The Londoner

By Sikander Hayat Kashmir is slowly being gobbled up by India by ethinic cleansing and population transfer from the rest of India to Kashmir. Pakistan’s options are limited in terms of taking it back from India through an open armed conflict given the disparity between the two countries in terms of economy and resources. Pakistan can only play a long game by improving its economy, get richer, have good relations with richer/influential nations and wait for the Kashmiris to fight for their right of self determination .  Pakistan has made some good progress in terms of constitutional clarity for the people of Gilgit Balistan and Azad Kashmir both of which are effectively now fifth and sixth provinces of Pakistan. Azad Kashmir is now a semi autonomous region with its own President ( Masood Khan ) , Prime Minister ( Raja Farooq Haider Khan ) and Supreme Court. Azad Kashmir has its own constitution to provide international clarity in terms of status of Indian occupied Kashmir vis ...

By Sikander Hayat  As per this story in BBC, Australia wants UK to open its doors to Australian immigrants in order for Mrs May to secure a free trade deal with Australia . Now as far as I can recall, the whole Brexit issue was about immigration numbers which stood at an influx of half a million people per year into UK.  If Mrs May's conservative governmen t signs such a deal with Australia or for that matter India ( with India's 1.2 billion populatio n ready to get on the next plane to UK), what was the point of Brexit and all the pain that country has gone through over the last year and will go through for many years to come. The main reason behind Brexit is an overflowing national health service , overflowing schools, overflowing roads, crowded cities without adequate housing and general lack of resources to accommodate a large number of people. Any deal which ends up getting more people in to UK will be rejected by the people who voted to leave European...

The energy crisis in Pakistan which suffers about 12 hours of power cuts a day has worsened in recent years amid 4,000 megawatts of electricity shortfall which the Iran gas pipeline is being fostered to cover. Iran has completed its part of the project with more than $2 billion of investment but Pakistan has fallen behind the target to take gas deliveries in the winter of 2014. Addressing a seminar on business opportunities in the clean energy sector in Washington Tuesday, Pakistan’s Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Khaqan Abbasi said he hoped sanctions on Iran would be removed soon. “The Iran gas line project is the best option for Pakistan. But as long US sanctions are there, we cannot buy gas from Iran,” the website of the Dawn newspaper quoted him as saying. The remarks came as Turkmenistan’s leader last month ordered construction of a $10 billion rival pipeline to Pakistan and India through Afghanistan to begin despite questions about the...

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...

By Sikander Hayat With the election of Modi , India has embarked on a mission to destabilise Pakistan . Indian Army has been told to use its intelligence agency RAW to create terror in Baluchistan, FATA and other parts of Pakistan by providing arms, money and intelligence support to terror groups all over Pakistan. BJP, RSS & SHIV SENA are busy killing Muslims in india over cow meat consumption and using the following discontent to turn India into a Hindu rashtra and at the same time they are using this hindu anger to inflict pain on Pakistan. Modi belongs to RSS which has never accepted the reality of Pakistan . Even during Bihar elections , people like Amit Shah were invoking Pakistan to consolidate hindutwa vote bank. The scheme failed miserably but that has not stopped Indian state from joining hands with Taliban Mullah Fazallulah t o spread terror in Pakistan. Appointing Mullah Fazallulah as the chief of of TTP was a very calculated move by Taliban ...

The Nitish Kumar-led grand alliance on Sunday looked set to form the next government in Bihar, possibly with a three-fourths majority, an outcome which was shaped by a combination of factors. The chief factor that swung what was all along seen as a close election in favour of the alliance was the consolidation of Yadav and Muslim votes as well as support from Kumar’s primary constituency of Kurmi voters. For the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the remarks by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat that time had come to re-look at the reservation policy just ahead of the poll turned out to be a self-goal for the party. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) leaders tried to counter this but by the time the defence came, it was too late. Yadav and other backward castes, who control about 60% of the Bihar electorate, benefit from the government’s affirmative action. Kumar’s clean image and his projection as the chief minister candidate also did the magic for  the grand alliance...