Tag Archives: india

India, Pakistan

Forget Obama-Rowhani — this weekend’s about the Singh-Sharif meeting

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While we still bask in the glow of tectonic movement between the United States and Iran, as well as an apparent resolution among the Security Council over Syria’s chemical weapons, there’s a third diplomatic front to keep an eye on.Pakistan Flag IconIndia Flag Icon

For all of the hype over the potential meeting between US president Barack Obama and Iranian president Hassan Rowhani earlier this week at the United Nations General Assembly, tomorrow’s meeting between Pakistan’s new prime minister Nawaz Sharif and India’s outgoing prime minister Manmohan Singh comes at a crucial time — in the wake of an attack by Pakistani militants earlier this week in contested Jammu that seemed designed to keep the two south Asian neighbors at odds.

Sharif is just barely 100 days into his third term as prime minister and Singh is a lame-duck who will leave office no later than May 2014 after India’s next elections.  While there’s a limit to what the meeting can accomplish, it’s important for at least five reasons, I argue this morning in The National Interest:

  • Boosting regional security will be even more important as the United States draws down troops from the Af-Pak theater in 2014.
  • Aside from Pakistan’s election in May, Iran’s election in June and India’s elections next year, Afghanistan will elect a president next spring and Bangladesh will hold elections in January.  That means we could see five new leaders in the span of one year in southwest Asia, in addition to this year’s leadership transition in the People’s Republic of China.
  • Greater ties between India and Pakistan could boost both countries’ underperforming economies.  Freer trade is low-hanging fruit.
  • The meeting can cement Sharif’s credentials as a strong — and democratic — leader as he contemplates who will succeed Ashfaq Parvez Kayani as the next army chief of staff.
  • Finally, while the world cares more about the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, it’s easy to forget that both Pakistan and India have had nuclear weapons for a decade and a half.  Cooperation between the two countries not only improves regional stability, but global stability.

 

Pakistan

Pakistan’s new president: Who is Mamnoon Hussain?

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mamnoonhussain

Pakistan has a new president, Mamnoon Hussain, following a hasty election by the National Assembly and the four provincial assemblies.Pakistan Flag Icon

Given the strength of the hold that the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N, اکستان مسلم لیگ ن) has on Pakistan’s government following national elections earlier in May, the outcome was never really in doubt, and Hussain is a loyal supporter of newly elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Hussain will succeed Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the late prime minister Benazir Bhutto and the de facto head of Pakistan’s opposition party, the Pakistan People’s Party ( PPP, پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی‎), which governed the country from 2008 until the PML-N’s victory earlier this year.  Zardari, whose PPP took power in part due to sympathy from Pakistani voters following Bhutto’s December 2007 assassination, has never been incredibly beloved within the country, and his government soon became unpopular.

Zardari signed off on constitutional reforms stripped the presidency of much of its power in 2010, thereby avoiding impeachment from a flurry of corruption charges, from which Zardari has since been shielded, due to presidential immunity.  By the time Zardari agreed to the constitutional amendment, he faced significant political protests and multiple showdowns with the Pakistani constitutional court.  So the presidency that Hussain will assume is not the same presidency Zardari held and that former military leader and general Pervez Musharraf held before him — the president, for example, no longer has the power to dissolve Pakistan’s parliament or to make key military or foreign policy decisions.

Nonetheless, in his role as a top PPP leader, Zardari remained the most important leader in Pakistani politics, far overshadowing either of the two prime ministers that served him: Yousuf Raza Gillani from 2008 to 2012 and Raja Pervaiz Ashraf from 2012 until 2013.  Gillani himself was forced out of office by Pakistan’s constitutional court when it declared Gillani retroactively disqualified after yet another dispute over corruption charges against Zardari and Gillani’s refusal to cooperate with the constitutional court over the Zardari charges.

 

But Hussain is not Zardari — it’s Sharif, instead, that has long been the head of the PML-N (the ‘N’ in the party’s name stands for Nawaz), and his brother Shahbaz Sharif has been the chief minister of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, since 2007.

Hussain, age 73, is a relatively little-known party loyalist, who remained faithful to the PML-N even after Musharraf, then Sharif’s army chief of staff, pushed Sharif out of office and into exile in 1999.  Hussain previously served as the governor of Sindh province (traditionally a PPP stronghold) briefly from June to October 1999, when Musharraf took power by military force.

Hussain is a mohajir, a Muslim born in what is today Uttar Pradesh, India, and has been a textile businessman in Karachi and a former president of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  That makes Hussain somewhat of an outlier within PML-N politics — many of Karachi’s fellow mohajir support the secular Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM, متحدہ قومی موومنٹ), a Karachi-based party that represents mohajir interests and is now so strong that it holds a nearly mafia-like grip on Karachi government.

But in choosing the Karachi-based Hussain, a mohajir who lives in the PPP’s strongest province, Sharif has made a presidential choice that indicates he wants to put a more national stamp on his administration.  Sharif owes his national government to his party’s overwhelming success in Punjab province, home to around 55% of the country’s population, where the PML-N won the majority of its 166 seats to Pakistan’s National Assembly.   Continue reading Pakistan’s new president: Who is Mamnoon Hussain? →

Bhutan, India

Do Chinese-Indian relations explain the result of the Bhutanese elections?

