Tag Archive for: Pakistan

Sir Lawrence Freedman on the delusions that plague war planners

Wars are easy to start, hard to end and are often launched with political goals that are loftier than the planning and capabilities that are committed. In today’s episode, Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, talks about the “short war fallacy” and why strategists keep planning for quick victories when long and costly conflicts are demonstrably the norm.

Lawrence discusses Putin’s misjudged invasion of Ukraine, the way forward—and significant obstacles—for Kyiv, Moscow and Washington, other long conflicts around the globe including those in Africa and what Xi Jinping might be thinking about Taiwan.

He explains how mass remains a key factor in warfare, and the ways in which new technology and old realities converge to create layers in modern warfighting. He caps off with some thoughts on nuclear strategy and the recent flareup between India and Pakistan.

You can read Lawrence’s recent Foreign Affairs Article, “The Age of Forever Wars: Why Minister Strategy No Longer Delivers Victory”.

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And read his substack here.

What satellites reveal about the clash over Kashmir. With Nathan Ruser

ASPI’s geospatial analyst Nathan Ruser reveals what he’s found by studying satellite imagery of the recent India-Pakistan clashes over Kashmir, in a special episode of Stop the World. This includes use of images for disinformation in ways he hasn’t seen before in his years of poring over satellite pictures geolocation data.

Alongside the military clashes the Indian and Pakistani governments, and their respective supporters, have been battling in the information domain, a typical pattern that is becoming ever more competitive with new technology, especially generative artificial intelligence.

Nathan’s globally recognised skills as a geospatial analyst are put to full use in this episode that will be useful to anyone interested in South Asia, disinformation, deepfakes, AI and nuclear stability.

Special episode: Will India and Pakistan go nuclear? With Raji Rajagopalan

After Pakistan-based militants murdered more than two dozen Indian tourists in Pahalgam in Kashmir, India retaliated by striking nine sites it says housed “terrorist infrastructure”. Pakistan in turn says it shot down several Indian fighter planes.

In this special snap episode, ASPI Resident Senior Fellow Raji Pillai Rajagopalan gives us her insights on whether the two nuclear armed arch rivals will bring the crisis temperature down and avoid the ultimate nightmare—escalation that goes nuclear.

Mentioned in this episode: 

India and Pakistan must manage escalation after Pahalgam attack, by Raji Rajagopalan

X thread by Nathan Ruser

Tag Archive for: Pakistan

India-Pakistan crisis: military operations intensify before ceasefire

The past 36 hours on the India-Pakistan front have been tumultuous. Where the confrontation is headed is unclear.

Although things seemed to be calming down early on Friday, May 9, intense developments followed. A series of attacks occurred on Friday and Saturday, though their sequence is difficult to disentangle. Then Donald Trump on Saturday announced a ceasefire that took effect at 5pm Indian time on that day.

Before it did, escalating attacks by both sides had targeted civilian and military sites. Pakistani aircraft and drone attacks had spread from Kashmir as far south as Gujarat. Most attacks have been closer to the border, by artillery and short-range drones. The most intense seem to have come in the Kashmir region in Jammu, though Indian officials named around 26 locations that had been targeted.

The ceasefire has reportedly been violated. As of this writing on Sunday morning, both sides appear to be re-establishing it. Whether this will lead to further talks on any substantive issue is unclear. Though the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested this might happen, India has ruled out more substantive talks, at least for the time being.

Casualties do not appear to have been heavy. A senior official of the Jammu and Kashmir state was killed in his home in Jammu, but there is no reason to think he was specifically targeted.

There is some confusion about a series of attacks on Amritsar, a city in the Indian Punjab that is the centre of the Sikh religion. A very late-night Pakistani military briefing on Thursday suggested that several ballistic missile attacks had hit Amritsar, but no more has been heard of this.

The most serious Pakistani attack was by a Fateh-1 missile that seems either to have targeted an Indian air force base in Sirsa, near Delhi, or to have targeted Delhi and, as social media posts suggest, been intercepted at Sirsa. If it was fired at Sirsa, the reason for attacking just one Indian air base is unclear.

Though the sequence remains uncertain, India also launched a series of attacks on Pakistani air bases, including Rafiqui, Murid, Chaklala and Rahim Yar Khan. Most notably, another was Nur Khan air base, outside Islamabad. Hitting it may have been intended not to achieve an operational effect but to send a signal to the Pakistani high command. Combat aircraft are not thought to have been at this base. It is used mainly for transportation, including for government officials.

Two other air bases that India targeted are thought to be those of Pakistan’s China-built fighters. Since the fighting began, Pakistan has said it has shot down five Indian aircraft, including three Dassault Rafale fighters from France. US officials have told Reuters that a China-built Chengdu J-10 fighter shot down at least two Indian aircraft on the night of May 7, of which at least one was a Rafale. India has acknowledged no aircraft losses.

Much later on Friday, there were reports that India had attacked Pakistan’s Sargodha air base complex. Pakistan is thought to store nuclear weapons at Sargodha.

Because we don’t know which attacks followed which, we cannot say which, if any, was a retaliation for another. Second, we do not know how exactly they were carried out. Some presumably used missiles or drones, because there is no indication that combat aircraft on either side have crossed the border to make attacks. Even air-to-air firing could conceivably have occurred from one side of the border to the other.

Third, there is considerable confusion about some attacks, particularly on the Sirsa and Nur Khan air bases.

As well as pilots apparently keeping on their own sides of the border, there is no indication of involvement by ground forces except for firing across the border and the Line of Control in Kashmir. No involvement by naval forces is evident.

