Taliban, Pakistani government leaders hold talks amid growing calls for Afghan ceasefire theglobeandmail.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theglobeandmail.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Kathy Gannon
In this photo provided by Pakistan s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, right, and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of a Taliban political team, arrive with other members of their delegations at the Foreign Ministry for talks, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2020. A Taliban team, led by the co-founder of the insurgent movement, arrived for talks with Pakistani government leaders amid growing calls for a reduction in violence in neighboring Afghanistan. (Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs via AP) December 16, 2020 - 9:34 AM
ISLAMABAD - A Taliban team, led by the co-founder of the insurgent movement, arrived Wednesday in Islamabad for talks with Pakistani government leaders amid growing calls for a reduction in violence in neighbouring Afghanistan.
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Few were surprised when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched a war of words against his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, following October s brutal murder of the Parisian schoolteacher Samuel Paty after he showed his class controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. The world has largely reconciled itself to Ankara’s abrasive brand of politics. Yet Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s subtler echo of Mr Erdogan’s words over the past several weeks has raised eyebrows, as did his government’s seeming accommodation of clerical protests on Islamabad’s streets, demanding a boycott of French goods.
The general perception of Mr Khan as a cosmopolitan leader is one of the reasons for this surprise. But as the anthropologist Pnina Werbner noted in her 1995 study of the cricketer-turned-philanthropist-turned-politician, Mr Khan is not someone who attempts to reconcile different worlds. Instead, he occupies many at once. The image of a clean-shaven E
Pakistan’s ‘disappeared’ suffer kidnap, torture, murder
Despite promises while a member of the opposition to end enforced abduction by security forces, numbers have increased under Imran Khan’s government
By Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Shah Meer Baloch / The Guardian, QUETTA, Pakistan
The abductors moved with an ease and stealth that suggested they had done this before. As Qayyum (his name has been changed to protect his identity) and his family slept, 12 masked and uniformed soldiers used a ladder to scale the gate of the house, in an affluent neighborhood of the Pakistani city of Quetta in Balochistan.
The family woke as they burst in, but the officers silenced them with an order: Don’t scream or we will beat you. One demanded Qayyum’s national identity card.
Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan’s president has passed an ordinance aimed at ensuring rape trials are completed within four months, while also setting up a national sex offender registry.
“The President of the country Dr Arif Alvi has approved the Anti-Rape Ordinance 2020,” said a statement from his office on Tuesday, adding that the ordinance will remain valid for 120 days until it needs to be ratified by parliament.
“The ordinance will help expedite [legal] cases of sexual abuse against women and children.”
The new ordinance will set up special courts to try cases of sexual abuse of women and children, requiring all proceedings to be completed within four months.