LEBANON, UKRAINE, AND THE NEED FOR SAFE AND ASSURED SUPPLY CHAINS.

The 17 and 18 September 2024 explosions in Lebanon involving devices such as pagers and walkie-talkies have raised concerns regarding the safety and integrity of electronic devices including current day smartphones and laptops. More concerning has been reports of the above goods being compromised (allegedly by Israel) during their production and assembly stages in the global supply chains involving countries as far as Taiwan, Japan, and Hungary.

In the case of the pagers, the devices were seen carrying the brand of Taiwan based company Gold Apollo; however, its founder and president Hsu Ching kuang has stated that the pagers were made by another company licensed to use its brand. The company was identified as the Hungary based BAC Consulting who was authorized to use the logo of Gold Apollo while the design and manufacture of the devices were handled by the said company. But, the spokesperson of the office of the Hungarian Prime Minister on X stated that the authorities had confirmed that BAC Consulting was a trading intermediary but not involved in manufacturing or operating in Hungarian soil.

Amid all these confusions, what has emerged so far is that the pagers were not directly exported from Taiwan to Lebanon but from European and American markets where Gold Apollo had exported around 260,000 pagers between 2022 and 2024. Speculations are rife that in the devices’ mid-way journey from Europe or Western markets to Lebanon, the Israeli deep state might have infiltrated the latter with explosives before their final journey to the hands of Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon. It is also alleged that this compromise in the supply chain might have taken place under the full awareness of US and the West− staunch allies of Israel in the current conflict in Gaza.

The walkie-talkie blasts following the explosion of pagers, have revealed that the devices were carrying the brand of Icom, a Japanese company. The model of the compromised devices, known as IC-V82 is a handheld radio, which was exported to the Middle East from 2004 to 2014 as stated by the Japanese company; however, the production of the model was stopped ten years ago. Later, it was confirmed by a sales executive at the US subsidiary of Icom that the compromised devices were a knock-off of the original model and that such counterfeit models are easily available online. Both the pagers and walkie talkies emphasize the need to ensure safe and secure supply chains whose integrity cannot be compromised.

On the other side of the world, during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, there has emerged reports of India made ammunition, including artillery shells being used by the forces of Kyiv against the Russian advancement. This has irked Moscow who has reportedly brought up the issue with India on two occasions, including in a meeting between External Affairs Minister (EAM) Dr S Jaishankar and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. While the Indian foreign ministry has declined reports of active selling of ammunitions to Ukraine, yet it has been found out that the Indian-origin ammunition constitute only 1 per cent of the arms imports to Kyiv during the start of the war.

It has also come to light that the above India-made artillery shells were re-imported by European countries like Italy and the Czech Republic who were leading an effort to supply arms to Kyiv from outside the European Union (EU). In addition, it was found that Indian companies like Yantra had clinched a deal with unlicensed Italian defence contractor Meccanica per I’Ellectronica e Servomeccanismi (MES) for manufacturing L15A1 shells which were empty. It was companies like MES who bought these empty shells and after having filled the latter with explosives sold them to Ukraine. While there have been speculations that New Delhi had turned a blind eye to the above despite revelations to benefit its own emerging defence export industry, yet it seems to violate Indian arms export regulations that limit the use of exported weaponry only to the declared user, while unauthorized transfers to third parties was prohibited.

Regarding the above, while some have opined that such ‘unauthorized’ transfers and the usage of Indian-origin ammunition by Ukrainian forces (with tacit consent from Indian authorities) only serve to underline New Delhi’s neutral position and independence from Russia to the West, it also has the potential to put strain in the growing bonhomie with Moscow, if this issue goes unaddressed. Such apprehension is not unfounded given the support extended by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk to Pakistan’s membership bid in the BRICS grouping as well as inviting Islamabad to join the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) as a snub to India’s growing convergence with the West. Hence, compromised supply chains with ‘un-trustworthy partners’ or ‘end-users’ can also cause deep harm to strategic interests.

All the above three incidents highlight the need to ensure secure, safe, and reliant supply chains as well as partners whose integrity cannot be compromised by inimical forces whether in the internal or external domain. In the case of India, the need for such supply chains is necessitated by the current confrontational relationship with China with whom New Delhi is still tied down by trade imbalance and dependence for critical industrial components. This dependence was highlighted by a report in The Washington Post of 2 September 2024 which spoke of Indian industries such as electronics, renewable energy, and pharmaceuticals dependence on Chinese-made components and intermediate goods such as integrated circuits (ICs) and batteries, solar cells, and basic pharmaceutical chemical inputs− such dependence was raising questions over India’s credibility under the ‘de-risking’ and ‘China plus One’ initiative. Another instance which brought to the fore the above dependence was the apparent conflict in June 2024 between the MEA and the Ministries of Commerce & Industry and Electronics & Information Technology over the issue of granting visas to Chinese technicians without whose expertise the exports quotas could not be fulfilled in time.

Given the extent of dependence on Chinese supply chains and intermediate goods by Indian industries, it would not be far fetched to say that Beijing might be tempted to follow the footsteps of Israel in sabotaging the India-destined export items to cause mayhem and chaos within Indian territory in the event of an all-out military confrontation with New Delhi. This fear is not unfounded given the propensity of Chinese electronic goods such as the Huawei 5G to contain backdoors intended for espionage which led to its ban by the US in 2020.

Hence, it is time for Indian industry and businessmen to whole-heartedly embrace the spirit of Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self- Reliant India) not just in defence, but also in non-military civilian supply chains while New Delhi must try to reduce its dependence on Chinese origin supply chains by re-routing and engaging with other partner countries who are reliable and believe in maintaining the integrity of supply chains.

Authored By

Mr. Anuraag Khaund

PhD International Politics(IP),

School of International Studies (SIS),

Central University Gujarat (CUG)