A senate panel has approved a legislation which blocks $300 million United States military aid to Pakistan.
As much as the Haqqani network seems to have catapulted to being the flavour of the day in terms of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence-supported terrorist groups in South Asia, a senior State Department official declared that the other ISI-proxy, the Lashkar-e-Tayiba -- responsible for the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai -- is equally on even more dangerous.
Stepping up a campaign against the group, 10 to 12 drones carried out a wave of pre-dawn attacks on Dargah Mandi and Danday Darpa Khel near Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan Agency, officials and witnesses were quoted as saying by TV news channels.
Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz has said that Pakistan's Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani was the official who asked him to deliver a secret memorandum on behalf of President Asif Ali Zardari seeking help from the Obama administration to prevent a possible military takeover.
The United States has asked Pakistan to squeeze the dangerous Haqqani network, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said as she underlined that it has been made clear to Islamabad that trying to distinguish between "good and bad terrorists" is self-defeating and dangerous.
The US is keeping the doors open for negotiations with the terror group as the Afghan endgame plays out, says Amir Mir reporting from Islamabad.
Asserting that the United States is trying to make its relationship work with Pakistan, the Obama Administration's point man for Afghanistan and Pakistan has said that it is important both the countries recognise that terrorism, including Haqqani Network, is a threat to both of them.
Apparently frustrated over Pakistan military's inaction against the dreaded Haqqani network, the United States has unleashed a wave of drone attacks killing dozens of militants in North Waziristan, a mountainous region of northwest Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, this month.
A US special envoy met senior Taliban representatives in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and discussed the issue of Afghan central bank reserves.
The United States has the right to target the Haqqani network that not only kills American troops in Afghanistan, but also sponsors Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, said Senator Carl Levin, who chairs the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee.
According to one American analyst, the "house that was struck was owned by a top aide to Sirajuddin Haqqani," who is now the interior minister in the Taliban government in Kabul.
The 13th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team cites a UN Member State as saying that Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), a Deobandi group ideologically closer to the Taliban "maintains eight training camps in Nangarhar, three of which are directly under Taliban control."
Former president Pervez Musharraf has admitted that Pakistan supported and trained groups like Lashkar-e-Tayiba in 1990s to carry out militancy in Kashmir.
Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund is appointed as Prime Minister with two deputies Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Molavi Abdul Salam Hanafi.
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.
Specially designated global terrorist Sirajuddin Haqqani, who carries a reward of $10 million US bounty on his head, is the acting interior minister while his uncle -- Khalil Haqqani -- has been named as acting minister for refugees.
Zawahri's long balcony visits gave the CIA an opportunity for a clear missile shot that could avoid collateral damage.
'Afghan people will not accept a governing structure that excludes women and minorities'
Cut off from the world and having to contend with an orthodox and repressive Taliban government, Afghans are facing the brunt of Pakistan's decades old policy of nurturing militant groups, note Harsh V Pant and Kriti M Shah four months after the Taliban took Kabul.
'Don't be fooled. There is nothing more moderate about the revived Taliban government'
Regional States will be worried that the US's nascent engagement with the Taliban behind the fig leaf of humanitarian aid enables the return of US intelligence personnel to Afghanistan, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
ISI chief Faiz Hameed coerced the Taliban to announce an interim government guaranteed to preserve Pakistan's control over the levers of power in Kabul, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The team's remarkable rise has been cricket's biggest fairytale story in recent times but Afghanistan risk isolation following the country's takeover by the Taliban in August.
China's Ambassador to Afghanistan Wang Yu and Acting Minister of Refugee Affairs of the Afghan caretaker government Khalil-ur-Rehman Haqqani attended the handover ceremony at the airport.
America's relationship with Pakistan has 'not served' either of the two countries, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Sunday raising questions on the Biden administration's approval of a $450-million sustenance package for F-16 fleet.
Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa, one of Pakistan's largest and oldest seminaries and dubbed as a 'university of jihad' by its critics for helping sow violence across the region for decades, has educated more Taliban leaders than any school in the world and its alumni now hold key positions in Afghanistan, according to a media report.
Even though the Taliban has managed to capture Afghanistan and form a government, an internal rift between the faction has started emerging, according to media reports.
Pakistan's close ties with China and its lack of democracy and disregard for human rights will not be overlooked, said Haqqani, who currently is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute think-tank in Washington.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who was on a visit to the US last month, said that America's relationship with Pakistan has "not served" either of the two countries and raised questions on the Biden administration's approval of a USD 450-million sustenance package for the F-16 fleet.
Despite dependence on the ISI for years of sustenance, Taliban leaders may harbour resentment over the ISI's excessive control, notes Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing.
A Muslim cleric in northwest Pakistan has been arrested under the tough anti-terrorism act for threatening to kill Malala Yousafzai in a suicide attack and instigating people against the Nobel Laureate for her recent comments on marriage, police said.
The Biden administration has approved a $450 million F-16 fighter jet fleet sustainment programme to Pakistan to help it meet current and future counterterrorism threats, in Washington's first major security assistance to Islamabad in four years.
Referring to the argument made by the US that F-16 sustenance package is to fight terrorism, Jaishankar had said everybody knows where and against whom F-16 fighter jets are used.
The world today sees them (Pakistan) as the epicentre of terrorism, Jaishankar said.
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.
A top commander of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Omar Khalid Khorasani and three other top terrorists have been killed in a mysterious blast in eastern Afghanistan's Paktika province, a Pakistani media report said on Monday.
'The really striking thing is that the Taliban has suo moto presented to us certain firm benchmarks against which it expects us to hold to account the Taliban rulers's actions in the period ahead' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Former Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, who fled to the United Arab Emirates before the Taliban seized power last month, on Wednesday apologised to the people for leaving the country abruptly, saying he believed it was the 'only way to keep the guns silent and save Kabul and her six million people'.
Addressing the 76th UNGA session in New York, Modi called for ensuring that no country 'tries to take advantage of the delicate situation in Afghanistan and use it for its own selfish interests'.
"Now we live in a completely independent Afghanistan. The new government will be announced very soon," said Anaamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban's cultural commission, reported Tolo News.
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