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30 June 2014

How history was made up at Nalanda

Arun Shourie | June 28, 2014

Surely, no self-respecting Marxist could have made his account rest on not just one miracle — acquiring sidhis and raining fire on to the structures — but two, for we also have the streams of water running down from the scriptures.

“The mine of learning, honoured Nalanda” — that is how the 16th-17th century Tibetan historian, Taranath, referred to the university at Nalanda. At the time I-tsing was at the university, there were 3,700 monks. The total complex had around 10,000 residents. The structures housing the university were as splendid and as extensive as the learning they housed. When excavations began, the principal mound alone was about 1,400 feet by 400 feet. Hieun Tsang recounts at least seven monasteries and eight halls. The monasteries were of several storeys, and there was a library complex of three buildings, one of them nine storeys high.

As the Islamic invaders advanced through Afghanistan and northwestern India, they exterminated Buddhist clergy, they pillaged and pulverised every Buddhist structure — the very word “but”, the idols they so feverishly destroyed, was derived from “Buddha”. Nalanda escaped their attention for a while — in part because it was not on the main routes. But soon enough, the marauders arrived, and struck the fatal blow. The ransacking is described in the contemporary Tabakat-i-Nasiri by Maulana Minhaj-ud-din.

Minhaj-ud-din rose and came to the notice of the rulers of the time — Qutb-ud-din Aibak and others — because of his raids and depredations, and because of the enormous booty he gathered, booty sufficient for him to set himself up as a plunderer in his own right. “His reputation reached Sultan (Malik) Qutb-ud-din, who despatched a robe of distinction to him, and showed him honour,” the historian writes. With its high wall, its large buildings, Nalanda seemed like a well-endowed fortress to Ikhtiyar-ud-din and his force. He advanced upon it with two hundred horsemen “and suddenly attacked the place”. Minhaj-ud-din continues,

“The greater number of inhabitants of that place were Brahmans, and the whole of those Brahmans had their heads shaven, and they were all slain. There were a great number of books there; and when all these books came under the observation of the Musalmans, they summoned a number of Hindus that they might give them information respecting the import of those books; but the whole of the Hindus had been killed. On being acquainted (with the contents of the books), it was found that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindu tongue, they call a college, Bihar [vihara].”

India’s call at Cancún conclave





Published: June 30, 2014 
Jairam Ramesh

Photo: APLEADING THE WAY: India played a key role in rescuing and reviving the multilateral negotiating process. But this did not get adequate appreciation at home. File picture of a demonstration by Greenpeace during the conference. — PHOTO: AP

Negotiating positions can never be frozen, but must actually evolve over time

“All nations must take on binding commitments in an appropriate legal form.” I added this sentence to my prepared text at the very last minute after much cogitation while addressing the U.N. Climate Change Conference at Cancún, Mexico on December 8, 2010. The conference came after the much-heralded Copenhagen meet. Bouquets from all over the world and brickbats from India followed immediately. The Mexican President and Foreign Minister were all praise for India’s pragmatism. President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives said that for the first time he felt confident that India was serious about addressing the special concerns of countries like his, while Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly lauded India’s constructive contributions. But at home, I was pilloried by influential non-governmental organisations, by large sections of the media, and by the present Finance Minister in Parliament.

Explanation for the addition

On December 17, 2010, I addressed a detailed eight-page letter to all Members of Parliament explaining the immediate context in which the impromptu addition was made. A majority of developing and developed countries were pushing for a legally binding agreement. Most countries including our BASIC quartet partners Brazil and South Africa, our developing country partners in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), Least Developed Countries, Africa and four of our SAARC colleagues shared this view. The opposition came mainly from the U.S., China, India, the Philippines, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Saudi Arabia. I felt it was important for India to demonstrate that it was not completely oblivious to the views and opinions of very large sections of the global community, especially those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

In my letter, I explained to the MPs that (i) commitments in an “appropriate legal form” are not a “legally-binding commitment” and that commitments made by the government to our own Parliament in the form of domestic legislation that contain performance targets for mitigation are also “an appropriate legal form”; and (ii) the commitments did in no way imply that India was taking on absolute emission cuts or agreeing to any peaking year for its emissions. I went on to add that this deliberate nuancing of our traditional hard line position would actually expand negotiating options for us and give us an all-round advantageous standing. The MPs appreciated the detailed explanation and I was naturally more than happy when I got a written reply on December 24, 2010 from Mr. Jaswant Singh saying: “I would not bother overmuch about the ersatz generated on account of our rather feeble understanding of the difference between ‘legally binding’ and an ‘appropriate legal form.’”

Actually, India played a crucial role in rescuing and reviving the multilateral negotiating process in Cancún. But this did not get adequate appreciation at home because of the furore over the impromptu addition. There were at least four distinctive contributions. First, it was India that ensured for the first time that developed country mitigation actions will be subject to “international assessment and review,” which means that experts including those from developing countries will have the right to review whether developed countries are living up to their commitments. Second, it was India that ensured the inclusion of the phrase “equitable access to sustainable development.” This was superior to the phrase “equitable access to carbon space,” which somehow connotes a fundamental “right to pollute.” Third, India’s detailed formulation on “international consultation and analysis” of developing country mitigation actions in a manner that is non-intrusive, non-punitive and respectful of national sovereignty was the key intervention that broke an acrimonious deadlock and helped take Cancún forward. Fourth, India’s formulations formed the basis of the consensus reached on technology development and sharing in both mitigation and adaptation.

ALLOWING EXTREMISTS A FREE RUN


KG Suresh
30 June 2014
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/allowing-extremists-a-free-run.html

The ongoing crisis in Iraq is a result of militancy by the extremist brand of Sunni faith dominated by the Wahhabi school. The ideology flourishes through petro-dollars pumped by Saudi Arabia and the benign conduct of the West

Even as the crisis in insurgency-hit Iraq deepens further, the primary concerns in India, and naturally so, are the evacuation of its citizens, including hostages currently in the custody of the ISIS/ISIL terrorists, and the possible fallout on fuel prices which would further burden the country’s fragile economy.

