The North Korean Imbroglio

The underground nuclear explosion on May 25, 2009 by North Korea caused tremendous political irritation all over the world. USA did not know how to respond.

Quantification of the destructive power of the North Korean blast is not clear. The test was done underground and the blast creates vibrations in the earth which can be measured on the Richter scale, just as in the case of an earthquake. The Geological Survey of the USA estimated the blast to be of the order of 4.7 on the Richter scale. It corresponds to the explosion of four kilotons of TNT. The preparatory commission for the CTBT at Vienna, which has 39 tracking stations located all over the world determined the magnitude of the blast to be of the order of about 4.5. Assuming these estimates to be not much off the mark, we can conclude that the magnitude of the North Korea blast generated yield of 4 to 5 kilotons of TNT. Nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had yields of 15 and 22 kilotons of TNT respectively.

The May 25 explosions highlighted the helplessness of the USA. President Obama’s comment that it was “a flagrant violation of the International Law” does not sound convincing because the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) under which the Korean nuclear test would have been illegal has not yet entered into force. Ironically, even the USA has not yet ratified the CTBT. However, it can be argued with some justification that the nuclear test by North Korea was clearly violative of the Security Council's Resolution no 1718 of 2006, and hence it did violate the International Law. Its staunch allies Japan and South Korea stand exposed to nuclear blackmail by the North Korean totalitarian regime. Russia and China do not have anything to fear. The Chinese are only concerned about the possibility of mass exodus of the North Korean refugees should the hostilities break out in the region. Russians do not have any serious concern. Japan and South Korea have most to worry and fear as their entire technological and industrial complexes lie exposed to North Korean nuclear missiles. Americans are also worried about the safety of 28,000 American troops in South Korea and more than 30,000 of them in Japan, who will be sitting ducks should the mad rulers of North Korea decide to unleash their nuclear fury against them. However, that is only a theoretical possibility. Howsoever mad or naïve Kim Jong-il might be he cannot underestimate the devastating American retaliation, which will finish him off and bring Stone Age to his country.

There are various speculations as to why North Koreans should go for an atomic test at point of time. One theory is that Kim Jong-il is upping his ante in the game of brinkmanship vis-à-vis the Americans. He and his advisers seem to have calculated that playing the nuclear card at this point will ultimately get them a better deal from the Americans. Another theory is that it might be easy to sell a tested weapon for which there is ample demand in the West Asian black market. Yet another theory is that Kim is suffering from the megalomania and wants North Korea to be accepted as a de facto nuclear state. Some analysts also guess that Kim ordered the nuclear test to promote his strong man image with the North Korean military establishment. Whatever the reasons might be, the North Korean test explosion has created enormous political turmoil in the region. If the American navy intercepts the vessels destined for North Korean ports for carrying the contraband nuclear material or equipment, there might be violent reaction from the North Koreans. It may even trigger off hostilities in the region with the risk of a nuclear exchange. North Korea has nothing to lose in such a situation because they not have a worthwhile industrial base. It is difficult to predict what turn the events will take in such a scenario. Even a 5-kiloton nuclear device dropped on South Korea and Japan would be a catastrophe. It would create a situation which will not be rectified by massive nuclear retaliation by the Americans.

The American strategy has been transparently to prevent hostilities in the northeast corner of Asia. Since the mid-nineties, the North Korean policy of the USA has lacked a strategy. That is one of the reasons why their policy has failed and the United States are groping in the dark for viable options in face of the belligerent behavior of a small country. Since the time when the power in North Korea passed from Kim Il-Sung to Kim Jong-il in 1993-94, the American policy had been to disarm the North Koreans by appeasement by way of negotiating with them. The Bush Administration leaned heavily on six-nation talks, hoping that China would use her leverage with North Korea. American lack of leverage was obvious in the six-nation deliberations.

The Security Council will no doubt tighten the existing sanctions against North Korea, and perhaps enact more sanctions. However, it is unlikely to go for military sanctions against the erring regime, because of the Chinese veto. Chinese, no doubt, are annoyed with North Korea by its latest nuclear folly. But they will not allow their close ally to be upended ignominiously. For one, the nuclear weaponry of North Korea is not a threat to China, just as the nuclear weaponry of the UK is not a threat to the USA. Secondly, should China pressurize North Korea by restricting food and oil, it might open the floodgates of millions of refugees pouring into China. Thirdly, keeping a small naughty country holding dagger at the American troops in Japan and South Korea is an entertaining spectacle to the Chinese Communist Party. They have yet to realize that if the present situation is allowed to continue, Japan may jump into nuclear arms race. A nuclear-armed Japan is not a pleasing prospect for China.

