Pakistan’s New War Games

Note: The fol­low­ing is a par­tial repost of my story that ran on Reuters India. TAME­WALI KHARIPUR, Pak­istan (Reuters) — Pak­istan army troops backed by fighter planes con­ducted a mock bat­tle with India in the largest mil­i­tary exer­cise in 21 years, sig­nalling that the old rival remained its biggest secu­rity threat. In a dusty yet impres­sive dis­play of conventional […]

Terror at Islamic University

ISLAMABAD—Twin sui­cide blasts killed at least five four and injured at least 23 more than 40 at one of the largest Islamic uni­ver­si­ties in the world today, the sev­enth major ter­ror­ist attack in two weeks. The attack comes as the Pak­istani Army presses its assault on South Waziris­tan against Tal­iban mil­i­tants, for­eign fight­ers and al Qaeda. Today’s […]

Pakistan’s 9/11

ISLAMABAD—Militants launched simul­ta­ne­ous attacks across Pak­istan Thurs­day morn­ing, hit­ting at least three police instal­la­tions in Lahore, ram­ming a sui­cide car bomb into a police sta­tion in Kohat in the NWFP and attack­ing a school in Peshawar. At least 37 peo­ple were killed in the com­bined attacks. The scene in Lahore was one of may­hem, where the Fed­eral Investigation […]

Kerry-Lugar’s First Victim

If true, this is total bull­shit: After strong crit­i­cism on the Kerry-Lugar bill in Pak­istan, the gov­ern­ment has decided to replace Pakistan’s ambas­sador to the US Hus­sain Haqqani and the announce­ment in this respect is expected within the next two days. There’s noth­ing in the bill rea­son­able Pak­ista­nis should object to, but bla­tant dem­a­goguery has apparently […]

Pakistan’s Civil War Heating Up

In the after­math of this weekend’s assault on the Pak­istani Gen­eral Head­quar­ters in Rawalpindi, the Tal­iban hit again in Alpuri, in the Shangla dis­trict east of Min­gora in Swat. Accord­ing to mil­i­tary sources who asked to remain anony­mous because they weren’t autho­rized to talk to the press, a 13– or 14-year-old boy walked up to an Army convoy […]

Suicide bombing kills 5 at WFP in Islamabad

The bomb that blasted through the World Food Pro­gram’s lobby at its heav­ily for­ti­fied office in Islam­abad on Mon­day, killing at least three five, and wound­ing at least six five, was a stark reminder that the Pak­istani Tal­iban are still a force to be reck­oned with. The explo­sion occurred at approx­i­mately 12:15 p.m., on a leafy street in one […]

At Home with a Swat Lashkar

I just fin­ished up a few days in Swat and while I’m work­ing on a story about it, I thought you might like to see a few pic­tures I took while there. Enjoy.

Mingora Shrugs Over Rumors of Fazlullah Capture

MIN­GORA, Pak­istan – The Swat Valley’s belea­guered cap­i­tal was tak­ing a wait-and-see atti­tude to the rumors that Maulana Fazlul­lah, head of the Swat Tal­iban which had ter­ror­ized the pic­turesque val­ley for five years, had been cap­tured or killed by secu­rity forces this week­end. The rumors first began appear­ing on Sat­ur­day night, when the NWFP gov­er­nor, Owais […]

Fazlullah may be captured

MIN­GORA, Swat — I’m fil­ing this from my iPhone, as Inter­net is spotty up here, but reports are trick­ing out that Maulana Fazlul­lah, leader of the Swat Tal­iban and a close ally of the TTP, has been either cap­tured or has sur­ren­dered near Gulibagh. This is as yet uncon­firmed, how­ever. I will post more as I can, […]

A Pakistani Awakening?

Some inter­est­ing news out of the Swat Val­ley yes­ter­day: TOTANA BANDAI: When a posse of Tal­iban fight­ers entered a mosque in this vil­lage dur­ing evening prayers last week to demand the alle­giance of the con­gre­ga­tion, long-suffering locals decided they had enough. The vil­lagers, of whom a major­ity had only just returned to their homes fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of […]