Kashmir: World watches, cautiously

JOHN CHERIAN

Pakistan comes up with a strong reaction, but the rest of the world has been cautious and muted in its response.

As expected, the international community has not reacted favourably to the government’s decision to unilaterally revoke the “special status” that was accorded to the State of Jammu and Kashmir in the Indian Constitution. The Kashmir dispute is incidentally the oldest unresolved international dispute pending before the United Nations. The international community has so far refused to recognise India’s sovereignty over Jammu and Kashmir or, for that matter, Pakistan’s claim to the part of Kashmir under its control.

But the immediate reactions from the international community were comparatively muted, with calls for restraint in the region. The United States State Department spokesperson, speaking on August 5, only urged India to engage in discussions with those affected by the decision. She went out of her way to emphasise that New Delhi considered its actions relating to Kashmir an internal issue, though she also added: “We are concerned about reports of detentions and urge respect for individual rights and discussions with those in affected communities.” President Donald Trump, who had recently offered once again to mediate in the dispute, has not yet spoken on the issue.

Pakistan’s reaction was the strongest. It wasted no time in reiterating that India’s “unilateral step” would alter the “disputed status as enshrined in U.N. [United Nations] Security Council resolutions” and that as “a party to the international dispute”, it would exercise “all possible options to counter [India’s] illegal steps”. The Pakistani government downgraded diplomatic ties, expelled the Indian High Commissioner, and stopped bilateral trade. It has indicated that it will once again close its air space for Indian aircraft and suspended the Samjhauta Express train.

On a railway platform in Lahore on August 8, watching an 

Indian relative leave by the Samjhauta Express.

Prime Minister Imran Khan warned of possible war. He told a special session of the National Assembly on August 6: “With an approach of this nature, incidents like Pulwama are bound to happen.” He cautioned that a war in the region between the two nuclear armed states would have devastating consequences for the world. “This is not nuclear blackmail—this is what will happen if you logically follow the chain of events that have been triggered,” he said. He also said that he had asked President Trump to get involved in the Kashmir dispute because of the Indian government’s failure to respond to his repeated attempts to resume bilateral talks.

China’s reaction

The Chinese Foreign Ministry objected to the decision to make Ladakh a Union Territory and said that this undermined China’s territorial sovereignty. The disputed area of Aksai Chin lies partly within the Ladakh administrative area. “China is always opposed to the inclusion of the Chinese territory in the western sector of the China-India border into its administrative jurisdiction,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said. She said that India “was continuing to undermine China’s territorial sovereignty by unilaterally changing its domestic law”. The spokesperson stressed that India’s actions were “unacceptable” and that China was “seriously concerned about the current situation”. She said that China’s position on the Kashmir issue had been “clear and consistent” and it had stuck to the international consensus that “it is an issue left from the past” that should be peacefully resolved through dialogue and consultation. “The relevant sides need to exercise restraint and act prudently. In particular, they should refrain from actions that will unilaterally change the status quo and escalate tensions.”

But if there was any solace for Pakistan in China’s stance, the leader of the opposition, Shahbaz Sharif, pointed out that Pakistan’s close friends, including China, had not openly backed the country after India’s move, which has drastically altered the ground realities in South Asia. Sharif advised the government “not to exhaust all its resources” in trying to establish peace in Afghanistan. He described President Trump’s offer to mediate on Kashmir a “trap card” and not a “trump card” as the Pakistan government has been claiming. Reza Rabbani, the Chairman of the Senate and a senior opposition leader, urged the government to move away from the U.S. and said there was a “nexus” between Washington, Tel Aviv and New Delhi. The opposition has also been critical of Imran Khan’s statement ahead of the general election in India that a Modi victory could turn out to be beneficial for bilateral relations.

Pakistan has announced that it will raise the Kashmir autonomy issue in the Security Council. In 1948, the Security Council called for a plebiscite in Kashmir, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru also promised to hold one. The promise was not kept, and Kashmir became a flashpoint. Despite the U.S. being a staunch military ally of Pakistan at the time, the Indian state brazened it out in international fora with the Soviet Union’s invaluable support.

India and Pakistan have fought four wars and the mood in Pakistan is now angry. The country’s Science and Technology Minister, Fawad Chaudhry, described India as a “fascist” country and said that Islamabad was not ruling out another war over the disputed territory. “Pakistan should not let Kashmir become another Palestine,” he said. “We have to choose between dishonour and war. However, very few Pakistanis actually want another war. With both the countries now having nuclear weapons, a full-blown war is unthinkable despite the rhetoric from both sides of the border. On August 8, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said in a statement that Islamabad “was not looking at a military option”. But he also said that the country reserved the right to respond in case of any aggression.

Vested interests

U.S. commentators and reports in the media have not failed to notice that India’s sudden move came immediately after President Trump’s offer to mediate and the partial resumption of U.S. military aid to Pakistan. The Trump administration has denied reports appearing in the Indian media that External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had alerted his U.S. counterpart, Mike Pompeo, about the decision to revoke Kashmir’s special status. In a later statement, the U.S. State Department said that India’s decision on Kashmir could increase instability in the region.

The Indian government seems to be quite confident that the Trump administration will not openly criticise the move. The right-wing government in New Delhi has signed up to be a military ally of Washington and play the role of a strategic counterweight to Beijing. New Delhi is on the verge of signing the third and last “foundational” defence agreement with the U.S., which will provide the framework for joint India-U.S. military operations. India has already agreed to allow the U.S. to use military bases in the country.

