Posts Tagged ‘china’

The irony of India

January 27, 2011

“India has no interest in destabilising any of her neighbours, or even in seeing any of them in difficulty,” said the silver-haired gentleman in a thin-striped suit and with piercing eyes. It was a small talk, before a small gathering of Pakistani journalists here in Delhi, at the invitation of the Indian government. But the message was large.

It went something like this. India is nurturing its economy to sustain growth rates in the 9-10 per cent per annum range. At this rate, the size of India’s economy doubles in less than a decade, not bad for an economy which clocked in a GDP of a little more than four trillion dollars in 2010, placing it as the world’s fifth largest economy and still rising.

India has set for itself the target of becoming a middle-income country by the year 2025. That means it cannot afford to run volatile cycles of boom and bust, nor can it afford to fall behind in the race to innovate. Even as the silver-haired gentlemen was gently laying out the facts for us, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was preparing to present its third quarterly review of monetary policy, an announcement that lays out the state of the economy as seen by the central bank.

“[G]rowth has moved close to its pre-crisis trajectory even in the face of an uncertain global recovery,” noted the RBI. The “pre-crisis trajectory” the RBI is referring to is a growth rate of 8.5 per cent. That puts India in close competition with China, the world’s fastest growing economy. Note the last words of the observation above: “even in the face of an uncertain global recovery.” Meaning, as the economies of the US and the EU battle the prospect of a second recession, and a possible sovereign credit crisis, the economy of India is part of a growing set of economies in Asia, led by China.

In order to nurture and sustain these growth rates, India needs to overcome all instability in its neighborhood. The distinguished gentleman, as well as others we have met here thus far, have all been clear to point out that there is a great deal of concern with internal stability in India. “But at least in the case of the Naxals, for instance” quipped one senior journalist, “I’m glad the instability is borne of hunger and not religion. You see, you can feed a hungry human who has picked up arms against you, but what do you do with those who pick up arms in the name of religion?”

But religion has crept into the Indian political vocabulary and landscape. And curiously enough, it has entered through the back door of the secular, democratic nationalism that has been the hallmark of Indian politics ever since the Nehru years. Just a few days earlier, for instance, a train carrying BJP student activists to Srinagar had been surreptitiously turned around and taken back to the station from whence it had originated. And on January 24, senior leaders of the BJP were arrested trying to enter Srinagar with the intention of raising the Indian flag there on Republic Day.

This is irony at its best. Here is a country that values its economic rivalry with China over everything else. A country that treasures and takes supreme pride in its six-decade long experiment with democracy. A country that is deeply religious, yet sees its own salvation in making sure the state is aligned with no particular faith. And in this very country, a political party that seeks to hold the highest elected offices of state, runs in the name of the supremacy of one religion over others, and which seeks to plant the flag of the secular republic in Srinagar, is physically prevented from doing so by the government of the day.

If India’s growth rates can persist in spite of the “uncertain global recovery,” if India’s democracy can thrive in spite of the BJP’s attempts to transform it into an illiberal republic, then we in Pakistan need to understand how irrelevant we are becoming in the 21st century world. And perhaps we need to see the irony in that: irrelevant in spite of being the epicentre of a superpower’s destiny.

COHEN ON PAKISTAN

January 10, 2011

By Ghalib Sultan
ZoneAsia-Pk

Dr Stephen Cohen’s interview with the Council on Foreign Relations has been published in Pakistan Today dated January 10, 2011. Dr Cohen is a respected scholar but he has strong views-especially on Pakistan though he is very critical of the Obama administrations’ policies too. Like many others he has a soft corner for India and, understandably for Israel that tends to color his perception of Pakistan.

Dr Cohen reads too much into the events unfolding in Pakistan after Governor Taseer’s assassination and while one can agree with him on the seriousness of Pakistan’s problems it would be folly to read too much into the power of the ‘extremists’ and ‘militants’ or the far right in Pakistan’s politics. There is no doubt that there has been degradation in Pakistan’s internal and external security environment but to say that ‘Pakistan is moving towards comprehensive failure’ is unfair, far too judgmental and only someone not quite friendly with Pakistan could say that. Suggesting that ‘we should prepare for Pakistan’s failure’ over five to six years is an opinion that is not based on any real data. It is surprising that Dr Cohen formed this opinion after a recent visit to Pakistan-perhaps he met the wrong people or only met his ‘friends’ or he ignored the views of some whom he met. Pakistan remains a functional state with its institutions intact.

Contrary to what Cohen says Pakistan’s importance is not just because of its ‘nukes and terrorist networks’ but because Pakistan is inching towards sustainable democracy, because it wants to be a moderate Muslim state, because it has put in place excellent custodial controls and because it actually wants to rid itself of all terrorists from its soil. The average Pakistani, and that means the majority, wants peace, security and an environment in which he can work and look after his family-not much different from what the average American wants and this applies to all areas of Pakistan including FATA. That is why the militants and extremists have never figured in elections. Election year is 2012 and political parties are preparing—this should explain the shenanigans of the religious right. They need an issue and think that they have found one.

Dr Cohen says that the military ‘cannot govern’. This is true. It does not want to govern. It does not even want to try. Dr Cohen should have got this message during his travels in Pakistan. No one wants military intervention and everyone wants a continuation of the present political system-warts and all. Pakistan’s current foreign policy obsession is not with Israel, Palestine or China-it is with a threat reduction strategy that allows it to shift focus to the economy and society. This is where the US can help Pakistan and if it does this sincerely then anti US sentiment will start changing. Dr Cohen says the military will never side with the ‘liberals’-the military will not side with the militants either and it is fully on board with the government on the road to democracy, economic uplift and threat reduction. The military is however not going to roll over and play dead anytime soon–nor is Pakistan. The relationship with China is strong and stable and multi-faceted. The Pakistan-Afghanistan relationship has to become stable-it is in the interest of both. The same applies to the relationship with India and Iran. Pakistan and indeed the region is looking at economic interaction, energy flows and infrastructure development-not at the doomsday scenario that Steve Cohen is predicting.

PAF to arm JF-17s with Pakistani-Chinese codeveloped SD-10 mid-range homing missiles

November 26, 2010

Pak1stan First.com

BEIJING – PAKISTAN has confirmed it will buy Chinese missiles and flight systems to equip its 250 JF-17 Thunder jet fighters as it seeks to deepen military cooperation with Beijing, state media said on Thursday.

Rao Qamar Suleman, air chief marshal of the Pakistan Air Force, told the Global Times newspaper Chinese radar systems and SD-10 mid-range homing missiles would be used on the fighters co-developed by the two nations.

‘PAF has no plans to install Western devices and weapons on the aircraft for the time being,’ the newspaper quoted Suleman as saying.

Pakistan may also buy up to four Chinese surface-to-air missiles, as it seeks stronger cooperation with China to help upgrade its armed forces, Mr Suleman told the China Daily in a separate interview.

He made the remarks on the sidelines of the annual Zhuhai Air Show now under way in southern China.

Chinese defense experts played down the comments, saying any cooperation did not target any country and did not compare with deals adopted during a visit to India this month by US President Barrack Obama, the China Daily said.

China has role in Kashmir: Attique

November 11, 2010

Hameed Shaheen

ISLAMABAD: Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir says China, being contiguous regional country, is destined to play a crucial role in efforts for settlement of Kashmir dispute. “In fact strategically there are seven parties to this dispute now: Pakistan, India, Kashmiris, China, UN Security Council, European Parliament (EP) and Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). Kashmir is being debated as active dispute on the yearly agendas of EP and OIC who have passed strong resolutions supporting Kashmiris right to self-determination”, he said while talking to a group of legal experts meeting him in Kashmir House here.

“China is a global power and is bound to play a global role. British Prime Minister Mr David Cameron’s call yesterday to China to undertake its role as global balancer is in fact acceptance of the emerging status of China in world affairs. The phenomenal economic rise of Beijing is most impressive and it is now an active model for the developing nations”, he observed.

The AJK Premier expressed the need to coordinate the Kashmir roles of all the seven parties to the dispute. “It is a happy sign that the EP has agreed to associate the UN and the OIC in its (EP’s) Kashmir settlement efforts at the global level. What we now need is to consolidate all Kashmir-specific roles of UN, OIC, EP, Pakistan, China, Kashmiris to smoothen avenues towards peaceful solution to the dispute, he pointed out.

“We understand”, the AJK Premier said, “that the EP is trying to have UN and OIC participations in its forthcoming Global Discourse on Kashmir being held in Brussels in mid-March next year”. Therefore our diplomatic recourse should be tailored according to this new emerging reality of global institutional linkage on Kashmir, he stressed.

