/UPDATE*/POLITICS-US: Afghanistan Moves Back into the Limelight

Six and a half years after the ouster of the Taliban, U.S. media attention is returning to Afghanistan where more U.S. and NATO troops were killed in June than in any previous month.

AFGHANISTAN: Karzai’s Threat Of War Triggers Outrage in Pakistan

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s threat to send troops across the border to crush pro-Taliban forces, which sparked angry protests in Pakistan’s border areas this week, has led to calls for restraint from moderate politicians in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

PAKISTAN: Call to Demilitarise Aid

U.S. aid to Pakistan needs to put far greater emphasis on education and far less on the military than it has to date, a Brussels conference has been told.

SOUTH ASIA: India-Pakistan Peace Survives

As Pakistan stumbles towards democratisation amidst domestic political uncertainty, armed unrest led by Islamists along the Afghanistan border, and strained military relations with the U.S., a broad consensus in favour of the peace process with India survives - almost miraculously.

HEALTH-PAKISTAN: Anti-Polio Campaign Resumes With Taliban Support

Health workers fanned out into hundreds of villages in a troubled north-western district of Pakistan to immunise children against polio following a peace agreement with a pro-Taliban faction that had campaigned against the vaccine.

PAKISTAN: School Bombings Force Girls to Drop Out

"I am disappointed about quitting school, but my parents want me to stay at home," says Sumaira Begum, a student of class 8 at the Government High School Mardan in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP). "On Mar. 20, my school was bombed after which nearly 100 girls including I stopped attending."

PAKISTAN: Kargil Conspiracy Still Unravelling

The ill-fated Kargil episode of 1999 continues to haunt Pakistan nine years after the crisis rocked South Asia. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif continue to exchange allegations and counter allegations as to who was in fact responsible for orchestrating the misadventure that resulted in hundreds of deaths and finally ended up in a huge diplomatic embarrassment for Pakistan.

PAKISTAN: Abductions For Ransom Blamed on Taliban

A spate of kidnappings in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and areas adjoining Afghanistan are being blamed on Taliban militia.

PAKISTAN: Musharraf’s Exit Imminent?

While Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has dismissed widespread speculation in the media of his imminent resignation, the odds are against the former military ruler continuing in office for long.

PAKISTAN: Quake Orphans Still Dependent on Charity, NGOs

Thousands of children orphaned by the earthquake that hit northern Pakistan in October 2005, leaving 85,000 people dead, continue to be dependent on charity and support provide by donors and non-government organisations (NGOs).

CULTURE-PAKISTAN: Afghan Refugee Poets Behind Pashto Revival

Afghanistan’s tumultuous history of the last three decades is behind the incredible popularity of poetry in Pashto, the language of the majority Pakhtoons in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

POLITICS-PAKISTAN: Violence Clouds Peace Prospects

Within a day of a controversial peace deal signed between the provincial government in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Islamic fighters in Swat, a journalist was shot dead in neighbouring Bajaur Agency ruled directly by the Pakistan government last week.

PAKISTAN: Agitations Planned to Get Top Judiciary Reinstated

Pakistan's ruling coalition is coming unstuck over the issue of reinstating 60 members of the higher judiciary dismissed by President Pervez Musharraf in November, ahead of a court decision on the validity his re-election for a second term.

PAKISTAN: Elected Gov&#39t Unable to Deal With Taliban Groups

Allah Hussain Mahsud has little hope in Pakistan's newly elected government's ability to negotiate with the ragtag Taliban militia and end militancy in the country's tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

DEATH PENALTY-PAKISTAN: Stonings – Sign of Taliban Resurgence

The Taliban have confirmed that their sympathisers have executed by stoning a runaway couple in this remote tribal region bordering Afghanistan - their first known use here of this long drawn-out death sentence for a so-called "honour crime".

MEDIA-PAKISTAN: Caught Between State and Non-State Actors

"My captivity only brought honour upon me," is how journalist Suhail Qalandar sees his ordeal at the hands of kidnappers last year. He was talking with IPS over the phone from Peshawar, capital of the North West Frontier Province.

PAKISTAN: Bulldozers Poised to Raze Afghan Refugee Camp

"We are shifting to a rented house in nearby Cherat village after being here for 20 years. We have to leave because my shop has been demolished," said an agitated Afghan refugee, Gul Wali, in the sprawling Jalozai refugee camp, 35 km east of this border city in Pakistan.

US/PAKISTAN: New Gov’t Needs Aid, Leeway to Address Terror Front

With the intelligence community and Congressional investigators warning that the greatest threat to the United States is developing in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, appeals for the George W. Bush administration to reassess its "global war on terror" and Pakistan's place in it are growing.

Q&A: &#39Brutalisation of State, Society Behind Spurt in Executions&#39

In 2007, Pakistan executed someone, somewhere on an average, every three days. And every single day 7,000 others died - ''figuratively speaking" - waiting in dread for the black warrant announcing their own date with the gallows, says I.A. Rehman, director of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Harsh Colonial Law Set To Change

In May 2007, officials sealed a multi-storey shopping plaza belonging to three brothers from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) because their tribesmen were reported to have abducted two former employees of the Pakistan Tobacco Company.

PAKISTAN: Putting Development Back on the Agenda

Pakistan’s new prime minister has announced what many term a ‘revolutionary’ agenda: continue the ‘war on terror’ but on Pakistan’s terms, lift the long standing ban on student and trade unions, raise minimum wages, revoke ‘black’ media laws, provide relief for farmers and observe austerity.