At least 35 people, including two women and children, were killed and 63 others injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a branch of the National Bank of Pakistan in Rawalpindi Nov. 2. Most of the victims were military personnel and employees of the Defense Ministry who had queued up at the NBP Shalimar Plaza Branch to draw their salaries. (Daily Times, Nov. 2)

The UN has decided to withdraw its non-essential foreign staff from Afghanistan in response to growing insecurity in the question. About 600 non-Afghan employees of the UN's 1,100 international staff will be temporarily transferred to other positions, said a spokesman. "Only those considered essential will remain. It is a decision clearly intended to ensure the security of all our staff in Afghanistan." About 4,400 Afghan staff remain in the country. The decision, coming as it does eight days after the Taliban attack on the UN guesthouse in Kabul in which five UN employees were killed, will be re-evaluated "within the next few weeks." The removed staff will meanwhile wait in Dubai. This is the first time the United Nations has removed staff from Afghanistan since the Taliban regime ordered the UN out of the country in 1998. Pperations continued from neighboring Pakistan. (The Guardian, RTE, AGI, Nov. 5)

This is getting pretty wacky. From the BBC Nov. 4:

Pakistani's chief military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas said recently that Pakistani troops had recovered "Indian arms, ammunition, literature and medical equipment" from Sherwangi, a key militant base.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik had also recently alleged that India was supplying arms to the Taliban.

SM Krishna has denied both the charges.

"We have absolutely nothing to do with whatever is happening in Balochistan or whatever is happening within Pakistan. I think it is their own making," Mr Krishna was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India.

"I don't think that there is any effective government functioning there."

SM Krishna has a pretty poor sense of western Pakistan's geography for somebody who is allegedly overseeing the insurgency there. Sherwangi village (like the current Pakistani military offensive) is in South Waziristan, not Baluchistan. And how likely is it that India is backing the same terrorist network that has repeatedly attacked India? Are Gen. Abbas and Minister Malik utterly cynical or completely paranoid?

We're just curious.

A suicide bomber struck a goat market in Adazi, some 10 miles south of Peshawar, killing eight people in an attack apparently aimed at a local mayor. The mayor, Abdul Malik, survived the attack but was wounded, police official Naseem Khan said. Militants have struck numerous times in Pakistan in the weeks since the government offensive began in South Waziristan, killing more than 300 civilians and members of the security forces. (UK Press Association, Nov. 8)

...holds that Western forces are using their helicopters to ferry Taliban fighters to Kunduz and elsewhere in the north of the country to spread the insurgency. An Oct. 29 IWPR report on Asia Times quotes anonymous Afghan soldiers who claim to have seen Taliban fighters disembarking from foreign helicopters. ISAF and Afghan government deny it. Nothing is provided by way of a motive, beyond creating chaos to justify the foreign presence in the country.

Hakimullah Mehsud, head of the Tehrik-e-Taliban, charged that Blackwater and Pakistani agents were behind the deadly market bombing in Peshawar. The claims were touted Oct. 31 in Iran's Press TV.

At least 30 were killed and more than 40 injured on Nov. 10 in a car bomb blast in the northwest Pakistani city of Charsadda. The bomb went off on a road intersection near a busy market, destroying several shops and cars. The death toll is expected to rise. No group has claimed responsibility.

The previous day, a suicide bomber in a rickshaw blew himself up near a group of police officers in Peshawar, killing three. (RIA-Novosti, Nov. 10)

Al-Jazeera broadcast video footage showing Afghan insurgents handling weapons, including anti-personnel mines, with US markings on them. The network reported that insurgents said they seized the weapons from two remote US outposts in Nuristan province. It was unclear when the footage was filmed. (AP, Nov. 11)

A car bomb explosion has killed at least 16 people and badly damaged an office of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. A suicide bomber rammed also a vehicle packed with explosives into a police station in Bannu, NWFP, killing three officers, injuring 12 and trapping others under the rubble. The death toll is expected to rise. (NYT, AlJazeera, AFP, Nov. 13)

A car bomb exploded near a NATO convoy just outside the US military's base Camp Phoenix at the Kabul airport early Nov. 13, wounding civilian contractors, foreign soldiers and Afghan bystanders. (Reuters, Nov. 13)

Ten are dead after a suicide car bombing on the outskirts of Peshawar Nov. 14. Police say the bomber was targeting a security checkpoint, but four children and a woman are among the dead. About two dozen people are said to have been wounded. (AP, Nov. 14)

On Nov. 16, three rockets fired by Taliban militants hit a crowded bazaar in Kapisa province 80 kilometers northeast of capital city Kabul, killing 10 Afghan civilians and injuring 29 others. (Xinhua, Nov. 17)

A suicide bomb attack in Peshawar killed 19 people and injured more than 25 Nov. 19. A man blew himself up when he was stopped by a police while trying to enter the district law offices. The death toll is expected to rise. (Bloomberg, Nov. 19)

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle attacked a senior police official in a crowded market area of Afghanistan's Farah city Nov. 20, killing the official and at least 12 others. (BBC News, Nov, 20)

Shahfur Khan, an anti-Taliban tribal leader, was killed Nov. 27 in an evidently targeted roadside bombing near Badan in Bajaur Agency, the latest attack against pro-government militias near northwestern Pakistan's Afghan border. The authorities also found the body of Ameer Saiyed, another anti-Taliban tribal elder, who was seized from his home late the previous day. Meanwhile, 34 militants were reported killed in continued fighting in the border region. (Daily Times, Pakistan, Press TV, Iran, Nov, 28; AP, Nov. 27)

A presumed Taliban suicide bomber killed Dr. Shamsher Ali Khan, a member of the NWFP provincial assembly with the secular Awami National Party (ANP), as he was greeting friends and constituents outside his home in Swat Dec. 1. Khan's brother was also killed in the attack, which came as Dr. Khan was seeing off guests who had gathered at his home for the Eid al-Adha holiday. (Dawn, Dec. 1)

A suicide bomber killed eight Afghans and wounded more than 40 Dec. 15 blocks from the US embassy in Kabul. The targeted Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood is a favorite of Afghan officials and foreign diplomats. Former Vice President Ahmad Zia Massoud lives near the site of the bombing, but he wasn't home at the time of the attack. Nearby concrete barriers shielded his home from the blast. (McClatchy, Dec. 15)