A new era for Caspian oil and gas

By Najia Badykov

FEB 13, 2015

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The recent decline in world oil prices is likely to constrain economic growth and investment in the Caspian region.

The steep decline in global oil prices has dealt a blow to earnings for many energy-exporting states, pushing their finances and investment projects over the red line. They have suffered slowdowns since crude prices began to slide in mid-2014, but most of them still expect to weather the crisis and will draw on their significant currency reserves to keep their economies and projects floating.

The Caspian states – specifically, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan – are among these believers. This essay will focus on their responses to the price crash.

Nobody knows with certainty when and how this prolonged and unexpected market fluctuation will end.

Even if conditions were to stabilise soon, the consequences of the dramatic fall that has already occurred could be serious. And if the market remains bearish, these countries could have a very hard time, not only with respect to recouping their losses but also in facing much tougher competition for new investment.

Under pressure

Caspian oil and gas exporters are already feeling the pressure from low oil prices and slow global economic growth. Additionally, they are also being squeezed by the knock-on effects of Russia’s economic crisis.

Among the former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are the biggest crude oil producers in the Caspian region. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Kazakhstan exported about 1.69 million barrels per day of oil in 2014, while Azerbaijan exported 840,000 bpd and Turkmenistan 280,000 bpd.

Since Turkmenistan is predominantly a gas-exporting country, it is more insulated from the fall in oil prices. But if the market remains at its current level for a long time, the country will soon face more serious problems than it has so far. Its export contracts may soon be generating less money than usual, as they link gas prices to global oil prices, which have sunk by about 50% since last June.

Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are also bound to be hurt by the deterioration of crude prices. Since these two countries rely heavily on oil exports to generate budget revenues, they have felt an immediate negative impact from the bearish market conditions.

My Bloody Valentine: The 5 Messiest Breakups in History

Rebecca M. Miller

February 14, 2015

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February 14. It’s a day to celebrate the ones who we love. A day to show that special someone how much you truly appreciate their suffering through your questionable cooking, terrible jokes and long rants about everything from your overbearing mother-in-law to American grand strategy. But for many of us, Valentine’s Day is also a reminder of relationships lost and messy splits.

Breakups are always tough, whether it’s between lovers, friends, families or entire societies. Indeed, history has seen its fair share of heated conflicts that ended in both sides parting ways. Some had religious, moral or ideological undertones, but most were political at their core.

There are many ways to gauge the severity of a breakup. How swift was it? How much bloodshed was there? Was there closure? Is there a chance for reconciliation, or are the two sides never, ever getting back together? For the purposes of this piece, I won’t be focusing on the specific numbers of casualties, but rather the general misery and lasting impact these breakups had on the course of history. So for all the lonely hearts out there, here are the five messiest breakups of all time.

The Catholic Church

Anyone willing and able to come up with ninety-five discussion points on any topic is clearly passionately invested in his or her belief system. Martin Luther’s “95 Theses” criticizing the Church’s sacrilegious practices, like selling “indulgences,” upended the Catholic world.

Although Luther undoubtedly sought to cause a major stir, even he couldn’t have foreseen the dramatic consequences of his action. Most immediately, the Protestant Reformation embroiled the Christian world in over a century of constant, violent sectarian conflicts between adherents to the Church and the growing number of “heretics” across Europe. This culminated in the Thirty Years’ War, which devastated Europe. Precise casualty numbers are hard to estimate, but they were many million people at a time when populations were much smaller. Present-day Germany was the hardest hit, with as much as a third of its population perishing during the war.

Canadian Intelligence Agrees to Give Ukrainian Military Satellite Imagery of the Eastern Ukraine

Stephen Chase

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February 13, 2015

Canada is preparing to supply the Ukrainian military with satellite imagery that would give Kiev’s forces new high-resolution battle intelligence in their long-running conflict with Moscow-backed separatists, sources say.

Ottawa and Kiev are finalizing an agreement that would see Canada feed Ukraine data from RADARSAT-2, which the Canadian Space Agency says is capable of scanning the Earth day or night through any weather conditions.A deal is expected to be announced shortly. It’s taking shape as Kiev prepares for a new ceasefire deal that is supposed to calm the fighting in eastern Ukraine by Sunday. But there’s no guarantee the truce will hold, and the Canadian satellite imagery would give Kiev a high-tech means of independently monitoring whether Moscow is honouring the terms of the ceasefire.

“They will be able to see what is crossing their borders,” one source familiar with the plan said.

The Ukrainian government has been battling pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine for more than 10 months, and the United Nations has estimated more than 5,300 people have died in the conflict.

RADARSAT-2, a satellite launched in 2007, is operated by Richmond, B.C.’s MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates for the Canadian government and is used for everything from coastal surveillance by the military to mapping and keeping track of sea ice, crops, pollution and ships.

The decision to supply beleaguered Kiev with sophisticated imagery was not without internal controversy. Some civil servants in the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development opposed sharing the data, sources say.

The Canadian government will stipulate in the agreement that the satellite pictures should only be used to help Ukraine take defensive measures and not offensive operations such as targeting opposing forces.

