From the Washington Post by Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick.
Pakistan’s “Father” of the Nuclear Bomb, A.Q. Khan (full name is Abdul Qadeer Khan) reportedly has been
complaining “to friends that his movements and contacts are being unjustly controlled by the government, whose bidding he did — providing a potential motive for his disclosures.”
Read full report. Accounts by controversial scientist assert China gave Pakistan enough enriched uranium in ’82 to make 2 bombs
In 1982, a Pakistani military C-130 left the western Chinese city of Urumqi with a highly unusual cargo: enough …

A troubling report on the failure to reform madrassas–the “breeding grounds for jihad” in Pakistan from Dawn.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has virtually shelved a US-aided, multi-million-dollar plan to reform seminaries considered nurseries of jihad, faced with uncooperative Islamists, as the military cracks down on the Taliban.
The government, allied to then US president George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror,’ initiated the project in 2002 in a bid to introduce a more secular curriculum to madrassas, sensing a homegrown threat from extremism.
It was billed as a policy U-turn after military ruler General Ziaul …

Dawn provides this interesting read on the state of affairs in Pakistan and US aid.
Comments in the press and endless TV debates on terrorism and the American offer of aid to combat it have come to sound more like expressions of ego than of realism. These statements appear an exercise in politicking and posturing and do not look the hard economic realities in the eye.
Moreover, the views of political parties are coloured by their own interests. Most unrealistic and perturbing, however, is the stand of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI). The …

According to Pakistan Daily: “Former president Gen. (Retd) Pervez Musharraf is to launch his political career in earnest in December this year, confirmed sources close to him.”
In another report harshly critical of President Asif Ali Zardari’s administration entitled: A Confused Pakistani Government says, “A traumatized nation watches its confused leaders make contradictory statements on the university attack and the Kerry-Lugar bill.”
WITH an ongoing military operation and rampant terrorism across the country, the first priority for the government should have been to establish clarity of purpose and strategy. Unfortunately, that is …

“If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together” then “there are issues that not just the United States but others have with your government and with your military security establishment,” Clinton was quoted telling senior Pakistani journalists in Lahore. “I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they (al Qaeda leaders) are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” she said.

The Taliban have warned Pakistan that they would stage more attacks if the army does not end a new ground offensive in South Waziristan tribal region, where the military has dispatched some 30,000 troops to flush out insurgents. South Waziristan is a major base for the Pakistani Taliban and other foreign militants.

Latest on the war in Pakistan.
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) – Taliban militants attacked Pakistani forces and recaptured a strategic town on Tuesday while two suicide bomb blasts at an Islamic university in the capital killed four people and wounded at least 20, officials said.
The army on Monday captured the small town of Kotkai, the birthplace of Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud on the approach to an insurgent base in south Waziristan, but militants struck back on Tuesday to retake it, security officials said.
The fighting for control of …

Peter Bergen reports a sobering read at the New Republic about the state of affairs in Afghanistan. Winning in Afghanistan is critical to defeating Al Qaeda.
And yet, as President Obama weighs whether or not to send more troops to Afghanistan, the connection between the region and Al Qaeda has suddenly become a matter of hot dispute in Washington. We are told that September 11 was as much a product of plotting in Hamburg as in Afghanistan; that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are quite distinct groups, and that we can …

New York Times David Rohde, held hostage by the Taliban for 7 Months and 10 days, recounts his harrowing experience. His kidnapping was kept secret during his entire captivity.
Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of “Al Qaeda lite,” a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.
Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ …

A major offensive against the Taliban has begun. War in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The stakes are high in this nuclear armed country. “This time the military has said there will be no deals” with the Taliban. Take a look.
Military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas and Information Minister Qamaruz Zaman Kaira said at a joint news conference that the army had encircled the area from three directions.
Abbas said the operation involving some 30,000 ground troops would last between six and eight weeks.
After months of aerial bombing …