CAPITALI$M IN SPACE

Solutions sought for growing space junk threat

Photo: Shutterstock

A growing swarm of debris in space has led the US government to attempt to set new space hygiene norms, while private companies are also investing in ways to tackle the messy orbital environment.

Thousands of commercial satellites are being launched into Earth's orbit at a record pace, driving up the risk of collisions that could spawn swarms of hazardous debris. And with no set norms for military space behaviour, some fear a potential space weapon attack that could generate far more debris.

At stake are billions of dollars in assets - the orbital devices crucial to navigation and smartphone maps, text messaging, calls and internet connections that are used by industries and people globally.

US Space Command on Friday released a formal list of what it views as responsible space behaviours, in a bid to steer military norms in orbit.

"The idea is we hope our adversaries do the same," Brigadier General Richard Zellmann, deputy director of the command's operations unit, told Reuters.

The wide-ranging report includes a section on space debris that urges space players to dispose safely of their defunct satellites and notify other operators if any problems with their spacecraft might pose a debris hazard.

"You have to find a way to allow the economy to grow in the space domain, and in order to do that you need to make sure that it remains sustainable," said Zellmann, who oversees much of the Pentagon's space tracking efforts.

"Key to that is going to be ensuring that we can either solve that debris problem, or at least mitigate it to the point that it's acceptable."

While governments try to tackle international rules, the immediate response to the littering of orbit is coming in large part from the private sector.

Tokyo-based Astroscale, with subsidiaries in the US and Britain, is testing a debris removal device called ELSA designed to latch onto defunct satellites and drag them toward Earth's atmosphere for a fiery disposal.

Jack Deasy, vice president of business development at Astroscale's US subsidiary, said industry-specific policies for space behaviour similar to the norms proposed by US Space Command are urgently needed before a catastrophic collision occurs that could lead to burdensome regulations.

"That kind of rushed, crisis-driven thing is not always the best way of setting up long-term policies that sustain the ecosystem," he said.

Elon Musk's SpaceX has launched thousands of Starlink internet satellites in low-Earth orbit in recent years. A handful of other companies, including Jeff Bezos' Amazon, plan to do the same.

"Particularly in the (low-Earth orbit), which is increasingly crowded, the people who are investing billions of dollars to run those constellations have a lot of incentive to keep that clean themselves," said Deasy.


Starlink satellites. Photo: Unsplash / Forest Katsch

Astroscale this week closed a series G funding round that brought in US$76 million (NZ$122m), a substantial sum in an industry otherwise facing a drought in investment as investors seek safer bets amid rising inflation.

Putting the firm's total funding at US$376m (NZ$604m), investors included Mitsubishi Electric and Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, a prospective passenger on SpaceX's next-generation Starship rocket system.

"Garbage scattered in outer space can become a big problem in the future," Maezawa tweeted on Monday as he announced a $23m (NZ$37m) investment in Astroscale.

Another part of the space debris mitigation equation is in-space satellite servicing, concepts in development by dozens of firms including Astroscale, Northrop Grumman, Maxar and Airbus. The idea: deploy service satellites to approach and latch onto broken or fuel-spent spacecraft to extend their lifespan.

Those mission extension concepts, which Astroscale and Northrop Grumman have begun testing in space, have sprouted a patchwork of other companies looking to build on the momentum.

Australia-based Neumann Space, for instance, is developing a technology that could help recycle old, defunct satellites into fuel - using the scrap metal to generate plasma thrust for new satellites. That could be used in partnership with satellite-serving companies, it hopes.

"It's great because you can do mission extension by refuelling with what's already in space," Neumann chief executive Herve Astier said. His company plans to launch a test satellite in June.

"Using the metal that's already there, that's a way to move forward in terms of sustainability."

Illegal refinery blast in Nigeria kills at least 12

TEHRAN, Mar. 04 (MNA) – An explosion and fire near an illegal oil refinery site in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region killed at least 12 people Friday, police said, although local residents reported a much higher death toll.

The explosion in the Emuoha council area of the southern Rivers state occurred along a pipeline targeted by illegal refinery operators who were trying to steal oil, AP quoted state police spokesperson Grace Iringe-Koko as saying.

“Preliminary investigation by the Police Command indicates that the victims were scooping crude products when the site caught fire,” Iringe-Koko said.

Five vehicles, four auto-rickshaws and a motorcycle “were all burned to ashes,” she said, adding that authorities were working to determine how many people died.

People in the area said that dozens may have died in the fire that raged for hours and that the victims were mostly young people who planned to siphon oil from a pipeline and transport to an illegal refinery site in at least five vehicles.

Fyneface Dumnamene, executive director of Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre, said a spark from the exhaust pipe of a bus loaded with gallons of crude oil ignited the explosion as the driver attempted to depart.

Residents rushed in to try to rescue some of those at the scene, but the explosion was “a massive one which shook our buildings,” said Issac Amaechi, who lives in the area.

Illegal refineries are a lucrative business in Nigeria, one of Africa’s top oil producers. They are more rampant in the oil-rich Niger Delta region, where most of the nation’s oil facilities are located.

The workers at such facilities rarely adhere to safety standards, leading to frequent fires, including one in Imo state last year in which more than 100 people were killed.

MNA/PR

Why the American far right adopted Brazilian ex-President Jair Bolsonaro

By Julia Jones

CNN
Sat March 4, 2023

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's former president, at a Turning Point USA 'Power of The People' event in Miami, Florida, US, on Friday, Feb. 3, 2023.Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Sao PauloCNN —

This Saturday, as American conservatives flock to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, they’ll get a taste of just how far and wide their own ideas have spread. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will speak on the same stage where a few hours later former US leader Donald Trump will deliver the event’s closing remarks — a man the Brazilian leader has intentionally mirrored from the beginning of his presidency.

