Pakistani security forces backed by warplanes and helicopter gunships launched a new operation in Buner district near the Swat Valley April 28, bombing suspected Taliban targets in Kalil, Shera Turf, and Kandao areas. Fighter aircraft also bombed Mushki Pur, a mountainous area of Mardan district bordering Buner. The strikes were carried out by the paramilitary Frontier Corps in coordination with the army.

The co-educational schools that the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) runs for Afghan refugees in Pakistan are under attack from Pakistan's new Taliban movement. This statement from RAWA was forwarded to us by the Support Association for the Women of Afghanistan (SAWA-Australia), April 21:

Shortly after the Pakistani Taliban won their demand for Islamic law in the Swat Valley in a peace-for-sharia deal, they moved into neighboring Buner district, and won the right to preach in mosques there—which, local reports indicate, means effective political control. Residents in Buner initially fought the incoming Taliban, forming a lashkar or tribal militia. Some 20 militants were killed in the battle, but the lashkar was soon outnumbered as hundreds more Taliban fighters swarmed into the area.

An April 13 NATO airstrike in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province killed six civilians, including two children, and wounded 14 more, charged Zalmay Yousufzai, governor of Watapor district, saying that helicopters destroyed one house and damaged several others. NATO officials confirmed the raid, but said that only insurgents had been killed. (NYT, April 13)

The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the April 12 killing of Sitara Achakzai, a women's rights advocate in Afghanistan and a member of Kandahar's provincial assembly. Achakzai, who had returned to Afghanistan to fight for women's rights after living in Germany during the Taliban's rule, was shot outside her home after being approached by gunmen on motorcycles.

US drone attacks on Pakistan's northwestern borderlands are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, officials in Islamabad claimed after a new attack April 4 killed 13 people. The officials say up to 1 million people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape the US missile attacks as well as bombings by the Pakistani army.

Pakistan's newly re-instated chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has called a court hearing into a video in circulation showing the public flogging of a teenage girl in the northwestern Swat Valley, where a peace-for-sharia deal has been brokered with local Taliban leaders. He has ordered top officials from North West Frontier Province to appear and produce the girl, who is shown in the video being held down by two men while a third hits her with a strap as she cries out in pain.

Much of the international aid to Afghanistan over the past seven years has been spent to achieve military and political objectives, and the current approach to aid lacks "clarity, coherence and resolve," a group of international NGOs said in a report to the heads of NATO-member states. The report warns of over-reliance on short-term military gains at the expense of longer-term peace and development.