A Tempest in a Teacup: Forget Hybrid Warfare!

By Franz-Stefan Gady

February 14, 2015

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Hybrid warfare is defined as “a combination of conventional, irregular, and asymmetric means, including the persistent manipulation of political and ideological conflict, and can include the combination of special operations and conventional military forces; intelligence agents; political provocateurs; media representatives; economic intimidation; cyberattacks; and proxies and surrogates, para-militaries, terrorist, and criminal elements.” The center of gravity in hybrid war is the population of a country.

However, the word hybrid — merely describing the mix of components in this form of conflict — does not do full justice to this nascent operational concept. For one thing, it leaves out its converging nature. As Lt. Col. Frank G. Hoffman states in an article in the Joint Forces Quarterly: “[The] character of conflict that we currently face is best characterized by convergence. This includes the convergence of the physical and psychological, the kinetic and nonkinetic, and combatants and noncombatants.” Hybrid warfare is the convergence of conventional and unconventional tactics, all merged to accomplish one objective. It is the scope of this form of warfare — including the media, organized crime, and business – that is truly unique, rather than the mix of new tactics.

With the exception of strategic cyber weapons, the various components of hybrid war have been used in previous conflicts. Currently, there is a lot of hype surrounding this subject (my colleague, Prashanth Parameswaran has provided a very useful summary and background on the current hybrid warfare debate). Hybrid war is the logical consequence of our increasingly connected, ostensibly borderless world. However: hybrid warfare is not a game changer on the battlefield. It does not qualify as a revolution in military affairs (RMA), and it cannot markedly alter the military balance between two opponents if one side chooses not engage in this form of warfare.

5 People, Including Former San Francisco Cop, Indicted for Computer Hacking As Part of Corporate Espionage Plot

Vic Lee

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February 12, 2015

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A decorated former San Francisco police officer is under federal indictment and facing charges of corporate espionage. The former cop and others are accused of hiring hackers to break into a company’s computer system. The whole thing came unraveled with these arrests.

A federal grand jury brought charges against five people for intercepting electronic communications; or, in laymen’s terms, they’re accused of hacking into private computers. The five people charged had been contracted by a company that was seeing a rival competitor for hiring away its employees.

The FBI arrested four of those indicted in the Bay Area. Former San Francisco police inspector and now private investigator Peter Siragusa was taken into custody at his home in Novato. Others arrested include Nathan Moser in Menlo Park, a third man in Oakley, and a fourth suspect in Los Angeles.

The indictment says the corporate espionage started in the early months of 2013.

Moser, a private investigator on the Peninsula, was hired by Internet marketing company Visalus to investigate its competitor Ocean Avenue. According to the indictment, Moser asked Siragusa to join the case.

The court documents charge the two men with hiring computer hackers to get Ocean Avenue’s email and Skype accounts.

The government says the hackers used a keylogger to gain access to the company’s protected computers. A keylogger is usually a software tool that intercepts activity on a keyboard.

Ahmed Ghappour is a specialist in security and technology at UC Hastings College of the Law. He explains how a keylogger works.

Sony Hack: Poster Child For A New Era Of Cyber Attacks

Dmitri Alperovitch

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2/13/2015

What made the Sony breach unique is the combination of four common tactics into a single orchestrated campaign designed to bend a victim to the will of the attackers.

In early 2014, George Kurtz and I predicted, in our "Hacking Exposed: Day of Destruction" presentation at the RSA Conference, an increase in data destructive attacks and even showed demos of attacks that can achieve physical destruction. On Nov. 24, that prediction came true with an attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) from a SILENT CHOLLIMA adversary, which CrowdStrike attributes to North Korea.

The Sony attack consisted of four phases: 

1. The initial infiltration into SPE network, likely through a spearphish email, and the subsequent reconnaissance of that network, theft of administrative passwords, and exfiltration of sensitive data, including confidential emails and unreleased movies and scripts.

2. Deployment of the wiper malware on Nov. 24 across the SPE network with hardcoded administrative credentials inside, which enabled the malware to automatically spread. The malware proceeded to securely overwrite data files and Master Boot Record (MBR) to make the machine un-bootable, as well as launch a local web server hosting a menacing skeleton image and bearing a blackmail threat. 

3. In the weeks after the wiper attack, the adversaries have carried out an orchestrated public release (doxing) of sensitive data, with direct outreach to media organizations and the hosting of stolen data on BitTorrent sites. The goal of the release was to bring further embarrassment and damage to the SPE executives, as well as hurt their business, by revealing highly proprietary and confidential business strategies and salary information.

4. Lastly, on Dec. 16, the attackers published a threat of physical violence on Pastebin against movie theaters that carry the film “The Interview,” resulting in the initial cancellation of the theatrical release of the movie.

None of the elements of the attack had been truly novel or unprecedented. Certainly, intrusions and exfiltration of data from corporate networks are a daily occurrence these days. Wiper malware variants, while less common, have been seen in use pervasively by SILENT CHOLLIMA against government, media, and financial institutions in South Korea since 2009; as well as by other adversaries against a variety of targets in the Middle East in recent years. Confidential data releases have been perfected by hacktivist groups like Anonymous over the last decade and physical threats on Pastebin are a dime a dozen.

