AT SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING of February 26, 2010, Major Mitali Madhumita was awakened by the ringing of her mobile phone. Mitali, a 35-year-old Indian army officer from Orissa, had been in Kabul less than a year. Fluent in Dari, the most widely spoken language in Afghanistan, she was there to teach English to the first women officer cadets to be recruited to the Afghan National Army. It was a sensitive posting, not so much because of gender issues as political ones: India’s regional rival, Pakistan, was extremely touchy about India providing military assistance to the government in Afghanistan and had made it very clear that it regarded the presence of any Indian troops or military trainers there as an unacceptable provocation. For this reason everyone on the small Indian army English Language Training Team, including Mitali, and all the Indian army doctors and nurses staffing the new Indira Gandhi Kabul Children’s Hospital, had been sent to Afghanistan unarmed, and in civilian dress. They were being put up not in an army barracks, or at the Indian Embassy, but in a series of small, discreet guest houses dotted around the city’s diplomatic quarter. I was the only one of my team who came back alive. The phone call was from a girlfriend of Mitali’s who worked for Air India at Kabul airport. Breathless, she said she had just heard that two of the Indian guest houses, the Park and the Hamid, were under attack by militants. As the only woman on her team, Mitali had been staying in separate lodgings about two miles away from the rest of her colleagues, who were all in the Hamid. Within seconds, Mitali was pulling on her clothes, along with the hijab she was required to wear, and running, alone and unarmed, through the empty morning streets of Kabul toward the Hamid. “I just thought they might need my help,” she told me recently in New Delhi. As she dashed past the Indian Embassy, Mitali was recognized by one of the guards from diplomatic security who shouted to her to...

Renowned South Asian writer Arundhati Roy returned on Thursday her National Award for Best Screenplay, which she won in 1989. Returning her award, the Booker Prize winner said that she was “so proud” to join the writers, filmmakers and academics, who have returned their awards to protest against attacks on minorities, murder of rationalists, threats to free speech, enforcement of beef bans, and the vicious remarks by leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. “I am very pleased to have found (from somewhere way back in my past) a National Award that I can return, because it allows me to be a part of a political movement initiated by writers, filmmakers and academics in this country who have risen up against a kind of ideological viciousness and an assault on our collective IQ that will tear us apart and bury us very deep if we do not stand up to it now,” Roy said, in an article in theIndian Express. Explaining her decision, she said, “First of all, ‘intolerance’ is the wrong word to use for the lynching, shooting, burning and mass murder of fellow human beings. Second, we had plenty of advance notice of what lay in store for us — so I cannot claim to be shocked by what has happened after this government was enthusiastically voted into office with an overwhelming majority.” “It is politics by other means. I am so proud to be part of it. And so ashamed of what is going on in this country today,” she added. “Life is hell for the living too. Whole populations — millions of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and Christians — are being forced to live in terror, unsure of when and from where the assault will come,” she added. Further, she said, “Today, we live in a country in which, when the thugs and apparatchiks of the New Order talk of “illegal slaughter”, they mean the imaginary cow that was killed — not the real man who was murdered. When they talk of taking “evidence for forensic examination” from the scene of the crime, they mean the food in...

Renowned South Asian writer Arundhati Roy returned on Thursday her National Award for Best Screenplay, which she won in 1989. Returning her award, the Booker Prize winner said that she was “so proud” to join the writers, filmmakers and academics, who have returned their awards to protest against attacks on minorities, murder of rationalists, threats to free speech, enforcement of beef bans, and the vicious remarks by leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. “I am very pleased to have found (from somewhere way back in my past) a National Award that I can return, because it allows me to be a part of a political movement initiated by writers, filmmakers and academics in this country who have risen up against a kind of ideological viciousness and an assault on our collective IQ that will tear us apart and bury us very deep if we do not stand up to it now,” Roy said, in an article in theIndian Express. Explaining her decision, she said, “First of all, ‘intolerance’ is the wrong word to use for the lynching, shooting, burning and mass murder of fellow human beings. Second, we had plenty of advance notice of what lay in store for us — so I cannot claim to be shocked by what has happened after this government was enthusiastically voted into office with an overwhelming majority.” “It is politics by other means. I am so proud to be part of it. And so ashamed of what is going on in this country today,” she added. “Life is hell for the living too. Whole populations — millions of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and Christians — are being forced to live in terror, unsure of when and from where the assault will come,” she added. Further, she said, “Today, we live in a country in which, when the thugs and apparatchiks of the New Order talk of “illegal slaughter”, they mean the imaginary cow that was killed — not the real man who was murdered. When they talk of taking “evidence for forensic examination” from the scene of the crime, they mean the food in...

  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...