Far from his home country, Bolsonaro has found a warm reception in America: on social media, mostly Brazilian fans post videos of meeting Bolsonaro outside his south Florida rental and running into him in parking lots, food courts, and grocery stores, where the former president appears in shorts and sandals, grinning and posing for photos with children.

Bolsonaro has made a number of appearances in US hotel conference rooms and evangelical churches targeting Brazilian expats, giving speeches that come across as both timid and awkward, as he pauses to wait for interpreters to catch up to him, not always seeming certain of what is being said.

Supporters of Bolsonaro stand in front of the home he is staying in, hoping he will emerge, in Kissimmee, Florida.Paul Hennessy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

In early February, he spoke in the auditorium of a Trump hotel just outside Miami, hosted by none other than conservative activist and far-right organizer Charlie Kirk. Kirk, who admitted to not knowing much about Brazil, was nonetheless flanked by the flags of both nations: a gold-fringed, star-spangled banner and Brazil’s unmistakeable bright green flag with a yellow diamond and blue circle in the center. “The fight against socialism and Marxism knows no borders,” Kirk said by way of introduction to an audience of mostly Brazilians who were there to see Bolsonaro – “the myth,” or legend, as they call him.

In a separate podcast interview, Kirk and Bolsonaro enthusiastically described common ground between the Brazilian and American right. Describing his decision to snub Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s swearing in, Bolsonaro said: “I didn’t want to be accused of collaborating with the clumsy way they began their mandate, because we have completely opposing political views: conservative, on the right, and theirs, closer to socialism on the left.”

“Sounds very similar to what we’re dealing with in the United States,” Kirk responded.

The commonalities go on. From expanding gun rights and downplaying COVID-19 to opposing abortion and advocating for tougher immigration policies, Bolsonaro and Trump had plenty in common while in office. The two have continued to mirror each other since then; both shunned their successors’ inauguration ceremonies and fled to the embrace of conservative society circles in Florida, where Trump moved his residence and where Bolsonaro has been living for more than two months.

But there’s another reason for Bolsonaro’s tour of the United States: his continued appearances on US stages serve strategic purposes for far-right movements in both countries.
A far right partnership that benefits both sides

For Bolsonaro, participating in US political events shores up his claims that he has not exited politics and will eventually assume again leadership of Brazil’s rightwing opposition, despite his current sojourn abroad.

For the American right, publicly allying with a foreign figure helps expand their reach and creates the appearance of confirming conspiracy theories that originate in the US. In 2022, it was Hungarian hardline leader Viktor Orban who made headlines at CPAC. This year, it’s Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro poses for a selfie during an event at a restaurant at Dezerland amusement park in Orlando, Florida, U.S. January 31, 2023.Joe Skipper/Reuters

Deputy Director of Rapid Response at Media Matters Madeline Peltz, who researches right wing media and has been tracking the way extreme rightwing figures like Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones talk about Brazil, says American and Brazilian activists can see each others’ countries as laboratories in which to test and observe tactics.

After a bruising midterm election, Peltz adds, Republicans are now wondering whether to continue down the path of being pushed farther to the right or to take a more measured approach, distancing themselves from election denialism and the violent acts of January 6, 2021, conveniently chalking that kind of behavior to the radicals of their party.

“The Republican Party was sort of testing this thesis about, do we continue down this path of Trumpism, of extreme election denial, and that was being reflected in the right wing media’s commentary on Brazil as well — they were testing that thesis both in the American elections and in the Brazilian elections,” Peltz said.

The blueprint hasn’t shown the expected results, she said. “Republicans underperformed, to be charitable, and Bolsonaro lost.”

In this balancing act, Bolsonaro is trying to figure out where he fits in. Though he denounced the invasion of Brasilia on January 8 by his supporters, in the days following the election he welcomed peaceful demonstrations while his party filed petitions for an audit of voting machines, alleging fraud. He fed his followers crumbs of misinformation about election fraud and made vague comments hinting at a potential coup.

When asked if Bolsonaro was not too problematic and messy to be brought into American politics — as a one-term president who infamously defended rape, torture, and a military dictatorship and is currently facing multiple criminal investigations at home — Peltz quipped, “They get their power from problematic and messy.” Shock value and controversy can actually confer clout in the American political universe, she said.

Prominent American conservatives have long lent support to Bolsonaro. “(Steve) Bannon has long considered himself to sort of be the international boogeyman of the left,” and his “next act” after leaving the White House was to form a sort of global coalition of far right movements, Peltz said. Brazil was one winning example of his political penetration.

Bolsonaro brought in Bannon to advise his first presidential campaign back in 2018 – and Bannon in turn began mentioning the South American leader more and more to his American audience, posing for photos with Bolsonaro’s children on US visits, and voicing his support for the president on his social media whenever he was under fire.

He is not the only one. In the days that followed the Brazilian presidential elections in November, as Bolsonaro and his party filed petitions for tens of thousands of votes to be thrown out, another prominent conservative voice joined in. Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson raised questions about whether the vote was legitimate – despite Brazilian courts rejecting fraud claims and a military investigation finding no evidence of rigged voting machines.

Rodrigo Nunes, a philosophy professor at University of Essex and author of “From Trance to Vertigo,” a book of essays about Bolsonarismo, said that Bolsonaro’s value to US conservatives comes from two factors.

