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Thursday, April 09, 2020

Explainer: Donald Trump's Decision to Cancel 'Secret' Talks With the Taliban

On Monday, US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad had announced that an “in principle” agreement had been arrived at between the US and the Taliban after nine rounds of talks held between their representatives in Doha, Qatar for the past year or so.
Under the accord, roughly 5,000 US soldiers would be withdrawn in 135 days after the deal was signed and the remaining 9,500 US and 8,600 mainly NATO forces would be withdrawn in phases thereafter.
Speaking late last month, US President Donald Trump said that he had planned to withdraw most US forces, leaving 8,600 behind.
But then, abruptly on Saturday, Trump said he had called off a secret face-to-face meeting with the Taliban, scheduled to be held at the US Presidential Retreat in Camp David on Sunday. Separately, Trump was also scheduled to meet President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan.
Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday. They were coming to the United States tonight. Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to..
52.3K people are talking about this
....an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? They didn’t, they....
....only made it worse! If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight?
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The secret talks were called off, Trump said, because the militants acknowledged their role in a recent bomb attack in Kabul that had killed a US soldier in Afghanistan. He accused the Taliban of a wanton attack  “that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people” in order to “seemingly strengthen their bargaining position”.
On Thursday, the Taliban had claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing in the eastern part of Kabul that killed 12 people, including a Romanian and an American soldier, and wounded dozens.
The Taliban and the Afghan delegations were, by Trump’s own account, scheduled to  arrive in the US on Saturday night. So far, the US has kept the Afghan government at arm’s length in the peace talks. Ghani, on the other hand, has been insisting that the Taliban declare a ceasefire immediately and hold talks with the Afghan government. The Taliban has refused, saying that the Kabul government is illegitimate. After being briefed about the “in principle” deal, Ghani had complained that it had no penalties for the Taliban were it to not honour its conditions.
Despite signs that the US was willing to make a deal with the Taliban and the repeated rounds of talks, the Taliban refused to end their campaign of violence against the Afghan government forces and the foreign forces in the country. So far 16 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year. But the worst brunt has been of Afghans themselves, who have been collateral casualties in the conflict. Though the Taliban do not control any major cities, they control more territory than at any time since the US-led campaign forced them out.
Just why Trump decided to pull out at the last minute is not clear. But it is not an unusual action on his part. Consider his recent decision to cancel his visit to Denmark, because the country refused to discuss the sale of Greenland. He later also cancelled an important visit to Poland that was part of the European tour to Copenhagen, because he said he had to monitor Hurricane Dorian whose limits he had fudged with a pen.
Maybe the penny finally dropped about the proximity of the talks with the 9/11 anniversary. A Taliban delegation in Camp David, along with the death of the US soldier in Afghanistan, may have been taken badly by his own nationalistic base. On the other hand, however, it could be that Trump finally realised that the Taliban refusal to stop its violence was, indeed, giving it leverage in the situation. The Taliban, though, insists that it is not under any obligation to stop attacks unless there is a full ceasefire in place. And it will not agree to a ceasefire till all the foreign forces have pulled out.
The US administration appears to be divided on a deal, with a report that secretary of state Mike Pompeo is refusing to sign the “in principle” agreement that Khalilzad has hammered out. Though secretary of defence Mark Esper met Trump on September 3, he has refused to reveal his views on what he says are “ongoing” negotiations.
In his 2016 election campaign, Trump had called for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, but of late he had been arguing that the US would maintain a presence of around 9,000 troops, the same number that had been there at the time he took office. But there has been no dearth of warnings from observers saying that the agreement would destabilise the situation and lead to a collapse of the Afghan state and a return of the medieval group that had enforced what they call the Shariat laws and brutalised women.

