India and the World

India snubs Pakistan, says no to SAARC summit

- by India Writes Network

In a major step aimed at isolating Pakistan in the region, India has announced that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not participate in the SAARC summit in Islamabad due to cross-border terrorist attacks, an obvious reference to the Uri assault by Pakistani terrorists.

In a diplomatic retaliation for Pakistan’s diversionary posturing on the Kashmir issue, India has underlined that the current environment is not conducive to then holding of the SAARC summit.

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India, Nigeria open new avenues to energise ties: Focus on nuclear energy, food security

- by India Writes Network

Bolstering their economic and energy partnership, India and Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, have decided to open new avenues of cooperation in areas of civil nuclear energy, energy, space and food security.

The talks between India’s Vice-President Hamid Ansari and his Nigerian counterpart Yemi Osinbajo in Abuja on September 27 culminated in an ambitious template for scaling up the India-Nigeria relations in key areas that included, among others, hydrocarbons, renewable energy, defence, space and counter-terror cooperation.

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Bypassing OIC to isolate Pakistan: Ansari to seek support of Nigeria & Mali, says OIC is just another club

- by Manish Chand

India is looking to step up its outreach to Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries to muster their support against Pakistan-sponsored terror, with Vice-President Hamid Ansari set to take up the issue with the leaders of Nigeria and Mali. However, even as India ratchets up its ongoing diplomatic campaign to isolate Pakistan in the wake of the Uri terror attack, Mr Ansari sent a subtle but strong message across by underlining that one should not exaggerate the significance of OIC.

Mr Ansari touched down in Abuja on September 26 on a three-day visit to Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and most populous country. Nigeria rolled out the red carpet to welcome Mr Ansari, with Nigeria’s vice-president Yemi Osinbajo personally receiving him at the Abuja International Airport. Dancers dressed in colourful attire welcomed the Vice-President, the first high-level visit from India in the last nine years since then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Nigeria in 2007.

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India’s response to Uri attack: Strategic patience, not restraint shows the way

- by India Writes Network

The September 18 attack on the Uri military camp, launched by Pakistan-based terrorists, has agitated the entire country and ignited serious, high-decibel debate as to how these repeated provocations need to be handled by the leadership.
Pakistan appears to have hit upon a ‘no cost’ grand strategy which is backed by its nuclear weapons capability with its announced first use policy. The aim, clearly, is to show Prime Minister Modi as a weak leader, to keep India unsettled by negatively impacting its international image and a calculation that the state response to terrorism can widen India’s potential internal fault lines. By applying this strategy, it feels that it has the strategic and tactical initiative for escalation of tension and, indeed, in the bilateral relations as a whole.
Costs for Pakistan can, certainly, be raised. Its grand strategy is anchored in waging an asymmetrical, ‘irregular’ war against India, backed up by its military and nuclear capability: this ‘irregular’ war involves non-uniformed, ‘civilian’ elements trained in subversion and guerrilla warfare in urban areas and the countryside. Conventional military action, as seen in the ‘Operation Parakram’ mobilisation of the Indian troops on the India-Pakistan border after the Parliament attack, cannot be the response.
As it needs to leverage all aspects of a country’s strength, countering asymmetric warfare is a protracted affair and cannot take the form of a short, swift conventional war. Ultimately, it is the strength and resilience of a political system which actually prevails in a war of attrition, against the strategy of ‘death by a thousand cuts’. The answer to our Pakistan dilemma, in short, is not ‘strategic restraint’ but ‘strategic patience’.

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India’s Africa safari: Why Vice-President Ansari is going to Nigeria, Mali

- by Manish Chand

Nigeria’s India-educated President Muahammadu Buhari is an incorrigible optimist. He is not deterred by narratives of Afro-pessimism or Africa Rising?, sparked by plunging commodity prices and festering violence in swathes of the continent, but is determined to ensure that the rising of Nigeria is real and lasting. A few hundred kilometres away, Mali, ravaged by savage terrorism, is trying to script its own resurgence amid formidable challenges. Against this backdrop, Vice-President Hamid Ansari heads to Nigeria and Mali to chart new pathways of cooperation to aid ongoing national reconstruction in these two important partners of India in West Africa.
Mr Ansari’s visits to Nigeria and Mali (September 26-30) underscore India’s strategic design to expand its footprints in the West Africa region, which had not hitherto loomed high on India’s diplomatic canvas.
Besides enhancing economic ties and development cooperation, the vice-president is expected to focus on imparting a strategic traction to India’s relations with Nigeria and Mali. Intensifying counter-terror cooperation will be on top of the agenda in both Abuja and Bamako.
The vice-president will also be seeking support of Nigeria and Mali, members of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), which forms the diplomatic support base of Pakistan on the Kashmir issue, for India’s campaign to isolate Pakistan in the wake of the terror attack in north Kashmir that killed 18 Indian soldiers.
China’s growing economic presence in West Africa is another strategic imperative for India to raise its game in the region. With a growing convergence of economic and strategic interests, India’s outreach to West Africa and the African continent is set to acquire a new narrative and resonance in days to come.

