Conflict

The Supreme Court of India’s directive to the Chhattisgarh government to disband and disarm 6,500 special police officers (SPOs) engaged in anti-Maoist operations is a slap on the latter’s face. On Tuesday, a Supreme Court bench ordered the Union government “to cease and desist, forthwith, from using any of its funds in supporting, directly or indirectly the recruitment of SPOs for the purposes of engaging in any form of counter-insurgency activities against Maoist/Naxalite groups”. SPOs, also...

Critics have long argued that the Indian government lost the plot in Kashmir ages back. But as an incident on Saturday shows, it is now increasingly turning schizophrenic — imagining enemies where there aren’t any. Well-known human rights activist Gautam Navlakha was detained at Srinagar International Airport on his arrival there on Saturday. He was not allowed to enter the city, and was served an order under section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Core (CRPC). Navlakha, who’s a frequent visitor...

India has been ranked 135th in the Global Peace Index 2011 released on Wednesday. India ranks below countries like Myanmar (133), Nepal (95) and Bangladesh (83). It, of course, is better placed than Pakistan (146), Russia (147), Afghanistan (150), Iraq (152) and Somalia (153). The GPI is one of the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness. It gauges ongoing domestic and international conflict, safety and security in society, and militarisation in 153 countries by taking into account 23...

It’s difficult for a journalist visiting Kashmir to return without meeting her. For, hers is one face of resilience in the 22-year Kashmir conflict. The unlettered Parveena Ahangar has been the voice of families left traumatised and bereaved in this protracted unrest. Her placid face masks the ordeal she has herself endured. But as chairperson of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), she leads from the front – she does not give up hope. Ahangar’s tryst with Indian authorities...

I was a tad surprised when he told me that he wouldn’t be able to meet me late evening since it was late, and he would have to return home. You don’t always expect guys to rush homewards just because it is a trifle late. We had initially planned to meet early evening, but another appointment had held me up. So we caught up on phone, and fixed 8:30 the morrow morn for a tête-à-tête. Since you don’t expect things to move at the same pace in Kashmir as it does in Delhi, I took it easy. I was late...

US President Barack Obama’s smug assertion that he had ruled out a drone attack on the Osama bin Laden haven in Abbottabad to avoid civilian casualties is a joke. It is, in fact, a cruel joke on hundreds of innocent people who have been blown to smithereens on the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier in brazen drone attacks. When so many could have been passed off as collateral damage in the war on terror earlier, there was no reason why they could not have carried out a drone attack one last, furtive...

If it is the Indian mainstream media which has been keeping you informed about Kashmir, trust me, you have been in the wrong hands. Lies are peddled by the government, and in turn faithfully disseminated by the Indian media. This is a brief attempt at dispelling those lies-turned-myths. Kashmir is militant-infested Who told you so? Watching too many Bollywood films, or what? If the official admission is anything to go by, there are not more than 500 militants operating today in Kashmir. And all...

Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution is the first of its kind: the toppling of an autocrat in the Arab world who was till the end backed by Western powers. What now remains to be seen is if unrest in this Maghreb country will spread across the Middle East. Early signs, if there can be any, are already there. As in Tunisia, Algeria too has been ravaged by riots in protest against food prices. Shortly after Tunisian President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali fled his country, the Algerian government of Abdelaziz...

In less than a week, as many as three ceasefire agreements have been extended in the Northeast. Technically, these are not called ceasefires; they are dubbed Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreements. Without going into the semantical or technical differences between the two, we know there's one thing that ought to be at the core of these agreements — to bring about peace and stability. On December 29, came an official statement saying that the SoO Agreement with the Dima Halam Daogah (Nunisa)...

No journalist worth his or her salt can ever want to see a day without one's paper. But journalists in Manipur, time and again, are pushed so much against the wall, that they are left with no other choice. It's happened once again in the state — this time, it signalling a wrong start to the New Year. Newspapers failed to hit the stands on January 1, and as reports last came in, the stand of the beleaguered scribes has failed to make any impression on the callous rulers of the state. Journalists...