Pearls and Irritations

In Asian media this week: Malaysian PM ignores Western critics. Plus: deadly attacks in impoverished Pakistan province; Myanmar trafficking syndicates now a global monster; Chinese spy-plane violates Japan’s air space; Zelenskyy plans peace summit in Global South; chance for Harris to change course on China.

Anwar Ibrahim was saluted by Western progressives over his three decades as Malaysian’s PM-in-waiting. But he is now reshaping his country’s foreign policy — being more critical of the US and edging closer to Russia and China — and the foreign policy elite do not like it.

A long article in Singapore’s The Straits Times says Western commentators would have people believe Anwar’s foreign policy is in disarray.

“[S]uch a crudely expressed suggestion is being circulated within the same Western strategic circles that once celebrated Datuk Seri Anwar for being among the few Malaysian politicians without anti-Western hang-ups,” the commentary says.

The article, written by Bhavan Jaipragas, the paper’s deputy opinion editor, says Anwar’s anti-US diatribes over Gaza, his plans for Malaysia to join the BRICS economic grouping, and remarks viewed as reflexively deferential to Moscow and Beijing have all come under scrutiny.

The piece quotes Euan Graham of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute as saying Anwar’s apparent anti-Western and pro-China leanings will probably make Malaysia harder to work with while he is in office.

And Joshua Kurlantzick of Washington’s Council on Foreign Relations wrote that Anwar’s statements on Gaza had soured his goodwill in the West.

But the article says that for the most part the criticisms miss the mark.

Kuala Lumpur’s relations with Jakarta, Bangkok, Singapore and other important partners are on solid ground, it says.

And Malaysia cannot be faulted for keeping up historical ties with Russia — a big arms supplier — and China, its largest trading partner.

“Like its neighbours, Malaysia has long insisted on the freedom to engage with major powers on its own terms, while avoiding taking sides,” the commentary says.

“The West’s continued inability to peel Malaysia, and indeed much of Asia, away from its rivals is more a reflection of its own shortcomings than those of the region,” it said.

If Anwar is aware of his critics, they clearly do not bother him.

In an interview during a three-day visit to India last week, he criticised the international community’s failure to push for an end to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

As reported in Malaysia’s The Sun newspaper, Anwar said: “I am completely devastated by the complete failure of the international community in the name of democracy and human rights.”

He said he did not regard Hamas as a terrorist group because they were fighting for their freedom. But he condemned atrocities committed by any side.

The Diplomat, the Asian newsmagazine, carried a report of Anwar’s India visit, emphasising the two countries’ decision to expand their economic and security ties.

The writer said: “Anwar has no doubt also sought support from Modi for his country’s planned accession to the expanding BRICS grouping”.

“India and Malaysia have a common self-perception as leading voices of the ‘Global South’.”

More than 70 killed in militant rampage

More than 70 people were killed this week in a coordinated series of terrorist attacks in a resource-rich, but impoverished, part of southwestern Pakistan.

The violent incidents occurred in Balochistan, a province that borders Afghanistan and Iran.

Al Jazeera said the province has had a simmering rebellion for many years.

It said armed groups, such as the Balochistan Liberation Army, a separatist organisation, often targeted labourers from Punjab province to the northeast, coming to the region for work.

Dawn newspaper said militants affiliated with the BLA went on a rampage across Balochistan, storming police stations, blowing up railway tracks and setting fire to about three dozen vehicles.

In three incidents, 36 people were killed, as well as 14 police. The militant toll was 21.

The worst incident took place near the Punjab border. Militants killed 23 people — passengers and truck drivers — after checking their identity documents (to see if they were from Punjab).

A senior police officer said 35 to 40 militants, armed with automatic weapons, intercepted dozens of vehicles and pulled the 23 travellers from buses before shooting them.

Dawn said in an editorial the Government professed to be working towards a solution of the province’s problems. But past administrations had made similar promises, the paper said.

“Yet… the separatist threat has grown in lethality and reach, and a fresh approach is needed to bring peace to this tortured land,” it said.

The Hindu newspaper said in an editorial Pakistan had seen a surge of terrorist attacks since the Taliban recaptured Kabul three years ago. In 2023 alone, there were more than 650 recorded attacks, with 23% occurring in Balochistan, a hotbed of separatist insurgency.

“Balochistan, despite its wealth of natural resources, is the country’s most impoverished region,” the editorial said. “Historically, Pakistan has taken a ruthless, militarist approach towards the Baloch problem…

“If Pakistan is serious about stability and security in its largest province, it should take measures to address the developmental concerns of the locals, stop the rights violations and engage with peaceful civil rights voices to reset ties with the Balochs.”

Online scam gangs target English speakers

Criminal syndicates in Myanmar, using forced labour to run international online fraud operations, have changed their human trafficking and scamming targets.

What was until recently a regional trafficking operation is now a global trafficking crisis. Interpol said late last year that law enforcement agencies had rescued people from 22 countries who had been trafficked into Myanmar.

A long story in Frontier Myanmar, a Burmese exile online magazine, said the traffickers initially targeted Mandarin speakers. But China had stepped up measures to protects its nationals and the syndicates had cast a wider net, going after English speakers.

The magazine told the stories of three women, one from South Africa and two from Kenya, who were lured to Thailand after being “hired” for apparently legitimate jobs in Thailand. They were taken across the border into Myanmar and forced to work for scamming syndicates.

“It’s a global monster,” said Judah Tana, founder of the NGO Global Advance Project.