The Trump move is, however, likely to be temporary. He is keen to show that he has upheld his election commitments. As for the Afghan parties, they have suffered a great deal and they, too, want peace, but each on their own terms. Meanwhile, the Afghan government is keen to press ahead with national elections at the end of this month to consolidate forces.
The Wire September 8, 2019 

All that is wrong with New India of Modi

Among the several episodes that tell us about the way New India is unfolding, two—related to Dr Upendra Kaul and Prof Romila Thapar—stand out. Under the authority of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had sent a notice to Dr Kaul, demanding his presence at its headquarters.  
Preposterously enough, it turned out that the NIA thought that a reference to ‘INR 2.3’ in an SMS exchange between the doctor and JKLF leader Yasin Malik referred to some hawala transaction. In reality, as the doctor explained to them, it was about a blood assay.  
The NIA may have the authority to summon Dr Kaul, but surely, the clarification could have been gotten through a phone call or sending an investigator to his office. Dr Kaul is not an unknown man in New Delhi. He is India’s pioneer interventional cardiologist who taught and worked for more than a decade in AIIMS, and currently chairs the heart centre at a private hospital. He was neither an accused nor a suspect; there was no reason for the NIA to invoke the dreaded UAPA to demand his compliance.   
Probably, there was another message in the summons: The good doctor has been a vocal critic of the Modi government’s decision to defenestrate Article 370 and demote Jammu & Kashmir’s status as a state of India. A prominent Kashmiri Pandit taking that position is clearly anathema to the government.  
As for Prof Thapar (87), the demand that she send her CV for revaluation of her life-time appointment as Professor Emeritus of JNU, borders on the ridiculous. But it, too, is politically motivated. It is no secret that the Hindutva ideologues ruling the country have a profound distaste for the university, even though several of its leading lights are alumni. Given their fondness to conflate myth with history, they are not too happy with historians like Thapar who have international stature. Not surprisingly, last October, JNU appointed Rajiv Malhotra, accused of plagiarism and a self-appointed defender of Hindu culture in the US, as visiting honorary professor.  
But this is only symptomatic of the banana republic that this country seems to have become with the spread of jahaliaat (ignorance) and incompetence in all sectors of life.
The signs are many. First, there are the tragicomic: the failure of the rifles to fire at the guard of honour during Jagannath Mishra’s funeral; a judge’s observations on War and Peace in Pune; the canal in Jharkhand that took 32 years to build and came apart in 24 hours; and a Union minister whose portfolio includes education and whose Indian pride claims border on fantasy.
But second, and worse, are the disastrous self-goals of the government of the day: the 2015 blockade on Nepal; demonetisation; the flawed GST rollout; draconian National Register of Citizens process; demotion and division of Jammu & Kashmir; and the raid on RBI’s reserves to replenish the government’s coffers. Union Home Minister Amit Shah has seen some of these as decisive acts of a government headed by a strong-willed Prime Minister. Maybe that is so, but the first three have already proved to be failures, just how the next two play out, remains to be seen.
In the meantime, India’s economy is slowly but steadily sinking. GDP growth has slowed to a six-year low of 5 per cent in the April-June quarter and is weak, no matter what spin you give. The problem is partly cyclical and partly structural and partly related to the global slowdown, so dealing with it requires sophistication and skill. Just how competently things are being run is evident from Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s steady rollback of her Budget measures, and the government’s seizure of the RBI’s reserves to make up for revenue.
Awareness of the need for reforms is actually the easy part. The problem is in getting a government capable of effectively executing them. The emerging crisis is not just about the global slowdown, lack of demand or the overhang of bad loans on the economy. It is actually about competence, both political and executive, of the Modi government.
Sure, Modi and Shah have proved that they know how to win elections. But whether or not they can run a country as huge and diverse as India remains a moot question. Instead of paying sustained attention to the longer term measures needed to put the Indian economy on the high growth path, they seem to get easily diverted into demonetisation, triple talaq, spats with Pakistan, roiling things in Jammu & Kashmir, and embarking on a global crusade against terrorism.  
 As for governance, all we get are slogans — Swachh Bharat, Plastic-Free India, Startup India, Bharat Mata Ki Jai and Jai Shri Ram. A national vision does not arise through the repetition of slogans. Neither, for that matter, does it come by vilifying the vision of predecessors, or a certain minority community. 
Given the size of the country and the wretched conditions in which hundreds of millions exist in it, there can only be one priority goal for the nation—the transformation of the economic and social conditions of the people so that they can leave hunger, poverty and ignorance behind them.
India has missed several buses going that way. This decade was supposed to be the one where that decisive shift should have taken place. Instead, as we come to its end, we seem to be missing another one.
The Tribune September 3, 2019

