The India card is now almost obsolete. There are more pressing challenges. People of Pakistan are fed up with years of bad governance, corruption and broken promises of successive governments. However, the politicians and former generals are still provoking sentiments on what is happening on the Line of Control for petty political gains, says Shahzad Raza.
'In times to come this will be considered a watershed event, but only if the establishment can see the flag which is up and the straws in the wind which are flying,' says Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
'A couple of hours before the H-Hour, the Kupwara division opened small arms and mortar fire on posts opposite its area of operation.' 'This was a diversionary tactic.' 'As Pakistani forces began to react to the firing, special forces teams began to slowly cross the LoC into PoK.' Nitin Gokhale reveals how planning for the surgical strikes began hours after the Uri attack.
'Why has the rhetoric gone down on the Indian side, Durrani wondered aloud.' 'I said because almost total normalcy and peace had returned on the ground in Kashmir,' recalls Shekhar Gupta. 'The general gave me that career spook's laser look. And he said: "That situation on the ground can change in no time".' 'This was precisely when the Pakistanis began their first incursions into Kargil.' 'Durrani had been retired for five years.' 'But once the ISI boss, you are always in the know.'
Once the blue eyed boy of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, the ex Director General of Police Dinesh Reddy is up in arms against the CM today.
Questioning the timing of the remarks, the BJP demanded a statement from former PM Manmohan Singh and former defence minister A K Antony on the issue.
'There must be thousands if not lakhs of people the government is illegally spying on.' 'Why should we enable this criminal activity by volunteering our details?'
'No country can ever be free to make its choices and remain independent if it continues to wear borrowed plumes,' warn Lieutenant General Ashok Joshi (retd) and Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'The prime minister has merely paid lip service condemning these crimes instead of launching a massive crackdown against such brutalities,' argues Professor Mohammad Sajjad.
The bravado of NDA ministers may have undone the gains made in cross-border security cooperation over the past several years.
Incoming US President Donald Trump has assembled a core team that is -- not surprisingly -- overwhelmingly white and male.
'Since India has to live next to Pakistan, it can't remain under permanent blackmail.' 'A predictable consequence of these fundamental shifts is the fraying of the principle of strategic restraint.' 'It hasn't been junked. But the threshold has been shifted to provide India much greater room for retaliatory action,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'Once accession to Pakistan appeared unlikely, the British instituted Operations Gulmarg and Datta Khel respectively to foil possible accession to India.'
A well-written screenplay, brilliantly executed, with clever music, stunning cinematography, and, above all, the hugely talented Kamal Haasan, make Jeethu Joseph's Papanasam a must watch.
'Even though he knew full well that the manipulation went against the facts as he knew them, Pillai nonchalantly contented himself with stating that since the file came from the minister himself, he just passed it on as it was,' says B S Raghavan.
Experts trace the reasons for the 26/11 attacks to the Pakistan's military interest in three key areas: Kashmir, Afghanistan and nuclear armaments.
T P Sreenivasan was India's high commissioner in Fiji in 1987, when Sitiveni Rabuka toppled the Indian-dominated government there. Ambassador Sreenivasan stayed on for two years after the coup, fighting for the rights of the people of Indian origin before he was expelled by Rabuka. 'Meeting Sitiveni Rabuka, who had overthrown a democratically elected government, discriminated against the Fiji Indians, brought untold humiliation and suffering to them, tried to disenfranchise them, ordered me out of Fiji and closed down the Indian high commission was a difficult decision to take even after 25 years,' notes Ambassador Sreenivasan who eventually caught up with Rabuka over a game of golf.
There's a certain amount of drama to the profession. Sample these taglines: 'We can see the unseen'; 'I can plant my detective in your guest bedroom.' One agency has even ensured that all its phone numbers end in '007'.
With Pakistan's powerful army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani's term coming to an end in November, names of top generals who are likely to succeed him are being discussed in the political circles and in the corridors of power.
'It would be unfair on the Mumbai police to believe that D has compromised the force. We should not forget that today the underworld in Mumbai stands decimated because of the efforts of the Mumbai police.'
Biometric authentication is based on the unscientific and questionable assumption that there are parts of human body that does not age, wither and decay with the passage of time.
After 20 plus years of threatening to offer us new sensations, Nagesh Kukunoor has finally let it rip, raves Sreehari Nair.
How the two South Asian neighbours will interact with each other in the coming months will be decided by the two prime ministers in Washington.
'Not a single soldier should be left behind in enemy territory.' Nitin A Gokhale's fascinating account on how the Indian Army conducted the daring and successful cross-border operation last September.
'Islamabad receives billions in aid from the US but continues to harbour terrorists,' he said.
The bench said it will take up the matter for hearing on Thursday.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect of Boston marathon bombings, has been indicted on 30 counts, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction, over the April attacks that killed three people and injured more than 260 others in the US.
'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.
In bilateral interfaces relations with China have also to be given due weight, opines Premvir Das
Six serials blasts rocked the venue of Narendra Modi's rally in Patna minutes before he arrived there to address the gathering while another crude bomb exploded at the railway station, leaving five dead and over a fifty injured.
The Chinese Communist Party's all important 19th Party Congress is just months away, and President Xi Jinping finds himself confronting unlikely challenges to his pre-eminent position, says former RA&W officer and China watcher Jayadeva Ranade.
'By the time he came out after nearly five hours, he had a one-to-one conversation with the President, a delegation-level meeting, a reception, a dinner, a tour of the White House and a joint statement of a kind none of his predecessors ever had,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Some of the letters exchanged between the arrested activists spoke of planning 'some big action' which would attract attention, Singh said.
'The sky is the limit for what all could be done at an air base to neutralise terrorists. Good proactive local leadership and delegated operational effort would be key to ensuring that a handful of terrorists cannot hold a whole air base, and by extension, the whole nation to ransom,' says Group Captain P I Muralidharan (retd).
As two recently declassified Intelligence Bureau reveal that the Jawaharlal Nehru government had spied on the family of Subhas Chandra Bose for nearly two decades, one of India's political mysteries takes centrestage. Rediff.com reproduces this 2006 report in which Sumit Bhattacharya reported that a website claims that Netaji, in fact, did not die in an air crash, as was being believed, and that Netaji had escaped to Russia.
'That cannot be done till they roam around free, get money from Pakistan and seek attention.' 'The cycle of violence was very cleverly generated.' 'During night patrolling when it was discovered that dumper trucks were unloading heaps of stones in various places, it was the first indicator that there would be trouble.' 'Wherever stones were dumped, the stones were taken by the police to construction sites.' 'It was a laborious task, but we did it rigorously.' 'We had to use some smart tactics and soft skills to defeat the cycle of violence.''
Part of funding for 9/11 attacks in the United States had originated from India, according to a former top police officer Neeraj Kumar, who has based his claim on the "revelation" made by a terrorist.
'The Pakistani military has encouraged and supported terrorist organisations, especially in Kashmir, as a means of waging proxy war against the Indian military and the country's superior economic resources.' 'The evidence is irrefutable with the recent killing of 46 paramilitary troops being just the latest example.'
'He has terror charges against him. And for an army officer, it's just terrible.'
The Enforcement Directorate has managed to sniff out over Rs 9,000 crore as suspected haul from money laundering in a decade, but it has yet to link those against anyone successfully in a court.
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