The Fighters of Lashkar-e-Taiba: Recruitment, Training, Deployment and Death

Titled The Fighters of Lashkar-e-Taiba: Recruitment, Training, Deployment and Death, is 61 Page Report on Lashkar-e-Taiba Prepared and Published by the Combating Terrorism Centre (CTC) in West Point, New York.

Here I am Posting Interesting Excerpts from that Report Along with Links to Download Full Report and Data. Click on the Hyperlinks Bellow (Which You Will Find in 1st Two Paragraphs in the Beginning) to Download Full Report,  Dataset and Appendix.

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The Fighters of Lashkar-e-Taiba: Recruitment, Training, Deployment and Death

4th April 2013

Authors: Anirban Ghosh, Arif Jamal, Christine Fair, Don Rassler, Nadia Shoeb

Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, Occasional paper series.

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This occasional paper is an analysis of over 900 biographies of the deceased militants of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a well-established Pakistani militant group that is best known for its November 2008 high-profile attack against a mix of local and foreign targets in Mumbai, India. Instead of evaluating evidence of the group’s internationalism, as many recent studies have attempted to do, this study is more foundational in focus. It is predicated on the assumption that LeT’s local activity and infrastructure are and will remain the key source of its strength, even if the group decides it is in its interest to become more active in the international arena. By leveraging biographical information extracted from four Urdu language publications produced by LeT from 1994 to 2007 and statistical information released by the government of Pakistan, this study aims to provide baseline data about LeT’s local recruits,  the nature of the time they spend with the group and how these dynamics have changed over time.

Two other documents – the Dataset from which the paper’s conclusions were derived and an Appendix that explains our coding methodology – are also being released in conjunction with the report, as it is our hope that other interested scholars will build upon our data/work.

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AUTHORS’ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper is the result of a multiyear research effort conducted by the authors.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This paper is a study of over 900 biographies of the deceased militants of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistani militant group that has waged a campaign of asymmetric warfare against Indian security forces and civilians in the contested region of Kashmir for over two decades, as well as other parts of India more recently.

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.... LeT’s recruitment of Westerners and linkages to a number of other international terror plots over the past decade, have heightened concerns that the group’s interests and operational priorities are no longer just regional, but that they are also becoming (or have already become) global.

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.... By leveraging biographical information extracted from four Urdu language publications produced by LeT from 1994 to 2007 and statistical information released by the government of Pakistan, this study aims to provide baseline data about LeT’s local recruits, the nature of the time they spend with the group and how these dynamics have changed over time.

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A summary of our main findings and the some of the related implications follow.

> Fighter Background

- Age: According to our data, the mean age when a recruit joins LeT is 16.95 years, while the militants’ mean age at the time of their death is 21 years. The mean number of years between an LeT militant’s entry and death is 5.14 years.

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> Residence and Recruitment

- Location: The vast majority of LeT’s fighters are recruited from Pakistan’s Punjab province. While LeT’s recruitment is diversified across the north, central and southern parts of the Punjab, the highest concentration of LeT fighters have come (in order of frequency) from the districts of Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Lahore, Sheikhupura, Kasur, Sialkot, Bahawalnagar, Bahawalpur, Khanewal, and Multan.

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> Training, Deployment and Death

- Location and Level of Training: LeT training has historically occurred in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan and in Afghanistan. Together these two locations have accounted for 75 percent of LeT militant training over time.

The highest level of training reported by most LeT militants (62 percent of available data) was specialized training (Daura-e-Khasa, LeT’s advanced course), the majority of which occurred in Muzaffarabad.

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- Fighting Fronts and Location of Death: Ninety four percent of fighters list Indian Kashmir as a fighting front. Although less relevant, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Tajikistan and Bosnia are also identified in the biographies as other fronts.

According to our data, the districts of Kupwara, Baramulla and Poonch in Indian Kashmir account for almost half of all LeT militant deaths since 1989.

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INTRODUCTION

.... While it is difficult to predict the directional priorities of Pakistan-based militant groups after the United States reduces its role in Afghanistan, especially in light of the internal security challenges faced by Pakistan and the state’s own shifting threat priorities, historical precedent suggests that some of these militant groups will reorient to and invest more broadly in the conflict in Kashmir.

