A Masked Taliban Warrior
Aftermath of a Taliban suicide blast in Wana
A recent blast in Lahore
Maulana Fazlullah, who radicalised Swat
Taliban police flog a smuggler in Charbagh, Swat
Pak Taliban police get ready to execute US spies, June 2007
No haircut for you, says a Taliban poster on display at a barber shop in Matta Tehsil
Taliban supporters at Killi Nalai, a_village near Pak-Afghan border, JUne 2007
Sucide attack took place near a military guest in Kabal,Swat, Jan 2008
Public testing and display of weapons by Taliban is a norm in NWFP interiors
Taliban fighters seen in South Waziristan
Taliban flags on Pak side of the border with Afghanistan
Taliban suicide squad attacked a police station at Mingora on Dec 29, 2008
Hundreds of thousand have been forced to leave Swat
Villagers looking at the debris of a school blown up by Taliban on Feb 19, 2009
Car bomb blast at Police and ISI headwquarters in Lahore leaves 31 dead on May 27, 2009
Police inspecting a crater formed after a car bomb blast in Lahore, May 27, 2009
Lahore police headquarters was damaged and the adjoining ISI regional headquarters partially damaged in car bomb attack on May 27, 2009
A militant stands near the sign board of a police station after it renaming it as Taliban Station in Swat Valley on April 19, 2009
A boy looks up to the sky as displaced people line up for food at Chota Lahore Refugee Camp in Swabi, May 24, 2009.
A monument is erected at Ittehad Town, near Karachi, where Taliban from Waziristan come to take treatment
Feb
28
Chuck Hagel, a former Republication Senator from Nebraska, finally received his confirmation as US Secretary of Defence from the Senate, 58-41, late Tuesday night, after facing a bitter opposition for days from his Republican colleagues. It was mainly his more balanced views on matters of vital importance to the US that ran counter to the mainstream opinion in the country, which had made the process of confirmation hearing so “tumultuous”. Some of his feelings had found expression in 2007 in words like the “Jewish lobby intimidated lawmakers”. At other occasions he has been critical of US relations with Israel, G. W. Bush’s war on Iraq and has questioned the American policy about the Iranian nuclear enrichment programme.
And just before the upper house was moving towards voting on his nomination, the news of his sharply critical assessment of India, which he accused had “financed problems” for Pakistan broke out. A video recording of his unreleased speech at Oklaho..... Read More
Feb
28
The just-confirmed US Secretary of Defence, Chuck Hagel, is reported to have suggested that India has been using Afghanistan to fight a proxy war against Pakistan, and had been doing so for many years. In a newly-released video clip dating from 2011, Hagel alleges that India has sponsored terrorist attacks in Pakistan and ‘financed problems for Pakistan in Afghanistan.’ While the remarks, which might have given India some discomfort, are in a sense old news, they are also a vindication of the position of many in Pakistan – namely that India has been conducting flanking moves in Afghanistan designed to incommode Pakistan. Our foreign policy makers might want to quiz Hagel on his views on that when he pays us a call. It is also rare to find a senior US official to be so candid about a corner of the geo-political landscape in which he is going to have a close interest if confirmed in post. Both Pakistan and India are likely to be high on the list of must-visit destinations early in ..... Read More
Feb
28
Rare admission: Editorial in The Express Tribune, February 28th, 2013.
Filed Under EDITORIALS | Leave a Comment
We are so accustome to conspiracy theories, accusations and charges of all kinds being whipped around and tossed along by the breeze that we have learnt in many cases to simply accept these as lies, intended to manipulate the way we think and form opinions. But in some cases, it appears that the suspicions voiced by the powers that-be in the country may not be entirely ill-founded. While Pakistani officials, both civilian and military, have for years been complaining of Indian action in the country from across the Afghan border, few have been willing to believe what was said, putting this down as an effort to shift blame.
