The battle for little states is heating up in Asia. With China wooing Myanmar, Pakistan and Lanka and Bharat (aka India) going after Maldives. Nepal and Bhutan are in the balance. Afghanistan seems to have gone to Pakistan following the London Conference where the world politely asked Bharat to lay-off Kabul. Delhi has been kicked out of Tajikistan and is now concentrating its efforts in some African countries and also on Bhutan.

• Nepalese struggle for freedom despite Indian meddling
• Nuclear flashpoint: How India lost Nepal to China
• Anti-Indian Maoists in Nepal raise ante

The Sri Lankans hate the Indians for supporting th the LTTE terrorists. The Bangladeshis are fed up with the “Rakhi Bahni” which tried to rule Bangladesh under an Indian general.  The Burmese would rather be isolated than deal with a Delhi bent upon making it a protectorate, The Maldives almost drowning don’t want a lifeboat from Bharat. The Chinese have huge boundary disputes with Delhi. In the early days of independence Delhi thought that it could grab Tibet and thus bifurcate China into small pieces, perpetuating the colonial division of China. Mao Zedung would have none of that and took over Tibet, Aksai Chin and told Delhi to lay off Tibet. Then of course there are the Pakistanis, a huge impediment to Bharati hegemonistic designs in West Asia.

In a quest for military advantage along its border with China, India is intensifying its military cooperation with the United States and Russia and stepping up its military penetration of small border states adjoining China and India.

In the past decade India has bought arms worth US$50 billion from the United States, Russia, Britain, Israel and France, making it the biggest arms importer in the developing world. India has also held joint military exercises with the United States, and is developing close military ties with Moscow. In talks at the Kremlin last December, President Medvedev and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed a blueprint for military cooperation to 2020, as well as a number of arms deals.

India has resumed military cooperation with Nepal, suspended in 2005. Under new agreements, India will train and share intelligence with Nepali forces. The Press Trust of India reported December 7, 2009 that India is to build an air base in Nepal and resume arms sales. The struggle between pro-India and pro-China forces in Nepal is at a critical stage and China needs to pay more attention to its interests there.

Following the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, India took control of and began to train the Bhutan Army. Over 4,000 Indian military advisors have been sent there. India helped establish and equip the Bhutan Air Force, which is deployed along the border with China, and has encouraged Russia to provide military helicopters and logistical support.

Myanmar, with 700 million barrels of oil reserves, 444.3 billion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, and a 2,185–kilometer long border with China, is also in the frame. Indian military officials began close contacts with the Myanmar government in 1997 and, since then, visits by successive Army Chiefs of Staff have become routine. India has been supplying military equipment to Burma since 1998.

In the Maldives, India has built radar installations and a base for early warning aircraft and helicopters.

But despite its arms purchases from the great powers and military penetration of neighboring countries, it remains extremely unlikely that India will unleash all-out conflict with China. Its pressing missions are to contain Pakistan and fight terrorism. Sino-Indian dialogue and negotiation mechanisms are still operating. For the foreseeable future, therefore, while a “cold war” between the two countries is increasingly likely, a “hot war” is out of the question.The author is a columnist with China.org.cn For more information please visit:http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/node_7078634.htm(This article was translated by Fan Junmei.)

A Pro-Chinese Nepal is catastrophic for Delhi. A Nepal which is more friendly to China eliminates Delhi’s access to Tibet, and puts pressure on Sikkim and Bhutan. A hostile Nepal places the Indian union in jeopardy because it is a Damocles sword on Delhi. At the drop of a hat Nepal could choke Indian access to the seven Indian states in the Northeast which are already up in arms against Delhi.

Many think that the stalemate helps the Maoists who want to bide away the time ’till the next elections where they think they will be able to to capitalize on the impotence of the current government and sweep the polls. The Delhi machinery in cahoots with the Nepalese Army is working to prevent that from happening.

The Maoists are mad at Delhi for the interference. If India continues its diktat, the Maoists could retreat to the mountains and begin the war once again. China has a lot of influence in Nepal.

This year will be interesting. It will be fascinating to see if Nepal emerges as an independent republican state free of Delhi’s diktats, or will the Nepalese contineu their struggle against Delhi’s domination from the jungles.

BEIJING: India is “intensifying military penetration” in Nepal and Bhutan, a Chinese analyst said in a government-run website. The Himalayan kingdoms have become theatres of conflict between military strategists from India and China, it suggested.

