War broke out in the eastern part of DRC again in August since which time 250,000 people have been displaced. The CNDP headed by Laurent Nkunda has seized large parts of the province of North Kivu, threatening the provincial capital Goma.
The conflict is about power sharing and access to resources in the context of a weak and discriminatory state. Besides resources, unresolved issues from the Rwandese genocide — the presence in the DRC of the Forces Démocratiques de la Libération du Rwanda [a rebel group operating in Kivu, made up principally of former Rwandan Army and militia responsible for the 1994 genocide] and the evidence of their alliance with the Kinshasa regime — draws in Rwanda, at least indirectly.
The colonial forces always organised, conquered or colonised people administratively by dividing them into tribes. The state still treats communities differently; even the formation of the government reflects those differences. The Tutsi Congolese have a history of having been oppressed by the state, for example when during Mobutu regime, their right of nationality was revoked.
Most of the neighbouring countries do not really want a strong DRC and the DRC has not been able so far to develop a posture of good neigbhourliness with its neighbours — at the moment, Rwanda is accused of involvement and Angolan troops are again on the way. Most of the neighbouring countries who have suffered because of Mobutu's gendarme regime want DR Congo to be weak and, also Kinshasha regime's contacts with China has perturbed West.
All this is because Kinshasha has no authority over its borders. Furthermore, it has got no real army, no public administration and is unable to defend her territorial integrity. funds meant for the war front are often diverted. Food meant for the army are found being sold at stores. The African union should form a neutral team to oversee the restructuring of FARDC.
Since the 1960s, at the end of each war in the DRC, peace agreements have failed to honestly take up the issue of national reconciliation. Too often, the solution has been based on power sharing favoring the strongest element and sometimes ignoring the defeated element, ie the divisions among the people are not dealt with and some continue to feel excluded, making it difficult for the state to function as a state for all people.
Since its creation at the 1885 Berlin Conference, the Congo has been an international colony entrusted into the hands of some person (Leopold II), some country (Belgium); then an international neocolony entrusted to the hands of the Troika (U.S., France, Belgium); now it’s in the hands of the U.S. and European Union.
The fear here is that, given the feeling left by the West’s doing nothing to prevent the genocide in Rwanda, they may raise the spectre of Kosovo [the carving out of a new state]. But the Congolese people will defend their territorial integrity.
The [present] U.N. mission reminds one of the ONUC, in the 1960s. The government that invited it seems to have changed its mind. Even the increased troop strength won’t change much.
Since the issue should be to achieve a long lasting settlement, the more the institutions are involved the better. During the time of the secessions (of Katanga and South Kasai in 1963), President Kasa-Vubu did meet with the leaders of the secessions.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
US AIR STRIKE KILLS RASHID RAUF, BROTHER-IN-LAW OF MASOOD AZHAR
The alleged mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot (Bojinka plot 1995) was killed in a US missile attack in northwest Pakistan early Saturday (November 15,2008) .The transatlantic bombing plot alleged mastermind Rashid Rauf was killed along with an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative in the US missile strike in North Waziristan early Saturday. He and the Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative were killed along with at least two other militants in a US drone attack on the house of a local tribesman in the village of Alikhel, part of a district known as a stronghold for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The US intelligence agencies, which supervise the unmanned Predator air strikes, have had two major successes of significance in November so far. The first was in an air strike on a house belonging to Dilbar, a member of the Janikhel tribe, in a village of the Miryan Police Station in the Bannu District of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) on November 19,2008. Six persons were killed in that air strike, including a middle-level Al Qaeda terrorist identified as Abdullah Azam Al-Saudi. US officials have projected him as the main link between Al Qaeda’s senior command and Taliban networks in the Pakistani border region.
