Fareed Zakaria advises the US to keep pressing on Pakistan.
Fareed Zakaria hails the only foreign policy success of Obama administration, Pakistan. But ends his piece with a huge warning and a friendly advice.
There are some who believe that Pakistan has changed its basic strategy and now understands that it should cut its ties to these [...]
India is ideally suited to provide the military trainers that NATO needs in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan needs more military trainers — NATO has been able to provide only 541 out of 1278 trainers needed for the growing Afghan Army and Police forces — and they aren’t getting them from anywhere. Pakistan has been rather keen to provide [...]
Only one reason — ensure the security and well-being of its citizens, thereby providing them with a better life.
Amidst all the hype over Indian involvement in Afghanistan and lamentations over declining India influence in that country, here is a quick check of the possible reasons that drive India’s continued interest in Afghanistan.
Let us start with [...]
First, organised stone pelting and now, outsourced terror strikes.
Stone pelting by protesters during demonstrations is not a new thing. Over the past decades, our drawing rooms have been satiated with images beamed from all over the world — places in Europe, South East Asia, West Asia and South America easily come to the mind — [...]
India needs a holistic, well-crafted response that balances its short-term, mid-term and long-term goals vis-à-vis Pakistan.
The jehadis have struck again on the Indian mainland; this time in Pune, albeit more than a year after the horrendous terror attacks on Mumbai in November 2008. The initial response, while going with the most plausible and popular assumption [...]
Some gaps in the understanding are filled, but more questions emerge.
Too many trees have been felled and much ether used to debate the Indian offer to recommence peace talks with Pakistan. Most of the sensible debate — not the jingoistic bit of how we have been shamed by Pakistan cocking a snook at us — [...]
Why India’s offer of bilateral talks with Pakistan is a really bad idea?
The Acorn is known to choose his words carefully. So when he sets out to welcome the impending Indo-Pak talks, albeit cautiously and with a big caveat in tow, one has to sit up and take notice. His only rationale for welcoming the [...]
One quote from the Indian Foreign Secretary says it all.
Political power flows from the barrel of a gun.~Mao
Here is Nirupama Rao’s answer to the sudden surge in media pieces asking India to resume talks with Pakistan.
Karan Thapar: What about the opinion expressed by some analysts that if India were to resume the dialogue process, it [...]
The calls for recommencing talks with Pakistan do not stand to logic and are not grounded in reality.
There are periods in history in which it isn’t enough to say you’ve done your best, when the only test is whether you have done what is necessary.~Churchill
It seems that the wonderfully efficient marketing machinery at an Indian [...]
PM’s Fifth Working Group report on Kashmir’s relations with centre serves some purpose in the mêlée that is Kashmir.
The Prime Minister’s Fifth Working Group on Kashmir, dealing with centre-state relationship, headed by former Supreme Court judge S Saghir Ahmad has submitted its report to the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir. This working group [...]
Pratap Bhanu Mehta makes a valid case for engaging Pakistan, but there have to be other prongs in the strategy.
In today’s Indian Express, India’s foremost columnist Pratap Bhanu Mehta makes a case against Indian military involvement in Afghanistan. He instead asks India to make bold attempts to engage larger Pakistani public opinion to meet Indian [...]
Differing outcomes to similar importance of Russia and India to US interests in Afghanistan.
Well, Holbrooke might not have been welcome in India for some months now but he and his team have been in Beijing and Moscow in buildup to the Obama announcement. Russia’s importance to the US efforts in Afghanistan is not limited to [...]
The average Pakistani soldier has already psychologically crossed over to the Jehadi side. It is impossible to convince him to undertake military action against his co-religionist brethren.
New York Times eventually discovers, albeit belatedly, that the average Pakistani is not ready to believe that their home grown jehadis could be behind the recent spate of terror [...]
[Guest blogger, BeeCee weighs in with his observations on the Indian options in Afghanistan.]
Till Obama’s Nobel Prize, Af-Pak strategy of US was definitely the flavour of the season. The theatrics over the Kerry-Lugar bill is merely part strategy and part consequence of the strategy. The trouble with strategic analysis and analysts is that it is [...]
There are little signs to suggest a breakthrough.
There are newsreports suggesting that Indian government is keen on restarting its long-stalled talks with the separatist leaders in J&K and a concrete offer in this regard could be made during the Prime Minister’s forthcoming visit to the state. The major separatist leadership is split down the middle, [...]
Sending troops to Afghanistan is a valid strategic option for India.
There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot. ~Steven Wright
In two separate op-ed pieces today, former army chief General Shankar Roychowdhury and defence analyst Ajai Shukla try to find ways for India to influence the events in Afghanistan. Roychowdhury [...]
Why US should stay the course in Afghanistan?
Steve Coll of the New Yorker, at his blog Think Tank, makes a fist of a very difficult job: to explain that besides exterminating al Qaeda, South Asia — and India in particular — is the reason for the US to stay committed in Afghanistan.
The United States has [...]
McChrystal’s report warns of Pakistani retaliation to Indian influence in Afghanistan.
From the much-reported COMISAF initial assessment of the war in Afghanistan submitted by General Stanley A. McChrystal to Obama administration:
Indian political and economic influence is increasing in Afghanistan, including significant development efforts and financial investment. In addition, the current Afghan government is perceived by Islamabad [...]
If this is India-friendly opinion, what is the centrist view in Pakistan.
When he was a young officer with the Pakistan army, he believed — till the mid-1970s — that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Then, as a serving and a retired general, he was associated with a Indo-Pak Track-II diplomatic initiative called [...]
One possible explanation for its allegations against India.
Pakistani military-intelligence combine is crying hoarse about Indian support to Baloch rebels, which is faithfully parroted by the Pakistani media. The Indian economic and reconstruction support to Afghanistan also attracts the ire of Pakistani strategic community and its media. Meanwhile, some of the most notorious Pakistani Taliban leaders [...]
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