Saleem's Post

  India's failed Nuclear Security   How many people know that in 1965 the US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) joined hands on a clandestine mission to install two nuclear-powered sensing devices on the summit of  India’s second-highest peak, Nanda Devi, and Nanda Kot, a feature nearby? Both the devices lie abandoned in Uttarakhand’s Garhwal Himalayas and keep ticking, each with its deadly stock of plutonium about half the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (Bag,2015).   According to Beckhausen (2013), after China exploded its first nuclear device in 1964, the Pentagon and the  CIA were worried about how to monitor Chinese missile tests which were being conducted at a top-secret facility a few hundred kilometers north of the Himalayan mountains. They desperately needed to find out the performance parameters of the Chinese missiles and their compatibility with nuclear warheads. The mountain range blocked gro...

10 March 2022: DGISPR Major General Babar Iftikhar briefed the media on an Indian "high-speed flying object" that fell in Mian Channu, Khanewal district on Wednesday night. He said: "On March 9, at 6:43 pm, a high-speed flying object was picked up inside the Indian territory by Air Defence Operations Centre of the Pakistan Air Force”  "From its initial course, the object suddenly maneuvered towards Pakistani territory and violated Pakistan's air space, ultimately falling near Mian Channu at 6:50 pm." “PAF continuously monitored the complete flying path of the object, from its point of origin near Sirsa, in Indian Punjab”, to its point of impact, near Mian Channu.“ PAF initiated requisite tactical actions,” he said. "It is important to highlight that the flight path of this object endangered many international and domestic passenger flights — both in Indian and Pakistani air space — as well as human life and property on the ground.” “Whatever ...

  The Cliffhanger! As if the nose rubbing in Afghanistan was not enough, the US has faced another humiliation, this time in Ukraine. In an earlier assessment, I had likened the US to a wounded giant – the famous Polyphemus in Homer’s classic – the Odyssey. Polyphemus was a man-eating giant-a monster with a single, orb-shaped eye in the middle of his forehead. Odysseus encountered him on his return from Troy and became trapped in the giant's cave. To escape, the hero plied him with wine and, as he slept, plunged a burning stake into his eye.     The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan began in October 2001in response to the September 11, 2001, attack on New York’s Twin Towers . Before invading Afghanistan the US, to the point of bullying, had grabbed Pakistan’s support in the “war against terrorism”. The United States Armed Forces, after a twenty-year useless war, completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan on 30 August 2021. Twenty years is too long a period to be called ...