Days after a visit to Kabul visit by Hillary Clinton, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, says he would side with Pakistan in the event of war with the US.
The oldest cliché in Afghanistan is to describe the country in terms of the "great game".
There goes the neighbourhood, a local wailed, but there might yet be some takers.
In Balochistan, mutilated corpses bearing the signs of torture keep turning up, among them lawyers, students and farm workers.
The suicide bomber, his faced cloaked in black, solemnly approaches a line of comrades, hugging each one in turn. Wailing jihadi chants fill the air.
More than two million cases of malaria are expected in Pakistan in the coming months in the wake of the country’s devastating floods.
More than two million cases of malaria are expected in Pakistan in the coming months in the wake of the country’s devastating floods.
The main focus is along the lawless 2 500km frontier with Afghanistan, where insurgent commanders can freely recruit, resupply and seek finance.
Two suicide attacks killed at least 31 people and injured more than 200 in Lahore on Tuesday as suspected Islamist militants escalated their campaign of mayhem in Pakistan’s largest cities. The bombs were the latest in a string of attacks against military and police targets in Lahore, the previously peaceful capital of Punjab province.
In some ways, life has changed little for Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf since the election two weeks ago. The retired general still trots out for afternoon tennis, aides say, and enjoys a game of bridge a few times a week. In the evenings he pulls on a cigar and, although he can’t admit it, nurses a glass of whisky.
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/ 28 January 2008
Watching him receive a verbal pistol-whipping from BBC veteran Jeremy Paxman at a London press conference earlier this month, it was hard not to feel sorry for Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the 19-year-old heir to Pakistan’s most perilous throne. Did the first-year Oxford student really think he was up to the job of heading the Pakistani opposition, even nominally?
An alarming surge in suicide attacks has fuelled a 30% rise in violence in Afghanistan this year, according to the United Nations. This year has seen an average of 550 violent incidents a month compared with 425 in 2006, a report by the department of safety and security said.
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/ 3 September 2007
Frenzied shuttling between London and Islamabad, not-so-secret deals and the machinations of <i>éminences grises</i> — a power shift in Pakistan is imminent. But who will come out on top? And can he or she bring stability? We look at President Pervez Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.
At five feet tall, Asma Jahangir is not an imposing figure, but for almost four decades she has towered over Pakistan’s human rights war. She has championed battered wives, rescued teenÂagers from death row, defended people accused of blasphemy and sought justice for the victims of honour killings. These battles have won her admirers and enemies in great number.
Khaled Hosseini’s highly anticipated second novel follows the trials and triumphs of two Afghan women, writes Declan Walsh
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/ 19 February 2007
The parents of 24 000 children in northern Pakistan refused to allow health workers to administer polio vaccinations last month, mostly due to rumours that the harmless vaccine was an American plot to sterilise innocent Muslim children. The disinformation has caused a sharp jump in polio cases in Pakistan