ARTICLES OF THE DAY

January 07, 2022

DMITRI ALPEROVITC, FOREIGN AFFAIRS .......................................................................................................... 2

JIM TOWNSEND, FOREIGN AFFAIRS ................................................................................................................. 7

IKRAM SEHGAL AND DR BETTINA ROBOTIKA, DAILY TIMES ........................................................................... 10

NILLY KOHZAD, THE DIPLOMAT ..................................................................................................................... 12

JAMES MCBRIDE AND JEANNE PARK, CFR ...................................................................................................... 15

ZAHID F. IBRAHIMI DAWN NEWS ................................................................................................................... 20

SYED MOHAMMAD ALI, EXPRESS TRIBUNE .................................................................................................... 22

SHAHZAD CHAUDHRY, EXPRESS TRIBUNE ...................................................................................................... 24

 The Case for Cyber-Realism
Dmitri Alperovitc, Foreign Affairs
I
n September 2015, U.S.
President Barack Obama
stood beside Chinese
President Xi Jinping in the
White House Rose Garden
and announced a historic deal
to curb cyber-related
economic espionage. The
scope of the agreement was
modest, committing China
and the United States only to
stop stealing or aiding in the
cyber-enabled theft of
intellectual property in order
to boost domestic industry. It
was an easy promise for the
United States to make, since
Washington had long
prohibited U.S. intelligence
services from conducting
economic espionage for the
benefit of private companies.
But it was a groundbreaking
pledge for China, whose
military and intelligence
agencies had for more than a
decade engaged in massive
cyber-enabled theft of U.S.
intellectual property and state
secrets in order to advantage
Chinese companies.
The agreement was equally
groundbreaking because of
how it came about. In the
weeks leading up to the Rose
Garden ceremony, Obama had
threatened to sanction Chinese
companies and citizens who
continued to target U.S.
companies with cyberattacks
or exploit stolen intellectual
property for commercial gain.
These threats, the first that an
American president had ever
issued in response to Chinese
economic espionage, were
calibrated to address not just
China’s cyber-activities but
also its broader economic and
strategic objectives. “We are
preparing a number of
measures that will indicate to
the Chinese that this is not just
a matter of us being mildly
upset, but is something that
will put significant strains on
the bilateral relationship if not
resolved,” Obama told
business leaders the week
before Xi’s visit. “We are
prepared to take some
countervailing actions in order
to get their attention.”
Initially, the agreement was a
limited success. Intrusions
from Chinese government-
affiliated groups dropped to
their lowest level in over a
decade in 2016. And for the
next two years, American
companies enjoyed a brief
respite from what had
previously been an
unrelenting assault by Chinese
military- and intelligence-
affiliated hackers. But the
détente was short-lived. In
2018, U.S. President Donald
Trump launched a trade war
that undercut the United
States’ economic leverage
over China and reduced
Beijing’s incentives to adhere
to the pact. Later that same
year, the National Security
Agency accused China of
violating the agreement, and
the U.S. Justice Department
proceeded to indict Chinese
hackers on charges of cyber-
enabled economic espionage.
The Trump administration
threatened to impose broad
sanctions on Chinese
companies, but it ultimately
sanctioned only a few firms.
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Although it failed in the end,
the 2015 agreement between
Obama and Xi offers a
promising model for
addressing cyberthreats. Until
recently, the United States has
tended to approach issues
related to cyberspace as a
narrow set of technical
problems to be solved
primarily with a combination
of defensive and limited
deterrence measures. Those
defensive efforts have
included funding the
modernization of technology,
regulating industries involved
in critical infrastructure, and
improving collaboration and
information sharing between
the government and industry.
Deterrence has typically
involved punitive actions by
law enforcement or sanctions
against individual perpetrators
or their affiliated military and
intelligence agencies. After
North Korean hackers
breached Sony Pictures in
2014, for instance, the United
States sanctioned individual
North Korean officials and
indicted three North Korean
intelligence operatives.
Russia’s interference in the
2016 U.S. presidential
election occasioned a similar
response: Washington
imposed sanctions on Russian
intelligence agencies, indicted
Russian military officers,
expelled Russian intelligence
officers operating under
diplomatic cover, and shut
down several Russian
facilities located in the United
States. The United States has
also sought to deter
adversaries by threatening to
take the offensive and carry
out retaliatory cyberattacks.
Yet despite all these steps,
neither North Korea nor
Russia—nor any other U.S.
adversary, for that matter—
has ceased targeting the
United States.
That is because vulnerability
to cyberattacks is not a
technical problem that
hardened defenses or narrow,
cyber-focused deterrence can
fix. Cyberattacks are a
symptom, not a disease; the
underlying conditions are
broader geopolitical problems
that demand geopolitical
solutions—namely high-level
negotiations with adversaries
in the pursuit of agreements
that all parties can live with.
As the range of cyberthreats
multiplies and the frequency
and severity of attacks
increase, Washington needs a
dose of cyber-realism. It must
treat cyberthreats as a
geopolitical and national
security priority that demands
hard-nosed diplomacy—
backed by all of the United
States’ tools for gaining
leverage—to entice
threaten U.S. adversaries into
changing their behavior, as
Obama did in 2015. The
specific carrots and sticks will
need to be tailored to each
adversary, taking into account
its unique geopolitical
ambitions. But the sticks will
have to include more
aggressive deterrence, aimed
not just at the hostile military
and intelligence agencies that
perpetrate cyberattacks but at
the regimes to which those
agencies answer. Cyberspace
is not an isolated realm of its
own, after all, but an extension
of the broader geopolitical
battlefield.
DEFENSE AND
DETERRENCEF or most of
the last three decades, U.S.
cybersecurity policy and
cyberstrategy have treated
cyberattacks as if they
emerged from the ether,
unconnected to the
geopolitical conflicts and
competitions that structure the
global security order. As a
result, much of U.S.
cyberstrategy has focused on
managing the effects of
cyberattacks through defense
and narrow deterrence of
actors in cyberspace rather
than addressing the causes of
cyberattacks.
Defensive measures can be
either proactive or reactive,
seeking to protect networks
from intrusions or to trying to
limit the damage when
intrusions inevitably occur.
But neither of these types of
defensive measures has
proved equal to the increasing
cyberthreat—as Russia’s
recent and extensive hack of
U.S. government networks via
network-monitoring software
made by the Texas-based
company SolarWinds, among
other major incidents in
cyberspace, has made clear.
Attackers have an inherent
or
advantage in cyberspace:
when the cost of each
attempted hack is low and the
penalties are effectively
nonexistent, hackers seeking
to infiltrate even hardened
targets can afford to spend
months and sometimes years
trying to find a way in. That
asymmetric advantage makes
aggressors quite likely to
succeed eventually, since they
need to get lucky only once,
whereas defenders must
discover and stop each
hacking attempt.
Attackers have an inherent
advantage in cyberspace.
Even if the U.S. government
could sufficiently harden its
own defenses, moreover, it
would not be able to prevent
all or even most cyberattacks,
many of which are directed
against smaller entities, such
as schools, hospitals, police
departments, small
businesses, and nonprofit
organizations, which have
neither the resources nor the
knowledge to implement
complex cybersecurity
strategies. These
organizations will have little
chance of fending off
sophisticated cyberattacks
from hostile countries no
matter how effective U.S.
government defenses become.
Deterrence, as it has
traditionally been practiced,
has been similarly ineffective
at preventing cyberattacks. In
the past four years, the U.S.
government has sanctioned
and indicted government
officials and contractors from
all its four primary
adversaries: China, Iran,
North Korea, and Russia. Yet
these states regard the cost of
such measures as relatively
minor, and they continue to
carry out or condone
cyberattacks at an unrelenting
pace. More aggressive
sanctions that would threaten
the underpinnings of
economic growth in these
countries, such as sanctions
against industrial national
champions, would likely
achieve a greater effect. But
because the United States
does not approach these
attacks in their broader
geopolitical contexts, it has
failed to mount appropriately
tailored responses.
On occasion, the United States
has gone on the
cyberoffensive. Ahead of the
2018 U.S. midterm elections,
for instance, U.S. intelligence
agencies sought to disrupt the
Internet Research Agency,
Russia’s infamous Internet
troll factory. Such offensive
measures have occasionally
succeeded on a tactical level,
impeding or slowing
adversaries’ attacks for a time.
But they have done nothing to
change the basic calculus of
U.S. adversaries in cyberspace
or to make the United States
less vulnerable to cyberattacks
in the long term.
THE GEOPOLITICS OF
CYBERSPACEThe vast
majority of cyberattacks
against U.S. entities, whether
by criminal groups or
governments, emanate from
the four countries—China,
Iran, North Korea, and
Russia—that also pose the
greatest conventional military
threats to the United States. To
effectively counter the
cyberthreat from these
countries, Washington must
consider their broader
geopolitical goals.
China is the United States’
most formidable adversary in
cyberspace, as well as in the
conventional military domain.