Obama Signs New Executive Order For Sharing Cyberthreat Information

2/13/2015

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President Obama today signed a new Executive Order to promote the sharing of cyberthreat information among private sector organizations as well as between the private and public sectors.

This is not Obama's first EO to push cyberthreat intel-sharing: his February 2013 order to buttress the security of the nation's critical infrastructure also called for increased cybersecurity information-sharing, from the federal government to private industry. The new EO includes more details on information-sharing, especially when it comes to private industry's liability and other concerns.

Obama officially announced the EO after his keynote address at the much-anticipated White House Summit On Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford University. The EO comes on the heels of the administration's rollout of the new Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, which wasannounced earlier this week.

"I'm signing a new Executive Order to promote even more information-sharing both within the government sector and between the government and private sectors," Obama said at today's summit. The order calls for a common set of standards and protocols that protect privacy and civil liberties as well, he says.

"So government can share with [private-industry] hubs more easily. It will make it easier for them to get classified cybersecurity threat information they need to protect their companies," the President said.

DARPA’s New Search Engine Puts Google in the Dust

BY HALLIE GOLDEN

FEBRUARY 13, 2015

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“How can I make the unseen seen?” Dan Kaufman, the director of DARPA’s information innovation office director, said last week in a feature on “60 Minutes.”

The answer, Kaufman said, is Memex. Developed by DARPA, this search engine on steroids dives deep into the realm of the “Dark Web” and spits out a data-driven map detailing all of the patterns it’s unearthed.

After only one year in use, Memex has already played an important role in about 20 different investigations, according to officials.

Inspiration for the technology’s — and its name — came in part from a 1945 Atlantic article written by Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, which was stood up in 1941 to coordinate military science research during World War II.

Bush described a memex as “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.” In other words, a lot like the Internet we know today.

But of course, the real importance of Memex is not how it came to be, but the innovative advances it has accomplished with big data. And one of the ways it is accomplishing this goal is through the use of social science.

Jacob Shapiro and his team at Giant Oak, a data firm that advertises itself as “seeing the people behind the data,” are responsible for the social science aspect of Memex.

How a Homeland Security Shutdown Would ImperilUS Cyber Defense

BY JACK MOORE

FEBRUARY 13, 2015

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“I’m gravely concerned about the impact of a shutdown on our cybersecurity efforts,” Andy Ozment, DHS assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications, said Thursday in testimony before a House subcommittee hearing.

Ozment told lawmakers a partial shutdown would affect basic cyber operations at the agency, potentially delay two key acquisition programs — including a contract award under its multibillion-dollar continuous monitoring program — and curtail its information-sharing activities with the private sector.

There are just 16 calendar days — and five scheduled legislative days — before DHS runs out of funding and would be forced to partially shut down and furlough some staff. Funding for the agency has been mired in a rancorous partisan fight over President Barack Obama’s recent executive order on immigration.

Funding for the rest of the government was settled by Congress in a catch-all spending bill two months ago.

Nearly all of the department’s cyber employees would be exempt from furloughs — meaning they would remain on the job, albeit without pay during any funding gap.

However, during a shutdown, Ozment said DHS would “lose the support” of more than 140 staff at the agency’s 24-hour National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.

Army Missile Defense Stretched Thin: Readiness, Crisis Response At Risk

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

February 12, 2015

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ARLINGTON: There’s no peace dividend in missile defense. While most types of Army units don’t deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan anymore, some scarce specialties are in increasing demand worldwide, such as special operators, division staffs, and missile defense forces like the famous Patriot. As long-range missile threats increase from Iran and North Korea,China and Russia, Hezbollah and Hamas, Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno himself has said the current pace of missile defense deployments is not sustainable.

“Today, we have air and missile defense forces in nine countries,” said Col. Clement Coward, deputy commander of the 32nd Air and Missile Defense Command. “On any given day, nearly half of the Army’s Patriot batteries are outside the continental United States [and] we’ve begun forward-deploying THAAD batteries” — even though THAAD’s so new there are only three batteries in service. As a result, Coward told the Association of the US Armytoday, “we are rapidly approaching an inflection point where we face the risk of breaking our AMD force.”

Skilled personnel are thinking of getting out, equipment is wearing out, and upgrades are delayed because the units aren’t at home to get them, Army leaders warned. Even more worrying is that, with so much of the force either deployed or recovering from deployment, little is ready and available to respond to unexpected crises.

“The risk really comes in our contingency forces,” said Maj. Gen. Gary Cheek, assistant deputy chief of Army staff for operations and plans (section G-3/5-7), also speaking at AUSA.

U.S. Troops Can Now Call in Tomahawk Cruise Missiles for Close Air Support

by DAVID AXE

U.S. Troops Can Now Call in Tomahawk Cruise Missiles for Close Air Support

And that’s not the old munition’s only https://medium.com/war-is-boring/u-s-marines-can-now-call-in-tomahawk-cruise-missiles-for-close-air-support-2a8aa4a64428new trick

The U.S. military received its first Tomahawk cruise missile in 1983. And now 32 years later, American troops are still teaching the far-flying smart munition new tricks.