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For the past two decades LeT has steadily emerged as one of Pakistan’s most lethal and capable militant proxy groups. Its long-term approach and the scale and scope of its activities, which largely revolve around efforts to conduct da`wa (missionary activism), to reform Pakistani society from within, and to engage in violent external jihad, especially in India, have helped the group develop a domestic political constituency and gain international reach. While the group has historically been used by Islamabad as an agent of regional foreign policy—and one that has been mostly focused on waging a low-level war of attrition in Indian Kashmir—a steady array of incidents tied to the group over the last decade strongly suggest that LeT’s interests are evolving and that its operations in the future might be less constrained.

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Western counterterrorism investigators have been particularly troubled by LeT’s recent attack history, its links to several international terror plots, the group’s transnational footprint, the accessibility of its infrastructure in Pakistan and the two-decade-long spillover associated with its training camps. The group’s active recruitment of U.S. and European citizens and the discovery of a number of LeT operatives and cells based in both places have led some researchers to conclude that a threat to the U.S. homeland by this organization (or an associated splinter group or LeT-trained element) can no longer be ruled out.

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Despite the prominence and enduring presence of LeT in Pakistan, there have been few efforts to collect data on its activists and, in turn, to develop more useful insights into the group’s cadres and recruitment practices. This lacuna is surprising given that the organization has produced and continues to produce massive amounts of materials about itself and its cadres that are available in the public domain, albeit mostly in Urdu.

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..., the research team acquired a collection of biographies of LeT fighters published in several different Urdu-language publications produced by the group over a fifteen-year period.

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DATA AND METHODS

Our data set includes biographical information and other key details about 917 LeT militants killed from 1989 to 2008. The biographies reviewed for this report were derived from four primary sources in Urdu published by LeT.

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.... The most consistent element in the biographies is the wasiyatnama, or will, of the militants, which indicates that LeT may provide militants with a standard template to fill out before their operational deployment.

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IMPLICATIONS

> Recruitment Base and Other Linkages

The Pakistan government insists that Pakistanis are not engaging in acts of terrorism in India or elsewhere; rather, the government claims that it is only providing diplomatic and moral support to the indigenous mujahidin fighting in India. While few entertain these claims as credible, our database indicates that this claim is false. First, the vast majority of LeT fighters are Pakistani and most are Punjabi, not Kashmiri. It is noteworthy that there is considerable overlap among the districts that produce LeT militants and those that produce Pakistan army officers, a dynamic that raises a number of questions about potentially overlapping social networks between the army and LeT. While certainly not the norm, at least eighteen biographies in our data set describe connections between LeT fighters and immediate family members (i.e., fathers or brothers) who were currently serving or had served in Pakistan’s army or air force. In several of these cases, the militant’s father had fought with the Pakistani army in the 1965 war in Kashmir (the Second Kashmir War) and/or during the conflict in 1971 over the status of then East Pakistan (since known as Bangladesh). In one case a militant’s father was described as a senior officer in the Pakistani army.

LeT draws in recruits using a variety of means, both through proactive targeting of potential cadres by LeT recruiters at schools, mosques and madrassas; as well as through LeT’s extensive publication and office infrastructure throughout Pakistan. Indeed, such expansive and overt presence throughout the country speaks to a degree of tolerance if not outright assistance from the Pakistani state. Equally notable is the fact that the vast majority of the fighters in this database died in Indian-administered Kashmir. This truth, taken with the predominantly Pakistani-Punjabi origins of the fighters, collectively puts to rest any of Pakistan’s claims about the nature of its citizens and their activities.

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FIGHTER BACKGROUND

> Age

The mean age when a militant joins LeT is 16.95 years, with the median age being 16.5. The youngest recruit in our data joined at the age of 11.5, while the oldest recruit was 30. Ninety percent of the militants joined LeT before they were 22 years old. ...

Militants’ mean age at the time of their death in our data is 21 years, while the median age of death is 20 years. The youngest militant whose death is recorded in our data is 14 years, while the oldest is 43 years. ...

While our data sample is limited to only those fighters who died and whose death was highlighted by LeT, our data appear to show that militants do not live long after they have been recruited by the group. In our sample, the mean number of years between an LeT militant’s entry and death is 5.14 years, and the median is 4.0 years.

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> Family Dynamics

- Marriage and Children

It is likely that a majority of militants are not married nor have children, ....

