All Blog Posts from World Watch

Pakistani officials reacted angrily Thursday night to U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s remarks earlier in the day in which she said, she found it "hard to believe" that no one in Pakistan’s government, including the country’s "military security establishment," knew where al Qaeda leaders were hiding.

Left: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is escorted by Pakistani Rangers at the Iqbal Memorial in Lahore, Pakistan, Oct. 29, 2009. Clinton is on a three-day state visit to Pakistan.

The controversy could overshadow Clinton’s first visit to the country as Secretary of State, especially as her remarks will be seen questioning the sincerity of the influential military, Pakistani officials said.

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Pakistan's influential army on Wednesday came out in a rare public criticism of a recent U.S. aid bill to the country, citing its "serious concern" on provisions which have prompted a wave of criticism from hardcore Pakistani nationalists.

The controversy has erupted just as U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to finalize a plan for stabilizing Afghanistan, Pakistan’s next door neighbor, where an insurgency led by the Taliban and supported by al Qaeda has gathered momentum in the past year, causing a growing number of U.S. and NATO military casualties.

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Hundreds of hardcore Arab fighters loyal to al Qaeda have fled the Afghanistan-Pakistan region this year, heading mainly to Yemen to bolster an Islamist insurgency targeting oil-rich Saudi Arabia, according to Arab, Pakistani and Western officials who spoke to CBS News.

The implications of such a buildup in Yemen are profound not only for the stability of Saudi Arabia — the birthplace of Islam and home to the holiest of Islamic shrines — but for the world's dependence upon a continued flow of petroleum from the largest known oil reserves.

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Pakistan’s army may require months to prepare for a new military offensive against the Taliban in a restive region along the country’s unsettled border with Afghanistan, a senior Pakistani general on Tuesday told President Obama’s envoy for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region according to senior Pakistani officials.

Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmed, a widely respected army commander, met with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Mr. Obama's envoy, to brief him on Pakistan’s northwest frontier province, specifically the areas at the center of Taliban activity.

It is this region which is of the most interest to the U.S. as Afghanistan heads in to Thursday’s presidential elections. In the past, U.S. officials have complained about Taliban militants crossing the border with relative ease to attack Afghan and western troops in Afghanistan before returning to Pakistan’s soil to reorganize.

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U.S. president Barack Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan proclaimed Monday that the Taliban has failed in its attempt to derail this Thursday’s crucial presidential election, which is widely seen as an essential step to lay the basis for a U.S.-supported democratic framework in the central Asian country.

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who is currently in Pakistan to discuss a host of issues including security affairs related to blocking the advance of the Taliban in the Pak-Afghan region, said the Taliban appeared to be "throwing everything they have into this current effort to disrupt the elections" though without success.

Speaking to a small group of journalists, Holbrooke said a recent escalation in casualties across Afghanistan was part of a "ferocious offensive by the Taliban, designed to kill the elections. Their goal is to prevent the elections and they have failed in that."

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Another suspected U.S. missile strike in Pakistan has killed some suspected high-ranking members of the Taliban. The attack comes on the heels of another strike which officials insist took out the militant group's chief last week.

The question is, if the leader is dead, and reports of bloody in-fighting to replace him are accurate, what happens next?

A former Pakistani government cabinet member warns that dealing with a unified Taliban movement may actually be easier than the alternative in the factitious region.

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Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, on Wednesday received complaints from Pakistan’s leaders over Taliban militants being driven into the country following recent American military action in southern Afghanistan, senior Pakistani government officials said.

“In meetings between Holbrooke and our leaders, this matter came up as a priority issue,” said one senior Pakistani official who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity.

Ambassador Abdul Basit, spokesman for Pakistan’s foreign ministry, confirmed that the concerns were conveyed, indicating an unusual case of some friction in another close relationship built between the two countries in the war on terror. “I can confirm that this is a continuing concern for us and we have conveyed this concern again to Ambassador Holbrooke,” Basit told CBS News.

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Pakistan's three-week-old military advance into the Waziristan region along the Afghan border has made "serious inroads against the Taliban militants, but the danger of retaliation remains high," a senior Western diplomat in Islamabad warned on Thursday.

A day after U.S. national security adviser James Jones arrived in Pakistan for talks with civilian and military officials, analysts said the Pakistan' military's advance into Waziristan was the strongest push by the country since it joined the U.S.-led war against Islamic militants.

"We have had unprecedented public support in these operations. Pakistanis were just too tired of the Taliban and wanted their elimination," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told CBS News.

Government officials and Western diplomats warn, however, that it's now vital for the campaign against the Taliban to succeed in targeting Baitullah Mehsud, the Waziristan-based Taliban militant who heads the Paksitani branch of the extremist group.

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In sizzling tropical temperatures of more than 36 degrees Celsius (roughly 97 degrees Fahrenheit), a small group of journalists from western news organizations, including CBS News were taken to Buner under military escort for a first-hand account of a region once at the center of a Taliban promise to be turned in to an Islamic state where harsh punishments would be routinely enforced.

"The Taliban hoped to turn the town of Ambela in to a graveyard for the security forces. We ended up making Ambela a graveyard for the Taliban," said Colonel Naseer Janjua.

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Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari on Friday urged Pakistanis to prepare for a long-term presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in contrast to Washington’s quick withdrawal from supporting the central Asian country after the 1989 retreat of troops from the former Soviet Union.

Mr. Zardari’s comments to a small group of journalists representing news organizations including CBS News, were his first public remarks on issues related to the fight against militancy in Pakistan since the military attacked Taliban militants in the northern Swat valley earlier this month.

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