A spurt in oil prices may widen India’s current account deficit to 2.3 per cent of the GDP. India imports nearly 80 per cent of its oil demand, out of this close to two million barrels per day come from Iraq, making it the second-largest source of fuel for the country after Saudi Arabia. Thus, it is equally important to understand a crucial dimension of the conflict, which could have a far-reaching impact on India as a nation — the growing tentacles of Wahhabism including within its borders.

To begin with, it is important to take into account some key factors which are being ignored both by the Western and Indian media.

The conflict in Iraq is not a Sunni-Shia sectarian war. The ISIS’s Saudi-backed Salafi-Wahhabi terrorists are killing Sunnis, Sufis, Shias and Christians. In their eyes, all Sunnis, Sufis or Barelvis (as we know them in India) in particular, are polytheists; Shias are infidels whereas Christians and Jews are enemies of Islam.

It’s the Salafi-Wahhabis who are attacking religious shrines in the war-torn country. Shrines in Samarra, Najaf, and Karbala are equally holy to Sufi Sunnis and Shias. Imam Hussain shrines in Karbala and Hazrat Ali’s shrine in Najaf are equally holy to all Muslims except the Salafis. In fact, Sunnis and Shias are joint custodians of the holy shrine in Samarra and other areas.

The ISIS, Nusra and Al Qaeda terrorists, and their allies in South Asia, despite their minor political differences are united in their hatred for Sunni Sufis, Shias and Christians. Events in Afghanistan, Nigeria, Libya, etc confirm that it is not the majority of Sufi Sunnis versus Shia, but it is Salafi-Wahhabis versus the rest of the world.

No easy way out


Hardeep S Puri
June 29, 2014

The escalating sectarian civil war in Iraq is dangerously poised. Apart from consequences for Iraq — a possible soft partitioning — there will be repercussions for other countries in the region and elsewhere. This constitutes a threat to international peace and security.

Decades ago, Western cartographers created an artificial country as part of a “division of spoils’. The exploding sectarian faultlines in Iraq are umbilically linked to the crisis in Syria, in which over 1,30,000 people have been killed since 2011. The genesis of these developments can also be traced to the policy-induced crisis in Libya, which resulted in UN Security Council Resolution 1973 and Nato military action.

The unbridled enthusiasm for the Arab Spring in the West blinded governments to the dangers of arming militias against established, even if tyrannical, regimes. The expectation that the Arab Spring would unfold on the lines of a Western liberal democratic template was mistaken, and acknowledged as such before long. A lesson learnt over decades — that there are no good or bad militants — was forgotten.

Colonel Gaddafi, much despised for good reason, proved an easy first rallying point. The desire of the United States, the United Kingdom and France to see him gone was understandable. Even the Chinese and the Russians did not feel strongly enough to cast a negative vote in the UN Security Council in March 2011. The Russian permanent representative, Vitaly Churkin, said Russia abstained because of its principled stand against the use of military force. The passion of interventionists prevailed. The new members, all aspiring for permanent status, Brazil, India and Germany, did not have the political clout to alter the outcome. They tried to negotiate a “balanced” resolution providing for a ceasefire and the possibility of mediation by the African Union. But the ink was barely dry when the P3 chose to invoke “all means necessary”, a euphemism for military action. Nato action followed instantly. The other provisions of the resolution were completely ignored.

Mainstream thinking in the West has a propensity to rationalise policy-induced mistakes made by governments. Evidence in the public domain, documented by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, shows that rebels were being armed by countries in the region acting on their own and as proxies. The arming of militias is invariably accompanied by unintended consequences. Some turn rogue.

Worse still, others turn on their creators. The attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi in September 2012 is a case in point.

Advocates of the use of force and the right of intervention will find it difficult to argue that military action in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 produced the desired outcomes. Regime change results in destabilisation, which is even more difficult to handle.

In the Era of Persistent Conflict, DIA Adopting New ‘Big Data’ Technologies to Modernize Its Analytic Efforts

Dan Verton
June 27, 2014
Inside DIA’s big data innovation efforts
fedscoop.com


All eyes may be on the CIA’s high-profile cloud computing contract with Amazon, but a quiet revolution in big data analytics and process re-engineering is taking place at the Defense Intelligence Agency that may have a bigger impact on the intelligence community’s planned common computing environment.

DIA has been at the center of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and now finds itself trying to keep pace with an unprecedented level of change on a global scale. It’s what DIA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn refers to as “persistent conflict.”
“This era of persistent conflict is real,” Flynn said, speaking June 24 at DIA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters for the agency’s second annual Innovation Day. “What we’re going to see in the next decade or two is unprecedented. The velocity of change is faster than I’ve ever witnessed.”

To deal with that change, DIA has embarked upon a massive agencywide effort to do the one thing pundits and observers are fond of talking about but rarely accomplish in reality — innovate.

“Innovation has nothing to do with technology, but it has a lot to do with the way we apply technology,” Flynn said. “Innovation is actually about people.”

But the innovation taking place within DIA may have far-reaching implications for the intelligence community’s effort to improve collaboration by standardizing its computing infrastructure — an effort known as the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise, or ICITE (pronounced eyesight). And while the agency’s emerging leadership role in ICITE may have been a deliberate effort to protect the interests of its own user base, a common understanding that the agency really has little choice but to get out in front of the challenges it faces has since emerged among senior DIA officers.

“We absolutely have to be a leader in that,” Flynn said, referring to the ICITE initiative and the movement to commercial and government cloud services. “We right now are managing around 230,000 top secret communications platforms around the world. That’s about 20 percent of our budget. That’s a lot of dough.”

Modernizing analysis

Contrary to popular belief, the lifeblood of intelligence is not raw data, but rather the process and quality of analysis that turns the data into finished intelligence — information the president or military commanders can use to make decisions.

