TOP SECRET Messaging: Hacking The Digital Age — App Erases Your Digital Trail

January 21, 2016 ·
www.fortunascorner.com
The World Economic Forum is having its yearly gathering in Davos, Switzerland this week, and the CNBC Squawk Box crew is hosting their daily morning show from there all this week. By having the show live in Davos, the CNBC crew is able to interview the titans of finance, industry, academia, and others. One interview I found interesting was with Ms. Nico Sell, Wickr Co-Founder and she also helps run DEFCON, the largest hacker gathering in the world that takes place every year in Las Vegas.
According to Wikipedia, Wickr was founded in 2012 by a group of privacy and security experts, and Ms. Sell served as the company’s CEO until May 2015, when she became Co-Chairman of Wickr and, CEO of the Wickr Foundation, — a newly launched non-profit dedicated to providing free and secure messaging services to groups including children, political dissidents, human rights activists, and journalists.

Wikipedia adds that, “initially unveiled on iOS and later on Android, Wickr allows users to set an expiration time [ranging from a few seconds, to six days] for their encrypted communications. Last December, Wickr released a desktop version of its secure communications, which coincided with introducing the ability to sync messages across multiple devices, including mobile phones, tablets, and computers. All communications on Wickr are encrypted locally on each device, with a new key generated for each new message — meaning that NO ONE EXCEPT WICKR USERS HAVE THE KEYS TO DECIPHER THE CONTENT. In addition to encrypting user data and conversations, Wickr strips metadata from all the content transmitted through the network.”
In essence, as Jeremy Kirk recently wrote in PC World, “Wickr lets people exchange files and messages, without leaving a digital trail that could later be examined by law enforcement, cyber spies,” and others. The encryption keys, are also encrypted, and only used once before being discarded,” Mr,. Kirk wrote. “Wickr doesn’t have access to any of the encryption keys used for securing the data. Even a person’s user name is stored by Wickr as a cryptographic cypher,” he added. “We don’t know who you are,” said Robert Statica, an Information Technology Professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, wh co-founded Wickr with Ms. Sell, Christopher Howell, and Kara Coppa.
Once the time period [set by the sender/receiver] expires, Wickr fatally corrupts the contents of the encrypted message. “This is important,” Mr. Kirk writes, “since computers and other devices don’t immediately erase data that has been tagged as garbage. Using special computer forensics software, the data can often be recovered,” but — that technique does not work with those who employ Wickr’s app. “The only real way to see something sent to a Wickr user would be to steal the user’s [cell] phone. Even then, five wrong attempts at the password — will cause Wickr to erase itself,” he added.

The Fourth Level of War

By Michael R. Matheny | January 01, 2016
http://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/ News/NewsArticleView/tabid/ 7849/Article/643103/the- fourth-level-of-war.aspx
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Dr. Michael R. Matheny is a Professor of Military Strategy and Operations at the U.S. Army War College.
Civilization began because the beginning of civilization is a military advantage.”1 This observation by Walter Bagehot is not far off the mark. Warfare certainly matured along with civilization as a violent expression of political will and intent. We currently view the art of warfare in three levels-tactical, operational, and strategic-but it was not always so. In the beginning, there were strategy and tactics. Strategy outlined how and to what purpose war might be used to achieve political objectives. Tactics directed how the violence was actually applied on the battlefield. For most of military history, tactical art was able to achieve strategic objectives as tribes, forces, and armies marshaled on the battlefield to destroy the enemy’s ability to resist their master’s political will. Although much debated, operational art was born at the end of the 19th century when the size of armies, made possible by the development of the nation-state, rendered tactics unable to bring about political results. Civilization has moved on. From a doctrinal, theoretical, and practical point of view, it is now time to consider a fourth level of war-the theater-strategic level of war.

Doctrine
There is little written about theater strategy in U.S. doctrine. Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Operation Planning, includes only a single paragraph on what would seem an important subject. U.S. doctrine acknowledges the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war. However, doctrine also includes a theater-strategic level in an overlapping area that suggests this level bridges the operational and strategic levels.2 Yet the operational level is defined as linking “strategy and tactics by establishing operational objectives needed to achieve the military end states and strategic objectives.”3 So what is the theater-strategic level of war? What is theater strategy? The problem in placing theater strategy in some useful context is that we already have so many kinds of strategy and no real consensus on what they are.
On the menu of strategies, we can find grand, national, national security, national military, just plain military, and theater strategies. All of these are harnessed to serve policy, but each varies in its objectives and means. There is a wide range of definitions of strategy, most of which illustrate an attribute rather than its essential nature. They range from the general: Art Lykke’s famous “strategy equals ends plus ways plus means”; to Lawrence Freedman’s more poetic “a story told in the future tense”; to Colin Gray’s more specific “the use or threat of military power for political purposes.”4 The Department of Defense (DOD) asserts that strategy is “a prudent idea or set of ideas for employing the instruments of national power in a synchronized and integrated fashion to achieve theater, national, and multinational objectives.”5This suggests that strategy involves the whole weight of the U.S. Government in the pursuit of national policy. Does theater strategy likewise involve all elements of national power?

Violent Nonstate Actors with Missile Technologies: Threats Beyond the Battlefield

By Mark E. Vinson and John Caldwell | January 01, 2016
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During the summer of 2014, three overlapping crises involving violent nonstate actors (VNSAs) with missile technologies captured the world’s attention.1 First, for 50 days in July and August, Israel engaged in a major conflict with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other VNSAs that fired more than 4,500 rockets and mortars from the Gaza Strip at Israel.2
The second crisis occurred on July 17, 2014, when Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17, a civilian airliner carrying 298 people, was shot down at cruising altitude by an advanced surface-to-air missile (SAM) while transiting territory controlled by Ukrainian separatist rebels.3 U.S. intelligence officials believe the airliner was shot down by pro-Russian rebels using an advanced Russian SA-11 missile system.4
Marines fire tube-launched, optically tracked, wire command-link guided-missile system from M-41 Saber weapon system during sustainment training at Udairi Range, Kuwait, July 10, 2012 (U.S. Marine Corps/Michael Petersheim)
The third crisis seemed to erupt in the spring and summer of 2014, when the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized territory and captured advanced weapons as it attacked across large stretches of Iraq and Syria. Among the weapons ISIL reportedly captured and used were shoulder-launched SAMs, also known as man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS).5 ISIL claims to have used MANPADS to shoot down an Iraqi military helicopter.6 ISIL’s possession of MANPADS threatens low-flying coalition aircraft as well as aircraft at Baghdad International Airport.7
As indicated by these crises, the availability of advanced missile technologies—particularly precision-guided missiles—to VNSAs can be a game changer in their warfighting capabilities against nation-states if they use the weapons to offset their air superiority disadvantages with stand-off attack capabilities. This may be attributed in part to a general absence of enforceable control of the proliferation of missile technologies to nonstate actors. Counterproliferation is a term most commonly associated with the international conventions for the control of weapons of mass destruction, specifically nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. However, without the control of international laws or the legitimacy and accountability constraints of state governments, VNSAs have gained access to an array of missile technologies that grant state-like capabilities to threaten significant death and destruction.

