Word: lawlessness
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...Pakistani leaders, for their part, insist they never get the respect that is their due. The military has lost hundreds of soldiers battling extremists along the Afghanistan border. But terrorist groups continue to thrive in the lawless tribal areas; Musharraf says they are being protected by sympathetic locals in terrain that is impossible to police. Many Pakistanis - and some U.S. officials - believe Musharraf has been indulging in the most dangerous form of triangulation, balancing U.S. interests with Islamist sympathies to keep himself in power. "Musharraf uses the threat of the extremists to prove his utility and indispensability to the Western...
...Pakistan is a long way from democracy, but revenge is on the minds of Bhutto's supporters. Their rage is directed not at her presumed assassins - al-Qaeda-linked Islamic extremists from the lawless tribal areas along the northern border with Afghanistan - but at President Pervez Musharraf, a man the Bush Administration deems a vital ally...
...Turkish army invaded northern Iraq, sending some 35,000 soldiers across the border to destroy the guerilla infrastructure of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) a militant group made up of Turkish Kurds that had found refuge in the lawless mountain region. Operation Steel, as it was called, killed over 500 militants, but still the PKK survived to fight another day. In early 1997, the Turks sent in another 30,000 soldiers - this time as part of Operation Hammer - to finish the job. They didn't. The Turks had to go in again later that year with Operation Dawn...
This time however there are some important differences. Turkey isn't invading the lawless hinterland of a pariah nation (Saddam's Iraq) but a region that not too long ago was considered the one relative success of the American project in Iraq. The United States - which controls Iraqi airspace - tried to forestall a Turkish invasion, but eventually caved into Turkish demands and agreed to a limited incursion. The fact that Turkey was ready to risk alienating its American ally for an operation with little chance of strategic success is a testament to the uproar by the Turkish public for action...
...Pakistan in October would usher in a power-sharing deal with Musharraf, it was also clearly nervous about the instability if the country's strong man were to lose power entirely. Pakistan - the world's second-most-populous Muslim nation, with elements of al-Qaeda and the Taliban controlling lawless mountainous pockets in the northwest - is also the only Islamic state with a nuclear arsenal. And though Washington publicly says Pakistan's nuclear weapons are safe, there are always private concerns about their security, concerns that will only heighten in the wake of Bhutto's assassination...