But the intensity of attacks in the day before the ceasefire was far greater than anybody had expected, especially as the situation seemed to have been winding down on Thursday.

Fighting was sufficiently serious to prompt a global reaction. The G7 countries put out a joint statement calling for de-escalation, and few hours later, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the chief of staff of the Pakistan Army, General Asim Munir, and Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

Before Rubio acted, the US had indicated that it would not intervene, with Vice President JD Vance saying that the India-Pakistan confrontation was ‘fundamentally none of our business.’

There are also reports that Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan has talked to the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers. China has also urged restraint on both sides.

Where the situation will move from here is unclear—especially whether the ceasefire will hold. Not just two countries are involved; there are also non-state terror groups on Pakistan’s side of the border.

But neither India nor Pakistan wants to antagonise Trump. That will encourage them to move cautiously.

India and Pakistan must manage escalation after Pahalgam attack

India has launched a retaliatory strike against the Pakistan-based groups responsible for a terrorist attack in Indian Kashmir two weeks ago.

The Indian government released a press statement announcing that the armed forces had launched Operation Sindoor in the early hours of 7 May. The operation targeted terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. According to the Indian government, nine terrorist sites were hit.

The government also noted that it has engaged in a ‘focused, measured and non-escalatory’ manner to ensure that the strikes were controlled. The statement also outlined that India exercised ‘considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution’ and didn’t target any Pakistani military facilities.

After the strikes, India briefed the US, British, United Arab Emirates and Russian governments.

The strikes were retaliation for a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Indian Kashmir, in which 25 Indians and one Nepali civilian were killed. Previous major terrorist attacks in Kashmir in 2016 and 2019 targeted Indian security forces. The Pahalgam attack, however, specifically targeted civilians, resulting in widespread anger in India and leading the government to respond.

According to initial reports, the Pahalgam terror attack was carried out by the relatively unknown Kashmir Resistance Front, which India maintains is a proxy for the better-known Pakistan-backed terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba. While it is unclear which group was responsible, the fact that it was a Pakistan-based group—with extensive support from Pakistan military—is undisputed.

This is not the first time that India and Pakistan have engaged in such clashes. In the past decade, India has suffered two major terrorist attacks resulting in retaliatory strikes against Pakistan. For a long time, India has struggled to develop an effective response to Pakistan’s use of cross-border terrorism as a state policy. Such attacks are clearly designed to keep India off-balance, but India’s response has also slowly become harsher.

Traditionally, India hasn’t responded with military force. The December 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi led to a military mobilisation, but no clashes. In 2008, the Indian government ruled out any military response to the terrorist attack on Mumbai. But the September 2016 Uri terrorist attack, which targeted an Indian army infantry base and killed 18 Indian soldiers, led to a change in India’s response. This attack came in the wake of another major terror attack in January 2016 on the Indian air force base in Pathankot. After two major strikes, the Indian leadership was presented with a dilemma, and it responded with what was called a ‘surgical strike’—a commando attack—on Pakistani terror hideouts.

In 2019, India suffered another major terrorist attack in Pulwama, killing dozens of Central Reserve Police Force personnel. This showed Pakistan escalating the strikes, not only in scale; it was also an escalation in messaging, considering the bold, open claim by Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based terrorist group, that it carried out the terror strikes. Worried that its 2016 surgical strikes didn’t have the necessary deterrence effect, India escalated, launching air strikes on a terrorist base in Balakot, Pakistan. This was the first time that Indian combat planes had attacked Pakistani territory since the 1971 India-Pakistan war.

This radical shift was the result of India’s conclusion that non-military measures were having no effect on Pakistan. India had previously responded to terrorist attacks with diplomatic punishment, including curtailing talks or limiting diplomatic interaction with Pakistan. In addition, New Delhi usually sought international diplomatic pressure to constrain Pakistan. Such policy measures failed to change Pakistan’s policy on state-sponsored terrorism. India’s lack of effective and forceful options led Pakistan to dangerously misread India’s possible responses.

Now that India has carried out retaliatory strikes on Pakistan, there is a strong likelihood that Pakistan will respond in some limited fashion to satisfy its domestic constituency. But it is highly unlikely that the two sides will intentionally escalate the current crisis to a prolonged series of clashes.

Though both states are nuclear-armed powers, nuclear weapons are unlikely to play any direct role in these clashes. Nevertheless, given their proximity to one another, one cannot rule out escalation dynamics. Pakistan will likely try to leverage this, invoking such scenarios to put international diplomatic pressure on India. This may have worked in previous conflicts, but as tensions heighten globally, foreign powers are unlikely to be as invested in talking the two sides down.

Pakistan:  More instability coming down the road

Pakistan’s elections on 8 February were meant to bring stability to the country after almost two years of turmoil but the fraudulent nature of the polls has deepened political divisions. It will also bring more instability to a nuclear-armed, 240-million strong country already shaky at best in a critically important geostrategic region.

In the months leading up to the long-awaited elections, the judiciary and the military pursued a dual track strategy: ensure that the highly popular former prime minister, Imran Khan, is never able to run for political office again and reinvigorate the political fortunes of Nawaz Sharif, the three-time former prime minister and leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz).

Following his loss of power in a parliamentary vote of no confidence in April 2022, Khan was relentlessly pursued by the judiciary which eventually handed him three sentences for corruption, leaking state secrets and an illegal marriage, for a total of 24 years. He was barred from politics and sent to gaol. His Pakistan Justice Movement (PTI) was disbanded, its electoral symbol (the cricket bat) outlawed, and its members banned from running as PTI members.