The Enduring IED Problem: Why We Need Doctrine

By Marc Trachemontagne | January 01, 2016
Commander Marc Tranchemontagne, USN (Ret.), is an Associate with R3 Strategic Support Group. He served more than 21 years as a Special Operations Officer and Master Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician.
I sometimes hear people express the hope that the IED threat will diminish as Western forces
pull out of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth—the IED has now entered
the standard repertoire of irregular forces in urban areas across the planet, and there are no signs
this threat is shrinking; on the contrary, it seems to be growing.
—David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains
As the Services and joint force update their doctrine after nearly a decade and a half of counter–improvised explosive device (IED) operations in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, now is a good time to consider what we have learned about operating in IED-rich environments. At the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, we lacked counter-IED doctrine—as well as counterinsurgency and counterterrorism doctrine—and had to figure things out on the fly. It was a steep learning curve with a high cost in lives lost and equipment destroyed, and the United States spent billions to counter a weapon that costs only a few dollars to make.
In addition to counter-IED doctrine and assorted handbooks, manuals, and lexicons, we created rapid acquisition authorities, notably the Joint IED Defeat Organization, now a combat support agency; new countermeasures such as counter-radio-controlled IED electronic warfare (CREW) systems; a new intelligence process (weapons technical intelligence [WTI]); counter-IED task forces and other ad hoc units such as the Joint CREW Composite Squadron, Task Force ODIN, weapons intelligence teams, and deployable counter-IED laboratories; law enforcement, interagency, and international partnerships; universal counter-IED training and specialized courses in homemade explosives (HME), post-blast investigation, and IED electronics; counter-IED working groups and other new staff elements; new families of armored vehicles; and many innovative tools to meet the IED threat.1 Some initiatives have been incorporated into doctrine or have become programs of record, some have been shelved, and others remain ad hoc. As a joint force, it is important to institutionalize what we have learned from hard experience in IED-rich environments.
IEDs affect how we fight, that is, how we plan for and execute joint operations. Operating in an IED-rich environment creates additional challenges for U.S. forces, just as operating in a chemical warfare environment would. Operation Iraqi Freedom may represent the worst case for an IED-rich environment, with numerous experienced, technology-savvy, externally supported violent extremist organizations (VEO) with overlapping and competing sectarian, nationalist, and international agendas in a developed theater. Future operating environments, however, may match its complexity and lethality. Today’s bomb makers will take their experience and expertise to other battlefields. Even in a conventional war, our adversaries are likely to turn to unconventional warfare tactics, using a mix of special forces, paramilitary units, militias, and surrogates to counter our military superiority. IEDs will figure in their order of battle.

From the First Gulf War to Islamic State: How America Was Seduced by the “Easy War”

http://warontherocks.com/2016/01/from-the-first-gulf-war-to-islamic-state-how-america-was-seduced-by-the-easy-war/
Sebastian J. Bae, January 22, 2016
As the premier military power since the Cold War, the United States, like hegemonic powers of the past, is held captive by the dangerous myth of the “easy war.” While terms like “network-centric warfare” wouldn’t formally enter the U.S. defense establishment lexicon until later in the 1990s, the central notion on which such concepts are based — that precision technology could be leveraged to quickly overpower an adversary — were validated by the stunning U.S. success in the First Gulf War. In a matter of 100 hours, with overwhelming and coordinated force and relying heavily on airstrikes, the largely painless dispatching of Saddam Hussein’s forces, the world’s fifth largest army, served as an affirmation to many of the invincibility of American military might. Compared to the bitter losses in Korea and Vietnam, the First Gulf War established an unequivocal military victory, reaffirming the value and dominance of the American methodology of warfare. Or at least that’s how the story is told.

As a result, the First Gulf War entrenched the notion that technology would provide near-omniscience on the battlefield, paving the road to an uncomplicated victory. Almost overnight, in the minds of strategists and policymakers, wars had become brief, casual affairs.
Operation Allied Force, the NATO air war during the Kosovo conflict, only furthered the easy war mythology, particularly the concept of neat, effective victory through airpower alone. The 78-day campaign, at the price tag of $3 billion, expended over 28,000 high-explosive munitions in an enormous display of airpower. Minus a few high-profile cases of collateral damage, like the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy (although the Chinese insisted the United States deliberately targeted the embassy), less than 500 noncombatants died in the course of Operation Allied Force. This marked “a new low in American wartime experience when compared to both Vietnam and Desert Storm.” Following the capitulation of Slobodan Milosevic to NATO demands, Operation Allied Force was hailed as an unprecedented success, elevating airpower to match its land and maritime counterparts. Serge Schmemann of the New York Times claimed Kosovo provided “a refutation of the common wisdom that airpower alone could never make a despot back down.” Airpower had evolved the myth of the easy war to a martial enterprise devoid of the risks and complications of ground forces. Thus, the myth continued, brushing criticisms aside.

After 9/11, the mythology of the easy war unsurprisingly carried over to the nascent months of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense, confidently declared in 2002 that the Iraq War would last “five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.” The legacy of the First Gulf War and Kosovo produced rapid marches to respective capitals, highlighting the spectacular use of airpower. The Shock and Awe Doctrine was expected to produce another bloodless victory. However, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq quickly devolved into a quagmire of nation-building and counterinsurgency. Contrary to overly optimistic expectations, a decade of occupation, and roughly $1.5 trillion have failed to produce any semblance of security or governance in either Afghanistan or Iraq. The notion that toppling a regime and implementing massive socio-political transformations would be a simple endeavor seems whimsical at best, and delusional in hindsight.