It has made no secret of its
ambition to surpass the United
States as the world’s leading
economic and military
superpower, and its activities
in cyberspace follow logically
from this goal. The vast
majority of Chinese
cyberattacks are instances of
traditional and economic
espionage. Between 2010 and
2015, for instance, state-
sponsored Chinese hackers
systematically targeted U.S.
and European aerospace
companies, stealing valuable
information that China then
funneled to its state-owned
aerospace manufacturers. This
hacking campaign was an
enormous success; by the time
it was discovered, in 2018,
Chinese manufacturers had
already built commercial jets
based in part on the stolen
intellectual property.
China’s cyber-espionage has
been especially aggressive in
sectors that Beijing deems
critical to its economic and
national security objectives.
Last July, for instance, the government, and weakening
National Security Agency, the the influence of Western
FBI, and the Cybersecurity countries in Russia’s
and Infrastructure Security neighborhood. Moscow’s
Agency released a joint report interference in the 2016 U.S.
warning that Beijing-linked presidential election, its 2017
hackers were continuing to malware attack that took
target U.S. companies and down networks in Ukraine
institutions in strategically before spreading around the
important areas, including world, and its 2018 hack of the
defense and semiconductor International Olympic
firms, medical institutions, Committee all served this
and universities. Compared broader agenda.
with other U.S. adversaries,
The same is true of Russian
however, China has engaged
ransomware attacks, which,
in relatively little cybercrime
despite being carried out by
and has carried out few
criminal gangs, represent an
destructive cyberattacks. This,
important part of the
too, fits with China’s broader
Kremlin’s strategy. The
strategic agenda, since such
cybercriminals that have
activities could undercut
targeted thousands of U.S.
China’s standing on the
organizations and extracted
international stage. Russia has
over $1 billion in ransoms in
its own set of geopolitical
recent years have sometimes
goals that its cyber-activities
been protected by Russian
aim to advance. Like Beijing,
security forces, and
Moscow is motivated by a
regardless, the Kremlin’s
pugilistic sense of national
refusal to crack down on them
pride. But unlike China,
amounts to a tacit
Russia does not have the
endorsement of their
economic capacity to compete
activities. Although
with the United States. It is
cybercrime does not advance
increasingly isolated
Russia’s core national
internationally and struggles
interests, it does serve a
to maintain its influence in its
strategic purpose: disrupting
so-called near abroad.
the U.S. economy and sowing
Nevertheless, it is striving to
fear among American
retain its status as a great
business leaders.
power, a goal that its leaders
Cybercriminals are also
believe they can achieve by
valuable bargaining chips in
strengthening their position at
international negotiations:
home while undercutting the
Russia can offer action against
reputation of the United States
ransomware gangs in
and its allies and frustrating
exchange for important
their international ambitions.
concessions, without having
Like its Soviet predecessor, to address its more
the Russian government strategically important, state-
carries out traditional spying sponsored cyber-activity.
and economic espionage.
The United States’ other two
Today’s Kremlin uses both
major adversaries, Iran and
cybertools and conventional
North Korea, have also used
means for this purpose. But
cybertools to advance their
Russia’s cyber-activities also
domestic and international
focus on sowing political and
goals, although less ably than
economic turmoil in the West,
China and Russia. Both
undercutting Westerners’
countries have done so
faith in democratic
primarily to circumvent
Western sanctions that are
squeezing their domestic
economies. The North Korean
regime has financed itself
with tens of millions of dollars
accumulated through
cybercrime, and Iran has used
cyber-enabled economic
espionage to get around
Western sanctions on defense
technologies, petrochemical
production, and other strategic
sectors. Both countries have
also used cyberattacks to
weaken their regional rivals,
with North Korea launching
attacks against South Korea
and Iran targeting Israel and
Saudi Arabia.
GRAND BARGAINSBetter
defensive measures might
help insulate U.S. government
agencies, private U.S.
companies, and individual
Americans from the
consequences of major
cyberattacks carried out by
these U.S. adversaries. But
neither defense nor deterrence
as it is currently practiced can
mitigate these threats on its
own. Washington’s
capabilities might improve,
but so, too, will those of its
rivals.
To halt China’s malign cyber-
activity, the United States and
its allies will have to convince
Beijing to make a deal. In
exchange for a de-escalation
of the trade war, Beijing might
agree to remove market-
distorting industrial subsidies,
halt the forced transfer of
technology, and curb
intellectual property theft.
Likewise, if the United States
wants to check Russia’s
nefarious cyber-activities, it
will need to ease Moscow’s
concerns about U.S.
interference in Russian
domestic and regional affairs.
Addressing the cyberthreat
from Iran and North Korea
will similarly require making
progress on negotiations over
their respective nuclear
programs, which are by far the
most pressing concern for
both countries.
This might seem like cause for
gloomy fatalism about the
chances of resolving issues
related to cyberspace. In fact,
the opposite is true. Like all
complex geopolitical
challenges, cyberthreats can
be addressed using the right
combination of incentives,
disincentives, and
compromises. The question
for the United States and its
allies is whether they are
willing to prioritize progress
on issues in cyberspace over
progress on other geopolitical
objectives—and what they are
willing to give up for the sake
of that progress. Considering
the recent slew of major
ransomware attacks and
supply chain hacks, the Biden
administration must urgently
answer that question. Then it
must back up its rhetoric on
cyberspace with hard-nosed
diplomacy that can change its
adversaries’ behavior.
Neither defense nor
deterrence as it is currently
practiced can mitigate
cyberthreats on its own. Part
of what it will take to force
these countries to make a deal
will be broader deterrence,
including measures that raise
the costs to hostile regimes of
carrying out cyberattacks
while denying them the
benefits of doing so. In
addition to military and spy
agencies, the United States
should sanction and prosecute
companies and executives in
countries, such as China, that
benefit from cyber-enabled
economic espionage, sending
the message that the theft of
intellectual property and trade
secrets comes at a hefty price.
Since anonymous
cryptocurrency transfers now
fuel so much global
cybercrime, the United States
should also work with its
allies to sanction and shut
down cryptocurrency
exchanges that cater to
criminal operations or that do
not perform due diligence on
the transactions they facilitate.
To be sure, as long as grand
bargains remain elusive, the
United States will have to
harden its defenses and make
itself more resilient. The U.S.
government has a poor record
on cybersecurity, so it needs to
step up its game and lead by
example—for instance, by
centralizing all civilian
cybersecurity operations
within the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security
Agency. It must also
incentivize public and private
investment in defensive
measures, including by
subsidizing the costs of
defense for municipalities,
nonprofits, and small
businesses and by holding
companies that do not take
responsible security measures
accountable for negligent
failures. Although these
measures can only ever be a
partial fix, they can limit the
damage done by hackers and
other cybercriminals until
Washington can forge a more
lasting diplomatic solution.
When the United States faces
a military threat from a hostile
nation, it does not tell its
citizens and businesses to
fund their own private armies
or to negotiate their own peace
deals. Many cyberthreats are
not meaningfully different
from military or economic
threats, and yet the United
States allows much of the
burden of defending against
them to fall on individual
companies and citizens. In the
short term, the United States
must do more to harden its
defenses and to help
companies and citizens do the
same. Ultimately, however,
Washington must accept that
cyberattacks are primarily an
effect, and not a cause, of
geopolitical tensions. Unless
the United States treats the
underlying disease, it will
never fully recover from the
symptoms.
 What It Will Take to Deter Russia
Jim Townsend, Foreign Affairs
I
n early eight years after
Russia invaded Ukraine
and illegally annexed
Crimea, triggering a raft of
international sanctions, the
United States and its allies
find themselves again trying
to figure out how to deter
Moscow from menacing
Ukraine—if not launching a
full-scale invasion—in hopes
of gaining new Western
concessions. Talks between
U.S. President Joe Biden and
Russian President Vladimir
Putin have begun in earnest,
with Putin putting forth
maximalist demands that
could become either the
starting point for protracted
negotiations that meet
somewhere in the middle or, if
left unmet, the pretext for a
major escalation in the
ongoing conflict. U.S. and
European leaders have warned
Putin publicly and privately
that should he again launch
military forces into Ukraine,
they will not hesitate to
expand sanctions against
Russia. U.S. National Security
Adviser Jake Sullivan
reported that during a two-
hour videoconference with
Putin on December 7, Biden
warned the Russian leader that
“things we did not do in 2014
we are prepared to do now.”
Biden’s threat to his Russian
interlocutors left little room
for misunderstanding.
Yet economic sanctions alone,
no matter how personally
painful they may be to Putin
and his cronies, will not be
enough to prevent the Kremlin
from using tactics that have
proved effective in the past. In
the years since Russia’s last
major confrontation with the
United States and its allies,
Putin has been honing his
skills at intimidation, using
military mobilizations,
disinformation campaigns,
and conflict below the
threshold of war to terrify his
neighbors and keep the West
perpetually on edge. When it
comes to sanctions, Putin’s
pain threshold is very high and
his political resilience appears
bulletproof. He is increasingly
confident that he will outlast
his Western adversaries—and,
indeed, none of the foreign
heads of state who pushed to
sanction Putin after his
Crimean adventure remain in
office. To deter Putin,
Washington and its partners
must persuade him that his
provocations will also be met
with a military response that
will weaken the impact of his
favorite coercive tactics and
dramatically undermine
Russia’s ability to strong-arm
concessions from its
neighbors. By strengthening
their military capabilities in
Europe and increasing their
presence along Russia’s
periphery, the United States
and its allies can both shore up
neighboring governments’
confidence in their ability to
withstand Russian bullying
and shake Putin’s confidence
that his Western adversaries
lack the means and the will to
resist his aggression.