First, “he’s a former president of a fairly important country. Geopolitically, he was a fairly important ally to Trump, because he was 100% aligned with Trump.” As a former leader in the global far-right and part of the “ecology,” Bolsonaro’s voice can be amplified in the US whenever his ideas are relevant, Nunes said.

Second, Bolsonaro frequently mimics and echoes the discourse of the far right in the US, which can be fed back into the US as offering further confirmation of what the far right are saying there, Nunes explained.

“That’s a lot of how this ecological approach to political organization works. When you’re using the internet, how do you make something real? You spread sufficient sources of it so that it looks like it’s coming from several different places at the same time, and suddenly, this produces an effect of reality, it looks like it’s real, because there’s a lot of people saying it and where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

In a way, the cycle is exemplified in the copycat insurrection that took place in Brasilia on January 8. It’s impossible not to see the influence of January 6 in the actions of the rioters there, and yet “the Brazilian Jan 6” was defended by Carlson and Bannon even as the reaction from Bolsonaro and many in his camp was mixed.

Bolsonaro supporters generate chaos in Brasilia, Brazil, with the invasion of the Supreme Court, National Congress and the Planalto Palace on Sunday, January 8.Mateus Bonomi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The day after the Brasilia riots, Bolsonaro condemned the acts in a tweet. “Peaceful demonstrations that follow the law are part of democracy. However, depredations and invasions of public buildings as occurred today, as well as those practiced by the left in 2013 and 2017, escape the rule,” he said.

But in American politics, what Bolsonaro thinks or says matters less than what the invasion of public buildings thousands of miles away means for American voters who believe that their own election was stolen.

“The way his narrative is built, to a large extent, as a copy or a mirror image of the narrative that they have in the US is very useful in the sense of showing people this is happening in other places, too. This proves the whole idea that there is a global conspiracy, a global left wing conspiracy to keep us, the people who represent the real people, out of power,” Nunes said.

In another recent speaking event, Bolsonaro took the pulpit of an evangelical church in Boca Raton, Florida, and told a crowd of Brazilians, “My mission is not over yet.”

In the same breath as he exalted the wonders of Brazil, (“There is nothing like our own land”), he urged his supporters to not be discouraged, and said he was planning to return to Brazil in the coming weeks to lead the opposition against Lula. If that is true, CPAC could be his last appearance in American politics before going home to an uncertain political future.

To Peltz, it would be the natural conclusion of what she described as Bolsonaro’s “strange, directionless detour to America,” given CPAC’s waning influence in the American political landscape. “CPAC no longer launches the careers of hopefuls looking to make an impact, rather, it’s now simply a box to check off. And without much otherwise on his to-do list, Bolsonaro might as well check it off.”

India and Pakistan

New normal?

Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry 

IN September 2016, India announced that it had carried out a surgical strike against Pakistan. The strike had not happened in reality, and, at that point, most analysts concluded that India was essentially testing the waters for a ‘new normal’ in bilateral relations, whereby it could strike Pakistan without provoking a nuclear response.

A few years later, in February 2019, India did carry out a surgical strike in Balakot on the grounds that it was targeting a militant training camp. Although there was no such camp there and the only some trees were hit, such strikes by one nuclear state against another represented a precarious situation unique to South Asia. All other nuclear weapon states have avoided direct military confrontation and relied more on diplomacy to avert conflict escalation.

Having witnessed the colossal destruction caused by the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the world community resolved that atomic weapons must never be used again.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 recognised the right of the five nuclear weapon states then — the US, Soviet Union, UK, France, China — to retain their nuclear weapons on the condition that in due course, they would disarm their nuclear arsenal. Non-nuclear weapon states that joined the NPT agreed to not acquire nuclear weapons against the promise they would have enhanced opportunities for peaceful uses of atomic energy.

This bargain was short-lived, as none of the five nuclear weapon states made efforts to disarm. Instead, a nuclear arms race erupted between the US and the Soviet Union.

There were fears that the Cold War between the two could morph into a direct war, but that never happened because they recognised that the outcome would be mutually assured destruction. Their rivalry played out on all continents, but mostly through espionage, propaganda, arms build-up and proxy wars.

The only time they came close to a kinetic confrontation was during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. All along, diplomacy was used to manage their conflicts. The concept of détente, from 1967 to 1979, helped reduce tensions, and diplomatic parleys led to the signing of treaties on limiting strategic arms.

Why has South Asia’s nuclear experience been different?

Even during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the US did not confront the Soviets with its own troops, and instead, used proxies through the mujahideen. After the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a US-led globalised world, several conflicts erupted in various parts of the world.

The US invaded Iraq despite stiff international condemnation, sanctioned Iran on concerns about its nuclear programme, and attacked Afghanistan to fight terrorism. During this phase, too, no direct confrontation took place between nuclear weapon states, again with the exception of Pakistan and India.

Today, the world is witnessing intensifying US-China competition, and the US has made alliances with India, Australia, Japan and others to contain China’s rise.

However, the two have so far refrained from engaging in direct warfare. Likewise, in the Russia-Ukraine war, Nato and the US have avoided fielding their own troops, leaving it to the Ukrainians to fight, with the West’s military and economic support.

The question arises, why has South Asia’s experience been so different from the rest of the nuclear world? Ever since the nuclearisation of our region in 1998, India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed, have intermittently engaged in conventional confrontations, including the 1999 clash in Kargil and the 10-month long military stand-off in 2002. Behind-the-scenes diplomacy and often the help of third parties helped cool off tensions and avert an all-out war.

