In this undated handout photo, Madhuri Gupta, 53, an Indian diplomat who worked as second secretary in the Indian high commission in Islamabad is seen
“At 53, she was bored, alone and attractive. Single, but definitely one step ahead to mingle.” That’s how the man who led the operation to bust Madhuri Gupta, the first Indian diplomat to be found spying for Pakistan, described her. For most of her two years in espionage, Gupta was a lone-wolf, conducting a classic spy operation from her base in Islamabad. Old-school “dead drops,” in which she passed off information without even meeting her Pakistani handlers, were her signature style. Yet it was a silly indiscretion — sending e-mails to her spy bosses from her office computer — that finally led to her arrest.
Gupta has not exactly been near the center of Indian decision-making, posted as a second secretary in the media section of India’s high commission in Pakistan’s capital, where her job had been to provide English and Hindi summaries of Pakistan’s Urdu-language newspapers. On April 22, the 53-year-old was summoned back to New Delhi ostensibly to help colleagues prepare for the ongoing South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) summit in Bhutan. After landing at Indira Gandhi International Airport, she was whisked away by officials of the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (IB), India’s internal intelligence agency, straight to an interrogation chamber in an undisclosed location. Twenty-four hours later, she was handed over to Delhi police, charged with treason and accessing confidential documents under India’s Official Secrets Act.
KABUL — Across Afghanistan, behind the obvious battles fought for this country’s soul, a shadow war is being quietly waged. It’s being fought with spies and proxies, with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid money and ominous diplomatic threats.
The fight pits nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan against one another in a battle for influence that will almost certainly gain traction as the clock ticks down toward America’s military withdrawal, which President Barack Obama has announced will begin next year.
The clash has already sparked bloody militant attacks, and American officials fear the region could become further destabilized. With Pakistani intelligence maintaining ties to Afghanistan’s Taliban militants, India has threatened to draw Iran, Russia and other nations into the competition if an anti-Indian government comes to power in Kabul.
The silver colored material spewing gamma radiation that slipped into a scrap dealer’s shops causing at least six persons to fall ill has exposed gaps in India’s mechanisms to preserve radiological safety.
Department of atomic energy official said that the scrap dealer and five workers have fallen ill with symptoms of radiation exposure after they tried to work with scrap that contained a highly radioactive element called cobalt 60.
Cobalt 60 is used as a source of radiation in cancer radiotherapy and in industrial inspection equipment, but scientists investigating the incident said the origin of the material found in the scrap dealer’s shops was still unknown.
‘India’s evidence against Saeed not admissible under our law’
Times of India
NEW DELHI: Pakistan has contended that the Indian evidence against LeT founder Hafiz Saeed of his involvement in Mumbai terror attack is not admissible under their laws for prosecution.
In a dossier given to India in which it asked for handing over of Ajmal Amir Kasab, Islamabad has also asked New Delhi to give all additional evidence related to 26/11 to it by the middle of next month, sources said.
Washington: Arguing that some tactical successes will not defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, a top US thing tank has sought opening of talks with the militant group but said India should not be included in any such parleys as it would antagonise Pakistan, in particular its Army.
“The negotiating framework should be determined during a secret contact phase mediated by the Pakistani Army prior to the strictly diplomatic phase conducted under UN auspices,” the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in a report yesterday.
While you were glued to your flat screen, with your eyeballs popping out every time the ball was hit for a six, in a dark corner of India – in a Haryana village very close to the national capital – a dog was barking. Since it was a Dalit dog (in India, even dogs have caste), the upper caste Jaats were getting all riled up. So they decided to teach the dog a lesson. A bunch of them surrounded a Dalit house and set it on fire. Inside the house were trapped an 18-year-old girl and her old father. Since the girl was physically challenged and could not move out of the burning house, she and her father were engulfed and consumed by the fire. This is how people teach a lesson to dogs in New India: by making the poor, lower castes die like dogs.
Even as you were glued to TV, watching the IPL drama – both on the field and off field – a few more things happened. Highly dangerous radioactive material affected several people in a scrap market of Delhi; more than 100 people died in the cow-belt areas as mercury touched 43 degree mark; more people died of hunger and starvation across the country; new figures revealed that the number of poor in India stands at 800 million and not 327 million as claimed by the government; and it was reported that the government was tapping the phones of important political leaders. It may also be tapping the phones of ordinary citizens.
ISLAMABAD: Islamabad asked Delhi on Saturday to facilitate the transfer of Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving Mumbai attacker, to Pakistan for recording his statement in the trial of the suspects here.
The request was conveyed by Interior Minister Rehman Malik in a meeting with Indian High Commissioner Sharat Sabharwal.
