Stephanie Nebehay | Geneva | May 24

Reuters - The last three countries where polio is still paralyzing children -- Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria -- said on Thursday that they have enlisted Muslim women and religious leaders to allay fears of vaccination and wipe out the disease.

Polio cases are at an all-time low worldwide, following its eradication in India last year, raising hopes but also fears about a threat of resurgence especially in sub-Saharan Africa unless remaining reservoirs of polio virus are stamped out.

Ibrahim Shinwari and Jibran Ahmad | May 23

Reuters - Pakistani authorities have sentenced a doctor accused of helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden to 33 years in jail on charges of treason, officials said, a move almost certain to further strain ties between Washington and Islamabad.

Shakil Afridi was accused of running a fake vaccination campaign, in which he collected DNA samples, that is believed to have helped the American intelligence agency track down bin Laden in a Pakistani town.

The al Qaeda chieftain was killed in a unilateral U.S. special forces raid in the town of Abbottabad in May last year.

"Dr Shakil has been sentenced to 33 years imprisonment and a fine of 320,000 Pakistani rupees ($3,477)," said Mohammad Nasir, a government official in the northwestern city of Peshawar, where the jail term will be served. He gave no further details.

Haji Mujtaba/ Miranshah & Jibran Ahmad / Peshawar | May 23

Reuters - A U.S. drone strike on suspected Islamist militants in northwest Pakistan killed 10 people on Thursday, intelligence officials said, an attack likely to raise tensions in a standoff with Washington over NATO supply routes to Afghanistan.

The pilotless drone aircraft fired two missiles at a compound in a village in North Waziristan, a day after a similar attack killed four suspected militants in the same region.

Ewen MacAskill | Chicago | May 21

The Guardian - Obama refuses bilateral meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, who wants demands met before roads reopen

A rift between the US and Pakistan appears to be widening at the Nato summit in Chicago – a dangerous development that could undermine Barack Obama's hopes for an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The US has said repeatedly that Pakistan holds the key to the future of the region but relations between Obama and President Asif Ali Zardari have deteriorated in a standoff over supply routes to Afghanistan.

Pakistan closed the routes after a US air strike killed two dozen Pakistani troops in November.

Obama is refusing to see Zardari, possibly because he arrived in Chicago without a deal in his pocket on reopening the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to US transport. A White House spokesman said no bilateral meeting between Obama and Zardari at the Nato summit was scheduled.

Instead Pakistan is making a series of demands in return for reopening the supply routes, including a review of the US policy of drone attacks against targets inside Pakistan and a public apology for the killing of its troops.

Jason Burke | May 20

The Guardian - Mahinda Rajapaksa poised to free jailed political rival in bid to quell international criticism over country's human rights record

Jailed former army general Sarath Fonseka is to be freed on Monday after the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, signed orders releasing his high-profile political rival.

Fonseka, widely condemned for his role in atrocities during the 2009 battles against the Tamil Tigers that ended the 25-year civil war, was imprisoned on graft charges more than two years ago after challenging Rajapaksa for the presidency. A second conviction was for launching a political career before leaving the military.

The move, confirmed by government spokesmen, is an apparent attempt to quell international criticism of the government's human rights record before a series of key visits by foreign officials and trips by the president over the summer, including to the London Olympics.

A previous trip to the UK ended in controversy when Rajapaksa was forced into a hasty departure after activists sought an arrest warrant for him. The authorisation for Fonseka's release will be sent to the justice ministry a spokesman told Reuters news agency.

Islamabad | May 17

AFP - Several Western embassies here on Wednesday received letters containing suspicious powder and threats to poison Nato soldiers in Afghanistan, Pakistan officials said.

Islamabad police chief Bani Amin said that embassies had received small packets containing black powder, which had been sent for laboratory analysis.

The letters said "poison" would be hidden in the Nato supplies should Pakistan decide to lift a nearly six-month blockade on supplies for American and Nato troops fighting the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Senior Pakistani security officials said that the French embassy, and the Australian and British High Commissions had received suspicious packages.

