...In December 2006, (click here) I flew to Quetta, where I met with several Pakistani
reporters and a photographer. Together we found families who were
grappling with the realization that their sons had blown themselves up
in Afghanistan. Some were not even sure whether to believe the news,
relayed in anonymous phone calls or secondhand through someone in the
community. All of them were scared to say how their sons died and who
recruited them, fearing trouble from members of the ISI, Pakistan’s main
intelligence service.
After
our first day of reporting in Quetta, we noticed that an intelligence
agent on a motorbike was following us, and everyone we interviewed was
visited afterward by ISI agents. We visited a neighborhood called
Pashtunabad, “town of the Pashtuns,” a close-knit community of narrow
alleys inhabited largely by Afghan refugees who over the years spread up
the hillside, building one-story houses from mud and straw. The people
are working class: laborers, bus drivers and shopkeepers. The
neighborhood is also home to several members of the Taliban, who live in
larger houses behind high walls, often next to the mosques and madrasas
they run....
Pakistan is indeed a strange place. Sometimes. No. Often, I wondered what was taking so long and why.
K2 (click here) (also known as Savage Mountain, Mountaineer’s Mountain, Mount Godwin-Austen, Balti: Chogori and Sarikoli: Mount Qogir) is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest. With a peak elevation of 8,611 m (28,251 feet), K2 is part of the Karakoram Range, and is located on the border between Baltistan, in the Gilgit–Baltistan region of Pakistan.
FTA's Dave Hancock (click here) posing with a machine-gun in Bin Laden's hiding place
Abbottabad. "This was shot some years before the US found OBL hiding
there," Dave told ExplorersWeb. "Little did we know, I've been there
about 8 times!"
courtesy Dave Hancock - FTA,
Strategic Studies 122
Ten years of U.S. aid to Pakistan and the post-OBL scenario (click here)
Mahrukh Khan
Since the inception of Pakistan, its effort to counter Indian hegemony in the region as well as to balance its military and economic disparity with its western neighbor, led it to join hands with the United States. The U.S. at that time was also looking for partners in the region to curtail the communist expansion and turned to Pakistan following India‘s choice of non-alignment....
K2 (click here) (also known as Savage Mountain, Mountaineer’s Mountain, Mount Godwin-Austen, Balti: Chogori and Sarikoli: Mount Qogir) is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest. With a peak elevation of 8,611 m (28,251 feet), K2 is part of the Karakoram Range, and is located on the border between Baltistan, in the Gilgit–Baltistan region of Pakistan.
FTA's Dave Hancock (click here) posing with a machine-gun in Bin Laden's hiding place
Abbottabad. "This was shot some years before the US found OBL hiding
there," Dave told ExplorersWeb. "Little did we know, I've been there
about 8 times!"courtesy Dave Hancock - FTA,
Strategic Studies 122
Ten years of U.S. aid to Pakistan and the post-OBL scenario (click here)
Mahrukh Khan
Since the inception of Pakistan, its effort to counter Indian hegemony in the region as well as to balance its military and economic disparity with its western neighbor, led it to join hands with the United States. The U.S. at that time was also looking for partners in the region to curtail the communist expansion and turned to Pakistan following India‘s choice of non-alignment....
Imagine a terrorist group (click here) that recruits tens of thousands of young men
from the same neighborhoods and social networks as the Pakistani
military. A group whose well-educated recruits defy the idea that
poverty and ignorance breed extremism. A group whose fighters include
relatives of a politician, a senior Army officer and a director of
Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission.
That is the disconcerting reality of Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the world's most dangerous militant organizations, according to a study released today by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. The report helps explain why Pakistan has resisted international pressure to crack down on Lashkar after it killed 166 people in Mumbai — six U.S. citizens included — and came close to sparking conflict between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India....
That is the disconcerting reality of Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the world's most dangerous militant organizations, according to a study released today by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. The report helps explain why Pakistan has resisted international pressure to crack down on Lashkar after it killed 166 people in Mumbai — six U.S. citizens included — and came close to sparking conflict between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India....
