NEPAL'S MAOISTS STAND BEHIND NAXALITES
India has long suspected that its indigenous Maoist insurgency received support from external forces in China and Nepal. Now at least one of those suspects is publicly owning up to the charge: Nepal’s own Maoist party, now part of the governing coalition in Katmandu, has broken with tradition and publicly voiced its support for India’s deadly insurgents. The news came only days after Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram suggested India’s Maoists, nicknamed Naxalites after the town of Naxalbari where their movement began, could be receiving arms from their counterparts in Nepal. The revelation was disclosed an interview with a Nepali newspaper, the Rajdhani daily, when a senior member of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal – Maoist explained that the UCPN-M had “extended [its] full support and cooperation to the Indian Maoists, who are launching an armed revolt.” (Indian Express, November 3, 2009)
AFGHAN TALIBAN HUMBLED
The broad consensus emerging in the West that the war effort in Afghanistan is flagging and the Taliban are gaining ground has been slightly dented by two recent developments on the ground. First, NATO troops conducted a raid that netted one of the largest seizures of bomb-making materials over the course of the eight-year war. Some 250 tons of ammonium nitrate and 2,000 timing devices and triggering mechanisms were seized from two compounds in Kandahar, the southern provincial capital in the midst of the Taliban stronghold. Fifteen individuals were also arrested - including, potentially, a senior bombmaker. The material seized could have provided for as much as 8,300 roadside bombs.
In other developments, a top Afghan Taliban (AT) commander and a prominent former Taliban minister have stressed their differences with al-Qaeda and their more radical cousins in the Pakistani Taliban, suggesting the AT movement may be open to negotiations – with conditions. Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, foreign minister for the Taliban government in the 1990s, highlighted the differences between the Taliban and al-Qaeda in an interview with CNN which aired on November 11th, asserting that al-Qaeda had a global jihadist agenda while the AT were focused solely on Afghanistan. He added that the AT would not allow Afghanistan to be used as a base from which to launch international terrorist attacks. A day earlier, Mullah Toor Jan, a standing commander in the AT, stressed to a Pakistani news channel that his organization had no connection to the Pakistani Taliban that has laid siege to neighboring Pakistan and that the AT was not under the influence of al-Qaeda. (Stratfor, November 11 and November 11, 2009)
SOUTH ASIAN PROLIFERATION
The latest issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists brings troubling news about nuclear proliferation in South Asia. An article authored by two prominent western nuclear specialists describes a region in which nuclear stockpiles are growing, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and where Pakistan (70-90 nuclear weapons) has overtaken its larger neighbor and rival India (60-80) in the nuclear arms race. The article notes that “Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not believed to be fully operational under normal circumstances, India is thought to store its nuclear warheads and bombs in central storage locations rather than on bases with operational forces… [and] new bases and storage sites probably are under construction” both in India and Pakistan, as well as China. (Times of India, November 18, 2009)
IPI MISSING AN “I”... FOR NOW
Iran’s foreign minister traveled to India on November 16th to try and kick-start sputtering talks on the 1,700 mile Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) natural gas pipeline. All three countries have wrangled over the terms of the contract for years – talks which were critically derailed by the terrorist attack in Mumbai last year emanating out of Pakistan. However, in an attempt to lean on India (which is also under pressure from the West to join an alternative pipeline project, TAPI) earlier this year Pakistan and Iran moved forward with a bilateral arrangement and construction has already begun on both sides of the border. India has suggested it is still open to talks, but insists its concerns about security (the pipeline passes through restive provinces in Pakistan and Iran), pricing, and delivery points (New Delhi wants Tehran responsible for delivering the gas to its border; Tehran wants to officially deliver the gas earlier, at its own border with Pakistan) remain critical obstructions. Mottaki emphasized during his talks that the pipeline was moving forward with or without New Delhi. Iranian officials have also suggested China could replace India if New Delhi remains on the sidelines. (Tehran Fars, November 8, 2009; New Delhi Economic Times, November 18, 2009; Deccan Herald, November 16, 2009)