The influential governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, Salman Taseer, has died after being shot by one of his bodyguards in the capital, Islamabad.
Mr Taseer, a senior member of the Pakistan People's Party, was shot when getting into his car at a market.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the guard had told police that he killed Mr Taseer because of the governor's opposition to Pakistan's blasphemy law.
Many were angered by his defence of a Christian woman sentenced to death.
He was a very good friend, a politician and a businessman. He was a national hero”
Rehman MalikPakistani Interior Minister
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani declared three days of national mourning and ordered flags lowered to half-mast. He also ordered an immediate inquiry into Mr Taseer's killing and appealed for calm.
PPP supporters wept and shouted in anger as the governor's coffin was put into an ambulance and driven away from a hospital in Islamabad.
Dozens took to the streets in Punjab's capital, Lahore, burning tyres and blocking traffic. There were also protests in the central city of Multan.
Mr Taseer, 66, was shot repeatedly at close range by his Elite Force guard as he got into his car at the Kohsar Market, a shopping centre in Islamabad popular with Westerners and wealthy Pakistanis, Mr Malik said.
Salman Taseer was politically close to the president
"The governor fell down and the man who fired at him threw down his gun and raised both hands," Ali Imran, a witness, told the Reuters news agency.
One doctor told the Associated Press that Mr Taseer was shot 26 times. The suspect was carrying a sub-machine gun.
Unconfirmed reports say up to five other people were also wounded when Mr Taseer's other bodyguards opened fire following the attack.
It is believed Mr Taseer had been returning to his car after meeting a friend for lunch at a nearby restaurant. He had previously been to the presidential palace, the Senate and the interior ministry.
The assassination of Salman Taseer once again highlights Pakistan's unending troubles. He was a high-profile leader of the PPP, and was governor of the country's largest province, Punjab. His death has left the country in shock at a time when it faces an imminent political crisis.
On the face of it, the assassination appears to be an individual act of a police guard in Mr Taseer's security detail. The guard has reportedly said he killed him because Mr Taseer publicly opposed the blasphemy law.
But the timing of the assassination holds deeper implications for the government, which is struggling to shore up political support to maintain a majority in the parliament. Whether it gets this support will be decided by one of two major political forces of Punjab - the opposition PML-N and the PML-Q parties. The assassination has the potential to upset these negotiations.
At a news conference, Mr Malik said: "The police guard who killed him says he did this because Mr Taseer recently defended the proposed amendments to the blasphemy law."
"This is what he told the police after surrendering himself."
"But we are investigating to find out whether it was his individual act or whether someone else was also behind it," he added.
Mr Taseer made headlines recently by appealing for the pardon of a Christian woman,Asia Bibi, who had been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad.
Friends of the governor say he knew he was risking his life by speaking out.
"I was under huge pressure sure 2 cow down b4 rightist pressure on blasphemy. Refused. Even if I'm the last man standing," he wrote on Twitter on 31 December.
Asked earlier that month by the BBC Urdu Service about fatwas, or religious decrees, issued against him in Pakistan, he criticised the "illiterate" clerics responsible.
"They issued fatwas against Benazir [Bhutto] and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto [her father, an executed former president], and even the founder of the nation, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. I do not care about them," he added.
A man identified as the suspected assassin was photographed being driven from the scene
The interior minister later identified the murder suspect as Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri, who he said had escorted the governor from the city of Rawalpindi on Tuesday as he had done on five or six previous occasions.
Mr Qadri was 26 years old and from Barakhao, a town on the outskirts of Islamabad, he added. He was recruited as a police constable, and transferred to the Elite Force after commando training in 2008.
"Salman Taseer is a blasphemer and this is the punishment for a blasphemer," Mr Qadri said in comments broadcast on Dunya television.
Mr Malik said Mr Taseer's Elite Force security detail was provided by the Punjab government, and that its members had been thoroughly screened. However, they have all now been detained and are being questioned.
