Donald Lu to testify before Congress panel

The US House Foreign Affairs Com­mittee has tasked its Subcommittee on the Mid­dle East, Africa, and Cen­tral Asia with conducting a hearing on the future of democracy in Pakistan, scheduled for March 20.

The hearing will also delve into the dynamics of US-Pakistan relations following the February 08, 2024 general elections.

Donald Lu, the Assis­tant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, will be the sole witness for the hearing. Lu’s alleged involvement in the cipher controversy adds significance to his testimony.

The PTI and its leader, Imran Khan, allege that Lu threatened to destabilize the PTI government during a March 2022 meeting with then Pakistani ambassador in Washing­ton, Asad Majeed Khan.

The issue is frequently brought up during US State Department news briefings by journalists from both Pakistan and the US. The department consistently dismisses these allegations as unfounded.

The decision to have Lu attend the hearing un­­derscores the departm­e­nt’s desire to resolve the controversy by providing clarification on its stance.

In a statement from Houston, Texas, the PTI’s US chapter claimed that persistent efforts by Pakistani Americans led to the much-anticipated announcement of a Congressional hearing on this.

This bipartisan hearing is expected to draw significant attendance from both Democratic and Repub­lican legislators.

 

Iran: World’s top oil pipeline developer

Global Energy Monitor, in a recent report, has said Iran is the world’s top country in terms of oil pipelines under construction.

Based on the report, the Iranian Oil Ministry is also among the world’s top oil pipeline developers.

According to new data from Global Energy Monitor, Africa, and West Asia are home to 49% of all oil transmission pipelines under construction globally at a cost of US$25.3 billion.

The 2023 annual survey of data in the Global Oil Infrastructure Tracker shows that these regions together are building 4,400 kilometers (km) of crude oil transmission pipelines at an estimated capital expenditure of US$14.4 billion.

An additional 10,800 km are proposed in these regions at an estimated cost of US$59.8 billion.

Globally, there are 9,100 km of oil transmission pipelines under construction and an additional 21,900 km of proposed pipelines. These pipelines in development are estimated to cost US$131.9 billion in capital expenditure.

The total 31,000 km of oil pipelines in development globally represents an increase of nearly 30% from this time last year.

The leading five countries in terms of in-development pipelines (proposed and under construction) are Iran, the United States, India, Iraq, and Tanzania.

The top five parent companies developing oil pipelines are state-owned enterprises and private companies, including Iran’s Oil Ministry, the China National Petroleum Corporation, Iraq’s Ministry of Oil, India’s Numaligarh Refinery Limited, and France’s TotalEnergies.

The longest pipeline projects under construction are the 1,950-km Niger–Benin Oil Pipeline and the Paradip Numaligarh Crude Pipeline (PNCPL) in India, both slated to start operating in 2024.

Canada is home to the third-largest pipeline project under construction, the 980-km Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX), expected to start in 2023 as an expansion to the existing Trans Mountain Oil Pipeline.

Why Sudan conflict matters to the world?

Fighting in Sudan between forces loyal to two top generals has put the nation at risk of collapse and could also have consequences far beyond its borders.

Both sides have tens of thousands of fighters, foreign backers, mineral riches and other resources that could insulate them from sanctions. It’s a recipe for the kind of prolonged conflict that has devastated other countries in the Middle East and Africa, from Lebanon and Syria to Libya and Ethiopia.

The fighting, which began as Sudan attempted to transition to democracy, already has killed hundreds of people and left millions trapped in urban areas, sheltering from gunfire, explosions and looters.

A look at what is happening and the impact it could have outside Sudan.

Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, head of the armed forces, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces that grew out of Darfur’s notorious Janjaweed militias, are each seeking to seize control of Sudan. It comes two years after they jointly carried out a military coup and derailed a transition to democracy that had begun after protesters in 2019 helped force the ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir. In recent months, negotiations were underway for a return to the democratic transition.

