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  • Balochistan Liberation Army launches fresh attack on Chinese interests in Gwadar
    Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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    • US geopolitical interests offer Iran sanctions loophole amid mounting tension | TTWMES | May 21 2019

      The Indian-backed Iranian port of Chabahar has emerged as a major loophole in a tightening military and economic noose and ever harsher US sanctions that President Donald J. Trump, reluctant to be sucked into yet another war, sees as the best way to either force Tehran to its knees or achieve regime change.

      Alice Wells, the State Department’s assistant secretary for South and Central Asia, said during a meeting with Afghan foreign minister Salahuddin Rabbani that Chabahar had been exempted at Afghanistan’s request.

      The State Department said earlier that the exemption was granted because it was related to “reconstruction assistance and economic development for Afghanistan, which includes the development and operation of Chabahar Port.”

      US officials said privately that the exemption was also a nod to India that sees Chabahar as vital for the expansion of its trade with Afghanistan and Central Asian republics.

      They said it was moreover an anti-dote to the Chinese backed port of Gwadar just 70 kilometres down the Arabian Sea coast in the troubled neighbouring Pakistani province of Balochistan.

      That may be a long shot, certainly as long as India like much of the rest of the world is restricted by the US sanctions in its economic and commercial dealings with Iran.

      The exemption comes however as Chinese security concerns in Balochistan as well as Pakistan at large are mounting.

      China’s massive US$45 billion plus Belt and Road-related infrastructure investment in Pakistan with Gwadar and Balochistan at its core has become a prime target for nationalist insurgents that has officials in Beijing worried. It has also reinforced long-standing doubts in some circles in Beijing about the viability of the project.

      Dubbed the China Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC, China sees the project, involving a network of roads, railways and pipelines that would link Gwadar to China’s troubled north-western province of Xinjiang as a key economic component of its brutal effort to Sincize the strategic region’s Turkic Muslim population.

      “China, you came here (Balochistan) without our consent, supported our enemies, helped the Pakistani military in wiping our villages. But now it’s our time… Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) guarantees you that CPEC will fail miserably on the Baloch land. Balochistan will be a graveyard for your expansionist motives,” a commander of the BLA’s Majeed Brigade said in a video message released a week after militants stormed a hilltop, highly secured luxury hotel in Gwadar, killing five people.

      The BLA claimed a month earlier responsibility for an attack on a convoy on a highway leading out of Gwadar in which 14 Pakistani military personnel died and an assault last year on the Chinese consulate in Karachi.

      The attacks and threats have prompted Chinese sceptics of China’s massive investment in Pakistan to express their doubts more publicly.

      “Gwadar wants to be in the shipping business, but it has failed to do so. Pakistan’s economy is not very good, and this port has become very wasteful … under these circumstances, including with the hotel attack, how can China conduct its business? The roads and traffic cannot even be maintained,” said Beijing-based military analyst Zhou Chenming.

      While many in Pakistan believe that the BLA enjoys Iranian support and Iranians are convinced that Pakistan enables shadowy Islamic militants who have claimed responsibility for a rare suicide bombing in December in Chabahar and attacks on Revolutionary Guards elsewhere in the Iranian province of Sistan and Balochistan, fact of the matter is that both countries are vulnerable to Baloch insurgents.

      The situation on both sides of the Iranian-Pakistani border is complicated by suspicions that the violence also has links to the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia and that the Baloch provinces of Pakistan and Iran could become a stage for a proxy war.

      Amid reports that China has reached out to Baloch nationalist leaders in exile, Pakistani security analyst Muhammad Amir Rana cautioned that the exiles may no longer be in control.

      “The new leadership of the Baloch insurgency largely hails from the educated middle class with urban backgrounds and is not hiding in Europe; therefore, it does not face the sort of constraints that exiled Baloch leaders do vis-à-vis Iran,” Mr. Rana said.

      Mr. Rana noted that Iran’s influence in Pakistani Balochistan was visible in oil smuggled across the border, Iranian products in grocery shops and the supply of electricity to the coastal strip of Makran that includes Gwadar.

      “For Pakistan, the security cost of CPEC is increasing which could frustrate the Chinese as well as foreign and local investors,” Mr. Rana warned.

