China Games: "Pakistan politicians fear losing strategic islands to China"

From Nikkei Asia, a report of how China seems to be seeking strategic ports in Pakistan and near India and the vital oil lanes from the Strait of Hormuz: Pakistan politicians fear losing strategic islands to China

Pakistan's federal government has triggered a political uproar after taking direct control of two islands previously under the regional government of Sindh province.

President Arif Alvi signed the Pakistan Islands Development Authority (PIDA) ordinance last month to facilitate reclamation and urban planning on Bundal and Bhuddo islands, which are located south of Karachi. Both islands are some eight kilometers across, and the largest along Sindh's coast.

Government officials say PIDA has been created to develop the islands as commercial zones. Imran Ismail, Sindh's governor, has claimed that Bundal on its own can take on Dubai and attract investment of $50 billion -- equal to the amount already tagged for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key component in President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

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The ordinance is helpful to Beijing's expanding economic ambitions in Pakistan. Last month, it nominated Nong Rang as its ambassador to Islamabad. Unusually, he is a political appointee well versed in commerce and trade, and analysts believe this portends increased commercial and BRI activities.

Mohan Malik, a visiting fellow at Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, said the sudden way in which the two islands near Karachi have been placed under federal control shows that something is afoot. He told Nikkei that the ordinance's stated goals of developing the islands for trade, investment and international tourism "seem to have been taken straight out of Beijing's BRI playbook."

 

Interesting,

Somali Pirates: Pakistani Vessel Taken

Pakistani ship kidnapped by Somalian pirates

Somalian pirates hijacked a Pakistani ship near the Somalian coast, Samaa reported on Wednesday.

According to details, the pirates hijacked the ship named MV Salama 1 and have taken to El Hur near port Hobyo.

Salama 1 is the fourth ship to be hijacked by Somali pirates.

The Pakistani ship was hijacked a day after an Indian commercial vessel was abducted by the pirates in a similar manner.

The Indian vessel was such as wheat and sugar from Dubai via Yemen to Somaliawhen it came under attack, owner Isaak Them said.

Disturbing Report: Pakistani Naval Officers Tried to Hijack Ship to Attack U.S. Navy

Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal reports AQIS claims plot to strike US warships was executed by Pakistani Navy officers

Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) claimed that Pakistani Navy officers were involved in the failed attempt to hijack a Pakistani warship and launch missiles at US Navy vessels in the Indian Ocean.

AQIS' spokesman, Usama Mahmoud, made the claim today in a statement released on his Twitter account. Mahmoud's statement was obtained by the SITE Intelligence Group.

Mahmoud had previously claimed on Sept. 13 that AQIS executed the attack on the Pakistani warship, and published a diagram purporting to show the layout of the PNS Zulfiqar. He said that the attackers had planned to take control of the PNS Zulfiqar and launch missiles at US warships in the Indian Ocean. The PNS Zulfiqar carries at least eight C-802 surface to surface anti-ship missiles.
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While Mahmoud's claim that Pakistani naval officers executed the attack on the PNS Zulfiqar cannot be proven, Pakistani officials and press reports indicate that at least some of the attackers are members of the Pakistani military.

Read the whole thing.

Yes, Bill is quoting a AQIS spokesman so take those comments for what it they are worth. However, even if they are mostly a tissue of deceit, there is still the underlying premise of the remarks - that AQIS thinks there is a way to hijack a modern technology to threaten U.S. naval forces operating in the vicinity.

Disturbing. On the other hand, U.S. naval forces are now forewarned.

General characteristics of the Zulfigar class can be found here:

The F-22P or Zulfiquar-class frigate (Urdu: ذوالفقار ‎ English: Sword class), is a general purpose frigate built by Pakistan and China for the Pakistan Navy (PN). They are an adaptation of the Type 053H3 frigates of China but include elements of the Type 054 frigates as well.
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The frigate's primary surface-to-surface missile armament comprises eight C-802 subsonic anti-ship missiles carried in two launchers with four cells each, fitted between the foremast and the funnel.

Built by China. Those box launchers circled in the nearby photo contain the C-802's.

Info on the C-802 here:

The Ying-Ji-802 land attack and anti-ship cruise missile [Western designation SACCADE], is an improved version of the C-801 which employs a small turbojet engine in place of the original solid rocket engine. The weight of the subsonic (0.9 Mach) Yingji-802 is reduced from 815 kilograms to 715 kilograms, but its range is increased from 42 kilometers to 120 kilometers. The 165 kg. (363 lb.) warhead is just as powerful as the earlier version. Since the missile has a small radar reflectivity and is only about five to seven meters above the sea surface when it attacks the target, and since its guidance equipment has strong anti-jamming capability, target ships have a very low success rate in intercepting the missile. The hit probability of the Yingji-802 is estimated to be as high as 98 percent. The Yingji-802 can be launched from airplanes, ships, submarines and land-based vehicles, and is considered along with the US "Harpoon" as among the best anti-ship missiles of the present-day world.