In a test on Jan. 29, a team of U.S. Marines called in an upgraded Tomahawk, called a “Block IV,” to quickly strike a nearby target—just like the Marines routinely do with their artillery, Harrier attack jets and Cobra helicopter gunships.

This is not what the Tomahawk normally does. By applying new software and procedures, the Marines have transformed the super-accurate missile with its 1,000-pound warhead into a close-support weapon—one they can dial up to blast the enemy during, say, fast-moving street-to-street fighting on some urban battlefield.

Meanwhile, the Navy is teaching the land-attack Tomahawk to also be an anti-ship missile.

This is a big, big deal. The U.S. military is getting powerful new weapons … without actually buying much new hardware.

The Pentagon keeps thousands of the million-dollar-apiece Tomahawks in stock—the precise number is classified. Mainly, the Navy launches them from submarines and surface ships to punch holes in enemy air defenses at the start of bombing campaigns. After all, there’s no pilot on board, so it’s no big deal if some of the Tomahawks get shot down.

WEEKEND READING: FRIDAY THE 13TH EDITION

February 13, 2015

Welcome to our latest installment of weekend reading, you strategy party people. Before you do anything else, check out our store where you can buy the swag you need to make it through your weekends (everyone needs a good flask).

Welcome back, Carter – Ash Carter is returning to “the building” as our nation’s newly confirmed Secretary of Defense. See who he is bringing with him here, from Defense News. What are the keys to success in this position? Take a look back at Charlie Stevenson’s take on why this is a “nearly impossible job.” And here are some defense reforms Secretary Carter should turn his attention to immediately, according to Jerry McGinn, Stephen Rodriguez, and Peter Lichtenbaum.

New day, new Duck – Check out the new website for the Duck of Minerva, where you can find top academics wonking out on politics.

Profiling Great (and Terrible) Men – Mother Jones, of all places, digs into the CIA’s psych profiles of leaders from Castro and Qaddafi to Khrushchev and Saddam and everything in between. See what the Office of Strategic Services had to say about Hitler’s prowess (or lack thereof) in the bedroom.

A romantic tour of Chinese shipyards – That’s what Information Dissemination has served up for you. Feng offers a breakdown – aided by an aerial photo – of what might be the busiest naval shipyards in the world.

Influential jihadi ideologue-cum-hostage negotiator – Joas Wagemakers has the scoop over at Jihadica on Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, once viewed as the most influential scholar in the jihadist movement, and thesecret role he played in helping to secure the release of Moaz Al Kasasbeh, the downed Jordanian pilot who was later brutally executed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. According to Wagemakers, Maqdisi played a key role in this affair from the start and details letters he wrote to the self-proclaimed Islamic State Caliph.

Delta Force’s Origins Are Public Record

by JOSEPH TREVITHICK

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Official documents detail top-secret force’s creation

After more than three decades and dozens of Hollywood movies, the U.S. Army’s Delta Force—one of Washington’s premier specialized units—is still largely hidden from public view. The Pentagon offers few details about the group, its organization or even how many Delta “operators” there are in total.

But the unit—technically the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment D—is a part of the Army, and has all the formal trappings that come along with being part of that bureaucracy. As a result, some of the detachment’s formative history is a matter of public record.

The Army originally planned Delta Force as “an organization which can be deployed worldwide and has the capability to provide an appropriate response to highly sensitive situations including acts of international terrorism,” explains a 1977 analysis of the proposed unit held by the Army’s Center of Military History.

The center keeps an assortment of records to help track Army units, their histories and honors. The staff help determine what battalions and squadrons the Army keeps—or even brings back into existence—when the ground combat branch shuffles things up.

Both Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team Six trace their origins to an outburst of political violence in the 1970s. At the time, Washington watched as acts of terror became a significant problem in Europe and the Middle East.

In 1972, Palestinian militants shocked the world when they attacked Israeli athletes at Munich Olympics. Smaller groups like the radical leftist Red Army Faction and ethnic Basque separatists carried out a campaign of bombings and assassinations across the continent.

Military Looking To Give Troops Super Sensing Abilities

BY PATRICK TUCKER

FEBRUARY 10, 2015

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The Squad X Core Technologies Program, or SXCT, builds off of a multi-year agency effort to shrink the sensing, detecting, and situational awareness capabilities of ships and fighter jets down to what an individual warfighter could carry with him or her. The program looks to bring troops, sensors and especially drones together in a single web of data collecting and communicating, effectively giving military personnel eyes and ears well into the distance.

“Warfighters in aircraft, on ships and in ground vehicles have benefited tremendously from technological advances in recent decades, with advanced capabilities ranging from real-time situational awareness to precision armaments. But many of these benefits depend on equipment with substantial size, weight and power requirements, and so have remained unavailable to dismounted infantry squads who must carry all their equipment themselves,” DARPA said in a press release.

