The Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the Ministry of Interior (MoI) said that several Taliban commanders have also been killed in Afghanistan following their leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour’s death in a drone strike in Pakistan. They said that the Taliban have come under enormous military pressure. The ministries said that the Taliban’s attacks have reduced following their leader’s death. They said that the Taliban launched 65 attacks over the past four days and security…
Posts published in May 2016
TIRINKOT – Chief of Army Staff Gen. Qadam Shah Shahim on Wednesday said the Taliban’s Omari offensive had failed and their leader was killed where he ascended to the group leadership. Gen. Shahim told this on Tuesday to a gathering involving military and civil officials and tribal elders during a visit to central Uruzgan province. He said they had come to Uruzgan to assess the security situation and thanked the security forces for bravely defending…
TEHRAN – Senior Iranian and Afghan officials in a meeting in Russia on Wednesday underlined the necessity for bolstering mutual security cooperation to fight against terrorism and other causes of instability in the region. The issue was raised in a meeting between Undersecretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Reza Seifollahi and Afghan National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar on the sidelines of an international security conference in Groznyy, Chechenia. During the meeting, Atmar appreciated…
WASHINGTON: The US State Department on Wednesday declared two militant organisations — the Tariq Gidar Group (TGG) and Jama’at ul Dawa al-Quran (JDQ) — as specially designated global terrorists. TGG is linked to the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan and was responsible for attacks on the Army Public School, Peshawar, and the Bacha Khan University, Charsadda, while JDQ is associated with the Afghan Taliban as well as Lashkar-e-Taiba. The designation imposes sanctions on foreign entities said to…
The writer is a member of staff. ON the day when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Iran to sign the transit agreement for Chabahar port, India also arranged a $750m payment to Iran on the money owed to it from previous oil purchases. In total, India owes Iran $6bn, and the first payment was timed to coincide with the signing ceremony for transit trade between India, Iran and Afghanistan. By contrast, Prime Minister…
The writer is a Programme Officer for South Asia Regional Peace and Stability Project at Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Pakistan. Pakistan and China who claim to be two friends in need were preoccupied in the last few days, celebrating the 65th anniversary of the establishment of Pakistan-China diplomatic ties. On this occasion, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif stated that May 21 marked the day when the two countries took the first step towards the establishment of bilateral…
President Ashraf Ghani, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani signed a three-way transit agreement on Iran’s southern port of Chabahar on Monday May 23, 2016. India will invest about $500 million for developing the project and it is going to benefit from it to a large extent. It will provide India an access to the land-locked countries of central Asia. But, it will benefit the region, at the same time. Indian…
Pakistan’s increasing international and regional isolation is becoming a harsh reality. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani were in Tehran on Monday to ink a transit and trade deal with their Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani. The main agreement was over the development of the Chabahar port in southern Iran, for which India will pay $500 million, as well as a railway line that will give India access to Afghanistan, Iran and…
Liu Zhijun, former railway minister, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve on July 8, 2013. “As a farmer’s boy, I could have been able to contribute more to China’s railway cause …,” he wrote in a confession letter. “If I could go back, I would choose to keep my integrity… I used to be such a person. Corruption ruined myself, my child and my family,” wrote Liu Tienan, the former deputy chief of…
The writer is a retired air-vice marshal, former ambassador and a security and political analyst. In the 1979 Afghan war the Soviet air force planes soon began violating the Pakistani border. Their targets were the refugee camps all long the Pakistani border which they knew were feeding and sustaining the mujahideen resistance. The Soviet Union was then the second pole in a bipolar world. The Pakistan Air Force reacted but never with the commitment that…
Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has severely criticised the US policy of taking unilateral action against Taliban leaders without taking Pakistan into confidence. This condemnation came in the wake of killing of Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was killed in a drone strike on May 21 inside Pakistani territory near the Afghan border. While addressing a press conference, the minister said that the strike would have “serious implications” for relations with the US, describing…