The victor of the latest fighting is likely to be Sudan’s next president, with the loser facing exile, arrest or death. A long-running civil war or partition of the Arab and African country into rival fiefdoms are also possible.

Terrified Sudanese are fleeing Khartoum, hauling whatever belongings they could carry and trying to get out of the capital, where forces loyal to the country's top two generals have been battling each other with tanks, artillery and airstrikes since Saturday.

 Alex De Waal, a Sudan expert at Tufts University, wrote in a memo to colleagues this week that the conflict should be seen as the first round of a civil war.

“Unless it is swiftly ended, the conflict will become a multi-level game with regional and some international actors pursuing their interests, using money, arms supplies and possibly their own troops or proxies,” he wrote.

Sudan is Africa’s third-largest country by area and straddles the Nile River. It uneasily shares its waters with regional heavyweights Egypt and Ethiopia. Egypt relies on the Nile to support its population of over 100 million, and Ethiopia is working on a massive upstream dam that has alarmed both Cairo and Khartoum.

Egypt has close ties to Sudan’s military, which it sees as an ally against Ethiopia. Cairo has reached out to both sides in Sudan to press for a cease-fire but is unlikely to stand by if the military faces defeat.

Sudan borders five additional countries, Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic, Eritrea and South Sudan, which seceded in 2011 and took 75% of Khartoum’s oil resources with it. Nearly all are mired in their own internal conflicts, with various rebel groups operating along the porous borders.

“What happens in Sudan will not stay in Sudan,” said Alan Boswell of the International Crisis Group. “Chad and South Sudan look most immediately at risk of potential spillover. But the longer (the fighting) drags on the more likely it is we see major external intervention.”

Arab Gulf countries have looked to the Horn of Africa in recent years as they have sought to project power across the region.

The United Arab Emirates, a rising military power that has expanded its presence across the Middle East and East Africa, has close ties to the Rapid Support Forces, which sent thousands of fighters to aid the UAE and Saudi Arabia in their war against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Russia, meanwhile, has long harbored plans to build a naval base capable of hosting up to 300 troops and four ships in Port Sudan, on a crucial Red Sea trading route for energy shipments to Europe.

The Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary outfit with close ties to the Kremlin, has made inroads across Africa in recent years and has been operating in Sudan since 2017.

The United State and the European Union have imposed sanctions on two Wagner-linked gold mining firms in Sudan accused of smuggling.

Sudan became an international pariah when it hosted Osama bin Laden and other militants in the 1990s, when al-Bashir had empowered a hard-line Islamist government.

Its isolation deepened over the conflict in the western Darfur region in the 2000s, when Sudanese forces and the Janjaweed were accused of carrying out atrocities while suppressing a local rebellion. The International Criminal Court eventually charged al-Bashir with genocide.

The US removed Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism after the government in Khartoum agreed to forge ties with Israel in 2020. But billions of dollars in loans and aid were put on hold after the 2021 military coup. That, along with the war in Ukraine and global inflation, sent the economy into free-fall.

Sudan’s economic woes would seem to provide an opening for Western nations to use economic sanctions to pressure both sides to stand down.

But in Sudan, as in other resource-rich African nations, armed groups have long enriched themselves through the shadowy trade in rare minerals and other natural resources.

Dagalo, a one-time camel herder from Darfur, has vast livestock holdings and gold mining operations. He’s also believed to have been well-paid by Gulf countries for the RSF’s service in Yemen battling Iran-aligned rebels.

The military controls much of the economy, and can also count on businessmen in Khartoum and along the banks of the Nile who grew rich during al-Bashir’s long rule and who view the RSF as crude warriors from the hinterlands.

“Control over political funds will be no less decisive than the battlefield,” De Waal said. “(The military) will want to take control of gold mines and smuggling routes. The RSF will want to interrupt major transport arteries including the road from Port Sudan to Khartoum.”