Nawaz Sharif—a convicted corrupt politician who’s had an ambivalent relationship with the army for 40 years, was brought back from a four-year self-exile in London as an alternative to Khan. Soon after Nawaz’s return to Pakistan the corruption charges he faced were dropped and his life ban from politics was lifted. The path was now clear for his smooth return to power. However, what was meant to be a walk in the park for Nawaz and the PML(N) turned out very differently on election day. The millions of pro-Imran Khan supporters were not interested in singing off the score sheet handed over by the army.

Even with all the measures taken to ensure there was no level playing field, and the ballot stuffing at a number of polling stations, the PML(N), was only able to win the second largest number of seats (75). Instead, the former PTI members—running as independents—won the largest number of seats, 93 of the 266 up for grabs. The independents’ total seats could increase as they are contesting the result of over a dozen others they claim have been stolen from them. Nevertheless, Nawaz declared victory, and will try—with great difficulty, to form a coalition government with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of the late Benazir Bhutto. The only bond between the PML(N) and the PPP is that their hatred of each other is slightly less than their hatred of the PTI.

International reaction to these elections, including from the US, the UK and the EU, was negative, with several countries calling for investigations into the allegations of vote-tempering and pre-poll obstructions. The Australian government also made it clear that that it was concerned that ‘the Pakistani people were restricted in their choice, since not all political parties were allowed to contest these elections’.

Notwithstanding the evidence to the contrary, much of it posted on social media platforms even though mobile internet connections were restricted, the Chief of Army Staff, General Asim Munir, commended the Electoral Commission for running such a successful election and stressed the significance of free and unhindered participation by Pakistani people in exercising their right to vote. Similarly, the caretaker prime minister, Anwaarul Haq Kakar, believed that the ‘nation had accepted the results’ and the country needed to move on. Moreover, he brushed aside international criticism of the elections as ‘not that big a deal’.

Despite the compromised nature of these polls, a PML(N)-led coalition government is the most likely—but not certain—outcome of the elections. According to the latest reports, it would be led by Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz’s younger brother who was prime minister after Khan was ousted in April 2022. But the real power will still be held behind the scenes by Nawaz Sharif. Given the fragility of the coalition, which will include smaller parties and non-PTI-leaning independents, this will be a weak government with little legitimacy. This is unfortunate given that whoever is prime minister will have to make some particularly difficult decisions on the economy, handle adroitly the country’s foreign relations, and manage a growing terrorist threat.

Pakistan is an economic mess, with 40% of the population living under the poverty line, an inflation rate that has hit 30%, a rupee whose value has halved in 10 years, and barely enough foreign exchange to cover the cost of imports for a month or so. The country avoided economic meltdown in August 2023 by securing a standby arrangement of US$3 billion with the IMF. However, this bailout runs out in March and a new one—the 24th in Pakistan’s history—will need to be negotiated. The IMF will undoubtedly demand that the government implement more austerity measures, including continuing to reduce subsidies on essential commodities. Imposing draconian economic measures on an already struggling population will not be easy, particularly given Nawaz’s lack of popular support. We can expect serious social unrest down the road.

A Shehbaz-led government will also have to deal with the growing terrorist threat, mainly but not solely from the Afghanistan-based Pakistan Taliban (TTP), which has continued to increase since the Taliban took over in neighbouring Afghanistan in August 2021. Pakistan has repeatedly demanded that the Taliban government of Afghanistan cease to support the TTP. But the Taliban isn’t about to turn on the TTP, an organisation with which it has deep ideological, operational, historical and tribal links. Kabul also knows that the Pakistani military doesn’t want to escalate this issue by pursuing the TTP unto Afghan territory. Moreover, given Pakistan’s poor fiscal position, it cannot afford another expensive military operation. Accordingly, Pakistan-Afghan relations will probably continue to be frozen, and the scourge of terrorism to fester.

This will not be well received by the leaders in Beijing who persistently press Pakistan to do more against the terrorists roaming the countryside regularly killing Chinese workers and officials working on the US$60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).  Pakistan already has some 10,000 security personnel dedicated solely to the protection of Chinese interests in Pakistan. Still, relations with China will continue on an even keel or even deepen. It was after all under Nawaz’s third stint (2013-2018), that CPEC started.

We can expect Indo-Pakistan relations to possibly improve. The personal dynamics between Nawaz and Indian PM Narendra Modi have been good in the past. Nawaz attended Modi’s 2014 inauguration and Modi visited Nawaz in Lahore in December 2015—the first visit by an Indian leader in more than a decade. But while Nawaz would probably be interested in improving relations with Delhi, it was the perception that he was warming up too much to the Indians when he was in power which critically contributed to the military orchestrating his downfall in 2017. Shehbaz, under the guidance of Nawaz, is unlikely to make the same mistake.

Despite Washington’s public criticism of Pakistan’s seriously flawed election, the Biden administration is committed to ‘strengthening its security cooperation’ with Islamabad regardless as to who eventually becomes prime minister. Pakistan continues to be a valuable regional partner, being in a unique position to monitor developments in Afghanistan. Finally, whilst Washington may have had issues with the election process, it will absolutely not miss Imran Khan, who repeatedly accused the US of having been instrumental, with the help of Pakistan’s military, in his downfall in April 2022.  Secretary Blinken’s meeting with General Asim Munir—the man who effectively runs Pakistan, in Washington only a few weeks before the elections only reinforced this common perception in Pakistan. However, given Munir’s massive miscalculation on the elections, his days may well be numbered.