"Embassies have received one sachet each. The problem is that it is in a meagre quantity and difficult even to test. It seems somebody has committed some mischief. We are sending it to a laboratory," Amin said.

Sajjad Tarakzai | Islamabad | May 14

AFP - Pakistan said Monday it was time to "move on" and repair ties with the United States and NATO, the strongest sign yet that it may reopen supply routes into Afghanistan closed for nearly six months.

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar made the remarks a day before Pakistani leaders are to discuss ending the blockade, and thereby cave in to a key demand from the West in time to attend a NATO summit in Chicago on May 20-21.

Islamabad shut its Afghan border to NATO supplies after US air strikes killed 24 soldiers on November 26, provoking a major crisis in Pakistani-US relations on top of the outcry from the raid that killed Osama bin Laden the previous May.

"It was important to make a point, Pakistan has made a point and we now need to move on and go into a positive zone and try to conduct our relations," Pakistan's foreign minister told a news conference.

"We are trying to put this relationship, you know, in a positive zone and I am quite sure that we will be successful in doing so."

LaHore | May 7

PakTribune - Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said on Sunday that Pakistan had offered the US to jointly carry out drone strikes in the restive Tribal Areas but the Obama administration turned down the proposal.

Addressing a press conference, the minister said Pakistan was willing to maintain its relations with the US according to expectations of the nation. Therefore, he added, the government had also asked Washington to stop drone strikes in Pakistan but to no avail. Mukhtar said he could not predict anything about the future of NATO supply through Pakistan.

However, he added, it would be a violation of international laws if the supply route for Afghanistan was not restored.

And what does international law say about unauthorized drone strikes against a sovereign nation?

When did the neoconservatives start giving a shit about Tibet?

WaPo| Greg Miller| May 3

Newly released documents recovered from the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed show that al-Qaeda’s core leaders were divided over how to manage an emerging group of distant affiliates that showed little discipline or willingness to take direction.
* Bin Laden documents (PDF)

Gareth Porter:Finding Bin Laden: The Truth Behind the Official Story - Truthout has been able to reconstruct the real story of bin Laden's exile in Abbottabad, as well as how the CIA found him, thanks in large part to information gathered last year from Pakistani tribal and ISI sources by retired Pakistani Brig. Gen. Shaukat Qadir. But that information was confirmed, in essence, in remarks after the bin Laden raid by the same senior intelligence official cited above - remarks that have been ignored until now.

Sonia Verma offers a decent (if somewhat cursory) outline in today's Globe and Mail of the actually-existing geopolitical landscape post-OBL (which stands in contrast to Peter Bergen's recent proxy-Obama2012 victory lap breathlessly commemorating POTUS' alpha-male action movie moment):

One year after Operation Neptune Spear, al-Qaeda still exists, though in a more fractured form. The group’s ability to carry out large-scale attacks has been compromised. Meanwhile, America’s counterterrorism campaign is gradually shifting from Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan to Yemen and the Horn of Africa. The shaky alliance between the West, led by the United States, and Pakistan, has been plunged into a crisis from which it has not yet recovered. Since Mr. bin Laden’s death, each side has viewed the other with simmering suspicion. But perhaps the most enduring legacy of Mr. bin Laden’s killing is that no one who helped him hide for so long, essentially in plain sight, has been held accountable – and that may have poisoned relations between Pakistan and its Western allies for the foreseeable future.

Standard read-the-whole-damn-thing rules apply.

Related: Navy SEALs for Truth? C'mon. You knew it was coming.

Update: CFR's Linda Robinson further unpacks lingering OBL blowback, specifically re: US/Pakistan relations.

The most direct impact of bin Laden's death on Afghanistan was actually the crisis the Abbottabad raid caused in the already troubled U.S.-Pakistan relationship, and the spillover effects from that. It threw the Pakistan military and the political system into crisis, causing Pakistan to react with more anti-Americanism and more hostility and suspicion along the border. Attacks from Pakistan into Afghanistan quadrupled last year, though they are down again now. So the net effect was to make cross-border cooperation more difficult and increase Pakistan's tendency to pursue its own agenda. That includes things like the Haqqani network's attacks in September in Kabul on ISAF and the U.S. embassy, and the giant truck bomb in Wardak against the U.S. coalition base in Sayed Abad.

