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 …

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 …

Forty terror camps are active in Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas, according to a Russian diplomat.
The assessment is based on satellite imagery and intelligence reports, Ambassador Alexander M. Kadakin said.
‘The camps don’t sport their organisations’ names any longer but the camps remain very much’, Kadakin, who is in Delhi on his second stint as Russian envoy since Oct 2009, told an English daily. He was posted here earlier from 1999 for five years.
Significantly, the US is mounting pressure on Islamabad to act against these very terror dens in the wake of botched …

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 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 …

By Myra MacDonald in the Reuters Blog
DAMADOLA: Despite initial military successes against the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, Pakistan is unlikely to move any time soon to dismantle the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group. As I wrote in this analysis,  Pakistani security officials say the country has enough on its plate fighting militants on its Afghan border without opening a new front in Punjab province, where the LeT is based. They argue this could drive the LeT – which has been careful not to launch attacks within Pakistan itself …

By Nadeem F. Paracha in the Dawn blogs
In 1947 the only established student organisation in the newly created country of Pakistan was the Muslim Students Federation (MSF), the student-wing of the Muslim League. The Muslim League began to disintegrate as Pakistan’s first ruling party. Consequently, the MSF too started to reflect the fragmentary nature of its mother party.
In 1950, a group of students in Karachi formed a progressive student organisation called the Democratic Students Federation (DSF). The organisation’s rapid growth led it to becoming a powerful platform for the students, …

By Patrick Cockburn in The Independent, Apr 16
The Pakistani army has fought successfully to control mountainous frontier areas once ruled by the Pakistani Taliban, but it remains reluctant to attack the cross-border safe havens of the Afghan Taliban despite American pressure.
Pakistani soldiers in Bajaur district on the Afghan frontier are eager to demonstrate what they have already achieved, showing off captured tunnels dug into the hillside by the local Taliban to protect their fighters against air and artillery attack. On display are some rockets and shells and a broken sign …

By Anwar Iqbal in The Dawn, Mar 14
WASHINGTON, March 13: The blasts in Lahore are the last desperate measures of pro-Al Qaeda militants who are now being abandoned by the Taliban, diplomatic sources told Dawn.
The sources also confirmed a Los Angeles Times report, published on Saturday, that the Taliban militants in Fata were now refusing to collaborate with Al Qaeda fighters.
The Taliban were declining to provide shelter or assist in attacks in Afghanistan even in return for payment, the report said.
“Yes, Pakistani intelligence sources also confirm this assessment,” said a …

By Jeremy Page in Delhi
A Pakistan-based militant group has reportedly warned foreigners not to attend three upcoming international sporting events in India, while another one has claimed responsibility for a deadly weekend bomb attack on a city in western India.
Ilyas Kashmiri, an alleged al-Qaeda operative who heads the notorious militant 313 Brigade, contacted the Asia Times Online to warn foreigners not to come to the Hockey World Cup this month, the Indian Premier League in March, and the Commonwealth Games in October.
“We warn the international community not to send their …