[KhaamaPress] The Indian officials have said that the Afghan Air Force will likely receive two Mi-24 gunships next month.
"It is now expected that two helicopters will be delivered to Afghanistan in April. The other two are expected to be handed over in June or July," sources privy of the development have told Hindustan Times.
The officials have not disclosed further information in this regard and the exact delivery date of the helicopters has not been announced so far.
India has played a major role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... regime and has invested over $2 billion in various reconstruction and infrastructure projects.
The government of India pledged a fresh aid package of $1 billion to support the reconstruction projects in Afghanistan during a visit by President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. .. in late 2016.
The two countries have also developed a high level of cooperation in terms of military and security during the recent years.
...very much to the frustration and annoyance of various officials in Pakistan, no doubt.
[Ynet] Microsoft says it has seized 99 websites used by Iranian hackers to launch cyberattacks.
The company said Wednesday it took control of the websites after suing the hacking group and obtaining a U.S. judge's approval.
Microsoft says it's been tracking the group since 2013. The company says the group has tried to steal sensitive information from activists, journalists and others in the Middle East.
Microsoft calls the group Phosphorus, while others call it APT35.
Wednesday's announcement ties the hackers to the country of Iran but not specifically to its government.
A front man for Iran's mission to the United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday.
Microsoft has taken hackers to court before. It used a similar strategy in 2016 to seize fake domains created by Russia-backed hackers.
[DAWN] Representatives and activists from religious minorities expressed disappointment over the state of law and order nationwide, as crimes against their communities continued unabated. They're not considered "Pakistanis" in the Land of the Pure. They're members of the Moslem majority or they're untermenschen Hindoos, Christians, Ahmadis, Sikhs or whatever.
Speaking to Dawn, several minority members complained that they were denied their basic rights and many of the laws regarding freedom and safety were not being fully implemented.
"It is ironic that while the Lahore Resolution advocated safeguards for minorities and the protection of their religious, cultural, economic, political and other rights, in the past few days we have been hearing of a new wave of forced conversions in Sindh and south Punjab," said Samuel Payara, chairperson of Implementation Minority Rights Forum, which earlier held a presser also in this regard.
"Only a few days ago, we saw the heart-rending video of a Christian woman who was crying and begging for help and safety ─ she had been paraded naked by some men," he said.
Payara has in the past filed several petitions in court, including demands for compensation for the Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. and Quetta church blast victims.
Hindu community activist Amarnath Randhawa said the issue of forced conversions was rising once again.
"Young girls from the Hindu community are being kidnapped and raped, and at gunpoint married off to Moslem boys even though some of them are already married," he said. "Even the Sikh community is not safe, as recently in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa a married young Sikh woman was kidnapped."
Randhawa also mentioned the case of the Christian woman ‐ a mother of three ‐ who was allegedly kidnapped from Islamabad and forcibly converted and married to a Moslem man.
Another Hindu community representative alleged that a couple of girls had been kidnapped from south Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... a couple of days ago. He said that a few years ago the Sindh government had withdrawn a bill aimed at protecting Hindus, in particular, from forced conversions despite the fact that it was passed by the provincial assembly.
The Criminal Law (Protection of Minorities) Bill 2016, presented by then MPA Nand Kumar, mentioned that children under 18 years of age would not be allowed for marriage, however underage Hindu girls were still being kidnapped and forcibly converted.
Payara further said: "On Nov 15, 2018, a decision was made by the former chief justice of Supreme Court that the chairperson of the Evacuee Trust Property Board must belong to the minority community. However, if you can't say something nice about a person some juicy gossip will go well... in spite of these orders, no names from the minority community have been sent to the cabinet for approval."
He also said that most importantly a National Commission of Minorities was needed. He stressed that their demands included immediate action by the prime minister for passing of the Criminal Law (Protection of Minorities) Bill, the Minorities Affairs Ministry be initiated again and this time be headed by a member of the minority community and all Supreme Court orders and directives be implemented.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/28/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[20 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
When will the intellectually disadvantaged be disregarded?
[DAWN] A delegation of the Asia-Pacific Group (APG) on money laundering, a regional affiliate of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), has expressed serious reservations over insufficient physical actions on ground against proscribed organizations (POs) to block flow of funds and activities and is likely to issue a formal warning before its departure on Thursday (today).