One major reason for instability in South Asia is the continuous cultivation of mistrust between the two countries. Some attempts were made to build mutual confidence, but they were never enough to help the countries establish a normal, good-neighbourly relationship.

The absence of a sustained dialogue, the unresolved Kashmir dispute, and failure to deal with the menace of terrorism cooperatively have kept South Asia unstable.

Presently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to be striving for a Hindu rashtra in India, and has been persistently aiming at marginalising and isolating Pakistan. These efforts continue to hamper prospects of peace and are making South Asia a high-risk zone of strategic instability.

India and Pakistan would need to learn from the practices of other nuclear weapon states, which realised early on that trying to ‘win’ in a nuclear environment has more costs than benefits. If diplomacy is given an uninterrupted chance, South Asia, like other parts of the world, could also achieve strategic stability that can allow the region to prosper. That is the ‘new normal’ that both countries should aspire to.

The writer is a former foreign secretary and author of Diplomatic Footprints.

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2023

US panel slams Modi’s actions in Gujarat

Anwar Iqbal 

Published March 13, 2023 

WASHINGTON: After a recent screening of a BBC documentary, India: The Modi Question, panellists urged the US media to hold Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi accountable for the 2002 massacre in Gujarat.

The documentary was screened at the National Press Club (NPC), Washington this week and the audience included representatives of various US media outlets.

The documentary covers the 2002 riots and mass killings of Muslims in India’s Gujarat state and their aftermath.

The panel included people who have first-hand connections to the events and they “called for news media in the US to expose the key role of Mr Modi, Gujarat state government leader at the time, in making it happen,” an NPC statement said.

The panel also included an eyewitness to the massacre and family member, as well as the daughter of a police whistleblower and was moderated by the NPC’s Press Freedom Team Chair Rachel Oswald.

According to the NPC, the film shows BBC reports on the scene and interviews with the British foreign secretary at the time, Jack Straw, describing an internal Foreign Office report telling of at least 2,000 murders of Muslims that Mr Straw called “hallmarks of ethnic cleansing”.

Sanjiv Bhatt, a senior Gujarat police official, who took part in meetings after the riots broke out tells interviewers that police were ordered by Mr Modi to do nothing for three days until the violence subsided, in testimony to an Indian Supreme Court investigation in 2011. The NPC report pointed out that Mr Bhatt was later prosecuted in 2018 for an old accusation and was serving a life sentence.

Imran Dawood, an eye witness to the riots was one of the panel members discussing the documentary. He said the rioters carried out “targeted attacks on Muslims,” using “the same tactics as in Nazi Germany.”

Aakashi Bhatt, daughter of jailed whistleblower Bhatt, told the participants that many of India’s institutions, including the media and judiciary, “are subverted from top to bottom” and “used by the regime to do its dirty work.”

When asked of actions that the US news media should take, Ms Bhatt said, “You have the power to hold this regime accountable,” and “Silence is a form of condoning what Modi did.”

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2023

Path of instability
Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry 

PAKISTAN is currently muddling through a storm of political instability, economic downturn and resurgent terrorism. Large sections of Indian media and pundits have seized the opportunity to demonise Pakistan as the epicentre of the problems plaguing South Asia. In doing so, they aim to absolve the Indian government of its own contribution towards an unstable South Asia.

Worrisome trends in India tell a different story. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen in an interview characterised the present Indian government as communitarian, majoritarian and anti-Muslim, which he deems as a ‘reduction’ of India from the pluralistic and culturally rich country it once was. He is not alone in raising these concerns. Since India is the largest state in South Asia, it is important to understand the recent rise of Hindu nationalism there, and why it matters to regional stability.

The secular, pluralistic and democratic country that Nehru had envisioned is rapidly giving way to a Hindutva-driven rashtra. Nehru’s book The Discovery of India des­cribed “unity in diversity” as the defining character of Indian civilisation. Conver­sely, the BJP’s political philosophy derives its inspiration from RSS leader Savarkar, who asserted that Hindu identity was the essence of India. Eventually, the Modi-led BJP actualised the nationalist political ideology of Hindutva. According to Aakar Patel, author of Our Hindu Rashtra, India today is a Hindu majoritarian state in practice.

The second dimension of today’s India is the personality cult of Narendra Modi that has been systematically developed. The BJP’s 2014 manifesto Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat (‘One India, Excellent India’) featured the pictures of many BJP leaders, but the title page of the 2019 manifesto Sankalp Bharat, Sashakt Bharat (‘Resolute India, Strong India’) had only the picture of Modi, a shift aimed at portraying Modi as the only hope for a strong India. In a Foreign Policy essay ‘The Cult of Modi’ published last year, Ramachandra Guha describes in detail how Modi has used a massive propaganda machinery to enhance his image as the “great redeemer of Hindus and Hinduism”. Arundhati Roy argues in an article published by The Guardian recently that Modi’s policy of violent Hindu nationalism was “underwritten by big business” like billionaire Gautam Adani.

Nehru’s India has given way to an India driven by Hindutva.

The third aspect of communitarian India is the growing anxiety of the country’s minorities. In 2018, then BJP president Amit Shah described Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh as “termites”. The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, offered Indian citizenship to religious minorities from neighbouring countries, except Muslims, which the UNHCR characterised as “fundamentally discriminatory”. The Muslim-majority population of Indian-occupied Kashmir has also suffered from communication blockades and lockdowns for years. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom asserted in its 2022 report that Modi’s India was committing “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom” against its minorities.

