report in Dawn, December 17, 2022KOHAT: The law-enforcement agencies here have received credible reports about planning by a terrorist organisation of targeting public gatherings, political figures and Friday prayers by women and teenagers trained by militants. Deputy commissioner Furqan Ashraf confirmed theterror threat on Friday andimposed a ban under section 144 CrPC on gatherings of more than five people. He ordered the police and other law-enforcement agencies to remain extra vigilant to avert any unpleasant…
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report in Dawn, December 17th, 2022SWABI: Two unidentified attackers hurled a hand grenade at the Kalu Khan police station here on Friday. When contacted, police officials said that two motorcyclists stopped their motorcycle on Swabi-Mardan road and threw a hand grenade at the gate of the police station, but it did not explode. The CCTV footage shows that the attackers were two and they escaped on their motorcycle after throwing the grenade. This was the…
report in The Nation, Dec 17, 2022UNITED NATIONS – Pakistan on Friday said that it would not tolerate cross-border terrorism by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or other terrorist groups and that the country reserved the right to take direct action against them. “Pakistan will not tolerate such cross-border terrorism by the TTP or other terrorist groups, like the BLA, which are also receiving financial and other support from hostile quarters. We reserve the right to…
by Shahzad Chaudhry in The Express Tribune, Dec 16th, 2022The writer is a political, security and defence analyst.Pakistan’s Afghan sore continues to bleed. As a policy, relations with Afghanistan have mostly bordered on superficial, aspirational and delusional. In search of an ideational chimera termed ‘strategic depth’ it has been a policy of unrealistic promise and zero return. The policy can essentially be divided over three phases. Till 1979 Afghanistan was a neighbour which shared ethnic…
The Pakistan ambassador to Kabul expressed concerns over the presence of foreign terrorist groups in Afghanistan and warned that their presence threatens Pakistan and the region. Ambassador Mansoor Ahmad Khan told TOLOnews’ Hamid Bahram that al-Qaeda and Daesh pose a threat. “Terrorist organizations present in Afghanistan have been posing threats to the security of Afghanistan as well as to other countries, including Pakistan. Daesh is there, remnants of al-Qaeda are maybe there. There are other…
It’s true, as the prime minister said during an interview with CNN over the weekend, that the world has no choice but to accept the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Sooner or later, therefore, everybody would be forced to do business with them, which implies official recognition, for the sake of the 40 million Afghan souls held hostage because of their government’s standoff with the international community if for no other reason. They…
The Taliban have detained 29 women and their families in Kabul, a senior US diplomat said on Saturday, adding to concerns about rising numbers of people seized and held indefinitely in Afghanistan. Rina Amiri, US special envoy for Afghan Women, Girls and Human Rights, said that women were among 40 people seized on Friday. “These unjust detentions must stop,” she said in a tweet. It has since been deleted, but other sources confirmed that multiple…
ISTANBUL — The Taliban on Friday released two Western citizens and two Afghan colleagues who had been working for the United Nations in Afghanistan, hours after the U.N. had announced that they had been held by the Taliban for several days in Afghanistan. The team members, including Andrew North, a British citizen and former BBC reporter, were on assignment with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and were detained in Kabul in recent days.…
The Afghan Taliban have failed to keep their initial promises. They had announced general amnesty for all. In a new report the UN says it has received “credible allegations” that more than 100 members of the ousted Afghan government, its security forces, and those who worked with the US-led coalition forces have been killed. Nearly a two-thirds of them were extra-judicial killings committed by the de facto authorities or their affiliates. Taliban officials have rejected…
KABUL: The Taliban’s religious police have put up posters around the capital Kabul ordering Afghan women to cover up, an official said on Friday, the latest in a string of creeping restrictions. The poster, which includes an image of the face-covering burqa, was slapped on cafes and shops this week by the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Since returning to power in August, the Taliban have increasingly curtailed freedoms —…
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — It was dark and the streets deserted one night in late August when the former intelligence officer heard banging on his neighbor’s gates. Then, women screaming. “Please don’t kill them,” they pleaded, “have mercy.” The former officer crawled to his roof to see three attackers pulling two men out into the street below him. The gunmen wore Taliban insignia and drove a confiscated green pickup truck, previously issued to Afghan police…