All the previous strikes since 2005 were on targets in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), mainly in North and South Waziristan and some in the Bajaur Agency. The surge in the Predator strikes since August 1 (20 plus) and the increasing success rate speak of an improvement in the flow of human intelligence (HUMINT) to the US forces and of the keenness of the Bush Administration to eliminate as many senior leaders of Al Qaeda as possible before the presidency of George Bush ends on January 20,2009.
The improvement in the quantity and quality of HUMINT reports to the US—-either directly or through Pakistan—- and the increasingly active role being played by the tribal militias (Lashkars) set up by the Pakistan Army in the counter-Taliban and counter-Al Qaeda operations in the Bajaur Agency of the FATA and in the Swat Valley of the NWFP show that the US and Pakistani forces have succeeded in creating some wedge betweem different Pashtun tribal groups and have been skilfully exploiting the sectarian differences between Shia and Sunni Pashtuns. The recent increase in the Taliban attacks on the Shia Pashtuns in the FATA and the NWFP indicates the suspicion of the Taliban that the Shias were responsible for the US successes.
It would be premature to talk of an Al Qaeda weakened beyond recovery. Its resilience is intact, but the US has definitely kept its cadres, some of them at senior level, in Pakistani territory on the run.
The US intelligence agencies, which supervise the unmanned Predator air strikes, have had two major successes of significance in November so far. The first was in an air strike on a house belonging to Dilbar, a member of the Janikhel tribe, in a village of the Miryan Police Station in the Bannu District of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) on November 19,2008. Six persons were killed in that air strike, including a middle-level Al Qaeda terrorist identified as Abdullah Azam Al-Saudi. US officials have projected him as the main link between Al Qaeda’s senior command and Taliban networks in the Pakistani border region.
All the previous strikes since 2005 were on targets in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), mainly in North and South Waziristan and some in the Bajaur Agency. The surge in the Predator strikes since August 1 (20 plus) and the increasing success rate speak of an improvement in the flow of human intelligence (HUMINT) to the US forces and of the keenness of the Bush Administration to eliminate as many senior leaders of Al Qaeda as possible before the presidency of George Bush ends on January 20,2009.
The improvement in the quantity and quality of HUMINT reports to the US—-either directly or through Pakistan—- and the increasingly active role being played by the tribal militias (Lashkars) set up by the Pakistan Army in the counter-Taliban and counter-Al Qaeda operations in the Bajaur Agency of the FATA and in the Swat Valley of the NWFP show that the US and Pakistani forces have succeeded in creating some wedge betweem different Pashtun tribal groups and have been skilfully exploiting the sectarian differences between Shia and Sunni Pashtuns. The recent increase in the Taliban attacks on the Shia Pashtuns in the FATA and the NWFP indicates the suspicion of the Taliban that the Shias were responsible for the US successes.
It would be premature to talk of an Al Qaeda weakened beyond recovery. Its resilience is intact, but the US has definitely kept its cadres, some of them at senior level, in Pakistani territory on the run.
JAPAN: Middle Power Status?
Currently, Japan is caught between its ”peace constitution” and a much more assertive military policy envisioned by the conservative wing of the LDP.
With the country dealing with economic decline and political uncertainty, some scholars are trying to find another way for Japan to relate to the world. Yoshihide Soeya, a professor of political science at Keio University and a member of several government councils, has been one of the leading proponents of a middle way for Japan. Soeya outlined his vision of Japan as a middle power staking out terrain between the great powers of the United States and China.
Central to his argument is the assertion that Japan itself is not and does not want to be a great power. ”Particularly in the domain of traditional security, where the military plays an important role, Japan’s role has not been that of a great power,” Soeya maintained. ”And there is nothing to suggest that Japan is moving in that direction. Some discourses in Japan might give you the impression that that is happening. But it is not taking place at the policy level.”
With the country dealing with economic decline and political uncertainty, some scholars are trying to find another way for Japan to relate to the world. Yoshihide Soeya, a professor of political science at Keio University and a member of several government councils, has been one of the leading proponents of a middle way for Japan. Soeya outlined his vision of Japan as a middle power staking out terrain between the great powers of the United States and China.