SHANGHAI: It is easy to keep Pakistan out of the IPL. But when it comes to attracting eyeballs of Chinese visitors and international businesses, Pakistan has beaten Indian hands down at the World Expo in Shanghai.
The Pakistani pavilion is attracting thousands of people by the hour for the past week while the Indian pavilion is far from complete.
United States, Britain, Canada and Australia warned their citizens of serious security risk and terror threat in India. The current situation raises serious concerns over Indian hosting of Commonwealth Games 2010 and the Cricket World Cup.
New Delhi – Australia and Britain on Thursday warned tourists of the increased risk of militant attacks in New Delhi, joining Canada and the US, which have urged foreigners to avoid parts of the Indian capital.
The new alerts updated long-standing general advice for Western visitors to India that they should exercise caution and underlined security risks in the city as it gears up to host the Commonwealth Games in October.
The US said on Wednesday it had information of a “specific” threat to half-a-dozen of the city’s shopping areas and markets which it described as “especially attractive targets”. It advised Americans traveling or residing in India to maintain “a high level of vigilance” and watch out for unattended packages.
The Canadian government said on its website that an attack could be carried out “in the following days or weeks in market areas” of Delhi frequented by foreigners, specifically in the Chandni Chowk area in Old Delhi.
Following this new advice, the Australian High Commission in New Delhi said on Thursday it “strongly” advised Australians “to minimise their presence in market areas of New Delhi”.
India is home to a wide range of separatists and insurgents. A growing Maoist insurgency, so far concentrated in remote rural areas of northern and eastern India, also threatens to spread to urban areas, with the eastern city of Kolkata seen as particularly at risk.
NEW DELHI: India now has 100 million more people living below the poverty line than in 2004, according to official estimates released on Sunday.
The poverty rate has risen to 37.2 percent of the population from 27.5 percent in 2004, a change that will require the Congress-ruled government to spend more money on the poor.
The Global Nuclear Security Summit, which concluded in Washington yesterday, was remarkable for its revelation that India cannot hope to be a global power of any significance unless it gets over its petty obsession, as a nation, with Pakistan. At the press conference that the foreign secretary gave immediately after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meeting with the president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, on Monday, there were as many as 30 direct or indirect references to Pakistan.
Nirupama Rao is free of any blame for this predicament. Of the 13 questions that she took at the press conference, 11 were on Pakistan. If she had refused to answer any questions on Pakistan because the subject of her press conference was the highest level Indo-US meeting, there would have been only her opening statement and two questions: one about Obama’s forthcoming visit to India and another about the sanctions Obama wants to impose on Iran soon. Read the rest of this entry ?
BAHAWALPUR: In an unprecedented move, the Pakistan Army and the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) exhibited their professional capabilities by targeting a drone in front of not only the prime minister, many federal ministers and parliamentarians belonging to different parties but also more than 30 military attaches of different countries, who witnessed the heavy firepower of the Pakistani armed forces on Sunday afternoon in the desert of Khairpur Tamewali near Bahawalpur.
The presence of the country’s top political leadership in a very hot desert boosted the morale of Army troops, who have been engaged in a six-week-long Azm-e-Nau-III military exercise for the last few days.
NEW DELHI: A whopping 45% of IAF air crashes in the last six years have taken place due to human error.
The IAF has informed the parliamentary committee on defence that it had recorded a total of 74 air mishaps between April 2004 and March 2010, of which a high of 42% was due to technical faults in the aircraft and a mere 6% due to bird-hit.
The figures in percentage would mean the IAF has suffered 33 crashes out of 74 due to human errors, 31 due to technical errors in the aircraft and another 4 due to bird hit. Reasons for the remaining six crashes have not been given to the committee.
There are fears about the safety of the IPL as well as the safety of the Commonwealth Games. There have been several terror attacks in India, and the organizers of the Commonwealth Games, already jittery are getting a bit nervous.
India’s Olympic chief on Tuesday sought to allay security fears at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi saying the country was committed to providing a “safe and secure” environment.
NEW DELHI: The authorities may have refrained from calling the blasts in Bangalore a terror act, but the incident can well be a wake-up call ahead of the Delhi Commonwealth Games as it exposed chinks in the armour of the security agencies.
The low-intensity explosions were set off by devices with timers, pointing to an expertise that can be used to engineer mayhem on a bigger scale. In fact, in crowded settings, even low-intensity blasts can exact a disproportionate toll by triggering panic leading to stampede.
That the packets carrying explosives went undetected in an area which is supposed to be thoroughly scanned, considering the known plan of terrorists to target Bangalore and sports venues across the country, has distressed the authorities.