Some quick background — in a 2013 DARPA request for information, the agency sought new ideas on how to “digitize dismounted squads.” Read that to mean: achieve better integration of computers and sensors to give troops intelligence when they most need it. Some of that digitization is inward facing, physical data on the physical, or even mental, condition of teammates. Most of it relates to the external environment, pregnant with threats.

“By digitization, DARPA means collecting sensor data that would provide much more detailed and actionable real-time information about a squad’s condition, surroundings and adversaries. It is believed that digitization could provide squads of 9 to 13 members and their unmanned assets with enhanced tactical awareness and advantage up to a mile away, in both urban and open‐air environments,” according to a DARPA statement.

WC MAKES A PITCH FOR INDIA-PAK TALKS

Vineeta Pandey

14 February 2015 

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Cricket diplomacy is back again. The game that has often helped thaw relations between India and Pakistan has once again come to ease tension between the two that went cold after a warm start last year. On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi used cricket World Cup as an opportunity to connect with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif. Modi called up Sharif to convey his best wishes for the Pakistani cricket team participating in the World Cup. India and Pakistan play their inaugural match against each other on February 15. The PM also announced that new Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar will visit Islamabad and other SAARC countries as part of his SAARC Yatra to push bilateral agenda.

“Spoke to President Ashraf Ghani, PM Sheikh Hasina, PM Nawaz Sharif and President Sirisena. Conveyed my best wishes for the Cricket World Cup,” Modi tweeted. Noting that five SAARC nations are playing and are excited about the World Cup, the Prime Minister said, “I am sure the WC will celebrate sportsman spirit and will be a treat for sports lovers. Cricket connects people in our region and promotes goodwill. Hope players from SAARC region play with passion and bring laurels to the region… would be sending our new Foreign Secretary on a SAARC Yatra soon to further strengthen our ties.”

As they talked, Modi and Sharif also laughed together when Modi joked about Sharif playing a warm-up World Cup match in 1987 alongside Imran Khan, sources said. To this, it is learnt, Sharif replied, “Kash vo din dubaara aata (I wish those days would come back).” Jokes apart, the two leaders used the opportunity to strike some diplomatic conversation and Modi informed Sharif about Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar’s upcoming tour to SAARC countries to push issues of bilateral interest.

India and the CTBT

February 14, 2015

WORLD VIEW

India’s future with the CTBT is still unwritten. Leadership until now may have been delayed, but there are opportunities for it to be reengaged and renewed

India’s past with the treaty to ban all nuclear tests in all places for all time is well known. Some might characterise it as leadership defaulted or, more optimistically, merely delayed. A lot has changed for India since the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened for signature in 1996, and the same is true for the treaty itself — enough to prompt fresh thinking about some renewed engagement.

India did not support the treaty in 1996 — and still does not — but it had been very supportive during negotiations. The roots of that exuberance can be traced to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous initiative in 1954 for a “standstill agreement” on nuclear testing. His intervention came at a time when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were detonating powerful nuclear weapons with increasing frequency. Nehru played an important role in building international momentum for the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which India joined. This treaty significantly reduced global levels of fallout, but did little to constrain the nuclear arms race. The CTBT was created as a result.

It has been hard in recent years to discern a public debate on the CTBT in India. This is tragic in the very country that made the path-breaking call for the “standstill agreement”; has been observing a unilateral moratorium since 1998; is a champion of nuclear disarmament; and, in the words of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “will continue to contribute to the strengthening of the global non-proliferation efforts.” For all of its efforts in galvanising the creation of an effective international verification system, India is currently unable to derive either the political or the technical benefits from it. But 183 other countries do.

When madrasa challenges state

Khaled Ahmed

February 14, 2015

After the adoption of a National Action Plan and a constitutional amendment to tackle terrorism through military courts, the clerics in Pakistan are worried. Records show many terrorists with a madrasa background, some used also by a state that has lost several essential attributes of normality.

The Nawaz Sharif government says madrasas are sacrosanct and will not be investigated, but a growing body of facts in the media says madrasas are involved in terrorism through the training of killers and “excommunication” (takfir) of the Shia community. The state itself apostatises Ahmadi Muslims but baulks at takfir of the Shia counted as

Muslims in the census. Most madrasas have gone on record — they may deny it — in calling the Shia kafir. Their fatwas have been used as handbills prior to Shia massacres.

The document that arraigns the madrasas of Pakistan comes from India in the shape of a collection of fatwas for apostatising the Shia. The compiler was the head of the Lucknow madrasa Nadwatul Ulema, the late Manzur Numani. The compilation is titled Khumeini aur Shia kay barah mein Ulama-e-Karam ka Mutafiqqa Faisala (Consensual Resolution of the Clerical Leaders about Khomeini and Shi’ism), al-Furqan, Lucknow, 1988. Numani was funded by Saudi Arabia to write a book against Imam Khomeini and collect fatwas of takfir of the Shia.