The sheer number of would-be mediators — including the US, the UN, the European Union, Egypt, Gulf countries, the African Union and the eight-nation eastern Africa bloc known as IGAD — could render any peace efforts more complicated than the war itself. “The external mediators risk becoming a traffic jam with no policeman,” De Waal said.

 

Iran raises concerns over US biological labs in Ukraine

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani has reacted to reports that the United States has established military biological labs in Ukraine, saying the labs are deeply worrying.

“Reports about the US military biological labs in Ukraine and some other countries are deeply worrying,” Kanaani said on Twitter. 

He added, “These activities are in breach of the US's commitments, especially the Biological Weapons Convention, and pose a threat to humanity, hence they need an impartial international investigation.”

A Russian state Duma committee has recently released a report saying that Washington is building biological weapons all over the world, according to IRNA. 

American-made biological weapons are able to destroy not only human beings, but also animals and even agricultural products to cause irreparable economic damage to the enemy. 

The Russian investigation committee called the possibility of covert use of biological weapons as completely peaceful industrial products alarming.

The Russian Duma assessed the American biological weapons program as the greatest threat to the biological security of the world. “In recent years, the US biological weapons program has not only not been limited, but has become more aggressive,” it said. 

The presence of American biological laboratories in Africa, Asia, the Caucasus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine has provided the basis for collecting information on the biological infrastructure of the host countries, according to the Russian state Duma. 

 

Japan pledges US$30 billion for Africa to counter Chinese influence

Japan plans to infuse US$30 billion in aid and investment from its public and private sectors into Africa over the next three years as it seeks to counter China’s growing influence.

Speaking via video link at the eighth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stressed Japan will grow together with Africa.

This is an increase from the US$20 billion that Japan promised African countries in 2019 and we essentially achieved it over the last three years, Kishida said.

The pledge is seen as an effort by Tokyo to differentiate itself from China, which has been criticized by the US and some Western nations for burdening African countries with loans.

Japan launched the TICAD in 1993, to revive interest in the continent and find raw materials for its industries and markets for its products. About a decade later, China began holding a rival event, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, at a time when Japan was turning inward as it sought to rebuild its struggling economy.

Japan has over time shifted the focus of its engagement with Africa from aid to private-sector-led investment.

Japan’s total trade with the continent is just a small fraction of Africa’s trade with China, according to the Japan External Trade Organization. In 2020, Africa’s exports to Japan were US$8.6 billion, while African imports from Japan were about US$7.9 billion.

As against this, China’s total two-way trade with the continent reached US$254 billion last year.

President Xi Jinping last year pledged US$40 billion in loans and investment for Africa and promised to grow imports from the continent to US$300 billion in three years.

Except during the triennial TICAD meetings, Japan is almost invisible in Africa, Seifudein Adem, a global affairs professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, said while Africa, too, is invisible in Japan.

Adem added, “China is also ahead in disseminating its ideas and values in Africa. While the global pandemic has widened the gap between Africa and Japan, the trend started earlier.”

He said Japan’s relative power has declined over the last three decades, as has its diplomatic and economic interest in Africa. However, the re-emergence of China as a global hegemon seems to be marginally stimulating Japan’s engagement with Africa and will continue to do so”, Adem noted.

At TICAD-8 in Tunis, which was attended by hundreds of heads of state and diplomats, Kishida, who spoke via video link, announced that Tokyo will help African countries with debt restructuring and extend loans worth around US$5 billion in coordination with the African Development Bank to promote sustainable African development.

This includes a special, newly created loan of up to US$1 billion for the purpose of advancing reforms that result in sound debt management and helping a resilient and sustainable Africa, the prime minister said.

Kishida also announced a further US$4 billion to promote Japan’s Green Growth Initiative. He also promised to contribute over US$1 billion to the Global Fund to help fight the spread of Covid-19 and other infectious diseases in Africa.

