Pakistan and India are back to their mutual blame-game – accusing each other of “unprovoked firing” across the 190km working boundary separating Jammu in India from Sialkot and other Pakistan towns. But the entire issue is worth taking a dig at in the historical perspective to decipher the mindset that is working behind this brinkmanship. For this, Reuters news agency and India Today offer some critical reading. Both sides have their own versions. During his recent interaction with the Pakistani and foreign media in the Sialkot sector, the commander of the border security forces Major-General Tahir Javed Khan rejected the Indian accusations of cross-border infiltration from the Pakistani side and also wondered about the motives. “The type of infrastructure which you have (on the Indian side) in terms of barbed wire, the gate control with them, fully lit at night with poles at 100 meters distance each, four search lights on each pole and then the bunkers spaced 75 meters to 100 meters all along the working boundary. Now, when firing is taking place everyone is alert, the lights are lit. How would that be possible that during this period, intense firing and once everyone is alert, some infiltration can take place?” Voice of American quoted Khan as saying. For several weeks, Indian BSF officers spurned telephone contact He also complained that for several weeks, the Indian BSF top tier officers spurned telephonic contact, either not taking phone calls via the hotline or saying the relevant officers were not available. “Reasons best known to them (India) but they are becoming more aggressive with each passing day. The number of [cease-fire] violations, the number of rounds they have fired and the number of [Pakistani] posts and villages they have engaged that is increasing with each passing day. And the number of rounds which they have fired in five days, probably this much volume was not fired even during the actual wars between India and Pakistan,” said Khan. Across...

After weeks of sparring over results, Afghan presidential candidates Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah finally demonstrated the kind of pragmatism that the war-wounded country needs for reconciliation and security. That marks another big step in Afghanistan’s chequered transition from war-ravaged tribal culture to a quasi democratic process. Mutual acrimony, motivated speculation, accusations and counter-arguments accompanied the entire process but – at least for now – better sense seems to have prevailed. The initial blueprint for the unity deal came from the US Secretary of State John Kerry following Abdullah’s rejection of results and intent of setting up a parallel government. Given the history of deep ethnic divisions and bitter political hostilities the power-sharing may not be smooth though. What, however, is certain that some rancorous realities ie adverse economic conditions and extremely volatile security concerns may possibly have forced both leaders – albeit unwillingly – to settle for an honourable exit from their stated positions. The compulsions facing the new Afghan leadership were best summed up by John F Sopko, Special Inspector General for Reconstruction of Afghanistan (SIGAR), in a speech he gave at Georgetown University Washington, DC (September 12, 2014): “Unfortunately, Afghanistan is a case study in projects and programs set up without considering sustainability… The bottom line: It appears we’ve created a government that the Afghans simply cannot afford.” The sheer size of the US government’s reconstruction effort, Sopko said, has placed both a financial and operational burden on the Afghan economy and its government that it simply cannot manage by itself. Quoting the Afghan government revenues of a little over $2 billion in 2013, Sopko said these potential revenues are not even one-third of the approximately $7.6 billion that the Afghan government needs stay afloat. Currently, more than 60% of the Afghan national budget comes from the US...

Months after Owais Jakhrani was sacked from the Pakistan navy for radical Islamist views, he led an audacious mission to take over a warship and turn its guns on a U.S. naval vessel in the open seas. The early September dawn raid at a naval base in the southern city of Karachi was thwarted, but not before Jakhrani, two officers and an unidentified fourth assailant snuck past a patrol boat in a dinghy and engaged in an intense firefight on or around the warship, PNS Zulfiqar. Four people were killed in the attempt to hijack the Zulfiqar, including Jakhrani and two accomplices, who were serving sub-lieutenants, according to police reports seen by Reuters. Officials are divided about how much support the young man in his mid-20s had from inside the navy. They also stress that Jakhrani and his accomplices were a long way from achieving their aim when they were killed. But the attack, claimed by al Qaeda's newly created South Asian wing, has highlighted the threat of militant infiltration into Pakistan's nuclear-armed military. The issue is a sensitive one for Pakistan's armed forces, which have received billions of dollars of U.S. aid since 2001 when they joined Washington's global campaign against al Qaeda. According to an initial statement from al Qaeda, the plan was to use the Zulfiqar to attack a U.S. navy vessel, meaning potential loss of American lives and a blow to relations between the two nations. A further statement issued by the group identified the target as USS Supply, a US naval ship used to refuel warships at sea. The Indian navy was also a target, the statement said. It urged followers to “make jihad on the seas one of their priorities," according to the SITE intelligence group, which monitors extremist communications. A naval spokesman said an inquiry was still ongoing when Reuters contacted the military with detailed questions about the incident. The military typically does not publish its inquiries. "The Reuters story is not based on facts," he...

