I’m busy wrapping up Fox 5 at the moment, so apologies for the delay in replying to the emails that have come through over Christmas — I’ll get to them asap. Thanks again for the feedback; it’s been great for me to hear how well LIQUID GOLD has been received… so far so good.
This year I have a busy publishing schedule. August we will see Fox 5 hit the shelves and it’s by far the fastest thriller I’ve written with the whole story fitting into a day so it can be pretty much read in real-time… if only the writing process went so quick. The first novel in my ALONE (teenage) series will appear in May, and its sequel comes out October. I’ve also contributed to some short story anthologies and serialised novels, starting with:
http://watchlistbook.net/
Happy reading, more soon.
JP.
A while back I wrote a post here where I pointed out my disappointment at how many authors and publishing peeps don’t know the history of their profession - eg what novels were groundbreaking and how were they received at the time, etc. Of course, the same is true for any profession, and life, for history surely teaches us to move forwards and not make the same mistake twice. Surely… At least I like to think so, but unfortunately we continue to repeat mistakes of the past - which means we don’t progress as we should.
A geopolitical example of this is in the global reaction to the Kargil War of 1999, where Pakistan invaded India and then vehemently denied it to the global media, just as Russia did with their incursion into Georgia in 2008. It’s disappointing the world does not have leaders who stand up to such blatant bullshit but hey, local economic security comes before foreign rape and murder in most politician’s constituencies.
I’m reminded of all this as we continue to see states in the US quarrel over access to fresh water. For the history lesson, here’s a little excerpt from my latest novel LIQUID GOLD:
… “Harry Truman once said that when Kansas and Colorado have a quarrel
over water in the Arkansas River they don’t call out the National
Guard in each state and go to war over it. They bring a case
before the Supreme Court of the United States and abide by
the decision. There isn’t a reason in the world why it can’t be
done internationally. And the key to access is control – who has
their hand on the tap.” …
And here is a New York Times piece from this week:
August 16, 2009
River Basin Fight Pits Atlanta Against Neighbors
By SHAILA DEWAN
ATLANTA — The residents of the economic engine of the South, as they like to call this comparatively gleaming and rapidly expanding state capital, have always suspected that they are the objects of resentment from their more rural neighbors.
Now they are certain of it.
A recent court defeat has left Atlanta howling that its enemies, including Alabama and Florida, are trying to choke off the city’s prosperity, if not out of sheer spite then at least the misguided notion that jobs and money would flow to them instead. The conflict is the timeworn rural-versus-urban enmity writ large, a battle over water that has pitted Atlanta against its neighbors in and out of Georgia.
“The only motivation is political,” Charles Krautler, the director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, said of the fight. “We don’t have as good of spin doctors as they do. It’s easy to point the finger at big bad Atlanta.”
Ostensibly, the war among the three states is about a river basin that supplies the taps of 3.5 million people in metropolitan Atlanta before it flows down the Alabama-Georgia state line and into the Florida Panhandle. Each state says the others are demanding too much water. But many experts say there is no actual scarcity — the system, managed properly, could meet the needs of users along the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers, including power companies, farmers and oystermen.
Still, the three states have spent nearly 20 years battling over the allocation of the water. And now, no matter their motive, Alabama and Florida have the law squarely on their side. On July 17, Judge Paul A. Magnuson of Federal District Court agreed with their argument that supplying water to Atlanta was not an authorized use of Lake Sidney Lanier, the federal reservoir northeast of the city at the headwaters of the river basin.
For decades, Judge Magnuson ruled, the Army Corps of Engineers had illegally managed the Buford Dam, which created the lake beginning in 1956, to provide the Atlanta region with drinking water. He said Congress built the dam only for navigation, flood control and hydropower. The 97-page ruling largely faults the corps for overstepping its authority but also suggests that Georgia knew for decades that Congressional approval was needed.
Govs. Charlie Crist of Florida and Bob Riley of Alabama, both Republicans, hailed the decision.
“Atlanta has based its growth on the idea that it could take whatever water it wanted, whenever it wanted it, and that the downstream states would simply have to make do with less,” Mr. Riley said.
After the court’s ruling, he added, “this massive illegal water grab will be coming to an end.”
Alabama officials say that they are not trying to prevent Atlanta from growing but that they want the city to pay for the infrastructure that growth requires. In 1948, the mayor of Atlanta declined to contribute money to the construction of the Lake Lanier dam, arguing that the city would not need the water.
Atlanta has responded with a major public relations offensive, painting the city as a good steward that has carried out a water plan, treats its sewage until it is drinkable and, during the recent drought, put conservation measures in place when downstream users did not. (Environmentalists concede these points but say that they are half-hearted at best and that the metropolitan area could save millions of gallons through more aggressive conservation.)
Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia, a Republican who is not normally an Atlanta ally in intrastate battles over rural and urban priorities, has recently begun to defend its water use. Mr. Perdue cites figures showing that the city’s net water use is less than 1 percent of the river basin’s water flow when it reaches the Florida-Georgia border. At that point in the basin, the minimum water flow maintained by the corps is 5,000 cubic feet per second, compared with 750 in Atlanta.
Mr. Perdue argues that the real goal of Florida, in suing for more water under the Endangered Species Act, is to protect the fishing industry in the Apalachicola Bay. And he says that while Alabama has argued for better navigation, it really wants water to cool power plants. Neither goal is an authorized use of Lake Lanier, and neither, Atlantans say, is as crucial as their own needs.
“What happens in metro Atlanta and Georgia doesn’t hurt either of those states,” said Pat Stevens, chief of the environmental planning division for the Atlanta Regional Council, blaming Georgia’s opponents for the many failed efforts at negotiations over the years. “But if their goal is to hurt metro Atlanta and Georgia, they could achieve that. I always just thought they never had a reason to come to an agreement.”
If that is true, they have less reason now.
Judge Magnuson did not order the spigots shut off immediately, nor did he say that the system could never be used for drinking water. Instead, he said he would allow three years for the corps to receive approval from Congress to use the lake for that purpose.
Several members of Congress have said they will not act unless the three states make a deal. But Georgia’s hand is now far weaker than it was before the ruling.
“Why didn’t they go to Congress for approval 20 years ago?” asked Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, an environmental organization. “It was obvious that this was a gamble to say well, the corps gave it to us so we get to keep all this water. There’s no insurance policy in that.”
Instead of taking a conciliatory approach, though, Mr. Perdue has vowed to “fight to the death,” accused his opponents of hypocrisy and pointedly brought up a 150-year-old Supreme Court decision declaring the Chattahoochee River to be on Georgia’s side of the state line. Mr. Perdue is hoping to find allies among other states where reservoirs built for other purposes are used for drinking water.
The governor has also talked about building reservoirs and is planning to appeal the decision, although even his allies say a successful appeal is unlikely.
Mr. Riley has engaged in theatrics of his own. When Mr. Perdue appointed Mike Garrett, the chief executive officer of Georgia Power, to work with Congress on the water issue, Mr. Riley warned the power company’s parent, Southern Company, to stay neutral. He did not mention that Alabama Power, another subsidiary of Southern Company, has been a party to the lawsuit for years.
Seeking Congressional authorization would be a tricky matter for Georgia, whose delegation is outflanked by Alabama and Florida combined, both in size and influence, though all three states are led by Republicans and lack firepower in the Democratic leadership that controls Congress.
