On 2 September, ahead of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit, the Pentagon announced the cancellation of US$300 million in aid to Pakistan for its alleged failure to take effective action against terrorist networks operating from its soil, including the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban. This was part of a broader cut announced on 4 January. Meanwhile, the history of unsettled borders, periodic… Read more »
UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has called on the international community to take “concrete and meaningful” action to alleviate the suffering of Kashmiri people under Indian occupation, while stressing the need for a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir dispute. “As a party to the Kashmir dispute, this is the UN’s long-standing obligation,” Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN,… Read more »
The Indian and Pakistani governments have accused each other of sabotaging peace talks in the latest spat over militancy in the Kashmir region. But where did it all go wrong for the proposed foreign ministers’ meeting? India recently canceled a proposed meeting between Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, which was set to take place… Read more »
SRINAGAR, India (AP) — The first phase of local council elections ended Monday in Indian-controlled Kashmir amid tight security and a separatist-sponsored shutdown. Authorities deployed tens of thousands of additional soldiers in the already highly militarized region for the elections, which are being held in four phases. Voter turnout was slightly over 8 percent in Muslim-dominated areas of the Kashmir… Read more »
Three weeks following India’s Supreme Court Judgement to decriminalize gay sex, their top court has decided to decriminalize another British-colony-era law, adultery. Since 1860, a man could be jailed for up to five years if he had sex with a married woman without getting her husband’s permission. It’s important that India has been decriminalizing these outdated laws as India continues… Read more »
In June 2014, a little-known Sunni insurgent group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) captured city after city in a three-week blitz through Northern Iraq that ended with the declaration of an Islamic caliphate under its commander Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. Combining tactical innovation on the ground with an unprecedented global propaganda offensive, ISIS changed the face… Read more »
Diplomats from India and Pakistan aired their differences over the disputed region of Kashmir at the UN this week, in what was supposed to be a general session on the merits of mediation at the organisation’s headquarters in New York. UN secretary general Antonio Guterres opened the Security Council debate by saying that mediating peace had become “increasingly complex” in the modern world – and so it proved,… Read more »
BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – An indigenous woman in northern India is taking her fight for inheritance rights to the country’s top court, leading others who are pushing back against sexist laws and customs. Ratan Manjari, who heads the women’s rights group Mahila Kalyan Parishad in Himachal Pradesh state, received land she had inherited from her parents – a rare… Read more »
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s top court on Thursday decriminalized adultery in a landmark judgment aimed at upholding the right to equality and freedom, scrapping a law first brought in under British colonial rule in 1860. In a unanimous judgment, the five-member bench of the top court struck down a law that meant a man who had sex with a… Read more »
US forces in Afghanistan confirmed Sunday that the head of ISIS in the country was killed in a strike a little over a week ago. The strike, on Saturday, August 25, was in the eastern area of Nangarhar province and killed Abu Sayed Orakzai, according to a statement from US forces in Afghanistan. CNN reported previously that the ISIS leader and 10… Read more »