Word: afghanistanism
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...pound the area with air strikes, the Pakistan military is reluctant to mount a ground offensive in South Waziristan, citing the hazardous terrain. And in North Waziristan, Pakistan appears unwilling to confront the Haqqani network and other militants who mount cross-border attacks on U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Instead, it has focused on militants who challenge its own authority in Pakistan. (See pictures of the turmoil in Pakistan's Swat Valley...
Getting Pakistan to see both groups of militants - those who fight chiefly in Pakistan and those who fight chiefly in Afghanistan - as a common threat will test Obama's gifts of persuasion. The gap over perceptions and priorities could be narrowed with enhanced support for Pakistan's counterinsurgency capability. Organized to fight a different kind of war on a different border, the Pakistan Army is poorly equipped and trained for offensives against hardened guerillas, especially on terrain that favors the enemy's methods...
...foreign and defense policy. Already moves by Zardari to draw closer to Kabul and New Delhi have encountered resistance. For the Pakistan Army, India remains the principal enemy. That view is likely to remain unshaken as long as it perceives threats from the eastern border and Indian influence in Afghanistan...
...Afghanistan's former Foreign Minister and current presidential aspirant Dr. Abdullah Abdullah refers to President Hamid Karzai as "that gentleman" with a kind of icy irony. Abdullah dismisses Karzai's suggestion that the two men - at loggerheads over the result of the Aug. 20 presidential poll, which Karzai says he won, and Abdullah says was rigged - should form a government of national unity. "I ran for a change in Afghanistan," Abdullah says. "Not for deal-making." And the U.N., which Abdullah blames for the poor organization of the polls and a pro-Karzai bias, doesn't escape his ire. "Right...
...final count has been paralyzed while U.N. and Afghan officials argue over what to do next. Some want to declare Karzai the winner quickly, arguing that even with the fraudulent ballots subtracted, the incumbent may still have gathered more than 50% of the vote. This, they say, would spare Afghanistan and the international community another costly and potentially violent vote in the midst of winter blizzards. Hence all that talk of a backroom deal between Karzai and Abdullah, in which Karzai would remain President but Abdullah would be named as Prime Minister or some such role. (See pictures of British...