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tobgay

Although it’s only the second election in the brief history of Bhutanese democracy, Bhutan’s voters will mark the precedent of its first democratic transfer of power following Saturday’s election, in which the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP, མི་སེར་དམངས་གཙོའི་ཚོགས་པ་) scored a major victory, winning 32 seats to just 15 seats for the governing party.bhutan

That’s quite a turnaround from the country’s first-ever election in 2008, when the governing Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party (Druk Phuensum Tshogpa, DPT, འབྲུག་ཕུན་སུམ་ཚོགས་པ) won 45 out of 47 seats in the country’s Gyelyong Tshogdu (National Assembly), the lower house of the recently promulgated Bhutanese parliament.

The governing DPT is seen as slightly closer to Bhutan’s monarch, the Druk Gyalpo (འབྲུག་རྒྱལ་པོ, its ‘dragon king’), the young Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck who has, like his father before him, smoothed the path toward the gradual development of a constitutional monarchy.  But both parties support the constitutional monarchy and both parties have ties to the governing elite.  The former PDP leader, for example, is Sangay Ngedup, who previously served as prime minister in the pre-parliamentary era from 1999 to 2000 and from 2005 to 2006.  DPT leader and Bhutan’s first elected prime minister, Jigme Thinley, previously served as prime minister from 1998 to 1999 and from 2007 to 2008.

Here’s more background on Bhutan’s idiosyncratic path to democracy at the time of the first round at the end of May, which eliminated two of the four competing political parties, setting the conditions for the July runoff between the DPT and the PDP.  Although the governing DPT won 44.52% of the first-round vote to just 32.53% for the opposition PDP, the DPT picked up virtually no support in the weeks following its initial May victory.

Tshering Tobgay (pictured above),  the PDP’s current leader, will now become Bhutan’s second prime minister, is a former civil servant, and comes from a younger generation of Bhutanese than either Ngedup or Thinley. (You can watch his TEDx talk in English on happiness here).  He’ll come to power on a wave of discontent over many issues, including a rupee shortage last year that brought about a miniature credit crunch in Bhutan caused, in part, by the government’s decision to spend too much of its Indian rupee reserves.

But the outcome may owe much to India’s ham-fisted decision to terminate a kerosene and cooking gas subsidy to its northern neighbor at the end of June, causing prices of the two energy sources to rise, allegedly in retribution for Thinley’s diplomatic overtures to the People’s Republic of China.  In the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s election, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh made it clear that the subsidy would be restored as soon as possible.  But the clear implication is that India used its special influence with Bhutan, the top recipient of Indian financial aid, to attempt to intervene in an internal election:

New Delhi was alarmed not just by Thinley, who made himself the official ambassador of Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness phenomenon, reaching out to Beijing but also the manner in which he established diplomatic ties with many other countries without bothering to take South Block into confidence.

Tobgay used the crisis as yet another instance to criticize Thinley for jeopardizing Bhutanese-Indian relations and he’s stated that bilateral relations with India will be his top priority.  Though Indian officials now admit the subsidy decision could have been better timed, it’s hard to see how the subsidy dispute could have helped Thinley in the closing days of the Bhutanese campaign.  Given the central economic and geopolitical role that India plays in Bhutan, it wasn’t a good sign for Thinley that he spent the final week of the campaign on the defensive over Indian relations.  There are a lot of reasons for the PDP’s victory on Saturday, including the wholly separate issue of last year’s rupee shortage, wider doubts about the Bhutanese economy, youth unemployment and the still-unsettled treatment of the Nepalese minority in Bhutan.  But it’s not hard to see how the PDP’s success — in southern Bhutan, in particular — came about in large part due to the Indian issue.

To understand why India (and China) are so important to Bhutan is to understand the simple geography of the country:

bhutan

Continue reading Do Chinese-Indian relations explain the result of the Bhutanese elections? →

Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Pakistan

In one year, south Asia and the ‘Af-Pak’ theater as we know it will be transformed

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south_asia

No one thinks about ‘southwest Asia’ as among the world’s regions.  But should we?

Consider for a moment that within the next 12 months, the world will witness the following:Iran Flag IconIndia Flag IconPakistan Flag Iconbangladesh flag iconafghanistan flag

  • the rollout of a new, more stable government headed by Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan dominated with the twin problems of regional security and economic growth, itself a transfer of power following the first civilian government to serve out a full term in office since Pakistan’s founding in 1947; 
  • the selection of a new president for Pakistan in August 2013 to succeed Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto;
  • the selection of a new army chief of staff in Pakistan in November 2014 to succeed Ashfaq Kayani, who’s led Pakistan’s military since 2007 (when former general Pervez Musharraf was still in charge of Pakistan’s government) and who remains arguably the most powerful figure in Pakistan;
  • the drawdown of U.S. combat forces in Afghanistan for the first time since 2001 later this year;
  • the election of a new president in Afghanistan in April 2014 to succeed Hamid Karzai, who cannot (and doesn’t want to) run for reelection;
  • the election of a new government in Bangladesh before the end of January 2014 under the explosive backdrop of the ongoing 1971 war crimes tribunals and the Shahbagh protests of earlier this year; and
  • the election of a new government in India before the end of May 2014 — likely to be headed by the latest member of the incumbent party’s family dynasty, Rahul Gandhi, or the sprightly chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi — that will end of a decade of rule by prime minister Manmohan Singh.