January 2011 - The governor of Punjab province, Salman Taseer, is shot dead by one of his bodyguards in Islamabad
February 2010 - Gunmen shoot at Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, leader of the Awami Muslim League (AML), in Rawalpindi
September 2009 - Religious Affairs Minister Hamid Saeed Kazmi is wounded and his driver killed in a gun attack in Islamabad
September 2008 – Shots are fired at the motorcade of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani as it travels to Islamabad’s airport
December 2007 - Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is killed in a suicide attack when leaving an election rally in Rawalpindi
"He was a very good friend, a politician and a businessman. He was a national hero," Rehman Malik added.
Human rights workers said Pakistan had been robbed of a rare voice of courage, who championed women's rights and supported minorities.
The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad says Mr Taseer, a close associate of President Asif Ali Zardari, was one of Pakistan's most important political figures and his death will further add to instability in the country.
The PPP-led government is facing a crisis that erupted after its junior coalition partner, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), quit on Sunday. Mr Taseer had said it would survive.
"Prezdnt Zardaris total support of PM has once again silenced rumours of split in PPP top leadership. Govt is here till 2013," was the last tweet he wrote on Tuesday.
Shortly before Mr Taseer's death, the opposition Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, had announced that it would not demand a vote of no confidence in Mr Gilani because to do so would exacerbate instability.
Pakistan suicide bomber was woman dressed in burqa Topic: pakistan, sunita kureishi, bbc n
by Sunita Kureishi, BBC News Analyst, for the BBC's Biodun Iginla
ISLAMABAD – A woman covered in a head-to-foot burqa carried out a suicide bombing that killed more than 40 people in Pakistan, government officials said on Sunday, adding to security challenges confronting the U.S. ally.
Any increased use of women as bombers may complicate efforts by
Pakistani security forces to stem a spreading wave of Islamist suicide attacks because it is harder to spot and search burqa-clad attackers in conservative tribal society.
Saturday's bombing illustrated the resilient ability of militants to stage attacks despite army offensives against them.
The woman blew herself amid a crowd of men, women and children heading toward a food distribution center of the World Food Program in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border.
"Initially there was confusion as to whether the attacker was a man or woman but now we have established that (it) was a woman," senior government official Sohail Ahmed told Reuters.
Government officials in Bajaur said they had recovered the head, burqa and clothes of the bomber.
PREVIOUS WOMAN BOMBER IN 2007
It was the second such attack by a female militant in Pakistan. In the first episode, a woman detonated explosives near a military checkpost in the northwestern city of Peshawar in 2007, but she killed no one except herself.
On Saturday, the woman initially threw hand grenades at people heading toward the food center to receive aid before blowing herself up. Forty-three people were killed and more than 60 were wounded in the attack.
"If militants use more women for such attacks then it is going to be a very huge problem for the security forces," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, an expert on tribal and militant affairs.
"They don't have enough women (in the) police force and even (if) they have policewomen, because of our conservative culture, people don't want their women to be subjected to body searches. It's going to be a big problem."
The attack happened a day after battles between security forces and insurgents in the neighboring Mohmand region that killed 11 soldiers and 40 insurgents, the government said. Militants disputed the official death toll.
The Pakistani army has conducted a series of offensives in its lawless Pashtun tribal belt, known as the global hub of Islamist militants, in recent years, killing hundreds of militants and destroying many of their bastions.
But the insurgents have still been able to strike back and have kept up a campaign of suicide and bombattacks across the country, killing hundreds of people.
"The militants' strongholds have been smashed...they are on the run and that's why they are now hitting soft targets," Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told reporters in comments broadcast by local television.
Saturday's attack targeted members of Salarzai, a major pro-government tribe backing army offensives against militants. Salarzai tribesmen have been a key role in mobilizing lashkars, or tribal militia, to back government military operations.
A Taliban spokesman, Azam Tariq, claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, saying that it was retaliation for "Salarzai activities against the Taliban."
by Sunita Kureishi, BBC News Analyst, for the BBC's Biodun Iginla
At least 11 soldiers and 24 militants have been killed in clashes near the Afghan border in north-west Pakistan, officials have said.
About 150 Taliban launched co-ordinated attacks against five Frontier Corps checkpoints in Mohmand tribal region, they said.
The Taliban said only two of their fighters had died.
The military has launched offensives in the region in recent months, but insurgent attacks have continued.