There is a window of opportunity for peace in Afghanistan. It has to be grabbed. For the first time in a decade the U.S. and the U.K. are acting in concert with Pakistan to proffer real solutions for Kabul. The former allies, turned protagonists, turned friends are once again on the same side–this time working for peace.
Mr. Karzai is once again calling his favorite friends for a big powwow which he calls a “Jirga” or tribal council. It is to be held in Kabul in two weeks. Pakistan is working with the UK and the US to ensure that this Loya Jirga represents all the Pakhtuns so that it becomes a vehicle for peace in West Asia. Islamabad has offered to hold a joint Loya jirga between the Afghan and Pakistani Pakhtuns. The last time Mr. Karzai hijacked the societal consensus for ending the war through the traditional means of a consultative assembly. Mr. Karzai used the grass-roots method to rubber stamp his own brand of government. Obviously the corruption, lack of peace, and loss on the ground has proven that a repeat of the previous methodology will not work.
WASHINGTON: Pakistan has said that it has acquired advanced nuclear fuel cycle capability and can offer it to the rest of the world under IAEA safeguards.
The offer, contained in a national statement presented at a two-day summit which concluded in Washington on Tuesday, reflected Islamabad’s desire to gain recognition as a nuclear state.
“As a country with advanced fuel cycle capability, Pakistan is in a position to provide nuclear fuel cycle services under IAEA safeguards, and to participate in any non-discriminatory nuclear fuel cycle assurance mechanism,” the document said.
At the summit, Pakistan also reiterated its proposals for establishing a strategic restraint regime in South Asia.
The policy paper released during the conference stressed that such a regime would “promote nuclear and missile restraint, a balance in conventional forces, and conflict resolution”.
— More than 80% of India’s nuclear and missile infrastructure based in the insurgency-hit areas or extremists’ dominated region
—Growing Moist insurgency, Nexal dominance in India’s Red Corridor ring alarm bell across the globe with regard to nuke safety
—The reasons behind fire at India’s top nuke facility further panics global community
—Indian Premier Manmohan Singh still shows the shameless cheeks to express reservations over safety of Pak nukes at Nuclear Summit in US
—46 world leaders, attending nuke summit having serious reservations about safety of nukes in India
Makhdoom Babar (Additional reporting by Christina Palmer & Ajay Mehta in New Delhi & Kapil Verma & Priyanka Joshi in Mumbai)
While the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has expressed his reservations over the safety of Pakistan nuclear assets at the 2-day Nuclear Summit being held at US capital Washington and is being attended by 46 world leaders from across globe, he appears to have completely forgotten the actual state of affairs with regard to the safety of India’s own nuclear and missile infrastructure back home, where the situation is highly alarming, reveal the findings of The Daily Mail’s investigations into the matter.
According to The Daily Mail’s investigations, the Indian government, in bid to keep it maximum possible away from the striking capabilities of Pakistan that lies across India’s northern borders, decades back decided to install all its nuclear and missile facilities in the Eastern zone of the country. However, with the passage of time, the eastern region of India emerged as the most disturbed, fragile and ungovernable region of the country with a variety of insurgency movements including that of Naxal rebels, emerging in that very part of the country.
Here is a chance that India blew to send a strong message for peace with both Pakistan and China. An Egyptian diplomat based in New Delhi apparently offered recently to help Indian Air Force overcome its shabby pilot training program.
According to a report by the Indian magazine Business Standard, the Egyptian official offered a novel solution: An Egyptian Air Force training crew flown from Egypt to India to train Indian pilots using Karakoram-8, the multirole trainer jointly developed by both Pakistan and China and now used by a growing list of countries, including Egypt, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Namibia, not to mention the air forces of both Pakistan and China.
Says the Indian magazine: “Since the offer was not followed up in writing, the Indian Air Force (IAF) was spared the embarrassment of having to reply.”
ISLAMABAD: Kayani’s worldview is Pakistan centric; he is respected as his military has won victories against enemies where the superpower could not succeed; like all good military leaders, he has good political sense; having recognised the failure of pre-emptive kill-capture doctrine, the US and West are listening with more attention to his advice; the strategic and operational framework outlined by him for ongoing conflict is in-sync with the national interests and good news for Pakistan.
Having gone through the article ‘General in the hood’, one gets more convinced that a lot needs to be thought right first, before endeavouring to put right, between the two countries. The article reinforces the perception; ‘What is good for Pakistan gets portrayed as bad for India’. The urge to write became more compelling due to a deliberate effort of quoting issues, which actually form the basis of threat to Pakistan. Interestingly enough, Pakistan’s predicament is that if it is not successful against the extremists, it gets portrayed as epicentre of terrorism and threat to world, especially India, and if it succeeds, our neighbour still feels threatened and portrays these as back to Brass Tacks. The blame game continues, despite knowing far too well, the extent to which Pakistan has gone against the miscreants with tangible results.
