The writer is a member of staff. SO, now what? Let’s be realistic about the terribleness. Realistic, admittedly, as only non-victims can be. It was Charsadda. It was a fraction of APS. And it wasn’t little kids. It’s a troubling assumption, but we can only assume they’d rather have hit something else. Another APS. A proper military school. Maybe a mall. Probably a big city. But revenge was wrought on a place most of us…
Posts published in “Day: January 24, 2016”
The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to the UN. IN his final State of the Union address, US President Obama predicted a decade of instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Af-Pak was always a bad construct for policy formulation. There are obvious security linkages between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the circumstances and prospects of the two countries are significantly different. Predicting continued instability in Afghanistan is an easy call. The Kabul government is beset by…
(The writer is CNN’s national security analyst, vice president of New America and a professor at Arizona State University. This essay is adapted from his latest book, “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Home-grown Terrorists.”) At 11 a.m. on Dec. 2, some 60 miles east of Los Angeles, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife,Tashfeen Malik, stormed into a Christmas party for employees of the San Bernardino county public-health department, where Farook worked. Wearing military-style clothing…
KABUL — For Abdul Fatah, distance is the enemy. Every morning, the metal scavenger drags his heavy wooden cart onto Kabul’s dusty streets in search of scrap. With callused hands, he sifts through rubble for a few cents’ worth of rebar. Then he winds his way back through more than a dozen miles of traffic jams and potholes to the junkyard, where he sells his finds before falling asleep in a flimsy tent. “It’s a…
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group in Iraq has reportedly executed three of it’s commanders hailing from Afghanistan. According to the local media reports, the three men were executed after they escaped from the city of Mosul, 405 km north of Baghdad. The execution comes almost a month after the terror group burned a number of its fighters alive for abandoning the city of Mosul. “Today, ISIS executed three of its…
KABUL: At least 10 Taliban insurgents were killed and 32 other injured in an operation launched by the security forces in the north-eastern province of Badakhshan, officials said Saturday. “The operation was launched in Tagab district,” said Naveed Ferotan, provincial spokesman. “Two Taliban commanders Qari Abdul Baset resident of Badakhshan and Qari Mahmood resident of Farkhar district of Takhar province were among the wounded.” Two police were also killed in the operation, Ferotan added. Last…
Dubai/Kabul: Taliban representatives will begin meeting in Qatar on Saturday with people close to the Afghan government, an encounter that comes as momentum grows for the start of a formal peace process between the two warring parties. Members of the Taliban’s political office based in the Qatari capital Doha will participate in a two-day series of talks organized by the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international group that works on conflict resolution.…
PESHAWAR: Afghan Taliban want to be removed from the UN blacklist before considering rejoining peace talks to end a 15-year civil war, a senior member said. After months of worsening fighting, with the province of Helmand slipping out of government control and frequent suicide bombings in the capital, Afghanistan and its neighbours are trying to get troubled negotiations back on track. Prospects of the Taliban, an increasingly strong presence on the battlefield since the withdrawal…
AFTER days of official comment and frenzied speculation, the India-Pakistan relationship appears to have gone quiet once again, at least officially and publicly. That is an unwelcome lapse into old habits. There are two things that the two countries need immediately: one, an expedited investigation into the full contours of the Pathankot air force base attack; and two, the initiation of the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue. Three weeks from the Pathankot attack, India ought to have…
The writer, a long-time specialist on Chinese law, is Distinguished Lecturer in Residence (ret.) at the School of Law, University of California, Berkeley A trio of recent repressive actions by the Chinese party-state represents a disturbing three-pronged attack that treats legality as an unnecessary burden on governance over society, and illustrates how far China is willing to go to snuff out dissent. The actions include the arrest of seven lawyers accused of “subversion” and four…
The writer is a columnist and analyst Fantasies never fail to succeed. Superman, Spiderman, Batman and Star Wars, no matter which sequel it is, still capture the imagination of audiences across countries, across cultures, across age groups and across continents. They touch the basic human instinct to supersede human boundaries and control and subjugate many forces in the world. That instinct in real life is best seen in politics where politicians act as supermen and…