Kishida said Tokyo would work to ensure grain shipments to Africa amid a global shortage at a time when the international order is under threat after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Japan has aligned itself with the other Group of Seven countries in sanctioning Russia. However, the continent is divided over Moscow’s war in Ukraine, with many countries taking a neutral stance while others oppose sanctions, which Russia has blamed for food shortages in Africa.

Adem of Doshisha University said Japan’s approach to African development is distinct with its emphasis on transparency and the high quality of its projects.

 “But, from Japan’s point of view, the growing influence of China in Africa in the last two decades has made them all the more important to try to offset China’s unassailable competitive advantage,” Adem, the author of a forthcoming book on lessons for Africa from Japan and China, said.

However, he said Kishida has been more cautious in his diplomacy so far compared with previous leaders. Perhaps gone are the days of bold initiatives of the late Shinzo Abe, a friend of Africa, he said.

But Jonathan Berkshire Miller, a senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, said: “Tokyo’s advantage will be to provide high-quality infrastructure, in line with the G20 priorities, and also enable African SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) through public-private partnerships.”

He said Japan has been making strides for decades on this through its TICAD process and evolving its assistance to the continent.

Miller said Japan views Africa in dynamic terms. However, Africa is changing and Japan is also realizing that its relations with the continent also need to balance the growing economic and geopolitical dimensions. Eventually, Japan would be advised to look more closely at building pre-existing partnerships with India and others in the region.

He said TICAD this year is of even more critical importance for African states to take ownership of partnerships and infrastructure cooperation. As the inflationary pressures and economic headwinds continue in recent months, the focus should be on partnership-based ventures that don’t saddle African states with unwieldy debt, Miller said.

Is China following debt trap policy?

A recent announcement by China that it is forgiving 23 loans for 17 African countries may be motivated by accusations of debt-trap diplomacy, say some analysts.

Critics have long accused Beijing of practicing debt-trap diplomacy, suggesting it deliberately lends to countries that it knows cannot repay the money, thereby increasing its political leverage. 

China vehemently rejects this, alleging it’s a way for the United States to discredit Beijing, Washington’s main challenger in the quest for influence in Africa.

China’s decision to forgive the zero-interest loans is, in part, aimed at countering the debt-trap narrative, said Harry Verhoeven, senior research scholar at Columbia University in New York.

“It is not uncommon for China to do something like this, forgive interest-free loans, now obviously it is connected to the overall debt-trap diplomacy narrative in the sense that clearly there’s a felt need on the part of China to push back,” Verhoeven said.

China’s announcement did not specify the countries or the amount of loan forgiveness, but analysts say that since 2000, China has regularly forgiven loans that are nearing their end but have a small balance.

“This is not a loan cancellation, but the cancellation of the remaining unpaid portion of interest-free loans that have reached maturity, that is if a loan was supposed to be fully paid off over 20 years, but it still has an outstanding balance, they cancel that outstanding balance,” Deborah Brautigam, Director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Brautigam’s research shows that between 2000 and 2019, China canceled at least US$3.4 billion of such debt in Africa.

While this applies to the Chinese government’s interest-free loans, it is not the case with the country’s interest-bearing commercial loans, which can be restructured but are never considered for cancellation, analysts explained.

Verhoeven said the sums of money involved in the 23 loans forgiven would likely be modest, but the politics of such gestures are noteworthy because for many years the Chinese would kind of shrug at various aspects, various lines of criticism, pertaining to their engagement in different African countries. But with the debt-trap allegations, China has belatedly woken up to the fact that this is a bit of public relations nightmare, said Verhoeven.

China has also been playing a role in restructuring the external debt of some African countries such as Zambia, which became the first African country to default on its debt during the pandemic. China, along with France, is chairing a committee to deal with debt relief efforts. The move, welcomed by the International Monetary Fund, is ongoing.

China is Zambia’s biggest creditor. Lusaka owes some US$6 billion to Chinese entities. In July, Zambia’s Finance Ministry announced it was canceling US$2 billion of undisbursed loans from its external creditors, US$1.6 billion of which are from Chinese banks. The move stopped construction of infrastructure projects largely funded by a Chinese bank, the South China Morning Post reported.