Hate speech and attacks targeting Muslims have become routine in India. Saffron-clad Hindu mobs frequently lynch Muslims on the streets. In February 2022, RSS followers made headlines in Karnataka when they heckled a hijab-clad Muslim student, Muskan Khan. On Aug 15, 2022, 11 convicted men, who had gang-raped a pregnant Muslim woman, Bilkis Bano, during the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, were released prematurely and received a heroes’ welcome. The recently relea­sed BBC documentary India: The Modi Question describes in detail how then chief minister Modi oversaw a pre­­planned pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Minorities in India face hate-mong­ering programmes, like ‘Ghar Wapsi’ (conversion to Hin­du­ism) or ‘Love Jihad’ (discouraging Hindu women from meeting Muslim men). Even Bollywood is embracing right-wing narratives that glorify Hinduism and disparage Islam.

The fourth plank of the Hindutva strategy is to isolate and demonise Pakistan. A massive disinformation campaign against Pakistan was run in Europe using fake NGOs (unearthed by EU’s DisinfoLab). Indian leaders recycle their mantra that Pakistan is the epicentre of terrorism, without acknowledging Pakistan’s valiant fight against terrorism.

If these trends continue, and minorities are pushed to the wall, South Asia’s largest country could head towards tumult. Pakistan and other South Asian nations are already facing serious political and economic challenges; if there is instability in India too, there would be grave implications for regional peace and prosperity. As the BJP-led government completes its second term, one hopes that it heeds wiser counsel, and prevents India from turning into a majoritarian state that is fast losing its democratic ethos.

The writer is a former foreign secretary and author of Diplomatic Footprints.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2023

SEELA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM IS FASCISM 

Balochistan misunderstood

Pervez Hoodbhoy 

Published March 11, 2023 
DAWN

“YOU mean they actually read books in Balochistan?” My Lahori friend sounded sceptical. For him, as for most Pakistanis, Balochistan is a war zone where people want guns not books. But, just back from the 2023 Gwadar Book Festival, I told him he was not only wrong but as wrong as wrong could be. Young Baloch are thirsty to know; they buy nearly three times more books than sold at literary festivals in Karachi, Lahore, or Islamabad.

More importantly, this festival — and others I have attended in Balochistan — was organic, energetic and unfettered. Thankfully, I neither saw nor heard support for BLA/BLF terrorists. With a shoestring budget, staffed by young volunteers, and held inside a rundown high-school compound, the GBF was unlike the tepid, uninspiring Karachi-Lahore type of lit-fests. Held in five-star hotels with abundant corporate and embassy funding, these are feel-good events with lots of self-congratulations, but topics and speakers deemed controversial are carefully excluded.

My friend was pleasantly surprised to learn that more female students than male students asked questions after my Gwadar University lecture. I had long complained to him that, over the past 35-40 years, female students at my old university in Islamabad have taken up the veil and turned into passive listeners, rarely summoning the courage to stand up and ask.

But if my well-read, well-travelled, and well-meaning friend was so consistently wrong, what’s going on in other minds? When news is blacked out, good news and bad news both stop. For fear of weakening CPEC, authorities are hypersensitive about negative news. Except for that cleared from ‘above’, print and TV media may not touch Balochistan on anything.

Designers of the Gwadar CPEC project had only roads and the port in mind, not Gwadaris’ welfare.

None has underscored this sad fact more brilliantly than a fisherman’s son, Maulana Hidayat-ur-Rahman of Gwadar’s Haq Do Tehreek. At last year’s Asma Jehangir Conference in Lahore, he stole the show. When a mouse found its way into a halwai’s shop in Lahore, he thundered, Pakistani media was set ablaze. But when dead bodies appear by roadsides in Balochistan, none dare whisper. The redoubtable maulana, also a Jamaat-i-Islami leader, is currently under arrest and charged with murder. People say he is at the centre of a tussle between two agencies, one of which wants him in, the other out.

As an outsider to Gwadar (last visit circa 1960) I could not figure out which of a multiplicity of security organisations has the top charge. Each protects its own turf and probably has its own extra-salary income sources. Along all highways and major roads, hilltops bristle with Omani-style forts and fortifications. Bunkers and check posts are everywhere.

Passing through the dry-as-dust town of Turbat, I wondered what made the local economy tick. Answer: smuggling. No attempt — not even the flimsiest — is made to hide the free flow of petrol, oil and LNG from across the Iranian border. On their way to Karachi and parts of Punjab, pickup trucks loaded with fuel-filled jerry cans are the largest fraction of road traffic. Luxury coaches to Karachi, I was told, have a tank under the chassis containing eight to ten thousand litres. Pre-assigned cuts warm pockets along the way.

One fact — more than any other — strikes a visitor instantly. The men who designed New Gwadar wasted not a moment in worrying about Gwadaris, the original inhabitants. Pushed away from the harbour, areas permitted for their fishing keep shrinking. A proposed new road will devastate the local boat construction industry. The old town looks like a dump, but Rawalpindi doesn’t care.

Those building the port — the Chinese — are invisible. Locals humorously call them yajooj-majooj. Instead of romping around the incredibly beautiful beaches, they live inside that which from afar looks like a prison camp. Once the project is over, I am sure they will be anxious to get back home and savour freedom.