Central to his argument is the assertion that Japan itself is not and does not want to be a great power. ”Particularly in the domain of traditional security, where the military plays an important role, Japan’s role has not been that of a great power,” Soeya maintained. ”And there is nothing to suggest that Japan is moving in that direction. Some discourses in Japan might give you the impression that that is happening. But it is not taking place at the policy level.”
To illustrate this point, Soeya identified elements of middle-power diplomacy in Japan’s postwar policy. It provided economic assistance to Southeast Asia and China. It emphasized the concept of human security, which expands traditional definitions of security to include human needs such as food and shelter. And it labored long and hard within multilateral institutions such as the United Nations.
That tradition continues today, he pointed out. ”Japan and Australia signed a joint security declaration last year,” Soeya related.
But there are no elements of traditional military cooperation. That’s natural for Japan and Australia, as middle powers. Soeya translated such middle-power diplomacy into a specific regional strategy in which Japan worked with other countries in the region to carve out a more autonomous space between China and the United States. ”Imagine Japan ganging up with Australians, Koreans, and Southeast Asian people and saying to America, ‘we like this, we don’t like this.’ They would create a regional order, and say to the Americans and Chinese, ‘that’s how we want to live and you’ll have to live with it.’”
Even as Japan articulates this middle-power diplomacy, however, it has been acquiring new military capabilities. U.S. instructors have trained Japanese pilots in air-to-air refueling procedures in preparation for Japan to receive new KC-767 refueling and strategic transport aircraft.
It has acquired Aegis ballistic missile defense systems, the F-2 Attack Fighter, and top-of-the-line battleships. It is developing a light air craft carrier. And it persuaded the Bush administration to sell the advanced F-22 Raptor stealth planes until Congress nixed the deal in August 2007.
Some politicians in Japan’s ruling party have advocated changes in the Japanese constitution, particularly the pacifist Article 9, in order to facilitate an overall beefing up of military capabilities and expansion of doctrine. Although Soeya pointed out that the Japanese constitution has not been amended since it was enacted in 1946, it has nonetheless been reinterpreted to give greater leeway for Japanese military exports or Japanese participation in ballistic missile defense.One key element of this debate hinges on the notion of ”collective self-defense,” which the Japan constitution currently rejects.
Should We Still Sleep ?
The war of civilisation between the Muslims and the infidels has begun in Indian territory. So said the first statement issued in the name of the so-called Indian Mujahideen (IM) in November,2007, after the three orchestrated explosions in three towns of Uttar Pradesh outside local courts.
We saw the latest round of this war in Mumbai on the night of November 26, 2008, as an unestimated number of terrorists literally took control of Mumbai and targeted with frightening precision famous hotels preferred by the rich of the country and foreign tourists, railway stations, a hospital and many other places scattered across this business capital of India.
Mind boggles as one tries to think and figure out how the terrorists could have planned and carried out terrorist strikes of such magnitude, territorial spread and ferocity without our intelligence and police having been able to get scent of it.
The iceberg has moved from UP to Jaipur. From Jaipur to Bangalore. From Bangalore to Ahmedabad and Surat. From there to Delhi. From Delhi to Assam. From Assam to Mumbai now.
Attention should be drawn to an article of Hamid Mir, a journalist of Pakistan, which spoke of Indian Muslims going to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban against the US and which also said that India is one of the routes being used by foreign jihadis going to Afghanistan.But there is no reaction just as Rajiv Gandhi did not react to repeated wake-up calls from the then Afghan President Najibullah that Muslims from Kashmir were being trained by the Afghan Mujahideen.
In October, two diplomats from the EU countries sought an appointment with Mr. B. Raman for a discussion on the IM.They expressed their surprise and concern over the fact that the Indian intelligence and police seemed to know so little about the IM despite their having arrested many perpetrators of the previous blasts and interrogated them.