Representative John Lewis, a Democrat from Atlanta and the senior member of the Georgia delegation, said members of Congress would become more involved in negotiations among the states. “It would be our hope,” Mr. Lewis said, “that the three states and the members of Congress from the three states would work it out, and if not we will take it up at the Congressional level.”
One of Mr. Perdue’s goals, meanwhile, is to go back to the negotiating table. To show his enthusiasm, on July 30 he sent a letter, which he made public, to Governors Crist and Riley, listing 40 possible dates for a meeting.
They are both still reviewing their schedules.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
FROM: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/us/16water.html?_r=1&ref=earth&pagewanted=print
Heard this the other day:
ELIZABETH JACKSON: There’s been speculation for some time that future wars will be fought over water.
Now a study published in the journal Nature has raised concern that the issue of water resources could make India’s already-fraught relationship with Pakistan even worse.
The NASA study shows that aquifers in north-western India, bordering Pakistan, are being depleted at a much greater rate than they’re being replenished.
Carly Laird reports.
CARLY LAIRD: India’s north-western region is known as the country’s breadbasket. And if the rate of groundwater depletion there is anything to go by, there’s a lot of food production happening.
Matt Rodell is a hydrologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in the United States. He and his colleagues have been using satellites to determine how much water is being depleted from below the Earth’s surface.
MATT RODELL: One of the places that stands out is north-western India, where there’s sort of a bullseye of red, where red is like a decrease in water storage.
And so we knew that north-western India has had issue with using too much groundwater and peoples’ wells going dry and people needing to find clean sources of water.
We also knew that that was one of the most heavily irrigated areas of the world for cropland irrigation, so our hypothesis was that the groundwater’s being depleted due to pumping for irrigation and so we decided to take a little closer look.
CARLY LAIRD: They found that between 2002 and 2008, the north-western region of India had lost over 100 cubic kilometres of groundwater. That’s double the capacity of India’s surface water reservoir.
MATT RODELL: And we know that the really heavy irrigation of the land began in the 1960s when they had what they called a green revolution, where they tried to increase agricultural output by using Western agricultural practices such as irrigation and synthetic fertilisers.
CARLY LAIRD: And he sees this as a potential problem for India’s north-western neighbour.
MATT RODELL: Potentially if India’s using a lot of water and drawing down the water table and it affects Pakistan, that could irritate the tensions that are already there.
CARLY LAIRD: Water is something that’s already been a source of conflict between the two countries. Dr Sandy Gordon is a Professor at the ANU’s Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security.
SANDY GORDON: India has built an enormous hydro dam on the Chennai River. Now Pakistan claims that this has drastically reduced the flow of the river and Pakistani farmers are saying that this also depleted the surrounding groundwater.
So this has become a serious cause for concern between India and Pakistan.
CARLY LAIRD: And he thinks the problem could escalate.
SANDY GORDON: As water is depleted in recent years I think it’s going to come much more to the fore in terms of its sources of tension between the two.
CARLY LAIRD: But hydrologist and NASA scientist, Matt Rodell, argues the Indian Government should actively try to prevent conflict from arising by encouraging farmers to change their practices.
MATT RODELL: Rice is one of the major crops in this region and rice requires a huge amount of water to grow. They could also try to implement more efficient irrigation techniques.
And hopefully the Indian Government will create incentives for them to do that sort of thing.
ELIZABETH JACKSON: Matt Rodell, a hydrologist at NASA, ending that report from Carly Laird.
FROM: http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2009/s2656906.htm
Nature article is at: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090812/full/460789a.html
Interesting post by Shekhar: http://www.shekharkapur.com/blog/archives/2009/08/why_are_we_hidi.htm#more
LIQUID GOLD:
The first fan-mails for LIQUID GOLD are in and they’ve been great — my thanks to those who took the time to send in feedback. I’m writing the fifth Lachlan Fox thriller at the moment. It concludes a three-book arc started in BLOOD OIL, where Fox finds himself up against UMBRA. It’s heaps of fun dipping back into this world that has really taken on a life of its own, especially so after several years of having these characters in my head and on the page. There’re always a few new characters in each book, and keep your eyes peeled in LIQUID GOLD for Art Kneeshaw and James Riley, both characters based in part on real people who in 2008 bought the naming rights at auction to help charities of the Fight Cancer Foundation. I do this with two characters in each book, and I’m currently working on where to fit in the next couple…
ALONE:
My first teenage novel, ALONE, is published here in Australia in May 2010 and I’ll start editing that soon. I wrote a novel for a teen audience because I’ve always wanted to create something that had a special story to tell to that age group. It’s such a formative time — it’s an age when you’re discovering and connecting with emotions and the world in new and extreme ways — and most of my favourite songs, films and books I discovered when I was 15 and 16. This first novel is in essence a story about identity, and by the end it leaves us with the sense that no matter what’s going on and no matter where you are, you’re never really alone. The subsequent books look at the wider world around our protagonist, so that by the end of book 3, where our lens has been getting wider and wider, we can decide for ourselves what has taken place and what it all might mean — for our characters, for the world around them, and for us. Like the Jason Bourne movies, the three parts to the ALONE series build on one-another to reach a point where our character (and readers) will finally learn the truth - and we empahtise in the feelings of what that really means.
I took plenty of risks writing it but then that comes with the territory of honest writing; it’s a story that I had to tell and I went into it knowing that its style and content is fresh and unique. It owes as much to THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL (Anne Frank), as it does to novels such as LIFE OF PI, ENDER’S GAME, SIDDHARTHA, THE LAST MAN, and THE ROAD (as Cormac McCarthy said: “The ugly fact is books are made out of books… The novel
depends for its life on the novels that have been written.”). Prior to putting pen to paper I had some meetings with publishers, and while I’m sure they would have been happy to publish something that was safer to define (say, a Lachlan Fox-type thriller series for teenagers) this was the story I just had to tell. There’s something extremely fulfilling about charting new creative territory and I think that the take I took on a post-apocalyptic scenario was a bold move — so bold, I was worried I couldn’t pull-off the ending of the first book but I soldiered on in a feverish writing frenzy… and discovered that, with a lot of effort, the ending did work. Advance readers I trust have loved what I created and they’ve all said that my passion for the story has come across — many have asked if the apocalyptic scenario in New York was in reference to the collapse of the global financial system, and a couple thought it was swine-flu related, and maybe they’re all right. What I love about the story is that people will all take something different from it (much like my appreciation of Radiohead’s songs, I’d rather they resonated with my own interpretation). That’s what I dig about writing. Good fiction doesn’t tell you what to think or how to think. But it certainly encourages you to think and feel something. I could tell readers what I think the story of ALONE is about, but the right answer is what the audience thinks. As an author, when you go into a project knowing you have a unique vision of story you just have to tell, you have to trust that your passion and drive will carry you through to the end. With ALONE I enjoyed every minute of creating it and I can’t wait to write the sequels and explore the hows and whys of this new world.
In the meantime I’m lucky enough to be exploring what happens to Fox post-LIQUID GOLD, and THAT’s the story that’s exciting me today. So, back to the deadlines and back to what I love most: taking risks.
Cheers,
jp.
