KARACHI: The Pakistan Navy has inducted its third state-of-the-art Regional Air Transport (ATR) aircraft and Scan Eagle Unmanned Aerial System into its fleet to augment effectiveness and enhance its operational flexibility and reach. An induction ceremony was held at PNS Mehran on Wednesday. Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Mohammad Zakaullah was the chief guest. He said that the Pakistan Navy Air Arm had come a long way since its inception in the early…
Posts published in “Day: September 1, 2016”
The author is on the staff of the daily Following the fall of the Taliban’s regime, Afghanistan sought peace through negotiation and urged warring factions to stop violence and bloodshed. Peace was a top priority for Afghan government as the country moved to democratization. Pakistan deemed peace talks the only viable option for political stability and promised to nudge the Taliban to sit around the negotiating table. As a result, a face-to-face negotiation was hosted…
Pakistan as the latter has been given a free hand to use Afghan soil against its neighbors. Such allegations by Pakistan are hardly substantiated by evidence. Furthermore, India has been playing an important role in Afghanistan’s reconstruction and stability. Indian contribution in this regard has been well acknowledged here in Afghanistan. On the optimistic side, Afghanistan will have no problem should India and Pakistan normalize their relations. In fact, Afghanistan will be one of the…
A number of former government officials and political analysts have criticized President Ashraf Ghani for a number of issues including his management style, the so-called centralization of power and that the president does not have faith in other officials. According to analysts and former government officials, Ghani currently heads up cabinet and security council meetings and oversees more than seven high councils and commissions. Meanwhile, Sadiq Muddabir, head of the office of administrative affairs and…
QUETTA: Pakistan has agreed to reopen its border with Afghanistan at Chaman from Thursday after Kabul strongly condemned the burning of the Pakistani flag at the Friendship Gate. At the fifth round of the flag meeting at the Chaman border on Wednesday, security officials from both sides discussed the matter in view of their previous night negotiations. A three-member Afghan delegation, led by Col Mohammad Ali, had at the Tuesday night meeting handed over to…
The writer is a senior journalist. Failing to bring into action the proverbial umpire during the last dharna, why are Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri in their solo flights again pinning their hopes on September to again try to dislodge an elected dispensation as the clouds of international and regional isolation are thickening? Indeed, the Panama leaks did put Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a tight corner. He was, however, helped by his absence from…
Day-to-day political changes can occur with remarkable speed as the Brexit campaign in the UK starkly illustrated this summer, but geopolitical changes tend to be far slower, tied as they are to evolutions in an individual nation’s foreign policy. Yet even the glacial movements of geopolitics can accelerate, and the subcontinent and South Asia are currently in fast-forwards mode geopolitically as the consequences of the American ‘pivot to the east’ play out. America is looking…
IN Delhi, the India-US Strategic and Commercial Dialogue; in Washington, the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement, one of four so-called foundational pacts the US signs with defence partners. Taken together, this is yet another step towards a closer US-India strategic, defence and commercial relationship, a process kick-started a decade ago under a Congress-led coalition and now accelerating under a BJP government. In the US, meanwhile, there is rare bipartisan consensus on deepening ties with India…
US support of Indian concerns of cross-border terrorism and its reiteration to Pakistan to “do more” with regard to terrorists using Pakistani soil to perpetrate attacks abroad raised quite a few alarm bells in Islamabad. All of this was said during the meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday as the two countries move closer together and extend cooperation on a number of things including…
US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to India was a reaffirmation of a truth that has long been evident: the US now counts India as one of its closest allies. There is economic and political logic behind this closeness. India’s galloping development along with its massive market makes it too tempting an economic partner for the US to resist. Politically, both countries count China as a rival to be countered. This forces the US…
WASHINGTON: The US State Department has said that the Haqqani network and other terrorist groups that operate inside Pakistan and along the Afghan border are a continued security threat to the entire South Asian region and beyond. At the Tuesday afternoon news briefing, spokesman John Kirby also said that a trilateral dialogue of the United States, India and Afghanistan would be a way forward for deciding Afghanistan’s future. The dialogue is scheduled in New York…