Bharat Rakshak

Shaktimaan wrote:

SSridhar wrote:


Pakistan's mad and unchanging obsession with India only rises in its rabidity every passing day and it is willing to destroy itself completely in the process.

This is true. The Pakis are not afraid of losing their "Sau-virginity". In fact they have none anyways, having sold it off bit by bit to Amir Khan, the Tarrel Fliend and the Araps.

This is the irony of their humungous anti-Hindu bigotry. To prevent the evil Baniyas from taking their sovereignty, they've already given it away to everyone else.

kmkraoind wrote:Pak Taliban Releases Video of SAM-7; Warns of More Such Attacks - New Indian Express

kmkraoind wrote:Pak Taliban Releases Video of SAM-7; Warns of More Such Attacks - New Indian Express

Tuvaluan wrote:http://indianexpress.com/article/world/ ... -helped-us

Seymour Hersh is a lying sack of flaming poop, or he is being fed a lot of poop and kept in the dark like a mushroom.

If the ISI and Kayani assisted the US in taking down Osama, why was that paki doctor who leaked the info to the US hounded by the very same ISI and Kayani for years after the Osama takedown? This story is utterly bogus.

This seems like another pile of lies from the US to pretend that Pakistan is still bestest ally. Nothing changes -- the US govt. is p!ssing on the graves of all the US soldiers who were killed fighting paki terrorists in Afghanisthan. But then the US army itself kisses up to the Pakis and their army -- they both deserve each other....even death (of US soldiers) won't make them part.

It is as if 9/11 never happened -- US went and had a seminal discharge in Afghanistan and now its back to bed with the same buggers who were instrumental in 9/11. The US is pathetic.

This also means that new Robin Raphel types will now crawl out of the woodwork..and things will regress further as far as US-India relations go. same old.

SSridhar wrote:partha, Sharayar Khan is no ordinary Pakistani.

It is our misfortune that some influential Muslim families of the Ganga-Jamuna belt which split between India and Pakistan deliberately, have wrought havoc with us, apart from some nostalgic Punjabi men from the undivided Punjab.

The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014. Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad.

Soon after the Navy SEAL raid on Bin Laden’s house, a Pakistani official told me that the United States had direct evidence that the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, knew of Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. The information came from a senior United States official, and I guessed that the Americans had intercepted a phone call of Pasha’s or one about him in the days after the raid. “He knew of Osama’s whereabouts, yes,” the Pakistani official told me. The official was surprised to learn this and said the Americans were even more so. Pasha had been an energetic opponent of the Taliban and an open and cooperative counterpart for the Americans at the ISI. “Pasha was always their blue-eyed boy,” the official said. But in the weeks and months after the raid, Pasha and the ISI press office strenuously denied that they had any knowledge of Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.

The second big transition that Pakistan is going through is a categorical, though gradual rejection of the past policies. The crackdown against militants in FATA and Karachi underscore the new paradigm. Peace management, appeasement and accommodation of non-state actors is a thing of the past, senior military and foreign office officials underline.

There is a clear break from the past. Background interviews do entail this impression. Both civil-military leaderships appear committed to the Afghan reconstruction and reconciliation but this is not a simple transaction, they caution. We are dealing with an extremely stubborn lot that has grown and survived in mountains for over three decades.

“I can say with conviction that an unusual synergy of civil-military thought is currently driving our Afghan and India policy,” underlined one of the senior-most officials at the ministry of foreign affairs.

A senior military official insisted that the “paradigm shift” is rooted in fears that the natural alliance between Afghan and Pakistani Taliban could lead to the emergence of a joint Islamic emirate in the region. This could turn into a real direct existential threat for all of us, the general said, while pointing to the latest five military casualties, including that of a young captain during clashes in the Tirah valley of the Khyber agency.

The considerable decline in incidence of terror is a direct reflection of the damage that the Operation Zarb-e-Azb seems to have inflicted on the TTP and its associates.

Of course, Pakistan has yet to come clean on non-state entities such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba. “I agree this bridge has yet to be crossed, and we also know it is absolutely essential to do something conclusive and demonstrable about it,” said a security official – underlining an issue that remains an intractable thorn in relations with India.

