India raises defense budget to $72.6 billion amid tensions with China, Pakistan

Indian armed forces ICV BMP II (Sarath) tanks take part in India’s 74th Republic Day parade in New Delhi on January 26, 2023. (AFP)
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Updated 01 February 2023

India raises defense budget to $72.6 billion amid tensions with China, Pakistan

  • India employs 1.38 million people in its armed forces with large numbers deployed along borders with China and Pakistan
  • South Asian giant plans to spend nearly $3 billion for naval fleet construction and $7 billion for air force procurements

NEW DELHI: India proposed on Wednesday 5.94 trillion rupees ($72.6 billion) in defense spending for the 2023-24 financial year, 13 percent up from the previous period’s initial estimates, aiming to add more fighter jets and roads along its tense border with China.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman allocated 1.63 trillion rupees for defense capital outlays — an expenditure that would include new weapons, aircraft, warships and other military hardware, as she unveiled nearly $550 billion of total federal spending in the annual budget for 2023-24 starting in April.

She said 2.77 trillion rupees would be devoted to military salaries and benefits in 2023-24, 1.38 trillion on pensions for retired soldiers, and further amounts for miscellaneous items.

Sitharaman also revised the defense budget for the current financial year ending in March to 5.85 trillion rupees from earlier estimates of 5.25 trillion.

In the past few years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ramped up spending to modernize the military, while underlining his government’s commitment to boosting domestic production to supply forces deployed along two contentious borders.

Laxman Behera, a defense expert at government-funded Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said the hike in the defense budget was “reasonable but not sufficient,” considering requirements for military modernization.

“The government has tried to allocate reasonable funds for defense forces while balancing other priorities during the pre-election budget,” he said, noting India needed more funds in view of growing friction with China along disputed borders.

The total Indian defense budget, estimated at about 2 percent of GDP, is still lower than China’s 1.45 trillion yuan ($230 billion) in allocations for 2022, which New Delhi sees as posing a threat to neighbors including India and Japan.

“The overall increase in the armed forces’ budget is as anticipated, but likely lower than what they asked for to beef up operational capabilities,” said Amit Cowshish, former financial adviser for acquisitions at the Defense Ministry.

India plans to spend near 242 billion rupees ($3 billion) for naval fleet construction and 571.4 billion rupees ($7 billion) for air force procurements including more aircraft, the latest budget document showed.

The South Asian giant employs 1.38 million people in its armed forces, with large numbers deployed along borders with nuclear-armed rivals China and Pakistan.

Although the defense budget allocations fell short of military expectations, they are likely to grow as the economy recovers from two years of pandemic curbs, according to Behera.

India and China share a 3,500-kilometer (2,100-mile) frontier that has been disputed since the 1950s. The two sides went to war over it in 1962.

At least 24 soldiers were killed when the armies of the Asian giants clashed in Ladakh, in the western Himalayas, in 2020 but tensions eased after military and diplomatic talks.

A fresh clash erupted in the eastern Himalayas in December last year but no deaths were reported.


Over 1,400 migrants are rescued from overcrowded boats off Italy by coast guard

Updated 07 June 2023

Over 1,400 migrants are rescued from overcrowded boats off Italy by coast guard

  • There were 47 migrants, including two children in immediate need of medical care, aboard the sailboat in distress off the region of Calabria
  • The rescues began late Monday night and ended in the early hours of Wednesday in the Ionian Sea off Calabria's east coast