But DIA needed to find a way to help analysts deal with the increasing demands of big data, understand what intelligence products its customers were actually reading and rapidly form communities of interest for crisis collaboration.

DIA calls its agile development answer to these problems the Nerd Brigrade.

“The concept of the Nerd Brigade is to take source developers, source coders, business process [experts] and engineers and have them sit side-by-side with analysts, using true data in the production environment that they have to live with every day and just look at their process and figure out where you can do a very agile two-week spin to improve their process and make their lives a little easier,” DIA Director for Analysis Catherine Johnston said.


DIA Deputy Director David Shedd leads a panel discussion during the agency’s Innovation Day June 24. Pictured from left: David Shedd, deputy director; Grant Schneider, chief information officer; Dan Doney, chief innovation officer; Catherine Johnston, director for analysis; Ardisson Lyons, deputy director for science and technology; Robert Adams, director of training; and Agustin Taveras, chief technology officer. (Photo: DIA)

Report on the U.S. Secret Service


June 27, 2014

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has released a 21-page restricted access Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on the U.S. Secret Service entitled “The U.S. Secret Service: History and Mission.” The report can be viewed here in its entirety.

ISIS and Al Qaeda Battle for Control of the Global Jihadist Movement


June 27, 2014

Aaron Zelin at the much-respected Washington Institute for Near East Policy has just published online an 11-page report entitled “The War between ISIS and al-Qaeda for Supremacy of the Global Jihadist Movement.” The report can be viewed here.

*** Tension With Afghanistan Is Complicating Pakistan’s Military Offensive Against the Taliban

Tim Craig and Shaiq Hussain
June 27, 2014
As Pakistan wages an offensive against militants, tensions with Afghanistan rise

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan has evacuated more than 450,000 civilians from a terrorist-plagued district in the northwestern part of the country, but its offensive against the militants there is complicated by fresh tension with neighboring Afghanistan.

With the North Waziristan campaign in its second week, officials say most civilians have left the remote, mountainous area, home to thousands of militants affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban and groups such as the Haqqani network. More than 350 militants have been killed, and military commanders say a full-scale ground invasion is imminent.

The area’s porous border with Afghanistan makes it likely, however, that some militants have escaped. Pakistan says Afghanistan is not doing enough to bolster surveillance of its side of the border. Pakistani Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah is thought to live in Afghanistan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has personally appealed to Afghan President Hamid Karzai to help dislodge him.

“So far, there has been no action on the part of the Afghan government to dismantle [Pakistani Taliban] hideouts,” said Pakistani Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa. “We want them to take action.”

In recent days, Afghan commanders have been largely dismissive of such concerns, saying they are doing all they can to help their Pakistani counterparts.
Men carry a person who fainted while queuing up to receive food supplies at a distribution point for those fleeing the military offensive against militants in North Waziristan, in Bannu, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. (Stringer/Reuters)

Karzai’s security forces have been locked in a nearly week-long battle with hundreds of Afghan Taliban militants in the southern province of Helmand. On Thursday, Afghan officials accused Pakistani military and intelligence officials of supporting the Afghan militants.

Eurasia's Ongoing Crackup

June 26, 2014

Eurasia -- from Iberia to the Korean Peninsula -- faces the prospect of epochal change. These disruptions are not always in the headlines, and they obscure vast areas of stability where change is gradual rather than sudden. But at a time of rapid shifts in technology and urban demography, it is to be expected that political identities of the kind that lead to territorial adjustments will undergo transformation. And while in some cases a yearning for liberal democracy will be a driving force of upheaval, in too many cases the driving force will be exclusivist ethnic and sectarian passions anchored in specific geographies. The world's leading opinion pages are consumed by the battle of ideas, but in the early 21st century blood and territory could be more accurate indicators of postmodern geopolitics.

The combination of a transnational European Union and that union's economic decline has helped further ignite calls for Catalan and Scottish separatism from within Spain and the United Kingdom, respectively. Merely the upsurge in talk of such self-determination is serving to enfeeble the reputations of Spain and Great Britain on the world stage. While these divorces -- if they ever occur -- will likely be velvet ones, not so the territorial rearrangements taking place in the Middle East.

Whatever current maps may suggest, Libya no longer exists as a state, and neither do Syria and Iraq. Yemen is barely a state at all, and Kurdistan is long into the process of becoming one. Such dramatic cartographic changes that -- barring a world war -- usually play out over decades and centuries have occurred within the space of just a few years. Though American-led military interventions provided the catalyst for state failures in Libya and Iraq, something more essential was the cause of this epic disruption. That something was suffocating absolutisms, at once fiercely modernizing and fiercely secular, in both Syria and Iraq and, to a lesser extent, in Libya. Beneath the carapaces of such centralizing tyrannies lay an utter void of civil society. Thus, as soon as these tyrannies began to buckle the most atavistic ethnic, sectarian and tribal energies came to the fore.

Indeed, as we look at all this it becomes apparent that postmodernism does not necessarily mean a more advanced stage of universal values than modernism. Postmodernism more likely represents a retreat into lethally narrow forms of identity, buttressed by deep religiosity, that are combined with the latest in communications and bomb-making technologies. In this kind of world, optimism is fine so long as it is based on ground-level analysis, not on philosophical abstractions.

East of the Levant we have the soon-to-be-realized specter of an Afghanistan and Pakistan without the stabilizing factor of the U.S. military for the first time in 13 years. Remember that democracy is less about holding elections than about strong institutions, which Afghanistan demonstrably lacks. If Afghanistan becomes a weaker state than it currently is in the coming years, this will further erode the meaning of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border so that the border itself will eventually disappear from future maps. A state only deserves to be fully represented in an atlas if it monopolizes the use of force unto its borders; otherwise the map lies.

