We resume our heads-up for South Asia’s flashpoints and trends in 2024, a series interrupted by commentaries about the massive uptick of conflict in Myanmar, and crucial aspects of conclusively mending the rents in Bangladesh-India relations. The Centre for South Asian Studies (C-SAS) at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) will, from time to time, provide such advisories alongside our usual deep-dive commentaries and analyses. This heads-up takes in potential blips in the Pakistan-India play in Kashmir, and Russia’s resurgent interest in South Asia.
Pakistan and India: Flashpoint Kashmir?
For some decades now, the ultra-nationalist or militarist stakeholders in Pakistan and India have developed this cycle of expediently leveraging events that aid the shoring up of rhetorical and political capital in both countries. It has more than once shored up army-led interests in Pakistan. And, in India, helped to seal electoral victory.
With Pakistan’s shambolic parliamentary elections in February, which has left the puppet masters in the military establishment red-faced, and imminent general elections to India’s Parliament, the cycle is now live.
Pakistan’s army establishment can use an opportunity to partly recoup its credibility, consolidate its hold on the country beset by a deeply weakened economy, fractured politics, and ethnic troubles to the north in the tribal areas and southwest in Balochistan, bordering Iran. In India, incumbents will be looking to reinforce political gains from the sped-up inauguration of a brand-new Ram Temple in Ayodhya in late-January, at the site at which the Babri mosque was strategically demolished back in 1992.
As ever, the go-to distraction could be the disputed region of Kashmir. The reasons could range from disputes arising from sharing the water of six rivers that flow from India -- indeed, the region of Kashmir -- into Pakistan and remain Pakistan’s agricultural and industrial lifeline; to continuing troubles in Indian-administered Kashmir, and the adjacent territory of Ladakh.
By the World Bank-monitored Indus Water Treaty in 1960, India and Pakistan agreed to divvy up the waters of six rivers. Waters of the Indus and its western tributaries, Jhelum and Chenab, would primarily accrue to Pakistan. Flow of the so-called eastern tributaries, Beas, Sutlej and Ravi, would primarily remain with India.
Pakistan has long criticized the construction of several irrigation and hydro power projects on the Chenab and a tributary of the Jhelum. Last week, news arrived of India’s completion of the Shahpur Kandi barrage on the Ravi, designed to fully utilize its allocation -- and turn a few screws of the tap to allow the negotiated trickle of Ravi waters into Pakistan. Now, while this barrage designed to irrigate parts of Indian Kashmir and Punjab is technically within India’s remit, the emotive, flammable nature of water resources mixed with Pakistan’s grouse about flow in its designated rivers can easily become an incendiary rhetorical point for leverage.
The other major blip is the inherently fragile nature of politics in Indian-administered Kashmir. An attack on February 14, 2019 on a convoy of Indian paramilitaries that killed 40 troops and injured over 30 was used by leaders of the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party government of the time to drum up rhetoric for votes in the name of the martyrs, so to speak, despite pleas to not politicize the matter.
Thereafter, in a muscular move after winning parliamentary elections in May 2019, the BJP-led coalition drove through legislation that removed the special constitutional status of Kashmir according reservations and several other provisions to Kashmiris; the abrogation of Article 370 and Article 35A opened up Kashmir to all Indians. Parliamentary railroading also led to the splitting up of the federal state of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories -- one Jammu and Kashmir and the other Ladakh that was hived off from the former state -- and placed under the direct control of the interior ministry.
Kashmir remains fragile, as repeated attacks by extremists have demonstrated, alongside the relentless establishment squeeze on the media and polity. There have been repeated demands for elections in Kashmir and the status of a federal state; a demand that has also surfaced most recently in Ladakh.
With such priming of tinder, it wouldn’t take long for Kashmir to light up -- or to be used as an excuse by both Pakistan and India, the territory’s fate since 1947.
Bear necessities
In a perceptive update this past December, Foreign Policy flagged a greater Russian footprint in South Asia in 2024. “(A) bigger play,” as the publication put it, that would cut into a region that China has increasingly viewed as its backyard, much to India’s transparent unease and America’s growing concern. Several reasons were provided, some of which have also been flagged earlier by this column.
Even as it remains buffeted by its war with Ukraine and resultant sanctions, Russia has demonstrated outreach.
A primary indicator was India’s emergence as a prime importer of Russian crude after sanctions were slapped on that country. Vortexa, a research firm, and Nikkei Asia confirmed that India’s import of Russian crude went from zero in January 2022 -- before the start of the Russia-Ukraine in February that year -- to 1.27 million barrels a day in January 2023.
By July 2023, imports of Russian crude had peaked at nearly 2 million barrels a day. Even though it has dipped to 1.29 million barrels a day in January 2024, Russian crude amounted to nearly a third of India’s crude imports in 2023 -- adding to handsome, not-so-mysterious concomitant exports of refined petroleum to Europe from India, especially to countries that had placed sanctions on Russian crude. (Russia also dispatched crude shipments to Pakistan in 2023, breaking through the US-China voodoo. It’s also tracking Afghanistan, which has attracted increasing geo-political and geo-economics interest from China.)
More outreach. The Russian foreign minister visited Bangladesh in September 2023, in the process becoming the first Russian foreign minister to do so. The following month, in mid-November, three Russian naval ships from the Pacific Fleet stopped by Chattogram port -- the first such call in fifty years -- for joint exercises. The warships visited Yangon’s Thilawa port earlier in the month for bilateral maritime security exercises with Myanmar’s navy, before sailing up the coast to Chattogram.
The Russian naval visit was a change from a year earlier, when a Russian freighter was prevented from entering Bangladeshi waters to deliver parts for the 2,400MW Rooppur nuclear power plant -- a Russia supplied and financed project; Russia will also supply the nuclear fuel and arrange for disposal of nuclear waste.
Meanwhile, Nepal is scouting for Russian investment in its hydropower sector, which in turn could boost its electricity exports to India and Bangladesh.
It’s a curious but not entirely unexpected outreach in a region in which Russia finds allies of convenience. India won’t push back against Russia, still a major weapons supplier to India and its major partner at multilateral forums even with India’s increasing tilt towards the United States and active membership of the Quad. China will tolerate limited Russian engagement in Pakistan to the extent it bolsters its competition against the United States. India will not prevent Russian ingress in Bangladesh because it adds a layer against China.
And so on, in an often-bewildering, shapeshifting global and regional relations that presents Russia with an opportunity to flex its presence beyond the shadow of Ukraine; and reclaim credibility for the Kremlin beset by its many wars -- including the one against dissidents such as the recently deceased Alexei Navalny.
Sudeep Chakravarti is Director, Centre for South Asian Studies at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. He has authored several books on history, ethnography, conflict resolution, and Eastern South Asia.
