Bridges are no longer sacrosanct
Top stories
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Drone attacks in Waziristan: FCR by USA
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, very few people knew about the tribal areas of north-western Pakistan, as very little news came out of the region and even less gained international attention. However, since the attacks, the tribal regions have been under the spotlight, not just of various international powers, but also of the international media.
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Mystery Missile Attacks Exact a Heavy Toll
It has been on record for the last three months that the border regions of Kunar province of Afghanistan are under missile attack. While it appears that these attacks are coming from the Pakistan side, this cannot be confirmed. Although the matter has become a huge issue for the government in Kabul, there has been no statement - either confirmation or denial of the attacks from Pakistan's side.
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Threats to Business
Afghans have always been famed as prodigious businessmen. An Afghan will make a whole in a mountain in order to forge a way to do trade. But even such intrepid businessmen have difficulty contending with the problems in the way of business nowadays.
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A Sorry Show in the Olympics
Though there was much rejoicing in Afghanistan that the country had secured one more medal in this year’s Olympic games than Pakistan, one bronze medal does not constitute a very impressive tally. Our own border regions did not secure a single medal.
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Conflicting reports on a path to peace
The last two weeks have been claim and counter-claim from both the Afghan and Pakistani governments regarding a reported meeting of Afghan officials with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a close relative of the Taliban leader Mullah Omar and widely considered to be number two in the Taliban movement. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is currently in jail in Pakistan. It is generally held that his very arrest in 2010 was because he was negotiating with the Afghan government.
Media gallery
Analysis and special features
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How Pashtoons became refugees in their own land
Back in the 1980s, a meeting was held among local people in Akora Khattak. Basically, the theme of the meeting was that with the influx of Afghan refugees we - the local community - have become a minority in our own town. As a minority, we are also eligible for some of the aid which comes in for the refugee community.
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Reconciliation of Patriotism and Piety
I often had the pleasure of sitting with Abdul Ghani Khan, the elder son of Bacha Khan. He told me once how his father first put him into a madrassah, wishing to make him into a great Islamic scholar. "Then, when the religious scholars got rid of Amir Amanullah Khan," - the date was 1929 so Ghani must have been about 15 years old - "my father took me out of the madrassah, saying that he would never let his son study with mullahs again."
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Bhutan: A Second Swat
As one who called Swat home for 40 years, between 1970 and 2010, my first impression on visiting Bhutan was how strikingly similar it was in physical appearance to Swat. My first sight of the striking traditional architecture and trout-filled streams of the Himalayan kingdom brought to mind the pinewood fragrance of the bazaars, the turquoise brilliance of the river of what was then an independent Swati state, ceded to Pakistan the same year that I arrived.