Source: The Long War Journal
By Bill Roggio

The Pakistani government has negotiated yet another peace agreement with the Taliban in the tribal agencies bordering Afghanistan. The latest agreement was signed in the Orakzai tribal agency, Geo TVreported.
The agreement mirrors other peace deals that have been signed in the tribal areas and in several settled districts in […]

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Source: The New York Times
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH and JANE PERLEZ
The mountain of white marble shines with such brilliance in the sun it looks like snow. For four years, the quarry beneath it lay dormant, its riches captive to tribal squabbles and government ineptitude in this corner of Pakistan’s tribal areas.
But in April, the Taliban […]

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Source: AP
By NAHAL TOOSI and ZARAR KHAN

A year after the deadly military siege of the Red Mosque, the radical spirit of the pro-Taliban stronghold lives on.
The dead are hailed as martyrs. Militants — and politicians — use the Pakistani mosque standoff as a rallying cry. And conspiracy theories have found fertile ground as questions linger […]

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Source: Minstrel Boy

Since”2005, al Qaeda forces have been regrouping in the mountains of Pakistan along the Afghan border, and the Bush administration has done little to go after them.
A report in Monday’s New York Times reveals that late last year the administration developed a secret plan for Special Operations forces to enter Pakistani tribal […]

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Source: The New York Times
In the last two months, Taliban militants have suddenly tightened the noose on this city of three million people, one of Pakistan’s biggest, establishing bases in surrounding towns and, in daylight, abducting residents for high ransoms.
The militants move unchallenged out of the lawless tribal region, just 10 miles away, in convoys […]

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Source: Roznama Mashriq
Taliban have killed six people for different acts of crimes in Pakistan’s tribal district of Orakzai Agency. The Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Mashriq reported that they were shot dead following an order of the Taliban Shura (consultative council).
According to the report, the Taliban had abducted the six people for their alleged roles in cases […]

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Sources: Bloomberg
By Gregory Viscusi
 
U.S.-led coalition forces killed 55 Taliban militants in Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan border in a three-day battle, the coalition said in a statement.
Operations began June 20 when coalition forces were ambushed in the eastern province of Paktika. The coalition repulsed that attack with small-arms fire, and then pursued the militants […]

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Source: The Hindu
Karachi (PTI): Radio is serving as an ideal propaganda tool for radical clerics in Pakistan’s restive tribal agencies, and the inking of a peace deal between the government and Pakistan Taliban will provide legal cover to FM stations used by them.
The deal under which licenses will be given to close to 100 […]

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Source: Daily Times 
Plagued by concerns over the teetering coalition at the Centre, and ravaged by the enormous losses in infrastructure being imposed daily by militants, the NWFP government has adopted a policy of least resistance against the militants
According to the peace deal reached between the NWFP government and the Tehrik-e Taliban, the Government has agreed […]

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I am going to try to be as blunt and straight-forward as possible without deviating from the issue at hand (NOTE: I said I’ll try!).
This ‘one sided’ peace agreement with the Taliban holed up in Pakistan’s North is NOT GOING TO WORK!
Unless Islamabad has a few tricks up their sleeves and are earnestly at […]

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Source: CBS News
Pakistan’s top military commander for the country’s Waziristan tribal region along the Afghan border on Sunday promised to keep his troops deployed in the area at newer locations, after last week’s peace agreement between the newly-elected government and Baitullah Mehsud, a hardcore pro-Taliban tribal militant.
Speaking to the first group of journalists to visit […]

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Source: Reuters
By Sahibzada Bahauddin
DAMADOLA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Angry residents of a Pakistani village on the Afghan border stopped government officials on Thursday from approaching the ruins of a house struck by missiles suspected to have been fired by a U.S. drone.
Eighteen people including foreign militants were killed when two missiles hit a house in the […]

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Source: Boston.com
By Eric Schmitt
When the Pentagon announced in March that Major General Jay W. Hood would become the senior officer based in Pakistan, it reflected the military’s aim to put a crisis-tested veteran in a critical job at a pivotal time in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
more stories […]

