Word: mujahedin
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...locus of that terrible peril because, for most of the players, continuing conflict works. It works for the militants, who have found an escape from grinding poverty in the gun and the cash and prestige it attracts. That's true of both the indigenous Kashmiri militants and the "guest mujahedin" who come in from Pakistan, veterans of ISI-run training camps in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and former Taliban-ruled territory in Afghanistan, who subscribe to the same ideal of waging a purifying jihad...
...elections, rampant official corruption, police torture and murders by soldiers. And with the U.S. enthusiastically prosecuting its war on terror in Afghanistan, New Delhi feels the time is right for its own crackdown. In Kashmir, it is: even Kashmiri militants, who desire independence from India, agree that their guest mujahedin are as nasty as they are unwelcome. "They are trying to Talibanize Kashmir," says activist Mohammed Kaleem. "Their only objective is to destroy India." Mehbooba Mufti, vice president of the pro-India People's Democratic Party, says the jihadis are giving Vajpayee's government exactly the justification it needs: "They...
...Shibarghan before joining the military during communist rule in Afghanistan. By the mid-1980s he was in command first of a militia battalion, then of a division. His big break came with the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan in 1988-89. As the troop convoys headed home and the rebel mujahedin sharpened their knives, Dostum and his Soviet-funded army of tough Uzbek and Turkmen irregulars emerged as the only real mobile outfit the communist regime of President Najibullah could count on. "In 1989 he had a budget for 45,000 troops, but we knew he had only...
...Digging up the Buddha is a forbidding task. The Russians, followed by the Afghan mujahedin fighters and then the Taliban, all planted land mines on the high cliffs above the colossal Buddhas, and rain and erosion have brought hundreds of these deadly devices tumbling into the valley. Dozens of Afghan de-mining experts are combing the slopes with their metal detectors, trying to avert more casualties. The mines are a particular hazard to the families of Hazara refugees whose villages were razed by the Taliban and who now shelter in the honeycomb of cliff caves once used by meditating Buddhist...
...Since becoming a nation in 1947, Pakistan has tried with war and guile to pry away the part of Kashmir, a former princely state with a Muslim majority, that is in India's hands. Borrowing a page from the cia's proxy war against the Soviets, which used the mujahedin in Afghanistan, the ISI in 1989 began encouraging Islamic-militant outfits inside Pakistan to cross over the mountains and snipe at Indian troops in Kashmir. As a guerrilla tactic, it was brilliant. On any given day, more than 300,000 Indian troops are busy chasing 2,000 Kashmiri and Pakistani...