Word: pakistani
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...desert sands. That shift is beginning against the Taliban's leadership. Fissures are appearing in the Taliban ranks between hard-liners and so-called moderates, who privately believe that Mohammed Omar's refusal to hand over terrorist Osama bin Laden is akin to mass suicide. Says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani author and expert on the Taliban movement: "The U.S. threat is helping to divide the Taliban." Rashid says the Taliban's "fellow travelers," the tribal leaders who don't share the Taliban's extremism, will be the first to shear off, leaving Omar with a die-hard band of devout...
This is a rift that Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials are eager to widen. In the border cities of Quetta and Peshawar, Pakistani military intelligence agents are dusting off Afghan war veterans and putting them to work sending out feelers to fellow ex-commanders who are serving the Taliban. Those commanders are being urged to defect in exchange for bribes and the guarantee of a job in the next Afghan government. First indications are promising, according to anti-Taliban sources in both cities. When he asked about arms, one commander from Afghanistan's Nangarhar province was assured that anti-Taliban...
...tribe, which is spread across western Pakistan and most of Afghanistan, are moving to bring back Mohammed Zahir Shah, the deposed Afghan King who is living in Rome. In high-walled and guarded villas, these elders receive a stream of whispering chieftains, Afghan ex-army generals, mujahedin commanders and Pakistani officials--all eager recruits for an uprising against the Taliban. "It's happening so fast," says Hamad Karzai, an influential Afghan Pashtun elder who is backing the ex-monarch's return. "The signals for a change are coming from inside the Taliban...
...already buzzing on hyperalert, almost any outbreak of an unusual malady was sure to raise the specter of a bioterrorist attack (see story below). Last week there were two such reports: an anthrax death in Florida and a cluster of cases of a virulent hemorrhagic fever along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Easy to forget but worth remembering is the fact that bacteria and viruses, even unconventional ones, do occasionally sweep through human hosts...
Similarly, nasty viral infection raging along the Afghan-Pakistani border is neither unusual nor unexpected; Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, as it is known, makes an appearance in that region each spring and summer, as ticks are its primary mode of transmission. Since March, 47 cases of the disease have been reported; at least four of those occurred in recent weeks...