The U.S. is emerging as India’s biggest arms supplier. The Trump administration now calls the Asia Pacific region “Indo-Pacific”. India’s tilt to the West will be even more evident if it does not allow the Chinese telecom giant Huawei to bid for 5G contracts in the country. And as the world knows, the Trump administration (and earlier U.S. regimes for that matter) cares little for human rights. The U.S., for instance, had opposed a U.N. inquiry into the war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza during its brutal 2014 bombing of Gaza, in which 2,100 Palestinians, most of them children, were killed. India, along with West European countries, abstained in the vote on the inquiry. As in the case of Israel and other U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, a different yardstick is applied to India nowadays when it comes to issues of self-determination and human rights.

India seems to be taking a page out of Israeli’s book. What Israel has done in the West Bank and Gaza is being replicated in the Kashmir Valley. The next logical step will be to implement “settler-colonial” projects on the lines of what Israelis have done in the occupied territories. Many observers of the region predict that it is only a matter of time before “Hindu only” enclaves are set up in the Valley, closely mimicking Jewish colonies on the occupied West Bank. Indian security forces have been receiving training from Israel in “anti-terror” operations. Israel and India would like the world to believe that the struggle for statehood in Palestine and self-determination in Kashmir is part of the global scourge of “Islamic terrorism”.

Muslim countries quiet

Imran Khan has made personal appeals to Islamic countries for support. He personally talked to the Turkish President, Recep Erdogan, and the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammed. Both of them are known to be outspoken in their views but have so far not made any statement on Kashmir, though their governments have expressed concern. Pakistan’s Arab allies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have not reacted officially, so far. The UAE’s ambassador to India, Ahmad al Banna, has said that the decision on Kashmir is an “internal matter”. The Saudi Crown Prince, Muhammad bin Salman, has an excellent relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whom he calls “a brother”. The Saudis and the Emiratis have already dumped the Palestinian cause. Kashmir, too, receded from their radar quite some time ago.

Iran, which shares a border with Pakistan, has also been quiet, preoccupied as it is with its ongoing confrontation with the Americans. However, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has in the past compared the situation in Kashmir with that in Yemen and Bahrain. He said in 2017 that Kashmiris required the “support of all Muslim nations”. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Contact Group on Kashmir, which was formed in 1994 to coordinate the OIC’s policy on Kashmir, has condemned the decision on Article 370. Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Niger, Pakistan and Turkey are its members. The OIC, a grouping of 57 Islamic countries, is expected to take a strong stance against India on the issue, but the Indian government considers it a toothless and ineffective grouping.

The Arab response to Kashmir has been muted

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), an international human rights NGO headed by 60 prominent jurists and lawyers, issued a statement saying that the revocation of the autonomy and special status of the State of Jammu and Kashmir “violates the right of the representation and participation guaranteed to the people” under the Indian Constitution and international law. The ICJ said that the Indian government’s move also was a “blow to the rule of law and human rights in the State and India”. The ICJ statement accused the Indian government of pushing through the new changes “in contravention of domestic and international standards”. The ICJ, however, expressed the hope that the Indian judiciary would closely look into the government’s bid “to eviscerate Article 370 of the Indian Constitution”.

The ICJ noted that the Indian government had rushed through with the amendments at a time when the State of Jammu and Kashmir was under the direct rule of the Central government. The statement also referred to the two reports by the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) highlighting grave violations of human rights by security forces in the Valley: “The ICJ condemns the legislative steps taken with respect to Jammu and Kashmir, and calls on the Indian government to implement in full the U.N. High Commissioner’s recommendations.” The UNHCR’s report had urged the Indian government to “fully respect the right of self-determination of the people of Kashmir as protected under international law”.

In a statement on August 8, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on all parties to the dispute to refrain from taking steps “that could affect the status of Jammu and Kashmir”. The statement clarified that the U.N.’s position on Kashmir was based on its Charter and the relevant Security Council resolutions on the issue. Guterres also appealed to India and Pakistan to “show maximum restraint” while looking for means to resolve the 70-year-old dispute.

Pressure tactics in the Persian Gulf

JOHN CHERIAN

Tension escalates in the Persian Gulf as Britain impounds an Iranian oil tanker. But Iran’s strategy of “equal response” against any aggression from the U.S. and its allies makes the Trump administration settle for a “fair deal”.

As almost all military experts and commentators have been warning, the standoff in the Persian Gulf triggered by the United States could ignite a military confrontation that could engulf the entire region and have repercussions around the world. A new sequence of events started when the Royal Navy impounded an Iran-owned 30,000-tonne supertanker carrying two million barrels of oil in the Strait of Gibraltar in the first week of July. The British government claimed that the ship was impounded on the request of the authorities in Gibraltar, a British territory on the tip of the Iberian Peninsula.

Britain said the ship was carrying oil to be delivered at a Syrian port, contravening the European Union (E.U.) sanctions on trade with Syria. It was clear at the outset that the ship was impounded under the orders of the U.S. administration, that too at a time when Britain, France and Germany, which are signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal, were supposed to be doing their best to ease the effects of the draconian sanctions imposed on Iran by the U.S. Iran had requested the E.U. countries to initiate action to counteract the adverse impact of the sanctions on its people. The European leaders, while advising Iran to exercise patience, looked the other way as the Donald Trump administration began tightening the economic noose around Tehran.

At a time when Iran is desperately trying to export its oil to customers who are willing to buy it, Britain has gone ahead and precipitated another crisis by seizing the Iranian tanker. Iran maintained that the ship was not heading to Syria and that the oil was supposed to be delivered to another country. Britain is aware that no Syrian port is capable of receiving a big ship. Besides, the British authorities know that the E.U. sanctions on trade with Syria do not apply to Iran.