Replying a question he said that the US considers Kashmir as a dispute. President Barack Obama during his recent India visit clearly classed Kashmir as longstanding dispute needing solution. UK also harbors similar views, considers Kashmir as outstanding dispute requiring settlement, he added.

It is a mockery of diplomacy to support Indian wish to ascend to the UN Security Council seat leaving Kashmir dispute unsettled at India’s backyard, the AJK Premier added.

India’s ‘Kyrgyz plan’ for Pakistan

April 29, 2010

by: pakalert

RAW was created in the late sixties with one purpose, to destabilize Pakistan. Its first target was East Pakistan. Its second target was Bangladesh. In 1971 RAW was successful in creating the Mukti Bahni, recruiting 80,000 Hindus and then sending them into Muslim Bengal disguised as Pakistani soldiers. They exacerbated a bad situation and created a Civil War. RAWs second target was Bangladesh. The Rakhi Bahni was imposed on Bangladesh with a sitting Bharati General in charge. The first success in East Pakistan was reversed on August 14th, 1975 when Bangladeshi patriots killed the Indian agent and left his body to rot in the streets for a week. Bangladesh tore up the “Treaty of Friendship” which would have allowed Delhi to first reduce Bangladesh into a Bhutan and then take it over like Sikkim. Though December 16th 1971 is taught to Bharati citizens as a huge achievement, August 14th, 1975 is ignored.

The Bangladeshi scenario is reported by Barrister M.B. Munshi in his seminal book titled “The Indian Doctrine”.

Indian intelligence: “‘the aim of RAW is to keep internal disturbances flaring up and the ISI preoccupied so that Pakistan can lend no worthwhile resistance to Indian designs in the region.”

RAW used the same model to take over Sikkim and then created the LTTE with an aim to bifurcare and eventually take of Sri Lanka. Similar palns were hatched to destabilize Nepal, and Maldinves. Bharti forces were sent to Lanka and Maldives-but had to withdraw. Bhutan today faces the same intrigues.

Then down through the years RAW continued its operations in all neighboring countries. India supported President Dawood’s grandiose extraterritorial ambitions in the 1970s. Using the Mukti Bahni model, Bharat tried to use sabotage in Pakistan during the USSRs occupation of Afghanistan. On the wrong side of history, Bharat did not condemn the invasion-instead it supported the Soviets and allied itself with the KGB,KHAD and blew up market places and civilian hospitals. One of RAWs greatest ignominious achievements were murdering 300 people in Bhori Bazaar Karachi with a bomb. While the world condemned the bombing, Delhi cheered.

India’s dark shadow on Afghanistan. After 9/11, Bharat re-established its presence in Kabul and used its Consulates and projects to send mercenaries across the border. It has been doing this for a decade. The purpose of these attacks is to break up Pakistan into pieces with docile friendly mini-states. This is the wet dream of most Bharatis-one taught to them in temples, and one that is reinforced in their worldview by the Hindu Mahasabah.

Christina Palmer describes the nefarious activities on both sides of the Khyber Pass. Today the RAW activities continue in Pakistan.
Listing of Indian RAWs bomb blasts in Pakistan
“India supporting the terrorists in tribal areas & Balochistan” FM Qureshi
Indian Commanders grill MI Chief over Intel failure in Azm-e-Nau
RAW Chief directed to create Kyrgyzstan like scenario in Pakistan
Agency asked to fund protestors in Pakistan over loadshedding, price hike issue
180 million dollars approved for smuggling Pakistani wheat to Afghanistan to create flour crisis across Pakistan
RAW also given an unspecified and un-auditable amount for organizing suicide bombing in Pakistan
MI Chief praised for Afghanistan performance but snubbed for failure on intel about Pakistan Army’s joint exercises with PAF
RAWs trail of terror: Indian Bomb blasts in Pakistan

RAW Page: Indian Intelligence Services

NEW DELHI-Some more details of the 2-day special conference of the commanders of the joint Forces of India that ended here yesterday have surfaced.

Highly credible defiance sources revealed that on the last day of the conference, the participants where appreciated the Military Intelligence Chief General Loomba there they showed their utmost resentment over his failure in pre-empting the Pakistan Army’s Joint execrates with Pakistan Air Force, code named Azm-e-Nau that are in full swing at the moment. Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee Air Chief Marshal P V Naik grilled the MI Chief general Loomba for not collecting the sufficient intelligence about the ongoing war exercises’ of Pakistan Army. The sources say that Loomba completely failed to give any reasonable intelligence output to the participants the war games that the Pakistanis were conducting in the southern part of the Punjab Province of their country.

The sources say that the Chief of top spy agency the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) K C Verma was the one who stole the show on the day-2 of the conference as he not only got immense commendation by the participants for his briefing on operations in Pakistan and China but also managed to grab the endorsement for the approval of a huge amount of funds for future operations in Pakistan and China.
India a secret player in Afghanistan: Bases-Lashkargarh, Qushila Jadid,Khahak,Hassan Killies
RAW facts on South Asia- India fails to occupy countries
The TTP is a RAW agency: The Indian LTTE against Pakistan

The sources say that the RAW Chief was directed by the commanders to create Kyrgyzstan like situation in Pakistan and must exploit Pakistan’s internal crisis like the energy crisis, the price hike etc. The RAW chief apprised the participants that his agency had already started work in this direction. He disclosed to the participants that his agency was already in touch with certain elements in Pakistan to fund the anti-government protests over the constant power outage and jobless youth was being engaged on daily wages basis for the purpose. He further briefed the participants that at least the three foreign Independent Power Producers (IPPs) were already paid handsome amount of money for producing less electricity while Pakistan Power Minister was already helping the agenda as he was himself engaged in prolonging to power crisis so that he can bring in rental power projects that could earn him highly lucrative kickbacks.
Anatomy of Indian Intelligence Services and Alliances
RAW facts on South Asia- India fails to occupy countries.
LTTE was created by India
Indian sponsored Tamil terror in Sri Lanka continues unabated
Lanka: Indian LTTE terrorists use youth as cannon fodder
Lanka Letter: RAW THE RASCAL by Prem Raj in Columbo
Pakistan Sri Lanka growing military alliance
Growing Pakistan Sri Lanka ties

The RAW boss also briefed the participants that an amount of 180 million US dollars had already been disbursed amongst certain drug leaders in Afghanistan to smuggle out Wheat from Pakistan to Afghanistan by the start of month of May so that the flour crisis could be generated at the same time to destabilize the State. He further sought the recommendation for an unspecified amount for organizing suicide bombings and sectarian clashes across Pakistan while a similar recommendation was sought for creating unrest in China’s Xinjiang province via Afghanistan by funding and patronizing East Turkistan Islamic Movement( ETIM). He assured the participants that his agency was fully capable of creating Kyrgyzstan like situation in Pakistan and it was just a matter of time and money upon which he got full endorsement of the commanders. More details of the last day’s proceedings are likely to follow shortly. Daily Mail Post. From Christina Palmer
BLA – A threat to international peace by Ahmad Shah Baloch: “The BLA is the creation of Indian intelligence agencies, which are trying to create instability in the areas bordering Iran and Afghanistan.”. Expose on RAW by Isha Khan of Dhaka Bangladesh
RAW facts on South Asia- India fails to occupy countries
India intelligence: “‘the aim of RAW is to keep internal disturbances flaring up and the ISI preoccupied so that Pakistan can lend no worthwhile resistance to Indian designs in the region.”
Dhaka Diary: RAW 2008: An Instrument of Indian Imperialism by Isha Khan Dhaka Bangladesh. In typical “baghal main churi, moun men ram ram” fashion, the Indian delegation first hides the fact that the RAW agents are funding and arming the BLA and supporting suicide bombings by anti-Pakistan elements in the USA. BLA – A threat to international peace by Ahmad Shah Baloch: “The BLA is the creation of Indian intelligence agencies, which are trying to create instability in the areas bordering Iran and Afghanistan.”. Expose on RAW by Isha Khan of Dhaka Bangladesh. The delegation then only discusses the bombing of the Indian “embassy” (which was a military base run by the notorious “Brigadier Mehta” and his band of merry men.

India and Iran’s Afpak policy

April 8, 2010

By: Atul Aneja

How does India propose to get back into the game of realignments beginning to unfold in and around Afghanistan?

Iran’s recent hyper-activism in neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan has caused considerable consternation in large parts of the globe. In media circles, think-tanks and world chanceries, high-browed mandarins and their well-healed affiliates are trying to make sense of the latest, seemingly inscrutable piece of the Persian puzzle.


An Afghan iron smith man works at his workshop in Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday.

