Central Asia

China, Tajikistan establish strategic partnership: mineral, and oil and gas resources

May 20, 2013

Source: xinhua China and Tajikistan established a strategic partnership on Monday, pledging to boost bilateral cooperation. The announcement was made during talks held between President Xi Jinping and his visiting Tajik counterpart Emomali Rakhmon, who is visiting China from May 19 to 20. China and Tajikistan share the need to consolidate cooperation, safeguard common interests and [...]

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Pepsi to march in, as foreign troops leave Afghanistan

May 20, 2013

Source: Yahoo PepsiCo will open its first plant in Afghanistan in 2014, its Afghan partner said on Monday, the same year foreign troops complete their withdrawal from the country after 13 years of war. “It will go on stream in 2014,” Hamed Kakar, head of marketing for Dubai-based Alokozay, which has an exclusive bottling agreement with PepsiCo [...]

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Expert: Withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan may become pretext for U.S. to establish bases in Caspian region

May 18, 2013

Source: Trends.AZ Withdrawal of coalition forces from Afghanistan could become the pretext for the Americans to establish long-term bases in the Caspian region, Director General of the Caspian Cooperation Institute, Sergei Mikheev believes. “Per se, the withdrawal of troops could become the pretext for the Americans create long-term bases, and for consolidation in the region [...]

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Fearing Afghan instability, Russia mulls border troops

May 17, 2013

Source: Reuters Russia, predicting instability once NATO-led troops withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of next year, is considering deploying border guards on the Tajik-Afghan border, Moscow’s envoy to Kabul told Reuters in an interview. Moscow, still sore from its disastrous, decade-long war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, is increasingly concerned by what it describes as the combined threat [...]

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Afghan Special Operation Forces to Start Conducting Spy Flights

May 15, 2013

Source: USN Afghan special operations will start conducting their own spy missions with new fixed wing aircraft, a top U.S. commando in Afghanistan said Wednesday, adding another critical stepping stone to allow the U.S. to withdraw by 2014. The U.S. has begun supplying Afghan forces with Swiss-made PC-12 planes, and training local forces to conduct [...]

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Energy security, power and technology

May 14, 2013

Editor’s Note: Major U.S. military operations/actions to protect oil Source: Fuel Fix A team of journalism graduate students has published a detailed project on energy security, geopolitics and technology that debunks several national myths about oil. The team of nine graduate students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism spent three months investigating “vulnerabilities in U.S. [...]

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The Iran route for India to access Central Asia, Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea mineral and energy resources

May 10, 2013

Editor’s Note: Or a strategic pivot against China-Pakistan ? Source: FC India has been looking for an access route to Afghanistan through Iran for long; more so after it began constructing the Delaram-Zeranj road in Afghanistan. Upgrading of the Chabahar port on Iran’s eastern-most point and building a road connection to Zahedan city and then [...]

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U.S. Troops Replaced by an Outsourced Army in Afghanistan

May 9, 2013

Source: Fiscal Times The United States is preparing to withdraw the majority of its troops from Afghanistan next year, ending more than a decade of war that has cost this country hundreds of billion of dollars and 2,126 lives to date. But the military withdrawal does not mean the United States is out of the [...]

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US wants to keep 9 bases after combat troops finish withdrawal in 2014

May 9, 2013

Source: AP|MG The U.S. wants to keep nine bases in Afghanistan after U.S. combat troops withdraw in 2014 which is fine as long as America makes “security and economic guarantees” in exchange, President Hamid Karzai said Thursday in his first public overture in what have been private talks on a future pact between the uneasy [...]

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The Fourth Great War

May 7, 2013

Source: Algemeiner The announcement bySecretary of Defense Hagelthat the United States will “rethink all options” including arming Syrian rebel groups, was carefully hedged. “It doesn’t mean… you will” (choose any particular path). The statement however moves the U.S. closer to picking sides in a war with no good options and no good allies, and which [...]

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Authorization for Use of Military Force: a blank check for war without end

May 5, 2013

Source: Guardian A handful of Democratic and Republican senators are considering a rewrite of 60 of the most consequential words to ever pass through Congress. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed after the attacks of 11 September 2001, and provides the legal cornerstone for the so-called US “war on terror”. Only one brave Congress [...]

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C.I.A., warlords, paedophilia bazaar, looting, drug trafficking – Afghanistan heading for ‘civil war’ when west withdraws in 2014

April 29, 2013

Editor’s Note: Are there covert strategies to foment a future civil war in Afghanistan? The West has no intention of withdrawing from Afghanistan. Global Opium trade and sex trafficking rings are fueling clandestine operations to rig elections, conduct regime changes, assassinations,drone strikes all off the books. You all get the point. Related Article: CIA’s paramilitary [...]

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Narco State: Karzai’s Office Gets Bags Full Of C.I.A. Cash

April 28, 2013

Editor’s Note: Afghanistan: C.I.A., U.S. Special Operation Forces, Bags of Dollar Bills and Militia Proxy Forces Source: NYT For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central [...]

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Ladakh incursion: India, China face-off at the ‘gate of hell’

April 24, 2013

Source: Firstpost Yarkandi caravan guides on the great Himal’s routes to Leh, might have mapped the journey thus: from the great plains, climb into the pass of the black gravel, the Karakoram. From there, cross the Chip-Chap, the very quiet river, to reach Daulat Beg Oldi, the spot where the great and rich man died,. [...]

