ON July 26, 2008 a Cabinet Division notification announced that the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate had been taken out of the prime minister’s establishment and placed under the interior ministry. This decision was rescinded the following day. Ten days later it was brought back to life but only to be held in abeyance.

Al-Qaeda's violent methods and tactics have been coming under mounting criticism this year from Islamist scholars who once supported it, says Frank Gardner, BBC security Correspondent.

Al-Qaeda can be defeated if the US relies less on force and more on intelligence and policing to find its leaders, a leading US think-tank says.

Increasingly worried about the threat from militant groups inside Pakistan, the US is trying to develop a comprehensive approach to tackling the security challenges this poses to Afghanistan, coalition forces there and, potentially, to the US itself., reports Kim Ghattas, BBC News, Washington.

The Taleban were routed earlier this year when the army was brought in. And now the new provincial government has signed a peace deal with them, promising to release prisoners and gradually pull back the army in exchange for an end to attacks and intimidation.

The US has given its clearest support yet for the new Pakistani government's efforts to strike a deal with militants.

PESHAWAR: At least 37 people, including 30 militants and seven security personnel, were killed and several others injured in continued clashes between the security forces and the militants in the troubled Bajaur Agency on Friday.

BAGHDAD - From the slaughter of children to edicts against suggestively shaped vegetables, al Qaeda's brutality and its imposition of severe Islamic laws have been crucial to its decline in Iraq. Its enforcement of a severe form of Sunni Islam in areas it controlled made everyday life miserable, sapping support among the people for its campaign against U.S. and Iraqi forces. 

"I saw them slaughter a nine-year old boy like a sheep because his family didn't pledge allegiance to them," said Sheikh Hameed al-Hayyes, an influential Sunni tribal leader from the former al Qaeda stronghold of Anbar province in Iraq's west. (Reuters)

WASHINGTON — Top Bush administration officials are urging the president to direct U.S. troops in Afghanistan to be more aggressive in pursuing militants into Pakistan on foot as part of a proposed radical shift in its regional counterterrorism strategy, The Associated Press has learned. By Pamela Hess and Matthew Lee - The Associated Press

There is wide acclaim today among Indian strategic analysts and diplomatic editors that New Delhi has scored a major diplomatic victory in Afghanistan and that its "influence" in Kabul has "peaked". This victory has come on the back of Washington's strategic pro-India tilt and, in the period since end-2001 to date, India's earmarking of a staggering US$1.2 billion as assistance for Afghan "reconstruction", says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar who was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service.

The Pakistani government has ordered major military offensives against the Islamist groups in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA), which are allegedly assisting the insurgency against US and NATO forces over the border in Afghanistan. The operations follow the visit to Washington by Prime Minister Yousuf Rusa Gilani last month, during which the Bush administration demanded a crackdown

The Bush Regime with its comic huffings and puffings is unaware that it has made itself the laughing stock of the world, a comedy version of the Third Reich. By Paul Craig Roberts, Vdare.com & Mary Shaw, Countercurrents.org

The F.B.I. seems convinced that it has finally solved the long-festering case of who mailed the anthrax letters that killed five people in 2001. Yet its description of the evidence pointing to a mentally disturbed Army bioweapons expert as the sole culprit leaves us uncertain about whether investigators have pulled off a brilliant coup after a bumbling start, or are prematurely declaring victory, despite a lack of hard, incontrovertible proof.

NEW YORK -- The almost forgotten war in Afghanistan, that was supposed to have been won in 2001, has roared back to life with a vengeance. More American soldiers are now dying in Afghanistan than Iraq.  As resistance to the US-led occupation of Afghanistan intensifies, the increasingly frustrated Bush administration is venting its anger against Pakistan and its military intelligence agency, Inter-Service Intelligence, better known as ISI, writes renowned syndicated columnist Eric Margolis.

KHAR, Pakistan - At least 30 militants and seven Pakistani paramilitary troops died in clashes near the Afghan border, where helicopter gunships and mortars pounded insurgent hide-outs Friday, officials and residents said.

By Habib Khan, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS