Afghan Border

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - As U.S. frustration with Pakistan's six-month blockade of Afghanistan-bound supplies became painfully apparent Monday at the NATO summit in Chicago, Pakistanis are growing worried that their government's negotiating strategy could cost their country millions of dollars in American aid and jeopardize its prospects for a voice in Afghanistan's postwar future. For weeks, U.S. and Pakistani officials have been negotiating a new set of transit fees that would pave the way for the reopening of routes that NATO convoys used to ferry fuel and nonlethal supplies from the southern port of Karachi to the Afghan border.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - As U.S. frustration with Pakistan's six-month blockade of Afghanistan-bound supplies became painfully apparent Monday at the NATO summit in Chicago, Pakistanis are growing worried that their government's negotiating strategy could cost their country millions of dollars in American aid and jeopardize its prospects for a voice in Afghanistan's postwar future. For weeks, U.S. and Pakistani officials have been negotiating a new set of transit fees that would pave the way for the reopening of routes that NATO convoys used to ferry fuel and nonlethal supplies from the southern port of Karachi to the Afghan border.

A suicide bombing destroyed a mosque in Pakistan near the Afghan border Friday, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 100, officials and witnesses said. Scores of people were missing in the rubble. The attack, near the town of Jamrud in the Khyber tribal area, came on the holiest day of the Muslim week, as the mosque was packed with worshipers. In the aftermath of the blast, prayer caps, cellphones and sandals lay scattered on the rocky ground.

The death squad shows up in uniform: black masks and tunics with the name of the group, Khorasan Mujahedin, scrawled across the back in Urdu. Pulling up in caravans of Toyota Corolla hatchbacks, dozens of them seal off mud-hut villages near the Afghan border, and then scour markets and homes in search of tribesmen they suspect of helping to identify targets for the armed U.S. drones that routinely buzz overhead. Once they've snatched their suspect, they don't speed off, villagers say. Instead, the caravan leaves slowly, a trademark gesture meant to convey that they expect no retaliation.

Pakistani state television said a missile attack near the Afghan border killed six people today. It said the missiles hit Azam Warsak village in South Waziristan. It didn't identify the victims or its source, or say who fired the missiles. But an intelligence official, who declined to be identified, said the dead were three foreigners and three local tribesmen. Residents said they heard the sound of a drone aircraft, suggesting the missile may have been fired by a U.S.-controlled unmanned Predator.

The Soviets have launched military operations to wipe out settlements in northern Afghanistan near their border in retaliation for Muslim rebel attacks on Soviet territory, a Western diplomat said Tuesday. The diplomat, speaking on the condition he not be identified, also reported heavy fighting last week in at least four other provinces. The information could not be verified independently.

More than 200,000 soldiers will participate in military maneuvers late this month near the border with Afghanistan, Iranian television reported Saturday. The maneuvers, which would be the second such show of force in less than a month, follow an admission by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers that its soldiers killed nine Iranian diplomats last month after seizing a rebel stronghold. Iranian authorities have taken an increasingly firm tone toward the Taliban, which controls about 90% of Afghanistan.

The United States is considering selling sophisticated early warning planes to Pakistan and temporarily sending U.S. planes to patrol near the tense border with Afghanistan, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Wednesday. President Zia ul-Haq said in an interview that he wants the airborne warning systems, as well as the temporary help from the U.S. Air Force.

The death squad shows up in uniform: black masks and tunics with the name of the group, Khorasan Mujahedin, scrawled across the back in Urdu. Pulling up in caravans of Toyota Corolla hatchbacks, dozens of them seal off mud-hut villages near the Afghan border, and then scour markets and homes in search of tribesmen they suspect of helping to identify targets for the armed U.S. drones that routinely buzz overhead. Once they've snatched their suspect, they don't speed off, villagers say. Instead, the caravan leaves slowly, a trademark gesture meant to convey that they expect no retaliation.

