A guide to travel in 2026.
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl chief Fazlur Rehman has claimed that 9,000 agents of US-based private security firm Blackwater are operational in Islamabad. The Daily Times quoted Fazl as saying that Blackwater is responsible for carrying out Taliban-like terrorist activities in Pakistan.
Khalid Khwaja, who has been at the forefront in raising the issue of 'missing persons' or people detained without charges by Pakistani security agencies, said that ex-intelligence personnel hired by Blackwater had been asked to 'pick up people with alleged connections to Taliban or Al-Qaeda'.
A United States federal judge on Friday dismissed criminal charges against five guards of Blackwater security firm, who were accused of killing 17 civilians in Baghdad in an incident that sparked widespread criticism of the army's use of private contractors. US district judge Ricardo Urbina threw out the case not on merit but on the way the prosecutors had handled it by wrongly using defendants' 'statements compelled under a threat of job loss'.
According to The Nation, the US firm has offered some of the retired Pakistani officials a whopping salary package of $60,000 (nearly Rs 28 lakh) per month. But what is more noticeable is that it has hired former CIA officer Steven Cash to operate as commander-in-charge of its operations in Peshawar.
A Pakistani journalist claims to have been receiving life threats from an American agency for critically writing against the Obama administration and for reporting its secret operations in the country.
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Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud has claimed that controversial American security firm Blackwater was behind the deadly bomb attack on a market in Peshawar that killed 105 people on Wednesday. In an interview with BBC Urdu, he claimed that Blackwater and 'Pakistani agencies' were involved in attacks in public places, in an attempt to discredit the militants. Reports in the Pakistani media have claimed that Blackwater has established a presence in the country.
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.'
The job was assigned to Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, the company whose operations in Iraq had come under intense scrutiny. CIA earlier hired it for its secret (now abandoned) programme to eliminate top Al Qaeda leaders.
'Employment of dedicated lightweight special forces aircraft may provide the answer for repeat anti-terror air strikes with surprise elements intact, the cost benefit assured and attrition minimal,' says Group Captain Murli Menon (retd), India's former air adviser in Pakistan.
'It is time India thought big not only about its global clout politically and diplomatically, but also act its size against pin-pricking by anti national elements,' says Group Captain Murli Menon (retd).
'It is my opinion that not releasing the Balakote Battle Damage Assessment immediately post strike was a phenomenal blunder, perception battle wise,' says Group Captain Murli Menon (retd), India's former air adviser in Pakistan.
The Underwater Photography Guide has announced the winners of their 8th annual Ocean Art Underwater Photography Competition: a selection that runs the gamut between beautiful, eye popping and, in the case of the Conservation category winner, tragic and unnerving. This year's contest attracted "thousands" of entries from 78 countries across the world.
The Underwater Photographer of the Year competition has announced the winners of this year's contest, with France's Gabriel Barathieu being named Underwater Photographer of the Year for an image of a hunting octopus. UPY was kind enough to share some of this year's honorees with us below.
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