UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women urged Pakistan and Afghanistan to investigate the recent killings of women—including public officials, and a young wife publicly executed on suspicion of adultery.
The US will retain control of non-Afghan detainees at Parwan Detention Center at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, despite plans to transfer control of the facility to the Afghan government in two months.
To grease the deal allowing NATO to resupply the Afghan operation through Pakistan, the US pledged Islamabad $1.2 billion in “counterterrorism” aid—even as Pakistan’s intelligence services are accused of aiding the Taliban.
Three people, including two children, were killed when a bomb planted in a donkey cart exploded at the Panj Peer shrine in Peshawar, as worshippers gathered for a weekly ritual honoring Sufi saints buried there.
The Pentagon is preparing to deploy a new generation of mini-drones with miniscule warheads that can allegedly be delivered with pinpoint accuracy. On a Pakistan visit, UN rights commissioner Navi Pillay questioned the legality of US drone strikes.
Shakeel Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the US government find Osama bin Laden was convicted last week for his association to a militant group in Pakistan, not for his ties to the US Central Intelligence Agency, as was originally reported.
John McCain’s demand that Pakistan pardon Dr. Shakeel Afridi, convicted of treason for helping the CIA locate Osama bin Laden, may not even be possible. Afridi was tried by a tribal court where Islamabad is constitutionally barred from interfering.
As NATO chiefs in Chicago broached negotiations with the Taliban, Amnesty International convened a “Shadow Summit” where women’s groups rejected the idea—while supporting the US/NATO occupation that collaborates with fundamentalist warlords.
Julia Ward Howe conceived the holiday as an anti-war statement in 1870, in response to the Franco-Prussian carnage. But the pacifists who rescue this legacy from oblivion unfortunately engage in their own historical revisionism…
Members of Pakistan’s Shi’ite Hazara ethnic minority held protests in London and Hamburg, charging “genocide” against their people with the complicity of the Islamabad regime—and the silence of the international community.
As the Taliban announce the start of their spring offensive, Obama signs a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Hamid Karzai allowing a major US military presence in Afghanistan beyond the supposed withdrawal deadline of the end of 2014.
Thirty-three were arrested by Onondaga County sheriff’s deputies for protesting at upstate New York’s Hancock Field air base over the use of unmanned drones in Afghanistan.
