The Pakistan government at the moment seems to be rejoicing Taliban victory in Afghanistan. The manner in which it wanted to exploit the Taliban victory in Afghanistan has rebounded threatening to reinforce religious fundamentalists inclinations in Pakistan itself. 

The Taliban's victory in Afghanistan may give Pakistan a choice to look at its relationships with its neighbours, not just from an anti-India stance as it tries to rein in and influence the Taliban to remain pro-Pakistan and not adopt an independent policy of their own.

However, the religio-politico situation of the region has increasingly shown a ripple effect in Pakistan, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) remains a prime example of such thinking.

Commenting on the evolving situation Ayesha Siddiqa, a geo-politics adviser at SOAS, UK, said that Rawalpindi invested primarily in the Taliban as it knew that US would ultimately leave Afghanistan. Rawalpindi's prime desire was to ensure a friendly establishment in its north-western neighbouring nation, which doesn't get exploited against Pakistan's interests, especially by India.

While Pakistani fear that the Taliban victory may give a violent boost to the TTP, the Pakistani Taliban that has close ties to their Afghan kin, the TTP had started to be active again inside Pakistan even before the Taliban capture of Afghanistan.

The Taliban victory benefits from decades in which religious fundamentalism was woven into the fabric of Pakistani society as well as some of its key institutions. Siddiqa comments: "The fact remains that, notwithstanding the ambition to mellow the tone of religion in Afghanistan, Pakistan itself runs the risk of becoming more like its north-western neighbour more religious and more authoritarian."

Pakistan understands the complex situation very well and that's why it was pushing the Taliban to opt for a truly inclusive government besides broadening its contacts with other Afghan groups. A visit last week to the Pakistani capital by representatives of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and other Afghan politicians is a pointer in that regard.

In discussing the fallout for Pakistan of the Taliban victory, analysts have by and large focus on Pakistan as fertile ground for the spread of Taliban-style religious fundamentalism as well as concerns that it would enable TTP to rekindle their campaign of attacks in Pakistan.

The TTP is a coalition of Pashtun Islamist groups with close ties to the Afghan Taliban that last year joined forces with several other militant Pakistani groups, including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a violently anti-Shiite Sunni Muslim supremacist organisation.

"Pashtuns of the Afghan Taliban will, after a few years in power, find common cause with their Pashtun kinsmen in Pakistan... There are plenty of Pakistani Pashtuns who would prefer the whole of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly North-West Frontier Province) to be part of a wider Pashtunistan," predicts scholar and former British ambassador to Pakistan Tim Willasey-Wilsey.

In fact, the events of the last 75 years confirm that the main focus of Pakistan's foreign policy has always been anti-Indian in tenor and practice. It became a fertile ground for Mujahideen in the 1970s, as it wanted to exert more influence on the Soviet state as compared to India besides stoking the fire in Indian Kashmir.

Later it allied with the US just in order to belittle India, but the reality is that Pakistan has always tried to be involved in Afghan affairs due to the economic gains also and this trend continues even now. The British Foreign Secretary Dominic Rabb, while in Pakistan last week, announced a doubling of aid to Afghanistan to 286 million pounds and released the first tranche of 30 million pounds of that to support Afghanistan's regional neighbours including Pakistan. Thus, in a way the foreign aid has not only lined the pockets of Afghan gang lords and politicians but even the Pakistani generals and politicians.

This complexity in Afghan affairs and the recent announcements by senior Taliban leadership with regard to India puts Pakistan in a real quandary. Pakistan might also be concerned after a Taliban official Sher Mohammed Abbas Stanekzai declared in a rare statement on foreign policy that "we give due importance to our political, economic and trade ties with India and we want these ties to continue. We are looking forward to working with India in this regard".

Pakistan in today’s contest may be rejoicing the de-facto control over Afghanistan but it will be a sure suicide in long term, leading to the destruction of a modern nation that its founding father MA Jinnah has dreamt of.  

(The writer is Prashant Tewari, Editor-in-Chief of The Opinion Express Group)

The Hits & Miss of Covid 19 in India: The WHO Representative to India, appreciated the response of the Government of India to the first wave of pandemic COVID-19 describing the Lockdown Measures as "timely, comprehensive and robust". WHO has, however, cautioned that lockdowns alone would not eliminate coronavirus and India must take necessary measures to prevent a second and third wave of infections. The government failed to understand the gravity of the problem. The healthcare spending in India is abysmally low for an emerging economy with a population of 1.3 billion. Lack of the desired level of investment in the health infrastructure has so far resulted in the fragility of the Indian health ecosystem which posed a big hurdle in generating an effective response against the pandemic. It is, therefore, strongly recommended to the Government to increase its investments in the public healthcare system and make consistent efforts to achieve the National Health Policy targets of expenditure up to 2.5% of GDP within two years as the set timeframe of the year 2025 is far away and the public health cannot be jeopardized till that time schedule.