Saturday, November 30, 2019

Is Crunch Time Approaching for Hong Kong Protests?


As the Hong Kong protests show no sign of easing, observers are wondering if crunch time is approaching. October 1, 2019, is the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and it is just about a month away. Beijing would like to give an image of authority and control on that occasion; the continuance of large-scale protests in Hong Kong would contradict that. The PRC is confronting the most significant challenge to its power since the ill-fated Tiananmen Square uprising, and there are no clear indications as to how it plans to handle it.
The Chinese authorities have been increasingly critical of the protestors, especially after the national insignia at the Central Liaison Office which represents the PRC government in the city was defaced in late July. Since then, the rhetoric has been scaled up to blaming the unrest on unspecified “black hands.”
In the first half of August, the Communist Party of China brass met at the resort town of Beidaihe as per its summer tradition. According to a report, they are increasingly talking about the developments there as a “colour revolution”, of the kind that shook the former Soviet Union and the Balkans in the early 2000, reportedly aided by western intelligence agencies.
On Sunday, the protests picked up momentum, compelling the Hong Kong police to use water cannons for the first time at protestors who threw bricks and firebombs. A Hong Kong police officer also fired a warning shot into the air after seeing a fellow officer fall.
China’s official news agency Xinhua shifted from comparing the Hong Kong protests with colour revolutions, to directly charging that they were, in fact, that. A commentary published late on Sunday quoted Deng Xiaoping in 1984 saying that in the event of unrest in Hong Kong, the central government should intervene. The commentary said that under the Basic Law (Hong Kong’s mini-Constitution) and the Garrison Law, “it is not only the authority of the central government but also its responsibility [to intervene]” .
Last Saturday, at a meeting of 40 advisers and political bigwigs in Shenzen, neighbouring Hong Kong, organised by the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies largely agreed that Beijing had the right to intervene and resolve the crisis and that using the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to do the needful would not necessarily spell the end of the city’s autonomous status. They said that the protestors were jeopardising the ‘one country, two systems’ framework, rather than defending it. Under this, Hong Kong, though a part of the PRC, has its own political, legal and financial system.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam speaks during a news conference in Hong Kong, China August 5, 2019. Photo: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
Carrie Lam’s meeting
On the same day, nineteen city influential people and politicians met at the official residence of the Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam to suggest a way out of the stalemate. According to the South China Morning Post more than half of them recommended that Lam meet the demand for a public inquiry into the events and completely withdraw the extradition Bill that triggered the current crisis. The report suggests that Lam was hesitant to act on both issues.
But speaking before a meeting with her advisers in the Executive Council on Tuesday morning, Lam acknowledged that the current stalemate arose from the government’s refusal to accept those demands. She said this would not happen as long as there was violence in the streets. She insisted that the Hong Kong police had used minimum force against protestors.
As the Hong Kong protests have continued and gathered intensity, the possibility of a PLA intervention has grown. Speaking at a reception in the city to celebrate the 92nd anniversary of the PLA on July 31st, Major General Chen Daoxiang, the commander of the PLA garrison in the city, said that violence by the protestors would not be tolerated. He said the garrison supported the Hong Kong government’s efforts to deal with the protestors through the law.
The garrison also released a video showing PLA soldiers practising storming a street protest and shouting commands in Cantonese, the language spoken in Hong Kong, rather than the mainland.
The Chinese authorities have also been pointing to the Clause 14 of the Garrison Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC which states that the government of the city “may when necessary, ask the Central People’s Government for assistance from the Hong Kong Garrison in the maintenance of public order and disaster relief.” There are some 6,000 PLA soldiers stationed in the city close to the border with the mainland.
Military vehicles parked on the grounds of the Shenzhen Bay Sports Center in Shenzhen, China. August 15, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Thomas Peter
Chinese central government must tread carefully
The Chinese central government is likely to be very careful in committing PLA forces in the city which, as one of the major financial and business centres of the world, is a cash cow for its economy. Its stock market is the fifth largest in the world by capitalisation.
Since China’s reform and opening up, Hong Kong has played a significant role as a channel of funds and technology into the mainland, accounting for 50-60% of all FDI flows. Since 1997, the Chinese economy began to get less dependent on Hong Kong, even while the latter’s prosperity became more entangled with that of the mainland.
In 2016, China’s total FDI was $133.7 billion of which 61% came through Hong Kong. In turn, the city has also played a role in China’s outward direct investment (ODI). And in 2016, of the $196.1 billion ODI, 60% was invested in Hong Kong or went to other destinations through Hong Kong. A PLA-led crackdown would lead to a major exodus of businesses, especially MNCs, along with the talent pool of finance professionals.
Hong Kong city. Credit: abdulrahman-cc/Flickr, CC BY 2.0
Hong Kong city. Credit: abdulrahman-cc/Flickr, CC BY 2.0
Given the consequences of the use of the PLA to crush the protests, the Chinese central government may not bind itself to the October 1 deadline. On the other hand, should the situation worsen, it could work along two parallel tracks. First, have Carrie Lam invoke the Emergency Regulations Ordinance which would give the chief executive in council the power to make “any regulations whatsoever which he/she may consider desirable in the public interest.” These could be used to cover issues relating to censorship, detention of protestors and trade.
Second, follow this up with the mobilisation of pro-PRC elements in Hong Kong to mount counter-protests and even take on the protestors with the help of police. Officially the Communist Party of China does not exist in Hong Kong and its operations are through the Central Liaison Office and various front outfits like the Fujian Hometown Association, Hong Kong Residents Association of Tianjin and the newly formed Great Alliance to Protect Hong Kong that held a big rally in mid-August. There are also newspapers like Ta Kung Pao always ready to attack the protestors. These could always be supplemented by volunteers from the mainland.
The Wire August 30, 2019

