She's young, stylish, sharp and pretty, and Indians are falling for her. Yep, it seems that Pakistan's new 34-year-old foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, has accomplished what years of tense diplomacy haven't been able to -- create some genuine goodwill between the two constantly sparring nations. In her first official visit today to India since taking over the foreign ministry last week, Khar met with her Indian counterpart, S.M. Krishna. The two agreed to boost security, trade, transportation, travel, and cultural links between the countries -- in what analysts called some of the most productive talks between the two sides since Pakistani militants killed 166 people in Mumbai three years ago. But it's her youth and glamour that are credited with creating a "fresh start atmosphere."  She later met with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

But who really cares what happened behind closed doors. More importantly: she got high marks for wearing Roberto Cavalli sunglasses, classic pearl and diamond jewelry, a blue designer dress, and toting an Hermes Birkin bag. And thus ladies and gentleman, a glamour icon is born. We give it three months before Vogue comes calling... wait, maybe two.

Indian papers and news programs today gushed over Khar, praising her beauty and style.  The Times of India headlined their front page story: "Pak Puts On Its Best Face." The Navbharat Times said the country was "sweating over model-like minister." The Mail Today said she had brought a "Glam touch to Indo-Pak talks" and asked, "Who says politicians can't be chic?" These are not the usual superlatives Pakistani diplomats are used to getting in the Indian press.

Of course, not everything was picture perfect. The Indian press did attack her for meeting with a Kashmiri separatist group later in the day.

But overall, it was hard not to sense the generational shift as Khar spoke about "a new generation of Indians and Pakistanis [who] will see a relationship that will hopefully be much different from the one that has been experienced in the last two decades" after meeting with the Indian foreign minister who -- through no fault of his own, save for his misfortune of being born 79 years ago -- did totally look like her grandfather.

As Seema Goswami, a leading Indian social commentator, put it, "She's incredibly young pretty, glamorous and has no fear of appearing flash. She wore pearls when she arrived and diamonds for the talks. We're so obsessed with her designer bag and clothes that we forget she first held talks with the Hurriyat [Kashmiri separatists]. She could be Pakistan's new weapon of mass destruction."

The classic American ‘donut-loving cop' stereotype is not so funny in India. Five overweight police officers collapsed during a short parade in Mumbai earlier this year due to an unfortunate heat and pot-belly combo. City commissioner Arup Patnaik was humiliated and demanded that all policemen trim their waistlines or risk enduring a sort of extreme weight loss boot camp that few police officers pass.

The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in Kerala recently conducted a survey and found over 50 percent of police officers were either overweight or obese. Obesity has become one of the leading causes of death even though half of all Indian children suffer from malnourishment, reports VOA. The police chief of the western state of Rajasthan voiced his dismay over obesity in the police force:

"A fat potbellied man in uniform is a sight nobody appreciates."

Just over the border, overweight Nepali officers also face intense scrutiny. Last year, the police force pledged to institute annual health tests alongside personal fitness regimes for every officer in the force of 56,000. Bigyan Raj Sharma, a spokesman for the police force in Kathmandu, threatened overweight police officials, saying:

"Officers who fail will be barred from promotion and transferred to less well-paying posts."

An anti-obesity clinic is in the works for a police hospital in Mumbai and it seems India's officers have no choice but to slim down -- or face the wrath of their mothers. Yes, the new weight-loss campaign includes the wives and mothers of male officers to ensure that they are sticking to their diets by supporting healthier eating habits. Say bye-bye to mango lassis and hello to Atkins.

Is the end nigh for Indian tech support? A British telecommunications company is moving one of its call centers from Mumbai to Burnley, 21 miles north of Manchester, to cut costs. New Call Telecom chief executive Nigel Eastwood explains the decision:

Salaries in India aren't that cheap any more. Add to that the costs of us flying out there, hotels and software, and the costs are at an absolute parity.

In the UK we will pay workers the minimum wage. Given the current economic environment, we will get good "sticky" employees who will also receive bonuses linked to performance.