Yet Iran’s deft moves in an area that the Persians have known well for thousands of years originate from deeply deliberated and well-grounded fundamentals. Ever since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran has been ceaselessly battling the threat of a direct American attack or an invasion by a third country that is backed by the United States. The Iraq war of 2003 brought the American forces in an eyeball-to-eyeball face-off along Iran’s western borders, while the entry of the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan became a potential cross-border threat to Iran from the east.

Since 2003, the Iranians have been seeking the exit of American forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of their aspirations have a good chance of realisation, as the bulk of the forces are slated to leave Iraq next year. The U.S. exit from Afghanistan could begin in July 2011.

While the exit of foreign forces would mark a substantial advance, the Iranians have been looking further ahead to a post-exit scenario, in anticipation of a political vacuum that is likely to emerge once the American troops depart. Viscerally opposed to any repositioning by extra-regional players , Iran is working vigorously to establish a de facto alliance of regional countries that will dominate the geopolitical arena stretching from Turkey in the west to China in the east.

It is in this larger context of regionalising the geopolitical space that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad set foot on Afghan soil on March 10. Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai – who fought running battles with the Americans who were more inclined to favour his rival Abdullah Abdullah during the recent Afghan elections – received the Iranian President warmly. Like the Iranians, Mr. Karzai has concluded that the Americans are tiring in Afghanistan and that the time has come to explore deeper alignments in an alternative camp that includes Iran, and has China, Pakistan, Central Asian republics and Russia as potential allies.

While engaging the Afghans on a new footing, the Iranians have also begun to cultivate Pakistan. A major shift in the contours of their relationship can be traced to October 2009, when the Pakistan-based Jundallah group, led by Abdolmalek Rigi, killed Nour-Ali Shoushtari, and other senior commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC). Incensed by these high-profile assassinations, in the Pishin area of the Sistan-Balochistan province, the Iranians sent a few days later their Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar to Islamabad, with the demand for Rigi’s handover. Subsequently, Rigi was nabbed in a dramatic fashion when the Iranians forced a Kyrgyzstan airlines plane in which he was travelling from Dubai to Bishkek, to land in the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas. Influential voices in Pakistan say that Islamabad gave the vital tip off that led to Rigi’s arrest. The Iranians, however, insist that the arrest was possible on account of their meticulous intelligence work, without any foreign involvement whatsoever.

Since the 2009-10 winter war in Gaza, during which Turkey openly distanced itself from Israel, the relationship between Tehran and Ankara has been warming up. Political goodwill is being translated into significant energy cooperation and both sides, despite resistance from several influential quarters, are looking at participating in the Nabucco pipeline, which will carry huge quantities of gas to Europe.

As the geopolitical alignments ahead of the U.S. pullout begin to emerge, India’s absence is glaring. Piqued by India’s high profile in Kabul, Pakistan’s military establishment has been looking for openings that would allow it to achieve its maximalist objective of seeking India’s hasty, and preferably unseemly, exit from Afghanistan.

However, two major hurdles have been impeding Pakistan’s path so far. First, the rapid improvement in Indo-U.S. ties during the Bush presidency firmly deterred it from taking India head-on in Afghanistan. Second, the Afghan presidency, closely tied to New Delhi since 2001, was hostile to Islamabad.

However, the scenario changed dramatically with the exit of the Bush administration and the emergence of Barack Obama. Focussed on an exit strategy from Afghanistan, the Americans deepened their security dependence on the Pakistanis in the hope of achieving rapid success. As a result, the Indian fortress in Afghanistan which looked impregnable during the Bush era was breached. Pakistan utilised this opportunity to the hilt.

A staunch ally of India for several years, President Karzai after his re-election last year began to exhibit unusual warmth towards Pakistan. His description of India as a friend and Pakistan as a conjoined twin during his visit to Islamabad was widely seen as a demonstration of his waning affection towards New Delhi.

There has been a significant deterioration in India-Iran ties since New Delhi voted against Tehran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the Iranian nuclear programme. In fact, the day India voted against Iran, it seriously jeopardised its project in Afghanistan. Without a geographically contiguous border, India can extend its reach into Afghanistan only through the Iranian corridor.

With its back to the wall, how does India propose to get back into the great game of realignments beginning to unfold in and around Afghanistan? It can draw some inspiration from its diplomatic conduct in the past – when it worked successfully with the Iranians, Russians and Central Asians, especially the Tajiks to unroll the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in 2001. With the recent visit of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to New Delhi where discussions on Afghanistan took place, India has taken its first major step in the right direction.

Mending fences with Iran has to be India’s next major undertaking. However, in trying to rework its relations, India is left with only one weighty card, which it can play with good effect provided it begins to view its national interests independently and not through the tinted glasses of the U.S. With its huge requirements of energy, India needs to get back to the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project. But in doing so, it has to substantially modify the arrangement and turn it around to suit its core long-term interests.

Iran would, with considerable enthusiasm, welcome India’s participation in this project, as is evident from the provisions included in the gas deal that was signed by Iran and Pakistan in Istanbul in March. Therein lies the opportunity for India to claw back into the arrangement and take it forward from there.

Instead of waiting for others like Pakistan to seize the initiative, India can benefit substantially by boldly and formally initiating the introduction of two significant players – Russia and China – into this tie up. The Russian gas giant Gazprom has already expressed its keen interest to participate in IPI. Gazprom’s representative in Tehran, Abubakir Shomuzov, has called for the extension of IPI to China, in an arrangement that would tie Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Iran together in a giant project.

Russia’s participation in the IPI would be crucial for India. With Russia firmly on its side, India can, with greater ease and confidence, engage with China in this cooperative enterprise. In the debate on the extension of IPI to China, the route that this pipeline can pursue would be of vital importance. If India has to take advantage of this extension, it has to insist that the pipeline passing through Iran and Pakistan should go through an Indian transit corridor and no other alternative route before entering China.

Such an arrangement would greatly help in making the IPI-plus arrangement more stable and workable. With China, Pakistan’s all-weather friend as the final beneficiary, Islamabad would find it impossible to block supplies to India. In other words, the routing of the pipeline to China via India, and the interdependence that it would generate among the various stakeholders would become New Delhi’s insurance policy for obtaining assured gas supplies from Iran via Pakistan.

There is a final diplomatic dimension which needs to be added if IPI-plus is to succeed. Critics of the IPI rightly point to the security problems that this project, in the current circumstances, is bound to encounter during the pipeline’s passage through the turbulent province of Balochistan. A comprehensive dialogue may therefore be the way forward to resolve this problem. India, which in recent years has gone into a diplomatic shell, can take the high-ground and propose a comprehensive six-party process. Besides itself, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, China and Iran can become the core participants of this arrangement. Such a forum, carefully constructed, adequately resourced and energetically led can take head-on not only the question of Baluchistan, but all other issues that may stand in the way of a lasting trans-national energy partnership.

Obama limits U.S. use of nuclear arms

April 7, 2010

By Phil Stewart and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama unveiled a new policy on Tuesday restricting U.S. use of nuclear weapons but sent a stern message to nuclear-defiant Iran and North Korea that they remain potential targets.

Kicking off a hectic week for Obama’s nuclear agenda, his administration rolled out a strategy review that renounced U.S. development of new atomic weapons and could herald further cuts in America’s stockpile.


President Obama enters the East Room of the White House as he hosts an Easter prayer breakfast, April …

The announcement, calling for reduced U.S. reliance on its nuclear deterrent, could build momentum before Obama signs a landmark arms control treaty with Russia in Prague on Thursday and hosts a nuclear security summit in Washington next week.

But Obama’s revamped strategy is likely to draw criticism from conservatives who say his approach could compromise U.S. national security and disappoint liberals who wanted the president to go further on arms control.

The long-delayed nuclear policy statement could also deepen U.S. strains with China by expressing concern about Beijing’s military buildup, including growing nuclear might.

“We are taking specific and concrete steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons while preserving our military superiority, deterring aggression and safeguarding the security of the American people,” Obama said in remarks issued by the White House.

The United States for the first time is forswearing use of atomic weapons against non-nuclear countries, a break with a Bush-era threat of nuclear retaliation in the event of a biological or chemical attack.

But this comes with a major condition. Those countries would be spared a U.S. nuclear response only if they are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran and North Korea would thus not be protected.

“If there is a message for Iran and North Korea here, it is … if you’re not going to play by the rules, if you’re going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you,” U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters.

THREAT OF NUCLEAR ATTACK

The Nuclear Posture Review, as the policy document is known, stated: “The threat of global nuclear war has become remote, but the risk of nuclear attack has increased.”

The NPR is required by Congress from every U.S. administration but Obama set expectations high after he vowed to end “Cold War thinking” and won the Nobel Peace Prize in part for his vision of a nuclear-free world.