Calling the seizure of the ship “an act of piracy”, Iran urged Britain to release the tanker and its crew, which included Indians. The Iranian Foreign Ministry warned Britain “against entering a dangerous game with no end in sight under the influence of the Americans”. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was quick to warn Britain of the “consequences” of the move.

Within days of Tehran’s warning, a British ship proceeding to collect oil from Basra was accosted by an Iranian naval patrol in the Strait of Hormuz. The ship had to turn back under British naval escort. The incident was meant to sound a warning, but the British government tried to portray it as an act of aggression by Iran. Iran pointed out that the incident happened in an area in the Strait of Hormuz over which it had territorial sovereignty.

Trump’s threats

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a call for “maximum restraint” in the Persian Gulf region at a time when the Trump administration was exerting “maximum pressure” on Iran.

Trump has been making threats to obliterate Iran and has openly admitted to the waging of an economic warfare against Iran and its people. He said that the U.S. would cobble up an anti-Iran naval coalition in the Persian Gulf. In the third week of July, the U.S. announced that it was sending its troops to Saudi Arabia. Iran is already surrounded by a string of U.S. military bases.

On July 19, two weeks after the impounding of the Iranian ship by the British, Iran announced that it had taken into custody a British oil tanker, “Stenna Impero”, on charges of “breaching international maritime law”. On the same day, the Gibraltar Supreme Court ruled that the ship impounded by Britain would not be released any time soon. The ruling on the extension of the ship’s detention came after a meeting between Gibraltar Chief Minister Gabriel Pinalto and British Prime Minister Theresa May. British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt made it clear that the decision on the ship was made in London.

A statement from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran said that the British oil tanker was detained at the “request of the Hormuzgan Ports and Maritime Organisation for failing to recognise international maritime rules”. According to the IRGC, the ship violated “three international naval regulations”, including turning off the GPS, breaking the traffic pattern in the Strait of Hormuz and polluting the water by dumping crude oil residue. The tanker was shifted to Iran’s Bandar Abbas port, and all the 23 members of the crew, 18 of them Indians, including the captain, were kept on board the ship pending investigations. India has called on Iran for the early repatriation of the Indian sailors. The IRGC detained a second British tanker temporarily. Iranian authorities let it go after warning it to abide by international environmental regulations.

Iran’s influential Guardian Council, which has a say in foreign policy matters, stated that the seizure of the British ship was “a reciprocal action” in retaliation for the British seizure of the Iranian ship. “The rule of reciprocal action is well known in international law,” a spokesman for the IRGC said.

Justifying the seizure of the Iranian ship on the grounds that it was contravening E.U. sanctions, Foreign Secretary Hunt said that Iran had violated international law. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tried to convince his British counterpart to release the ship. Hunt, who is engaged in a losing contest for the Prime Minister’s post in Britain, preferred to take a tough line, at the behest of the U.S.

The U.S. and the U.K. have always acted in tandem on Iran. Their despicable role in the overthrow of Iran’s first democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mossadegh in the 1950s, is well documented. That incident is embedded in the national psyche of Iran. Trump was quick to condemn Iran’s seizure of the British ship. Germany and France, too, joined the chorus of criticism. The three countries had no words of criticism for the British interception and capture of the Iranian ship in international waters.

The actions of the European countries reinforce the Iranian view that they are not serious about salvaging the JCPOA. Britain had ostensibly joined France and Germany in preserving the deal by trying to set up an alternative trading platform through which Iran could evade U.S. sanctions. The British government accepted that Iran was largely justified in increasing its uranium enrichment levels as a response to the Trump administration abrogating the JCPOA. Britain insists that it is committed to the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal. Recent events have shown that the commitment is skin deep at the most.

The seizure of the British ship came just a day after Trump announced the shooting down of an Iranian drone by a U.S. warship. However, the spokesman for the Iranian army, Gen. Abolfazi Shekarchi, said that it was a “false claim rooted in Trump’s illusions”. After Trump’s initial claims, the U.S. military stopped talking about the alleged downing of an Iranian drone. It seems that the Pentagon is keen to settle scores with Tehran for the loss of its drone over Iranian territorial waters in June.

A cat-and-mouse game seems to be on in the Persian Gulf. Iran has taken care to ensure that the actions it has taken so far were carried out inside its territorial waters. During the last days of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), the U.S. Navy shot down an Iranian civilian plane, with 290 people on board, over the Persian Gulf. The U.S. claims that it was an accident, but many Iranians still have suspicions about the 1988 downing of the Iran Air Airbus 300. Accident or not, incidents such as that one are waiting to occur if tensions in the Persian Gulf are not resolved soon.

After the shooting down of the U.S. drone in June, there was a real threat of war breaking out. Trump claimed at the time that he had called off a U.S. missile strike on Iran just 10 minutes before it was due to be launched. Iran as well as the military leadership had stated at the time that they would not have stood aside if the U.S. had launched an attack. After waiting for 15 months for the European signatories to the JCPOA to act and provide sanctions relief, Iran has given up its policy of “maximum patience”.

President Rouhani has adopted a strategy of “equal response” against any aggression from the U.S. or its allies. Iran has built a vast network of underground military facilities along its coastline in anticipation of a U.S. attack. Iran and its allies have developed formidable asymmetrical military capabilities across the region. The Hizbollah chief, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, warned that his forces would spring to Iran’s aid if the Trump administration carried out its military threats.

