Free Republic

29 years ago this fortnight, Pakistan's dictator -- the general who made jihad an integral part of Pakistani State policy -- died in a mysterious air crash. Did the KGB, the then USSR's dreaded espionage agency, assassinate Zia-ul Haq? Was India's RA&W responsible for blowing Zia's military aircraft out of the skies? Was it Zia's many enemies in Pakistan's military? Was it a case of exploding mangoes as Mohammad Hanif speculated in his fascinating novel about Zia's death? Or was the assassin someone else? Kallol Bhattacherjee delves into the persistent puzzle of Muhammad Zia-ul Haq's death. IMAGE: General Zia-ul Haq...

The US has signaled that the odyssey doesn't end with Yemen. It is also moving into Somalia and Kenya. With that, the US establishes its military presence in an entire unbroken stretch of real estate all along the Indian Ocean's western rim. Chinese officials have of late spoken of their need to establish a naval base in the region. The US has now foreclosed China's options. The only country with a coastline that is available for China to set up a naval base in the region will be Iran. All other countries have a Western military presence.

BY 9 in the morning, the bazaar on a rocky island in the Panj River was a frenetic scene of haggling and theatrics. Afghan traders in long tunics and vests hawked teas, toiletries and rubber slippers. Turbaned fortune tellers bent over ornate Persian texts, predicting futures for the price of a dollar. Tajik women bargained over resplendent bolts of fabric. All were mingling this bright Saturday at a weekly market held throughout the year and, in one form or another, for thousands of years here in the Wakhan Valley, which divides Tajikistan and Afghanistan. “Mousetraps, mousetraps, mousetraps, oooowww!” crooned a...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A KGB master agent who ran some of Moscow's most damaging Cold War spies in the West -- Klaus Fuchs and the Rosenbergs -- died on Friday after a lifetime of espionage that helped the Soviet Union acquire the nuclear bomb. Alexander Feklisov, who also played a key role as a mediator in the Cuban Missile Crisis, was 93, a spokesman for Russia's foreign intelligence service (SVR) said. He arrived in New York in 1941 and began running Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple who supplied the Soviet Union with top secret information on the U.S....

NEW DELHI: President Vladimir Putin of Russia offered to build four new nuclear reactors for India on Thursday, cementing his country's traditional role as India's main nuclear benefactor. A memorandum of understanding on the plants was signed by the heads of the Russian and Indian nuclear agencies after a meeting between Putin and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India. Putin arrived in India on Thursday, hoping to use the two nations' friendship to push for deals in civilian nuclear cooperation, military hardware and trade expansion between the booming economies. Russia has been eager to reassert its traditional role as the...

Christopher Pala for The New York Times Workers for China National Petroleum who helped build a $700 million pipeline attended an opening ceremony in Atasu, Kazakhstan, in December. A company executive called the pipeline "the new Silk Road."  March 17, 2006 China Pays Dearly for Kazakhstan Oil By CHRISTOPHER PALA ALMATY, Kazakhstan ? China, which for more than a century turned its back on Central Asia, has reached out to Kazakhstan, Central Asia's biggest country, for one major reason: oil.In 2005, the China National Petroleum Corporation bought Petrokazakhstan, a Canadian-run company that was the former Soviet Union's largest independent...

U.S. Criticizes Russian Moves In South Ossetia, Praises Georgia (RFE/RL) PRAGUE, March 2, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- For the second time in three weeks, a senior U.S. representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has registered concern over the ongoing tensions in Georgia's unrecognized breakaway Republic of South Ossetia and Russia's policies towards that region. Addressing the OSCE's Permanent Council in Vienna on March 2, U.S. Charge d'Affaires Kyle Scott expressed concern that recent incidents in South Ossetia could have triggered new bloodshed there, and he called on "both sides to exercise restraint and take care to...

Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a visit to India where she discussed Washington's desire to help India become a "major world power." Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao followed suit with Beijing's most recent wooing of New Delhi by announcing a "strategic partnership" between the world's two most populous countries. India has clearly become an object of desire for the major powers in Asian politics; how this courtship plays out will have global ramifications. Several factors have coalesced in recent years to thrust India into a prominent role on the global stage. China and the United States are...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US State Department was tightlipped on the fate of former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, detained in Japan and wanted on a 12-year-old US warrant charging him with violating an international commercial embargo on the former Yugoslavia. "There's a limit to what I can say about the situation of Mr Fischer because of the Privacy Act," spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. "We don't have permission in terms of a Privacy Act waiver to release any further information on Mr Fischer." The Privacy Act gives persons in custody the option, before they are formally charged, of having...

Oil wars Pentagon's policy since 1999 By Ritt Goldstein May 20 2003 A top-level United States policy document has emerged that explicitly confirms the Defence Department's readiness to fight an oil war. According to the report, Strategic Assessment 1999, prepared for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defence, "energy and resource issues will continue to shape international security". Oil conflicts over production facilities and transport routes, particularly in the Persian Gulf and Caspian regions, are specifically envisaged. Although the policy does not forecast imminent US military conflict, it vividly highlights how the highest levels of the...

The Serbian Ministry of Energy and Mining has welcomed the agreement signed on 22nd July between the United States Trade and Development Agency and the government of Croatia on a US donation for a feasibility study on the construction of a pipeline linking the Black Sea and the Adriatic. The project would connect the Romanian port of Constanta, the refinery at Pancevo near Belgrade (which was heavily bombed by Nato in 1999) and the Italian port of Trieste. It would enable the transport of Caspian Sea oil to Europe, making maximum use of existing facilities. The minister, Kori Udovicki, said...