A near-accidental visit to the Gwadar Institute of Technology turned out to be a surreal experience. A plaque says this super-modern institution was handed over by China in 2021. The auditoriums, lecture halls, classrooms, and laboratories are picture perfect. I counted over 60 training simulators for cranes, gantries, heavy vehicles and forklifts. Later, upon googling, the per-piece price ranged from $30,000-$50,000. All are spanking new, still under plastic covers. On this vast but desolate campus there are no teachers, students, or staff — only chowkidars. No one has a clue of how to get things moving.

This is development gone mad. But who is to blame and who will foot the bill? Was there a PC-1 planning document, and what’s in it? Still, Gwadar’s development will doubtless benefit those who have always won. Vast areas have been cordoned off with razor wire for various official organisations and their housing schemes. Colonisation, of course, is too strong a word to use here. Let’s just say it’s the familiar desire for officer colonies.

An unexpected encounter between Quetta and Gwadar led to a three-hour conversation with a junior army officer, a Kakul graduate. Brilliant and likeable, he engaged the TTP in firefights in South Waziristan. Well, how do they compare against BLF/BLA? He laughed: these are criminals and adventurists. But TTP are formidable hardcore terrorists. He then paused: he’d rather fight elsewhere where he would be liked by people, not here.

Intriguing! This begged my question — why don’t you people just go back home? Leave law-and-order to the local police and Baloch Levies? He sighed. Yes, this should happen sooner rather than later. But both are under-equipped, under-trained and, being locals, have families that terrorists can target. This young officer doesn’t want to be seen as part of an occupation force. Though troubled, he still loves the army.

Those at the centre of power imagine Balochistan as some faraway, barren land of tribals. Far too rich to be left alone, they think it must be governed from afar. Stunted development springing from this regressive mindset is driving Pakistan back onto the rocks. Balochistan — and for that matter the concept of Pakistan — will have to be re-understood in very new ways. Else history will exact its awful toll as it did once. But next time around, the price could be still steeper.

The writer is an Islamabad-based physicist and writer.

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2023

Balochistan: the foreign hand?

Pervez Hoodbhoy 

Published February 26, 2022

WITH the present uptick of attacks on security forces, we are back to a familiar routine. Between when a terrorist incident occurs and blame is assigned, the separation is no more than a few minutes. The investigation-free and evidence-free conclusion never changes; whatever happened is the work of foreign forces. Domestic political opponents — even if perfectly peaceful and totally unconnected with the incident — can conveniently be labeled as foreign agents and stomped upon hard. It is hoped that fear will leave them paralysed and speechless.

This may explain why Hafeez Baloch was forcibly disappeared three weeks ago by armed men who alighted from a black pickup. This bright young man is an M.Phil candidate in particle physics in my department at Quaid-e-Azam University. The incident happened in front of his terrified students and fellow teachers while he was teaching at a small private school in Khuzdar, his hometown. Hafeez had used the winter vacations to take a short trip home and earn some desperately needed cash. Just days away from returning to Islamabad for submitting his final thesis, his teachers and fellow students tell me he was a bookworm not known to have the slightest connection with any violent group.

Fearful of how the security forces might react, the local police balked at registering an FIR. While in their captivity, Hafeez will doubtless have been accused of being a foreign agent. Like countless other young Baloch men arbitrarily picked up in the past, he too will be deeply scarred emotionally — and perhaps physically — during this ordeal. One does not even know if he will ever be seen alive again. The mounting sense of Baloch grievance will go up yet another notch.

Pakistan’s external enemies are claimed to be behind its problems of national integration. But those who play secret games under the guise of national security bear far greater responsibility. It is they who made our country suffer so grievously from terrorism between 2001 and 2014. Although inimical foreign powers have undoubtedly sought to inflict hurt, Pakistan’s wounds during that terrible period were largely self-inflicted.

Forcibly disappearing Baloch students won’t eliminate terrorism but will weaken the federation of Pakistan.

In the years following 9/11, terrorist attacks became a daily occurrence once Gen Pervez Musharraf sided with America and joined its so-called war on terror. Earlier, Pakistan had been the Taliban’s principal supporter and, as is well known, that support continued secretly. However, publicly Pakistan had declared itself on the side of the Taliban’s enemy. In retaliating against this perceived betrayal, religiously inspired young boys from madressahs blew themselves up in bazars, hospitals and schools. The establishment, however, claimed all terrorists were either foreigners or foreign supported. The common refrain was: how could killers of Muslims be Muslim?

The loudest advocate of the foreign hand theory was the late Gen Hamid Gul. My first encounter with this famous general was after he addressed an audience sometime around 1998 in the physics auditorium at Quaid-e-Azam University. There he urged Pakistan to lead jihad around the world. During the Q&A session he was flattered at my calling him Adolf Hitler’s brother. We then sparred frequently on various TV channels. My last televised encounter with him was in early 2014, just after a horrendous back-to-back suicide attack some hours earlier. The general declared that the bombers were non-Muslim because they had not been circumcised. He angrily refused to provide proof.

The truth, however, had started leaking out soon after the bloody capture in 2008 of the Swat valley by Mullah Fazlullah’s forces. The powers that be of those times approvingly watched him — and the infamous Mangal Bagh — from a distance. Their U-turn came much later. After the 2014 massacre of 149 children and their teachers at the Army Public School in Peshawar, the denial mode was switched off. Thereafter the Pakistan Army launched Operation Rad-ul-Fasaad. The word ‘fasaad’ is a term strictly used for internal conflict only, not war against an external enemy.

Suddenly Pakistanis began to see TV propaganda video clips of PAF jets pounding targets in North Waziristan, artillery firing into the mountains, or, perhaps, some other celebration of these military operations. You rubbed your eyes in disbelief — how could aircraft of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan bomb Taliban fighters whose stated goal was to establish Pakistan as an Islamic state? How could they ever have been portrayed as non-Muslims?

