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The spook unit was set up after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks on a defence ministry directive asking for the creation of covert capability. Army documents, perused by HT, reveal the senior-most officers signed off on the formation of this unit. File No A/106/TSD and 71018/ MI give details of approvals by the Director General Military Intelligence, vice-chief and chief of army staff. The TSD — disbanded after allegations that it spied on defence ministry officials through off-the-air interceptors — was raised as a strategic force multiplier for preparing, planning and executing special operations “inside depth areas of countries of interest and countering enemy efforts within the country by effective covert means”.US ATTITUDE TO THIS NEWSAND THEN THEY ASK WHY DO THEY HATE US?
Posted by admin in INDIA-AN EVIL NATION, INDIA-HO-- -- USE BUILT ON SAND AND COW DUNG, INDIA: THE EVIL HINDU EMPIRE on September 8th, 2013
While the incidence of rape and sexual violence is soaring in India, the rupee is falling steeply. From 54 rupees per dollar in May this year it has dipped to Rs.65 to date. There is a likelihood of its further plunge in the coming days if not arrested by effective measures. Let us deal with rape situation first.
India seems to be caught up between two mammoth crises. One is the moral meltdown and the other is the economic downturn. The societies do suffer from setbacks. But it also devolves upon the leadership to overcome such ugly monstrosities and put a halt to those setbacks in a competing world. India has been neck and neck with China in economic growth.
The economic debacle has lowered Indian ranking to 60, as mentioned in the annual Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014, released by Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF). It is distressing for India because it is 31 points lower than her regional rival China.
Statistically every 20 minute a rape of a female takes place in India. Recently there has been a spate of agonizing and atrocious rape incidents in India. Doing masturbation in front of women in public places is a common spectacle. The gang rape by five males of a 23-year old medical student on December 16 last year in a bus is the most outrageous incident that shook the entire India and the world beyond. As a result of that brutal attack she died two weeks later.
Now as recent as August 22 another horrific rape of a photojournalist was committed in Mumbai. One can imagine how sinister and ugly the situation is getting in the largest democracy of the world.
The story of Rose Chasm a Chicago university student who stayed in India for studies is nerve shattering. In her article, “India: The Story You Never Wanted to Hear” viewed by over a million people, she shares her account of personally “experiencing repeated sexual harassment and the way travelers and local women folks were s were exposed to this insidious epidemic in India” Some extracts of her poignant article titled,“India: the Story You Never Wanted to Hear “are reproduced hereunder:
“For three months I lived this way, in a traveler’s heaven and a woman’s hell. I was stalked, groped, masturbated at; and yet I had adventures beyond my imagination.”
“This is the story you don’t want to hear when you ask me about India. But this is the story you need. There was no way to prepare for the eyes, the eyes that every day stared with such entitlement at my body.”
“When people ask me about my experience studying abroad in India, I always face the same dilemma. How does one convey the contradiction that over the past few months has torn my life apart, and convey it in a single succinct sentence?”
Let me quote another observation from a report published in AP and penned by Nirmala George. She writes,
“Rapes in India remain drastically under-reported. In many cases, families do not report rapes due to the stigma that follows the victim and her family. In other instances, families may decide not to report a rape out of frustration with the long delays in court and harassment at the hands of the police. Police themselves are reluctant to register cases of rape and domestic violence in order to keep down crime figures or to elicit a bribe from the victim.”
In a fiendish propensity for raping underage and very young children of late, several cases have been reported in the Indian press. One such horrific incident was of a four years old girl raped on April 17. She died in hospital nearly two weeks after she was raped and found unconscious at a farm. One can also reckon how other countless rape incidents remain unnoticed particularly in villages and dense urban areas where a pall of aloofness and fear of stigma deters the victims from disclosures.
In a recent report, the “Asian Center for Human Rights” cited statistics in which it showed that 48,338 child rape cases were reported in India between 2001 and 2011. The report said that the number of cases rose from 2,113 in 2001 to 7,112 in 2011.