RUN-OFF LOGJAM THREATENS AFGHANISTAN’S POLITICAL TRANSITION – ANALYSIS


Afghanistan's Abdullah Abdullah. Photo Daniel Wilkinson (U.S. Department of State)

JUNE 29, 2014  
MONISH GULATI

Just days after the Afghans braved the Taliban threats to vote in the second round run-off of the presidential elections on June 14, presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah accused Afghan President Hamid Karzai of orchestrating a political stalemate and that Karzai would be responsible for any political crisis that follows.

Abdullah said whatever results that have been announced, are not acceptable to him. Observers fear allegations of fraud on both sides could lead to a bitter and drawn out tussle for power along ethnic lines, which could derail attempts to transfer power democratically for the first time in Afghanistan’s history.

Abdullah’s team at a press conference on June 22 released audio recordings indicating collusion between the Independent Election Commission (IEC) officials and a member of rival Ashraf Ghani’s team. The IEC, a day earlier, had announced it is delaying release of the results of the presidential election run-off.
Run-off

The second round run-off had pitted Abdullah, a former anti-Taliban fighter with a support base among the ethnic Tajik voters, against Ghani, an ethnic Pashtun, after neither secured the required 50 percent votes polled to win outright the April 5 first round. In the first round, Abdullah had secured 45 percent votes compared to Ghani’s 31 percent.

On June 14, Afghans hailed another successful election after conclusion of the second round run-off polling with millions turning out to choose a new president amongst the two remaining contenders. The election took place at the height of the summer fighting season and the polling day saw at least 150 minor attacks, after the Taliban threatened to launch “nonstop” assaults during the vote.

Officials said more than seven million people (or 52 percent of the estimated electorate of 13.5 million) cast their votes. The higher than expected turnout matched the first round turnout of seven million (though the first round was revised to 6.6 million after more than 350,000 ballots were deemed fraudulent). The votes were cast at 6,365 polling centers across the country and the attendance was so high that some 333 voting centers ran out of ballot papers. Preliminary results are expected on July 2 with final results to be announced on July 22.
The Controversy

Abdullah has demanded suspension of vote counting and declared that he has no trust in electoral bodies after initial reports on the run-off put Ghani in the lead by close to a million votes. Abdullah said his opponent’s apparent million-vote lead was due to massive fraud and questioned the figures given out by IEC, which put the turnout at more than five million of an estimated 12 million eligible voters.

Abdullah alleges a surge of votes have come from the country’s eastern and southeastern provinces, the power base of Ghani. Incidentally, these are the areas where in 2009 the biggest frauds were uncovered; the IEC then had discarded more than one million votes as ineligible. This time, in Khost, a province wracked by insecurity, some 400,000 votes were cast as against just 113,000 in the first round.

LET US NOT GO BALLISTIC OVER PAKISTAN’S NUKES

June 28, 2014 
Let Us Not Go Ballistic Over Pakistan’s Nukes

More bombs does not mean India is threatened any more than it already is

Rakesh Krishnan Simha

Arms race At this rate, Pakistan could overtake France to become the fourth-largest nuclear-weapons State by around 2024

Arms race At this rate, Pakistan could overtake France to become the fourth-largest nuclear-weapons State by around 2024.

Pakistan has cranked up the production of nuclear weapons in a bid to pull ahead of India in the South Asian version of the nuclear arms race. In its latest tally, the somewhat Orwellian sounding Stockholm International Peace Research Institute puts the Pakistani arsenal at a maximum of 120 warheads — 10 more than India.

Currently, China, India and Pakistan are the only three nations expanding their nuclear arsenals. According to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, an independent group that estimates worldwide nuclear production, “Pakistan may have a stockpile of material sufficient for more than 200 weapons and could currently be producing material for about 12-21 weapons per year. It has a capacity to increase this production rate to 14-27 weapons per year when two under-construction reactors become available.”

Judging by the pace at which Pakistan’s doomsday stockpile is growing, the Islamic country could overtake France to become the fourth-largest nuclear-weapons State by around 2024.

Since the raison d’etre of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program is to counter India’s conventional might, should India be worried?

A difference of 10 or 20 nuclear weapons is hardly alarming. Even if Pakistan overtakes France’s total of 300 warheads and the Indian tally is, say, 200, it will matter little in a nuclear exchange. Even 100 is overkill — for, there just aren’t enough targets in all of Pakistan.

From Pakistan’s point of view, the dilemma is bigger. It can keep producing as many nuclear warheads as it wants to, but whether it can actually use them is a totally different matter. While the Indian strategic forces can erase Pakistan off the map with a dozen well-aimed warheads, India is too big to be decapitated by a first strike.

“Nuclear warfare is not a commando raid or commando operation with which Pakistan is more familiar,” says Subhash Kapila, an international relations and strategic affairs analyst at the New Delhi-based South Asia Analysis Group. “Crossing the nuclear threshold is so fateful a decision that even strong American presidents in the past have baulked at exercising it or the prospects of exercising it.”

Islamabad cannot expect New Delhi would sit idle and suffer a nuclear strike without massive retaliation. So basically, if Pakistan goes for the nuclear trigger first, it commits suicide. If India goes for first-use, Pakistan still ceases to exist. It is a lose-lose proposition for Pakistan in every situation.

As US strategic analyst Ralph Peters, the author of Looking for Trouble, explains, “Pakistan’s leaders know full well a nuclear exchange would leave their country a wasteland. India would dust itself off and move on

In the Era of Persistent Conflict, DIA Adopting New ‘Big Data’ Technologies to Modernize Its Analytic Efforts

Dan Verton
June 27, 2014

All eyes may be on the CIA’s high-profile cloud computing contract with Amazon, but a quiet revolution in big data analytics and process re-engineering is taking place at the Defense Intelligence Agency that may have a bigger impact on the intelligence community’s planned common computing environment.

DIA has been at the center of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and now finds itself trying to keep pace with an unprecedented level of change on a global scale. It’s what DIA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn refers to as “persistent conflict.”

