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Fighting for a common cause |
Yan Wei
THE Peace Mission 2009, a joint military exercise that was held on July 22-26 by China and Russia, was meant to convey one message: that both countries are firmly resolved to rooting out the “three evil forces” of terrorism, extremism and separatism. About 1,300 service people from the army and air forces of each country participated in the five-day drill at the Taonan tactical training base in northeast China bordering Russia’s Far East.
Chen Bingde, Chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, jointly announced the beginning of the exercise, after holding strategic talks in Russia’s Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk.
The exercise did not target any third party, the Chinese Defense Ministry said. It was designed to showcase the two countries’ capacity and determination to jointly cope with various kinds of security threats.
The exercise contributed to the international community’s antiterrorism efforts and was increasingly necessary in the face of the mounting terrorist threat in Central Asia, Chinese and Russian experts said.
Responding to threats
“Terrorism is making a comeback from North Caucasus and Central Asia to China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region,” said Feng Yujun, Director of the Institute of Russian Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR). “Al Qaeda members are migrating to Central Asia as the United States intensifies its military operations along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.”
Armed attackers assaulted the police in Andijan, Uzbekistan, at the end of May, while a string of terrorist attacks has ripped through Pakistan. The terrorist organization Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan has become more active in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. In this context, especially given the fact that the international financial crisis has dealt severe blows to the Central Asian countries’ economies, it is imperative that members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) step up cooperation in antiterrorism, Feng said.
The SCO, founded in Shanghai in 2001, groups China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan into a mutual security organization. Senior military delegations from the other four SCO member states as well as the secretary general of the SCO Secretariat and head of its Regional Counterterrorism Structure observed the Peace Mission 2009 exercise.
The situation in Afghanistan shows that NATO cannot effectively combat terrorist forces in the country without the support of Russia and China, said Viktor Litovkin, Deputy Managing Editor of the Russian publication Independent Military Review. Joint exercises held by Russia and China are an important part of the international antiterrorism efforts and exemplify the countries’ sense of responsibility to help deal with antiterrorism, he said at a televised seminar at the Beijing Press Center of the RIA Novosti News Agency on July 21.
China, Russia and other SCO members previously conducted two antiterrorism exercises under the name Peace Mission in 2005 and 2007. Peace Mission 2007, staged in Russia in August 2007, was the first joint military exercise that involved armed forces from all six SCO members. The People’s Armed Police Force of China and the Internal Troops of Russia also held their first joint counterterrorism exercise in Russia in 2007.
Holding joint exercises has become a tradition in China-Russia military cooperation, Litovkin said. He pointed out that the purpose of their joint exercises is transparent—while conducting drills on fighting international terrorism, they aim to enhance the mutual understanding between their armed forces through joint exercises.
Participants in this year’s joint exercise come from troops deployed along the border, Litovkin noted. Chinese and Russian soldiers live in the same training camp during the joint exercise, with their weapons and equipment stored nearby. This enables them to become acquainted with each other and become familiar with each other’s weapons, he said.
Peace Mission 2009 was more focused on fighting terrorism than the previous two joint exercises, said Vladimir V. Evseev, Senior Associate at the Institute for World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences. Russia sent strategic warplanes to the first joint military exercise in 2005, sparking concerns in Western countries, he said. Officials made adjustments this year so the joint military exercise could only be understood as an antiterrorism drill, he said.
Working together
China has adopted a new security concept that underlines cooperation without causing confrontation or targeting other countries, said Sun Bo, an associate professor at the Institute of Security and Strategic Studies at the CICIR. “Since China and Russia carry out military cooperation within the legal framework of the SCO, Western countries’ concerns are totally unnecessary,” he said. “Antiterrorism is a cornerstone of the SCO. SCO members have a consensus on addressing terrorism, separatism and extremism.”
The most important measure the Chinese Government has taken against separatism, extremism and terrorism is eradicating the soil that breeds them by making the country’s economic and social development more balanced, Feng said. It seeks to promote tolerance and understanding among different ethnic groups and religions and expand exchanges and cooperation of diverse cultures in China. Improving the capacity of its armed forces and police to fight terrorism and extremism is another important goal of the Chinese Government. Moreover, it is eager to carry out antiterrorism cooperation with other countries and international organizations.
China and Russia have made “monumental progress” in their military cooperation since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Feng said. That progress has led to a strengthening of military trust along their border, as well as great strides in military technology exchanges, with Russia becoming an important technology provider for the modernization of the Chinese military’s equipment. Their military forces additionally share a great deal of consensus on the international strategic situation, since both are committed to world multipolarization and safeguarding international strategic stability. They have worked together closely in personnel training and in recent years many Chinese officers have received military education in Russia. The two countries’ joint antiterrorism exercises also provide evidence that their military cooperation has reached a high level.
Sun cautioned that external factors pose a grave challenge to international security. U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly recently admitted the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) gives funds to the World Uygur Congress, the organization behind the July 5 riot in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The NED also receives its funds from the U.S. Congress, according to a Xinhua News Agency report. The Peace Mission 2009 joint exercise sent a clear message that SCO members do not allow terrorist forces to use their territories to undermine other members, Sun said.
The joint exercise was not directly aimed at addressing the riot because China and Russia have been preparing for it for months, Fend said. It is impossible for them to make major changes to the goals of the exercise with such short notice. In the future, however, China and Russia, as well as other SCO members, can take imminent terrorist and extremist threats into consideration when conducting joint military exercises, he said.
The SCO, which originated from the confidence building measures taken by its six members along their borders, has become an important factor that helps safeguard peace and stability in Central Asia, said Evseev. He said it is his hope that China and Russia continue to hold joint military exercises and that other SCO members join them as well.
