Word: khans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...attacks from extremist Wahabi-inspired militant groups that regard them as heretics or apostates. With the emergence of the Pakistani Taliban, that threat has intensified. In recent years, the town of Parachinar in the wild tribal areas along the Afghan border, Baluchistan province's capital of Quetta, Dera Ismail Khan in the northwest, and parts of Punjab have been among the areas scarred by anti-Shi'ite attacks. The latest bombing will call attention to the Taliban's long-standing but murky presence in Karachi. Until this past week, they have resisted mounting attacks in the city, preferring...
...Persian Empire, Taxila was one of Alexander's conquests and is today a World Heritage Site. The museum there, started in 1918, is one of Pakistan's finest, with more than 4,000 artifacts from the Gandhara civilization. But no one comes to visit much anymore. Nasir Khan says there have been warnings of a possible attack on the museum, and some security procedures have been put in place, but he said they're insufficient. (See pictures of Pakistan subcultures...
...lack of archaeologists at many sites has led militants and vandals to close in. Kashmir Smast, about 70 miles northwest of Islamabad, is a Hindu site, not Buddhist, and thus unusual for the area. "But there's no preservation, no one to look after the site," says Dr. Nasim Khan, professor of archaeology at the University of Peshawar. "The local people are damaging the site because of illegal diggings." In Swat, the Taliban have long attempted to destroy the Buddhist heritage of the region. In October 2007, as militants cemented their hold on the former tourist area, the Taliban dynamited...
Foreign teams bring a lot of money for conservation and excavating, money the cash-strapped Pakistani government doesn't have to spend on preserving antiquities when it has a war to fight. The University of Peshawar's Khan says that there are usually excavations on the outskirts of Peshawar and Taxila, but even he can't go to these sites anymore, much less foreigners. To his knowledge, he said, there are no foreign teams scheduled to come to Pakistan. "We are not taking the risks to bring them to the sites," he says. "We need their help, we need...
Foreign contracts also often include a commitment to help preserve and develop a site after the initial research is done. Without that, excavations are being started and then left open when local funding dries up, Khan says. "We don't have the resources to protect each and every site in Gandhara," he explains. "We don't have any resources to make it a model site for tourism, which would create jobs and bring in money...