Photo shows a C-802 launching from a from truck mounted box launcher.

Will Governmental Agencies Seek to Regulate Environmentally Incorrect Nature as "Pakistan quake island off Gwadar 'emits flammable gas'?"

Environmentally insensitive plate tectonics is polluting the atmosphere as it shakes the planet, doing more damage than -say - a couple of herds of cows . . . as is unreported by BBC News in its report Pakistan quake island off Gwadar 'emits flammable gas':

RashRashid Tabrez, the director-general of the Karachi-based National Institute of Oceanography, says the energy released by the seismic movements of these fault-lines activates inflammable gases in the seabed.

"The seabed near the Makran coast has vast deposits of gas hydrates, or frozen gas having a large methane content," he explained.

"These deposits lay compressed under a sediment bed that is 300m-800m thick."

"When the plates along the fault-lines move, they create heat and the expanding gas blasts through the fissures in the earth's crust, propelling the entire sea floor to the surface." Tabrez, the director-general of the Karachi-based National Institute of Oceanography, says the energy released by the seismic movements of these fault-lines activates inflammable gases in the seabed.

Plate tectonics? In case you live in world you think is unrelated to geology. Image above is from NASA here,

Horizontal velocities, mostly due to motion of the Earth's tectonic plates, are represented on the map by lines extending from each site.

And about "gas hydrates" here:

As natural gas from shale becomes a global energy "game changer," oil and gas researchers are working to develop new technologies to produce natural gas from methane hydrate deposits. This research is important because methane hydrate deposits are believed to be a larger hydrocarbon resource than all of the world's oil, natural gas and coal resources combined. If these deposits can be efficiently and economically developed, methane hydrate could become the next energy game changer.

Enormous amounts of methane hydrate have been found beneath Arctic permafrost, beneath Antarctic ice and in sedimentary deposits along continental margins worldwide. In some parts of the world they are much closer to high-population areas than any natural gas field. These nearby deposits might allow countries that currently import natural gas to become self-sufficient. The current challenge is to inventory this resource and find safe, economical ways to develop it.

I am waiting for environmentalists to condemn "Nature" or "Geology" or declare that this is somehow "man caused."

In any event, there is some concern that if a large amount of methane gas hydrate was release all at once there will be serious consequences.

On the other hand, the earth could get hit by a really big meteor or something. If it's not one damn thing it another as far as doomsday scenarios go. Or, as the poet put it:

Fire and Ice
By Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

India and Pakistan: Water War May Go Nuclear?

Indus River Basin (from U.S. Senate report)

Interesting link up from Oilprice.com to an editorial in a Pakistani newspaper in John Daly's Pakistani Editorial Says Nuclear War with India "Inevitable" as Water Dispute Continues:

Every now and again, one reads an editorial that stops the reader in his tracks.

On 8 December, with the headline "War Inevitable To Tackle Indian Water Aggression," Pakistan’s Urdu-language Nawa-e Waqt, issued such a screed.

Nawa-e Waqt bluntly commented on India’s Kashmiri water polices and Islamabad’s failure up to now to stop New Delhi’s efforts to construct hydroelectric dams in Kashmir, “India should be forcibly prevented from constructing these dams. If it fails to constrain itself, we should not hesitate in launching nuclear war because there is no solution except this.”

Read it all.

It seems that India is building dams in Kashmir that may allow it to control the flow of water through Pakistan - water vital to Pakistan's agricultural survival. The Pakistanis take exception to having their fate lie on the hands on some flow control wheel on Indian dams. Daly reports:

Bashir Ahmad, a geologist in Srinagar, Kashmir commented grimly about the Indians’ future intentions, “They will switch the Indus off to make Pakistan solely dependent on India. It’s going to be a water bomb.”

As noted in the Oilprice.com article, Afghanistan is also looking to build dams on the Kabul River, which also would impact Pakistan. India is reported to be supporting these dams. The effect is to make the Pakistanis even less comfortable.

