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He calls himself a wheeler dealer — an old-style power broker who maneuvers through a murky, dangerous world of intelligence, tribal intrigue and, some critics allege, guns and drugs.
Seven years ago, a little-known group called Jundallah emerged in Iran with claims to fight for the rights of minority Sunnis in the unruly tribal areas near the border with Pakistan.
Pakistan launched a much-awaited ground offensive in the al-Qaida and Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan early Saturday, officials told The Associated Press, the toughest test yet in the nuclear-armed U.S. ally's struggle against militants aiming to topple the state.
The United States has long suspected that much of the billions of dollars it has sent Pakistan to battle militants has been diverted to the domestic economy and other causes, such as fighting India.
It wasn't enough for the Taliban to name judges in one stretch of southern Afghanistan.
The picture shows a battered woman peering through a broken window. The words below say in Pashto, the Afghan language: "Why in the 21st century are women here found only in the home and the cemetery?"
Five years ago, Eitadullah Khan — then 25 — voted for the first time in his life. He even campaigned for Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Baitullah Mehsud, unlike other militant leaders, made the Pakistan government his target, using suicide attacks and assassinations to shake the foundations of this country.
In a recent debate leading up to the presidential elections here, the first question was not about terrorism, or violence, or even opium. It was about how candidates viewed a jagged line casually drawn on a map 115 years ago by British colonial rulers.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — He moved his finger slowly across his throat, to show that the Taliban kills truckers who don't pay for safe passage through large swaths of territory near Afghanistan.
She doesn't have a name yet.
Moabullah recalled dragging the dead in his wheelbarrow for burial behind a girl's school. There were about 30 bodies, he said, many blown apart in fighting between the Pakistan army and Taliban militants in the Swat Valley.
Army trucks rumbled through a destroyed market a few miles down the road, passing a charred gas station where a Taliban suicide bomber killed four soldiers a few weeks ago when the Pakistani government hit back at an incursion by Islamic extremists.
Fauzia Abrar had finally gotten her crying baby to sleep when screaming men pounded on the steel doors of her home in the mostly Christian slum in the port city of Karachi.
At the entrance to Peshawar, a young man on the side of the road offers a prayer, while on the bridge overhead three men videotape him.
Pakistan was trying to end bloodshed when it let the idyllic Swat Valley fall under Islamic law last week. Instead, it has emboldened the Taliban and prompted an invitation — however improbable — for Osama bin Laden.
The promised reinstatement of Pakistan's chief justice defused a protest movement threatening the U.S.-allied government, but it could still spell trouble for the country's struggling president.
It was 2 a.m. when a rocket launcher sent a grenade slamming into the front gate of Hafizullah Shahbaz Khiel's walled compound. Screeching children and women ran into a small underground room. American and Afghan soldiers shouted: "Get over here, get over here. On the floor, heads down."
A U.S.-backed plan to create militias and give them guns to fight the Taliban is drawing criticism from local authorities in areas where the first units are being rolled out, raising questions as to whether the effort can succeed in Afghanistan.
The Afghan government wants America to review its military strategy in Afghanistan and for Afghan troops to take over a larger share of military operations, the president's spokesman said Wednesday.
"We have three foreigners, including women," the gunman said into the phone. The response was brutally simple: "Kill them." Gunshots then rang out inside the Mumbai hotel, followed by cheering that could be heard over the phone.
From atop a craggy hillock, the silver-haired Lt. Col. Javed Baloch gestures toward a small black opening in a sandstone outcropping. It's the mouth of a cave.
Brothers Mushtaq and Ishaq Ali left the police force a month ago, terrified of dying as their colleagues had — beheaded by militants on a rutted village road before a shocked crowd.
The militant group blamed for the Mumbai attacks has roots in the disputed Kashmir region where Pakistan's military has faced off against India for decades.
Almost three years ago, Sajjad Khan used to buy supplies for the Pakistani Taliban with U.S. dollars that he says came from al-Qaida.
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