Seeking to set an example, the Obama administration said the United States would consider use of nuclear weapons only in “extreme circumstances” and committed to not developing any new nuclear warheads.

But it said that while reducing the role of nuclear weapons in national security, the United States would strengthen its conventional arsenal.

The administration also pledged to pursue further arms control with Russia beyond the new START pact Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will sign this week in Prague, in which they promise to slash nuclear arsenals by a third.

“The United States will pursue high-level, bilateral dialogues on strategic stability with both Russia and China which are aimed at fostering more stable, resilient, and transparent strategic relationships,” it said.

But the Obama administration said a lack of transparency surrounding China’s nuclear programs was cause for concern over Beijing’s strategic intentions.

OBAMA TO MEET HU

The White House said Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao would meet on the sidelines of the 47-country nuclear summit in Washington on April 12-13. That would also be a chance to ease tensions over other issues, including a dispute over the valuation of China’s currency.

“China’s nuclear arsenal remains much smaller than the arsenals of Russia and the United States,” the document said.

“But the lack of transparency surrounding its nuclear programs — their pace and scope, as well as the strategy and doctrine that guides them — raises questions about China’s future strategic intentions.”

Obama now faces the challenge of lending credibility to his arms control push while not alarming allies under the U.S. defense umbrella or limiting room to maneuver in dealing with emerging nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea.

The review is a test of Obama’s effort to make controlling nuclear arms worldwide a signature foreign policy initiative. It is also important because it will affect defense budgets and weapons deployment and retirement for years to come.

The Hell Diggers

March 29, 2010

THE SCALE OF CORRUPTION IN MINING IS A NATIONAL CALAMITY. NO ONE EPITOMISES THIS BETTER THAN THE BELLARY BROTHERS. KIDNAPPINGS, POLITICAL CLOUT, MUSCLE POWER. VIJAY SIMHA HAS THE WHOLE STORY. PHOTOGRAPHS BY SHAILENDRA PANDEY


OPEN WOUNDS A typical open cast mine in Bellary. Once scavenged, the area turns into a wasteland

ON A pleasant morning some weeks ago, a senior mining executive stood gaping at the spot where his office was until the previous night. He had worked for four years in the office, kept the records, and had eaten, joked and rested there. Now, it was gone without a trace. The case of the missing office set in motion a chain of events, leading to the first full eyewitness account of happenings inside a powerful mining company in the iron ore belt of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. This account exposed how they play with life and law, much like in Bihar’s badlands between the 1960s and the 1980s, except that the new iron ore dons of south India have gotten smarter and bigger – and this may have far bigger consequences for India and her people.

V Anjaneya, the deputy general manager now without an office, worked for the Obalapuram Mining Company (OMC), a controversial group run by Karnataka Tourism Minister Janardhana Reddy – the mightiest of the infamous “Bellary brothers” trio. (On March 23, the Supreme Court stayed the group’s mining operations on complaints of encroaching into another mine.) Reddy began the OMC sometime around 2001-2002 when he was not yet a minister. He has since acquired a reputation as India’s most feared mining don, which is in serious contrast to his mostly anonymous work as tourism minister. Anjaneya’s presence made things legal for Reddy’s OMC because Anjaneya had a first class Mines Manager certificate, the highest qualification in mining given by the Union Labour Ministry and the Director-General of Mines Safety.

Mined at a legal pace, Bellary has enough iron ore to last 30 years. But it is likely to be ravaged in just six

India’s mining laws say a permit to operate a mine will not be granted to anyone with machines and a high production target unless they employ a first class mines manager. This means that you could take a pickaxe and emerge with a few kilos of ore, but you cannot run a full operation without qualified professionals handling it for you. Since Reddy was not in it for a couple of kilos, he hired Anjaneya in 2006. Anjaneya was in-charge of the OMC’s Antara Gangamma Konda (AGK) mine near the border between Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, in the middle of a rich iron ore belt. He reported to a managing director, who in turn reported to Reddy.

Things were fine until December 9, 2009. Suddenly, news came that the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) was planning a raid on OMC offices. The OMC had become very big and was accused of a host of illegal mining practices. Reddy had almost brought down the government of Karnataka after Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa took him on, and forced a humiliating compromise on the chief minister. A CBI raid was, therefore, plausible. The OMC management alerted each of its officers that the sleuths were coming.


IN A FREE STATE Like termites, thousands of trucks cart away the ore illegally, eating into the crust

Ajaneya’s office was at the bottom of a hillock where the mining was done. It was a makeshift office, held up by nuts, bolts and sheets. In there were the records of the AGK mine. Anjaneya sat there with an assistant, Lakshmi Prasad, (who pops up later in the story at key points). All Anjaneya found on December 9, 2009, were a couple of security guards. No office. The previous night, on orders from an OMC managing director, a group of men arrived in a black Scorpio (a SUV often favoured by the mining dons), broke open the lock and took away the records. Furniture in the office was loaded onto a few trucks and carted away. Finally, an excavator came from the top of the hillock and demolished Anjaneya’s office.

Anjaneya drove to the office of the managing director, BV Sreenivas Reddy, 35 km away in Bellary. An argument ensued. Curiously, Anjaneya’s assistant, Lakshmi Prasad, was outside Reddy’s room. Anjaneya asked Reddy where the records were and why the office was demolished. Reddy told him the records were in his custody and that Anjaneya must not worry. Anjaneya, a heart patient, worried that he couldn’t face the CBI without the records. Reddy told Anjaneya that his assistant manager would deal with the CBI and that he could go home.


a typical stockyard, many of which are illegal

Outside Reddy’s office, Anjaneya spotted Lakshmi Prasad and told him he was angry at how Prasad was upstaging him. He was also upset that the Reddys had shifted the records without informing him. He said he might have to tell the CBI everything to save himself. It was a mistake, as he realised later. Prasad instantly told the managing director. They wondered if Anjaneya had kept copies of the office records.

Bellary, where this scene was playing out, is a small district of Karnataka, close to its border with Andhra Pradesh. It’s small enough for 18 Bellarys to fit inside Delhi and still have land to spare. One of the most backward areas of Karnataka, the Bengaluru-driven IT revolution had passed it by. In 2005, a Karnataka Human Development Report said Bellary was 18th in the Human Development Index, among the bottom-10 districts of the state. Bellary, though, is crucial for its iron ore mining. A little over half of Bellary is what is known as the mining belt. And even here, the actual iron ore deposits are in a third of the area. For instance, a mine may have, say, 30 hectares. Only 10 hectares may have the ore. It is this treasure, and the covetousness of those driving the mining industry surrounding it, that has converted Bellary into the proverbial valley of fear.


a mine worker – wealth and despair is rampant in the region. Air, water and the human body is covered in red dust here

Estimates in 2008 said Bellary had close to 1,000 million tonnes of iron ore reserves of all grades. When mined at a pace legalised by the Indian Bureau of Mines – the Nagpur-based body that controls mining in India – it should take about 30 years to be done with. The trouble, however, is that a mad rush to mine has created a parallel universe where law flows from the barrel of the gun. Profit is the only rule in this world, which Janardhana Reddy is alleged to be lording over.

The Beijing Olympics sparked a huge demand in China for iron ore. This triggered an ugly greed in Bellary

ABOUT 60 percent of Bellary’s iron ore reserves are what is described as “fines”, a high-quality grade of iron ore in powder form, which is commercially in big demand. The 600 million tonnes of Bellary “fines” has become a prized commodity after China began buying the stuff a decade ago. The frenzy to feed China, and make as much money as possible before the rates fell, has triggered a host of illegal practices. Karnataka authorities say all the iron ore in Bellary could be taken out in six years if things continue the way they are now.

This, though, was not on anyone’s mind as Anjaneya left the office of his managing director after the argument. Anjaneya worried that the CBI would nab him for his role in the shady practices in Janardhana Reddy’s Obalapuram Mining Company. The managing director and the man who worked as Anjaneya’s assistant worried, in turn, that Anjaneya would take them down with him.


WAR GAMES A mine the Reddys have encroached upon. The ore lies beneath the water

Janardhana Reddy, the man they all worked for, is an interesting character. He is only 43 and is feared for his razor sharp thinking. Being raised in a head constable’s house – his father Chenga Reddy was with the Bellary City police station – appears to have taught him two things: that money is a critical component on the path to power, and that the law is not something you worry about, you simply find a way to keep it busy as you do your thing. From pretty early on in his life, Reddy worked at improving his financial reputation. He formed a chit fund company that soon spread to 46 branches across Karnataka, before charges of cheating surfaced.