It took a very long time to admit that Fazlullah’s TTP was actually a Muslim force. Now that the Afghan Taliban government in Kabul continues to harbour and protect the TTP, that delusionary bubble has finally burst. But has it? I don’t know. One day TTP is denounced as India-funded and, on the next, embraced as brothers. The confusion continues.

For now, let’s leave that as it is. What about Balochistan. Where lies the truth? How deep is India’s involvement?

India has certainly not been unaware of Pakistan’s difficulties in Balochistan. As a general rule, whenever a population is angry and alienated, for external enemies to find domestic allies is easy. India believes that Pakistan recruited Kashmiris on India’s side of the LOC to attack Indian security forces. Back in 1971, India could successfully exploit Bengali alienation to cut Pakistan in two. Today, Baloch alienation leads many Indians to talk about Balochistan as an arrow in India’s quiver against Pakistan.

Editorial: Cycle of distrust and disaffection must be broken to deal with renewed insurgency in Balochistan

Indian spymasters Vikram Sood and Ajit Doval, as well as PM Modi, have often spoken about doing a tit-for-tat for perceived Pakistani involvement in Kashmir. Meanwhile strategists like Pramit Pal Chaudhuri suggest the retribution could come through fanning Pakistan’s exaggerated fears of Baloch secession. India should hope, he says, that the Pakistan Army’s angry overreaction to dissent will keep Balochistan aflame.

The abductors of Hafeez Baloch — and of other young missing Baloch men who number in the hundreds — have taken the bait dangled by Pramit Chaudhri and others. Throughout the Baloch community of students in Islamabad, anger and fear run deep. The flagrant violation of Baloch constitutional rights is weakening the national spirit and harming the federation. Before the self-appointed guardians of Pakistan’s security cause further damage to our country through their illegal actions, they must be brought to task.

The writer is an Islamabad-based physicist and author.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2022

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for Balochistan 

PAKISTAN
Boosting renewables in the mix

Nasir Jamal 

Published March 13, 2023 

Pakistan must pursue a more ambitious plan to tap its variable renewable energy (VRE) — solar and wind power — potential to significantly increase its share in the country’s energy mix than the one planned in the National Transmission & Despatch Company (NTDC) 10-year Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan (IGCEP) prepared last year.

In its analysis of the IGCEP 2021-22, a German think tank, Agora Energiewendie, suggests that Pakistan has the potential to generate at least 33,000 megawatts of solar and wind power or more than 48 per cent of the the planned increase in electricity production to nearly 70,000MW in the next 10 years. That will result in generation cost savings of 15pc and emission savings of almost 50pc, says the recently commissioned Agora study titled ‘Solar and Wind Roadmap for Pakistan’.

The study examines VRE scenarios beyond 2022 and reviews the 10-year generation expansion planning for Pakistan, evaluating the possibility and benefits of pursuing a more ambitious solar and wind power target by 2030-31. Based on the hourly dispatch of 2030, the study concludes that an increase in the planned total VRE capacity is possible by adding minor grid infrastructure reinforcements.

“Increasing VRE to 33,000MW by 2030 or 60pc greater than the IGCEP planned 21,000MW has high benefits and is stable under all scenarios. For any unexpected change in demand or others, the annual tender capacities of solar and wind can be adjusted flexibly in the future,” it adds.

German think tank suggests that Pakistan can generate 33,000MW through wind and solar power in the next decade

The study further recommends including this more ambitious target in the next iteration of the IGCEP, which is due in June this year. It also suggests pursuing a strategic reinforcement of road infrastructure (including the high-voltage direct current link to Chaghai in Balochistan), focusing on the flexibilisation of the operation of hydro and coal units, and implementing a stringent and localised annual tender plan for auctioning out the 33,000MW of solar and wind power over the life of the NTDC plan.

The NTDC prepares IGCEP every year as required under the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority law to forecast the electricity demand and supply scenarios in the country over the next decade and gives plans to boost power generation from different fuels to meet the increase in demand.

The IGCEP encapsulates power generation additions required to meet the country’s future energy and power demand, including NTDC and K-Electric (KE) systems. Three scenarios of long-term forecast are prepared for the low, normal and high GDP growth of 3.40pc, 4.30pc and 5.42pc, respectively.

Agora has made its VRE recommendations based on the ‘base case’ scenario developed by the NTDC on a normal scenario of the long-term forecast, existing contractual obligations and retirements of power projects during the planning horizon. For the study, 8,021MW of existing power generation capacity is retired during the planning horizon in every scenario.

In the base case, the demand and installed capacity of the whole country, as forecast by the IGCEP, is 41,338MW and 69,372MW, respectively, by 2031, according to the IGCEP executive summary.

It is to highlight that in the planned future installed capacity, the optimised share of VRE is 20,548MW — 13,680MW from solar photovoltaic (PV) and 6,868MW from wind. That will be about 30pc of the total projected installed generation capacity in 2031. This is in line with the 2019 alternate energy plan that seeks to increase renewable energy share in the power generation fuel mix from the existing 7pc to 20pc by 2025 and 30pc by 2030.

The salient features of the IGCEP base case include aggressive inclusion of VREs, minimal reliance on imported fuels, that is, coal, RLNG and Residual Furnace Oil (RFO), and increased share of hydropower as well as local coal, with all optimised generation based on indigenous resources.

