Word: pakistanis
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...situation, to be widely considered a nation's most popular politician yet simultaneously barred from ever holding public office again. But that's the situation facing Pakistani opposition leader and long-time political mainstay Nawaz Sharif after a Feb. 25 decision by Pakistan's Supreme Court. The ruling declared both Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz, ineligible to hold office, ostensibly because of Sharif's criminal convictions after he was tossed from office in a 1999 coup by Gen. Pervez Musharraf...
Sharif says he doesn't buy the explanation and dubbed the court's decision a "nefarious act" by the current Pakistani president - Asif Ali Zardari - designed to quash Sharif's electoral threat. He has called for an anti-government rally next month, but his supporters aren't waiting. Widespread and violent protests broke out after the court's decision, adding considerable tension to a country already near its breaking point. (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable North-West Frontier Province...
...alliances is also illustrated by the U.S.'s use of drones to target two groups of militants, led by Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadar, based in Waziristan. These men, from the Ahmedzai Wazir tribe, which straddles the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, had formed an alliance with the Pakistani army against Mehsud and other militants. In fact, backed by the army, Nazir and his men had routed some 250 al-Qaeda-aligned Uzbek militants from Wana, in South Waziristan, in 2004. But despite their nonaggression pact with the Pakistani military, both men continued to mount cross-border attacks...
...That's certainly how Nazir and Bahadar see it. The two men and Mehsud, the militant commander against whom they fought on behalf of the Pakistani military, have now formed an alliance with ambitions on both sides of the border. The Shura Ittehad Mujahedin, or Council of United Jihadists, has declared war on the governments of the U.S., Afghanistan and Pakistan and proclaimed its fealty to Mullah Mohammed Omar, leader of the Afghan Taliban. (The Pakistani Taliban has, until now, been a separate if like-minded group.) In this instance, the drone war may actually have strengthened...
...government hopes its peace deal in Swat will drive a wedge between militants there and the stronger, more ambitious Mehsud - and, if successful, that it can be replicated on other fronts. But as is demonstrated by the shifting alliances in Waziristan, the basic problem facing the Pakistani government is that most of the population in the areas it's trying to pacify, while not inherently opposed to the Pakistani state, nonetheless support the principle of fighting the Americans in Afghanistan...