'Some Pakistani generals are saying -- a little more so now than before -- that the biggest threat to Pakistan is not external -- not India -- but internal.' 'The proof of that will be their change of policies and that is going to be the challenge,' Rakesh Sood, one of India's most distinguished diplomats, tells Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com in Washington, DC.
India has demanded the United Nations to slap sanctions against the new Taliban leader in Afghanistan, saying it is "sheer folly" that the leader of a proscribed entity is not yet designated as a terrorist individual.
Jim Mattis in his resignation letter to the US president wrote that he deserved a defence secretary whose views were better aligned with his on these and other subjects.
'From the very start, PM Modi was insistent that visiting foreign leaders should be exposed to an India beyond its capital.' 'Through these experiences, he felt that the full Indian narrative would be much better understood across the world,' explains External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. A riveting excerpt from Bluekraft Digital Foundation's Modi@20: Dreams Meet Delivery.
'The picture only looks worse from where Bajwa sits.' 'He sees a domineering India to the east, an unravelling Afghanistan and a complex Iran to the west, an overbearing China on the north and a US which is no longer an ally,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
Haley also said there was a plan for her to travel to India by the end of this year.
The crash late Friday represents the biggest death toll in a single incident for international forces in Afghanistan since the start of the war in 2001
China said Islamabad is at the frontline of combating terrorism.
United States President Barack Obama on Wednesday said that the US has succeeded in its mission in Afghanistan by "severely" crippling the Al Qaeda there and vowed to keep pressure on the terror group until that network is entirely defeated.
The Devyani Khobragade row, India-Pakistan bickering over Afghanistan and a nightclub act by two diplomats were some of the issues discussed at one of the sessions at Jaipur Lit Fest, reports Sanchari Bhattacharya.
Army Chief General V K Singh began his official visit to the US during which terrorism, situation in the region including Afghanistan and Pakistan, besides bilateral military-to-military ties would top the agenda of his talks with top American military leadership.
Alleging that Pakistan has for decades leveraged radical terrorist groups to carry out attacks in India and Afghanistan, a US lawmaker has introduced a bill that proposes to deduct $50 million (Rs 2,681 crore) from the US aid to Islamabad every time an American is killed "as a result of actions of ISI."
The Republican White House contender took the time to pat himself on the back for 'being right on radical Islamic terrorism' and sought the resignation of US President Barack Obama.
Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt Gen Rizwan Akhtar has left for the US on his maiden visit to hold talks with top American officials on regional security, counter terrorism and intelligence issues.
Pakistani forces were "unusually accurate" as they fired shots on an Afghan-United States patrol on November 26, an American officer stationed in Afghanistan has said, providing new details about the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation attack that could put fresh strains on the already tattered US-Pak relations.
'The Indian side has realised that not talking to Pakistan has not served any useful purpose.'
'I want to show that we are also part of this society and want to participate just as much, whether it is for security or whatever community work there.'
The reduction of tension on the Chinese border may have reduced the urgency of a Biden-Modi meeting, but the sooner Modi starts a bromance with Biden the better as he had done with Obama and Trump, suggests Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation attack that killed 24 Pakistani troops has widened the US-Pak rift, according to a leading American daily, which said the Obama administration's regret and Islamabad's anger over the strike reflects a "deepening distrust" that gets harder to repair with each new confrontation.
The man, dressed in an Afghan border police uniform, opened fire on Isaf troops during the training mission, killing the soldiers in Taliban-infested eastern Afghanistan, Nato announced. The gunman was identified as Azat Gul.
The US administration will take the final call in a meeting in coming weeks.
Here are the images that encapsulated the biggest moments in the month of August.
The army chief said that India needs to broaden its understanding of national security and must examine non-traditional threats like pandemics "de-novo" as they have the potential to inflict severe damage on the country. "We need to act and prepare ourselves accordingly."
While India is terming the visit of American President Barack Obama as a very successful trip that will give a shape to the Indo-US strategic partnership, Pakistan is worried especially after Obama endorsed India's role in Afghanistan and India's right to a permanent seat in the Security Council.
In a move that could have determining effect on the 'war on terror' in Afghanistan, the new American military commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus has suggested putting the dreaded Haqqani group in the list of banned terror groups.
A top American military commander headed for Afghanistan on Tuesday said he would not be surprised by links between Pakistan's spy agency Inter State Intelligence and Islamist extremist organisations, who have established a safe haven in Pakistan's restive tribal region.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence is pushing the Taliban to attack American troops and their allies based in Afghanistan, the media here has said, close on the heels of a White House report that slammed Islamabad for not doing enough to battle terrorists holed up near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
American combat troops could stay in war-torn Afghanistan beyond the 2014 deadline set by United States President Barack Obama for their pullout if Kabul sought delaying their withdrawal, the US ambassador has said.
In a clear reference to Pakistan, he also sought diplomatic isolation and blacklisting by anti-terror watchdog FATF of countries sponsoring terrorism, asserting that there is a need to take the bull by its horns and strike at the root cause of terror.
Over 69 percent of Americans believe that the Afghanistan war is important to their national security, with 36 percent of those saying it is very important.
There is no doubt that all terrorist organisations like the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Tayiba are operating with impunity in Pakistan. They may be loosely confederated, but their agendas are being synchronised and India after Afghanistan is their prime target.
Pakistan-based Haqqani network is a deadly terrorist outfit, which is responsible for more than 90 percent of the civilian casualties in eastern part of Afghanistan, a top US military official based in this part of the war-torn country believes.
US President Barack Obama is unlikely to rake up the issue of Kashmir during his visit to India, a senior American official in New Delhi indicated. The US has reiterated that Kashmir is a bilateral issue to be resolved between New Delhi and Islamabad.
The Looming Tower reveals the bitter CIA-FBI turf battles that led to the worst terrorist attack in America's history.
Barack Obama has said that he had ruled out involving Pakistan in the raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout because it was an "open secret" that certain elements inside Pakistan's military, and especially its intelligence services, maintained links to the Taliban and perhaps even al-Qaeda, sometimes using them as strategic assets against Afghanistan and India.
The top US commander in Afghanistan appeared to be on his way out after the White House and Pentagon took strong objection to his controversial comments against key aids of Obama administration in an interview.
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.
The Modi government has been put on notice.'Will it buckle under such pressure? These are times when the moral fibre of the leadership makes all the difference, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'The fatal mistake for the USSR was the invasion of Afghanistan.' 'Quite possibly the fatal mistake for the Chinese empire is the assault on Ladakh,' observes Rajeev Srinivasan.
Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar leaked the whereabouts of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden to American investigators, the Sunday Mirror reported.