Just got back from a couple weeks in NYC and LA. Always a lot of fun, and as great and fun as I find those places and the friends and agents I have there, it’s always good to be home. Ah, Melbourne… la dolce vita.
Well, just about a week now until my 5th book, LIQUID GOLD, is out (and the BLOOD OIL paperback). When I got home I had boxes waiting for me at the post office, and the new covers of the novels look fantastic. It’s always fulfilling to see the work being put out there to readers.
Next week I’m giving a few talks: Box Hill TAFE on Monday night (27th July), Belgrave Library 11am Thursday then Watsonia Library 7pm (both 30th July), and a day at Geelong College on Friday 31st. After that I’m sure I’ll do a bit of touring around to promote the new Fox novel, LIQUID GOLD, and I’ll post the details here.
I’m still getting plenty of emails about the craft of writing and, yes, I will get around to putting some tips up here once we launch our redesigned site. I guess in essence there’s no real method to my creative madness — for me, writing is about self-exploration and an attempt to make sense of the world around me; I’m lucky in that I’ve found a job that means so much to me that I’ve discovered myself through it. I enter each new book expecting to find similar creative confines to the last outing, and anything that emerges beyond those limitations is a welcome surprise. The day that stops happening, I’ll hang up my pen.
Happy reading,
jp.
I’m still editing this novel and it’s shaping up well.
In the meantime, over the next few months leading up to publication I will publish here some background information and articles related to the storylines:
Published on Wednesday, April 15, 2009 by the Belfast Telegraph (UK)
1,500 Farmers Commit Mass Suicide in India
Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.
The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.
“The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago,” Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine
“Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well.”
Mr Sahu lives in a district that recorded 206 farmer suicides last year. Police records for the district add that many deaths occur due to debt and economic distress.
In another village nearby, Beturam Sahu, who owned two acres of land was among those who committed suicide. His crop is yet to be harvested, but his son Lakhnu left to take up a job as a manual labourer.
His family must repay a debt of £400 and the crop this year is poor.
“The crop is so bad this year that we will not even be able to save any seeds,” said Lakhnu’s friend Santosh. “There were no rains at all.”
“That’s why Lakhnu left even before harvesting the crop. There is nothing left to harvest in his land this time. He is worried how he will repay these loans.”
Bharatendu Prakash, from the Organic Farming Association of India, told the Press Association: “Farmers’ suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no option other than death.”
Mr Prakash added that the government ought to take up the cause of the poor farmers just as they fight for a strong economy.
“Development should be for all. The government blames us for being against development. Forest area is depleting and dams are constructed without proper planning.
All this contributes to dipping water levels. Farmers should be taken into consideration when planning policies,” he said.
©belfasttelegraph.co.uk
It’s been a while since I’ve written here and there’s good reason - I’ve been VERY busy.
I was recently a guest at the Perth Writer’s Festival, where the stand out moment for me was a panel discussion I shared with Dame Stella Rimington, the former Director of MI5 turned thriller writer. It was one of those panels that really entertained the crowd — something so many novelists and festival programers seem to shy away from. So, thank you Stella for a wonderful time!
While there, I spoke with Robert Baer, former CIA case officer turned author of some great books on the Mid East. Bob seemed like a good guy, and he’s insightful as hell on what’s going down in and around his old sand pit. I admit, I expected him to look a little more like George Clooney, who’d played him in “Syriana”, but hey, I guess there can’t be two guys in the world as good looking as Clooney.
Anyway, be sure to go check out both Stella and Bob’s books, they’re all good reading.
The next Fox book is done!
Firstly, thanks to all who read BLOOD OIL and took the time to write to me via the contact page at this website and via my publishers. The response has been bigger than the previous books, and I’m thrilled at that. So many people found the journey of Fox in BLOOD OIL to be not just entertaining rewarding and insightful, which is somewhat humbling.
Likewise, many were happy to surmise the parallels of his personal journey and our own national journey of revenge in this War on Terror. While I never aim to use a sledgehammer in getting such points across, I was a little more direct with this kind parable than I’d been with the themes in FOX HUNT and PATRIOT ACT, and I’m glad that it was so well appreciated. It’s always a very fine line between what an author spells out and what to leave up to the reader to make their own story, and this was something that I felt maybe I’d done a bit too obviously. Not didactic as such, just not exactly subtle! Anyway, thanks again for buying, reading, and writing in.
So, my next Fox book is in with the publishers, titled LIQUID GOLD, and scheduled for release in Australia this August. I’m really happy with it, just about to do the edits. It takes place just a few months after BLOOD OIL and takes up some previous storylines. Takes the best of what worked in the first three books, and while it’s longer in word-count and page length than what has preceded it, it’s the shortest in terms of the book’s time-line and it rips along with constant action as the story in this one is a strong, fast, highly-tuned engine (just like Fox’s new motorbike). It’s perhaps a little less subversive that the previous books, and it’s a direct set up to Fox 5 which will be published August 2010… a book that is set just minutes after this one ends!
Writing the Fox books means I usually have a very busy summer, and I squeeze in going to the cricket and the odd day at the beach to recharge. Before this summer, I completed another project…
ALONE. I wrote this un-contracted, and I loved every minute of the writing process. ALONE is the first novel in a teenage series, to be published sometime next year. I’ll be doing a book a year in this series concurrent with my book a year in the Fox universe, for the next couple of years at least. I had been hoping that by the time I turned 30 (not long to go now!) I’d be slowing down, eg maybe a book every 2 years, but I’ve figured that while I have the time and energy to burn, why not get a few more things achieved?
THE COPPER BRACELET. This is a secret project that I will blog here about at a later date (sorry, not my rules!). Suffice to say, it’s a thriller, it’s big, and it will rock.
PICTURE THIS. A Pearson short story collection for schools, published… soon. My story will be a tie-in to the characters I created in ALONE.
LITERATI 2. I’m nearing the end of my PhD, about 3 years in the making so far, and I can’t wait to be on the other end of it. I’ll miss university, where I’ve been attending in some form or other for 12 years now, as for all its bureaucratic, back-scratching crap the payoff is that academic life is mostly a buzzing beehive of literate activity. A defining characteristic of the university is that is a place where people read, write, exchange and respond to a dizzying variety of texts in the context of disciplinary or interdisciplinary study. So, while I’m happy to be contributing to the wider field of learning via my PhD, and finishing will be bitter sweet, I definitely need a break from it prior to going back to do any teaching.
I’ll post another blog soon about what I’ve been reading and watching and listening too.
Cheers,
JP.
Indian Farmers, Coca-Cola Vie for Scarce Water Supply
In the Indian state of Rajasthsan, farmers have accused Coca-Cola factories of drawing too heavily on the area’s water supplies and contributing to pollution. Fred de Sam Lazaro reports for PBS on the controversy and the claims of both the company and its critics.
GWEN IFILL: Next, the battle between Coca-Cola and farmers over the shrinking supply of available water in India. NewsHour special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro has our report from the state of Rajasthan.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO, NewsHour Correspondent: This is one of 49 factories that make Coca-Cola drinks across India. The company has invested over $1 billion dollars building a market for its products in this country, but Coca-Cola’s welcome has been less than effervescent, particularly around this factory in Kala Dera, in the arid and recently drought-stricken state of Rajasthan.
