A senior Indian paramilitary officer has been killed in an explosion in Indian-administered Kashmir, police officials say.
Deputy inspector general of the Border Security Force OP Tanwar died when his vehicle was hit by a blast near a border post in Jammu.
Three soldiers accompanying him were also injured in the explosion.
Officials said Mr Tanwar had gone to a border post in Balad area to investigate reports about some men allegedly trying to cross over the Line of Control (LoC) from Azad Kashmir into Indian-Occupied Kashmir.
This is the first time an official of the rank of a deputy inspector general has been killed in the Jammu region.
In this latest episode by Brasstacks, Zaid Hamid sheds some light on Khilafat-e-Rashida that how it was the greatest form of governance ever by human kind
Morale has fallen among US soldiers in Afghanistan because of the rising violence there and the long and repeated deployments for troops after eight years of fighting in the country, according to a new U.S. Army report released Friday.
The report summarizes two surveys of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan taken earlier this year. New statistics from the Army also show suicides are up in the entire service. Produced every two years by the Army’s Mental Health Advisory Team. “Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to face stress from multiple deployments into combat but report being more prepared for the stresses of deployments,” Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army Surgeon General told reporters Friday.
Foreign Office and MI6 are backing efforts to remove ‘reconciled Talibs’ from UN sanctions list
British officials are increasing pressure on the Afghan government to talk to Taliban leaders as part of a major attempt at reconciliation, it emerged today.
The move is strongly backed by the Foreign Office – notably Sherard Cowper-Coles, the government’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan – by MI6, and by Lieutenant General Graeme Lamb, former head of the SAS and Britain’s senior military officer in Kabul, the Guardian understands.
The Zardari-Nawaz musical chairs stands exposed before the Pakistani people. Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat appears on Ahmed Quraishi’s TSS [Sunday, Nov. 15, 08:00 pm-Aag TV] to issue this warning: this is the last chance for the politicians and the expanded ruling elite. Anjum Niaz puts that warning in perspective in this column in her unique style.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Today President Zardari and the Sharif brothers stand exposed. The moment of reckoning is upon them. Proof of their allegedly stealing billions, from what rightfully belonged to the people of Pakistan, is before us in black and white. Washington and London, with the blessings of our establishment, have finally decided to let the skeletons in the politicians’ cupboards come out. The politicians tried to outsmart the military by flirting with the Kerry-Lugar Bill cleverly scripted by our ambassador in Washington. The army threw in a monkey wrench and thwarted it. Husain Haqqani has since gone into hiding while his boss in Islamabad is hunkered down in the Presidency.
ISLAMABAD – Reiterating Pakistan’s firm commitment to combat terrorism, Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani Friday made it clear to the US that Indian presence in Afghanistan would not help achieve objectives of the war on terror.
General Kayani made these remarks while talking to the US National Security Advisor General (Retd) James Jones who called on him at GHQ.
The visiting US dignitary also held separate meetings with President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.
Though ISPR press release said that the COAS and James Jones discussed matters of mutual interests, TheNation has learnt from other reliable sources that General Kayani expressed his deep concerns over Indian blatant interference into Pakistan through Afghanistan. “Pakistan cannot tolerate it as it was tantamount to be counterproductive in the war against terror,” the sources added.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — More than one-third of all weapons the United States has procured for Afghanistan’s government are missing, according to a government report released Thursday.
The U.S. military failed to “maintain complete inventory records for an estimated 87,000 weapons — or about 36 percent — of the 242,000 weapons that the United States procured and shipped to Afghanistan from December 2004 through June 2008,” a U.S. Government Accountability Office report states.
“Accountability lapses occurred throughout the supply chain,” it says.
Orla Guerin, BBC News Pakistani forces fighting the Taliban near the Afghan border claim American and Afghan troops aren’t doing enough to help.
Commanders in the troubled north western region of Bajaur complain of a lack of effort, and a lack of troops, on the other side of frontier. They claim American and Afghan forces aren’t taking strong enough action against the militants – an accusation traditionally levelled against Pakistan itself. Senior military officials claim Taliban fighters are able to re-arm in Afghanistan, and cross back into Pakistan.
