The US wants action against the existing safe havens of the Taliban and the Haqqani network and demolish its ability to carry out strikes across the border in Afghanistan.
'Pakistan is only interested in Afghanistan insofar as it can give it more strategic weight vis-a-vis India,' says Afghan expert Sarah Chayes.
The possible extradition of 12 Afghan Taliban militants, including Taliban No 2 Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, arrested by Pakistan has been stalled after the Lahore High Court dismissed petitions regarding the extradition.
The chief of the Islamic State militant group in Af-Pak region has been killed in a US drone strike in eastern Afghanistan, three days after another top leader of the terror outfit died in a similar American air assault, a media report said on Saturday.
Observing that Islamic law is within the framework of Pakistan, the US has refrained from making any comment on the peace deal between Islamabad and a Taliban-linked group for enforcing Shariah law in the Swat Valley.
A man who allegedly helped terror suspect Faisal Shahzad travel to Pakistan's tribal belt to attend bomb-making camps was arrested on Thursday.The arrested suspect has admitted to being an accomplice of Shahzad, who was arrested at New York's JFK airport for plotting a terror attack on Times Square. He also has links with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.The latest arrest confirms the fears of the US administration that the Pakistani Taliban plotted the failed bomb plot.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst who was one of the key architects of US President Barack Obama's Af-Pak policy during his first term, has called for an offensive strategy against terrorist networks and this includes hitting out at terrorist groups inside Pakistan.
The dastardly attack on Malala Yousufzai is a disturbing sign that Taliban militants may be regrouping in Swat valley, warns Tahir Ali
Badruddin Haqqani, the key operational commander of the Al Qaeda linked Haqqani network, and top Pakistani Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah are believed to have been killed in US drone and air strikes in the tribal region of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Indeed, nearly all of the jihadi groups operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, LeT, and others have joined together in an extended terrorist network that shares the same goals, including destabilising Afghanistan and destroying the Pakistani state," said Congressman Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Thirteen people, including two children, were killed and four others injured when the Pakistani Taliban targetted a bu s carrying Shia Muslims with a roadside bomb in the country's restive tribal belt on Wednesday.
'If India does venture across the LoC, it will evoke a strong response.'
Terrorist groups under the banner of the Taliban in Pakistan as well as those operating in South and Central Asia pose the "greatest threat" to Islamabad's nuclear infrastructure, a report by a US think tank has said.
He was responding to a question over Pakistan denouncing the US drone strike in Balochistan last month as violation of its sovereignty.
Hizbul Mujahideen leader Mast Gul, involved in the 1995 siege of Charar-e-Sharief shrine in Jammu and Kashmir, was behind a suicide attack on Shias in Peshawar that killed nine persons, a Pakistani Taliban commander has said.
While agreeing to negotiations, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has demanded that the government make leaders of three rightwing political parties guarantors and also called for the release of six Taliban detainees before the start of talks.
Ground forces of paramilitary Frontier Corps spearheaded the assault to strike the militants of the banned Lashkar-e-Islam group, a Taliban ally in the restive Bara region through which passes the main highway to Afghan capital Kabul
Pakistani forces fought pitched battles with Taliban fighters in their bid to wrest their hub of Sararogha in South Waziristan killing 34 militants to raise the terrorist death toll to 227, but lost 11 soldiers as insurgents opened new fronts in the lawless region.
Pakistani jets and artillery pounded Taliban bases for the second day on Sunday killing 60 militants in the lawless Waziristan region as ground forces continued their push into the strongholds of the Taliban and captured two key towns from them despite stiff resistance.
The Barack Obama administration is facing a dilemma with respect to Pakistan as unlike Afghanistan, it cannot send its troops there to fight Al Qaeda and Taliban and needs to find other means, top United States Special Envoy for the region Richard Holbrooke has said. "The dilemma is that the leadership of both the Al Qaeda and the Taliban are in a neighbouring country (of Afghanistan) where our troops cannot fight. And therefore we have to find other means," he said.
