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Ed Webb

Pakistan pledges to release captive Indian fighter pilot - Stripes - 1 views

  • Modi, in his first remarks since the pilot's capture, gave a rallying speech ahead of elections in the coming months. "Our defense forces are serving gallantly at the border," he told tens of thousands gathered across the country to listen to him in a videoconference from New Delhi. "The country is facing challenging times and it will fight, live, work and win unitedly."
    • Ed Webb
       
      Modi's rhetoric contrasts with Khan's. Driven by relative power, domestic politics, ideological differences, other?
  • "Pakistan wants peace, but it should not be treated as our weakness," Khan said "The region will prosper if there is peace and stability. It is good for both sides."
  • he tried to reach his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Wednesday with a message that he wants to de-escalate tensions.
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  • An Indian government official, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak publicly, warned that even if the pilot is returned home, New Delhi would not hesitate to strike its neighbor first if it feared a similar militant attack was looming
  • Kashmir has been divided but claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan since almost immediately after the two countries' creation in 1947. They have fought three wars against each other, two directly dealing with the disputed region.
  • Pakistan's prime minister pledged on Thursday his country would release a captured Indian fighter pilot, a move that could help defuse the most serious confrontation in two decades between the nuclear-armed neighbors over the disputed region of Kashmir.
  • India's army said Pakistani soldiers were targeting nearly two dozen Indian forward points with mortar and gunfire. Lt. Col. Devender Anand, an Indian army spokesman, called it an "unprovoked" violation of the 2003 cease-fire accord between the two countries. He said Indian soldiers were responding to ongoing Pakistani attacks along the highly militarized de facto frontier.
  • fresh skirmishes erupted Thursday between Indian and Pakistani soldiers along the so-called Line of Control that divides disputed Kashmir between the two nuclear-armed rivals.
  • Pakistan's airspace remained closed for a second day Thursday
  • "I think hopefully that's going to be coming to an end," Trump said, without elaborating. "It's been going on for a long time — decades and decades. There's a lot of dislike, unfortunately, so we've been in the middle trying to help them both out, see if we can get some organization and some peace, and I think probably that's going to be happening."
Ed Webb

Why Narendra Modi's Quest for Global Coronavirus Cooperation Won't Work - 0 views

  • Modi has the right idea to be pushing for more global coordination, but the obstacles he faces underscore the limit of multilateralism today—even amid a rapidly spreading pandemic that badly requires a global response.
  • By projecting India as a leader in crafting global responses to the coronavirus when others are not stepping up to the plate, Modi can demonstrate that his country is not a global actor to be taken lightly. More broadly, New Delhi can telegraph a message that India is a responsible and collaborative global player with the capacity to spearhead global cooperation to address shared threats.
  • India is quietly trying to make a case for having the capacity to galvanize a global response in the same way as China—as a convener but also a goods provider. Last month, India sent 15 tons of medical supplies to—ironically—China when Beijing was still getting hit hard. This month, it dispatched doctors to the Maldives and more recently Nepal. On the heels of the SAARC videoconference, it is also sending supplies to Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. India’s foreign affairs ministry says it is considering aid requests from Iran and Italy, two of the world’s hardest-hit countries. And Israeli media report that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested Indian masks and other supplies during a call with Modi in mid-March.
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  • Modi’s efforts to spark international responses to the coronavirus may also be rooted in a desire to alter the way his government is perceived abroad. New Delhi has suffered blow after blow to its global image in recent months following a series of controversial policy moves. These include the revocation of the autonomy of India-administered Kashmir; the passage of a new citizenship law that critics believe discriminates against Muslims; and the government’s silence in the face of India’s most deadly communal violence in several decades. This has garnered negative international media coverage and criticism from political leaders around the world who fear New Delhi is taking the world’s largest democracy in an authoritarian direction.
  • While his regional initiative has enjoyed some forward movement, thanks to several SAARC states having pledged modest contributions to the new emergency fund and India’s deployment of assistance to South Asian states, it will inevitably be hobbled by the India-Pakistan spat. During the videoconference, Pakistani Health Minister Zafar Mirza called on India to change its policies in Kashmir in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus there—a comment that didn’t sit well with New Delhi.
  • Modi’s push for the G-20 videoconference could end up benefiting Beijing—a G-20 member with more capital and resources for global outreach than India—by giving it a high-powered forum to amplify its messaging
  • most countries are understandably too focused on the coronavirus at home to focus on coordinated responses abroad
Ed Webb