One of the women, called Sara in the story, was recruited for what seemed a perfect job in Thailand. But she ended up in Myanmar, where she was told her job was to scam people online, working 20 hours a day. The only way out was to pay $300,000.

She was given the identity of a wealthy Asian woman from Chicago who would identify English-speaking male targets on social media, recommend a cryptocurrency investment opportunity and lead them to a fake website. Team leaders would then work an elaborate scam.

Sara was able to buy her freedom for $100,000 after nine months, using savings, loans from friends and money she earned through scamming. She was dropped off at the Thai border and had to find her own way home, helped by an anti-trafficking NGO and the South African embassy.

China tells US it can cause headaches

A Chinese military aircraft this week violated Japanese airspace for the first time, but what it was doing the remains unclear.

The aircraft, a Y-9 intelligence-gathering plane, flew in Japanese airspace for about two minutes on Monday morning, The Japan Times reported. After leaving Japanese airspace, it continued to circle in a nearby area for some time, the paper said.

The air force scrambled jets in response and the Japanese Government delivered what was called a solemn protest.

The spy-plane incursion was utterly unacceptable, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told a news conference. He said it was a threat to Japan’s safety, the paper reported.

China was expanding its military activities in the skies and seas surrounding Japan, The Asahi Shimbun said in an editorial.

Japan was working with the US, the Philippines, and other countries to boost their collective deterrent power. But “using force against force” might destabilise the region, the editorial said.

Japanese defence officials were scrambling to work out whether the incursion was intentional or accidental, the paper said in a news story.

Some in the Defence Ministry and the military thought the plane simply took the wrong course. But one official said the plane had been gathering intelligence about Japanese radar frequencies and the pilot had gone off course while concentrating on the task.

The South China Morning Post suggested the incursion might have been aimed at testing Japan’s responses. Stephen Nagy, a professor of International Relations at Tokyo’s International Christian University, said China had done this in the past.

But Nagy also thought China might be sending a message to the US. China was troubled by US activities in the region, such as freedom of navigation exercises in waters of the South China Sea that China occupied.

“Something like this looks to me like a tit-for-tat action,” Nagy said. “Beijing is saying that if the US tries to get involved in its core interests, then they can and will cause headaches for Washington and its allies.”

Modi says India ready to help in Ukraine, Russia talks

India might host a global peace summit on resolving Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held out the prospect in talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, The Indian Express reported.

It said New Delhi was examining the offer to bring the warring parties together.

An Ukraine peace summit was held in Switzerland in June, but Russia was not present. Zelenskyy said a second summit should be held in the Global South.

He and Modi met last week in Kyiv. Modi’s visit followed a trip to China last month by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba for talks with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi.

Modi told Zelenskyy Ukraine and Russia should sit together, without wasting time, to end the war, the Express reported. India was ready to play an active role.

Modi spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, the paper said in a separate story. They discussed ways of strengthening their relationship and their views on the war.

The paper said Modi posted on X, saying he reiterated India’s firm commitment to supporting an early, abiding and peaceful resolution of the conflict. But Putin had given his assessment of the destructive line of Kyiv and its allies.

Indian commentator C. Uday Bhaskar said in a South China Morning Post opinion piece that the subtext of Modi’s message was the need to deflect US concerns that India had been uncritically pro-Russia.

Bhaskar, director of the Society for Policy Studies, a New Delhi think-tank, said India and China both gave the appearance of flying with the doves on Ukraine, but they were really maintaining an owl-like perch to protect their long-term interests.

“Neither India nor China can enable an effective peace process in the Ukraine war without earnest US involvement, and this will be determined by the outcome of the November US presidential election,” he said.

Global Times, an official newspaper in China, said in an opinion piece the possibility of India acting as a “peacemaker” was questionable.

Modi’s visit to Kyiv was an attempt to repair the damage caused by his recent visit to Russia, which had soured India’s relations with the West, the article said.

Stephen Roach asks: can Harris be a new Nixon?

If Donald Trump were to win the presidential election, his administration would take a very hawkish approach to China and would push Asian countries to pick a side – China or the US.

A Trump-Vance administration might upgrade US forces in Asia to better position the country to potentially fight a war with China.

A Harris-Walz administration would continue the Biden-era policy of preparing for possible military conflicts in Asia. It would take a tough line on human rights in China, consistent with Tim Walz’s record of defending freedoms in China.

These are the views of Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Writing in The Japan Times, Kurlantzick said Asian countries were worried about the possible approach of either administration.

“While some Asian states may be concerned that a Trump-Vance administration would move the region closer to war or sink regional economies, Asian countries are somewhat concerned that Harris and Walz might pay too little attention to the Asia-Pacific overall and focus on Europe, Russia and Ukraine,” he said.

Senior economist Stephen Roach, former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, has higher-level hopes for a Harris-Walz administration. He wonders whether there could be a breakthrough in US-China relations, as there was with Richard Nixon in 1972.

Roach said in an article, distributed by the expert writers’ group Project Syndicate and published in The Manila Times, that the looming clash between the US and China begged for another strategic breakthrough.

“The two countries, fuelled by politically driven false narratives, are on a collision course with no realistic off-ramp,” he said.

Trump, he said, would hit China with higher tariffs, but this could backfire by raising prices for US consumers.

Walz, he said, had concerns about human rights in China, but he had also stressed the need for a sustainable US-China relationship.

“[Harris and Walz] also recognise the need to face the urgent imperative for a course-correction in a troubled Sino-American relationship,” he said. “Who better than a thoughtful new US president to mitigate a dangerous dynamic with another superpower and shift the relationship from adversarial to competitive, from conflict escalation to conflict resolution?”