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Pakistani police arrested 11 Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers Monday for illegally entering the country, amid tensions over a recent suicide attack that Tehran alleges was carried out by militants backed by Pakistani intelligence officials. The 11 officers were taken into custody in Mashkel, close to the countries' border in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, police officer Dadur Raman said. He said officers were interrogating the men and had seized two vehicles.

The Pakistani army dealt a psychological blow to the Taliban yesterday after taking the home village of the insurgent leader Hakimullah Mehsud. The seizure of Kotkai after a three-day siege is the second strategic victory for the army in its week-old offensive into the mountainous region of South Waziristan, a stronghold for Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants. More than 30,000 troops, backed by helicopters, jet fighters and heavy artillery, are engaged in heavy fighting with 12,000 well-armed insurgents in the treacherous terrain bordering Afghanistan. So far 162 militants and 22 troops have been killed in what the Pakistani army has described...

ISLAMABAD – Soldiers captured the strategically located hometown of Pakistan's Taliban chief Saturday after fierce fighting, officials said, the army's first major prize as it pushes deeper into a militant stronghold along the Afghan border. A suspected U.S. missile killed 22 people elsewhere in the northwest, but apparently missed a top Taliban figure, authorities said. Pakistan's eight-day-old offensive in the Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold of South Waziristan is considered its most critical test yet in the campaign to stop the spread of violent Islamist extremism in this nuclear-armed, U.S.-allied country. The army operation has prompted a wave of retaliatory attacks...

A rising number of Western recruits, including Americans, are travelling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to train at paramilitary camps...

The death toll is US drone attack at a compound in Bajaur tribal agency has reached 27, report said. Earlier, it was reported that nearly 14 persons were killed when a US drone fired missiles on a compound in Damadolla area of the agency. The compound was located near the house of local Taliban leader Moulvi Faqeer. Unconfirmed reports from the area said that 11 foreign nationals were also among the dead.

A suicide bomber attacked a suspected nuclear-weapons site Friday in Pakistan, raising fears about the security of the nuclear arsenal, while two other terrorist blasts made it another bloody day in the country’s struggle against extremism. Increasingly daring and sophisticated attacks by terrorists allied with al Qaida on some of Pakistan’s most sensitive and best-protected installations have led to warnings that extremists could damage a nuclear facility or seize nuclear material. Pakistan's nuclear sites are mostly in the northwest of the country, close to the capital, Islamabad, to keep them

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – A mine killed 16 wedding guests in Pakistan's tribal belt on Friday while a suicide bomber targeted an air force base, inflicting another reverse on the military in its war on the Taliban. A car bomb exploded outside a restaurant in the northwestern city of Peshawar, wounding 15 and underlining the threat to civilians in a nation where more than 190 people have died during Taliban-linked attacks in 19 days. The explosion ripped through the wedding party minibus in the Sorandara area of Mohmand, where security forces have been pressing an offensive against Islamist rebels for...

The Pakistani Taliban targeted an air base believed to be one of the country’s secret nuclear weapons facilities on Friday among a wave of suicide bombings that killed at least 25 people across the country. The attack on guard post at the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex at Kamra, about 40 miles outside Islamabad, killed eight people and raising fears about the security of the nuclear-armed state’s arsenal. Officials were quick to deny that the facility, the major research centre for the air force, had links to the nuclear programme. However, Pakistan doesn’t specify which sites are involved in the programme and...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday joined the battle between former Vice President Dick Cheney and Obama administration officials over the strategy of the war in Afghanistan. Pelosi chided Cheney for asserting Wednesday that President Obama is "afraid" to make a decision about whether to ramp up war at the request of his military advisers or scale back the effort and focus on going after Al Qaeda in Pakistan, as some of his political advisers are urging. "That's really not a dignified statement," Pelosi said Thursday. "The president has a very difficult decision to make. I don't think that's a...

A suspected suicide bomber has killed six people outside Pakistan's main air force maintenance facility. Police said the attack took place near the Kamra aeronautical complex, 60km (35 miles) from the capital, Islamabad. The bomber blew himself up when he was stopped at a checkpoint outside the complex. Among the dead were two security officials. The attack comes as the Pakistani army continues its drive against Taliban bases in South Waziristan. A wave of attacks on Pakistani cities has killed nearly 185 people during the month of October alone. "It was a suicide attack, which killed six people, including four...