ABC’s South Asia correspondent Michael Edwards in his August 20 article paints a dismal picture of the dwindling state of Indian economy. He quotes Mark Colvin as commenting that, “One of the world’s biggest economies is heading towards a crisis. India’s currency, the rupee, has crashed to record lows and its stock market is experiencing serious falls. To add to India’s problems, capital is also flowing out of the country at what economists describe as dangerous levels. Analysts argue that investor frustration at the slow pace of economic reform is a major part of the problem. Others point to a lack of political leadership.”
In his most objective analysis of the fledgling Indian economy, Arvind Subramanian in his article published by New York Times on August 30 writes that, “Growth has slowed to 4.4 percent a year; the rupee is in free fall, resulting in higher prices for imported goods; and the specter of a potential crisis, brought on by rising inflation and crippling budget deficits, looms.”
He apportions the blame for this crippling economic downturn to, “The current government, which took office in 2004, has made two fundamental errors. First, it assumed that growth was on autopilot and failed to address serious structural problems. Second, flush with revenues, it began major redistribution programs, neglecting their consequences: higher fiscal and trade deficits.”
India is the second most populous country after China. Its present population of 1.21 billion is projected to be the world’s most populous country by 2025, surpassing China. Correspondingly the socio-economic challenges would also exacerbate with the growth of population. If far reaching strategies are not evolved to forestall the population growth or create additional resources, there is going to be complete mayhem in India.
India is beset with a plethora of ethnic and racial mosaic. It is also bedeviled with draconian caste system that somehow hinders an even handed socio economic uplift. The dillats or untouchables and also the religious minorities remain marginalized. India is a secular society by constitution but practically the people go by their religious obligations. That is why one can witness cows, apes and occasionally elephant in Indian streets.
The round wheel on the Indian flag, the three animal faced emblem and otherwise the displays of Indian sacred weapon Shiva’s Trishool (three spears) are manifestations of preponderance for Hinduism. Like Pakistan and other religious dominated country, there is a predominant section of population that comprises die-hard and fanatic Hindu extremists. They protest vehemently and even go on rampage against the minorities particularly Muslims in case of a dispute such as Babri mosque.
India is certainly advancing comically but it still falls short of eradicating rampant poverty and raising the quality of life as China has done. China being a one party system can enforce her decisions effectively. India being a democracy has to seek consensus for watershed decisions.
The infrastructure in India has markedly improved over the years but still one can see the slums and ghettos in big cities. It would take a great deal of efforts and time for India to put on the grab of a veritable modern state.
Like other third world countries in India to there is endemic corruption and manipulation of state funds by the influential sections and misuse of power for personal gains at every level from top to bottom.
India is also plagued by a multitude of separatist movements. That challenge is the most formidable because it fractures and at least poses a grave danger to the Indian territorial integrity. Moreover it puts enormous financial burden on the Indian economy. No one could forebode how long it would take India to bridle, tame or overcome insurgencies for separation from the Indian federation.
The cardinal issue of Kashmir between India and Pakistan on one hand and Tibet with China on the other are, interminable deflections that would continue to bog down India till these are resolved. Once these territorial disputes are resolved India would be free to divert the funds now being spent on these issues to development and reconstruction.
The writer is a senior journalist, former editor of Diplomatic Times and a former diplomat
India witnessed a peak power shortage of 9 per cent during the five years ending 2012 when over 50,000 MW new generation capacity was created, the Economic Survey said today.
“During the 11th Five Year Plan (2007—12), nearly 55,000 MW of new generation capacity was created. Yet, there continues to be a peak shortage of 9 per cent,” it said.
Peak power shortage is shortfall in generation capacity when electricity consumption is maximum.
The survey said the resources currently allocated to energy supply are not sufficient for narrowing the gap between energy needs and energy availability.
One of the key challenges remain resolving the energy bottlenecks. Further, the country’s excessive reliance on imported crude oil make it imperative to have an optimal energy mix that will allow it to achieve its long—run goal of sustainable development.
