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Fashionistas defied militant threats to celebrate couture culture in a Taliban-troubled conservative nation plagued with Islamic extremism as the Pakistani fashion fraternity gathered in the country's largest city for Karachi Fashion Week (KFW) that started on Wednesday. Intricate and colourful fabrics lit up the catwalk as bold models shrugged off all security fears as well as local social norms. The fashion week has attracted 35 top Pakistani designers including Deepak Perwani and Maheen Khan, who recently attended Milan Fashion Week. But staging the fashion week in Karachi was not trouble-free. It was postponed by almost a month due to the...

In the protracted Washington debate over the war in Afghanistan, the most concise analysis so far has come from America’s top soldier: “If we don’t get a level of legitimacy and governance (there), then all the troops in the world aren’t going to make any difference.”Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was speaking two days after Hamid Karzai was declared the winner, by default, in August elections so massively rigged that a U.N.-backed electoral complaints committee threw out about a million Karzai votes. That forced a run-off from which his challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah...

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suspected U.S. drone aircraft fired two missiles on Thursday into North Waziristan, a major al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary in northwest Pakistan, killing two people, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say. Two other militants escaped, one of them badly wounded, after the attack in Kulgam district, south of Srinagar. The militants had assault rifles but were taken by surprise - police found the remains of pudding they had made to eat when the bear attacked.The militants had made their hideout in a cave which was actually the bear's den, said police officer Farooq Ahmed.The dead have been identified as Mohammad Amin alias Qaiser, and Bashir Ahmed alias Saifullah. News of the attack emerged when their...

Here is an interesting tidbit of information from the charge sheet against David Coleman Headley, the US jihadi indicted for plotting attacks in Denmark. Headley traveled to North Waziristan and afterward offered his view on the number of al Qaeda and other foreign jihadis in the tribal agencies' largest towns (in response to a think tank survey that said a significant number of people in the northwest approved of the Predator attacks against al Qaeda):

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- The Oct. 9 Congressional Research Office report "Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security and U.S. Policy" says that from 2003-08 the United States spent nearly $10 billion training and equipping the current Afghan National Army force of roughly 90,000 soldiers. That is approximately $110,000 per soldier. In his Aug. 30 report U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal states that the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police are not sufficiently effective to take ownership of Afghanistan's security. One of his four main pillars to accomplish the mission and defeat the insurgency is to increase the size of the...

Note: The following text is a quote: Man Admits Using Alias for Immigration Status COLUMBIA, SC—United States Attorney W. Walter Wilkins stated today that Sohail Feroz Ali Dossani, a/k/a Sohail Muhammad Jamal, age 29, a Pakistani national located in Florence, pled guilty to filing false statements to gain entry and citizenship, a violation of Title 8, United States Code, Section 1306(c). United States Magistrate Judge Thomas E. Rogers, III, accepted the plea and will impose sentence after he has reviewed the presentence report which will be prepared by the U.S. Probation Office. Evidence presented at the guilty plea hearing established...

As Pakistani troops advance through South Waziristan, they are coming across quickly abandoned facilities apparently long used by Islamic terror organizations. South Waziristan, and its pro-Taliban Mehsud tribe, has long been a place where government officials only went with permission of the locals. And the locals apparently believed their own propaganda that government troops would not get far if they tried to invade the area. Army artillery and helicopter gunships, aided by air force fighter-bombers, proved more than a match for the tribal warriors, who soon fled to the safer hills. The Islamic terrorists fled with them, often failing to...

The Pakistani military has launched a large offensive involving 30,000 soldiers into South Waziristan, one of the tribal agencies most hospitable to the Taliban and like-minded terrorists. Following frightening Taliban attacks on the Army headquarters and an air base suspected of storing nuclear weapons, the Pakistani government began a belated but aggressive campaign. In order for the Pakistanis to succeed however, the U.S. must demonstrate a similar determination to rout the Taliban in Afghanistan by launching a comprehensive counter-insurgency campaign.

Pakistani forces say they have seized control of the town of Kaniguram in South Waziristan, one of the Taliban's key regional strongholds. The army said it had full control of the town, the latest capture in an offensive against militants that began in South Waziristan on 17 October. The offensive has sparked a string of suicide bomb attacks. About 35 people were killed in an attack in Rawalpindi and seven were injured on the outskirts of Lahore. Rewards offered Military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas, in the capital Islamabad, said that the Kaniguram area had been "completely cleared of terrorists"....

