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About
this
Newsletter
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The
Khyber is a
weekly newsletter from NALSAR University, focusing
on South
Asian affairs. This not-for-profit venture consists
of a collation of news from national, regional
and international streams.
The Khyber was launched to bring
oft-neglected policy discussions into mainstream academic discourse,
and hopes, like the Pass from which its name is borrowed, to provide
easy access for the information-thirsty traveller into this strange,
misunderstood, frustrating but important part of the world.
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April 2,
2010 | A South Asian Affairs Brief
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Where To Buy A Landmine In Sri Lanka
The civil war in Sri Lanka may be over, but you can buy
a land mine
on the side of the road in Jaffna � though they're more likely to
explode in your mouth than anywhere else. In the main city on Sri
Lanka's northernmost peninsula, besieged by 2½ decades of bloody
sectarian
violence until last May, the spicy samosa sold by street
vendors throughout the city is still known by its nom de guerre: midi-vedi,
the
Tamil word for land mine.
The name was first used by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,
popularly known as the Tamil Tigers, in the early 1990s when they were
in control of Jaffna.
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Sometimes you have to smell the truth, breathe it. Heydari lived it.
Something was rotten then in the state of Iran. It still is. A historic
mistake was made.
Read
the
full story.
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India and Pakistan Feud Over
Indus Waters:- A feud
over water between India and Pakistan is threatening to derail
peace
talks between the two neighbors. The countries have
harmoniously shared the waters of the Indus River
for decades. A 50-year-old treaty regulating access to water from the
river and its tributaries has been viewed as a bright spot for India
and Pakistan, which have gone to war three times since 1947.
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Chinese leader Hu Jintao to
attend nuclear summit in U.S.:- The president's attendance, which was
uncertain because of a recent
U.S. arms sale to Taiwan, could
boost
President Obama's efforts to curb
Iran's and North Korea's nuclear programs. Reporting from Beirut and
Beijing - China announced Thursday that
President Hu Jintao planned to attend a nuclear nonproliferation
conference this month in Washington, an affirmative gesture after
months of giving the cold shoulder to the Obama administration over a
U.S. arms sale to Taiwan.
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Pakistani
president
persuades U.N. to delay report on Bhutto assassination:- Pakistani
President
Asif Ali Zardari prevailed upon the United
Nations on Tuesday to delay for two weeks the
release
of a fact-finding
report that is expected to criticize Pakistan's security
establishment
in connection with the assassination of his wife, former prime minister
Benazir Bhutto, in 2007.
The move represents a political retreat by the Pakistani leader, who
requested the U.N. probe during his first weeks in office but who now
faces challenges to his authority on several fronts.
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Blind Man's Bluff :- Over
the past three months, several prominent American think tanks and
academic
institutions have conducted simulation games about the Iranian crisis.
Although
these war games have nicely covered almost all facets of the problem,
they have
left one
aspect
mostly understudied: the nature of Iran's response to a U.S.
or
Israeli airstrike. I recently took part in two U.S.
government-sponsored games
in which the participants attempted to provide a modest assessment of
that crucial
issue.
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India embarks on world�s largest census:- India on Thursday
embarks on the world's largest census in an
exercise that will compile a register of fingerprints, photographs and
mobile telephone usage of its billion-plus residents. Census
officials will start
at
the top, and work their way down to the
millions of Indians about which much less is known to produce a
National Population Register. The first person to submit their details
will be Pratibha Patil, the president, as 2.5m officials count and
extract information about the identity, religion and habits of one of
the world�s most diverse nations.
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It�s China�s World. We�re Just
Living in It. :- Back when President Obama lived in
Indonesia, in the late 1960s, China
loomed as a malign force to the north, where communist cadres plotted
to export their revolution
to the rest of Asia. The Jakarta he'll visit
later this month has an entirely different attitude toward the People's
Republic. Local companies are doing deals in yuan, the Chinese
currency, rather than dollars.