The Bad Lessons of Desert Storm

06/08/2015, William F. Owen

http://mida.org.il/2015/08/06/the-bad-lessons-of-desert-storm/מאת

The rapid collapse of Iraqi forces in Operation Desert Storm made many fall in love with the idea of a quick, bloodless war with the aid of the power of planes and technology • Israel learned the folly of this thinking in the Second Lebanon War • On the 25th anniversary of the First Gulf War, an article on learning the wrong lessons from military history

It is obvious to most that war and warfare are harsh and cruel teachers. What is less obvious is that they also teach bad lessons to otherwise smart men. They trick people with illusions and tricks, and many governments and armies fall prey to those illusions.
This was the case with the First Gulf War, as we have come to know it, or Operation Desert Storm: the campaign to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. What the public saw was quick decisive war, which delivered all the promises that mattered most, was the product of superior western technology.
All of that is undeniably true. It was a short decisive war, and technology was important. The problem was that a partial version of the truth was used to create a convenient story, one which even some in the Israeli Defence Forces came to believe. So strong was that belief, that by 2006 and the Second Lebanon War, serious men thought technology and air power would deliver success, because that was what they chose to learn from 1991.
Israelis are sceptics and critics by nature. Most do not believe easily. Evidence is important. The IDFs ability to learn lessons from 1948, 1967, 1973, and all the other wars before and since is probably un-matched anywhere else in the world. Have they always learned the right lessons? No. Not always. Have they learned them better than others? Yes, mostly.

Most armies are not as incompetent as Saddam's
Magical thinking also characterized the other side in the Gulf War: Saddam Hussein’s consistently faulty instinct told him that the world would not react to his invasion of Kuwait. When he found out he was wrong, he took an army that had only fought against fanatical but un-skilled Iranians and tried to fight against a mostly American and British force optimised to fight an existential battle against the Soviet Union. Worse than that—and that’s pretty bad—he fought in way that gave his opponent every possible advantage.
Compared to all other terrain, the desert offers an army the least chance of concealment from the air. Saddam Hussein parked his Army in the desert and let Allied air power, and some artillery, kill it. A hundred-hour ground operation then essentially drove over it. The hundred-hour ground war showed just how incompetent the Iraqi Army really was, especially actions like the Battle of 73 Easting where a US Armoured unit destroyed well over 100 Iraqi tanks and IFVs for the cost of just one dead.
If you really believed that all future enemies of the west were going to be as catastrophically stupid as Saddam Hussein, and his army so incompetently lead, then the future looked very rosy indeed. Did the Allied armies know it would be that easy? No, they didn’t. They expected a very tough fight, which is why they bombed the Iraqi Army and its entire defence force for just over a month.

Pathankot, before and beyond

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160123/jsp/opinion/story_65310.jsp#.VqMY_VIpq38
Abhijit Bhattacharyya
Authentic information, rather than 'agenda interpretation', makes analysis credible, meaningful and useful for a nation to understand, decide and act. Hence let us get the basics right and then examine the fundamentals. The sole motto of Pakistan, post-1971 defeat and disaster at the hands of the armed forces of India, is revenge through religious jihad by the jihadists. Shuja Nawaz, the author of the magnum opus on the Pakistani Army, Crossed Swords, has observed that the number 786, which represents the numerological equivalent of the opening sentence of the Quran, is also the "identification number for the General Head Quarters of the new Pakistani Army".
The writing on the wall was too transparent to be ignored by India. The defeat, followed by surrender - resulting in the loss of the eastern wing of the Islamic state of Pakistan at the hands of un-Islamic India in December 1971 - made the Army-ISI duo of Pakistan take a vow of revenge. It was assessed, and appreciated, that no revenge can be successfully carried out through conventional warfare, owing to the superiority of India's man power and material inventory. The assessment and planning concluded a perpetual war of attrition through indirect, irregular and unconventional methods and tactics. The fighting machine of India had to be destroyed without fighting. And the people of the enemy country, must be won over through various means of " Taqiya Kalam", implying deceit, cunning, lies and the "charm offensive" and through the enemy's gullible, divided and vast civil society, a portion of which inevitably resorts to 'could-not-care-less' and 'as-long-as-I-am-not-affected' attitudes, and with the army-ISI recruited, financed, trained and deployed terror pool of unemployed and radicalized young people.
After the 1971 war, Pakistan's military ruling class, the army, made a final assessment that it would be futile to take on the war machine. Instead, it could resort to an indirect approach by permanently targeting Delhi's two principal border states, Punjab and Rajasthan, which is the largest quality reservoir of fighting men filling combat ranks of at least five of the 23 infantry regiments of the Indian army: Rajputana Rifles, Rajput Regiment, Sikh Regiment, Sikh Light Infantry and the Punjab Regiment. In this venture, the Pakistani army-ISI duo's job became easier, as it so often happened in the past, as few notoriously unscrupulous and corrupt Indians in public life have been conniving, conspiring and colluding with foreign invaders even today. Thus it certainly would not be incorrect to suggest that for the spread of the drug trade, particularly to the districts of Punjab and Rajasthan (located close to Pakistan), which are traditional soldier-recruitment (catchment) areas, some Indians have a deep nexus with Pakistan's nefarious activities, thereby posing a direct threat to the safety and security, and the unity and integrity of India.

Critical republicanism - Can Hindu liberals criticize Muslim bigots?