US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke had requested talks with Mullah Omar during his July visit to Pakistan. During the visit, Holbrooke, asked Pakistani officials to make the effort in bringing either the Taliban leader or his special representative to the negotiating table.Holbrooke's request is being considered in Taliban's leadership council by Mowlavi Abdul Kabir and Mowlavi Abdul Latif Mansour, the report adds. According to a member of Taliban's leadership council, during his Islamabad visit in July, Holbrooke opposed suggestions by Pakistani officials that his appeal for talks with the Taliban leader should be made public. Holbrook then demanded that the...

Police in Pakistan say that unknown gunmen shot and killed a senior army officer and his driver in Islamabad. The attack is the second this week in the city and the violence is seen as retaliation for the ongoing military offensive against Taliban extremists in their stronghold of the South Waziristan region, near the Afghan border. Police say the early-morning attack took place in a residential part of the city, where assailants ambushed a military vehicle carrying a senior officer of the Pakistani military. An eyewitness says two men took part in the assault that instantly killed the driver and...

A strong earthquake has shaken buildings in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.1 and was centered in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan. That's according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake was felt in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

October 22, 2009, 0:00 a.m. Disconnecting the Dots An Afghanistan strategy is not enough. By Clifford D. May Don’t fault President Obama for reconsidering his strategy in Afghanistan. Fault him for reconsidering his strategy only in Afghanistan. Nearing the end of his first year in office, his administration has not yet developed a coherent and comprehensive plan to defend Americans from the movements, groups, and regimes that declare themselves our enemies, explicitly state their intentions — e.g. “A world without America�— and, unless we take steps to prevent it, will soon have nuclear capabilities to help them accomplish their...

If you run a domain or a blog and keep track of your statistics, you know that there are always a couple of files or posts which pick up global currency in Google. They accumulate views, perhaps giving you a picture of the world collected through the lens of whatever you have written. In another way of speaking, people, regions or countries display patterns determined by their interests, their likes, what they may be feeling about various issues, or their reactions to the news of the day. One can think of it as a variety of fingerprints left on your...

PESHAWAR: In the first drone strikes since the Pakistan military began its operation in South Waziristan a top al-Qaeda operative Abu Al-Masri is reported to have been killed in a strike from a US unmanned aircraft. However, conflicting reports earlier suggested that Al-Masri may have been killed preparing suicide jackets in the village of Spalga. Known as Mustafa Al-Yazid, he was urported to have links with Afghan immigrant Najibullah Zazi, whom US authorities arrested in an alleged plot to use homemade backpack bombs, he served three years in an Egyptian prison, in the 1980s, for supposed links to the group...

Taliban declare entire country is a war zone Following the attack, Rehman Malik, Pakistan's interior minister, said that Pakistan was now in what he called a state of war. As ground troops pressed their offensive in South Waziristan, police in cities went on heightened alert after attacks by al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists this month left 185 people dead. Their targets included elite police commando colleges in Lahore and the army's own general headquarters in Rawalpindi. An education ministry spokesman said 414 schools, colleges and universities run by the federal government had been shut down. The country's elite schools, which operate...

....Like Poo-bah in the Mikado, the president seems to be Lord High Everything Else, Secretary of Everything and a non-stop presence before the television cameras. Some of his supporters are chagrined. The New Republic's publisher Marty Peretz, who evinces buyer's remorse over Obama's Middle East policy, diagnosed the president with "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" in his blog on October 4. The reason for Obama's peculiar mode of governance, though, may have less to do with his apparent narcissism than with his objectives. It is a credible hypothesis that this president holds views that he cannot easily share, even with his own...

All it took was a simple statement to resolve a huge controversy over a well-meaning $7.5 billion U.S. aid package to Pakistan and avert what could have become a major issue in U.S.-Pakistan relations at a time when neither country can afford it. The controversy grew from claims in some Pakistani quarters that the aid package, known as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill, was designed to micromanage Pakistan's internal affairs and impinge on its sovereignty. The powerful Pakistani military establishment expressed strong reservations despite assurances by the government of President Asif Ali Zardari that it was a "pro-democracy aid package." The opposition...

As Pakistan forces begin to squeeze Taliban forces up against the Afghan border, the Pakistani press wonders where U.S. and U.N. Afghan forces are to block the Afghan border crossings. Now I am not a military expert but it seems to me the attack in Afghanistan a few weeks ago that killed eight Americans, and from which, I beleieve, they abandoned that post afterwards, just might be related.

All schools and universities have been closed across Pakistan a day after suicide bombers attacked an Islamic university in the capital, Islamabad. Four people died and at least 18 were wounded in the twin blasts at the International Islamic University. The Taliban claimed the attack and said there would be more violence unless the army ended its offensive in the tribal areas of South Waziristan.