As on March 2011, the country’s estimated coal reserves were at about 286 billion tonnes, lignite at 81 billion tonnes, crude oil at 757 million tonnes and natural gas 1,241 billion cubic metre (BCM).
Electricity generation by power utilities during 2012—13 was targeted to go up by 6.05 per cent to 930 billion units.
The growth in power generation during April to December, 2012 was 4.55 per cent as compared to about 9.33 per cent during April—December, 2011.
The estimated hydro potential is about 1,45,000 MW. The total potential for renewable power generation from various sources other than large hydro projects stood at 89,760 MW.
Import dependence on crude oil is projected at 78 per cent while that in coal will be 22.4 per cent by 2016—17, Survey said.
An integrated power transmission grid helps to even out supply—demand mis—matches. The existing inter—regional transmission capacity of 27,750 MW connects the northern, western, eastern and north—easterns in a synchronous mode operating at the same frequency and southern region asynchronously operating in the same mode.
Synchronous inter—connection of the southern region with other regions is expected to be established by April, 2014.
Meanwhile, trading in electricity is enabled through traders and power exchanges that optimises generation resources by facilitating trade and flow of electricity across the country.
It has helped in sale of surplus power by distribution utilities and captive power plants on one hand, and purchase of electricity by deficit firms on the other hand to meet sudden increases in demand, it said.
The capacity addition during the 12th plan period (2012—17) is estimated at 88,537 MW comprising 26,182 MW in the central sector, 15,530 MW in the state sector and 46,825 MW in the private sector respectively.
The capacity addition target for the year 2012—13 was set at 17,956 MW. A capacity of 9,854 MW has been added till December 2012.
Posted by Shahroz Bashir in INDIA-AN EVIL NATION, INDIAN SABRE RATTLING BITS THE DUST, INEPT INDIAN NAVY on August 17th, 2013
Video of the catastrophe shows a fireball engulfing the dock where the Indian navy submarine was berthed. Emergency crews are working to rescue the sailors, but military officials have not released the number of sailors that may be trapped in the vessel.
MUMBAI – Eighteen Indian sailors were trapped and some were killed after an explosion and fire on a diesel-powered submarine berthed at a base in Mumbai on Wednesday.
Defense Minister A.K. Antony said crew members inside the Russian-built INS Sindhurakshak had died. He gave no details.
The explosion just after midnight was likely an accident, but an investigation was under way to establish the cause, the navy said.
“There are some people who are trapped on board, we are in the process of trying to rescue them,” navy spokesman P.V.S. Satish said. “We will not give up until we get to them.”
Kamal Kishore / Reuters
The Russian-built INS Sindhurakshak is seen here in 2006.
The incident raised memories of the explosion on the Russian nuclear attack submarine Kursk which sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea in 2000, killing all 118 crew members.
The Indian vessel, which returned from an upgrade in Russia earlier this year, had suffered a similar accident in 2010 in which one sailor was killed while it was docked in the southern port of Visakhapatnam.
Typically, such a submarine is fitted with torpedoes and missiles. Torpedoes are launched underwater to attack other submarines while missiles are used for long ranges above water. There was no immediate word on the status of the weapons on board the Sindhurakshak.
“Lot of things are in very close proximity, there is fuel, there is hydrogen, there is oxygen, there are weapons with high explosives on board,” said retired Indian navy chief Arun Prakash.
“So a slightest mistake or slightest accident can trigger off a huge accident. The question of sabotage – I mean, all possibilities have to be considered – but sabotage is probably the last possibility.”
Three people who were near the submarine at the time of the explosion were injured and being treated in hospital, spokesman Satish said.
Vikalp Shah / Reuters
Flames from the INS Sindhurakshak burn in Mumbai, India, late on Wednesday.