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160123/jsp/opinion/story_65306.jsp#.VqMY91Ipq38

Politics and Play - Ramachandra Guha
In March, 1937, M.K. Gandhi published an article entitled "Need for Tolerance". This was in response to a letter he had received from a Muslim friend. This man, a liberal and sceptic, wondered why, when referring to the Prophet Mohammad or the Koran, Gandhi never analysed them critically. "I am at a loss," he wrote, "to understand how a person like you, with all your passion for truth and justice, who has never failed to gloss over a single fault in Hinduism or to repudiate as unauthentic the numerous corruptions that masquerade under it, can holus-bolus accept all that is in the Koran." The friend was "not aware," he told Gandhi, "of your ever having to called into question or denounced any iniquitous injunction of Islam. Against some of these I learned to revolt when I was scarcely 18 or 20 years old and time has since only strengthened that first feeling."
Reproducing and then answering this letter in Harijan, Gandhi remarked, "I have nowhere said that I believe literally in every word of the Koran, or for that matter of any scripture in the world. But it is no business of mine to criticize the scriptures of other faiths or to point out their defects. It should be, however, my privilege to proclaim and practise the truths that there may be in them.'
Gandhi held the view that only adherents of a particular faith had the right to criticize its precepts or sanctions. By that token, it was both his "right and duty to point out the defects in Hinduism in order to purify it and to keep it pure. But when non-Hindu critics set about criticizing Hinduism and cataloguing its faults they can only blazon their own ignorance of Hinduism and their incapacity to regard it from the Hindu viewpoint. ... Thus my own experience of the non-Hindu critics of Hinduism brings home to me my limitations and teaches me to be wary of launching on a criticism of Islam or Christianity and their founders."
Critics from within had the capacity and empathy to reform and redeem their faith; critics from without the tendency to mock and caricature the other's faith. Gandhi thus concluded that it was "only through such a reverential approach to faiths other than mine that I can realize the principle of equality of all religions".

Leftists Scuttled Settlement On Ayodhya. But What Lies Beneath The Babri Masjid Site?

http://swarajyamag.com/politics/leftists-scuttled-settlement-on-ayodhya-but-what-lies-beneath-the-babri-masjid-site/
Sandipan Deb, Sandipan is the Editorial Director of Swarajya.
22 Jan, 2016
Recently famed archaeologist KK Muhammed stated in his autobiography ‘Njan Bharatiyan’ that leftist historians and a section of media inflated the Ayodhya issue, ignoring chances of settling the matter in an amicable way. Muhammed was among the members from Delhi School of Archaeology who joined the excavation team of Ayodhya headed by Prof VB Lal.
Sandipan Deb, Editorial Director of Swarajya magazine, entered the heavily guarded Ayodhya excavation site in May 2003, and wrote about what he saw there in Outlook magazine, of which he was then the Managing Editor. Republished with permission.
‘ 245.’ ‘ 175.’ ‘ 160.’ Numbers are the only words being spoken on a pitilessly hot afternoon here. Here, the flat top of a low hillock, the epicentre of a political earthquake whose aftershocks never die, whose waves never peter out.
Dozens of people work quietly with picks and shovels, whisks and dustpans, probing into the earth for the secrets it has concealed for centuries, secrets that, when uncovered and understood, could impact the lives and minds of a billion Indians.
But when you look at the workers’ nonchalant faces, periodically calling out some measurements, you get no such sense. They are just doing their job.
Ayodhya, May 2003. For more than two months now, following the order of the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on 5 March, the Archaeological Survey of India team led by Dr B.R. Mani (ordered by the court to be replaced on 22 May) has been excavating the land on which the Babri Masjid had stood from AD 1528 till 6 December, 1992.
The roughly 41 m by 24 m area is now a grid of 4 m by 4 m trenches, each trench separated from the adjacent one by 1 m strips forming what archaeologists call “baulks”. Aluminium ladders extend into the trenches. Every find in every trench is photographed, the recovery, the packing and sealing process videographed meticulously.
Entry into the excavation site is seriously restricted. The security is almost impossible to breach. Apart from the ASI team, only observers appointed by the court and nominees of the litigants in the various cases relating to the Ram Janmabhoomi issue are allowed in. All the permitted visitors have to carry passes issued by the Allahabad High Court. They enter through a gate separate from the one used by the pilgrims, the darshanarthis of Ram Lalla.
The pilgrims reach the makeshift structure where Ram Lalla sits through a long cage-like corridor that winds through the excavation site. Not only does the pilgrim have any way to enter the excavation site—he would have to cut through the steel rods of the cage walls to do that—he cannot even see what’s going on outside his cage.
To keep the excavation totally concealed from the public eye, the walls of the cage have been covered from roof to ground with dark-red curtains. And there are policemen patrolling the cage to make sure no one is peeping.



Every evening, shortly after six, when the excavation work stops, an ASI official comes to a small enclosure to read out a list of the finds of the day to the official observers. The observers spend their day in this enclosure, cooled by the blast from an air cooler and heated by their constant arguments about the meaning and significance of whatever has been gleaned from the earth recently. They are shown the smaller artefacts recovered that day, but no one is allowed to touch anything. Sometimes, when they have interesting photographic evidence, the ASI brings in a screen and projects pictures on it.

