Recently in Pakistan Category

• Pakistan's battle with insurgents is far from over, despite routing the Taliban from its lair

rom Abu Muqawama reported by Amil Khan

By Syed Saleem Shahzad in Karachi

Rendezvous with the Taliban
The traffic moves slowly on the main arteries of the southern port city of Karachi on weekend evenings as people search out roadside restaurants; their parked cars line the streets, clogging byways that are already overflowing with bustling pedestrians.

 I make it to my appointed meeting place at 9pm. Within a minute a brand-new silver-grey imported Japanese car draws to a halt in front of me. I immediately recognize the man in the front passenger's seat; I interviewed him several years ago. He had a senior position in the Taliban government until it was forced out by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. Abdullah is about 50 years old, but looks much older.

I slip into the back seat behind Abdullah and exchange greetings.

• Mumbai planner's links with the US intelligence to remain under wraps
  
• Indian officials "investigating CIA double-agent claim."
  
• US backtracks on promise to allow Indians interrogate US suspect
  

CIA links to David Coleman Headley, the American facing trial for planning the the terrorist strike in Mumbai in November 2008 in which 166 people were murdered, will remain secret at the insistence of the Obama administration. 

India's Home Ministry officials are now investigating whether the Pakistani-American terror suspect David Coleman Headley was in fact a CIA  "double agent."

Headley's arrest in Chicago last October was initially seen as a breakthrough that would expose how Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Pakistan-based terrorist organization operated in India. Instead the Obama administration has made strenuous efforts to cover up the intelligence details of the case, causing uproar in India.

THE sprawling and often chaotic city of Karachi is poised to host its first literary festival. Mohammed Hanif, the author of the critically acclaimed A Case of Exploding Mangoes, will headline an international festival showcasing Urdu and English writers.