Not too long ago, the Tehrik-e-Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that claimed the lives of at least 80 paramilitary cadets at a military training center in Charsadda, in Northern Pakistan. The Taliban announced the bombing was an act of revenge for the killing of Osama bin Laden. It had taken out elements of […]
President Barack Obama delivered his second State of the Union Address on Tuesday. Foreign policy did not top the agenda. Instead, as expected, the speech was heavy on domestic policy–even as an important election has swung past American politics, there’s one just around the corner. Indeed, foreign policy seemed to have sprung up in President […]
A female suicide bomber has killed at least 41 Pakistanis at an aid distribution center near the Afghanistan border in North West Pakistan. This is the first time that a woman has been employed to detonate an explosive vest in a crowded area and marks an uptick in strategy in what has always a brutal […]
I can’t help but think that this is fairly obvious news: The U.S. intervention in Afghanistan won’t work unless the Pakistani government and military rounds up its Taliban allies and, in a manner of speaking, breaks the back of the various groups that constitute the Taliban–both the Afghanistan and Pakistan contingents. Elisabeth Bumiller, writing for […]
The recent news of threats emanating from Pakistan and Algeria have spooked the American and European public milling about in great and famous cities. But the reasons behind the news that seems to single out machinations wrought in Pakistan remain murky, as they must by dint of the ways and means of intelligence. However, given […]
The U.S. government has made several related moves that now allows it go after the Pakistani Taliban with meat and muscle. The U.S. Department of Justice has charged Hakimullah Mesud, the alleged leader of the Tehrik e-Taliban with conspiracy to murder 7 C.I.A officers. Using a Jordanian physician as a double-agent the Tehrik-e-Taliban were able […]
Its hard to imagine the stake-holder that he had in mind when President Asif Ali Zardari had his chat with a reporter for Le Monde. He is on record to have claimed: “The international community, to which Pakistan belongs, is losing the war against the Taliban. “This is above all because we have lost the […]
A pen and ink and suminagashi print of the 2007 arrest of the retired general and former Director of Pakistan’s spy agency, Hamid Gul. Lt. Gen Gul is thought to have managed ISI’s coordination with the Afghan Taliban in order to develop strategic depth in Afghanistan to counter any Indian intervention in that country.
In today’s New York Times reportage by Mark Mazzetti, Jane Perlez, Eric Schmitt and Andrew W. Lehren has come crashing down on Pakistan. Though broadly speaking the news is nothing new to anyone with an ear for politics in the region, the reportage offers documentary proof of ISI complicity with the Afghan Taliban. It is […]
If it wasn’t sufficiently clear before, it should be now: the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik e- Taliban) are out to bring down the ‘apostate” government in Islamabad, piece, region by region, piece by piece. It were as if the Taliban were only moved to refute the writ and authority of the central government, which it thinks […]