10 Conflicts to Watch in 2020 - 0 views

  • Only time will tell how much of the United States’ transactional unilateralism, contempt for traditional allies, and dalliance with traditional rivals will endure—and how much will vanish with Donald Trump’s presidency. Still, it would be hard to deny that something is afoot. The understandings and balance of power on which the global order had once been predicated—imperfect, unfair, and problematic as they were—are no longer operative. Washington is both eager to retain the benefits of its leadership and unwilling to shoulder the burdens of carrying it. As a consequence, it is guilty of the cardinal sin of any great power: allowing the gap between ends and means to grow. These days, neither friend nor foe knows quite where America stands
  • Moscow’s policy abroad is opportunistic—seeking to turn crises to its advantage—though today that is perhaps as much strategy as it needs
  • Exaggerated faith in outside assistance can distort local actors’ calculations, pushing them toward uncompromising positions and encouraging them to court dangers against which they believe they are immune. In Libya, a crisis risks dangerous metastasis as Russia intervenes on behalf of a rebel general marching on the capital, the United States sends muddled messages, Turkey threatens to come to the government’s rescue, and Europe—a stone’s throw away—displays impotence amid internal rifts. In Venezuela, the government’s obstinacy, fueled by faith that Russia and China will cushion its economic downfall, clashes with the opposition’s lack of realism, powered by U.S. suggestions it will oust President Nicolás Maduro.
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  • As leaders understand the limits of allies’ backing, reality sinks in. Saudi Arabia, initially encouraged by the Trump administration’s apparent blank check, flexed its regional muscle until a series of brazen Iranian attacks and noticeable U.S. nonresponses showed the kingdom the extent of its exposure, driving it to seek a settlement in Yemen and, perhaps, de-escalation with Iran.
  • another trend that warrants attention: the phenomenon of mass protests across the globe. It is an equal-opportunity discontent, shaking countries governed by both the left and right, democracies and autocracies, rich and poor, from Latin America to Asia and Africa. Particularly striking are those in the Middle East—because many observers thought that the broken illusions and horrific bloodshed that came in the wake of the 2011 uprisings would dissuade another round.
  • In Sudan, arguably one of this past year’s better news stories, protests led to long-serving autocrat Omar al-Bashir’s downfall and ushered in a transition that could yield a more democratic and peaceful order. In Algeria, meanwhile, leaders have merely played musical chairs. In too many other places, they have cracked down. Still, in almost all, the pervasive sense of economic injustice that brought people onto the streets remains. If governments new or old cannot address that, the world should expect more cities ablaze this coming year.
  • More people are being killed as a result of fighting in Afghanistan than in any other current conflict in the world.
  • In 2018, aggressive international intervention in Yemen prevented what U.N. officials deemed the world’s worst humanitarian crisis from deteriorating further; 2020 could offer a rare opportunity to wind down the war. That chance, however, is the product of a confluence of local, regional, and international factors and, if not seized now, may quickly fade.
  • Burkina Faso is the latest country to fall victim to the instability plaguing Africa’s Sahel region.
  • Mass protests between 2015 and 2018 that brought Abiy to power were motivated primarily by political and socioeconomic grievances. But they had ethnic undertones too, particularly in Ethiopia’s most populous regions, Amhara and Oromia, whose leaders hoped to reduce the long-dominant Tigray minority’s influence. Abiy’s liberalization and efforts to dismantle the existing order have given new energy to ethnonationalism, while weakening the central state.
  • Perhaps nowhere are both promise and peril for the coming year starker than in Ethiopia, East Africa’s most populous and influential state.
  • Burkina Faso’s volatility matters not only because of harm inflicted on its own citizens, but because the country borders other nations, including several along West Africa’s coast. Those countries have suffered few attacks since jihadis struck resorts in Ivory Coast in 2016. But some evidence, including militants’ own statements, suggest they might use Burkina Faso as a launching pad for operations along the coast or to put down roots in the northernmost regions of countries such as Ivory Coast, Ghana, or Benin.
  • The war in Libya risks getting worse in the coming months, as rival factions increasingly rely on foreign military backing to change the balance of power. The threat of major violence has loomed since the country split into two parallel administrations following contested elections in 2014. U.N. attempts at reunification faltered, and since 2016 Libya has been divided between the internationally recognized government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj in Tripoli and a rival government based in eastern Libya. The Islamic State established a small foothold but was defeated; militias fought over Libya’s oil infrastructure on the coast; and tribal clashes unsettled the country’s vast southern desert. But fighting never tipped into a broader confrontation.
  • In April 2019, forces commanded by Khalifa Haftar, which are backed by the government in the east, laid siege to Tripoli, edging the country toward all-out war.
  • Emirati drones and airplanes, hundreds of Russian private military contractors, and African soldiers recruited into Haftar’s forces confront Turkish drones and military vehicles, raising the specter of an escalating proxy battle on the Mediterranean
  • A diplomatic breakthrough to de-escalate tensions between the Gulf states and Iran or between Washington and Tehran remains possible. But, as sanctions take their toll and Iran fights back, time is running out.
  • After falling off the international radar for years, a flare-up between India and Pakistan in 2019 over the disputed region of Kashmir brought the crisis back into sharp focus. Both countries lay claim to the Himalayan territory, split by an informal boundary, known as the Line of Control, since the first Indian-Pakistani war of 1947-48.
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