19 April 2011

The interlocutors and guarantors of Kurram peace deal will meet in Islamabad on Tuesday to chalk out a strategy for recovery of 35 passengers, who were kidnapped from Thall-Parachinar Road last month. They will discuss ways to salvage the peace agreement that collapsed only after month it was put into effect. “The stakeholders will sit together to find out solution to lingering issue of Kurram,” Malik Waris Khan Afridi, former federal...

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19 April 2011

We tend to divide victims of target killing into neat categories: X was killed due to his ethnicity, Y was killed due to his sect. However, reality tends to be a lot more complicated. Emerging trends in target killings in Karachi point towards an increasing overlap in political and sectarian violence. The city’s biggest and most powerful political party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement(MQM-A), says it is being targeted not only by militias with...

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19 April 2011

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Monday unanimously passed a resolution against US drone strikes inside Pakistani territory. The assembly also demanded that the federal government summon the US ambassador to the Foreign Office and convey its demand of an immediate halt to these strikes, since they were a violation of the country’s sovereignty. The provincial assembly, however, seemed to object to US control over the drone strikes rather than...

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19 April 2011

As the Afghan imbroglio heads towards another so-called endgame or impasse, US based think-tanks and experts here are saying that Pakistan and the United States are at odds over the final resolution of the crisis. They even suggest Pakistan could seek to completely oust Washington’s influence in any resolution, which given the present situation could be a tough sell. The Americans are seeking a strong and centralised Afghan government commanding...

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