"The crux of first two days of interactions is that they (APG) consider us very good on paper ‐ legislation, regulation, data collection and notifications ‐ mostly involving the federal government, but highly non-performing at provincial and district levels where such POs and non-profit organizations (NPOs) actually operate," a bigwig told Dawn.
The APG delegation is currently on a three-day visit to Pakistain for mutual evaluation as part of second country risk assessment report and would conclude its assessment on Thursday (today). Authorities of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistain, Financial Monitoring Unit, law enforcement and intelligence agencies, ministries of foreign affairs and interior, National Counter Terrorism Authority, Federal Investigation Agency and Counter Terrorism Departments of the provinces participated in the two-day interaction.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/28/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[DAWN] The Foreign Office on Wednesday formally conveyed to India the message that the initial information shared by that country regarding the alleged involvement of Pakistain-based elements in the Pulwama attack could not substantiate the imputation, and offered to examine any fresh proof ‐ whenever it is available.
"All information provided by India was checked and no link with the Pulwama attack could be established," a source told Dawn. "We remain ready to investigate and take action if there is any fresh evidence."
The findings were conveyed to the Indian high commissioner in Islamabad, Ajay Bisaria. "The Indian high commissioner in Islamabad was called to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by the foreign secretary (Tehmina Janjua) and the findings on the Pulwama incident were shared with him," the FO said in a statement.
India had on Feb 27 given to Pakistain a dossier containing information in support of its allegation that the Jaish-e-Mohammad ...literally Army of Mohammad, a Pak-based Deobandi terror group founded by Maulana Masood Azhar in 2000, after he split with the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. In 2002 the government of Pervez Musharraf banned the group, which changed its name to Khaddam ul-Islam and continued doing what it had been doing before without missing a beat... (JeM), a group allegedly operating from Pak territory, was involved in the Feb 14 attack on a security convoy in India-held Kashmire’s district of Pulwama. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs said that it had provided Pakistain with "specific details of JeM complicity in the Pulwama terror attack and the presence of JeM terror camps and its leadership in Pakistain."
The source said the dossier contained few telephone numbers and WhatsApp IDs. "Our investigation could not link those numbers to the Pulwama attack," the source said, adding that the WhatsApp IDs had been sent to the US-based parent company, but no response had been received yet.
The dossier, Indian media had previously reported, contained information about JeM’s recruitment drives in the past two years, despite being listed by the Pakistain government as a terrorist group. The information was reportedly gleaned from open sources such as blogs, websites, Facebook and Twitter.
The source said that Pakistain remains committed to its offer of full cooperation and collaboration, but cannot punish anyone without evidence.
"Pakistain has acted with a high sense of responsibility and extended full cooperation," stated the FO release. "We do so in the interest of regional peace and security. We have sought further information / evidence from India to take the process forward."
After the Pulwama attack, Prime Minister Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems... offered cooperation in the investigation if credible evidence were provided by India. The two sessions of the National Security Committee held while cross-border tensions were escalating had also reiterated the offer of cooperation.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/28/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[WSJ] With the test, which destroyed an Indian satellite orbiting around 186 miles up, India joined the U.S., Russia and China as the only nations with such capability
Posted by: Fred ||
03/28/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
[IsraelTimes] Education Minister Naftali Bennett responds to the EU condemnation of the US recognition of Israeli illusory sovereignty over the Golan Heights, telling the bloc of 28 nations "shame on you."
"The Golan Heights, and Jerusalem and the land of Israel has been the home of the Jewish people thousands of years before La Belle France was the home of the French and the UK the home of the British so we will continue building our amazing country," he says in a video posted on Twitter. "We’ll continue defending the free world from radical Islam even though you don’t deserve it."
In an earlier statement, EU member states unanimously rejected the US recognition of Israeli illusory sovereignty over the Golan, saying the shift in longstanding American foreign policy was not in keeping with international law.
Trump formally signed the proclamation alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, reversing more than a half-century of US policy in the Middle East. The US is the first country to recognize Israel’s illusory sovereignty over the Golan, which the rest of the international community regards as occupied territory.
#4
Russia and China are especially laughable. One could make the case that in France and Great Britain's cases, the locals would vote to remain with their "colonial" power, where that is probably not the case in the Golan Heights (I have my doubts, honestly, but one could argue that). But There is no way that Russia could honestly maintain a hold of all of its territory without its iron grip, nor China over Tibet without the same.
