'The high profit margins in this kind of crime make it little wonder why gangsters and terrorists have turned to piracy.'
Two Sikh-American military recruits, both medical professionals already in the US Army, who have been denied the right to report for active duty in July unless they remove their turbans and cut their unshorn hair and beards, have called on the Pentagon to allow them to serve their country without having to compromise their religious principles.
'We already have Indian Islamic extremist groups working in India, and secondly, if Pakistan slides even further, India will be sharing a border with the Taliban,' says Ahmed Rashid, perhaps the world's foremost expert on the Taliban.
Two nonproliferation hawks, who vehemently opposed the US-India civilian nuclear deal, will soon man the White House and State Department and lead the charge to push President Obama's non-proliferation agenda to seek a worldwide ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and a strengthening of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that is bound to bring pressure to bear on India that has been loath to sign the CTBT and has maintained the NPT is discriminatory.
The appointment of veteran diplomat Peter Burleigh as charge d'affaires at the American embassy in New Delhi was a Department decision and not on the recommendation of Richard Holbrooke, Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as had been rumored because of their earlier longtime working relationship, senior Administration sources have told rediff.com.
President Barack Obama has appointed the first Hindu community activist and one of the first Hindu women priests in New Jersey, Anju Bhargava, to the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Senior administration officials acknowledged that US wants India to be a key stakeholder in the development efforts in this beleaguered country, where winning the hearts and minds of the populace will be imperative in the war against the al Qaeda, Taliban and other extremists elements.India's experience and expertise on helping the US in its developments efforts would be invaluable, because "there is a clear recognition that Indian aid to Afghanistan has been effective."
The Maryland House of Delegates has passed major legislation authored by Majority Leader Kumar Barve--the longest-serving Indian American legislator--to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state.
The decision by the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Leon Panetta who chose India for his first overseas trip--unprecedented in the annals of the spy agency's history-- was deliberate and intended to sustain the momentum and institutionalize the unprecedented intelligence cooperation between Washington and New Delhi that began in the aftermath of the horrific 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, say intelligence officials.
Foreign Service Officer Robert Orris Blake, Jr, who is currently the United States' Ambassador to Sri Lanka, before which he served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in New Delhi from 2003 to 2006, is the top contender for the post of the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, currently held by diplomat Richard Boucher.
Although Pakistan faces an 'existential' threat from terrorists within its borders, many of its leaders are still hung up on India as that country's principal enemy, the chief of United States Central Command has informed the US Congress.This observation was made by Army General David Petraeus, who was addressing the Senate Armed Services Committee to sell President Barack Obama's comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he unveiled last week.
The Al Qaeda terrorist havens in Pakistan will be dismantled through "the combination of military operations -- aggressive military operations on the Afghan side -- and working energetically with the Pakistani government to shut down these safe havens."
President Barack Obama's much respected National Security Adviser, Retd James L Jones made clear that while the President's new comprehensive strategy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan includes encouraging a rapprochement between India and Pakistan, it will absolutely not include any efforts to bring about a resolution of the Kashmir imbroglio.
As US President Barack Obama took ownership of a new comprehensive strategy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan to counter the Al Qaeda and a resurgent Taliban, senior Administration officials acknowledged that India would be a key stakeholder in these efforts too, although New Delhi will not be invited to put boots on the ground in this renewed fight against terrorism because of its regional problems with Pakistan.
Former foreign secretary Shyam Saran, who was the original Indian interlocutor of the US-India civilian nuclear deal negotiations with erstwhile US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, is unapologetic about his recent remarks at the India Habitat Centre lecture series in New Delhi which left many foreign policy experts both in India and the US puzzled.
Curtis, who was the lead panellist at a conference at The Brookings Institution titled, The US-India Nuclear Agreement: Expectations and Consequences,' said, "During the Bush Administration, US officials broke the habit of viewing India solely through the India-Pakistan lens. Washington developed a greater appreciation for the Indian democratic miracle and viewed our shared democratic principles as the bedrock for a broader strategic partnership."
T P Sreenivasan, India's former Governor to the International Atomic Energy Agency and ex-Indian Ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, has predicted that the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal will be honoured regardless of whatever dispensation comes to power following the general election in May. Sreenivasan noted that "two of the three coalitions vying for power in India are committed to amend it, though not to abandon it."
He argued that "as India emerges as one of world's leading economic and political power, the central question is how United States and India can work together to address the regional and global challenges that no country alone can solve."
"Therefore, we have given our full support to the consolidation of a multi-party democracy in Afghanistan. We feel that it can and should be a multi-ethnic society, a plural society backed by the United States and India," Saran said.
If peace and stability is to come to South Asia, links between Pakistan's military, Inter-Services Intelligence and the violent extremist jihadi groups the ISI created, must be severed, said Steve Coll, president and CEO of The New America Foundation and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars.
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