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 that such veto power over the conduct of the drone war is a central …
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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 supported them as they believed it to be part of the jihad against the …
Continue reading “Taliban Backs Off From Attacking Civilians”
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 civilian life" has been claimed in the covert war. Led by British investigative journalist Chris Woods …
Continue reading “Study Rebuts US Claims of ‘No Civilian Deaths’ in Pakistan Drone Strikes”
Tom Engelhardt on Washington’s singular accomplishment
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 Afghanistan. In the video, released on Monday, an unknown …
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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 that his military can do without the suspended U.S. military aid, …
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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 bilateral relations. While it is still too early to say whether the gamble …
Continue reading “Pakistan Military-Aid Hold Deals New Shocks”
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 joint chiefs, Admiral Mullen, openly accusing the Pakistanis of “sanctioning” …
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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 just-published book by Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistani journalist whose body was found in a canal outside Islamabad last …
Continue reading “Slain Writer’s Book Says US-NATO War Served al-Qaeda Strategy”
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 Barack Obama administration strategy aimed at …
Continue reading “US Uses Peace Talks to Divide Taliban from Pakistan” 