.... In several cases, mothers attempted to prevent their sons from fighting by trying to persuade them to marry.

- Siblings

Siblings are central characters in the biographies, and they play important roles. For example, in several cases siblings supported (i.e., provided permission) and opposed their brother’s decision to fight.

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> Education

.... LeT militants are actually rather well educated compared with Pakistani males generally.

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- Nonreligious Education in Pakistan

- Results and Analysis: Most aspiring LeT fighters join the group when they are young, as the mean age of entry into the organization is a little over 16.9 years old.

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... In our data, we see that 63 percent of LeT militants have at least a secondary education (matric or above), suggesting that their educational distribution is slightly higher than the national attainment levels, ....

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- Religious Education in Pakistan

- Results and Analysis: Nearly 31 percent of biographies that were reviewed by the research team provided information about the level of religious education attained by LeT fighters. Based upon that data we find that 56.9 percent of LeT militants have attended a madrassa, with only 4.3 percent of those having received a sanad.

Based upon available data, militants spent an average of 2.77 years at a madrassa.

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> Employment

.... LeT militants are typically low-income workers who come from the poor or middle-lower classes.

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RESIDENCE AND RECRUITMENT

- Home Districts

- Results and Analysis: .... our data confirms that most LeT militants are recruited from Pakistan’s Punjab province. In our data, 89 percent of the militants are from Punjab, with 5 percent from Sindh, and about 3 percent from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A smaller number of militants originate from Azad Kashmir (about 0.5 percent), while Indian Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Baluchistan together produced about 1.1 percent of the militants in our sample. Three militants had hometowns in Afghanistan, two came from Saudi Arabia and one from Europe.

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- District-Level Details of Militant Origins

.... As observed previously, the militants were recruited mostly from the Punjab region, but more interestingly, even within Punjab, greater numbers of militants seem to have originated from the areas that border India or are quite close to it.

.... As mentioned previously, the LeT militants in our study often came from densely populated and urbanized districts in the Punjab, with Gujranwala (10 percent), Faisalabad (10 percent) and Lahore (7 percent) producing more militants than any other district in the country. This finding is not surprising, as those three areas have long been known to be locations where LeT is active and has a lot of infrastructure.

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- Relative Concentration of Militants

.... Yet at the same time, our data also highlight that LeT recruitment is diversified across the north, central and southern Punjab districts, indicating that while there are specific districts in which we see a high concentration of fighters, LeT recruitment is not a geographically isolated phenomenon within that particular province.

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- Means of Recruitment

- Background: .... Given the broad range of activities in which the group is engaged, LeT trains far more people than it will ever deploy on any mission.

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- Results and Analysis: There is no one single or centralized method through which LeT members are recruited, but instead, as one would expect, the group uses a slew of methods.

.... We find that militants are rarely recruited through more than one channel, as over 90 percent of our militant recruitment data identify only a single channel. ....

.... The most common form of recruitment is by a current member of LeT, as noted in 20 percent of the cases. The second-most-common form of recruitment is when a family member, almost always a brother or the father, helps an individual to join the group (20 percent of all cases). LeT propaganda, which includes speech or literature, is the channel for the recruitment of 12 percent of militants, which when added to those who are self-initiated (4 percent), can be considered the share of militants who are recruited passively by LeT. Mosques (9 percent) and madrassas and Islamic study centers (8 percent) together account for 17 percent of recruitment. Interestingly, there is evidence of limited overlap between LeT and Hizbul Mujahidin (another militant group historically focused on Indian Kashmir) members, as fewer than 3 percent of individuals are recruited into LeT by that other militant group.

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TRAINING AND DEPLOYMENT

The scale and scope of LeT’s training is extensive. While not all who receive training see combat in places like Indian Kashmir, some estimates suggest that between 100,000 to 300,000 men have received some form of LeT training over the last two decades. This estimate also includes a smaller number of Western jihadists who, after receiving training from LeT, have played active roles in a number of international terrorism plots.

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> Training: Type, Length and Location

- Background: In addition to a number of specialized courses, LeT has three primary types of training, the first two of which are progressive. They include:

Daura-e-Aama (Basic Training) is LeT’s basic three-week training course. During this twenty-one-day course, attendees are given religious instruction (i.e., learn parts of the Qur’an and how to perform Islamic rituals in the Ahl-e-Hadith way), training in light arms, particularly in the use of the Kalashnikov and hand grenades, and instruction in basic guerilla warfare tactics.