A number of clerical leaders of Pakistan cosigned or confirmed the fatwa against the Shia in 1986. Among them were two well-known names: Muhammad Yusuf Ludhianvi and Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai. Both were to die in the sectarian upheaval that overtook Pakistan during the Afghan civil war of the 1990s and the jihadist reaction to the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Medicines in India, for India

Pavan Srinath

February 14, 2015 

Tropical diseases have often been neglected by pharmaceuticals because the size of the drug market is smaller, people have lower incomes and companies are uncertain about IPR

January marked an important breakthrough in the fight against tropical diseases. Researchers and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in Delhi found a drug candidate that prevented TB and malaria pathogens from infecting human blood cells.

It is not just that this cutting edge research took place in India, but it also addresses Indian challenges whose solutions have global implications. Further, Anand Ranganathan and his colleagues did not just find this drug candidate, but also helped develop processes to develop these drug leads. It also happened thanks to a combination of a United Nations facility set up decades ago, attracting top global research talent to come back to India and work here. And the research was funded not just through international sources, but also a ‘Grand Challenge Programme’ on vaccines set up by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. Much of this success is the delayed fruit of a biotechnology push in India that started in the mid-1980s, and that has gained in strength over time.

However, the discovery of the drug candidate M5 synthetic peptide is the beginning of a long road and not the end. The process of drug discovery here is not yet complete, and has to be succeeded by more research and a host of clinical trials. Here is a plausible set of intermediate steps from the work of Dr. Ranganathan and others, before a new TB or malaria drug enters the market.

The Internet’s tempting presence

February 14, 2015

Toward the end of last year, there was an uproar when India’s leading telecom carrier Bharti Airtel decided to charge subscribers extra for use of applications such as Skype to make free calls over the Internet. Airtel was criticised for violating a key principle influencing Internet traffic, which is that all data must be treated equally and there must be no discrimination. The principle goes by the name Net neutrality. Within days, the company beat a retreat on its pricing move, saying it would wait for the regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s consultation paper in this regard. The paper is still awaited. In contrast, there was hardly a whimper when a few days ago social media giant Facebook tied up with Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications to bring to India a service that critics globally believe presents a huge challenge to Net neutrality. The reason is not hard to fathom. Facebook’s offering, internet.org, unlike that in the Airtel example, is free. The stated intention of the social media network is to make available Internet to those who don’t have it. It is hard to find fault with such a mission. Despite fast growth in recent years, the percentage of individuals using the Internet in India is less than 20 per cent. China and Brazil, in comparison, have already got about half their populations accessing the Internet.

The catch then is in how internet.org has been implemented. In every country where it has been launched — India is the sixth — internet.org offers a preselected bouquet of websites free to subscribers of Facebook’s telecom partner, under a practice dubbed zero-rating. Yes, this does mean millions of Indians could for the first time in their lives access the Internet, albeit an extremely limited version of it. But there are numerous reasons why it is difficult to see it as an altruistic endeavour. One, the subscribers have no say in selecting the websites. Two, the Internet ceases to be an open platform where everyone has an equal chance to succeed. Three, in the long run, internet.org could present a huge competitive advantage to some, to the disadvantage of many. This is all the more significant, because newer Internet adopters are going to do so via smartphones, which are becoming cheaper by the day. India’s smartphone sales are exploding, almost doubling to 80 million units in 2014 compared to the previous year, and expected to double once more this year. Also, Facebook and Reliance, both having more than a hundred million users in India, are not small entities trying out a novel practice here. In this context, it will all boil down to what India’s official position is on this. The telecom regulator’s much-awaited consultation paper will make that amply clear.

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How to Setup A Modern Defence Industry in India?

By Bharat Verma

13 Feb , 2015

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Sixty-seven years of Independence and not a single combat aircraft has been produced by India!

Despite the word ‘indigenisation’ featuring repeatedly in political rhetoric, one of the reasons is because of the vested interests within the government of the huge kickbacks associated with imports of military hardware. The perception that in every armament deal massive amounts of taxpayers’ money is siphoned off is largely correct. Blacklisting vendors is merely theatrics to divert public attention from this crass truth. The long, convoluted and tedious process of procurement of military hardware has been created deliberately by the politico-bureaucratic red-tape to extract larger kickbacks which eventually is the taxpayers’ liability!

Worse, it appears that the primary national objective is not to add military capabilities to ensure the nation’s security but to find ways to guarantee maximum kickbacks.

Worse, it appears that the primary national objective is not to add military capabilities to ensure the nation’s security but to find ways to guarantee maximum kickbacks. Frankly, nobody involved in the decision-making process is really concerned about the MMRCA being inducted on time to shore up the rapidly declining firepower of the Indian Air Force; or about the Indian Navy receiving submarines in time; or with the tremendous collateral damage the nation suffers on its borders with Pakistan because the infantry is ill-equipped. Despite similar levels of corruption, China never overlooks the primary objective of building military muscle. Frankly, no other country does except India!

Will New Delhi Crush Terrorism

By Jagdish N Singh 

February 13, 2015

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Abstract: Empress Razia Sultan and King Akbar sidelined communal fanatics with the help of India’s broad, liberal base of society and their military prowess. New Delhi could use this social asset and military prowess to combat Islamist terrorism today as well. 

