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Posts published in March 2016

Peace with The Taliban is not possible, but it is with Pakistan By MASSUD EBADY in Khaama Press, Mar 29 2016, 6:56 pm

The author can be reached at [email protected] Whether we like it or not, peace with Pakistan is possible. But peace with The Taliban is not. There are many reasons why, I will examine a few. This will be under the assumption that Nation States are still the most powerful and influential actors in the world. The world has not entered the era of which Nation States have conceded to non-state actors, it is actually the…

Key HPC Members Work For Foreigners: Shahid by Sayed Sharif Amiri in Tolo News, Mar 30, 2016 at 08:25

A spokesman for the High Peace Council on Tuesday said funding for 2,400 HPC projects has been embezzled and that key members of the council are being paid by foreign embassies. While appearing on a TOLOnews current affairs show, Tawde Khabare, Mawlavi Shahzada Shahid, spokesman for the HPC, let slip that prominent members of the HPC’s secretariat were working for foreign embassies. “President [Ashraf] Ghani and [Chief Executive Officer] Abdullah Abdullah should know this. A…

Dy FM Karzai doubts Pakistan has fulfilled commitments for Afghan peace talks: Khaama Press- Tue Mar 29 2016, 8:13 pm

iDeputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai has said the Afghan government believes Pakistan has not fulfilled commitments Islamabad pledged for the revival of direct peace talks with the Taliban group. He was speaking during a summit organized in capital Kabul which focused on regional cooperation for peace and stability. Karzai further added that the Afghan government was supposed to participate in direct peace talks with the Taliban group based on an a decision taken during…

Pakistan in two minds on buying F-16 jets from US By Wajid Ali Syed in The News, March 30, 2016

WASHINGTON: Pakistan is re-evaluating the purchase of eight F-16 fighter jets from the US following a hold on the financing put by US congressmen. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a highly placed official familiar with the ongoing proceedings told The News that the need and preference to buy the jets remain but the deal could only be acceptable if it meets the desired criteria. The deliberations are caused due to a delay in the…

Pakistan is a ‘very, very vital problem’: Donald Times of India, Mar 30, 2016 at 10.30 AM IST

WASHINGTON: A nuclear-armed Pakistan is a “very, very vital problem”, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has said and asserted that the country needs to “get a hold of” its situation. “Pakistan is a very, very vital problem and really vital country for us because they have a thing called nuclear weapons. They have to get a hold of their situation,” Trump told CNN during a town hall in Wisconsin, where the Republican presidential primary is…

Pathankot probe: edit in Daily Times, March 30, 2016

The arrival of a five-member Pakistani Joint Investigation Team (JIT) in India to formally probe the Pathankot air force base attack has stirred up controversy. Earlier, the Indian government had accepted Pakistan’s proposal to jointly investigate the January 2 attack on the Pathankot airbase. The Bharatya Janata Party (BJP)-led government’s move has sparked criticism from mainstream opposition parties in India including the India National Congress (INC) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), whose leaders have termed…

Pathankot progress Amid all the irritants: edit in Pakistan Today, March 30, 2016

It’s not often that Congress in opposition in India accuses a sitting BJP government of “surrendering to Pakistan” while Delhi defends Islamabad for making “serious efforts towards investigating”. Yet that is precisely why scenes in and outside the Pathankot air base yesterday were indicative of the will on both sides to see this episode through. Problems, meanwhile, continue to mount. The way popular reaction, especially mainstream media, on both sides was so against this cooperation…

RAW deal:edit in The News, March 30, 2016

The joint press conference held by ISPR Director General Asim Bajwa and Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid was unprecedented in more ways than one. We had the two main spokespersons of the military and civilian setup acting in concert against a perceived external threat and, for once, bringing the public into confidence about an intelligence matter. In playing the six-minute video of alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Yadav confessing to working for RAW to destabilise Balochistan and…

As grumbling mounts in China, is President Xi losing his grip on Communist Party? By Simon Denyer in The Seattle Times, Mar 29, 2016 at 4.46pm

BEIJING – A series of extraordinary outbursts of public criticism of Chinese President Xi Jinping in recent weeks has raised the question of whether his crackdown on dissent is backfiring. The sniping has come from the highest levels of the business community and the media but also, most tellingly, from within the Communist Party itself. At its core is a growing unhappiness with Xi’s attempts to centralize power and crush dissent, both within the party…

China newspaper editor ‘resigns over media control’: By Neil Connor in The Telegraph Mar 29, 2016 at 12.49 BST

Beijing: A Chinese newspaper editor said he is resigning in protest of tighter controls in the media, according to a posting on his social media account, a rare rebuke to China’s Communist leaders. The move comes amid increasingly louder calls from Beijing for the country’s media to toe the party line. Only last month President Xi Jinping visited the leading state media organisations where he called on them to “be surnamed party”, which means that…

Armed nation: edit in The News,March 29, 2016

When we lament the growing rate of crime, militancy and other kinds of violence in the country, we do not always link this back to the large number of firearms that circulate through society. Around 11 out of every 100 people are in possession of a gun of one kind or the other, whether acquired legally or illegally. Out of these 20 million or so arms held by the Pakistani public, only seven million are…