CAUGHT
UNPREPAREDRussia’s
initial invasion of Ukraine
came as a shock to the United
States and its allies. The
alliance’s focus on territorial
threats to European allies had
atrophied in the years since
the 9/11 attacks. It was during
a February 2014 meeting that
I attended of NATO defense
ministers in Brussels that
rumors of “little green men”
infiltrating Crimea were first
heard and greeted with
disbelief by the assembled
NATO leaders. In the hours
that followed, we scrambled
to find accurate information
about what was taking place in
Crimea.
Still grappling to understand
Putin’s intent, though
beginning to recover from the
shock, the United States and
its allies started putting
together a raft of measures
designed to punish Russia for
its actions and to deter future
aggression: a package of
economic and financial
sanctions that sought to
punish Putin without further
provoking him, and while
limiting any impact on
Western interests. The
resulting halfhearted
measures had little coercive
effect on Putin; meanwhile,
Western countries limited
their military assistance to
Ukraine to nonlethal support
only.
Putin has been using conflict
below the threshold of war to
terrify his neighbors and keep
the West on edge. However,
Putin’s aggression prompted
the United States and NATO
to begin a crash program to
strengthen military deterrence
in Europe, which had been
weakened by years of U.S.
troop withdrawals, base
closures, and deep cuts in
allied defense spending. In
order to reassure allies of its
commitment to defend
NATO, the United States
began to deploy forces back
into Europe. This time, U.S.
forces would go on a
rotational basis—not as
permanent deployments to
European bases, as they had
during the Cold War. Two
armored brigade combat
teams (ABCTs) deployed on
nine-month rotations to
Germany to train with allied
troops on the frontlines from
the Baltic to the Black Sea.
NATO also strengthened its
rapid reaction forces and
deployed multinational battle
groups to the Baltic countries
and Poland to act as tripwires
in the event of a Russian
incursion. The United States
pushed its allies to increase
their spending on defense,
which they did. Slowly,
Washington was restoring
confidence among frontline
allies that they would not be
left to face Russian
intimidation alone.
But what the West didn’t do in
2014 was rearm the Ukraine
military with the kind of lethal
military equipment it would
take to stand up to Putin and
give him pause when
considering another invasion.
Washington did not want to
provoke Putin or risk steering
him away from diplomatic
efforts. Although the United
States and other countries sent
millions in funding, nonlethal
equipment, and training teams
to Ukraine, they declined to
deploy combat troops or battle
groups, as they did to NATO
members in the Baltics and
Poland. The limited military
assistance to Ukraine taught
Putin that NATO would go
only so far to defend a non-
NATO ally such as Ukraine:
he could harass his neighbors
with virtual impunity because
the United States and its allies
were not eager to go to war for
a non-NATO ally.
LEARNING FROM 2014As
talks get underway between
Putin and the West, the
Kremlin is undoubtedly
considering the lessons of
2014 as it assesses the
potential costs of another
invasion of Ukraine. As in
2014, the United States and its
NATO allies have offered
strong rhetorical support for
Ukrainian sovereignty but,
again to avoid provoking
Russia as talks begin, have yet
to send significant lethal
assistance to the country or to
strengthen forces already
deployed to allied countries
along the frontier with Russia.
If next week’s meeting in
Geneva between U.S. and
Russian officials shows that
the Russians are interested not
in de-escalation but in using
the talks to build a case for
hostilities, then the United
States and the West should
lose no time in quickly
providing lethal military
assistance to Ukraine,
including additional training
by U.S. and NATO forces.
The United States could
preposition equipment for an
ABCT in western Ukraine,
similar to the sets
prepositioned in allied
nations, to assist the United
States in training Ukrainian
forces. American boots and
armor on the ground in
Ukraine, even as trainers,
would create a tripwire that
would complicate Kremlin
planning by risking a direct
confrontation with the United
States—something that Putin
does not want.
To deter Russia from
continuing to intimidate other
European nations, the United
States and its NATO allies
must make it clear to Putin
that this time he has good
reason to expect a NATO
response that includes
significant military
reinforcement of Europe to
strengthen the confidence of
Russia’s neighbors and so
reassure them that they are no
longer quite so vulnerable to
manipulation by Russian
military threats.
This buildup of U.S. and allied
forces could include returning
U.S. and allied air force
combat squadrons to long-
shuttered but now reopened
European bases, bolstering
allied ground forces deployed
permanently to Europe with
additional armor and missile
defense batteries, and
reinforcing the U.S. Navy’s
Sixth Fleet with a carrier
strike group rotation and
destroyer rotations to ports in
northern Europe. If
Washington and its allies took
those steps, European security
would be significantly
strengthened, and Putin might
recalculate how easy it is for
him to use military
intimidation to manipulate
others.
Continued Russian
provocations have made it
clear that the Western allies’
economic sanctions on Russia
after its 2014 invasion of
Ukraine not only were an
inadequate deterrent but may
actually have given Putin a
sense of impunity. A new
package of even harsher
economic sanctions will help,
but only if it is accompanied
by a robust military response.
Sanctions alone cannot break
the cycle of intimidation and
capitulation that keeps so
many citizens of former
Soviet bloc countries in
Putin’s thrall. Putin’s favorite
tool of military intimidation
must be undermined by a
renewed U.S. and NATO
military posture in Europe that
inspires confidence in those
nations under pressure and so
strengthens them to withstand
Putin’s provocations.
 A Cradle of Human Civilisation — Part III
Ikram Sehgal and Dr Bettina Robotika, Daily Times
T
here are other places of
the stone age human
activities in South Asia
so far no place has been found
that matches the splendour of
Mehrgarh. This could be due
to the missing archaeological
research in those areas.
Northeast India, being one of
the most diverse regions of
Asia in terms of human
civilisation through the ages,
its strategic location at the
junction of South Asia, East
Asia and Southeast Asian
countries and its natural and
cultural interconnectivity may
explain the cultural diversity
of the population inhabiting
the area. Its unique climactic
conditions with regions
having maximum rainfall or
being the wettest place in the
world, with the associated
flora and fauna influencing
the life and culture of the
people of Northeast India. The
area has been referred to as a
corridor because it is one of
the points where the otherwise
segregated subcontinent has
been connected to the
surrounding areas of Asia
over time. From time
immemorable people have
come here from Tibet, South
China and Southeast Asia, this
explains its richness of culture
and social organisation.
Prehistoric studies were of
major interest in the pre-
independent era. However,
archaeologists ignored the
northeast region. In
independent India, the region
has been ignored by
archaeologists,
anthropologists, historians,
and the common people as
well. The local population is
ignorant about their inherent
past and the Neolithic culture
of Assam has been identified
with few tools and pottery
collected from different parts
of the region. Though some
very small-scale excavations
were carried out, there is scant
evidence about the so-called
Neolithic Revolution of this
region.
One reason for this may be the
unfavourable conditions in
Assam, such as its torrents of
rain and exuberance of wild
vegetation, which makes it
almost impossible to penetrate
the Jungles of Assam and
explore. Thus, there is no
dependable chronology of a
Neolithic culture and other
prehistoric cultures of
Northeast India even though,
according to expert opinion,
this region is known to have
played a great role in the
domestication of several food-
producing plants essential for
man, including rice.
Archaeologists dealing with
global archaeological
problems are very interested
in the archaeological potential
of Northeast India. It is
believed that rice is one of
India’s oldest crops and grains
of both wild and cultivated
species occurring in this
context help in marking out
the stages of evolution from
wild to domesticated forms.
Botanists base their evidence
of the origin of rice largely on
the habitats of the wild species
as it is presumed that the
cultivated species have
developed from certain types
of wild rice. But as of today,
the Neolithic stage of human
history was the new way of
life for our ancestors that is
characterised by the
domestication of animals and
plants. So far, we have to rely
only on some stone tools and a
few pieces of pottery found in
the Assam region for the
Neolithic stage. The three
characteristic features of the
Neolithic culture in Northeast
India viz making of stone
axes, producing cord-
impressed pottery, and rice
agriculture, are more or less
similar to the Neolithic
cultures of East Asia and
Southeast Asia. A.H. Dani
(1960) has demonstrated the
similarity of stone tools from
the various regions of
Northeast India with various
parts of Southeast Asia and
East Asia.
Northeast India is known to
have played a great role in the
domestication of several food-
producing plants essential for
man, including rice.
In the Eastern and Central
Indian Neolithic scenario,
domesticated rice and
handmade pottery occurred at
Koldihawa and Mahagara are
within the Neolithic levels.
Other places of Neolithic
findings are Burzahom in
Indian Held Kashmir (IHK),
the Bhimbetka caves in
Madhya Pradesh, the Ayad
Valley site in Rajasthan,
Brahmagiri in Karnataka and
Chirand in Bihar.