Pakistani newspapers are buzzing with reports that the son of Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi works for Sen. John Kerry, man of the hour in helping resolve Afghanistan's elections dispute. A spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told POLITICO that Zain H. Qureshi has served as an intern in Kerry's personal Senate office. He said it was his understanding that the internship has concluded. He didn't immediately know the duration of Qureshi's work in Kerry's office. A business card circulating on Pakistani sites describes Zain Qureshi as a legislative fellow in Kerry's Senate office. Pakistani media are portraying...

The Pakistani army's push against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in the Mehsud tribal stronghold of South Waziristan has one paramount objective - to destroy the source of militant attacks in the country. The ground offensive that it launched in the region on Saturday is viewed by analysts as its most serious attempt so far to liquidate the militant network there. This conclusion is based on the tactics the army has adopted so far. Unlike previous operations which were invariably half-hearted, haphazard and abortive, it took its time to plan a thorough operation this time. StrongholdThe ground offensive comes after a...

Sharia is spreading in Iraq, after almost eight years in Afghanistan it is a stand-off at best, and the Taliban is running wild in Pakistan. Either the gloves are going to come off against our enemies, or we will continue to lose this war. Pakistan suffers reverses in offensive against militants DERA ISMAIL KHAN , Pakistan -- Taliban guerrillas recaptured the birthplace of the Pakistani Taliban leader from the Pakistani army Tuesday, inflicting the heaviest military losses so far in Pakistan's high-stakes offensive in South Waziristan , a refuge for Pakistani extremists, Afghan insurgents and al Qaida .

On July 25, Najibullah Zazi, a lanky man in his mid-twenties, walked into the Beauty Supply Warehouse in Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. The visit was captured on a store video camera. Wearing a baseball cap and pushing a shopping cart, Zazi appeared to be just another suburban guy.Of course, not many suburban guys buy six bottles of Clairoxide hair bleach, as Zazi did on this shopping trip--or return a month later to buy a dozen bottles of "Ms. K Liquid," a peroxide-based product. Aware that these were hardly the typical purchases of a heavily bearded, dark-haired young...

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT (Reuters) - The United States cannot wait for problems surrounding the legitimacy of the Afghan government to be resolved before making a decision on troops, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said. Gates, speaking to reporters on board a plane traveling to Tokyo, described the situation in Afghanistan as an evolutionary process that would not improve dramatically overnight, regardless of what course is taken following the country's flawed August election. "I see this as a process, not something that's going to happen all of the sudden," Gates said. "I believe that the president will have...

The war between the Taliban and Pakistan continues to accelerate. Just last weekend, Pakistan’s army responded to a long string of Taliban attacks by launching a massive ground operation in Waziristan. But through this already-long fight, the press and other observers have only focused on the continuing bloodshed rather than the fact that the Taliban continue to launch suicide bombers and other types of attacks inside Pakistan’s cities against its police and military forces. We warned that the Taliban’s war on Pakistan’s government and civil society would widen since the assassination of Prime Minister elect Benazir Bhutto in December 2007....

TEHRAN (FNA)- Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Ground Force Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour urged Iranian officials to issue the required orders for his troops to attack the Jundollah terrorist group in Pakistan. "This is not acceptable to us that terrorists enter Iran from a neighboring country and stage terrorist action," Pakpour told FNA on Tuesday. The Pakistan-based terrorist group Jundollah, headed by Abdolmalek Rigi, has claimed responsibility for a Sunday deadly attack in the city of Sarbaz in Sistan and Balouchestan province which killed 42 and wounded 28 others. Lieutenant Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps...

Outside View: Afghanistan’s center of gravity WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- Numbering more than 25 million, Pashtuns are the largest tribal group in the world. They are also by far the dominant ethnic group in the Taliban. The center of gravity of the war in Afghanistan is the confluence of the Taliban's Islamic radicalism and traditional Pashtun culture. In their brilliantly written article, "No Sign until the Burst of Fire -- Understanding the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier," Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason emphasize that the key to addressing the current instability and radicalization on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border...

New York Times reporter David Rohde writes about his kidnapping by the Haqqani Network and seven-month captivity. Rohde tells us three things that longtime readers of The Long War Journal and more recently Threat Matrix already know: 1) The Haqqani Network is intricately linked with al Qaeda. 2) The Haqqanis and the wider Taliban movement seek to impose a global Caliphate. 3) The Haqqani Network and other Taliban groups are in full control of North and South Waziristan. Rohde observes: Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – Pakistan's army, in the midst of a major new offensive against Taliban militants, has struck deals to keep two powerful, anti-U.S. tribal chiefs from joining the battle against the government, officials said Monday

Note: White Jihadi. # SNIPPET: "The NEFA Foundation has obtained a new video from the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) showing a group of alleged German nationals receiving instruction at an IJU terrorist training camp in northwest Pakistan. The video also includes footage of a balding Caucasian male identified as a U.S. national fighting alongside the IJU, "Abu Ibrahim al-Amriki." The IJU has claimed responsibility for a failed terrorist plot in 2007 targeting airports and other critical infrastructure in Germany - including Ramstein Air Base."

