Five months ago, shortly after the Pakistani government had
begun a military offensive against suspected Taliban fighters in the
northernmost area of the country, we arrived in Islamabad, the capital, as part of a small
delegation organized by Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). Our
initial travel plans had focused on learning more about civilian suffering
caused by U.S.
drone attacks.
The pictures are too gruesome to show. The charred bodies lie under
a makeshift shroud. Someone near the camera holds up an identity card -
giving one corpse a name, a history, a dignity that's now been stolen.
The war in South Waziristan started early for Ghufran. As Pakistani warplanes pounded the Taliban
stronghold of Ladha last week, in preparation for the ground offensive
now under way, the 11-year-old boy and his family scrambled to safety
across a range of jagged mountains.
ISLAMABAD - Despite serious reservations, Pakistan's military at the weekend began an all-out offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda in the tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.
The deployment of about 30,000 troops in South Waziristan, backed by the air force, shifts the main theater of the South Asian battlefield from Afghanistan to Pakistan.
As the Obama administration dithers over what to do for the best in Afghanistan, neighbouring Pakistan is paying an increasingly heavy price. Like a spate of previous Taliban attacks in recent days, today's
mayhem in Lahore underscored fears that the principal consequence of Washington's Afghan paralysis, albeit unintended, is the further destabilisation of the Pakistani state.
Pakistanis might be forgiven for wondering whether, with friends like these in Washington, who needs enemies?
LAHORE - Teams of gunmen attacked three security sites on
Thursday in Lahore, killing a total of 27 people and leaving at
least 30 injured.
One of the attacks, on the Elite Police Academy on Bedian Road,
lasted into Thursday afternoon before security forces killed the five
attackers and freed a family they were holding hostage, police said.
President Obama's Pakistan policy was in disarray yesterday after Islamabad
raised objections to the stringent terms attached to his new $7.5 billion
aid package.
In what is likely to be its sternest challenge
yet, Pakistan's military is poised to launch a major offensive in the
coming days against militants in the remote mountainous terrain of
South Waziristan, long rumoured to be the hiding place of Osama bin
Laden.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Steps by the United States to vastly expand its aid to Pakistan, as well as the footprint of its embassy and private security contractors here, are aggravating an already volatile anti-American mood as Washington pushes for greater action by the government against the Taliban.
ISLAMABAD – Two Pakistani women and
an Iraqi national were killed Monday when a suicide bomber struck
inside a heavily fortified UN office in the heart of the Pakistani
capital Islamabad, police officials said.
The explosion inside
the offices of the World Food Programme (WFP) comes after Taliban
rebels vowed to avenge the death of their leader Baitullah Mehsud,
killed in a US missile strike in August.