      For now, China confronts a more serious challenge in Gwadar, Balochistan as well as other parts of Pakistan that are struggling with un-related incidents of political violence compared to India and Chabahar.

      That could change if the Saudi Iranian component of the low level Baloch insurgency spins out of control with the escalating stand-off between the United States and Iran.

      Iran appears to have pinned its hopes that Chabahar will be shielded from the impact of regional tensions on the perceived US geopolitical need to protect India’s interest in Afghanistan and Central Asia.

      Said Pir Mohammad Mollazeh, an Iranian Afghanistan and Central Asia scholar: “US long-term geopolitical interests, due to the lack of relations with Iran, require India to maintain its position in the region and protect India as a partner in Central Asia… Chabahar port is considered to be a very important and strategic which is an opportunity for our country to enable Iran to reduce its sanctions by means of economic exchanges in Chabahar.”

      Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture.
      With economic corridor’s viability on the line, Beijing searches for an answer to Pakistan terrorism | SCMP | May 18 2019

      Ejaz Hussein, a political and military analyst at Iqra University in Islamabad, said the Pakistani government should bolster security for the Gwadar port and other CPEC projects, including enhancing intelligence networks in the area in collaboration with China.
      But posting Chinese military personnel in Pakistan would be counterproductive, as it would trigger both “unimaginable attention” and “severe criticism”, he said.

      “It may not be prudent on the part of the Chinese government and its private and public companies to develop an interest in taking over CPEC in governance and security terms,” Hussain said.

      “Nor will it be a suitable and affordable policy on the part of Pakistan in the context of internal and external security challenges, ethnic divide, increasing intolerance, political instability and the contested character of the corridor.”
      Chinese armed personnel in Pakistan remains a no no. Any article that says Chinese troops in Pakistan ostensibly to protect CPEC should be treated with suspicion.

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      • This is one way of looking at it



        Earlier primer on heartland



        Nobody uses the terms heartland & rimland but the commentary around certainly draws of it. And nobody knows why, but they are confident of it

        This theory is to warn countries about the future, not predict it

        Rimland powers need to stop the Heartland from taking over the seas around the world-Island & parts of the Rimland

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        • Imperial Rome knew what it was doing but what about China ?

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          • ‘Chinese’ cyber spy ring accused of targeting key players in Belt and Road Initiative
            Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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            • Pakistan seeks $1b ADB loan to repay foreign debt

              Such is the state of Pakistan and its economy.
              Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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              • ^

                Arresting Zardari more important than arresting fiscal deficit: Hafeez Shaikh | Pakistan Today | Jun 13 2019


                “Once the Sharifs and the Zardaris are arrested and other opposition parties are similarly kept under check, deficits and reserves will automatically be under check,” Shaikh said.

                “What matters is the number of corrupt politicians behind the bars, not the numbers depicting trade, exports, foreign exchange, inflation, etc,” the financial adviser added.

                Referring to the Prime Minister’s commission to probe why the national debt had ballooned over the years, Shaikh said that he’s volunteering for the project.

                “I know the corrupt politicians from the PPP tenure and the current tenure, having been in charge of finances in both,” he said.
                : D : D

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                • The most corrupt institution in Pakistan is the Pakistan Army and their mercenary spy force the ISI. Until those 2 are fixed, nothing will work out in Pakistan, and they will forever remain a terrorist shithole and walk around with begging bowls.
                  Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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                  • Chinese worker killed in Bangladesh construction site clash

                    Hundreds of Chinese and Bangladeshi labourers in deadly clashes at Beijing-backed power plant near Dhaka
                    Last edited by Oracle; 21 Jun 19,, 14:20.
                    Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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                    • Antigua: sprawling 'Chinese colony' plan across marine reserve ignites opposition
                      Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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                      • The Uneasy Future of the Nepal-China Railway

                        Locals have dubbed the proposed BRI railway project 'kagat ko rail (paper railway)' and 'sapana ko rail (dream railway)'.

                        Tashi Sherpa runs the only teashop in Rasuwa Gadhi on the Nepal-China border, 170 km north of the capital Kathmandu. About 50 metres away, a group of Chinese workers are busy building a bridge that will link the two countries, but none of them has ever come to her teashop.

                        “A truck brings food every few hours from that large building on the other side [of the border]. The Chinese do two things – eat and work. They eat a lot of meat,” Sherpa said with a big smile.