The plant used about 900,000 liters of water last year, about a third of it for the soft drinks, the rest to clean bottles and machinery. It is drawn from wells at the plant but also from aquifers Coca-Cola shares with neighboring farmers. The water is virtually free to all users.
These farmers say their problems began after the Coca-Cola factory arrived in 1999.
RAMESHWAR PRASAD, Farmer (through translator): Before, the water level was descending by about one foot per year. Now it’s 10 feet every year. We have a 3.5-horsepower motor. We cannot cope. They have a 50-horsepower pump.
RAM SAPAT, Farmer (through translator): Every day, a thousand vehicles come out of that factory taking away our water. What is left for our kids?
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: To irrigate their fields of barley, millet and peanuts, these growers complain they must now drill deeper and use heftier pumps to water their fields.
MANGAL CHAND YADAV, Farmer (through translator): I’ve had to drill three times. It’s down to 260 feet. Five years ago, it was 180 feet.
HARI MICHAN YOGI, Farmer (through translator): It’s because everyone has a submersible pump now, the Coca-Cola factory. There’s not enough rain. These are the reasons.
Environmentalists’ claims
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Their cause was picked up by activists, like Rajendra Singh. He has worked across the region helping villagers conserve and collect rainwater through traditional methods.
RAJENDRA SINGH, Water Activist (through translator): Exploitation, pollution, encroachment, Coca-Cola is doing all three. That’s why I say that no company has the right to steal the common water resource. No company has the right to pollute water that is our life. No company has the right to encroach on our land that is our livelihood. Coca-Cola is doing all three.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The farmers also got the attention of international activists, according to Siddharth Varadarajan, an editor with the newspaper The Hindu.
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN, Newspaper Editor: Activist groups have been quite effective and have managed to tap into anti-globalization and environmental and green groups across the world and have, you know, therefore, I think, managed to put Coke on the defensive internationally, to a much greater extent than has happened within India.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In 2005, when the University of Michigan banned Coke products, the company responded, and the ban was then lifted.
Coca-Cola agreed to an independent third-party assessment of some of its operations in India. That report determined that this plant in Rajasthan is contributing to a worsening water situation. It recommended that the company bring water in from outside the area or shut the factory down. Coca-Cola rejected that recommendation.
Already in 2004, Coca-Cola shut down one factory in south India amid a similar controversy. Its response now doesn’t surprise Varadarajan.
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN: Clearly, if Coke were to give in one factory, as other communities essentially look at the experience of Rajasthan, it’s quite likely that there would be a cascading effect. So I suspect Coke will dig its heels in.
The company’s viewpoint
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: For his part, Coca-Cola’s India head, Atul Singh, says it would be irresponsible to leave.
ATUL SINGH, President, Coca-Cola India: You know, walking away is the easiest thing we can do. That’s not going to help that community build sustainability.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: So Coca-Cola, while insisting its impact on the water supply was minimal, said it would stay and help.
The company has agreed to subsidize one-third of the cost of water-efficient drip irrigation systems for 15 neighboring farmers. The government pays most of the rest; growers themselves must chip in 10 percent.
Coca-Cola has also set up concrete collection systems for rainwater. Typically about 70 percent of rainfall evaporates before it can seep into the ground. Water collected from rooftops is piped into shafts up to 150 feet deep. Despite drought conditions, the system has been a success, according to company spokesman Kalyan Ranjan.
KALYAN RANJAN, Coca-Cola Spokesman: We have still managed to recharge banks than what we withdraw, so what we see ourselves is we are part of a problem-solving mechanism rather than a problem in ourselves.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Are you saying you’re putting back more water than you’re taking?
KALYAN RANJAN: In Kala Dera, yes. In Kala Dera, yes.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The scientist who conducted the independent study of Coca-Cola’s operations is not ready to accept that claim. Dr. Leena Srivastava is with the Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute.
LEENA SRIVASTAVA, Scientist: We haven’t been able to prove that. And it’s too short a timeframe to start talking about whether groundwater aquifers have been recharged in six months. I think we really have to wait and watch and see what the impact is.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And farmers and activists, like Rajendra Singh, remain skeptical.
RAJENDRA SINGH (through translator): They have an arrogance that says, “We have money; we can buy what we want.”
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: They also are critical of the government locally for attracting Coca-Cola to a water-scarce region and nationally for ignoring water policy in a rush to attract industry and foreign investment. Editor Varadarajan says they have a point.
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN: India has a completely irrational groundwater management policy, where, if you have the means and the resources, you can extract as much groundwater as you like and you can use this water which you essentially pump up for free — it’s unmetered — to manufacture products which you can sell for a high price, whether it’s bottled water, whether it’s a beverage, whether it’s industry.
And, you know, this is something which the Indian policymakers have simply not bothered to formulate a cohesive strategy to deal with.
Food, water scarcity
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: At stake is the nation’s food supply, says scientist Leena Srivastava.
LEENA SRIVASTAVA: We are heading very rapidly towards the situation of absolute scarcity. Without even adding on the problems that might come up because of climate change issues, we just don’t have enough. And food security in the future can become a major problem for the country.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Food security?
LEENA SRIVASTAVA: Food security, yes.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Based on the water scarcity?
LEENA SRIVASTAVA: Based on water scarcity.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In June, India’s prime minister proposed a series of measures to address broader climate change issues, including water. As for Coca-Cola, CEO Singh says, by the end of 2009, the company will become, quote, “water-neutral,” returning at least as much groundwater as it withdraws in India overall, though not necessarily at individual plants like Kala Dera.
He says it’s part of an emerging sense of corporate social responsibility.
ATUL SINGH: You know, I think the world has changed. If you’d asked me this question 10, 15, 20 years ago, I would give you a different answer.
Today, what I have seen — and this is globally, as well as in India — corporates have moved from philanthropy — you know, cutting a check for the art, you know, some art museum or some religious temple or, you know, helping a particular foundation — into real sustainability.
Are we building sustainable communities? And if we are not, consumers will choose products and services from companies who do behave in that manner.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He says Coca-Cola plans to invest several hundred million more dollars in the years ahead in what may soon become its largest market.
FROM: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/july-dec08/waterwars_11-17.html
Not sure if you’ve been following the news at my site www.gsrnews.com but there’s been some interesting news from the sub-continent/mid-east this week. The elected president of Pakistan made remarks that may reveal a change in his country’s nuclear doctrine, at the same time as a new map of his country has been doing the rounds and the ISI’s political wing has been disbanded. An NIE leak in Washington has confirmed reasons behind our limited successes in Afghanistan. MI6 has issued a global warning in regards to Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan’s freedom to go back to what he does best: profiting from proliferation. NMD, as introduced in FOX HUNT, gets a mention too. Here’s some selected reading from part of my ongoing research for upcoming Lachlan Fox novels:
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Bush’s Legacy in India
By William R. Hawkins
FrontPageMagazine.com | 11/24/2008
President George W. Bush will leave several foreign policy legacies. The one that has gotten the most attention is the change of regimes in Iraq, which after a rough patch at the end of his first term, has gotten back on track due to the troop surge directed by Gen. David Petraeus. But in the long run, President Bush may be remembered even more for the improvement of U.S.-Indian relations. If South Asia is defined as running from the Persian Gulf to the Malacca Straits, then closer ties between Washington and New Delhi are not unrelated to American objectives in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, while also furthering larger interests across Asia.