Taken together, it’s a moment of extreme political change in South Asia, with turnover in each of the five pivotal countries (with a cumulative population of over 1.65 billion people) that touches and concerns the ‘Af-Pak’ region, and the greater South Asian region generally, which could well be the world’s most sensitive security theater and remains a critical region for global economic development — India is one of the four BRIC countries, and Bangladesh, Iran and Pakistan are each ‘Next Eleven’ countries.

That’s without mentioning the fact that we’ve just entered the first year of what’s expected to be a decade of leadership by Xi Jinping and the ‘Fifth Generation’ of Chinese Communist Party leadership in the People’s Republic of China, and the ongoing interest of Russia as a geopolitical player in the region, with so many former Central Asian Soviet republics bordering the region. It’s also without mentioning the thaw in political repression and diplomatic isolation currently underway in Burma/Myanmar.

For some time, discussion about the European Union has involved the caveat that major policy initiatives on EU policy, especially with respect to monetary union and fiscal union, are on hold until the German federal election, which will take place at the end of September 2013.  It’s reasonable to assume that Angela Merkel will want to secure reelection as Germany’s chancellor before pushing forward with new changes.

But that pales in comparison to the political transformation that will take place in west Asia in the next 12 months, even though I see very few commentators discussing that when they talk about Iran, south Asia, Af-Pak, etc.  In many ways, I think that’s because foreign policy analysis don’t typically think about this particular set of countries as a discrete region in its own right.

Iran comes up in the context of the Middle East and much more rarely in the context of Afghan or Pakistani security, even though Iran’s population is comprised of Persians and Azeris, not the Arabs who otherwise dominate the Middle East.

It’s more common to think about Pakistan today in the context of Afghanistan (for obvious U.S. security interest reasons) than in the context of Bangladesh, even though Bangladesh continues to battle over political ghosts that originated in its 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.  But how much of that has to do with, say, early turf wars in the Obama administration between the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke and other envoys, or the Bush administration’s initial approach to the global war on terror?

It’s common to think about Pakistan, India and Bangladesh together (but not Iran) because they were so centrally administered together as part of the British empire from the 18th through the 20th century.

Looking forward through the end of the 2010s and the 2020s, do any of those linkages make as much sense?

Without channeling the spirit of Edward Said too much, what do we even call the region spanning from Tehran to Dhaka and from Mumbai to Kabul? West Asia? Southwest Asia?

Though I cringe to call it a Spring, make no mistake — the leadership realignment has the potential to remake world politics in ways that transcend even the Arab Spring revolts of 2010 and 2011.

 

Pakistan

Can Nawaz Sharif and Ishaq Dar fix Pakistan’s sclerotic economy?

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dar

Last week, even before all of the votes had been counted, when it was clear that Nawaz Sharif would be Pakistan’s next prime minister, he named his designee for finance minister — Ishaq Dar (pictured above).Pakistan Flag Icon

Dar served as Sharif’s finance minister from 1998 until Sharif’s overthrow by army chief of staff Pervez Musharraf, and he spent much of his previous time as finance minister negotiating a loan package from the International Monetary Fund and dealing with the repercussions of economic sanctions imposed by the administration of U.S. president Bill Clinton on both India and Pakistan in retaliation for developing their nuclear arms programs.

Currently a member of Pakistan’s senate, Dar briefly joined a unity government as finance minister in 2008, though Dar and other Sharif allies quickly resigned over a constitutional dispute over Pakistan’s judiciary.  The key point is that even across political boundaries, Dar is recognized as one of the most capable economics officials in Pakistan.

It was enough to send the Karachi Stock Exchange to a new high, and the KSE has continued to climb in subsequent days, marking a steady rally from around 13,360 last June to nearly 21,460 today.  Investors are generally happy with the election result for three reasons:

  1. First, it marks a change from the incumbent Pakistan People’s Party (PPP, پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی‎), a party that has essentially drifted aimlessly in government for much of the past five years mired in fights with Pakistan’s supreme court and corruption scandals that affect Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari in lieu of a concerted effort to improve Pakistan’s economy.
  2. Second, the election results will allow for a strong government dominated by Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N, اکستان مسلم لیگ ن) instead of a weak and unstable coalition government.
  3. Finally, Sharif’s party is viewed as pro-business and Sharif himself, more than any other party leader during the campaign, emphasized that fixing the economy would be his top priority.  Sharif, who served as prime minister from 1990 to 1993 and again from 1997 to 1999, is already well-known for his attempts to reform Pakistan’s economy in his first term.

Sharif will need as much goodwill as he can, because the grim reality is that Pakistan is in trouble — and more than just its crumbling train infrastructure (though if you haven’t read it, Declan Walsh’s tour de force in The New York Times last weekend is a must-read journey by train through Pakistan and its economic woes).  The past four years have marked sluggish GDP growth — between 3.0% and 3.7% — that’s hardly consistent with an expanding developing economy.  In contrast, Pakistani officials estimate that the economy needs more like sustained 7% growth in order to deliver the kind of rise in living standards or a reduction in poverty or unemployment that could transform Pakistan into a higher-income nation.  Already this year, Pakistan’s growth forecast has been cut from 4.2% to 3.5%.

The official unemployment rate is around 6%, but it’s clearly a much bigger problem, especially among youth — Pakistan’s median age is about 21 years old.  That makes its population younger than the United States (median age of 37), the People’s Republic of China (35) or even Egypt (24), where restive youth propelled the 2011 demonstrations in Tahrir Square.

Although Pakistan’s poverty rates are lower than those in India and Bangladesh, they’re nothing to brag about — as of 2008, according to the World Bank, about 21% of Pakistan’s 176 million people lived on less than $1.25 per day, and fully 60% lived on less than $2 per day.

Though it has dropped considerably from its double-digit levels of the past few years (see below), inflation remains in excess of 5%, thereby wiping out much of the gains of the country’s anemic growth:

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Pakistan is undeniably the ‘sick man’ of south Asia.  India, even facing its own slump, has long since outpaced Pakistan over the past 20 years, and increasingly over the past decade, Bangladesh has consistently notched higher growth:

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To make matters worse, Pakistan has a growing fiscal problem — although its public debt is lower than it used to be, it’s still over 60% of GDP, and a number of problems have led to debt-financed budgets in the past, including a 6.6% deficit in 2012.

That sets up a classic austerity-vs-growth conundrum for the Sharif government.

On the one hand, the familiar austerity hawks will argue that Sharif should focus on a reform program to lower Pakistan’s unsustainable deficits as a top priority.  If, as expected, Sharif obtains a deal with the IMF for up to $5 million in additional financing to prevent a debt crisis later in 2013, the IMF could force Pakistan into a more aggressive debt reduction program than Sharif might otherwise prefer.

On the other hand, given the number of problems Pakistan faces, growth advocates will argue that Pakistan should focus on more pressing priorities and save budget-cutting for later.  After all, with rolling blackouts plaguing the country, no one will invest in Pakistan regardless of the size of its debt.  It’s also important to remember that Pakistan is not Europe — it’s an emerging economy with a young and growing population that could easily grow its way out of its debt problems in a way that seems impossible for a country like Italy or Greece.

So how exactly will Sharif and Dar attempt to fix Pakistan’s economy?  Here are eight policies that Sharif’s government is either likely to implement — or should be implementing:  Continue reading Can Nawaz Sharif and Ishaq Dar fix Pakistan’s sclerotic economy? →

Pakistan

Six reasons why everyone in the United States should know who Nawaz Sharif is

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sharif copy

Votes are still being counted across Pakistan two days after its nationwide general elections, and the big winner is former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whose center-right party defeated the unpopular incumbent party and held back a spirited challenge from the anti-corruption party led by charismatic cricket star Imran Khan.Pakistan Flag Icon

The election results were a wipeout victory for Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N, اکستان مسلم لیگ ن), and Sharif will come into office with a broader mandate and a more stable government than the one he’ll replace.

That, alone, is of vital importance to the United States, which has about as strong an interest in Sharif’s victory, a peaceful transition from the outgoing Pakistan People’s Party (PPP, پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی‎), and the ongoing success of Sharif’s government over the next five years.

Pakistan, with 180 million people, is more populous than nearly every other country in the world — only China, India, the United States, Indonesia and (just barely) Brazil have more human beings.  But given that it was essentially a fabricated nation when it gained independence in 1947 as the Muslim-majority nations partitioned from India, it’s never been a fully cohesive country, even in the way that the sprawling and diverse Indian and Chinese nations are.  That means that governing Pakistan is already a challenge, and that will likely continue, with each of Pakistan’s four provinces dominated by another party — the PPP retains its stronghold in Sindh province, the PML-N overwhelmingly won its stronghold in the most populous Punjab province, and Khan’s upstart Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice or PTI, پاکستان تحريک) will now control the provincial assembly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Pakistan’s location means that it’s a key piece of U.S.-led efforts to reduce the threat of radical Islamic terrorism and it’s on the periphery of the axis between India and China that will power the global economy for decades to come.  It goes without saying that the United States has a huge interest in a safer, more prosperous, more democratic Pakistan, and the United States now has an interest in facilitating as much success as possible for the Sharif government.