Is the IM the name of an organisation or of a movement? Is it one or many organisations in different States acting, like the International Islamic Front (IIF) of Osama bin Laden, as a united front—–autonomously where they can and unitedly where they should? Who constitute its command and control? Where are they? In India or outside? Nobody knows for certain.
Till now, we were greeting with glee Pakistan’s incompetence in dealing with terrorism. We can no longer do so. We have become as clueless as Pakistan.
One question : how safe are our nuclear establishments and material?
CHINESE ECONOMY MONITOR
China announced on November 9,2008, an economic stimulus programme amounting to US $586 billion to be spent over a period of two years. The announced sum represents about 16% of China’s economic output last year, and is roughly equal to the total of all central and local government spending in 2006. Most of the allocated amount is proposed to be spent on new housing, new infrastructure, agriculture, health care and social welfare. It also includes a tax deduction for capital spending by companies. China’s stimulus package is substantially higher than that of the US ( US $ 168 billion), Japan (US $ 51.5 billion largely in the form of payouts to families and tax reliefs to business companies) and Germany (US $ 29.9 billion mainly tax reliefs and loans). The Chinese contention is that the best way they could contribute to re-stabilising the global economy is by a substantial increase in expenditure in those sectors such as housing and infrastructure, which would create new jobs at home and, at the same time, maintain a high level of imports of raw materials and other items such as minerals and metals required for this purpose.
China’s financial system remains largely unscathed by the global credit squeeze, but prospects for the country’s continued rapid growth have quickly deteriorated. Export orders from the U.S., Europe and Japan are weakening, causing factories around China to trim work forces or shut down entirely — leading to unemployment that could undermine popular backing for the Government. Urban consumers are pulling back from China’s housing market, causing new construction to collapse to its worst level in a decade. With construction weak, support for other key industries such as cement and steel has declined, and they are cutting output and canceling orders for raw materials — moves that are being felt by commodities firms around the world. The downward spiral in confidence is likely to depress growth even further.
The Government is presenting the program as an opportunity to do many things that would be worth doing anyway. These include helping companies upgrade to higher-tech equipment, improving irrigation in rural areas, raising pensions and social-security payments, and improving water and waste treatment in cities.
Shortly after unveiling the economic stimulus plan, China is now turning its attention to managing the more intractable social fallout from the downturn —- growing discontent fuelled by rising unemployment. The policies range from setting up a fast-track system to nip labour disputes in the bud, providing financial aid to firms to help them retain workers, improving job search services for rural workers and clearing a backlog of sensitive court cases. ‘The root cause of unhappiness is unemployment. Without a job it is hard to survive in China because of weak social protection,’ said Professor Hu Xingdou, an expert in economics and China issues with the Beijing Institute of Technology. He added: “If leaders want to defuse tensions, they must solve the job problem.” China’s official urban unemployment rate was currently about 4 per cent, but could hit 4.5 per cent by the year-end. Even before the current crisis, China’s 24 million urban job-seekers outnumbered new jobs two to one. With even fewer jobs next year, the fierce competition among the country’s university graduates, for instance, is set to intensify. The authorities are concerned that they could be the biggest source of unrest.
Already, there have been isolated protests by workers over unpaid wages at shuttered factories. But of increasing concern for the Chinese Communist Party is the widening scale of unrest and scope of issues that are fuelling public dissatisfaction. In recent weeks, taxi drivers upset over falling incomes have staged strikes in at least three Chinese cities, including Chongqing. Earlier last week, a two-day protest over home demolitions in Gansu province left more than 70 injured.
China’s Communist Party has long been obsessed with social stability, concerned that any type of protest could escalate into a major challenge to its 59-year rule. The Ministry of Land and Resources, meanwhile, announced it would increase compensation for farmers’ land from 2009 “to guarantee the lawful rights of farmers whose land has been taken”, in a statement on its website on November. Government-backed “land grabs” are a common occurrence in China and have sometimes fuelled violent protests as owners of the properties are forcibly moved away to make way for new developments.