South Korea has announced that it will become a full member of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to curb trade in weapons of mass destruction. North Korean reaction was on expected lines. They said, “Any tiny hostile acts our republic, including the stopping and searching of our peaceful vehicles……will face an immediate and strong military strike in response…. Our military will no longer be bound by the armistice accord as the current US leadership….has drawn the puppets (South Korea) into the PSI.”

White House supports enforcing the 2006 resolution by the Security Council that permits the inspection of vehicles suspected carrying nuclear or missile components. However, there are practical difficulties. The American intelligence is poor in this field. It is ironical that President Bush had last year removed North Korea from the list of states that sponsor terrorism. Now the American administration is trying to find a face-saving way to reverse that decision.

What are the viable American options in the present scenario? One of the plausible options for the USA is to pre-empt the possibility of nuclear mischief by the North Koreans by destroying their nuclear infrastructure by heavy conventional bombing. China or Russia may make some noises but their noises will lack the political amplitude. The pre-emptive American strike will also send a strong message to the recalcitrant Iranian regime.

There are indications that Americans are bracing for a strong action. Speaking on ABC’s This Week, the Secretary of State Clinton said if the test and other recent actions by North Korea did not lead to “strong action”; there was a risk of “an arms race in Northeast Asia”.

The North Koreans are supplementing their nuclear folly by showing off their delivery vehicles. North Korea does not have a missile having a credible long enough range to reach the United States. However, there are some indications that they are preparing to another test of their long-range ballistic missile Taepodong-2. Their first Taepodong-2 fired on July 5, 2006 was a miserable failure. It flew only for 35-40 seconds after the launch.

They test-fired a long-range ballistic missile on April 5, 2009. The three-stage missile traversed over Japan and first stage of the rocket fell into the Sea of Japan, and the other rocket stages as well the payload fell into the Pacific Ocean. It was calculated that the rocket reached 3850 kilometers from the launch site. There are hints that they may be making preparations for another test of Taepodong-2. If they do it is bound to exacerbate the already tense situation in the region.

Key to the solution of the North Korean Imbroglio lies with the Chinese. They have got the clout and the leverage. They supply them with fuel, food, power plants and money. But will the Chinese have the foresight to see the consequences of their policy of letting the situation drift? It is a question on the answer of which lies the prospect of world peace. If war erupts in the northeast region of Asia, we do not know how it will it end.

Strictly speaking, the Korean War that took place in the middle of the last century never came to ended. Only an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. With the passage of time the peace in the Korean peninsula has solidified along the famous 38th parallel of latitudes. Both sides of this line, huge military concentrations of rival regimes of North and South Korea stare at each other. Neither side wants war, however. South Korea is afraid of the huge enemy artillery trained on Seoul and also the lately developed nuclear weapon capacity. North Korea, on the other hand, is acutely aware of the devastating military might of the United States and the American prowess in technological warfare. North Korea cannot expect to win the war. But it will not be a cakewalk for the Americans, either. China, the prime player in the region, also does not want war as it might give rise to a militant, and possibly nuclear-armed Japan. In spite of their vast military superiority, the Chinese psyche retains the traumatic experience at the hands of the Japanese imperialist machine.

A Can of Worms Opened Unwittingly!

The whole story erupted like a volcano with the release on April 16, 2009 of the four top secret memos on the torture. They were prepared by the Office of the Legal Counsel (OLC) of the Justice Department in the year 2002. Prepared by John C. Yoo, Steven G. Bradbury and Jay S. Bybee, these memos virtually gave a green signal to the CIA operatives to inflict torture of the prisoners by giving a highly perverse interpretation of the law. The memos defended the use of waterboarding (a cruel form of simulated drowning), as well as sleep deprivation, isolation and physical violence.