He moved into hospitality, setting up a small hotel. When that bored him, he started a four-page Kannada tabloid. From his experience with the tabloid, he lost the fear of media that bothers average businessmen. By now, Reddy had gotten over two fearsome social forces: the law and the media. This made him think big. Another striking trait in Janardhana Reddy is loyalty to family. Though he has the biggest profile in the family, he has so far kept his brothers close. Karunakara Reddy, the eldest, is the Karnataka Revenue Minister and Somasekhara Reddy, the other brother, is chairman of the Karnataka Milk Federation. All of them are spoken of as one unit in public – it is always the Reddys. Janardhana Reddy places such value on friends and family that B Sriramulu, the current state health minister, who he has known for barely 10 years, is considered the fourth brother.

Most mine owners have their private army of guards, armed with SLRs. Even officials fear entering the sites


armed guards – dust, muscle and corruption abound in the mines

Janardhana Reddy believes he can read people. He thus has strong likes and dislikes. Those he likes, he cherishes. Like the family of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy. YSR and Janardhana Reddy were closer than Janardhana has been with any Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) senior. YSR helped Janardhana Reddy when his Obalapuram Mining Company was born. After YSR died, Reddy planned and funded a campaign to make YSR’s son, Jagan Mohan, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. So strong was the campaign that only a resistant Congress high command in Delhi could halt it.


boy spies – the Reddys’ clout has distorted the psyche of Bellary’s youth

THOSE HE hates, he crushes. Like Yeddyurappa, who tried to change a few things in the corrupt Bellary administration. It triggered such wrath in Reddy that he got together about 40 MLAs, took them to Hyderabad and threatened to install another person as chief minister. It took all the negotiating skills of the BJP leadership in Delhi to save the Yeddyurappa government. The chief minister was forced to sack his favourite people and was so crushed that he wept on television at the turn of events.

Thus, Reddy can set goals and stick to them with striking clarity. He has a problem, though. He has spent much time with political toughies who can bludgeon their way through. This makes him think like a streetfighter. He is able to scare people. He is able to buy people. For instance, he employs a battery of high profile lawyers in Delhi, who would cost anybody a fortune. But Reddy has a problem when he has to deal with people who have known money and ambition. He is uncomfortable with people who prefer subtlety. He cannot massage egos gently. This makes him a misfit in Delhi. All the lawyers in the world can’t give him the image he so seeks. He, therefore, is an unknown in Delhi. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which runs the BJP, doesn’t like Reddy. And he has made no impression on Congress president Sonia Gandhi either. In Bellary, he can get away. In Delhi, he can’t.


THE BROTHERS GRIN Janardhana, Karunakara and Somasekhara, inseparable in work and wealth

In Bellary, Reddy is constructing a palatial bungalow at the foot of a hillock.There’s a lane leading to his house and the whole 500 metre approach is monitored on CCTV. One part of his house is shaped like a cottage. The newer part, which is being constructed, is spread over almost an acre. Apparently, there will be more than 60 rooms in the new portion alone. Even on days when Reddy is not in Bellary, his house is guarded by at least a score of gunmen who look like they have spent much time in the gym. There are rows of spanking vehicles, but almost all of them are SUVs. There is a helipad right across the road, but Reddy is apparently getting one done in his house as well. His confidant Sriramulu is also constructing a house, with 60 rooms, adjacent to Reddy’s structure. Both will be connected by a passage. There are bomb-proof shelters. The driveway from the gate of Sriramulu’s house leads to a helipad on the rooftop. Reddy likes helicopters. He owns two, one for the day and one for the night. Word is that he is buying a dozen or so helicopters to get into tourism big-time.


Janardhana getting into his private chopper

When Reddy got into mining, China was hungry for iron ore to construct a new China in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Chinese steel production is still in a gallop after the Olympics. For instance, China produced 48.7 million tonnes of steel in January 2010. (India managed 5.4 million tonnes.) Reddy calculated he didn’t have to pay much for the ore, which he could export to China. According to the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act of 1957, the presiding Act on mining in India, the best quality iron ore “fines” – with 65 percent or more iron (Fe) – had a royalty of Rs 19 a tonne.

For “fines” with iron content between 62 and 65 percent, the royalty fell to Rs 11 a tonne, and for ore with less than 62 percent iron, the royalty was Rs 8 a tonne. The state was virtually giving it away for free. This astonishing fact has little logic. The only reason appears to be that iron ore was never in demand in the past, and the government didn’t think it would ever be. Till 2005, a lorry of iron ore cost less than a lorry of sand or building material. Iron ore went as low as Rs 1,200 a lorry while sand came at Rs 2,000 a lorry and building material even higher, up to Rs 6,000 a lorry. When Reddy was making his move, he had an open field. All he had to do was organise his end of it. The state wanted nothing. (In August 2009, the Centre increased the royalty to 10 percent of the sale price on ad valorem basis.)


the beginnings of Janardhana’s 60-room Xanadu

BUT IT wasn’t just Reddy who was getting ready. There was a mad rush to get a mining lease when the boom hit in 2002. The rush was such that people didn’t even know where they were seeking a lease for. Karnataka Lokayukta Santosh Hegde remembers: “They would produce a map of Hospet taluk or of Sandur taluk, and give the government the name of a village with some boundaries for grant of lease. This would go to the Central Government, which was as careless as the state government. There was no cross-checking of facts, no counter-checking, and no sending of a team of surveyors and of the mining department to find out if there was a place of such a description. And, they started granting leases.”

Leases were a problem for Reddy. Indian mining laws state that a lease, once granted and not annulled for any reason, runs for 20 years before it comes up for renewal. By the time the Obalapuram Mining Company became active, 100 leases were given out in Bellary and about 60 leases were granted in neighbouring districts of Chitradurga and Tumkur. So, Reddy went to good friend YSR. In 2007, the Obalapuram Mining Corporation Pvt Ltd Bellary (its full name) was granted leases to mine iron ore in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh, an area close to the state’s border with Karnataka. OMC has two leases that will come up for renewal in June 2027, if not cancelled earlier. One lease is over 68.5 hectares, the other over 38.5 hectares.

Young men between 15 and 25 have stopped studying. They’ve been given bikes and phones and made to spy

Companies considered friendly to Reddy, or influenced by him, also got iron ore leases in Anantapur. Bellary Iron Ores Pvt Ltd has a lease for 44.52 hectares that lasts until the year 2016, Y Mahabaleshwarappa and Sons has a lease for 60.7 hectares until 2018, Sai Balaji Minerals has a lease for 4.04 hectares until 2027, and a lease in the name of ‘Murli Mohan Reddy’ is listed for 4.7 hectares until 2028. These are the only leases granted for iron ore mining in Anantapur.

Reddy began mining legally in the area he was allowed to. However, the quality of iron ore in Anantapur was poor, with barely 35 percent Fe. This was not what he got into mining for. This was never going to make him a big player. By then, however, Reddy had built a crafty team of advisors who have today built a reputation for almost always thinking ahead. One of those advisors, who spent years as an advocate in Andhra Pradesh, apparently put it into Reddy’s head that he must mine in Karnataka and show the mining as done in his Andhra Pradesh mines. That would get him the high quality ore. But, the leases were already given out in Karnataka and Reddy would have to wait 20 years when the leases would be looked at anew.

SUCH WAS the madness in Bellary that everyone, even those who couldn’t afford to buy expensive machinery and were using pickaxes and shovels, were at it in any bit of open land. It was like gold rush. Says Hegde: “You could also find many illegal mineral storage plots there. Storing mineral is again controlled by law. But no law is followed here and in the process, we found huge illegal mining.” Thus, there were two problems now. Reddy couldn’t get a lease in Karnataka for 20 years and he couldn’t be like the others, desperately chancing luck in every bit of open land.

The Reddys pay Rs 27 per tonne of ore to the state. They sell at Rs 7,000 and make about Rs 20 crore a day

So, Reddy began looking for mine owners who had leases but didn’t have the expensive machinery and men to do the mining. He also put his men to scout for disputes between mine owners. Indian law states that a mining lease can lapse if mining is not done for two years after a lease is granted. Mine owners with no money to mine were likely to lose the lease. Also, owners with disputes would get hit because courts rarely deliver a verdict in two years. Such mine owners were easy pickings for Reddy. Reddy offered to resolve disputes.

IT WAS a typical street manoeuvre. Both sides prefer to pay a man with muscle and get on, instead of trusting the state to deliver. Reddy is believed to have begun mining in Karnataka on leases where the owners had no men or machines to do so, and where the owners had disputes. Reddy’s rivals accuse him of doing this in the form of a ‘raising contract’, a sort of a rent agreement where Reddy agrees to do the work for a cost. According to an estimate 48 of the 65 mine owners working in Bellary have ‘raising contracts’ with Reddy, where he pays the paltry royalty for the ore he transports.


