July 22, 2019
By Frud Bezhan
Pakistan's most popular TV station, (click here) Geo News, was abruptly forced off the air in many parts of the country as independent media come under unprecedented pressure from authorities.
Geo News’s broadcasts were blocked starting July 21, just hours before Prime Minister Imran Khan, Pakistani Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, the head of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the military's notorious spy wing, landed in Washington for talks with U.S. officials.
Geo TV was still blocked in some parts of the country on July 22.
The move was condemned by international media watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which in a September report said that the climate for press freedom in Pakistan was deteriorating as the country's powerful army "quietly, but effectively" restricts reporting through "intimidation" and other means.
The Pakistani Army and ISI play a major role in domestic and foreign affairs in the South Asian country of some 212 million people.
"The blockage of Geo News just as Prime Minister Imran Khan visits Washington is an unfortunate illustration of how widespread censorship has become in Pakistan," Steven Butler, CPJ's Asia program coordinator, said in a statement after the station went off air....
July 21, 2019
Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan - A female suicide bomber (click here) struck Sunday outside a hospital in Pakistan as the wounded were being brought in from an earlier shooting against police, in a complex assault claimed by the Pakistani Taliban that killed nine and wounded 30.
Salim Riaz Khan, a senior police officer in Dera Ismail Khan, said gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on police in a residential area, killing two. He said the bomber then struck at the entrance to the hospital, killing an additional four police and three civilians who were visiting their relatives. He said eight police were among the wounded, and that many of the wounded were in critical condition.
Inayat Ullah, a local forensics expert, said the female attacker set off 15 pounds of explosives packed with nails and ball bearings....
July 17, 2019
By Michael O'Hanlon
The Korean War (click here) is sometimes called America’s forgotten war — but that title really now belongs to the Afghanistan conflict, soon to be 18 years old. Several hundred thousand Americans have served there since October 2001; more than 2,000 have died. The war has cost the United States roughly $1 trillion, and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ costs for the injured will add several hundred billion dollars more in the decades to come.
About 15,000 Americans (and another several thousand foreign troops, most from NATO nations) still serve in uniform in Afghanistan, with an estimated additional annual cost to the American taxpayer of some $20 billion. We have been suffering 10 to 20 fatalities annually in recent years, as well.
Afghan forces serve and fight bravely, and lose some 5,000 to 10,000 personnel a year. But they do not appear closer to being able to protect their nation on their own, due to weak institutions, high attrition rates and pervasive corruption in much of the country. Drug production is once again high. Cities and most major roads remain in government hands; much of the rural countryside is contested, and some is even in Taliban hands....
