India Views Events In Pakistan With Growing Horror

The Times Of India details the growing fears of Indian government officials over Pakistan border instability and the possibility of an Islamic extremist takeover :

With Pakistan tottering on the brink of uncertainty after Benazir Bhutto's assassination, the Indian security and foreign policy establishment promptly went into a huddle on Thursday evening to discuss the implications for India.

The first reading of the situation was there would be "no immediate repercussions" for India in terms of a jihadi or any other spillover from across the border.

The Pakistan Army as well as the nefarious ISI, as it is, are getting increasingly bogged down within their own borders to create major mischief across their eastern flank in India.

The mid-term to long-term estimate, however, held that the emerging situation with fundamentalists pushing the jihadi envelope from the frontier areas to well-fortified garrison towns in Pakistan, was fraught with serious consequences for India.

"An unstable Pakistan, in the danger of imploding, does have security implications for us. The terror infrastructure in Pakistan and PoK directed against India is, after all, still very much intact," said a top security official.

Far more serious is the fear that the threat of a fundamentalist takeover is not just a wargame scenario, but a possibility getting stronger by the day. "Groups of terrorists enjoying state patronage are worrisome enough. But the cost that we may have to pay if they get to control the state apparatus, the army and nuclear arsenal can't even be comprehended," said an intelligence officer.

Massive New Asia Alliance Takes Shape To Counter United States

Russia And China's Armed Forces War-Game Together For The First Time

The American media, and the Bush administration, have pretended the following news isn't reality. Or important. And for good reason. Even the idea that Russia and China are now forming a psuedo-military alliance, and working out through wargames how their forces and arsenal can compliment each other in a future clash of the superpowers, is enough to rattle America to its foundations.

That a Russia-China alliance could eventually take in most of the Asia 'Stans, along with Pakistan and India, is all but beyond Western comprehension.

It's important to remember, as we consistently point out on this blog, that both China and Russia have opposed greater isolation of their energy partner Iran through the UN Security Council, and have made diplomatic-level promises to defend their "interests' in Iran, in the event of strikes by the United States or Israel.

From the London Times :

Russian and Chinese troops are joining forces this week in the first military exercises by an international organisation that is regarded in some quarters as a potential rival to Nato.

Thousands of soldiers and 500 combat vehicles will take part in “Peace Mission 2007”, organised by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia. Russian officials have also proposed an alliance between the SCO and a body representing most of the former Soviet republics.

Scores of Russian and Chinese aircraft begin joint exercises tomorrow before a week of military manoeuvres from Thursday that will include Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. At least 6,500 troops are involved in what is described as an antiterror exercise.

Colonel-General Vladimir Moltenskoi, the deputy commander of Russian ground forces, said: “The exercise will involve practically all SCO members for the first time in its history.”

Staff officers from Uzbekistan, the sixth SCO member, will also attend in what is being regarded as a major extension of the organisation’s capabilities. The SCO was founded as a nonmilitary alliance in 2001 to combat drugs and weapons smuggling as well as terrorism and separatism in the region. It has since developed a role in regional trade and is increasingly regarded by Moscow and Beijing as a counterweight to US global influence.

The secretary-general of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) called last week for joint military exercises with the SCO. Nikolai Bordyuzha said that the body representing Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan should work with the SCO to guarantee security across the region.

Mr Bordyuzha has already announced a CSTO plan to create a large military force capable of assisting a member state in the event of an attack. A rapid-reaction force is already based in Central Asia and there are plans for a common air defence system covering most of the former Soviet Union.

Leaders of SCO member states will meet in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, next week for their annual summit. Turkmenistan will also attend for the first time, while Mongolia, Iran, India and Pakistan have observer status.

To recap, Russia and China are wargaming together, and through the SCO, Mongolia, Iran, India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are all involved in some capacity with the war games, and the expansion of solidifying of military and security ties amongst the SCO member and observer nations.

It's a remarkable and historic event, worthy of more than the minimal attention it has recieved in the Western media, so far.