(The Daily Mail-Beijing
Review Articles Exchange Item)
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Faith can be fun |
Dr Farish A. Noor
AS the centre of my universe has moved to Central Java, I find myself travelling to the cities of Jogjakarta and Surakarta quite a lot. The last time I was there was during the celebration of Eidul Fitr or Lebaran as it’s called in Indonesia, just in time to catch the celebrations that customarily take place on the last night of Ramadan and on the eve of the month of Shawwal.
On that night, I set by the road in the middle of Jogjakarta, camera in hand, to watch hundreds of kids from their respective schools and mosques parade in the streets in a myriad of funky and funny costumes: There were Pokemons and Doraemons, Sponge Bobs, Devils and Angels, Dragons and ?monsters galore.
I watched as the bands marched past blaring their horns and drums, and as the floats made of paper and plastic rolled past. As this colourful parade marched past, I wondered aloud about how and why there seems to be so much fun in this country, and so little elsewhere in the Muslim world today...
Now of course it is a well known and well established fact that Muslims celebrate Eidul Fitr all over the planet. Indonesia is not unique in this respect and one can make the rather facile point that celebrations are celebrations, wherever they may be. But one qualitative difference has always distinguished Indonesian Muslim celebrations from other celebrations I have seen elsewhere in the world, and it lies in one subjective factor that has to be seen and felt rather than theorised: Indonesian Muslim celebrations are fun. Yes, fun! Remember what it was like, to actually have some real fun ?during Eid?
I throw this question to the readers for the simple reason that in my own accounting I have suffered a deficit of fun over the past two decades or so. As a child in Malaysia I recall celebrating the end of Ramadan with fireworks, oil lamps, music and a jolly dose of cake-eating, which kids are wont to do. Ramadan and Eid were fun then, during those days in the 60s and 70s when the entire month of Ramadan was spent cleaning the oil lamps, filling them with kerosene, lighting them up every evening, buying (and hoarding) fireworks and having firework fights with my neighbours.
Things however began to change as soon as the tone and tenor of normative Islam in Malaysia took a turn for the political and the Mullah-wannabes began to preach from the pulpit about the evils of fun and happiness.
By the 1980s, as Malaysia went into full swing in the spirit of an Islamisation programme that witnessed little fun but rather the rise of more and more conservative types in mosques and the Parliament, the element of fun was slowly but surely stamped out. We were told that music was ‘haram’ or un-Islamic, that the oil lamps were Hindu, that the fireworks were decadent and corrupt. Tell that to a seven-year old and you kill his love for fun for the rest of his life.
As a researcher working on comparative religious politics across the Muslim world, I have witnessed the massacre of fun from Pakistan to the Magreb, from Malaysia to Brunei. Which is why Indonesia is such a startling place for me, as it seems to be one of the few places in the Muslim world today where Muslims can actually be happy and have fun, despite the difficulties - both economic and political — that the ?country faces.
As an academic-activist who has been engaged in the constant effort to improve the image of Islam in the international media for years, I have been recommending Indonesia as the antidote to Islamophobia for years. Humour has never been needed as much as it is now, and such irony and humour are perhaps the best foils against an Islamophobic media that can only see Muslims as murderers, fanatics and terrorists. Tell that to the boy in Jogja as he sings ‘Allahu Akbar’ dressed as Sponge Bob.
—Khaleej Times
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Afghan policy: US faces critical choices |
Dan Balz
PRESIDENT Barack Obama delivered a global call to action at the United Nations Wednesday morning, but it was an expression of apparent frustration that may have best captured the moment in which he finds himself. His address came during a whirlwind week of international gatherings and diplomacy — a climate change summit and Middle East meetings on Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, a G20 meeting on the international economy on Thursday. Those formal events coincided with an intensification here at home over critical choices facing the president in his Afghanistan policy. Obama’s message to the other national leaders assembled in New York was that his administration represents a clear break with the posture of the Bush administration in its dealings with allies around the world. Hailing what he called a new era in the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world, Obama ticked through the changes he said his administration has undertaken in the first eight months of his presidency.
They included the banning of torture, the order to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, the winding down of the war in Iraq, a renewed focus on dismantling and defeating Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the appointment of a special envoy for the Middle East with the goal of a two-state peace agreement, and fresh investment in combating climate change.
In return, Obama said, the United States expects the cooperation of others in addressing these problems. “This cannot be solely America’s endeavor,” the president said bluntly. “Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone. We have sought — in word and deed — a new era of engagement with the world. Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”
That summed up the challenge he faces. Can a different style, a more open hand and expressions of respect prompt the rest of the world to follow along with this administration as it tries to solve many of the same problems that confronted the Bush administration?
And to what extent will the president be willing to act, if not exactly unilaterally, then mostly alone, to advance this nation’s interests?
Part of this will depend on the steadiness and consistency of Obama’s leadership. He has set clear goals and, in his speech Wednesday, outlined concrete steps in some of the areas of priority. But as he delivered his address, his administration was engaged in an important debate over Afghanistan — one that became all the more public Monday with Bob Woodward’s publication in The Washington Post of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s report warning of failure in the mission there unless more troops are committed. The report puts Obama squarely on the spot. With public support for the war eroding and with liberal activists voicing opposition to what they see as a potential quagmire in Afghanistan, White House officials have responded cautiously — hesitantly in the assessment of some outsiders — to McChrystal’s assessment. It was only a few months ago that the president announced a new strategy for Afghanistan. McChrystal was installed to implement that strategy.
Now, in the wake of reports that the general wants more troops, administration officials suggest another new strategy may be needed. They cite a new set of conditions, including the messy aftermath of the recent election in Afghanistan, as a cause for reassessment. In reality, the election certified rather than exposed what administration officials have long known — that President Hamid Karzai is an unreliable partner in the battle against the Taleban and Al-Qaeda.
—Arab News
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