The Neolithic site of
Burzahom on an elevated plot
between the Dal Lake and the
Zabarvan Hills was the first
Neolithic site to be
discovered; subsequently,
Gufkral, Brah, Begagund,
Waztal, Thajiwor and other
sites were discovered in
Kashmir. Burzahom translates
to “home of the birch tree;”
mud-brick structures, as well
as mud pits, found here point
to the existence of a Neolithic
settlement. Apart from several
metal and terracotta remains,
recovered artefacts include a
female skull with 11 attempts
at trepanation (surgical
operation) that point to
medicinal or conversely
magical practices of the
people. Also, a stone slab with
an engraving depicting
hunting scenes and two suns
has led to a theory of this slab
being the oldest sky chart to
record an existing supernova,
according to some
astronomers.
The Bhimbetka caves mark
the beginning of the South
Asian Stone Age and are
among the earliest proof of the
existence of life on the Indian
subcontinent. These shelters
were inhabited by a Homo
Erectus species around
300,000 years ago and are
filled with paintings and
murals that chronicle, among
other things, the existence of
dance amongst humans,
instruments used by the tribe,
and etchings of wild animals
such as bison, tigers and
rhinoceroses. The excavations
so far do not suggest a
civilisation at par with the
findings in Mehrgarh,
Balochistan.
The most recently discovered
prehistoric site is the Ahar or
Ayad valley civilisation, it
was inhabited by humans
around 2000 BC. Like the
Harappan civilisation, the
Ahar civilisation produced
ceramics items like toys,
utensils, as well as copper and
bronze items. An ancient
copper mine has been
excavated which proves the
technique of extracting zinc is
very similar to contemporary
techniques.
A Microlithic, Neolithic and
Iron Age site of a later
civilisation that flourished
from 1000 BC-200 BC in
Brahmagiri. It is situated in
the current Chitradurga
district of Karnataka, in itself
a city attached to the
Ramayana and Mahabharata.
Brahmagiri was the
southernmost tip of the
Mauryan Empire, and a rock
edict with Ashok’s message
for peace still provides
validation of its place in
Mauryan history. Artefacts
from all three ages of
civilisations have been found
here, which include 300
rectangular granite tombs with
etchings in ochre, stone beads,
rare crescents and gravers
made from jasper, agate
carnelian and opal from the
Megalithic era; and jewellery
in glass, shell, clay and gold
from 100 BC. The fertile area
of Chirand in Saran district of
modern-day Bihar (at the
confluence of the rivers
Sarayu and Ganga) reveals the
prevalence of food
cultivation, crops such as
wheat, barley, lentils, as well
as a large number of bone-
made tools and ornaments.
Artefacts excavated here
include blades, arrow-heads
and hammers, made with
basalt, quartzite and granite.
A total of 84 Neolithic sites
have been identified in West
Bengal. The nature and
distribution of Neolithic
records in West Bengal
suggest two focal areas of
Neolithic culture with
opposite patterns of
development. They are the
Himalayan foothills
(comprising Kalimpong and
adjacent Sikkim State) and the
plateau fringe area
(comprising the districts of
Midnapur, Bankura, Purulia,
Burdwan and Birbhum). In the
plateau fringe area, Neolithic
sites are found all along on the
riverbanks or near rivers. But
in the Himalayan foothill
region, sites are found along
the hill terraces. Neolithic
tools with a distinct ceramic
industry (grey and pale
redware, sometimes with cord
impression) characterise the
Neolithic culture of the
Plateau fringe area, whereas
Himalayan foothill Neolithic
culture is characterised by
Neolithic tools without
ceramics.
Findings from Bangladesh
have yielded stone age
artefacts as well. Sites are the
Lalmai hills near Comilla,
Chaklapunji Tea Garden of
Chunarughat in the Habiganj
district of Sylhet, Sitakunda
and Rangamati of the
Chittagong region, and the
Wari-Bateshwar of
Narshingdi district.
None of the here mentioned
sites matches Mehrgarh. So
far, only Mehrgarh has been
excavated and researched with
some consistency, but other
places in South Asia could
bring to light other stone age
civilisations. That is why for
the time being, it would be
important to preserve the
remnants of Mehrgarh more
consistently. That is a task not
only for the provincial govt of
Balochistan but for all of
Pakistan.
What Does the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan Have to
Offer?
S
ince the Taliban seized
power in Afghanistan in
August, one group has
remained strident in its
resistance, with plans of
expanding on both a national
and global level.
The National Resistance Front
of Afghanistan (NRF), a
grassroots resistance
movement that emerged from
the rugged terrain of the
Panjshir Valley, has vowed to
keep its momentum strong
against Taliban aggression,
despite the group’s rise to
power with its taking of Kabul
in August 2021.
Historically, the Panjshir
Valley served as a pocket of
resistance in the past against
the Soviet invasion and
subsequently the Taliban’s
rise in the 1990s. A little north
of Kabul, its mountainous
landscape provides
defensive advantage that has
played a strong role in making
it the epicenter of guerrilla
warfare, withstanding all
types of foreign interlopers
that have knocked on its
doors.
Today, the NRF finds itself
trapped in a deja-vu moment
as it grapples with the
challenges of ridding
Afghanistan of the Taliban
once again, and this time
alone.
Who Are the NRF?
The NRF is led by Ahmad
Massoud, son of Ahmad Shah
Massoud or the “Lion of
Panjshir,” a key figure who
led multiple offensives against
the Taliban in the 1990s.
Nilly Kohzad, The Diplomat
Ahmad Shah Massoud played
a critical role in forming an
anti-Taliban resistance after
the group’s first rise to power
in 1996. The powerful
commander was known for
his larger-than-life personality
and keen leadership. He was
assassinated by al-Qaida just
two days before the 9/11
attacks.
For his now 32-year-old son,
Massoud junior, the apple
doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Ahmad Massoud is closely
following in his late father’s
footsteps through the
formation of his own
resistance movement.
“Ahmad Massoud is young,
clean, and educated, he is not
associated with the corruption
of the past 20 years,” says
NRF foreign relations head
Ali Nazary.
a protected with ground and
“We resist for freedom,
justice, independence and for
the welfare of every single
citizen inside the country. The
NRF was formed by people,
not political parties and its
platform is not for a specific
region or a specific ethnic
group. We are fighting for
everyone in the country. The
only resistance group that has
a legitimate presence inside
Afghanistan at the moment is
the NRF,” says Nazary.
For many people joining the
resistance movement, the
NRF is more than just an idea.
Dadgar, a commander with
the uprising who goes by his
last name, says he joined the
resistance because of his
shared values with the
movement. “We have respect
for the law, human rights,
women’s rights, children’s
rights and freedom. Those
who control Afghanistan
today do not value these
things and they challenge
anyone who is against them.
This situation inspired me to
join the resistance and stand
up against the Taliban. We are
not in favor of war or the
continuation of war. Our
resistance is not for war but
for peace. We want a
government that respects and
values these basic rights.”
The demographics of those
involved in the resistance
vary, and these days and
weeks, recruiting for the NRF
has become simpler due to
Taliban aggression.
“In Panjshir we have around
17 bases and it’s well
aerial forces. Same with
Parwan, Kapisa, Badakhshan,
Balkh and Takhar. People are
also reaching out to us from
the east and the south but it’s
going to take time for them to
announce their forces, it’s
because you have the Taliban
oppressing many Pashtuns,
the Achakzai tribe is a good
example,” says Nazary.
He also mentions that the
Taliban’s ethnocentric
policies throughout the
country, especially in the
north, have convinced people
that they should join the
resistance, making it easier for
the NRF.
“We haven’t been making
much of an effort. The people
themselves willingly come
and reach our bases. We have
been getting many youth [to]
join our ranks, middle-aged
men, remnants of ANDSF and
former professionals; it’s been
a drastic increase compared to
September and our pockets of
resistance are in many
provinces not just Panjshir or
Andarab.”
The Taliban contests the
NRF’s claims, with
spokesman Muhammad
Suhail Shaheen recently
telling Russian media that the
Taliban is not militarily
engaged with the group.
According to TASS, Shaheen
said, “What they call National
Resistance exists only on
paper, there’s no place you
can see them on the ground.
They don’t really care about
the people of Afghanistan,
they care about some former
rulers, they have no grassroot
support. They depend on
social media and spread fake
news; this is it.”
Michael Kugelman, deputy
director of the Asia Program
and senior associate for South
Asia at the Wilson Center,
weighs in on the NRF’s
ground potential by stating
that they are a modest
movement with limited
military capacity but still a
very determined group of
fighters, nonetheless. He
believes that the resistance is
finding it difficult to operate
inside the country as the
Taliban control the majority
of Afghan territory, but this
notion could change
depending on how the coming
months unfold.
“If the Taliban are unable to
consolidate power and gain
legitimacy domestically then
that could allow the resistance
to strengthen and that could
benefit the current resistance.
But right now, we are looking
at an anti-Taliban force that is
quite modest and doesn’t
really have the military
capacity to do much at this
point,” says Kugelman.
Kugelman argues that the
satisfaction or dissatisfaction
of the Afghan people will be
largely dependent on how the
Taliban deal with their
handicaps such as their
internal divisions or whether
they can address incredibly
challenging policy
conundrums such as the
unfolding catastrophic
humanitarian crisis. This will
either push Afghans toward or
away from the resistance; only
time will tell.
