Free Republic

Late one evening in March, I sat in Haandi, a Pakistani restaurant on Lexington Avenue, and watched the swearing in of the new Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gillani. Gillani is a loyalist of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which since its founding in 1967 has been led by the Bhutto clan. The general election in February was held seven weeks after the PPP's chair, Benazir Bhutto, was killed by a bomb blast and a bullet to the head at an election rally in Rawalpindi, and in an acrid climate of grief, anger and bewilderment, the PPP ended up...

ISLAMABAD: Gunmen have killed nine people in a Pakistani region bordering Afghanistan in attacks against tribal leaders who support a government campaign against Al Qaeda linked insurgents, officials said yesterday. Unknown attackers shot dead tribal elder Malik Mirza Alam along with his two brothers, a son and a nephew yesterday near the South Waziristan town of Wana, a local administration official said, requesting anonymity. Alam, who had spoken out in support of the Pakistani troop deployment in the rugged border region, had survived an attempt on his life two week ago and lost a son in an attack about two...

The first published interview with new CIA Director Porter Goss, which appeared last week in Time magazine, contained a bombshell that exploded with barely any notice. To the ritual question — when will we get Osama bin Laden? — Goss gave a far from ritual answer. "That is a question that goes far deeper than you know," Goss began. "We have some weak links" that make it impossible for now to get bin Laden, he explained, pointing to "the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states." Sounds like you know where he is, the interviewer pressed. "I...

President Pervez Musharraf's army has captured 500 Al Qaeda militants and handed them over to the United States, and has lost more than 500 soldiers fighting Al Qaeda in the rugged tribal areas. But the reality is that Musharraf has little incentive to catch bin Laden - and it may even be in the military's interest to keep him alive, without necessarily knowing where he is. ... So turning a blind eye to bin Laden's whereabouts and to Taliban recruitment inside Pakistan gives the army leverage over both Washington and Kabul. That leverage was evident during last year's presidential elections...