Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Quershi has asked the US to help Islamabad fight the Taliban, saying his government is "very determined to eliminate sanctuaries of the extremists on its soil".
New Delhi should resist any temptation to act as spoiler and instead should cooperate with its SCO partners in reaching a regional consensus behind the formation of an interim government in Kabul, argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
As his militants triggered a series of attacks and suicide blasts across Pakistan on Thursday, Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud threatened to dispatch terrorists to fight India, once an Islamic state had been created in Pakistan. "We want an Islamic state. If we get that, then we will go to the borders and help fight the Indians," Hakimullah said. "We are fighting the (Pakistan) military, police and militia because they are following American orders," he added.
The Pakistani Taliban on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the attempt on the life of senior journalist and television anchor Hamid Mir, saying they would carry out more attacks on anyone "pursuing a secular agenda".
Investigators are now reportedly looking at a possibility of the missing Malaysian Airline passenger jet being flown to Taliban-controlled bases. The Flight MH370 went off civil radar just after 40 minutes after take off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, carrying 239 people.
Pakistani fighter jets pounded Taliban strongholds in the volatile South Waziristan tribal region on Friday as the death toll from the series of US drone attacks in the region rose to 13. The warplanes hit targets in preparation for a full scale military operation which Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said would take off as soon as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud was spotted.
Taking strong exceptions of the reports that are appearing in the media about the Taliban's ban on female education in Pakistan, the Muslim clerics and intellectuals in India vehemently denounce their purported actions.
The Barack Obama administration's top diplomat for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, has admitted that the United States is getting battered by the Taliban in the information war in the Federally Administered Tribal Area and the Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan. He warned that the 'success' in the US-led assault on these militant groups would ring hollow if there is no propaganda victory against these extremists."We are losing that war," he said.
Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan on Tuesday said slain former premier Benazir Bhutto had faced a threat from the Taliban and al-Qaeda because she had pledged to take action against the two groups but there is no similar danger to him.
An imminent concern for India is the fact that disenchanted al-Qaeda cadres may shift their allegiance to the Islamic State and its regional affiliate Islamic State -Khorasan Province.
Stepping up their attack on militants, a US Drone fired missiles hitting a Taliban hideout killing eight militants, including two foreign terrorists, as 159 insurgents surrendered to the army in Pakistan's restive North Waziristan Frontier Province region on Monday.
Pentagon on Wednesday said there is a 90 per cent certainty that Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud is dead and it is operating under the presumption that the top militant is no longer a threat to the people of the region. Pentagon spokesman Jeoff Morrell said the Taliban has not been able to provide any evidence contrary to this viewpoint. "We are operating under the assumption -- and it's not just an assumption," he said.
The release of Pakistan's envoy to Afghanistan was part of a deal between the government and the local Taliban, under which they will swap about 330 prisoners after signing a formal peace agreement in the restive northwest tribal areas. The Taliban wanted 250 militants, currently in the government's custody, to be swapped with 80 soldiers and government officials, who had been taken hostage by the rebels. Azizuddin was handed over by militants to authorities at Razmak.
The Pakistan government and Taliban militants in the restive South Waziristan tribal region are expected to swap prisoners as part of efforts for a formal peace agreement. A formal agreement could be reached in three to four days. The swapping of prisoners is expected to take place at Tiarza in South Waziristan, sources said. An official said all of them were members of the Mehsud tribe.
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.
Afghan Intelligence claims that reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar is in the custody of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence and that after Osama Bin Laden's killing, the wanted terrorist has been abstained from making any contact with his commanders in Afghanistan.
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan on Saturday claimed responsibility for kidnapping a group of over 30 boys, who had strayed into Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province as reports said some of them had escaped and reached back to their homes.
President Asif Ali Zardari has assured the United States that the Pakistan government will not allow anybody to challenge its writ or run a parallel administration in any part of the country. Zardari gave the assurance to US Special Envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke during a telephonic conversation, the Daily Times reported on Friday.