The London Times piece also lays out the figures for military personnel strength of China, Russia and the United States :

Russia

$24.9bn Russian defence budget 2006

395,000 on active service in army

142,000 in active service in navy

160,000 on active service in air force $35.3bn Chinese defence budget

China

$35.3bn Chinese defence budget

1.6m Army

255,000 Navy

400,000 Air force

United States

$535bn US defence budget

595,946 Army

376,750 Navy

347,400 Air force

More To Come...

INSIDE INDIA'S 'WAR ON TERROR'

Arubdhati Roy supplies a detailed and troubling look inside the 'War On Terror' now being waged by India. Once again, close examination of a country's use of the 'War On Terror' to fight other battles also reveals how the cover of the terror war can be exploited.

It also gets into what hapens once the headlines of 'Terrorists Caught' fade and the court cases begin. Like in the United States, the UK and Australia, what appears to be the 'official story' is anything but when it is taken apart in a court room

The whole story is definitely worth a read.

From the UK Guardian (exccrpts) :

Five years ago this week, on December 13 2001, the Indian parliament was in its winter session. The government was under attack for yet another corruption scandal.

At 11.30 in the morning, five armed men in a white Ambassador car fitted out with an improvised explosive device drove through the gates of Parliament House.

When they were challenged, they jumped out of the car and opened fire. In the gun battle that followed, all the attackers were killed. Eight security personnel and a gardener were killed too.

The dead terrorists, the police said, had enough explosives to blow up the parliament building, and enough ammunition to take on a whole battalion of soldiers. Unlike most terrorists, these five left behind a thick trail of evidence - weapons, mobile phones, phone numbers, ID cards, photographs, packets of dried fruit and even a love letter.

Not surprisingly, prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee seized the opportunity to compare the assault to the September 11 attacks in the US only three months previously.

On December 14 2001, the day after the attack on parliament, the Special Cell (anti-terrorist squad) of the Delhi police claimed it had tracked down several people suspected of being involved in the conspiracy.

The next day, it announced that it had "cracked the case": the attack, the police said, was a joint operation carried out by two Pakistan-based terrorist groups, Lashkar- e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Three Kashmiri men, Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani, Shaukat Hussain Guru and Mohammad Afzal, and Shaukat's wife, Afsan Guru, were arrested.

In the tense days that followed, parliament was adjourned. The Indian government declared that Pakistan - America's closest ally in the "war on terror" - was a terrorist state.

On December 21, India recalled its high commissioner from Pakistan, suspended air, rail and bus communications and banned air traffic with Pakistan. It put into motion a massive mobilisation of its war machinery, and moved more than half a million troops to the Pakistan border.

Foreign embassies evacuated their staff and citizens, and tourists travelling to India were issued cautionary travel advisories. The world watched with bated breath as the subcontinent was taken to the brink of nuclear war. All this cost India an estimated pounds 1.1bn of public money. About 800 soldiers died in the panicky process of mobilisation alone.

For all these reasons it is critical that we consider carefully the strange, sad and utterly sinister story of the December 13 attack. It tells us a great deal about the way the world's largest "democracy" really works.

If you follow the story carefully, you will encounter two sets of masks. First, the mask of consummate competence (accused arrested, "case cracked" in two days flat), and then, when things began to come undone, the benign mask of shambling incompetence (shoddy evidence, procedural flaws, material contradictions).

But underneath all of this - as several lawyers, academics and journalists who have studied the case in detail have shown - is something more sinister, more worrying. Over the past few years the worries have grown into a mountain of misgivings, impossible to ignore.

Through the fissures, those who have come under scrutiny - shadowy individuals, counter-intelligence and security agencies, political parties - are beginning to surface. They wave flags, hurl abuse, issue hot denials and cover their tracks with more and more untruths.
Thus they reveal themselves.

The official version of the story of the parliament attack is very quickly coming apart at the seams. Even the supreme court judgment, with all its flaws of logic and leaps of faith, does not accuse Afzal of being the mastermind of the attack.

So who was the mastermind?

A genuine inquiry would have to mean far more than just a political witch-hunt. It would have to look into the part played by intelligence, counter-insurgency and security agencies as well.

Offences such as the fabrication of evidence and the blatant violation of procedural norms have already become established in the courts, but they look very much like just the tip of the iceberg.

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