U.S. sanctions

The Trump administration imposed more sanctions on Iran after the downing of the U.S. drone. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Foreign Minister Zarif were among the top officials against whom sanctions have been imposed. Zarif, who spent many years studying in the U.S. and was the key Iranian interlocutor in the nuclear deal, was confined to the U.N. building in New York and the Iranian embassy compound during his recent visit there. The new U.S. sanctions barred him from even travelling within New York City.

Zarif’s visit to New York in the third week of July coincided with signals from the Trump administration that it was willing to start talking to Iran. The last thing Trump wants is a full-scale war before he is up for re-election. He is now saying that all he wants is “a fair deal” with Iran. There has been talk that Trump is going to appoint the anti-war Republican Senator Rand Paul as an emissary to Iran. Iran has always said that it is ready for talks provided the unilateral U.S. sanctions are lifted immediately. During his visit, Zarif reiterated that Iran would never give up its defensive missile programme, a key demand of the Trump administration, as long as the U.S. supplied sophisticated missiles and armaments to its adversaries in the Gulf. Zarif also said that Iran could “reverse” its uranium enrichment if sanctions were lifted.

The U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, however, is on record stating that U.S. sanctions will be lifted only after Iran permanently ends its production of nuclear fuel, gives up its medium-range missiles and ends its support for terrorist groups. The U.S. deems Hamas and Hizbollah, which Iran supports, as “terrorist” groups.

No self-respecting Iranian government will accept the conditions laid down by the Trump administration. As Zarif stated in New York, Iran signed a historic agreement with the U.S. government and not with individuals. The only way out of the impasse and to keep war from breaking out at this juncture was to keep channels of communication open and hopefully wait for the demise of the Trump administration in 2020. “We will survive, we will prosper long after President Trump is gone,” Zarif told the media in New York, pointing out that Iran had a glorious history that was 7,000 years old. “Our time slots are in millennia,” he said.

Racist terror

JOHN CHERIAN

The March 15 terror attack on two mosques in New Zealand
was made possible by the country’s lax gun control laws,
but the pattern fits in with a wide global trend.

The horrific massacre of Muslim immigrants praying in two mosques in Christchurch, on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island, by a crazed white Christian fundamentalist on March 15 shows the reach of racism and xenophobia worldwide. The New Zealand authorities have said that only Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian citizen, was responsible for the mayhem in which 50 people were killed, the most severe act of terrorism witnessed in the country’s history.

Tarrant live-streamed a video of the shootings on Facebook for 17 long minutes using a camera mounted on his helmet. By the time Facebook removed the video, it had gone viral. There are fears that it could lead to copycat attacks in other parts of the world, giving incentives, for instance, to the Islamic State, which has been targeting Christian churches for some years in West Asia and North Africa.

Seven people were killed in Linwood Masjid and 43 at Masjid al Noor; the two mosques are located at the centre of the city, close to each other. Many of those taken to hospital are in a critical condition, so the toll may go up. The Bangladeshi national cricket team had a narrow escape. The team members, along with their support staff, were on the verge of entering the mosque for Friday prayers when the shooting started. The Test match that was scheduled to start the next day was immediately cancelled. The killer did not spare children as young as two; whoever crossed his path was mowed down.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described it as “a well-planned terrorist attack” and said it was “one of the darkest days in the country’s history”. In her address to the grief-stricken nation, Jacinda Ardern said that New Zealand was “not chosen for this act of violence because we condone racism, because we are an enclave of extremism. We were chosen for the reason because we are none of this thing. Because we represent diversity, kindness and compassion.”

Most of the victims were from the Indian subcontinent. Ten Indians and 10 Pakistanis were among those slaughtered. Naeem Rasheed, a Pakistani, was shot while trying to save the worshippers.

Tarrant, according to the investigators, had travelled to New Zealand with the specific purpose of upsetting the relative social tranquillity the small nation enjoys. Unlike in neighbouring Australia, racially tinged politics and Islamophobia remain relatively dormant in New Zealand. All the same, a small racist and populist party, the NZ First Party, with an explicit anti-Asian and anti-immigrant platform is part of the coalition government under Jacinda Ardern. Without its support, her government will lose its slim parliamentary majority. It managed to get 7.2 per cent of the votes in the 2017 election. Despite its small size, the party was given the key portfolios of Defence and Foreign Affairs. Following the 2017 Islamist terror attack in London, the NZ First Party’s leader, Winston Peters, demanded in Parliament that the Muslim community in the country should “clean house” and name the “potential terrorists” in their own families.

Right-wing politics & Islamophobia

Most counterterrorism experts say that the Christchurch attack should not be viewed in isolation and that it is a result of the overt and covert support that right-wing racial politics has been enjoying worldwide since the beginning of this century. A definite marker would be the 9/11 terror attacks, which sparked widespread Islamophobia in the West and led to the invasion of two Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, by the United States. Australia and New Zealand contributed troops for the invasion and occupation of both.

Islamophobic and xenophobic hate crimes are spreading fast globally. The most powerful democracy, the U.S., and the most populous one, India, have been particularly prone to the virus. Social networks spewing fascistic propaganda have proliferated under the protection of state apparatuses in the last decade.

Tarrant had released a 74-page dossier to coincide with the massacre, “The Great Replacement”, in which he claims that he spent two years planning his gory blood fest. The title alludes to the conspiracy theory popular among right-wing Christian extremist groups that the white race is being supplanted by people from Asia and Africa in countries where they are currently in a majority. He even mailed his diatribe against “immigrant invasion” to the New Zealand Prime Minister’s office nine minutes before he went on his shooting spree. The sophisticated firearms and ammunition he had accumulated went unnoticed by the authorities. He had five licensed weapons, including two semi-automatic guns, with him during the attack.