How long the next prime minister will last in office is anyone’s guess, but given that no prime minister has ever completed their term in Pakistan’s 75-year history, I suspect the odds are poor that Shehbaz Sharif will break that tradition.

The threat spectrum

Planet A

This year’s UN climate conference, COP28, was the first to include a day of programming dedicated to the theme of health, relief, recovery and peace. The program provide an opportunity for health, aid and humanitarian workers and peacebuilders from various UN agencies, community-based organisations, think tanks and academic institutions to discuss how the links between climate change and conflict and how best to reflect conflict-related issues in climate-change policy.

Representatives from war-torn regions such as Gaza, Yemen, Syria and Ukraine used the event to spotlight the environmental impacts of war. Ukraine’s pavilion ran the slogan ‘ecocide’, with officials saying that 150 million tonnes of CO2, mostly from fuel and fires, had been emitted because of the invasion. They also drew attention to the degradation of nearly 30% of Ukraine’s forests caused by the war.

Addressing the nexus between conflict and climate change remains a challenging task. It’s not yet clear whether world leaders will adopt policy solutions that sufficiently ease the burden on destabilised regions. Steps they could take include prioritising climate-adaptation financing, supporting climate migrants, empowering local leadership and assisting with transboundary resource management.

Democracy watch

Protests erupted in Peru on the anniversary of a government crackdown that led to 49 civilian deaths. Allegations of corruption and elite capture have contributed to mass anti-government sentiment in the country. A November poll showed that just 83% and 82% of citizens approve of the president and the congress, respectively.

In a further blow to Peru’s fragile democracy, prosecutors allege that the country’s attorney-general, Patricia Benavides, coordinated a scheme in which lawmakers facing criminal investigations could be cleared if they agreed to appoint or dismiss certain judges. The situation is causing a political standoff amid growing unrest.

The government has declared a state of emergency through to at least 5 January. Some rights have been suspended, including rights to assembly, transit and freedom from warrantless searches, and the armed forces have been authorised to police any demonstrations.

Information operations 

Since 2020, an India-based organisation calling itself Disinfo Lab has been running a covert campaign to discredit US-based critics of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Combining factual research with unverified assertions, it alleges that US government figures, researchers, humanitarian groups, and Indian American are conspiring to undermine India.

Despite positioning itself as unbiased, it’s been revealed that Disinfo Lab was set up and is operated by an Indian intelligence officer. Under the guise of exposing anti-India disinformation, it runs a clandestine influence operation. Its materials, favoured by right-wing Indians including Hindu nationalists, have achieved global reach through dissemination by high-profile figures, including officials from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, former intelligence and military personnel, and a cabinet minister on social media platforms.

How aware these figures are of Disinfo Lab’s intelligence ties remains unclear. Disinfo Lab has denied any affiliation with government agencies, insisting it is as an independent organisation.

Follow the money

Australia will start negotiating a trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates in early 2024. The decision relates in part to the collapse of Australia’s trade talks with the European Union in October, with Canberra citing inadequate market access for its agricultural products.

Trade Minister Don Farrell emphasised the need for Australia to diversify its export markets and reduce its reliance on China. The UAE is Australia’s largest trading partner in the Middle East and offers lucrative opportunities, especially in the agricultural and industrial sectors, which currently face tariffs of up to 5%. In 2022, Australian exports to the UAE incurred $129 million in duties.

Meanwhile, China is lifting trade bans on most Australian red meat, signalling progress in easing tensions, though sanctions persist on small abattoirs and the lobster industry. China had banned imports of meat from 11 Australian abattoirs since 2020, citing cases of Covid-19 among staff and incorrectly labelled products. The government has welcomed the positive development but is continuing to urge China to lift the remaining bans.

Terror byte 

In a militant attack on Tuesday, 23 Pakistani security personnel were killed in Daraban, a remote area in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border. Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan, an affiliate of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the assault, in which six terrorists targeted a security forces’ post.

After the military’s thwarting of the initial attempt to breach the post, the attackers resorted to ramming an explosive-laden vehicle into the site, followed by a suicide bombing. The blast severely damaged a military camp building, leading to multiple casualties. Subsequent Pakistani military operations resulted in the death of at least 27 terrorists.

In response to the attack, Pakistan issued a strong demarche to Afghanistan, attributing the attack to fugitive Taliban militants based across the border. The Pakistani government demanded immediate action against the attackers, urging Afghanistan to publicly condemn the incident. The interim Afghan government has yet to respond to these demands.

Ten years after the Rana Plaza disaster, South Asia’s garment workers are still not protected

This year marked a decade since the collapse of the Rana Plaza in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which resulted in over 1,100 deaths. On the morning of 24 April 2013, workers were instructed to enter garment factories located in a building with substantial cracks and visible structural failure. It took less than 90 seconds for Rana Plaza to crumble. It was described as ‘mass industrial homicide’ at the time and survivors faced a strenuous physical and mental recovery that was compounded by extended delays in compensation from a US$30 million recovery fund—a meagre pledge from a global garment industry valued in the trillions.

As a response to international pressure, the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety were enacted between trade unions and some garment brands to ensure legally binding action on workplace safety hazards. The accord was renewed in 2021 as the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry and extended to include commitments in Pakistan.

Significantly, it establishes a legal obligation for signatory brands to sever relations with factories that refuse to adhere to safety standards following an independent inspection. The Worker Rights Consortium estimates that since 2013, this approach has identified and addressed over 130,000 safety violations, including the immediate evacuation of 50 factories primed for disaster. The accord, however, is due to expire in October of this year.

