Search results for ‘Taliban’
837 items found
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Swat: why we should care about this faraway war
In quieter times, Taj Mahmad pulls a cart loaded with vegetables for a living. But today’s Washington Post quotes him as saying that he fled government shelling so quickly that he and his wife were forced to leave their son and three-year-old daughter behind. “My wife cried and said the rest of us would be…
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Obama's reputation depends on his Af-Pak policy
It is hard to say which meeting is more important: Obama’s meeting with the president of Afghanistan or with the president of Pakistan. For it is becoming increasingly clear that Obama’s foreign policy reputation – indeed his presidency – will depend upon success in what US officials call the “Af-Pak” region, in much the same…
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Brown's ambitious Af-Pak promise
Gordon Brown has announced a mini-surge of British troops in Afghanistan to help police the August presidential election there. He’s also promised a big increase in aid to Pakistan, with half of the money going to the Afghan frontier region, which Mr Brown has branded “the crucible of global terrorism”. His 15-page strategy document (UK…
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British troop surge: 'mid to high hundreds'
So are more British troops going to Afghanistan on top of the 8,100 or so already there? The PM is “very seriously” considering it, I’m told. This is what I can glean from snooping about in the Nato summit press centre corridors… Troop numbers will be in the mid to high hundreds. Their deployment will probably…
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Pakistan: tracing the flogging footage
Mobile phone footage of a teenage girl being flogged publicly in Pakistan’s Swat Valley is now circulating widely (Google News brings up 89 results at the time of writing – probably far more by the time you read this). Some viewers may find images in the video below distressing. Part of this footage was used last month in a…
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Lahore attack raises worrying questions
Today’s attack on a police training school in Lahore could be part of a worrying trend. This was not suicide bombing, but a commando-style raid, as per the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team which left seven dead in the same city earlier this month, and the attacks on the hotels in Mumbai, India last…
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Holbrooke on Afghanistan and Pakistan
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – This week the Americans will announce their new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Attending a conference organised by the German Marshall Fund in Brussels, I’ve had a sneak preview at a session where President Obama’s envoy, Richard Holbrooke, spoke. He was scathing about the last US administration, describing the decision to switch focus…
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Afghan Star: 'X Factor' on a knife-edge
The big finale of Afghanistan’s answer to The X Factor is live on Tolo TV right now. It’s the Noruz New Year weekend there and thanks to an electricity deal a couple of months ago with neighbouring Uzbekistan, there should be enough juice to beat last year’s viewing record of 11-million Afghans. The final 10…
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Meeting Viktor Bout, the 'Merchant of Death'
BANGKOK, THAILAND – For an opening gambit, it didn’t suggest things would go that well. Viktor Bout had, at court, told me several times that the western media were untrustworthy and broadly despicable. Here, as I approached the visitor’s window in the remand centre where he’s been languishing for a year, he was set apart…
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Viktor Bout: 'I never supplied arms'
A piece in The Observer about my prison interview with the man nicknamed the “merchant of death”: Viktor Bout, the Russian accused of being the world’s biggest arms dealer, has angrily denied allegations that he supplied weapons to the Taliban and al-Qaida in his first interview for six years with the western media. Bout is…
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Pakistan-style attacks 'could happen in Europe'
I’ve just had a very insightful chat with Ahmed Rashid, doyen of the Lahore journalism set, the best-selling Taliban-Qaida watcher and described by Christopher Hitchens as “Pakistan’s best and bravest reporter”. His latest book, Descent into Chaos, documents Pakistan’s apocalyptic downward spiral. So what did he make of what went on in the upmarket Gulberg…
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Afghanistan: people’s war
A father prepared to sell his son, widespread kidnappings, corruption and lawlessness. In an RTS award-winning film, Channel 4 News captured the startling personal tales of ordinary Afghan people.
