The Londoner

Pakistani politicians, media, and civil society are pushing for a robust offensive to finish off the Taliban in the aftermath of the militants' shooting of a girl peace campaigner. The October 9 shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in northwestern Swat Valley has led to a groundswell of calls for Islamabad to abandon its long reluctance to take on extremist sanctuaries in the North Waziristan tribal region, on Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan. The region is home to Pakistani and Afghan Taliban factions and allied international jihadists. For years, Islamabad resisted considerable pressure from Western capitals to launch an offensive in the region. But the government and the military are now finding it difficult to resist growing domestic pressure for such an assault. "Certainly there is a need for the government to launch an operation finally in North Waziristan, which has become the hub of all kinds of militancy," says

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani security forces have detained the family of a man accused of attacking Malala Yousafzai , the schoolgirl who became an icon of resistance against Taliban oppression and who is now being treated at a British hospital, neighbors of the man’s family said on Thursday. The authorities in the Swat Valley , where the attack happened on Oct. 9, said they were still searching for the man who shot Ms. Yousafzai and wounded two other girls on a school bus. The suspect has been identified as a member of the Pakistani Taliban named Attaullah, and the authorities are seeking an accomplice as well. One senior provincial official said Attaullah had been arrested before, on suspicion of militant activity during a military operation in 2009 in Swat, in northwestern Pakistan, but was freed because of a lack of evidence. “Then we got to know that he was back in Swat and was planning some mischief,” the official said. At

  MANY say they now realise it has taken a 14-year-old schoolgirl to teach Pakistan the meaning of courage. Back in 2009 Malala Yousafzai began chronicling the dark grip of the Pakistani Taliban on her homeland, the pretty Swat valley in the country’s north. She had a clear-eyed conviction that girls had a right to an education, something the Taliban did their best to prevent, even after their local rule was broken in an army offensive. She called the Taliban “barbarians”. On October 9th the barbarians took their revenge, shooting her in the head. She is now in a British hospital, in Birmingham, with a specialist unit for war injuries. Doctors are impressed by her resilience. Back home, says Nusrat Javed, host of a popular political show, “Malala has liberated Pakistan.” Pakistanis have voiced unprecedented anger against the Pakistani Taliban, calling for the peaceful majority to reclaim the country’s destiny from gun-toting, head-chopping extremists. The qu

In the eleven years since the American invasion of Afghanistan, Abdul Nasir has become a modern and prosperous professional. A worldly man in his late thirties, he smokes Marlboros, drives a Toyota, and follows Spanish soccer, rooting for Barcelona. He works in Kabul as a producer for Khurshid TV, one of the many private channels that have sprung up since 2004. He makes news and entertainment shows and sometimes recruiting commercials for the Afghan National Army, one of the country’s biggest advertisers. On weekends, he leaves the dust of the city and tends an apple orchard that he bought in his family’s village. We met for tea recently in a restaurant called Afghan International Pizza Express. Nasir wore jeans and a black T-shirt and blazer. His beard is closely trimmed, in the contemporary style. Nasir recalled that when Afghanistan’s civil war broke out, in April, 1992, he was an agricultural student at Kabul University. He was from the sort of secular family t

In one of the major foreign policy  speeches  that Barack Obama gave in 2008, he declared that "the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was. That's why ... my new strategy will be taking the fight to al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan." In the paragraphs that followed he set forth several goals: bringing Osama bin Laden to justice, routing the Taliban, killing al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and building a secure, stable Afghan democracy.  The United States achieved some of those goals and failed miserably at others. And the American people have rendered this judgment: the war wasn't worth it, we aren't going to win, and we ought to bring the troops home. That's the basic takeaway from the latest  New York Times   poll . Sixty-eight percent of Americans think the war is going somewhat or very badly, 69 percent say the U.S. should not be involved in the war, and 59 percent say that the endeavor hasn't been a suc

In keeping with their post-Soviet realpolitik, Russian officials consistently voice support for NATO’s Afghanistan mission. After all, they  do n’t want  NATO forces to withdraw from Afghanistan too soon for fear that the Afghan War burden will be dumped on them.  But should the alliance’s stabilization effort succeed, Russians will be the first to demand the departure of Western troops. And in the meantime, Russian officials are determined to constrain NATO’s military presence in Eurasia by making it dependent on Moscow’s goodwill. Until recently, most NATO non-lethal supplies bound for Afghanistan were routed through Karachi. But with  the  closure  of the Pakistani route since late November 2011, almost all NATO supplies now enter Afghanistan via the so-called Northern Distribution Network (NDN).  Read the full story here. 

QUETTA: Balochistan government is planning to purchase 1,000 megawatts (MW) electricity from Iran to overcome the power shortage in Balochistan besides ensuring uninterrupted power supply to tube-wells in agriculture sector of the province. Talking to the visiting under-training officers at Civil Service Academy Lahore here on Monday, Balochistan Chief Secretary Ahmed Baksh Lehri said work on solar energy project is also in progress, which on completion would generate additional power for the province. He said Gwadar deep-water port is also being made operational besides organising the mines and mineral sector of the province on modern lines. Referring to irrigation sector schemes, he said work on Kachi canal, small and medium dams projects is also in progress which on completion would bring over one million acres of barren land under cultivation across the province.  Read the full story here. 

The past year has seen the number of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan plummet. In the first three months of 2012, there were 11, compared with 21 in the first three months of 2011 and a record 28 in the first quarter of 2010. On Monday, Pakistan's parliament started to debate whether the United States should be made to stop CIA drone strikes altogether in the Pakistani border regions with Afghanistan and also whether the U.S. should apologize for NATO airstrikes that killed some two dozen Pakistani soldiers late last year. Read the full story here.  

The survey found that more than two-thirds of those polled — 69 percent — thought that the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan. Just four months ago, 53 percent said that Americans should no longer be fighting in the conflict, more than a decade old. The increased disillusionment was even more pronounced when respondents were asked their impressions of how the war was going. The poll found that 68 percent thought the fighting was going “somewhat badly” or “very badly,” compared with 42 percent who had those impressions in November. The latest poll was conducted by telephone from March 21 to 25 with 986 adults nationwide. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Read the full story here. 

FIVE years ago, the Americans were refusing to speak to the Taliban. Now the Taliban are refusing to speak to the Americans. That is a measure of how the balance of power has shifted in Afghanistan. The western intervention there has failed. As the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) prepares to withdraw from the country in 2014, it is only the scale of the defeat that remains to be determined. A senior Pakistani official comments sardonically: "I remember when the Americans used to say that the only good Taliban was a dead Taliban. Then they talked about separating the reconcilable from the irreconcilable. Now they say, the Taliban are not our enemy." In fact, Nato and Taliban forces are still enemies on the battlefield. But in a desperate effort to leave behind a stable Afghanistan, the US and its allies are also battling to include the Taliban in the political process. However, the Taliban are in no rush to negotiate and recently broke off tal