📰 Taliban surge: on Kandahar attack
With the Kandahar attack, the militants strike a blow to Afghan election and peace processes
•The attack on a high-level meeting inside the Governor’s compound in southern Kandahar on Thursday, killing top security officials, is yet another reminder of the sharply deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan. In recent years, the Taliban had shown its capability to infiltrate official meetings and attack any government building, notwithstanding claims by the authorities of heightened security. A year ago, the Kandahar Governor’s office had come under attack by militants, resulting in the death of a Deputy Governor, the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates and members of Parliament. Thursday’s assault happened at a meeting that was attended by General Austin ‘Scott’ Miller, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. U.S. troops later said he was unhurt, while Gen. Abdul Raziq, the Kandahar police chief, and Abdul Momin, the Kandahar intelligence chief, were killed. Kandahar Governor Zalmai Wesa was also targeted in the attack, but there were conflicting reports about the status of his health. Raziq was arguably the most powerful police commander in southern Afghanistan. A close ally of the U.S., he had previously survived several attempts on his life and was instrumental in coordinating the local police networks in the fight against the Taliban. His death will leave a security vacuum in the south, especially at a time when the Taliban has launched an all-out offensive.
•Significantly, the Kandahar attack happened two days ahead of the much-delayed parliamentary election. From the day the election dates were announced, the Taliban had warned those participating in the process. The security situation is so dire in the country that one-third of the polling stations will not open on Saturday, election day. Over the past couple of months, the Taliban has repeatedly targeted election offices and gatherings, killing at least 10 candidates and dozens of their supporters. The already overstretched Afghan security forces will now have to deal with the fallout of the Kandahar strike. The attack is a setback for the U.S. plan for direct talks with the Taliban as a way out of the 17-year-long conflict. Zalmay Khalilzad, the American special envoy to Afghanistan, recently met Taliban representatives in Qatar. The push for talks comes from a realisation that the war has drifted into a stalemate and an outright military solution could be impossible. And as it finally comes around to the idea of direct talks, the U.S. is trying to turn up pressure on the militant group through Pakistan. But this strategy will work only if the Afghan forces and their allies make some advances on the ground, and bring the Taliban under military pressure. What is actually happening, as incidents such as the Kandahar attack suggest, is the opposite. Both the U.S. and Afghan forces appear to be clueless about how to stop the Taliban’s advances.
📰 L'affaire Khashoggi
There are limits to Saudi Arabia’s defiance even within the ambit of narrow national interest
•The gory, gruesome and ghastly details of the last few moments in the life of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as reported in the government-controlled Turkish media, have reaffirmed the continuing validity of the universal truth: the pen is mightier than the sword.
•Authoritarian regimes not only do not fear open, violent acts of defiance but they also welcome them. It helps them identify opponents of the regime and deal with them with ruthlessness and brutality. Most such acts of opposition would be dismissed as terrorism, as is routinely done by totalitarian regimes. It is the written word, even more than the spoken one, that scares regimes. Khashoggi, after all, was just one person, at one time even close to the ruling circles in Riyadh. He welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reform moves in the country such as permitting women to drive cars unaccompanied by male members of the family. But the regime felt so threatened by Khashoggi’s dissident and heretical views that it felt compelled to liquidate him physically.
•Nor are those responsible for his suspected murder necessarily unhappy that the horrible details of his torture have come out in the public domain, something they themselves might have greatly hesitated to do. They have achieved the purpose of sending a clear, unambiguous message to all potential trouble makers. The message will no doubt be effective in silencing dissent for a long while.
Tokenism in reactions
•Saudi Arabia is defiant. It has warned all those who may be thinking of isolating or even moving sanctions against the regime with dire consequences. Some token action is being taken by some western governments such as demanding a thorough, impartial inquiry into the incident. The chief of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, has cancelled her participation at the ‘Davos in the Desert’ Conference, in Riyadh. Significantly, the U.S. Treasury Secretary has joined the boycott. The outrage is universal in the developed world, though the developing countries seem to have decided their own counsel. The Bretton Woods institutions will still need Saudi funding.
•This writer has long and firmly believed that foreign policy is all about promoting national interest and that sentiment should have no place in it. This continues to be his conviction. U.S. President Donald Trump follows this principle quite ruthlessly. He is open about it, and not at all hypocritical. He is unabashed in proclaiming that hundreds of billions worth of arms sales are on the line and that he is not prepared to put them in jeopardy.
•For all we know, the complicity of the highest levels of the Saudi monarchy may never be fully established; already fall guys are being projected which will give Mr. Trump the fig leaf to continue his cozy relationship with the regime. It remains to be seen if the noises made by some U.S. Senators about imposing sanctions or blocking the arms sales amount to any meaningful action.
•It is the same principle of national interest that has inhibited us from confronting the Saudis as well as the Iranians about their open, unchecked support, financial and otherwise, by funding radical Sunni and Shia mosques in India. This is reported to have been going on for decades, perhaps before Independence. Yet, successive governments have not found it possible to protest such behaviour which amounts to direct interference in India’s internal affairs and in radicalising sections of the Muslim community. It was felt that India’s national interest, India’s dependence on West Asian energy sources and anxiety not to upset them too much lest they voted against us in meetings of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, or side with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue, is what made us cautious.
India’s deck of cards
•Is there a lesson for India in the Saudi Arabian stance of defiance? India does not have the kind of money to throw around as the Saudis have. If India needs their oil, they also need to sell it. They need to sell as much oil as they can to continue with their disastrous misadventure in Yemen. The high level of crude price enables them to prosecute the war with comparably less cost, yet the Crown Prince’s ambitious reform plan will need more money than the kingdom can produce.