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Source: AFP
Mushtaq Yusufzai has been wounded by the Taliban, arrested by Pakistani forces and his mother has begged him to quit — but still he keeps reporting from the frontline of the “war on terror”.
The 32-year-old specialist on Pakistan’s wild tribal belt is the winner of the Kate Webb award, set up by Agence France-Presse […]

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Source: IPS
 By Ashfaq Yusufzai

The Taliban have confirmed that their sympathisers have executed by stoning a runaway couple in this remote tribal region bordering Afghanistan — their first known use here of this long drawn-out death sentence for a so-called “honour crime”.
“A qazi (religious official) court run by the Taliban found the couple guilty of adultery […]

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Why am I not surprised to hear this? *chuckles*
So our democratic, non-barbaric, pious, and ‘civil’ government has had the door slammed on their face by the T-Boys. Ha. Were you really expecting them to do otherwise? How silly of you.
There were basically four demands put forward by the T-boys to our kind government:
- Withdrawl of […]

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Source: The Economic Times
PESHAWAR/ PAKISTAN: Four people were killed and 30 injured when a car bomb ripped through a police station in northwest Pakistan on Friday, ending a month-long lull in attacks, officials said.
The powerful blast in the city of Mardan destroyed most of the police station, wrecked a hotel and several shops, said local […]

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Source: Al Jazeera English
A relative of a Pakistani Taliban leader just released from custody, has vowed to continue armed struggle for Islamic law in the country’s northwest, despite the signing of a peace accord.
Maulana Fazlullah, son-in-law of Sufi Muhammad, said on Tuesday that his group will not lay down their arms until the government enforces […]

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Source: International Herald Tribune
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Pakistani security forces recovered two U.N. employees after a gunbattle Monday with their captors in a militant stronghold near the Afghan border, an official said.
One paramilitary soldier was killed and four were wounded in the clash in Khyber tribal region, said Mohammed Iqbal, a local government official. The two employees […]

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Source: USA Today
TORKHAM (AP) — U.S., Afghan and Pakistani officers opened the first of six joint military intelligence centers along the Afghan-Pakistan border Saturday, an effort to cut down on militants’ movement in a region of rising terrorist activity.
The centers represent the latest step in American efforts to get Afghanistan and Pakistan to coordinate […]

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Source: AFP
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) — Islamist militants killed a tribesman after accusing him of working as a US spy in a lawless stronghold of Al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents bordering Afghanistan, officials said Friday.
Rebels shot and then slit the throat of the 30-year-old man in the latest in a series of executions in Pakistan’s troubled tribal […]

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Source: The Associated Press
A look at suicide attacks in Pakistan this year:
_ March 11: Separate bombers shatter seven-story police headquarters and house in Lahore. At least 27 people killed, more than 200 wounded.
_ March 4: Two bombers blow themselves up at navy training college in Lahore, killing four college employees.
_ March 2: Bomber attacks tribesmen […]

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Source: Daily Times
* Maulana Faqir says US biggest terrorist in world
KHAR: A pro-Taliban leader in the Tribal Areas said on Sunday that Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden and fugitive Taliban militant leader Mullah Omar were “not enemies of Pakistan”.
Addressing a rally near Khar, the main town of Bajaur tribal district bordering Afghanistan, Maulana Faqir […]

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Source: CNN

Girls, who are often discouraged from attending school, read at one of the Central Asia Institute schools.
Greg Mortenson brushed his tears away. His body sagged when he saw it happen. The prize he had sought for 78 agonizing days was slipping from his view.
He was clinging to an icy patch of K2, the second-highest […]

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Source: The Associated Press
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON
The Associated Press
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; 4:16 AM
UCHRAI SAR, Pakistan — Hardcore militants who seized Pakistan’s most scenic valley are still holed up in its snowy heights, three months after President Pervez Musharraf sent in the army to show his resolve against spreading Islamic extremism.
Down below, life in the towns […]

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