India - Nepal:  Ties Looking Better

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India - Nepal:  Ties Looking Better

Back to back visit by Prime Ministers of Indian and Nepal, writes Manjeev Singh Puri (former Ambassador to Nepal) “have the potential of swinging India-Nepal ties in the upward direction in the near future…..”

 

Significance of PM Modi’s visit

The visit was an “important geopolitical signal, given the Chinese push to assert a certain Buddhist identity of theirs, including through helping build an international airport at Bhairawa, near Lumbini…..”

Geo-politics apart, five of the six agreements exchanged at Lumbini after bilateral talks between the two PMs pertained to education and strengthening of cultural ties between the two countries.

The sixth was in the critical area of hydropower cooperation, allotting Arun 4, a 679-MW project, to Shimla-based SJVNL, which is already building the 900-MW Arun 3 hydropower project in Nepal. Given the growing global movement away from fossil fuels, Puri writes “Nepal and India need to energise their hydropower cooperation for mutual and global benefits, with game-changing implications for Nepal’s economy.”

 

Nepali politicians play the China and anti-India card

India-Nepal ties tend to oscillate, “given the propensity of Nepali politicians to beat the drum of nationalism, which in Nepal is essentially anti-India identity politics. This was particularly the case when KP Sharma Oli was the PM. He amended the constitution, incorporating some Indian territory in Uttarakhand in Nepal….” The point to be not is that “nearly the entire Parliament in Nepal, including the current PM, Sher Bahadur Deuba, who was then Leader of the Opposition, voted in favour of the amendment.

“Nepali politicians also unhesitatingly play the Chinese card, which, given the vastly increased Chinese financial clout, has created a seriously challenging political space for India in Nepal in recent years……

“And then, there is the growing and noticeable influence of the West in Nepal, including in the political sphere. Systematically, this tryst of Nepal with globalisation can only have challenging implications for India in time.”

Be that as it may, Puri writes “the general feeling in India is that a government led by Deuba’s Nepali Congress is better for India-Nepal ties, given its democratic traditions and ties with Indian political leaders. Keeping with the times, the Prime Minister burnished these links by visiting the BJP headquarters while in Delhi. This was, in all probability, a first by any Head of State/Government on an official visit to Delhi. He also visited Benaras, the city with abiding ties to Nepal in the cultural, educational and religious spheres, but, more importantly, being Modi’s parliamentary constituency…..”

Significantly, Nepal will see elections in 2022 at all three levels — local, provincial and federal. India will need to carefully watch development leading to the events as well as the outcomes.

 

 

 

 

Afghanistan: Taliban’s Pakistan Sanctuaries Defeated the Soviets and the US - Lessons for India

Two weeks ago, the United States Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) issued the latest in a series of reports, explaining just how the US put together over two decades at a cost of $88 billion  imploded within weeks last year as the Taliban took over. Among other things, the reports have blamed President Joe Biden’s morally sapping decision to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2021, the dependence on technologies Afghan forces could not maintain, and poor decisions on leadership and tactics.

The SIGAR reports are a model of honest introspection and careful study. The most important issue, though, is missing, writes Praveen SwamI (National Security Editor, ThePrint): “the United States’ failure to destroy the Taliban’s sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan.”

“Long ago,” Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko lamented  at the 1986 meeting of the Politburo where its leaders concluded the war was lost, “we spoke on the fact that it is necessary to close off the border of Afghanistan with Pakistan and Iran….Experience has shown that we were unable to do this”. The US also failed to do so and lost.

Lessons for India: There are important lessons there for all militaries fighting insurgencies with transborder bases—India is among them, writes Swami.

“The United States, unlike the Soviet Union, could have used its vast coercive and economic resources to compel Pakistan to shut down the Taliban’s transborder sanctuaries. It chose not to, believing its relationship with Islamabad was of more strategic value than the war-torn country it chose to abandon. The wisdom of that choice will, in time, reveal itself.”


All Neighbours Article