In a tweet on Sunday, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader said, 'Recent developments in our volatile neighbourhood & the way Sikhs & Hindus are going through a harrowing time are precisely why it was necessary to enact the Citizenship Amendment Act.'
Samajwadi Party member of Parliament Shafiqur Rehman Barq has been booked for sedition following his recent remarks allegedly defending the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan and equating it with India's own freedom struggle, police said on Wednesday.
Top US and Afghan officials have apparently been conned by a man claiming to be a leading Taliban negotiator in secret talks with Afghan officials.
The timing of these transfers, while being projected as routine, is significant in both strategic and political terms, asserts Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
Let's face it. When it comes to the Pentagon, the Pakistani military can do no wrong. Even if it's going after only the Pakistani Taliban and not the Afghan Taliban, which it apparently continues to promote for strategic depth against India and as a hedge in case the US decides to cut and run.
The US intelligence community assesses that the Taliban leader Mullah Omar is now dead, although the circumstances of his death is not yet clear, the White House has said.
"They (the Taliban) do not represent the popular will in Afghanistan and every poll, every survey I would particularly bring your attention to the BBC/ABC/ARD poll of earlier this year shows that their support is in the single digits," Special US Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, told media persons at a news briefing.
Beyond assurances of support, the 100-plus delegations that congregated in Bonn failed to articulate anything particularly meaningful, says Amir Mir
Pakistan's army chief General Raheel Sharif will visit Afghanistan tomorrow to meet the new leaders there and discuss security issues, including the thorny one of Pakistani Taliban militants hiding there.
Afghans went to the polls for the first time on October 9 in a direct election to choose a presidential candidate.
The India delegation flagged concerns over the possible implication of the Taliban's capture of power for the security situation in Jammu and Kashmir as there are apprehensions about spill-over of terrorist activities from Afghanistan to the union territory, the sources said.
Amid India's concerns that Afghanistan's territory might be used for anti-India activities under the Taliban regime, the terror group has said that it has the right to raise its voice for Muslims anywhere, including in Kashmir. However, it added that the group does not have a policy of raising arms against any country.
Karzai has steadfastly opposed direct talks between the US and the Taliban, wanting Afghan ownership of the "reconciliation process", as the reintegration of the Taliban into the mainstream is referred to.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the bombing, which was felt across the city.
No tears are shed for the thousands of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan by Pakistan's proxies such as the Afghan Taliban, says South Asia expert Professor C Christine Fair. Aziz Haniffa reports.
Only punitive pressure against Pakistan can help in neutralising the Haqqani Network, says senior analyst B Raman
Representatives from the United States and Qatar, the UN, China, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, the EU, Germany, India, Norway, Tajikistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan joined a regional conclave on Thursday to discuss ways to contain the escalating security situation in Afghanistan.
The much anticipated peace talks between the Taliban and the United States might not happen as well, a US official said, as the Special US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan left Qatar without any talks with the Afghan insurgent group.
'The Mansoor Taliban is really an extension of the Haqqani Network which in turn is an instrument of the ISI. With Ashraf Ghani ready to dance to Pakistani tunes and with the Haqqani Network becoming part of the Afghan government, Pakistan is all set to see the fruition of its strategic policy,' says Sushant Sareen.
Slamming Pakistan for refusing to cut ties with the Haqqani network of militants, a leading US daily has said the military of the 'crippled and chaotic' state continues to play a "double game" of accepting aid from America while enabling the Afghan Taliban.
US troops after 10 years in Afghanistan are in the same position as the Soviet troops after eight years were in 1987 --victory increasingly elusive, says B Raman.
The statement comes Days after Trump sought Imran Khan's help in the Afghan peace process.
Following the recent killing of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in an American military raid, the Obama administration has adopted a new strategy towards the chief of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Mohammad Omar, which is aimed at persuading the fugitive extremist leader to agree to a negotiated settlement of the decade-long conflict in Afghanistan, writes eminent Pakistani journalist Amir Mir.
Pakistan on Friday agreed to let India transport 50,000 metric tonnes of wheat and life-saving drugs as humanitarian assistance for the people of Afghanistan on Afghan trucks through the Wagah border crossing, after a row erupted between the two countries over the modalities of transportation.
With the death of the terrorist mastermind, the emergence of a nuclear-equipped splinter group from within the Pakistani establishment looks disturbingly plausible, says Colonel Anil Athale (retd)
The pressure on Delhi mellowed Lucknow's ruling dispensation's initial enthusiasm to try and draw electoral mileage from the developments in Afghanistan.
When the Taliban ruled the country between 1996 and 2001, they banned education for females and barred women from leaving the house without a male relative.
The United States is going to retain a laser focus on its counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden said on Friday, and warned the Taliban of a forceful response to any attack on American forces or disruption of its operations at the Kabul airport.
Pakistan on Thursday dismissed reports that Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Muhammad Omar was being treated in a Karachi hospital, with the help of officials of the Inter Services Intelligence, after he suffered a heart attack."This is hackneyed speculation with no substance whatsoever," said Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit.He said such reports were aimed at maligning Pakistan and creating misgivings.
Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, killed in a United States airstrike in Balochistan, was a frequent flyer and used a Pakistani passport for over nine years
A shocked Pakistan on Wednesday began observing 3 days of national mourning for the 141 people, mostly children, massacred by the Taliban suicide attackers in horrendous terror attack in northwestern city of Peshawar.
The Afghan women's national football team will travel to Pakistan this month for their first international match abroad.
'They must be hiding somewhere in a country where the Taliban would not even spare a 4-year-old girl.'
The recent catastrophic attack on US troopers underlines the undamaged capability of the Afghan Taliban to take the NATO forces by surprise and inflict heavy casualties on them and its determination to make the US withdrawal from Afghanistan a humiliating retreat and not a successful withdrawal, says senior analyst B Raman.
Khan was known to directly participate in attacks against US and coalition forces, and the actions of his network terrorised Afghans, especially in Nangarhar.
Officials said the militants targeted residential areas and held hostages.
Fearing at the possibility of attacks against the US emanating from Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her second visit to the country has called on Islamabad to take further and specific actions against militant networks, British Broadcasting Corporation reported.
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was obviously so impressed by her meetings with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari that she ventured into the White House briefing room after sitting in on the meetings between President Barack Obama and the two leaders, to express her optimism that a solid alliance had been formed committed to crushing the Taliban and other extremist elements destabilising the region.
'The negotiation was a result of -- based on the judgment that we weren't winning the war and therefore time was not on our side and better to make a deal sooner than later'