Statistics between June 2014 and April this year suggest that the strategic clarity on top has to a certain extent reversed the security situation for the better, something also indirectly acknowledged by the Chinese officials, who used to spend a lot of time on this issue. But, said a key official at the foreign ministry, Chinese officials pleasantly surprised us by not taking up terrorism and security this time. We assume they understand the complex situation and appreciate the efforts undertaken so far, he said.
- See more at: http://www.imtiazgul.com/May_08_2015.ht ... ad0Ky.dpuf

The fourth major change that the Pakistani security apparatus and the political leadership have embraced – under the Chinese influence – is the decision not to respond to what Afghans or Indians say about it. Nor to take any positions on the evolving India-US alignment in the region.

The civilian and military leadership says it is guided by the Chinese principle of good relations with all neighbours and a singular focus on internal stability and economic development.

The fact that China has turned Pakistan into the pivot of the One Road One Belt vision of President Xi Jinping seems to be driving Pakistan to gradually divorce the cold war era mindset. Islamabad and Rawalpindi, it is glaringly clear, cannot expect to reap the dividends of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor if their romance with the old security paradigm continues. Officials insist they are aware of the next steps required to make the Corridor vision become a reality. This however will also require a national consultative process and a grand consensus within.
- See more at: http://www.imtiazgul.com/May_08_2015.ht ... ad0Ky.dpuf

SSridhar wrote:BJP MP opposes India-Pakistan cricket series in Lok Sabha - ToI

There is no Chankiyan-ness in playing cricket with Pakistan especially in view of latest developments. I will be disappointed with GoI if this happens.

Lisa wrote:FWIW

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m- ... -bin-laden

The Killing of Osama bin Laden
Seymour M. Hersh

See also, for example, the intelligence material that the US brought back from bin Laden's compound and then displayed to the world. Hersh says that, in fact, bin Laden had spent the previous five years a hostage of Pakistani intelligence rather than an active member of al-Qaeda. The intelligence "treasure trove" was thus a fabrication, cooked up by the CIA after the raid to back up the American-Pakistani conspiracy.

This is a strange thing to argue, as Carnegie Endowment Syria research Aron Lund points out, because al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri subsequently said the intelligence materials were real, and had quoted from them himself. So either Hersh is wrong or, Lund writes, "Zawahiri is helping Obama forge evidence to boost US-Pakistan relations, which seems like an unusual hobby for an [al-Qaeda] leader."

KLNMurthy wrote: Hersh is supposed to be this crusading journalist who exposes lies and corruption in American government's foreign policy over and over again. Yet, time and again, he gets the most amazing access to the deep state that does the same lying and corruption.

Tuvaluan wrote:

KLNMurthy wrote: Hersh is supposed to be this crusading journalist who exposes lies and corruption in American government's foreign policy over and over again. Yet, time and again, he gets the most amazing access to the deep state that does the same lying and corruption.

Hersh probably has connections in the government who have their own uses for him -- it is not too difficult to "leak" bogus documents to Hersh and have him think that he is revealing the truth to the public, when he is actually being played by the government. Someone like him won't necessarily trade their credibility unless they were absolutely sure they had convincing proof of what they are writing. The GOTUS contact knows that any journalist would kill to get such a story if it is convincing enough..and if you are part of the govt., it cannot be too difficult to cook up a report that says whatever you want Hersh to write. Hersh cannot validate all the bogus documents he has for fear of compromising his source -- an ideal situation for him to get played by the GOTUS.

Given the immediate reaction from the paki army about sovirginity of pakistan after OBL was captured, it is laughable that the US now claims the Paki army was complicit. If the Paki army kept out the capture and killing to avoid blowback from jihadis then, what has changed that it is okay to reveal that to the pakjihadis now? US clearly gains, but what does pakistan gain?

A_Gupta wrote:MK Bhadrakumar writes as a Pakistani
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article5647.html

Rishi wrote:http://www.thespywhobilledme.com/the_sp ... story.html

Hersh story was broken in 2011 by this ex-intel type

A simpler question: why would Pakistan bother with the ostentatious fake raid at all, when anyone can imagine a dozen simpler, lower-risk, lower-cost ways to do this?

Why not just kill bin Laden, drive his body across the border into Afghanistan, and drop him off with the Americans? Or why not put him in a hut somewhere in Waziristan, blow it up with an F-16, pretend it was a US drone strike, and tell the Americans to go collect the body? (Indeed, when I first heard about Hersh's bin Laden story a few years ago from a New Yorker editor — the magazine, the editor said, had rejected it repeatedly, to the point of creating bad blood between Hersh and editor-in-chief David Remnick — this was the version Hersh was said to favor.)