“This era of persistent conflict is real,” Flynn said, speaking June 24 at DIA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters for the agency’s second annual Innovation Day. “What we’re going to see in the next decade or two is unprecedented. The velocity of change is faster than I’ve ever witnessed.”

To deal with that change, DIA has embarked upon a massive agencywide effort to do the one thing pundits and observers are fond of talking about but rarely accomplish in reality — innovate.

“Innovation has nothing to do with technology, but it has a lot to do with the way we apply technology,” Flynn said. “Innovation is actually about people.”

But the innovation taking place within DIA may have far-reaching implications for the intelligence community’s effort to improve collaboration by standardizing its computing infrastructure — an effort known as the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise, or ICITE (pronounced eyesight). And while the agency’s emerging leadership role in ICITE may have been a deliberate effort to protect the interests of its own user base, a common understanding that the agency really has little choice but to get out in front of the challenges it faces has since emerged among senior DIA officers.

“We absolutely have to be a leader in that,” Flynn said, referring to the ICITE initiative and the movement to commercial and government cloud services. “We right now are managing around 230,000 top secret communications platforms around the world. That’s about 20 percent of our budget. That’s a lot of dough.”

Modernizing analysis
 
Contrary to popular belief, the lifeblood of intelligence is not raw data, but rather the process and quality of analysis that turns the data into finished intelligence — information the president or military commanders can use to make decisions.

But DIA needed to find a way to help analysts deal with the increasing demands of big data, understand what intelligence products its customers were actually reading and rapidly form communities of interest for crisis collaboration.

DIA calls its agile development answer to these problems the Nerd Brigrade.

Backgrounder on Pakistani Military’s North Waziristan Offensive Against the Pakistani Taliban

Reza Jan
June 27, 2014
What You Need to Know About Pakistan’s North Waziristan Operation

Paramilitary soldiers march along a street in a neighborhood after a gunfire attack on a security academy run by the Airports Security Force (ASF) in Karachi June 10, 2014. Pakistan’s Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack on the security academy at Karachi’s airport that killed more than 30 people. (Reuters)

After many feints and false starts, the Pakistani military finally launched a long-awaited military operation in the main al Qaeda and Taliban stronghold of North Waziristan on Sunday, June 15.[1] The offensive follows the recent breakdown of peace talks between the Pakistani Taliban and the government, and an audacious, deadly attack on the country’s busiest airport. A properly executed military offensive in North Waziristan may seriously impact the ability of groups like al Qaeda, the Taliban and their allies to plan and execute attacks inside Pakistan, across the region, and against U.S. interests at home and abroad. Although necessary, the operation alone is not sufficient in defeating al Qaeda and its allies in the region, however. Furthermore, the severely diminished U.S. presence in Afghanistan means that militant forces escaping the operation in Pakistan may be able to reconstitute in Afghanistan unhindered. The operation’s characteristics, potential goals and likely prospects are examined below.
Why now?

The most important tipping factor as to why the Pakistani military has chosen to undertake an operation now is likely the June 8, 2014 attack by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) on Karachi’s international airport.[2]

The U.S has continually pressured Pakistan to conduct a military operation in North Waziristan Agency since at least early 2010. This pressure was probably strongest following the attacks by the TTP and its allies on Camp Chapman, in Khost, Afghanistan on December 30, 2009 and the Times Square bomb attack on May 1, 2010—both plots had operational links to North Waziristan.[3] Despite U.S criticism and an increase in violence, the Pakistani military was reluctant to undertake a large-scale offensive in the agency for a number of reasons. The army feared being stretched too thin after recently conducting robust operations in both Swat district and neighboring South Waziristan Agency in 2009.[4] There was also concern for the likely militant backlash in the rest of the country if the main extremist stronghold in North Waziristan was seriously disturbed.[5] Lastly, the army was probably also keen to avoid the serious disruption that an operation might cause to the Haqqani Network, an Afghan militant group and Pakistani state proxy that operates in Afghanistan but is based in North Waziristan and shares both ideology and infrastructure with groups such as the TTP and IMU in North Waziristan.[6]

AS US FORCES LEAVE MANAS, THE GREAT GAME STIRS IN CENTRAL ASIA – ANALYSIS


By Jacqueline Côté Geopoliticalmonitor.com

The idea of ‘Russian territory’ extends far beyond internationally accepted borders, as the world witnessed when Russian troops stormed into Ukraine. ‘Russian territory,’ in the Kremlin’s mind at least, extends across most of the former Soviet Union, particularly in the pockets that still harbor pro-Russian sentiments.

So when the United States leased the Manas airbase from Kyrgyzstan in 2001 to assist with operations in Afghanistan, Moscow was hardly impressed. But for the sake of international solidarity in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Russian government held its tongue.

But Russian patience with a US presence in its former satellite state has been wearing thin, and in the last two years Moscow has stepped up pressure on Kyrgyz officials in Bishkek to rebuff the United States and expel American forces from the Manas air base.

On the one hand, the hefty paycheck received by the Kyrgyz government in rent from Washington was a major boost to the country’s struggling economy, which remains heavily reliant on agriculture and the resale of Chinese goods. But on the other hand, there have been many thorny issues surrounding Manas, especially concerning the supply of fuel to the airbase and the alleged involvement of the son of then-leader Kurmanbek Bakiev in a racketeering scheme.

Kyrgyzstan finally capitulated to Russian demands in June 2013, when Kyrgyz lawmakers voted to end the lease in June 2014. The United States has until July 11 to fully vacate the airbase.

Ridding the tiny mountainous state of US forces was just the first of Russian steps towards bringing Kyrgyzstan more fully into its orbit. Russia, or perhaps more accurately, Putin, is scrambling for more of Russia’s post-Soviet states to join the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), of which only Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan are members.

Russia has its work cut out for it, though. Promoting the EEU – or the Customs Union, as it was previously known – is not an easy sell for Kyrgyzstan, no matter how impoverished it may be at the moment, for a plethora of reasons.

