Mindful of hostilities to the East (5)
I believe the answer is:
aware
'mindful of' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'hostilities to the east' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'hostilities' could be 'war' (hostilities between two nations) and 'war' is located in the answer.
'east' could be 'e' (abbreviation) and 'e' is found in the answer.
A single letter 'a' remains which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for aware that I've seen before include "Cognizant" , "Conscious, sentient" , "Bearing in mind" , "Conscious, knowing about" , "fly" .)