New Zealand has been lax over gun control, though Jacinda Ardern has pledged to introduce stricter gun laws after the attack. Currently, the country, with a population of less than five million, has more than a million registered firearms. Professor Greg Barton, Chair of Global Islamic Politics at the Australian Alfred Deakin Institute of Globalisation and Citizenship, noted that Tarrant brought his ideology of Islamophobia from Australia, which has far stricter gun laws, and put it into practice in New Zealand, exploiting the easy availability of weapons.

The domestic pro-gun lobby is a politically influential one, like its powerful counterpart in the U.S. Jacinda Ardern’s suggestion that semi-automatic weapons should be banned has come in for immediate criticism from the gun lobby, which has the support of key mainstream parties. The country’s Attorney General has already backpedalled on Jacinda Ardern’s initial pledge. Although Tarrant was active on right-wing social networks advocating hate crimes, he managed to operate under the radar in both Australia and New Zealand for more than four months. His travel history includes trips to Pakistan, the Balkans and North Korea. Prof. Barton said that Tarrant was not on the “terrorism watch list” because “of the large cloud of right-wing extremism” online.

Friends of a man gone missing after the terror attack
grieve outside a refuge centre in Christchurch
on March 17. 

Among the rambling statements in Tarrant’s dossier, there was praise for the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump and the Norwegian white supremacist Anders Breivik, responsible for the killing of 77 people in 2011. Tarrant even claimed to have the “blessing” of Breivik for the attack when he visited Norway and had a “brief contact” with the Norwegian mass murderer. Breivik had targeted a Norwegian Labour Party holiday camp full of children and teenagers.

Trump’s ascendance on the political scene, the dossier said, “was a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose”. The U.S. President, who has been scapegoating Muslims even after being elected to office, was quick to condemn the terror attack but refused to blame the rise of white supremacist movements for the surge in terror attacks in the West. While defending his decision to ban people from a few selected Islamic countries from visiting the U.S., Trump had said: “Islam just hates us.” He said that Muslim terrorists from West Asia were in the migrant caravan that was moving towards the American border from Central America. Many of his top political associates and advisers belong to the fundamentalist Christian alt-right movement. During a trip to the United Kingdom, Trump had said that Europe was losing its “identity” and “culture” because of mass immigration.

In February, the U.S. authorities arrested a Coast Guard Lieutenant, Christopher Paul Hasson, on charges of plotting to carry out terror attacks against socialist groups, prominent Democrats and media personalities. Hasson is a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi who has also said that Breivik is his role model. The Anti-Defamation League in the U.S. reported that 50 people were killed in that country last year in terrorist attacks. An “overwhelming” number of attacks were perpetrated “by right-wing extremists”.

Tarrant’s dossier contains a litany of rants against immigration and multiculturism and laments the “decaying” culture of the white and European world. The killer also threatened “Antifa/Marxists/Communists”, saying that they were in “his sights” and ready “to be crushed under my jackboots”.

An Australian Senator, Fraser Anning representing Queensland, seemingly provided a justification for the Christchurch massacre. “The real cause of the bloodshed on New Zealand’s streets today is the immigration system which allows Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place,” he said in his statement.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, whose right-wing government has many Islamophobic members, was, however, quick to criticise Anning’s statement. He described the Senator’s views “as disgusting” and emphasised that they did not have “a place in Australia, let alone the Australian Parliament”. Such Islamophobic views, unfortunately, are now widely prevalent all over Europe.

Countries like Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic have governments run by openly xenophobic leaders. In France, the U.K. and Germany, the ruling parties have introduced legislation or encouraged policies that openly discriminate against Muslim citizens. The Conservative Peer Baroness Sayeeda Warsi has said that her Tory party “is institutionally Islamophobic”. Boris Johnson, the former British Foreign Secretary now bidding to succeed Theresa May as Prime Minister, had compared “burqa-clad” women to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers” in an article he wrote last year.

Strain on tolerance?

New Zealand was the last place where one would expect a massacre of this scale to happen. It was a nation known for its tolerance and easy-going way of life. Unlike neighbouring Australia, its immigration laws are more relaxed. Located at the “bottom of the earth” and being a long distance away from most of the population centres of the world, it was an attractive place for immigrants, especially from Asia. Some very rich Americans have even bought property in the country, hoping that it would provide them relative security from radiation fallout in the event of a global nuclear war.

Both Australia and New Zealand opened up to non-white immigrants in a big way only from the 1970s. Even today, though Australian immigration policy claims to be non-discriminatory, there is an inbuilt bias in favour of the white race. Australian media have reported that South African whites wishing to emigrate have been allowed to jump the queue ahead of other racial groups. The notorious and inhumane immigration policies that Australia has implemented against people from war-torn countries seeking to come to the country by sea have been well documented and condemned internationally. Australia has put thousands of people in brutal internment camps in neighbouring countries like Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

The aboriginal population continues to be at the bottom of the heap in Australia. The native Maori population in New Zealand got a better deal. The 1840 treaty of Waitangi that the British signed with Maori chiefs gave the indigenous people more protection by recognising their sovereignty over large tracts of land. But New Zealand’s Race Relations Commissioner, Dame Susan Devo, admitted two years ago that the nation “always had a problem with racism”. She also said that the rapid growth of ethnic diversity was putting a stress on the country’s reputation for tolerance. A survey conducted two years ago by researchers at the University of Auckland, based on interviews conducted with 20,000 respondents, revealed that many New Zealanders had a negative view of Muslim immigrants.