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Karzai rails against foreign
presence, accuses West of engineering voter fraud:-
President Hamid Karzai on Thursday
delivered one of his most stinging criticisms to date of the foreign
presence in Afghanistan
, accusing
the
West and the United Nations of wanting a "puppet government"
and of orchestrating fraud in last year's election.
Karzai's comments come just five days after President Obama, in his
first visit to Afghanistan as commander in chief.
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When Beijing and New Delhi pull
together:- When Hui Liangyu,
China�s vice-premier, visited New Delhi last week
he was presented with a miniature silver chariot pulled by two horses.
The horses, his hosts quipped, represented China and India pulling the
global economy into recovery. More often than not these horses
pull
in different directions. India bridles at its growing dependence on Chinese
telecommunications and power equipment, vital for modernising its decrepit
infrastructure. It has imposed curbs on Chinese companies bringing
workers across the Himalayas
to build pipelines and power plants.
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 America's India
Envoy Needs to Run a Permanent Campaign: America's
ambassador here, Timothy J. Roemer, will need all the skills
he honed as a politician on the campaign trail in Indiana and
Washington as he stumps across India in coming months. Time and again,
he can expect to address questions about the U.S.'s commitment to
establishing India in the top rung of its global allies.The
reason: As the U.S.'s relations improve with Pakistan, its
relationship with India, if not very delicately handled and
consistently nurtured, will inevitably suffer fallout.
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Iran
nuclear
scientist Shahram Amiri 'defects to US':- An
Iranian
nuclear scientist who has been missing since June has defected
to the US, according
to
a US media report. ABC
News said Shahram Amiri had been resettled in the US and was helping
the CIA in its efforts to block Iran's nuclear programme.Mr Amiri
disappeared in Saudi Arabia while on a Muslim pilgrimage.
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Insurgent
Faction
Presents Afghan Peace Plan:- Representatives
of
a major insurgent faction have presented a formal
15-point peace plan to the Afghan government, the first concrete
proposal to end hostilities since President Hamid Karzai said he would make reconciliation
a
priority after his re-election last year. The delegation represents fighters loyal
to Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar, 60, one of the
most brutal of Afghanistan�s former resistance fighters who leads a
part of the insurgency against American, NATO and Afghan forces
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Face
to
face with Pakistan�s most wanted:- As Pakistani ministers and the country's
army
chiefs lobbied the Obama administration in Washington this week for
increased military funding for the fight against Al Qa'ida militants,
the top man on the US, UN and EU most wanted list in Pakistan moved
freely
in
the streets of Lahore. Read
first interview with a western newspaper - Hafiz Muhammad Saeed �
suspected of organising the slaughter of 166 Indians in Mumbai in
November 2008.
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U.S. can suspend reprocessing if
�national security' is threatened:- The �arrangements and procedures'
(A&P) under
which India can reprocess U.S.-obligated spent fuel allow Washington to
suspend reprocessing permission if it apprehends
either
a �serious
threat� to its national security or to the physical protection of
the
facility where the reprocessing is taking place that makes suspension
unavoidable. But the A&P also specify a
detailed consultation process similar to that contained in the
Indo-U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement (the 123 agreement) prior to
suspension.
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India�s
Woes
Reflected in Bid to Restart Old Plant:- �Wherever there is a lamp, there is
darkness below it,� said Bava
Bhalekar, a fisherman and local leader in this village roughly a
hundred miles south of Mumbai. �The tragedy is that while our village
has this project, we ourselves don�t have electricity.� �This project�
is the
power
plant that Enron
built. A decade after Enron withdrew from the project, the Indian
government
and two Indian companies are promising to bring the plant to full
capacity
- Causes for optimism:- �Diplomatic disasters don�t come much
bigger than this� was the verdict of one European-based newspaper on the outcome
of the Copenhagen climate-change conference. What had been billed as
the summit to save
the planet became the summit which, just barely,
scraped a deal that many felt did not go much beyond an agreement to
keep talking. But,
argues Michael Grubb, history may judge it more kindly.
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