Unreliable data can incite and escalate a conflict – the latest UN-sponsored figure of 60,000 should not be reported as fact By Sharmine Narwani February 16, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - Less than two months after the UN announced "shocking" new casualty figures in Syria, its high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay estimates that deaths are "probably now approaching 70,000". But two years int ...

By Sajjad Shaukat Both open and clandestine techniques of state terrorism are being employed by India to suppress the struggle of Kashmiris who are fighting for their genuine right of self-determination as recognised by the UN resolutions. In this regard, after fabricating a false case of his role in attacking the Indian parliament in 2001, Mohammed Afzal Guru was hanged on February 9, this year, while he h ...

By Usman Khalid, Director Rifah Institute of Foreign Affairs (RIFA) Not many people know that Hindus are a minority in India. The number of those within the fold of chaturvarna i.e. four castes (Brahmin, Kashatri, Vesh and Shudara) are no more than 15% of the population of India – the same as the Muslims. The original inhabitants of India are treated as ‘untouchables’ like the shudras but their number is 65 ...

Asif Haroon Raja Few thousands fighters under Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Hizb-e-Islami leader Gulbadin Hikmatyar have been fighting the occupation forces and ANSF for twelve years. The resistance forces consider ANSF and ruling regime led by Karzai as collaborators while the latter view the Taliban as extremists and anti-democratic. The US punished them for collaborating with Al-Qaeda. Failing to defeat ...

By Joseph Kishore The Obama administration is discussing the expansion of its drone program into Algeria and other countries in northwest Africa, according to media reports. The preparations to extend the military and CIA “kill lists” takes place amidst proposals to more securely institutionalize the global program of assassination. According to a front-page report in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal headline ...

Professor Ali Sukhanver Recently a Bangladeshi judicial tribunal sentenced life imprisonment to Abdul Qader Mullah, a leader of Jamat-e-Islami, for his role during the independence war against Pakistan in 1971. According to the media reports, somewhere in 2010, the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina initiated the process of trying those accused of committing crimes against humanity during the war, u ...

By Franklin Lamb Tehran -- Azadeh, a graduate law student from Tehran University, on the sidelines of Iran’s Third Annual Hollywoodism (www.hollywoodism.orghttp) reminded her interlocutors, of the obvious damming admissions last week by two US politicians: “It would be a defense lawyer’s worst nightmare wouldn’t it? I mean to have one's clients, in this case the Vice-President of the United States and the o ...

Ali Ashraf Khan The Kargil episode that in 1999 involved India and Pakistan in another military adventure and ended with the humiliation of Pakistan has since then boggled the minds of not only Indians and Pakistanis but of people interested in Indo-Pak relations and world politics all over the world as to what was the actual purpose of that adventure that cost the lives of hundreds of soldiers on both side ...