The picture which comes out of the torture used by the interrogators of the Bush Administration is utterly disgusting and shameful. The methods used to extract confession from the prisoners were unconstitutional, grossly uncivilized, inhumane, and in violation of The United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the United States is a signatory. According to Manfred Nowak who is the special United Nations rapporteur on torture, the USA is bound under the above Convention to prosecute those who engage in torture. According to him the decision of President Obama not to prosecute CIA agents who used torture tactics is a violation of international law.

Leon Panetta, the director of CIA, was not in favor of releasing the memos, at least without heavily redacting them. The CIA director reasonably felt that such release would hamper the work of CIA interrogators in future, as they would be under tremendous pressure to confine themselves to the red lines. He also felt that it would have an undesirable effect on their relationship with the foreign intelligence agencies.

According to the declassified information, waterboarding was used on alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003. Suspected al-Qaida logistics Chief Abu Zubaydah was subjected to the treatment 83 times in August 2002.

It is naïve to believe that the degrading acts of cruelty performed by the intelligence gathering operatives have enhanced the security of the great American nation even by an iota. On the contrary it has dragged country’s name in mud, and encouraged terrorists of all sorts to outperform Americans in devising more and more diabolical ways to inflict tortures on their prisoners, some of whom might well be Americans.

The insects used by the CIA operatives to extract information by instilling fear amongst prisoners is a throwback to the Paleolithic times when large swarms of stinging insects were released in the caves to smoke the enemy out of their shelters. The use of waterboarding, physical violence, sleep deprivation and other forms of torture remind us of Gulags of the Soviet era. They were also used by the communist regime in China against their enemies in the fifties. The notorious Pol Pot in Cambodia did not have any compunction in using such methods.

Where is the moral pre-eminence of America when such repulsive practices was allowed and encouraged by the Bush administration in the name of making the nation more secure? The then director of intelligence, the then defense secretary and the then attorney general are in the dock of public scrutiny and they should be given an opportunity to say as to what extent they were involved in organizing the most nauseating drama in the history of this nation.

The domestic law of the USA is very clear on this issue. Torture is defined in the section 2340 of United States Code Title 18. The punishment for committing torture is provided for in the section 2340A. Both these sections can be seen below.

Section 2340.
Definitions
As used in this chapter—
(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and
(3) “United States” means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.

Section 2340A. Torture

(a) Offense.— Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
(b) Jurisdiction— There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if—
(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.
(c) Conspiracy.— A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

The legal opinion tendered by a counsel cannot supplant or upstage the substantive law. If a competent court decides that torture as defined under section 2340 was actually committed, the penal provisions of section 2340A will immediately become enforceable. The accused will include not only those intelligence agents who actually performed the torture but also all those who abetted in the crime by giving direction or justification, howsoever senior they might be in the hierarchy of the administration.

President Obama is now being buffeted from all sides. The liberal Democrats as well the civil right groups are encouraging him to prosecute the involved CIA investigators as well the lawyers in the Justice Department who gave an opinion, prima facie in contravention of the domestic and international law. They feel that the President has a sworn duty to preserve, protect and defend the constitution and execute the laws of the United States. On the other hand, the conservative Republicans are shocked at the talk of applying human values to the ranking terrorists. They believe that the organs of Bush administration had been functioning legitimately and properly in defending the nation with all the ingenious methods at their disposal. The whole thing has become a public clash of values and perspectives.

As things stand presently, the President Obama has decided not to prosecute those who directly or indirectly were responsible for inflicting torture. He has also forbidden the intelligence agencies the use of torture as an investigating tool. It is difficult to predict how things will shape in future. But one thing is certain. President might be regretting now the day he decided to declassify the top secret memos. It is easy to open a can of worms, but difficult to persuade the worms to go back in the can.

Brouhaha on the AIG Bonus

The whole world is abuzz with the bonus given to a certain group of executives of the American International Group (AIG), the colossal insurance giant. People are aghast at the enormity of the event. When the country is passing through recession, it is unconscionable for anybody to accept huge sum of money by way of bonus, and it was stupid on the part of the management of the AIG not to be able to find a way to avoid such an embarrassing situation. It is all the more so, because the recipients of the bonus were the very same people who are said to have dealt in the derivatives trading which brought financial ruin on the company. Simplistically, they were rewarded for their incompetence. At least this is the view, which is popular in the media and public. Fuming with rage, the attorney-general of the New York, Mr Cuomo declared that he would “name and shame” the recipients of the bonus. Not to be left behind, his counterpart in Connecticut said, “……these people should have been shoved out the door, not showered with cash." In a fit of righteous anger, a senior Senator went to the extent of advising them to “resign or go, commit suicide.” In private conversations, people used much stronger language.

