Meeting to Demilitarise Siachen Glacier Fails to Yield Results
31 May 2011
India and Pakistan failed on Tuesday to break ice on how to demilitarise the world's highest battlefield in the Himalayan region in a sign of how far apart the nuclear-armed rivals are even on less contentious issues. Defence secretaries from both countries held two days of closed-door talks in New Delhi on how to agree on withdrawing troops from the financially costly , mountainous no-man's land above the Siachen glacier and defining the official...
Read the post »
Pakistani Journalist Who Wrote about Military's Links to Al Qaeda Found Dead
31 May 2011
A Pakistani journalist who was feared abducted after he went missing on Sunday has been found dead, his family has confirmed. Police said Saleem Shahzad's body was found in a canal in Mandi Baha Uddin in Pakistan's northern Gujarat district. Earlier, Human Rights Watch researcher Ali Dayan Hasan said he had "credible information" that Shahzad was in the custody of Pakistani intelligence. He recently wrote an article about al-Qaeda infiltration in...
Read the post »
Pakistani Warplanes Kill at Least 16 in Orakzai
31 May 2011
Pakistani warplanes attacked Taliban positions in the northwestern Orakzai region on Tuesday, killing 17 militants, a senior regional government official said. Orakzai is one of seven ethnic Pashtun tribal areas where the Pakistani army has tried to root out militants with offensives against their strongholds. The strike came a day after a local newspaper reported that Pakistan will launch an offensive in North Waziristan, a known sanctuary for al...
Read the post »
Indigenous Politics in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas
31 May 2011
Is it an exaggeration to say that every day a new militant group forms in Pakistan's tribal areas, but never a political party? Maybe. It would be more accurate to say that every few months a new militant group forms in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). But it would hardly be an exaggeration to say there are no indigenous political parties, when there are just a few tiny groupings. One is a struggling party that launched itself last...
Read the post »
US Presses Pakistan to Target Specific Militant Leaders
31 May 2011
The United States has drawn up a list of five militant Islamic leaders it expects Pakistan to provide intelligence about immediately and possibly target in joint operations, including Osama bin Laden deputy Ayman al Zawahiri and Taliban commander Mullah Omar, according to a U.S. official and a Pakistani official. The list also includes Siraj Haqqani, the operational commander of the Haqqani network, the most violent group in the Afghan Taliban and...
Read the post »