The U.S. Navy’s Biggest Base Is Sinking : Climate change endangers Norfolk

by ROBERT FARLEY

What if the U.S. Navy’s main base in Norfolk, Virginia sinks? It could happen. And it’s not an isolated problem, as climate change alters coastlines all over the world.

A report from the American Security Project identifies Naval Station Norfolk as America’s fifth most endangered military base. The report also lists Eglin in Florida, Diego Garcia, Bahrain and Guam as being particularly vulnerable to climate change.

Probably more than any other service—and possibly more than any other government agency—the Navy has taken climate change seriously. The sailing branch is making a long-term commitment to biofuels project as part of its Green Fleet initiative.

The Navy’s interest isn’t accidental. If accompanied by the melting of Arctic ice and rising sea levels, climate change could dramatically affect how the Navy does its job. Global warming has the potential to open up new areas for patrol, but it also puts littoral populations at risk of humanitarian disaster.

Littoral populations including the Navy’s own people.

No American naval installation is more important than Naval Station Norfolk, the largest naval base in the world. Norfolk services the Navy’s largest carriers and amphibious warships and also functions as a major naval air center. The loss of Norfolk or—just as important—the loss of the workforce’s homes, would have devastating consequences.

In addition to a general rise in sea levels, climate change could create much more powerful storms. One from the Army Corps of Engineers study suggested that such storms could devastate Norfolk.

The problem extends beyond the base itself. Residents of Norfolk have grown extremely concerned about the prospects of sea level rise—and especially of increased flooding. Since 2000, flooding has intensified dramatically, and most climate models suggest that the trend will continue. By 2100, flood levels could increase by five feet or more.

The Army Corps of Engineers study examined the extent to which Norfolk needed the broader civilian infrastructure—and how vulnerable that infrastructure would become to storm and flood damage in context of higher sea levels. In short, severe flooding would badly damage the infrastructure upon which Naval Station Norfolk depends.

The United States has lost bases to natural disasters before. Hurricanes badly damaged Homestead and Keesler Air Force Bases in 1992 and 2005, respectively. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 wiped out Clark Air Base, accelerating a major reduction of the U.S. military presence in The Philippines for more than two decades. 

This Tank Doesn’t Need a Gun A taxonomy of armored vehicles, volume one—the assault breacher

The U.S. occupation of Iraq is over. The Afghanistan war is winding down. Today America faces “emerging threats in an increasingly sophisticated technological environment,” according to Gen. John Campbell, the Army vice chief of staff.

For the U.S. ground combat branches that means a renewed emphasis on fast-moving armored warfare. The Army and Marines are dusting off heavy vehicles that played a minor role in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In this series, we spotlight some of the more obscure, and fearsome, armored behemoths. The battle wagons of a new era of warfare. First up—the Marines’ Assault Breacher. An M-1 tank that doesn’t need a gun.

During World War II, the Allies fitted tanks with a bewildering array of plows, flails and demolition mortars to help clear German minefields and smash through terrain and fortifications. “Funnies,” the Allies called them.

The concept proved eminently useful. And throughout the Cold War, all the major armies on both sides of the Iron Curtain built special engineering vehicles—often based on their dominant tank types.

The U.S. military modified M-60 tanks. But when the M-1 replaced the M-60, the Americans needed an engineering vehicle to keep pace. Enter the Grizzly, a two-man M-1 with no main cannon and an added nine-foot bulldozer blade. “With the fielding of the Grizzly in … 2004, the U.S. Army will have a survivable, mobile, complex-obstacle-reduction system,” the official Armor magazine predicted in 1998.

But the Cold War’s end—and commensurate budget cuts—compelled the Army to kill off the Grizzly in 2001. That left the Army using what oneArmor contributor described as a “a ballet of farm implements” such as traditional bulldozers to shove through defensive walls, dunes and barricades.

Fortunately, the Marines kept working on Grizzly—and even added a mine-clearing system that throws an explosive line up to 150 yards to set off buried munitions. The Corps bought around 50 Grizzlies.

The U.S. Military's Dangerous Silence on China


June 26, 2014

In June 2012 I wrote PacNet #34 "China. There, I Said It" in an effort to generate a conversation about how the United States was publicly discussing the competitive elements of its relationship with the People's Republic of China (PRC). At the time, I felt like there was an unnecessarily tight muzzle on our civilian and military leadership that prevented the US from having a frank and honest conversation about the subject. If Congress is going to be asked to marshal the resources to sustain its enduring interests in the Asia-Pacific region – including a balance of military power that favors the US and its allies – I contended that the administration and specifically the Pentagon would only be successful if they were comfortable publicly making the case why these investments were required.

Two years on, I have observed occasional improvements in the discourse. Between President Obama's strong position on the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands before his recent trip to Asia, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel's forceful speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, or Assistant Secretary of State Danny Russel's stern testimony on maritime disputes in the region, the statements and testimony from administration officials and the president himself in the past two years have taken on a new level of seriousness toward China.

However, in military and security terms we still struggle to communicate how the defense budget is being built to manage the security competition with China. For instance, our military's capabilities for anti-surface and anti-air warfare, counter-mine operations, missile defense, long-range strike, and base resiliency are increasingly discussed in public briefings and strategy documents. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to justify these missions as ends in themselves rather than explain why they have taken on a newfound importance.

ISIS Is Dysfunctional It is unlikely to retain control over vast swaths of Iraq and Syria.

JUNE 28, 2014
By Tom Rogan


An ISIS convoy in Iraq's Anbar Province (From a jihadist website)

Some commentators (Simon Jenkins, for example) say that the ISIS threat is exaggerated.

As I outlined prior to the ISIS march on Mosul, that assessment is wrong. Supplied by a deep well of European recruits, supported by a war chest worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and driven by pure hatred, ISIS poses a major transnational threat. Because of its pernicious reshaping of regional political dynamics, ISIS must be challenged.

That being said, over the long term ISIS is unlikely to retain control over vast swaths of Iraq and Syria. Here are three interconnected reasons why.