HEAVY HITTERS Anjaneya, a former Reddy employee, has become a whistleblower

Getting the ore from the mines to the port is a huge process. To do so, you need two permits: a Mineral Dispatch Permit, given by the Mines and Geology Department, and a Forest Way Permit, given by the Forests Department. In addition, the trucks have to be loaded correctly. A single rear-axle vehicle, which has four wheels at the back and two wheels in the front, has loadable capacity of 15 MT (metric tonnes). A double rear axle vehicle has a legal capacity of 25 MT. To drive them, you need drivers with proper licences. And there is only so much ore that each mine is allowed to send out a day, which the Indian Bureau of Mines calculates individually for each mine based on height, area, etc.

Transporting the ore legally was a drag for the OMC. It reeked of conformity and had nothing to do with ambition. To go where he wants to, Reddy needs money fast. So, his men overload vehicles and order them to make the trip from the mines to the ports and back rapidly. This means doing more than 600 km in less than 24 hours, day after day, from the nearest port. A 15 MT truck is often loaded with 24 MT or more, while a 25 MT truck can have up to 50 MT. You can’t see the material in a properly loaded truck, because it will be below eye level when the back of a truck is clasped shut. An overloaded truck will have material than can be seen, because it goes above the sides of a truck when the back is shut. It’s easy to spot. Yet, between 30 percent and 50 percent of the trucks are overloaded and no one stops them. On a good day, the Reddys make about Rs 20 crore with close to 10,000 trucks doing the rounds. On lean days, they still make about Rs 12 crore.


Janardhana Reddy with Karnataka BJP leaders

When TEHELKA hit the road, there wasn’t a single check post on the way. It was shocking. It’s a free run on the roads. Many trucks ply with false permits. Genuine permits are computer prints with a hologram. Fake permits are printed and come in gaudy colours. Till a few weeks ago, trucks sent by ‘the company’ had a small card with a swastika on it. The drivers simply waved the swastika and carried on. It was a code that those trucks were not to be touched. When the authorities got wind of it in Bengaluru, the swastika was discontinued. But, the fake permits change every few days. In late February-early March, the Lokayukta’s office raided the Bellikere port at dawn. They found virtually every truck carrying a fake permit, which they say comes from the Reddy group. The sleuths seized fake permits enough to fill two gunny bags.

Reddy is building himself a 60-room house with bomb-proof shelters and a helipad for his night-vision chopper


and with LK Advani and Sushma Swaraj, his key backer

SUCH RAIDS are rare and done with extreme caution. UV Singh, a key investigator, never sleeps at the same place more than one night while in Bellary. He always travels incognito, mostly at night. He wears a lungi and covers his face with a towel, just like the locals do. He travels with a driver in an unmarked car and checks the trucks at night. If spotted, he would be a dead duck. But he can’t travel with a posse in any case, because that would mean advertising his location. For the Bellikere raid, Singh and his men travelled by state roadways buses and spent hours stalking the port. They pretended to pray at a nearby temple and hit the port swiftly before anyone knew what was happening.

Such raids usually have two effects. The code word for the overloaded trucks is changed and more trucks are sent to the ports in frenzy. This is because they know that another raid could take weeks and months. Some time ago, nearly 10,000 lorries were leaving every day from Sandur and Hospet for the Bellikere and Goa ports. This caused a great demand for drivers. They couldn’t find that many drivers with licences, and so the cleaners were asked to drive on the way back from the ports while the driver slept after taking the truck to the port from the mine.

There are always thousands of trucks on the roads at night. It can get nightmarish some nights as the trucks zip by endlessly. At times, it can take 30 minutes before there is a break in the line of trucks. Plus, when cleaners drive trucks, the chances of an accident increase. Also, the roads in Karnataka are not built to handle 10,000 trucks one way and 10,000 trucks the other way. Most roads now resemble craters.

The cost of taking ore from a mine to the port is about Rs 300 to Rs 400 a tonne. The same tonne is sold for about Rs 5,500 currently, when there is a recession. More than a year ago, a tonne sold at over Rs 7,000. Such incredible profit margins meant that Reddy’s profile changed drastically. He got richer by the day, while Bellary continued to languish. The beauty of such an arrangement is that barely anything can be proven in court. There’s nothing on paper in Karnataka to link the Reddys to anything illegal. It’s only when the investigators get a break, like with the hundreds of fake permits at the Bellikere port, that they can even begin to try to get their man.

Mining illegally also means you need a place to store the stuff you shouldn’t have taken out in the first place. So, some investigators in the Lokayukta’s team found huge areas of forests used for dumping the material. Says Hegde: “The encroachment was such that no person with the desire to maintain the ecology or the environment would ever get in.” Then, there is the pollution. The iron ore is often carried in open body vehicles. The dust flies and en route, all water bodies, plants, and houses, everything, turns red.

Anjaneya, the Reddys’ chief mining officer, was kidnapped to stop him from blowing the whistle

TO DO all this and stay ahead of the system every day is a colossal task that Reddy appears to have managed superbly so far. But there was still one big thing. Even if he manages to grab a share of every mine in Bellary, which is not the case because a few owners are resisting him, he still needs to show that the stuff has come from his mines in Andhra Pradesh. The way to do this is to extend the area of the OMC from Anantapur into Karnataka. This is where the altering of the boundary between Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka comes in – and this is where Anjaneya, the deputy general manager who threatened to blow the whistle early on in the story, returns to the narrative.

In the AGK mines, where Anjaneya worked, they changed the inter-state boundary pillars (which are on the hilltop) frequently. Since the Andhra Pradesh government was friendly with Reddy, things went smoothly each time the Andhra side made an inspection. They would help the Reddys push the boundaries into Karnataka, and when the Karnataka side visited, the Reddys would put the boundary pillars back at the original spot.

Apparently, the boundaries were changed two to three times in a year. A trijunction point, which was a marker since the British times, was demolished and created confusion on where the base point was for any surveyor to identify. The trijunction point was a permanent mark, deeply chiselled, marked and written on rock. It was blasted and thrown away as waste. Anjaneya says he can pinpoint the tri-junction point that has been blasted if given protection and taken to the spot.

“It happened under my supervision. I sent people to do it. I had instructions from [BV] Sreenivas Reddy [a managing director of OMC who appears early in this story]. Sreenivas Reddy would get instructions from the top boss [Janardhana Reddy]. Sreenivas Reddy came one day and showed the tri-junction point to me. He said by this evening, it should not be there. I instructed a foreman and he did the job,” says Anjaneya.

By thus altering the boundaries and working in the Karnataka mines, the OMC is said to have exported 27 lakh tonnes of commercial grade iron ore in the name of the AGK mine. Early on, the ore was transported from Karnataka and stocked near the Kakinada and Krishnapatnam ports in Andhra Pradesh. But, after YSR’s death, the OMC has sensed that it is dangerous to risk Andhra now and has stuck largely to ports in Karnataka. To take the ore from Karnataka to Andhra, the OMC is understood to have constructed a spanking 4 km road through the forests. This is the subject of another investigation.

ACCORDING TO Anjaneya, a deputy GM with the OMC, PM Shiv Kumar, prepared the production reports, which were given to the Indian Bureau of Mines, the Department of Mines and Geology, the Department of Forests, and the Director-General of Mines Safety. “He would prepare monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and annual reports showing production in the AKG mine, call me to his office, and take my signature.”

Reddy’s money funded ‘Operation Kamal’ that brought the BJP to power in Karnataka. Delhi is their next stop

Boundaries between mines were altered as well. “The pillars, made of cement and brick, are meant to show the point from where a neighbour mine has to be surveyed. The pillars would have the respective names of the mines and the mining lease numbers on either side. The law says there should be a pillar every 20 metres between mines. But they have converted these pillars into mobile units, which move at will. They have changed everything.”

Anjaneya recalls a specific instance of the OMC grabbing another mine. “One day in 2008, Sreenivas Reddy [the MD] instructed me to go and attack the workers in the neighbouring Tumti mine. I did not. Instead, I sent a message in the morning asking them to stop work in their mine. When I found the work going on, I sent another message at 4 pm saying our MD has asked them to stop working. They did not. Then, Sreenivas Reddy called me as I was leaving for the day. He asked if the work had stopped. I said I sent two messages but they did not stop. Reddy said I should have kicked them into submission and got them to stop. ‘You can’t do even this’, he said. So, I returned to the mine.

“Reddy came there with seven or eight people. They rode in Scorpios. Some goondas followed them and attacked a foreman of the Tumti mine. The foreman who was being attacked did not know who Sreenivas Reddy was or who the attackers were. He knew only me. He identified me and filed a case against me and 15 others. The case is going on in a Sandur court, listed as crime number 99 in Toranagallu police station.”

