Russia And The US: Modi Should Mediate

When China and India were blowing hot and blowing cold up in the Himalayas, Russia, a friend to both, stepped in and mediated a winding down. India is a friend both to Russia and the United States. It should reciprocate. Modi should mediate. Several major European powers as well the US seem to think we are on the brink of war. Russia might invade Ukraine. That would be a bad development for Russia, the US, Europe, and the world. It was not just the USA but also Russia that defeated the Soviet Union. Russia hit the final, decisive blow. It was Russia's victory. The US was a spectator. 

Ukraine's sovereignty is sacrosanct, but Russia is one of the major powers alongside China and the US. Its economy might be minor, in no small measure due to the mismanagement and large-scale giveaways to today's oligarchs after the Soviet Union fell like a house of cards after Yeltsin's decisive blow and courageous stand. 

I am aware the West would like to see a Western-style democracy in Russia when no two western powers have identical political systems. But opening up Russia or reforming Russia need not go by way of a war in Ukraine. Russia's domestic political processes have their own idiosyncrasies. Stalin had his extreme left fire to burn. Putin seems to turn up the extreme right fire far and wide. 

There is no need to convince Russia of the US position, or the US of Russia's position. That is not what peace is about. There just is an urgent need to wind down the tension that can be facilitated by another power that is considered a friend by both. 

India dreams of becoming a permanent member of the Security Council. It has to be willing to play a role here to get there. This is a necessity as well as an opportunity. This is not a war either Russia or the US want. But sometimes you just need to be able to save face. You need help climbing down the pole. 

Russia And The US: Modi Should Mediate https://t.co/qTI9CS7NRA @narendramodi @BJP4India @whitehouse @VP @KamalaHarris @StateDept #Ukraine #Russian

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) January 14, 2022

Yemen's Roadmap To Peace

I know very little about Yemen. I have read very little. But the crisis there must be big enough that I have skimmed a ton of headlines while just going out and about. I am a news junkie. I skim news daily, almost.

This is what I do know. Yemen is not oil-rich. Sand and oil are two different things. It might surprise a lot of people but just because you have sand does not seem to mean you also have oil. Yemen is a poor Arab country. In that Yemen allows for time travel. The oil-rich countries all used to be poor like Yemen. That was only a few decades ago.

Yemen had a president who had been president for a long time, something like 30 years. He was toppled by a group of rebels inspired by the Arab Spring. He was gone and that created a vacuum, quickly filled by the two poles of the regional cold war, Iran and Saudi Arabia. And since there has been a civil war, lurching this way and that. There is widespread misery and mayhem. Fighters are not even 0.1% of the population. But the suffering is across the board.

Iran and Saudi Arabia can't go to war with each other, and they know it. The global economy would have a heart attack if they do. But Yemen is a poor, inconsequential country. War in Yemen does not rattle anyone except the poor, non-fighting Yemenis. This is a sad situation.

And, of course, the military-industrial complex in the United States fishes in every muddied pond. Yemen has been the reason that complex has sold over a hundred billion dollars worth of military hardware. 100 billion dollars is a lot of money.

The sad part is the civil war in Yemen might not see a quick resolution. But it is also true that if it goes for long enough, there are going to be implications beyond Yemen's borders. So it makes sense to proactively put out the civil war fire.

The best way would be for Iran and Saudi Arabia to wind down their Cold War. But that can feel too ambitious for the short term. It is possible to eke out peace inside Yemen even if Iran and Saudi Arabia do not normalize their relations. But it is hard.

There has to be a mediator for the peace talks. I think Imran Khan of Pakistan might be the only available neutral party who has some gravitas. Yemen could be the dress rehearsal for the eventual peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Get the warring factions to meet and talk. Unite their fighters into one unified army for Yemen. Form an interim government. Hold elections to a constituent assembly. Something along those lines.

Yemen crisis: Why is there a war? Yemen, one of the Arab world's poorest countries, has been devastated by a civil war. ......... The conflict has its roots in the failure of a political transition supposed to bring stability to Yemen following an Arab Spring uprising that forced its longtime authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to hand over power to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, in 2011.......... Alarmed by the rise of a group they believed to be backed militarily by regional Shia power Iran, Saudi Arabia and eight other mostly Sunni Arab states began an air campaign aimed at restoring Mr Hadi's government........The coalition received logistical and intelligence support from the US, UK and France........... At the start of the war Saudi officials forecast that the war would last only a few weeks. But four years of military stalemate have followed.........