The Pakistani military has launched a large offensive involving 30,000 soldiers into South Waziristan, one of the tribal agencies most hospitable to the Taliban and like-minded terrorists. Following frightening Taliban attacks on the Army headquarters and an air base suspected of storing nuclear weapons, the Pakistani government began a belated but aggressive campaign. In order for the Pakistanis to succeed however, the U.S. must demonstrate a similar determination to rout the Taliban in Afghanistan by launching a comprehensive counter-insurgency campaign. The U.S. has been secretly helping the Pakistanis carry out their offensive, providing them with intelligence from unmanned aerial vehicles...

SNIPPET: "PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Islamist militants blew up a girls school in Pakistan's lawless Khyber tribal district Sunday, destroying the building and wounding four people in neighbouring homes, officials said. Two explosions ripped through the 18-room government high school for girls at Kari Gar village and a boy who watched the premises is missing..." SNIPPET: "Islamist militants, who have carved out a strong presence in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border, have destroyed hundreds of schools, mostly for girls, in the northwest of the country in recent years. Nearly 200 schools were destroyed in the Swat valley alone...

On Thursday, in an effort to convince Pakistan to raise taxes on its impoverished masses, Secretary of State Clinton told government officials the United States enforces confiscatory taxation on the American people. Clinton told senior Pakistani newspaper editors in Lahore, “The percentage of taxes on GDP (in Pakistan) is among the lowest in the world. We (the United States) tax everything that moves and doesn’t move, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan,” she proudly proclaimed. Hillary Clinton Proclaims “We Tax Everything in the USA”

<p>An explosion rocked the compound of a four-star hotel just off a main boulevard in Pakistan's garrison city of Rawalpindi on Monday and there were reports of casualties, police said. "According to initial reports the blast took place in the compound of the hotel. Our teams are there, they are updating us on the details," police officer Mohammed Akhlaq told AFP by telephone.</p>

Secretary of State Takes On a Complicated Mission in the Mideast as Obama's 'Engagement' Diplomacy Comes Under Pressure MARRAKESH, Morocco -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a diplomatic swing across the greater Middle East to reassert her role in foreign policy even as the trip exposed the strategic challenges facing the Obama administration's overseas agenda.Mrs. Clinton, during her first 10 months atop the State Department, has appeared at times a marginal player on a national-security team dominated by special diplomatic envoys and President Barack Obama himself. Foreign governments have questioned what role Mrs. Clinton was playing in formulating...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistani forces are zeroing in on two major Taliban bases in South Waziristan region as their offensive pushes deeper into militant bastion on the Afghan border, the military said on Sunday. The army launched a major assault in South Waziristan on September 17 to seize control of the lawless land after a string of attacks by militants, including a stunning assault on the army headquarters that killed more than 150 people. The offensive is a major test for the Pakistani government and the military to stem the rising tide of Islamist militancy and is being closely followed...

In his slick PR fashion, Obama's answer to the charge that he is "dithering on Afghanistan" is to feed the hungry media a military photo op. Yes, Obama can be seen in the pic saluting a US Soldier's flag-draped casket coming back from Afghanistan. Now we know why the White House insisted that our battlefield casualties should not be shielded from the media. You need tame media access for photo ops. So Obama is finally showing some respect. For the Hollyweirdos, appearance is reality. We now have a Commander in Chief who knows how to salute. He must therefore be...

Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan: Hillary Clinton * US taxes everything, and ‘that’s not what we see in Pakistan’ * Pakistan must start planning for challenges posed by population growth * US secretary of state meets COAS LAHORE: The leadership of Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday. “I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” she added. “Maybe that’s the case; maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t know... As far as we know, they are in...

In a roundtable today with Pakistani editors, Hillary Clinton responded to a question about the Israeli-Palestinian issue with the now-familiar Obama administration litany: the problems are hard, they were inherited, they were ignored by the prior administration: I think that, look, we all know that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is one that is a very serious and difficult problem that we are working hard also to try to resolve. We inherited a lot of problems. If you remember, when my husband left office, we were very close to an agreement because he worked on it all the time. The next administration...

Hillary Clinton has flatly said she’ll never run for president again. She’s even mused about retirement. But can a woman who fought so hard and came so close to bagging the big enchilada last time around suddenly flip off the ambition switch? Ask yourself: particularly in light of her trip to Pakistan, who’s sounding more like a Commander-in-Chief these days: Hillary Clinton or that hope-’n-change fella back in DC? This morning’s Today show ran part of Andrea Mitchell’s interview of Hillary in Pakistan. You can question the wisdom of Clinton having scolded the Pakistanis for providing al Qaeda a “safe...

