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| Africa: East |
| India offers military tech to Sudan |
| 2003-12-15 |
| I’m still not certain why India would do this, given Sudan’s links to the terror network in all of that cash that was sent there from Iran in September 2002 or the US intel assessment in May 2003 after the Riyadh bombings saying that al-Qaeda was being allowed to reopen its training camps in the country. That doesn’t even begin to get into the NIF’s ties to Eritrean, Ugandan, and Somali al-Qaeda affiliates, but far be it from me to understand why nations like Russia or India would sell this crap to nations that may at some point in the future give it to people who would just as soon use it against them ... India has offered military training and defence equipment technology to Sudan for the ambitious 20 year plan to revive and develop its Army, Sudanese Defence Minister Maj Gen Bakri Hassan Salih said on Sunday. "We have an ambitious 20 year plan for the revival of the development of Sudanese Army. India has demonstrated its political will and determination in this process," Salih told reporters after his visit to the Bharat Earth Movers Ltd factory, a defence undertaking, here. He said the training would encompass the Navy, Army and the Air Force, besides technical institutions in Sudan. Salih, who called on President A P J Abdul Kalam and Defence Minister George Fernandes at New Delhi on Saturday, said India had committed to transfer of defence technology to the African nation, which is close to signing a peace agreement with rebels in the country. And is getting ready to start a new civil war in Darfur ... "We want all equipment that is produced in India," he said, adding that the Sudanese delegation had visited several defence establishments in the country including BEML. "There are several areas of cooperation which we discussed with George Fernandes... what is important is at the political level, the level of commitment and preparedness of the Indian side. We will evaluate our needs before we come back for agreement or signing contracts," Salih said. He said a delegation led by Sudanese oil minister visited New Delhi last week, the first after Kalam’s Sudan visit. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #4 I suspect there is a mixture of all these motives: national pride, a lingering resentment of the Anglosphere and need for oil and natural gas - c.f. their insistance that they will continue to transfer nuclear technology to Iran. |
| Posted by: rkb 2003-12-15 6:51:48 AM |
| #3 Paul and Zhang Fei, you two are forgetting about one key thing, namely that corruption and bribery are still extremely high in even the current Indian government which in turn causes these same people to find whatever makes the most money without regard to how it affects the rest of the world. Stuff like this doesn't surprise me, India is trying to gain ground on the international scale as a nation that can produce everything from IT and Engineering staff to weapons and other arms procurement. Combine that with the egoism that the BJP has in its dealings (hell every time I look at these guys I think of cronies with nothing better to do than strut their feathers and try to show their "power") and you get what India is currently. Also just like China, India needs and consumes a vast amount of oil, and that supply can be easily threatened, so I wouldn't be surprised either if they deal with just about anybody to guarantee their supplies. |
| Posted by: Val 2003-12-15 6:28:48 AM |
| #2 India sided with the Soviets because for the first 40 years of it's independance it was ruled by the Indian National Congress, which was a socialist party and leaned towards the Soviets. In contrast, Pakistan's government was overthrown in a military coup in the early 50's, and the new General became an ally of America, and so the Indo-Pak dispute settled along Cold War lines. The present Indian government in dominated by the BJP, which is a right-wing Hindu oriented party that was in favor of closer ties to America and Israel, while keeping it's strong ties with the Third World nations that the Congress party cultivated. Just as America has and continues to give Billions of dollars to the Pakistani Army, because they do not see them as a threat, so the Indians cultivate countries like Iran and Sudan, because they are no threat to her. Pakistani sponsored insurgencies and terrorism is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Indian soldiers and civilians in the past couple decades, but the American government has always given the (understandable) impression that they don't care about terrorism directed against India, as long as it's not directed against America. However it essentially is the same fight, since the major Jihadi groups operating in Kashmir, such as the Jaish-e-Mohammad, Laskar-e-Taiba and Harkat ul-Mujahideen are all part of Bin Ladin's International Islamic Front. |
| Posted by: Paul Moloney 2003-12-15 3:37:55 AM |
| #1 I’m still not certain why India would do this, given Sudan’s links to the terror network in all of that cash that was sent there from Iran in September 2002 or the US intel assessment in May 2003 after the Riyadh bombings saying that al-Qaeda was being allowed to reopen its training camps in the country. I think there's this view that the Indians are now our kemosabes, because they're also fighting a terror problem of their own. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Indians are fighting in Kashmir to preserve an Indian empire they never even conquered for themselves - the British did it for them. And the strange thing is that despite this favor, the Indians have a real chip on their shoulder about the Brits - as if India's modernization could have occurred without British imperialism. That chip, now the size of a cinder block, has now been transferred to the US, which it sees as a new British empire. The recent confab with the Chinese, where the Indian leader announced that when India and China stand together, no one can oppose us, was a mixture of vainglory, wishful thinking, stupidity and misdirected anger (obviously at the US). Note also that the Indian government sided with the Soviets throughout the Cold War, which is further out than even the French ventured. India is making nice with the US because it hopes to gain US support for its colonial venture in Kashmir - no more and no less. Like France, India's a democracy, but it has even fewer things in common with the US than the French have with us. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-12-15 1:32:19 AM |