CLASHING IDEOLOGIES
Let’s be clear: The crisis in Iraq isn’t about general Sunni-vs.-Shia sectarianism. Instead, it’s the consequence of a blood feud between Salafi jihadists and Iran. While both seek to segregate Iraq into base sectarian allegiances, that agenda isn’t shared by most Iraqis. Indeed, ISIS is the most extreme fringe of Sunni Islamism, consolidating its power by both promising security and creating fear. The group has improved its position by mobilizing vehement anti-Maliki sentiment in the Baathist heartlands north of Baghdad. However, now that ISIS has expanded deep into Anbar province, their ideology will face an increasing social disconnect.
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That’s because where ISIS subscribes to a psychotic Salafi interpretation ofHanbali medievalism, in Anbar’s tribal structured society the dominant Sunni school is Hanafi. Hanafi doctrine is more moderate than the Arabian Peninsula–centered Hanbali. These ideological divergences mean that where Anbar tribes regard their local independence as paramount, ISIS is obsessed with establishing a centralized, authoritarian caliphate. In turn, while Sunnis may tolerate ISIS over the short term, as ISIS usurps communal governance structures (and it will), resistance against it will increase.

EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE
ISIS believes it has learned from the experience of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). In 2006, having suffered years of devastation at the hands of AQI gangsters, many Sunni-majority communities joined with the U.S. military (and British Special Forces) to eviscerate AQI. Its brutal sharia courts and death gangs simply became intolerable. Today, ISIS thinks its softly-softly approach toward music etc. will placate those in the cities it claims. It’s mistaken.

As America learned in 2003 in Iraq, occupying forces must provide basic services alongside security. The two are mutually dependent. In the cities that ISIS now rules, the collapse of government services has cut access to electricity and water. This is an especially big problem in Iraq. After all, as I write, Mosul’s temperature is 113 degrees Fahrenheit. ISIS is good at torturing people and seizing refineries, but it lacks the technical skills and bureaucratic temperament to support populations. Moreover, its theocratic mania means that it has a very different governing agenda. Ultimately, as ISIS constructs a “holy order,” its temptation to dominate Iraqi civilians is likely to overwhelm any sense of political realism. In the days ahead, it will be interesting to see how various Anbar tribal leaders react to ISIS’s seizure of border transit points to Syria and Jordan. These positions provide lucrative smuggling routes for the tribes. AQI’s history carries another warning here. As Richard Shultz has noted, the 2006 uprising against AQI was caused partly by AQI’s capture of these roads. As the summer advances, ISIS will probably face far greater resistance.

China's South China Sea Strategy: Win the Perception Battle

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/chinas-south-china-sea-strategy-win-the-perception-battle-10776


Harry J. Kazianis

June 28, 2014

Editor's Note: The following article first appeared at the University of Nottingham's China Policy Institute blog here.

With the United States once again preoccupied with events in the Middle EastChina has made another strategic adjustment to its claims in the South China Sea. It seems clear by now that Beijing has found a new way to bolster its position in what Stratfor analyst Robert D. Kaplan has dubbed Asia’s Cauldron. China’s plan: why provoke your neighbors with raw military might, or the outright taking of claimed territory, when you can use oil rigs and maps to achieve the same strategic aims?

While China’s crafty placement of an oil rig off Vietnam’s coast—with fears several more might be in the offing—has been in the news for the past month or so, it is Beijing’s latest ploy that should make Asia watchers more concerned.

According to various reports the PRC “has published its first official vertical national map incorporating the vast South China Sea, with equal weight given to both land and sea, in its latest move emphasizing its claims of sovereignty over the disputed waters.” While Chinese maps have been used before in various claims of sovereignty (recall Beijing’s passport photo controversy a few years ago), this adds a new twist. According to an article in the South China Sea Morning Post past official maps “were horizontal and focused on the country’s vast land area. And the country’s sea areas and islands in the South China Sea were often featured on a smaller scale, in a separate box-out in a bottom corner of the map.” This new map, which went on sale last Monday shows “the islands and claimed waters in the South China Sea have been given the same amount of weight as China’s land areas, and are featured on the same scale in one complete map.” The report goes on to detail the area of the map concerning the South China Sea being “more prominent in the new map and is marked out by a nine-dash demarcation line. China claims all the islands and their adjacent waters encompassed by the line are part of its sovereignty.” (Note to readers: looking at the map, it’s actually a 10-dash line now)

For China, such a strategy is in line with past attempts, not only to slowly change facts on the ground and in the water, but to change perceptions regarding various territorial claims. Doing and acting as if you have sovereignty over something goes a long way to driving the narrative towards your own perspective. Sending an oil rig well within another country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), constantly utilizing non-naval maritime assets (rightly dubbed “small-stick diplomacy”) to solidify claims, issuing regulations over various parts of vital commerce such as fishing in disputed territories and now using maps all make it quite clear what China’s strategic plan for the South China Sea is. It’s quite simple really: don’t just talk the talk, walk the walk. They say possession is nine-tenths of the law. For China, outright possession could spark a war. So winning in multiple domains that have less of a chance to spark a conflict like maps, oil rigs, using non-naval assets and regulations put China in position to inch its way towards possession in the one place that might just count the most: the perception game.

So should the Asia-Pacific and wider Indo-Pacific be concerned about such a move? What about the United States?

INDIA ENERGY PROFILE: ECONOMIC GROWTH FUELS INCREASED NEED FOR ENERGY – ANALYSIS


By EIA

India was the fourth-largest energy consumer in the world after China, the United States, and Russia in 2011, and its need for energy supply continues to climb as a result of the country’s dynamic economic growth and modernization over the past several years. India’s economy has grown at an average annual rate of approximately 7% since 2000, and it proved relatively resilient following the 2008 global financial crisis.