ROME: More than 1,400 migrants have been rescued from overcrowded vessels, including a sailboat, in four separate operations in the Mediterranean Sea off southern Italy, the Italian coast guard said Wednesday.
There were 47 migrants, including two children in immediate need of medical care, aboard the sailboat in distress off the region of Calabria, in the “toe” of the Italian peninsula, a coast guard statement said. They were rescued by a coast guard motorboat early Tuesday.
The statement said the rescues began late Monday night and ended in the early hours of Wednesday in the Ionian Sea off Calabria’s east coast. One coast guard vessel took on around 590 migrants from aboard a fishing boat, and then later brought on around 650 migrants from another fishing boat, the statement said.
A coast guard motorboat and an Italian border police ship came to the assistance of a fourth vessel, with 130 migrants aboard.
Authorities didn’t immediately give details on the nationalities of the passengers or routes taken by the migrant vessels. But generally, many boats with migrants sighted off the Ionian Sea set out from Turkiye’s coast, where smugglers launch crowded and unseaworthy boats.
Earlier this year, a migrant boat navigating on that route slammed into a sandbank just off a Calabrian beach town and broke apart. At least 94 migrants perished and 80 others survived.
That shipwreck is under criminal investigation, including the role of several members of Italy’s border police corps, which operates vessels off the country’s long coastline. Four suspected smugglers have been arrested.
In addition, prosecutors want to know if rescue efforts could have been launched hours earlier. Italian border police boats reportedly turned back to port because of rough seas, and by the time a coast guard vessel, better equipped to navigate in poor sea conditions, reached the area, bodies were already in the water. In that case, the migrant boat had been spotted hours earlier by a surveillance aircraft operated by Frontex, the European Union’s border monitoring force.
Wednesday’s statement by the coast guard said that crew on a Frontex surveillance plane had spotted a fishing boat with the 590 migrants aboard. A Frontex patrol boat and a Frontex support vessel were among the assets involved in the rescue operations for the two fishing boats, according to the coast guard.
Alarm Phone, a nongovernmental organization that frequently receives satellite calls from migrant vessels in distress and relays the information to maritime authorities in Italy and Malta, was among the organizations signaling the need for rescue for the 130 people aboard the fourth boat.


Erdogan proposes destroyed dam probe in Zelensky call

Updated 07 June 2023

Erdogan proposes destroyed dam probe in Zelensky call

  • Moscow and Kyiv have traded blame for the destruction of Kakhovka hydroelectric dam
  • President Erdogan said that a commission could be established with the participation of experts from the warring parties, the United Nations and the international community

ISTANBUL: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday proposed, in a call with his Ukrainian counterpart, creating an international commission to probe the destruction of a major dam in southern Ukraine, his office reported.
Moscow and Kyiv have traded blame for the destruction of Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, which was ripped open early Tuesday after a reported blast.
“President Erdogan said that a commission could be established with the participation of experts from the warring parties, the United Nations and the international community, including Turkiye, for a detailed investigation into the explosion at Kakhovka dam,” his office said after the call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Kakhovka dam sits on the Dnipro River, which feeds a reservoir providing cooling water for the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe’s largest, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) upstream.
The destruction of the dam caused torrents of water to pour into the Dnipro, pushing thousands of civilians to flee the flooded areas while raising fears of an ecological disaster.
NATO member Turkiye, which has good ties with Moscow and Kyiv.


First batch of 630 pilgrims from Indian-administered Kashmir leaves for Hajj

Updated 07 June 2023

First batch of 630 pilgrims from Indian-administered Kashmir leaves for Hajj

  • Out of India’s Hajj quota of 1,75,025 pilgrims, 12,000 departing from Kashmir region
  • This year’s contingent is the region’s largest-ever embarking on the spiritual journey

NEW DELHI: The first batch of 630 pilgrims from Indian-administered Kashmir performing Hajj this year left for Saudi Arabia on Wednesday from Srinagar airport, an official from the region’s Hajj authority said.

Out of India’s annual Hajj quota of 1,75,025 pilgrims, 12,000 will be departing from the Himalayan region, nearly double Kashmir’s Hajj contingent last year and the region’s largest-ever group embarking on the spiritual journey that is one of the five pillars of Islam.

Special Hajj flights from India started in the last week of May.

“We have the highest quota this year,” Safina Baig, chairperson of the Jammu and Kashmir Haj Committee, told Arab News after 630 pilgrims departed for Jeddah from Kashmir’s main airport in Srinagar.

“It was an emotional scene with many feeling overwhelmed by the opportunity to perform Hajj in their lifetime.”

Most pilgrims were selected through a draw, except for the elderly and women traveling without a mahram, or male guardian.

“Generally, the selection process happens through draw but as a special gesture we are allowing single women and people above 70 to apply directly without going through the process of draw,” Baig said.