Out With the Old, In With the
New
Moving forward, the NRF
believes in revamping
Afghanistan’s outdated social
and political systems in order
to bring forth something that
will serve the people first.
From the movement’s
perspective, Afghanistan has
experienced a vicious cycle of
conflict and to end this
perpetual conflict, they have
proposed certain systematic
and political changes that can
undo the divisions of the past
few decades thus creating a
new social contract.
“The only way of ending this
conflict which has always
been over power is to
distribute power from Kabul
to elsewhere, so everyone sees
themselves being part of the
power structure, which has
never happened in this
country. We believe the best
political system is a That would require another
decentralized system which
can devolve power from the
center to the peripheries,” says
Nazary.
For a multiethnic and
multicultural country like
Afghanistan where no
particular group enjoys
dominance, a political system
that embraces diversity and
could guarantee political and
social pluralism is what the
NRF find most fitting.
“We believe, to have social
justice, freedom, for everyone
to enjoy their rights and be
equal under the law – you
need a new political system, a
new Afghanistan. And the
best political system in our
view is a federal system,
which many
multinational/multicultural
states have embraced and
have been successful in
bringing stability and lasting
peace in their country,” says
Nazary.
Leaders of the NRF have
noted the importance of
learning from other countries’
experiences and adapting
them to fit Afghanistan’s
unique mold.
“This is why we have been
emphasizing a new formula
that is compatible with our
traditions, and our realities,
and could be acceptable to
every citizen in the country.
Unfortunately, the models of
governance that have been
used in the past few decades
and generally in the past few
centuries have never been
based on these realities,” says
Nazary.
However, experts like
Kugelman view a completely
new form of governance as
unrealistic and untimely. “I
think it’s much too ambitious
of a goal to impose a new form
of governance at this time.
war, which I don’t think there
is much stomach for.”
“Mobilize, Organize, and
Influence”
In the four months since the
Taliban takeover, the NRF has
experienced heavy clashes,
late night ambushes, and
skirmishes with the Taliban.
Fighting continues despite the
coming cold months ahead.
Commander Dadgar says,
“The weather has gotten cold,
but we are continuing our
efforts, we are constantly
changing our locations for our
safety, and we are in touch
with all resistance members in
every active province, there is
no stopping.”
In terms of formal plans,
Nazary says, “We have both
political efforts and military
efforts. We are preparing
ourselves militarily and we
have a military strategy that
we are pursuing.”
Politically, the NRF are
lobbying against the possible
international recognition of
the Taliban’s government as
the legitimate government of
Afghanistan.
“We believe we need
representations throughout the
world. Our first representation
is here in the United States, we
have the rights to operate and
be able to lobby and advocate
here. We are working on
opening more offices to bring
such awareness throughout
the world,” says Nazary.
In late October, the NRF
registered under the Foreign
Agents Registration Act in the
United States in order to
engage in political lobbying.
Registration is not tied to any
sort of political recognition on
the part of the U.S.
government.
With these activities, the NRF
positions itself as very
different from the Taliban and
hopes to take advantage of
those differences.
“We are different from the
Taliban, they are a sanctioned
group, considered a terrorist
group, with limited
movement. However, we can
travel and have any type of
activity based on the laws of
the countries we are operating
from. We have the support of
the diaspora communities,
which could make a big
difference. We are also
present on social media
platforms such as Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram,
Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces
etc. We are using every
possible approach and means
there is to organize, mobilize,
spread awareness, and
influence opinion. This is our
greatest strength,” Nazary
says.
Kugelman sees the NRF’s
efforts to spread awareness as
justifiable, but argues that the
group must jump through
many hoops in order to make
any noticeable change.
“The NRF have to get the
word out, they are trying to
emphasize the urgency of
their fight, which is the right
thing to do, but it’s tough in a
context where so many key
players and key countries
want to move on and
unfortunately forget about the
war. The U.S., for example,
has no compelling motivation
to get involved with internal
players of the resistance. If
anything we have heard the
Biden administration saying
that they perceive bigger
priorities elsewhere.”
In terms of the use of social
media as a tool, Kugelman
mentions the heavy risks it has
posed ever since the Taliban
takeover.
“There has been so much
misinformation about
Afghanistan that has flooded
social media, both relating to
the Taliban and to the NRF. In
that sense it’s important for
the NRF to correct their
record. More and more
analysts like me have become
increasingly mistrustful of
content that’s posted on social
media, especially [from
accounts] that are not
verified.”
A Message to the World
With Afghanistan’s rapidly
worsening humanitarian and
economic crisis, the NRF
predicts that there are only
two paths for the future. Either
Afghanistan is saved, and
democracy is reestablished, or
the current situation
continues, and international
terrorism increases its
presence and threatens
Afghanistan’s existence.
Afghanistan is at a very
critical juncture in its history,
much worse than anything the
people have experienced
before. Despite this, Nazary
believes the international
community can reverse many
of these changes.
“There is still time to make a
new trajectory that could
bring lasting peace and
freedom, but without a
proactive policy or role from
the international community,
it is very difficult for only the
NRF to save the whole nation.
We are going to do our best
and continue our struggle until
we free every single inch of
Afghanistan but to be
successful in this endeavor,
we will need the support of the
international community and
ignoring this problem will not
help anyone.”
 After the Berlin Wall: Europe’s Struggle to Overcome Its
Divisions
James McBride and Jeanne Park, CFR
T
he fall of the Berlin
Wall in 1989 laid the
groundwork for new
institutions, new states, and, in
some cases, new conflicts. In
the more than three decades
since Germany’s reunification
and the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the European Union
(EU) has taken shape but
suffered growing pains along
the way. A look back at the
postcommunist years recalls
the swift expansion of the EU
and the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), and
the mounting challenge
Russia posed in response to
both. The continent has had to
grapple with economic crises,
migration pressures, and
rising nationalism, as well as
the ongoing repercussions of
the COVID-19 pandemic.
Transatlantic relations have
also become a source of strain,
with the core tenets of U.S.-
EU ties coming into question
amid new divisions over tax,
energy, and defense policy.
Europe Redraws Its
BordersFollowing its
construction in 1961, the
Berlin Wall became the
starkest symbol of the Cold
War’s division of the
democratic West from the
communist East. Its fall on
November 9, 1989, paved the
way for the reunification of
Germany on October 3, 1990,
and the liberation of Central
and Eastern European
countries previously bound
under the Warsaw Pact
defense alliance with the
Soviet Union.
In December 1991, the Soviet
Union dissolved into fifteen
independent republics, of
which the Russian Federation
was the largest. On January 1,
1993, Czechoslovakia split
into two separate countries,
the Czech Republic and
Slovakia, in a “Velvet
Divorce” [PDF]. The breakup
of Yugoslavia in 1991
wrought a decade of war that
devolved into ethnic cleansing
and genocide. Eventually,
Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro,
North Macedonia (formerly
Macedonia), Serbia, and
Slovenia would all become
independent states. Russia
Experiments With Capitalism
and DemocracyWith the
dissolution of the Soviet
Union, the newly constituted
Russian Federation got its first
democratically elected
president in Boris Yeltsin,
who immediately set out to
implement market-oriented
reforms: lifting trade barriers,
giving up price controls, and
withdrawing state subsidies.
This form of shock therapy
sparked a period of sharp
inflation that decimated the
savings of millions of
ordinary Russians and sent
poverty rates soaring.
Despite his deep unpopularity,
Yeltsin won a second term as
president in a 1996 election
tainted by irregularities. The
emerging class of oligarchs
supported Yeltsin’s reelection
bid in exchange for a
controlling stake in many of
the country’s biggest mineral
and oil companies. In 1998,
Russia defaulted on its
sovereign debt [PDF] and its
economy crashed. This,
combined with a rise in
corruption, organized crime,
and income inequality, was a
major setback for Russian
democracy and set the stage
for the 1999 emergence of
Vladimir Putin. First elected
president in 2000, he would go
on to dominate the country’s
politics for decades. The
European Union Is BornThe
fall of the Berlin Wall and the
collapse of the Soviet Union
accelerated the push for
deeper European integration,
a project that had begun in
earnest in the wake of World
War II, with the founding of
the European Coal and Steel
Community in 1951 and the
European Economic
Community in 1958. The EU
was formally established by
the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
Maastricht established a
framework for a common
currency and a common
defense and security policy;
the 2007 Lisbon Treaty
created the EU’s current
structure.
Under these treaties, the
twenty-seven member states
agreed to pool their
sovereignty and delegate
many decision-making
powers to the EU. Among
other changes, this allowed for
the creation of a passport-free
zone, known as the Schengen
Area. The free movement of
people is one of the bloc’s
“four freedoms,” along with
that of goods, services, and
capital. Redefining
SovereigntyThe unraveling of
Yugoslavia in the wake of the
fall of the Soviet Union
resulted in a decade of conflict
that prompted a reevaluation
of national sovereignty and
the responsibility of outside
powers to stop atrocities. The
1995 massacre of more than
eight thousand Bosnian
Muslims in Srebrenica
prompted NATO air strikes
against the Bosnian Serb
forces responsible, paving the
way for the Dayton
Agreement, which ended the
Bosnian war. NATO also
intervened against Serbian
forces in Kosovo in 1999 to
protect ethnic Albanian
Kosovars.
