By  Rida Zaheer President Barack Obama has cleared the way for the US to provide military assistance to Somalia as it rebuilds itself following years of conflict.  He  issued a memo to Secretary of State John Kerry saying it would "strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace". The move now gives Mr Kerry the option to provide defence aid to Somalia. Last month, the UN Security Counc ...

By Jim Marshall Term limits preclude Hamid Karzai from seeking re-election in the Afghan presidential election slated to occur one year from today (parliamentary elections will follow in 2015). So, for the first time since 2001, Afghanistan will soon have a new chief executive along with a new parliament, a leadership transition that has immense implications for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, yet one that ...

Rida Zaheer The first female prime minister in her country's history, Thatcher came to embody a turn toward a free-market political program that sought to unleash economic dynamism through an aggressive program of privatizations and tax reductions. Thatcherism -- as her political program became known to both her supporters and detractors -- would throw off the heavy hand of the state and seek a Britain with ...

By Sajjad Shaukat With the acceleration of propaganda campaign by the external elements against Pakistan and its army, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid who has pro-Indian tilt has also been maligning Pak Army. Unfortunately, some prominent persons of our country also speak in the tone foreign anti-Pakistan entities. In this regard, unlike the past years, this time a ceremony was held in Dhaka ...

Asif Haroon Raja It has been alleged that Pakistani troops raped 300,000 women on and after March 25, 1971 in former East Pakistan. This allegation has generally been accepted by the world at large and even by some Pakistani secular pseudo intellectuals like Tahira Abdullah, Asma Gilani and others. Sheikh Mujib was the inventor of this themes fed to him by India. This was phenomenal exaggeration which has n ...

Asif Haroon Raja The sudden demise of Quaid-e-Azam on September 11, 1948 left the nation stricken with grief and added to the travails of Pakistan but provided an opportunity to India to put its plan to undo Pakistan into motion. Hardly had he closed his eyes when the hidden demented forces of hate and greed who had remained suppressed under the awe-inspiring personality of Quaid, surfaced and started to di ...

By Dennis J. Bernstein In early March, the U.S. and South Korea launched an expanded set of war games on the Korean Peninsula, prompting concerns in some circles that the military exercises might touch off an escalation of tensions with North Korea. Christine Hong, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, worried that the U.S. “was lurching towards war” since “the military exercises that t ...

By AFP March 23, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -"AFP" - The US Central Intelligence Agency has been feeding information to select rebel fighters in Syria to try to make them more effective against government troops, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. Citing unnamed current and former US officials, the newspaper said the new CIA effort reflected a change in the administration's approach that aims ...