The Londoner

By Sikander Hayat Appointing Mullah Fazallulah as the chief of of TTP was a very calculated move by Taliban to convey the message to Pakistan that they are not going to negotiate. It is time that Pakistan has a clear policy with respect to Taliban, Afghanistan & India. It is now very clear that intelligence agencies like RAW , NDS & CIA are all now working together to undermine Pakistan & keep it unstable in the medium to long term. Indian establishment has been successful in keeping Pakistan busy in Waziristan & other parts of FATA and keep their attention away from Kashmir . Also, India is waging a dirty war in Baluchistan against the Pakistani state & its civilians. Indian intelligence is waging a proxy war in Waziristan & Balochistan by funding the terrorist groups like that of Mullah Fazallulah who is known as the butcher of Swat . On one hand, India talks about resolving the Kashmir issue & on the other, they are backstabbing Pakista...

The Chinese government is rapidly building a bigger, more sophisticated military . Here’s what they have, what they want, and what it means for the U.S. In a single generation, China has transformed itself from a largely agrarian country into a global manufacturing and trading powerhouse . China’s economy is 20 times bigger than it was two decades ago and is on track to surpass the United States’ as the world’s largest. But perhaps most startling has been the growth of China’s ambitious and increasingly powerful military . Just 10 years ago, the budget for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was roughly $20 billion. Today, that number is more like $100 billion. (Some analysts think it’s closer to $160 billion.) The PLA’s budget is only a sixth of what the U.S. devotes to defense annually, but defense dollars go much further in China, and in the years ahead, Chinese military spending will grow at the same rate as its economy. Meanwhile, ...

" ... Young guerrilla girl Kumsuni delivers letters to comrades, and one day is caught by the police. When the policemen demand the girl disclose information about the guerillas , she spits into the faces of her interrogators. As the policemen drag Kumsuni to her execution, the heroic girl cries out ' Long Live General Kim Il Sung! '" ...Pre-teen boy Ri Kwang-ch'un is a member of a secret anti-Japanese children's organization. Along with others, he helps the "Red Guard uncles". However, one day policemen apprehend the boy. When the "bastards" tortur...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Militants launched a coordinated assault on the main airport in the northwest city of Peshawar late Saturday, killing at least five people and injuring 45 others in an attack likely to renew questions about the government’s ability to combat Pakistan’s five-year insurgency. [Updated 11:57 a.m. Dec. 15: Authorities later raised the death toll to nine -- four civilians and five militants. ] Militants fired a volley of rocket-propelled grenades at Bacha Khan International Airport, damaging a section of the boundary wall, said Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain. The airport is also home to an air base used by the Pakistani air force. No aircraft were damaged in the attack, and after a couple of hours troops had secured the airport and surrounding area, Hussain said. There was no word as of late Saturday night where those who were killed or injured were at the time of the attack, but local authorities said most of the rocket fire hit houses ...

In the wake of the 2012 election, it is clear that there has been a sea change in the perceptions of the American electorate on which party is the better steward of the country’s national-security interests. Traditionally, Republican candidates had always enjoyed a so-called “national-security advantage” (at least in those elections where foreign and defense policies were major issues). Only a short eight years ago, George W. Bush enjoyed a eighteen-point lead over John Kerry when exit polls asked voters to rate who they trusted to wage the "war on terror" more effectively, and of those voters who made national security a voting issue, sixty percent favored the Republican incumbent. No longer. The November 2012 Rasmussen report now gives Democrats the edge when the question is posed as to which party is better equipped to deal with national security. Veterans and active duty military are more likely to split their votes rather than acting as a reliably Repub...

Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem Born in Solingen, Germany, Adolf Eichmann was the son of a businessman and industrialist, Karl Adolf Eichmann. In 1914.   Eichmann joined the Austrian branch of the NSDAP (member number 889 895) and of the SS, enlisting on 1 April 1932, as an SS-Anwärter. He was accepted as a full SS member that November, appointed an SS-Mann, and assigned the SS number 45326. For the next year, Eichmann was a member of the Allgemeine-SS and served in a mustering formation operating from Salzburg. In September 1934 Eichmann landed a position in Heydrich's SD, the powerful SS security service. There he started out as a filing clerk cataloguing information about Freemasons. Predictably, the Nazis believed that the Masons were assisting the Jews in their attempts to gain world domination. Eichmann's job was to compile information on prominent Freemasons in Germany. However he was soon assigned to the Jewish section, which w...

Washington faced a 3 AM moment a few months ago when it learned about the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the other Americans who were with him. This was not the first one, of course, nor will it be the last. I was introduced to the idea of the 3 AM moment in 2001, when I was undergoing the two-week training session on embassy leadership in preparation for becoming the U.S. ambassador to Singapore. One of the exercises involved something of a trick question: What is the most important article of clothing for an ambassador? Is it white tails, for state weddings and funerals? Perhaps black tails, for formal dances and banquets? Maybe even an ordinary business suit for ministry calls? In fact, the answer was pajamas and a bathrobe. Simply put, most every ambassador eventually finds himself or herself managing a crisis from the ambassador's residence at 3 AM. Best to have some good PJs and a respectable ro...

The man with the wire-rim glasses and bushy beard, speaking calmly in American-accented English, is familiar from dozens of Web videos urging violent jihad against the United States. Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric, during a sermon broadcast online. But in one astonishing clip, recorded more than a year before the man, Anwar al-Awlaki , was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike in Yemen , the American-born cleric had a very different mission: to propose marriage to a third wife. “This message is specifically for Sister Aminah,” Mr. Awlaki says in the video to his future bride , a comely 32-year-old blonde from Croatia who he hoped would join him in his fugitive existence. The woman had expressed fervent admiration for Mr. Awlaki on his Facebook page and later made clear in her own video reply that she shared his radical views, saying, “I am ready for dangerous things.” ...

By JAMES D. HORNFISCHER From books to movies, 2012 could be called the year of the Navy SEAL. Since the night of May 2, 2011, when the unit known as SEAL Team 6 found and killed Osama bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the elite commandos have been celebrated in memoir after memoir, from accounts of life in Team 6 by Howard E. Wasdin and Don Mann to books by "regular" SEALs—Chris Kyle's "American Sniper," Brandon Webb's "The Red Circle" and Marcus Luttrell's "Service" (which I was privileged to have had a hand in). The biggest of all was "No Easy Day" by "Mark Owen," a pseudonym for Matt Bissonnette, a SEAL who participated in the raid. The film "Act of Valor," made with the cooperation of the SEAL command, topped the box office in February. A cable movie, "SEAL Team Six," will air Nov. 4, Mr. Luttrell's first memoir, "Lone Survivor," is in...