Pakistan missed a valuable opportunity to create goodwill with the United States and other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation members when it failed to announce a reopening of NATO supply routes to Afghanistan at the summit held Sunday and Monday in Chicago, says Lisa Curtis.
The United States has said that the threat from terrorist groups, in particular the Haqqani network, continues to emanate from inside Pakistan, dismissing top Pakistani diplomat's claim that the dreaded group responsible for audacious attacks in Afghanistan has been wiped out.
The ability of President Hamid Karzai to maintain inter-ethnic unity will determine whether history will be repeated in Afghanistan, says B Raman
A study has pointed out that the Al Qaeda seeks to employ white men with Western nationalities to successfully strike in the heart of the West. Amir Mir reports from Islamabad
US troops after 10 years in Afghanistan are in the same position as the Soviet troops after eight years were in 1987 --victory increasingly elusive, says B Raman.
Hardening its stance on terror safe havens in Pakistan, the United States has made it clear to Islamabad that time is over for hedging its bets on terror groups like Haqqani network, the Afghan Taliban or the LeT against India.
The US administration will take the final call in a meeting in coming weeks.
We should be prepared for a phase of increased tensions in India-Pakistan relationship thanks to the evolving situation in Afghanistan, says Shyam Saran.
The United States was aware of Pakistan's "duplicitous role" in the war on terror long before its top military commander Mike Mullen branded the dreaded Haqqani network of Taliban a "veritable arm" of Inter Services Intelligence, a media report said on Tuesday.
Pakistan's border region remains the most dangerous place in the world and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas remains the epicentre of the world's worst of global jihad, a top Pentagon official has said.
'There will be much for President Trump and Prime Minister Modi to discuss including growing Chinese military cooperation with Pakistan, which heralds a new attempt by China and Pakistan to neutralise India's influence in its Indian Ocean neighbourhood,' notes Ambassador G Parthasarathy.
'The hardliners in Delhi are in for a big disappointment,' predicts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Defence Secretary Ashton Carter declined to give a certification to the Congress that Pakistan is taking sufficient action against the dreaded Haqqani network.
Trump said that the US will defeat its enemies with the full force of American might.
India on Sunday said it was good that the Obama administration recognised the links between the Inter-Services Intelligence and Haqqani network of Taliban, amid a raging United States-Pakistan row over the spy agency's support to the dreaded terror outfit.
With Pakistan under fire from India for its inaction against terrorism, Interior Minister Rehman Malik tweeted on Thursday that Delhi must realise that his country is paying a heavy price for fighting militancy, which has claimed hundreds of lives.
Currently placed on the FATF'S 'grey list', Pakistan has been scrambling in recent months to avoid being added to a list of countries deemed non-compliant with anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regulations by the FATF.
Stung by a stunning leak of classified records indicating links between the Inter State Intelligence and the Taliban-Al Qaeda network, the White House came out in defence of Pakistan, insisting that the US-Pak alliance has led to significant blows against the Al Qaeda leadership since 2009.
'The ISI has given a stunning display of its capacity to do with impunity what it likes within Kabul. Incensed over the triumphalism of the hardliners in Kabul, the ISI has hit out; it is a typical ISI reflex action that Indians are familiar with,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats' remarks came days after a group of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists struck the Sunjuwan Military Camp in Jammu on Saturday, killing seven people including six soldiers.
In a veiled reference to Pakistan, India said perpetrators of violence in Afghanistan must not be allowed safe havens in its neighbourhood, as it slammed the United Nations Security Council's sanctions regime for not designating the leader of Taliban as terrorist, calling such an approach a "mystery."
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.
There is no doubt that all terrorist organisations like the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Tayiba are operating with impunity in Pakistan. They may be loosely confederated, but their agendas are being synchronised and India after Afghanistan is their prime target.
The legislation, the National Defense Authorisation Act-2019, gets rid of the certification requirements for Pakistan's action against the Haqqani Network and it also gets rid of the authority to reimburse Pakistan for counter-terrorism.
For a wannabe terrorist like Faisal Shahzad, accused in the Times Square bombing plot, shopping for help in Pakistan is no problem as the country is like a supermarket with money and weapons freely available for potential jihadists, says Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria.
A Pakistani chemistry professor lost his life while trying to protect his students using his licensed pistol against armed Taliban militants who stormed the university.
'We're paying them nothing because that's what they've done to help us. Nothing'
Pakistani security agencies have nabbed the alleged mastermind of the audacious October 10 terror attack on the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi.
Pakistan has ordered a probe into the killing of the eldest son of the chief of the dreaded Haqqani network that has been blamed for attacks on the Indian Embassy and American forces in Afghanistan, a report said on Friday.=
Nine years after their mysterious disappearance following the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the US still believes the two top Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are in hiding in northwestern Pakistan.
'No one knows Pak and understands Pak better than China,' Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.
The US, the official said, is monitoring the situation carefully in Pakistan and expects some progress.
Introduced by Republican Congressman Ted Poe and Democratic lawmaker Rick Nolan, the legislation calls for revoking MNNA status of Pakistan, which was granted to it in 2004 by the then president, George Bush, in an effort to get the country to help the US fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba is acting in a more Al Qaeda-like manner after being 'infected' by the ideas of Osama bin Laden's terror network and poses the highest risk to the United States, according to a top American counter-terrorism expert.
Shanthie Mariet D'Souza, an associate fellow with the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, traces the future of India-Afghanistan relations. The October 8 attack on the Indian embassy in Afghanistan, a grim reminder of a similar attack on July 7, 2008, has yet again highlighted the challenges of India's involvement in Afghanistan.
A prominent global think tank has termed the radical Sunni-Deobandi groups as the "primary source" of terror in Pakistan and said their continued patronage by the army has influenced Islamabad's relations with India and Afghanistan.
The Al Qaeda network is not located in Afghanistan, but clearly headquartered in Pakistan, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen told Congress Thursday, and warned that if the Taliban takes over Afghanistan again, it would mean the return of al Qaeda to Afghanistan to plan and plot attacks against the US reminiscent of 9/11.
The United States has begun to squeeze the funding and flow of money to terrorist organisations in the Af-Pak region including the Taliban, Al Qaeda, the Haqqani network and Laskhar-e-Tayiba, and keeping a tab on 'hawala' transactions, a top Obama administration official has said.
Pakistan-based terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed were named on Monday in the Summit declaration of the BRICS countries.
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