Amjad Ali Khan, administrator of Mohmand, confirmed that 11 soldiers had been killed following initial reports that three had died. He said 12 other soldiers had been injured.
Mr Khan said the Frontier Corps paramilitary troops had "repulsed" the militant attacks in the Baizai area which began at 0200 local time.
"The troops responded with artillery fire and raids by helicopter gunships, killing 24 militants," he said.
"Seven of their bodies are in our possession."
He said that the fighting ended later Friday morning.
However, Sajjad Mohmand, spokesman for the Taliban in Mohmand, told the BBC that only two insurgents had been killed in the clashes.
Pakistan's Mohmand tribal region has long served as a sanctuary for militants operating against US-led troops based across the border in Afghanistan's north-east Kunar province.
Mohmand also shares a border with another volatile Pakistani tribal district, Bajaur, where the Pakistani army conducted a year-long operation against militants in 2008-09.
In 2008, Pakistan launched a clean-up operation in southern and eastern Mohmand to reduce the militant threat to towns and cities such as Peshawar and Charsadda.
But there has been no large-scale operation deeper into the region like the one in Bajaur, or, more recently, South Waziristan and Orakzai.
As a result it has emerged as a haven for militants uprooted from other regions or those active inside Afghan territory.
He said they had captured two soldiers alive and held the bodies of six others.
Security officials have rejected the claim, saying no soldiers are unaccounted for.
Mohmand is a transit point for insurgents crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan and a stronghold of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad says militants are proving that they can still carry out attacks, despite the military campaign against them.
Earlier this month, a twin suicide bomb attack at a government compound in Mohmand's main town of Ghalanai left 43 people dead. Local officials had been meeting tribal elders to discuss forming an anti-Taliban militia at the time of the blasts.
In July, another twin suicide bombing attack, also targeting tribal elders, killed more than 100 people in the village of Yakaghund in Mohmand.
Mohmand is one of seven Pakistani tribal areas.
Pakistan has faced growing pressure from Washington to launch a major ground offensive in the tribal region of North Waziristan, considered a fortress for militants fighting US-led troops in Afghanistan.
Islamabad has denied accusations that it is not doing enough to fight the Taliban in the restive north-west of the country.
It says more than 2,40 Pakistani soldiers have been killed fighting Islamist insurgents since 2002.
Pakistan supported the Taliban regime in Afghanistan from 1996-2001, but later became an ally of the US when it led an invasion in 2001.
Pakistan denies it unmasked CIA station chief Topic: pakistan, sunita kureishi, bbc n
ISLAMABAD
by Sunita Kureishi and Biodun Iginla, BBC News News Pakistan's main spy agency denied Saturday it had unmasked the CIA's station chief in Islamabad, and warned such allegations could damage its already fragile counterterrorism alliance with the United States.
The CIA pulled its top spy out of Pakistan on Thursday amid death threats after his name emerged publicly a few weeks ago from a Pakistani man threatening to sue the CIA over the alleged deaths of his son and brother in a 2009 U.S. missile strike. The attorney involved with the complaint said he learned the name from Pakistani journalists.
But the station chief's outing has spurred questions whether Pakistan'sspy service might have leaked the information. Lawsuits filed last month in New York City in connection with the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, India, also may have raised tensions by naming Pakistan's intelligence chief as a defendant.
The recall of the top American intelligence official in Pakistan comes at a delicate time.
The White House over the past week released the results of a review of progress in the war in neighboring Afghanistan. The report included the conclusion that the existence of safe havens for militants on Pakistan's side of the border remained a major obstacle to defeating the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Pakistan's assistance in clearing those militant hideouts — and providing intelligence to help the U.S. pinpoint targets for its covert, drone-fired missile strikes — is considered crucial. A breakdown in the relationship with Pakistani intelligence could be a major blow to the U.S.
An official with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, its lead spy agency and a powerful force in the country, said Saturday any suggestions it outed the station chief were "a slur."
Such "unfounded stories can create differences between the two organizations," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not cleared to brief the media.
The U.S. lawsuits were filed last month, and the plaintiffs include relatives of victims in the Mumbai attacks, which left 166 people and nine attackers dead. The assault has been blamed on the Pakistani militant groupLashkar-e-Taiba, which is listed as a defendant in the suit.
