by Asif Haroon Raja As long as Mullah Omar was in power in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden (OBL) enjoyed his patronage and protection. Once his regime was uprooted from power in November 2001 and the Taliban rendered homeless and fugitives, al-Qaeda as an entity also got displaced from Afghanistan to South Waziristan (SW). Ahmadzai Wazirs who had fought alongside Afghan and Arab Mujahideen in th ...

By Kevin Sieff KABUL —Afghan commanders have refused more than a dozen times within the past two months to act on U.S. intelligence regarding high-level insurgents, arguing that night-time operations to target the men would result in civilian casualties, Afghan officials say. The defiance highlights the shift underway in Afghanistan as Afghan commanders make use of their newfound power to veto operations pr ...

By Rama Lakshmi India’s intelligence agency sparked outrage in Pakistan and self-deprecatory jokes at home this week after it listed ordinary Pakistani shopkeepers as terrorists on a mission to attack some of India’s landmark institutions. The Research and Analysis Wing, India’s premier intelligence agency, issued an advisory to state governments in which it said that five trained militants from Pakistan’s ...