News Archives:

• Swat: a sordid case of appeasement
  Neville Chamberlain would have been happy at the antics of the ANP and the PPP were he alive today. The British prime minister is perhaps best known -- a euphemism really for infamous -- for his government's policy of not standing up to Nazi Germany, particularly from 1937 to 1939, in the run-up to the Second World War
• Swat valley could be worst refugee crisis since Rwanda, UN warns
  The human exodus from the war-torn Swat valley in northern Pakistan is turning into the world's most dramatic displacement crisis since the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the UN refugee agency warned
• Taliban will be defeated this time
  Little Malalai Yousafzai was very happy after the peace agreement in Swat between the government and a pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Muhammad three months ago. Twelve-years-old Malalai was happy because she was sure that her school would be open after the peace agreement. About 600 schools and colleges were closed in Swat three months ago due to fighting between the local Taliban and the security forces
• The army finally gets it right
  It was retaliation par excellence. A convoy of the Pakistan army was ambushed by Taliban terrorists in the Kanjo area in Swat. The convoy had intended to go to Mangora to reinforce the army units there. Several soldiers died on the spot. The army responded with robust force and attacked the Taliban holding strategic positions on the heights containing Mangora emerald mines. From those heights the Taliban used to attack the Mangora circuit house, where the army was stationed. All the militants on the heights were killed and the state property, the emerald mines, was regained
• Beyond the ‘original sin’
  THE Nizam-i-Adl Regulation 2009 has been promulgated by the NWFP government after being approved by the president at the recommendation of the National Assembly – all in the name of national security
• Chand Bibi or Tara Bibi, someone got flogged, right?
  The Islam of the Taliban might have any danger of being challenged from within were there an alternate "modern" interpretation of Islam
• A CRY FOR JUSTICE FROM SWAT
  Pashtuns should condemns the lashing of one of our daughter and sister and demands that it is not the few people holding the girl and lashing her, who need to be punished but the solution lies in confronting the ideologies, parties and institutions which sponsor these actions
• Fallout of Swat military operation
  The huge military operation launched in Malakand region in late April was meant to decisively defeat the Taliban militants and restore the writ of the state in Swat, Buner and Lower Dir districts. One doesn't know how long the army action will continue in view of the fact that the federal and provincial ministers and the military authorities have been giving conflicting timelines for its completion. There is also no guarantee that militancy will be defeated once and for all as a result of this unprecedented undertaking by Pakistan's armed forces
• The other battle to be won
  The other day students of Pakistan Studies from the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad visited IDP camps near Mardan to distribute rations to the displaced from Swat and Buner
• Paradise lost – irretrievably
  You cannot whip people into paradise. But the Taliban believe they can -- and they must. It is hard to imagine that, not too long ago, Swat was a place where people went for holidays and honeymoons, skiing and moviemaking, and where foreign and local tourists went trekking and sightseeing. Tourism was Swat's primary industry. Because of its natural beauty and peaceful and hospitable people, Swat was also advertised as 'paradise on earth'
• PLIGHT OF SIKHS: History's Hostages
  Decades before the cartographer sliced the subcontinent into Pakistan and India, ancestors of Kalyan Singh demonstrated the wanderlust typical of the Sikh community. They settled down in the green, picturesque Ferozkhel valley of Orakzai, one of the seven autonomous agencies which together comprise what is now called the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). In his own 45 years of life, Kalyan had never experienced religious discrimination
• refugees_plight
  The tale of human misery unfolding in the Frontier has few parallels in Pakistan’s recent history. It is estimated by the United Nations that nearly 2.4 million people have been displaced from their homes this month alone. Some 126,000 refugees from Malakand, says the UNHCR, are streaming into relief camps or registration centres on a daily basis