Word: pakistan
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...Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum and Tajik strongman General Mohammed Fahim - even if that means turning a blind eye to their transgressions. He is also keen to take charge of negotiating a political settlement with the Taliban on his own timetable, and with less of a role for Pakistan than Washington might be ready to concede to Islamabad. Just as U.S. influence in Iraq declined precipitously once its intention to withdraw became clear, so is Karzai's game plan premised on getting along without the U.S., even though he'll do his best to keep it there as long...
...same agenda as their patrons just because their interests coincide at a given moment. But not all of Karzai's enemies in the region are America's enemies, and not all of America's allies are Karzai's allies. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of Pakistan, the original patron of the Taliban, which has also been going through the motions of indulging American concerns while continuing to enable the Afghan Taliban insurgency and identifying Karzai as an adversary because of his regime's close ties with India...
...Like Pakistan over the past eight years, Karzai has been biding his time, positioning himself for the battles and power shifts that will come when the Americans leave, his goal - like Islamabad's - being to protect his power. And the arrival in Washington of the Obama Administration signaled the onset of the endgame. Driven by a desire to conclude America's fiscally burdensome wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and alarmed by the downward security spiral in Afghanistan, the Obama Administration put Karzai on notice that failure to tackle the corruption that was deemed to be fueling the insurgency would jeopardize...
...should come as no surprise, then, that in the endgame, Karzai has revealed an agenda quite distinct from that of Washington - just as Pakistan has done. The premise of the U.S. policy, after all - just like that of the Pakistanis, Karzai, the Taliban and every other player in the game - is that sooner or later, the Americans will leave. And it's that reality, now more than ever, that is shaping everyone's game...
...gateway to Pakistan's restive tribal belt, Peshawar is "within easy reach" of the Taliban militants who are based in the country's lawless zone, says Dr. Riffat Hussein, chairman of the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Quaid-e-Azam University. "This is a payback attack for what the Pakistan army has tried to do to them in the tribal areas, and the Americans as well, in addition to the anticipated Kandahar attack." Cross-border infiltration - and coordination - between the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban remains a key obstacle. Rizvi says the threat posed by the linkage will take...