Controlling Corruption At Borders: Identifying The Black Sheep

http://swarajyamag.com/politics/controlling-corruption-at-borders-identifying-the-black-sheep/
Narendra Kaushik, 22 Jan, 2016
How will the Indian security establishment deal with the threat of corruption at India’s borders?
Fears that corruption at the Indian borders facilitates terrorism in the country have once again been confirmed. There is a strong suspicion of locals having provided logistical support to Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists who attacked the Pathankot airbase earlier this month, and a few weeks before, an ISI-sponsored spy ring involving personnel from different agencies was also busted.
The two incidents have corroborated the concern that the fence may be eating the crop by conniving with terrorists, drug traffickers and smugglers from Pakistan and illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
The apprehension that a nexus of corrupt policemen and unscrupulous jewellers and drug traffickers may have helped the JeM terrorists cart huge cache of arms and explosives into Pathankot airbase looks much more credible considering that the terrorists were armed to teeth with guns, magazines, explosives and yet carried backpacks stuffed with food packets and medicines.
The natural question thus would be that how could the terrorists jump over a ten-feet-high perimetre wall with an extra two-feet-high concertina wire, stretch the encounter to two days and yet have magazines and enough explosives to trigger blasts after the gun-battle?
But the connivance allegation should come as a surprise to nobody. After all, corruption at borders is not a new phenomenon. It has been reported at least for over a decade. Right from Mumbai to Punjab to Jammu & Kashmir, the names of personnel from Border Security Force (BSF), Indian Air Force (IAF), Indian Army, Customs, Coast Guard, Rashtriya Rifles and police have figured in numerous cases of collusion with terrorists and smugglers.
The courts have sentenced 10 officials of Maharashtra Police and Customs Department for the 1993 Mumbai blasts which left a trail of blood and gore in the megalopolis.
There is a recorded conversation between Tiger Memon, the mastermind of the ‘93 Mumbai blasts and blasts accused Taufique Jaliawala where it transpires that there was an exchange of Rs. 2.2 million bribe between arms smugglers and the customs officials before the huge cache of arms and explosives including 1.5 tonnes of RDX, hundreds of assault rifles, pistols and grenades landed on the Konkan coast on February 3 and 7. Over a month later 13 serial blasts claimed 257 lives and maimed around a thousand people.
In March 2007, what was seen as a rehearsal before 26/11 Mumbai attack, Coast Guard allowed eight Lashkar terrorists to sneak into Mumbai from Karachi through the sea route for a ‘consideration’. The terrorists, trained in guerrilla warfare, were intercepted while travelling in a boat but were let off after alleged payment of the bribe.
The terrorists reached Jammu & Kashmir by train from Mumbai and were subsequently arrested by the security forces in Rajouri (Jammu & Kashmir). Two of the terrorists – Abdul Majid Araiyan and Jamil Ahmad Awan – are currently lodged in Jammu jail while not much is known about their colleagues.
In Punjab, no less than Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal has accused the BSF, manning the over 550 km long International Border, of not doing enough to check trafficking of narcotics into his state.

** The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond

Written by Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum
Published Thursday 14 January 2016 We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society.
The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.

There are three reasons why today’s transformations represent not merely a prolongation of the Third Industrial Revolution but rather the arrival of a Fourth and distinct one: velocity, scope, and systems impact. The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent. When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance.
The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.
Already, artificial intelligence is all around us, from self-driving cars and drones to virtual assistants and software that translate or invest. Impressive progress has been made in AI in recent years, driven by exponential increases in computing power and by the availability of vast amounts of data, from software used to discover new drugs to algorithms used to predict our cultural interests. Digital fabrication technologies, meanwhile, are interacting with the biological world on a daily basis. Engineers, designers, and architects are combining computational design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering, and synthetic biology to pioneer a symbiosis between microorganisms, our bodies, the products we consume, and even the buildings we inhabit.

The 62 Richest People Are As Wealthy As Half The World

by Felix Richter, Statista.com -- this post authored by Niall McCarthy
The shocking extent of financial inequality around the world has been laid bare by a new report from Oxfam.
It found that in 2015, 62 individuals owned as much wealth as the poorest half of the world's population. It also criticised the amount of money being kept in offshore tax havens. That comes to an estimated $7.6 trillion - more than the GDP of the UK and Germany combined.
This chart shows global wealth of the bottom 50% and 62 richest individuals from 2001 to 2015.

 

Infographic: Human vs. machine

http://qz.com/589218/infographic-human-vs-machine/

Its setting may be remote, but the annual Davos summit always seeks to reach out and grip the forces and events propelling the planet. The backdrop of market turmoil on day two made this quite clear, as world leaders across disciplines mixed spot analysis and long-term perspective. Here are the themes and developments that rose over the Alps.
HARD LANDING FOR CHINA? Answers to one of the most urgent questions facing global leaders at the start of day two were discussed at the morning’s “Where is the Chinese Economy Heading?” panel. IMF chair Christine Lagarde noted the transition in China from an industrial, infrastructure, and export-driven economy to one of consumer and discretionary spending, with anti-corruption and reform initiatives to boot. She asked Chinese leaders to address a “communication issue” sowing uncertainty over their plans and market movements, though she expressed confidence in China’s currency reserves and the IMF’s 6.5% predicted growth rate for the year. Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio urged calm: “A bad year in China is going to be a great year in any other country.”
Because every economy feels the impact of business unrest in China, several panels focused on the outlook there. In a special “Global Financial Priorities” conversation with journalist Thomas Friedman, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew cited China’s need for a mix right now between old and new, the capital expenditures and operational ones, capex and opex. In the “How to Reboot the Global Economy?” panel, Professor Joseph Stiglitz observed that China has been the world’s growth engine for 15 years, and the last seven in particular. “It should have been obvious that it wasn’t going to continue, but markets are always short-sighted,” he said. Stiglitz pointed to Brazil and Africa’s reliance on Chinese demand, as well as a transition to service economies in the US and Europe as reasons behind recent market drops.

HUBOTO A much-heralded South Korean robot is stealing the show at Davos and helping ignite conversations over the role of artificial intelligence and technology in employment, productivity, and even combat. In the “What If: Robots Go to War?” panel, leading artificial intelligence scientist Stuart Russell cited his July open letter—with signatories like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk—calling for a ban on autonomous weapons. He also apologized for taking so long to make the appeal, given the dangers and devastating humanitarian and strategic impact of a rogue robot force activated by single actors operating outside of international norms. Other panelists expressed support for campaigns seeking a new treaty, even though a truly autonomous machine with moral agency may be decades away. The US is the only country with an effective ban on using the weapons, despite being a leader in their development. Ominously, WEF polls showed that most people would prefer their own country attacking with an artificial intelligence force, even though they’d rather be invaded by humans

China and India: Tomorrow’s Superpowers

http://thecipherbrief.com/article/china-and-india-tomorrow%E2%80%99s-superpowers 

JANUARY 15, 2016 | JANUARY 15, 2016

China and India are gradually assuming leading positions at the global and regional levels, with over $11 trillion and $2 trillion in gross domestic product respectively.

China initiated a comprehensive plan for expanding its footprint in Asia, Europe, and Africa through its Silk Road and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. China’s leaders called for “protecting interests abroad” at the the 4thforeign affairs work conference in November 2014 and in their May 2015 white paper on defence strategy. At the May 2014 CICA (Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia) Summit meeting in Shanghai, President Xi Jinping called for Asian countries to look after their own security instead of depending on “outside” powers. The International Monetary Fund has recognized China’s currency as a reserve global currency and in doing so, expanded China’s voting power within the IMF from about 3 percent to nearly 8 percent, which both contribute to legitimizing China’s rise.

