Interior Minister Rehman Malik caused consternation on Tuesday by thanking the Taliban for maintaining peace during Muharram, for which authorities had deployed tens of thousands of security personnel across Pakistan to prevent any sectarian attacks.
A top leader of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has said that his group will seek mediation by countries like Saudi Arabia if the government offers to hold peace talks.
Karachi is considered the safest place by the Taliban to hide in Pakistan. According to a Newsweek report, the Taliban is hardly worried by US' plans to send in more troops to Afghanistan, and believes that as far as they do not foment terror, they can live safely in the city.
Pakistani security agencies have informed the government that the Taliban have plans to attack foreign election observers, foreign journalists, important candidates and officials of the Election Commission during the May 11 polls, according to a media report on Thursday.
The Trump Administration called on the Pakistani government to deny sanctuaries to 'dangerous' individuals and organisations.
The Pakistani Taliban on Monday warned all international organisations and individuals to leave the country or face violence as it was in a "state of war". Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said that Pakistan had buried the desire of its people for peace in the North Waziristan tribal region and launched a military operation to make its western backers happy.
Revelations by Pakistani-American David Headley, a Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative charged with conspiring in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, may have prompted Islamabad to finally go after the Afghan-Taliban, a noted United States scholar on South Asia has said.
Describing the resurgence of Taliban and the Al Qaeda as 'real challenge,' India on Wednesday asked the international community to put 'effective pressure' on Pakistan to implement its commitment to deal with terror groups in its territory, failing which the region could be catapulted into spiral of violence.
Blaming the American private military company Blackwater and Pakistani secret agencies for the suicide attacks in International Islamic University in Islamabad and the deadliest attack in Khyber bazaar in Peshawar that claimed a number innocent of lives, Qari Hussain, commander of Tehrik Taliban Pakistan said that it is an attempt to malign the Taliban and warned that militants would avenge 'the killing of innocent people within few days.'
Describing the Pakistani Army's offensive against the Taliban and other extremist groups as "terrific", US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has assured Islamabad that Washington would keep supporting the troubled nation in future also.
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has taken responsibility for the attack on NATO supply trucks in Sindh, which claimed 5 lives on Friday. The TTP has warned that such attacks will continue till Pakistan blocks the supply line to Afghanistan for NATO trucks.On Friday, nearly 12 Taliban militants blocked a road at Shikarpur Sindh and stooped the NATO tankers. After chasing away the drivers, they set nearly 35 tankers on fire. Some of the tankers were destroyed completely.
Close on the heels of the United States advocating dialogue with the Afghan Taliban, the terror outfit has said that peace talks cannot be held unless Washington abandons its "dual-faced policies" on Afghanistan.
Pakistan's former interior minister Major General Naseerullah Babar denies a rediff.com column.
"There seems to be a growing recognition that the Taliban and other miscreants, to use the Pakistanis own word for this, are a threat to the entire country and are alien to the spirit of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the founders of Pakistan," Holbrooke said at a press conference after the meeting of Friends of Democratic Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York on Thursday.
In an interview to ABC News, Musharraf called Sharif 'abrasive' and 'confrontational'.
Three Taliban militants have been given a death sentence by a Pakistani court for attacking trucks carrying critical supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan in 2010.
Should India engage Pakistan's generals directly, bypassing Imran? Ambassador G Parthasarathy, India's former high commissioner to Pakistan, ponders Delhi's diplomatic dilemma.
Taliban appears to be nearing collapse as in another blow to the group, Pakistani authorities have captured Mulla Abdul Kabir, a member of the Quetta Shura and the shadow governor of Afghanistan's eastern Nangahar province.
Over 100 Taliban fighters crossed over from Afghanistan and attacked military posts in Upper Dir area of northwest Pakistan, triggering clashes that left eight soldiers and 15 militants dead, officials said on Monday.
Just two soldiers are known to have survived unscathed after the attack on the base.
Taliban's move came as Pakistani forces stepped up their campaign to retake territory in the districts of Buner, Dir and Swat. The military said they had killed more than 100 militants and lost several soldiers since fighting began on Tuesday.
Initial reports state that one person died and three others have been injured.
The assassination of 69-year-old Taliban critic Bashir Ahmed Bilour is a reminder of the violent relationship between the terror group and the Awami National Party. Tahir Ali reports
Both the Taliban and the Al Qaeda have rejected claims regarding their involvement in Wednesday's Peshawar bomb blast which killed 95 persons and injured over 200.
The Pakistani Taliban have rejected Interior Minister Rehman Malik's demand that any peace talks should be preceded by a ceasefire, saying any truce will follow the dialogue process.
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.
The United States has cautioned it is unlikely that the proposed peace talks with the Taliban will begin anytime soon given the lack of clarity over whether the militant group actually intends to engage in dialogue.
The Biden administration is quietly pressing Pakistan to cooperate on combating dreaded terrorist groups such as the ISIS-K and Al Qaeda following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, according to a set of leaked documents and diplomatic cables to a prominent US media outlet.
Heavily-armed Taliban militants have abducted nearly 400 students and staff members of a cadet college after intercepting a convoy of buses in a lawless tribal region near the North West Frontier Province.
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.
Gaining an upper hand in the restive Swat valley in north-western Pakistan after signing of a deal with the authorities, an emboldened Taliban has told all Non Government Organisations working in the area to pack their bags, saying their activities are un-Islamic.
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".
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.
These are obviously not 'organic' desertions but brought about under intense military pressure, post the 9/5 arrests. It seemed as if the party was being dismantled the same way it was brought into power!, notes Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at RA&W, India's external intelligence agency.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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