[...]

U.S. officials estimate that maybe 100 AQ fighters come and go from Afghanistan across the Pakistan border. Afghanistan is not much of a safe haven for al-Qaeda, though it still has some distance to go to become stable and capable of defending itself against attempts to reestablish an al-Qaeda safe haven. Most Taliban fighters on the ground are not directly connected to the al-Qaeda organization, and it is possible that at some point the Taliban senior leadership will find it in its interest to repudiate its formal ties to al-Qaeda. It is Pakistan that is the cause for greatest concern because al-Qaeda there is mixed up with a stew of various insurgent groups that do actively combine forces and cooperate on an operational level.

Nothing really all that new here. Still, the ugly (if familiar) truth certainly bears repeating, especially in light of the empty football spike sloganeering ("...and GM is alive!") that dominates the campaign discourse.

Apr 30

BBC - Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi says she and fellow opposition MPs will take a parliamentary oath despite disputing the wording of it.

Ms Suu Kyi, who was elected to parliament a month ago, said her party was willing to compromise to prevent it complicating political matters.

She and 42 other National League for Democracy MPs will be sworn in to parliament on Wednesday.

In a historic address to Burma's parliament, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was encouraged by recent reform efforts in the country, but said the process of change was fragile and needed nurturing.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who is due to meet Mr Ban on Tuesday, said her party would "proceed as quickly as possible to become legal members of parliament by swearing the oath".

The NLD last week said they would not take part in a swearing-in ceremony unless the wording of the oath was changed from "safeguard" to "respect" the constitution.

On Monday she said: "Some people might ask, given that we didn't accept the wording of 'safeguard' in the beginning, why we accept now. The reason we accept it, firstly, is the desire of the people. Our voters voted for us because they want to see us in parliament."

She added: "We are not giving up, we are just yielding to the aspirations of the people."

Declan Welsh, Eric Schmitt & Steven Lee Myers | Apr 28

NYT - The latest high-level talks on ending a diplomatic deadlock between the United States and Pakistan ended in failure on Friday over Pakistani demands for an unconditional apology from the Obama administration for an airstrike. The White House, angered by the recent spectacular Taliban attacks in Afghanistan, refuses to apologize.

idjits, two lousy words

Apr 25

VOA - Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani says he will face the country's Supreme Court Thursday, when it is set to announce the verdict in a contempt case against him.

Mr. Gilani told his Cabinet on Wednesday that he will appear before the court. Information Minister Rehman Malik then said the entire Cabinet would accompany the prime minister to Thursday's hearing in a show of support.

Mr. Gilani was charged in February for defying a Supreme Court order to reopen an old corruption case against President Asif Ali Zardari.

If convicted, the prime minister faces up to six months in prison and removal from office.

Islamabad | Apr 25

AFP - Pakistan successfully test fired a nuclear-capable intermediate range ballistic missile on Wednesday, the military said, less than a week after India test launched a long range missile.

The exact range of the missile was not revealed, but retired General Talat Masood, a defence analyst, told AFP it would be able to hit targets up to 2,500 to 3,000 kilometres (1,550 to 1,850 miles) away -- putting arch-rival India well within reach.

Last Thursday, India test fired its long range Agni V missile, which can deliver a one-tonne nuclear warhead anywhere in China.

"Pakistan today successfully conducted the launch of the intermediate range ballistic missile Hatf IV Shaheen-1A weapon system," the military said in a statement.

Islamabad | Apr 19

AFP - Up to 130 people are feared dead after a Boeing 737 crashed while trying to land in bad weather near the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Friday, officials said.

The Bhoja airline flight from Karachi came down outside Islamabad's international airport, police official Fazle Akbar said, adding that emergency teams have been sent to the site.

"There is no chance of any survivors. It will be only a miracle. The plane is totally destroyed," he told AFP from the crash site.

There were conflicting reports about how many people were on board the plane.

A senior defence ministry official said initial reports suggested there were 126 people on board, Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority said it was carrying 121 passengers and nine crew, while the chief of Islamabad police Bani Amin told AFP from the crash site that 127 were on board.

