Regional/International
By N.P. Upadhyaya
Kathmandu: 27 July 2020 will go a long way in the South Asian nation’s political history virtually dominated by the interventionist entity — India born 1947, for multiple political reasons.
It is this date which fortunately embargoed the regional scoundrel — India to be sure, from attending the mini SAARC that has just taken a shape with Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nepal as its core members that are fittingly headed by India’s arch-rival — China, the emerging superpower.
Notably, China enjoys the Observer’s status in the SARC body already.
Why China excluded Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the webinar convened on 27 July could be a card that has been at best kept a guarded secret under Chinese sleeves.
Whatever the inner motive(s) of China for excluding these countries who were not that far from Beijing but when China so decided, let’s assume China must have done so for some far-reaching political benefits?
Analysts in Nepal are more than happy that India was banned collectively by the smaller South Asian nations who have since 1947 been brutally misbehaved by this pretty new country in this part of the globe.
Thus 27 July must be celebrated for so many reasons.
Interestingly, since 27 July, India has been mercilessly beaten by the Chinese PLA forces at the war fronts which has made “expansionist” India lose lands.
China is almost ready to teach yet another lesson to big-headed India despite Russia’s mediation.
B’desh too slapped India early this month, 1 July 2020, with FM A. K Momen meeting secretly with Pak HC Imran Ahmad Siddiqui.
This date was inauspicious for India.
The 27 July China sponsored webinar touched on two specific topics.
Firstly, the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi suggested the participating countries copy the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) development model, and secondly, Wang hinted that China supports the extension of the CPEC to Afghanistan to strengthen deeper connections between the four countries and later they will have ties with the Central Asian countries.
Wang Yi hinted to the extension of “regional connectivity” (stress added) in between webinar attending nations.
This clearly indicates that China prefers Afghanistan to join the CPEC mainstream and thereby desires to distance Afghanistan with its rival India.
Afghanistan is already verminous with the RAW agents, it is believed.
The partaking of Afghanistan itself in the China sponsored webinar does tell that this country also wishes now to benefit from China’s expertise and largesse keeping India distanced.
The Chinese desire is that these four countries need to utilize their geographical advantages which in due course strengthens their interactions and connectivity with Central Asian countries.
This will also add to safeguard regional peace and stability, China believes.
If and when Afghanistan gets linked with the CPEC model, the Pakistan-Afg friendship will surely increase to the gratification of both and this is what China wants ultimately for its own trading benefits.
The coming closer of Pakistan and Afghanistan means India being disconnected.
But will India allow Afghanistan to do so?
Moreover, “if peace prevails in and around Afghanistan they’ll have a direct positive impact for Pakistan and that when things deteriorate there (Afghanistan), we (Pakistan) get affected”, this is what the Pakistani foreign minister M. S Qureshi told Valentina Shvartsman of the Sputnik online in Moscow on 11 September 11.
FM Qureshi was in Moscow to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting.
In a way, Pakistan has warned fellow members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) about “spoilers” that seek to undermine the Afghan peace process from both within and outside the country.
He said this a few days ahead of the Doha meeting of the Taliban and the Afghani government brokered by the US.
Most powerful was Qureshi’s note on the possible role of Russia in the Afghanistan peace process while talking to Sputnik online in Russia.
He said, “Given its growing influence in the region, Russia’s role in the Afghan peace process will remain ‘decisive’.
The Pak FM Qureshi termed “Russia as an important regional player” and reiterated that “We feel Russia’s importance has grown because of the very constructive approach it has adopted towards peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan,” he told the Sputnik media.
Nepal also believes that the Russian role should increase in South Asia.
The SCO is a Eurasian political and economic organization that was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
For the record, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and India are its main members, and Iran, Mongolia, Afghanistan, and Belarus are observers.
Iran has applied for the full membership of the SCO, however, due to the UN Sanctions, the membership issue is pending, say Russian media sources.
FM Qureshi may have taken the Indian establishment as spoilers, the declared troublemaker/destabilizer in South Asia because the Indian Defense Minister Raj Nath Singh forcefully dropped in Iran on his way back home from Moscow.
While in Tehran, Singh met Brigadier General Amir Hatami and is learnt to have concentrated his talks on “Afghanistan” from where India is tentatively out.
Diplomatic sources claim that Singh might have suggested Iranian defence minister Hatami to lobby for India so that India could once again enter into the body politics of the war-torn country and further fracture Afghanistan by exporting RAW men in hundreds and thousands.
Says the Indian Minister Singh upon meeting Amir Hatami, “we discussed regional security issue including Afghanistan”.
He admits that he did talk on matters on Afghani peace. The Indian minister when says that he talked on regional issues with Iranian defence minister he means that India would help ensure more and the demanded security to Iran than China which has been invited by Iran in Chabahar port.
With China’s entrance into the Chabahar port scheme, India has lost connection to Iran and subsequently lost a proper route to destabilize Pakistan. That’s the plan of India.
No route to export K.V Yadavs?
As if this were not enough, the internationally recognized coercive Indian FM Shankar also “purposely” landed in Iran to meet his counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif and is reported to have talked on the issues that have in the recent months frustrated India.
The visits being made by two highly haughty Indian ministers to Iran comes in the backdrop of strained ties between the US and Iran, and China trying to grab the strategic space in sanctions-hit Iran.
Notably, India is darling to the US and Iran is the number one enemy of the US.
Isn’t India cheating US President Trump?
