In the latest Global Pulse episode, Pakistan at War, host Erin Coker asks who is to blame for the violence in Pakistan. Watch the episode and share your thoughts below!

Wednesday's market bombing in Peshawar capped off a particularly deadly month in Pakistan amidst a shored up military campaign in the country's western region of Waziristan.  More than 100 people died in Wednesday's attack, many of them women and children.

Global media largely attribute the recent bloodshed to the Pakistani Taliban's attempt to destabilize the government in retaliation for recent military efforts to drive extremists from the country's volatile North-West Frontier Province.

However, militant violence in Pakistan has been on the rise long before the government launched its new offensive. According to the terrorism database, South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), terrorist violence killed 2,155 civilians in 2008, compared to 140 in 2003. Similarly, nearly 1800 civilians have been killed in the first 10 months of 2009, exceeding the total number of civilian deaths from 2003 to 2006, according to the SATP.

Some international and media experts note that the Pakistani Taliban has absorbed Punjabi militants and other separatist groups, resulting in a new and dangerous band of extremists. These militants are further bolstered by al-Qaeda members who have taken refuge in the country's tribal areas near the Afghan border. This new incarnation of militants, notes the Council on Foreign Relations' Jayshree Bajoria, is "more violent and less conducive to political solutions than their predecessors."

In a Foreign Policy editorial, the Washington, DC-based Atlantic Council attributes Pakistan's inability to contain the growing extremist threat to a lack of modern military might and calls on the U.S. to furnish Pakistan with adequate weaponry to defeat the Taliban. Failure to do so, argues Shuja Nawaz, will result in continued terror strikes on the public. 

However, Pakistani blogger Riaz Haq blames the violence not on a lack of American weapons, but on government intelligence failures. "The best way to stop the increasing carnage on the streets of Pakistan...is to stop the attacks well before they occur," writes Haq. "Unfortunately, however, the intelligence agencies which are supposed to frustrate the blood-thirsty attackers appear totally ineffective, even paralyzed."
   
While the exact cause of the surge in violence may be up for debate, the toll it is taking on Pakistani civilians is undeniable.

The renewed clashes between government forces and the Taliban in North-West Frontier Province have resulted in a second wave of refugees fleeing the fighting, adding strain to already-crowded camps. According to the U.N., fighting in South Waziristan has forced an estimated 139,400 people from their homes [PDF link] and could displace thousands more.

The latest bombing in Peshawar has also disrupted the lives of Pakistan's urban residents. "The people want to go back to their mundane routines," writes Murtava Razvi in a Dawn editorial. "Youngsters want to go out to the parks, to the beach, to bowl, to eat out. Women want to go shopping unescorted, and men want to go about their daily chores without worrying about families left at home. This isn’t happening anymore."

For this week's Global Pulse episode, Iran’s Power Players, host Erin Coker asks the question: Are Khamenei and Ahmadinejad playing "good cop, bad cop"? Share your thoughts below!

In the nearly three months since Iran's disputed election and the massive street protests that followed, global media have turned their attention to the internal factional bickering within Iran's ruling party. Allegations of detainee abuse have created further fissures within Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conservative government, with the country's leadership offering conflicting responses to the allegations.

Reacting to claims made by opposition candidate Mehdi Karroubi of detainee torture and sexual abuse, Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani vehemently dismissed the allegations as "sheer lies," according to a CNN report. Larijani's remarks contradicted police and judiciary officials who acknowledged detainee abuse at the now-shuttered Kahrizak prison and promised to investigate the claims. According to The Guardian, an unnamed Iranian MP said he had proof of the abuse, further contradicting Larijani.

As this week's episode points out, Ahmadinejad and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have also appeared at odds over abuse allegations. According to a report that ran on the state-controlled Press TV website on August 28th, Ahmadinejad blamed the abuse on an enemy plot, saying that he had evidence which "exonerated revolutionary, military, security and intelligence forces." But three days later, following a report that the detained son of a conservative political advisor had died as a result of abuse, the BBC reported that Ayatollah Khamenei promised the young man's father that those responsible would be brought to justice.