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The Geopolitical Powderkegs Most Likely to Start the Next Major War

April 24, 2013

Source: IO9 Predicting future conflicts is not easy, especially considering that social unrest and dramatic political changes can happen at virtually any time. But world-altering events don’t unfold in a vacuum — it’s all about reading the signs. Here are seven geopolitical hotspots that have the potential to change the course of history. Since the [...]

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Afghanistan Airstrikes, C.I.A. and the Secret Militia 0-4 Unit

April 18, 2013

Source: NYT The spokesman for President Hamid Karzaisaid Thursday that the C.I.A. was responsible for calling in an airstrike on April 7 that left 17 Afghan civilians dead, 12 of them children, and that the secret Afghan militias that the agency controls behaved as if they were “responsible to no one.” It was a C.I.A. operation using a [...]

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Opium Production in Afghanistan Increases

April 15, 2013

Editor’s Note: Funding clandestine warfare in Syria ? Nearly 20,000 Foreign Mercenaries Fighting In Syria Funded by Afghanistan Drug Trafficking Source: Stripes Opium cultivation is expected to increase across Afghanistan, and in several areas where the crop had previously been eliminated production has resumed, according to a U.N. report released Monday. Despite years of efforts by [...]

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Rift between Baloch militant groups fueled by American CIA, Indian RAW and Israeli Mossad

April 8, 2013

Source: PO Although some foreign elements have been maintaining unanimity among various Baloch militant groups to continue subversive acts in the province of Balochistan in order to dismember Pakistan, yet besides other insurgent outfits, rift has especially been widened between the leaders of Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and United Balochistan Army (UBA) due to personal rivalries and jealousies. Harbiyar Marri’s [...]

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Gwadar and ‘the great game’

April 2, 2013

Source: The News International It is perhaps a less known fact that when President Richard Nixon visited Pakistan in 1973, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto sought US help to construct a new port at Gwadar, and reportedly offered the US Navy use of the facility. The US, of course, was not interested as mere 70 [...]

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Central Asia: between Russia and China

April 2, 2013

Source: TZ Central Asia is home to some 65 million people living in five countries: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Since they gained independence just over 20 years ago, the political landscape has remained depressing. The region has rampant corruption, ethnic tensions and conflict and border disputes. Human rights violations are widespread, while civil [...]

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US strategic tilt towards India

March 29, 2013

Source: FP With approximately 3.2 per cent of the total world area and 28 per cent of world population the geostrategic architecture of South Asia has always attracted the great global players including the U.S. Pakistan and India – two core regional actors – have historically been vital to Washington in meeting its strategic objectives. [...]

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Rumblings of Russia’s Afghan re-entry

March 29, 2013

Source: Hindu Russia appears set to stage a re-entry into the Afghan theatre by establishing military maintenance bases inside the strife-torn nation after the withdrawal of NATO forces next year. These facilities are meant to service Russian military equipment routed through NATO to the Afghan armed forces. For several years the Pentagon has been purchasing [...]

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Pakistan intelligence agency claims Afghanistan supports Taliban splinter cells

March 27, 2013

Source: ABC News Pakistan’s intelligence agency has accused the Afghan government of supporting Taliban splinter groups. In a report presented to Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, the ISI agency alleged President Hamid Karzai’s administration was in league with groups linked to the main Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan movement, known collectively as the TTS. The report suggested the [...]

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India-China: The real military equation

March 26, 2013

Source: Business Standard China may be ahead in land power but a confrontation involving air and sea power would be a different matter altogether. Leave aside economic growth parameters and astounding leaps in infrastructure that only increase the disparity between India and China with every passing day, the story is repeated about the increasing gap [...]

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Beijing’s difficult balancing act for energy security

March 25, 2013

Source: Nation Thailand In line with its growing economic might, China’s dependence on imported oil has been rising rapidly – increasing from 33 per cent in 2009 to 55 per cent in 2012. It is expected to rise to above 60 per cent in 2015, when China will become the largest oil importer in the [...]

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The Role of MI6, ISI, CIA and Iran in Afghanistan and region crisis

March 19, 2013

Source: KP Afghanistan is considered to have a highly strategic value during the 21st century in southern and central Asian regions, owed to its geopolitical situation and untapped mineral resources. The country has proven to be a key inhibitor for the newly formed republics in central Asia besides having a high influence and pressure on [...]

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Inside Balochistan’s dirty war

March 18, 2013

Source: Hindu Late last month, Zamur Domki and her 12-year-old daughter were driving back to their home in an upmarket Karachi neighbourhood when a black car swerved across the road, blocking their route. Thinking she was a target of an armed robbery, Ms Domki offered the masked men who surrounded the car her jewellery and [...]

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Ex-ISI chief sees civil war in Pakistan after US Afghan pullout

March 14, 2013

Source: AN Gen. Hamid Gul, a former chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan and one of the architects of “Afghan Jihad” possesses a rich knowledge about Pakistan’s politics and its relationship with Afghanistan. In a wide-ranging interview with Urdu News, he spoke about the ramifications of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan for the neighboring [...]

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U.S. intelligence community believes that Central Asia’s threats come from within

March 13, 2013

Source: Asia Plus An article “U.S. Intel: Central Asia’s Threats Come Not From Afghanistan, But From Within” by Joshua Kucera, posted on the Eurasianet’s website on March 12, notes that the U.S. intelligence community believes that the greatest threat facing Central Asia is internal, rather than emanating from Afghanistan, in contrast to recent statements by [...]

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