Word: masood
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...Some Taliban experts say that if Mehsud is indeed dead, his organization won't announce it until a new leader for the Pakistani Taliban is chosen - and that could take a while. "Very likely, there is confusion in the ranks," Talat Masood, a retired general and political analyst, told TIME. "The Taliban will keep on denying Mehsud is dead until the battle for succession is over...
...need an increased U.S. troop strength to countervail the Taliban in the south and the east, so that you can bring them to the negotiating table," says retired general Talat Masood. "The Pakistani military also thinks that if they succeed in Afghanistan, the Taliban will be less powerful in Pakistan. The Americans should see Pakistan as an interlocutor for trying to handle these groups politically...
...Major General Abbas was at pains to insist that JeM itself - which was implicated in the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament and the murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl - was not directly involved. But other observers are not convinced, and say that its fugitive leader, Masood Azhar, is believed to be somewhere in Waziristan. Nor is it clear if the Pakistan army has severed its links entirely with the outlawed terrorist group, as its presence in and around the southern Punjabi city of Bahawalpur grows undisturbed. A heavy concentration of madrasahs in the area has become a breeding ground...
...struggle over the poll also highlights the country's age-old ethnic divide. In the August poll, Abdullah won a clear majority of the Tajik vote in the north; Karzai the Pashtun vote in the south. Abdullah's ties to the late warrior-poet, Ahmed Shah Masood, killed by al-Qaeda a few days before 9/11, help Abdullah's support in the north because Tajiks revere Masood as an exemplary leader who single-handedly held off the Soviets and the Taliban. On the other hand, Abdullah's Masood connection is a turnoff to many Pashtun tribesmen, who viewed Masood...
...large painting hangs in Abdullah's drawing room. It is a variation on the traditional Persian theme of a Sufi master sitting on a rock, jesting with his loving disciples. In this canvas, though, the turbaned Sufi teacher is replaced by Masood and his disciples are several scruffy-looking guerrillas plus Abdullah, who stands out, neatly combed, with the hint of a halo. As a military man, Masood understood that in Afghanistan, political disputes are often settled by force. This is a lesson passed on to his disciple Abdullah and one, he says, that Karzai should learn, too. "Karzai blames...