                        Hundreds of trucks and jeeps trundle down the bumpy road every day, over a temporary bridge, to carry goods and tourists from China. While they wait to enter Tibet or take passengers to Kathmandu the drivers sip tea and eat snacks in Tashi’s teashop.

                        The border here only opened after the devastating Nepal earthquake in 2015 led to China closing the badly damaged Kodari route. It is also where the new railway – proposed as part of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – will enter Nepal from Tibet.

                        China has built a well-equipped customs and immigration office, which looks like a shopping mall. But the infrastructure on the Nepalese side is a complete mess. In 2017, when visited the area, police officers were checking visitors in a hut with a zinc roof. Two years later, conditions have not improved. “We don’t even have a metal detector, so we have to ask each person to open their luggage and backpacks, and then check manually. A railway is beyond our imagination,” said Dilip Chhetri, the police inspector on duty at the border.

                        Since tourists visiting Mount Kailash have started to flock through this land route, owners of newly built hotels are expecting more business in the future. The railway will be a further boost, they hope.

                        The earthquake destroyed Nepal’s local revenue office, but the construction of a multi-storey replacement has been delayed due to a dispute with the contracting company. “How can a country which hasn’t managed to construct a building for its officers in two years construct tunnels through these mountains and run trains? It’s no more than a fantasy,” said Finjo Lopchan, owner of Potala guesthouse in Ghattekhola, one kilometre south of the border.

                        “To be honest, my head spins when people talk about railways. Look at the roads here. Shameless government,” he added.

                        How near is Nepal’s BRI railway?

                        The proposed BRI railway will link Kerung city in southern Tibet to Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, entering the country in Rasuwa district and eventually going on to India. But locals have dubbed the project kagat ko rail (paper railway) and sapana ko rail (dream railway).

                        People who have suffered for years along bumpy roads in the northern border region of the country laugh at the idea of the railway. “I don’t feel excited when you talk about railways, I feel disappointed. Every day we have to drive along this scary road in our trucks and we hear news time and again about railways. I don’t understand,” said Balaram Rimal, a truck driver who carries goods across the border from Kerung regularly.

                        China prepared for Nepal a pre-feasibility study of the railway in late 2018. This report suggested it was an extremely hard project, but not impossible. “Technically this will be one of the world’s toughest railways to construct”, said Paribesh Parajuli, the only railway engineer at Nepal’s railway department, who will leave once his short-term consultancy contract expires.

                        The Chinese study has not been made public despite intense debate over what’s happening. The report lists “six extremes”: including topography, weather, hydrology and tectonics that will make the project hugely challenging, said Parajuli, who shared the findings of the report.

                        About 98% of the railway on the Nepal side will be in tunnels and on bridges according to the report, with about five stopovers. Tracks will need to be built on steep terrain, as the railway climbs from an altitude of 1,400 metres in Kathmandu to about 4,000 metres in Tibet.

                        The proposed route also cuts through the mountains near a major fault line – where the Indian plate meets the Eurasian plate to form the Himalayas – so the area is very susceptible to earthquakes.

                        Mitigating these risks means the project will cost far more than normal railways, Parajuli explained.

                        Underprepared, overwhelmed

                        In Nepal there are almost no preparations in place. Consultants are currently studying another railway, the east-west railway planned in the southern plains near to India. But the state lacks people capable of reviewing their reports, much less anybody to actually lead the construction of the railways. In the decade since it was set up, Nepal’s railway department is yet to hire a single permanent railway engineer, but it hopes to construct 4,000 kilometres of railways in the next two decades.

                        A new 34 kilometre railway from the Indian state of Bihar to Nepal is due to start running in a few months, but the government will have to hire a train driver from India and other technicians to operate its first modern rail, according to local media reports.

                        Where is the money?

                        Preliminary estimates put the costs of the railway from Kerung to Kathmandu at about 38 billion yuan (USD$5.5 billion), almost equal to Nepal’s total revenue in 2018. The railway would be 170 kilometres long from Tibet to Kathmandu. Although only one-third of the total length falls on the Nepal side, it would account for almost half of the costs due to the extreme geology and climate.

                        Despite these challenges, Nepal’s railway dreams moved closer to reality after the project was listed as one of the 64 to be considered under China’s BRI during the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in April. However, this does not guarantee any financial support to the project.