Yet, there is another side of the story. The bonus given to AIG executives was not a performance bonus. It was retention bonus and its value was not linked to the performance level of the individual recipients. It was a part of their total compensation package, and the company was obliged to pay it under a contract with them, regardless of how the company fared. Unlike the performance bonus, the retention bonus is not designed to be a percentage of the profit which they would be expected to add to their company. This modus of bonus is prevalent in many big corporations. In the popular mind, the concept of bonus is invariably associated with the idea of a reward which an employer gives to an employee for his exceptionally good work. In this case of AIG employees, it was an integral part of their pay packet.

Let us see the situation from another perspective. A surgeon cannot be denied his fee, even if an operation fails and the patient dies. A lawyer cannot be denied his fee even if his client loses the case. So why a banker who does his work with due diligence and sincerity be denied his contracted compensation, if he fails to add profit to his company due to circumstances beyond his control. Fact of the matter is that nobody in the world had foreseen the denouement of the story of subprime housing mortgages. One might argue, with some justification that the compensation paid to the top officials of the Bush administration should also be denied or heavily taxed because they failed to see the storm of recession coming well in time.

Jake DeSantis, the Executive Vice President of the AIG-Financial Products resigned on March 24, 2009. In his letter of resignation addressed to the CEO of AIG, he made a point that most of the employees of the finance product division who received the bonus had nothing to do with the large losses which occurred due to credit default swaps. He remarked, inter alia, that “None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.”

At this point of time it is purely academic to debate the ethicality or otherwise of the assailed AIG bonus. There are two seminal questions at this point which should be publicly debated.

Whether the law to tax such bonus retrospectively can stand legal scrutiny at the apex court; and

Whether taxing heavily AIG bonus will set a bad precedent and be detrimental to business climate in the USA.

The cardinal principle of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence is that an ex post facto rule of law is astoundingly unfair and therefore invalid ab initio. Constitution of the United States is categorical on this issue. Section 9 of the Article 1 of the Constitution lays down, “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” It is, therefore, somewhat surprising that the House of Representatives passed a bill levying tax on certain categories of bonuses with retroactive effect. In all likelihood, this law shall be set aside by the apex court. If the matter goes before the courts, it is bound to create lot of interest not limited to the law-practicing community.

The retroactive law, if upheld by the Supreme Court, will set a bad precedent for the American business. The entire financial system is based on the trust. Treasury bonds worth billions of dollars are bought on the trust that the interest rates committed will not change. How many people, least of all the foreign governments, will be interested in investing in those bonds, if they are not sure that in some not foreseeable future the Congress might dilute the interest rates retroactively? Will it not make purchasing the American debt a risky affair for China and Japan?

Many banks have received assistance under Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Since the law passed by the House relates only to those financial institutions who have been given massive financial assistance by the government, they may well tend to refuse such assistance as it would bind their hands in matters of deciding compensation to their executives. Financial institutions which fall in this category are the likes of Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America who may determine that the advantages of getting massive funds under TARP in exchange for their preference equity or general equity might not outweigh the advantages of their retaining operational freedom. This is all the more so when they are planning to sell their toxic assets to private equity funds and hedge funds. Accurate differential pricing of such assets will be crucial to the profitability of big banks and the whole exercise will need highly specialized skills and vast experience of their executives. Restricting their compensation package under an executive fiat or an oppressive tax regime is bound to encourage their prized employees to seek greener pastures elsewhere.

It is human nature to find a 'whipping boy' for their misfortunes. The monumental outpouring of public anger against the AIG bonus recipients stems from the people's belief that they were the villains of the piece, and that the recession would not have visited them but for them. The great hullabaloo on the AIG bonus issue has only resulted in distracting attention of the Obama administration from fixing the larger problem of rising unemployment and premature foreclosures on defaulted mortgages. Loss of 165 million dollars, assuming it is a dead loss and totally unjustified, is almost nothing in comparison to the federal budget of about 3,500 billion dollars, and less than almost nothing in comparison to the American economy of about 14,000 billion dollars.

We cannot afford to be million wise and billion foolish in our hour of supreme financial crisis.

