Congo spotlight on India and Pakistan

The reputation of Indian and Pakistani peacekeeping forces could be at stake, reports Martin Plaut of the BBC

A BBC investigation into United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo has put the spotlight on Indian troops for the first time, and revived questions about Pakistani troops there.

Much of the report is based on confidential UN documents. Concerns were first raised within the UN about Indian troop activities in eastern DR Congo in July, 2007. After discussions between the UN and India, it was agreed that a UN investigation team would “determine whether the allegations are credible and require full investigation by India and the United Nations”.

That team identified five areas involving Indian troops in which a UN report says allegations have been “corroborated”

• The illegal purchase of gold from rebels of the FDLR - the former Rwandan army that fled to Congo following their involvement in the Rwanda genocide of 1994
• The use of a UN helicopter to fly into the Virunga national park, to exchange ammunition for ivory with the rebels
• The exchanging with the rebels of UN rations for gold
• The buying of drugs from the rebels
• The failure to support the disarmament of this rebel group.

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The curious case of Kashmir Singh

The case of Kashmir Singh seems to get curiouser and curiouser. Released after 35 years in various Pakistan jails following a pardon by President Pervez Musharraf of espionage charges, Kashmir now says he was, in fact, a spy. Sarabjit Pandher in The Hindu has the story:

In a reversal of his stand that he had no role in espionage, Kashmir Singh, who was released from a Pakistani jail after being incarcerated for 35 years, on Friday admitted that he had gone into Pakistan “on duty” to spy for the Indian Military Intelligence.

However, he refused to divulge details about who controlled the operations.

Addressing journalists at the Press Club here, Mr. Singh, with his wife Paramjit Kaur by his side, narrated his experiences of crossing the border on numerous occasions to collect information required by the MI.

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Earlier, in Mail Today, Manoj Joshi regrets the fact that both India and Pakistan treat their spies as expendable pawns

The story of Kashmir Singh cannot fail to stir the heart of every Indian. Here is a man, convicted for spying, who spent 35 long years entombed on the death row in Pakistan. Singh says he was not a spy; that does not matter. Even if he was one, he was a pawn in a larger game that routinely has dozens of agents crossing the border, or the Line of Control in Kashmir, to gather low level military intelligence. Their task is to update what is called the enemy’s “ order of battle”— the location of armoured or infantry units, artillery batteries, air force squadrons and cantonments — the pieces of a real life chessboard.

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Cold warriors do a flip

Nuclear terrorism threatens all states alike and they should be mobilised to confront it collectively. Shyam Saran, India’s former foreign secretary, in The Times of India:

George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn have little in their distinguished careers that would point to a strong advocacy of nuclear disarmament. On the contrary, their preoccupation as public servants was to maintain US nuclear deterrence against its Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union. They dismissed the goal of nuclear disarmament as fantasy.

And yet today, these same veterans of the Cold War are arguing forcefully for putting nuclear disarmament back on the inter-national agenda. In two important articles they wrote in the Wall Street Journal last year and in January this year, they call for a global effort to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, prevent their spread into potentially dangerous hands by strengthening non-proliferation and technology denial regimes and eventually end their threat to the world through their total elimination.

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Hobbling Defexpo

The biggest defence fair in South Asia began on Saturday in New Delhi with arms makers from 30 countries displaying their wares to the world’s fourth-largest military power. India is expected to spend tens of billions of dollars in ramping up its fire power over the next few years. Business Standard reports: 

 

There is nothing pretty in the spectacle of wealthy global defence suppliers urging poor countries to spend on exorbitantly priced weaponry, but that is what India’s premier defence exhibition, Defexpo India 08, is all about. Behind the glitzy displays, the glossy handouts emblazoned with names like Lockheed Martin and Rosoboronexport, and the easy talk about “strategic partnership” and “spreading insecurity”, is India’s failure to identify its defence needs and build up the capability to meet them cheaply and indigenously.

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