The IGCEP says the inclusion of VREs, hydro and local coal will help lower the basket price of the overall system, thus providing much-needed relief to consumers though in the long run.

The current installed generation capacity in the country is 41,239MW megawatts, including 3,319MW produced by KE. The committed projects will have a capacity of 14,159MW, while the candidate projects of 17,812MW.

Historically, Pakistan strongly relies on hydropower. Heavy capacities in thermal plants have been added over the years based on coal, heavy fuel oil, gas and nuclear to cover demand-supply. Apart from some domestic coal and gas, all fuels are imported. Solar and wind are at their initial stages with a share of 1pc and 4pc in the total energy mix, respectively.

The Agora study, conducted by energy experts working on or in Pakistan’s energy sector, describes the IGCEP as much more progressive in terms of wind’s 7,000MW and solar’s 14,000MW power than the last version. However, it still includes substantial further investments in local coal and other fossil fuel plants.

Due to the developments in the global energy market since early 2022, a completely new situation has evolved for countries dependent on imported energy like Pakistan: imported coal and gas prices have almost doubled, increasing Pakistan’s electricity generation costs and consumer prices and often leading to planned loadshedding to save money on energy imports that have caused the current account imbalance to worsen.

The Agora study says the increase in VRE does not mean that evacuation capacities have to be constructed in the grid infrastructure. “The envisaged VRE capacity is located across the country at different voltage levels, allowing the usage of existing infrastructure. Feeder-based and net metering plants do not require transmission grid infrastructure; furthermore, 1,000MW of PV nameplate capacity are typically connected to 0.8-0.9GW of evacuation capacity with a negligible amount of curtailment,” it points out.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, March 13th, 2023

A first Academy Award for an Indian film — and then a second on the same night


'Naatu Naatu' from RRR won the Academy Award for best original song and The Elephant Whisperers won best documentary short film.

Indians erupted in celebration on Monday after ‘Naatu Naatu’, the breakout hit from the action movie RRR, won the Academy Award for best original song, making history as the first movie from the country to win the honour.

The song — a fast-paced number that has found fans all over the world, spawned a TikTok challenge and has millions of views on YouTube — won a standing ovation when it was performed at the 95th Academy Awards on Sunday night.

Indians had won Oscars previously, but no Indian film had won an Academy Award before Sunday night in Los Angles. RRR and The Elephant Whisperers, which won best documentary short film, gave the country two Oscar-winning films in one night.

“No words can describe this surreal moment. Dedicating this to all our amazing fans across the world. THANK YOU!!,” the Twitter account for RRR posted.

Television showed images of people dancing to the song in the streets, minutes after the award was announced, even as #NaatuNaatu was a top trend on Twitter.

“The popularity of ‘Naatu Naatu’ is global. It will be a song that will be remembered for years to come,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on Twitter, congratulating the team behind the song.

“Entire India is proud. They have brought India to the world stage,” singer Prudhvi Chandra, one of the singers of ‘Naatu Naatu’, told the India Today news channel.

In the film, made in the South Indian language of Telugu and directed by S.S. Rajamouli, ‘Naatu Naatu’ begins when the two leads, played by Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr., flaunt their dance skills after being bullied as the only Indian people invited to a British party in colonial times.

When a young British man aims racist insults at the leads, they decide to educate him using the song ‘Naatu Naatu’. During the scene, which was filmed at Ukraine’s grand Mariinskyi Palace, everyone at the party, including the scoffing British man, tries to master the moves.

At the Oscars, composer M.M. Keeravani burst into song while accepting the award on stage, along with songwriter Chandrabose. “I feel this is about just the beginning of everything so that the world — particularly the Western world — focuses more on Indian music and Asian music, which is long due,” Keeravani said backstage after winning the award.

The Elephant Whisperers is about a couple in South India who adopt a baby elephant and care for him.

Palestine afire

Editorial 

Published March 13, 2023 

THERE were genuine concerns that Benjamin Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government, that took power in December 2022, would make life very difficult for the Palestinian people. These concerns have turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the state of Israel, now with xenophobic pro-settler ministers in charge, sits by as extremist Jews unleash havoc upon the Arabs. A particularly appalling incident occurred on Feb 26, when a mob of settlers ransacked the Palestinian village of Huwwara in the occupied West Bank. The raid — reminiscent of the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba — came about after two settler brothers were shot dead by suspected Arab gunmen in the same village. What followed was nothing short of collective punishment, as hundreds of Jewish settlers ransacked the town. What is equally appalling is the response of some Israeli ministers to this outrage. Finance Minister Bezazel Smotrich, one of the most virulently anti-Arab characters in the Netanyahu set-up, called for Huwwara to be “wiped out”, while adding that Israel should attack Palestinian cities “mercilessly”. Predictably, violence has surged with Israeli troops killing a number of Palestinians, including children, while Arab gunmen have also retaliated.

It is easy to see where the situation is headed: towards a third intifada. The Palestinian people apparently have no other option but to resist, as Israel butchers them regularly, while those running Tel Aviv openly talk of genocidal violence against the Arabs. The tragedy is that the inept Palestinian leadership, and the hypocritical self-declared defenders of the international ‘rules-based order’ have all failed the ordinary people in the occupied territories. The silence from the slumbering Muslim world is particularly deafening. Whether it is vicious forays into Gaza, frequent provocations at Al Aqsa by extremist Jews or murderous rampages in the West Bank, Israel’s message is clear: the peace process is dead and buried. What remains for the Palestinians in the holy land is repression and brutal violence.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2023