Posted by ansarmukhtar in INDIA-AN EVIL NATION on June 21st, 2013
Pakistan Think Tank’s Thought Leaders Comment
Pakistan Army and ISI seem to be the bread and butter of Indian journalists and news-media.
One wonders what these Indian journos would write about had it not been for Pakistan Army and ISI ? On the contrary, there is hardly a word in Pakistani news-media about RAW and Indian Army…
With friends like Kabulis like Amrullah Saleh, we do not need enemies.
Pls note, this pathetic Karzai-excuse of a journo, Praveen Swami (see below), is trying to make it sound like Najibullah’s murder was any different from Moamer Gaddafii’s after the later’s US-funded capture and lynching at the hands of US-Allies, so-called “Libyan-Rebels”.
MAK
by Praveen Swami
Jun 20, 2013
Early in 2011, Hillary Clinton addressed iron words to Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership at a convention in New York, telling the men who enabled 9/11 exactly what they needed to do to bring “an end to the military actions that are targeting their leadership and decimating their ranks.” “They must renounce violence,” the former United States secretary of state said. “They must abandon their alliance with al-Qaeda; and they must abide by the constitution of Afghanistan.” Inside of days, the United States is scheduled to begin talks with Taliban envoys at their newly-inaugurated political office in Doha—an office flying the flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, destroyed by American bombs after 9/11.
Heading into 2014, when almost all western troops will pull out of Afghanistan, it’s turning out that America’s Red Lines on terror were drawn with vanishing ink. From 1 January to 6 June, civilian casualties are up 24 percent compared with the same period last year, three-quarters inflicted by the Taliban and its partners. The Taliban has refused to reject al-Qaeda. Its leaders refuse to sit across the table with representatives of Afghanistan’s elected government. New Delhi needs to start worrying, and soon: the Taliban’s march back into office will have lethal consequences not just for Afghans, but India and the region.
Late last year, Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, set up to negotiate peace with the Taliban, drew up a five-stage plan for peace talks. Formal negotiations with the Taliban, scheduled in the plan for mid-2013, are running bang on schedule—but only because key steps have been skipped. In return for its leadership being removed from the United Nations’ 9/11 sanctions list, for example, the Taliban was to announce it was “cutting its links with al-Qaeda.” Eighteen low-ranking Taliban released by Islamabad—a move meant to facilitate negotiations with the Afghan government—have remained on in Pakistan, without renouncing violence.
President Hamid Karzai, angered by the United States’ decision to talk to the Taliban regardless, has now called off negotiations on post-2014 security arrangements—but the truth is he has little power to shape events. There’s a simple reason why the United States has continued to push for talks: President Barack Obama is desperate for any political deal that will dignify his 2014 retreat: peace, as it were, at any cost.
Key Taliban leaders like Mullah Muhammad Umar, Abdul Ghani Baradar, Abdul Ahad Jehangirwal and Nooruddin Turabi remain in Pakistan—and under the effective control of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. The families of key Doha negotiators, including Taliban chief of mission Tayyab Agha, are also in Pakistan. The Taliban’s office in Doha is as much a Pakistani intelligence station as an Afghan political mission. Aga Jan Motasim—a former Taliban leader targeted for assassination in 2010 because of his participation in secret peace talks—recently made clear the Doha leadership was not among Taliban moderates willing to accept electoral democracy.
Islamabad has cashed in on Obama’s desperation, selling its leverage over the Taliban hardliners in return for equities in Afghanistan’s political future. It argues that the Taliban leadership, if given power in Kabul, will be able to buy off ground-level jihadists fighting alongside al-Qaeda and its sister organisations. The Taliban leadership, it hopes, will return the favour by using its influence with jihadists fighting against the Pakistani state, like al-Qaeda and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Few experts believe things will work to the script Pakistan is marketing: key Taliban affiliates like Jalaluddin Haqqani’s networks are deeply entwined with al-Qaeda and the TTP, the scholars Dan Rassler and Vahid Brown have shown. President Obama, though, seems desperate enough to try.
