The impoverished tribesmen in Pakistan's lawless areas have borne the brunt of the government's attempts to combat militancy, says Tahir Ali
Taliban insurgents disguised as police attacked a prison holding hundreds of militants in northwest Pakistan with rockets and mortars and have reportedly escaped with 300 prisoners after a gunfight with security forces.
Top Taliban leader Mullah Omar was sheltered by Pakistan's powerful spy agency Inter-Services intelligence after the outfit's leadership fled from Afghanistan in 2001, according to an email received by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton during her tenure.
A top commander of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Omar Khalid Khorasani and three other top terrorists have been killed in a mysterious blast in eastern Afghanistan's Paktika province, a Pakistani media report said on Monday.
The Pakistan government is supporting Islamist groups close to the Taliban in its attempt to suppress tribal insurgency in Balochistan, a leading international think tank has alleged. In its report Pakistan: The Forgotten Conflict in Balochistan, the International Crisis Group said that the Musharraf regime relies on divide-and-rule policies. It supports Pashtun Islamist parties like the JUI-F, a key patron of the Afghan Taliban, in a bid to counter secular Baloch forces.
United States officials have identified Pakistan as a base of operations or target for numerous armed and non state militant groups, some of which have existed since the 1980s, the independent Congressional Research Service said in the report.
Militant commander Syed Muhammad was gunned down in the mountainous Elaum area in Buner district on Sunday, officials said
After intense pressure from the United States, Pakistan has reportedly agreed to launch a full-scale offensive against the Taliban and other extremist organisations in their stronghold North Waziristan, but has also clarified to the Obama administration that the timing of the military offensive would be decided by it.
A powerful explosion ripped through a market in Bajaur tribal region of northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing eight persons, including two anti-Taliban tribal elders, and injuring 12 others.
Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani escaped an attempt on his life when Taliban militants fired rockets at an area in South Waziristan tribal agency shortly after his visit to the troubled region.
Pakistan has informed the United States that it is ready to facilitate its peace talks with Taliban, but it must not be blamed in case of failure, as it does not spoon-feed the militant group, a media report said on Sunday.
The case of Shahbaz Bhatti clearly shows that the terrorists were guided by someone from within the forces, as the killers not only knew that the minister had no security at the time they planned to attack him but they also succeeded in leaving the place undisturbed.
A Pakistani court barred the government from extraditing five Afghan Taliban leaders captured in the country, including Mullah Baradar, and asked the administration to explain its position in the matter on Friday.
The Jamatul Ahrar, a splinter group of the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it was carried out to avenge the hanging of Mumtaz Qadri, killer of Taseer.
Ghulam Rasool Khan alias Khan Mirza, the Afghanistani national who was recently arrested in Purnia district in Bihar for his alleged links with the Taliban, holds a Pakistani passport.According to sources, police have recovered a Pakistani passport, issued in 2005, and a diary from Khan. Acting on a tip-off by the IB, the police arrested Khan in Purnia on January 13, and he was brought to Patna for further interrogation.
Bashir Ahmed Bilour, a leader of Pashtun nationalist party, was among the eight killed during Taliban's suicide attack at Peshawar on Saturday.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Tuesday refused to confirm the death of Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour but said a DNA test will be done to establish the identity of a man killed in a American drone strike last week.
Hakimullah Mehsud-led Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan believes that since all decisions of the Pakistani government are influenced by the army, his organization will only talk with negotiators who represent the military and not the government. Tahir Ali reports
Even as the Pakistan Army is all prepared and waits for a nod from the government to launch an all out offensive in South Waziristan, the Taliban's stronghold, many inside the Canadian government who deal with Pakistan and Afghanistan issues are suspicious of Islamabad's efforts.
Talks between Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and the Pakistan government are at standstill position, as both the parties blame each other for 'non-serious' attitude during the much-awaited peace negotiation.
He was arrested as part of an ongoing crackdown on the "Quetta Shura" or council of the militants led by Mullah Muhammad Omar, the elusive chief of the Afghan Taliban.
The unrest in Pakistan's south-western Balochistan province threatens to dent the military operation against the Taliban militants and its economy, a news report has said.
The Obama administration is stepping up pressure on Pakistan to expand and reorient its fight against Taliban and Al Qaeda and wants its army to pursue the militants into north Waziristan.
The Pakistan political leadership may be calling for 'peace talks' with India, but the country's military continues to spread propaganda by dropping pamphlets in North Waziristan that link the Taliban with India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing.
Pakistani security forces backed by helicopter gunships pounded Taliban positions in the restive Khyber tribal region bordering Afghanistan, and killed 33 militants and destroyed two main bases of the banned Lashkar-e Islam group.
Pakistan on Tuesday sternly told the Taliban to leave Buner and other areas occupied by them or face "forceful" action, as its troops killed 70 militants in the expanding army operations along the restive Afgan border. The warning that "a handful of militants cannot challenge the writ of the government," came from Interior Minister Rehman Malik as security forces stepped up operations in Dir in North West Frontier Province.
Born in the Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh on October 5, 1951, Mohammed Mazhar, lives at ST 1/A, Block 2, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi, and carries three Pakistani passports (KZ 550207, KC550207 and G15429), the Treasury said.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik has announced a one million dollar bounty on Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of Tehrik-e-Taliban who is behind the attack on teenage rights activist Malala Yousufzai. "This conspiracy assassination plan was made across the border in Afghanistan. Of course, (by) Mullah Fazlullah, who had fled when we took action in Malakand Swat," Malik saod.
Pakistani Taliban terrorists on Tuesday carried out two attacks on North Atlantic Treaty Organisation container trucks in the Khyber tribal region in country's northwest, killing one person and injuring another in the first strikes since supply routes to Afghanistan were reopened earlier this month.
The jets targeted militant hideouts in Ghaljo and Dabori areas of Orakzai tribal agency, officials were quoted as saying by TV news channels.
The 13th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team cites a UN Member State as saying that Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), a Deobandi group ideologically closer to the Taliban "maintains eight training camps in Nangarhar, three of which are directly under Taliban control."
Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Wednesday indirectly blamed the Taliban for the daring suicide attack on the Inter Services Intelligence's provincial headquarters in Lahore. "It appears to be a fall-out of the ongoing military operations in Swat, Dir and other areas of the North West Frontier Province," Malik said and warned that there would be no let up in the crackdown on these 'anti-national elements'.
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was obviously so impressed by her meetings with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari that she ventured into the White House briefing room after sitting in on the meetings between President Barack Obama and the two leaders, to express her optimism that a solid alliance had been formed committed to crushing the Taliban and other extremist elements destabilising the region.
A university vice-chancellor abducted by the Pakistani Taliban from the country's troubled northwest nearly two years ago has appealed to his colleagues and student groups to pressure the government for his release in a new video issued by the militants.
US officials said the message did not amount to an ultimatum but rather it was intended to "prod a reluctant Pakistani military" to go after Taliban insurgents in Pakistan who are directing attacks in Afghanistan.
A tribal jirga in the restive North Waziristan region of Pakistan has endorsed a Taliban ban on polio vaccinations, linking the lifting of the ban to the ending of US drone strikes in the area, according to a media report on Thursday.
The teenage girl who was filmed being flogged by the Taliban in Pakistan's restive Swat Valley has denied that the incident ever occurred in a statement made to government officials, media reports said today.
Rescue officials on Tuesday recovered the severed head of the suspected suicide bomber who they believe blew himself up inside a mosque packed with worshippers during the afternoon prayers on Monday in the high-security zone in Pakistan's restive northwestern Peshawar city.
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