The country has a poor state of primary healthcare, especially in rural areas. It is strongly recommended that the Ministry urgently increase its spending under the National Rural Health Mission to strengthen the delivery of health care services in the rural areas, keeping in view the languishing health infrastructure and inadequate delivery of health services to the much-needed rural population. The country is ravaged by natural fury but our country has shown tremendous resilience to overcome the traumatic time. It is good to see that the Modi government has started the work on a war footing and the country is gradually limping back to normalcy. The most surprising sequence of the covid pandemic is the behaviour of China. They have become aggressive at the border, started challenging the armed forces of the country by snatching land parcels. Even more surprising is the silence of our government on the Chinese intent, The entire world at G7 summit has condemned China but the Indian leadership chooses to remain silent.

Rafale Ghost: In another development that will escalate demands in India for an independent probe into the controversial Rafale deal, a French judge has been appointed to lead a judicial investigation into alleged corruption and favouritism in the 7.8-billion-euro sale to India of 36 fighter aircraft, including the role of a middleman whose disclosures India’s Enforcement Directorate is reportedly aware of but has not bothered to investigate till now. Given the central role played by Anil Ambani’s Reliance group – Dassault’s Indian partner in the deal for the 36 aircraft – the probe is likely to also examine the nature of the association between the two companies.

India and Dassault had officially been negotiating terms for the purchase and manufacture of 126 Rafale jets right up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s publicly announced decision – on April 10, 2015 – to scrap that deal and replace it with the outright purchase of 36 fighters. In a sensational new revelation, “Documents seen by Mediapart show that Dassault and Reliance had in fact signed their first Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) – a document setting out broad outlines of an agreement – on March 26th 2015. That was 15 days before Modi’s announcement of the turnaround, and the exclusion of HAL, and begs the question as to whether the two companies had been informed of it in advance.”

“The two partners agreed on a maximum investment in the subsidiary of 169 million euros. Of that sum, Dassault, which held a 49% stake in DRAL, pledged to provide up to 159 million euros, representing 94% of the total, while Reliance would provide just the remaining 10 million euros. “This meant that Reliance was given the majority 51% stake in the joint venture in return for a relatively very modest sum. While Reliance brought neither funds nor know-how of any significance to the joint venture, it did bring to it its capacity for political influence. In November 9, 2015, Dassault CEO Trappier and Reliance Group chairman Anil Ambani signed a “strategic partnership agreement”, which was a more detailed document than the previous March 26, 2015 MoU, for the establishment of a joint venture in India. While it detailed how Dassault would provide “technology and know-how”, “technical assistance” and “international marketing” capabilities, Reliance was expected to provide only “production facilities”, presumably land, and “marketing for programs and services with the GOI and other authorities in compliance with applicable laws”. Narendra Modi has to face a twin attack on Covid mismanagement and Rafale Ambani jugalbandi in the coming parliamentary session.   

(The Writer is the Editor-in-Chief of The Opinion Express Group)

Modi government and several state governments incompetence is largely responsible for India’s pandemic disaster, as infections and deaths mount at a terrifying pace in India, the prime minister’s team culpability for the crisis has become startlingly clear. A literate leader might have saved India from this manmade disaster.

India might have been spared this humanitarian crisis had Modi and his team not neglected their duties and vilified those who offered him constructive counsel. He had the time, means, and access to expertise to proof the country against this inferno. As early as last November, a parliamentary committee had issued warnings of a second wave and urged the government to stockpile oxygen. But rather than bolstering India’s capacities, Modi used the virus to burnish his cult and pillage the country.

Last March, days after plunging India into chaos by announcing a nationwide lockdown with a four-hour notice, he sought tax-free donations for a fund called PM CARES to help the poorest of the poor, buy personal protective equipment and build oxygen plants across India. The equivalent of more than a billion dollars flowed into it during the first week. What did Modi do with all that money? Nobody knows and nobody is allowed to know.

