Carlotta Gall

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  Syria, Migrant Crisis Coverage Wins War Correspondents Prizes

  France's prestigious Bayeux-Calvados award for war correspondents on Saturday honoured journalists covering conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, as well as Europe's worst migrant crisis since World War II.

• For Pakistan, deep ties to militant network may trump US pressure

  Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other senior administration officials visited Pakistan in October to demand that Pakistan's spy agency either deliver the Haqqani network, a virulent part of the insurgency fighting American forces in Afghanistan, to the negotiating table or help fight them in their stronghold in Pakistan's rugged triba...

• Pakistanis tied to 2007 border ambush on Americans

  A group of American military officers and Afghan officials had just finished a five-hour meeting with their Pakistani hosts in a village schoolhouse settling a border dispute when they were ambushed - by the Pakistanis.

• Seized phone offers clues to Osama bin Laden's Pakistani links

  The cellphone of Osama bin Laden's trusted courier, which was recovered in the raid that killed both men in Pakistan last month, contained contacts to a militant group that is a longtime asset of Pakistan's intelligence agency, senior American officials who have been briefed on the findings say.The discovery indicates that Bin Laden used the group,...

• Ilyas Kashmiri killed in US drone strike in Pakistan: Reports

  One of Pakistan's most wanted militant commanders, Ilyas Kashmiri, has been killed in an American drone strike in the tribal territory of South Waziristan, residents and a militant member in the area said on Saturday. Officials said they were also aware of the reports but could not confirm his death.Mr. Kashmiri was considered one of the most dange...

• Often threatened, Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad found dead after abduction

  A well-known Pakistani journalist has been found dead after being abducted over the weekend in an upscale neighbourhood of the capital and receiving repeated threats from Pakistan's premier intelligence agency. The journalist, Syed Saleem Shehzad, 41, wrote predominantly about security and terrorism issues for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online ...

• Is one-eyed Taliban leader Mullah Omar dead? Taliban says no

  The Taliban said on Monday that its leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, is alive and "living in a safe place," disputing reports coming from inside Afghanistan's intelligence agency indicating that he had been killed in Pakistan two days ago. A senior Afghan official said the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, had the info...

• US still waits for access to Osama bin Laden's widows

  Pakistan has not yet allowed American investigators access to the three widows of Osama bin Laden taken into Pakistani custody after the raid that killed the leader of Al Qaeda, nor shared their own interrogation report, a Pakistani security official said Tuesday. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with the rules of his ...

• It's absurd, say locals on Osama's stay in this Pak village

  Chak Shah Muhammad, a small farming village of low brick houses, poultry farms and wheat fields, is reportedly one of Osama bin Laden's last hiding places. Bin Laden's youngest wife, who was detained after the raid that killed her husband, told Pakistani investigators that they lived for more than five years in their last home, in Abbottabad, and b...

• Osama's secret life in a diminished, dark world

  The world's most wanted terrorist lived his last five years imprisoned behind the barbed wire and high walls of his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan, his days consumed by dark arts and domesticity. American officials believe that Osama bin Laden spent many hours on the computer, relying on couriers to bring him thumb drives packed with information from...

• The men who sheltered Osama in Abbottabad

  In his last days, Osama bin Laden was not surrounded by a circle of heavily armed Arab bodyguards or mujahedeen who had fought with him in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. Rather, he relied on two Pakistanis, one of whom, according to American officials, was his most trusted courier. Both men died with him in the American raid on their compoun...

• Amid skepticism, Pakistan calculates its response

  The discovery of Osama bin Laden by American commandos close to the Pakistani capital dealt a devastating blow to the Pakistani military and its intelligence service and set off a fevered round of speculation about how Bin Laden could have been hiding virtually under their noses in a small city that housed military garrisons. It was amply clear on ...

• Blood money paid, Raymond Davis released

  American officials won the release on Wednesday of a CIA contractor under investigation for two counts of murder in Pakistan after they spent more than six hours with the families of the victims, the lawyer for the families Asad Manzoor Butt said.The families accepted a payment of money, ending the case, Mr Butt said. He did not specify the amount....

• How this man was kidnapped, tortured by Al Qaida

  Abdul Khaliq Farahi's kidnappers attacked fast, smashing into his car to stall it, seizing him and executing his driver as he tried to make a phone call. Within seconds, they were driving away to a hide-out just 20 minutes away. It was Sept. 23, 2008, and Mr. Farahi, the Afghan consul general in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar, was driving ho...

• Midlevel Taliban admit to a rift with top leaders

  Recent defeats and general weariness after nine years of war are creating fissures between the Taliban's top leadership based in Pakistan and midlevel field commanders, who have borne the brunt of the fighting and are reluctant to return to some battle zones, Taliban members said in interviews. After suffering defeats with the influx of thousands o...