But they also list the ISI and its chief, Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha. The suits repeat long-standing allegations that the ISI "has long nurtured and used international terrorist groups," including Lashkar.
"Defendant ISI provided critical planning, material support, control and coordination of the attacks," the lawsuits allege in pursuing wrongful death and additional claims against the ISI, Pasha and others.
The lawsuits claim at one point that a safe house in Pakistan used in connection with the attacks was part of the ISI's "Karachi Project" — "an initiative by which anti-Indian groups were tasked and/or supported by the ISI in a surreptitious fashion to engage in acts of international terrorism."
Pakistan has denied any government agency was involved in the attacks in India, its archrival with whom it has fought three wars since 1947. Islamabad has detained seven suspects in the case, but their trials have stalled in the country's slow-moving court system. India has convicted the sole surviving gunman in the attack.
It's unclear how far the U.S. lawsuits will go or how quickly they will move, but being named in such legal documents is an embarrassment to the ISI and Pasha.
"We are in the process of serving all defendants," James Kreindler, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, wrote in an e-mail. "Most have been served, which triggers their obligation to answer."
The Pakistani intelligence official said the CIA has not directly accused the ISI of any wrongdoing in the revelation of the station chief's name.
The station chief in Islamabad operates as a virtual military commander in the U.S. war against al-Qaida and other militant groups hidden along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The chief runs the Predator drone program targeting terrorists and handles some of the CIA's most urgent and sensitive tips.
He also collaborates closely with Pakistani intelligence. The alliance has led to strikes on key militant leaders but has also been marred by spats between the two agencies and ongoing suspicion that the ISI has not fully severed its ties to the Afghan Taliban, which it supported before the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
During the first term of President George W. Bush's administration, Pakistan almost expelled a previous CIA station chief in a dispute about intelligence sharing.
Pakistanis involved in the threatened lawsuit over the missile strikes have held rallies in Islamabad featuring posters bearing the CIA officer's name and urging him to leave the country.
A number of Americans and other Westerners, including a Wall Street Journal correspondent, have had to leave Pakistan or take extra precautions after their names surfaced in press reports as possible spies for the CIA, Israel or India. Some right-wing newspapers have even printed Westerners' addresses or claimed they were Jewish in some articles.
by Sunita Kureishi and Biodun Iginla, BBC News. Sunita reported from Islamabad.
A suicide bomb attack in north-west Pakistan has left at least 40 people dead, local officials have said.
The attack took place at a government compound in the Mohmand Agency as officials met anti-Taliban allies.
Dozens of people have also been hurt in the attack, local media say.
The area borders Afghanistan and is a stronghold of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The military has launched offensives there but insurgent attacks continue on a regular basis.
Journalists killed
The latest attack was carried out by two suicide bombers and targeted a local administration compound in Ghalanai, the main town in Mohmand, about 175km (110 miles) north-west of the capital Islamabad.
More than 100 people were said to be in the compound, where talks were taking place between government officials, tribal elders and local anti-Taliban groups.
One official, Mohammad Khalid Khan, told Associated Press that tribal elders and police officials were among the dead.
At least two journalists were also killed.
About 25 seriously injured people have been taken to Peshawar for hospital treatment.
One of the possible targets of the attack, Mohmand's top political official, Amjad Ali Khan, was not hurt.
A local administration official told the BBC a man on a motorbike drove up to a sitting area at the meeting and detonated his explosives. Seconds later another bomber, also on motorbike, exploded his device at the gate of the compound.
Thousands of people have been killed in al-Qaeda and Taliban attacks across Pakistan since government forces raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad in 2007.
In July, a double suicide bombing in the village of Yakaghund in Mohmand, which also targeted tribal elders, killed more than 100 people.
The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad says the army has carried out limited operations in Mohmand but has focused more thoroughly on the neighbouring Bajaur tribal region.
He says the Taliban in Mohmand are led by Umar Khalid, a little known but powerful commander whose fighters are more active in Afghanistan than Pakistan.
Umar Khalid is said to provide sanctuary to top al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders as they flee operations by the army. These are said to include Hakimullah Mehsud and Ayman al-Zawahiri, our correspondent says.