The U.S. Senate report, "AVOIDING WATER WARS: WATER SCARCITY AND CENTRAL ASIA’S GROWING IMPORTANCE FOR STABILITY IN AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN" can be downloaded here:

Of all the rivers flowing into Pakistan, the Indus is the most essential because of its importance to the agricultural sector. Pakistan’s agriculture relies on the world’s largest contiguous irrigation system fed by the Indus waters; in fact, water withdrawals for agricultural irrigation represent almost 97 percent of all withdrawals in Pakistan. This irrigation network covers an estimated 83 percent of cultivated land in the country and contributes to nearly a quarter of its gross domestic product.

Water. Can't live without it. Might go to war over it. One of those "national survival" threats.

Somali Pirates: Terrorist Connections Alleged

This time the Somali pirate-terrorist connection link allegations come from India. As set out in Somali pirate-LeT tie-up is BIG threat for India:

The coming together of Lashkar-e-Tayiba and southern Somalia-based Al-Shahbab poses new maritime protection issues for India.
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Intelligence sources told rediff.com that the Al-Shahbab group has links with the Al Qaeda and carries out the latter's operations. The cadres of this group specialise more on sea and have been using the pirates for their operations.
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The detail that has been most revealing during the interrogation of these pirates is that the Al-Shahbab group, which has been closely associated with the Al Qaeda, is now cozying up to the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, which is probably India's biggest headache.

Intelligence reports suggest that the Lashkar-Al-Shahbab association will look to carry out more attacks on Indian waters and one could witness plenty of hostage crisis' in the near future, if not acted upon.

For those who don't remember, Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LeT) ("Soldiers of the Pure") is the group from Pakistan was the group that landed people ashore in Mumbai and killed 174 people.

As alleged in an American Shipper quoted yesterday:

“The Somali pirates are exploring further collaboration with the remnants of the Tamil Tigers out of Sri Lanka who in the past have sold weapons to them via Eritrea, and now our greatest fear is a coordinated assault between the Somali pirates and the remnants of the Tamil Sea Tigers against commercial navigation in the waters south of India and Sri Lanka,” Frodl said.

Before thinking that these connections may be about spreading terrorism on the seas, it is a good idea to read a post from Martin Murphy's excellent blog Murphy on Piracy, Pirate money flows to al-Shabaab in which, as of July, Mr. Murphy was of the opinion that the al-Shabaab link to pirates was about the money, not the spread of whatever al-Shabaab is spreading. In the context of some link up with the Tamil Tigers, this money connection makes sense, as the Tigers are not radical Islamists.

The concern is that these connections - and others- will lead to a spread of piracy into more sea lines of communication and chokepoints.  Right now, the entrance/exit to the Red Sea, the  Bab el-Mandab and the entrance/exit to the Persian Gulf are most impacted by piracy (that's where the ships are!), a spread to the east brings into play the entrance/exit to the Strait of Malacca.

Predators Take the Fight to the Terrorists

So, after a Predator UAV strike, the world is a little safer (for a short time). From BBC News - "Taliban 'remove German militants' bodies' after attack":

The Taliban have removed the bodies of eight militants killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan, the BBC has been told.

Pakistani security officials say that four of the dead were German nationals.

They were killed by two missiles fired at a house in North Waziristan. A number of people were said to have been wounded.

Security sources have closely linked the area to a reported al-Qaeda plot to attack European cities.

The attack destroyed the home of a tribal leader with close links to a local Taliban commander in a village 3km (2 miles) from the main town of Mir Ali.

Identification of the victims is being made more difficult because Taliban militants sealed off the area after the missile strike, taking away the remains for burial.

See also this Wall Street Journal opinion piece Preventing the Next Mumbai .



Photo is from an earlier operation in another place, but the song's message should be clear to the currently alive would be terrorists.

Fearless Navy Bloggers Take to the Air: Episode 34 Pakistan at the hub and the rise of China 8/29/2010 Midrats on Blog Talk Radio

Episode 34 Pakistan at the hub and the rise of China. 8/29/2010 - Midrats | Internet Radio | Blog Talk Radio. 5 pm Eastern U.S.

Where is the world's most interesting neighborhood? From northeast to southwest Asia. That is where we are going to focus on this episode of Midrats.Join us as we weigh in with to experts on the subject.

For the first half hour we will have as our guest Seth Cropsey, Senior Fellow from The Hudson Institute to discuss the rise of China and her growing influence throughout Asia and globally. For the second half of the hour we will have guest Bill Roggio from Long Wars Journal to discuss the central role of Pakistan in this decade and next's global conflict.

"Pakistan Sucks," Says a NY Times Op-Ed and "It's all America's fault."

Yes, well, ignore billions of dollars of U.S. Aid humanitarian aid poured into the sink hole that is Pakistan and in the midst of a flood, blame the Americans for a failing state, and you have an NY Times op-ed piece by Ali Sethi "Pakistan, Drowning in Neglect":

“That is not advisable,” he said. There were soldiers on the highway, and they wouldn’t want to be on camera. What were soldiers doing on the highway?

The answer came in evasive, fragmented sentences: there was an airbase on the Sindhi side of the highway. This was where the military’s newest F-16 fighter jets were parked. But local residents believed that the base also housed the notorious American drones used to kill Islamist militants in the mountains. If true, this meant that the military was getting tens of millions of dollars a year in exchange, none of which trickled down to the local population.
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But there is at least one other way of looking at the country revealed by this natural disaster. This is a place where peasants drown in rice fields they don’t own, where mud-and-brick villages are submerged to save slightly less expendable towns, and where dying villages stand next to airbases housing the most sophisticated fighter jets in the world. Such a country is owed more than just aid, it is owed nothing less than reparations from all those who preside over its soil.

This includes politicians and bureaucrats, who are already being brought to account by a rambunctious electronic media, but also an unaccountably powerful military and its constant American financiers, who together stand to lose the most when the next wave comes.

How much aid? How about $17 billion dollars from FY 2002 to FY2011.

President Obama authorized $7.9 billion in October 2009.

Was some of this money spent to further U.S. interests?

I sure as hell hope so.

We are, after all, a country and not a charity.

Even with that, which country has hundreds of members of its military engaged in difficult rescue missions? Who will match the following (as of 16 Aug - I'm sure the totals are higher now)?

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16, 2010 – Four U.S. Marine Corps CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters arrived today and U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo aircraft began transporting international aid within Pakistan as part of the continued U.S. humanitarian assistance in support of flood relief from the monsoon floods.

The four helicopters are part of the contingent of 19 helicopters urgently ordered to Pakistan last week by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. They bring to 11 the total number of U.S. military aircraft in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, two Air Force C-130 aircraft from the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing in Afghanistan flew to the Pakistani air force base Chaklala in Rawalpindi this morning in response to a Pakistani government request to pick up and transport international relief supplies stored there for delivery to flood-stricken areas. These flights are scheduled to continue daily to assist with getting out urgently needed relief supplies. An estimated 52,000 pounds of relief supplies were delivered today to Sukkur for distribution by Pakistani government and military authorities.

To date, the United States has pledged to provide about $76 million in assistance to flood-affected populations in Pakistan. Support includes both financial assistance and the immediate provision of urgently needed supplies and services, drawing on unique U.S. capabilities and resources.

U.S. military helicopters have rescued 3,555 people and transported 436,340 pounds of emergency relief supplies in spite of bad weather. In addition, within 36 hours of the initial flooding on July 29, the United States began delivering thousands of packaged meals to Pakistan from U.S. stocks in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region. In all, 436,944 meals that conform with Islamic law were provided to civilian and military officials in Pakistan for distribution to Pakistanis in need.

Two shipments of heavy-duty, waterproof plastic sheeting to be used in construction of temporary dry shelter arrived in Karachi over the past two days. The 770 rolls bring the number of sheeting materials rolls brought to Pakistan to 1,870, an amount expected to help in providing shelter for 112,000 people. Some 14,000 blankets were brought along with the sheeting last week.

“Our experience has shown that plastic sheeting is urgently needed for temporary shelters, and we know it is urgently needed in Sindh as the flood waters continue to move south,” said U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson. “It will be supplied along with locally purchased materials that can be easily moved when people are able to return home.”

The sheeting material will provide dry shelter for 46,800 people in Sindh province. The cargo is immediately being sent to a logistics hub in Sindh and will be distributed by local and international organizations.

Other U.S. contributions to date include:

-- A month’s emergency food rations to more than 307,000 people through a partnership with the World Food Program.

-- About $11.25 million for the United Nations Refugee Agency, $5 million for the International Committee of the Red Cross, $3 million to the World Health Organization and $4.1 million for Save the Children.

-- A total of 436,944 meals delivered to civilian and military officials in Pakistan within 36 hours of the initial flooding via U.S. Air Force airlift, a contribution of about $3.7 million.

-- Emergency relief items totaling about $4 million delivered to the National Disaster Management Authority. The items include: 18 Zodiac rescue boats, six water filtration units, 10 water storage bladders, 30 concrete-cutting saws and 12 pre-fabricated steel bridges. A 25-kilowatt generator was provided to the Frontier Scouts-KPk to support their flood relief efforts.

You want more? Go review this, which includes only the DoD involvement.

