The Londoner

  By Sikander Hayat  The urge in the US these days is to delegate everything to do with South Asia to India and make India a defence wall against Chinese aspirations . President Trump wanted to leave Afghanistan fully and to that end he was supporting and sponsoring talks between President Ghani’s government in Kabul and the Taliban . Trump drew down American troops in Afghanistan to put pressure on Ashraf Ghani's government to talk to the Taliban. Trump wanted to concentrate on the United States as the debt mountain continues to reach new heights as the  current US debt is $27.3 trillions as of January 2021. The United States needs to get its own house in order, keep its currency as the reserve currency of the world and to do that it needs to bring down the debt levels to manageable levels and cut deficit spending.  Right now the Biden government is doing exactly the opposite by doubling down on deficit spending, spending trillions on cheques to people who in s...

By Sikander Hayat  The problem with the Euro is that it treats a country like Greece as if it is the same as Germany in terms of its economy, politics, culture and other aspects of its social fabric. We know very well that this is not the case as countries and cultures acquire ways of doing things in their own way. Greece cannot be turned into Germany, Germany cannot be turned into Greece and yet the single currency euro tries to do just that. Since 2008, Greece's economy has gone down 25%, loosing millions of jobs, forcing citizens to emigrate, pension schemes to collapse, loss of sovereignty and directly leading to the rise of ultra right and ultra left wing political parties. Germany is widely blamed by the Greek for their country's problems. People of Greece invoke second world war and occupation by Nazi Germany as an earlier example of German belligerence . Greeks argue that what Germans did militarily during the second world war , they are now doing to ...

By Sikander Hayat 1. India has never accepted Pakistan and whenever any Indian politician or intellectual tries to say anything of the sort, he or she is demonised by the Indian media and society and branded a traitor straight away. Story of Jaswant Singh is not very old and then there was Advani on Pakistan a few years ago. People like Amir Khan & Shah Rukh Khan and whoever does not fit the Hindutwa agenda is told to go to Pakistan.  2. The only country Pakistan has ever fought a war against is India and 1948, 1965, 1971 are examples of this long history of conflict. Siachin Glacier is still hot and many Pakistani & Indian soldiers have lost there lives to cold and hostile action by enemy. Siachin is the prime example of India's hate for Pakistan.  3. According to the formula of British exit from Pakistan & India in 1947, any autonomous Muslim majority areas were to join Pakistan but India forced the Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir to allow Ind...

Sheikh Hasina Wajid ( who is an Indian puppet installed in Dhaka by Indian intellegence agency RAW) has murdered two more of her adversaries in opposition and therefore has continued to kill political rivals to avenge her father's murder at the hands of revolutionaries.   The Bangladeshi authorities on Sunday hanged two senior opposition leaders on made up charges relating to India's invasion of East Pakistan in 1971. Violent protests have followed previous convictions and executions from political trials, and the authorities deployed heavy security and asked businesses adjacent to the Dhaka Central Jail to close their doors. Toward midnight on Saturday, an imam was seen entering the jail, and family members filed out after final meetings with the victims, Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed. Both were executed shortly after midnight. Bangladesh’s law minister, Anisul Huq, lied that the two men petitioned the president for cle...

Pakistan's strategically important Gwadar port, being developed by China as part of the $46 billion Economic Corridor linking both the countries, will not pose any military threat to India, Chinese media said today. "The Western and Indian media have tended to exaggerate the threat of Gwadar port to India, pointing to its military functions and claiming that the port will be built into a military base for the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean. Some Indian reports have even claimed that China's 'takeover' of the port could be a strategic game changer," an article in the state-run  Global Times  said. As part of the Economic Corridor plan, Pakistan has officially kicked off a project last week by handing over more than 2,000 acres of land in Gwadar port on Arabian Sea to Chinese firm for 43 year lease for commercial development. The deal will turn the port into a free port similar to Hong Kong, according to Chinese media reports. China ha...

Two people have locked in 140 guests and 30 employees in "a hostage-taking situation", the hotel's US owners said. Gunmen entered the hotel, which is popular with expat workers, shooting and shouting "God is great!" in Arabic. A Malian army commander told the AP news agency that about 20 hostages had been freed. Hostages able to recite verses of the Koran were being released, a security source has told Reuters news agency. Six staff from Turkish Airlines are staying at the hotel, and a Chinese guest told China's state news agency Xinhua that he was among about seven Chinese tourists trapped there. French newspaper Le Monde quoted the Malian security ministry as saying at least three hostages had been killed, AFP news agency reports. Read the full story at BBC website

BBC Paris Correspondent Hugh Schofield writes: The news is a breakthrough, because Abaaoud is regarded as an individual of great importance in so-called Islamic State - a man responsible for organising not just Friday's attacks, but also others such as the Thalys train attack two months ago. He is believed to have been a close friend of Salah Abdeslam, the eighth gunman who is still on the run. However identifying Abaaoud also raised serious questions. The man was high on French and Belgian wanted lists, and yet managed to travel from Syria to the heart of Paris without ever leaving a trace.

By Sikander Hayat  Turks must abandon European dream  as they have rejected again and again by  Europeans . They must understand that they are too big and powerful for the EU to allow them in and by this time they must understand that not matter how secular they are or strive to be, the tag of being a Muslim country is hampering their dream. They must leave this notion and try to revive RCD so that  Turkey, Iran and Pakistan  can create an economic and ever closer political union and with 300 million people, this would be the most respected economic zone in the world. There are pre-requisites to this zone being established and must be fulfilled before anything like this could happen.  In Pakistan, military must relinquish the rule  and give the country back to civilians, Iran must get rid of its mullah regime to establish a secular forward looking Islamic country and Turkey must forget about being the member of the EU ( there must be a limit to hum...

Some 1,036 million dollars would be invested in Gwadar till 2018 on different projects related to improving basic road infrastructure and power projects on the basis of grant and interest-free loans. Talking to The News, Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal said the projects to be completed in Gwadar included Gwadar Coal Power Project (360 million dollars), new Gwadar Airport (260 million dollars), construction of breakwaters (130 million dollars), water treatment plant (114 million dollars), state-of-the-art hospital (100 million dollars), Free Economic Zones (35 million dollars), dredging of channels (27 million dollars) and technical and vocational institute (10 million dollars). He said all the projects in Gwadar would be completed on the basis of loans that have been converted into grants and interest-free loans so the cost of the overall basket can be reduced to a considerable level. The minister said the bidding process for the China-Pakistan Economic Cor...