Which is scarier, the noise or the silence? Long after the attacks of Sept. 11, the clangor of terror echoes worldwide. But for U.S. investigators, what they don't hear is almost as frightening as what they do. Terrorist communications, according to Francis X. Taylor, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, have reached levels "probably as high as they were last summer." Attacks continue. In April, a truck bomb--now thought to be the work of Islamic terrorists with links to al-Qaeda, the ...

It has been a grim seven weeks for Pakistan's powerful generals. The unilateral raid on Osama bin Laden's compound opened them up to charges of complicity abroad and a sense of deep embarrassment at home. The criticism sharpened after a major terrorist attack on a naval base in the southern port city of Karachi, with many critics unfavorably contrasting the privileges the military enjoys against its recent failures to provide security. And then long-standing suspicions of the ...

An anthropologist finds a "living stone-age museum " On a chilly September night in 1982, three men approached a police checkpoint at the village of Lotsum, along the tense cease-fire line between India and Pakistan in the Himalayas. The travelers looked like ordinary Kashmiri peasants, and the guards let them pass. But one of them was not what he seemed. French Anthropologist Michel Peissel had disguised himself in garb like that of his two local guides, staining his face with ...

A month after Osama bin Laden's death, one of the men tipped to succeed him as leader of al-Qaeda is believed to have been eliminated by a CIA-operated drone strike on Friday. U.S. and Pakistani officials say that they are increasingly certain that Ilyas Kashmiri, the head of the "313 Brigade" affiliated with the global terror organization, was slain in South Waziristan. His followers are vowing revenge against the U.S. Full confirmation, officials say, will only come ...

JAI Bangla! Jai Bangla!" From the banks of the great Ganges and the broad Brahmaputra, from the emerald rice fields and mustard-colored hills of the countryside, from the countless squares of countless villages came the cry. "Victory to Bengal! Victory to Bengal!" They danced on the roofs of buses and marched down city streets singing their anthem Golden Bengal. They brought the green, red and gold banner of Bengal out of secret hiding places to flutter freely from buildings, while ...

Fears are growing for the safety of a well-known Pakistani journalist who has been missing for 39 hours now and, according to an international advocacy group, is believed to be in the custody of the Pakistan's controversial Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence . Human Rights Watch declared that Saleem Shahzad, a reporter working for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and Adnkronos International, the Italian news agency, could be subject to mistreatment and even torture while in custody. While ...

There was more bad news on Sunday for a Pakistani military already reeling from the fallout of the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden: suspected Islamist militants launched a brazen large-scale attack on a Pakistani naval base in the southern port city of Karachi. As many as 15 fighters carrying guns, grenades and rocket-propelled grenades stormed into the Pakistan naval station Mehran on Sunday in the most dramatic attack in years on a Pakistani military ...

Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, in an exclusive interview with TIME — his first since the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — warned Wednesday that continuing to work with the United States could imperil his government, unless Washington takes drastic steps to restore trust and win over 180 million Pakistanis. Despite the clamor of criticism in Washington alleging Pakistani duplicity over the fact that the al-Qaeda leader had been hiding out in the sleepy garrison ...

Osama bin Laden may have been found and killed in Pakistan, but that country's leaders believe it wasn't the only place where the al-Qaeda leader had traveled after fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, in an exclusive interview with TIME on Wednesday — one of the first he has given since the raid on Abbottabad — thinks bin Laden may have visited his ancestral homeland, Yemen, in search of a new bride. Just ...