Islamabad – Pakistan’s security establishment, unmoved by the threat from homegrown Islamic insurgents, is to launch a training exercise this week focused on the scenario of a possible showdown with traditional rival India.
The country’s powerful military is to launch exercise Azm-e-Nau (New Resolve) III to test the capacities of its men against a hypothetical Indian attack, and validate its security strategy.
The war game is the culmination of the new strategies discussed over a period of one and half years at various academic and operational levels, and will be the largest military exercise since 1989.
Director General Military Training (DGMT) Major General Muzzamil Hussain said the forthcoming exercise in the garrison city of Rawalpindi will “focus on India.”
Before we take another strategic U-turn on Afghanistan, Pakistan’s Policymakers must read this:
Pakistan is conceptualized as a theater of war in American operational plans as the term Af-Pak suggests so strategic dialog under the presence of such perception is nothing more than an illusion
One option for Pakistan is to work on isolating the extra-regional powers [countries not bordering Afghanistan] and then pitch the extra-regional powers against one another by manipulating the rifts between major EU countries (which are already wary of prolonged Afghan mission) and the U.S.
This strategic dialog is an important component of an overall military strategy led by Gen. Petraeus in which enhancing U.S image and closing the trust deficit both in COIN operations at tactical level in Afghanistan and at strategic level in Pakistan.
The idea of offering Pakistan the carrot of a prolonged negotiations for a civilian nuclear deal was floated as far back as April 2009 with the aim of aligning US and Pakistani interests
Majid Mahmood
An Assessment
Summary
Recent days have seen a deceptive shift in U.S policy towards Pakistan. In a stated aim to ‘redefine’ its relationship with Pakistan a process of strategic dialog has been orchestrated by the United States creating much buzz in Pakistan over the issue. This brief essay will examine the real purpose of this strategic dialog, American plans for the region, strategic implications for Pakistan’s continued alliance with the US, and the formulation of alternative policy options for Pakistan.
Variety of sex scandals, financial scams, land frauds in Indian army welcome General Singh
Land scams like Sukna issue await Singh n Issue of Uniformed female sex workers in India army’s Kashmir establishment set to test Singh’s nerves
Inability of Indian Army’s Armour and Artillery to fight in the night tops issues facing new Indian Army Chief
Plans to mess with China via Afghanistan appears to be on top of Singh’s war doctrine
General Singh finding it hard to re-unite Indian army that he did divide during cold war with General Kapoor
Global acknowledgment of Pak army’s capabilities to tackle challenges demoralizes new Indian Army Chief
Over the past few months, the Indian army was divided in two: half supporting former army chief Gen. Kapoor, and the other half supporting Gen. Singh, in charge of the eastern command who succeeded this month in dislodging the army chief. Now Gen. Singh’s first task is to reunite a divided army. But that’s not all. This in-depth look also shows Gen. Singh comes with other interesting plans.
Christina Palmer and Ajay Mehta
NEW DELHI—Gen V K Singh, the senior most infantry officer of the Indian army took over as the country’s 26th Army Chief after winning the notorious ‘War of the Generals’ with General Deepak Kapoor on Thursday with a variety of spicy scandals, juicy scams, serious disciplinary, administrative as well as technical issues waiting to test his nerves, reveal the findings of a The Daily Mail investigation.
Fifty-nine-year-old Singh, who took over from arch rival Gen Deepak Kapoor, who retired from service, has become the 26th chief and will stay at the helm of the 1.13 million personnel-strong ‘night blind’ Army of India for a period exceeding two years.
RAIPUR: A day after 76 troopers were massacred in the worst ever Maoist attack, hundreds of para-military men and state police personnel assigned to track down the killers are scared to enter the jungles of Chhattisgarh Wednesday fearing a repeat of the ‘bloody Tuesday’ incident.
The shell-shocked police incumbent here have ordered nearly 40,000 policemen deployed in the restive Bastar region to retaliate.
But officials posted in the interiors of the region say: “The Tuesday attack has rattled the entire police force engaged in the anti-Maoist operation and they are now reluctant to enter the landmine protected jungle terrain”.
“It’s easy for everyone to dictate to us from New Delhi and Raipur sitting in air-conditioned chambers, but here the situation is completely hostile because Maoists rule the roost in jungles. The forces in Bastar now need urgent motivation,” a police officer based in Dantewada said on phone.
In this undated handout photo, Madhuri Gupta, 53, an Indian diplomat who worked as second secretary in the Indian high commission in Islamabad is seen
