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...introducing Holbrooke's mission to promote counterterrorism cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama on Thursday warned that "there is no answer in Afghanistan that does not confront the al-Qaeda and Taliban bases along the border [in Pakistan]." But Amjad Islam was not killed in some frontier village abutting Afghanistan; his body hung 80 miles (129 km) from Pakistan's capital in the Swat Valley, which until 2007 had been a popular tourist destination dubbed the "Switzerland of Asia." Today about 75% of the valley is under the control of a particularly virulent branch of the Pakistani Taliban, which...
...people, dashing Pakistani hopes that the Obama Administration would end the U.S. attacks on militant targets inside Pakistan, which Pakistani military spokesman Athar Abbas calls "counterproductive." There have been more than 30 such missile strikes in Pakistan since last August, and U.S. officials say they have eliminated several top al-Qaeda leaders. But Pakistan considers the strikes a violation of its sovereignty, and the accompanying civilian casualties have become a potent anti-American rallying point. Despite Pakistan's official opposition to the strikes, senior officials have indicated that the authorities there may have provided intelligence in some instances. The suspicion...
...once fearsome Muqtada al-Sadr has been very quiet lately in Iraq. Political analyst Amir Hassan Fayht says the reason the onetime Iraqi militant shows less and less political muscle is simple. "He gave it up," says Fayht, dean of the college of political science at Baghdad University, "just like that...
...Indeed, al-Sadr's once formidable movement appears to be at its nadir, with the cleric himself scarcely a presence in Iraqi politics these days and his political bloc pushed to the sidelines of the provincial elections on Jan. 31. A series of military defeats at the hands of toughened Iraqi security forces plus political missteps over the past year by al-Sadr and his followers have left the future of the mass movement in doubt. And without a solid showing of popular support in the coming vote, the Sadrists appear set to lose what remains of the enormous political...
Prospects for al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, and the political figures who stood at the edge of it have steadily dimmed since last spring, when government forces of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki emerged as the de facto victors in battles with the Mahdi Army across southern Iraq and Baghdad. Weeks of fighting in the early months of 2008 ended in a stalemate. Since then, Iraqi security forces have rounded up scores of Sadrists with the help of U.S. troops, effectively hollowing out the movement's street power and political influence. Meanwhile, the vast popularity that al-Sadr...