Hillary Clinton faced anger during her visit to Pakistan after she attacked the failure of the government to tackle al-Qaeda. The US Secretary of State also faced angry questions about America's use of drone attacks inside Pakistan as she ended her three-day visit on Friday. Mrs Clinton was earlier forced to soften her criticism of Islamabad for its failure to capture of kill al-Qaeda's leaders.

Today, President Obama will lead another meeting to debate strategy in Afghanistan. He will presumably discuss the questions that have divided his advisers: How many troops to commit? How to define plausible goals? Should troops be deployed broadly or just in the cities and towns? For the past few days I have tried to do what journalists are supposed to do. I’ve called around to several of the smartest military experts I know to get their views on these controversies. I called retired officers, analysts who have written books about counterinsurgency warfare, people who have spent years in Afghanistan. I...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has questioned Pakistan's commitment to hunt top al-Qaeda leadership hiding inside the country and accused it of failing to track them down. "Al-Qaeda has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002... I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to," Clinton told a group of senior Pakistani journalists in Lahore on Thursday. "Maybe that's the case, maybe they're not gettable. I don't know... As far as we know, they are in Pakistan," she said in unusually blunt remarks during...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been meeting tribal leaders in north-west Pakistan on the last day of a testing visit to the country. During her three-day trip Mrs Clinton hoped to strengthen ties between the US and Pakistan and tried to address a rising tide of anti-American feeling. In an interview with the BBC she urged Pakistanis to "realise the connection" between al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But her arrival was overshadowed by a deadly bombing in the city of Peshawar. More than 100 people died when a car bomb exploded in a busy market on Wednesday. The BBC's...

It's been another dreadful week in the war of civilizations. On Sunday, 153 people were killed and more than 500 wounded in back-to-back car bombings in Baghdad. On Tuesday in Kabul, five UN staffers and three Afghans were killed in an attack on a UN guesthouse. And on Wednesday in Pakistan, 100 people - mostly women and children - were killed and 160 wounded in a shopping district bombing in Peshawar. The week also saw 24 American service personnel killed in Afghanistan, making 58 fatalities for the month - the deadliest since 9/11. This is a war of civilizations in...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Matthew P. Hoh is a former U.S. Marine Corps captain and, until recently, the U.S. Department of State senior civilian representative in Zabul province, Afghanistan. His recent resignation was based not on "how we are pursuing this war" but "why and to what end." As resignation letters go, Hoh's was a masterpiece. In my opinion, many of his observations ring true, but one could offer alternative interpretations. Terrorism directed against the United States and Western countries originates primarily from sanctuaries in failed, unstable or rogue states. That is, nations that either cannot constrain them or...

SNIPPET: “WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s Consul General in Chicago personally knew both David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, nabbed by the FBI for planning to carry out a major terror attack in India at the behest of LeT, the US authorities have claimed. The FBI in its revised chargesheet filed before a Chicago court said the Consul General of Pakistan in Chicago personally knows both Rana and Headley alias ‘Daood Gilani’, as all three of them are from the same high school. According to the website of the Pakistan Embassy here, Dr Aman Rashid is the Consul General in Chicago. “On...

WASHINGTON: It was supposed to be a charm offensive, but as the day wore on she put away her charm and went on the offensive. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s public dressing down of Pakistan during a three-day visit there, including virtually accusing the country of complicity with al-Qaida, has shaken Washington as much as it stunned her hosts. "Her inner voice became her outer voice," Martha Raddatz, a veteran NBC correspondent said on the network, explaining that while many in the administration believed what she said to be true (that Pakistan is coddling terrorists), it was rare for America's...

SHAWANGAI, Pakistan -- An alleged member of the Hamburg, Germany, terror cell linked to the Sept. 11 attacks is believed to be among al Qaeda leaders helping the Taliban fight Pakistani forces in South Waziristan, Pakistani authorities said Thursday. A German passport belonging to Said Bahaji, a close associate of Sept. 11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta in the 2001 attacks, was among documents recovered this week by Pakistani troops from an abandoned militant compound in Shawangai. The mountain village in South Waziristan was used as an al Qaeda and Taliban command base until as recently as this week, a military...

Leadership: As the fire grows in Afghanistan and U.S. troops suffer their worst casualties since Fallujah, the commander in chief remains AWOL on his intentions, delaying the tough decisions. Is he opting for defeat? Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned in August that time was short to win this war. Now October is ending as the deadliest month in the Afghan war. With 55 dead since August, McChrystal's warning now stings. Even so, each day brings a new excuse from the White House for delaying a decision on troop reinforcements McChrystal has sought. The goal posts move almost daily. This...