Daura-e-Khasa (Specialized Training) is LeT’s advanced training course, which lasts for three months.91 This program is usually reserved for those trainees who are likely to be sent to Indian-administered Kashmir (or even to other parts of India) or to other places to wage armed jihad. This advanced course is “geared towards guerilla warfare, with training in the use of arms and ammunition, ambush and survival techniques.”

Other Named Training includes a number of LeT training courses about which not much is known. These courses are believed to be both physical and ideological in orientation (see below for more information) and to either occur after Daura-e-Khasa or as modules to complement that same course.

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- Results and Analysis: Out of a pool of 627 militants whose biographies provided this type of data, 5 percent of the militants were said to have undergone only basic training (Daura-e-Aama). The highest level of training reported by most of the LeT militants (62 percent) was specialized training (Daura-e-Khasa), and an additional 12 percent were able to name other specific training courses, ....

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- Training Length, and Time Spent Between Basic Training and Death

As mentioned above, the length of training varies across the different types of training LeT provides, ranging anywhere from three weeks to ten months. ....

A review of the biographies suggests that after completing basic training the trainees usually spend the next few years waiting to be deployed. This is consistent with our data, as only 5 percent of the militants studied died within one year of their entry into the organization, with the median amount of time a militant spent between joining the organization and death being 4.0 years.

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- Training Locations

.... LeT training has historically occurred in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan, (47 percent) and in Afghanistan (28 percent). Together these two locations accounted for 75 percent of all LeT militant training in our dataset.

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> Fighting Fronts and Location of Death

- Results and Analysis: LeT’s primary fighting front has historically been Indian Kashmir. Of the individuals for whom we have data in this field, 779 out of 822 list Indian Kashmir as a fighting front, representing 94 percent of the individuals. ....

.... Not surprisingly, over 94 percent of the militants died in India, mostly in Indian Kashmir, which is consistent with our finding that the most active fighting front for LeT militants is Indian Kashmir.

At the district level, we have details on the location of death for 465 militants, which is 51 percent of all the biographies in our data. ....

.... top three districts—Kupwara, Baramulla, and Poonch, all in Indian Kashmir—account for almost half of all militants killed.

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- Changes in Location of LeT Deaths between 1990 and 2004

In addition to the location of death of the militants in our study, we also know the year of their death.

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... areas of LeT fighter deaths in Indian Kashmir have become more geographically distributed over time, suggesting that the group has intentionally pursued this type of strategy or that it is potentially in response to pressure applied—or new campaigns waged—by Indian security services in select districts.

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CONCLUSION

Our data attest to the enduring nature of LeT and its sustained ability to attract highquality recruits from across the Punjab and through a variety of means for operations throughout South Asia. This research contributes to the evolving body of literature that suggests that poverty, limited education and time spent at a madrassa are poor predictors for determining either support for terrorism or participation in terrorism in Pakistan. If our data are at all representative of LeT’s other cadres, they would appear to suggest that some of Pakistan’s best-educated young men are being dispatched to die in this unending conflict with India.

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Copyrights: Combating Terrorism Centre (CTC) in West Point, New York / U.S. Military Academy / D0D, United States

No Easy Day: Download Links

Yesterday ‘No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden’ book is published, Book authors is ‘Matt Bissonnette’ (Book is published under his pseudonym  ‘Mark Owen’) and Kevin Maurer. Matt Bissonnette was one of the U.S. Navy SEALs who participated in the mission to kill ‘Osama bin laden’ and he was one of the team members present in the 3rd-floor room of bin laden's compound when the terrorist leader was killed.

Here I am posting download (torrent) links of that book. I found all this download links from internet. Download it from one of the links soon, Because I am not sure this links will work for long time.

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Download Links:

Link-1, Link-2, Link-3, Link-4, Link-5, Link-6, Link-7, Link-8, Link-9, Link-10, Link-11.

