The Pampore attack 'has the stamp of LeT written all over it.'
'They are exactly like the so-called fidayeen of the 1999-2003 phase, when J&K witnessed a surge in suicide attacks on various important garrisons,' says Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd), who served as the General Officer Commanding 15 Corps in Kashmir.
'It is imperative to restore the dignity and authority of the services chiefs. Erosion of this has resulted in lowering of service efficiency. It is also time to end the practice of taking seniority as the sole criterion for appointing chiefs.'
'So a number of people are drawn in along with members of their friends' circle or their relatives.' 'A number of individuals find that they have more in common with the 'imagined community' that they discover online as opposed to their own physical community and indeed, even the majority Muslim community elsewhere.'
'Vietnam has become an adjective as well as a verb -- the Americans, for instance, were driven by the passion to do a 'Vietnam' on the Soviet Union when that country invaded Afghanistan in 1979.'
In this two-part interview to rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt, former IB chief Ajit Doval furiously argues against any kind of CBI action against his former colleague Rajinder Kumar in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case of 2004.
'Modi's campaign has been strikingly devoid of anti-Muslim rhetoric. After the kutta pilla incident, it has been several months since he said something horrible about the Muslims of India. It is the result of democratic constraints. He has to make compromises... He's trying to reinvent himself. He will politically hurt himself if 2002 becomes the definition of Mr Modi again', says political scientist Ashutosh Varshney.
