Taliban gun men on Friday May 28, targeted two mosques of minority Ahmadis in Lahore and killed seventy people. At least 90 people were injured. The last major attack on Pakistan’s cultural capital took place in March when a double suicide bombing killed dozens. This was for the first time Ahmadis were attacked. Hitherto, militants were targeting Shia Muslims.
Ahmadis consider themselves Muslim and follow all Islamic rituals. But they were declared non-Muslims in Pakistan in 1974 and in 1984 they were legally barred from proselytising or identifying themselves as Muslims.
“Punjabi …

By Glenn Kessler in Washington Post, May 20
Diplomacy sometimes consists of winks and nods, not outright trades. That might explain why the Obama administration has been quiet about a recent Chinese commercial transaction that nuclear specialists say marks a blatant disregard of international guidelines.
In the midst of intense negotiations on new sanctions for Iran, which China was reluctant to embrace, Beijing confirmed that one of its state companies had signed an agreement to supply Pakistan with two new nuclear reactors.
The lucrative deal, if consummated, appears to be a clear violation …

(An authoritative account of how Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan helped spread nuclear terrorism unhindered for decades)  Review by Bob Drogin in The Los Angeles Times, May 11
Nuclear weapons, which largely faded from front pages after the Cold War, are back in the news. President Obama endorsed a new national security strategy, and earlier this year he signed an ambitious arms control treaty with Russia, further easing fears of global Armageddon. But Obama also led an unprecedented summit of world leaders to warn of an increasingly urgent threat — nuclear terrorism.
Much of …

PESHAWAR: Pakistani police on Tuesday killed a an alleged militant wanted over terror attacks including the murder last year of an official with the Iranian consulate, officials said.
Police acting on a tip-off surrounded a house in the northwestern city of Peshawar where the man, named Amanullah, had been hiding, local police chief Liaquat Ali said.
A gun battle broke out and Amanullah was killed, he said, adding that two police officials were wounded in the clash, which lasted about half an hour.
“Amanullah, who had close links with militant outfits, was wanted …

Uighur leader killed in Pakistan: Rehman Malik
BEIJING: Pakistan and China have “broken the back” of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which China accuses of orchestrating attacks in its restive Xinjiang region, Pakistan’s Interior Minister said in Beijing on Friday.
An alleged leader of the group, about which little is known, has been killed, Rehman Malik said at the end of a visit to discuss security cooperation between the two countries.
China has granted long-standing ally Pakistan a $180 million loan to purchase police equipment, including armoured personnel carriers and bullet-proof jackets, …

By Rob Crilly, in The Daily Telegraph
Lahore: Pakistan has repeatedly accused India of breaching the terms of a 1960 treaty governing the use of shared river systems, complaining that irrigation channels on its side of the border have emptied.
The issue has now been adopted by militants in Jamaat-ud-Dawah, widely regarded as a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Jihadi group fighting Indian troops in Kashmir and responsible for the November 2008 wave of gun and bomb attacks that killed at least 170 people in Mumbai.
Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashka-e-Taibi and head …

By Babar Dogar in The News, Apr 28
LAHORE: Former foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri has disclosed that the agreement on Kashmir, worked out through back-channel diplomacy, was an interim one, and was subject to review after 15 years.
Talking to The News here on Tuesday in the backdrop of ‘Aman Ki Asha’ – a joint venture of the Jang Group of Pakistan and The Times of India, Khursheed Kasuri claimed the Pakistani and Indian sides at that time had the realisation that in view of the history of Jammu and Kashmir …

TOBA TEK SINGH, April 26: Former municipal committee chairman Mian Muhammad Rafiq Sarhandi has demanded of the federal government to lift curbs on second visit to India.
A Pakistani has to wait for 18 months for next visit to India.
In a press statement, he said hundreds of people belonging to the Indian town of Sarhand resided in the Toba district and wanted to attend the Urs of Hazrat Mujaddid Alif Sani and offer fateha on the graves of their relatives, but the curbs on their second visit had barred them from …

By Ansar Abbasi in The News, Apr 26
ISLAMABAD: After the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), now apprehensions are also being expressed by the PML-N about some alleged conspiracy being hatched by certain elements belonging to the Army and intelligence agencies.
Though it is whispered and not publicly said in so many words, in their off-the-record discussions with media persons, some PML-N leaders express their fears that the third force is preparing the ground to do something extra-constitutional.
Ahsan Iqbal is on the record as having said on Saturday that a third force wants …

BY now Pakistanis are accustomed to ‘non-state actors’ — nebulous creatures that are blamed for the nation’s ills and help the government defer the burden of accountability. In a nod to these elements, we learnt this month that the violence and intolerance that permeate this country’s campuses are the work of ‘non-student elements’.
This coinage comes from the Punjab University (PU), which re-opened recently as a 19-day faculty boycott came to an end. The faculty was protesting the beating — many describe it as attempted murder — of a professor. As …