NEW YORK: The top US military officer said Thursday he is ‘reasonably comfortable’ Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are secure amid a rising tide of insurgent violence aimed at the government. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a lunchtime audience at the Hudson Union Society, said the US has invested in […]
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration plans to seek as much as $3 billion over the next five years to train and equip Pakistan’s military, and is considering sending 10,000 more troops to battle the Taliban in Afghanistan, defense officials said Wednesday. The money would include $500 million in an additional war budget request for the […]
ISLAMABAD – The son of a poor potato farmer who once worked as a fitness instructor has grown into one of the most powerful militant leaders along the Pakistan-Afghan border, his rise fueled by alliances with al-Qaida and fellow Pakistani militants. A day after Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud threatened to attack the White House, […]
KABUL, March 31 — The reclusive commander of the Pakistani Taliban said Tuesday that his fighters had carried out Monday’s bold assault on a police academy in eastern Pakistan and boasted that he was planning a terrorist attack in Washington that would astonish the world. Baitullah Mehsud, an Islamist leader from the South Waziristan tribal […]
Hardly had the implications of Obama’s new approach to the war in Afghanistan sunk in that the carping began in Pakistan. The words that most stuck in the establishment’s craw were those that warned our generals that they could no longer expect a blank cheque from the Americans. Thus far, the Pentagon has been underwriting […]
WASHINGTON: The attack on a police academy in Lahore indicates that religious terrorism, once confined to Pakistan’s tribal belt, now threatens political stability nationwide, The Washington Post observed on Tuesday. ‘The precisely orchestrated assault … was also a likely sign that militant groups in Punjab, once tolerated and even supported by the Pakistani state to […]
LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif denied in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday that he has had links with religious hardliners. He said the accusations were propaganda unleashed by General Pervez Musharraf, who deposed him in a coup in 1999. Although members of the PML-N sometimes characterise the war on terror as […]
It should be clear by now that we are at war with ourselves as the enemy within grows more audacious by the day. Yet there are educated people in this country who continue to blame American foreign policy and the ever-potent ‘foreign hand’ for the wave of terrorism sweeping the country. This argument is deeply […]
The terrorist attack on Police Academy in Lahore must have been a wake up call for those who have been arguing that ‘war on terror’ is America’s war. On the contrary, it is a war that is being fought in Pakistan and for a majority of Pakistan, it is heart sinking to realize that men, […]
WASHINGTON: President Barak Obama on Friday announced a new strategy which seeks to triple US economic aid to Pakistan and promises 4,000 additional troops to train Afghan security forces. ‘Make no mistake: al Qaeda and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within,’ he warned the Pakistani nation. ‘Al Qaeda offers […]
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A suicide bomber demolished a mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers attending Friday prayers close to the Afghan border, killing at least 48 people and injuring scores more, officials said. The attack in the Khyber region was the bloodiest in Pakistan this year and came hours before President Barack Obama was due […]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After agreeing to bury their differences and unite forces, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan have closed ranks with their Afghan comrades to ready a new offensive in Afghanistan as the United States prepares to send 17,000 more troops there this year. In interviews, several Taliban fighters based in the border region said […]
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama called President Asif Ali Zardari and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai on Thursday to tell them Washington had completed a review of its new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said. According to TV reports, President Zardari expressed concern over US drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas and told President […]
NEW YORK: US and Pakistani intelligence officials are drawing up a fresh list of terrorist targets for Predator drone strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, part of a US review of the drone program, the Wall Street Journal said Thursday. Citing official sources the newspaper said Pakistani officials are seeking to broaden the scope of the […]
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – Intelligence officials say at least 11 people are dead after a suicide bomber struck a restaurant in volatile northwest Pakistan. The two officials say the roadside restaurant’s visitors at the time included some two dozen militants opposed to Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. They say several others were wounded in […]