Word: marriott
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...tensions come as the militants have stepped up their campaign inside Pakistan, strengthening their hold over huge swathes of the country and launching ever more deadly strikes in its cities, including a Sept. 20 truck bombing that killed more than 50 people at Islamabad's Marriott Hotel. U.S. Army General David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, believes the militants are now so strong that they pose an "existential threat to the future of Pakistan." Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters at the Pentagon on September 26 that the terrorist safe haven...
...anti-American - will emerge from these camps. If Bajaur is a crucial front for the Pakistani military, the terrorists know not to get cornered into any last stands; they are striking across the country. Al-Qaeda and Taliban bombers are now able to strike Karachi and Islamabad; following the Marriott bombing, militants have targeted political leaders across the country. Their reach also imperils the U.S. military's supply lines into Afghanistan - 80% of dry cargo and 40% of the fuel used by U.S. forces in Afghanistan goes through Pakistan...
...generous foreign donors have spent tens of millions of dollars building roads and widening existing ones across Islamabad. The canyon-like underpasses and grand boulevards are meant to help traffic flow around the capital. But since a truck packed with 600 kg of high-grade explosives rammed into the Marriott hotel on Sept. 20, city officials have scrambled to reverse the plan, hoisting in concrete barriers to slow traffic, setting up police checkpoints, and seriously beefing up the "red-zone" security area around parliament, the prime minister's house, other government buildings and big hotels...
Call it the Baghdad effect. The colorful moniker may differ slightly from the "green-zone" U.S. forces carved out of central Baghdad, but Islamabad is beginning to feel a little like the Iraqi capital these days, especially since the devastating Marriott bombing that killed 54 people. True, Islamabad is not tattered by years of economic sanctions, nor pockmarked by days of aerial bombardment. And it is not occupied by a foreign army. But on my first trip here in six months, I'm struck by all the ways - small and big, physical and mental - Islamabad has become Baghdad circa...
Showing me to the front gate of his modest central Islamabad home this week, former foreign minister Abdul Sattar visibly shudders as he recalls the sound of the explosion as the Marriott went up. "Horrible," he says. "The whole thing is horrible. You can hardly go out anymore without worrying" There's still lingering hope that the new government can improve security and get the economy humming again. But perhaps the scariest part of comparing Islamabad to Baghdad is the knowledge that things got much worse in Iraq before they got better...