Here are six reasons why Sharif, in particular, will now vaunt to the top of the list of world leaders that are incredibly vital to U.S. security and economic interests. Continue reading Six reasons why everyone in the United States should know who Nawaz Sharif is →

India, Karnataka

As expected, BJP loses Karnataka state elections to surging Congress

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rahulkarnataka

Votes from Sunday’s elections in the Indian state of Karnataka were counted today and, as polls suggested, the troubled government of the conservative, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी) has overwhelmingly lost.India Flag Iconkarnataka flag

The Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) has won 121 seats — an absolute majority — among the 223 seats up for election in the Karnataka legislative assembly, the Vidhan Sabha (विधान सभा).  In contrast, the BJP lost 72 seats and now holds just 40.

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So what do the results mean for Indian national politics?  As with most special elections and regional and local elections, it’s hard to extrapolate trends from a local election for national significance.  But given that India’s national leaders, including very likely its next prime minister, all campaigned in Karnataka, there are some points worth noting, with India’s own national elections set to take place before May 2014.

First, critics of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, both inside and outside the BJP, will have an argument that Modi’s brand of campaign magic isn’t transferable outside his own state.  Modi campaigned vigorously in the final days of the campaign, and he’s widely seen as the frontrunner to lead the BJP in next year’s general election and even a slight frontrunner to become India’s next prime minister.  But the BJP in Karnataka was always facing an uphill battle, so Modi’s failure to change the dynamic is no more or less indicative of his national appeal than Rahul Gandhi’s inability to help Congress win last year’s elections in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.

Second, the Karnataka election was the first state election since Rahul (pictured above) became the vice president of Congress, so a loss or a closer-than-expected race might have demonstrated that Congress’s brand — and the Gandhi brand — is wearing thin nationally.  That didn’t happen, so from Rahul’s perspective, the election is a success.

Perhaps the most important lesson is the anti-incumbent mood, and it wouldn’t be surprising if many of Karnataka’s voters, who just ejected a BJP government this week, will be equally keen to eject the national Congress-led government next year — a government that’s been in office nearly a decade and has received much criticism, even abroad, for a drop in India’s economic growth and its relative lack of energy in pursuing economic reforms.

Back in Karnataka, however, attention will now turn to the next chief minister of a state that remains a technology-fueled economic star within India.   Continue reading As expected, BJP loses Karnataka state elections to surging Congress →

India, Karnataka

Karnataka, India’s high-growth power state, votes in shadow of 2014 national campaign

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mysore

In 2004, when the national government of the center-right, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी) sought reelection, it did so with the slogan of ‘India Shining,’ a catchphrase that it hoped would capture the progress India was making in catching up to the economic development that for so long eluded it.  That campaign failed, and the slogan itself largely backfired, but make no mistake — no city was shining brighter than Bangalore, the capital of the state of Karnataka.karnataka flagIndia Flag Icon

Bangalore, in the 1990s and the 2000s, rapidly developed into the so-called ‘Silicon Valley’ of India, with a rapid, increasingly technology-fueled growth wave that made the city a favorite among multinational corporations and that made Karnataka one of the fastest-growing regions in the world.  Bangalore’s population went from 5.1 million to 8.4 million from 2001 to 2011 alone.

Karnataka itself has a population of nearly 62 million people — although it ranks as only the ninth-most populous state within India, it nonetheless has a slightly larger population than Italy and a population twice as large as Malaysia, though I’m sure you’ve heard much more about the recent Italian elections and the Malaysian parliamentary elections scheduled for the same day as Karnataka’s state elections on May 5.  But given the rising economic, cultural, demographic and political importance of India, and the central role than Bangalore and its economic hinterland has played in India’s 2000s economic boom, there’s really no reason why Italian politics should necessarily be any more important than Karnataka state politics.

Its importance comes especially into relief when you view the Karnataka campaign in the context of India’s highly anticipated 2014 national election showdown between the BJP, which will likely (though not certainly) be led by Gujarati chief minister Narendra Modi and the current governing party, the Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस), which will almost certainly be led by Rahul Gandhi, the son of current Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, and both Rahul and Modi have recently visited Karnataka state to campaign for their parties and to take swipes at one another.

So what do you need to know about the politics of Karnataka? Continue reading Karnataka, India’s high-growth power state, votes in shadow of 2014 national campaign →

Afghanistan, United States

Will Hamid Karzai really step down as Afghanistan’s president in August 2014?

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karzaiobama

Four panelists discussed whether the United States military should leave Afghanistan at the end of 2014, as currently planned by the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama Thursday evening at a debate sponsored by the McCain Institute (founded in 2012 in cooperation with Arizona State University and, yes, U.S. senator John McCain was in attendance). USflagafghanistan flag

The panel included a wide range of voices, including the American Enterprise Institute’s Fred Kagan, The Atlantic‘s Steve Clemons, Ken Roth of the Human Rights Watch, and the RAND Corporation’s Seth Jones, whose 2010 book on the Afghan war, In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan, remains a must-read touchstone for understanding the U.S. effort in Afghanistan even today.

Whither Karzai?

The underreported issue is what exactly Afghanistan’s government will look like at the end of 2014 when U.S. troops are supposed to leave — and that, to paraphrase Robert Frost, will make all the difference.