Metastasis of Talibanism in Pakistan

Government of Pakistan has virtually agreed to the Talibanizaton of Swat district of its North West Frontier Province (NWFP). They have entered into a formal agreement with the militants for the promulgation of sharia laws of Islam.

The agreement is a fig leaf to Pakistan's total capitulation to militants in Swat. In the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, the writ of Pakistani government never ran. Now Swat has been added to the list of places in Pakistan where nobody cares for the government at Islamabad.

Swat district is in the Malakand division of NWFP. It is home of the Swat valley which is known the world over for its skiing resorts, fruit orchards, flowing streams and snow-capped peaks. For Al Queda and Taliban it is not only a political victory over Pakistan, it is a triumph of tremendous implications. The pride of the formidable Pakistani army has been severely wounded.

Pakistani army did not have many options in Swat. Its troops were outmaneuvered by the militants. Many, if not the most, Pakistani soldiers, who had the background of madrassa education felt empathy with the fundamental Islamic goals of the militants. There was yet another factor which demoralized Pakistani troops in that area. Since 2007, when the Taliban activities began in Swat, Pakistani army had ceded about three-fourths of the Swat area to the enemy. Talibans used savage methods of public beheadings and public floggings to terrorize civilians and the soldiers alike. According to Amnesty International, a quarter to half a million people have fled Swat since 2007, and at least 1,200 civilians have been killed in the region. Barbaric cruelty of Talibans induced a speechless fear in a large number of Pak soldiers. Demoralization has set in all their ranks.

There is a reason why the Talibans of Afghan origin felt at home in fighting in NWFP. The NWFP is primarily an area inhabited by Pakhtoons (also called Pashtoons or Pathans). They are of the same ethnicity as the majority of Afghans. In fact, the people of NWFP, of which Swat is only a district, are culturally quite different from the rest of Pakistan. They speak a different language, and their traditional way of living has nothing in common with the rest of Pakistanis. They have always had a secret longing for uniting with Afghanistan.

It is interesting to visit the contemporary history of NWFP. Pakistan came into existence in 1947 as a result of the partition of erstwhile India into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. NWFP was the odd man out. Out of all of the 5 provinces proposed to constitute Pakistan, only NWFP did not have a Muslim League government in spite of its being a Muslim-majority province. It was governed by a coalition of Indian National Congress (INC), Khudai Khidmatgars and Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind. INC and its coalition partners hated the ideology of Pakistan. People of NWFP were also averse to join the new state of Pakistan because they believed their ethnicity would be compromised by joining Pakistan, which might be ruled by Punjabis and the Urdu-speaking migrants from Northern India. However, the geography of the subcontinent was against them. They were landlocked and the choice given to them in the referendum ordained by India Independence Act 1947 was to join either Pakistan or India. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who was known as Frontier Gandhi, and his brother Dr Khan Sahib, who was the then Chief Minister of NWFP, agitated for an independent status for NWFP by the name of Pakhtoonistan. In June 1947, Acharya Kripalani, the president of INC, wrote a letter to Lord Mountbatten, the then Viceroy, pleading for an option for NWFP for independence along with the option of joining either India or Pakistan. Two months earlier to his letter, the British Legation in Kabul had written to Government of India, that “the view taken by the Afghan Government is that the tribesmen in tribal territory are more closely connected with the Afghan Government than with the Interim Government of India and the Afghans have, as you know, already asked that the tribes should be given the option of securing their complete independence or joining themselves to Afghanistan if they wish to do so rather than continue as part of India”. However, India Independence Act of the British Parliament did not give them that choice, and NWFP willy-nilly became a part of Pakistan. They could not vote for India as geography was against them. The turnout of the voters in the referendum was extremely poor in spite of a vicious and violent campaign launched in favor of Pakistan by Muslim League.

Presently there are three political forces swinging in the NWFP. First is the active political and military presence of Talibans and Al Qaeda. Second is the presence of the demoralized and confused Pak army. Third is the yearning of Pakhtoons to get detached from Pakistan. A virulent anti-American sentiment is cementing all these forces to the detriment to the concept of a united Pakistan.

Talibanism in FATA and Swat is thriving on the vulnerability of the dysfunctional body politic of Pakistan. It is difficult to see how a military effort alone can prevent it from encroaching upon the settled areas of NWFP. With the historical background of NWFP it is very difficult for Pakistan to retain political or military control over NWFP for a long time.