With rents as low as £4 per square foot, prices for commercial real estate in Burnley are reportedly on par with those in Mumbai. Residential prices are similarly affordable; data from the property website Mouseprice indicates that four of the five most affordable streets in England and Wales are located in Burnley, a former mill town struggling with high unemployment. Meanwhile, salaries in the IT outsourcing industry in India are set to rise 11.9 percent in the upcoming year, and some business process outsourcing leaders in India have already admitted that, with unemployment high throughout the West, India's competitive advantage in call centers is shrinking.

Eastwood also notes that using British staff should make call handling more efficient as well, because British customers will find compatriots easier to understand. Although the rest of the world may beg to differ on that one.

A front-page story in Pakistan's The News today reports that new WikiLeaks cables have confirmed what reads like a laundry list of Pakistani suspicions and grievances against India:

A cable from US Embassy in Islamabad leaked by whistle-blower website WikiLeaks disclosed that there were enough evidences of Indian involvement in Waziristan and other tribal areas of Pakistan as well as Balochistan.[...]

An earlier cable ruled out any direct or indirect involvement of ISI in 26/11 under Pasha's command while Mumbai's dossier, based on prime accused Ajmal Kasab's confessional statement was termed funny and "shockingly immature."

WikiLeaks revealed that a cable sent from a US mission in India termed former Indian Army chief General Deepak Kapoor as an incompetent combat leader and rather a geek.
His war doctrine, suggesting eliminating China and Pakistan in a simultaneous war front was termed as "much far from reality." Another cable indicates that General Kapoor was dubbed as a general who was least bothered about security challenges to the country but was more concerned about making personal assets and strengthening his own cult in the army. The cable also suggested that a tug-of-war between Kapoor and the current Indian Army chief had divided the Indian Army into two groups. [...]

An earlier cable described Indian Army involved in gross human rights violations in Indian-held Kashmir while some Lt Gen HS Panag, the then GOC-in-Chief of the Northern Command of the Indian Army, was equated with General Milosevic of Bosnia with regard to butchering Muslims through war crimes.

The only problem is that none of these cables appear to be real. The Guardian, which has full access to the unreleased WikiLeaks cables, can't find any of them. The story, which ran in four Pakistani newspapers, isn't bylined and was credited only to Online Agency, an Islamabad-based pro-army news service.

It's actually surprising this hasn't happened yet. The vast majority of the cables are still unreleased, but the newspapers which have access to them have often reported on some of the more salacious details before the original cables are actually available. (Take for instance, the famous "Batman and Robin" description of Putin and Medvedev, which appeared in newspapers days before the actual cable was available). 

So, it's pretty easy to just make up cables to serve your political agenda. If the Pakistani forgers had been more sophisticated they would have invented quotes or even mocked up fake cables rather than just paraphrasing. This, in my opinion, is an argument for just releasing the full archive now rather than trickling them out at the newspapers' pace. It will be a lot easier to fact check false claims if we no longer have to rely on the Guardian as WikiLeaks' gatekeeper. 

On another note, while the Pakistani revelations seem cartoonish, it wouldn't be surprising if some damaging cables from New Delhi are coming soon. In working to improve the political and economic relationship with India, both the Bush and Obama administrations have papered over a number of unpleasant facts, from India's tacit support to the Burmese military junta to still rampant governmental corruption. I'm guessing the embassy staff in New Delhi has probably been a lot blunter. 

The WikiLeaks revelations about Pakistan mostly just confirmed how both governments not-so-privately already feel about each other. In the case of U.S.-India relations, there's a lot more to lose. 

Dear Pakistani military officers Maj. Ali Sameer and Maj. Iqbal: You may want to delay that long-planned vacation to London. You see, Interpol has just issued warrants for your arrest over your alleged roles in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Interpol's action will further affirm many analysts' suspicion that the Pakistani military played a crucial role in planning the deadly attacks, which resulted in the deaths of 175 people. But to be clear, this isn't proof positive that the two Pakistani officers were involved: Interpol issued what is known as a red warrant, which calls for the "provisional arrest" of an individual based on another country's investigation.

