Afghanistan’s Supreme Court has upheld a 20-year prison term for Parwiz Kambakhsh, 24, a journalist accused of “blasphemy” for writing an article advocating greater rights for women under Islam.
Several were killed in clashes between Pakistani troops and Taliban militants in the Tribal Areas—the same day the government signed a peace pact with tribal leaders.
A US drone was shot down by Taliban militants in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal district, officials and residents said. Pakistani officials are said to be searching for the wreckage.
Afghanistan’s human rights progress has been thwarted by armed conflict, censorship, abuse of power, and violence against women, the UN Human Rights Council charges in a new report.
Leon Panetta, in his first interview as CIA director, told reporters that President Obama will “continue a very aggressive effort to go after terrorists”—implying a widening of drone strikes in Pakistan.
Two missiles fired from a US drone killed at least eight militants in the Sora Rogha area of South Waziristan, a tribal region controlled by the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
Five were killed in a suicide attack on a girls’ school in Pakistan’s conflicted Baluchistan region. The target was apparently Maulana Shirani, an Islamist leader who has broken with the Taliban.
A US Green Beret was found not guilty at court-martial of murder and mutilating a dead body in connection with the March 2008 killing of an Afghan man near Hyderabad, Afghanistan.
A US Army Special Forces soldier facing court-martial proceedings over the killing of an Afghan civilian argued during opening statements that the act was committed in self defense.
A suicide attack targeting a Shi’ite funeral procession in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province as the Ashura holy period draws to a close sparked hours of riots and army intervention.
Gen. David D. McKiernan, top US commander in Afghanistan, said that the heightened troop levels that President Obama ordered for the country could remain in place for up to five years.
President Obama announced the mobilization of 17,000 new troops to Afghanistan, bringing total US troop levels there to 55,000—as a UN report finds that Afghan civilian casualties rose by 40% last year.