Riven by corruption, Indian police is unprepared to tackle modern terror

By: Sandeep Unnithan & Kiran Tare with Amarnath K. Menon, Bhavna Vij-Aurora & Mihir Srivastava
Published: September 16, 2011 / India Today

One week after a blast ripped through the Delhi High Court premises killing 17 people, sleuths from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the National Security Guard are yet to decide on the type of explosive used. Forensic laboratories in Delhi, Chandigarh and Hyderabad gave three different reports on the bomb component. The Union home ministry has now sent the reports to a fourth laboratory at Gandhinagar to 'reconcile' the findings.

Barely had the smoke cleared when the Delhi Police released sketches of suspects that were so laughably obscure that if taken seriously, could have led to the detention of large numbers of the city's adult male population. If that wasn't enough, a frenetic blame game began between the home minister and the Lt Governor, both of whom control the city police. P. Chidambaram insisted Lt Governor Tejendra Khanna had been warned of an impending attack. Khanna denied having received any warning. The NIA swung in and arrested four persons from Kishtwar, Jammu and Kashmir for sending a threatening email soon after the blast from a cybercafe. It turned out that they were schoolboys from a nearby higher secondary school. This was the scene in the capital, which got a shot in the arm with a Rs 1,350-crore police modernisation grant in 2009 ahead of the Commonwealth Games.

The situation is no different in Mumbai. In the July 13 blast that killed 26 persons, forensic teams were unable to even reconstruct the bomb because at least two agencies walked away with fragments. Both unsolved blasts have left the police groping in the dark and citizens wounded.

India's police force is in disarray. Years of accumulated neglect have resulted in a force barely able to respond to a 10.9 per cent increase in crime each decade. It is incapable of an effective response to threats like terrorism. Six bomb attacks in 18 months still remain unsolved. The 20 lakh-strong force is short of nearly 5 lakh policemen. It will take another decade to make up this shortfall. India already has among the world's worst police to public ratios. Just 128 policemen per 100,000 population (the UN mandates a minimum of 222 policemen). Yet as internal security expert Ajai Sahni points out, a manpower surge may not be enough. "Police need to transform their profile through better training, equipment, orientation and deployment."

But the police are starved of budgetary support and consequently invest little in training and even basic crime-fighting technology like facial recognition software to create police sketches. Corruption has now become so endemic that the police, the first responders, are seen as unapproachable. In fact, as the arrests in the Malegaon blast case in 2006 show, the ordinary citizen may no longer be safe. Days after the September 8, 2006, Malegaon blasts which killed 36 people, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) arrested six Muslim youths. The case changed hands from the ATS to the CBI and now finally, the NIA. The six youths have been in the Arthur Road jail for over five years without bail despite there being no evidence to convict them.

The Constitution says law and order is a state subject and states zealously guard this turf. They go to the extent of disobeying the Supreme Court which has pushed for police reforms-its landmark 2006 verdict asked states to break away from the outdated Indian Police Act of 1861 and implement a new Model Police Act. These changes include greater autonomy for the police, security from transfer raj and a police commission for merit-based appointments. In 2010, the court issued showcause notices to the worst offenders-Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal-who refused to implement reforms. On September 15, heads of all state police forces will converge in Delhi for a three-day annual conference. The problems are known, the solution evades implementation.

Never Ready

The Mumbai police does not have a Total Containment Vessel (TCV) a hemispherical steel container that is mandatory for bomb disposal. Here is what police will do when confronted with a bomb emergency: dial the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport to bring in their TCV. It will take them at least two hours to drive this five-tonne equipment to south Mumbai through traffic.

A corruption scandal has stalled the purchase of Mumbai police's TCV. The police paid Rs 6.5 crore for the vessel in 2008; Mumbai International Airport Ltd, the private consortium which runs the airport, bought one for Rs 4 crore. When the disparity was noticed, the state government stopped the procurement. Nobody has been held accountable. State Home Minister R.R. Patil says the Mumbai airport will loan the TCV to the police. This is not the only instance of terror preparedness being compromised by corruption. In 2010, the Mumbai police bought 12 bomb disposal suits at inflated prices. A PIL has stalled their acquisition. The suits lie in a godown in Malad.