When President Bush entered office, relations with India were at low ebb. In 1998, India and Pakistan conducted rival nuclear tests, bringing new U.S. sanctions against both countries. President Bill Clinton considered Pakistan, with its support for Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan and Kashmir, to be more dangerous than India, but felt compelled to be even-handed in the cause of non-proliferation. The same requirement to appear even-handed came into play again after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks when the sanctions were lifted on both countries. There was a need to pull the Pakistani regime into the anti-terrorist campaign in Afghanistan. Pakistan had played a major role in creating the Taliban, who were giving sanctuary to al-Qaeda. The U.S. approach to Islamabad used carrots and sticks. In the latter category were improved relations with India, including a role for India in Afghan reconstruction and an occasional mention of a possible request for Indian troops.
The Bush administration was already warming to India for other strategic reasons prior to 9/11. In May 2001, the Indian government had issued a carefully worded endorsement of U.S. plans for a national missile defense (NMD) system after Washington’s termination of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.
Though the NMD is called a limited system against rogue threats like that presented by North Korea, China has feared it could counter its small nuclear force as well and has loudly denounced the U.S. program. If America can blunt Beijing’s nuclear ambitions, India would also benefit, as China poses the greatest security threat to New Delhi. The threat India worries about from Pakistan is derived mainly from the aid Beijing has given Islamabad’s nuclear and missile programs. The Chinese alignment with Pakistan presents India with a risk of a two front war, countering India’s greater inherent strength against Pakistan. The Taliban conquest of most of Afghanistan was supported by Beijing as well as by Islamabad. The Taliban sent parts of two U.S. cruise missiles fired in 1998 at al-Qaeda camps to China for study. Chinese firms set up the Taliban’s telecommunications system prior to the U.S. invasion. Beijing continues to ship weapons through Pakistan that end up in the hands of Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents.
From Beijing’s perspective, aiding Pakistan keeps India focused to the west, allowing the Chinese more freedom of action in Southeast Asia, where it is the main source of support for the military dictatorship in Myanmar (Burma). Beijing has built naval bases along Burma’s coastline in the Bay of Bengal, better designed to service Chinese warships than the non-existent Myanmarese fleet.
In Tibet, Beijing has built all-weather military roads linking army bases, major airfields and ballistic missile sites. China is increasing its ability to launch strikes deep into India, by both aircraft and missiles, in the wake of growing unrest by the Tibetan people against Chinese oppression.
While the United States and India have a common enemy in radical Islam, whose terrorists were waging a campaign in the Indian province of Kashmir long before 9/11, the larger common threat is from China. Beijing’s rapid economic rise is giving the Communist regime the means to project its power across a wide arc. The 2008 annual report to Congress from the Office of the Secretary of Defense on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China had as its key finding, “China’s expanding and improving military capabilities are changing East Asian military balances; improvements in China’s strategic capabilities have implications beyond the Asia-Pacific region.”
From the U.S. perspective, India is the only country on the Asian mainland that has the heft to counter China. From the Indian perspective, the U.S. is a vital source for technology to speed its economic development, and to improve its military capabilities. For example, India needs to match the ability of Chinese nuclear submarines to remain submerged while launching nuclear missiles, a senior Indian Navy planner recently told Defense News. New Delhi also needs to improve its general naval capabilities. Zachariah Mathews, a retired Indian Navy commodore, has identified three littoral regions — the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal — that India needs to dominate. India will have to obtain the technology and weapons systems from foreign sources to do so. For example, the Indian frigate Tabar, which sank a pirate ship off the African coast Nov. 19, is a Russian design built in St. Petersburg. It also incorporates components from several other countries including Britain, Denmark, Germany, Ukraine, and India itself.
Russia, particularly during the Soviet period, has been India’s primary source for military equipment. But since the collapse of the USSR, India has found this relationship less appealing. Russia is not the super power it once was, its equipment is second rate, and it is no longer an ally against China. Rather, Russia under Vladimir Putin has aligned Russia with China to counter American “hegemony.” India has turned to France, Germany, Israel, and Britain for arms, and is now looking for increased access to the American defense industry. Indian naval officers now speak in the Pentagon’s language of “net centric warfare.”
In the air, Lockheed Martin’s F-16 Fighting Falcon and Boeing’s F-18 Super Hornet have already emerged as the front-runners in the competition to sell 126 fighter jets to India worth $12 billion. Russia, Sweden and France are also in the hunt for one of the world’s richest export opportunities. Money, however, is not the only reason Washington wants an American firm to win the Indian bid. An arms deal will pull the military of the two countries together and foster interoperability.
The way for closer ties was opened with the ratification of the U.S.-India Agreement for Cooperation on Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy. The implementing legislation was signed by President Bush on Oct. 8, a week after it was passed by both houses of Congress. The Senate vote was 86-13, with both Barack Obama and Joe Biden voting with the majority (along with John McCain and Hillary Clinton). The immediate benefit is that it boosts America’s chances in competition with Russia and France when bidding on the eight nuclear reactors India plans to import by 2012. The larger gains go beyond the nuclear pact itself. The diplomacy behind the agreement will expand a relationship that was started by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 when he signed a memorandum of understanding on high-tech sales to India. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said when the nuclear deal was signed that it was, “positive for United States national security interest because it will help us cement our strategic partnership with India, which is very important for our global interests.”
President-elect Obama needs to understand the value of what President Bush has left him. During his presidential campaign, Obama raised fears in India regarding a potential U.S. tilt towards Pakistan in the Kashmir dispute. Obama’s thinking seems to be that to win greater Pakistani cooperation against militants in its border provinces with Afghanistan; the U.S. should help Islamabad advance its militant demands on India. Such a policy would only embolden jihadists and reward radical elements in Pakistan’s army and intelligence services who are the political enemies of the country’s new democratic government. Afghanistan and Kashmir are not separate issues, but a common cause for the Islamic terrorist movement. Alienating India in order to give the militants a partial victory would be a strategic disaster for the United States. Instead, Washington, in concert with NATO and India, need to make clear to Islamabad that the legitimacy of its claim to sovereignty over its border areas depends on preventing its territory from being used for attacks against its neighbors.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari understands that the threat to the survival of his democratic government is internal, not external. Pakistan now wants to normalize relations with India, a country that poses no danger to Islamabad unless provoked. There is already an ongoing and productive peace process, which has included important back-channel negotiations over Kashmir. Rather than interfere with these discussions, Obama needs to keep focused on the larger strategic importance of closer ties with New Delhi. India is an emerging great power in Asia whose alignment with the United States is vital to the maintenance of a balance of power favorable to American security interests.
William R. Hawkins is Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the U.S. Business and Industrial Council in Washington, D.C.
FROM http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=2F008B71-7F50-42C1-81A9-A7A563566E45
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November 23, 2008
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR | TRANSITIONS
A Wartime Presidency, on Two Fronts
By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN
Washington
BARACK OBAMA will take office having campaigned that he would fight the war on terrorism by focusing on winning the war in Afghanistan and eliminating Al Qaeda’s and the Taliban’s sanctuary in Pakistan. He recognizes that these two countries have become the center of Al Qaeda’s activities and of the violent Islamist extremism that challenges the real values of Islam. He also promised he would find the best way to withdraw from Iraq, and to create a new balance of security in the Persian Gulf.
