Date Incidents 26th February A two feet long piece of rail track, linking Quetta with the rest of the country, was blown up by unidentified persons in Sariab area of the provincial capital. Unidentified men armed with sophisticated weapons attacked and injured two security personnel in Tuba Nokhani area of Dera Bugti district of Balochistan. All the cases filed against the Baloch leaders, Barahamdagh Bugti, Harbiyar Marri and Akhtar Mengal, have been quashed. Mahazullah, another Baloch missing person, reached home in Nushki, Balochistan. Five activists of banned militant organization Lashkar-i-Islam (LI) were killed and their several hideouts were demolished, when gun ship helicopter shelled the area in Tirrah Valley in Khyber Agency (Federally Administered Tribal Areas). The chief of kidnapping squad, Meen Asghar was killed when a mortar shell hit a hideout of militants in Speen Drand area of Tirrah Valley in Khyber Agency. Two children and two women were killed when the house of Saifoor Khan was hit by a mortar shell in Tirrah Valley in Khyber Agency. Political administration under the territorial responsibility clause of Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) held 21 members of Mangal tribe in Kurram Agency, after militants fired rockets on Piwar area near the Afghan border. According to the officials, the tribesmen would remain in custody till the culprits were not handed over to the local authorities. Another person, Saleem Khan, was added to the list of `missing persons` after he was abducted from Gulshanabad area in Rawalpindi, by what his family alleged personnel of law enforcement agencies, and an FIR was registered. After the multiple blasts on the Pakistan Railways (PR) track in Sindh, allegedly carried out by terrorists, security at stations and inside trains has been beefed up. FIRs have been registered at different railway police stations against unidentified persons in eight districts of Sindh, under the anti terror law, in the wake of more than a dozen...

The Lisbon Summit of 2010 had set 2014 as the deadline for the withdrawal of foreign security forces from Afghanistan. But US defence secretary, Leon Panetta stated on February 1, 2012 that US would end its combat role in Afghanistan by the mid of 2013 and '---switch to an advice and assist role with the Afghan army.'[1] Though later on, he tried to rephrase his message through spin of words, yet, the jest of the matter remains unchanged; the financial crisis at home is dictating the US administration to work out cheaper engagement options beyond 2013. Moreover, the latest National Intelligence Estimate, a compilation based on the input from 16 US intelligence agencies including the CIA, suggests that '--- war in Afghanistan is mired in a stalemate---.'[2] The report also warns that security gains, achieved as a result of US troops– surge are severely jeopardized by the lack of progress at socio-economic fronts and blessing of safe havens in Pakistan tribal region for the Taliban.[3] Against this backdrop, the US has opened up its arms to embrace Taliban. In an interview with Newsweek on December 19, 2011, US vice president, Joe Biden astoundingly underlined that '--- the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests.'[4] This was clearly indicative of what Washington was upto. And it was most probably to the context of already existing contacts between US and Taliban representatives, which eventually culminated in the establishment of a Taliban representative office in Qatar in January 2012. Biden statement was in fact the precursor to initial confidence-building talks between the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman and the Taliban representatives led by Tayyab Agha, stationed in the tiny Gulf state of Qatar.. It is important to note here that US kept the Afghan President Hamid...

Geo-strategic location Drone attacks Foreign Involvement Military operations Policy on Kashmir and Afghanistan Poverty Unemployment Illiteracy Distribution of resources among provinces Deficient rule of Law Governance issues Role of Frontier Corps in Balochistan Geo-strategic location Pakistan crucial geo-strategic positioning ´ protracted tensions with India over Kashmir, long history of strained relations with Afghanistan, and its proximity to Iran, which has tensions with the United States, and the increasing US focus on the region ´ can be termed as a major conflict driver. In the wake of the strategic location of Afghanistan, having proximity to China, Russia and the Central Asian states, the United States wants to keep foot in Afghanistan, in order to have an eye on the activities of China and Russia. Being a neighbor, Pakistan has the highest stakes in Afghanistan, and thus finds itself at the center of a complex geo-strategic scuffle going on in the region. As many actors are busy in the game in this part of the world, it becomes difficult for Pakistan to safeguard its regional interests in addition to maintaining peace and stability within its boundaries. Drone attacks Drone attacks, carried out by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), also serve as a driving factor behind the militant upsurge. Right-wing religio-political parties and sympathizers of al Qaeda and Taliban condemn the drone attacks as a 'violation of Pakistani sovereignty', and therefore also use them to justify their opposition to the military's counter-insurgency efforts. It increases anger and feeling of revenge even in the local population of the drone hit areas, resulting in an increase in terrorist acts against the government and the military forces of the country. According to the data compiled by The Long War Journal, US carried out 64 drone strikes in Pak-Afghan bordering region (South and North Waziristan) during 2011, which resulted in the killing of 405 suspected terrorists...