Shahar Hameiri, a political economist from the University of Queensland in Australia, agreed that the latest move by Beijing in forgiving African nations’ interest-free loans was probably just a goodwill gesture.

“The bigger loans are likelier to be restructured, if repayment problems loom, as we saw in Zambia,” said Hameiri

Senior officials in the United States have regularly warned developing countries, particularly in Africa, about the dangers of Chinese loans, and a 2020 State Department document, titled “The Elements of the China Challenge,” referred to China’s “predatory development program and debt-trap diplomacy.”

On a visit to the continent this month, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, touched on the idea that the wealthy and powerful have extracted Africa’s natural resources for their own gain. And it continues today through bad deals and debt traps. She did not mention China by name.

African politicians themselves have had mixed reactions to the debt-trap theory, with some, such as Ethiopia’s Ambassador to China, Teshome Toga Chanaka, refuting the idea, saying, “A partnership that does not benefit both will not sustain long.”

Others, including Kenya’s new President-elect, William Ruto, and Angolan opposition presidential candidate Adalberto Costa Jr., have expressed concern over taking Chinese loans.

The debt trap allegations have infuriated Beijing, which says Western private lenders are responsible for the bulk of poor countries’ debt and charge much higher interest rates.

The US allegation against China is simply untenable, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said this month.
Chinese state media constantly run articles aiming to debunk the narrative.

A number of economists and researchers are also saying the debt-trap narrative against China is unfounded.

“The debt-trap idea is that Chinese banks had ulterior motives, deliberately lending to countries when they knew those countries couldn’t repay,” Brautigam said.

“The reality is that like bondholders, which hold the majority of Africa’s debt, Chinese banks lent to countries that looked quite promising. All of these creditors have belatedly realized that risk profiles can shift dramatically in a short period of time.”

China restructured or refinanced about US$15 billion in African debt between 2000 and 2019, Brautigam’s research has found. She did not find that China had been involved in any asset seizures.

Echoing Brautigam, Hameiri said, “There is scant evidence that China has pursued ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ the idea that it would on purpose issue loans to ensnare recipients in unsustainable debt, in order to seize strategic assets or exercise control over their governments.”

Chinese lending has at times been problematic, Hameiri wrote, because in a frenzy to issue loans, Chinese lenders often spent little time considering debt sustainability. Chinese lending has contributed to debt problems in a number of countries, although it is not necessarily the only or even the primary cause as in Sri Lanka.”Some critics blamed China for the crisis in Sri Lanka earlier this year, when the cash-strapped government – which had defaulted on its debt – was deposed by mass protests. Beijing also is Colombo’s biggest bilateral creditor; however, Sri Lanka’s largest foreign lending source is in sovereign bonds.

Verhoeven said the growth in sovereign bonds has been an important factor in African nations’ debt too and rejected the Chinese debt-trap narrative.

“When it comes to China, the debt-trap narrative suggests … this is being done on purpose,” to get countries to vote with China in the UN General Assembly and to reduce Western influence, he said.

There “is little actual evidence that China’s been doing this for political gain,” Verhoeven said, “which is not to in any way say that Chinese lending is all fine, or that it’s always responsible or the best thing for countries to do, far from it.”

Since China has now been burned several times regarding its lending, with several countries defaulting on the loans, plus its own economic difficulties at home, there is certainly a sense that the good old days of 10 or 15 years ago where it could sort of give out loans left and right … are over,” said Verhoeven.

Chinese sale of fighter jet to Pakistan attracts other markets with ambitious plans but thin wallets

In December 2021, Pakistan Air Force (PAF) announced that it would soon acquire 25 Chinese-made J-10C combat aircraft. This purchase was a long time coming. Speculation that the PAF would acquire the J-10 goes back at least a decade.