[Ynet] Despite Israeli efforts, Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth", has acquired an impressive array of weapons including Qassam rockets, homemade R-160 (km range), Iranian Fajr-5 rockets, drones, mortars and attack tunnels.
The rocket fired from the Gazoo Strip on Monday was one of the most powerful launched ever by Gazoo murderous Moslems, flying nearly 120 kilometers (70 miles) before it slammed into a house in central Israel, wounding seven people.
Over more than a decade, the Islamic murderous Moslem Hamas group has built up a large arsenal of rockets and missiles. It started with crude short-range projectiles and now possesses rockets that can strike virtually anywhere in Israel.
Continued on Page 49
#2
another technical advance that the IDF needs is a way to kill the missiles in their early boost phase, especially the long range ones
will require having a working directed energy device on a drone, good targeting, etc.
probably several years away
of course Skidmark's solution of having the stored missiles explode in situ works too
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/28/2019 13:13 Comments ||
Top||
#3
So expect secondary and tertiary explosions?
Quaternary explosions if you include heads at the UN.
Hamas has painted themselves into a bit of a corner. For years, they made a living annoying the Juice, causing enough mayhem to earn resistance points but not enough to bring the wrath of the IDF down on their heads once and for all. Now, thanks to the deep pockets of their sponsors, they have all sorts of up-gunned weapons like long-range missiles and such. No more launching bottle rockets off a rail propped up on cinder blocks!
The problem is all this new kit can do some real damage AND Hamas's sponsors expect some return on their investment. Throw in Hamas supporters, always a frothy bunch, clamoring for action and you have a recipe for an actual war.
#4
This need to be eradicated. And like it or not, a large force ground raid of a week or so in duration will be needed to root out and demolish this stuff.
[IsraelTimes] Statistical review finds Paleostinians launched 1,233 rockets from the Strip, hurled 94 bombs and 600 Molotov cocktails across the border fence.
Israel said on Wednesday that more than 2,000 violent incidents have emanated from the Gazoo Strip since Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,-orchestrated weekly border demonstrations erupted a year ago.
A statistical review found that Paleostinians launched 1,233 rockets from Gazoo, hurled 94 bombs and 600 Molotov cocktails across the security fence and committed 152 acts of arson against Israeli forces.
The report said rocket fire killed one Israeli and injured 126. Paleostinian attacks on the security fence killed one Israeli soldier and maimed 16.
It said incendiary kites have torched thousands of acres of Israeli farmland, causing over $9.5 million in damage.
Israel has been accused internationally for using disproportionate force against unarmed protesters, but the military says troops only open fire after they come under attack and their lives are in danger. Over the past year, nearly 200 Paleostinians have been killed by Israeli fire. Hamas has claimed dozens of them as members.
There was a spike in tensions this week after a rocket fired from the Gazoo Strip hit a house in the agricultural community of Mishmeret in central Israel and destroyed it completely, wounding seven people. Israel responded with Arclight airstrikes on scores of targets in the Gazoo Strip.
Since Hamas wrested control of the Gazoo Strip from the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... ’s Paleostinian Authority in a bloody 2007 coup, Israel has fought three campaigns against the Islamist terror group, which calls for Israel’s destruction.
Throughout the recent violence, Egyptian military intelligence officials have been working to broker a ceasefire. Israel is reportedly demanding an end to rocket fire and to all violence along the border, including the weekly riots along the Gazoo border fence and the launching of airborne incendiary and bombs into Israel.
On Monday, the Israel Defense Forces deployed two additional brigades to the Gazoo border region and called up approximately 1,000 reservists for air defense and other select units.
[ALMASDARNEWS] Secretary-General of Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah urged the Arab countries to withdraw from the the Arab Peace Initiative during the ongoing Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... Summit in Tunisia, as a response to US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... ’s recognition of Israeli illusory sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Nasrallah made the televised address from an undisclosed location in Leb on Tuesday.
"If there is any remaining honour, conscience and magnanimity in the Arab world and the Arab states, the summit of Tunisia will announce the withdrawal from the Arab Peace Initiative, which was decided at the Beirut Summit in 2002 and return to the point of zero," said Nasrallah.
"After the Golan [Heights recognition], we have to expect, on any given day and hour, that Trump will emerge on the Arab and Islamic worlds and declare recognition of Israeli illusory sovereignty over the West Bank," he added.