Pakistan's military says its offensives have disrupted militants in the north-west but analysts say the insurgents often escape.
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Pakistan's first nuclear reactor was established with help from the United States in 1965 during the regime of military dictator Gen Ayub Khan.
Gen Khan's protege and then foreign minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was the driving force behind the programme, which was based at Nilore near Islamabad.
It was set up under the Atoms for Peace programme initiated by President Dwight D Eisenhower.
At the time it was strictly peaceful and intended to help meet Pakistan's civilian energy needs under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
A few years later Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto became prime minister. He launched a nuclear weapons programme in 1974 as India and Pakistan competed in a new South Asian arms race.
Codenamed Project 706, Pakistan's plan to enrich its own uranium was conceived and led by Munir Ahmed Khan, a brilliant US-trained nuclear and electronics engineer.
He was joined a year later by a name that is now synonymous with Pakistan's nuclear programme - Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.
It was Dr Khan - later disgraced for transferring technology to Iran and Libya - who was instrumental in setting up Pakistan's first nuclear enrichment plant at Kahuta near Islamabad.
Project 706 thus became Kahuta Research Laboratories, where enriched uranium for Pakistan's first nuclear weapon was produced.
Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan developed Pakistan's nuclear bomb
Pakistan is believed to have developed a nuclear device by 1984, when Dr Khan alluded to it in an interview with a Western journalist.
Since then Pakistan's nuclear power complex has undergone a rapid expansion.
The organisation in charge is the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), which is headed by a civilian nuclear physicist or engineer.
It operates eight fuel production and enrichment facilities, three mining concerns and one heavy water production facility.
The original bomb was a small uranium device with about the power of those the US dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
It was unwieldy and could only be launched from a bomber specially fitted for the purpose.
But Pakistan has made rapid advances since then - it is now said to have 70-90 weapons in its stockpile.
Many of these have been miniaturised to be mounted on ballistic missiles with ranges of more than 2,000km (1,245 miles), bringing many Indian cities within reach.
China is believed to have played a critical role in Pakistan's nuclear programme, and is said to have helped it manufacture many of its weapons.
Nuclear weapons development and advancement in Pakistan is primarily done by PAEC with Chinese collaboration, reports say.
Western officials believe that long-range missile technology was also acquired from North Korea in the 1990s - in exchange for Pakistani help with its nuclear programme.
Meanwhile, proliferation experts believe Pakistan continues to make rapid strides in the development of uranium enrichment facilities and its weapons development complex.
Work has been proceeding rapidly on the construction and expansion of plants in Chasma and Sihala.
Pakistani engineers, with help from the Chinese, are also said to be in the advance stages of developing MIRV technology for its missiles. This would allow the military to fit several warheads on the same ballistic missile and then launch them at separate targets.
Security
PAEC has hundreds - perhaps a few thousand at most - civilian employees working directly for it. An exact figure is not available. They include scientists and engineers, as well as technicians and other support staff.
Pakistan is thought to have acquired missile technology from North Korea
In all, tens of thousands of security and other personnel are thought to work in Pakistan's nuclear complex.
Because of security concerns all PAEC staff are said to be thoroughly screened by Pakistan's intelligence services.
These have been expanded to include checks on any sort of connection to extremist religious organisations.
Post-9/11, several Pakistanis scientists were arrested for alleged links to al-Qaeda.
While most of them were released after several months of interrogations, additional scrutiny is now given to all serving and prospective employees, intelligence officials say.
Pakistan denies this is under pressure from the US, but concerns from the country's largest investor carry a lot of weight here.
The weapons themselves are then transported and stored by the Strategic Plans division of the army.
In recent times, they have been kept at depots all over the country. Some are said to be near the main air bases, while others are outside the purview of any sort of inquiry.
Pakistan's army remains secretive about the locations of its weapons - although US officials have openly said they believe they are in safe hands.
In the last few years US technical experts are said to have provided training for the Pakistanis on safe nuclear storage procedures and facilities.
The Americans are also believed to have provided $100m (£64m) to be used to enhance the security of Pakistan's nuclear stockpile.
A plane carrying eight people has crashed shortly after taking off from Karachi airport in Pakistan, killing all those on board.
