The writer is CEO and Chairman of Haider Group of Companies and hosts a current affairs talk show on PTV News. The year was 1995; Benazir Bhutto was serving as the Prime Minister of Pakistan while Nasrullah Babar Malik was the Interior Minister. Abdul Wahid Kakar was the Chief of Army Staff and Talibanisation was on a continuous rise. During the same era, Taliban hanged the Afghan President Najibullah brazenly. After his execution, Taliban took…
Posts published in “Day: June 28, 2016”
Afghanistan Still World’s Largest Opium Producer by Far: by Tariq Majidi in Tolo News, June 26, 2016
Afghanistan is by a long way still the world’s largest opium producer, accounting for some 70 percent (3,300 tons) of global opium production, according to the United Nations World Drug Report of 2016. Myanmar is the second largest producer of the drug at 14 per cent (650 tons) of global production. According to the UN report, the total value of the illicit opiate economy in Afghanistan was $2.8 billion USD in 2014 — equivalent to…
A top commander of the Taliban group was killed in an airstrike together with his six fighters in northern Kunduz province, the Ministry of Interior (MoI) said Sunday. “During an air strike, seven armed Taliban were killed including Janat a key commander of armed Taliban,” a statement by MoI said. The statement further added that the airstrike took place in Sarak Payin village, Chahar Dara District of northern Kunduz province, last night. “This group was…
KABUL: Heavy fighting between government forces and the militant Islamic State (IS) group has claimed dozens of lives in eastern Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday. In recent months insurgents claiming allegiance to IS had largely appeared to be bottled up in a mountainous area along the border with Pakistan under threat of US air strikes. The latest attacks indicate the group remains a potent threat to a government already battling an insurgency dominated by the…
Policy for repatriation of Afghan refugees gets tougher By Zahid Gishkori in The News, June 27, 2016
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has decided to introduce ‘tougher policy’ for Afghan refugees days before the deadline (June 30) for repatriation of over three million refugees living here since 80s. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with consultation of Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif will finalise terms of new policy next month a road map for the institutions concerned to send Afghan refugees back to their homeland at all cost. “We’ve decided to review our national policy…
A sex education textbook issued to high schools in Jiangxi Province was accused of calling girls who have premarital sex cheap, triggering a public debate of gender inequality. Xiao Chuwu (pseudonym), a high school teacher in Shenzhen, South China’s Guangdong Province, took to Weibo on Wednesday to quote a passage from High School Sex Education that says girls are “degraded” by premarital sex. “Premarital sex has a tremendous negative psychological and physical impact on girls,”…
BEIJING — A longtime political activist and artist who has been detained for more than a year in China after visiting the grave site of a victim of the violent Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 is expected to stand trial on Thursday, according to his lawyer. The activist, Chen Yunfei, 48, uses performance art to criticize the Communist Party and is a close friend of other Chinese intellectuals, including the author Liao Yiwu, who lives…
Urumqi: At 9:57 pm Beijing time Friday, the Baida Mosque, or the Grand White Mosque, in downtown Urumqi looked serene. It was three weeks into the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and a day’s fast was about to end. The sun had just set. The sky was clear blue, pale in the west and dark above. The exterior wall of the Baida Mosque is white, as its name suggests, with two towers standing at each…
Up to 45,000 Madrasas in Pakistan continue to train, fund and send terrorists to fight against Afghanistan, the The Ministry of Defense (MoD) said on Sunday. According to the MoD, terrorists currently fighting the Afghan security forces are fostered in the Pakistani Madrasas. The terrorists are educated and equipped and then dispatched to Afghanistan to attack the Afghan government forces. Afghan officials have consistently stated that there is a link between certain Madrasas in Pakistan…
April was the cruelest month for many in Karachi a year ago. On April 16, 2015, Debra Lobo – the vice-principal for student affairs at the Jinnah Medical and Dental College – was attacked by two unidentified gunmen as she made her way to the campus. Eight days later, on April 24, Sabeen Mahmud – activist and founder of The Second Floor café – was shot dead after conducting a panel discussion on Balochistan. Then…
Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. Mansour, it is believed, resisted negotiations with the Afghan government and its allies. The strike was notable for several reasons. First, the United States military executed it and not the CIA. Second, it was the first drone strike outside the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and their peripheries in Pakistan. Third, it likely did not involve coordination with the ISI or the…