In this case, a New Delhi court is calling for their arrest based on evidence Indian investigators gathered from their inquiry into the network of David Coleman Headley, a U.S. citizen who pleaded guilty to involvement in the attacks in March. The Indians are claiming that Maj. Iqbal was Headley's Pakistani handler when he traveled to India to scout out potential targets for a terrorist attack. This may or may not be true, but the arrest warrants are not based on anything other than the allegations of Indian investigators, which have long suspected Pakistan of complicity in the attacks.

With those caveats firmly in place, there does appear to be some agreement from the United States that Pakistani officers played a role in the attacks. As FP contributor Simon Henderson recently pointed out, the sole footnote in Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars noted that the CIA received "reliable intelligence" that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's main spy agency, were involved in training the militants who went on to wreak havoc in Mumbai.

As if the pressure was not mounting enough on India's mismanagement of the upcoming Commonwealth Games -- highlighted recently by a FP photo essay -- CNN uncovers fresh evidence that child labor is being extensively used to "beautify" and build for the games.

Knowledge and reports of the practice have been documented from early on this year, but the Indian government is apparently not completely aware of what is going on at its own construction sites. According to the CNN article,

"The [government] minister... went on to say that ‘she had wished' somebody would have come and told her of the allegations."

While this may be true, child labor is pervasive in India, and some argue it is better than the alternatives. Perhaps the government was really just looking out for the children.

Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuyo Okada is in India this week holding talks on civilian nuclear cooperation, but he is also pushing for a clause to attempt to limit India's future nuclear weapons tests:

Before leaving for his two-day visit to India, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said any civilian nuclear deal between the two countries needed a clause to define how Tokyo would respond to any nuclear test by New Delhi.

"Japan will have no option but to suspend our cooperation" in the event of a nuclear test by India, Okada told a news conference in New Delhi

The two countries launched talks in June on signing an atomic civilian cooperation agreement which will allow Tokyo to export nuclear power generation technology and related equipment to energy-hungry India.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan's government has been criticized at home for negotiating the deal with India, which developed nuclear weapons outside the framework of the global non-proliferation treaty. Japan's Mainichi Shimbun editorializes: 

Cooperation with any country like India on atomic energy could make the NPT a dead letter and give Iran and other countries that are suspected of developing nuclear weapons even though they are parties to the treaty an excuse to develop nuclear arms.... [I]n negotiating with India, Japan should assert its position as the only country that has suffered from nuclear devastation.

India seems unlikely to agree to further pledges against nuclear testing, beyond those it has already made. As a member of the international nuclear-suppliers group, Japan finally overcame years of resistance in 2008 when it agreed to a waiver that allowed India to receive nucelar assistance despite its non-NPT status. Japan's willingness to cooperate on nuclear energy with India is a pretty good indication of how China's military and economic rise has changed the equation for its neighbors.

Indian-U.S. relations are going to be pretty important for the foreseeable future. I'd imagine, then, that implicitly threatening the victims of the Bhopal Union Carbide (now owned by Dow Chemical) disaster of 1984 to be quiet or else isn't a very smart thing.

Apparently deputy National Security Adviser Mike Froman didn't get that memo.

India's Planning Commission deputy chairman sent Froman an e-mail requesting U.S. assistance in securing a loan from the World Bank. Froman replied that he'd look into it, and then proceded to lose all common sense:

While I've got you, we are hearing a lot of noise about the Dow Chemical issue. I trust that you are monitoring it carefully... I am not familiar with all the details, but I think we want to avoid developments which put a chilling effect on our investment relationship.

In case, like Froman, you're not familiar with the details of Bhopal, 25 years ago, a large amount of methyl isocyanate leaked from the plant and spread over the city, killing at least 3,000 immediately and contributing to the deaths of approximately 25,000 more. Local journalists had repeatedly warned that the plant suffered from lax safety regulations to no avail. Birth defects, cancers, growth deficiency, and other health issues are abnormally high in the affected area.