It’s one of the most crucial puzzle pieces for Afghanistan’s future, both in relation to deeper U.S. political engagement with Afghanistan, as well as the U.S. decision on its military footprint in the country after 2014.  After all, it’s going to be much easier for the U.S. to disengage militarily if it’s doing so in the context of an Afghan government that’s committed to the rule of law and nation-building and that can also stand on its own in the absence of U.S. forces.

As such, the presidential election currently scheduled for April 3, 2014 should determine the regime with which the U.S. government will be negotiating the transformation of its current military-heavy relationship with Afghanistan.

But for now, incumbent Afghan president Hamid Karzai is stepping down after two consecutive terms in office — he is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term in office.

That means, as U.S. troops draw down in permanent numbers, the U.S. government will not only be dealing with a new civilian government in Afghanistan, but a government without Karzai, the only Afghan leader that U.S. policymakers have ever really known since the U.S. military removed the Taliban government in autumn 2001.  Karzai was quickly selected as interim president and, thereafter, won reelection in the (somewhat imperfect) October 2004 and August 2009 presidential elections.

So while the official timetable suggests an election around 13 months from now that will lead to Afghanistan’s first peaceful transfer of national power set to take place weeks before U.S. troops permanently withdraw, color me skeptical.

It seems to me that the United States can either secure the integrity of the current withdrawal timetable or the current Afghan electoral timetable, but certainly not both.

That the McCain Institute is even hosting a panel to discuss the option of a significant U.S. military force in Afghanistan beyond 2014 is a testament to the fact that the 2014 drawdown date is written in pencil, not ink.  And if the mayor of New York City can find a way to evade term limits to seek a third consecutive term, I’m sure the U.S.-backed president of Afghanistan can do the same.

Consensus for greater U.S. political engagement

One thing upon which all of the panelists more or less agreed was the need for more political engagement from the United States in Afghanistan.

As Roth drolly noted, ‘you can’t kill your way to good governance.’

Roth expressed caution that Afghanistan has only been viewed as a military matter, which he argued has been counterproductive for U.S. objectives in the region, especially with respect to promoting good governance and deepening the rights of women in Afghanistan; he remained hopeful, however, that the troop drawdown would open space in the U.S. agenda for further political engagement.

Even Kagan, who strenuously cautioned against an end to the U.S. drawdown in 2014 (which, after all, is two ‘fighting seasons‘ away), noted that the United States needs a political strategy — and he was quick to caution that negotiating with the Taliban is an exit strategy, not a political strategy, and not a particularly smart one at that.

Clemons, who opposes a significant military role in Afghanistan beyond 2014, thoughtfully added, ‘It’s odd we’ve adopted a country that we don’t seem to want to be very close to,’ questioning why U.S. officials haven’t developed closer ties to develop economic opportunities or reduce trade barriers.  He noted, too, that the amount the United States spends annually on its military action in Afghanistan (around $198 billion in fiscal years 2012 and 2013, according to this source) dwarfs in multiples the country’s GDP — around $20 billion or so in 2011.

Looking ahead to December 2014

But none of that answers the fundamental question of what we’ll mean in, say, December 2014, when we talk about the ‘Afghan government’ — and that’s a pretty important question. Continue reading Will Hamid Karzai really step down as Afghanistan’s president in August 2014? →

Gujarat, India

Modi’s Gujarat victory sets platform for national ambitions in 2014

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Votes were counted yesterday from two regional state elections in India — in Gujarat, on the west-center coast of India, with 60 million people, and in the much smaller Himachal Pradesh, a much smaller Himalayan state that borders Tibet, with just six million people.India Flag Icon

But in some ways, December 20 was the first day of campaigning for the national election — likely to be held in 2014 — to control India’s Lok Sabha ( लोक सभा), the 552-member lower chamber of the Indian parliament.

The upshot of the elections is that Gujarat’s chief minister Narendra Modi (pictured above) has been reelected for a third consecutive term, and his victory has invariably made him the frontrunner to be the prime ministerial candidate of the Hindu nationalist and conservative Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी) in 2014, when the BJP hopes to national power for the first time since its stunning 2004 election loss.

Modi had done nothing to dispel the notion that he wants to become prime minister during the campaign, in which Modi, quite novelly in Indian politics (and to my knowledge, world politics), appeared simultaneously at rallies throughout the state using a hologram version of himself.

Even in his victory speech, when he addressed supporters not in the local language, Gujarati, but the more nationally recognized Hindi language, he seemed to indicate that he was turning his eyes toward a national audience.

Modi, if he does lead the BJP in 2014, will not face the current prime minister, Manmohan Singh, but likely Rahul Gandhi — the son of the Sonia Gandhi, the president of Singh’s Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) and of the late former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, and also the grandson of the late former prime minister Indira Gandhi.

Although some other BJP chief ministers appear ready to back Modi, he still faces obstacles — 2014 is far away, and the BJP chief minister of Madhya Pradesh since 2005, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, who has also been a member of the Lok Sabha since 1991, will be seeking his third consecutive term next year.  Madhya Pradesh lies in the heart of central India, with an even larger population (75 million) than Gujarat and which also has an economy better than India’s average.