Corupt To The Core

There is a good reason why the police are perceived to be among the most corrupt government departments. In Maharashtra, policemen comprise 23 per cent of government servants netted for bribe-taking over the past six years. Experts say the figure could well be a national average. Police corruption takes the form of extortion: bribes are taken for not enforcing the law. Policemen wield immense powers relating to the life and liberty of citizens, implement legislation relating to gambling, prostitution, dance bars, hotels, economic offences, and in some states, prohibition. They are tasked with checking activities having the potential to generate black money. Even simple measures like free registration of First Information Reports (FIR) is not adopted.

A check of the complaints register at any police station usually reveals hundreds of unregistered cases. Nobody is punished for such lapses. Law and order gets priority over crime and corruption thrives. Graft is so endemic to the force and the opportunities for retail corruption so many, that bribes are paid for recruitment. Three months ago, the Andhra Pradesh cid arrested five police sub inspectors for using impersonators to clear their recruitment test. In 2008, nearly 40 sub-inspectors morphed photographs of post-graduate students onto their hall tickets and paid each student Rs 4 lakh to write their test.

Their investment has to be quickly recovered once in the force. "Police leadership is to be blamed for its failure to check corruption. Everything takes place with their knowledge and officers know what can advance their career. There are no innovations in police working," explains Ashok Dhamija, a former ips officer-turned-lawyer. Former dgp of Maharashtra Arvind Inamdar believes levels of corruption increase with rank. Conscious of this, politicians connive to auction plum posts to share the loot. A plum post in the Mumbai police commissionerate varies between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 1.5 crore depending upon its 'importance' or potential for corruption.

Misplaced Priorities

Strangely, Rs 1.5 crore is also the figure that Maharashtra has spent on training India's second largest police force of 1.7 lakh personnel in the past decade, the least in the country. The state is short of 284 technicians in its forensic labs. It has just one forensic lab in Mumbai as against a requirement of three. The state does not even have 1,500 bulletproof jackets to meet the bare minimum of modernisation guidelines.

These are not isolated instances. Over the years, state governments have neglected the police force and diverted money meant for police modernisation. Over 90 per cent of an average state police budget is spent on paying salaries. The remainder is used to pay for running the force. There is no money left for building police accommodation, buying vehicles, weapons or radio sets. It comes from a fundamental budgetary bias: police is treated as a non-plan expenditure head or, implicitly, an expenditure that does not result in any tangible benefits for the state. States hence live on modernisation doles handed out by the home ministry. These are often grossly inadequate.

Under the megacity policing policy, the Mumbai police needed portable X-ray machines, vehicle scanners and a vehicle tracking system costing Rs 300 crore in 2008. It has got only Rs 160 crore for these from the home ministry in the past five years. When money is made available, it is not claimed. Maharashtra is yet to claim its share of Rs 223 crore, earmarked for it by the Centre this year. The excuse is that the state's proposal to spend the funds is not yet ready. A home department source blames lack of coordination between the police and the government.

Where resources are required, they are not made available. In the aftermath of the 2006 Nithari murders, the Delhi-based Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) agreed to build a national DNA databank. Four years later, the home ministry is yet to sanction Rs 10 crore meant for the project.

The Weakest Link

The Delhi Police's 650-strong special cell, its spear-tip against terrorism, is now reduced to chasing petty criminals. The reason? Terrorists have switched to secure communication like email dead-drops and do not use cellphones. The special cell is paying a price for its excessive reliance on wiretaps. This has made the job of the lowly police constables all the more important, admit senior police offcials. "The police have no option but to strengthen their constabulary and develop human intelligence,'' says a senior police official. The reality speaks otherwise.

The police constable-the most important link in the fight against terror- is equated to an unskilled worker. Constables constitute over 85 per cent of the police force. A government clerk is treated as a skilled worker and gets overtime for each additional hour of work. A constable has no fixed working hours, works for up to 14 hours a day and takes just one holiday a month. The constabulary is given rudimentary field training in drill and physical fitness and classes on basic law. They are alloted 20 rounds per year as part of firearm training on World War II vintage .303 rifles but a policeman can go through his entire career without firing a weapon. Modern policing techniques like riot control, bomb disposal, disaster management, evacuation, fire drills and search are imparted only to special units. There is no incentive to acquire specialisation as it is not linked to promotions.

