The United Nations has announced its intention to recall 60 staff members of the organization that constitute its international staff in Pakistan amid growing security concerns in the country. The withdrawal of the U.N workers will be in effect for six months and will not be applicable to the 2,700 Pakistani nationals, currently serving under [...]
Five people were killed and eighty injured in a suicide bombing that took place outside a Shiite religious gathering in the capital of Kashmir, controlled by Pakistan. The bomber detonated the explosives during a security check at a checkpoint. Of the five killed, two have been identified as part of the police force and most [...]
A significant way in how the whole world turns actually rests in the hands of US President Barack Obama and his administration. Tempering the nuclearization of global weaponry, harnessing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions posthaste and on a global scale, truly changing the fate of Afghans, assuring stability in the potentially combustible powder keg [...]
It’s been 8 years of cat-and-mouse chase between the US government and Osama bin Laden, the seemingly slippery leader of the slithery terrorist group al-Qaeda. With the US doing all the chasing and bin Laden doing all the skirting, one wonders at the vaunted reputation of American spies.
In the news not too far back, we [...]
The United Nations recently announced that internally-displaced persons (IDPs) in Sri Lanka, housed in refugee camps since the time they fled their homes during the final and fatal offensive against the LTTE, can now go back to their homes. The questions are whether they still have homes to go back to and how safe is [...]
Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan has less to do with military action than ‘turning the war over to the Afghans.’ ‘The challenge lies in leveling the playing field by inserting operatives into the Taliban. Since the Afghan intelligence services are inherently insecure, they can’t carry out such missions. American personnel bring technical intelligence to bear, but [...]
U.S. President Barack Obama’s new strategy in Afghanistan, and consequently in Pakistan, has three core elements: ‘maintain pressure on al Qaeda on the Afghan-Pakistani border and in other regions of the world;’ ‘blunt the Taliban offensive by sending an additional 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan, along with an unspecified number of NATO troops he [...]
With Obama signing the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, otherwise known as the ‘Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill,’ a five-year, $7.5 billion aid package to Pakistan is assured, along with a promise of more to come. ‘It includes language proposing a subsequent tranche of $7.5 billion of aid for 2015 to 2019. There is yet more money for [...]
According to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a Democratic congressman from New York, ‘the Bush administration permitted the world’s most notorious terrorist mastermind to escape because it needed additional justification to invade Iraq.’ The lawmaker ‘accused President Bush of purposely letting Osama bin Laden escape capture in order to justify the Iraq war.’ He says, “I don’t [...]
There has been much confusion as to why the US persists to wage its war in Afghanistan when its target is al-Qaeda, a hugely diminished presence in Afghanistan, and not the Taliban, an ethnic group of domestic insurgents merely fighting for their cause in their local turf. US President Barack Obama, however, calls the war [...]