Proponents of these
interventions argued that
acting in the former
Yugoslavia—at times without
UN authorization, as UN
Security Council members
China and Russia opposed the
Kosovo campaign—was
justified by the need to put
human rights above state
sovereignty. In 2005, UN
member states unanimously
adopted the principle of the
“responsibility to protect,”
which established the basis for
international action to stop
genocide, war crimes, ethnic
cleansing, and crimes against
humanity. Since then,
however, controversial
international interventions in
places such as Libya have
called the doctrine into
question.
'Europe Whole and Free'The
reunification of Germany
paved the way for former
Eastern Bloc countries to join
the EU. Between 2004 and
2007, EU membership
jumped from fifteen countries
to twenty-seven, with the
addition of Central European
nations including the Czech Donald Tusk serving as
Republic, Hungary, Poland, European Council president
and Slovakia, as well as the from 2014 to 2019. But the
Baltic states of Estonia, conservative populist vision
Latvia, and Lithuania. Many of Poland’s ruling Law and
policymakers hoped this Justice party, in power since
would fulfill a vision of a 2015, has led to confrontation
united Europe, “whole and with Brussels. Warsaw, along
free,” as first articulated in with the right-wing
1989 by U.S. President government of Prime Minister
George H.W. Bush. Viktor Orban in Hungary, has
continued to clash with the
But enlargement has since
rest of the bloc over migration
slowed as the bloc has
policy, judicial reforms,
struggled with economic
relations with Russia, and
crises, migration pressures,
European integration efforts.
and rising nationalism.
These tensions escalated in
Croatia has been the only new
2021, after Poland’s
admission since 2007, joining
government and its highest
in 2013. Turkey’s candidacy,
court rejected the primacy of
already contentious due to
EU law over the national
concerns over the country’s
constitution, leading Brussels
size, its human rights record,
to withhold tens of billions of
and the stability of its
dollars in pandemic relief aid
economy, has come to a halt
and other EU funds from
amid President Recep Tayyip
Poland. Germany
Erdogan’s growing
RisingAnxiety about
authoritarianism. Further
Germany’s role in Europe
expansion efforts, largely
resurfaced after the fall of the
focused on the Balkans, have
Berlin Wall. Despite the
stalled over France and
optimism of the time, some
Bulgaria’s opposition to
Western leaders opposed
applications from Albania and
German reunification, fearing
North Macedonia; in 2021,
it would once again make
EU states reaffirmed their
Germany a dominant power.
commitment to eventually
Indeed, slow growth driven by
welcoming six new Balkan
the costs of reunification was
members, but the timeline
soon countered by extensive
remains unclear. Europe’s
labor market reforms and a
East-West DivideGermany’s
manufacturing boom that
post-reunification decision to
made Germany the undisputed
return its capital from Bonn to
economic powerhouse of the
Berlin, in what was East
continent. Many analysts have
Germany, presaged the EU’s
seen the creation of the EU in
eastward enlargement. The
large part as an effort to
bloc’s expanding borders have
constrain German influence,
gradually moved Germany
by tethering the country’s
from Europe’s frontier to its
economic strength to a
center, and heightened the
common currency and a
importance of Central and
supranational alliance.
Eastern European countries
within EU institutions. That dominance has increased
German leadership in
In particular, Poland’s
European affairs but also led
increasingly vocal role in the
to new tensions. Under
EU sparked hopes of deeper
Chancellor Angela Merkel, in
East-West cooperation, with
office from 2005 to 2021,
former Polish Prime Minister
Germany drew the ire of many
crisis-stricken states by
insisting on strict austerity
policies and structural reforms
as a condition for EU bailouts.
In 2015, Merkel upended
European politics by allowing
more than one million
refugees from Africa and the
Middle East to enter
Germany, sparking a debate
over migration policy that
continues to rage. NATO’s
Uncertain FutureThe collapse
of communism raised
existential questions for
NATO, founded in 1949 to
protect Europe from Soviet
invasion. Despite protest from
Russia and reluctance from
some Western European
countries, the United States
championed post–Cold War
NATO enlargement as a way
to cement democratic gains in
Eastern Europe. NATO’s
membership soon grew from
sixteen countries to twenty-
nine, incorporating former
Soviet satellite states such as
Bulgaria and Poland, as well
as three former Soviet states,
Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania.
At the same time, NATO’s
mission evolved to include
proactive “out-of-area”
operations. The alliance
intervened in conflicts in
Bosnia and Herzegovina and
Kosovo in the 1990s,
Afghanistan beginning in
2001, and Libya in 2011.
Since 2014, Russian
expansionism has led NATO
leaders to focus on increasing
military readiness on the
alliance’s eastern borders. At
the same time, Washington
has stepped up criticism that
Europe does not spend enough
on its own defense, and U.S.
President Donald Trump
entered office vowing to
improve NATO burden
sharing. He took NATO
countries to task—especially
Germany—and reportedly
contemplated withdrawing
from the alliance altogether.
President Joe Biden has
pledged to recommit the
United States to NATO, but
his 2021 withdrawal from
Afghanistan unsettled many
European allies and led top
EU officials to argue that
plans for an independent EU
army should be accelerated.
Russia’s Challenge and
Conflict With UkraineRussian
President Vladimir Putin, who
has served as either president
or prime minister since 1999,
has centralized executive
power, undermined the free
press, and undone many of the
democratic reforms of the
1990s. He has also set Russia
on a collision course with
Western countries, seeking to
revive Moscow’s sphere of
influence in Europe, Central
Asia, and the Middle East.
Russian policymakers have
expressed alarm at NATO and
EU enlargement efforts, and
Putin has cited these
grievances to justify his
interventions abroad,
including the 2008 invasion of
neighboring Georgia, which
was seeking NATO
membership. In 2014, Russia
intervened in Ukraine in
response to a new pro-West
government, annexing Crimea
and backing separatist militias
in the eastern region of
Donbas. Since then, Putin has
also stepped up efforts to
expand Russian influence
further abroad, sending troops
to back the government of
President Bashar al-Assad in
Syria, seeking new energy
relationships in Europe, and
interfering in the 2016 U.S.
presidential election and the
referendum in the United
Kingdom (UK) on EU
membership. Europe and the
United States have responded
with sanctions and other
moves to isolate Russia and
bolster Ukraine’s defense, but
how much to push Russia
remains a divisive issue.
Biden, for instance, has
pressed Germany over its
nearly completed Nord
Stream 2 gas pipeline with
Russia, while other EU
countries are split over
whether to pursue closer
diplomatic ties with Russia.
Europe’s Unfinished
CurrencyThe EU’s founders
sought to promote peace and
prosperity through an ever-
closer union. The culmination
of this vision was to be the
euro, a common currency at
the heart of a monetary union
that bound member states
together through shared
economic policy. Created by
the Maastricht Treaty, the
euro entered into full
circulation in 2002. Nineteen
of the EU’s twenty-seven
member states use it, and the
rest are legally required to
eventually adopt it. (Denmark
is an exception, as was the
United Kingdom before it left
the EU.) The eurozone’s
monetary policy is managed
by the Frankfurt-based
European Central Bank
(ECB), while national
governments remain
responsible for their own
fiscal policies, within agreed
EU budgetary limits.
The shortcomings of this
arrangement became clear in
the wake of the 2008 global
financial crisis. Many
peripheral EU countries, such
as Greece, Ireland, and
Portugal, had run up
unsustainable government
debt and soon found
themselves unable to borrow
from international markets,
forcing them to turn to the
ECB, the International
Monetary Fund, and other
European governments for
emergency support. Despite
bailouts and painful economic
reforms, many countries still
grapple with low growth, high
unemployment, and towering
debt, dynamics exacerbated
by the COVID-19 crisis.
Migration PressuresEurope
has long struggled with how to
integrate its Muslim residents,
many of whom arrived from
former colonies, in the case of
North Africans, or as guest
workers, in the case of Turkish
immigrants in Germany.
Some experts have warned of
the emergence of “parallel
societies,” while others have
argued that more immigrants
are needed to support
Europe’s rapidly aging
population.
Since 2015, the issue has
become more urgent as
Europe has seen a surge of
migration from the Middle
East and Africa. Millions of
migrants have risked
dangerous journeys overland
or across the Mediterranean
Sea to flee war and poverty.
The lack of a united response
to the crisis has exacerbated
tensions in the bloc, between
countries such as Greece and
Italy that receive the bulk of
arrivals, and those, such as
Hungary and Poland, that
refuse to take in more
migrants. EU countries have
pursued controversial
measures to curb the influx,
including a 2017 deal to return
migrants to Libya and a 2016
agreement with Turkey to
keep Syrian refugees there.
Brexit and the Rise of
NationalismThe EU’s
founding vision of unity,
regional integration, and
cross-border cooperation has
been under increasing
pressure from Euroskeptic
political forces. A decade of
low growth, which many
argue had its roots in EU-
imposed austerity, led to
disillusion with the bloc, as
did the lack of a coordinated
response to the continent’s
migration crisis.
Populist parties have
strengthened significantly in
many EU member states,
especially Italy and France.
