Dr Mohammad Taqi

The political shura (council) members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have now met with their intermediaries, the Jamaat-e-Islami’s (JI’s) Professor Ibrahim Khan and the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) Samiul Haq faction’s Maulana Yusuf Shah. The TTP reportedly gave a laundry list of demands to its intercessors who had been ferried to, no marks for guessing, the North […]

The history of talks between the Pakistani state and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and its antecedents, is long and has repeated itself a good 14 times as a grave tragedy. This time around it is playing out as a farce. No nuclear-armed state has been humiliated quite so thoroughly at the hands of some armed […]

The beleaguered ShiaHazara community of Quetta has dug yet another mass grave for its loved ones slaughtered in the Mastung bombing by the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) as they were returning from a pilgrimage in Iraq and Iran. The Hazaras, one of the most peaceful people in Pakistan, had just commemorated the anniversary of the massacre perpetrated […]

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) martyred over 20 security personnel in Bannu last week followed by another deadly attack killing soldiers in the Royal Artillery (RA) Bazaar, Rawalpindi, earlier this week. Prior to these attacks, the TTP slaughtered three employees of a media house in cold blood in Karachi. Subsequently, Ehsanullah Ehsan of the TTP had […]

Karachi’s tough cop Chaudhry Aslam Khan, a leader of the terrorist-battered Awami National Party (ANP) Mian Mushtaq, several security personnel guarding the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Amir Muqam and, of course, the hero of Hangu, young Aitzaz Hassan were all martyred at the hands of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the past several days. […]

Pakistan completed major civil and military leadership transitions without any hiccups last year, which by itself is a major achievement for a nation that has grappled with political uncertainty for the better part of its existence. The country’s leadership has consistently rated terrorism as the top national concern along with the economy. But the way […]

Pakistan completed major civil and military leadership transitions without any hiccups last year, which by itself is a major achievement for a nation that has grappled with political uncertainty for the better part of its existence. The country’s leadership has consistently rated terrorism as the top national concern along with the economy. But the way […]

As the Punjab-based ruling and opposition parties wrangled over the latter’s Lahore weekend rally, the Pashtuns in Mirali, North Waziristan Agency (NWA) of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) were caught between the foreign and domestic terrorists on one side and the artillery barrage from the Pakistani army on the other. According to locals and […]

After serving as the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) since June 2005, except for a brief, forced hiatus, the honourable Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has finally left the Supreme Court (SC) building. His stint as the top judge of the country, the longest for any CJP, was certainly the most tumultuous one. There never was […]

Another US drone strike last week near Hangu wiped out six associates of the Jalaluddin Haqqani terrorist Network (HQN), namely Kaleemullah, Abdul Rahman, Mufti Hamidullah Haqqani, Maulvi Ahmed Jan, Abdullah and Gul Marjan. Maulvi Ahmad Jan was a confidant of the HQN’s de facto boss Sirajuddin Haqqani and a financier and operational point man. The […]