Statistics from the Chinese Customs indicated that during the first nine months of this year, China’s textiles and clothing exports touched $136.94 billion, a rise of 8.1% over the same period of 2007. But the growth rate is 11.9 percentage points lower than that of the corresponding period of last year. The latest statistics issued by the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) indicate that in September 2008, there were 1,883,300 international tourists to China, down by 15.10% compared to the same period of last year. According to the analysis of CNTA, due to the series of serious natural disasters and “unexpected incidents” that took place in China this year, the Chinese tourism industry has been affected to a certain degree. Also, the global financial crisis has had an adverse impact on tourism.
China’s financial system remains largely unscathed by the global credit squeeze, but prospects for the country’s continued rapid growth have quickly deteriorated. Export orders from the U.S., Europe and Japan are weakening, causing factories around China to trim work forces or shut down entirely — leading to unemployment that could undermine popular backing for the Government. Urban consumers are pulling back from China’s housing market, causing new construction to collapse to its worst level in a decade. With construction weak, support for other key industries such as cement and steel has declined, and they are cutting output and canceling orders for raw materials — moves that are being felt by commodities firms around the world. The downward spiral in confidence is likely to depress growth even further.
The Government is presenting the program as an opportunity to do many things that would be worth doing anyway. These include helping companies upgrade to higher-tech equipment, improving irrigation in rural areas, raising pensions and social-security payments, and improving water and waste treatment in cities.
Shortly after unveiling the economic stimulus plan, China is now turning its attention to managing the more intractable social fallout from the downturn —- growing discontent fuelled by rising unemployment. The policies range from setting up a fast-track system to nip labour disputes in the bud, providing financial aid to firms to help them retain workers, improving job search services for rural workers and clearing a backlog of sensitive court cases. ‘The root cause of unhappiness is unemployment. Without a job it is hard to survive in China because of weak social protection,’ said Professor Hu Xingdou, an expert in economics and China issues with the Beijing Institute of Technology. He added: “If leaders want to defuse tensions, they must solve the job problem.” China’s official urban unemployment rate was currently about 4 per cent, but could hit 4.5 per cent by the year-end. Even before the current crisis, China’s 24 million urban job-seekers outnumbered new jobs two to one. With even fewer jobs next year, the fierce competition among the country’s university graduates, for instance, is set to intensify. The authorities are concerned that they could be the biggest source of unrest.
Already, there have been isolated protests by workers over unpaid wages at shuttered factories. But of increasing concern for the Chinese Communist Party is the widening scale of unrest and scope of issues that are fuelling public dissatisfaction. In recent weeks, taxi drivers upset over falling incomes have staged strikes in at least three Chinese cities, including Chongqing. Earlier last week, a two-day protest over home demolitions in Gansu province left more than 70 injured.
China’s Communist Party has long been obsessed with social stability, concerned that any type of protest could escalate into a major challenge to its 59-year rule. The Ministry of Land and Resources, meanwhile, announced it would increase compensation for farmers’ land from 2009 “to guarantee the lawful rights of farmers whose land has been taken”, in a statement on its website on November. Government-backed “land grabs” are a common occurrence in China and have sometimes fuelled violent protests as owners of the properties are forcibly moved away to make way for new developments.
Statistics from the Chinese Customs indicated that during the first nine months of this year, China’s textiles and clothing exports touched $136.94 billion, a rise of 8.1% over the same period of 2007. But the growth rate is 11.9 percentage points lower than that of the corresponding period of last year. The latest statistics issued by the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) indicate that in September 2008, there were 1,883,300 international tourists to China, down by 15.10% compared to the same period of last year. According to the analysis of CNTA, due to the series of serious natural disasters and “unexpected incidents” that took place in China this year, the Chinese tourism industry has been affected to a certain degree. Also, the global financial crisis has had an adverse impact on tourism.
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