Bush dinner tastes sour for Obama - PMO decision to entertain former President causes hurt in Washington K.P. NAYAR Washington, Oct. 24: Preparations for Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington on November 24 have begun on a negative signal to the Obama administration with a decision by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to host former President George W. Bush for dinner at Singh’s residence at the end of this month. Bush is visiting New Delhi on October 30 and 31 at the invitation of an Indian newspaper and will speak at a conference organised in New Delhi on October 31 on...

Pakistan Bloggers Expose Blackwater and U.S Covert Ops in Pakistan Pakistanis Angered over U.S. Security Forces Antics University Town of Peshawar Center of Blackhawk Activies, U.S. to Employ 1,000 Marines to Guard U.S.'s Largest Embassy in Islamabad If you asked the average American what they knew about the war on terror and the U.S. military and Pakistan, they might tell you that the U.S. military involvement is a "small one", that the U.S. "involvement" is in the form of aid, or that the military is using drones to combat al-Qaeda based on reports by CNN and the MSM. While the...

ISLAMABAD – A strong earthquake hit Afghanistan's Hindu Kush mountains Thursday, shaking large areas of the country and neighboring Pakistan, officials said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the quake, which struck at 10:14 p.m. (1744 GMT) and was centered in a remote part of the Hindu Kush mountains, about 160 miles (250 kilometers) north of Kabul. Given the area's isolation it could take many hours for such reports to emerge. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.0, though Pakistani officials said it was 6.1. Tremors were felt in Kabul,...

Sherwangei, Pakistan (CNN) -- A passport bearing the name of Said Bahaji, a suspect linked to the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, has been found in a town captured by the Pakistani military. The passport was found in South Waziristan, where the Pakistani military has been battling to wrest territory from the Taliban in Pakistan. It contained a Pakistani visa issued in August 2001 showing that the bearer entered Pakistan on September 4, 2001, and appeared unusually new for a document eight years old. CNN has not independently confirmed its authenticity. The photo in the passport resembles...

ABC News Clinton Questions Pakistan's Willingness to Go After Bin Laden In her Toughest Talk Yet, Clinton Asserts That Al Qaeda Has 'Safe Haven' in Pakistan By KIRIT RADIA Oct. 29, 2009— Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dropped the diplomatic language today and said she finds it "hard to believe" that Pakistan couldn't get al Qaeda's leaders "if they really wanted to." Clinton made her sharpest comments during a three day diplomatic offensive in Pakistan, a U.S ally where she has generally praised Pakistan and its military for its willingness to take on the Taliban along its rugged frontier with...

For the second time this week, Hillary Clinton has hit the nail on the head. On Tuesday she spoke out against the Obama backed U.N. resolution on “defamation of religions". Today she has applied some common sense and is questioning Pakistan and the two-faced game that they are playing with us. I believe that Hillary is going to sit back and watch Obama crash and burn, then quickly turn on him.

The Long War Journal: 89 killed in car bomb attack in Peshawar Written by Bill Roggio on October 28, 2009 8:29 AM to The Long War Journal Available online at: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/10/89_killed_in_car_bom.php A street is ablaze in the aftermath of the blast in Peshawar. AFP photo. A Taliban car bomb killed 89 Pakistanis and wounded hundreds more at a bazaar in the provincial capital of Peshawar. The attack is the latest in the Taliban's terror campaign and took place hours after the US Secretary of State touched down for a diplomatic visit in Islamabad. The blast took place at the crowded...

So much for politics ending at the water's edge . . . Hillary Clinton has gone to Pakistan and bragged of having opposed Pres. Bush during her entire Senate career. Clinton also depicted the difference between Barack Obama and George W. Bush as being "like daylight and dark." For good measure, Clinton played the moral equivalency game, declaring "we cannot let a minority of people in both countries determine our relationship." The Pakistani minority she had in mind is presumably composed of al Qaeda and its sympathizers. Clinton didn't specify which Americans she would apparently equate with them.

Clinton's Goodwill Trip Marred By Pakistan Attackby Jackie Northam October 28, 2009 The thrust of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's three-day visit to Pakistan is to build and repair fragile relations with a country the U.S. sees as a critical ally in the fight against Islamist extremism. But just hours after Clinton's arrival in Pakistan on Wednesday, word came of the powerful car bomb attack at a market in the northwest city of Peshawar that killed at least 100. Many of the victims were women and children. The news broke as Clinton was 100 miles away in Islamabad, sharing lunch...

Exporting Terror by Ari Bussel October, 2009: Pakistani Military Headquarters in Islamabad attacked, the guard post at one of the entrances was breached and both civilians and officers were taken hostage. After a standoff, commandos were able to rescue most alive. This major security lapse and embarrassment is being investigated. A breach of security in Iraq allowed car bombs to be set off moments apart near the Ministry of Justice and the Baghdad Provincial Council, killing more than 150. An investigation began. A homicide bomber blew himself at a meeting in South East Iran, killing 42 people, including the Revolutionary...