As governments strive for more resilient global supply chains, the protection of workers can’t be overstated nor ignored. It’s essential that the garment industry is pressured to renew the accord with even stronger protections.

The accord has tangibly protected workers, but it remains voluntary for employers and there are still major brands absent from its signatory list, including Myer, Levi’s, and Walmart. These companies usually claim their self-regulation processes are sufficient, despite often being considered ineffective.

The accord also doesn’t sufficiently address broader human rights issues in supply chains. In recent years, the demands of fast fashion combined with the insecurity of the Covid-19 pandemic have subjected workers to coercive conditions like withheld benefits and salaries, extensive overtime, verbal and physical threats, sexual harassment and abuse, and more.

These conditions predominantly affect women and young people, and demand responses that consider the interaction of gender, age and other factors with workplace power dynamics. The prevalence of gender-based violence in the sector was re-exposed in 2021 when a male supervisor in a H&M supplier factory was charged with the murder of a female garment worker.

While evidence of human rights violations continues to accumulate, the industry has produced scant targeted protection for garment workers in the last decade. In its Ethical Fashion Report, Baptist World Aid revealed that a decade after the disaster, none of the companies surveyed pay a living wage.

Compounding this, climate change will add to the pain of garment industry workers. Heatwaves pose an immediate health risks for workers, and may worsen gender-based violence and harassment. The industry must go beyond ‘greenwashing’ and appropriately address the human rights implications of climate change.

Additionally, climate-related displacement is likely to increase the proportion of migrant workers in the garment industry. Migrant workers are more vulnerable to human rights abuses as they lack legal protection. They suffer higher rates of debt bondage, excessive hours, wage reduction, discrimination, usually because of threats of deportation. There’s also a growing number of home-based garment workers operating in the informal economy without targeted protections or formal contracts. Most of these are women, who must also contend with restrictive gender norms, unpaid domestic labour, and inadequate housing.

The inept national governance and corruption that permitted the Rana Plaza disaster must also be addressed. It’s essential that protections for garment workers are cemented before Bangladesh’s expected graduation from least developed country status as its exit from duty-free quota schemes will alter the international labour trade with potentially dire consequences for vulnerable workers.

The wellbeing of garment workers extends beyond the remit of one accord and must be viewed as a human rights, trade, labour, environmental, governance and development issue.

A holistic approach that involves these sectors and brings together stakeholders throughout the supply chain is underexplored and utilised. Garment workers themselves deserve greater support and a comprehensive approach that’s centred on their experiences and demands.

Saheli Women, for example, is a non-profit atelier based in Rajasthan, India, that prioritises the empowerment of female workers in order to achieve sustainable community development.

Its founder, Madhu Vaishnav, is proud to describe the model as her ‘gift to the world’. She emphasises that business, development and sustainability do not operate in silos, and that ‘women are the main pillar of sustainability, who need to be involved in the process at every level’.

“We empower one woman [in her work], and this one woman will go back and empower the entire family.”

Integrating grassroots sustainable development like this with a human rights approach throughout the supply chain is possible. And to end the ongoing exploitation and endangerment of the people who make our clothes, it’s necessary. A decade on from the Rana Plaza disaster, it’s time to take meaningful action.

UN warns of risk of terrorism from Afghanistan

A United Nations report released on 1 June provides a stark warning about the danger of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan and for the region and beyond. It claims that the ethnic Pashtun Taliban have not only instituted a reign of terror, targeting especially Afghan women and girls as well as the non-Pashtun population, but also brazenly accommodated al-Qaeda and other terror groups. The warning deserves urgent attention if the world is to circumvent another wave of terrorism arising from Afghanistan directly or indirectly.

The Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team’s report to the UN Security Council paints a very alarming picture of the Taliban. In assessing the group’s rule since its return to power in August 2021, the report states: ‘The Taliban, in power as the de facto authorities in Afghanistan under Hibatullah Akhundzada, have reverted to the exclusionary, Pashtun-centred, autocratic policies of the Taliban administration of the late 1990s.’ And, it says, there’s ‘little prospect of change in the near to medium term’.

The report further explains: ‘The link between the Taliban and both Al-Qaida and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) remains strong and symbiotic. A range of terrorist groups have greater freedom of manoeuvre under the Taliban de facto authorities. They are making good use of this, and the threat of terrorism is rising in both Afghanistan and the region … the Taliban have not delivered on the counter-terrorism provisions under the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the United States of America and the Taliban.’

Eyewitness accounts from Afghanistan reveal that the Taliban have also lately embarked on a policy of ‘internal imperialism’ to subordinate and dilute the non-Pashtun minorities who predominantly populate northern, central and western Afghanistan. This policy, which was once pursued by one of Afghanistan’s Pashtunist rulers, Abdul Rahman Khan (1882–1901), to unite Afghanistan’s mosaic population under the ethnic and political supremacy of the Pashtuns as the largest minority, has involved the transfer of hundreds of armed Pashtun TTP fighters into non-Pashtun areas. A Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, who, along with some Taliban leaders, has repeatedly denied the existence of al-Qaeda and downplayed any threat emanating from Afghanistan, claims that they are only resettling Pakistani refugees, implying as a humanitarian act. Yet his assertion doesn’t stand up to the facts on the ground.

