Syria's state news agency, Sana, reported that an explosion in Aleppo on July 26 killed around 15 soldiers and wounded 50 others. The Syrian officials had claimed that highly explosive products blew up due to an accidental fire at the facility, and no sabotage was involved. They had reasoned that the increase in ambient temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius caused an ammunition dump to explode, killing and wounding the soldiers. 

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has a geopolitical dimension that people outside the foreign policy circuit in India may not be sufficiently aware of. The ASEAN has always wanted to influence the shape of the regional order in Southeast Asia and the role of major powers in it. How can a group of ten relatively small countries aspire to manage the geopolitics of a region that is stalked by military or economic giants like the US and Japan and rising behemoths like China and India with populations of more than one billion each?

Remember Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s high-profile meeting and the promises at Havana (Cuba) on the sidelines of the NAM (Non-Alignment Movement) summit in mid-September 2006. One year has passed since both leaders agreed to have a joint anti-terror mechanism (ATM) to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations. It was considered significant then.

The declaration by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) that the presidential polls will be held on October 06 is of critical concern. It is imperative to point out that the ECP has played a very crucial role in facilitating the re-election bid of President Musharraf by declaring that he would be eligible to contest elections, despite a constitutional ban on government officials from standing for elections unless they retired two years before the polls. 

The much awaited request for proposal (RFP) for 126 medium-range multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) was finally announced by the Ministry of Defence in a press release on 28 August 2007. It took nearly two years of deliberations since the request for information (RFI) was issued in late 2005. Six bidders, considered ‘gorillas’ in military business, will compete for the massive $ 10.2 billion contract, dubbed as ‘mother of all deals’ in the history of Indian arms acquisition.

Despite more than three decades of international restriction on technology regime, India’s space program has successfully launched INSAT 4CR satellite early this month. The satellite has life span of ten years and it carries 12 high-power Ku-band transponders for direct-to-home television services, facilitate video picture transmission and digital satellite news gathering. The success of this test is very important particularly when viewed at the background of last year’s failure.

The involvement of a number of Indians in the foiled UK terror plots of early July this year rang alarm bells in India. Are Indian Muslims being lured into al-Qaida's global jihad? Britons of Indian origin have been tied to al-Qaida in the past, including the Muslim convert Dhiren Barot and Haroon Aswat, the alleged mastermind of the 21/7 bomb attacks. Unlike these Qaida predecessors, Kafeel Ahmed, one of the Glasgow car bombers, was born and raised in large part in India, in the booming hi-tech city of Bangalore.

While India is known for its disciplined armed forces, numbers of stress-related deaths in the form of suicide and fragging have been increasing in recent years, especially in troubled states of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Northeast India. Apart from tackling terrorism, escalation of fragging and suicides in such sensitive regions provide additional threats to national security. It also affects the morale of young aspirants and distracts them from pursuing it as a career option.

India’s forest land, rich in natural resources like forest derivatives and minerals, is undoubtedly the cauldron of various degrees of conflict. From civil wars in Chhattisgarh to armed conflict in the East, it has created internal security more volatile than ever before in India. The Union Ministry of Home Affairs has a special wing to neutralise this ‘internal security’ with solid policing. The growing number of conflicts in the forest area have threatened the forest resources and the livelihood of inhabitants.

The fall of the Red Mosque (Lal Masjid) has indeed heralded a new era in Pakistan marked by conflict between moderate and fundamentalist forces.