The Reddys thus have reason to keep Anjaneya quiet. In a series of brutal incidents, Anjaneya’s family was targeted, he attempted suicide and survived, he was kidnapped, his son-in-law was harassed and has also attempted suicide, and he is now in a Bengaluru house from where he doesn’t step out. Reddy, meanwhile, is believed to be working towards making Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj the next prime minister. Sonia Gandhi has already been warned about this.

Indian Army Chief’s Outrageous Admission of Armoured Debacle Stuns The World

January 18, 2010

By Makhdoom Babar

(Additional reporting by Ajay Mehta in New Delhi & Hina Kayani in Rawalpindi)

While the Indians celebrate 62nd Army Day, country’s Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor, just after a couple of weeks of announcing a new war doctrine of Indian army to eliminate Pakistan and China in matter of hours even if it has to fight on simultaneous fronts, outrageously admitted Indian Army’s Armoured debacle and expressed concern about the force’s ‘night blindness’ in the area of Armoured Corps and mechanised infantry. ‘My major concern is that night blindness of the army is removed so we are able to fight in the night as in the day,’ Kapoor said at New Delhi Yesterday, an admission that stunned the world in the back drop of his two weeks old remarks. The situation also forced Indian Defence Minister Antony to chew his own buts as he had been endorsing and projecting General Kapoor’s announcement regarding the new war doctrine for Pakistan and China Earlier, when his attention was brought to the fact that the Indian Army’s tanks have a night vision capability of 20 percent, Pakistan’s have 80 percent while China has 100 percent, General Deepak Kapoor admitted this outrageous military debacle by saying: ‘You are right.’

‘Projects are already in the pipeline to ensure that we have the night vision capability that our adversaries have. It may take three-four years,’ Kapoor added. The lack of night vision capability of the Indian Army has affected its fighting capability during the night. The deficiency has been persistent since the Kargil conflict.

On a query about the obsolete artillery of the Indian Army, the army chief said that successive bans have delayed acquisition of new guns for long. ‘Artillery is a cause for concern. We need to have better guns. Trials for towed guns are underway. Because of bans the process got delayed. We are now acquiring (ultra light) guns through FMS (Foreign Military Sales) route (from the US),’ Kapoor added.

The Daily mail’s investigations into the matter reveal that despite a numerical strength of tanks over Pakistan, Indian army otherwise armoured and infantry capabilities are even below average if compared with Pakistan Army. According to these findings, Indian armoured corps comprises around 4, 059 tanks with a backup of 1, 133 as reserve while Pakistan Army’s Tank strength is 2,401 with a backup of 270 as reserves. However this numerical supremacy of Indian army is outraged with the fact that Indian armoured corps relies mainly on its Main Battle Tank (MBT) Arjun which emerged as a big failure while Pakistan Army’s armoured corps’ main strength has become Al-Khalid MBT which is a great success story, endorsed across the world. But the latest admission of Indian Army Chief about failure of its armoured corps to fight a battle in the night time is an additional and a rather huge disadvantage to the Indian Army and crystal clearly negates the claims of Indian Army Chief regarding smooth victory in case Indian army has to fight a war with Pakistan or China or even both at the same time.

The Daily Mail’s findings further disclose that India’s MBT Arjun is more flab than brawn. More a heavyweight than a performer. A potpourri really, with a French engine, and German seals fitted into an Indian hull and turret. And transporting this heavyweight is going to be another problem, which could limit its operational performance.
These findings further indicate that Arjun has indeed suffered throughout its development, from confusion and inexplicable delays and by imbalances between the Army, the DRDO and the bureaucracy. Pakistan by contrast, has drawn a lesson from the Indian experience and avoided the trap of over lasting her R&D’s indigenous know-how in the development of its MBT Al-Khalid.

The Daily Mail’s findings indicate that Arjun mounts a 120mm rifled gun deadly in lethal power but wanting in accuracy. Its performance in various trails was reported to be anything but up to the mark. It is believed that during in March 1990, General V. N. Sharma, the then Army Chief of Staff and an armoured expert, was “quite wild” when only three of the five rounds hit the 5X5 meter target and no hit was scored against a moving target.

According to Major General M. L. Popli (retd.) of the Indian Army, Arjun’s production was basically planned as an ambitious project with complete indigenous components and assemblies but it was later revealed that the Arjun’s sub-systems were all imported except for the hull and the turret. The imported assemblies include all major sub-systems such as engine, transmission, track-suspension, gin and fire control. Our experts are of the view that their integration, “leaves much to be desired”. The auxiliary power unit from France did not perfectly fit in the tank, with the German seals not meeting the General Staff qualitative requirements of withstanding temperatures up to 150 degree Centigrade. The barely measured up to 120 degrees. Arjun is therefore quite a “fuss” with the French engine, with German seals fitted into the Indian hull and turret mounting a not very accurate 120mm gun.

Armoured experts say that another problem thrown up by the heavyweight is its transportation. Arjun could present a lot of problem for transportation by railways particularly through certain portions of the system. This imposes very serious limitations on the Arjun’s operational performance. In most of the field armies, the tank transporters and assault bridges are not usually designed to take such heavy weights. These aspects mostly highlight the engineering and operational problems.

According to The Daily Mail’s findings, global military analysts say that Pakistan adopted a step-by-step approach towards the manufacture of its MBT-2000 Khalid, and this is the single most important reason for having stolen a march over India. They are of the opinion that the Indian project was too ambitious, whereas Pakistan’s approach was more systematic comprising the following phases and that was why Pakistan Army got a well prepared MBT while the Indian Armoured Corps was equipped with huffing, overweight and inaccurate Tank system.

The Daily Mail findings indicate that clear technical and professional edges of Pakistan Army’s Armoured Corps over Indian Army’s Armoured Corp are valid reasons to make General kapoor a really apprehensive Chief of Indian Army. These findings indicate that Pakistan’s MBT-2000 Khalid mounts a 125mm gun with thermal image converter. Maximum efforts were devoted to getting the machine souped up as possible mainly to cut down weight. Just compare the 60 tons Arjun with the maximum 44 tons Al- khalid.

It is essential to mention that Al-Khalid is equipped with 105mm gun with a more powerful engine, special armour for increased protection in the indigenously built laser range finder and thermal image sighting system to maximize the gun range even in the hours of acute darkness, enabling Pakistan Army’s armoured Corps to enjoy a complete technical and professional Supremacy of over Indian Armoured Corps; a fact that now worries Indian Army Chief the most. Further more, Al-Khalid MBT has an integrated fire control system for reducing engagement time and increasing accuracy, along with the automatic fire support system. This tank’s most lethal component, the penetrater ammunition called Armour Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot (APFSDS), is also being indigenously produced. This project has been designated P-87. Currently, a series of such closely related projects to manufacture hull, turret, gun barrels and engines are in various stages of planning-execution. All these will finally merged into a tank manufacturing factory that will produce MBT-2000 Khalid.

The Daily Mail’s findings indicate that despite the disgraceful admission of the Indian Army Chief regarding Indian Armoured Corps’ inability to combat a battle in the night, the Indian Army is already going through a very depressed and dejected phase and many of the missile systems, given to the Indian army have also emerged as seriously faulty and rather super-flops battle tools. These investigations indicate that many of the tests of Missile systems, carried out by Indian DRDO and declared officially as successful, have actually got a highly dubious result history.

The Daily Mail’s investigations reveal that the failure in rapid succession of Astra missile system, a satellite launcher and a new ballistic missile have shown up the technological and budgetary difficulties faced by India’s space establishment, both civilian and military.

These investigations indicate that India’s intermediate-range ballistic missile “Agni III” that was launched by the secretive Defense Research Development Organization (DRDO) failed soon after liftoff and crashed into the Bay of Bengal, less than 1,000 kilometers away from the launch site.

The failure of the Agni III was a very serious matter because it exposed the political limitations of India’s attempts, despite its ambitions, to pursue a military capability.

The surface-to-surface ballistic missile, designed to have a range of 3,500 kilometers, took off in a “fairly smooth” manner at the designated hour. But “a series of mishaps” occurred in its later flight path.

Earlier, India decided to postpone the missile test out of fear that a test could hamper US Congressional ratification of the India-US nuclear cooperation deal. Publicly, the then Indian Defense Minister cited “self-imposed restraint” to justify the postponement.

However, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military, visited India and declared that “I do not see it [a test] as destabilizing” or upsetting the regional “military balance” since “other countries in this region” (read, Pakistan) have also tested missiles.Following this “facilitation” or clearance, and after indications of favorable votes in US Congressional committees on the nuclear deal, India’s stand changed. A week later, the DRDO announced it was ready to launch Agni-III.