KLNMurthy wrote:Together Obama and Hersh are like the Claude Raines character in the movie Casablanca, the corrupt colonial police chief who proclaims with a straight face, "I am shocked, SHOCKED that there is gambling going on [in Rick's cafe]." Is the lying and deceit something new that America has started or is it something that has always been an integral feature of American power?

SSridhar wrote:partha, Sharayar Khan is no ordinary Pakistani.

India’s famous cricket captain Mansur Ali Khan Patudi’s family also split in 1947 like many others. While Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi’s father, Iftikhar Ali Khan stayed behind in India, his brother (uncle of Mansur Ali Khan) Nawabzada Mohammed Ali Pataudi (later a Major General of the Pakistani Army) migrated to Pakistan. His son is Nawabzada Shahryar Mohammad Khan who was a Foreign Secretary of Pakistan as well as the President of the Pakistani Cricket Board (PCB). Shahryar Khan has been involved in track-II diplomacy and was a special representative of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in c. 2013.

It is our misfortune that some influential Muslim families of the Ganga-Jamuna belt which split between India and Pakistan deliberately, have wrought havoc with us, apart from some nostalgic Punjabi men from the undivided Punjab.

SSridhar wrote:
partha, Sharayar Khan is no ordinary Pakistani.

India’s famous cricket captain Mansur Ali Khan Patudi’s family also split in 1947 like many others. While Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi’s father, Iftikhar Ali Khan stayed behind in India, his brother (uncle of Mansur Ali Khan) Nawabzada Mohammed Ali Pataudi (later a Major General of the Pakistani Army) migrated to Pakistan. His son is Nawabzada Shahryar Mohammad Khan who was a Foreign Secretary of Pakistan as well as the President of the Pakistani Cricket Board (PCB). Shahryar Khan has been involved in track-II diplomacy and was a special representative of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in c. 2013.

It is our misfortune that some influential Muslim families of the Ganga-Jamuna belt which split between India and Pakistan deliberately, have wrought havoc with us, apart from some nostalgic Punjabi men from the undivided Punjab.

Karan M wrote:The Pakis require this article big time because their H&D has been very butthurt and sore that pride of Pakistan, the fizzle-aya could not detect US helicopters.

Karan M wrote:The Pakis require this article big time because their H&D has been very butthurt and sore that pride of Pakistan, the fizzle-aya could not detect US helicopters. And that they got penetrated in Abbotabad or wherever the SEALs did what they did.
Its hilarious to watch that joke of a country and its thought process. That their leaders two timed them is ok. As long as it preserves H&D of whatever these so called leaders lead.

These fools never once think that if the Pakistani Army has such corrupt Generals and Corps Commanders. That the PAF is so compromised it shuts off whenever Americans come in.. what use are such third rate institutions and how corrupt they must be from within?

The hype surrounding the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), to be built through Gilgit Baltistan, resurfaced with the recent visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Pakistan. The visit yet again generated an animated discourse in the global media about the corridor’s future. The long-gestated CPEC project received initial traction during Nawaz Sharif’s visits to China in the year 2014. Subsequently, on his maiden visit to Pakistan in April 2015, the Chinese President reaffirmed the previously announced commitment, worth $46 billion, towards the CPEC. The CPEC is considered a significant project that seeks to cement Sino-Pakistan bilateral ties and further consolidate their strategic ties. The corridor will run through India’s periphery, more significantly, Gilgit Baltistan, claimed by India as part of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). In due course, this geographical reality of the CPEC could potentially impinge upon India’s geopolitical calculations and pose a strategic challenge.

China’s approach, India’s response

In December 2014, the Chinese state-run Xinhua published a statement announcing the closure of the strategic Khunjerab Pass and in the process referred to Gilgit Baltistan as part of Pakistan. Until then, China had maintained that J&K was a bilateral problem/dispute between India and Pakistan. Whether terming Gilgit Baltistan as part of Pakistan reflected a possible shift in the Chinese position on the J&K— a change from its previously held neutral position – was debated in the Indian media for a while. A section believes that by taking up a long term project such as the CPEC, the arteries of which will originate in Gilgit Baltistan, China has yet again tacitly approved Pakistan’s claim and control over this region. There was no reaction from the Indian official sources to the Xinhua statement. In the past, a similar statement was withdrawn after India registered a protest to the Chinese news agency.