They say it was a Russian-made cargo plane heading to Sudan's capital Khartoum and the crew were Russian.
The jet crashed into buildings that were under construction inside a naval base, close to Jinnah airport.
TV footage showed rescuers fighting a large fire. Reports say there were also casualties on the ground.
There were also reports of explosions.
'Engine on fire'
"It (the plane) took off from Karachi at 0145 (2045 GMT) and after one-and-a-half minutes it crashed," Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Pervez George told the AFP news agency.
My son wasn't asleep and he saw the cockpit on fire and the crash. The plane was in more than two parts. It's totally burnt, it's a wreck”
Ayas Peer MohammedEyewitness
"It was an IL-76 cargo plane. It was going to Khartoum. It had eight people on board," he said.
Unconfirmed reports say that two construction workers on the ground also died in the crash.
The BBC's Shoaib Hasan in Karachi reports that another worker - who was sleeping near the premises - told how he ran for his life when he heard the plane coming. The worker spoke while being treated for injuries in a local hospital.
If the plane had crashed just 500 metres (560 yards) away, it would have hit a much more densely populated area, our correspondent adds.
Rescuers later recovered several bodies from the crash site, reports say.
Witnesses say they saw that one of the plane's engines was on fire, which suggests that the cause of the crash may have been a mechanical failure.
"The plane crashed 800m away from my house. We heard the bang and we rushed out," Ayas Peer Mohammed, a retired brigadier who lives in the naval residential area, told the BBC.
"My son wasn't asleep and he saw the cockpit on fire and the crash. I went to the crash site immediately. Right now the fire vehicles are there and they are trying to extinguish the fire. The plane was in more than two parts. It's totally burnt, it's a wreck, there were many small pieces on fire," he said.
"The plane crashed in an open area very close to the last inhabited building. I think the pilot tried to crash there on purpose," Ayas Peer Mohammed added.
Our correspondent says that the blaze - which was fuelled by thousands of gallons of petrol - is now under control.
The explosion caused by the crash was so powerful that local residents thought it was triggered by a bomb, Karachi police chief Fayyas Leghari was quoted by the AFP as saying.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known, and an investigation is now under way.
The plane was carrying relief aid to Sudan.
Earlier this month, a small passenger plane crashed soon after take-off from Karachi, killing all 21 people on board.
In July, Pakistan's Airblue passenger plane crashed into hills overlooking the capital Islamabad, killing all 152 people on board.
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-- Some can't wait to get out of Afghanistan and some can't wait to see us leave. NATO allies now want out ASAP. Some have already left (Dutch troops), others are preparing to leave (Canadians) and soon the allied fighting force will be reduced to 100,000 Americans and 9,000 Brits.
And Afghan President Hamid Karzai now wants the United States to reduce its military footprint countrywide -- just as U.S. commander Army Gen. David H. Petraeus seeks to widen it -- and begin negotiations with Taliban.
When NATO allies volunteered military units to assist the United States in rooting out al-Qaida's infrastructure in Afghanistan after 9/11, they figured they'd be home in a few months. Had their governments known that their troops would be in Afghanistan for a decade, they would have stayed home.
Most troublesome for U.S. and NATO allies is that al-Qaida, the original reason for dispatching troops "out of area," fled Afghanistan for Pakistan in mid-December 2001.
The prestigious Council on Foreign Relations' 25 experts-strong, 71-page task force report on the crisis, says, given "the complex political currents of Pakistan and its border regions … it is not clear U.S. interests warrant" the costly war, "nor is it clear that the effort will succeed."
And if U.S. President Barack Obama's December strategic review "shows progress is not being made, the U.S. should move quickly to recalculate its military presence in Afghanistan."
The same week CFR published its gloomy assessment of the Afghan war, one of Pakistan's most influential journalists, the editor of a major newspaper, made the "off the record" -- which now means go ahead and use it but keep my name out of it -- rounds in Washington to deliver a stunning indictment of all the players.
Samples:
-- All four wars between India and Pakistan (1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999) were provoked by Pakistan.
-- There is no Indian threat to Pakistan, except for what is manufactured by Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency.