Asked if there were any survivors, the defence ministry official said: "So far there is no good news."

Saifur Rehman, an official from the police rescue team said the plane came down in Hussain Abad village, about three kilometres (two miles) from the main Islamabad highway.

Apr 19

Hindustan Times - India on Thursday conducted the maiden test of its indigenously developed nuclear capable Agni-V ballistic missile with a strike range of over 5,000 km, from the Wheeler Island off Odisha coast.

The three stage, solid propellant missile was test-fired from a mobile launcher from the launch complex-4 of the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at about 8:05am, defence sources said.

Soon after the maiden launch took place, Agni-V witnessed a smooth and perfect vertical lift-off from the launcher and analysis was done to assess its health parameters after retrieval of date from all the sophisticated wide range of communication network systems, they said.

The test-fire of the first of its kind missile, which was originally scheduled for Wednesday, had to be postponed at the last moment due to bad weather marked by rains and heavy lightning, the sources said.

The trial of Agni-V, considered to be of the category of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), demonstrates giant strides taken by India in its integrated missile development programme.

Only the United States, Russia, France and China possess the capability to operate an ICBM at present.

(My favorite comment: We dont have electric power for 10 hours a day!!! Anyways, we have a missile!!)

Palash R. Ghosh | April 17

IBT - Less than a week after North Korea's failed rocket launch, India may be on the verge of test-firing a nuclear-capable missile that has the ability to reach all parts of Asia and even parts of Eastern Europe, according to reports.

The 50-ton, 20-meter Agni V rocket – also known as the “China Killer” in Indian media -- boasts a range of more than 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles).

Apr 12

WaPo - This country's Parliament unanimously demanded Thursday that the United States end its long campaign of drone strikes in Pakistani territory, a vital component of President Barack Obama's strategy against al-Qaida and other militant groups.

But lawmakers, acting after weeks of debate, tacitly allowed the passage of oil, food and other nonlethal goods across the country's borders to supply NATO troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistan has barred NATO convoys for several months in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers.

Reflecting anger over the war in Afghanistan, drone attacks and other elements of U.S. policy, about 440 lawmakers supported the recommendations of a national security committee that set out to reconfigure what it called Pakistan's “terms of engagement” with the U.S. The two countries entered into a counterterrorism partnership shortly after the 9/11 attacks.

The proposals also seek to bar private security contractors and intelligence operatives from working in the country and to ban the shipment of arms and ammunition through Pakistani territory or airspace into Afghanistan.

** The ball is back in the executive’s court
** Pakistan Gives U.S. a List of Demands, Including an End to C.I.A. Drone Strikes
** We blinked, and maybe it’s good
** Supply route closure impedes Afghan withdrawal

Tom Hussain | Karachi | Apr 9

McClatchy - The P226, a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol made by the weapons manufacturer SIG Sauer, is a favorite of law enforcement agencies and militaries worldwide, from the FBI and Navy SEALs to NATO troops in Afghanistan and police departments across the United States.

But the shipment of 232 pistols that arrived in the Pakistani city of Quetta in January was intended for a different recipient: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an al Qaida affiliate that's accused of targeting Shiite Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The group used some of the pistols in deadly attacks and distributed others to favored militants — sort of a jihadi version of a corporate bonus — according to militants and criminals in Quetta.

Even more troublesome to U.S. officials, however, is the purported source. A Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant who received two of the pistols, and who gave his name only as Raees, told McClatchy that smugglers had purchased the shipment from a gang of corrupt Afghan National Army soldiers, who'd pilfered them from a NATO armory in Afghanistan.

The prospect that al Qaida affiliates are using the same weapons as the SEAL team that killed al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden last May illustrates the ease with which Pakistani criminal and militant gangs draw on a network of gunrunners that operates from neighboring Afghanistan and Iran to procure a wide range of Western, Russian and Chinese weapons.

In Washington, a senior U.S. defense official said that while he couldn't confirm the report, it was troublesome to consider that the U.S.-led NATO coalition's weapons were making their way into al Qaida hands.