ISLAMABAD – A rumpus is brewing in a small corner of the Pakistani media over the safety of a New Delhi-based American journalist. Being a US citizen has its benefits and Mr. Mathew Rosenberg is lucky to have a few coming to his defence in Pakistan. A couple of months ago a Pakistani journalist’s life came under threat in Swat. He escaped to Washington where he was humiliated on landing, kept in detention for two weeks and is entangled now in a legal mess. Mr. Rosenberg’s self-appointed defenders in the Pakistani media silently watched that story without uttering a word, let alone writing editorials. Another reporter, Fawad Shah, had to leave Peshawar after he broke the Blackwater story and got threats from US personnel. he escaped to Iran and then into Armenia but had to return eventually and finally chose to go public rather than simply lying low in fear. We saw no one from the US media or Pakistani media, barring the story in TheNation, take up Fawad’s case. Obviously, there are benefits to defending a US citizen as compared to a Pakistani one. Who will reward you for defending Pakistan, right?
There have been many tragedies in the post 9/11 world. Millions have been killed by occupying forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the world. Wars followed by more wars and political upheaval resulting in chaos and coups. Apart from all this chaos, it is the intellectual forgery that has plagued the world. Right after 9/11 every petty journalists all around the world became an Afghan expert and started writing books on Afghanistan, Pakistan and the ‘War on Terror’. This was followed by Iraq, and now it’s Pakistan’s turn to be maligned by many pseudo intellectual fraudsters. One such newspaper is an online newspaper Asia Times Online that has a habit of towing the US establishment line and creating myths of preposterous nature. Asia Times is an online newspaper and is based out of Hong Kong. In the recent two part article written by Pepe Escobar, the author claims many things without any substantial evidence or quotations.
First part of the article is named, “Welcome to Pashtunistan”. Pashtun is the ethnic word for the Pathan or Pushtun race. Pashtunistan is the slogan of ANP (Awami National Party), which was founded by the deceased ANP leader Ghaffar Khan – was also known as the ‘Frontier Gandhi’ and was against partition of India, against the popular sentiment of the people of the Frontier who were sympathetic to the idea of a separate Muslim homeland for India’s muslims. Targeted with being Anti-Muslim, Ghaffar Khan was attacked in 1946, leading to his hospitalization in Peshawar.
The US ambassador in Kabul has written to the White House to oppose sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan.
In a leaked cable, Karl Eikenberry said President Karzai’s government should first prove it would tackle corruption. The message arrived amid intense debate over strategy, with President Obama yet to make a decision on troop numbers. The dramatic intervention puts the ambassador – a former military commander in Afghanistan – at odds with generals seeking reinforcements. On Wednesday, President Obama held his eighth meeting to discuss the question of whether to send tens of thousands more troops to confront the Taliban.
Mr Eikenberry sent the secret cable in the past week, according to US media reports. Expressing concern about corruption in Afghanistan, he said it was “not a good idea” to send substantially more soldiers, the BBC has been told. The diplomatic dispatch appears to be a dramatic and last-minute intervention by the ambassador, says BBC Washington correspondent Adam Brookes. It comes right at the end of weeks of White House deliberation over how to proceed in Afghanistan, and appears to put the ambassador at odds with the US Army, whose generals favour reinforcing and intensifying America’s campaign. The US currently has some 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, among a coalition force of more than 100,000.
China has agreed to sell Pakistan at least 36 advanced fighter jets in a deal worth as much as $1.4bn, according to Pakistani and western officials.
Beijing will supply two squadrons of the J-10 fighter jet in a preliminary agreement that could lead to more sales, said a Pakistani official. The official said Pakistan might buy “larger numbers” of the multi-role aircraft in the future, but dismissed reports that Islamabad had signed a deal to purchase as many as 150 of the fighter jets.
Gen. Hamid Gul giving his expert opinion on RAW activities in Pakistan with extensive inside into RAW and Mossad activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan— In Bob Woodward’s book, “Bush at War”, he recalls how when he (Woodward) quoted Hersh to Bush, the latter replied that Seymour Hersh was a liar! Hersh’s article “Defending the Arsenal” in The New Yorker (November 16, 2009) has predictably caused a stir in Pakistan. But this always happens after the event; after foreign journalists have been given excessive access into the corridors of power in Pakistan. So it has been with Hersh. Now the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) claims Hersh has a well-known “anti-Pakistan” bias. If that is the case, then did the MFA give an official perspective on how much access Hersh should have been given in Pakistan? Did they advise the President to avoid meeting this man or did they give any official brief to the President on what to say to him on sensitive issues? Clearly, the Zardari meeting with Hersh has no reflection of the MFA or any official Pakistani position. Instead, there is a reflection of ignorance with the President declaring that our army officers are “British-trained”!