Special arrangements had been made by the Indian government for women traveling without a mahram, she said, including separate accommodation and women helpers.

“By Allah’s grace, I got the opportunity to travel alone to perform Hajj,” said Shamima Akhter, 56, a widow from the southern Pulwama district of Kashmir, who is among 120 Kashmiri women pilgrims traveling to Saudi Arabia alone.

“This is a good decision to allow single women to travel.”

Akhter’s three daughters helped her raise about $5,000 to pay for her Hajj package, which is around $1,000 more expensive for Kashmir compared with other regions of India.

Baig said she had raised the issue of the higher cost with the Ministry of Minority Affairs and the Haj Committee of India.

“What I understand is that the rise in the total expenses is due to higher prices of air fare from Kashmir,” she said. 

“Kashmir is a Muslim majority region, and the government should be more considerate … I feel that the government should provide some relief to the Kashmiri Hajis. It sends a good message.”


Attacks by suspected militants in Burkina Faso kill 21

Updated 07 June 2023

Attacks by suspected militants in Burkina Faso kill 21

  • Burkina Faso struggling with a militant insurgency that swept in from neighboring Mali in 2015
  • Nearly a third of the country lies outside the government’s control, according to official estimates

OUAGADOUGOU: Twenty-one people, most of them members of the security forces, have been killed in Burkina Faso in attacks by suspected militants, security sources said on Wednesday.
Fourteen members of the VDP volunteer militia and four soldiers died on Monday in Sawenga in central-eastern Burkina, while five were wounded, a source said.
Another security source confirmed the toll, saying that the clash occurred during an operation to secure the area, and that “more than 50 terrorists were neutralized” in an airborne counter-attack.
Separately, a police source said a policeman and two civilians were killed on Monday night in an attack on a police border post at Yendere, on the southwestern frontier with Ivory Coast.
A trucker in the area confirmed the attack, adding that many local people had already fled into Ivory Coast because of militant incursions.
Ivory Coast hosts around 18,000 Burkinabe refugees, more than double the tally for 2022, according to the UN’s refugee agency.
One of the poorest and most troubled countries in the world, Burkina is struggling with a militant insurgency that swept in from neighboring Mali in 2015.
Nearly a third of the country lies outside the government’s control, according to official estimates.
More than 10,000 civilians, troops and police have died, according to an NGO count, while at least two million people have been displaced.
Anger within the military at failures to roll back the insurgency sparked two coups last year, culminating in the ascent of a young army captain, Ibrahim Traore.
The junta has ruled out any negotiations with the militants.
It is staking much of its anti-militant strategy on the VDP — the Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland militia.
The force comprises civilian volunteers who are given two weeks’ military training and then work alongside the army, typically carrying out surveillance, information-gathering or escort duties.
Since its inception in December 2019, the VDP has suffered hundreds of casualties, especially in ambushes or roadside bombings.
Despite the losses, the authorities launched a successful recruitment drive last year, encouraging 90,000 people to sign up, far exceeding the target of 50,000.


Philippine court denies bail request for staunch Duterte critic in drugs case

Updated 07 June 2023

Philippine court denies bail request for staunch Duterte critic in drugs case

  • Petition was for a drug case that saw Leila de Lima accused of conspiring to commit illegal narcotics trade in a Philippine prison

MANILA: A Philippine court has denied a bail request from Leila de Lima, a former senator and staunch critic of ex-President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, the defendant’s lawyer said on Wednesday, thereby prolonging her detention.
“Sad to inform you that the court denied Senator Leila’s bail application,” Filibon Tacardon, her legal counsel, told reporters.
The petition was for a drug case that saw de Lima accused of conspiring to commit illegal narcotics trade in a Philippine prison.
De Lima was arrested in 2017, just a few months after she launched a senate investigation into Duterte’s anti-narcotics campaign during which thousands of users and dealers were killed, many by police or in mysterious circumstances. She has been in police detention ever since.
A Philippine court in 2021 dismissed a drug case against de Lima, 63, while another court in May acquitted her from a charge that she received drug money from prison inmates.