The Taliban has its backers, notably Pakistan and China. Their purpose is to have a monstrous entity near India's northern borders to keep democratic, secular India off-guard, observes Amulya Ganguli.
'Sarkar jo bhi gana gaye, is bar sarkar paltegi'
Modi will utilise the Presidential poll to show that he is the only leader who matters in India, argue Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari. So the question being asked in political circles is: 'Who will be the next Kovind?'
India finally made their presence felt as they thrashed Afghanistan by 66 runs on Wednesday to keep alive their slim hopes of reaching the Twenty20 World Cup semi-finals.
At an online book release event, former vice president Hamid Ansari lays to rest the controversies surrounding his tenure.
How Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa deals with the ensuing reshuffle of lieutenant generals would be interesting to watch, notes Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
An Indian national, who went missing in Pakistan's restive northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province in 2012, was taken away by intelligence agencies from a police station before his disappearance, police has said.
A couple of losses for hosts England has only brightened the 1992 winners' prospects of a semi-final berth.
Lieutenant General Faiz Hamid will take to his new command as duck to water, notes Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
The educated, respectable and established Muslims voices, that were on the modernising side on the Shah Bano issue, are fighting on the opposite side now, mostly because they worry about Narendra Modi, observes Shekhar Gupta.
The flawed Indian policy toward Afghanistan is missing the woods for the trees. The Modi government doesn't have a 'big picture', observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar, who played a stellar role in beginning India's systemic dealings in Afghanistan in 1994.
'A man dies and it's over for him. But we're right here, it isn't over for us,' she says cryptically. She talks about the "poverty" in which she had to raise her sons and daughter, the responsibility of today's youth to its country and how war widows should cope with their loss.
As people queued up to cast their vote, there were some famous faces in the lines at different polling stations.
Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed.
Images from the T20 World Cup match between Afghanistan and New Zealand, in Abu Dhabi, on Sunday.
"You can change friends but not neighbours," Atal Bihari Vajpayee famously said this 15 years ago.
Six government employees, including two policemen, were on Wednesday dismissed from service for their alleged links with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir, taking the total number of employees sacked in last nearly six months to 25, officials said.
Images that capture what it was like living through 2021.
Pakistan on Monday criticised President Hamid Karzai for calling on Islamabad to stop backing terrorists as a condition for negotiating a strategic partnership pact, saying the Afghan leader's remarks were "misplaced and without any basis".
Caretaker Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz Khan said that President Pervez Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, former federal ministers Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Ejaz-ul-Haq, Amir Muqam and Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and former Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi faced threats to their lives from extremists.
ISI chief Faiz Hameed coerced the Taliban to announce an interim government guaranteed to preserve Pakistan's control over the levers of power in Kabul, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
In fact, the Taliban apparently collects about 10 per cent as cultivation tax from opium farmers and 15 per cent as heroin tax from laboratories and smugglers that smuggle narcotics into Pakistan. This, by itself, is a revenue stream estimated at USD 250-300 million.
Members of Parliament on Sunday bid adieu to outgoing President Pranab Mukherjee.
A closure of the Indian mission in Kabul will be a Himalayan blunder at this historic juncture when the wheels of diplomacy and politics are set to accelerate in Afghanistan, argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar
'It was always anticipated that the return of the Taliban would embolden armed Islamists including anti-India groups like the Lashkar and Jaish.'
Afghanistan gave away 35 extras, which proved to be Sri Lanka's second top scorer
Curfew continued without any relaxation in Srinagar and other major towns of the Kashmir valley on Thursday where protestors defied curfew and clashed with the police in Sopore town. Meanwhile, Yasir Hamid Sheikh, cousin of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Mohammad Yaseen Malik, succumbed to injuries at a private hospital in New Delhi in the wee hours of Thursday, said party spokesman Altaf Khan.
The court order came after Musharraf and the three other persons did not file representations in the court despite repeated notices issued to them. During the last hearing, the court had also warned that it would go ahead with ex-parte proceedings against three more persons named in Aslam's petition
Despite claims that Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's younger brother Ahmad Wali Khan Karzai is a drug lord, Senator John F Kerry says no US agency has given him proof.
All the four suspended Rajya Sabha members of Samajwadi Party have met Chairman Hamid Ansari and apologised for their unruly behaviour on Monday over the Women's Reservation Bill, a move that could pave the way for revocation of their suspension.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the nation in paying tributes to the valour and sacrifices of Bangladeshi freedom fighters and Indian armed forces on the 50th anniversary of the occasion 'Vijay Diwas'.
Should India engage Pakistan's generals directly, bypassing Imran? Ambassador G Parthasarathy, India's former high commissioner to Pakistan, ponders Delhi's diplomatic dilemma.
Afghanistan scripted a new story in annuls of cricketing history after qualifying for the World T20 tournament proper on Saturday.
The Taliban had promised an 'inclusive' government that represents Afghanistan's complex ethnic makeup, but there is no Hazara member in the cabinet.
Hasina, the president of the Awami League, won the 11th parliamentary elections with a landslide victory even as the Opposition rejected the "farcical" polls marred by violence that claimed 17 lives, making it one of the deadliest polls in the country's history.
Authorities have been directed to take stringent measures and show 'no leniency' towards elements involved in militancy and violence.
'India has to ensure its borders are properly sealed and there is no infiltration from PoK.
Images from the T20 World Cup Super 12s match between India and Afghanistan, in Abhu Dhabi, on Wednesday.
'Mulk questions the very principle, of good-Muslim exceptionalism.' 'That, of course, we adore Abdul Hamid, A P J Abdul Kalam and Bismillah Khan and if only more Muslims were like them.' 'Anubhav Sinha sticks his neck out to say that these are no exceptions.' 'Most Muslims are like them. It is the terrorists who are exceptions,' says Shekhar Gupta.
India cannot afford to be complacent about a possible Pakistan resort to military options across the LoC, warns Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
