India’s goals are to deny Pakistan “strategic depth” in Afghanistan and the ability to block India from trade and other connections to Central Asia and beyond, and to prevent militants in Afghanistan from attacking Indian targets. This was revealed in a US Congressional report, published in October (https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL30588.pdf The report by the Congressional Research Service further stated that they saw the Afghan Taliban’s hosting of al Qaeda during 1996-2001 as a major threat because of its association with a militant organistation in Pakistan seeking to thwart India’s control in Indian-held Kashmir. As for relations between Afghanistan and India, the report said the former had “sought close ties to India—in large part to access India’s large and rapidly growing economy—but without alarming Pakistan.” The ‘Strategic Partnership’ agreement which was signed between the two countries on October 5, 2011 in New Delhi “affirmed Pakistani fears by giving India, for the first time, a formal role in Afghan security,” the report adds. Under the agreement, the two sides had agreed for India to train some 600 ANDSF personnel in India. According to the report, former Afghan president Hamid Karzai had visited India after the Afghanistan-Pakistan border clashes in early May 2013 to seek sales of Indian artillery, aircraft, and other systems that would help it better defend its border with Pakistan. He had visited again in mid-December 2013 to again request for the sales of weapons. However, India reportedly declined “in order not to become more directly involved in the conflict in Afghanistan or alarm Pakistan”. Further, current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has withdrawn the request “to avoid complicating his outreach to Pakistan”. Moreover, the report stated that India’s relationship with the Afghan government and with individual factions reflects India’s concerns about “potential preponderant Pakistani influence” in post-2014 Afghanistan. In the...

  India’s goals are to deny Pakistan “strategic depth” in Afghanistan and the ability to block India from trade and other connections to Central Asia and beyond, and to prevent militants in Afghanistan from attacking Indian targets. This was revealed in a US Congressional report, published in October (https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL30588.pdf The report by the Congressional Research Service further stated that they saw the Afghan Taliban’s hosting of al Qaeda during 1996-2001 as a major threat because of its association with a militant organistation in Pakistan seeking to thwart India’s control in Indian-held Kashmir. As for relations between Afghanistan and India, the report said the former had “sought close ties to India—in large part to access India’s large and rapidly growing economy—but without alarming Pakistan.” The ‘Strategic Partnership’ agreement which was signed between the two countries on October 5, 2011 in New Delhi “affirmed Pakistani fears by giving India, for the first time, a formal role in Afghan security,” the report adds. Under the agreement, the two sides had agreed for India to train some 600 ANDSF personnel in India. According to the report, former Afghan president Hamid Karzai had visited India after the Afghanistan-Pakistan border clashes in early May 2013 to seek sales of Indian artillery, aircraft, and other systems that would help it better defend its border with Pakistan. He had visited again in mid-December 2013 to again request for the sales of weapons. However, India reportedly declined “in order not to become more directly involved in the conflict in Afghanistan or alarm Pakistan”. Further, current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has withdrawn the request “to avoid complicating his outreach to Pakistan”. Moreover, the report stated that India’s relationship with the Afghan government and with individual factions reflects India’s concerns about “potential preponderant Pakistani influence” in post-2014 Afghanistan. In the...

Monthly Updates on the Covert War Scores of US air and drone strikes hit Afghanistan in October as the country’s military and police continued struggling to control the resurgent Taliban. While at least 80 strikes reportedly hit Afghanistan, the CIA’s drone strikes stopped at the Pakistani side of the border. There were also no US drone or air strikes reported in Yemen or Somalia last month. Pakistan All the strikes in the table above were carried out by the CIA using Predator or Reaper drones. The Pakistan Air Force has also carried out air strikes in the same region as the CIA, using jets and its own armed drone – the Burraq. There were no reported US drone strikes in Pakistan in October, the third calendar month to pass without a strike there this year. The Pakistan Air Force continued to target alleged militants in the mountains of Pakistan’s tribal region. Pakistan’s armed drone, the Burraq, carried out its first night strike, according to the Pakistan military’s public relations wing – the ISPR. Afghanistan The US Air Force has a variety of aircraft carrying out missions over Afghanistan, including jets, drones and AC-130 gunships. The UN reported in August 2015 that most US strikes were by unmanned aerial vehicles. This matches the Bureau’s records which show most US air attacks since January have been by drones. Due to a lack of official US information, it remains unclear which type of aircraft carried out the attacks. The Bureau’s data on strikes in Afghanistan is not exhaustive. The ongoing war creates barriers to reporting and the Bureau’s data is an accumulation of what publicly available information exists on specific strikes and casualties. The US government publishes monthly aggregates of air operationsin Afghanistan, but not casualty figures. A US AC-130 gunship destroyed a hospital in the northern city of Kunduz on October 3, run by the international charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), killing at least 30 staff and patients. The attack hit...

Only three days before historic elections are to take place in Turkey (Nov. 1), the police raided a critical media institution—Koza Ipek MediaGroup. For the first time in the nation’s history, a television station’s broadcast was cut off live on air. This was a major blow to Turkey’s already-deteriorating press freedoms. Ordinary Turks across the country are outraged. Yet despite increased solidarity among different segments of society against this brutal crackdown, Koza Ipek’s friends in the mainstream media industry have largely kept quiet. The news manager of Kanaltürk, which is also owned by Koza Ipek, has criticized his colleague’s apparent indifference to this audacious act of censorship—going so far as to call them “penguins.” But this is not surprising. Turkish society has never been especially unified. And its media industry reflects this reality. Turks vs. Kurds, Sunnis vs. Alevis—strong divisions have always had a presence. There is, however, a consensus that Turkey has never before been this polarized; and that this is worrisome in the run-up to such significant elections. This is, in in part, thanks to the increasingly authoritarian politics of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. His bitterly divisive rhetoric, which frequently employs religious narrative and the demonization of opponents, has cleaved the country in two: those who love him, and those who hate him. Both parties are equally passionate in their conviction, which makes the divide all the more volatile. The country is so divided that even after the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the Turkish nation on Oct. 10, reportedly committed by ISIL, the government could only issue a bland, unfeeling statement of mourning. Indifference toward the excruciating pain of those with loved ones who were killed (mostly leftists, Kurds, and Alevis) exacerbated tensions. It kept the country from understanding these deaths as shared pains, and kept us from mourning together. It’s not hard to...