(Current Affairs) International Events | September: 2016

International Events

US supports India’s aid in Afghanistan

  • The U.S. is in favour of India providing greater security assistance to Afghanistan.
  • The gift of four MI-25 attack helicopters by India to Afghanistan was specially cited by the U.S. military commander while flagging the crucial role India is playing in the war-torn country.
  • The tremendous cooperation India has made in the human capital of Afghan security forces is the one contribution that is going to be enduring.
  • He said efforts were under way to create a facility in Afghanistan for servicing Russian made military equipment such as the MI-25 helicopters they got from India.
  • The fight against Taliban, he said, is making progress. “Last year, Afghan forces suffered over 5,000 deaths. But by the end of the year, they were able to take control of all major population centres.
  • After President Obama gave authority to attack the IS in January this year, U.S. forces have been aggressively targeting them.

Difference between Russia and Ukraine on the rise again

  • Ukraine’s President put his Army on combat alert along the country’s de facto borders with Crimea as a war of words between Russia and Ukraine threatened to heat up the largely frozen conflict over the Black Sea peninsula.
  • Ukrainian President PetroPoroshenko issued the order after Moscow accused his country of sending in “saboteurs” to carry out attacks in Crimea.
  • Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 following a hastily called referendum, a move that sparked fighting between Russia-backed separatists and government forces in eastern Ukraine.
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin upped the ante when he directly accused the Ukrainian government of plotting the attacks and called a meeting of the country’s top brass to discuss boosting security in Crimea.
  • Peace talks in the Belarusian capital of Minsk in 2015 helped ease the fighting but did not solve the crisis.
  • While the separatists never allowed Ukrainian forces to regain control of the border, Ukraine has also not adopted legislation to provide broad autonomy to these territories.

China says India can still get NSG membership

  • As Chinese Foreign Minister began his three-day India visit from Goa, a commentary in the state-run Xinhua news agency stated that the door is not shut on India’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
  • The write-up pointed out that “so far, there is no precedent for a nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatory to become an NSG member”.
  • Any future discussions need to be based on safeguarding an international nuclear non-proliferation mechanism, in which India itself has a huge stake.”
  • Without stating that a quid pro quo could be in the offing, the article followed its observations on India’s stalled bid for the NSG with an elaboration of the South China Sea issue.
  • China insists on a direct dialogue among the disputants on the South China Sea issue.

India- China talks about India’s entry into NSG

  • India on Saturday offered a new “mechanism” of talks to China on the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) issue.
  • External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj also expressed concern to the visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi about the China Pakistan Economic Corridor.
  • The proposed talks featuring the Directors-General on disarmament issues on both sides would be a new track to convince China about India’s needs to be integrated into the global nuclear technology market.
  • External Affairs Minister outlined importance of meeting our clean energy goals in the context of COP-21. Offered to discuss any technical issues China may have. It was agreed that the DGs of Disarmament of the two countries would meet soon.
  • The proposal for a separate track for discussion on nuclear issues came weeks after India failed to get into the NSG during the June 23-24 plenary of the organisation in Seoul.
  • India had said “only one country” (indirectly referring to China) had raised a procedural objection to India’s inclusion into the NSG.
  • China had opposed India’s candidature saying that its application for membership lacked merit as India had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
  • So far, India and China maintained the mechanism of bilateral dialogue at the level of Special Representatives (SR), which covers comprehensive diplomatic and strategic affairs.
  • Ms. Swaraj also “urged” China to reconsider its opposition to India’s UN-level campaign to blacklist Pakistan-based terror mastermind Masood Azhar, who is wanted for his role in multiple terror attacks including in Pathankot.
  • China had placed a “technical hold” or a diplomatic note of opposition to India’s campaign to include Azhar on the list of “globally designated terrorists”.
  • The “technical hold” will turn into a formal blockade in early September unless China cooperates.

World’s first quantum communication satellite to be launched by China

  • China is set to launch the world’s first quantum communication satellite which boasts of hack-proof ultra high security features to prevent wiretapping and intercepts.
  • If the satellite works well, it will pave the way to a hack-proof communication system, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. It will launch the satellite in a matter of days.
  • In July 2015, a quantum-computing lab jointly established by Chinese Academy of Science and Chinese Internet giant Alibaba opened in Shanghai.

Stricter enforcement of environmental standards in China

  • China will use the stricter enforcement of environmental standards as well as tougher credit controls to help fight against overcapacity in key industrial sectors, the government said.
  • The world's second-largest economy has identified overcapacity as one of its key challenges and it has already pledged mass closures in the steel and coal sectors, but it has so far fallen behind on its targets.
  • Govt would “normalize the stricter implementation and enforcement of mandatory standards” to tackle overcapacity in sectors such as steel.
  • Firms that fail to comply with new energy efficiency targets would be given six months to rectify and would be closed if they fail to make progress.

Massive human rights violation in Balochistan for decades

  • Prime Minister Modi’s reference to Balochistan in his Independence Day speech signals an aggressive shift in India’s approach towards Pakistan.
  • Mr. Modi said: “The time has come for Pakistan to answer the world, on atrocities against people in Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.”
  • The Indian strategy could be drawing global attention towards one of the oldest internal problems faced by Pakistan.
  • Balochistan, home to over 13 million people, mostly Balochis, is Pakistan’s largest but least developed province. Similar to Kashmir’s, the roots of the conflict go back to Independence.
  • When Pakistan was born in 1947, the rulers of the Khanate of Kalat, a princely state under the British and part of today’s Balochistan, refused to join the new nation. Pakistan sent troops in March 1948 to annex the territory.
  • After the 1948 rebellion was put down, crisis erupt- ed in 1958. In 1962-63 and1973-77, Baloch nationalists mounted violent campaigns for independence from Pakistan.
  • But tensions started building up after General Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999. When the military started building new cantonments in Balochistan, radical nationalist factions saw it as a bid by the Army to tighten control over the region.
  • The fifth wave of insurgency that broke out in this context is still on. The province has several separatist groups, the strongest being the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), designated as a terrorist group by Pakistan.
  • Balochi nationalists accuse Islamabad of deliberately keeping the mineralrich province poor, while Pakistan’s rulers say it is the insurgency that has slowed down the pace of development.
  • But a bigger allegation Pakistan is facing, something which the Prime Minister tried to highlight in his speech, is the large-scale human rights violations, both by the Army and the militants.
  • Every time there is unrest in the region, the Army uses brute force to retain order. Even the Air Force was used against the civilian population many times. The Pakistani atrocities had attracted international condemnation.
  • The province now holds greater importance in Pakistan’s grand economic and geopolitical strategies.
  • It is one of the important locations in the economic corridor China has proposed to build at an investment of $46 billion linking the deepwater port of Gwadar with the city of Kashgar, a trading hub in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang.
  • The much publicised Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline is planned to run through Balochistan.

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