ISLAMABAD, Pakistan ‚ President Asif Ali Zardari returned from China late Friday without a commitment for cash needed to shore up Pakistan's crumbling economy, leaving him with the politically unpopular prospect of having to ask the International Monetary Fund for help. Pakistan was seeking the aid from China, an important ally, as it faces the […]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bomber on Thursday attacked a police station in northwest Pakistan, killing four security officers — the latest in a series of blasts that are eroding confidence in the country. The attacker struck in the mountain valley of Swat, one of several regions where government forces have been struggling to defeat […]
WASHINGTON ‚ A growing al Qaida -backed insurgency, combined with the Pakistani army's reluctance to launch an all-out crackdown, political infighting and energy and food shortages are plunging America's key ally in the war on terror deeper into turmoil and violence, says a soon-to-be completed U.S. intelligence assessment. A U.S. official who participated in drafting […]
Pakistani intelligence agents re-arrested an American detained in the country's volatile border region and were questioning the man, police said Wednesday. The man ‚ identified by Pakistani police as Juddi Kenan ‚ was carrying a laptop computer when he was arrested Monday at a checkpoint in the northwestern district of Mohmand, near where Pakistani security […]
The threats started about a year ago, telling Haroon Bacha to stop singing or else. "There were letters, there were phone calls, there were text messages," Mr. Bacha said, sitting upright on a floor in Brooklyn, surrounded by smoke from Pakistani cigarettes. "They used to come very frequently back home, just telling me to stop […]
Here's an alarming thought: Pakistan is in even scarier shape than most of the so-called experts are willing to admit. This nuclear-armed state of 168 million is no stranger to political upheaval, of course. But this time, things are different. Today's ongoing crisis — marked by a rash of suicide bombings, the assassination of former […]
A joint session of parliament in Islamabad has heard, in camera, the newly-appointed ISI Director General Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha ‚ who was Director General Military Operations (DGMO) before he got the job ‚ on the terrorist threat facing Pakistan and the army's operations to thwart the terrorists. The briefing has made it clear […]
Pakistan's new spy chief briefed lawmakers Wednesday in an unusual private session focused on the fledgling government's fight against Taliban and al-Qaida militants entrenched in the tribal belt along the Afghan border. The government called the special session of parliament as it sought political unity to stabilize this key U.S. ally in the war on […]
Forty years ago, the United States began to mount raids into Cambodia and to undermine the government of King Sihanouk in order to cut Vietcong supply lines. As a result, America's war with Vietnamese Communism spread into Cambodia, leading to the triumph of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide. But these horrors occurred after […]
Pakistan ordered the deportation of about 50,000 Afghan refugees in an insurgency-wracked tribal region amid a major military offensive against al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. The government said it was expelling all Afghan refugees in the Bajur tribal region, alleging many of them have links to militant groups. Police in the town of Khar in Bajur […]
Islamabad, Pakistan – For Pakistan, moments of success have been few in the fight in its northwestern tribal area against members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But with militants there carrying out increasingly brazen attacks in Pakistan's cities, and stirring trouble in Afghanistan , prompting the United States to pressure Pakistan to act , […]
A suicide bomber killed 15 people and wounded a Pakistani opposition politician on Monday in the latest attack to underscore the threat posed by Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants. The attacker blew himself up in a crowd of people at the house of Rashid Akbar Nowani, a minority Shiite MP from the party of former premier […]
LONDON, Oct 4: MQM chief Altaf Hussain has made an impassioned appeal to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to forget and forgive and join hands with the PPP-led coalition government to steer the ship of the nation out of troubled waters. Speaking at a function to celebrate his 55th birth day on Friday, Mr Hussain […]
Two suspected U.S. missile strikes Friday on villages close to the border with Afghanistan killed at least 12 people, most of them militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said. American forces recently ramped up cross-border operations against Taliban and al-Qaida militants in Pakistan's border zone with Afghanistan ‚ a region considered a likely hiding place for Osama […]
A US strike on a Pakistani village near the Afghan border has killed at least nine people including suspected foreign militants, Pakistani sources say. Initial reports said at least 20 people had died when an unmanned aircraft (drone) fired on the village in North Waziristan region. But officials later talked of between nine and 12 […]