Syllabus Connect :- GS III (Security challenges and their management in border areas; linkages of organized crime with terrorism)
Context:-
The withdrawal of United States troops from the Bagram military base, its biggest military base in Afghanistan, by stealth at night in early July without keeping the Afghan authorities in the loop marked the formal ending of the 20-year-old military occupation of Afghanistan.
The hasty exit from Bagram demonstrated the lack of coordination between the USA administration and the government in Kabul, even as the resurgent Taliban forces gained ground across the country. The USA administration decided to beat a retreat from Afghanistan much before the September 11 deadline that was originally announced.
In comparison to the chaos that characterised the withdrawal of U.S. forces after their defeat in the Vietnam war, the U.S. retreat from its last operating military base in Afghanistan was an orderly one.
During the course of the two-decade-long U.S. occupation, the Bagram military base, built in the 1950s by the Soviet Union, had burgeoned into a mini city. It was the staging post for the 100,000 U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan a decade ago.
There are reports that Washington decided to pull its troops out of Bagram in a hurry, fearing that the Taliban would capture Kabul. The capital’s airport is just an hour’s drive from the military base. The Taliban described the departure of U.S. troops from the Bagram base as “a positive step”.
Military allies of the U.S., such as Britain, Germany and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), complained that the hurried departure of U.S. troops left them exposed and the allied Afghan forces were without effective air cover.
According to U.S. media reports, U.S. intelligence agencies have told the USA administration that the Taliban could take over Kabul within six months. At the most, the U.S. intelligence agencies estimate, the government of President Ashraf Ghani could hold on for two years. The Taliban has already made rapid advances towards the capital in the last month and a half. The Taliban claims that it controls two-thirds of the country.
By mid-July, it had seized control of key border posts used for most of the trade with Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Iran. Spin Boldak, on the border with Pakistan, was one of the important border posts to fall.
Danish Siddiqui, the Indian photo journalist who was covering the fighting, was killed in a Taliban attack. Many Afghan army units are either surrendering without a fight or running away, leaving behind expensive U.S.-supplied equipment such as Humvees.
USA’s reassurance
Speaking after the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Bagram, USA tried to reassure the government in Kabul that Washington was not abandoning the country. Top U.S. officials have openly stated that Washington retains the option of bombing Afghanistan even after the military occupation ends.
However, Pentagon officials are pressuring Biden to authorise air strikes in the event of the Taliban trying to take over Kabul and other cities by force. Critics of the Afghan war point out that a Taliban takeover of most of Afghanistan is inevitable. If the U.S. decides to start bombing the Taliban again, there will be no end to the war in the country. Biden recently admitted that the “likelihood that there will be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely”.
The ceasefire between the Taliban and the U.S.-led occupation forces is still in force. Any U.S. targeting of the Taliban at this juncture would jeopardise the safe withdrawal of the few remaining troops from the country. A contingent of 600 U.S. troops will remain in Kabul to guard the U.S. embassy there.
The Taliban, on its part, has scrupulously avoided targeting U.S. and NATO troops. Only the Turkish contingent of NATO support forces remain in Afghanistan. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had told the U.S. that Turkish troops would help secure the Kabul airport from the Taliban after U.S. troops left the country. The Taliban described the Turkish move “as ill advised, a violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity and against our national interests”.
Searching military bases elsewhere
The U.S. has been desperately looking for military bases in neighbouring countries from which to conduct future operations in Afghanistan. This time Pakistan has refused U.S. requests for access to its military bases. The Afghan Taliban had threatened Islamabad with repercussions if the Americans were allowed to use Pakistani bases to stage attacks inside Afghanistan. The U.S. has asked for access to military bases in Central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. So far, these countries have been reluctant to oblige.
The U.S. had military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in the early days of the occupation. These bases were closed following public opinion in these countries and Moscow’s suspicions about Washington’s long-term strategy in the region.
For the time being, the U.S. will have to depend on its military bases in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to help its Afghan allies with surveillance. U.S. aircraft carriers are stationed in the Arabian Sea on a permanent basis. Russia has warned the U.S. against deploying troops in the Central Asian region after the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
General Austin Miller, the U.S.’ top commander in Afghanistan, who announced his retirement after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Bagram, told reporters that he envisioned the return to a civil war-like situation in the country. With the Afghan army and special forces unable to halt the Taliban advance, both the Afghan government and the U.S. are encouraging the formation of militias.
The Hazara minority, which suffered greatly under Taliban rule, has formed its own militias. Many notorious warlords such as Abdul Rashid Dostum are once again gearing up for action against the Taliban. A few minor warlords, on the other hand, have switched sides and pledged their allegiance to the Taliban.
After ensuring the exit of the U.S. forces, the Taliban is trying to cultivate a more moderate image in the international community. While making military gains, the organisation is also publicly offering an olive branch to its adversaries. Afghanistan’s warring sides have resumed peace talks in Doha, Qatar’s capital.