When America is about to throw an ally to the wolves, we follow an established ritual. We discover that the man we supported was never really morally fit to be a friend or partner of the United States.
When Chiang Kai-shek, who fought the Japanese for four years before Pearl Harbor, began losing to Mao’s Communists, we did not blame ourselves for being a faithless ally, we blamed him. He was incompetent; he was corrupt.
Seymour Hersh might have come up with some absurd findings, like concluding that religious extremism has multiplied in Pakistan because no one offered him Johnny Walker Black during his recent visit. But apart from that, Pakistan’s national security managers should sit up and take notice of one glaring fact: The US media and some circles in the Washington establishment are behind the worst global demonization campaign against Pakistan. Now this is denting national morale and forcing Pakistanis to question if their military is capable of defending the nation, since politicians have proven to be a disaster.
‘Instead of murdering muslims, TTP should fight the US in Afghanistan’ – Says the Afghan mujahideen commander
KABUL – Former Afghan Prime Minister and founder of the Afghan resistance party Hizb-e-Islami, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has offered western forces a ‘safe passage’ once the US announces a complete withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan, alongwith NATO.
In a new video aired by a private TV channel, Hekmatyar is also said to have confirmed that Osama Bin Laden is still alive, however he did not say where he believed the Al Qaeda chief was. He also blamed the fall of the Taliban government on Al Qaeda’s misguided ideology and failed strategy, saying he did not agree with ‘murdering ten muslims to kill one of the enemy’ – in reference to indiscriminate terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan that have killed thousands of civilians.
‘Americans know only as much as they can guess and nothing more – about Pakistan’s nuclear programme’.
ISLAMABAD: Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Tariq Majid has dismissed as ‘absurd and plain mischievous’ a report by American journalist Seymour Hersh published in The New Yorker about alleged vulnerability of Pakistan’s nuclear assets and facilities.
He said Pakistan did not need any foreign help to guard its nuclear facilities because they were already well protected.
Morale has fallen among US soldiers in Afghanistan because of the rising violence there and the long and repeated deployments for troops after eight years of fighting in the country, according to a new U.S. Army report released Friday.
The Zardari-Nawaz musical chairs stands exposed before the Pakistani people. Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat appears on Ahmed Quraishi’s TSS [Sunday, Nov. 15, 08:00 pm-Aag TV] to issue this warning: this is the last chance for the politicians and the expanded ruling elite. Anjum Niaz puts that warning in perspective in this column in her unique style. 
ISLAMABAD – Reiterating Pakistan’s firm commitment to combat terrorism, Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani Friday made it clear to the US that Indian presence in Afghanistan would not help achieve objectives of the war on terror.
Pakistani forces fighting the Taliban near the Afghan border claim American and Afghan troops aren’t doing enough to help.
In a leaked cable, Karl Eikenberry said President Karzai’s government should first prove it would tackle corruption. The message arrived amid intense debate over strategy, with President Obama yet to make a decision on troop numbers. The dramatic intervention puts the ambassador – a former military commander in Afghanistan – at odds with generals seeking reinforcements. On Wednesday, President Obama held his eighth meeting to discuss the question of whether to send tens of thousands more troops to confront the Taliban.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan— In Bob Woodward’s book, “Bush at War”, he recalls how when he (Woodward) quoted Hersh to Bush, the latter replied that Seymour Hersh was a liar! Hersh’s article “Defending the Arsenal” in The New Yorker (November 16, 2009) has predictably caused a stir in Pakistan. But this always happens after the event; after foreign journalists have been given excessive access into the corridors of power in Pakistan. So it has been with Hersh. Now the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) claims Hersh has a well-known “anti-Pakistan” bias. If that is the case, then did the MFA give an official perspective on how much access Hersh should have been given in Pakistan? Did they advise the President to avoid meeting this man or did they give any official brief to the President on what to say to him on sensitive issues? Clearly, the Zardari meeting with Hersh has no reflection of the MFA or any official Pakistani position. Instead, there is a reflection of ignorance with the President declaring that our army officers are “British-trained”!
KABUL – Former Afghan Prime Minister and founder of the Afghan resistance party Hizb-e-Islami, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has offered western forces a ‘safe passage’ once the US announces a complete withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan, alongwith NATO.
ISLAMABAD: Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Tariq Majid has dismissed as ‘absurd and plain mischievous’ a report by American journalist Seymour Hersh published in The New Yorker about alleged vulnerability of Pakistan’s nuclear assets and facilities.