The confusing signals reflect factional struggles at the highest levels of government, which can only be aggravated by the Iranian blogosphere's relentless pursuit of allegations of torture, sexual abuse and killings of detained protesters, often through chilling personal accounts. On September 2, the independent Radio Zamanah’s website reported that a rape victim and key witness in the case had disappeared. Mentions of the story surfaced several times throughout the day on the microblogging site Twitter, alongside posts like "Regime, No matter how many you execute, torture, or rape. We will never stop. We will never give up on our right to freedom," and, "Saeedeh's body was burned & almost unrecognizable (note that she was arrested from her house, so burning was deliberate)."

Even after the dust has settled on the present internal political struggle, it may take more than damage control to bridge the divisions between the Iranian government and its people.

The government of Sri Lanka declared Wednesday a national holiday to celebrate this week's end to a 26-year civil war fought against the Tamil Tigers. While images emerged of jubilation in the streets of Colombo, news reports from the last battle front in the northeast depicted a grave state of affairs that could jeopardize long-term hopes for peace. According to UN figures, at least 7,000 civilians have died since January in the cross-fire between government military and dwindling Tamil Tiger forces. Sketchy reports are also emerging of 42 government-run internment camps where upwards of 300,000 Tamil civilian refugees have been interned in recent months.

At the same time, verifiable battleground facts are hard to come by in Sri Lanka. The Red Cross has been shut out of the northeast region, as have other international aid organizations and media. Many, including the pro-Tamil voices at TamilNet, fear for the safety of the island nation's Tamil minority, which comprise 12% of the population. Unlike in other recent conflict hot spots like the Sudan and the Balkans, there has been little talk of involving international forces in keeping the peace. If anything, the government has gained political cover through its linking of the fight against the Tamil Tigers to a larger global "war on terror."

"To protect the Tamil population in this country is my responsibility and duty," Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa proclaimed in an address to the nation early this week. Rajapaksa delivered the lines in Tamil, a hopeful sign perhaps of a new reconciliation. But later on he also emphasized, "we don't want advice from other country about how we should treat our people." Coming at the end of a war that has killed in the range of 90,000 Sri Lankans, it is difficult to be convinced that the suffering is now fully over.

Watch the Global Pulse video on Sri Lanka here.

How should we view the recent resurgence of Taliban activity in Pakistan?

Be afraid, very afraid.

That’s a common message voiced by media and political observers in recent weeks. Pakistan’s government could go the way of the Shah of Iran in 1979, writes the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Taliban threats to Pakistan’s leadership represent the worst global crisis since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, a RAND Corporation official tells the Financial Times.

And it’s hard not to be moved by the devastation occurring in Pakistani regions like the Swat Valley. Doctors Without Borders announced today that it was halting medical services to refugees in Swat due to escalating warfare.

But could all this fear of a Taliban takeover in Pakistan be blinding the U.S. to local realities? An Economist report notes that for all the Taliban’s repellent acts in Swat, the Pakistani military has engendered deep local hostility by its brutal strikes on civilian targets. Rather than pushing for further billions of dollars in military aid for Pakistan to stave off an unlikely Taliban takeover, U.S. leaders would do well to pay more attention to the shaping of local hearts and minds. Central Asia Institute, the education non-profit co-founded by Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson, is one example of a worthy U.S. effort to build rather than break human capital in Pakistan.

Watch the Global Pulse episode on Pakistan here.

The Bush administration's detainee interrogation tactics are front and center in a new U.S. Senate intelligence committee report that implicates Condoleeza Rice as an early proponent of torture techniques. While Liz Cheney and other former Bush officials defend tactics such as waterboarding as a means to prevent terror, we are tracking ways in which societies elsewhere have responded to revelations of state torture.

Susan Benesch at the Huffington Post draws parallels with Argentina and Chile, where early attempts to forgive officials accused of torture during military regimes in the 1970s and 1980s have more recently led to criminal trials and imprisonment. Just two weeks ago, former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori received a 25 year prison sentence from Peru's Supreme Court for his role in massacres of left-wing rebels in the 1990s.

And at Real Clear Politics, Pierre Atlas proposes the U.S. look to the U.K. and Israel, whose judiciaries struck down the use of torture to fight perceived terror threats posed by Irish and Palestinians respectively. Meanwhile, this week's U.S. Senate intelligence report itself notes that waterboarding was previously the domain of brutal despots like Pol Pot in Cambodia.

