Word: pakistanis
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Instead of increasing assistance to its old ally, Beijing has apparently been keeping a distance from Islamabad. During Zardari's visit in October, the Chinese snubbed the Pakistani President's request for a full-blown economic bailout. While Beijing did grant Islamabad a soft loan last year worth $500 million, it was nowhere near the estimated $14 billion experts say is needed to get Pakistan back on its feet. "The cooperation we saw during the Musharraf era just isn't there anymore," says Sayem Ali, an economist with Standard Chartered Bank in Karachi. "China would rather develop better relations with...
...With the Taliban growing in confidence and feeling the wind at its back, the bad news out of Afghanistan just keeps getting worse for the U.S. NATO commanders have long expressed frustration at the failure of the Pakistani military to prevent Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters maintaining sanctuaries in Pakistan from which they can launch attacks inside Afghanistan. But Pakistan's announcement on Monday of a peace agreement to accommodate the domestic Taliban insurgency in the Swat Valley suggests that an all-out war against militants on their soil is not what Pakistan's generals have in mind...
...been put on hold, and the militants have agreed to a tentative cease-fire. But many observers fear that, far from calming the conflict, the government has capitulated to the Islamist guerrillas and set a worrying precedent - one that will surely displease the U.S. officials who want the Pakistani government to take a harder line against militants...
Scarcely 100 miles from the Pakistani capital, Taliban forces loyal to jihadist preacher (and former chairlift operator) Maulana Fazlullah have brutally advanced across Swat - a region once known as the "Switzerland of Asia" - capturing more than four-fifths of the plush valley. Once a choice destination for honeymooners, Swat has over the past two years seen more than 1,500 people killed, close to 200 schools destroyed and girls' education banned, scores of beheadings and kidnappings, and more than 100,000 people driven from their homes. (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable North-West Frontier Province...
Government officials insist that the ban on female education will be lifted and that the measures will be less austere than the Taliban's in Afghanistan. But Pakistani advocates of women's rights have sounded an alarm, forcefully arguing that the move endangers both the rule of law and women's rights. "We condemn it," says Iqbal Haider, co-chairman of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission and a former law minister. "It is an illegal, unconstitutional and discriminatory act to further promote religious fanaticism in Pakistan. The constitution does not allow a parallel legal system. And there is no guarantee...