Hillary Clinton meets Pakistani Prime Minister

Men stand in front of a building after a bomb explosion in Peshawar. ISLAMABAD—A powerful car bomb ripped through a market Wednesday in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing at least 90 people hours after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Pakistan to smooth relations strained by terms of an American aid package for the key South Asian ally. Mrs. Clinton was meeting with officials in Islamabad, a three-hour drive from Peshawar, when the explosion went off. The bombing was the second attack to hit one of Peshawar's crowded markets this month; it sparked a fire in the...

A woman died at her apartment late Tuesday after trying to shed a bathrobe that had caught fire, officials said. A passer-by saw the woman, later identified as Linda Gadd, 58, on her balcony, on fire, said Jason Evans, spokesman for Dallas Fire-Rescue. The passer-by climbed up and put out the flames with a fire extinguisher, Evans said. But it was too late. Firefighters were called at about 9 p.m. to the one-alarm fire at the Pavilion Town Place, 7700 W. Greenway Blvd. in north Dallas. The neighborhood is southwest of the intersection of Lovers Lane and Dallas North Tollway...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A car bomb tore through a busy market in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing 91 people as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited the country and pledged American support for its campaign against Islamist militants. More than 200 people were wounded in the blast in the main northwestern city of Peshawar, the deadliest in a surge of attacks this month. The government blamed militants seeking to avenge an army offensive launched this month against Al Qaeda and Taliban in their stronghold close to the Afghan border. The bomb destroyed much of a market selling...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — An explosion rocked a women's market in Pakistan's main northwest city of Peshawar on Wednesday, killing at least 16 people in the latest attack to shake the country as the army battles Islamist militants along the Afghan border. At least 35 people were wounded in the blast, police said. It coincided with a trip to Pakistan by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was in the capital, Islamabad, some three hours drive away. The explosion hit Peepl Mandi, a neighborhood in the city where many Shiite Muslims live. Police official Sajid Khan said it struck...

SNIPPET: "As Pakistan’s military continues to make progress against the Taliban and Al-Qaida in South Waziristan, an incident has occurred along its border with Iran that has raised eyebrows throughout the international community. Eleven Iranian Revolutionary Guards soldiers were detained after they crossed the Pakistan-Iran border into Pakistani territory. The incursion happens eight days following a suicide bombing that killed forty-two Iranians, including six Revolutionary Guards Commanders." SNIPPET: "The Iranian soldiers remain in Pakistani custody as they try to determine the meaning and intent behind the incursion. Officials have not announced whether or not the soldiers were part of Iran’s...

ISLAMABAD: SNIPPET: "‘But we worry about proliferation and we have good reason to worry about proliferation,’ she said, alluding to Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. The United States has warned that the scientist, who was effectively put under a five-year house arrest after he admitted leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya, is still a proliferation risk. ‘We want to encourage Pakistan to join with us in the non-proliferation review conference that will be held next spring,’ Clinton told reporters travelling with her. ‘We want them to work with us on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. We want them...

At least five people have been killed and 35 wounded by a large blast in a market in Peshawar, Pakistani, local media say. Huge plumes of black smoke were seen drifting over the city. Pakistan has seen an increase in such attacks in recent weeks as the military carries out an operation against Taliban militants in South Waziristan. The blast comes as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton begins a visit to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Pakistani television showed footage of burning shops in Peshawar, in the northwest of the country, and ambulances rushing to the scene

A Taliban suicide bomber has killed seven people near a nuclear weapons complex in Pakistan's Punjab province. The suicide bomber detonated outside a security checkpoint near the Kamra Air Weapon Complex in the district of Attock, Geo News reported. Three security personnel and four civilians were killed in the blast, and 12 more were wounded. The attack is the latest in a string of suicide strikes and military assaults by the Taliban against Pakistan's security forces, the government, and civilians. Today the Taliban assassinated a senior general and his driver near the general's home in Islamabad. Yesterday the Taliban conducted...

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's army pushed deeper into a Taliban sanctuary close to the Afghan border Tuesday, claiming to have killed 42 militants in the latest stage of an offensive against extremists blamed for relentless attacks in recent weeks . In the capital, gunmen attacked a high-ranking Pakistani army officer in the second targeted shooting against top military brass in less than a week, part of a wave of violence sweeping the country in apparent retaliation for the 11-day long offensive in South Waziristan. The army officer, and his mother who was traveling with him, escaped unhurt from the assault in...