Talibans are now trying to gain footholds beyond NWFP. On Feb 7 and Feb 11 this year they attacked two police outposts in Mianwali district of Punjab which lies along the river Indus. Punjab has a chain of mosques where Wahabi brand of Islam is preached. Talibans may find them handy in promoting their agenda.

Talibanism is now beginning to metastasize.

Twin Rubik Cubes of Afghanistan and Pakistan

Mr Richard Holbrooke is bound to feel elated at the supreme confidence reposed in him by President Obama. However, he will soon realize that his job is not exactly a bed of roses.

He has been asked to clear the terrible mess American interests are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. USA has two primary goals in that region. One is to destroy completely the training camps and leadership of Al Qaeda and Taliban. Second goal is to ensure that the nuclear assets of the Pakistan do not fall in the hands of extremist elements.

It is easy to see that both these goals do overlap, making this region a veritable nightmare for the Obama administration.

Holbrooke's mission is much more than an uphill task. In Pakistan he is facing at least three main power centers at the federal level. One is the civilian government, another is the army, and yet another is Inter- Services Agency called ISI. They have different perspectives as to what the national interests of Pakistan are. In theory, army is subject to civilian control. In actual practice, it is the other way round. Government cannot take any crucial policy decision without taking army chief into confidence. In May 1999, the Pakistani army took the decision to rattle India by initiating what is known in the contemporary history as Kargil War. It is widely believed that the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was kept in total dark and he came to know only after the attack on the Indian positions by Pak army units actually began. Similarly, ISI is supposed to be a part of Pakistani defense establishment. But in actual practice it is an autonomous body who has its own foreign policy goals and own views on domestic politics. It believes brass of Pakistani army to be too soft and naive to understand the realpolitik. The head of the ISI is always a senior officer of the rank of Lieutenant General of the army who after being appointed to the post falls in the tradition of asserting ISI's Independence from the army headquarters. Before Ashfaq Parvez Kayani succeeded General Parvez Musharraf as the Chief of the Army Staff he had been the Director General of the ISI for three years. The attack on the Indian embassy at Kabul on July 7, 2008 was engineered by ISI presumably without the knowledge of Pakistani army or the Pakistani government. Taliban provided only the fig leaf for that attack. It is also believed that the dastardly attack on Mumbai in November 2008 was done by an extremist Pakistani outfit Lashkar-i-Taiba with the active support and professional training of ISI. Much of the power of ISI stems from the fact that it keeps dossiers on most of the politicians, many of whom have many skeletons in their cupboards.

There is yet another aspect of the fractured polity of Pakistan. Pakistan has four major provinces. Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Between NWFP and Afghanistan lies an area called Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). Its area is more than 27000 square kilometers and its population more than three million. FATA is nominally a part of Pakistan but the writ of the Pakistani government does not run there. It is controlled by fiercely independent Pakhtoons. Culturally they consider themselves Afghans and are happy thriving on narcotic and arms trade. It is irony of history that they fall in east of the Durand Line which is the international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Durand Line was drawn arbitrarily by the British Government in the year 1893 between the then British India and Afghanistan's the then ruler Amir Abdur Rehman Khan. The treaty formalizing the Durand Line was for one hundred years and has lapsed in the year 1993. The Afghan govt has refused to renew the treaty. No Afghan government has ever accepted Durand Line as the international border between them and British India (or its successor state Pakistan). In fact the Loya Jirga of Afghanistan has repudiated in 1949 the Durand Line as the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, Pakistan does not feel itself obliged to renegotiate the treaty. It believes that Durand Line is the international border in perpetuity. Even during the Taliban regime when Pakistan was extremely friendly with it, Afghan government did not agree to the legitimacy of Duranad Line. It is felt by Pakhtoons that it artificially divides Pukhtoons living in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Durand line has been a continuous source of tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

FATA which is politically a part of Pakistan has become adopted home of Al Qaeda. American intelligence agencies believe that Osama bin Laden and his top operators are hiding in FATA. The mountainous and rugged terrain of FATA also helps the Al Qaeda fighters. American pilotless drone aircraft are repeatedly bombing the suspected hideouts of Al Qaeda as and when they get actionable intelligence. Americans do not share their intelligence with Pakistan, because they suspect their intelligence might be clandestinely passed by the ISI to the Taliban or maybe even to Al Qaeda.

