The writer is an associate research fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. Coming on the heels of two terrorist assaults by the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al-Alami, the attack on the Police Training Centre (PTC) in Quetta was a tragedy waiting to happen. We could have prevented it but we did not. Anything that can possibly go wrong went wrong in the PTC attack, whether you look at it from the state-society perspective or…
Posts published in “Day: November 4, 2016”
THE pain of Balochistan, particularly Quetta, is such that even those not directly affected would find it difficult to contemplate the recent tragedies without a shudder. The violence-weary city had not yet come to terms with the killing of 70 lawyers in August, when on Oct 24 another unspeakable slaughter occurred. This time the assailants crept into Quetta’s Police Training Centre and, under cover of darkness, laid to waste one of the four hostels on…
KABUL — Abdulhalim fled the northern city of Kunduz this month after militants and security forces had been clashing for days. Now he’s 200 miles away in Kabul, sleeping in a tent and living on aid. He is part of a looming humanitarian crisis aid agencies here are struggling to contain. Before the current crisis, more than a million people had already been uprooted last year. This year, at least another million Afghans are “on…
A group of 11 insurgents who joined government’s peace process recently changed their minds and re-joined the Taliban on Tuesday, local officials said. The group was tasked with controlling a check post after joining the peace process. However they deserted their post to rejoin the insurgents and took all their military equipment with them, said police security official, Abdul Hafiz Khashi. “About four months ago they joined the peace process but it is not yet…
A key Haqqani network commander and Taliban’s shadow deputy governor for Paktika were killed during a special operation by security forces, the Minister of Interior said in a statement. The first operation was launched on Tuesday in Sardani Hindi village of Warmmi district of Paktika in which the Haqqani network commander and three other insurgents were killed, according to the statement. This comes after 46 other insurgents including Taliban’s shadow deputy governor for Paktia were…
General John Nicholson, the commander of U.S and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has called on Pakistan to stop harboring militant groups including the Taliban. He said that moves to weaken Afghanistan by anyone is unacceptable to the international community particularly the U.S. Nicholson made the remarks a day after President Ashraf Ghani announced that the current undeclared war against Afghanistan has been changed into a declared war, predicting tough times ahead for Afghan security forces.…