December at the mutilation of two Indian soldiers on the Line of Control. Only right wing Pakistani nutcases like Zahid Zaman have openly attacked Sharif (Zaman tweet: “Understandably, Indians are extremely happy on NS win. He is an army hater, wants to investigate and put on trial Generals for hurting India.”) But then Zaman’s credibility can be gauged from his theory that “The nuclear weapons of non-Muslim countries will either become unusable or explode on their own territories.”

New Delhi must cautiously welcome Mr Sharif’s overtures, not only because an unequivocal Indian embrace would be a kiss of death in Pakistan. Behind Mr Sharif’s “peace with India” stance there remain unanswered questions about his role in the Kargil conflict and his family’s links with the Jamaat-ud-Daawa and Jaish-e-Muhammad. While this must be kept in mind, it must also be remembered that --- like in the case of Musharraf --- a hand of friendship extended from Pakistan is valuable only if the other hand holds and brings along with it the hard line elements that have prevented peace so far.