The critical point is that the Taliban would not be able to do what they’re doing without the help of their longstanding patron, Pakistan. Not surprisingly, the influence of Pakistan’s military and powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which operates as a ‘government within a government’, is all evident in the Taliban’s governance and operations. A proxy takeover of Afghanistan has been Islamabad’s long-term project. It goes back to the military dictatorship of Muhammad Zia ul-Haq (1977–1988), who was killed during the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in a mysterious air crash, together with the US ambassador to Pakistan. While backed lavishly with financial, economic and military aid by the Ronald Reagan administration in a shared interest to contain the spread of Soviet communism from Afghanistan, General Zia entrusted ISI with the conduct of Pakistan’s Afghanistan and Kashmir policy in 1982. In relation to Afghanistan, his goal was to turn the country into ‘strategic depth’ against Pakistan’s arch regional foe, India.

The Pakistani military and ISI never relented on that policy. Defying US pressure during the two-decade-long US intervention in Afghanistan, they maintained their patronage of the Taliban and their affiliates, including the Haqqani network. Since the Taliban’s resumption of power, Pakistan has extensively aided their de facto government in administrative, logistic, technical and security terms. It has also lobbied the international community in support of engaging the Taliban’s authorities.

Islamabad seems to have wanted to reap rewards from having the Taliban in power in pursuit of three main objectives. The first is to benefit from the natural resources of the country and economically integrate it into Pakistan. It has already started importing tonnes of quality Afghan coal well below world prices, with more exploitative projects underway. The second is to facilitate the relocation of TTP fighters from Pakistan into Afghanistan and thereby remove an insurgent force that has troubled the very politically, financially and economically fragile Pakistan for so long. The third objective is to end once and for all the long-running Afghanistan–Pakistan border dispute. In the past, several Afghan governments called for the creation of an allied independent Pashtunistan entity out of the restless Pakhtunkhwa province and part of Baluchistan province, which would also enable landlocked Afghanistan to gain direct access to international waters.

Pakistan’s approach is extremely risky, and it could backfire. Greater integration between 40 million Pakistani Pashtuns and their close to 20 million Afghan kindred carries the potential of generating more space for extremist groups and fuelling ethnic-based Pashtun nationalism to cause more trouble for Pakistan. But this is a risk that Pakistani authorities appear to have viewed as manageable.

Given the UN warnings and the policies pursued by the Taliban and their Pakistani patrons, it is imperative that other regional actors, the Muslim domain and world powers wake up to the fact that Afghanistan has once again become a hotbed for extremism. Failure to act will increase not just the suffering of the Afghan people, but also the threat to regional and global security.

South Asia’s looming water war

More than six decades ago, the world’s most generous water-sharing pact was concluded. Under the Indus Waters Treaty, upstream India left the lion’s share of the waters from the subcontinent’s six-river Indus system for downstream Pakistan. But repeated Pakistani efforts to use the treaty to disrupt India’s efforts to safeguard its own water security have driven India to rethink its largesse.

Last month, India issued notice to Pakistan that it intends to negotiate new terms for the treaty. In its current form, the treaty permits the World Bank to refer any India–Pakistan disagreement to either a neutral international expert or a court of arbitration in The Hague. But India contends that Pakistan, with its repeated bids for international intercession to block modestly sized Indian hydropower projects over technical objections, has abused and even breached the treaty’s dispute-settlement provisions.

India’s frustration intensified last October when the World Bank appointed both a neutral expert and a court of arbitration, under two separate processes, to resolve differences with Pakistan over India’s Kishenganga and Ratle hydroelectric projects in Jammu and Kashmir. India claims that the arbitral court proceedings, which began two days after it issued its notice to Pakistan, contravene the treaty, so it is boycotting them. The World Bank, for its part, has acknowledged that ‘carrying out the two processes concurrently poses practical and legal challenges’.

India’s renegotiation plan—which focuses on barring third parties from intervening in bilateral disputes under the treaty—appears to be a direct response to these developments. But, as India well knows, Pakistan is highly unlikely to agree to negotiations. This suggests that India’s recent notice to Pakistan is just its opening gambit. The next step may well be an attempt to force Pakistan’s hand on its long-term sponsorship of cross-border terrorism.

This has been coming for some time. Six years ago, after an attack by Pakistan-based terrorists on the Indian military in Jammu and Kashmir killed 19 troops, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared, ‘Blood and water cannot flow together.’ In a sense, his statement got to the heart of the treaty, which India pursued precisely to improve relations with Pakistan and avoid bloodshed on the subcontinent.

When the treaty was signed in 1960, Sino-Indian tensions were high, so India effectively attempted to trade water for peace with its other large neighbour, Pakistan. The treaty—under which India keeps less than 20% of the total basin waters—is the only international water agreement embodying the doctrine of restricted sovereignty, with the upstream country agreeing to forgo significant use of a river system for the benefit of its downstream counterpart.

But the deal appeared only to whet Pakistan’s appetite for the Indian-administered region of Jammu and Kashmir, through which the largest three rivers of the Indus system flow. Five years later, in 1965, Pakistan launched a surprise war—the second conflict between the two countries over the region’s status.

All the while, the treaty guaranteed to Pakistan a huge share of Jammu and Kashmir’s water—the region’s main natural resource. This hampered economic development, led to chronic electricity shortages, and fuelled popular frustration in that territory. And when India attempted to address the region’s energy crunch by building run-of-the-river hydropower plants—which are permitted by the treaty, and would not materially alter transboundary water flows—Pakistan did everything it could to block progress.

Ironically, Pakistani officials and lawmakers have sometimes issued their own calls to renegotiate the treaty. In 2016, for example, the Pakistani Senate passed a resolution to ‘revisit’ the treaty and ‘make new provisions’ that favoured Pakistan. But far from advancing Pakistan’s interests, such actions have merely reminded the Indian public that, at a time of growing water stress, the treaty is an albatross around their country’s neck.