Fearing refugees and unrest on its western fringe, China has sealed off its tiny border with Afghanistan, a state-run newspaper reported here Wednesday. The move, which took place Monday, followed similar action by Pakistan and Iran, other neighbors of Afghanistan that have closed off their borders to a growing tide of Afghan refugees fleeing famine, civil war and U.S.-led airstrikes in their homeland.

Pakistan and the United States have been here before: a crisis followed by saber rattling, recriminations — and moves behind the scenes to patch things up. This time feels different. The rage coursing through Pakistani society over the Nov. 26 airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers suggests there may be permanent damage to a relationship already scarred this year by the killing of two Pakistani men by a CIA contractor, and by the U.S. commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Allegations that a NATO attack killed 24 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border Saturday dealt a serious blow to already tense relations between Washington and Islamabad at a time when the U.S. needs Pakistan's cooperation in engineering a peaceful resolution to the 10-year war in Afghanistan. If confirmed, the NATO helicopter and fighter jet attack would be the deadliest ever involving Pakistani security forces. In response, Pakistan shut down crucial border crossings used by convoys delivering supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan and gave the U.S. 15 days to vacate an air base in southern Pakistan that in the past had been suspected as a launchpad for CIA drone attacks.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry on Sunday strongly rejected claims that the nation's premier spy agency was involved in the assassination of Afghanistan's chief negotiator with the Taliban. Afghan and U.S. officials have been increasing pressure on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, to sever its ties with the Haqqani network, an affiliate of the Afghan Taliban regarded by Washington as the most dangerous security threat to U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistani political leaders meeting Thursday in the capital denounced U.S. allegations that the country's premier spy agency assisted insurgents in attacking American targets in Afghanistan, but also stressed the need to keep lines of communication open with Washington. The meeting of more than 50 politicians from a broad spectrum of parties, along with military and intelligence chiefs, was meant to convey Pakistan's unity amid fear that the United States will attack tribal areas along the Afghan border where Afghan Taliban militants maintain strongholds.

A decade ago, Peshawar's bomb squad had it pretty easy. Occasionally, one of its 20 members would be dispatched to a cornfield to defuse a mine planted by a villager who was feuding with his neighbor. Bombs were small and crude; the only tools an officer needed were pliers and a roll of electrical tape. Because their budget was minuscule, the officers traveled by taxi. Today, the squad careens through week after week of carnage and peril in this volatile city near the Afghan border.

A suicide bomber at a mosque jammed with worshipers killed at least 40 people and injured 100 Friday in Pakistan's restive tribal region along the Afghan border, one of the deadliest attacks in recent weeks in the country. At least 400 people were in the mosque near the town of Jamrud in the Khyber tribal district when the bomber walked in and detonated his explosives, police and witnesses said. Khyber, the gateway to Afghanistan for NATO supply trucks, remains a stronghold for Taliban militants fighting the U.S.-allied Pakistani government.

A suicide bomber dressed in an all-enveloping burka struck a crowded food distribution center in Pakistan's volatile tribal region Saturday, killing at least 42 people and injuring more than 60 others, officials said. The attack in the town of Khar, the administrative center of the Bajaur tribal area, came amid ongoing fighting between Pakistan security forces and insurgents in the region bordering Afghanistan. A major clash in the neighboring Mohmand tribal area about 24 hours earlier had left 11 troops and about two dozen militants dead.

A coordinated attack consisting of a remote-controlled bomb and a female suicide bomber killed at least six people Thursday in the volatile northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, ending a stretch of relative calm there. The blasts occurred at a police checkpoint in the city of 1.4 million people on the edge of Pakistan's tribal belt along the Afghan border, where Taliban militants and their allies maintain strongholds. Plagued by scores of suicide bomb attacks in recent years, Peshawar recently has experienced a lull in militant violence.

Al Qaeda vowed to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden with retaliation against the U.S. "soon," in a warning that the terrorist network posted this week on militant websites. In confirming the death of its leader in a statement dated Tuesday, Al Qaeda urged Muslims to not stray from the path of armed struggle against the United States. The terrorist network said it would soon release an audio message made by Bin Laden a week before his death in which he passes along "advice and guidance.