Word: islamabad
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...welling up from the crowded lanes of the bazaar, he saw it as a sign that normality was returning to Peshawar. "We killed a lot of them," he says, referring to the militants known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) or the Pakistani Taliban who are at war with Islamabad while their Afghan brethren are hiding in these same saw-blade mountains to launch attacks on NATO forces across the border. The bombings are less frequent and the kidnappings, he says, have gone "from 50 a day to zero." Bringing music back to Peshawar is one thing; extending the Pakistani...
...easy. Consider this scene: at a dusty army camp in Dera Ismael Khan a few weeks back, Pakistan's army commander Ashfaq Parvez Kayani summoned elders, or maliks, from the Mehsud tribe who had been hiding in Karachi, Peshawar and Islamabad from Taliban assassins. Eyewitnesses recount that the elders were so scared of being spied on by the Taliban that they rolled up to the army chief's office with the car windows plastered over with newspapers so their faces couldn't be seen...
...with good reason. General Khan reckons that the Pakistani Taliban have killed over 500 tribal elders since 9/11 for supposedly collaborating with Islamabad and Washington. Even after assurances from the army chief, the Mehsud elders are still afraid to venture back to their lands. "The jihad has eliminated the old tribal system of maliks," says General Khan. "Now any crook with a cell phone can call up a gang of his militant friends for any kind of mischief, and everyone is too afraid to stop them." His former colleague, Brigadier Mahmoud Shah, formerly in charge of security for the Northwest...
Most important, Baradar's arrest marks a turning point in the fraught cooperation between Washington and Islamabad on counterterrorism. Until now, Pakistan was reluctant to help the U.S. hunt down the Taliban's leadership, with whom it had close ties before 9/11. But the Taliban's militancy has spawned terrorism inside Pakistan, and the country's military and political leaders may have finally realized that they cannot get rid of homegrown terrorists without cracking down on the jihadis' Afghan brethren...
Pakistan has watched warily as both Iran and archrival India have expanded their influence with anti-Pakistani forces in Afghanistan - a country many in Islamabad still view as their backyard. The arrest earlier this month of Mullah Abdul Baradar, rumored Taliban deputy commander, by Pakistani authorities in Karachi has been seen as a sign of Islamabad's desire to now dismember some of the terror networks it once helped create. Handing over Rigi may be another gesture of goodwill. "Actions like this ease pressure on India and Iran," says Abbas. "There's now a chance for more cooperation and coordination...