22 MAY 2015: IS wins Iraqi city Ramadi

Ø  With the Union Finance Ministry reworking its proposal for setting up the Public Debt Management Authority, the Reserve Bank of India has won its biggest battle in its 80-year history. The watered-down proposal no longer envisages the RBI to relinquish control over the task of managing the Centre’s borrowings. Instead, the proposed authority, to be housed in the Finance Ministry and staffed mainly by government officials, is being given “limited functionality”. It will take over merely the “front office” for the management of the Centre’s borrowings, while the control over the “back office” will remain with the RBI. The authority will be set up through an executive order. The Finance Ministry has put on the backburner its earlier move of amending the RBI Act for setting up the authority. The new plan is to move amendments to the RBI Act for statutory status to the authority and for full transfer of control not before another year or two.

Ø  The Islamic State’s recent takeover of the Iraqi city of Ramadi, followed by its seizure of the historic city of Palmyra in Syria suggests that rumours of the impending demise of the armed group are vastly exaggerated. Months of aerial bombing by United States-led forces may have weakened the spine of the insurgent organisation and led to the loss of some of the vast areas it holds across Iraq and Syria. Reports have suggested that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was injured in one attack and that control of the day-to-day functioning of the militias has passed on to other commanders. The resistance shown by Kurdish fighters both in Syria and Iraq — belonging to the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Regional Government respectively — has forced the IS to retreat from places such as Kobane and the adjoining Kurd-held territory close to Mosul in Iraq. The group has also suffered significant losses in Tikrit, the former stronghold of ex-President Saddam Hussein. But these losses apart, the resilience of the group has been evident in its capture of Ramadi in the largely Sunni-populated and vast desert province of Anbar. The weaknesses of the Iraqi army — still to recover from its disbandment following the U.S. invasion — are evident. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s resort to help from the radical Shia militias might have the support of the Sunni councils in Anbar, but this could only exacerbate what is clearly a conflict that has its origins in heightened sectarian violence in post-U.S.-invasion Iraq. The IS has cunningly used as buffers vast territories in Syria and Iraq that it controls. An air-bombardment-only campaign is certainly not going to be enough even if it inflicts a toll on the group. The Syrian regime has been fighting too many battles against a variety of rebel forces. It lost some to rebel groups supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey in Idlib recently, and its tactical retreats from IS-held territory in the past have come to haunt Bashar-al Assad’s forces with the loss of Palmyra. The ancient city — which used to be a Silk route hub — is rich in historic and cultural artefacts; the IS, with its medieval and retrograde views, is expected to engage in destruction here as well. It is clear that the parcelled form of offensive action against the IS is not working well. The IS is bound to implode; it cannot forever sustain itself against a multiplicity of forces — the Syrians, the Iraqi army, the Kurds and the U.S.-led allies (even if they are only engaged in aerial bombing). But as long as there is no concerted action from all these forces targeting the IS in any cohesive manner, it will remain resilient and leave even more brutal trails of destruction in its wake than it has until now.

Ø  India and Bangladesh will sign a series of agreements during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Dhaka in June, ushering in plans for road, rail and port connectivity and energy tie-ups. Mr. Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart, Sheikh Hasina, will flag off a Kolkata-Dhaka-Tripura bus service. Dismissing concerns about China, which had reportedly decided to invest in the Pyra deep-sea port project, as “seeing ghosts in the neighbourhood”, the High Commissioner said Bangladesh wanted a “consortium of countries to invest in, and benefit from, the deep-sea port”.

Ø  Islamic State now controls over half of Syria’s landmass after its seizure of Palmyra, where it has begun massacring a rebellious tribe and faces no opposition to its entry and sacking of the historic city’s ancient ruins. “There are no forces to stop them [entering the ruins],” Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, said. “But the important thing also is that they now control 50 per cent of Syria.”