Months after Owais Jakhrani was sacked from the Pakistan navy for radical Islamist views, he led an audacious mission to take over a warship and turn its guns on a U.S. naval vessel in the open seas. The early September dawn raid at a naval base in the southern city of Karachi was thwarted, but not before Jakhrani, two officers and an unidentified fourth assailant snuck past a patrol boat in a dinghy and engaged in an intense firefight on or around the warship, PNS Zulfiqar. Four people were killed in the attempt to hijack the Zulfiqar, including Jakhrani and two accomplices, who were serving sub-lieutenants, according to police reports seen by Reuters. Officials are divided about how much support the young man in his mid-20s had from inside the navy. They also stress that Jakhrani and his accomplices were a long way from achieving their aim when they were killed. But the attack, claimed by al Qaeda's newly created South Asian wing, has highlighted the threat of militant infiltration into Pakistan's nuclear-armed military. The issue is a sensitive one for Pakistan's armed forces, which have received billions of dollars of U.S. aid since 2001 when they joined Washington's global campaign against al Qaeda. According to an initial statement from al Qaeda, the plan was to use the Zulfiqar to attack a U.S. navy vessel, meaning potential loss of American lives and a blow to relations between the two nations. A further statement issued by the group identified the target as USS Supply, a US naval ship used to refuel warships at sea. The Indian navy was also a target, the statement said. It urged followers to “make jihad on the seas one of their priorities," according to the SITE intelligence group, which monitors extremist communications. A naval spokesman said an inquiry was still ongoing when Reuters contacted the military with detailed questions about the incident. The military typically does not publish its inquiries. "The Reuters story is not based on facts," he...

Months after Owais Jakhrani was sacked from the Pakistan navy for radical Islamist views, he led an audacious mission to take over a warship and turn its guns on a U.S. naval vessel in the open seas. The early September dawn raid at a naval base in the southern city of Karachi was thwarted, but not before Jakhrani, two officers and an unidentified fourth assailant snuck past a patrol boat in a dinghy and engaged in an intense firefight on or around the warship, PNS Zulfiqar. Four people were killed in the attempt to hijack the Zulfiqar, including Jakhrani and two accomplices, who were serving sub-lieutenants, according to police reports seen by Reuters. Officials are divided about how much support the young man in his mid-20s had from inside the navy. They also stress that Jakhrani and his accomplices were a long way from achieving their aim when they were killed. But the attack, claimed by al Qaeda's newly created South Asian wing, has highlighted the threat of militant infiltration into Pakistan's nuclear-armed military. The issue is a sensitive one for Pakistan's armed forces, which have received billions of dollars of U.S. aid since 2001 when they joined Washington's global campaign against al Qaeda. According to an initial statement from al Qaeda, the plan was to use the Zulfiqar to attack a U.S. navy vessel, meaning potential loss of American lives and a blow to relations between the two nations. A further statement issued by the group identified the target as USS Supply, a US naval ship used to refuel warships at sea. The Indian navy was also a target, the statement said. It urged followers to “make jihad on the seas one of their priorities," according to the SITE intelligence group, which monitors extremist communications. A naval spokesman said an inquiry was still ongoing when Reuters contacted the military with detailed questions about the incident. The military typically does not publish its inquiries. "The Reuters story is not based on facts," he...

People, companies, and agencies need to be held seriously accountable for stupid decisions, dereliction of duty, corrupt behaviour, and subpar performance. Otherwise, we simply foster the expectation that additional waste, fraud, and abuse will be tolerated in the future, and only those who can shove the money out the door or meet the required “burn rate” are to be promoted and rewarded — John F Sopko, the US Special Inspector General for Reconstruction of Afghanistan (SIGAR) The US Special Inspector General gave this biting conclusion in a rare, blistering critique at Georgetown University, Washington, DC (September 12, 2014) saying, “It appears we’ve created a government that the Afghans simply cannot afford.” He said that the US had spent more than $104 billion for Afghan reconstruction but “what have we gotten for the investment” after committing “more funds to reconstruct Afghanistan, than the US spent to rebuild Europe after World War II under the Marshall Plan?” SIGAR was created in 2008 by Congress to provide “independent and objective oversight of the US reconstruction effort in Afghanistan”. Sopko’s questions on the “reckless” US spending in Afghanistan offers food for thought to Pakistanis, who wonder how the ruling elite and bureaucracy play havoc with the taxpayers’ money without fear of accountability. “I was stunned when senior state department officials on my first trip to Kabul suggested how we should write our reports. They even suggested changes to our report titles and proposed that we give them our press releases in advance so they could pre-approve them,” Sopko said, referring to the high-handed attitude of bureaucratic and military officials on ground. Sopko underscored how SIGAR’s interventions saved hundreds of millions of dollars from being criminally wasted in wrongly prioritised projects. Federal contract officials don’t bother to make site visits, fail to keep proper documentation, fail to enforce standards and fail to ensure work is...