The President of Iran has accused Pakistan of involvement in the suicide bomb attack which killed at least 42 people including six senior commanders of the elite Revolutionary Guard. A local rebel Iranian Sunni group called Jundallah or Army of God says it ordered the attack. However, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says both western and Pakistani secret services are implicated.

Debating the Pakistani National Interest over the Kerry-Lugar BillBy: Tufail Ahmad * IntroductionOn October 7, 2009, the Pakistani military took an extraordinary step by expressing publicly its "serious concern" over the civilian government's approval of the Kerry-Lugar Bill, a U.S. aid program for Pakistan approved by Congress. The military fears that its role will be curtailed if the bill comes into effect. The debate, emerging out of the military's concern, also reflects the complex nature of thePakistani national interest. Broadly speaking, the military's intervention on a matter of government policy has revealed concerns regarding: a) the Pakistan Army's near-absolute control...

Big News in the Overseas Contingency Operation (Formerly known as the War on Terror)You might not have heard about it as most "reporters" seem more interested in the Balloon Boy hoax in Colorado! Pakistan Launches Full-Scale Offensive 30,000 Troops Deploy In Militant Stronghold By Karin Brulliard Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, October 18, 2009 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 17 -- The Pakistani military launched a major ground offensive Saturday in the insurgent haven of South Waziristan, starting a much-awaited fight that could define the nation's increasingly bloody domestic struggle against Islamist extremism. ... After months of targeting South Waziristan with aerial...

Conflicting reports emerge a day after thousands of soldiers launched an offensive against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in South Waziristan. 'We have not been weakened,' a Taliban spokesman says.Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan - On the second day of Pakistan's major offensive to uproot the Taliban from tribal areas along the Afghan border, the military claimed to have killed 60 militants, while the Taliban countered that it had fended off the troops' initial surge. Wildly differing interpretations of progress being made on both sides are expected to continue as the military pushes forward with its most crucial ground operation so...

House Armed Services Cmte. Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) considers General McChrystal’s assessment on the situation in Afghanistan and his request for 40,000 additional troops. Witnesses testify on three strategy options: a counterterrorism approach, a focused train and equip effort, and a population-centric counterinsurgency approach. Washington, DC : 2 hr. 43 min.

Pakistan Closes In On Taliban Leader's South Waziristan Strongholds Pakistan's armed forces are closing in on the stronghold of Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, with heavy losses reported on both sides. By Saeed Shah in Lahore and Daud Khan in Peshawar 18 Oct 2009 Troops were advancing towards the towns of Makeen and Ladha in the mountainous region of South Waziristan, in a military offensive that could prove decisive in the country's struggle against Islamic extremism. On the second day of the long-awaited ground operation, soldiers on three sides approached the area held by the fearsome Mehsud tribe, which forms the...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – Pakistani troops and the Taliban fought fierce battles Sunday in a militant sanctuary near the Afghan border, with both sides claiming early victories in an army campaign that could shape the future of the country's battle against extremism. A Taliban spokesman vowed the Islamist militants would fight to "our last drop of blood" to defend their stronghold of South Waziristan, .. Victory for the government in South Waziristan's tribal badlands would eliminate a safe haven for the Taliban militants blamed for surging terrorist attacks and the al-Qaida operatives they shelter there. .. Defeat would give...

THE car’s engine roared as the gunman punched the accelerator and we crossed into the open Afghan desert. I was seated in the back between two Afghan colleagues who were accompanying me on a reporting trip when armed men surrounded our car and took us hostage. Another gunman in the passenger seat turned and stared at us as he gripped his Kalashnikov rifle. No one spoke. I glanced at the bleak landscape outside — reddish soil and black boulders as far as the eye could see — and feared we would be dead within minutes. I had been headed to...

The Taliban which just will not go away, has threatened Pakistani Christians once again. The threats are in accordance to the Islamic scriptures. Would anyone from the Islam is a religion of peace crowd like to address this? BREAKING NEWS: Taliban Threatens To Kill More Christians Saturday, October 17, 2009 By Worthy News Chief International Correspondent Stefan J. Bos SARGODHA, PAKISTAN (Worthy News)-- Fighters linked to the militant Taliban group have threatened to kill Christians and burn their homes in Pakistan's Punjab province if they don't meet their demands.