India, under new leadership since the mid-2014 elections, has made “development” its primary agenda. In the 18 visits abroad in his first year as the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi had assiduously attracted investments and high technology for the successful “Made in India” campaign. During a speech in Singapore, Indian Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar called for India to be a “leading” rather than “balancing” power. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, at a speech in Mumbai, suggested that India should punch neither below nor above its weight but “appropriately” in international affairs. India had revised its “look east” policy to that of “act east” policy, which appears to be in consonance with the United States objectives in the Indo-Pacific region, in addition to similar perspectives on the global commons of maritime cyber and space domains. India’s relations with the United States, Japan, Australia, and European countries were strengthened further recently, specifically in defense and strategic fields.

Russia's Navy has a Funding Problem

January 22, 2016, By Stratfor

Russia's gross domestic product is in distress, the ruble has been and will likely continue to deflate with minimal interference from the central bank, and oil and natural gas prices are falling. Russia is being forced by its budget to prioritize either military or domestic spending. But it is clear that the Kremlin is looking to increase exports of large military hardware such as naval vessels. Currently, 90 percent of the state export agency's defense-related contracts are "small orders," such as munitions and small arms. Russia's naval rearmament program will depend on these foreign orders to maintain certain economies of scale and to ensure revenues for the shipyards.
President Vladimir Putin also plans to redirect $3.3 billion in overseas investment into project bonds for infrastructure — ports included. Business leaders complain that the Russian government expects unusually short payback periods on their port investments, ranging from 3 to 5 years instead of the more standard 20 to 25 years. But the country's overarching financial crunch makes funding from overseas investors all the more vital.
Specifically, the government and the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) have prioritized six shipyards to support military construction activities: Yantar and St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea, Sevastopol on the Black Sea, Murmansk in the north, and Khabarovsk and Vladivostok in the east. Of USC's nearly 60 shipyards, these six complexes have some unique advantages as a target for federal and foreign investment. With the exception of the contentious Sevastopol in Crimea, which has been subordinated to USC since March 2015 and was authorized in December 2015 to repair naval surface ships and submarines, the other five are all under a special legal status to boost investment and construction orders. St. Petersburg's Shipyard Cluster alone is responsible for 70 percent of all export-oriented shipbuilding in Russia and nearly 30 percent of total shipbuilding. The remaining four shipyards can help improve personnel expertise and achieve greater scale. Murmansk and Khabarovsk are classified as "port special economic zones," which reduces the tax and customs burdens on firms established there in relevant industries. Yantar, also a "special economic zone," is under an older regime meant to boost investment as a whole in Kaliningrad. And since October 2015, Vladivostok has been a "free port" to incentivize businesses through streamlined registration, reduced taxes and tariffs, and simplified immigration protocols.
This article originally appeared at Stratfor.

China’s foreign policy Well-wishing

http://www.economist.com/news/21688786-chinese-president-makes-his-first-visit-region-xi-jinpings-tour-middle-east
Xi Jinping’s tour of the Middle East shows China’s growing stake there Jan 23rd 2016 | BEIJING |
SINCE he took over as China’s leader in 2012, Xi Jinping has been a busy globetrotter. Last year he visited more countries than Barack Obama, America’s president (14 against 11). Heedless of whether his hosts are powerful, puny or pariahs, he has flown everywhere from America to the Maldives and Zimbabwe. Mr Xi wants to project China’s rising power—and his role in promoting that—to foreign and domestic audiences. But until this week, he had not set a presidential foot in the Middle East.
The trip, under way as The Economist went to press, began in Saudi Arabia (whose king, Salman bin Abdul Aziz, is pictured with Mr Xi). He then visited Egypt and was due to finish his tour in Iran. No Chinese president had toured the region since 2009. China’s leaders had worried about getting embroiled in the region’s intractable disputes. But China has a big stake in the Middle East. It is the world’s largest oil importer and gets more than half of its crude from the region (see chart). Mr Xi’s much ballyhooed “new Silk Route”, aimed at linking China and Europe with the help of Chinese-funded infrastructure, runs across the Middle East. Chinese companies are already building expressways and harbours there.
The timing of Mr Xi’s tour is tricky. Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are particularly high after Saudi Arabia executed a Shia cleric earlier this month and angry Iranians responded by storming the Saudi embassy in Tehran. But the lifting of Western sanctions on Iran on January 16th (seearticle) allowed Mr Xi to display even-handedness by visiting both countries, without upsetting Western powers. Mr Xi, like his predecessors, likes to present China as a non-interfering champion of peace. (Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, said this week that the West’s “meddling hands” were “more of a mortal poison than of a magic potion” in the Middle East.) But Mr Xi is not keen to play a central role as peacemaker. China’s first “Arab Policy Paper”, released on January 13th, is a vague, waffly document. It talks of “building a new type of international relations”, but is devoid of new ideas.

Prospects for Extended Deterrence in Space and Cyber: The Case of the PRC

By Dean Cheng , January 21, 2016
http://www.heritage.org/ research/reports/2016/01/ prospects-for-extended- deterrence-in-space-and-cyber- the-case-of-the-prc
The diverging political context for extended deterrence in the Asia-Pacific, coupled with China’s perspectives on extended deterrence in outer space and cyberspace, has important implications for the United States. American deterrence focuses on dissuasion, seeking to influence opponents to avoid actions that would harm American interests. China sees deterrence as not only dissuasive, but also coercive, as a way to persuade opponents to follow actions that further Chinese objectives. China, given its lack of allies, engages in direct deterrence but also counters extended deterrence, since its coercive actions against Japan, for example, would require that dissuasive action be taken against the United States. For the United States, the issue in the Asia-Pacific is not direct deterrence versus extended deterrence. China will assess all American actions to grasp the essence of American deterrence, employing its diverse forces to signal its resolve and intentions.

KEY POINTS
Chinese concepts of deterrence embody not only dissuasion, but the idea of coercing opponents to follow a course of action that accords with larger Chinese objectives.
Western concepts of deterrence focus more on dissuasion, seeking to influence opponents to avoid actions that would harm American interests.
The emphasis for China is not on deterrence in particular environments (for example, space or cyber), but rather on the use of those environments as a means of effecting more general deterrence.
China sees itself as likely confronting the U.S. should it be compelled to consider the use of force against U.S. allies.
The U.S. needs to consider whether it is possible to provide extended deterrence through space and cyber measures, to support allies in the face of Chinese threats and pressure.