But a new video, placed on a video-sharing website, appears to strongly endorse Pakistan’s views. In a 2011 talk, US Senator Chuck Hagel, while speaking at an American university, had said in plain words that India was ‘financing’ problems for Pakistan, on various fronts, from the Afghan side of the border. Mr Hagel is, of course, President Barack Obama..... Read More
Feb
10
Former Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter’s article, ‘Here’s how the US can work with Pakistan’ appearing in The Atlantic offers a considered prescription to establish a lasting and a strong bond between the two countries. He was frank enough to admit the mistake of viewing Pakistan exclusively through the ‘optics of our efforts in Afghanistan’ and called for taking on board the Pakistani officials. Surely the factor of such camaraderie has been missing from the equation that partly resulted from certain attempts to double-cross one another.
Also he was conscious of the fact that the dividend of the US’s commitment to strike a balance between building democracy and ushering in an era of prosperity could not be achieved. But to make that possible, he called for thorough reforms for Pakistan’s institutions before disbursal of aid. What is a little hard to implement is his suggestion that both the nations should now look beyond their bilateral relations and inste..... Read More
Jan
27
In the FATA theatre infested with militants and jihadis, another bloody episode has exploded, unleashing more mayhem on Friday. As Pakistan celebrated the Eid-i-Miladun Nabi, commemorating the birth of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) — whose insistence on brotherhood and tolerance is one of his most noted teachings — Tirah valley in the Khyber Agency, a ‘war-torn’ part of Pakistan, saw some of its citizens fighting one another to death. As two rival militant groups clashed, armed with deadly weapons, at least 32 people were killed the first day, and this number had risen to 52 as per the latest reports. The merciless firing between the two groups highlights a few things, of which some are more noticeable. The growing skirmishes between different groups in FATA manifests the escalation of tensions in an area that seems to be more ungovernable as time goes by; and where the control of the law enforcement agencies has weakened drastically, becoming almost negligible in some parts of the v..... Read More
Jan
16
More than six months after the story first broke of at least four Kohistani girls being killed for singing and clapping at a wedding in the presence of unrelated men, the ugly affair has cropped up again. At the time, a local man, Afzal Kohistani, had alleged the girls had been put to death on orders given by a jirga, after two of his brothers filmed and then released the mobile phone footage of the girls on the Internet. Afzal Kohistani also claimed that his brothers were under threat from the Azadkhel tribe to which the girls belonged. After the Supreme Court took suo motu notice of the matter, a commission visited the remote district and declared that the girls were alive. And here the matter was put to rest.
But now Afzal Kohistani has said that three of his brothers were killed in an attack on his home, the girls were killed long ago, look-alikes were produced before the commission and a long, bloody feud could break out between the Azadkhel and Salehkhel tribes which could..... Read More
Jan
8
A deadly drone strike, in fact involving three drones, killed a TTP suicide-wing commander, among 16 others, most of them suspected to be militants belonging to the Mehsud tribe. As the army too is engaged in clearing up areas of such hardcore militants, a precision strike eliminating the head of the suicide squad comes as welcome news. But obviously, how intelligence is collected and most of the times carrying out the strikes without sharing it with the Pakistani authorities compounds the negativity around the drones as a whole. As the Pakistani army had now implicitly stated internal disturbances to be the number one threat to Pakistan, it needs to drone technology more than the US, which is not battling such militancy on its own soil.
