From Volume 37, Issue 38 of EIR Online, Published Oct. 1, 2010
Asia News Digest

British-Saudi Operations Target Kashmir

Sept. 21 (EIRNS)—Since early Summer, violence in Kashmir has claimed almost 100 lives. On the one hand, the anti-India population—all are Muslims at this point—have organized themselves to defy all the writs of the New Delhi government. On the other, New Delhi has failed miserably on two counts: it failed to bring the dissidents to the negotiating table and, instead, killed demonstrators. The blame lies fair and square with Indian Premier Manmohan Singh, who lives in a world of his own, where politics and economics are two different categories, and he considers politics to be for intellectually inferior people.

The dissidents are worked up by the British and the Saudis, who have stepped up their operations within Pakistan. The British want to separate Kashmir from both Pakistan and India, while the Saudis use the same British operators to spread Wahhabism in that part of Pakistan. It is the Wahhabis who are ready to give their lives fighting "Hindu India."

In addition, the jihadis have been boosted by their understanding that the Americans have been defeated in Afghanistan, through their efforts. They believe that a separate land can be carved out from Pakistan and India, in Kashmir. They have full support from the Saudi promoters of Wahhabism and the British, who want to have a regime serving the empire's interest, wearing a different garb, against China, India, and Pakistan, and at a stone's throw from Central Asia and Russia.

The solution lies in developing a clear understanding between India and Pakistan, in cooperation with regional forces, such as China and Central Asia.

Tajikistan in British-Saudi Drug Runners' Crosshairs

Sept. 21 (EIRNS)—Forty Tajik soldiers were killed on Sept. 19 in an ambush. Tajikistan's government said that foreign Islamist militants, including mercenaries from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Chechnya, were responsible for the ambush in the Rasht valley, and also blamed warlords with whom the government in Dushanbe had fought a civil war in the 1990s. The ambushed soldiers were part of a 75-man convoy moving through the Rasht Valley, an area known as a haven for Islamist insurgents. The soldiers were searching for members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), who escaped in a mass prison-break in Dushanbe on Aug. 25.

Novosti news agency today cited Russian anti-drug agency chief Viktor Ivanov, referring to the Rasht valley ambush, saying that the terrorist groups not only feed on drug trafficking, but are actually controlling it. Tajikistan lies north of Afghanistan, and is a key corridor through which huge amounts of opium and heroin move into Russia, addicting hundreds of thousands of youth and financing anti-Russia insurgent groups operating in Chechnya, North Ossetia, and Ingushetia, among other places.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a terrorist group that operates in most of the Central Asian republics, is financed by Saudi Arabia, and its members are trained with various terrorist groups based in Pakistan's tribal areas. The IMU works hand-in-glove with the London-based Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), preachers of the orthodox Wahhabi version of orthodox Islam, the state religion of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Both HuT and IMU seek to establish an Islamic caliphate in Central Asia, and reports indicate that the IMU terrorists recruit exclusively from the "peace-loving" preachers of the HuT.

The attempt to destabilize Tajikistan, and the entirety of Central Asia in the process, is a British-Saudi move to further complicate the Afghan situation and threaten Russia. Since Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to its south, the IMU/HuT-led destabilization will provide the British-Saudi-led terrorists a base in northern Afghanistan, where insurgency against the foreign troops is still nominal.

India-France Joint Venture for Nuclear Power Plants

Sept. 24 (EIRNS)—The Secretary of India's Bharat Heavy Electricals, Bhawani Singh Meena, announced on Sept. 24 that the Indian companies Bharat Heavy Electricals and Nuclear Power Corporation of India (both state-owned), have agreed to set up a joint venture with France's Alstom to supply nuclear power plants. The plants will be supplied with the non-reactor equipment, such as the steam generation and supply systems, containment buildings, and power distribution systems. Alstom is a global major involved with manufacture of power equipment.

In a nuclear power plant, the cost of the nuclear reactor itself is about 30% of the overall cost. The rest is in the areas where this joint venture will contribute. Moreover, the construction time of a nuclear power plant diminishes significantly if there is another major supplier involved in the non-reactor supply area. Having a single supplier, for both the reactor and all non-reactor system, causes delay.

The investment details are being worked out, Meena said, adding that the joint venture was conceived a couple of years ago, but the Indian government was awaiting the passage of a nuclear liability bill for the joint venture to take off. Currently, nuclear power plants can be set up only by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India.

'Phenomenal' Scale of Afghan Opium Traffic

Sept. 19 (EIRNS)—A three-day special joint anti-narcotics operation by the anti-drug services of Russia, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan netted a record-breaking amount of illegal drugs and dope runners, news services reported. The amounts seized in the Channel 2010 anti-drug program, which ended Sept. 16, are minuscule compared to the scope of the drug-running operations, but demonstrate the scale of the drug scourge in Central Asia and Russia.

The Russian Federal Drug Service (FKSN) announced that the anti-drug services seized 110 pounds kilograms of heroin, nearly the same amount of hashish, and 1.2 tons of marijuana. Tajikistan seized over 121 pounds of raw opium.

The results of the operation provide convincing evidence that "the phenomenal scale and intensity of drug trafficking from Afghanistan to Russia is still continuing," the Tajik news service Avesta.tj quoted Russian Federal Service for Drug Control Minister Viktor Ivanov, a leading advocate of using military operations, including eradication, against the Afghan opium traffic.

Mahathir Renews Assault on Global Speculation

Sept. 20 (EIRNS)—Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the man who stood up to George Soros and the IMF to clamp currency controls on the Malaysian ringgit in 1998 during the speculative raid on the Asian currencies, has responded to the current Malaysian government's plan to lift those currency controls with a (typically) pointed and deadly accurate attack on speculators and the current global financial structure. Dr. Mahathir wrote in his daily blog (perhaps the most read publication in Malaysia):

"The present financial crisis in the world is due to the abuse of regulations in the financial market. No positive steps have been taken so far to regulate it. Certainly currency trading remains unregulated and selective. The latest report says that every day currency trading is valued at $4 trillion, equal to the total output of Germany in one year. Whereas Germany's $4 trillion yearly output creates millions of jobs, businesses big and small, and much trade, the $4 trillion a day currency trade creates practically no jobs, businesses or trade. Of course the currency traders make tons of money. In the process we know that they can cause a repeat of the crisis faced by the world when they lose. Why should the world allow such greedy people to put the world at risk?

"If we fully free our ringgit, the risk of being attacked by currency traders will once again be faced by us. Do we really want to have the financial crisis once again? So I hope the government will explain why it wants the ringgit to be traded again. I hope it is not because we want to be good boys who will always do what we are told to do."

All rights reserved © 2010 EIRNS