PAK: WE WANT PEACE WITHOUT THE STRINGS
[Editor's Note: The U.S. Congress has passed an unprecedented five-year, $7.5 billion aid package to Pakistan entitled the Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement (PEACE) Act. Several provisions included in the bill passed by the U.S. House - designed to better monitor the provision of aid and require Pakistan to verifiably cut ties with terrorist groups - were removed at the urging of the Obama administration and the senators. Most American analysts believe Pakistan has diverted significant portions of U.S. counterterrorism and civilian aid toward alternative military programs suited for fighting a conventional war with India. Former President Musharraf admitted as much to Pakistan's Express News in a September interview.]
Leaders in Pakistan are having an unexpected reaction to the passage of legislation that will triple U.S. aid to their country over five years: "Thanks, but no thanks." The Obama administration and its counterpart in Pakistan, led by President Asif Zardari, have been caught off-guard by the amount of criticism PEACE has garnered from opposition parties and the military (the language of the bill has been public for two months and has been debated for over a year.) Pakistan's military, the most powerful institution in the country, has voiced "serious concerns" over parts of the bill, and opposition politicians have called the bill and its conditions "humiliating." The bill must be submitted to Pakistan's parliament for approval, where a lively debate is expected. The government, meanwhile has announced it will approach the administration "to seek annulment or amendment" of several controversial clauses. (Radio Free Europe, October 8, 2009; Islamabad The Daily Mail, October 10, 2009)
ADVANCED U.S. AIRCRAFT TO INDIA
In another sign of the growing military cooperation between Washington and New Delhi, the United States has agreed to sell India an advanced new Airborne Early Warning Aircraft, the Hawkeye E-2D. The purchase is particularly noteworthy given that the U.S. Navy has yet to put the planes in operation itself. India "could have advanced Hawkeyes. about the same time that the U.S. Navy becomes fully operational with the same aircraft," says Woolf Gross, corporate director at Northrop Grumman, the Hawkeye's designer. Defense cooperation has grown steadily between the two democracies since a thaw in the late 1990s - a thaw that transformed into a strategic partnership under the Bush administration. Indian Ambassador to the U.S. Meera Shankar noted that India "placed orders worth $3.5 billion last year and it could grow even more in the future," highlighting how far India has come from the days of the Cold War when it purchased arms exclusively from the Soviet Union. (Voice of America, October 8, 200)
INDIAN EMBASSY IN AFGHANISTAN STRUCK FOR SECOND TIME
A suicide blast targeting the Indian embassy in Kabul on October 8th killed 17 people and wounded 80 more. Only Afghans were killed, many of them local street cleaners, although three Indo-Tibetan Border Police were among the injured. The attack was carried out in a car loaded with explosives and damaged a wall and destroyed a watch tower. The Indian embassy was the target of an even more deadly attack last summer, when dozens of people were killed in another suicide bombing. It is the fourth bomb attack in Kabul in two months. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Afghan government said the attack was conducted by enemies with "bases [that] are outside Afghanistan." (New Delhi The Hindu, October 9, 2009)
SRI LANKA: CIVIL WAR OVER BUT DEFENSE BUDGET RISING
Five months after the conclusion of a decades-long civil war, the Sri Lankan government is boosting its military budget. This year's record $1.6 billion budget will be supplemented with an additional $300 million, the Sri Lankan government has announced. A state of emergency, in place since May when the government decisively crushed the Tamil Tigers, a militant Hindu Tamil insurgent group fighting for greater autonomy in the country's north, has been extended for another month as well. Colombo has argued the additional expenditures are needed to compensate the dead and injured, to purchase additional food and fuel supplies, and to open two new military bases in former Tiger territory in the Hindu north. The majority of Sri Lankans are ethnic Sinhalese and Buddhist. (BBC, October 9, 2009)