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Big Deal: India gets Rafale advantage over Pakistan

- by India Writes Network

Ending year of visions and revisions, India finally signed one of its biggest defence deals with France to acquire 36 Rafale fighter jets, which promise to give the country a decisive edge vis-à-vis its adversary Pakistan in a conflict situation.
The 7.87-billion euro deal was inked by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and his French counterpart Jean Yves Le Drian in New Delhi on September 23, capping years of hard-fought negotiations which has saved the nation around 750 million Euros.
The deal to buy 36 fighter aircraft in fly-away condition was unveiled during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to France in April 2015, but the price negotiations dragged on for months resulting in a win-win deal. The Modi government and its negotiators have much to crow about as the final deal has not only saved India 750 million euros compared to the deal negotiated under the previous government, but also comes with a 50 per cent offset clause, which effectively means business of around 3 billion euros for Indian companies.
Rafale jets, considered the most advanced in the world, will bolster India’s defence as they are equipped with latest missiles and weapon system. The India-specific modifications and the integration of state-of-the-art missiles like ‘Meteor’ and ‘Scalp,’ will give the Indian Air Force the much-needed strike capability against adversaries like Pakistan.
The Beyond Visual Range (BVR) Meteor air-to-air missile with a range in excess of 150 km will enable IAF to, if such a situation arises, to strike inside both Pakistan and across the northern and eastern borders while staying well within within India’s territorial boundary.

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India debunks Sharif’s Kashmir tune: Shun Pakistan, Ivy League of Terrorism

- by India Writes Network

India fielded a young diplomat to trash Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s staccato speech at UN, in which he drummed the Kashmir cause in a formulaic manner and sought to glorify the leader of a proscribed terrorist organization. It was a stinging rebuttal of the Pakistani leader’s speech, who invested 80 per cent of his time in orchestrating the Kashmir cause, with hardly any resonance among world leaders.
“The land of Taxila, one of the greatest learning centres of ancient times, is now host to the Ivy League of terrorism. It attracts aspirants and apprentices from all over the world,” said Eenam Gambhir, First Secretary at India’s Permanent Mission to the UN. Ms Gambhir was deployed to exercise India’s Right of Reply during the General Debate of the 71st session UN General Assembly on September 21.
Condensed in just 510 words, India’s rebuttal was a model of precision and the most devastating indictment of Pakistan’s continuing use of terrorism as a state policy.
In a rebuff to Pakistan, the leaders of more than 25 countries have spoken at the UNGA, but no one even alluded to Kashmir and everybody spoke about the need to fight terror unitedly, underscoring Pakistan’s growing international isolation.

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Uri attack: India confronts Pakistan with evidence, says stop sponsoring terror

- by Manish Chand

It was time for some plain speaking as India’s Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar summoned Pakistan’s High Commissioner Abdul Basit and conveyed that India has enough evidence to link Pakistani militants with the recent terror attack in Uri that killed 18 Indian soldiers.
The message was direct and sliced through duplicity and denials that have become hallmarks of Pakistan’s response in the aftermath of terror attacks in India, engineered by Pakistan-based militants, in collusion with sections of the state machinery.
The latest terrorist attack in Uri only underlines that the infrastructure of terrorism in Pakistan remains active, India’s external affairs ministry said after the meeting between Mr Jaishankar and the Pakistani envoy in New Delhi on September 21. “We demand that Pakistan lives up to its public commitment to refrain from supporting and sponsoring terrorism against India,” said the statement. This was an unambiguous statement from India, which suggests that India’s security agencies have made a considered assessment that the attack on an Army base in Uri on September 18 was perpetrated by Pakistani militants with support from state actors.
With India providing specific evidence of complicity of Pakistani militants in recent terror attacks in the country, the ball is now in Pakistan’s court. Denials and equivocations simply won’t do, and hyped-up rhetoric, which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is set to unleash at the UNGA tonight, will not deceive anyone. It’s time for Pakistan to act and redeem its honour, in short.

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