'Can India forever respond with restraint to attacks like Mumbai, the attack on the Indian Parliament? Maybe. But I wouldn't bet the future of the world on that,' former CIA veteran Bruce Riedel tells Rediff.com's Aziz Haniffa.
'Jaish looked to creating regional mayhem, at a time when peace appeared more likely, and when that peace would have threatened Jaish's existence.'
United States President Barack Obama has appointed Bruce Riedel, a veteran Central Investigative Agency analyst for nearly three decades, to chair an inter-agency policy review of US policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.Obama's press spokesman Robert Gibbs said that this policy review chaired by Riedel would have to be completed before the summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in April.
A covert United States military operation in January targeting Al-Qaeda leaders in the Afghan-Pakistan border region accidentally killed an American and an Italian, both aid workers who were hostages of the terror group, President Barack Obama said.
The world's most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden spending several years in a mansion in Abbottabad.
Robert Hathaway, currently director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, said, "The US calls for patience are not likely to satisfy New Delhi, and when Secretary Rice arrives in India she is likely to face sharp questioning about Washington's continued support for Pakistan."
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban leader freed from a Pakistani jail on the request of the US less than three years ago, has emerged as an "undisputed victor" of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, according to a British media report.
Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction, the CIA report, prepared jointly with the NIC, said.
'Frankly, India has no role to play.' 'This is a showdown between the US and NATO on one hand and Russia on the other.' 'That said, the outcome of this titanic struggle in Central Europe will remould the world order and affect India profoundly,' argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is warning that the situation on the sub-continent has turned "grave" as it appears that open warfare is about to break out between Pakistan and the United States, The European Union Times reports.
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Stating that the Al Qaida was able to establish an unprecedented safe haven along the Pakistan-Afghan border in the past 18 months, the Central Intelligence Agency chief has warned that the situation there presented a clear danger to the two nations, as also to the United States. General Micheal Hayden termed the 2006 peace deal between Pakistan government and the pro-Taliban tribals in North Waziristan as absolutely disastrous.
The US were ready to mount an operation inside Pakistan, similar to the covert raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
In a bid to prevent a Mumbai-like massacre on American soil, the CIA is said to have launched a vast spying operation in Britain as it suspects that British terrorists of Pakistani origin are the biggest threat to US. According to the CIA, which has recruited a number of informants in the Pakistani community, a British extremist of Pakistani origin entering the US is the most likely source of a terror attack on America, Britain's leading newspaper The Sunday Telegraph report
'There's no wonder that many Pakistani parents send their kids to madrasa and one knows what happens to a small percentage of the kids who go there.
The terrible beauty of Doval's initiative is that it is all about a new journey rather than about a set compass pointing toward a pre-determined destination, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Delhi was not concerned.' 'It would continue sleeping for several more years, with the result that Indian territory is still occupied by China today,' says Claude Arpi.
While Damon stays true to his character and is intense throughout the film, it's the story which lets down this spy thriller, says Namrata Thakker.
To be able to bid farewell to Daniel Craig is an emotion all fans of the Bond franchise must experience, feels Aseem Chhabra.
The White House called upon Iranian authorities to immediately release US-Iranian ex-Marine Amir Mirzai Hekmati, who was "sentenced to death for cooperating with a hostile nation, membership of the CIA and trying to implicate Iran in terrorism."
The Islamic State has emerged as the most potent terrorist threat globally but in the Afghan-Pak region the space is dominated by other terrorist groups like Taliban, Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Tayiba, America's top spymaster has said.
The Obama administration has ruled out halting the strikes by the CIA operated unmanned planes, which have been billed as the most potent anti-terror weapon, ABC news reported quoting unnamed US officials.
Over two months after the killing of its leader Osama bin Laden, United States' counter-terrorism officials believe that terror outfit Al Qaeda is on the brink of collapse. "US counter-terrorism officials are increasingly convinced that the killing of Osama bin Laden and the toll of seven years of CIA drone strikes have pushed Al-Qaeda to the brink of collapse," The Washington Post reported.
The banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has condemned the release of Central Intelligence Agency contractor Raymond Davis under a "blood money" deal with relatives of two men he killed and threatened to target all those who aided the US in securing his acquittal in court.
Afridi had ran a fake vaccination drive in Abbottabad city to help CIA agents track the former Al Qaeda chief, who was later killed by US Navy Seals in a controversial raid on May 2, 2011.
The Taliban is highly pragmatic and would regard it wasteful to resume military offensive to capture Panjshir. The Taliban's preference, historically, has been to keep the military option as the last resort, explains Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar
Trump ordered that they be reviewed in the next 180 days.
Riedel, who was also the erstwhile director for South Asia in the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration and most recently an adviser on foreign policy to the Obama campaign, said it's difficult to believe the Pakistani government's assertions that its intelligence service has no links to LeT. If there's anything that is a 64 million dollar question today," it is finding out the "extent of its ties to the Pakistani intelligence service."
Bruce Riedel, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is being talked about as likely to be tapped for a senior position in an Obama Administration that deals with South Asia, said while the LeT's continuing relationship with the Pakistani intelligence services, the ISI, is much debated and the Pakistani authorities deny any such relationship, "The fact is that the organisation has been tolerated in Pakistan despite the 2002 ban."
R&AW Special Secretary (retd) Amar Bhushan's upcoming book won't be just a 'semi-fictional' story but will throw welcome light on a sad chapter in the history of Indian intelligence, notes B Raman.
Despite dependence on the ISI for years of sustenance, Taliban leaders may harbour resentment over the ISI's excessive control, notes Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing.
United States rises to number two just behind Saudi Arabia.
Ever since President Obama unveiled his timetable for an American pull-out, the Taliban and the Al Qaeda have gone from strength to strength -- they are winning the psychological war.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked by US Congressmen if the US had explore the possibility of northwest India for counter terrorism capabilities in Afghanistan. Blinken's remarks on India assume great importance, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar
As the US announced deepening of its involvement in Afghanistan by despatching 30,000 more troops, President Barack Obama has quietly authorised an expansion of war against terrorism in Pakistan under which CIA would widen its campaign of strikes against militants by unmanned drones.
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The US is not in a forgiving mood for being humiliated in such a manner by an insurgent force and made to look 'loser' internationally, predicts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
My candidate for the best general of the last century hailed from a little, poor colonised Asian nation whose impact on world affairs rarely amounted to much, notes Shankar Acharya.
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