The government has been asking the US to hand over the drones so that it may itself use them when it deems necessary. If for instance the drones are given to Pakistan, sovereignty would stay intact and the front line ally of the US would be bett..... Read More
Dec
3
The attack on Mullah Nazir: editorial in The Express Tribune, Dec 3
Filed Under EDITORIALS | Leave a Comment
Mullah Nazir, leader of a faction inside the Taliban network, has been attacked and injured by a suicide bomber in Wana, the headquarters of South Waziristan. He was targeted by the drones a number of times, the last time being in June 2012, but escaped every time. In Pakistan, he was considered friendly because unlike the other factions bound to al Qaeda and sworn to jihad against the Isaf forces in Afghanistan, he abstained from targeting places and people inside Pakistan. Since the latest attack did not come from the drones, it is assumed that he has been targeted by another faction inside the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
The fact that he was operating in South Waziristan more or less under the Pakistan Army’s control tends to prove that his faction was not considered dangerous by Pakistan. At least, in regard to the Uzbek component inside the al Qaeda combine, he was doing what Pakistan would most like him to do: attack and eliminate these ferocious ‘foreigners’ f..... Read More
Dec
3
The US Senate approved by a heavy majority of 62 to 33 a resolution calling for the withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. According to media reports, the mover of the resolution, Senator Jeff Merkley, said that the time had come to withdraw from Afghanistan as Al-Qaeda was no longer in a position to launch a major attack on American soil, and thus the long war should be brought to an end. However, the underlying message is that not even Americans understand why they should have 66,000 troops in Afghanistan till the end of 2014. The resolution calls for something that is now a matter of mere haggling; the exact date when the forces should be withdrawn. That they are to be withdrawn in 2014 is clear, but the diehards have pressed so successfully for staying as long as possible, that it is assumed that that means the end of the year. The current argument is that a US contingent is needed for the Afghan elections in 2014, when the term limit means that some other collaborator than Hamid K..... Read More
Dec
2
A U.S. future in Afghanistan: Editorial in The Washington Post, Dec 2
Filed Under EDITORIALS | Leave a Comment
TALKS BETWEEN the Obama administration and the Afghan government over a U.S. military presence after 2014 have gotten off to a poor start. In Washington, officials have been briefing journalists about minimalist options for counterterrorism forces and trainers after the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops is completed. The figure of 10,000 troops recently reported by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times is about one-third the number that defense analysts Kimberly and Frederick Kagan, who have advised U.S. commanders in Afghanistan for years, said would be necessary for a stay-on force in a recent Post op-ed.
The government of President Hamid Karzai, for its part, is making its own troubling noises. Mr. Karzai has been suggesting that he will refuse to grant U.S. troops immunity from the Afghan courts after 2014 — crossing what he knows is a Pentagon red line. Some of his top advisers are questioning whether any Western soldiers should remain in the country. “If the 15..... Read More
-
About Us
This is a unique portal. It deals exclusively about Talibanisation that is spreading across Pakistan. Updated round the clock, the portal provides latest news, analysis and commentaries sourced from various newspapers of Pakistan, United States and Great Britain. 
Deserted village of Mandana in South Wazirstan
Govt school blasted with explosives at Saidu Sharif, Swat Valley on 17 Jan 2009
Marriott Hotel, Islamabad set ablaze on Sep 21, 2008
Warehouse of World Food Programme was set on fire at Kanju, Swat, Oct 21, 2008.jpg
Pak boyswalk past a sign, which reads Madrasa Islamia al-Arabia in S Waziristan, May 24, 2008
Supporters of Sufi Muhammad marched through Mingora streets after he signed the Swat deal
Taliban Militants have Pak women in their ranks as this Pix shows
Terrorists in a dare devil mood driving along the highway
A pro-Taliban protest, a common sight in Pakistan
Children walking on the debris of their school. Taliban blasted this and three other schools in Swat on Feb 19, 2009
Taliban is forcing the closure of girl schools.If it has its way even religious schools will be out of reach for Swat girls
Taliban is the master of highways and roads in Swat as this picture shows
Supporters of Maulana Sufi Mohammad stage victory march in Mingora after the Swat deal was signed
A car bomb destroyed an Internet Cafe and tore through a bus carrying handicapped children in Peshawar on May 16, 2009
A vehicle is burnt during sectarian clashes in Karachi on April 29, 2009
NATO oil supply tankers went up in flames after an explosion near Peshawar in April 2009
A huge truck bomb set ablaze Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Sept 21, 2008
Refugees leaving Buner May 19, 2009.
Gunmen attacked Ahmadis place of worshiop in Karachi, Oct 2005
Scene after a bomb blast at Qissa Khawani bazaar in Peshawar, May 28, 2009
People leaving troubled region in Lower Dir on April 27, 2009