Let's turn the question back to the internal politics of Pakistan:
"Why did not Pakistan invest in more flood control instead of nuclear weapons?" After all, floods have happened for years:

Yet, little attention has been focused on why the flood and other natural hazards that have struck Pakistan have done so much damage. Pakistan has suffered from earthquakes, droughts and floods in recent years. In each case, the cost in terms of human life, suffering and material damage has been magnified by the country’s underdeveloped physical and social infrastructure. Previously, floods occurred in 1950, 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992 and 1993, washing away homes, crops, livestock, roads, schools and clinics. Mercifully, the extensive system of dams, embankments and canals—partly built with U.S. foreign assistance in the 1960s—has permitted some management of the downstream water flow, but this system was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the current flood.  (emphasis added)

I guess, though, to follow the popular phrase, "it would have been worse" without that aid from the 1960s. And, it also follows that if the Americans are willing to pay for flood control, that frees up Pakistani money for things like developing nuclear weapons technology.

Oh, wait, there was a disruption in aid to Pakistan?

But actual U.S. development assistance to Pakistan has been minimal since the large aid programs of the 1960s and early 1970s (the hey-day of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship). At that time, U.S. development assistance helped build roads, power stations and a vibrant agricultural economy. Since then, Pakistan has seen little cash for development projects from the United States.

Let's see, the liberal Brooking Institute couldn't bring itself to identify why the aid dropped, but I will (with the help of Wikipedia):

On the surface as well, Carter's diplomatic policies towards Pakistan in particular changed drastically. The administration had cut off financial aid to the country in early 1979 when religious fundamentalists, encouraged by the prevailing Islamist military dictatorship over Pakistan, burnt down a US Embassy based there. The international stake in Pakistan, however, had greatly increased with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The then-President of Pakistan, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, was offered 400 million dollars to subsidize the anti-communist Mujahideen in Afghanistan by Carter. General Zia declined the offer as insufficient, famously declaring it to be "peanuts"; and the U.S. was forced to step up aid to Pakistan. (emphasis added)

Of course, there was that "Symington Amendment" thingie:

The Symington Amendment (to the aforementioned Foreign Assistance Act) prohibits delivering or receiving economic assistance and military aid unless the President certifies that Pakistan has not obtained any nuclear-enriched material. The Glenn Amendment requires the termination of U.S. government economic assistance and military transfers due to Pakistan's testing of a nuclear device in 1998 (this applies to India as well). It also prohibits U.S. support for non-Basic Human Needs lending at the International Financial Institutes. The Pressler Amendment calls for sanctions on government to government military sales and new economic assistance unless the President certifies that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear device.

The Symington Amendment was first activated against Pakistan in 1979 because of Pakistan's importation of equipment for the Kahuta uranium-enrichment facility, a facility which is not subject to IAEA safeguards. However, the Soviet invasion of Afghansitan in 1979 led to a shift in U.S. proliferation policies towards Pakistan, and in 1981 Congress waived the Symington Amendment, citing national security concerns.

Until 1990, the United States provided military aid to Pakistan to modernize its conventional defensive capability. During this period the U.S. allocated about 40% of its assistance package to non-reimbursable credits for military purchases, the third largest program behind Israel and Egypt. The remainder of the aid program was devoted to economic assistance.

Soon after the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, in 1990 the Bush I Administration declined to make the certification that Pakistan does "not possess a nuclear explosive device and that the proposed U.S. assistance program will significantly reduce the risk that Pakistan will possess a nuclear explosive device." As a result the Pressler Amendment went into effect against Pakistan, ending all government to government military sales to Pakistan.

Speaking of Pakistan's "friends," how about explaining The Pakistan Taliban has threatened to attack foreign aid workers hampering efforts to get relief to the eight million people affected by the flooding?

In the meantime, forgive my lack of sympathy for the picture painted by Ali Sethi. Some beds you make all on your own.

Pakistan flood map from ReliefWeb. Click on it to enlarge.

Somali Pirates: Pakistani trawler taken

Somali pirates hijack Pakistan-flagged ship:

The spokesman for the European Union's anti-piracy force says Somali pirates have hijacked a Pakistan-flagged fishing vessel.

Cmdr. John Harbour says the pirates seized the MV Shahbaig Tuesday. He says there are 29 crew on board and more details will be available later Wednesday

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Logistics, logistics, logistics

The Captain’s Journal asks How Many Troops Can We Logistically Support in Afghanistan?

A recent Pakistani supply route closure (since re-opened) raises the issue for the general public, but logistics is always on the minds of professional warriors.

Sustainability is the watchword.

How many C-17s do we have?