Can the U.S. draw useful lessons from global responses to state torture? Or will Americans chart a new and unique path to reconciliation?

This week, Global Pulse examines international reaction to North Korea's weekend missile launch. According to most world media, the launch was a failure and resulted in the missile's harmless fall into the Pacific Ocean. But Pyongyang insisted the missile reached outer space as a satellite, using the event to reintroduce Kim Jong Il in his first public appeareance since August.

Photo footage of Kim in front of North Korea's Parliament showed the leader suffering from weight loss, though he appeared more healthy than some had predicted in the wake of a rumored stroke in August. The Financial Times speculated that Kim's actions could push East Asia into a new arms race as South Korea and Japan escalate their military response capabilities. The Washington Post though noted that a similar 2006 missile launch was followed only weeks later by North Korea's willingness to return to diplomatic negotiations.

Is Kim Jong Il a leader to be feared, and perhaps met with military force? Or is this most recent missile launch merely the work of an increasingly frail and marginalized despot?        

The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President al-Bashir. He is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for the crisis in Darfur. But al-Bashir and many in the Arab and African world remain defiant and refuse to recognize the court's decision. Most western media outlets immediately vilified al-Bashir, while Arab, African and Chinese media support the president and ask the question: if al-Bashir can be accused of these crimes, why not the leaders of Israel or the U.S?

SOURCES: ABC News, U.S.; NBC News, U.S.; BBC, U.K.; SABC, South Africa; TV5, France; CCTV, China; Al Jazeera English, Qatar; Sudan TV, Sudan; Press TV, Iran.

This week, Global Pulse is covering the controversy surrounding last week's International Criminal Court decision to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Human rights activists hope the court's action, the first against a sitting head of state, will end the bloodshed that has flared in Darfur since 2003. But many Sudan watchers worry that the warrant could set off further tensions, including a resurgence of a decades-long, north-south civil war.

The Christian Science Monitor examines how Sudan's move this week to expel 13 international aid groups cuts Darfur's humanitarian effort in half, placing over 1 million people at risk for starvation. Likewise, BBC News predicts that rising desperation in Darfur could trigger renewed conflict in south Sudan, where rebel groups have long sought political recognition from the Sudanese government.

Meanwhile, guest columnists at the Huffington Post and the Washington Post call on the Obama administration to use the ICC warrant as justification for a stepped-up military campaign in Sudan. Today's kidnapping of 3 Doctors Without Borders workers in Darfur may further stoke the fire of the military interventionists.

Should the international community enforce ICC wishes and arrest Bashir, even if by military means? Or will enforcement of the court's wishes only lead to further humanitarian catastrophe?

Beheadings, assassinations, gun battles on the street - Mexico is ground zero in the global war on drugs. U.S. media focuses on the spread of violence north of the border, as drug cartels spread fear and intimidation south of it. What will it take for Mexico to beat the drug lords?

Sources: Once Noticias, Mexico; TeleSur, Venezuela; TVE, Spain; Galavision, Mexico; Al Jazeera English, Qatar; NBC, U.S.; CNN, U.S.; Fox News, U.S.; BBC News Online, U.K.; Stratfor Global Intelligence, U.S.

This week, Global Pulse examines rising drug-related violence in northern Mexico that threatens to spread across the U.S.-Mexico region. Is U.S. anti-drug policy contributing to this new crime wave? And what options do Mexican and U.S. authorities have to limit drug warfare at the border?

In the Wall Street Journal, former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo co-authors an editorial calling for a drastic re-evaluation of anti-drug policies in the U.S. and Latin America. "The war on drugs has failed," Zedillo's editorial states, imploring President Obama to work with current Latin American heads of state to remake drug policies in the interest of public health. At the RAND Corporation, Brian Michael Jenkins similarly calls for treating drug consumption as a public health issue.

But the bloody standoff in recent weeks between elected officials of Ciudad Juarez in northern Mexico and local drug cartels has escalated fears that Mexican and U.S. leaders will fail to intervene appropriately to end the cycle of violence. At the Huffington Post for instance, Sandy Goodman notes the "prospect of this uncontrolled violence crossing the border" in spite of law enforcement efforts.

Can effective government intervention put an end to the Mexican drug wars? Watch the Global Pulse video and let us know your thoughts in the comments section above.