Responding to a query in the Lok Sabha in December 2014, Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj noted:
“Government has seen reports with regard to China and Pakistan being involved in infrastructure building activities in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), including construction of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Government has conveyed its concerns to China about their activities in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, and asked them to cease such activities.”2

But somewhat contravening the above is a recent statement by India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, who noted:

“India has no worry over the construction of Pakistan-China Economic Corridor as an economically strong Pakistan would bring stability in the region.”3

India is yet to comprehensively articulate its approach towards the CPEC despite the fact that the corridor bodes strategic implications for India. As stated, the corridor will pass through the Gilgit Baltistan region where China has invested in the past in infrastructure and hydropower projects. In the Gilgit Baltistan segment, the CPEC project design includes a major expansion of the Karakoram Highway, establishing industrial parks in special economic zones, constructing hydropower projects, railway line and road building. The project also entails building hydropower projects and motorways/highways in the so-called Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). India has occasionally raised objections to Chinese infrastructure investment in the region.

The origin of the CPEC could be traced to the Border Agreement of 1963, considered a milestone in China-Pakistan relations. The agreement ceded the 5000 plus square mile Trans Karakorum Tract to China and served as a precursor to the Karakoram Highway, conceived later as a strategic link defining China and Pakistan’s ‘all-weather friendship’. The then Defence Minister of India, Krishna Menon, elaborately enunciated India’s position on the issue at the UN, condemning the agreement as illegitimate. Besides, India lodged an “emphatic protest” to China and conveyed its concerns in a letter of protest.4 Decades down the line, while India’s policy orientation and broader claim on Gilgit Baltistan remains unchanged, its stance on Chinese investments in the Karakoram Highway, and Chinese efforts to leverage this territorial link to build a strategic corridor, is perceived to be weakening over time.

India’s Dilemma

Is it because of a realization that in a changed strategic landscape, the options for India vis-a-vis a project like CPEC are limited and complicated? Is India conflicted about whether to engage itself in the mega connectivity network project or stay out of it in accordance with its stated positon on Gilgit Baltistan and the so-called AJK? Participating in the project would require a major alteration in India’s policy. Overlooking the territorial dimension could be interpreted as a massive climb-down from its stated position. It may even be construed as acquiescing to the China-Pakistan alliance in the region and beyond. Thus, the CPEC poses a policy challenge to India on how best to strike a precarious balance between securing its strategic/territorial interests without at the same time being confrontational.

Be that as it may, India would need to take a clear positon on the CPEC sooner or later. Domestically, there has been, till now, no serious political or public debate on how India should approach the issue. In the absence of a rational public discourse, India is yet to articulate a clear stand or position on the CPEC. This is also owing to the fact that public debates in India on issues concerning China and Pakistan are often emotive and devoid of a rational evaluation of policy options. Charting a policy course is essential since China has, of late, through stray remarks extended an invitation for India to participate in the Silk Route ‘one route one belt’ project. The onus now lies on India to respond to such overtures. India has to take a call on whether it would like to be a party to the CPEC, sit on the fence, or convey its concerns more emphatically in a bid to discourage China.

CPEC may materialize despite scepticism

Ironically, in Pakistan itself, there is growing cynicism about the CPEC’s prospects and feasibility because of security-related concerns and inter-provincial political discord on route preferences. Nevertheless, given the Chinese determination to find a route to oil-rich West Asia through Pakistan, and the Pakistani desperation to provide every possible assurance to China about safeguarding its investments, the project is likely to be implemented, even if its scope may be limited. The Chinese decision to strike deals worth US$ 22 billion out of a total of $28 billion with private players rather than the Pakistan government has been touted as an indication of Chinese seriousness in investing in Pakistan. One has to remember that China and Pakistan have weathered geographical and logistical extremes in the past to build the highest metalled road on one of the toughest terrain, i.e. the Karakoram Highway. Moreover, the Pakistani decision to raise a special security division to protect Chinese workers and interests in Pakistan, consisting of 10,000 security personnel, including 5,000 from the elite special services group (SSG) of the Pakistan Army who are specially trained for counter-terrorism and security, indicates its resolve to implement the project in all earnestness.

While India’s overall stance on PoK remains understated, the commencement of the CPEC warrants more serious attention than what has been accorded so far. There is a need to carefully weigh the situation and devise a suitable and sustainable approach that could serve India’s long-term interests. It is imperative that some of the explicit strategic concerns regarding the CPEC figure in the bilateral round of talks during the Indian Prime Minister’s forthcoming visit to China.

SSridhar wrote:BJP MP opposes India-Pakistan cricket series in Lok Sabha - ToI

There is no Chankiyan-ness in playing cricket with Pakistan especially in view of latest developments. I will be disappointed with GoI if this happens.