Furthermore, Raman Singh, who has been the BJP chief minister of the less-populous (25 million) but industrially vital east-central state of Chhatisgarh since 2003, will also seek his third consecutive term in 2013.

At the national level, the chief minister of Bihar state, Nitish Kumar, remains decidedly cold about running with Modi in 2014.  Kumar leads the Janata Dal (United) party (JDU), which holds just 20 seats in the Lok Sabha, but is the second-largest member, after the BJP, of the National Democratic Alliance in the Lok Sabha that stands as the united opposition to Congress.  The JDU lies more to the political left of the BJP, and it’s been strongest in Bihar and Jharkhand in the far east of India.  Kumar, whose party is also more secular than the Hindu-based BJP, has worked to appeal to Muslims, which comprise 16.5% of the population in Bihar.  He has threatened to pull the JDU out of the alliance with the BJP if it nominates Modi as its prime ministerial candidate.

But for now, let’s take a closer look at the results, announced yesterday, in Gujarat:

gujarat

Going into the election, the BJP controlled 117 of the 182 seats in the Gujarati regional parliament.  Modi held onto most of those seats, despite a nationalized campaign that brought Singh and both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi to campaign against him, and despite rumblings from elements within Gujarat to Modi’s right and Keshubhai Patel, who preceded Modi, serving in 1995 and from 1998 to 2001.  Patel formed a new party, the Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP), which won two seats, and likely stole away enough votes from Modi’s BJP to allow Congress to win a few more seats in the election.

Although Modi would probably have liked a wider victory — expectations spun wildly out of hand that he could win 130 to 150 seats, although that was never incredibly likely — it’s nonetheless a very strong win after more than a decade of incumbency for Modi personally and two decades of incumbency for the BJP, especially in a country that isn’t incredibly kind, electorally speaking, to incumbents (as the BJP learned yesterday in Himachal Pradesh).  Continue reading Modi’s Gujarat victory sets platform for national ambitions in 2014 →

Gujarat, India

Gujarati voters consider third decade of BJP rule as Modi looks to prime minister race in 2014

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In Gujarat, the state where Mahatma Gandhi — India’s spiritual and intellectual founding father — was born, voters will go to the polls in two rounds on December 13 and 17 to elect a new regional government. 

Since 2001, however, Gujarat’s government has been headed by Narendra Modi (pictured above), the regional leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी), which currently holds 117 out of 182 in the state’s unicameral Legislative Assembly (Vidhan Sabha, ગુજરાત વિધાન સભા). In the previous 2007 elections, Modi’s BJP defeated the Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) by an 11% margin — Congress currently holds 59 seats.

Politics in Gujarat is largely a straightforward contest between India’s two largest national political parties and, as one of India’s most conservative states, it’s long been a for the BJP, which has held a majority in the Legislative Assembly since 1995.

Modi is a longtime veteran of Indian politics, and he is widely thought to harbor national political ambitions, though he’s a relatively polarizing figure within India, and opponents have dismissed him as more hype than substance.

He will be looking to poll at least as well as he did in the previous 2007 elections, when the BJP won 49% of the vote and nearly two-thirds of the seats in the Legislative Assembly, as a springboard into the 2014 national elections.  Although that contest is still a long ways off,  Modi remains the favorite to run as the BJP’s candidate for prime minister in 2014, though he may face intraparty rivals, including former deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani.  Congress is expected to run under the candidacy of Rahul Gandhi — the son of Congress’s president Sonia Gandhi and the late former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, and the grandson of the late former prime minister Indira Gandhi.

Although the state’s officials won’t start counting votes until December 20, barring a political earthquake, it’s a safe bet that Modi will emerge with a mandate for a fourth consecutive term in office.

In one of the world’s most novel twists on campaigning, he has turned heads by using a three-dimensional hologram avatar of himself to address multiple rallies in Gujarat simultaneously. Continue reading Gujarati voters consider third decade of BJP rule as Modi looks to prime minister race in 2014 →

India

Could Coalgate finally bring down Manmohan Singh’s government in India?

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In the span of 10 days, India has seen a government report on government abuse in awarding coal contracts morph into perhaps the most ferocious scandal of Manmohan Singh’s government.

The scandal — known as ‘Coalgate’ — stems from an August 17 report from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India that accuses the  governing Indian National Congress (Congress, or भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस) of handing out coal mining contracts to companies without going through the proper competitive bidding process, leading to inflated prices for the ultimate recipients.  The accusation comes.

Singh spoke about the scandal for the first time on Monday in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, challenging the house to debate the issue in full and disputing the corruption accusations.  In turn, Singh was met with jeers and shouts of, “Quit prime minister!”

His remarks appear to have emboldened the opposition — the conservative, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP, or भारतीय जनता पार्टी).  BJP leader Sushma Swaraj responded to Singh by accusing Congress of swapping coal mining contracts for bribes:

“Mota maal mila hai Congress ko” (Congress got big bucks),” Swaraj said….

