The wikileaks cable has given a rare glimpse of the hard-nosed practicality of Pakistani administrators. Speaking to the Bryan Hunt, Principal Officer at the US Consulate in Lahore, Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of the Punjab province, even joked about using ‘long beards’ — a sign of devotion — to charm the people. Sharif was talking […]
Officials of the United Arab Emirates, home to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, said the tiny country had to “understand the needs” of its bigger neighbors like Iran and Saudi Arabia to survive and can only go so far in helping the US in the region. A cable leaked by Wikileaks reports the UAE Central Bank […]
Many senior Pakistani military officers seemed out of touch with Western reality and are steeped in myths — particularly anti-American ones — while being in awe of the Chinese, according to the experiences of a US Army Colonel who was studying there. Colonel Michael Schleicher, who was attending a senior level course at Pakistan’s prestigious […]
A late 2008 diplomatic cable from the Islamabad embassy of the US has shed new light on the thinking inside the Pakistani establishment about Kashmir, Balochistan and the bombing of Indian embassy in Kabul in the same year. According to the cable, which described a high-level meeting between the US Assistant Secretary for South and […]
Indian public opinion would force the Indian government to take military action against Pakistan in case of another attack like Mumbai, home minister P Chidambaram told the Americans in 2009, according to leaked US diplomatic cables. Chidambaram also blamed Bangladesh and Myanmar for providing sanctuary to insurgents in the North East and called Myanmar “totally […]
India’s defence minister AK Antony has reacted to the Wikileaks’ revelation that parts of the Pakistani government were in touch with the terror groups who bombed the Indian embassy of Kabul in 2008. Antony said the biggest hurdle to better relations between India and Pakistan was the links between high officials in Pakistan and terror […]
One of the most recent US diplomatic cables released to be released by Wikileaks has pointed to India’s deep ambitions in Afghanistan. The cable, written as a ‘scene-setter’ for the visit of influential US Senator John Kerry in February last year noted that Indians were restrained in their military co-operation with Afghanistan only because of […]
Wikileaks release of more than 700 top secret prisoner records from the Guantanamo Prison off the Southern Coast of the US gives a unique picture of how a terrorist is made. The prison papers give detailed and often engaging history of terrorists — what their backgrounds were, how they ended up being ‘radicalized,’ how they […]
This is the second part of the biographies gleaned from the Guantanamo prison records leaked by Wikileaks today. They show, up and close, how many young men decided to take up arms for their religion, how they were facilitated by religious teachers etc.. However, it must be remembered that the histories are largely based on […]
Despite humoring the US concerns on Iran when discussing matters like nuclear proliferation, India very much continued to be a ‘behind-the-scenes’ friend to Iran and Myanmar, according to the latest US cables leaked by Wikileaks. According to the late 2006 cable sent from USA’s Finnish embassy in Helsinki, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh was very […]
The Gauntanamo prison records released by the whistleblower site Wikileaks has thrown light on an aborted “parallel” 9/11 attack in Asia that was supposed to take place at the same time as the US attack. According to the records of the prisoner Abd al-Malik Abd al-Wahab, an alleged member of al-Qaida and former Usama Bin […]
We’ve all heard of newspapers coming out with April Fool’s stories, but a cable leaked by Wikileaks reveals that even the dour diplomats have a funny bone they let out once in a year. The cable, reproduced in entirety below, was authored by the American Embassy in charge Steven White on April 1, 2008 and […]
A December 2006 US diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks has given valuable insights into what the Americans, at least the then US ambassador David Mulford, viewed as India’s role in the emerging political scenario in Asia. Not only did Mulford see India as a counterweight to China, “which it can never match,” but he also […]
The latest release by whisleblower organization Wikileaks — prisoner stories from the Guantenamo Bay has shed light into the role played by Pakistan in training Taliban militants. Wikileaks started releasing hundreds of prisoner files from the controversial prison set up by the US after it started its attack on Afghanistan ten years ago. “Detainee attended […]
India’s old-world and “capacity-constrained” bureaucracy is the biggest impediment to improving relations its relationship with the US, US embassy officials told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a briefing paper prepared for her July 2009 visit. According to the Peter Burleigh, the in-charge of the American Embassy in New Delhi, even as the defence forces […]
Three years after the riots of 2002, Michael S Owen, the US Consul General in Mumbai, gave a vivid description of Gujarat reminding readers of Akira Kurosawa’s classic, Rashomon. While NGOs and minority representatives insisted the presence of a ‘communalizing’ government, business leaders and government officials portrayed a picture of normalcy and harmony. In the […]
Indian Government had lost all hope of ever seeing the Indo-Iranian gas pipeline come into existence, but kept up the pretense of negotiations to keep Muslims and the Left happy, according to a US assessment. According to a cable sent in early 2007, the ministry of petroleum and natural gas headed by Murli Deora (described […]
India looked with suspicion at China’s establishment of Naval bases along the African coast in the name of fighting pirates, and felt the US climbdown over the USS ‘Impeccable’ incident of 2008 was unhelpful. The USS Impeccable, an unarmed surveillance ship of the US Navy, was repeatedly harassed by Chinese naval and other ships and […]
In 2005 immediately after his visit to Pakistan Senior Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leader,Lal Krishna Advani’s was on the verge of being sidelined,actually he was pushed to the corner. The reason was his charitable remarks on Jinnah in which he described him a secular leader. The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh(RSS),the parent organization of the BJP, reacted […]
Meeting Lalu Prasad Yadav, the then railway minister, was an “unforgettable experience” for the then US Ambassador to India, David Mulford, according to a cable released by Wikileaks. Mulford, who described Lalu as “as one of the most savvy, colorful, grassroots politicians in India,” however, was disappointed by the rather ‘serious’ Lalu that he encountered. […]