While Kashmir Is ‘Under Control’, Trump Isn’t Going To Interfere

Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump stuck to an orthodox script, ensuring that their second substantive meeting of 2019 on the sidelines of the G7 Summit at Biarritz, France was not wasted.
For his part, Modi, in a polite yet firm statement at a joint appearance with Trump just before their bilateral discussion on Monday, 26 August, laid out India’s position on Kashmir, leaving no room for any mediatory excursion.
“All issues between India and Pakistan are bilateral in nature,” he said, adding tartly, that India did not want to “inconvenience any (third) country on this issue.”
Trump, meanwhile, said that he was confident that “they can do it themselves, they’ve been doing it for a long time.” Asked pointedly whether the offer to mediate was still on the table, all he had to say was “I’m here.”

He also mentioned the previous night’s conversation about Kashmir with Modi: “The prime minister feels he really has it under control; and now, when they speak with Pakistan… I’m sure they will be able to do something probably very good.”
The two leaders had last met at the end of June on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Osaka, but this was after nearly 18 months in which there had been no direct contact.
In a tweet later, Modi said that he had had an “excellent meeting” with Trump and that the two had agreed “to address trade issues for mutual benefit soon.”
At the press meet, Trump said that the two sides had been talking about trade, about military and other issues. “We had some great discussions, we were together last night for dinner and I learned a lot about India,” he said.