Can you imagine what would happen if one released some venomous serpents into your land and you refrained from killing them and just got them cornered into a part of your own territory ? Just think of the inevitable that would follow : the serpents would always be in a look out to infiltrate the rest of your land to sting the souls around . This is precisely the story of terrorism India has been faced with since her Independence.

In October 1947, just a couple of months after the tragic partition of the undivided British India, Islamabad invented the ideology of Islamist terrorism and dispatched its warriors (Pakistani soldiers in guise of Pakhtoon raiders) into India’s Kashmir to capture it. Mahatma Gandhi could foresee the consequence thereof and advised Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru not to submit to the raiders and have them driven out. The Indian Army, too, was in a position to deal with the menace appropriately. Yet, instead of eliminating the warriors of fanaticism totally, New Delhi cornered them into a part of Kashmir (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) and took the matter to the United Nations resulting in the loss of the 2/5ths of its own territory. And since then the menace of terrorism has been spreading out to other parts of India. According to authentic studies, since 1980, India has lost 150,000 lives on account of terrorism alone.

It is ironical that New Delhi still seems to be in favour of developing a concerted global strategy to combat Islamist terrorism. At a recent Munich Security Group meeting, organised by the Observer Research Foundation, in New Delhi India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval said that the three major challenges in dealing with India’s security threats were - “invisible cyber enemies, outdated intelligence-gathering techniques and a disunited approach to tackle terror” and suggested a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism.

Doval argued that the idea of such a convention was first mooted by the National Democratic Alliance government in 2001 but it did not take off, for countries such as Pakistan would not agree to describe groups they wanted to call “freedom fighters” as terrorists. He lamented that  “those days, no one saw India’s point of view on Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Osama bin Laden’s capture in Pakistan has changed that.”

Why Did Afghanistan Just Suspend a Request for Heavy Weaponry from India?

By Ankit Panda

February 13, 2015

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A little noticed report in the Afghan press earlier this week confirms that the Afghan government has suspended a request made for heavy weaponry from India. The request, which was originally made by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s predecessor Hamid Karzai during a trip to New Delhi, requested heavy artillery and other weaponry from India. The request was initially rejected but later revisited by the Indian government. A report in Afghanistan’s ToLo News confirms, based on Afghan government sources, that the request for heavy weaponry has been suspended.

Why the sudden change? Well, there are a variety of explanations. The first, and the least convincing, comes straight from within the Afghan government. Mohammad Mohaqeq, a staffer working for Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s chief executive officer, notes that ”If president the has rejected this, there is the possibility that he has thought of another place to confidently get these arms from.” The bid for Indian weaponry was one of the more public requests by the Afghan government and there have been no similar requests in the works for months now.

“I believe that the president would have a trip to India and he will not contradict all the works of the former president, we need the equipment and should get it from anywhere,” Mohaqeq adds. Relations between Afghanistan and India haven’t declined either.

The best explanation is probably that Afghanistan rescinded the request for heavy weaponry from New Delhi amid what appears to be a slow and steady process of rapprochement with Islamabad. Pakistan has made clear its interest in seeing India and Afghanistan keeping at an arm’s length. Earlier this week, Pakistan’s National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz recommended that “external actors” following a policy of non-interference in Afghanistan’s internal matters, warning against attempts to wage a proxy war. Similarly, both Afghanistan and Pakistan are looking at expanding their cooperation on counter-terrorism amid efforts by the central government in both countries to assert control over various militant groups.

Terrorist's Laptop Fuels Night Raids in Afghanistan

By Franz-Stefan Gady

February 13, 2015

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Today, the New York Times reported that the last couple of months have seen a marked increase in the number of night raids conducted by Afghan and U.S. Special Operations forces in Afghanistan. The New York Times believes that this surge in raids is due to the data retrieved from a laptop detailing Al Qaeda operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The intelligence found on the laptop is “possibly as significant as the information found in the computer and documents of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan,” the article notes.

The laptop’s owner, Abu Bara al-Kuwaiti, was killed during a raid that took place in Nazyan district of eastern Afghanistan, bordering the Khyber tribal agency in Pakistan, a safe haven for Islamic militants across the world. Kuwaiti may have been the assistant and right hand of Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, Al Qaeda’s chief of staff, and may have taken over some of the latter’s duties and responsibilities.

There are no precise numbers on the number of night raids and how many militants have been killed in the last few months, yet according to an unnamed official, the scale and scope of operations is “unprecedented for this time of year” (the fighting season usually starts in early to late spring in the country). “It’s all in the shadows now. The official war for the Americans — the part of the war that you could go see — that’s over. It’s only the secret war that’s still going. But it’s going hard,” emphasized a former Afghan security official, confirming the above statement.

The increase in night raids is also attributable to a new security pact, signed by President Ashraf Ghani in September 2014, which eased restrictions on night raids by American and Afghan Forces. Gen. John F. Campbell, the commander of U.S. and NATO ground forces in Afghanistan, allegedly increased the tempo of Special Forces operations right after the signing. Ghani’s predecessor, Hamid Karzai, was vehemently opposed to those raids and put severe limits on them, to the dismay of many Afghan military commanders.