Arm-twisting tactics

U.S. SANCTIONS ON IRAN

JOHN CHERIAN

The unilateral sanctions imposed against Iran by the United States kick in, but major European Union countries are looking for alternative ways of trading with Iran.

The draconian sanctions that were reinstated by the Donald Trump administration against Iran came into force in the first week of November. Trump administration officials described it as the “biggest sanctions action ever” the United States government has implemented against Iran so far. The new sanctions specifically target more than 700 Iranian entities. They include banks, companies, the national carrier Iran Air, Iranian shipping, and high-level officials and businessmen.

Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, described the U.S. action as “an act of war” from which his country would emerge triumphant. He vowed that his country would not succumb “to the language of force, pressure and threats” even as he expressed confidence about Iran’s ability to defeat “the economic war” being waged by the U.S. Soon after the sanctions went into force, Iran test-fired a barrage of new short-range missiles. It was part of a large military exercise and a signal of Tehran’s defiance. Among the Trump administration’s demands is that Iran give up its missile defence programme.

Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State and a long-standing Iran baiter, said that the only option Iran had was “to either do a 180 degree turn” from its current policies or see “its economy crumble”. Pompeo said Washington would continue with its policy of “maximum pressure” until Tehran bowed to the diktats of the Trump administration. The other key demands from the U.S. are that Iran end its support to the Syrian government and the Hizbollah in Lebanon.

The European Union (E.U.) and some of the U.S’ close allies have been critical of President Trump’s decision to scuttle the landmark U.S.-Iran nuclear deal of 2015. The nuclear agreement, as the Iranians point out, was signed not just by the U.S. but also by five other countries—Britain, China, Russia, France and Germany. All these countries stand solidly behind the accord and have criticised Trump’s decision to scrap it. The United Nations Security Council had also approved unanimously the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the reimposition of sanctions would only lead to the further isolation of the U.S. in the international community.

The U.S. has alternately threatened and cajoled key countries to stop all oil imports from Iran by the unilateral November deadline it had set. Top Trump officials such as Pompeo and Secretary of Defence James Mattis had paid visits to New Delhi in order to persuade India to adhere to the sanctions, including the purchase of oil and gas. India’s National Security Adviser, N.K. Doval, was in Washington recently to meet senior Trump administration officials to plead for a “special waiver”. The U.S. had also threatened to impose sanctions against India on the purchase of the S-400 missile defence systems from Russia. India and China are the two biggest buyers of Iranian oil.

Six-month waiver

The Trump administration finally gave “a six-month waiver” to both countries along with South Korea, Japan, Turkey, Italy, Greece and Taiwan. Under the terms of the waiver, all these countries have to start progressively reducing the import of Iranian oil during the six-month period. Pompeo, while announcing the granting of the temporary waiver, said Washington was determined to bring down Iranian oil exports to “zero” in the near future. He also said the countries that were given waivers had already slashed their oil imports from Iran. According to him, countries that had been given waivers had promised to further cut down oil imports from Iran in the coming months.

Pompeo, however, admitted that an important reason for the waiver was to avoid a spike in global oil prices. Pompeo and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin bragged to the American media that because of U.S. sanctions more than 200 foreign firms had ceased to do business in Iran and around 20 nations had stopped the import of Iranian oil even before the sanctions took effect. Iranian oil exports have, in fact, fallen by 40 per cent. Oil is the main source of foreign exchange for Iran. In the past couple of months, the Iranian currency has lost more than 50 per cent of its value. The U.S. has not yet imposed sanctions on the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT). It wants all Iranian banks to be excluded from SWIFT.

China said it would not be bulldozed into complying with the U.S. sanctions against Iran. Russia’s Energy Minister, Alexander Novak, said Moscow considered the U.S. sanctions on Iran illegal. India, on the other hand, drastically cut its oil imports from Iran. All the privately owned Indian companies were quick to comply with Washington’s demands. Most observers, however, are of the view that India and China will never completely stop buying Iranian oil.

The Iranians had politely warned the Indian side that there would be a price to pay if it completely capitulated to the Trump administration. Cooperation in the Chabahar port, which India and Iran are jointly developing, could have been a casualty. According to reports, the Indian side had to work overtime to gain the “waiver” on Chabahar. The Afghan government, too, lobbied with Washington to exempt Chabahar from sanctions. New Delhi and Kabul, according to the reports, were successful in convincing the Trump administration that Chabahar was India’s gateway to Central Asia and an access to Afghanistan via Iran.

Gateway to Central Asia

India and Iran are not only bound by a shared history and culture. Iran is the gateway for the lucrative Central Asian market and beyond. Iran will have a key role to play in the events unfolding fast in Afghanistan and in the wider region. The country shares a long border with Pakistan. Relations between Tehran and Islamabad have got a little tense following the recent serious terrorist incidents in Iran. Iran has blamed Sunni insurgents who have a base across the border in Pakistan for the incidents. It is in India’s national interest to maintain good relations with Iran, which shares borders with both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iran is also a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement.

India should have adopted a much tougher stance against the Trump administration’s unilateral and foolhardy decision on Iran, like the Europeans did. Major E.U. countries such as Germany, France and Britain are looking for alternative ways of trading with Iran. There are reports that a special clearing house designed to allow European companies to trade with Iran is being set up. This will allow them to bypass the U.S. sanctions against Iran. The clearing house, known as a special purpose vehicle (SPV), is being created specifically to assure Iran that the Europeans continue to support the nuclear deal and will go on expanding business ties with the country. The Iranians want the Europeans to accelerate the setting up of the SPV.