Finally last June employees of the plant received punishment. Local Indian managers were convicted, but received what were perceived as little more than slaps on the wrist. Campaigners have demanded Union Carbide -- including then chairman Warren Anderson -- itself be reprimanded, but no action has been forthcoming. Amnesty International called the convictions "too little, too late." 

Making Froman's e-mail even more asinine, his threat wasn't even credible. Regardless of further actions taken against Dow Chemical, the U.S. is going to invest a lot of money into India for both geopolitical and economic reasons -- making Froman's message one that really should have stayed in his drafts folder.

Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, has concluded that India is no longer the primary threat to the country's security. Displacing New Delhi for the title are Islamist militias operating in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province:

A recent internal assessment of security by the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's powerful military spy agency, determined that for the first time in 63 years it expects a majority of threats to come from Islamist militants, according to a senior ISI officer.

The assessment, a regular review of national security, allocates a two-thirds likelihood of a major threat to the state coming from militants rather than from India or elsewhere. It is the first time since the two countries gained independence from Britain in 1947 that India hasn't been viewed as the top threat.

In the words of Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, the report is nothing short of "earth-shattering." To be clear, the ISI's findings aren't yet supported among members of the Pakistani military, or in the higher reaches of government. But keep your eye on this.

A court case in India might could give a whole new meaning to the phrase "masters of the universe": 

Can Hindu deities have demat accounts to enable them transact in shares and debentures on the stock market?

The Bombay High Court will decide the issue after a religious trust filed a petition challenging the decision of National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) to refuse it permission for opening demat accounts in the names of five Hindu deities.

The deities of the Sangli-based trust "Ganpati Panchayatam Sansthan" are Lord Ganesh, Chintamaneshwardev, Chintamaneshwaridevi, Suryanarayandev and Laxminarayandev. The trust, belonging to the Patwardhan family, the erstwhile royals of Sangli, had obtained PAN cards in the names of deities in 2008. 

In Inida, a "demat account" is one in which shares are held in electronic form rather than in certificates, which seems appropriate for metaphysical beings. If Lord Ganesh and co. do win their case, I know the perfect banker for them. 

Hat tip: Marginal Revolution

Steve Coll's new magnum opus for the New Yorker on whether it's possible to negotiate with the Taliban has a wealth of interesting nuggets, but this was the most interesting bit to me (the entire article is not online, alas). Coll discusses a key Pakistani document whose existence was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, and says it shows a singular focus:

In [January and February], high-ranking Pakistani officials met with Holbrooke, Mullen, McChrystal, and General David Petraeus, and, at the invitation of the U.S., submitted a fifty-six-page briefing on its security interests in the region. The paper, according to officials familiar with its contents, reflects one overriding concern: India.

For years, Pakistan has maintained that India has used its Embassy and Consulates in Afghanistan to foster separatist insurgencies inside Pakistan. The Indian government rejects this accusation as paranoia, and, in reality, the official Indian presence in Afghanistan is not formidable; it includes about a hundred Embassy and Consulate employees, plus local hires, a security team, and a construction team that is erecting a new Afghan parliament building. But India has opened two consulates near the Pakistan border, in Jalalabad and Kandahar, which I.S.I. officers believe have been used to aid anti-Pakistan groups. [...]

In March, two Pakistani generals-Ashfaq Kayani, the Army chief, and Ahmed Pasha, the head of I.S.I., met with Karzai in Islamabad, and signalled that they could help that they could help cool down the Taliban insurgency. In exchange, Kayani said, the Karzai government must "end" India's presence in Afghanistan. According to a senior Afghan intelligence official, he said, "There cannot be any type of Indian presence in Afghanistan-any type." (A senior Pakistani official said that the generals' message was more restrained, demanding only that India not use Afghanistan as a platform for guerrilla war against Pakistan.)