Yemen is experiencing the world's worst man-made humanitarian disaster....... The UN says Yemen is on the brink of the world's worst famine in 100 years if the war continues...... About 80% of the population - 24 million people - need humanitarian assistance and protection.

............ About 20 million need help securing food, including almost 10 million who the UN says are just a step away from famine. Almost 240,000 of those people are facing "catastrophic levels of hunger"........ More than 3 million people - including 2 million children - are acutely malnourished, which makes them more vulnerable to disease........ With only half of the country's 3,500 medical facilities fully functioning, almost 20 million people lack access to adequate healthcare. And almost 18 million do not have enough clean water or access to adequate sanitation..... Consequently,

medics have struggled to deal with the largest cholera outbreak ever recorded

, which has resulted in more than 1.49 million suspected cases and 2,960 related deaths since April 2017......... The war has also displaced more than 3.3 million from their homes, including 685,000 who have fled fighting along the west coast since June 2018....... Separatists seeking independence for south Yemen, which was a separate country before unification with the north in 1990, formed an uneasy alliance with troops loyal to Mr Hadi in 2015 to stop the Houthis capturing Aden......... The situation was made more complex by divisions within the Saudi-led coalition. Saudi Arabia reportedly backs Mr Hadi, who is based in Riyadh, while the United Arab Emirates is closely aligned with the separatists. ....... Gulf Arab states - backers of President Hadi - have accused Iran of bolstering the Houthis financially and militarily, though Iran has denied this........ Yemen is also strategically important because it sits on a strait linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, through which much of the world's oil shipments pass.

Why Saudi Arabia and Iran are bitter rivals Historically Saudi Arabia, a monarchy and home to the birthplace of Islam, saw itself as the leader of the Muslim world. However this was challenged in 1979 by the Islamic revolution in Iran which created a new type of state in the region - a kind of revolutionary theocracy - that had an explicit goal of exporting this model beyond its own borders. ....... Fast-forward to 2011 and uprisings across the Arab world caused political instability throughout the region. Iran and Saudi Arabia exploited these upheavals to expand their influence, notably in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, further heightening mutual suspicions........ Iran's critics say it is intent on establishing itself or its proxies across the region, and achieving control of a land corridor stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean....... The strategic rivalry is heating up because Iran is in many ways winning the regional struggle....... In Syria, Iranian (and Russian) support for President Bashar al-Assad has enabled his forces to largely rout rebel group groups backed by Saudi Arabia...........Saudi Arabia is trying desperately to contain rising Iranian influence while the militaristic adventurism of the kingdom's young and impulsive Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - the country's de facto ruler - is exacerbating regional tensions........ In the pro-Saudi camp are the other major Sunni actors in the Gulf - the UAE and Bahrain - as well as Egypt and Jordan. ....... In the Iranian camp is Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, a member of a heterodox Shia sect, who has relied on pro-Iranian Shia militia groups, including the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, to fight predominantly Sunni rebel groups..... Iraq's Shia-dominated government is also a close ally of Iran....... This is in many ways a regional equivalent of the Cold War, which pitted the US against the Soviet Union in a tense military standoff for many years.....Iran and Saudi Arabia are not directly fighting but they are engaged in a variety of proxy wars (conflicts where they support rival sides and militias) around the region........ For a long time the US and its allies have seen Iran as a destabilising force in the Middle East. The Saudi leadership increasingly sees Iran as an existential threat and the crown prince seems willing to take whatever action he sees necessary, wherever he deems it necessary, to confront Tehran's rising influence...... Saudi Arabia's vulnerability has been demonstrated by these latest attacks on its oil installations. If a war breaks out, it will be more perhaps by accident rather than design.

....