Many European firms such as Total and Airbus, meanwhile, pulled out of deals they had signed with Iran, citing fears of secondary U.S. sanctions. Many European governments felt that the imposition of secondary sanctions by the U.S. government in pursuit of its foreign policy goals was a clear illustration of economic imperialism. The E.U’s Foreign Affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, said that trade between the E.U. and Iran was “a fundamental aspect of Iran’s right to have an economic advantage in exchange for what they have done so far, which is being compliant with all their nuclear-related commitments”. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reiterated that Iran has been in full compliance with the terms of the nuclear deal it signed in 2015.

In a joint statement, the E.U. Foreign Policy chief, along with the Foreign and Economic Ministers of Britain, France and Germany, said that they “deeply regret” the reimposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran and that they would set up an SPV soon. The statement pledged to implement the nuclear deal, saying that it was a question “of respecting international agreements and of our shared international security”. On the Iran issue at least, the Europeans seem to be working in tandem with Russia and China. Russia has said that it will continue to buy and sell oil from Iran to third countries.

Fake terrorism plots

Meanwhile, moves are afoot in Europe to drag Iran into “false flag” terror acts. The Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, is working overtime to implicate Iran in fake terrorism plots. The government of Denmark, without providing any convincing evidence, said that Iran was involved in the hatching of an assassination plot against a leader of an Arab separatist group living in that country. In September, the Daesh (Islamic State) had carried out a terrorist attack in Khuzestan province in Iran, killing 30 people. The Arab separatist movement, whose leader is based in Denmark, had initially claimed credit for the September 22 terrorist attack. Iran’s Foreign Ministry had summoned the Ambassadors of Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain in Tehran after the attack. Iran’s Foreign Ministry said “it was unacceptable” that members of terrorist groupings were given safe haven there.

The French government provides sanctuary to many leaders of the Iranian group Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). Although it is still on the terrorist list of many Western governments, it has become a favourite of the Trump administration. Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton has been very close to the group for decades and has featured as a keynote speaker in many of its international conferences. The MEK these days is being projected by the Trump administration as an alternative to the Islamic government in Tehran.

The new sanctions have already adversely impacted the poorer sections of Iranian society. Life-saving drugs and medical equipment are once again in short supply. Firms manufacturing life-saving drugs are reluctant to do business with Iran fearing the reach of the U.S. government. But the Iranian government is confident that it will be able to weather the sanctions this time too.

The last round of sanctions did not inhibit the exercise of its foreign policy. The U.N. sanctions on Iran lasted from 2006 to 2015. These sanctions in that period had broad international support but did not inhibit the spread of Iranian influence in the region. This time the U.S. is isolated as even its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies are trying to salvage the Iran deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Diktat diplomacy

BY JOHN CHERIAN

The United States is piling the pressure on India to whittle down its oil imports from Iran and retreat from the Chabahar port project.

THE United States has been piling the pressure on India in its ongoing efforts to isolate Iran after the Trump administration unceremoniously reneged on the historic nuclear deal that the Barack Obama administration had signed with the country. All the other signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), including close allies of the U.S. like the United Kingdom, France and Germany, have said that they will honour the deal and will not reimpose sanctions on Iran. President Donald Trump, however, seems to have made the reimposition of sanctions a priority issue for his administration. He had raised the issue with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, during their recent meeting in Helsinki.

The Russian side has been openly critical of the American decision to unilaterally scrap the nuclear deal. China, which imports a lot of Iranian oil and gas, is unfazed by threats from the White House to blacklist companies and countries buying oil from Iran. In fact, Chinese companies placed new orders for Iranian oil after the U.S. government issued the warning. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in the first week of August that Beijing stood firmly against unilateral American sanctions and emphasised that “China and Iran unwaveringly maintain normal trade and economic ties”. The Iranian economy continues to be dependent on oil.

In Asia, only the governments of India, Japan and South Korea seem to be buckling under the threats. Tokyo and Seoul are military alliance partners of Washington. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, following arm-twisting by the U.S., has given up plans to undertake a state visit to Iran in July. It would have been the first by a Japanese Prime Minister in more than 40 years. South Korea, the world’s fifth biggest oil importer, buys most of its light crude from Iran. Its government has denied reports that it will stop buying from Iran, but its oil imports from Iran have declined sharply from May. India also seems to following suit after the U.S.’ sharp warning to its “allies” to completely stop importing from Iran by November. The Trump administration has declined “special waivers” to countries like India, which have been traditional importers of Iranian oil.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said sanctions would be imposed on India and China if they did business with Iran. “And yes, we will certainly be requesting that their oil imports go to zero,” the official told the media in June. The Trump administration has been sending senior officials to New Delhi to demand that India act promptly on its recommendations. Among the high-profile American visitors to Delhi in the last two months was Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who is counted among the Trump administration’s top Iran-baiters. She told the media in Delhi that she had asked the Indian government to cut its oil imports from Iran and downgrade its relationship with the country. Two other top officials have called for regime change in Iran—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton. Both of them are supporters of the terrorist grouping Mujahedin-e-Khalq.

Going by past experience, the Indian government is likely to substantially reduce oil imports from Iran. The previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had cooperated to a large extent with the sanctions regime that was in force from 2011 to 2016. However, most of the sanctions against Iran during that period were mandated by the U.N. After the U.N.-mandated sanctions were lifted in 2015, Iran once again became a top supplier of crude to India, just behind Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Iranian heavy crude is cheaper than Saudi and Iraqi oil. The Indian government also committed in 2016 to transfer $6.5 billion it owed to Iran as payment for oil supplies. The payment was held up owing to the sanctions. During the earlier sanctions period, India and Iran had agreed to conduct half of the oil trade between the two countries in Indian rupees. A rupee-rial arrangement was then in place. After the sanctions were lifted three years ago, India started paying Iran in euros for 55 per cent of its oil imports.