The horrific attack on the Peshawar school is the terrorists's retaliation for the Zarb-e-Azb military operation in North Waziristan.
I was flogged about 500 in 3 days, they cut my back with blades and removed nails from my hands and feet," said Shahbaz Taseer of the ordeal he endured.
Hamid Karzai's first priority after getting re-elected as Afghanistan's president is to open peace talks with Pakistan in an attempt to end the Taliban insurgency raging across their shared border, one of his top aides has said.
Terming United States President Barack Obama's ongoing visit of India as a plan by the US and India to ruin Pakistan, Tehrike Taliban Pakistan has asked the people of Pakistan to support it the for sake of the country's survival.
Amid growing global concerns over Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling in the hands of the Taliban, the top United States military official on Monday said it remains a "strategic concern" but the atomic arsenal of Islamabad are secure as of now.
The chief minister of Pakistan's restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday survived an assassination bid by a Taliban suicide bomber who blew himself up near his motorcade in the country's northwest.
A suicide bomber struck at a hotel in a busy market in the restive North West Frontier Province on Thursday, killing at least 11 people and injuring over 20 others, most of them militants opposed to Pakistan's top Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud.The bomber struck at a hotel at the busy Jandola Bazar in Dera Ismail Khan, while scores of anti-Taliban militants were just beginning their meals. They were members of the 'Turkestan Bittani' group.
Canada had prohibited military exports to Pakistan in May, 1998, after the country's first nuclear weapons test. MacKay said that he and Pakistani defence officials also agreed to resume a co-operation deal, the Military Training Assistance Programme.
'Many senior officers are unhappy with him, but many lower level officers are still supportive.' 'This is also not something that has happened for a long time. So this is certainly a milestone.'
The Pakistani police are on the look out for two youths suspected of shooting 15-year-old education activist Malala Yousufzai, and the prime suspect who drove them to the scene, Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said.
Taliban militants have publicly beheaded a man for allegedly spying for the security forces in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region.
Under pressure from the US, President Asif Ali Zardari today said Pakistan is ready to shift some of its troops from the Indian border to its western frontier to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. The US has been pressing Pakistan to step up its offensive against the Taliban but Islamabad has been reluctant to move troops from the eastern border as it considers India as its main threat.
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday said neither Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden nor Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar were present in Pakistan, a day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton' assertion that the Laden is still in the country.
The fighting started last night when army and paramilitary forces launched an operation in Zao Kharamtang area of Khyber Agency, one of seven tribal districts where Al Qaeda-linked terrorists are active.
India's insistence on continuing to buy Iranian oil defying United States sanctions, drawing common approach on China, Af-Pak situation and peace negotiations with Taliban dominated the talks of Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai, who concluded his maiden bilateral visit in Washington on Thursday. The "serious situation" in Maldives after the resignation of President Mohamed Nasheed and the multi-billion jets deal found passing mentions during Mathai's meetings.
Top Taliban commander Mullah Baradar's arrest in a joint US-Pakistan operation does not mean that Pakistan is moving against the militants and may be seen as a key strategy of the country aimed at maintaining influence on its "western flank", a US think tank said on Monday.
After the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, the United States has pressured Pakistan 'to do more' to nab Al Qaeda activists and key Taliban leaders including Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omer. It is suspected that Omer is hiding in Quetta city of Balochistan. Responding to US's pressure, Pakistan has speeded up its efforts and is tracking Al Qaeda terrorists all across the country.
Islamabad is being bluntly asked not to use the development in Kashmir for cross border terrorism or infiltration across the Line of Control.
A little-known pro-Taliban militant group that is holding two former ISI officers and a British journalist of Pakistani-origin has threatened to execute them if its demands are not met within 10 days.
Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud has died due to injuries sustained in a United States' drone attack, the state-run television reported on Sunday, though the government said there was 'no verifiable information' about his death. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan chief had died in the home of his father-in-law due to wounds sustained in a drone strike earlier this month, PTV quoted local sources in Aurakzai tribal region as saying.
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