While there has been discussion about whether today’s security environment constitutes a “neo-Cold War,” the reality is that it is actually more complex than the Cold War. For most of the period between 1947 and 1992, the situation was largely marked by a bipolar balance, where the two major players created somewhat symmetrical blocs of allies, friends, and client states. Consequently, there was a potential for symmetric responses and signaling. As important, there was a perceived continuum of security that spanned conventional and nuclear thinking, linking the use of force in the former to the potential for escalation into the latter. It is within this context that “extended deterrence” took shape.
Today’s world, however, is much more multipolar, so most states, including increasingly the U.S., have to consider more than just a single, highest priority contingency. Consequently, signaling is also more difficult, especially because there is no symmetry of relations and alliance networks. This is exacerbated by the spread of military operations to outer space and the cyber realm. That various activities are more open to consideration in space and cyber erodes the conceptual firebreak that marked the Cold War.
It is important to begin with some definitions of key concepts. First, what is deterrence? From the American perspective, deterrence is the combination of actual capability and will to employ that capability to influence an adversary, typically to not do something. As Alexander George and Richard Smoke wrote in 1974, deterrence “in its most general form…[is] simply the persuasion of one’s opponent that the costs and/or risks of a given course of action he might take outweigh its benefits.”[1]

The End of China’s Long View

Zhou Enlai and Henry Kissinger. Henry Kissinger is usually credited with asking Zhou Enlai about the effects of the French Revolution on China. (Bettmann/Corbis)
China is often credited with taking the long view to achieve its strategic goals; however, that luxury may be coming to an end. There is an oft-quoted story about former Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, who, when asked about the effects of the French Revolution on China, demonstrated the Chinese long view by answering, “It is too soon to tell.” U.S. strategists, on the other hand are often limited in their ability to plan beyond the current administration. They have watched China slowly grow in power, both militarily and economically, over the last few decades with an arguable long-term goal of displacing the U.S. as the dominant global power, all the while focusing their own efforts on wars in the Middle East. China has remained in the shadows of global security, rarely venturing out to address even regional challenges, hoping their gradual, long term, hegemonic rise would become a fait accompli. That hope may now be at risk.
Demographics
A booming population with scarce agricultural resources led Chinese leaders to adopt a One-Child Policy in 1979. While this policy mitigated exponential population growth and prevented a Malthusian catastrophe, the effect is an aging demographic that will weigh heavily on Chinese power/control in the coming decades. In short, a relatively small under-30 crowd will have to support a much larger over-70 crowd. The ramifications are already being felt. In 2012, China’s workforce decreased by 3.5 millionand is forecast to continue its decline. Some estimates indicate that by 2020 Shanghai, a city with almost 15 million people, will have a population in which fully one-third will be over age 60. Additionally, the Wall Street Journal estimates that by mid-century the population of China will consist of 186 single men for every 100 single women, a recipe for increased crime and dissension, (as well as a continued declining birth-rate). China’s ability to maintain a self-sustaining workforce is waning rapidly.
A Slowing Economy
China experienced a meteoric rise in its economy, reaching years of continued growth in excess of 10%. Those days are over. China’s most recent quarterly growth was just under 7%, with projections continuing to decline over the next decade and beyond. Why does this matter? If China wants to become a global power, it will need the funds to do so. That money must be used for external investment, military procurement, and continued infrastructure development. Sustaining the growth of China’s military and economic power will become more difficult, and will soon begin a slow and potentially unrecoverable decline.
The Middle-Class Trap

A third factor contributing to China’s slowdown is a phenomenon called themiddle-class trap, whereby a country transitions from a poor to middle-class economy through basic manufacturing and textiles. The difficulty lies in developing those skills to take industrialization to the next level, such as providing education and training for the new industries. China has been unable to develop its education infrastructure to meet its requirements. The wealthy are able to send their children overseas, and China sends over a quarter million of its students to US colleges and universities. However their inability to meet educational demand domestically will limit their ability to meet professional domestic requirements, thus limiting their ability to make the transition to an advanced economy. Basically, China is great at making “things,” but how much has China actually developed? Of course, as the middle class increases, and wages improve, industries in search of cheap labor migrate elsewhere, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, or Vietnam, leaving China in search of employees and incapable of continued development. While not inevitable, many Latin American countries such as Brazil have fallen into this trap. They cannot compete with countries with greater capabilities in more technology-intensive goods and services. Because like China, they have never developed the policies and institutional environment to make the leap to high-tech or industrial economic development-what is often referred to as industrial policy.

Latest Developments In China’s Strategic Nuclear Forces

The Return Of The Nuke Trains
strategypage.com, January 22, 2016
In early December 2015 China conducted a launcher test of a new rail-mobile version of the DF-41 ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile). This test involved the called cold launch system. This involves igniting the rocket motor after the missile is ejected from its launch tube with a gas charge. This means the launcher is not damaged by the rocket motor blast and can be reused. In this case the test ensured that the missile tube launch system, originally designed for road vehicles, also worked on a rail car. Moreover this test is a significant milestone for Chinese strategic arsenal because their biggest and most powerful nuclear missile can be now launched from a rail mobile and very hard to find platform.
The DF-41 missile is successor of DF-31 which has a range of 10,000 kilometers, allowing it only to reach the west coast of the United States. The DF-41 is estimated to have range of 15 thousand kilometers and one missile can carry up to 10 warheads that can separate from the body of the rocket and target individual destinations in the final stage of flight (MIRV system), thus making defense much more difficult. Previously DF-41s were based in silos and road-mobile launchers. China probably obtained rail-mobile missile technology from Ukraine, which during the Soviet period was a manufacturer of the (now decommissioned) twelve Russian SS-24 rail-based ICBMs. However it should be noted that the Russians want to revive the concept by manufacturing five new ones called “Barguzin”. Each train will be able to carry six new “Yars” missiles and are supposed to be deployed by 2020.
The “nuke trains” also known as “land submarines” first appeared during the Cold War era. The combination of high-speed mobility, launch cars disguised as civilian passenger trains, tunnel protection and secure reloading of missiles, coupled with multiple warheads, made the system extremely hard to find and counter. In contrast SSBNs (ballistic missile submarines) were always threatened by enemy hunter (SSN) submarines while the “nuke trains” were protected by sheer size of Russian territory and rail network.