Saudi purge demonstrates ruthlessness of crown prince Big things are happening in Saudi Arabia. Princes, ministers and top businessmen are being arrested, detained in a luxury hotel, accused of corruption, their planes grounded and their assets seized........ Corruption is rampant in Saudi Arabia. Bribes, sweeteners and lavish kickbacks have long been an integral part of doing business in the world's richest oil-producing nation........ Many of those appointed to key positions amassed astronomical wealth - in some cases running into billions of dollars - far beyond their government salaries, much of it stashed away in offshore accounts.......... The government he leads would love to get its hands on some of these offshore private assets, estimated by some to total as much as $800bn (£610bn)....... The ruling Al Saud family has never revealed how much of the nation's oil wealth goes to which princes and their families, and there are thousands of them. .......... many ordinary Saudis are welcoming this purge of the rich and famous, in the hopes that some of their wealth will be redistributed to the general population...... At 32 years old, Prince Mohammed bin Salman - or MBS, as he is known - has already amassed extraordinary control over the key levers in the country.........He is the youngest defence minister of any major country, and is also driving an economic development programme, declaring his intention to wean Saudi Arabia off its dependence on oil revenues......... He is largely popular with the young, despite dragging the country into a seemingly unwinnable war in Yemen and executing a damaging boycott against neighbouring Qatar. .......

The old guard in Saudi Arabia are rattled.

....... The crown prince knows that to drive through his modernising reform programme he may meet resistance, but he is now demonstrating a steely ruthlessness in removing anyone or anything that could get in his way. ........ There is no-one left in Saudi Arabia with any obvious powerbase to challenge the rise to power of the crown prince and he could well become king and rule for the next half-century........ Some among the royal family are grumbling that he is taking on too much too quickly, but perhaps

more worrying is how the religious conservatives will react in the long-term

.......... The Al Saud depend on these clerics for their legitimacy to rule the home of the two holiest places in Islam, Mecca and Medina (the king carries the title "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques")........ So far, the clerics have accepted the curbs on their power and in September acceded to the lifting of the ban on women driving, which they always resisted....... In time, history will decide whether the purge begun on Saturday night has set the course for a better, cleaner Saudi Arabia, or whether it has started to melt the glue that holds this complex country together. 

Crown prince says Saudis want return to moderate Islam Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said the return of "moderate Islam" is key to his plans to modernise the Gulf kingdom........ He told reporters that 70% of the Saudi population was under 30 and that they wanted a "life in which our religion translates to tolerance"......... He made the comments after announcing the investment of $500bn (£381bn) in a new city and business zone.......... Dubbed NEOM, it will be situated on 26,500 sq km (10,230 sq miles) of Saudi Arabia's north-western Red Sea coast, near Egypt and Jordan......... Last year, Prince Mohammed unveiled a wide-ranging plan to bring social and economic change to the oil-dependent kingdom known as Vision 2030......... As part of those reforms, the 32-year-old has proposed the partial privatisation of the state oil company, Saudi Aramco, and the creation of the world's largest sovereign wealth fund....... The government also wants to invest in the entertainment sector. Concerts are once again being held and cinemas are expected to return soon................

"We are returning to what we were before - a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions, traditions and people around the globe," he said.

....... "We want to live a normal life. A life in which our religion translates to tolerance, to our traditions of kindness," he added....... The prince stressed that Saudi Arabia "was not like this before 1979", when there was an Islamic revolution in Iran and militants occupied Mecca's Grand Mosque....... Afterwards, public entertainment in Saudi Arabia was banned and clerics were given more control over public life.

Yemen's Roadmap To Peace https://t.co/3wKqKDUE5w @ImranKhanPTI @PTIofficial @PTIKPOfficial @SMQureshiPTI @ImranIsmailPTI @AliHZaidiPTI @MuradSaeedPTI @ZiaBangashPTI @PTIHazara @KingSalman @KSAmofaEN @Saudi_Gazette @MOFKSA @MojKsa_EN #Yemen #Iran #SaudiArabia #pakistan

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) November 27, 2019

Kashmir Deserves Normalcy
"UAE Against All Violence And Terrorism"
The Hong Kong "Contagion:" Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Chile And Counting
Thoughts On The Middle East
Formula For Peace Between Israel And Palestine
The Stupidity Of The Ayodhya Dispute
Saudi-Iran: Imran Is The Only One Who Can
New Capitalism Is Techno Capitalism, Hello Marc
The Nation State In Peril
Dubai, Pakistan, Peace, Prosperity
The Dubai Sheikh Is A Business School Case Study
South Asians Working In The Gulf
Masa, MBS, And The Broader Investment Climate

India's Massive Unemployment Problem: China Actually Knows

India has a massive, massive unemployment problem. Even when there is some economic growth, the jobs are not being created. And China is one country that actually knows how to solve that problem. And it might even be eager to help.