“Congress has got a fat sum from coal block allocation, that is why this delay (in amending the laws) was caused. My charge is that huge revenue was generated but it did not go to the government and went to the Congress party,” Swaraj said.

Her “mota maal” charge was confirmation that the party, unfazed by government’s criticism for holding up Parliament or lack of support from non-Congress players, is in no mood to step down from its “maximalist” demand for the PM’s resignation.

In the past week and a half, Coalgate has monopolized Indian politics and all but ensured that the Indian parliament’s monsoon session* will be held up as a result of the scandal.  Congress and its allies control the Indian parliament with 262 out of 543 seats so, short of a formal vote of no confidence, Singh and Congress will likely govern until the next scheduled general election in 2014.  The government currently has no plans to call a trust vote itself — Singh, by daring the opposition BJP on Monday to call a trust vote, knows that leftists parties that comprise the ‘Third Front’ in the Lok Sabha would loathe supporting a BJP-led initiative to bring down the Singh government.

Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy argues that Singh will likely survive this scandal, because some BJP members are also implicated in the coal scandal.  Keating lists the growing number of scandals that Singh’s government has already survived:

  • accusations that Congress bribed allies in return for their support in last vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha — in 2008 over the U.S.-India nuclear pact,
  • corruption with respect to awarding contracts for the Commonwealth Games,
  • the ‘2G scam,’ whereby the government sold mobile phone bandwidth at a loss of $30 billion to the Indian government, and
  • most ironically, the 2011 firing of the government’s anti-corruption chief PJ Thomas on corruption charges.

But it’s not been a good year for Singh — or for India — and while most people still believe that Singh is personally one of India’s most honest politicians, he could have a hard time weathering the latest corruption charge plaguing his party.  That’s especially true now, with the entire world worried about India’s weakening economy.  Just last month, Time Magazine Asia declared Singh an ‘underachiever’ in a scathing cover story.

Continue reading Could Coalgate finally bring down Manmohan Singh’s government in India? →

India

Indian blackout a metaphor for India’s political, economic and infrastructure growing pains

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With some pluck, The Guardian begins an editorial on India’s world-record blackout — nearly 700 million people without power — with the following joke:

Q. What do you call a power failure in Delhi? A. Manmohan Singh.

Womp, womp.  But the joke — and the blackout as a metaphor for India’s governmental and infrastructure impotence — cuts deep.

While authoritarian China pushes onward with so much of the world’s attention, India — a chaotic democracy of 1.2 billion — and its political leadership seem stalled.

As The Times of India writes, dubbing yesterday “Terrible Tuesday,” in “powerless and clueless” India, most of north India — including 684 million Indians — was submerged into a power-less world for the second day, with accusations levied at Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab for over-drawing power.  But that does not hide the fact of India’s antiquated grid system nor the fact of a domestic coal supply that can’t keep up with domestic demand.

On the day of the biggest power failure in, well, human history, power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde was promoted to home minister.

As The Times notes:

Moving Sushilkumar Shinde out of the power ministry now is like changing the captain of the Titanic when it’s reeling after hitting a giant iceberg. The country is in the midst of an unprecedented power crisis. For two days in a row, the grid has collapsed. This doesn’t cover Shinde with any glory. Yet he’s promoted as home minister. Even if that’s ignored, what’s pertinent at this point of time is that Shinde is likely to have some clue about the power problem; a new minister – who will be holding additional charge of the portfolio – will possibly have none.

The international view is not much better. The Guardian writes:

Whatever the unadmirable qualities of contemporary British politics, imagine any cabinet minister failing to apologise for presiding over such a first-class foul-up, then being awarded a promotion. Such, sadly, is the typical high-handedness of India’s political classes, who too often lack any sense of obligation to their voters.

It’s a brooding time for India today, with its most recent quarterly growth rate of 5.3% a nine-year low, its eight straight quarterly decline — while the United States or any Western European country would be elated at 5% annual growth, it means a slowdown of alarming proportions for a country that averaged nearly 8% growth in the past decade.

Banyan, The Economist‘s Asia column, points its finger at Coal India — a bloated, state-run disaster that cannot keep pace with demand:

Not enough coal is being dug up by the state monopolist, Coal India. As a result, generating companies, which own power stations, face the prospect of buying expensive imported coal, with ruinous consequences for their finances. Many are in danger of going bust. As this week’s cuts have shown, the national transmission system that shifts power around the country needs modernisation and investment—some $110 billion according to a McKinsey study. And finally the “last mile” local distribution companies, usually state-owned and which deliver power to homes and businesses, are all but bankrupt. Their tariffs are held artificially low by politicians more keen to win votes than balance the books. They have also chronically underinvested.

Tyler Cowen has also been out way ahead in sounding the alarm on India’s economic slowdown, as evidenced in an op-ed in The New York Times just last May, where he pointed to several causes to the slowdown.   Continue reading Indian blackout a metaphor for India’s political, economic and infrastructure growing pains →