by Naveed Hussain Afghan government troops, aided by coalition forces, claim to have wrested back control of the strategic northern city of Kunduz three days after it was overrun by the Taliban [The claim is still contested by the insurgents]. This was a psychological blow to the fledgling national unity government in Kabul, and ignominy for the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police. Conversely, the stunning Kunduz seizure de-emphasised the leadership row in the Taliban and showed the resilient militia’s power to capture an urban centre outside their traditional powerbase of southern Afghanistan. Afghan officials were quick to point an accusatory finger at Pakistan for the Kunduz humiliation. Like in New Delhi, it has become a norm in Kabul to lay the blame at Pakistan’s doorstep for anything that goes wrong in Afghanistan. Ideally, the fall of Kunduz, though brief, should have prompted some serious soul-searching in Kabul rather than finger-pointing at Islamabad. The Taliban takeover of Kunduz shows: a) failure of President Ashraf Ghani’s new governance model; and b) anything but unity in his national unity government. Kunduz, one of the nine northern provinces of Afghanistan, is a cauldron of ethnic tensions, tribal rivalries, political factionalism and warlord-ism. Though the Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group (over 30 per cent of the population), other ethnicities, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens and Aimaqs in particular, are collectively over twice the number of Pashtuns. Soon after his inauguration, President Ghani had selected Kunduz as a pilot experiment for his new governance model. In an ambitious overhaul of the provincial administration, he had sacked the governor, police chief, intelligence director, ANA commander and prosecutor. Subsequently, he had vetted a list of hopefuls and handpicked Mohammad Omar Safi, a foreign-grad Pashtun and political start-up, to implement his governance model in Kunduz. The trouble started soon after when...

by Arshad H. Abbasi University and college faculty serves as an agent of making leaders that will stop climate change; facts-based knowledge is imparted regarding environmental science. Faculty can take substantial steps in playing the key role in water security. The melting of Siachen Glacier is a big challenge, but the hegemonic Indian policy is the biggest hurdle to save this glacier. Science tells us that glaciers are the most sensitive indicators of climate change. Worldwide, it is believed that the glaciers melt due to atmospheric warming but in the case of Siachen and Himalayan glaciers, there are other factors that should be taken into account. Direct human intervention on a large scale is the most significant cause of this melting which is then causing variance in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including changing monsoon patterns in the sub-continent. The Global Sustainable Development Report 2015 (GSDR), places the South Asian countries on the top the 193 countries at climate risk. Bangladesh ranks third while India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan are 10th, 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th respectively. We owe this vulnerability to the human intervention in glaciers. Nevertheless, the official rhetoric of India over the melting of Siachen is global warming; this is only a red herring and is successfully sold by India, while Pakistan keeps mum over the issue. Why is India trying to cover up by using the excuse of global warming, without looking at the man-made direct interventions? Without accountability, climate change becomes a crutch. High-resolution images of the Siachen glacier show deep cracks or crevasses every 10 feet, both in longitudinal and latitudinal directions, owing to military presence in the area. The retreat of the glacier is also visible by horizontal expansion of glacial lakes throughout the glacier, but the most alarming sign is the vertical thinning of glaciers, which is aggravating the widening of crevasses...

It is, of course, a fallacy that there is a hierarchy of agreeable and less agreeable Hindutva ideologues. As such, it could be a Brahminical myth that Modi of a lower caste is by some yardstick worse than Vajpayee in his communalism. Modi is coarse. Vajpayee was urbane. Little else sets them apart. While Mohammed Akhlaq’s recent lynching by a mob of cow worshippers has set off finger-pointing at Modi, and rightly so, it was during Vajpayee’s rule that Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two small sons were roasted alive in their jeep by a Hindutva mob in Orissa. Instinctively, within weeks, Vajpayee was headed for Lahore for a globally applauded meeting with Nawaz Sharif, quite aware that the sudden rush of diplomatic finesse was needed to repair his tarnished image abroad. He was already in the doghouse over the nuclear tests. As for Dara Singh, the mob leader of Orissa in January 1999, he was only following the lead he got from his hero of the Nellie massacre of September 1983. The killing of children and women in Assam that year was the outcome of a ‘rivers of blood’ speech Vajpayee gave against Muslim residents, including those who had migrated illegally. The gruesome pictures from Assam had greatly embarrassed Indira Gandhi in front of Ziaul Haq for whom she had only contempt but who was in Delhi for a non-aligned summit. In May 1996, though hopelessly short of majority, he announced a pan-India ban on cow slaughter as his key policy objective. How was that different from other Hindutva ideologues, including Modi? Vajpa­yee subsequently headed two terms as prime minister of a coalition government when his mission to save the Indian cow became inexpedient to pursue. Neither grudging peace with a neighbour nor a state of perpetual confrontation can alter the Hindutva DNA Modi shares with Vajpayee. It was during Vajpayee’s tenure that Modi felt encouraged to abuse an entire community, mocking them as children of “Mian Musharraf” while...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. Key points: -  CIA and Pakistan Air Force drones hit Pakistan’s tribal areas -  US strikes continue in Yemen as the civil war rages -  Al Shabaab continue to kill peacekeepers and civilians in Somalia -  The three drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen in September means a total of 491 drone strikes there under President Obama -  US air power helps stem the Taliban tide in Afghanistan -  Medecins Sans Frontiers trauma centre in Kunduz hit in October air strike -  The Bureau publishes investigation into UK’s Watchkeeper programme as Cameron doubles RAF drone fleet 2. The Bureau’s numbers:  Recorded US drone strikes to date Recorded US air and cruise missile strikes to date * The Bureau’s estimates are based predominantly on open sources information like media reports. Sometimes it is not possible to reconcile details in different reports. This is why use ranges for our record of casualties and, in the case of Yemen and Somalia, our strike tallies. ** The US has only carried out drone strikes in Pakistan. 3. Bureau analysis for September 2015: Two drone strikes in Yemen plus one in Pakistan during September means the total strikes in the US’s covert drone war in those countries and Somalia during Barack Obama’s presidency now stands at 491. September was the second consecutive month when US air and ground forces reportedly came to the aid of the Afghan army and security forces in their struggle to contain a brutal insurgency. US air attacks continued into October when a series of strikes hit a hospital run by international NGO Medecins Sans Frontier, killing at least 19 people, including 12 staff members. A CIA drone strike hit Pakistan killing five or six people in the same month that Pakistan jets killed civilians in South Waziristan and the first Pakistan Air Force drone strike reportedly killed three people. In Yemen the US continued drone strikes while the Saudi Arabia-led coalition of Arab and African states continued its air and...