Nationalist conservatives such
as Hungary’s Orban champion
“illiberal democracy,” which
they say allows the
government to defend national
sovereignty and identity, but
which critics say undermines
free elections, erodes the
independent press and
judiciary, and weakens civil
society. In Germany, the anti-
immigration Alternative for
Germany (AfD) became the
first far-right party to win
seats in parliament since
World War II, largely on the
strength of its support in
former East Germany.
These trends have taken
perhaps their most dramatic
form in the UK, where a long-
standing ambivalence toward
European integration
combined with rising anxiety
over immigration and
terrorism resulted in the
country’s 2016 vote to leave
the EU. The UK’s 2020
departure avoided the worst of
the disruptions many experts
feared. Major complications
remain, however, most
notably in Northern Ireland,
where an agreement on new
border checks sparked street
violence and fears of renewed
sectarian conflict. Belarus
Goes RogueSince declaring
independence in 1991,
Belarus, a former Soviet state
that borders Poland, has made
overtures toward increasing
ties with the EU while
maintaining close links with
Russia. Ruled by Alexander
Lukashenko since 1994,
Belarus has increasingly
collaborated with Russian
policy goals, including
through the 1999
establishment of a “union
state” with Russia that
involves economic integration
and defense cooperation. In
the wake of Russia’s 2014
invasion of Ukraine, however,
Lukashenko criticized Putin
and sought to develop warmer
relations with the EU.
But after Belarus’s fraudulent
2020 election and subsequent
crackdown on human rights,
the EU imposed sanctions and
refused to recognize
Lukashenko. Relations
worsened further in 2021. In
May, Lukashenko’s
government forced a
European airliner crossing
Belarusian territory to land so
that a prominent dissident
journalist passenger could be
arrested. Later in the year,
Minsk began facilitating the
travel of thousands of Middle
Eastern migrants to Belarus,
with the promise of passage to
Western Europe. Many
migrants gathered at Belarus’s
border with Poland, where at
least a dozen died as
temperatures dropped.
Brussels backed Warsaw’s
refusal to accept the migrants
and applied further sanctions
on Lukashenko’s government
for intentionally fomenting
the crisis. Analysts say the
Belarusian leader has now
embraced Moscow more fully
than ever. Transatlantic Drift
The post–Cold War
relationship between the
United States and Europe has
seen highs and lows. In the
wake of the 9/11 attacks, the
continent responded with
solidarity: NATO invoked its
collective self-defense clause,
Article 5, for the first time,
and European allies backed
the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
But the United States’
subsequent invasion of Iraq in
2003, which European powers
including Germany and
France saw as illegitimate,
strained relations nearly to a
breaking point.
Relations improved under
U.S. President Barack Obama,
but tensions persisted over
chronic underfunding of
NATO and revelations that
the U.S. National Security
Agency spied on European
citizens. At the same time,
Obama worked closely with
European allies on the 2015
nuclear agreement with Iran,
the Paris Agreement on
climate, and an ambitious relations, though a rift with
U.S.-EU trade agreement, as European allies over a failure
yet incomplete, known as the to consult them on the U.S.
Transatlantic Trade and withdrawal from Afghanistan
Investment Partnership and a canceled submarine deal
(TTIP). threw an early wrench into
those plans. Other tensions
Trump took a confrontational
also remain, including over
approach: in addition to
differing views on Russian
castigating NATO allies, he
energy supplies, Chinese
sought warmer relations with
investment in critical
Putin, raised tariffs on
industries, and regulation and
European partners, and all but
taxation of large tech firms.
ended hopes for TTIP. Biden
has promised renewed
commitment to transatlantic
 Contempt versus free speech
Zahid F. Ibrahimi Dawn News
I
WAS midway reading a
thesis on the effectiveness
of the law of contempt at
the 2004, SAARCLAW
Conference in Karachi when
suddenly the chairman of the
session, Justice U.C. Banerjee
of the Supreme Court of India,
used an empty glass and spoon
to ring an impromptu bell and
wake up the audience.
The ‘ting’, ‘ting’ interruption
from the chair of the panel was
to stop me in my tracks as I
was making the argument on
how the Indian supreme
court’s contempt conviction
of the celebrated author
Arundhati Roy did nothing to
enhance the prestige of the
Indian supreme court.
Justice Banerjee, took the
mike and said, I am sorry to
interrupt but the speaker has
got it wrong: The Indian
supreme court did not convict
Arundhati Roy for contempt
of court.
Another judge, this time from
the front seats of the audience,
justice Bashir Ahmed of the
Delhi High Court stood up and
said, yes sir, the speaker has
his facts wrong, Arundhati
Roy was never convicted of
contempt of court in India.
The courts are the ultimate
guardians of free speech, yet
find it difficult to come to
terms with free speech when
critically directed at the courts
themselves.
My reference to the Arundhati
Roy case while discussing the
law of contempt, more
particularly of scandalising
the court, in South Asian
countries was purely a
comparative examination.
Scandalising the court is that
species of contempt law
which seeks to outlaw and
punish scurrilous criticism of
judges which undermines the
administration of justice.
I was not in any way singling
out the Indian supreme court.
Yet, a judge of that court
sought fit to curb my speech
because he felt hurt at what he
perceived was a wrongful
allegation on the Indian
supreme court and thus
merited sacrificing the right of
freedom of expression.
The proponents of contempt
prosecutions reason that
unfair allegations attacking
the courts erode public
confidence in the judiciary
and therefore strike at the
foundation of the most
important pillar of a
democratic society. The
argument that courts must be
protected from harsh criticism
relies upon the view, that the
public is naïve — that it lacks
the faculties to distinguish
between fair and unfair
critique and, if left
unprotected, harsh words will
shatter public confidence. In
other words that offensive
speech unpunished will lead
us all to ‘anarchy’.
Contempt actions are
paradoxical. The courts are
the ultimate guardians of free
speech, yet find it difficult to
come to terms with free
speech when critically
directed at the courts
themselves. Interestingly,
contempt of scandalising the
court seems to have become
obsolete in established
democratic societies.
Contemporary scholars such
as Geoffrey Robertson and
Andrew Nicol view the
offence of scandalising the
court in England as “an
anachronistic relic of the 18th-
century struggles between
partisan judges and their
vitriolic critics”. Eric Barendt
suggests that the offence of
scandalising the court is “now
so unimportant in practice that
it appears fruitless to spend
much space in debating its
justification”.
In 1899, the Privy Council (a
sort of supreme court for
many Commonwealth
countries) ruled that
“committals for contempt of
court by scandalising the court
itself have become obsolete in
this country [UK]. Courts are
satisfied to leave to public
opinion attacks or comments
derogatory or scandalous to
them. But it must be
considered that in small
colonies, consisting
principally of coloured
populations, the enforcement
in proper cases of committal
for contempt of court for
attacks on the court may be
absolutely necessary to
preserve in such a community
the dignity and respect of the
court”. Even a hundred years
later, the Privy Council
continues to look generously
towards contempt convictions
when they come from
countries where the
administration of justice is
seemingly more vulnerable.
Courts in Pakistan, India,
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka all
have a prolific record of
prosecuting contempt of
scandalising the judiciary.
Yet, each of these countries
scores poorly on the World
Justice Project’s ‘Rule of Law
Index’, with Pakistan at an
embarrassing 124th position
out of 139 countries. Last
year, the Sri Lankan supreme
court set a new record by
sentencing the actor-turned-
parliamentarian Ranjan
Ramanayake to four-year
imprisonment for contempt.
Yet, Sri Lanka fell almost 20
places on the ‘Rule of Law
Index’ in a spate of two years.
Justice Banerjee was
undoubtedly only trying to
protect the dignity of the
Indian supreme court when he
interrupted and announced
that my facts were wrong on
the Arundhati Roy conviction.
However, remarkably,
another panelist from India,
K.K. Venugopal, a highly
acclaimed Indian lawyer,
currently serving as that
country’s attorney general,
interrupted justice Banerjee.
K.K. Venugopal, took the
mike and told the audience
that in fact the speaker was
correct; the Indian supreme
court had indeed convicted
Arundhati Roy for contempt
of court and it was justice
Banerjee who had got his facts
wrong. I heaved a sigh of
relief and continued making
the argument that it is
necessary to re-examine the
premise of public confidence
in the judiciary as a
justification for contempt
actions.
While we restrict criticism
directed at the court on the
pretext of saving public
confidence in the judiciary,
we need to probe the question
whether the immunity from
intemperate and even unfair
criticism strengthens the
judiciary.
As Arundhati Roy was being
whisked away to Tihar jail to
serve her one-day sentence for
contempt, she scribbled a note
which said “I stand by what I
said. And I am prepared to
suffer the consequences. The
dignity of the court will [only]
be upheld by the quality of
their judgements
I think Ms Roy is correct. The
dignity of the court, the
majesty of the rule of law will
only be affected by the quality
of judgements and not by
anachronistic laws of
contempt.
 Finding common ground in Afghanistan
Syed Mohammad Ali, Express Tribune
T
here is much finger-
pointing between the
US, other NATO
states, and non-NATO allies
like Pakistan, about the
prevalent precarity within
Afghanistan. Blame games
may offer political mileage,
but they imply a grave toll for
Afghanistan, and strategic
instability for the broader
region and beyond.