Top Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud may have been killed in an American drone attack in South Waziristan in Pakistan's restive tribal belt. Quoting unnamed senior administration officials, the popular ABC News said United States and Pakistani officials now believe that Baitullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistani Taliban, was 'very likely' killed. "There is reason to believe that reports of his death may be true, but it can't be confirmed at this time," an American official said.
There have been conflicting reports about whether Taliban's supreme council was consulted or not on the election
In a major setback to Taliban, missiles fired from US drones have killed its top commander and group's deputy chief Qari Hussain Mehsud, mastermind of many suicide attacks across Pakistan, sources claimed on Friday.
Making a distinction between some violent extremist groups and others is counterproductive, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday told Pakistan that the Taliban's safe havens along the Af-Pak border have to be eliminated or both nations would suffer "more lethal and brazen attacks".
The Afghan Taliban have claimed that they killed three persons, including two Indians, and injured seven Afghan soldiers in a missile attack on a United States airbase and an Indian non-governmental organisation's office in eastern Kunar province.The claim was made by Afghan Taliban spokesman Qari Omar Haqqani, who spoke to reporters in Khar in Pakistan's Bajaur tribal region on the phone on Sunday. Haqqani claimed the militants attacked the office of the Indian NGO.
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.
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.
Afghan refugees in New Delhi protest against the Taliban and Pakistan's interference in Afghanistan.
The New York Times reported that Pakistan was moving 6,000 troops (more than a brigade) to fight militants on its western border with Afghanistan, quoting a Pakistani official who did not want to be identified. The Pakistan military, advancing on three fronts backed by fighter aircraft and attack helicopters in Buner, snatched the vital 8-km-long Ambela heights which overlook most of Buner.
The Taliban killed 14 security personnel and beheaded all but one of them before displaying the heads of two soldiers on wooden poles in the lawless North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan, security officials said on Monday.
A Pakistani Taliban commander claimed the militants captured the two security personnel on Sunday night while troops were conducting a raid in Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan Agency.
A Pakistani Taliban group on Saturday banned the use of "tight or thin" clothes both for men and women in the holy month of Ramadan and warned of one month imprisonment for not fasting.
Six Pakistani security personnel and 17 Taliban militants were killed in an overnight gun fight in the restive Kurram tribal region of northwest Pakistan, security officials said on Wednesday.
'Pakistan and the jihadis's capacities have been diminished because of increasing dominance of our security forces.'
Taliban militants on Sunday attacked the Central Jail in Bannu and freed several of their comrades, including Adnan Rashid, a convict on death row who had plotted to kill General Pervez Musharraf. Tahir Ali reports
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has claimed responsibility for the suicide attack at Mardan military training center in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on Tuesday.
The Pakistani military has "significantly degraded" the Pakistani Taliban, but is still reluctant to take action against the elements of Afghan Taliban operating from inside its territory, a top US General said on Wednesday.
The coherent strategy of the TTP has not been matched by an equally coherent one from Pakistan Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. He has been struggling to counter the co-ordinated strategy of the TTP with a bits and pieces strategy depending on where the pressure from the TTP comes from.
Former president Pervez Musharraf has admitted that Pakistan supported and trained groups like Lashkar-e-Tayiba in 1990s to carry out militancy in Kashmir.
At least 10 people, including five soldiers, were killed on Monday in a Taliban suicide attack at a market close to Pakistan's military headquarters in Rawalpindi, a day after one of the deadliest attacks on security forces killed 20 troops.
Shaken by the Taliban terror attack in which 148 people, including 132 school children, were killed in Peshawar on Tuesday, Pakistan has pledged to announce a "national plan" to tackle terrorism within a week with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif saying "this entire region" should be cleaned of terrorism.
'India should pledge that it will only target those provinces of Pakistan where nuclear weapons are located,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
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