                        Nepal is seeking a grant from China to construct the railway, but China has remained reticent. The Nepal government did not allocate any money for the northern railways in its budget speech in May. But according to officials at Nepal’s infrastructure and transport ministry, a detailed study for the Kerung-Kathmandu railway will cost an estimated – five times the country’s total rail budget for the next year.

                        Despite this, finance minister Yubaraj Khatiwada has declared the date of construction: “We will complete the detailed project report and feasibility study and start construction work on the Kerung- Kathmandu railway in the next two years,”

                        The Chinese do not seem in such a rush. In 2014, the Qinghai-Tibet railway reached Shigatse in Tibet about 500 kilometres northeast of Nepal’s border. The railway was scheduled to arrive on the border at Kerung by 2020, but the Chinese have pushed that back to 2025, according to recent media reports.

                        Debt trap fears

                        At home, there are fears of the potential financial burden to the country if the railway is built. But the government has refuted the possibility that Chinese loans could push the country into a debt trap. “The main thing is how projects are selected, whether they are selected on the basis of possible returns. And what is the payback plan?” Pradip Gyawali, Nepal’s foreign minister, said in May.

                        While the minister could not answer questions about what Nepal would export to China by train, the prime minister, KP Oli, has suggested mineral water. But since mineral water is already a multi-billion dollar industry in Tibet, the market is already saturated.


                        There are serious grounds for concern. While imports from China increased by about 40% in 2018, exports from Nepal fell by 30%, with the country’s trade deficit reaching about US$12 billion last year – equal to nearly half of the country’s total GDP.

                        The Chinese ambassador has tried to allay fears. “The BRI is not a ‘debt trap’ that some countries may fall into, but an ‘economic pie’ that benefits the local population,” she wrote in a recent opinion piece in a Nepali newspaper.

                        However, since the railway proposed by China is almost entirely along tunnels and bridges through remote mountains and misses nearly all the big cities on the Kathmandu-Kerung highway, it is unlikely that local populations will benefit.

                        Locals and government kept in the dark

                        Early one morning in the second week of May, 76-year-old Narayan Das Dongol was playing with his granddaughter in Tokha village in the northern corner of Kathmandu valley – a proposed stop on the China-Nepal railway. “In next few years these fields will be filled with concrete houses,” he said. “I heard that the railway is coming this way during a religious meeting, but I haven’t got any information from local authorities.” A decade ago the cost of land per aana (about 32 square metres) was about US$4,000, but now it’s about US$25,000.

                        Land prices have soared along the highway from Kathmandu to Rasuwa Gadhi over the last few years after China declared the international border entry point in 2017. The railway rumours have played a part.

                        But there is confusion about the exact route of the railway. Everywhere we went, people had one question for us: “Do you know which way the railway will come?”

                        As we waited outside the office of the mayor of Bidur – the biggest city in Nuwakot district, 75 kilometres northwest of Kathmandu *– his driver Lok Bahadur Giri came up and said, “I have heard people say it will be built next to current highway. Is it coming to our city?” The mayor, Sanju Pandit, also thinks the railway may be built along the highway to China where his city serves as a major stopover: “I have heard that the railway will cross this city, but we haven’t been consulted or informed about it at all.”

                        The route proposed by the Chinese does not, in fact, align with the existing highway but will cross the mountains through tunnels. “So major cities on the existing highway won’t be even able to see the railway,” said Parajuli, the railway engineer.

                        What about environmental and biodiversity impacts?

                        The railway will pass through two national parks – Langtang and Shivapuri. Langtangboasts endangered and vulnerable species like the red panda and snow leopard, while Shivapuri – on the northern side of Kathmandu – is home to over 300 bird species and one-third of the country’s total birds. Yet while economic, political and technical issues dominate railway discussions, environmental impacts are not even on the radar.

                        The growth of illegal wildlife smuggling along the railway route is one concern. The field office of Nepal’s National Park and Wildlife Conservation Department is severely under-resourced. When we visited, one staff member called Lalan Pandit said the police had informed them that there was something suspicious in our truck. He shared an experience from last year: “I was monitoring trucks entering Tibet and one driver was attaching a small bundle on the walls of the trucks and seemed suspicious. As we rushed to the truck the driver jumped into the river. We finally got him back and found that he was trying to smuggle tiger bones."

