Word: waziristan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Afghan border, "the drones can hit where the Pakistani military cannot," says Talaat Masood, a retired general and independent military analyst in Islamabad. On Feb. 19, U.S. aerial surveillance helped the Pakistanis find and kill more than 30 militants in a bombing run in a forested valley in South Waziristan, which, until a major Pakistani offensive last October, had been crawling with Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters...
...Pakistan. Since the days of the jihad against the Soviets, Pakistani spy service the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has kept close ties with the Haqqanis. Now the Pakistanis are resisting demands by Washington to clear the Haqqanis out of their lair in the Pakistani territory of North Waziristan. Pakistani officials insist they will - but within six months. For now, they say, their 140,000 troops are too busy fighting the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal agencies of Orakzai, Bajaur and South Waziristan to tackle the Haqqani clan...
...Last year, more than a thousand Pakistanis were killed in 80 Taliban-orchestrated suicide attacks at volleyball games, pilgrimages, police academies, army bases and more. In response, Pakistan's army swept into the northern and southern ends of the tribal belt, particularly the Mehsud tribes' homeland in South Waziristan. With the Mehsuds flushed out of their stronghold, it is easier for the Drones to pick them off. "Because of improved cooperation between the American and Pakistani intelligence services," says analyst Masood, "the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban can't hide itself as effectively." And since the Mehsud tribesmen...
...Agreeing on a successor to Mehsud, who has led the organization for less than a year, won't be easy, but a Taliban commander quoted in the news said it would probably be Waliur Rehman, a high-ranking fellow Mehsud tribesman from South Waziristan. But he may not be acceptable to other Taliban fighters scattered across the lawless borderlands. Although various regional commanders are united under the organization Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, their reasons for becoming Taliban are varied. The ideology of replacing the pro-Western Islamabad government with an al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic caliphate is often a flag...
...assent and offered the use of bases on its soil. Even Taliban militants recently acknowledged the effectiveness of the drone war. "Westerners have some regard for civilians, and they do distinguish between Taliban fighters and civilians, but the Pakistani army doesn't," says a pamphlet distributed recently in North Waziristan by the pro-Taliban Council of United Holy Warriors. "Instead of the Taliban, it is bombing ordinary people's homes and their bazaars and killing innocent people." (See pictures of Pakistan beneath the surface...