He has less than two months to go from broad rhetoric to concrete day-to-day action. On Jan. 20, he will take over at a pivotal point in negotiating Iraq’s status of force agreement with the United States, in the middle of a winter military campaign in Afghanistan, and during a political, security and economic crisis in Pakistan. None of these issues will wait for America to deal with its financial problems. And no one involved believes that the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s northern territories can be fully won, or even transferred to Afghan and Pakistani hands, by even the end of President Obama’s first term. For at least the next two to three years, the war will intensify, and virtually all of the additional burden will be borne by the United States.
Leaks of a new National Intelligence Estimate have shown that we are now losing the war for several reasons: a lack of Afghan competence; a half-hearted Pakistani commitment to the fight; a shortage of American, NATO and International Security Assistance Force troops; too few aid workers; and nation-building programs that were designed for peacetime and are rife with inefficiency and fraud. This is why Gen. David McKiernan, the top commander in Afghanistan, and other military leaders have called for 20,000 to 25,000 more troops and warned that even those reinforcements may not be adequate.
Even with a potential drawdown in Iraq, the military is being stretched ever thinner. The Army already extends the deployment of troops beyond their commitments, and it and the Marine Corps may well find it impossible to meet their goals for shortening deployment cycles. As things stand, it will almost certainly take until 2011 to bring enough military advisers into Afghanistan to train its army and police forces to the level where locals can replace international troops. And with increasing terrorist attacks on non-governmental groups, many aid workers are being forced to leave the country.
The Afghan and Pakistani economies have effectively collapsed, and Afghans face food shortages this winter. Monthly spending on operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan will likely rise to as much as $5 billion, from around $2 billion today, or we will face defeat.
Even if the United States fully withdraws from Iraq in 2011, as Mr. Obama and the Iraqi government say they would like, we will remain on something very like a war footing there throughout the next presidency. While the combat burden on our forces will decline, withdrawal will be as costly as fighting. It will take large amounts of luck (and patient American prodding) for the Iraqi government to move toward real political accommodation while avoiding new explosions of ethnic and sectarian violence.
Even with progress on those fronts, we will have to withdraw while still helping to win a war, contain internal violence, limit Iranian influence and counter its nuclear program, create effective Iraqi security forces, and help Iraq improve its governance. Not a full war perhaps, but at least a quarter war in terms of continuing strains on our military and budget.
Moreover, the best case for the Iraq war means coming to grips with the legacy of the worst secretary of defense in American history, Donald Rumsfeld. In spite of recent progress under Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Mr. Rumsfeld’s inability to manage any key aspect of defense modernization has left the Obama administration a legacy of unfunded and expensive new trade-offs between replacing combat-worn equipment, repairing and rehabilitating huge amounts of weapons and equipment, and supplying our forces with new, improved equipment.
At best, President Obama will have to conduct the equivalent of one-and-a-quarter wars throughout his first term. At worst? The outside chance of war with Iran as well.
Anthony H. Cordesman is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
FROM http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/opinion/23cordesman.html?bl&ex=1227589200&en=17a6020edb96eb41&ei=5087%0A
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London—MI6 has issued a global priority warning to all security services that Islamic terrorists are now closer to obtaining material to create a “dirty bomb” to launch against Western targets.
Osama bin Laden has long made this a priority and reinforced it with regular messages from his mountain redoubt in the north-west province of Pakistan. He has repeatedly said every “true Muslim must make it his duty to assist in all ways possible to find the next powerful weapon to destroy our enemies”.
After the election of the new Pakistani president, the controversial Asif Ali Zardari, who has served a nine-year jail term on corruption charges he has strongly denied, MI6 fear there will be little ability to provide strong leadership against the new wave of Islamic extremism that al-Qaeda has launched across the country.
Groups such as the newly formed Pakistan Taliban have proclaimed it is focussing on creating a “dirty bomb”.
MI6 agents based in Islamabad fear the mounting instability in Pakistan will make it easier for them to do so.
While Pakistan is the only Muslim country with a nuclear arsenal, it has in the past provided its expertise to Iran.
Pakistan’s Islam bomb was developed in the 1990s by the rogue scientist, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. He sold them to pariah states like North Korea and Libya. He was placed under house arrest by Pervez Musharraf.
But since Musharraf was forced to resign, restrictions on Khan’s detention have been virtually lifted–a decision that has alarmed Western diplomats in Pakistan.
While Musharraf readily agreed for the US to place stringent security around Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, there are serious concern that President Zardari will not be able to resist the rampant pressure al-Qaeda is mounting from its terrorist infrastructure base in Waziristan province in the north-west of the country.
A senior U.S. security official in Islamabad said: “Our concern is the sudden rise in intelligence which strongly indicates that al-Qaeda has renewed plans to gain access to nuclear material that could form a primitive nuclear device, one perhaps that a suicide truck bomber could use”.
In a “dirty bomb”, conventional explosives are surrounded with radioactive material.
The MI6 priority alert says such a device, while having a limited effect as a nuclear weapon, would create widespread panic.
An indication of how the threat has increased has been the number of terrorist-related websites which contain details of how to create a “dirty bomb”. As soon as the sites are discovered, they are eradicated by MI6’s experts. But within days they reappear elsewhere.
Gordon Thomas is the author of a new edition of Gideon’s Spies: The Inside Story of Israel’s Legendary Secret Service, The Mossad, by JR Books of London and available on Amazon Books.
(C) G-2 Bulletin, Washington D.C., USA, and Gordon Thomas.
FROM http://en.epochtimes.com/n2/world/al-qaeda-develop-dirty-bomb-7569.html
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November 23, 2008
MEMO FROM ISLAMABAD
Ringed by Foes, Pakistanis Fear the U.S., Too
By JANE PERLEZ
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A redrawn map of South Asia has been making the rounds among Pakistani elites. It shows their country truncated, reduced to an elongated sliver of land with the big bulk of India to the east, and an enlarged Afghanistan to the west.
That the map was first circulated as a theoretical exercise in some American neoconservative circles matters little here. It has fueled a belief among Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the United States really wants is the breakup of Pakistan, the only Muslim country with nuclear arms.
“One of the biggest fears of the Pakistani military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan,” said a senior Pakistani government official involved in strategic planning, who insisted on anonymity as per diplomatic custom. “Some people feel the United States is colluding in this.”
That notion may strike Americans as strange coming from an ally of 50 years. But as the incoming Obama administration tries to coax greater cooperation from Pakistan in the fight against militancy, it can hardly be ignored.
This is a country where years of weak governance have left ample room for conspiracy theories of every kind. But like much such thinking anywhere, what is said frequently reveals the tender spots of a nation’s psyche. Educated Pakistanis sometimes say that they are paranoid, but add that they believe they have good reason.
Pakistan, a 61-year-old country marbled by ethnic fault lines, is a collection of just four provinces, which often seem to have little in common. Virtually every one of its borders, drawn almost arbitrarily in the last gasps of the British Empire, is disputed with its neighbors, not least Pakistan’s bitter and much larger rival, India.
These facts and the insecurities that flow from them inform many of Pakistan’s disagreements with the United States, including differences over the need to rein in militancy in the form of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The new democratically elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, has visited the United States twice since assuming power three months ago. He has been generous in his praise of the Bush administration. But that stance is criticized at home as fawning and wins him little popularity among a steadfastly anti-American public.
