Pakistan must fight militant groups that threaten Afghan, Indian and US interests, US Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday as he offered sympathy for the victims of last month’s massacre of children at a Pakistani school.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan has long been suspected by the West of playing a double game, fighting some militants while supporting those its generals have regarded as strategic assets to be used against rivals and neighbors, India and Afghanistan.
Visiting Pakistan after going to India over the weekend, Kerry said all militant groups should be targeted to bring security to the region.
“Terror groups like the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani Network, Lashkar-e Taiba and other groups continue to pose a threat to Pakistan, to its neighbors and to the US,” Kerry told a news conference in Islamabad, listing some of the most feared groups. “And all of us have a responsibility to ensure that these groups do not gain a foothold, but rather are pushed back into the recesses of memory... Make no mistake. The task is a difficult one and it is not done.”
Most US-led forces in neighboring Afghanistan officially completed their combat mission last month, prompting concern about the stability of the region where insurgents have been increasingly aggressive in past months.
Following last month’s attack on the school in which 134 children were killed, Pakistan has promised to stop differentiating between “good” and “bad” militants and to step up operations against their hideouts on the Afghan border.
Although observers have noted some progress, most agree that Pakistan has yet to show that it is seriously committed to go after all groups equally, including the powerful Haqqani Network, which attacks targets in Afghanistan from its bases in Pakistan.
Kerry said Washington, which has spent billions of US dollars on military aid to Pakistan to help it fight insurgents, would provide an additional US$250 million in food, shelter and other assistance to help people displaced by conflict in tribal areas.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
RSS