-- Washington says Pakistan must do more to flesh out insurgent safe havens in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. As long as the Taliban were the illegitimate children of ISI that was possible. But Taliban are now the enemies of Pakistan, irrespective of whether they are Pakistani Taliban or Afghan Taliban. Assets have become liabilities. We've lost 3,000 Pakistani military KIA. All the jihadis terrorist organizations were created by Pakistan -- and they have now turned against us.
-- Pakistan has a big stake in Afghanistan. And America's own exit strategy is entirely dependent on Pakistan. Our army has a chokehold on your supply lines through Pakistan. And Pakistan wants to be the U.S. proxy in Afghanistan. ISI wants to make sure Pakistan doesn't become a liability in Afghanistan.
-- The United States should cut its losses in Afghanistan as rapidly as possible.
-- There is no chance whatsoever for the United States and its NATO and other allies to prevail in Afghanistan. No big military successes are possible. All U.S. targets are unrealistic. You cannot prevail on the ground. ISI won't abandon Taliban. And if Taliban doesn't have a major stake in negotiations with the United States, these will be sabotaged by Pakistan.
-- Time is running out for Petraeus -- for the United States and for us (Pakistan). Our system is falling apart. The sooner the United States and Pakistan are on the same page, the better it will be for both of us.
-- The Kerry-Lugar aid bill ($1.5 billion a year over five years) is too little too late. Only half of U.S. pledges are actually coming in. A huge slice of this bill goes to administration and local bureaucracy. Some $25 million was earmarked for Sesame Street -- for Pakistanis! U.S. aid isn't achieving any of its objectives. Flood relief also caused havoc. 400 bridges were washed away.
-- The attacks against U.S./NATO supply lines through Pakistan, which have included the torching of scores of tanker trucks, weren't the work of Taliban guerrillas; they were all the work of ISI made to look like Taliban. The objective was to demonstrate the extent to which the United States is dependent on Pakistani security.
-- U.S. drone strikes? The Pakistani line about "huge provocations" and more civilians killed than Taliban and their partners is pure army invention. Drones play a limited role and should continue.
-- One can't begin to understand the Pakistani crisis until one absorbs the terrifying fact that Pakistan's 180 million population includes 80 million children under 18 -- almost half the population. And only 40 percent of Pakistani children are in school. (Reminder: Pakistan is also one of the world's eight nuclear powers, counting North Korea).
-- India and Pakistan must bury the Kashmir feud. The reason it continues in an off-and-on mode is because that's what the Pakistani army wants. The army's corporate interests are at stake. If the crisis is resolved, the army loses its narrative for dominating the economy.
-- Pakistan is a work in progress. The war against extremism is our war, too. The stake holders are changing. Urban Pakistan isn't interested in al-Qaida's global caliphate narrative.
-- The pictures and stories about the public whipping of a young girl sent a wave of revulsion through our middle classes. Alas, they are still a minority.
-- Pakistani President Asif Zardari is pilloried in a corner. He has no room to move.
-- Anti-Americanism? (The Pew Foundation poll indicates 64 percent of Pakistanis believe the United States is the enemy.) Yet the one thing they all want most of all is a U.S. visa. The anti-U.S. feelings all trace back to the way Washington left us high and dry after we had fought together against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
-- China? The Pakistanis see Obama's visit to India and the warm relations between the old and the new superpower as further evidence it would behoove Islamabad to further enhance its relations with China, which is busy enlarging its footprint in Pakistan.
An Iran-Pakistan-China pipeline is considered a realistic project. Singapore now has rights on Gwadar, the new Pakistani port on the Arabian Sea, which will soon be transferred to China (with some fancy footwork by Pakistan's Supreme Court that will say the Singapore contract doesn't hold legal water, which will clear the way for China).
Between the Council on Foreign Relations' 25 experts-strong, 71-page report and a prominent Pakistani newspaper editor's confidential musings about his own country's betrayals, there was a touch of Yogi Berra's déjà-vu-all-over again.
At least 55 people have been killed and nearly 100 injured in a suicide bomb attack on a mosque in north-west Pakistan, local officials say.
