National/Regional/International Affairs

By N. P. Upadhyaya (Aryal) Kathmandu: Needless to say, interventionist India’s strongarm “neighbourhood first policy” is primarily a fraudulent notion to lure the smaller neighbours that “under the new scheme” they will be, contrary to what it was given to understand as its prime objective, subjected to further terror and arms twisting should they ignore the Indian dictates in their bilateral dealings with India, has wretchedly failed. Indian author Arundhati Roy rightly says “On what grounds India can be taken as a democracy?” She stamped that India is not a democracy. The neighbourhood first policy has despondently been botched. Instead, it is now a “cheat and threaten neighbours first” policy. The fate of the Muslim lady who was gang-raped during Gujrat violence, Bilkis Bano, met with is a glaring example of what Arundhati says that India is not a democracy. Indian democracy was exposed to the hilt. Ram Chandra Guha, a foremost historian of modern India says the personality cult around PM Modi is the largest in human history. He adds, “Modi is now in the league of Hitler, Mussolini, Ghaddafi and Saddam Hussein. Though he is a Gujarati, he rules like British rulers. Modi has fully used, the police, army, executive judiciary and anti-graft bodies to sustain his reign”. Gujrati businessman Adani has smoothly entered and awarded Sri Lanka for “power business”. Net benefit to India from the Sri Lankan upheaval which was its creation, claim international observers. Nepal and B’desh are now the targets. Pakistan, needless to say, is India’s permanent target. The colonizing and the land grabber Indian Army Chief Pandey is here to further “press” the already “white elephant” Nepal Army(?). If Army remains standoffish to national crises then it is a defunct Army. Isn’t it? Here is the message. A democracy never threatens and intimidates its neighbours. However, India does so it is not at all a democracy, as Arundhati guarantees. The Sri Lankan storm is about to hit India-elevated the Nepali ruling circle soon. India’s neighbourhood first policy was a conceptual fraud and thus it evaporated into the ethereal medium. India’s domination in the entire region is definitely increasing in a phenomenal manner which, we presume, must have been due to Pakistan’s weaknesses which is partly due to the abrupt change of a comfortably popular government this April and the subsequent inept handling of the incumbent government its domestic as well as its foreign policy. This is what has been emanating from Pakistani people and the Pakistani media. We have nothing to add.  However, our heart goes to the people of Pakistan who have been hard hit by the recent floods that have literally ravaged Pakistan. Needless to say, India’s rough behaviour could have prompted the South Asian belief that the US may have appointed India as policeman of South Asia, a prize to India from the USA for having been a strong partner of the US-designed Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) comprising of the US, Australia, Japan and expansionist India. The Indian regime now has reasons to feel elated and strengthened for having associated itself with the lone superpower for the sole purpose of “teasing and containing China” as the QUAD is believed to have come into existence essentially. Trickster India ditched the heir apparent of the former USSR -- the Russian Federation -- by aligning itself with the US. A Tweeterati Lord Curzon on September 3, questions in his Tweet, “Is India an American mole in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) or a Russian mole in QUAD? The question is valid in that India is riding two boats at a time allowing both Russia and the Americans to determine what India is up to. A time soon will come when the two powers shall use and throw India for good or at best take India as the “mole” of the other competing power. India will lose its political and international credentials if left any. To recall, India had a two-decades-long “security pact” with the USSR which split Pakistan into two halves and this facilitated the emergence of Bangladesh. Back to the US-India love affair: Whether the US is using India or India is using the US is a riddle that only the countries in question could explain, however, it is strongly believed by intelligent brains across the globe that this US-India tie-up is only to cut the Chinese wings to size so that China could not expand and increase its influence across the world. Interpretations and explanations may greatly differ suiting one's political choices and preferences which is only natural in a free society. For some, the USA is the guardian of democracy while others take the US differently. Differing opinions apart, the US is still a global power which needs slight adjustments, we believe in Nepal, in its foreign policy conducts to regain “goodwill” that is waning in countries in South Asia, particularly Pakistan, which concludes that the Islamic nation has been used and overused by the US beginning several decades in the past more so at the time of the entire Cold War period. The US used Pakistan for a long time after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Islamabad feels so. The Pakistani claim is also that the smooth exit of the US from Afghanistan last year was only possible with Pakistan’s mediation. However, the US perhaps differed with Pakistani assertions and the sitting PM Khan was ousted reportedly. Yet it is also the “beauty of democracy” which allows one to “agree to disagree”. Enters Syed Moshahid Husain: Journalist turned senator Moshahid Hussain a few years back addressing Kathmandu’s Nepal Council of World Affairs (NCWA) gathering coined a term called the new “Great Game” which was in play against China. He also had said that the center of gravity of world politics now has shifted from the West to Asia thus bringing both challenges and opportunities for Asia more so for South Asia. Let’s recall what the Pakistani senator said of China and the Great Game in Kathmandu (already said) and later in Beijing. Senator Syed Moshahid Hussain who is also the chairman of the Pakistan-China Institute (PCI) and Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said in Beijing on November 17, 2018, that there is a shift in global economic and political power from the West to the East, and China’s peaceful rise and amazing development is an important inspiration for developing countries”. It was this Pakistani scholar who coined the new term “Great Game”, as stated earlier, which he hinted to have been a match being played by Western powers to contain China. While addressing the 4th CPEC Media Forum in Beijing, Mushahid Hussain said that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has now spawned a Greater South Asia comprising South Asia, Central Asia, China, Iran and Afghanistan drove by economy and energy. He said that the BRI is opening the door to a new world with China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as