So how will the promise by President-elect Barack Obama for a new start between the United States and Pakistan be received here? How can it be begun?
One possibility could be some effort to ease Pakistani anxieties, even as the United States demands more from Pakistan. That will probably mean a regional approach to what, it is increasingly apparent, are regional problems. There, Pakistani and American interests may coincide.
American military commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, have started to argue forcefully that the solution to the conflict in Afghanistan, where the American war effort looks increasingly uncertain, must involve a wide array of neighbors.
Mr. Obama has said much the same. Several times in his campaign, he laid out the crux of his thinking. Reducing tensions between Pakistan and India would allow Pakistan to focus on the real threat — the Qaeda and Taliban militants who are tearing at the very fabric of the country.
“If Pakistan can look towards the east with confidence, it will be less likely to believe its interests are best advanced through cooperation with the Taliban,” Mr. Obama wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine last year.
But such an approach faces sizable obstacles, the biggest being the conflict over Kashmir. The Himalayan border area has been disputed since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and remains divided between them.
Pakistan’s army and intelligence agencies have long fought a proxy war with India by sponsoring militant groups to terrorize the Indian-administered part of the territory.
After the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan reined in those militants for a time, but this year the militants have renewed their incursions. Talks between the sides made some progress in recent years but have petered out.
Pakistanis warn that the United States should not appear too eager to mediate. First, they caution, India has always regarded Kashmir as a bilateral question. India, they note, also faces a general election early next year, an inappropriate moment to push such an explosive issue.
Second, some Pakistanis are concerned about the reliability of the United States as a fair mediator. “Given the United States’ record on the Palestinian issue, where the Palestinians had to move 10 times backwards and the Israelis moved the goal posts, the same could happen here,” said Zubair Khan, a former commerce minister who has watched Kashmir closely.
It was discouraging, Mr. Khan said, that the United States ignored the importance of the huge nonviolent protests by Muslims in Kashmir against Indian rule this summer. “Anywhere else, and they would have been hailed as an Orange Revolution,” he said, referring to the wave of protests that led to a change in the Ukrainian government in 2004.
Such distrust has been exacerbated by what Pakistanis see as the Bush administration’s tilt toward India.
Exhibit A for the Pakistanis is India’s nuclear deal with the United States, which allows India to engage in nuclear trade even though it never joined the global Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Pakistan, with its recent history of spreading nuclear technology, received no comparable bargain.
The nuclear deal was devised in Washington to position India as a strategic counterbalance to China. That is how it is seen in Pakistan, too, but with no enthusiasm.
“The United States has changed the whole nuclear order by this deal, and in doing so is containing China, the only friend Pakistan has in the region,” said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani Army general.
Further, Pakistan is upset about the advances India is making in Afghanistan, with no checks from the United States, Mr. Masood said.
India has recently made big investments in Afghanistan, where Pakistan has been competing for influence. These include a road to the Iranian border that will eventually give India access to the Iranian port of Chabahar, circumventing Pakistan.
India has offered training for Afghanistan’s military, given assistance for a new Parliament building in Kabul and has re-opened consulates along the border with Pakistan.
The consulates, the Pakistanis charge, are used by India as cover to lend support to a long-running separatist movement in Baluchistan Province. (Baluchistan was even made an independent state on the theoretical map, which accompanied an article by Ralph Peters titled “Blood Borders: How a Better Middle East Would Look,” originally published in Armed Forces Journal.)
Both India and Pakistan in fact have a long and destructive history of, gently or not, putting in the knife. Exhibit A for the Indians is the bombing in July of its embassy in Afghanistan, which American and Indian officials say can be traced to groups linked to Pakistan’s spy agency.
If the Obama administration is indeed to convince Pakistanis that militancy, not the Indian Army, presents the gravest threat, it will not be easy.
The commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, got a taste of the challenge this month, when he visited Islamabad and sat down with a group of about 70 members of Pakistan’s Parliament at the residence of the United States ambassador, Anne W. Patterson. Their attitude showed an almost total incomprehension of the reasons for American behavior in the region after Sept. 11, 2001.
“A couple of the questions I got were, ‘Why did you Americans come to Afghanistan when it was so peaceful, before you got there?’ ” General McKiernan recalled during an appearance at the Atlantic Council in Washington last week.
“Another one,” he said, “was, ‘We understand that you’ve invited a thousand Indian soldiers to serve in Afghanistan by Christmas.’ ”
There was no truth to the claim, he told the Pakistanis. “We have a lot of work to do,” he told his audience in Washington.
Indeed, among ordinary Pakistanis, many still regard Al Qaeda more positively than the United States, polls find. Talk shows here often include arguments that the suicide bombings in Pakistan are payback for the Pakistani Army fighting an American war.
Some commentators suggest that the United States is actually financing the Taliban. The point is to tie down the Pakistani Army, they say, leaving the way open for the Americans to grab Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
Recently, in the officer’s mess in Bajaur, the northern tribal region where the Pakistani Army is tied down fighting the militants, one officer offered his own theory: Osama bin Laden did not exist, he told a visiting journalist.
Rather, he was a creation of the Americans, who needed an excuse to invade Afghanistan and encroach on Pakistan.
FROM http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/world/asia/23pstan.html?em
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Leader: Pakistan won’t be first in nuclear strike
24 Nov 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan’s president has assured rival India he would not be the first to use atomic weapons in any future conflict and proposed the idea of a nuclear-free South Asia.
Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine, unlike India’s, does not contain a clause saying the country will not use its weapons first in conflict.
It was not clear if President Asif Ali Zardari’s comments, made Saturday during a video conference question-and-answer session organized by The Hindustan Times newspaper of India, represented a formal change in policy.
Asked by a student whether Pakistan was prepared to say it would not use a nuclear weapon first, Zardari said: “Most defiantly, I am against nuclear warfare altogether,” he said.
The moderator then asked the question again, pointing out to Zardari that his earlier answer was a “headline.” Zardari again replied, “Definitely.”
Zardari proposed the idea of a nuclear-free South Asia, saying he could persuade lawmakers to support such a plan, the reports said.
“I am sure I can get my parliament to agree with that, straight on. Can you say the same?” he asked those in attendance, which including government and business leaders.
He gave no more details on the idea, which Pakistan — six times smaller than India — has proposed before.
Predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan have fought three wars since they were created in the bloody partition of the Indian subcontinent at independence from Britain in 1947.
The stakes got much higher after both tested nuclear weapons in 1998.
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Pakistan dissolving military spy agency’s political wing
Reuters
Monday, November 24, 2008
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has disbanded the political wing of the military intelligence agency, the foreign minister said Sunday.
The cooperation of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, directorate is regarded as vital to the West in fighting the threat of Al Qaeda globally and defeating the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
But critics call it a “state within a state.” Pakistan’s eight-month-old civilian government has regularly accused the ISI’s political wing of involvement in the overthrow of their governments. Neighboring Afghanistan and India view the ISI with great distrust.
The Pakistani foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, described the disbanding of the ISI’s political wing as a “positive development.”
“ISI is a precious national institution, and it wants to focus fully on counter-terrorism activities,” the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan quoted him as saying.