The analyst, Dai Bing, also raised a rare issue saying that the Bhutan Air Force has deployed defense equipment along the border with China after getting them from India. It did not say what kind of equipment has been deployed.

“The struggle between pro-India and pro-China forces in Nepal is at a critical stage and China needs to pay more attention to its interests there,” the analyst said while citing a news report that New Delhi was building an air base in Nepal.

India has also “encouraged Russia” to provide military helicopters and logistical support to Bhutan, the article complained. It said India has helped establish and equip the Bhutan Air Force. It also expressed worry over rising military cooperation between New Delhi and Moscow. The article might seems to actually congratulate India on its defense diplomacy in persuading Russia to take actions that would make China unhappy besides commanding considerable influence over the two Himalayan kingdoms.

This is interesting because Beijing is dangling two lucrative offers before Katmandu. They are the offer to extend the Tibet railway to Nepal and send large numbers of tourists to the Himalayan nation. In turn, it wants an assurance that Tibetan separatists would not operate in Nepal.  India aid to Bhutan, ties with Russia worrying China
Saibal Dasgupta, TNN, 8 February 2010, 08:19pm ISTText Size:|Topics:China

Some of the important visits from China to Nepal were:

February 25, 2009: Assistant Chinese Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue led a 14-member delegation.

February 19, 2009: Liu Hongcai, vice minister of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), led a delegation to take part in the inaugural ceremony of the 8th convention of the Unified Marxist Leninist in Butwal.

February 10, 2009: A high-level Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) delegation, one of the largest delegations in two months, arrived in Nepal.

December 6, 2008: Lieutenant General Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of General Staff of the PLA headed a 10-member delegation. China agreed to provide US$2.61 million worth of security assistance to Nepal.

December 1, 2008: China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi visited Nepal.

July 24, 2008: Chinese Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, Wu Dawei, visited Nepal. He pledged a grant assistance of 100 million yuan (US$15 million) as economic and technical cooperation.

March 4, 2008: Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs of China, He Yafei, undertook a three-day visit to Nepal.

It used to be that the Naxalites from Andhra Pradesh used to support the Maoists of Nepal. Now that the Maoists have their own state, the trail of support will run both ways. The Nepalese revolution in eliminating the pro-Indian King will provide succor to the 89 insurgencies raging in the poor and disenfranchised sectors of “India.”

The clear and present danger for Bharat extends beyond the threat from the Maoists in Nepal. The fact remains that New Delhi for the past several decades has opposed the Maoist guerrillas fighting a complacent, corrupt and complaint pro-Indian appendage of a government in Khatmandu. Now New Delhi’s enemies are in power in Nepal.

The pro-India Jhalanath Khanal, president of the Delhi sponsored Unified Marxist Leninist (UML), party has been unable to come forward with one voice. Defense Minister Bidya Bhandari disagrees with the prisedent of the party. Such bickering aside, the fractured government is using excuses not to include the Maoists in the mainstream army or policy. 

The discredited Nepalese Army which was defeated by the Maoists has long supported the status quo–of keeping the royalty mentality and maintaining loyalty to Delhi. It is obvious that they don’t want the former enemies, the Maoists in their ranks.

The problem for New Delhi extends beyond Khatmandu and Nepal. The Maoist victory in Nepal serves as a lightning rod to the Maoist and Naxalites that are active in more than a dozen Indian states–from the Seven sisters in the Northeast, all the way down to central India and then hooking up with the Tamil Nadus. The Naxalite insurrection in India has been named the number one security threat to the union right after Kashmir and the Northeast secessionist movement. India surrounded on all sides with insurgencies. India has horrible relations with all her neighbors-stealing territory from all of them. Much to the chagrin of Bharat, even Bhutan is now negotiating with China directly in the Chumbi valley. Intoxicated India, deaf and blind to internal schisms–unable to instrospect & resolve its huge race, caste, religious problemsIndia’s Security concerns

Pakistan has to build better relations with Nepal. The long term goal would be to connect Nepal through Aksai Chin and the Karakoram highway– giving Nepal a berth in Gwader with Cosular status which would be “Nepalese territory”. Nepal could then ship containers from Nepalese ships and they would reach Nepal without interference from either Pakistan or China–nad more importantly without any interference from Bharat.
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