The new unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. are deemed to be illegal under international law. The Iranian government has been conveying to the Indian side that it understands the constraints India faces as it tries to balance relations between the U.S. and Iran. Interestingly, the Indian government, in the second week of July, gave permission to an Iranian bank to open a branch in Mumbai. The U.S. has not officially reacted to this development. Bank Pasargad will have the distinction of being the first Iranian bank to have an office in India. The presence of the Iranian bank will ensure a smooth flow of funds between the two countries. Then there is the question of the Chabahar port, located adjacent to the Gwadar port in Pakistan, which India is committed to developing. New Delhi has committed to invest $500 million in the port and has pledged to make it operational by 2019. There is, however, a question mark on whether India has the will to go ahead with the project in the face of open hostility from the U.S. Off the record, Iranian officials have been complaining about the slow pace of progress in the project. Japanese companies, which were supposed to invest in it, are now unlikely to do so.

The Iranian side has indicated that there are many other countries willing to develop Chabahar. Chabahar can be India’s gateway to the markets in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and the government should ensure that the project is expedited notwithstanding the U.S. threats. The Iranian government wants the Indian government to start work on infrastructure projects that will connect the port to the Iranian rail network and the city of Zabedan located close to the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh reassured Parliament in July that India was “engaged in long-term partnership” in the energy sector with Iran and also gave assurances on the operation of the Chabahar port. He stressed that India’s ties with Iran were not dependant on relations with a “third country”. He said that the high-level exchange of state visits highlighted the strong relationship between the two countries.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Tehran in 2016. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was in India in February this year. The declaration of “long-term friendship” between India and Iran came a day after the Trump administration despatched Assistant Secretary of State for Terrorist Financing Marshall Billingslea to New Delhi as part of the U.S.’ ongoing efforts to pressure India into drastically curtailing economic ties with Iran. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Seyyed Abbas Araghchi, was also in New Delhi at around the same time to hold talks with Indian officials on the sanctions issue.

The Indian government has on previous occasions insisted that it will comply with the sanctions regime only if it is internationally mandated. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj reiterated this position during the visit of her Iranian counterpart, Mohammed Javad Zarif, to New Delhi in May. She said India would adhere only to U.N.-mandated sanctions and not to those imposed by individual countries. But with the Trump administration fixated on the goal of regime change in Iran, it wants to ensure that most avenues for the export of Iranian oil are blocked, by hook or by crook. Iran has threatened to retaliate if its oil exports are blocked by closing down the Straits of Hormuz and disrupting the supply of oil from the Persian Gulf region. “You may begin the war, but it is us who will end it,” warned Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, in response to one of Trump’s belligerent tweets threatening to annihilate Iran.

The U.S. has shown its displeasure at the Indian government’s reluctance to immediately comply with its demands by rescheduling, at the eleventh hour, the first ever 2+2 meeting from June to the first week of September. Under the 2+2 format, the Ministers for External Affairs and Defence will hold talks with their U.S. counterparts, the Secretaries of State and Defence.

All of a sudden the Trump administration, which had made an issue out of India’s decision to purchase the potent S-400 missile systems from Russia, has indicated that it will not impose sanctions on India for arms purchases from Russia. But then the Trump administration is not known to speak in one voice on foreign policy issues. The U.S. Congress has passed a “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act” Bill. It went out of its way to provide special “waivers” for India in relation to the purchase of Russian weaponry. Justifying the decision, Secretary of Defence James Mattis said: “The fundamental question we must ask ourselves is, do we wish to strengthen our partners in key regions or leave them with no other option but to turn to Russia, thereby undermining a once in a generation opportunity to more closely align with nations with the U.S. vision of global security and stability?”

In an obvious quid pro quo, the Indian government has agreed to buy even more military equipment from the U.S. There are reports that the Modi government wants to install an American missile shield for the country costing billions of dollars. The Indian government has also also let it be known that it would like President Trump to be the chief guest at next year’s Republic Day celebrations.

Concurrently, the Indian government seems to be on the verge of signing the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) with the U.S. India has been under pressure to do so after the signing of the logistics exchange agreement in 2016. If the Indian government initials the COMCASA, the Indian military will be further drawn into the American military alliance. The logistics exchange agreement allows the U.S. military to use Indian Army bases and ports. COMCASA will give the U.S. access to the Indian military’s communications systems. It will also compromise the sophisticated Russian equipment which is in the service of the Indian armed forces, besides sending a message to China that India is now a key part of the U.S.’ grand strategy of isolating it militarily in the Asia-Pacific region.

Modi in recent months has started talking about the need for strategic autonomy and ambiguity in India’s foreign policy. In a speech in Singapore he said that India’s friendship with the U.S. should not be viewed as an alliance that seeks to contain any other country in the region. Modi had emphasised in his speech at the Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore that New Delhi gave equal importance to its ties with Washington and Moscow. India is a member of both the BRICS and the SCO. These two groupings have made it clear that they will call the Trump administration’s bluff on Iran. Russia is participating in Iran’s aerospace and nuclear industries. The two countries have played an important role as allies in quelling the jehadist threat in West Asia. China plays an important role in Iran’s economy.

Many of the key Belt and Road projects are located in Iran. Iran is also part of the International North South Transportation Corridor that is essential for enhancing connectivity between Asia countries and the European market.