The back to back visits to Iran by the noted South Asian ruffians must have been to woo Iran and associate itself once again with the lost Chabahar port project plus design to seek Iranian help to deter China’s increasing approach in the vicinity and much beyond.
But what will happen to commitments made by Iran to China in the recent past? And will China easily swallow, if and when, Iran take steps back from assured pledges?
Imperialist India will try to strengthen its political base in the region with the Iranian support but may drop out Iran if and when the US scolds as it rejected Iranian Oil.
India has a habit of changing bed-partners. India warmed the bed with the USSR like a bloodsucker and later left the USSR to the cold when it split and then instantly glued itself with the US. This is the Indian DNA national character.
India is envious of the increasing Beijing-Tehran ties in that this relation is of geopolitical importance and is likely to have far-reaching effects in South Asia especially for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and other countries.
And India knows PM Khan’s exceptional ties with Beijing and Tehran’s top rulers and the US is also not that far from Khan’s approach.
If the CPEC scheme ends with a positive note then the Gwadar-Kashgar pipeline project could solve China’s multiple problems of the increasing energy needs.
If China benefits, Pakistan is sure to accrue profits undoubtedly.
And this is what is of distaste to India’s gang of four.
Writes Sabena Siddiqui for the Al-Monitor (the pulse of the Middle East) dated 28 July 2020 that “since Iran and Pakistan are neighbours, any partnership between the former and China is bound to have an impact on Islamabad and some projects could even become “trilateral”.
This multiplies the Indian nuisance and hence the whirlwind trip by two Indian ministers to Tehran.
It should be in this light the visits of Minister Singh and Shankar to Iran should be taken.
The Indian objective is to defeat Pakistan and lessen the Chinese influence in South Asia plus Iran.
FS Shankar is learnt to have talked with Minister Javad Zarif on the Afghani stability and the overall situation in Afghanistan.
Regional experts say that he pleaded Iran to help support the Indian participation in the Afghanistan peace process from which India was almost kicked out.
Save President Ghani at the personal level, the Afghani people take Indian establishment as a country that exports RAW agents inside Kabul and then destabilizes the country.
Despite the Afghani distaste, the Indian minister Shankar addressed the Doha meet of the Afghanistan peace talks the other day.
The historic peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government have already opened in Qatar and by now has ended.
The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the beginning of the intra-Afghan peace talks in Doha that “it is up to Afghans to decide on their political system”.
The historic talks aimed to end the nearly two-decade-long armed insurgency in Afghanistan amid approaching November 3 election pressure in the US.
Pompeo said, “You will write the next chapter in Afghan history” looking at the negotiating Taliban and the government teams on both sides of the table.
Addressing the Doha meet through teleconference FM Shankar presented the Indian perception on the Afghani peace process which demanded laughter.
Look what he says, “New Delhi expects that the Afghani soil shall not be used for anti-India activities”.
This is ridiculous in that a recognized thief (India) pleads that it not be called a burglar.
Similarly, FM Qureshi said to the Doha meet that Pakistan has been holding the stance that the Afghan issue has no military solution to which the world is recognizing though late.
Continuing his speech on Doha meet on Afghanistan peace process, Qureshi said among other things that “the progress achieved should not be wasted and that a prosperous and peaceful Afghanistan will bring new opportunities for the people and would also open new vistas of cooperation and ‘connectivity’ in the region and beyond”.
His stress on connectivity thus reminds us all of the July 27 webinar chaired by Wang Yi-the Chinese FM.
Afghans alone must be the masters of their destiny without outside influence or interference, Qureshi opined.
He was referring to the likely “infiltration” of some known notorious force in the neighbourhood and remain vigilant from their ugly affairs.
Qureshi talked in Moscow of possible “foreign meddling” in the Afghan peace process. Perhaps he was hinting at India.
Some thirty thousand Nepalese nationals are reportedly on RAW’s regular payroll at the moment.
The gist is that peace in Afghanistan is vital for Pakistan and vice versa.
The SA region also benefits from Afghan peace if India allows at all to prevail.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Army on Thursday said that Pakistan and Afghanistan would “defeat all spoilers” of the Afghan peace process.
“[The] unfortunate rise in violent incidents on both sides of [the] Pak-Afghan border is meant to derail [the] Afghanistan peace process,” a statement by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) reads, reports the News International dated 10 September.
The Pak Army’s statement made last Thursday was timed to sound the “spoilers” attending the peace talks in Doha.
In yet another political development in search of “Afghan peace”, the United States Central Command (US CENTCOM) commander General Kenneth McKenzie Jr called on Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and the two discussed the Afghan peace process as well as military cooperation between the two countries, Inter-Services Public Relations said Friday, reports Daily Times on 12 September.
Gen McKenzie and Gen Bajwa also discussed several pressing issues, including Kashmir, the geostrategic environment, and discussed on South Asian regional security and beyond, adds the Daily Times.
The meet of the US Gen McKenzie with the Army Chief Bajwa has some visible security-political connotations.
The US General’s desire to talk on Kashmir issue is ‘news breaking’ for the Indian regime.
Peace in Afghanistan is needed in that Afghanistan is a distinguished member of the SAARC regional body.
The US general must have got briefed by Gen. Bajwa on the existing security situation if South Asia. This is also news breaking.
In this backdrop, India killed SAARC body is likely to come out from India dug grave as arch-foe India and Pakistan have given a positive signal for the convening of the stalled SAARC meet.
Nepal as the Chair has summoned the Summit on 24 September. India gave nod perhaps to halt its deteriorating ties in the neighbourhood.
People’s Review Print Edition
Login to add a comment