Withdraw from the pretend plan that would accomplish nothing and bind no one? Sure, why not — so long as dramatic flouncing is included.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/28/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
The cancelation is not permanent, rather temporary for the next two days in order to let the Egyptian delegation to try and mediate a ceasefire before the Saturday border marches #Israel#Gazahttps://t.co/Z0OOUXi5tR
[Rudaw] With the web of US sanctions tightening, Iran faces a host of challenges as it looks to an isolated port in the country’s far southeast to maintain the flow of goods.
The port in Chabahar, only about 100 kilometres (62 miles) from the Pakistain border and located on the Indian Ocean, is Iran’s largest outside the Gulf. It is also the only Iranian port with exemptions from unilateral economic sanctions reimposed by the United States in 2018.
That is due mainly to the pivotal role of the port, and a planned railway line, in breaking landlocked Afghanistan’s dependence on Pakistain for trade with the world, especially India. Afghan trade as well as plans for a trading route by rail between central Asia and the Indian Ocean called the North-South Corridor are the main reasons the Islamic republic has invested one billion dollars in Chabahar’s Shahid Beheshti port, official sources say.
"We will keep on developing this port... our rail network, road network and airport are all being developed, so that we can implement the North-South Corridor," Roads and Urban Development Minister Mohammad Eslami told AFP while visiting Chabahar for a development conference.
‘TRAFFIC WILL PICK UP’
More than 200 hectares (almost 500 acres) of land have been reclaimed from the sea for the project and over 17.5 million cubic metres (618 million cubic feet) dredged, creating a 16.5-metre (54-foot) draught.
But more than a year since the new installations became operational in December 2017, business has yet to pick up. The ships that officials say have docked in the past year have only loaded and unloaded 2.1 million tonnes of cargo, a far cry from the port’s annual capacity of 8.5 million tonnes. Only 20 ships have docked at the new section of the port and most of its three kilometres of waterfront remains unutilised, with new machinery and neatly lined-up cranes standing idle.
But authorities remain upbeat about the prospects for growth.
Hossein Shahdadi of the provincial ports and maritime authority said that in the first 11 months of the past Iranian year, which started on March 21, 2018, "there has been a 56 percent increase in cargo handled at the port compared with the previous year".
"We’ve also had a 25 percent rise in the number of ships calling at the port" on the Gulf of Oman, he said.
Arun Kumar Gupta, managing director of India Ports Global Limited which has a 10-year concession at the new port, played down the startup issues.
"Any port will have a gestation period, there will be lulls but we are very sure that traffic will pick up," Gupta told AFP.
‘BORN WITH SANCTIONS’
The Indian company began work in December and has so far handled only an average of 60,000 tonnes of cargo per month. But Gupta is counting on the port’s proximity to India and Afghanistan to attract business.
Chabahar’s location, however, carries its own risks as it lies in the volatile Sistan Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... province where Death Eater jihadists operate.
In December, a suicide kaboom on the local police headquarters killed two coppers.
During an investment conference in February, security was tight with many roads cut off and hundreds of armed security personnel deployed to protect delegates.
Apart from security concerns, US sanctions banning financial transactions with Iran make it ever harder to pay or receive payments. Some like Afsaneh Rabiani, who runs a freight forwarding company, see Chabahar as an opportunity for "those willing to take the risk".
"I’ve been researching Chabahar for the past year and a half, and the infrastructure is now in place to do serious work here," she said.
As for the sanctions, Iran’s roads minister said the challenge was nothing new.
"We were born with sanctions. Ever since the (1979 Islamic) revolution, we have been under sanctions and we are working on how to counter them," Eslami said, as he oversaw the unloading of a first shipment of Afghan goods lined up to be re-exported from Chabahar.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/28/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
The port in Chabahar
Gee, only 400 miles from the new US Navy facility.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. ..
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire..jpg)
[DAWN] 
[DAWN] The Foreign Office on Wednesday formally conveyed to India the message that the initial information shared by that country regarding the alleged involvement of Pakistain-based elements in the Pulwama attack could not substantiate the imputation, and offered to examine any fresh proof ‐ whenever it is available.
[WSJ] With the test, which destroyed an Indian satellite orbiting around 186 miles up, India joined the U.S., Russia and China as the only nations with such capability
[Rudaw] With the web of US sanctions tightening, Iran faces a host of challenges as it looks to an isolated port in the country’s far southeast to maintain the flow of goods.
