Word: pakistanis
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Pakistani military saw the original Swat agreement and its concessions on Shari'a law as a way to pacify the bulk of the Taliban's popular support base, while isolating the more implacable jihadist element by denying them a key rallying issue. The generals don't share Clinton's view of the Taliban as some sort of external force invading territory the Pakistani military is obliged to protect; on the contrary, odious though it may be to the country's established political class and to the urban population that lives in the 21st century, the movement appears to be rooted...
Goaded into action by mounting criticism from the U.S., the Pakistani military last week launched an offensive against the Taliban on its own soil. But it remains unclear whether the goals of the offensive are limited to containing the militants' most recent advances, rather than reversing their steady gains of the past year. The country's President, meanwhile, ahead of a trip to Washington, told foreign journalists that as far as his intelligence agencies were aware, Osama bin Laden was dead - though he readily admitted that they had no proof. The rituals recalled the days when General turned President Pervez...
...peace agreement that put them into effective control of the Swat Valley, extended their reach by taking control of Buner - a province 60 miles from Pakistan's capital, as every media outlet hastened to explain. Pentagon leaders warned that the militants had become an "existential threat" to the Pakistani state. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the situation as a "mortal danger" to global security and bluntly demanded that the Pakistani military - a recipient of more than $10 billion in U.S. aid over the past decade - do a better job of earning that support. "We're wondering why they...
Pakistan's generals got the message - the message being that Washington expected them to push back. On April 27, Pakistani security forces launched an offensive to "eliminate and expel the militants from Buner," as army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas noted. Two weeks ago, Pakistan's parliament had endorsed a peace agreement that involved the imposition of Islamic Shari'a law in the Malakand Division, which includes Swat and Buner. The Taliban insist that it allowed them to maintain an armed presence; the military rejects that claim and made clear its intention to limit the Taliban from further advances...
...also be more sanguine about the Taliban than Washington has been because the generals tend to view the country's political establishment, most directly challenged by the militants' gains, as corrupt and self-serving. The army, rather than the relatively weak political institutions, is the spine of the Pakistani state, and democracy has never been seen as a precondition to its survival. If the turmoil in civil society reaches a boiling point, the military, however reluctant its current leadership may be to seize power, can be reliably expected to take the political reins...