Kayani is certainly a step up from his predecessor Pervez Musharraf, and was recently described to me by one former U.S. official as "the most reality-based Pakistan general" ever to visit Washington, but the lack of strategic thought on display here is quite amazing. Here you've got an impoverished, dysfunctional country next door to one of the most dynamic economies on Earth, and it can't imagine a paradigm in which India is an economic partner and an ally, not a threat. Convincing Pakistan to set aside its traditional paranoia about its larger, more successful neighbor has got to be one of the top priorities of U.S. foreign policy for years to come.

Google's January investigation into Chinese hacking of over twenty companies and the emails of dozens of human rights activists has highlighted an increasingly potent form of espionage:

"Cyber espionage is the great equalizer. Countries no longer have to spend billions to build globe-spanning satellites to pursue high-level intelligence gathering, when they can do so via the web..."

That is from a joint report released today by the Information Warfare Monitor and Shadowserver Foundation called "Shadows in the Cloud". It details how China-based hackers stole secret documents from the Indian Defense Ministry, the Dalai Lama's offices and the U.N over the past year. Although the report acknowledges no Chinese government link to what they dub the "Shadow Network," the information harvested is unlikely to be of much benefit to individuals. It includes secret assessments of India's security in regions bordering Tibet, Bangladesh and Myanmar; missile systems; information on the domestic Maoist insurgency; and embassy assessments of Indian relations with West Africa, Russia, former Soviet republics and the Middle East.

Reuters neatly summarizes the report's conclusions into how the attackers operated:

"The cyber-spies used popular online services, including Twitter, Google's Google Groups and Yahoo mail, to access infected computers, ultimately directing them to communicate with command and control servers in China"

Although the Chinese government has denied any involvement and made clear that it views hacking as an international crime, it will be interesting to see if it investigates such hacker networks operating from its territory. There is surely enough evidence to do so. On the other hand, it is no secret that the U.S. also hosts a large number of the world' cybercriminals; a recent report from Symantec's Message Labs showed that while the bulk of the world's targetted email attacks (28 percent) originate in China, 14 percent originate in the U.S.

In fact, since the Google-China debacle exploded, grievances in the American media have seemed to focus on freedom of speech and freedom from censorship rather than on issues of espionage. The Indian press also seems somewhat unconcerned -- the report has gotten little attention there and the Chinese government has brushed it off as media hype. It just seems that all parties are resigned to the fact, at least tacitly, that this is the way things work nowadays.

Think mustard gas is bad?

In possible contravention of long-standing international conventions on the prohibition of chemical and biological weapons, the Indian military has announced the addition to a new weapon to its arsenal: chili grenades.

Made from bhut jolokia -- the spiciest chili pepper in the world, according to the 2007 Guinness Book of World Records -- the grenades are expected to be "effective nontoxic weapon[s]... [whose] pungent smell can choke terrorists and force them out of their hideouts."

I urge readers to be on the lookout for one of these things at the next international weapons exhibition they attend.  

Today Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh met in New Delhi to sign a number of bi-lateral commercial agreements. While the agreements cover a wide variety of topics, including space exploration, fertilizer importation, and commodities trade, nuclear energy and defense are what have received the most attention.

Edging out competition from France and the United States, Russia won contracts to build up to 16 new civilian nuclear power plants in India, six of which are expected to be completed by 2017, according to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov. This is sure to leave a sour taste in the mouths of many American firms, especially after the success of the 2005 Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear agreement.

Additionally, the two countries signed a multi-billion dollar deal which will see Russia refit Indian aircraft carriers, help India develop transport aircraft, and supply India with 29 new MiG fighter jets.This should leave Russia well positioned to remain India's largest military hardware supplier. Currently, Russia accounts for approximately 60-70% of India's total defense spending. 

While New Delhi's goal of diversifying its energy supplies and moving away from coal may be admirable -- in 2003, coal was estimated to account for almost 70% of India's energy consumption -- you've got to question the wisdom of sinking billions of dollars into improving commercial ties with Russia when your country's per capita GDP puts you in the bottom quartile of the world.