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.
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.
The Indian Mujhaideen does not want to be an India centric outfit anymore and is keen on joining forces with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Vicky Najappa/Rediff.com reports
US special forces came away with hard drives, DVDs and a trove of documents from the Abbottabad safe house of Osama bin Laden which might tip American intelligence to Al Qaeda's operational plan and lead the manhunt to his presumed successor Ayman al Zawahiri.
One of the most dreaded terrorists in the world is now a member of the Taliban cabinet.
US President Barack Obama, who made a surprise visit to Kabul and met President Hamid Karzai, has vowed to deny the Al Qaeda safe haven and reverse Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan.
Security has been beefed up across Pakistan to fend off a looming threat by Taliban to launch the "biggest attack" on some unspecified important installation, officials said on Monday.
"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.
Afghan refugees in New Delhi protest against the Taliban and Pakistan's interference in Afghanistan.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said some people in the Pakistani government are aware of the whereabouts of elusive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Omar.
The United States is offering rewards of up to $5 million each for information leading to the location of top two TTP leaders Hakimullah Mehsud and Wali Ur Rehman.
Top US officials are unhappy over some Inter-Services Intelligence elements continuing to support the Haqqani network to counter India's presence in the region, amid fears that Pakistani military is "unable or unwilling" to act against Taliban and Al Qaeda in the restive tribal belt.
The United States has issued a travel warning for its citizens, informing them about a security risk in traveling to Pakistan where the presence of the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other extremist groups pose a potential danger. "The presence of the Al Qaeda, Taliban elements, and indigenous militant sectarian groups poses a potential danger to US citizens throughout Pakistan, especially in the western border regions of the country," the State Department said in a travel warning
Besides Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are listed as major source of terrorist financing.
The US said the current "status quo" in Pakistan's restive tribal areas, which have become a safe haven for Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists, is "unacceptable" amid growing fears that Islamabad was not doing enough to battle militants holed up near the Af-Pak border.
Noting that the Al Qaeda and the Taliban have now large presence in Pakistan, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday said that in the last nine months Islamabad has increased its commitment in the fight against terrorism, but the Obama administration is not "satisfied."
United States Ambassador to India Timothy J Roemer, on Friday said the Al Qaeda, Taliban and Lashkar-e-Tayiba were the common enemies of both India and America.
The Pakistani groups included in the list are Aid Organisation of the Ulema, Al Akhtar Trust International, a financier of which has been linked to the murder of Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl, Al Harmain Foundation of Pakistan, Al Masjid Al Aqsa - Aqsa Foundation and Al Rashid Trust.
The United States Senate has approved the Department of Defence Authorization bill according to which the US military assistance to Pakistan can be used only for its fight against the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
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.
India has told the United Nations General Assembly that it is high time the international community called on Pakistan to take 'effective and irreversible' actions against terror outfits operating on its soil, asserting that Islamabad should not take the 'high road of morality' which is only laden with mines of falsehood.
Shamsi airfield, in the Baluchistan region in southern Pakistan, has become the new ground zero in the United States war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.The Times, London, reports that the Central Intelligence Agency is covertly using the Shamsi airfield, located just 30 miles from the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, to launch Predator strikes on Taliban and Al Qaeda bases on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan -- a fact repeatedly denied by US and Pak
CIA Director Leon E Panetta said: "The bottom line here is that the war on terrorism is not just about Al Qaeda. It is a series of terrorist groups that are basically confronting us and it is the kinds of changes that we see in their methods of approaching the United States that I think represents the very important threat that we have to pay attention to."
The report said the crucial meeting involved Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, CIA director General Michael V Hayden, new army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj, the chief of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence.
Through its early days to the 1980s, Pakistan sought to expand its sphere of Islamic influence through Afghanistan to Central Asia and got Pakistani citizens recruited in the Afghan government institutions in the 1990s when the Taliban were power. Now, it is looking eastward through India to Bangladesh and Myanmar to establish an imaginary caliphate.
Swearing allegiance to Taliban and al Qaeda, chanting anti-Modi slogans outside a court, and operating without the support of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence are indications that the banned Students Islamic Movement of India is seeking the attention of global terrorist groups and wants to be the face of India's home-grown terror. Vicky Nanjappa reports
'Should the new ISIS leadership opt for a consolidation, the Afghan-Pakistan border would be an attractive place,' warns Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
'Terror is a legitimate threat. It is a threat that comes from Al-Qaeda and those organisations that have morphed off of Al-Qaeda, but there are other interests we have beyond merely -- for example, the situation in the Middle East is not a global war on terror. But it matters to us mightily whether or not we end up with an accommodation between the Israelis and the Palestinians,' he said.
While US officials believe much of the American money was not making its way to the frontline, Pakistani officials see it as American ingratitude for Pakistani counterterrorism efforts.
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan will inspire terrorists and trigger an "explosion" of extremism and security challenges for the world, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace warned on Thursday.
The explosion took place at 4 pm at the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl workers' convention in Khar, the capital of Bajaur tribal district.
Pakistan is making efforts at multiple levels for the Taliban government to have a soft landing, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
IS-Khorasan was sanctioned for its links with Al Qaeda and involvement in several deadly attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan that killed over 150 people.
The United States has issued a worldwide travel alert to its citizens including in South Asia where it said terrorist outfits like al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) might harm them.
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.
It is yet to be known how the Al Qaeda propaganda material made its way to Bihar.
Afghanistan's participation in next month's T20 World Cup is becoming a matter of intrigue after Taliban's takeover of the strife-torn country.
This is for the first time in several years a news report has surfaced about the hiding location of the Al-Qaeda chief, who is Osama bin Laden's mentor and successor.
A "perturbed" Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has flayed Interior Minister Rehman Malik for his claims of uncovering an al-Qaeda plot to kidnap Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and blamed the statement for his penchant to remain in headlines.
According to the reports, America's Defence Intelligence Agency was aware that Pakistan's ISI was sponsoring the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