This was the ninth missile in the Agni series (named after the Sanskrit word for “fire”) to have been tested. The first was tested in May 1989. The last test (Agni-II) took place in August 2004.

The Daily Mail’s investigations indicate that unlike major powers including the US, Russia or China, which test the same missile 10 to 20 times before announcing that it is fully developed, India considers only three or four test flights to be enough for both producing and inducting new missiles and thus ended up with inaccurate results and the success story was announced in a hasty manner.

These investigations disclose that this was not the first time that the test of an Agni series missile failed. As earlier, some tests of the shorter range Agni-II (range 2,000 kilometers-plus) also proved unsuccessful. However what made the Agni-III’s failure significant was that unlike its shorter-range predecessors, it was a wholly new design, developed with the specific purpose of delivering a nuclear warhead.

The Daily Mail’s findings indicate that Agni-I (range 700 to 800 kilometers) and Agni-II were both products of India’s space program and connected to its Integrated Guided Missile Development Program (IGMDP), itself launched in 1983. Originally, their design used a satellite space-launching rocket (SLV-3) as the first stage, on top of which was mounted the very short-range (150 to 250 kilometers) liquid fuel-propelled Prithvi missile.

The Agni-III’s brand new design, in which both stages use solid propellants, was to enable it to carry a payload weighing up to 1.5 tons and deliver it to targets as far away as Beijing and Shanghai. At present, India lacks an effective nuclear deterrent vis-a-vis China, based on a delivery vehicle carrying a nuclear warhead. Agni-III was meant to fill the void.

The causes of the failure of the test flight are not clear. Scientists at the DRDO, which designed and built the missile, have been quoted as saying that many new technologies were tried in the Agni-III, including rocket motors, “fault-tolerant” avionics and launch control and guidance systems. Some of these could have failed. Other reports attribute the mishap to problems with the propellant.”The DRDO isn’t the world’s most reliable weapons R&D agency,” Admiral L Ramdas, a former Chief of Staff of the Indian Navy, told The Daily Mail. “The Indian armed services’ experience with DRDO-made armaments has not been a happy one. Their reliability is often extremely poor. We often used to joke that one had to pray they would somehow work in the battlefield,” he added “The figure of the budget of DRDO is extremely high for a poor country like India, with a low rank of 127 among 175 countries of the world in the United Nations Human Development Index,” said Anil Chowdhary of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. “Yet the DRDO has delivered very little.”

The Daily Mail’s findings indicate that none of the three major projects assigned to the DRDO were completed on time or without huge cost-overruns. These include the development of a Main Battle Tank (MBT), a nuclear power plant for a submarine, and an advanced Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), all involving expenditures of hundreds of millions of dollars.

“The primary reason for these shocking instances of underperformance and inability is lack of public accountability and oversight of the DRDO,” says M V Ramana, an independent technical expert attached to the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore.

“The DRDO, like all of India’s defense and nuclear service establishments, is not subject to normal processes of audit. It has used ‘security’ as a smokescreen or shield and refused to be held to account,” he adds.

The Daily Mail’s investigations disclose that Pakistan, in sharp contrast, has always accorded high priority to its air defence management, with its multi-tier surveillance cover, air defence fighters, quick-reaction, short-range missiles and an integrated control and reporting system.

The Indian Armed Forces, however, continues to make do with its obsolete air defence systems, The IAF, for instance, has aging Pechora, Igla-1M and OSA-AK missile systems, and that, too, in woefully inadequate numbers. While Trishul was to replace its OSA-AK weapons system, Akash was meant as a substitute for Pechora.

The Daily Mail’s findings reveal further that But both the Trishul and Akash air defence missile systems, which are part of the original Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme launched as far back as 1983, have been dogged by development snags in their “command guidance and integrated Ramjet rocket propulsion” systems.

Trishul, for instance, has been tested over 80 times so far without coming anywhere near becoming operational. It was, in fact, virtually given up for dead in 2003 after around Rs 300 crore was spent on it, before being revived yet again.

Trishul’s repeated failure, in fact, forced the Indian Navy to go in for nine Israeli Barak anti-missile defence systems for its frontline warships, along with 200 Barak missiles, at a cost of Rs 1,510 crore during the 1999 Kargil conflict.

The Daily Mail’s investigations reveal that India’s missile scientists are on record to have said that the country’s indigenous missile programme is flagging and needs foreign assistance to revive it.

The embarrassing admission came amid claims by Indian analysts that Pakistan’s missile programme had proved to be more robust and surefooted than India’s. The Mail Today, an Indian newspaper is on record to have quoted the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) as announcing that it would scrap its 25-year Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) very soon.Talking about the Trishul surface-to-air missile that has now been termed a technology demonstrator, former Indian Naval Chief Sushil Kumar said:”It was a national embarrassment. DRDO made fake claims for 25 years. In the 1999 Kargil conflict, the Navy was vulnerable to attacks from Pakistan’s Harpoon.

“Finally the project was scrapped when the Navy went in for the Israeli Barak missiles. The Prithvi’s naval variant, Dhanush, is also flawed and ill-conceived, which is being inflicted on the Indian Navy. Former Air Chief S. P. Tyagi said:”Akash was to be ready at a certain time, but it wasn’t. I had to change everything to make up for the delay.” Both missiles were part of a programme to develop indigenous weapons, which began in July 1983, with plans for Agni, Prithvi, Trishul, Akash and Nag missiles.

The IGMDP, which was aimed at achieving self-sufficiency in missile development and production, comprises five core missile programmes; the strategic Agni ballistic missile; the tactical Prithvi ballistic missile; the Akash and Trishul surface-to-air missiles and the Nag anti-tank guided missile.

Indian newspaper, The Mail Today quotes S. Prahlada, Chief of the Control Research and Development, DRDO, as saying that development and production of most of the futuristic weapon systems would henceforth be undertaken with foreign collaboration.

With regard to the nuclear-capable Agni series, comprising I and II, the newspaper quoted army sources as saying while they had been tested five times each “a handful of tests are not enough to prove a missile’s worth”. There were different problems with other systems too.

“Pakistan has always been one step ahead of India in its missile programme,” the newspaper said, adding that Islamabad has “a much more robust missile force than India, one capable of launching nuclear weapons to any part in this country.” Unlike Indian missiles, which were declared “inducted” after a few tests, the Pakistani projectiles have always been thoroughly tested.

With this state of affairs in the direction of the missile systems, coupled the Armoured Corps’s inability to combat a night vision battle, one should must salute the Indian Military leadership to have come up with the announcement of evolving an innovative war doctrine to crush Pakistan as well as China and that too in hours’ time.

China backs efforts for independent Palestinian state

January 18, 2010

RIYADH (AFP) – China on Wednesday endorsed efforts to create an independent Palestinian state as Saudi Arabia hardened its accusations that Israel is preventing a settlement of the Middle East conflict .


China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi speaks during a joint press conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saudi al-Faisal in Riyadh. China on Wednesday endorsed efforts to create an independent Palestinian state as Saudi Arabia hardened its accusations that Israel is preventing a settlement of the Middle East conflict.

“China will continue its support for the Palestinian effort to establish an independent state,” Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said on a visit to Riyadh .

Yang said at a news conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal that China supports the principles of a two-state solution under the Saudi-driven Arab Peace Initiative , which calls for an independent Palestinian state based on 1967 borders and with Jerusalem as its capital.

Saud, meanwhile, stepped up the rhetoric over Israel’s refusal to freeze the construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and begin talks with the Palestinians.

“This is the longest conflict in modern times,” Saud said.

“The reason why this conflict is long is the refusal by Israel of all the attempts to end this conflict. Arab countries have done their job with the Arab Peace Initiative, which gives Israel security, and gives the Arab countries the restoration of their lands.

“But peace should be established by two sides, not just one side. If one side does not want peace, peace will not be achieved,” he said.

The comments came as both the US and Saudis have increased efforts to push the Palestinians and Israelis into final-status peace talks that would result in an independent Palestinian state.

Amid a sharp increase in regional diplomacy, White House National Security Adviser James Jones met Saudi King Abdullah late Tuesday on the first stop of a regional tour that will take him to Israel and the Palestinian territories .

US Middle East special envoy George Mitchell is also expected to visit soon.

The two sides remained at odds over the key issue of Israeli settlements .

The Palestinians and their Arab backers — with Saudi Arabia one of the most important — insist that peace talks cannot resume until Israel freezes the construction of Jewish settlements in the West bank and East Jerusalem.

Israel and the United States say talks should proceed with no preconditions.


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