Earlier plans to buy up several dozen J-10s were scuttled by a lack of funding, but India’s decision to purchase 36 highly advanced, French-made Rafale fighter jets apparently pushed Pakistan to move forward with their own buy of modern fighters.

Beijing has not had much luck lately exporting its fighter jets. It has tried to flog some of its less capable combat aircraft on the global market but with little success.

During the 1990s and 2000s, China offered export versions of two domestically-built fighter jets, the JH-7 (designated the FBC-1 Flying Leopard) and the F-8IIM (a heavily upgraded MiG-21, a plane that first flew in the 1950s). Neither of these planes secured an overseas sale.

Until now, China’s best result has been a handful of sales of its JF-17 to Burma (Myanmar) and Nigeria. The JF-17 is a rather basic lightweight fighter jet built explicitly for export. Pakistan has been its biggest buyer, with intentions of acquiring up to 200 planes. At the same time, these JF-17s will be manufactured in Pakistan and equipped with Western radar and Russian engines. There is very little Chinese about this aircraft.

Not surprisingly, the Chinese have pinned a lot of hope on the J-10 when it comes to overseas sales. The J-10 was China’s first “fourth-generation-plus” combat aircraft. It is an agile, single-engine fighter jet roughly in the same class as the US F-16C. It features fly-by-wire flight controls and a “glass cockpit,” meaning that it utilizes several multi-function flat-panel displays, as opposed to traditional analog instruments.

The J-10 has had its share of teething problems. Although its development was initiated in the mid-1980s, it didn’t fly until 1998, and it was nearly 20 years before it entered operational service with China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). Even now, it is equipped with a Russian turbofan engine—underscoring China’s ongoing difficulties with developing a usable jet engine.

The latest variant, the J-10C—the version being exported to Pakistan—is considered to be a relatively advanced fighter. The J-10C features highly advanced active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar and is capable of firing long-range missiles, meaning that it could engage enemy aircraft as far away as 124 miles.

One report claims that the J-10C is comparable to the most advanced versions of the F-16 (the so-called “Block 60/70” version).

China, despite being consistently among the top 10 arms exporting nations, is still essentially a niche supplier of weapons systems. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Chinese arms exports in 2020 consisted mainly of tactical missile systems (such as anti-tank weapons or anti-ship cruise missiles) and armed drones. After that come artillery systems, mortars, and lightly armored vehicles.

Sales of big-ticket items, such as warships, submarines, main battle tanks, and fighter jets, were few and far between—the major exceptions being the sale of Yuan-class submarines to Pakistan and Thailand, and offshore patrol vessels to Malaysia.

In fact, in 2020 China slipped to number eight on SIPRI’s list of leading arms exporters, behind France, German, and even Spain. Its arms sales for the period 2016–2020 were less than one-sixth those of the United States, the world’s leading arms exporter.

Armed drones, in fact, are China’s main exception to the rule of exporting rather prosaic weapons systems. As noted in an earlier article, Beijing has had great success selling armed drones.

According to SIPRI, China has exported armed drones to at least 16 countries on three continents, including Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These deals have earned Beijing more than US$700 million in export sales.

China has quickly become the developing world’s go-to source for armed drones, and Chinese drones are being used regularly in combat. While perhaps not as advanced as their competitors, Chinese drones are filling a critical—and lucrative—market niche.

Countries may not be lining up to buy most Chinese weapons, but armed drones are a segment where Beijing has several advantages over its competitors: a “good-enough” product—at a relatively low price—to just about anyone who has the cash, and with few or no questions asked.

Will Beijing be able to duplicate its success with exporting the J-10 that is has had with armed drones? It is probably too soon to say. Certainly, China faces a lot of competition in the global fighter business and, therefore, prospects for overseas sales of the J-10 remain dim.

Nevertheless, a successful sale of the J-10 to Pakistan raises the prospects that China could flood the global arms market with a relatively cheap and yet quite capable fighter jet. In particular, the J-10 could appeal to African, Asian, and Latin American air forces with ambitious plans and thin wallets.