To be sure, Pakistan has plenty of its own water-related problems. A deep divide has emerged between downriver provinces and the upriver Punjab province, which appropriates the bulk of the Indus waters to sustain its profligate agricultural practices. Punjab’s water diversion—aided by large China-backed dams in the Pakistani portion of Kashmir, including the massive Diamer Bhasha Dam—is turning the Indus Delta into a saline marsh, which represents a major ecological disaster.

But none of this is the fault of the treaty, which is clearly in Pakistan’s interest to safeguard. To do that, Pakistan must stop focusing only on its treaty-related rights, while neglecting its responsibilities. This includes rethinking the use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy—a tactic that runs counter to the spirit of the treaty and threatens to drive India unilaterally to withdraw from it.

Such action would not cause river flows to Pakistan suddenly to stop, as India lacks the kind of hydro infrastructure this would require, and has no plans to change that. But it would enable India to pursue reasonable hydro projects without dam reservoirs, regardless of Pakistani objections. More fundamentally, it would sever a crucial diplomatic thread between India and Pakistan.

For any treaty to survive, the advantages it confers on all parties must outweigh the duties and responsibilities it imposes. The Indus Waters Treaty is nowhere near meeting that standard for India, which has so far accrued no tangible benefits from it. What has been called the ‘world’s most successful water treaty’ has overwhelmingly benefited Pakistan, which has a powerful incentive to abandon its combative approach and embrace the compromise and cooperation needed to save it.

Policy, Guns and Money: Non-proliferation, infantry fighting vehicles, Pakistan floods and Labor’s defence budget

Moscow’s recent claims that Kyiv is planning to use a dirty-bomb have been condemned as ‘transparently false’ by France, the UK and the US. Given the renewed focus on nuclear threats, ASPI’s Alex Bristow asks Kelsey Hartigan, deputy director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Project on Nuclear Issues, about progress on non-proliferation issues, risk reduction and the links between integrated deterrence and non-proliferation.

Phase 3 of the Defence Department’s Land 400 project and the suitability of infantry fighting vehicles to the Australian Defence Force’s future needs are hotly contested. Marcus Hellyer, ASPI’s senior analyst for defence economics and capability, speaks to Albert Palazzo, adjunct professor at UNSW Canberra, about the ADF’s proposed acquisition of the vehicles and whether the scenarios in which they might be deployed merit such an expensive purchase, something Palazzo wrote about his recent ASPI report, Deciding the future: the Australian Army and the infantry fighting vehicle.

Pakistan recently experienced its worst floods on record, with more than nine million people displaced and around two million homes destroyed. ASPI’s Will Leben speaks with Pakistan’s high commissioner to Australia, Zahid Hafeez Chaudri, about the impacts and long-term threats of climate change for Pakistan, the role of the military in disaster response, and climate compensation.

Last week, the new Labor government delivered its first federal budget. ASPI’s Marcus Hellyer explains why the government has kept its defence powder dry, setting the scene for some difficult decisions in the first half of next year.

The struggle for Pakistan

Among all the nuclear-armed states, Pakistan is the most fragile. The country keeps lurching from one crisis to another. The latest arises from the election commission’s banning of the former but popular Prime Minister Imran Khan from holding public office. Khan has vowed to fight the ban to the bitter end, putting him at odds with Pakistan’s powerful military whose favour he has lost. This power struggle may change Pakistan’s political paradigm.

Khan was deposed last April in a parliamentary vote of no confidence by a coalition of the Pakistan Democratic Movement, formed by a number of right and centre-left parties in 2020 and led by Shehbaz Sharif (a former chief minister of Punjab province and brother of ex–prime minister Nawaz Sharif). After some of the coalition members of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party defected to the opposition, Khan lost his majority.

He has blamed his loss of power on a US-led conspiracy against him because of his independent foreign policy and for not following Washington on regional and international issues. While  increasingly sounding critical of the US and holding Washington responsible for the plight of Afghanistan under the Pakistan-backed Taliban rule, he has not substantiated his claim. Reportedly, the main reason for Khan’s downfall was that his relations fractured with the military over the appointment of the head of the military intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, in October 2021.

The military has ruled Pakistan directly and indirectly for most of its existence since the country’s creation in 1947, with a pervasive role in every aspect of the nation’s life. Irrespective of one’s criticisms, the military has also been instrumental in holding together Pakistan’s five disparate national groups—the Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis, Pathans (whose kindred are called Pashtuns on the Afghanistan side of the border) and Muhajirs (those who migrated from British India during partition). In popular rallies, the opposition claims that Khan has maligned state institutions, including the judiciary and the military.

The latest political upheaval besetting Pakistan comes against the backdrop of deep-seated conditions of instability. It reflects the plight of a country where no elected prime minister has ever completed a full term and where economic, financial and social decline; underclass poverty; pervasive corruption; and national fragmentation have grown to be the order of the day. Extreme political Islamism has not wielded much political power, but it has been a disruptive and costly player, as embodied in such groups as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, whose relations with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban as a creature of Pakistan’s military (or, more specifically, ISI) must not be underestimated.

Pakistan’s founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had intended Sunni Islam and the Westminster system of governance to define Pakistan’s national identity and cohesion, but that was not to be. The military has used both institutions, though in the context of longstanding Indo-Pakistan hostilities, to cement a pivotal role in Pakistan’s domestic and foreign affairs. It has harvested whatever ideologically and geopolitically possible to enforce Pakistan’s ambitions in Afghanistan and close ties with oil-rich Saudi Arabia, as well as with China and the United States for strategic reasons when opportune.

