30 June 2011
Pakistani troops backed by jets and helicopter gunships have killed 40 militants in a restive tribal area bordering Afghanistan in the past three days, a military commander said Thursday.Brigadier Aftab Ahmad told AFP by telephone that his forces had destroyed 17 militant hideouts in the Baizai region under his command in the lawless tribal area of Mohmand. "Militants were regularly attacking our posts on the Afghanistan border at Shonkari and Mithai...
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30 June 2011
President Obama’s counterterrorism strategy is narrowly focused on al-Qaeda and its ability to strike the U.S. homeland and is “not designed to combat directly every single terrorist organization in every corner of the world,” White House counterterrorism chief John O. Brennan said Wednesday. Acknowledging that the president’s goals “track closely with the goals” of the George W. Bush administration, Brennan said...
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29 June 2011
He built Pakistan's nuclear bomb and is accused of having sold his knowledge to Libya and Iran. Since 2004, Abdul Qadeer Khan has been under a state of house arrest. In an e-mail interview, he now explains why he accepted sole blame for the accusations at the time and points a finger at the Pakistani army.
Spiegel Online: Recent attacks on a naval base in Karachi, Pakistan, which resulted in the deaths of 16 people, show that extremists are posing...
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29 June 2011
Human rights violations in Pakistan’s southwest province of Balochistan are getting worse as militants and security forces target civilians, while authorities seem unwilling to rein in lawlessness, according to a report released on Wednesday. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), an independent non-governmental organisation, said in its report that lawlessness in the province had proliferated at an alarming rate with a growing numbers...
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29 June 2011
A tribunal headed by Justice Mohammad Hashim Kakar of the Balochistan High Court submitted on Tuesday its report on the Kharotabad incident of May 17 in which five foreigners, three of them women, were killed by security personnel, but the provincial government has decided not to make it public. According to sources, the government observed after going through the report that recommendations made by the judicial tribunal could not be fully implemented....
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28 June 2011
The announcement by President Obama on 22 June 2011 of substantial withdrawals of United States troops from Afghanistan by September 2012 marks an important moment in the almost decade-long war in the country. The impact of the decision will be felt on the current diplomatic calculations over the nature of a settlement that will bring the war to an end. It may also impinge on the presidential-election campaign in the US that reaches a climax in November...
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28 June 2011
The Pakistan government’s inability to provide for the security and prosperity of its own people has led to questions about its sovereignty, whether in terms of its monopoly of violence, fiscal solvency, or human security. But rather than asking questions of the Pakistani government, Pakistanis are content with blaming Washington for the country’s ills. Washington wants Pakistan to succeed, even though, admittedly, the United States has...
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Police Stations Understaffed in Punjab, KP and Sindh: Report
28 June 2011
The police stations in Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) were understaffed to a varying degree, the police stations in Balochistan and Islamabad capital territory were heavily overstaffed, according to Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN’s) police station monitor. This report is based on information collected by FAFEN monitors who visited 90 police stations in 62 districts across the country during January - March 2011. Of the monitored...
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Pakistan's Border Regions Vulnerable amid Planned US Withdrawal
27 June 2011
Fighting across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border will overshadow talks when the two countries meet along with the United States on Tuesday to map out plans for reconciliation with the Taliban. Pakistan on Monday rejected Afghan allegations it had fired 470 rockets into Afghanistan over the past three weeks, saying only that "a few accidental rounds" may have crossed the border when it pursued militants who had attacked its security forces. But the...
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Pakistan Expels British Military Trainers
27 June 2011
Pakistan has expelled a team of British military trainers sent to help with the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida, as the fallout from the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden continues to rock relations between Islamabad and its western allies. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that at least 18 military advisers, deployed as part of a £15m programme to train the paramilitary Frontier Corps, have been withdrawn from Pakistan. Most are already...
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