The Taliban was initially reluctant to resume the talks with the government for various reasons. One reason was the U.S.’ refusal to withdraw its troops by May this year as agreed in the peace deal the two sides signed in Doha last February. Another sticking point was the Kabul government’s reluctance to release the remaining Taliban prisoners.
The prisoners’ release has been held up because of the Taliban’s refusal to form a unity government in Kabul until elections are held. The Taliban has also been reiterating that it does not believe in elections and Western-style democracy. Despite international opposition, the Taliban has said that it is determined to re-establish an “Islamic Emirate” to rule the country.
In the third week of July, during the ongoing talks in Doha, the Taliban offered a three-month ceasefire in exchange for the release of more than 7,000 of its fighters and activists imprisoned by the government.
Many of the Taliban fighters are incarcerated in the Bagram base. On July 18, even as the Taliban was busy capturing more territory, Haibatullah Hakimzada, its supreme leader, said that he “strenuously favours” a political settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan.
In a statement he said: “In spite of the military gains and advances, the Islamic Emirate strenuously favours a political settlement in the country. Every opportunity for the establishment of an Islamic system, peace and security that presents itself will be made use of by the Islamic Emirate.” The Taliban leader blamed the opposition for “wasting time” and relying on foreigners to resolve the Afghan conflict.
Pressure from neighbours
All of Afghanistan’s neighbours, including Pakistan, have urged the Taliban to desist from attacking cities. Russia and China are particularly concerned about what the future holds for Afghanistan as their national security could be severely impinged if the country once again spirals into all-out civil war.
Moscow has been active on the diplomatic front to get the warring sides in Afghanistan to agree to a peaceful power sharing. The Russian government hosted talks four months ago, which was attended by the “extended Troika” consisting of Russia, China, the U.S. and Pakistan.
According to ground reports, the Taliban is no longer a purely Pashtun-dominated grouping. Its growth in the last decade has apparently been broad-based, with Tajiks, Uzbeks and even Hazaras joining its ranks. That is one reason why the Taliban has been able to make rapid advances in the north in the last two months in areas once dominated by the Northern Alliance led by the Tajik warlord Ahmad Shah Masood and supported by the West, Russia, Iran and India.
Mohammed Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban spokesman, reiterated in Moscow that the Taliban had no intention of forcibly capturing cities and shedding more blood. He said that the Taliban’s policy “is to find a political solution to the Afghan issue, which is continuing in Doha”.
Shaheen claimed that the Taliban had gained territory in recent months through peaceful handovers. He said in most areas, the Afghan security forces surrendered voluntarily without a fight. Afghan security forces manning a key border crossing on the border with Tajikistan chose to flee across the border without a fight. However, recent reports suggest that Afghan security forces are putting up a brave fight in areas such as Kandahar, Kunduz and Spin Boldak.
Russia reportedly is planning to remove the Taliban from its “terror” list. The Taliban seems to have assured China that it will join the Belt Road Initiative (BRI) and ban the Uyghur terrorists currently fighting in Idlib from returning to Afghanistan. Both Russia and China want to ensure that Afghanistan will not be a haven for terrorists once again.
Afghanistan was on top of the agenda at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Foreign Ministers meeting held in Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, in the third week of July. The SCO, of which India is a member, wants the peace process to be “Afghan owned and Afghan led”.
India has also established channels of communications with the Taliban. An Indian delegation recently met with Taliban representatives in Doha. Moscow and Beijing have told both the Afghan government and the Taliban that they prefer the formation of a provisional coalition government for the next two to three years.
Meanwhile, the Afghan government’s relations with Pakistan have deteriorated once again following the Taliban’s capture of Spin Boldak. President Ghani has accused the Pakistan government of allowing 10,000 fighters to sneak into Afghanistan to create unrest there. Kabul has blamed the Pakistan Air Force for helping the Taliban in its takeover of the important trading post.
Pakistan announced in the second week of July that it was planning to host an Afghan peace conference in Islamabad, which would be attended by the Afghan government, the Taliban and members of the extended Troika. In the third week of July, Afghanistan withdrew its ambassador from Islamabad following an unsavoury incident in which a diplomat’s daughter was abducted and assaulted by unknown kidnappers. Pakistan has since announced the postponement of the Afghan peace conference.
Pakistan has strongly denied the Afghan President’s allegations of its alleged “negative role” in the Afghan conflict.
It is, however, no secret that many Taliban fighters are still lying low in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The Taliban was a creation of the Pakistani intelligence services but a lot has changed in the last 20 years.
The Taliban, more broad-based now, recognises the importance of paying attention to other powerful neighbours such as Iran, besides China and Russia, for the return of lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan. Given the ethnic make-up of the country and its history, the Taliban leadership knows that no party can rule on its own in Afghanistan.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.