Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, will be the chief guest at a military parade celebrating Pakistan's national day on March 23. Ironically, his hosts will be the same military that backed the Taliban militia during its years of power in Afghanistan.
On July 15, after receiving a death sentence in a Hyderabad court for murdering American reporter Daniel Pearl, a defiant Omar Sheikh made a threat against the life of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president. The threat comes at a moment when the military government's campaign to give the army a permanent political role enjoys critically low public support.
Sources believe that many IMU members are living under the protection of Pakistanis sympathetic to their cause in various parts of Pakistan, and in Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir.
According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), pupils attended about 3,000 schools across the country. Overall, there are about 4.5 million children of school age in the country.
Afghanistan interim leader Hamid Karzai visited India on February 27 on a mission to attract additional foreign investment for his country's reconstruction. Both Karzai and his Indian counterpart, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, sought to dispel the impression that closer Afghan-Indian ties would pose a threat to Pakistan.
Afghanistan's interim government received an important boost February 8, when Pakistan announced its full support for Afghan reconstruction efforts. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf endorsed the work of the Afghan interim government during talks in Islamabad with Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's provisional president.
A group of former Taliban officials in Islamabad recently announced the revival of the long-dormant group, Khudamul Furqan Jamiat, or Society of Servants of the Holy Koran. While the group has offered its support for the new Afghan government, it is unclear whether the KFJ will be a constructive or destabilizing force in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Pakistan's key stock prices were expected to surge starting this week in a sign of approval of the country's debt rescheduling agreement struck recently with the Paris Club of creditors, financial analysts told IRIN on Thursday.
Hamid Karzai has traveled a long distance politically over a relatively short period of time to emerge as the leader of Afghanistan's provisional council. In the 1980s, Afghan warlords and Western diplomats considered Karzai a lightweight - an intellectual who was a voracious reader and a snazzy dresser.