That is why it is important to settle the border dispute with Pakistan. Because the same formula that will settle the dispute with Pakistan will also settle the long border dispute with China, the longest in the world.

The India-Pakistan border and the China-India border are unnecessarily militarized. Both need to be turned into trade membranes.

There is a region in Nepal called Karmali. It is right by Tibet in the west of Nepal. Karnali, about 500 years ago, used to be a prosperous empire, big enough to be called a civilization. Today Karnali is destitute. It has unimaginable poverty. It is because Karnali is like a house with all its windows closed. China has sealed the border with Tibet. That hampers trade or rather suffocates it.

Peace with Pakistan is important because peace with China is also important. Trade solves many problems. Peace is the greatest dividend of trade. Prosperity is secondary, but not minor.

Formula For Peace Between Israel And Palestine

• Given that it is wrong for any human being to be stateless, that every human being has a fundamental right to be a citizen of this or that state,
• Given that Israel would like to continue as a Jewish state, 
• Given that there are plenty of countries on earth in the form of enclaves,
• Given that no one group of people can lay claim on Jerusalem,

It is imperative that two states be formed, one Israel, another Palestine, but both be tied into an economic union at birth, having the same currency, and the same central bank, with travel between the two to be mutually determined, that Palestine have the Gaza Strip and the enclaves inside the West Bank, and for territory that used to be the West Bank and now is Israeli settlements, the state of Israel pay into a trust fund for Palestine, an annual sum, to be determined, for the next 50 years, and Jerusalem be given the status of an international city like no other, neither just Israel, or just Palestine, but both and more, and the countries of the region and the world come up with an aid package to lift the battered economy of Palestine going forward.

A Creative Solution To The Palestine Problem
The Stupidity Of The Ayodhya Dispute
Saudi-Iran: Imran Is The Only One Who Can
Hong Kong: Endgame Scenarios

Formula For Peace Between Israel And Palestine https://t.co/UZBvF6bQBd @IsraeliPM @netanyahu @Palestine_UN @un @PalestinePMO @pmofa @asadabukhalil @AliAbunimah @intifada @nadplo @PLO_DPDP @DrHananAshrawi @PalMissionUK @hzomlot @nujoud @972mag #Israel #palestine #peace

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) October 20, 2019

A Creative Solution To The Palestine Problem

The Stupidity Of The Ayodhya Dispute
Saudi-Iran: Imran Is The Only One Who Can
Hong Kong: Endgame Scenarios
New Capitalism Is Techno Capitalism, Hello Marc
Middle East: Cold War, Cold Peace, Warm Peace
The Nation State In Peril

Let's get less ideological about it. Let's get pragmatic. Let's get creative.

Before Zionism: The shared life of Jews and Palestinians There were those who called for unity, such as Jerusalem Mayor Raghib al-Nashashibi, who wanted not to speak of Arabs and Jews, but of Palestinians. Klein debunks the myth according to which the residents of the country before the advent Zionism or the Arab national movement lacked all identity. Instead, he describes a lively and vivacious community with its own traditions and customs, bringing testimonies from Jews, Muslims and foreigners as proof......... Both Zionism and Arab nationalism came to Palestine from outside the country. The two movements developed in the diaspora but both saw the territory between the river and the sea as part of their war for control; they drew borders in a place that had been borderless at the expense of those who lived here. Palestinian residents distinguished between “Arab Jews” — a common identity of Jews who were either born here or in other Arab countries — and Jewish immigrants from Europe who arrived to redefine the land......... The idealistic reality described by Klein seems almost like a dream today. He quotes the memoirs of Ya’akov Elazar from Jerusalem, who remembers how “the Muslim women cooperated respectfully with the customs of the Jewish religion…the Muslim neighbors allowed the Jewish women to pump water necessary before the Sabbath.” Klein also describes how some Muslims even joined their Jewish neighbors in reciting religious prayers. He describes the cheder (a traditional elementary school where the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language were taught) run by Hacham Gershon in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where Arab parents brought their children so that they would learn how to behave properly. Klein also writes that sexual relations and marriages between Jews and Arabs were not unheard of, even if they were not considered legitimate. ......... when the Ashkenazi Jews immigrated they brought with them their customs, clothing, and lifestyle, and did not adapt to the cultures of Palestine: “They speak Yiddish and maintain the Jewish street accent of their home countries. They are different from their Sephardic brothers not only in language and appearance but also in their worldview.” Or take Palestinian activist Ghada Karmi, who says: “We knew they were different from ‘our Jews,’ I am talking about the Arab Jews. We saw them as foreigners who came from Europe more than as Jews.” ........ the Zionist establishment invented and nurtured the idealistic image of the Jews as Hebrew-speaking tzabars — as opposed to the Arab Jew. The myth of the tzabar was formed by a culture of immigrants who wanted to see themselves as natives. Maps were redrawn and Arab names of places were ignored or changed to Hebrew names. This was done not only to transform the immigrants into natives, but also to inherit the place of those who were here before. When Yosef Shlush, one of the founders of Tel Aviv, complained that he was attacked by Arabs, the heads of Jaffa’s Arab clans responded: “Who is at fault for all these incidents if not the Bolsheviks you brought from Moscow?”........... Salim al-Husseini, the mayor of Jerusalem at the end of the 19th century, is quoted: “This is not a political movement as much as it is a settler movement, and I am sure that not a single intelligent, wise Zionist does not imagine the idea of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine.” Najib Azuri, a Maronite Christian from Lebanon who served in the Ottoman administration in Jerusalem and was one of the harbingers of Arab nationalism, said this in 1905: “Both these movements will be resigned to continually struggle until one wins out, the fate of the entire world rests on the results of this struggle between two nations who represent two opposing principles.” ............ It is not that the first part of the book is bereft of violence, riots, murder, and clashes between groups — but there is some kind of balance. One group kills, the other responds, then they reconcile and go back to living together. Until the next time......... Klein claims that 1948 and 1967 were not two separate wars, but rather two rounds of the same war, basing his theory on a convincing comparison and many testimonies from both Jews and Palestinians. He writes about the expulsion of Palestinian from their homes, which were then re-populated by Jews — both in ’48 and ’67.......... He describes the stories of refugees who returned to visit their homes and properties that were taken in 1947, and the meetings with the new residents who weren’t always happy to see the refugees. Supreme Court Justice Zvi Berenson, who lived in a Palestinian home, refused to show the house to its former owners, claiming that he had invested much money in renovations. A different refugee who arrived at her old home ran into a Jewish immigrant from Poland who argued that the Poles took her old home, in an attempt to justify the fact that she has done the same thing to the Palestinian standing before her......... Even the personal relationships between Jews and Muslims were disrupted by the wars, such as the one between Ishak Musa al-Husseini and his childhood friend Yaacov Yehoshua. Both studied together and remained friends until they were separated by the 1948 war. After ’67, Yehoshua became a top Israeli clerk, while al-Husseini, whose family lived in the West Bank, came to his Jewish friend to ask for help in retrieving his family’s property. Yehoshua decided not to help him, writing in is journal: “It turns out that you have yet to come to terms with the new Jew — the same one you scorned in the past has now become a brave soldier, a tank crewman, a pilot.”...........

a different reality that existed before the rise of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism.

....... just maybe, there is hope for a shared life in this land — after all, that reality already existed. He proposes that the two nations, which have been fighting over the same piece of land for the past 100 years, may just be able to go back to living together.

Right from Kashmir all the way to Palestine, you have one knotty problem after another. There is Kashmir. There is Afghanistan. There is the Iran-Saudi tussle. And then you have the mother of all tussles: Israel-Palestine.

There is the spiritual dimension. And this might be key. The three major religions are all talking about the same God.

Then there is the existential issue for Israel. They have the Holocaust hangover. Never again is their mantra. With countries like Iran still not truly accepting Israel, that country stays paranoid.

And then there is geopolitics. The Middle East geopolitics chessboard is the most complex.

Every human being has a fundamental right to citizenship of this or that country. The Palestinians can not be kept stateless forever. It is wrong to keep them in this limbo.

Is there a one state solution? Will both groups become one country? That does not seem to be the Israeli desire.

So, obviously, you are going to have to create a state for Palestine. Israel already is a state.

As to what shape and size that Palestinian state will be is a question made more complex by the day.