its success story since it is the flagship and pilot project of the BRI. More than important and ear-pleasing was that Hussain announced a “Greater South Asia” was in the making which shall include China and some very powerful central Asian countries. It is these countries which have pleasingly joined the Chinese initiative, the CPEC, which has taken deep roots in Pakistan through China-initiated projects. Hussain prefers Iran also to be included in the Greater South Asian scheme. If so and if that materializes time permitting then that would surely cut the wings of the Indian regime which has been opposing the CPEC tooth and nail. India prefers BIMSTEC over the slaughtered SAARC. (source: telegraphnepal.com, 2018). However, the senator did not clarify whether the SAARC members other than India shall be joining his scheme. Hussain is surely a sharp critic of the USA and on the contrary, he takes China unquestionably as “my dear friend”. However, Nepal has had a bit of a bitter experience with China as China and India signed a trading agreement via Lipulekh, a Nepali territory. China has yet not apologise for having used Nepali landmass for trade with India without Nepal’s prior approval. India if it so desires, says Hussain, can also join this greater South Asia. Hopefully, India shall not. India in its bid to isolate Pakistan a second time, let’s admit the fact straight, has almost killed the SAARC regional body, which is, what may have prompted Pakistan to talk of the Greater Asian scheme as a bigger alternative to SAARC. However, the Greater South Asian scheme has emanated from Pakistan’s scholarly level only. The things will take a concrete shape if and when it comes from the official quarters. The present-day leaders in Islamabad are said to be “intimate” with India so this scheme too will die a premature death hopefully. Yet, since Mushahid is a man of conviction and is a man close to Mian Nawaz Sharif so this idea may take shape if incumbent PM Sharif takes the trouble. Indian reaction shall be awaited. SAARC Summit boycott: To recall, India in the year 2016 had used its influence in SAARC to isolate Pakistan (second time) when it announced that it would not attend the regional group’s 19th Summit scheduled for Islamabad on November 15 and 16. The Indian boycott was later endorsed by Afghanistan, Bangladesh and baby Bhutan. All these three countries in the SAARC are taken as “obedient” neighbours of India for multiple reasons. Though Nepal is the most loyal Indian “stooge”, yet, it didn’t boycott because Kathmandu had, as a matter of practice, to hand over the chair to Islamabad. The SAARC postponement was, as India alleged, Pakistan’s involvement in the Uri attack which Pakistan strongly rebukes. As of Afghanistan, this war-torn nation was being extensively and excessively used by India to destabilize Pakistan as some Indian consulate offices were stationed close to the border which allowed Indian mercenaries to enter inside the Pakistani territories and then create disturbances. The previous Afghan top leaders were “intimate” with the Indian establishment. This is why when the Taliban(s) took Kabul under its control on August 15/16, 2021, the Indian diplomats were the first ones to flee from Afghanistan in a terrified state. It is said that they took to their heels to save their lives. But why? Visible Pakistani weaknesses: Let’s presume that it is the weak handling of Pakistan’s foreign policy that is associated with the internal political rivalry causing instability that has weakened the country from within which mars its deserved capabilities that being of an equal and competing/matching nuclear power to the expansionist nuclear Indian regime, Pakistan is lagging. The present-day leadership of Pakistan, we have been told, is busy “diminishing” the popularity of the former Prime Minister Imran Khan who claims that he was ousted by a calculated design crafted by the US in collaboration with some internal political forces that were in close contact with the posers who apparently ousted PM Khan. Whether the US was involved in Khan’s ouster or not is not an issue of our concern as it is the internal affairs of Pakistan so it would be desirable to remain outside of the internal affairs of neighbouring and friendly Pakistan. Whatever happens or takes place inside Pakistan is not of our prime concern, however, what becomes our worry as and when India exploits the internal unstable politics of regional countries including born rival Pakistan since the days of grand partition that occurred in South Asian landmass, Pakistan acquires stoic silence. The India-Pakistan conflicts: “The India-Pakistan conflicts have been at the core of insecurity and instability in South Asia”, we presume. Pakistan can and must neutralize the Indian establishment’s uninterrupted regional hegemony by asserting itself as an equal and matching nuclear deterrent to India. If Pakistan affirms itself as an equal and corresponding nuclear regional force, that it is by all standards, it can offer solace to the smaller countries of South Asia as and when these smaller countries are being endangered by the regional bully -- the Indian regime. But will Pakistan affirm its role for the benefit of the smaller countries of the region? Those countries in South Asia who have felt the impact of Indian suppression perhaps wish Pakistan played a crucial role. To begin with, Pakistan as the next chair of the SAARC Regional body deserves every right to begin talking on SAARC which, in our opinion, shall put moral pressure on the regional bully for giving a new lease of life to PM Modi’s killed SAARC. During a meeting with this scribe on August 30, Pakistan envoy in Nepal Syed Haider Shah skipped the issue when the question of the revival of the dead SAARC was raised.  This means Pakistan is not interested in the revival of the Modi-killed SAARC. Since Pakistan has already become, we guess, the hub of regional connectivity through CPEC by making a transition from geopolitics to geo-economics, so as a regional and competing force should assert its competencies at least for the betterment of the smaller nations of South and Central Asia. Finally, some snippets from India: Sixteen years after a bomb exploded at a residence of a Nanded-based Rashtriya Swayansevak Sangh (RSS) worker, a former senior functionary of the organization has moved an application before a special CBI court claiming that several senior right-wing leaders were directly involved in the incident, the WIRE reported on September 2. The WIRE adds, “Yashwant Shinde was an RSS worker for close to 25 years and also had associations with other ultra-right-wing groups like the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal. He has claimed that over three years before the blast, a senior VHP worker had informed him about a terror training camp that was underway to “carry out blasts across the country”. This speaks of the functioning of Indian democracy. That's all.