Sunni-Shia conflict and rise of ISIS have roots in the First World War Keith Jeffrey's new book cogently shows how 1916 was the beginning of the end of Western dominance.

http://www.dailyo.in/politics/1916-a-global-history-keith-jeffery-first-world-war-isis-middle-east-saudi-arabia-economist-colonialism/story/1/8599.html
22-01-2016, MINHAZ MERCHANT @minhazmerchant
The facts numb the mind. During just eight months in 1916, the midpoint of the First World War, 2.2 million British, French and German troops perished on the battlefields of the Somme and Verdun in France.
As Keith Jeffery writes in 1916: A Global History, Verdun became "a byword for the manifest horrors of industrialised 'total' war." In the battle of the Somme, the British suffered 57,000 casualties (its biggest ever in a single day).
As the war dragged on, Indian soldiers bore much of the brunt. They were mercenaries, recruited in the 'defence' of the British Empire. Jobless in India or in poorly paid work, they were shipped to the frontline trenches to fight a bloody war between rival imperial European powers jockeying for global supremacy.
The Indian soldiers were used as cannon fodder. They were paid well though and the wounded looked after in hospitals. After the war, some married local girls and stayed back in Europe.
But the real story of Jeffrey’s book is the madness that overcame Europe exactly a century ago. 1916 also marked the end of the Ottoman empire which fought the war as an ally of Germany.
In May 1916, Sir Mark Sykes and Francois George-Picot, a British and French diplomat respectively, divided the Arab Ottoman lands into zones of British and French influence.

New names would soon be given to "countries" within these artificially drawn borders: Iraq, Syria, Jordon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and so on. Sectarian sensitivities between Sunni, Shia, Kurd, Alawite, Yazidi and Druze were largely ignored.
It was a bad, longstanding colonial habit. The British had divided Pashtuns across the Durand line between Afghanistan and Pakistan in 1893 – a problem that festers till today. They drew the McMohan line between India and China in a treaty with Tibet in 1914 that Beijing still refuses to accept.
The division of the Ottoman lands a century ago sowed the seeds of the Sunni-Shia war that rages today in the Middle East. It also created fertile conditions for the brutal rise of the Islamic State (ISIS).
Saudi Arabia in 1932 became the only country in the world to be named after a family – the al-Sauds. Abd-al-Aziz was proclaimed king and in 1933, his eldest son, Saud, named crown prince.

In an odd cover story recently, The Economist interviewed 30-year-old Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s current deputy crown prince whom the magazine called King Salman’s “favoured son”.
The Economist is a magazine that thrives on condescension. But with the young Saudi prince it was all tea and sympathy.
Tough questions on the Saudi role in midwifing the Islamic State (ISIS) were delicately avoided. The overall tone was only mildly critical.
Any other country that executes 47 people in one day, forbids women from driving and bars cinema halls would receive harsh editorial treatment from most independent-minded magazines. But not, on this occasion, from The Economist.

* The War for Islam

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/22/the-war-for-islam-sunni-shiite-iraq-syria/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks
Amid a roiling Middle East, Iran and Saudi Arabia are fanning the fires of sectarianism and playing politics in a zero-sum proxy war of religious fervor.
By Vali Nasr, January 22, 2016

 Since the Iraq War, sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis has emerged as a major fissure in Middle East politics — fueling conflicts in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen; a resurgence of extremism and the scourge of the Islamic State; and an escalation in tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia which has become the most significant clash between regional rivals in decades. From country to country, across the region, sectarian conflict is the thread that runs through each crisis, tying them into a strategic Gordian knot.
The common refrain in the West is that this is a 14-century-old feud we don’t understand. Even U.S. President Barack Obama said as much in his final State of the Union, calling the Middle East a place “rooted in conflicts that date back millennia.” The not-so-subtle implication, of course, is that this is the kind of religious politics the West has long left behind. It is true that Shiite and Sunni identities were formed centuries ago over a religious dispute. It is also true that Shiite-Sunni clashes are nothing new. But sectarianism should not be dismissed out of hand as an ancient feud that defies modern logic. The violent paroxysm in today’s Middle East is a modern phenomenon, a product of contemporary politics and priorities. Furthermore, it is playing out not in obscure theological forums but in the political arena.
Sectarianism today is a perfect storm — the product of a confluence of factors at play in the region. The first culprit in stoking sectarian conflict is Islamism. This modern-day ideology, born in the 1930s, calls for an ideal Islamic state built on the foundations of Islamic law and sharia. The Islamic state is a utopian panacea that looks to religion to perfect modernity. But the Islamic state is not a generic idea, as it requires harkening to either Shiite or Sunni conceptions of Islam.
Shiites and Sunnis each have their own methodology, interpretation, and practice of law. As such, there can be no such thing as a non-sectarian Islamic state. In a region in which Islam matters so much to politics, it is inevitable that the critical question then becomes “what Islam” and “whose Islam.” The rise of narrower and more extreme forms of Islamism have only exacerbated sectarianism.
The founder of Iran’s Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, learned this lesson the hard way. He fashioned himself as a pan-Islamic leader but was dismissed by a growing number of Sunnis as a Shiite cleric. He may have garnered political respect, particularly in standing up to the United States, but few Sunnis accepted him as their religious pole. While Shiites across the region were filled with pride and hope, Sunni Arab rulers looked for ways to quash expectations of change. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein famously responded to the revolution’s challenge by purging Shiites from the ranks of the Baath Party and putting to death the eminent Shiite cleric, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr.
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, then-President Zia ul-Haq also began to play politics with Islam, imposing a mandatory religious tax. But, emboldened by the Iranian revolution, Pakistan’s Shiites asserted their sectarian independence, refusing to submit to that country’s experiment with Islamic statehood. Zia soon capitulated, but resentful Sunnis recoiled at this diminution and started sectarian clashes and violence that has beleaguered the country to this day.