Two successive suicide bomb blasts hit the central Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi, killing at least 24 and wounding more than 60 early Sept. 4. The first bomber detonated his exposives on a bus carrying government workers. Minutes later, a… Read morePakistan terror: “tentacles” from Tribal Areas
Opium production in Afghanistan has hit a record $3 billion this year, accounting for more than 90% of the world’s illegal output, according to a new report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Production is concentrated mainly… Read moreUN: Afghan opium bumper crop
Way to go, guys. From The Guardian, Aug. 25: Three British troops killed by US jet An urgent investigation was under way last night into why a US fighter plane killed three British soldiers, and seriously injured two others, after… Read moreAfghanistan: US bombs Brits
Note the last sentence of this Aug. 19 AFP account. Do you think Hamid Karzai grasps the irony? Afghanistan celebrates independence from Britain President Hamid Karzai led Afghanistan’s Independence Day celebrations on Sunday with a call to the country’s young… Read moreOccupied Afghanistan celebrates “independence”
Radical students July 27 again occupied Islamabad’s Red Mosque—hours before a suicide bomber killed 13 people in a market down the street from the mosque. Seeking a political solution to the multiple converging crises he faces, Pervez Musharraf reportedly met… Read moreUS to invade Pakistan?
Afghanistan has announced three days of official mourning for the country’s former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, 92. Announcing his passing, President Hamid Karzai, a relative, hailed Zahir Shah as the “father of the nation.” (RFE/RL) An editorial bidding him farewell… Read moreAfghan king, paradoxical voice for secularism, dead at 92
In a surprise ruling July 20, Pakistan’s Supreme Court dealt a harsh blow to President Pervez Musharraf, voting unanimously to restore Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry to his post. The court also voted 10-3 to dismiss charges of misconduct that… Read morePakistan: race between jihad and democracy?
Lawyers across Pakistan boycotted courts July 18, the day after a bomb attack on an anti-government rally by attorneys in Islamabad killed 15 people. Gen Musharraf strongly condemned the “terrorist attack” and called for calm, but lawyers called the blast… Read moreLawyers protest Islamabad terror
With more than 70 killed in bombings over the weekend, Pakistan appears to be lurching towards civil war in the aftermath of the Red Mosque attack. A suicide bomber killed at least 26, including six police, and wounded over 50… Read morePakistan: tribal truce called off amid resurgent terror
A suicide bomber targeted a NATO patrol in a marketplace filled with children in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province July 10, killing 13 elementary-school students and at least four other people. Eight Dutch soldiers and at least 35 Afghans were wounded. The… Read moreAfghanistan: the new Iraq?
Gee, just what Musharraf needs—the State Department weighing in for his repression, augmenting the (accurate) perception that he is Washington’s toady. Don’t they have enough sense to keep quiet? This brings Pakistan one step closer to an Islamist coup, which… Read morePakistan: US-approved state terror
From Reporters Without Borders (RSF), via the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), July 6: Reporters Without Borders has condemned the arrests of two journalists by intelligence officers in the past six days. Both Mohammad Asif Nang, editor of the… Read moreAfghanistan: dissident journalists arrested