Like those other leaders, Modi has spent more time diminishing the pandemic’s seriousness than combating it. In early March, even as cases in India rose alarmingly, he again boasted that the country would serve as “the world’s pharmacy,” churning out vaccines for developing nations. His health minister judged India to have entered the “endgame” of the pandemic. In a new cricket stadium named after Modi, tens of thousands of largely unmasked people turned out to watch matches between India and England last month. Many more unprotected people turned out for Modi’s recent election rallies in the state of West Bengal, and an estimated 3.5 million people have attended, with the encouragement of Modi’s Hindu nationalist colleagues, the Kumbh Mela religious festival.

COVID-19 has shown that we have underestimated the insidious nature of and the menace posed by biological weapons to humanity. It is difficult to anticipate new, highly infectious, and deadly bioagents like COVID-19. The absence of immediate bio-defences and the timelag in finding treatment(s) and vaccine(s) enables the invisible enemy to inflict high morbidity and mortality. The latency period and mutation into virulent and different strains, along with the chances of a recurrence in waves, makes disease detection and control more challenging.

Mass contagion and efforts to contain it, including through the Great Lockdown, has brought even the most powerful countries to their knees and economies to a grinding halt. It has pushed robust democratic societies into turmoil and has led governance into crisis. The pandemic has generated a psyche of fear, uncertainty, and helplessness among people everywhere.

Wish the ruling class in India should be literate enough to understand the scientific inputs rather than the usual election dynamic of dividing communities on the communal, caste and class lines.

The writer is Prashant Tewari, Editor-in-Chief of The Opinion Express Group) 

THE MAHA BLUNDER: Many political leaders, who were in influential positions in Maharashtra and Gujarat during 1990s had developed close relations with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and his henchman Iqbal Mirchi. This assertion was officially put down on paper when the N.N. Vohra committee submitted its report to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in 5 October 1993, roughly three months after it was established on 9 July 1993 in the aftermath of 12 March 1993 Bombay bomb blasts. While the contents of the report, that was subsequently made public on 1 August 1995 in Parliament, were only limited to 11 pages, it is a part of the government’s own records that the finding of the report, in total, was close to 100 pages. It is these 100 pages that were never made public, that have now become relevant, almost 26 years after they were brought into existence, after Union Home Minister Amit Shah highlighted the issue on the floor of the parliament. The 100 pages with annexures, which are the most vital part of the report, as according to old Intelligence Bureau (IB) hands, it contains the names of leading politicians and bureaucrats who helped Dawood and Mirchi from the 1970s till 1993 and beyond.

However, there is strong hope among former Intelligence officials that the present dispensation at North Block will now be able to gather the courage to make 100 pages of the report public, especially with BJP now raking up the issue of the connections between politicians and Dawood. The matter has taken a serious turn in the present context when Pakistan is using Dawood & Co extensively to sabotage the progress of India. The terror attacks, gold smuggling, drug trafficking, money laundering is extensively pushed by Dawood network to weaken the Indian state on the behest of hostile neighbor Pakistan, proxy controlled by China.      

The growth of Dawood and Mirchi was due to the fact that the concerned enforcement agencies did not timely take action against him and, later, this perhaps became difficult on account of the enormous patronage that he had developed. MHA was given all kinds of information, in volumes of pages, which were ‘ultra-sensitive’ in nature. This information clearly showed how politicians were on the payroll of Dawood and how they were acting as his servants. Much of this information was produced in the Vohra committee report, in the portion which was not made public. We can understand why it was not made public before, but now, there is no political compulsion as such. It should have been presented before the public to show the deep nexus that existed between the politicians, police and criminals. All the recent developments in Maharashtra related to Vazegate and his handlers rouge police commissioner Paramvir Singh, NCP & Shiv Sena political leadership are known to the entire country. It further establishes the fact that nothing has changed at the ground when it comes to criminal synergy between the various stakeholders.        

The syndicated crime has dented prosperity of the country and it has infected the system from top to bottom. It is imperative that the present government must table the Vohra committee report on the floor of the parliament and expose the nexus between the politics, police, bureaucrat, media linkage with syndicated mafia to clean up the governance.  Narendra Modi has repeatedly promised corruption free governance, transparent society and his strong-willed home minister should take up Vohra committee report seriously and the process to clean up the opaque corrupt system controlled by mafia’s must end. The role of the state governments is critical to clean up the mess since law & order is a state subject. The roadmap set up by UP Chief Minister to clean up syndicated mafia should be taken as the glaring example to set the law & order right. Our country has limited resources and the scarcity is going to increase further, hence the distribution of available resources become key for the success of the nation. We need a coordinated effort from all the stake holders to erase mafia nexus so that our next generations can live in peace.    

(The writer is Prashant Tewari Editor in Chief)