Word: karachi
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...fighting in Swat masks far more serious problems. In Waziristan, a region on the Afghan border, security forces have ceded control to the militants. Outlawed sectarian groups are gaining a foothold in Punjab province. And in the financial capital of Karachi, where Pakistani Taliban insurgents raise funds, ethnic clashes claimed more than 30 lives last month. When U.S. President Barack Obama commented during an April news conference that the Pakistani government did not "seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services - schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of the people...
...rather than local control, it would have little hope of doing so. The insurgency is largely confined to ethnic Pashtuns, who comprise little more than 15% of the population. It is unlikely to find significant resonance in the major cities such as Islamabad and Lahore - though an influx into Karachi of people displaced by the fighting in the tribal areas has swelled that city's Pashtun population, which has in turn raised communal tensions there. While the Taliban is reported to have made some inroads in southern Punjab and has linked up with small militant groups based in the province...
Qasab's final weeks of preparation were spent in a house near Karachi. It is possible that the attack had been compromised. In late September, India's Intelligence Bureau warned specifically about the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, and in mid-October, U.S. intelligence agencies warned that Mumbai was a target of an attack by sea. The hotel tightened its security and received extra protection from the Mumbai police. But nothing happened, and the security measures were relaxed in mid-November...
Qasab's group stole out of Karachi's harbor at 4:15 a.m. on Nov. 22. While port authorities say no one can leave the shore without permission, it would have been easy for the men to leave in a boat already registered with the harbormaster. There are at least 150 launches a day at the Karachi port, says Abbas Ali, who runs a launch business. "Once mariners reach the deep sea, they can do anything, smuggling, drugs, whatever. There are not enough people to check all the boats." From the launch, the team boarded another boat and then...
Qasab and the team turned on their GPS devices at 6:54 a.m., establishing a spot near Koti Bandar, about 93 miles (150 km) southeast of Karachi, as their starting point. Al-Husseini encountered an Indian fishing trawler, the M.V. Kuber. Qasab's confession states that "once they reached Indian waters, the crew hijacked an Indian fishing vessel." But the Indian dossier and intelligence sources describe the scenario slightly differently: the sources suspect that the operator of the ship, Amar Singh Solanki, might have been lured into Pakistani waters with the promise of money for smuggling...