The report did not say when the decision was made.
The army has ruled Pakistan for more than half its history since 1947. Consequently, issues related to the military are closely watched in the region as well as by Western allies of the nuclear-armed nation.
The latest chapter of military rule ended with the defeat of parties loyal to Pervez Musharraf in elections in February and Musharraf’s resignation as president in August.
His successor, President Asif Ali Zardari, and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani signaled their intention to exert more control over the ISI in July but backtracked from an attempt to bring it under the ambit of the Interior Ministry.
Senior officials say that the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, who himself served as ISI head, has been supportive of Pakistan’s return to civilian-led democracy while insisting that the army look after its own affairs.
Since becoming army chief in November last year, Kayani has moved to take the army out of politics, including ordering all officers out of civilian posts and barring them from meeting politicians. He appointed a new ISI chief in September and replaced several senior officers.
The political wing was established by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first popularly elected prime minister, in the 1970s. Bhutto was toppled and hanged by the military in the late 1970s.
His daughter Benazir Bhutto had also accused ISI officials of conspiring to destabilize her two governments in the 1990s.
She was assassinated last December while campaigning for election, but her husband, Zardari, led her Pakistan People’s Party to victory.
Security analysts said the decision was good for the ISI.
“The involvement of ISI in politics has been a major controversy in Pakistan. This decision will help it in earning respect in the eyes of people of Pakistan, particularly at a time when it is facing the major challenge of terrorism,” said Talat Masood, an analyst and former army general.
The ISI is known to have wielded great influence on foreign and security policies, especially toward India and Afghanistan.
It played a role in distributing arms and money, covertly supplied by the United States and Saudi Arabia, to Islamist guerrilla groups fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Critics say the ISI was also instrumental in creating the Taliban movement in Afghanistan in the 1990s.
Pakistan officially stopped backing the Taliban after becoming a U.S. ally in 2001, and the ISI has helped the United States eliminate hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters since then.
But the agency, or at least agents within it, are often accused of playing a double game and treating the Afghan Taliban and some militant groups as assets rather than enemies.
Some members of Pakistan’s security apparatus regard these militants groups as tools to gain leverage in Afghanistan and the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir in the long term, according to analysts.
The United States is believed to have privately urged the new government to rein in the ISI, particularly after a suicide attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul last July.
Washington demanded that Pakistan investigate Indian and Afghan accusations that the ISI was involved in the attack, which Pakistan denied.
FROM http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/24/asia/pakistan.php
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US planning to deploy more troops near Pakistan border
KABUL, Nov 23: A brigade of 3,500-4,000 extra US troops due in Afghanistan in January would be deployed in the east amid efforts to stop infiltration of militants from Pakistan, the US military said on Sunday.
The brigade has been approved as part of requested US troop reinforcements for Afghanistan’s fight against extremists, US military spokesman Col Greg Julian told reporters in Kabul.
“The first brigade that is coming will go into the (Nato-led) RC-East (Regional Command East) and they are going to move into areas that are currently not covered,” Col Julian said.
The area includes about a dozen provinces, many of which are on the border with Pakistan.
“We recognise that there are certain lines or avenues that the insurgents come through (from Pakistan) and we are focussing our efforts on those,” he said.
International and Afghan troops along with counterparts in Pakistan this month launched “Operation Lionheart” along the border. “This operation will help to deny the enemies of Afghanistan safe havens in Pakistan,” Brig-Gen Richard Blanchette, spokesman for a Nato-led force working alongside the US-led coalition and Afghan army, told the briefing.
Cooperation between Nato troops and the Pakistani army was the best it had ever been, said Brig-Gen Blanchette.
The cooperation was the result of tripartite meetings between Isaf, the Afghan military and Pakistani forces, he said. “This is not only a cooperation in the execution. This is also a cooperation that has happened in the planning,” he remarked.—Agencies
FROM http://www.dawn.com/2008/11/24/top1.htm
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New Treaty Aims to Protect Shared Transboundary Aquifers
PARIS, France, October 23, 2008 (ENS) - Underground aquifers contain 100 times the volume of fresh water found on the Earth’s surface but they have been neglected under international law despite their environmental, social, economic and strategic importance.
On Monday, that will change as the UN General Assembly receives the draft of a new international treaty to safeguard these enormous pools of underground water shared by more than one country.
The draft Convention on Transboundary Aquifers applies to 96 percent of the planet’s freshwater resources - those that are to be found in underground aquifers, most of which straddle national boundaries.
Many shared aquifers are under environmental threats caused by climate change, growing population pressure, over-exploitation, and human induced water pollution.
Blue Eye Spring in southern Albania is fed by the Vjosa / Pogoni Aquifer shared by Albania and Greece.
The draft treaty requires that aquifer states not harm existing aquifers and cooperate to prevent and control their pollution. Prepared over the past six years by the UN International Law Commission with the assistance of experts from UNESCO’s International Hydrological Programme, the treaty is intended to fill a gap in the law.
To accompany the draft treaty, UNESCO is publishing the first-ever world map of shared aquifers. It shows the aquifer locations and provides information about the quality of their water and rate of replenishment by rainfall.
So far, the inventory includes 273 shared aquifers - 68 are in the Americas, 38 in Africa, 65 in eastern Europe, 90 in western Europe and 12 in Asia.
The growth in the demand for water since 1950 has been met by the increased use of underground resources. Globally, 65 percent of this water is devoted to irrigation, 25 percent to the supply of drinking water and 10 percent to industry.
Underground aquifers account for more than 70 percent of the water used in the European Union, and are often the only source of supply in arid and semi-arid zones.
Aquifers supply 100 percent of the water used in Saudi Arabia and Malta, 95 percent in Tunisia and 75 percent in Morocco.
Irrigation systems in many countries depend very largely on groundwater resources - 90 percent in the Libya, 89 percent in India, 84 percent in South Africa and 80 percent in Spain.
One of the largest aquifers in the world is the Guarani Aquifer, extending over 1.2 million square kilometers, shared by Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Although aquifer systems exist in all continents, not all of them are fed on a regular basis by rainfall. Those in north Africa and the Arabian peninsula were formed more than 10,000 years ago when the climate was more humid and are no longer replenished.
This well in Africa’s Sahara desert taps into an underground aquifer. (Photo by J.R. Virtue)
In some regions, even if the aquifers are renewable, they may be endangered by over-exploitation or pollution. In the small islands and coastal zones of the Mediterranean, people often use groundwater more rapidly than it is replenished.
The aquifers in Africa, which are some of the biggest in the world, are still under-exploited, the UN agency says, adding, “They have considerable potential, provided that their resources are managed on a sustainable basis.”
Since they generally extend across several national boundaries, the sustainable use of African aquifers depends on agreed management mechanisms that will help prevent pollution or over-exploitation.
Mechanisms of this kind have begun to emerge. In the 1990s Chad, Egypt, Libya and Sudan established a joint authority to manage the Nubian aquifer system.
In their project concerning the Iullemeden aquifer that extends over 500 000 square kilometers in the semi-arid tropical savanna ecoregion of West Africa, Niger, Nigeria and Mali have approved in principle a consultative mechanism for administering the aquifer system. UNESCO says such mechanisms still are rare but the new treaty may encourage their formation.
FROM:
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2008/2008-10-23-01.asp
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