The chief reason of Pakistan facing problems in FATA is the fact that inhabitants of FATA think themselves as more of Afghans than Pakistanis. Kabul has always claimed that NWFP as a whole belongs to Afghanistan as it is inhabited by Pakhtoons. The name NWFP itself is not an ethnic name unlike Punjab, Sindh or Baluchistan.

The story of Swat is intriguing. It is an administrative district in th NWFP and home of Swat Valley, which is popularly known to be the Switzerland of Pakistan. It is a place of exquisite natural beauty and home to a number of skiing resorts. Since December 2008, practically the entire Swat is under control of Talibans. They have banned female education, watching TV, listening to music. Men are obliged to keep beards. They have burnt down more than 170 schools for girls. Swat is hardly 100 miles away from the capital of Pakistan, and its falling into the hands of Taliban militants has introduced a new equation in the already tangled political and military situations in Pakistan.

Situation in Afghanistan is no better, if not far more worse. The writ of Hamid Karzai government does not run beyond Kabul. The functionaries of his government are steeped in corruption and the governors of Afghan provinces do not care for the central authority. The Afghan army is ill-trained and poorly organized and virtually ineffective as a fighting force. Present position is little short of pathetic. Presently there are deployed troops from the USA and other NATO countries. They have dual function of supporting the Karzai government and hunting Taliban and Al Qaeda. There is a United Nations Military force International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) stationed there since December 2001. Presently it is commanded by Eurocorps since August 9, 2004. The function of this 6500-strong force is to help the Afghan administration reconstruct the country in all fields of public life. Unlike NATO forces, it is supposed to be politically neutral.

Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic society. Pakhtoons are the most prominent group. Then there are Hazaras, Tajiks and Ujbeks. All these groups have their own political agendas. Hazaras are supported by Iran, because they are shias like Iranians. Not only this, almost the entire opium produced in Afghanistan is exported via Iran. All these factors make the role and authority of Kabul utterly diminished. The American envoy might find it difficult logistically talk to the leaders of the major ethnic groups who are corrupt and do not care for anybody in Kabul or Washington, but without whose support the Afghan imbroglio cannot be untangled.

Holbrooke is a great negotiator and has unquestionably profound skills of a star diplomat. However, the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is tangled, messy and full of so many power centers that the distinguished American envoy may not find it easy to solve the twin Rubik cubes of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pedigree of American Recession

The present recession in the USA has a complicated pedigree.

The story begins with the tragic events on September 11, 2001. The dastardly attack on the USA by Al Qaida shook the soul of America as never before. The earlier major national traumatic experience was Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. But it was peanuts in comparison with what took place on 9/11. Al Qaida pierced the very heart of America. Japanese had used their own aircraft as weapons at Pearl Harbor. In 9/11, Al Qaida used the American aircraft to stress the humiliation heaped on American psyche.

The 9/11 attack kicked-off a chain of events. It triggered off invasion of Iraq as the American government believed on the basis of the evidence available to it that the next attack on the United States, possibly nuclear, might come from Iraq. Iraq war was a huge military success in the initial phase, but since then it has dragged on interminably. The military activities are over in Iraq, but a huge contingent of troops continues to stay there. It continues to drain the American treasury.

There are various estimates as to the cost of Iraq war. The Bush administration understandably downplayed the cost. We must take into consideration not only the upfront cost incurred on the military deployment and operations but also the staggering social and economic costs which might not be obvious. According to Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, in a scholarly article published in the Washington Post on March 9, 2008, the total cost of Iraq war might exceed 3 trillion dollars. Even if we assume that their estimate was liberal by a factor of 2, in a 14-trillion economy, a wasteful and entirely non-productive outlay of 1.5 trillion dollars is bound to be impactful.

Even before the Iraq war, the federal budget of the United States had a huge deficit. The war opened the floodgates of expenditure. This expenditure was met with the borrowed money of national debt, which was soaring by about $1 billion a day, thanks to the heavy purchase of the debt by China and other exporters to the United States. Iraq War, along with Afghanistan war, made its own contribution to the recession which is plaguing the United States and therefore the world, today.

