Word: pakistanis
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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This alarms U.S. officials, who point out that terrorist leaders have previously used peace deals to expand their influence. Such deals have been "abject failures that at the end of the day have made the security situation in parts of Pakistan worse," says a U.S. counterterrorism official. "Why the Pakistani government keeps returning to this strategy is a mystery." (See pictures of Pakistan beneath the surface...
...senior Pakistani military official tells TIME a ground operation in the mountainous wilds of South Waziristan would be too difficult and would risk triggering a "tribal uprising" in a region over which Islamabad has little control...
That assessment is shared by some Pakistan experts in Washington, who say the country's military, despite some success against militants in the Swat Valley, simply doesn't have the ability to confront the TTP head-on. A ground operation would leave the Pakistani army "with its nose bloodied," says Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations. Having "come out of Swat looking reasonably good," Pakistan's generals don't want to risk "taking a morale hit." (Read "Are Pakistan's Taliban Leaders Fighting Among Themselves...
...experts - like some U.S. officials - suspect the Pakistani military lacks the desire to eliminate the TTP entirely. Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution, who conducted the Obama Administration's review of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, says the military may simply want "to get the TTP back to where it was two years ago - a malleable force that doesn't attack the Pakistani state, and particularly not the army." A somewhat tame TTP is a useful bogeyman "to keep civilians appreciative of the need for the army to be getting resources and priority attention," Riedel adds...
...Obama Administration, the Pakistani military's reluctance to take on the TTP doesn't bode well for the pursuit of U.S. interests. Washington would like Islamabad to confront the groups that pose a direct threat to NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan - the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network. But "it's not clear that the Pakistanis are prepared to pay more than lip service to that," says Riedel...