Constables have poor housing facilities and hence commute long distances to work. A bulk of Delhi Police constables travel into the city from Sonepat, Haryana, 65 km away or Alwar, Rajasthan, 150 km away. This is because only 18 per cent of the 70,000 strong police force has housing against a national police average of 22 per cent. The work pressure and acute shortage of personnel have had a severe impact on police effectiveness. A rise in police deaths owing to weapon misfires points to on-job stress, poor training and therefore, accident-prone policemen. It's a tragedy playing out as farce.

 

Copyright: 2011, India Today Group.

URL for the article: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/terror-strikes-ill-equipped-corrupt-police-force-india/1/151582.html

Inimical US overstay. Really??

On 16 September 2011... During my routine news reading i came across Pakistan's The Nation newspaper’s website  editorial. I always read our good ;) neighbor's news papers to understand them batter. After reading The Nation's editorial i decided to post it here with my thoughts between the lines. Below is the 16th September Editorial, i posted my views in Brackets. Hope you will enjoy reading it and don't laugh(i mean smile) between the lines. :) 

Title of the editorial: Inimical US overstay, 

Published: September 16, 2011, Home, Opinions, Inimical-US-overstay, Editorial. 

The Americans are ''reportedly''(According to Pakistani sources) busy these days trying to give a concrete shape to their ''main motive''(Motive of staying in Afghanistan-Iraq?) behind the façade(Really?) of the war on terror, in pursuit of Deputy Under Secretary of Defence Michele Flournoy’s statement about two months back that the US intended to maintain long-term presence in Afghanistan, beyond President Obama’s stated position of a pull-out by 2014. Thus, ''a plan to establish permanent military bases in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq is afoot''(Advance thinking or i should say prediction). According to a press report, this has raised Pakistan’s hackles ''because US continued stay next door would be a source of instability and ''friction in the region''(Don't expect that editor to say... Friction with Pakistan for supporting terrorism in Afghanistan) and is rightly perceived to be a ''threat to our national interests''(Interests of ISI and company. Also how can they tolerate government which is against Pakistan, Taliban & company). One should not, therefore, be surprised to see our leaders mounting a campaign to lobby regional powers like ''China, Iran and Russia to bring them on board against the US move''(Don't disturb, let editor to dream about Russian support to Pakistan). Pakistan has had, it must be recalled, ''repeated experience of US betrayal''(US not supported Pakistan against INDIA during Kargil war, they also killed laden even without consulting Pakistan etc.). 

From Afghanistan, the US intends checking the expansion of Beijing’s influence in energy-rich Central Asia – a virtually ''impossible task''(Always hopeful and positive attitude. Sometimes even chines fails to be that much hopeful-positive) on two counts. First, the sharply rising Chinese economic strength inevitably constitutes a strong mutual pull for Central Asian Republics, on the one hand, and China, on the other; and, secondly, the equally sharply declining economic might of the US would deter it from making the kind of investment in the region that a more reliable and ''friendlier neighbor could come up with''(Don't ask about chines friendship to Vietnam, japan, India etc.).  

Nevertheless, the US leaders are making desperate efforts to find some way of establishing their hegemony in the region, even if they have to ''violate their own international commitments''(Did they?) about nuclear non-proliferation. ‘’The nuclear deal with India is a case in point’’(Don't expect friendly attitude towards India). ''India is Pakistan’s sworn enemy''(What a choice of words from a news paper editor) that poses it an existential threat with intransigent attitude on Kashmir and stealth of water that legally belongs to it. In the US perception, that would cut both ways: military might backing up India’s flourishing economy would enable it to serve as a bulwark against China; and, at the same time, nullify the role that ''Pakistan, the Beijing’s best friend in the region''(No doubt about that), could play in defence of China’s interests. ''There are also systematic US moves to destabilise Pakistan, cripple it economically and socially by instigating local dissident leaders to create trouble''(According to most reliable Pakistani sources). ''From Iraq, the US wishes to protect the Israeli interests, keep a check on Iran''(Don't ask why US can't do that from Israel) and ensure the flow of Middle Eastern oil to run its economy. 

In the light of these dangers, it is but ''inevitable that the countries in the region would come round Pakistan to work against the US''(Will they?) attempt to build bases in Afghanistan and Iraq and affirm that by adopting suitable policies they can best solve the problem of militancy in the region. These countries along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia must make it clear to the US that beyond 2014 they would not tolerate its presence here, which has done ''immeasurable harm to the countries in the region''(Editor means Pakistan).