                        It is not possible for the staff to monitor the hundreds of trucks and people crossing the border every day with current resources, Pandit explained. More than 100 people were arrested in 2016/17 in the country for smuggling wildlife parts, mostly to China.

                        Park officials in Kathmandu said they have not been consulted about the railway yet, but they are hoping to get involved in the planned feasibility study. “As it is a major infrastructure project there are serious concerns regarding biodiversity and environmental issues so we will engage once the government asks us for permission to conduct further study for the railways,” said Bishnu Prasad Shrestha, spokesperson at the department of national parks and wildlife conservation.

                        Timeline: Nepal’s BRI railway

                        2017 – Nepal and China signed a memorandum on Belt and Road cooperation ahead of first Belt and Road Forum.

                        2018 – Nepal formed two committees headed by the foreign secretary and finance secretary to propose projects for China to fund under BRI.

                        2018 – Nepal’s prime minister, K.P Oli, visited China and signed 14 bilateral agreements including on railway cooperation.

                        2018 – China conducted a pre-feasibility study for the cross border railway from Kerung to Kathmandu.

                        2019 – The Nepal-China cross-border railway was listed as part of the Trans-Himalayan connectivity network in the leaders’ issued at the second BRI Forum in Beijing in April.

                        2019 – Nepal’s government declared railway construction will start in the next two years during its budget speech, without allocating appropriate budget for a detailed study.

                        All images and videos by Nabin Baral via The Third Pole.

                        This article was originally published by The Third Pole.
                        Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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                        • Lesotho mohair farmers protest over Chinese monopoly

                          Click image for larger version

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                          Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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                          • Centre outlines plan to counter China’s BRI
                            Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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                            • “As part of the GoI LOC programme, 279 LOCs have been extended to 63 countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, Caribbean, Oceania and Commonwealth of Independent States worth nearly $28 billion,” Muraleedharan informed the lower house of parliament.

                              Of this, 254 projects aggregating nearly $4.70 billion have been completed, while 194 projects worth nearly $19 billion are under implementation, he said.

                              These include 94 connectivity projects in five countries in India’s immediate neighbourhood that are being taken up with GoI LOCs worth nearly $6.6 billion, he informed the House.
                              $28bn

                              Interestingly, there was no mention of any Indo-Japan bilateral project in the Indo-Pacific region or the proposed trilateral cooperation involving India-Japan-USA or any proposed Quadrilateral (India-Japan-USA-Australia) aimed at rebalancing the BRI.
                              This must be in addition to then

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                              • Ream Naval Base denies Chinese military base speculation | Khmer Times | Jul 02 2019

                                Ream Naval Base yesterday dismissed speculations by a senior US military officer that it will host Chinese military facilities in its base in Preah Sihanouk province.

                                US embassy spokesperson Emily Zeeberg said in a statement today regarding a letter from Joseph Felter, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for South and Southeast Asia, to Cambodia’s Ministry of Defence.

                                “Recent developments have fueled speculation about Cambodia’s future plans for Ream Naval Base, including the possible hosting of Chinese military facilities, given the high level of Chinese economic and political influence in Cambodia, is a real concern,” the statement said.

                                “Any steps that weaken Cambodia’s independence or open the door to a foreign military presence in Cambodia would be of serious concern to the United States and could threaten the credibility and centrality of ASEAN,” it said. “We urge Cambodian leadership to maintain its constitutional commitment to have an independent foreign policy and actively protect Cambodia’s independence for future generations.”

                                Ream Naval Base spokesman Rear Admiral Mey Dina rejected the US embassy’s statement.

                                “Ream Naval Base wishes to reject the statement made by the US embassy that speculated about the future of Chinese military facilities in our Naval Base. We have no Chinese military base here,” he said.

                                Cambodia’s constitution does not allow foreign troops to build a military base in its territory,” he said “Ream Naval Base maintains our sovereignty and we will continue to strengthen international cooperation with other navies in the region and the world.”
                                Well, let's see how well they adhere to their constitution

                                Given that China has ensured Cambodia pretty much vetoes any anti-China statements at the ASEAN meet, the call for the quad will only get stronger.

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