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Pak’s million mutinies, ghosts and Doval’s doctrine of ‘defensive offence’

Indian spooks have succeeded spectacularly in Pakistan by not only engineering the greatest intelligence coup of the century. Updated: Nov 25, 2020, 13:20 IST By Shishir Gupta, Hindustan Times New Delhi     National Security Adviser Ajit Doval flew down to Srinagar in August 2019 to reach out to people and security personnel after Parliament scrapped Jammu and Kashmir’s special status. (Sourced) For decades, India has been on the receiving end of Pakistan’s relentless export of terrorism, the commodity in which it has enjoyed both a comparative as well as a competitive advantage. Faced with Pakistan’s use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy, India struggled to devise an adequate response. After every big terror attack, there was a standard response in India: the government threatened to retaliate and talking heads on TV nudged government strategists to pay back Pakistan in the same coin. The standard response to this unsolicited advice was that India couldn’t stoop to Pakista
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Doval using insurgents to distract Islamabad from Kashmir — retd Pakistan Air Force officer

In an article titled ‘Doval’s dirty war’, retired Pakistan Air Vice Marshal Shahzad Chaudhary alleges that the scrapping J&K's special status was the handiwork of India's NSA. ANI 24 November, 2020 National Security Adviser Ajit Doval | File photo: ANI New Delhi:  Faced with rising resentment from political parties in his country, a Pakistani military veteran has alleged that India’s National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval is using elements in the insurgent groups in Pashtun tribal areas and Balochistan to force the Pakistan Army away from the Kashmir issue and focus on handling internal security issues. In an article titled ‘Doval’s dirty war’, senior Pakistani columnist and retired Pakistan Air Force officer Air Vice Marshal Shahzad Chaudhary in an editorial published on tribune.com.pk on November 22 said: “Reports of RAW teaming up splintered TTP elements under one control against Pakistan and synching them with Allah Nazar and the BLA in Balochistan, as indeed with s
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Owaisi Represents Only The Elitist Muslims, And Not The Entire Community

If Muslim frustrations lead them to join the AIMIM bandwagon then it will be advantage BJP out and out.  KHALID ANIS ANSARI Outlook The sphere of politics shares an intimate connection with culture. And it is precisely the cultural hegemony of the RSS, achieved through consistent mass work and integration of subjugated castes through creative revisionism of the Hindutva discourse, which anchors the flourishing of the BJP. Furthermore, the charisma and strategic depth of the Modi-Shah duo in combination with an impressive corporate-backed propaganda-electoral machinery, has produced a ‘Hindu ecosystem’ that has shifted the grounds of political engagement. The Hindu Right has triggered a legitimacy crisis for non-BJP political parties by critiquing their apparent translation of secularism as pandering to the Muslims, social justice as merely electoral calculus and domination of numerically significant castes, political opportunism and corruption, and so on. The putative secular and socia
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The Indian Ocean: Major Power Projection arena for Global Actors

 In  article  10:13 AM, Nov 24, 2020   Soumik Pyne On the 17th of November 2020 the US Secretary of the Navy made plans public to deploy a dedicated U.S. Naval Fleet in the Indian Ocean. If this fleet is composed along the lines of the 5th and 7th fleets currently deployed in the Persian Gulf and Japan, it would likely mean that the USN would have an active presence of at least 20 deployed vessels with at least one carrier battle group with 75 combat aircraft permanently in the Indian Ocean. It would also indicate a US Naval deployment of up to five Carriers and associated vessels at any given time in Asian waters. To be fair the USA has never shied away from its interest in the Indian Ocean, as long ago as in 1890, Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan of the USA affirmed, that “ whoever controls the Indian Ocean will dominate Asia, the destiny of the world will be decided on its waters ”. The USA began acting on those initial strategies as British power in Asia began to wane with alliance
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New Asian free trade agreement secures economic space for China

New Atlanticist   by   Hung Tran Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc chairs the 4th Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Summit as part of the 37th ASEAN Summit in Hanoi, Vietnam November 15, 2020. REUTERS/Kham After eight years of negotiations, ten Association of South East Asian (ASEAN) nations and five other Asian countries (China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand) finalized the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on November 15, bringing together  about 30 percent of world’s population and gross domestic product (GDP)  under the new free trade agreement. This new arrangement will compete with the European Union (EU) as the world’s largest trading bloc, and will be the most important economic configuration in Asia, totaling a 27.4% share of global trade, compared to 15 percent for the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for TransPacific Partnership (CPTPP). The RCEP’s main winner will be China, which has secured a dominant position i
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Indian Maoists: 4,483 rebels, 2,958 jawans killed in last 20 yrs: Maoists document

Soumitra Bose | TNN  |  Nov 22, 2020, 04:44 IST Nagpur: A recovered ‘message’ of the Central Military Commission of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) has revealed that Maoists have lost  4,483 cadres, including 839 women, in the last 20 years in their fight against security forces in affected states. The message recovered by security forces also includes an instruction to Maoist formations across the country to form ‘sniper teams’, smaller squads and similar formations to launch attacks and wipe out police information network. The document — a copy is with TOI — stated that the Maoist’s topmost military body believes  2,958 security personnel were killed by them in two decades in the guerrilla zone. According to an internal report, the Maoists’ guerrilla fighters have also injured 3,507 security personnel and robbed around 3,208 modern weapons along with 1.52 rounds of ammunitions. It also mentioned its successes, from Bihar-Jharkhand to Chhattisgarh, Odisha-Andhra Pradesh b
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CPEC Crisis: China plays hard as Pakistan spirals deeper into debt trap | Deep Dive

Political turbulence, foreign debt limits and the Covid-19 pandemic have all come together to slow down Chinese investment in Pakistan as Beijing holds off on projects under the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), including a $6.1 billion railway renovation plan. Here's a Deep Dive into the CPEC crisis Saikiran Kannan Singapore November 20, 2020 UPDATED: November 20, 2020 21:01 IST The Gwadar Port. (Image: Getty Images) Political turbulence, foreign debt limits and the Covid-19 pandemic have all come together to slow down Chinese investment in Pakistan as Beijing holds off on projects under the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), including a $6.1 billion railway renovation plan. The recent controversy is surrounding the Main Line 1, or ML-1, railway project, the largest in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Pakistan, as Beijing is hesitant to finance it at the 1 per cent interest rate requested by Islamabad. With 2,655km of track, it connect
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