The military has historically benefited from Saudi petrodollar aid and counted on China’s economic and military support in a common cause against India. In addition, from the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and then the US intervention in that country in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks, it enjoyed enormous American financial and military aid by claiming to be on the side of Washington in the ‘war on terror’, though at the same time it continued to back the Taliban as the force fighting American and allied troops in Afghanistan. To maintain Washington’s aid flow, it harboured the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, next to its military academy in Abbottabad near Islamabad until he was discovered and killed by the US in a special operation in total secrecy from Pakistani authorities in 2011.

However, the military’s privileged entrenchment in and control of Pakistan are now challenged by Khan with unsurpassed popularity. The power struggle is going to be a test of will on both sides, but it’s eventuating at a time when there are rumours of growing tensions within the military itself. According to some Pakistani analysts, a split is brewing in the higher echelons of the military between those who think that it has gone too far in its treatment of Khan and those who are still determined to maintain control over the Pakistani state.

A majority of Pakistanis are now more concerned about the security of their country than ever before. A downturn in the military’s cohesion and national chaos and fragmentation in a nuclear-armed state carries dangerously unpredictable risks, unless Pakistan is financially and economically bailed out and a fair and free general election is held sooner rather than later.

Pakistan’s foreign policy reset hits a dead end

When Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government fell in a vote of no confidence in April, his detractors in the power elite claimed that the change of government would lead to improved ties with the world and an easing of the country’s economic crisis.

Khan, they said, had ruined Pakistan’s relations with the West with steps like an ill-timed visit to Russia that coincided with the invasion of Ukraine. They also alleged that his government had harmed ties with long-time ally China, including by levelling accusations of corruption in projects that were part of the Belt and Road Initiative–linked China–Pakistan Economic Corridor.

But the foreign policy reset pursued by the new coalition government and the Pakistan Army, which had backed Khan until relations soured late last year, has yielded few tangible dividends. Three months after Khan’s ouster, no country has come to offer Pakistan extraordinary support as inflation soars and the country faces a balance-of-payments crisis. In fact, Pakistan’s relations with long-time partner China appear to be facing a stress test.

In early April, the powerful Pakistan Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa publicly suggested at a security forum in Islamabad that Pakistan had been pushed into dependence on China. General Bajwa’s inartful messaging came as the army had been signalling for some time the need to rebalance relations with China and America.

And then, in late April, a terrorist attack took the lives of Chinese nationals in the port city of Karachi. Beijing, losing confidence in Islamabad’s ability to secure Chinese nationals, has since requested permission to deploy Chinese private security contractors to Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Pakistani commentators tied to the ruling coalition have fostered the impression that concessions to the United States—like drone basing or overflight rights—could be exchanged for economic relief measures. But Pakistan’s attempted rebalancing to the West has done little in this regard.

The International Monetary Fund continues to drive a hard bargain, insisting that Islamabad raise electricity and fuel prices, ramp up tax collection and make sizeable budget cuts. While the US may desire a counterterrorism presence in the region, its withdrawal from Afghanistan has eliminated the main source of leverage Pakistan had over it: the lines of communication to supply American and coalition forces.

There is simply little appetite among Pakistan’s bilateral and multilateral partners to continue to subsidise the Pakistani elite’s reckless macroeconomic policies. In fact, Pakistan’s economic distress and its greylisting by the Financial Action Task Force have proved the efficacy of economic compellence.

The West’s leveraging of Pakistan’s economic precarity has not only forced Islamabad to take action against leaders of groups like Lashkar-e Taiba, but also constrained its ability to defy the West strategically. For example, fear of US secondary sanctions is one reason why the country’s commercial and governmental institutions are afraid to source discounted Russian fuel. In contrast, India has ramped up imports of Russian oil, with no repercussions from the West.

America’s deference to India reflects its perceptions of New Delhi’s importance to its efforts to counter Beijing in the Asia–Pacific region. This imposes a ceiling on cooperation with Islamabad, limiting it to the non-strategic domain. Pakistan and the US can cooperate in areas like climate change. And this may satisfy Pakistani interlocutors keen on building their image at home with photo-ops with Western counterparts. But proximity to America may also be a political liability in Pakistan.

In the early decades of the Cold War, prominent American visitors, including First Lady Jackie Kennedy, were greeted with tremendous enthusiasm by the Pakistani public. Today, however, anti-US sentiment is rife in Pakistan, and it may be a factor in Pakistani electoral politics. Most Pakistanis, according to a survey by Gallup Pakistan, are now ‘angry’ about the removal of Khan as prime minister, and close to a majority believe his claims that his downfall was due to an American ‘regime change’ campaign.

Pakistan’s foreign policy is at a crossroads. Its power elite rightly recognise the need to avoid getting caught up in the US–China power struggle. And it has taken meaningful action against international terrorist groups based in the country. But deep economic and governance reforms at home are what will ultimately increase foreign direct investment, shape mutually beneficial trade partnerships, drive sustained and equitable economic growth, and increase its national power.

The habit among the Pakistani elite of bartering strategic and security concesssions to foreign powers for modest economic aid will have little impact in a country as large as Pakistan. And, as Pakistan’s recent history has shown, this approach is likely to result in a domestic backlash that Pakistani rulers will invariably attempt to quell through political repression—denying the country the very stability it needs in order to thrive.