The attack took place during prayers in the Darra Adam Khel area, near Pakistan's tribal regions
Hours later, grenades thrown into a second mosque, near Peshawar, killed at least two people, police said.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the attacks, the latest in a series of mosque and shrine bombings.
The Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for such attacks in the past and have been particularly active in recent years in and around Peshawar.
The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says the Darra Adam Khel bombing may have been a response from pro-Taliban militants to recent military offensives in the area.
In the later attack, unknown assailants threw hand grenades into a mosque during evening prayers in the village of Sulemankhel, about 7km (4.5 miles) north of Peshawar, police said.
At least two people were killed and more than 20 injured.
'Terrifying'
The suicide bombing occurred in the village of Akhurwal, about 45km (30 miles) south of Peshawar.
Witnesses contacted by the BBC said the bomber was on foot. He blew himself up at the main gate of the mosque after Friday prayers had ended and worshippers were coming out of the mosque.
Parts of the mosque roof caved in and the death toll is likely to rise, officials say.
The bomber was thought to have been about 17 years old, a senior local official, Khalid Khan Omarzai, told the BBC.
Ambulances and volunteers ferried the survivors to nearby hospitals. Rescuers said some victims of the blast had been trapped by debris. A number of the injured are in a critical condition.
"The blast tossed me up. I fell down," one man told the Associated Press from his hospital bed in Peshawar. "Later, it was just like a graveyard."
A number of children were among the dead and wounded, medics at Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital said.
The suicide bombing is not the first of its kind in Darra Adam Khel, but it comes after a long interlude.
Darra has been a hub for militants affiliated with the main Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan group led by Hakimullah Mehsud, and a launch pad for attacks on nearby Peshawar and Nato supply convoys.
Pakistani security forces have been conducting limited operations in the area for nearly two years. Their attempts to raise a tribal force to counter the Taliban failed when some gatherings of local elders were attacked by suicide bombers.
But a subsequent strategy of raising an alternative Taliban group to counter the TTP worked and most Taliban leaders in the area were forced to seek refuge in Tirah region on the border between Orakzai and Khyber tribal regions.
Friday's mosque bombing could be an attempt by them to make a comeback.
"I had just finished the prayers when there was a big explosion. It was very terrifying. I don't know what happened later. I just fell down," 15-year-old Mohib Ullah told Reuters news agency.
Some reports say the target could have been a local tribal elder, whose house near the mosque was among those damaged. The elder is reported to have encouraged people to take a stand against the Taliban.
It is not clear if he was among the victims. One report said he now lived in Lahore.
The Darra region links up with Orakzai and Khyber tribal regions in the west and has served as a convenient base for militants attacking Nato supply convoys as well as Shia commuters from Kurram.
Friday's suicide bombing is the deadliest in Pakistan since an attack on a Shia Muslim rally in Quetta killed at least 50 people on 3 September.
Last month 25 people were killed in a blast at a shrine in Punjab province. Another attack at a Karachi shrine two weeks earlier killed nine and was claimed by the Taliban.
At least 45 people have been killed and nearly 100 injured in a suicide bomb attack on a mosque in north-west Pakistan, local officials say.
The attack took place during Friday prayers in the Darra Adam Khel area, near Pakistan's tribal regions.
The roof of the mosque had caved in and the death toll was likely to rise, officials say.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack, the latest in a series of mosque and shrine bombings.
The Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for such attacks in the past and have been active in the Darra area.
Witnesses contacted by the BBC said the bomber was on foot. He blew himself up at the main gate of the mosque after Friday prayers had ended and worshippers were coming out of the mosque.
"We fear there might be more casualties in the debris," one official said. Some of the injured are in a critical condition.
Taliban opponent
The target could have been a tribal elder who had encouraged people to take a stand against the Taliban, according to one report. It is not clear whether he was among the victims.
The wounded have been taken to nearby hospitals.
The mosque is in the village of Akhurwal, about 45km (30 miles) south of Peshawar.
The Darra region links up with Orakzai and Khyber tribal regions in the west and has served as a convenient base for militants attacking Nato supply convoys as well as Shia commuters from Kurram.
Last month 25 people were killed in a blast at a shrine in Punjab province. Another attack at a Karachi shrine killed nine and was claimed by the Taliban.
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