No one predicted the speed
with which the Afghan
government would fall to
Taliban forces. But despite
their surprisingly swift
military victory, the ability of
the Taliban to rule
Afghanistan remains
uncertain. The floodgates of
potential refugee flows into
neighbouring states like
Pakistan and Iran, which
would have invariably
accompanied a civil war-like
situation in Afghanistan, have
been averted for now, but this
threat lingers. The Taliban
face multiple changes to
create an effective
government, and to clamp
down on militant proxies or
terror groups with global
ambitions.
Afghanistan desperately
needs to build a homegrown
governance system, which is
representative, and which
does not continue to become
more repressive. It is also vital
to prevent chaos in the country
which could unleash another
humanitarian disaster and
provide a fecund environment
to extremist outfits such as Al-
Qaeda and its offshoot, the
Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-
K), an affiliate of the central
ISIS group in the Middle East.
However, the international in Afghanistan is an issue of
community remains reluctant concern for not only
to go beyond providing Afghanistan, but for Pakistan,
meagre humanitarian support, China and other regional
to unfreeze Afghan assets, and states, besides the US. While
resume international aid. all states agree that IS-K and
Meanwhile, the Taliban find Al-Qaeda should not be given
themselves locked into an an opportunity to regroup in
intensifying rivalry with IS-K. Afghanistan, there is a major
difference of opinion about
IS-K is now portraying itself
other militant outfits.
as a Taliban rejectionist
Contending with ETIM and
group, by claiming that the
TTP remains a priority for
Taliban have somehow sold
China and Pakistan, but the
out or been coopted by the
US is less concerned about
Americans, and it is IS-K
these latter groups. Pakistan
which now represents the
also fears that India will take
spirit of anti-imperial
advantage of the turmoil in
resistance. Such posturing is
Afghanistan to resume
not only indicative of IS-K
support of militancy in
political connivance, but this
Balochistan. On the other
nature of propaganda places
hand, India is concerned with
severe limits on the Taliban’s
the re-energisation of militant
ability to show political
groups which operate in
leniency.
Kashmir.
The Taliban’s announcement
Instead of using Afghanistan
of a largely Pushtun and all-
as a tit-for-tat arena for
male caretaker government
stoking trouble in rival states,
was not only an illustration of
all countries with a stake in
ideological myopia, but it was
Afghanistan need to cooperate
also compelled by the need to
to effectively contend with IS-
avert the IS-K from exploiting
K and Al-Qaeda. If such
internal dissent within the
cooperation succeeds, it may
ranks of the Taliban.
enable needed collaboration to
Pakistan has already seen IS- curb illicit opium production
K being emboldened across and to make the Afghan
the Durand Line, besides the economy more sustainable.
Taliban themselves
Afghanistan has an
challenging the status of this
immensely valuable
demarcation as an
geostrategic location, which is
international border. IS-K
at the crossroads of Central
affiliates, such as the Tehreek-
and South Asia, and it has
e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP),
mineral deposits worth nearly
have also become more active,
$1 trillion. Yet, regional trade
and they have been known to
possibilities and increased
target Chinese investors in
foreign investments to inject
Pakistan in solidarity with the
life into the Afghan economy
Eastern Turkmenistan Islamic
can only materialise if
Movement (ETIM). The
Afghanistan’s descent into
threat of IS-K gaining strength
chaos is averted.
 Pak-US equation and dynamics
Shahzad Chaudhry, Express Tribune
A
Pakistani scholar at
an American think-
tank recently penned
a laudable piece on Pak-US
relations for the NYT. Madiha
Afzal is a graduate of US
schools and a fellow at a
prestigious Washington
institute. The piece is as good
as it can get. So, kudos to her.
Except that it is patently
written for and addressed to
the policy elites in
Washington. It looks at this
complex dyad with an
American eye and works its
way into suggesting a
modified approach replacing
the G2M (Government to
Military) — preferred US
approach as perceived by the
author — with a G2G
(Government to Government)
or civil-civil construct.
Inalienably such a course
imputes a separation between
the Pakistani military and the
civilian government which is
neither helpful nor realistic.
Even if unintended it infuses a
misplaced nuance to what is
essentially a domestic
dynamic.
The piece in many ways
complemented an
announcement in Islamabad
of a National Security Policy
which placed at its heart geo-
economics, the current fad
word. The policy brings the
non-traditional security
aspects of our nationhood into
governmental focus and for
the first time places into equal
measure the security of the
state and the security of the
people in a government
document. It can help a
government reorient its policy
priorities and determine its
budget outlays along those from the region. We as people
lines. Clearly it will depend are easy victims of a zero-sum
upon a government’s spare mindset.
fiscal capacity beyond
So then what is the rational
repayment of debt, retaining
and practical approach to this
an optimal defensive
phase in the Pak-US
capability against multifarious
relationship? Clearly the US
internal and external threats,
wanted out of Afghanistan not
and running a government.
because it could not spare a
Usually it spares only a
few billion a month to support
modest outlay for routine
its presence if it wanted to.
development with current
But it essentially was a re-
revenues. It was thus that
tweaking of American needs
Afzal suggests the US
which weren’t being served
plugging into this dire need of
by continuous presence.
Pakistan and look beyond the
Hence, it called curtains. It
military-alone aspects of her
though reflects that whatever
relationship with Pakistan.
were the conceived goals in
Clearly, the piece also nudges Afghanistan were now no
the US to outmanoeuvre more. It also meant that any
China from her singular hold dream of an economic sub-
in Pakistan by making its block of this region composed
economic presence felt of Central Asia, Afghanistan
through economic and Pakistan did not enthuse
engagement that China has so the US much. China on the
adroitly leveraged in a other hand finds such a
Pakistan desperate for development, were it to
economic oxygen. Just as the eventuate, of benefit though
US, China also has a she will save her money and
significant defence mirth for later when the
relationship with Pakistan but promise is realised.
of late she has diversified and
China has its own direct
broadened her arc of
access to parts of Central Asia
engagement to include
through Kyrgyzstan and
economic planks in
Kazakhstan and will not
fulfillment of her global
unnecessarily irk Russian
political and economic goals.
sensitivity by expanding its
The US may not fall for such
interest unduly across the
a premise simply because it
remaining Central Asia. But if
must too move along her own
other countries like Pakistan
global and regional blueprint
can create a nexus in the
of interests. It would be a
region China would have no
fallacy to assume that
qualms milking off it. CPEC
anything less drives American
may then develop some
disposition; certainly not an
laterals. If not, China
assumed and misplaced
continues to meets its strategic
acrimony bordering on enmity
need of connecting its western
which Pakistani popular
regions with a shorter route
opinion tends to characterise
through Gwadar for trade and
with American distancing
economic support. Oil and gas
from Iran and minerals and
metals from Afghanistan and
Pakistan’s Balochistan can
doubly benefit China. These
are all matters of additional
convenience if economic
activity can gain such
resurgence along CPEC and
its tributaries. But to label
China for grander illusions
than its essential needs is
misplaced as well as
misleading. In its existing
geo-strategic construct none is
willing to invest in the region
till the flux settles.
The US is thus an improbable
partner to the region — even
in competition with China. If
an opportunity presents itself
to spoil China’s progress the
US can be a willing patron but
to say that she may invest here
to carve a space in pursuit of
some ideational chimera is
quite unlike the US. Their
larger interests lie elsewhere.
The role the US has for India
is of a diversion of Chinese
military and strategic effort.
India is unlikely to enter war
with China just because the
US wants it to but will be the
feint at the right price. Nor
does one nuclear power act as
a lackey for another —
especially India, Pakistan,
China and the US engaged in
this modern version of
Checkers in South Asia. India
as a convenient prop only
serves to divide China’s
response along two axes —
Tibet and Taiwan. What is
currently happening on the
western and northern
extremities of India is China’s
deterring response to the Indo-
US feint. Call it a preemptive
disabling of a possible
threatening posture by India in
the south to gain a most
essential freedom to focus
only where it matters.
So what about Pakistan and
the US? There shan’t be much
to gain from the US in the
short-term because she has
little interest here. Even
Afghanistan is now reduced to
a pro forma mention only. If
someone offers an implicit
gain so be it but the US isn’t
expending its energies in a lost
cause. Which really means
that any amount of imploring
to widen the base of
engagement with Pakistan
will only return a blank. Even
a persuasion in the name of
democratic and liberal ideals
to relegate the military with a
civil-civil plank alone in the
relationship is unlikely to cut
much ice. The two nations will
thus have the freedom to focus
elsewhere more critical to
them in the interregnum.
Would that mean that the US
is a friend no more and by
some extension an enemy or a
friend of the enemy? That will
really depend on how Pakistan
will like to phrase the
relationship. Benign
distancing is far better than an
agitated and inflamed tryst
turning into unnecessary
acrimony. We would have
then caused one when none
existed.
A nation of some 250 million
in popular estimates and a
nuclear power to boot isn’t a
secondary player nor should it
reduce itself to such a
denomination in search for
more popular allies or be seen
to play a keen lackey. Zero-
sum alternatives are a losing
proposition in a world that has
long changed its paradigm of
engagement with each other.
The US is a need-based
patron/client. It is for us to
exercise our independence
from big-power enslavement.