•If India is forced to reduce the import of Iranian oil to zero in the next few weeks, India does not have to worry about alternate sources of which there are plenty, as the Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas has assured us. Saudi Arabia has no choice but to continue to make up the shortfall, first, because it needs to sell its oil, but second and more important, it must do all in its power to weaken and destroy its mortal enemy, the leader of the Shias of the world. As King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia told the U.S. a few years ago, “the head of the snake needs to be cut off”. If it becomes useful to befriend India in its relentless campaign against Iran, it will be a small price to pay.
•There is yet one more weapon that India can selectively use. Next to the Saudis, we are the largest buyer of weapons in the world. The U.S., France, Russia all have only one interest in India — to sell their extremely expensive war material. They not only earn money, they even earn our gratitude. India has an insatiable thirst for weapons of war and apparently bottomless pockets to pay for them. Mr. Trump, who advocates, for his country as well as for others, to follow the principle of ‘my country first’ would be the last to impose penalties on India in case we do something that might not fit in with his agenda, either vis-à-vis Iran or Russia. The government seems to be conscious of this advantage that India has.
•The principle of national interest can run into conflict with respect to other higher principles especially in democracies. Thus, the Khashoggi affair might eventually result in action in the U.S. Congress which the President then will have no option but to abide by. This is what happened in Congressional action against Russia and which Mr. Trump then had to follow. Vox populi will on occasion trump narrow national interest.
📰 Rwanda names 50 percent female Cabinet, following Ethiopia
The country has received international recognition for female representation in government, with women making up 61 % of parliament members.
•Two days after Ethiopia announced one of the world’s few “gender-balanced” Cabinets with 50 % women, Rwanda has done the same.
•The East African nation late Thursday announced that women now make up half of the slimmed-down, 26-seat Cabinet.
•Rwanda joins a handful of countries, mostly European, where women make up 50 % or more of ministerial positions, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Women.
•The country has received international recognition for female representation in government, with women making up 61 % of parliament members.
•Ethiopia’s move earlier this week was the latest in a series of dramatic political and economic reforms under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who took office in April.
📰 New skin gel offers protection from some pesticides
Scientists conducted successful tests on rats and plan to undertake human trials soon
•Indian researchers have developed a gel which, when applied on the skin, can inhibit some pesticides from getting absorbed into the body, thus averting serious adverse effects and even death.
•Organophosphate-based pesticides, which are commonly used by farmers in India, are toxic to the nervous system and heart, and can cause cognitive dysfunction.
•When esters present in organophosphate-based pesticides enter the body they bind and inhibit an enzyme (acetylcholinesterase or AChE) critical for nerve and muscle function. This causes neurological disorders, suffocation, paralysis, and even death.
Making inactive
•A team led by Dr. Praveen Kumar Vemula from the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem), Bengaluru, an autonomous institute under the Department of Biotechnology, used a chemical reaction to convert the ester into acid by using a catalyst to make the pesticide inactive.
•Since the majority of organophosphate-based pesticides are absorbed through the skin (the nasal/inhalation route constitutes about 10-15%) the researchers made a gel for topical application. The active ingredients of the gel are attached to chitosan (a substance found in the hard outer shells of crab and shrimp) so the gel does not penetrate the skin.
•Studies on rats found that the gel was effective in a range of temperatures (20°-40° C) and a single application could protect the animals for four continuous days of pesticide exposure.
•“As long as there is a thin layer of the gel present on the skin it can offer protection from pesticides,” said Dr. Vemula.
•“The gel does not act like a physical barrier but chemically deactivates the pesticides thereby limiting the inhibition of the enzyme.” The gel can be washed off using soap.
No signs of toxicity
•While the rats that did not receive the gel application when exposed to the pesticide died within seven days, all the animals that received the gel survived. Even 30 days after exposure to pesticides, none of the rats that received the gel application showed any visible signs of toxicity. Brain tissue harvested from these rats showed that the gel was effective in preventing the inhibition of the enzyme in the brain. Other studies on rats showed the gel prevented the loss of motor coordination, loss of endurance and altered neuromuscular signalling. The results of the study were published in the journal Science Advances.
•“We are in the process of setting up a start-up and plan to carry out trials on humans,” he said.
📰 RBI opposes move for independent Payments Regulatory Board
‘Holistic regulation by central bank will be more effective’
•The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has opposed the move to have an independent Payments Regulatory Board (PRB) as envisaged by the draft proposal for amendments to the Payment & Settlement Systems Act, 2007.
•In a dissenting note to the Inter-Ministerial Committee for finalisation of amendments, the RBI said, “There is no case of having a regulator for payment systems outside the RBI.” The Watal Committee, it said, had recommended the establishment of the PRB within the overall structure of the RBI. “Since banks are regulated by the RBI, a holistic regulation by RBI will be more effective and not result in increased compliance costs,” it said.
•“There needs to be integrated operations and not co-ordination. Co-ordination is required across different but related functions, which is not the case for payment systems. This is also the basis for reiterating that the Governor of the RBI should be the chairman of the proposed PRB,’’ the note said. Objectives for the PRB, the RBI said, were best avoided to be mandated by law. For, it felt that law might not provide the much-needed flexibility. “The views of the Ministry of Law could also be taken into account on jurisdictional conflict. Further, innovation is generally not mandated — it evolves based on requirements,” it added.
•Stating that it welcomed changes, the RBI, however said, “changes should not result in existing foundations being shaken and the potential creation of disturbances in an otherwise well-functioning structure as far as India is concerned.”
