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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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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Seized Phone Offers Clues to Bin Laden's Pakistani Links
24 June 2011
The cellphone of Osama bin Laden’s trusted courier, which was recovered in the raid that killed both men in Pakistan last month, contained contacts to a militant group that is a longtime asset of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, senior American officials who have been briefed on the findings say. The discovery indicates that Bin Laden used the group, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, as part of his support network inside the country, the officials...
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Obama "Insists" Pakistan Fulfills Counterinsurgency Promises as US Prepares Afghanistan Withdrawal
23 June 2011
President Barack Obama on Wednesday vowed the United States will “insist” Pakistan fulfill its promises to counter militant sanctuaries on its soil. “We will work with the Pakistani government to root out the cancer of violent extremism, and we will insist that it keep its commitments,” Obama said in a televised speech on troop withdrawal plans for the war in Afghanistan. Obama’s comments underscored festering tensions...
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22 June 2011
Pakistanis largely disapprove of the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, with a majority believing the al-Qaida chief’s death is a bad thing and relations between Washington and Islamabad will suffer as a result, new polling data show. The findings of two Pew Research Center surveys reflect widespread anti-Americanism in a country where many view the U.S. as the main reason for rising Islamist violence that has killed thousands, even as...
Pakistan Seeks Greater Role in US-Taliban Talks
21 June 2011
Pakistan on Monday sought ‘greater transparency and clarity’ from the United States in its plans to reach out to the Afghan Taliban in a move that indicates Islamabad’s unease over Washington’s recent overtures with insurgents. The Obama administration has recently confirmed that it had established contacts with the Afghan Taliban though it insisted the negotiations were at a preliminary stage. It is widely believed that the...
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Two Drone Strikes Kill At Least Nine Suspected Fighters in Kurram
20 June 2011
At least nine suspected fighters have been killed after US drones fired missiles at a vehicle and a residential compound in the Kurram tribal agency, in Pakistan's northwest, according to Pakistani officials. Al Jazeera's sources said that in the first of Monday's two attacks, a vehicle was hit and two suspected fighters were killed. The vehicle was attacked again but just a few minutes later, as the local tribesmen rushed to a nearby residential...
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Suspicions Rise as Pakistan Bomb Labs Empty Before Raids
20 June 2011
For the second time this month, bomb-making factories in Pakistan were evacuated shortly after American intelligence officials notified Pakistani security forces of their existence, fueling suspicions that such intelligence is being shared with insurgents. It remains unclear whether the evacuations — four of them in the past month alone — were the result of deliberate or inadvertent leaks or were planned in advance of the intelligence...
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Pakistan to Investigate New US Claims that Security Agencies Warned Militants ahead of Raids
17 June 2011
Pakistan assured US lawmakers on Thursday it was investigating a complaint that Pakistani security agencies asked by the CIA to act against two IED factories in Fata had instead alerted the militants and allowed them to escape. The assurance conveyed to senior US lawmakers in a meeting with a Pakistani delegation headed by Ambassador Husain Haqqani, followed a series of congressional hearings that focused on the allegation. During the meeting, US...
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