The latest slowdown in growth of emerging market countries and higher inflation levels, combined with domestic supply and infrastructure constraints, have reduced India’s annual inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) growth from a high of 10.3% in 2010 to 4.4% in 2013, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). India was the third-largest economy in the world in 2013, as measured on a purchasing power parity basis. Risks to economic growth in India include high debt levels, infrastructure deficiencies, delays in structural reforms, and political polarization between the country’s two largest political parties, the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The BJP, elected as the majority party in May 2014 to govern India in the following five years, faces challenges to meet the country’s growing energy demand by securing affordable energy supplies and attracting investment for infrastructure development. Highly regulated fuel prices for consumers, fuel subsidies that are shouldered by the government and state-owned upstream companies, and inconsistent energy sector reform currently hinder energy project investment. Some parts of the energy sector, chiefly coal production, remain relatively closed to private and foreign investment, while others such as electric power, petroleum and other liquids, and natural gas have regulated price structures that discourage private investment.

Despite having large coal reserves and a healthy growth in natural gas production over the past two decades, India is increasingly dependent on imported fossil fuels. In 2013, India’s former petroleum and natural gas minister, Veerappa Moily, announced that his ministry would work on an action plan to make India energy independent by 2030 through increased fossil fuel production, development of resources such as coalbed methane and shale gas, foreign acquisitions by domestic Indian companies of upstream hydrocarbon reserves, reduced subsidies on motor fuels, and oil and natural gas pricing reforms. The current petroleum and natural gas minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, who took office in late May 2014, reiterated the goal of making India self-sufficient in energy resources. India is also looking to further develop and harness its various renewable energy sources. These actions would effectively increase India’s energy supply and create more efficiency in energy consumption. India already began implementing oil and gas pricing reforms over the past two years to foster sustainable investment and help lower subsidy costs.

Arsonists and Firefighters Who Is Setting the Sectarian Fires in the Middle East?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/opinion/sunday/thomas-l-friedman-who-is-setting-the-sectarian-fires-in-the-middle-east.html?ref=opinion&_r=1

JUNE 28, 2014
A scene from Aleppo, Syria, after airstrikes by government forces in March. Some argue that the sectarian violence in the region isn’t necessarily inevitable. 


Thomas L. Friedman
WHAT’S the real fight in the Middle East today? Is it just sectarian (Sunnis versus Shiites) and national (Israelis versus Palestinians and Arabs versus Persians)? Or is it something deeper? I was discussing this core question with Nader Mousavizadeh, a former senior United Nations official and the co-founder of Macro Advisory Partners, a geopolitical advisory firm, and he offered another framework: “The real struggle in the region,” he said, “is between arsonists and firefighters.”

There is a lot of truth in that. The sectarian and nationalist fires you see burning around the Middle East are not as natural and inevitable as you may think.

“These are deliberate acts of arson,” argues Mousavizadeh, “set by different leaders to advance their narrow and shortsighted political, economic and security objectives.” In the West, he warns, “a mix of fatigue and fatalism is in danger of creating a narrative of irreversible Sunni-Shia conflict. This is historically false and releases the region’s leaders from their responsibility to wield power in a legitimate and accountable way.”

To be sure, he added, the sectarian divides are real, but it is “not inevitable” that the region erupt in sectarian conflagration. It takes arsonists to really get these sectarian fires blazing, and, “unless they set them and fan them and give them fuel,” they will more often than not die out.

How so? Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, is an arsonist. When confronted with a nonviolent, grass-roots protest against his tyrannical rule, he opened fire on the demonstrators, hoping that would provoke Syria’s Sunni majority to respond with violence against his Alawite/Shiite minority regime. It worked, and now Assad presents himself as the defender of a secular Syria against Sunni fanatics.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is an arsonist. The minute America left Iraq, he deliberately arrested Sunni leaders, deprived them of budgets and stopped paying the Sunni tribesmen who rose up against Al Qaeda. When this eventually triggered a Sunni response, Maliki ran in the last election as the defender of the Shiite majority against Sunni “terrorists.” It worked.

Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt launched a violent crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood, killing, wounding and arresting many hundreds, and then he ran for president as the defender of Egypt against Muslim Brotherhood “terrorists.”

The Palestinian extremists who recently kidnapped three Israeli youths were arsonists, aiming to blow up any hope of restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and to embarrass Palestinian moderates. But they had help. Radical Jewish settler supporters in the Israeli cabinet, like Naftali Bennett and housing minister Uri Ariel, are arsonists. Ariel deliberately announced plans to build 700 new housing units for Jews in Arab East Jerusalem — timed to torpedo Secretary of State John Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy. And they did.

There are firefighters in all these places — people like Tzipi Livni and Shimon Peres in Israel, former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Mohammad Javad Zarif in Iran and Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Iraq — but they are now overwhelmed by the passions set loose by the arsonists.

China Lets Its Oil Rigs Do the Talking

June 29, 2014

A meeting with ASEAN has made little progress on resolving maritime disputes in the South China Sea.
It passed with barely a word. A two-day meet in Bali this week was supposed to improve relations between China and the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It was touted widely in the Chinese-friendly press but in the end not even the sycophantic scribes of Beijing had much to say.
Senior officials were meeting on the Indonesian island as part of a joint working group to thrash out a common approach to resolving maritime disputes in the South China Sea – known as the East Sea in Vietnam and the West Philippine Sea in Manila.

But Beijing’s stance ahead of the meeting probably did not help the 11th ASEAN/China meet, which was meant to make some inroads on the much-vaunted Code of Conduct (CoC), first raised in 2002, and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties (DoC) in the South China Sea.

“China has strictly adhered to the principle of the DoC and has exercised great restraint when facing provocation from other countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam,” Zhang Junshe, vice president of the Naval Research Institute, said ahead of the meet.

“We hope these two countries will stop the provocative actions against China.”

China’s take it or leave it approach to its territorial ambitions has hardened since it foisted an ancient claim on the United Nations five years ago through its nine-dash line, which ignores international maritime law, modern conventions, and recognition of sovereign borders.