by Zahid Gishkori in The News, March 12, 2018 ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is still not ‘out of the woods’ after being listed on ‘terror financing watch list’ weeks ago. This time ‘alarm bells’ are ringing not with a ‘whimper but with a bang’ as the country drifts toward the US human trafficking watch list, which may trigger travel curbs and aid cut. The State Department has sought tough answers from Pakistani authorities to demonstrate the country’s…
Posts published in “Talibanisation”
by Kalbe Ali in Dawn, March 12th, 2018 ISLAMABAD: The proscribed Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) is likely to contest the upcoming general election on its own but in disguise by fielding candidates either as independent or as representatives of another registered party. Some ASWJ leaders belonging to Punjab believed that the group would form an electoral alliance with the largest religious party, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl or JUI-Sami but their expectations shattered with the emerging political…
Report in Daily Times, March 5th 2018. ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani passport has been ranked among the five worst passports for international travel, according to a new report. The Henley Passport Index published in February 2018 ranks Pakistan as the fourth worst passport in the world, placing it on 102nd position among 105 countries. Pakistani passport holders have visa-free access to only 30 countries. Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are the only countries that ranked below Pakistan…
report in Pakistan Today online, Mar 29, 2018 ISLAMABAD: He is crisscrossing Pakistan championing a fatwa, or Islamic religious decree, forbidding militant violence inside the country. But the mere fact that Fazlur Rehman Khalil, veteran leader of an organisation designated as a terror group by the US, is free has experts questioning Pakistan’s willingness to fight extremism. Khalil, once a close friend of the late al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, co-founded Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, a group accused…
by Javaid-ur-Rahman & Imran Mukhtar in the Nation, Feb 16, 2018 ISLAMABAD – The government on Thursday sent mixed signals about a US motion to put Pakistan on a global terrorist-financing watch list, while the lawmakers feared the move could succeed, resulting in economic and diplomatic troubles for the country. The government informed the Senate it was on a global lobbying campaign and was sure about a positive decision for Pakistan in the upcoming Financial…
by Rohan Dua & Neeraj Chauhan in the Times of India, Feb 16, 2018 Lucknow/New Delhi: While Pakistan denies any involvement of terror tanzims based on its soil in the attack on the Indian army’s Sunjuwan camp, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar has bragged about his role in scripting the attack in Jammu. In an audio tape, Azhar, who was released from an Indian prison in 1999 as part of a hostage-swap, does not…
by Chidanand Rajghatta & Omer Farooq Khan in The Times of India, Feb 15, 2018 Washington/Islamabad: The Trump administration’s tough approach towards Pakistan on terrorism may be yielding some results. Castigated and called out publicly by the new dispensation in Washington — in contrast to the previous administration’s kid glove treatment — Islamabad is purportedly rolling up its state-sponsored terror groups in the face of imminent financial sanctions and blacklisting for its use of terror…
By Margherita Stancati in The Wall St Journal,January 10, 2018 ABHA, Saudi Arabia—Arwa Alneami wanted to be an artist ever since she was a child. But growing up in the conservative region of Asir, she was constrained by a rigid strain of Sunni Islam that has long defined life in Saudi Arabia and the kingdom’s image to the outside world. When she drew a bird, Ms. Alneami recalls, teachers would scold her and cross off…
Report in The Express Tribune, Oct 26, 2017. Blogger Aasim Saeed, who went missing in January 2017, has applied for asylum in Britain after alleging that he was tortured during his captivity. He was one of the five social media activists who vanished from different cities of Pakistan earlier this year before being released. Third missing activist found, flees country fearing for life: family Prior to his abduction, Saeed told the BBC, he had been…
Reuters report in The News, Oct 4, 2017 WASHINGTON: In a Senate hearing on Tuesday, the top US military officer said he believed Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, had ties to militant groups. “It is clear to me that the ISI has connections with terrorist groups,” Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), told the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Pakistan Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to…
by Sachin Parashar in The Times of India, Sept 25, 2017 NEW DELHI: Pakistan PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi last week yet again flaunted+ his country’s tactical or nonstrategic nuclear weapons, saying they were meant to deter the Indian Army’s ‘cold start’ doctrine. While Abbasi declared that Pakistan’s nuclear assets, including the tactical nukes, were under a robust command-and-control system, the short-range weapons meant to be used early in a conventional conflict with India are vulnerable…