Washington -- SNIPPET: "Rev. Zaheer Khan, pastor of Maghoo Memorial Church, Rev. Aamir Azeem, pastor of United Christians Church and Rev. Zafar Akhter, pastor of United Presbyterian Church each received a copy of threatening letter. The Islamists sent the letters to the following Christian institutions: St Peter's Middle School, Sargodha Institute of Technology, Sargodha Catholic High School, St John's Primary School and Fatima Hospital. Besides the Christian institutions, the letter was also sent to the main Immam-Bar-Gha (Shiite Muslim's gathering hall). Shiites are a minority Muslim group in Pakistan where the majority of the population is Sunni Muslim. ICC's Jonathan...

DHAREMA, PAKISTAN (BosNewsLife)-- A Christian schoolgirl in Pakistan's Punjab province was recovering Sunday, October 11, after she was allegedly "ruthlessly beaten" with a bamboo stick by a Muslim headteacher for saying she is "a Pakistani" citizen. The bedridden Nadia Iftikhar, 11, told BosNewsLife she was seriously injured when the teacher of the local evening coaching school 'Bright Future Academy' in the town of Dharema got angry because she challenged her views on Islam. “Our teacher was teaching us about the culture of Pakistan and Pakistani people and quoted a sentence from the text book saying 'We are Pakistani and all...

I was on a BBC radio show last week - a roundtable discussion of Pakistan that featured a Georgetown University expert and a Pakistani journalist. We had a couple of calls from inside Pakistan that were almost pleading in their desire for the government to do something about the terrorism. All of us agreed that the Pakistani government's long promised offensive into the tribal areas better kick off soon or the situation would threaten civilian rule not to mention destabilize the entire country. In fact, the government promised back in June after they had swept the Swat Valley of Taliban...

ISLAMABAD: SNIPPET: "Police found some objectionable literature, computers and some other stuff in the house and seized over 15 vehicles, including Sedan cars and sport utility vehicles. According to a senior police officer, the arrested people were booked under the Anti-Terrorism Act and produced in a court of law for further legal action. He said the activists were suspected of helping militants. He said the meeting was being held in a rented house and police were searching for the owner who would also face a legal action."

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani forces fought fierce battles with Taliban militants on Sunday, a day after launching a long-awaited offensive aimed at bringing the writ of state to lawless tribal lands on the Afghan border. The offensive on the global Islamist hub of South Waziristan follows a string of brazen militant attacks in different parts of the country, including an assault on army headquarters, in which more than 150 people were killed. About 28,000 soldiers are battling an estimated 10,000 hard-core Taliban, including about 1,000 tough Uzbek fighters and some Arab al Qaeda members, after surrounding militant territory and...

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal stepped off the whirring Black Hawk and headed straight into town. He had come to Garmsir, a dusty outpost along the Helmand River in southern Afghanistan, to size up the war that President Obama has asked him to save. McChrystal pulled off his flak jacket and helmet. His face, skeletal and austere, seemed a piece of the desert itself. He was surrounded by a clutch of bodyguards, normal for a four-star general, and an array of the Marine officers charged with overseeing the town. Garmsir had been under Taliban control until May 2008, when a force...

A Taliban victory would have devastating consequences for U.S. interests. But to avoid disaster, America must beware the Soviet Union’s mistakes -- and learn from its own three decades of failure in South Asia. The United States has two compelling interests at issue in the Afghan conflict. One is the ongoing, increasingly successful but incomplete effort to reduce the threat posed by al Qaeda and related jihadi groups, and to finally eliminate the al Qaeda leadership that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. The second is the pursuit of a South and Central Asian region that is at least stable...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – More than 30,000 Pakistani soldiers launched a ground offensive against al-Qaida and the Taliban's main stronghold along the Afghan border Saturday, officials said, in the country's toughest test yet against a strengthening insurgency. The United States has long pushed the government to carry out an assault in South Waziristan, and it comes after two weeks of militant attacks that have killed more than 175 people across the nuclear-armed country. That has ramped up pressure on the army to act. Pakistan has fought three unsuccessful campaigns since 2001 in the region, which is the nerve-center for...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 17 -- Pakistan's army launched a ground offensive Saturday morning aimed at rooting out Islamist insurgents in the lawless tribal region of South Waziristan, an intelligence official in the area said. The military had been planning the operation for months, amassing nearly 30,000 troops in the area and attempting to soften targets with aerial strikes. Military officials and security experts estimate that between 5,000 and 10,000 "hardcore" Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents are based in the area, which the United States views as a terrorism hub and has targeted with unmanned drone strikes. The offensive comes after two...