Rawalpindi: Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif has confirmed death sentence of five terrorists that were involved in the Safoora incident, according to a private TV channel. The terrorists were also involved in the murder of Sabeen Mehmood. A counter-terrorism department (CTD) official confirmed on Thursday the arrest of Ali Rehman, an alleged accomplice in the murder of activist and T2F director, Sabeen Mahmud, and an absconder in the Safoora Goth attack. Ali…
Posts published in “Day: May 13, 2016”
The writer is a reporter for The Express Tribune The deadly Taliban attack in Kabul on April 19 caused a serious blow to renewed efforts for peace negotiations for a second time in less than a year. As key Taliban political negotiators from the Qatar office touched down in Pakistan recently to discuss prospects for peace negotiations, President Ashraf Ghani, in a major shift of his policy to pursue reconciliation, prioritised war with the Taliban…
The Torkham border remained closed for a third day after a dispute between Pakistani and Afghan authorities over the installation of barbed wires and fences in Pakistan could not be resolved. This has left hundreds of people stranded on both sides of the border. Both countries have escalated the presence of their military personnel on the border and have also been asking residents to evacuate the area. This crossing is used by Afghans who work…
Nearly 15 years after 9/11, the war in Afghanistan is raging and Pakistan deserves much of the blame. It remains a duplicitous and dangerous partner for the United States and Afghanistan, despite $33 billion in American aid and repeated attempts to reset relations on a more constructive course. In coming weeks, Gen. John Nicholson Jr., the new American commander in Afghanistan, will present his assessment of the war. It’s likely to be bleak and may…
At least 82 Taliban insurgents were killed or wounded during a heavy clash in western Herat province of Afghanistan, the security sources said Thursday. The Ministry of Defense (MoD) said the militants were killed during the clearance operations conducted as part of the Zafar-4 military operations. However, the local officials, said the militants were killed after launching coordinated attacks on several security posts. The officials put the number of dead militants at 35 and at…
The Afghan police forces seized at least 9,700 kgs of explosives as the militants were looking to use the explosives for attacks in Afghanistan. “Yesterday evening, Afghan National Border Police (ANBP) confiscated 9700 kilos of Ammonium Nitrate, a key component used to make Improvised Explosive Devices,” a statement by Ministry of Interior (MoI) said. The statement further added that “The Ammonium Nitrate was placed in a Pakistani truck transporting fresh fruits to Afghanistan.” “The police…
PESHAWAR: Russia’s Ambassador to Pakistan Alexey Y. Dedov has acknowledged contacts between his country and the Afghan Taliban, but said they are aimed at promoting reconciliation in Afghanistan. “There have been limited contacts with the Afghan Taliban,” he told participants of a seminar on ‘Russia’s position on Afghanistan and Syria’ at the Area Study Centre here on Thursday. Later, the Russian envoy told Dawn that he was not aware of the level of engagements with…
LANDI KOTAL: Tension further heightened between Pakistan and Afghanistan on Thursday and the two countries deployed tanks and armoured personnel carriers along the tense Torkham border besides sending more troops after their negotiating teams failed to resolve the border fencing dispute, political administration sources told Dawn. The two countries have locked horns over the issue of fencing of some points at the border. Pakistan has started fencing some vulnerable points of the border with Afghanistan…
More troops and military equipment have been deployed along the two sides of Torkham as tensions have escalated between Afghanistan and Pakistan over fencing attempt by Pakistani border guards. The additional forces were deployed on Thursday, two days after the gate remained close for the second consecutive day. According to the local media reports in Pakistan, the additional forces were deployed after negotiations failed between the Afghan and Pakistani officials regarding the issue. Pakistan sent…
The writer is an Islamabad-based journalist. A PREVAILING sense of déjà vu across Islamabad’s ruling circles following the US threat of withdrawing funds for eight new F-16 fighters may well suggest that Pakistan is missing the point. It’s easy to say ‘we have seen it all before’. But it’s much harder to figure out the lessons learnt from the past that could be usefully applied to shape future policies in Pakistan’s best interest. Beyond another…
Geopolitics is a global balancing act, finely tuned by diplomats of every nation to maintain equanimity among the community of nations and is one of the more neglected aspects of international relations. Changes in the geopolitical architecture tend to be small and infinitesimally slow, but there is currently what amounts to a geopolitical churn in the neighbourhood of Pakistan as well as other states in the sub-continent and Central Asia. The churn has been triggered…