Early on 27 September 1996, Muhammad Najibullah Ahmadzai was dragged out of the United Nations compound in Kabul, where he had taken sanctuary. The former Afghan president was beaten, then castrated; his bloodied body was dragged behind a truck before being hung on a traffic light for public display. President Najibullah’s last minutes were the first of the life of Afghanistan’s Islamic Emirate. His fate tells us why President Obama’s initiative is doomed to fail.
From 1994, the United States threw its weight behind oil giant Unocal’s efforts to build a pipeline linking central Asia’s vast energy fields with the Indian Ocean. In April 1996, Robin Raphel—then assistant secretary of state for south Asia, and now President Barack Obama’s ambassador for non-military aid to Pakistan—visited Kabul to lobby for the project. Later that year, she was again in Kabul, calling on the international community to “engage the Taliban.”
Mullah Muhammad Ghaus, the Islamic Emirate’s then-foreign minister, led an expenses-paid delegation to Unocal’s headquarters in Sugarland, Texas. The clerics, housed at a five-star hotel, were taken to see the NASA museum, several supermarkets and—improbably—the local zoo. Glyn Davies, the State Department’s spokesperson, described Najibullah’s killing as “regrettable”. Yet, he said, the United States hoped the new Islamic Emirate would “form a representative interim government that can begin the process of reconciliation nationwide”.
Raphael had these words in response: “The Taliban do not seek to export Islam, only to liberate Afghanistan.”
The United States responded with silence—both to the Taliban’s crimes against its own people, and its role in Osama bin Laden’s violent rise. Even though the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan sheltered bin Laden, it was never declared a state sponsor of terrorism. In 1996, a State Department report had described bin Laden as one of the “most significant sponsors of terrorism today”. “Madeline Albright, [her] undersecretary Tom Pickering and regional specialists in state’s south Asia bureau,” records Steve Coll in his magisterial work Ghost Wars, “all recommended that the administration continue its policy of diplomatic engagement with the Taliban. They would use pressure and promises of future aid to persuade [Mullah Muhammad] Omar to break with bin Laden.”
“The truth,” Albright would later argue, “was that those [attacks before 9/11] were happening overseas and while there were Americans who died, there were not thousands and it did not happen on US soil.” Libya, Iraq, South Yemen, and Syria, all secular states, hadn’t killed “thousands” or “on US soil”—but that didn’t stop the United States from designating them sponsors of terrorism. The truth was also that the United States saw Sunni jihadists in Afghanistan, along with nuclear-armed Pakistan, as allies against a resurgent Iran.
Ever since 26/11, Pakistan has reined in jihadist groups operating against India, fearful of military retaliation and international sanctions. Now, though, as the ISI seeks to deflect jihadist energies away from Pakistan, India is again becoming a target. Threats from al-Qaeda have multiplied: in a recent video, al-Qaeda cleric Asim Umar called on Indians Muslims to battle for shari’a rule; last year, al- Qaeda’s Ahmad Farooq vowed “to hasten our advance towards Delhi.”
Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed recently condemned suicide bombings in Pakistan—but appeared to suggest they’d be legitimate elsewhere. Doha-based Islamist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi—a key influence on the Taliban, and behind the scenes player in the talks—has hailed the jihadist struggle to create an Islamic state in Kashmir. For all practical purposes, the talks in Doha will hand Pakistan and its jihadist proxies the keys to Afghanistan’s future—a decision that could impose enormous costs on India.
New Delhi will have to resume serious dialogue on military assistance with the Northern Alliance, which battled the Taliban until 9/11. It will have to think seriously on the use of offensive covert means to target the jihadist leadership in Pakistan. New Delhi will also have stop dragging its feet on requests for military assistance from Afghanistan, made by Karzai last month. “I think the time has come for India to revitalise its relationship with its historic friends, who resisted Pakistani expansionism in Afghanistan before 9/11,” former Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh told Firstpost. “The moment of decision is inching closer.”
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