Observers saw the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan last year as a strategic victory for neighboring Pakistan after years of frosty relations between Islamabad and the Western-backed government in Kabul that collapsed last August. Security concerns along the two nations’ border have since complicated the picture. Many Pakistanis celebrated the Taliban’s return to power, including Prime Minister Imran Khan, who declared […]

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan and Chief of the Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa paid a visit to Balochistan province on Tuesday, days after two deadly terrorist strikes at different military bases killed nine soldiers. The terrorist raids on 2 February have been claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA). The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorist organisation, an offshoot of […]

Assailants threw a hand grenade at a bus station in volatile southwest Pakistan on Tuesday, killing a passerby and wounding two others, police said, in a sign of increasing violence in the region. The attack happened in Dera Murad Jamali, a town in Baluchistan province, said Aziz Baloch, an area police official. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. It […]

Militants firing from inside Afghanistan killed at least five Pakistani soldiers at a border post in northwestern Kurram district on Sunday, the Pakistan military said, the second such attack since the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) came into power in August. The Pakistan army said it retaliated, causing heavy casualties, but independent confirmation was not immediately possible because the districts […]

Twenty militants and nine soldiers were killed in recent days during insurgent attacks on two military bases in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, Pakistan’s military said on Saturday. The attacks, the biggest in recent years by ethnic Baloch insurgents, began on Wednesday night, Reuters reported. “A total of 20 militants were killed during Panjgur and Nauski operations. Security forces have completed […]

Pakistan’s military said security forces cleared two areas in a southwestern province of separatist militants after they attacked two army camps, leaving nine soldiers dead and six others wounded. Twenty militants were killed in intense, hours-long firefights and follow-up operations, it said. The military statement issued late Saturday said militants attacked security forces camps in Baluchistan province in the districts […]

As Pakistan observes what it refers to as ‘Kashmir Solidarity Day’ yet once again, some hard questions stare you in the face. The first one is that if Islamabad’s so confident of its Kashmir narrative being as sound as insists it is, then why is it merely posturing instead of asserting itself in seeking a permanent resolution of this seven-and-a-half-decade […]

China stands firmly embedded in 2022 in Pakistan’ Army’s strategic calculus despite unfolding geopolitical environment heavily stacked against China and thereby devaluing Pakistan Army’s strategic- asset worth to United States. In 2022, the United States should not be misled into the belief that Pakistan Army’s strategic- asset value can be retrieved to serve United States security interests again. Pakistan in […]

Islamabad must tread carefully with its long-time Taliban allies back in power in Kabul. Pitfalls lie ahead for Pakistan’s domestic security and its foreign relations. The Pakistani government should encourage Afghanistan’s new authorities down the path of compromise with international demands regarding rights and counter-terrorism. What’s new? Pakistan faces difficult challenges in shaping policy toward Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Though Pakistan continues to […]

Twin attacks by separatists on Pakistani military posts in the volatile southwestern Baluchistan province triggered intense firefights that lasted hours and killed seven soldiers and 13 assailants, Pakistan’s interior minister and the military said Thursday. A recently formed separatist group, the Baluchistan Nationalist Army, had claimed responsibility for the attacks late Wednesday in a post on Twitter. In one of […]