America’s Pakistan Dilemma

By Sarah Graham

February 12, 2015

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One of the few remarked-upon passages in Hillary Clinton’s otherwise unenlightening Hard Choices was her recollection of the decision not to inform Pakistani authorities of the U.S. raid to kill Osama bin Laden. In her retelling, the suggestion that the U.S. should tend to the diplomatic sensitivities of its ally was summarily dismissed by the most senior officials in the room. This would pose too great an operational risk given the known links between the Pakistani military and terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban, even, scarily, at the risk that Pakistani authorities mightmistake the U.S. incursion for a fully-fledged military attack by someone else.

So well known are these terrorist connections, in fact, that sponsorship of terrorism by various elements of the Pakistani state has its own Wikipedia page, and analysts consider the use of terrorist groups as proxies to be an established operating principle of Pakistani foreign policy. Among senior U.S. officials since 2001, Clinton has been the most willing to openly discuss the contradictions in U.S. policy. She coined the memorable phrase “snakes in the backyard” to describe the impunity with which militants operate in Pakistan’s northwestern provinces. John Kerry has taken a much softer approach. His visits to Pakistan have been accompanied by lavish promises of aid and a generally polite glossing over of the strategic contradictions in one of Washington’s most complicated diplomatic relationships.

Ensnared by History

Like Gulliver, the U.S. is ensnared by its history with Pakistan and the flawed logic behind decades of strategic involvement of the region. Despite its great power and wealth, Washington has only limited means of influencing Pakistan, and few viable options for rethinking its current policy in the short term. This is not a new problem for the U.S. At relatively few points in history do we see a really clear convergence of strategic interests between Pakistan and the U.S., and it is the U.S. that tends not to get the better side of the bargain. Though the stakes have rarely been higher, Washington is continuing in a sort of policy paralysis, leaving other players to exercise a decisive influence on the stability of the region.

Xi Jinping to Visit Pakistan in Coming Months

By Ankit Panda

February 13, 2015

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi confirmed that Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Pakistan this year, his first official state visit to the country since assuming the Chinese presidency. Xi was slated to visit Pakistan last fall, as part of a general South Asia tour that encompassed Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and India. Due to widespread anti-government protests in Pakistan at the time, both the Chinese and Pakistani governments agreed that it would be best to postpone to the visit.

“That will be [Xi Jinping's] first visit to Pakistan as the head of state of China and that will be the first visit of its kind in nine years,” Wang remarked. Wang, who is in Pakistan on a two-day tour, met with Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. According to Pakistan’s Express Tribune, following meetings with the two Pakistani leaders and with Pakistani National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz, Wang remarked that China and Pakistan are in complete agreement on all points of discussion — a statement that echoes the common refrain in China-Pakistan relations of the two being “all-weather partners.” “During my discussion with Sartaj Aziz, we agreed on everything. This shows the high degree of trust and support between the two countries,” Wang said.

Interestingly, Wang’s visit addressed the issue of a joint China-Pakistan role in Afghanistan following the United States’ military withdrawal in that country. Wang noted that “ending Afghanistan’s turmoil was a common aspiration for both countries.” “China is ready to play its necessary role and will deliver its commitment in terms of security, economy and support,” he added. “Only with smooth progress can Afghanistan realize its potential and embrace a brighter future,” Wang further commented.

Why 2020 Is a Make-or-Break Year for China

By Shannon Tiezzi

February 13, 201

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Those perusing China’s reform plans can’t help but notice a certain date popping up with surprising frequency: 2020. A number of key goals, all seemingly unrelated, are pegged to this date. By 2020, leaders say, China will: achieve a 60 percent urbanization rate; complete construction on the Chinese space station; become an “Internet power”; place a cap on coal use and transition to clean energy; and even (according to unofficial reports) have its first domestically-built aircraft carrier. Perhaps most importantly, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has pledged that by 2020, China will be a “moderately well-off society” – meaning, in hard terms, that the per capita income in China will be double the 2010 figure. China will also attempt to double its current GDP in that same timeframe. That, in turn, is supposed to help China establish its international image and build up soft power.

What do these goals have in common, other than their projected completion date? They are all benchmarks of China becoming a prosperous, powerful, modern country. And that is exactly the accomplishment China wants to showcase at the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CCP, which will take place in 2021. Before then – in 2020, in other words – China’s government wants to have handfuls of concrete gains to show the people.

2021 marks the first of China’s “two centenary goals,” pegged to the 100th anniversaries of the CCP and the People’s Republic of China. These goals were put down in writing by the 18th Party Congress in 2012 – the same Party Congress that saw Xi Jinping assume the position of China’s top leader. Xi himself linked these goals to a catchier slogan: the “Chinese dream.” In Xi’s speeches, the “two centenary goals” are often paired with the “Chinese dream” or the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” as twin aspirations. “At present, the Chinese people are striving to realize the Two Centenary Goals and the Chinese Dream of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Xi said in July 2014.