Dilnaz Boga
When I moved to Kashmir in the later part of 2009, a classmate in Sydney suggested that I meet “a lovely man” who was the chief of the AFP Bureau in Srinagar. Little did I know, that one phone call would lead me to such a boundless treasure.
I recall meeting him every month as his office was very close to the BSNL building where I had to pay my phone bill. Giving up after looking at the long...
Posted 47 days ago.
If a court reporter can summarise rambling judgements, there is nothing wrong with his education. Instead, Naseer A Ganai says, criteria need to be set for media owners
Justice Katju says even a peon needs a qualification: at least he should be a high school pass. “Are you people (journalists) worse than chaprasis? Why are you so such touchy about qualification of journalists?” he said in a recent television debate on the issue. He even took on an anchor of the...
Posted 47 days ago.
Khursheed Wani
The rhetoric generated in Pakistan’s ongoing election season is being disseminated in every Srinagar home, thanks to a flourishing cable TV network.
Even as the issue of Kashmir is not discussed much prominently in the election rallies across Pakistan, the politically sensitive Kashmiris...
Posted 52 days ago.
Parvaiz Bukhari
Heavily-armed rebels attacked a police compound in Srinagar, the main city of Indian-controlled Kashmir, killing five Indian paramilitaries on Wednesday before the government forces killed the two attackers.
The attack that also injured five other personnel of the federal Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) was claimed by Kashmir’s largest pro-Pakistan militant group, the Hizbul Mujahideen.
Kashmiri leaders are warning that the region's youth...
Posted 68 days ago.
Omar Abdullah must now take a trend-setting step of officially declaring curfew as another season in Kashmir, harsher than the shivering, frostbiting cold of Chillai Kalaan writes Fayaz Jaleel
Curfew - official restriction on people’s movement, requiring them to remain indoors. But this definition of curfew doesn’t hold good for Kashmir.
No way. It needs to be modified,...
Posted 71 days ago.
Azhar Qadri
SRINAGAR: In a two-page letter on the last week of February this year, senior ideologue of Tehreek-e-Taliban Punjab Maulana Ismatullah Mawiya, who is reported to have been formerly associated with Jaish-e-Mohammad before forming the Taliban faction, termed the hanging of 2008 Mumbai attack gunman Muhammad Ajmal Kasab and 2001 Parliament attack convict Muhammad Afzal Guru as a “good sign” for...
Posted 71 days ago.
Azhar Qadri
SRINAGAR: Al-Qaeda and its affiliate groups, which include Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Tehreek-e-Taliban Punjab, have recently made multiple direct threats warning that Kashmir is their next mission once curtains are drawn on the Afghan theatre of war.
Ustad Ahmad Farooq is the head of Al-Qaeda’s preaching in Pakistan, a very important portfolio in Islamist militant circles where religion is the main and, many a times, only motivation.
This...
Posted 72 days ago.
Naseer A Ganai
It was unexpected. That is why it had greater impact. And no one can predict its aftershocks.
At least no one in the Valley was expecting that Afzal Guru will be hanged. That too secretly.
The UPA led Congress government not only hanged him but went a step ahead: they didn't inform Afzal’s family before carrying out the hanging. They didn't give his family a chance to meet him.
Instead, they shot a letter to his...
Posted 76 days ago.
Andrew Buncombe
It was not the first time that Syed Ali Shah Geelani found himself under house arrest.
At around 9am on the morning of February 9, just an hour after the television channels broke the news that authorities had hanged Afzal Guru, a man convicted over the 2011 attack on the Indian parliament that left more than half-a-dozen people dead, police arrived at the flat where Mr Geelani was staying in Delhi.
For two weeks, the Kashmiri...
Posted 81 days ago.
Junaid Ahmad
Among the many intriguing things in the aftermath of Afzal Guru's hanging, the apparently similar posturing of the Pro-freedom and the Pro-Indian camp is the most compelling.
The condemnation of the hanging by the pro-freedom group was expected. But it certainly wasn’t the case with the pro-India camp. From Omar Abdullah to Mehbooba Mufti to Engineer Rashid, all sang the same tune - of condemning the execution....
Posted 85 days ago.