No Mediation as Long as Kashmir is Under Control

Trump also seemed to try and get over another cloud that had been hanging over his relationship with Modi: A January 2018 report that claimed he had been ‘affecting an Indian accent and imitating Modi’s style of speaking.’
At the Monday press meet, after Modi said in Hindi that the two would discuss the issues and then inform the press about the same, Trump interjected, saying: “He actually speaks very good English… he just doesn’t want to talk.”
The two laughed loudly at this and clasped each other’s hands, as the room erupted with laughter.
The clear message here is that as long as the situation in Kashmir is under control, neither Trump, nor the US as such, are likely to get involved in any mediation.
As of now, barring some scattered incidents, the situation does seem to be under control, but the reality is that the state remains under a lockdown spanning 22 days.
The security forces’ presence and restrictions remain, communications are fitful, the streets are deserted and people seem unwilling to step out into the streets or send their children to school to signal that things are, indeed, normal.
Modi’s Uneasy Relationship With Trump
Modi shares an uneasy relationship with Trump. After an over-the-top meeting in the White House during his first official visit to the US, in June 2017, where the PM embraced a distinctly uneasy Trump, things went downhill. The November 2017 meeting, on the sidelines of the Asean Summit in Manila, went well for all public purposes.
A White House readout talked about the discussions on their comprehensive strategic partnership and commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region and the decision to enhance their ties as ‘major defence partners’. Trump even thanked India for buying 10 million barrels of American oil.
But Modi felt that the warmth with which he had been greeted by Trump earlier had gone and he had been treated “like any other Asian leader.”
Nevertheless, Modi gave the US President’s daughter Ivanka a grand reception during her India visit and had traveled to Hyderabad to meet her.
India-US relations seem to move on two tracks – one on which the US President moves, and the other on which his cabinet colleagues do. 
Over the years, the president seems to get worked up only on issues relating to trade, while his officials have been assiduously promoting defence and economic ties with India. Even the Kashmir issue was a bit of a diversion for him.
So, whether by accident or design, there was no meeting between the two through 2018. This was the year that also saw two issues clouding the relationship – that of sanctions relating to Iran and Russia.
While India quietly accepted sanctions against Iran and stopped all oil trade, it has insisted on continuing its weapons acquisition deals with Russia despite the threat of sanctions.

India-US Trade War

Actually, when Trump has spoken on issues relating to India, they have mostly been on trade. After he publicly called out on the issue, India reduced the tariff on Harley Davidson motorcycles from 75 to 50 percent in February 2018.
However, this did not satisfy Trump, who said the US was getting nothing by the 50 percent decision, adding “They (the Indians) think they’re doing us a favour. That’s not a favour.”
Later in October, he slammed India for its allegedly high tariffs on US products. Announcing the key elements of the new US-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) agreement and the deals that were being negotiated with others, Trump described India as the “tariff king” and said India wanted a trade deal just to keep him happy.
India has been one of the countries affected by the Trump Administration’s steel and aluminum tariffs imposed early in 2018. It held off retaliatory tariffs for a while and tried to appease the US by reducing duties on Harley Davidson motorcycles, but to little avail. 

In early June 2019, the US terminated India’s designation as a beneficiary nation under the Generalised System of Preference (GSP) .
So, later that month, India put in place its retaliatory tariffs on some 30 US items. Trump was enraged and publicly demanded that India withdraw the tariffs and said he would take up the issue of India having put “very high tariffs against United States” for many years with Modi, who he was planning to meet on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Osaka at the end of June.
A little over a week later, on 9 July, he tweeted “India has long had a field day putting tariffs on American products. No longer acceptable!” Later, in August, he said that India and China were no longer developing nations and that they had been “taking advantage” of the tag given to them by the World Trade Organisation.
So, if things remain stable in Kashmir, POTUS will remain silent on the issue. But that cannot be confidently asserted about other issues, especially the one closest to his heart, trade.
Quint August 28, 2019