When corruption eats into the vitals of a nation, the State structures decompose and collapse. And when the leadership loses respect of the people, the war is lost, asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar, who played a stellar role in beginning India's systemic dealings in Afghanistan in 1994.
The IAF transport aircraft landed in Jamnagar, Gujarat with over 120 people including officials and security personnel from the embassy.
Expressing concern over the situation in Afghanistan, a group of eminent persons, including former ministers K Natwar Singh, Yashwant Sinha and Mani Shankar Aiyar, on Wednesday urged the government to continue engaging with the Taliban and not allow any political party to use the developments in that country to communally polarise Indian society for electoral gains.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during his telephonic conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday, discussed the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan amidst chaotic airlifts of Afghan civilians and diplomats by the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries before the August 31 deadline.
The Indian Navy has a big role to play in support of our strategic objectives in the Indian Ocean. The increasing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean is a matter of concern and need to be factored. Hence, the requirement of an Aircraft Carrier is a foregone conclusion, asserts Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
Deputy director for the People's Liberation Army Office for International Military Cooperation Major General Huang Xueping held a video conference with his US counterpart Michael Chase last week.
The use of RDX in the explosion was confirmed by experts after samples from the scene were sent for examination. While one of the bombs was laced with 1.5 kg of RDX, the other contained nearly 1 kg of RDX, the officials said.
The sanctioned individuals and their immediate family members are prohibited from entering the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao of China. They and companies and institutions associated with them are also restricted from doing business with China, according to the statement by the Chinese foreign ministry.
In his penultimate State of the Union address, Barack Obama said that the economy is improving.
The two sides are also expected to explore ways to deepen defence collaboration, including exercises, defence transfers and technologies ahead of the next edition of the 2+2 defence and foreign ministerial dialogue to be held in the US later this year, they said.
Officials said this was another example of Pakistan misusing higher studies as bait for recruitment in terror groups.
'We have leaders who would rather that we cohabit with the Indian Mujahedeen than fight terror, as long as the payoffs are there in the next polls... Obviously, we are not headed down the best route to keep terror at bay,' says Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
Blinkin said the US will engage with the Taliban not on the basis of what a Taliban-led government says, but what it does to live up to its commitments.
'It is a testing time for our foreign policy which may involve a certain element of taking risks, assessing costs, and expecting failures,' asserts Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
The United States has announced the end of its 20-year-old war in Afghanistan as the last American military flight flew out of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul shortly before the August 31 deadline.
11 BSF troops have so far been killed in cross-border firing incidents along the IBr in J&K this year.
'The war of 1962 exposed the hollow intellectual foundations of Nehruvian foreign policy, especially vis-a-vis China and that is why it was such a shock.'
The Biden Administration on Monday said it was now focused on completing its evacuation mission from Afghanistan by August 31, the deadline for removing all American troops from the country.
India is struggling with a second wave of the pandemic with more than 3,00,000 daily new coronavirus cases being reported in the past few days, and hospitals in several states are reeling under a shortage of medical oxygen and beds.
'The aim of Russian policy is to reform European security, stop NATO expansion and in a more general sense -- set up the new rules of relations between the great powers.' 'From this perspective. the invasion of Ukraine is quite pointless.'
'Many said his visit was very risky. But mercifully, Air Force One has taken off from Delhi without Mr Trump stepping on anybody's toes,' notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant claimed that they had executed 1,700 Iraqi Shia air force recruits in Tikrit, posting some gruesome photos online to support their claim.
He said the US has been very clear to Pakistan on ending support to terrorist safe havens.
The International Olympic Committee expects to bear costs of up to $800 million for its part in the organisation of the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics, now due to be staged next year, IOC president Thomas Bach said on Thursday. In March, the International Olympic Committee and the Japanese government decided to delay the Games, which were due to start this July, for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed 300,000 people worldwide.
The BSF troops were carrying out border domination along the IB, when snipers of Pakistan Rangers opened fire on them around 1050 hours in Hiranagar-Samba sector of Kathua district, said a senior BSF officer.
President Barack Obama has said that the United States will reduce its troops to 9,800 in Afghanistan by the end of this year before a complete withdrawal takes place by the end of 2016.
If New Delhi finds itself out in the cold in Afghanistan, both the Congress-led UPA and BJP-led NDA have only themselves to blame. Each has been in power for a full decade from 2001, without reaching out to the Taliban, points out Ajai Shukla.
'India has to ensure its borders are properly sealed and there is no infiltration from PoK.
The aid will directly benefit 25,000 people from some of the worst hit areas of the state, adding a humanitarian expert from the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Operations has also been deployed to assess the situation in the state.
The Taliban is showing its strong discontent as the high hopes given to it by the Pakistani military have been dashed, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
"Notwithstanding my personal anguish, I hope this will not cause any damage to the hard-earned peace and development in the state," Singh wrote in his letter to Gandhi
It would be realistic to see India's position on the DGMOs joint statement more as 'engagement, different from dialogue', where our subsequent options could be decided depending on the realities of the situation on the ground, notes Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
The suspension of US aid to Pakistan, which was announced by President Donald Trump in January 2018, remained in effect throughout 2019, the State Department said.
There is growing acceptance of the idea in the international community that engaging the Taliban government is a far better approach than ostracising it, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Delhi has come to accept the Taliban takeover in Kabul as a reality and seems increasingly unsure of its dogmatic view of the Taliban as a mere proxy of the Pakistani military and security establishment, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Clearly, Washington has all but given up hope following US Acting Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells's stormy visit to Colombo last month where she read the riot act to Sri Lankan leaders to sign the pending status of forces agreement allowing American troops to use Sri Lanka as a hub for operations in the Indian Ocean,' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
After two decades, the SCO appears to be at a cross-roads with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, asserts Srikanth Kondapalli, the leading China expert.
Though dubbed as the "war hero", the role of Rajapaksa in ending the conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam with the death of its supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran in 2009 is quite divisive as he stands accused of violating human rights, a charge he vehemently denies.
A woman passenger claimed that she had explosives and threatened to blow up the aircraft mid-air but it turned out to be a hoax. No bombs were found following a thorough search of the plane after it made an emergency landing.
"If we have to recognise a government, the first thing is that we will need to wait until the government is formed," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