The balance of trade between China and the USA has been continuously rising in favor of China since 1986. During recent times, it has grown from $203 billion in the year 2003 to $266 billion in the year 2008. Cumulatively it adds up to about one and a quarter billion dollars over the last six years. Quite a good chunk of this money has been used by the Chinese in purchasing the US national debt. Can we, therefore, not say that Chinese-American trade also played a role, albeit indirectly, in deepening the financial crisis?

However, the greatest and most visible contribution to the recession was made by so-called subprime landing. These were the loans granted by bankers for buying houses, cars and other assets without checking the paying capacity of the borrowers. Most of the borrowers of such loans did not have adequate capacity to service their mortgages. Such mortgages were then collated by the first lenders in various bundles, securitized and sliced suitably in the form of attractive looking bonds at high coupon rates and sold to greedy investors who believed they were too clever to go for the traditional form of investments. Thus banks created assets for themselves some of which were ab initio non-performing assets or toxic assets. The ultimate value of such bank assets depends upon whether the mortgages taken against those bonds are repaid or not.

The bubble burst, as it was destined to, and the people ran for cover. The value of the assets based on such securitized bonds fell freely as though under gravity. Value of stocks of banks and other corporations in the share market plummeted. It severely restricted the capacity of banks to open fresh lines of credit. In turn, this made the entire economic system totter on the brink of uncertainly, if not sure disaster. Moralists feel it all happened due to human greed. Economists say it was all due to lack of adequate regulation and overseeing of the financial system.

Consumer spending has got steeply diminished. The 14-trillion dollar American economy depends at least 65 per cent on consumer spending, both on goods and services. Demand of goods and services is falling and and people have lost jobs in consequence. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the payroll employment has declined by 3.6 million since December 2007. Imagine the misery it must have brought to so many households. People are finding it very painful to survive.

The fundamental strategy to address this grim scenario is to boost demand, which can only be done by injecting huge outlays in the system. Food stamps and unemployment benefits are sure shot as the recipients are bound to spend the money as soon as possible. Tax cuts to the low income groups is another way to inject expendable money in the system. President Obama has creative ideas like going in a big way building infrastructure like new roads and schools. Giving money to states is also a good idea as it will stimulate social security programs like Medicaid. Banks should also get huge chunks of money so that they are able to reactivate their lines of credit to the borrowers who might be willing to invest in productive ventures.

At this point of time it is difficult to say what should be the nitty-gritty of stimulus package. Time alone can say to what extent Obama administration will succeed in averting the economic disaster.

On Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter died yesterday at the age of 88. He was one of my favorite writers.

I came to know about Pinter about a decade ago when I traveled from Bucharest to New York. I am a vegetarian and the cabin crew had mixed up my food with something I do not eat. The perceptive Israeli woman sitting next to me remarked that such stupid errors cannot happen in her country. That was the beginning of an interesting talk about kosher food, Jewish institution of kibbutz and Jewish contribution to human civilization. We also talked about the place in the history of mankind of great Jewish names such as Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Henry Bergson, Franz Kafka, and other timeless celebrities.

She asked, “What do you think of Pinter?” Like an ignoramus, I blurted, “Pinter? Who is that?” That was the beginning of my acquaintance with Harold Pinter. She gave me a brief oral backgrounder on Pinter. From that day on, I grabbed any book written by Pinter. The more I read his works, the more I fell in love with them. My admiration for the great writer grew exponentially as time passed.

Pinter had a lower middle class ancestry. He spent the formative years of his life in a London Grammar school. The friends he made in those days, like Henry Woolf, Mick Goldstein and Morris Wernick remained an integral part of his emotional life.

This is not an obituary of Pinter. It is a just my personal tribute to one of the greatest literary figures of 20th century. In his acceptance speech of Nobel Prize in 2005, he said “There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false. I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?”

That was perhaps the essence of wisdom coming from this great man. It placed him along with Kierkegaard, Sartre and other great existential thinkers.

He was as fond of Noam Chomsky as Chomsky was of him. And like Chomsky he was fearless, formidable and utterly honest. He was a leading critical voice against violation of human rights all over the world. His defense of Kurdish people against the Turkish repression will remain memorable in the contemporary history. He talked in simple language and spoke the truth with devastating effect. Nobel Prize did not add any additional glamour to his name. It only served to make his name heard repeatedly at the dinner tables of bejeweled high-society ladies.