Troublesome? Sheesh, is it this defense officials first war? ;)

Jim Yardley | New Delhi | April 8

NYT - In the first visit to India by a Pakistani head of state in seven years, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India on Sunday expressed a mutual desire to improve relations between their rival South Asian nations, and Mr. Singh announced that he would at some point visit Pakistan for the first time since taking office.

The meeting was not a formal summit meeting, and diplomats tried to tamp down expectations. Mr. Zardari had originally asked to make a private visit to an important Muslim religious site, the Ajmer Sharif shrine, in Rajasthan State. Mr. Singh then invited him to make a detour to New Delhi for lunch.

Islamabad | Apr 7

CNN - Pakistani soldiers dug into a massive avalanche in a mountain battleground close to the Indian border on Saturday, searching for at least 117 of their colleagues buried when the wall of snow engulfed a military complex.

More than 12 hours after the disaster at the entrance to the Siachen Glacier, no survivors had been found.

"We are waiting for news and keeping our fingers crossed," said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas.

Hundreds of troops, sniffer dogs and mechanical equipment were at the scene, but were struggling to make much headway into the avalanche, which crashed down onto the rear headquarters building in the Gayari sector early in the morning, burying it under some 70 feet of snow, said Abbas.

"It's on a massive scale," he said. "Everything is completely covered."

Siachen is on the northern tip of the divided Kashmir region claimed by both India and Pakistan.

Here's my "good news" story for today: the man who single-handedly planted an entire 1,360 acre tropical forest.

A little over 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav "Molai" Payeng began burying seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in northern India's Assam region to grow a refuge for wildlife. Not long after, he decided to dedicate his life to this endeavor, so he moved to the site where he could work full-time creating a lush new forest ecosystem. Incredibly, the spot today hosts a sprawling 1,360 acre of jungle that Payeng planted single-handedly.

...While it's taken years for Payeng's remarkable dedication to planting to receive some well-deserved recognition internationally, it didn't take long for wildlife in the region to benefit from the manufactured forest. Demonstrating a keen understanding of ecological balance, Payeng even transplanted ants to his burgeoning ecosystem to bolster its natural harmony. Soon the shadeless sandbar was transformed into a self-functioning environment where a menagerie of creatures could dwell. The forest, called the Molai woods, now serves as a safe haven for numerous birds, deers, rhinos, tigers, and elephants -- species increasingly at risk from habitat loss elsewhere.

Reading news that we're probably headed for a worldwide financial collapse by 2030 or that world food prices are currently rising fast - meaning there's going to be more food-anxiety unrest of the kind that triggered the Arab Spring - I often feel like the 1980s pioneers of the "cyberpunk" genre got the motifs right, but were off on the timeline by about thirty years. I get especially depressed by supposed experts in and out of government making great plans for more of the same with no obvious apprehension about the coming inevitable collapse if we don't change the way we do things. Here's a reminder that we can all take action directly rather than just burying our heads in the sand.

Sanjoy Majumder | Vishakhapatnam, India | April 4

BBC - India is to formally commission a nuclear submarine into its navy, joining an elite group of nations with similar capabilities.

The $1bn (£630m) Russian-built Nerpa has been leased by the Indian navy for the next 10 years. It was handed over to India in eastern Russia in January.

India previously had a Soviet submarine but decommissioned it in 1991.

It now rejoins China, Russia, the US, the UK and France as an operator of underwater nuclear vessels.

Saeed Shah | Quetta, Pakistan | March 29

McClatchy - The family of Jalil Reki learned from television news that his body had been found, more than two years after the political activist was allegedly abducted by Pakistani security officials.

Reki's body bore signs of severe torture, according to his father, Qadeer Baloch, including broken wrists and knees and burn marks. He was killed by several shots through the back of the head.

His grisly story is replicated across the remote and thinly populated western province of Baluchistan, where Pakistani forces are fighting a separatist insurgency that the outside world barely knows about. While the U.S. and other Western powers focus on the country's other war — against Islamic extremists in the northwest tribal areas bordering Afghanistan — the conflict in Baluchistan is raging mostly in the shadows even as violence escalates.