ISLAMABAD — Pakistani civilian and military leaders are insisting on an effective veto over which targets U.S. drone strikes hit, according to well-informed Pakistani military sources here. The sources, who met with IPS on condition that they not be identified, said...
Taliban Backs Off From Attacking Civilians
PESHAWAR — A series of Taliban attacks selectively targeting Pakistani security forces is being seen as an attempt to shore up the flagging popularity of the fundamentalist Islamic scholars. "As long as the Taliban targeted security forces alone, the local people...
Study Rebuts US Claims of ‘No Civilian Deaths’ in Pakistan Drone Strikes
As the Pakistani public grows increasingly outraged at the United States' drone attacks in the northwest region of the country, a recent study by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism is contradicting U.S. officials' insistence that "not a single...
How Not to Make Friends in the Greater Middle East
Execution Videos Strike Terror in Pakistan
PESHAWAR — A video showing a group of 16 Pakistani policemen, hands tied behind their backs, being executed by Taliban gunmen in the Dir district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is only the latest in a series showing brutal acts designed to strike terror in the areas bordering...
Pakistan Better Off Without US Military Aid?
KARACHI — Defense analysts in Pakistan believe that forgoing $800 million worth of aid may be a fair bargain for ridding this country of over a hundred "military trainers" who were suspected of being spies. Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has said...
Pakistan Military-Aid Hold Deals New Shocks
By suspending $800 million in U.S. military aid to Pakistan, the administration of President Barack Obama appears to be taking a calculated gamble that Islamabad — and especially its powerful army — has no interest in substantially escalating the growing crisis in...
Next Up: Pakistan
I see someone besides myself has noticed all the “leaking” going on in the upper echelons of Washington over our rocky relationship with Pakistan. Suddenly Islamabad is on the verge of being classified as part of the Axis of Evil, with the head of the...
Slain Writer’s Book Says US-NATO War Served al-Qaeda Strategy
Al-Qaeda strategists have been assisting the Taliban fight against U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan because they believe that foreign occupation has been the biggest factor in generating Muslim support for uprisings against their governments, according to the...
US Uses Peace Talks to Divide Taliban from Pakistan
The leaked reports over the past two weeks of a series of meetings between U.S. officials and a Taliban figure close to leader Mullah Omar seemed to point to real progress toward a negotiated settlement of the war in Afghanistan. But in fact the talks are part of a...