Word: pakistans
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...young people in many parts of India: they simply want a government that works. This was most clear in Mumbai after the November terrorist attacks in which nearly 200 people were killed. There was certainly anger directed at the terrorists and their sponsors, who are believed to be in Pakistan, but the more enduring feeling was disillusionment with the city's own inadequate response. Mihir Joshi, 28, is a DJ and musician in south Mumbai who says he has become politically active for the first time in his life because of "26/11." What still troubles him isn't the motivation...
...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 in Pakistan's social fabric. The Taliban's recent advances have been accomplished in no small part through recruiting locals to its cause by exploiting long-standing resentment toward the venal local judicial and administrative authorities that prop up a feudal social order...
...leaders began sounding the alarm last week when the militants, buoyed by a 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...
...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...
Still, the army is reluctant to launch an all-out campaign against the militants, not least because of a widely held perception in Pakistan that the Taliban's rise is a product of America's unpopular war in Afghanistan. There's little support in the public - or within the ranks of the military - for deploying the military in a sustained civil war against the militants. Many in Pakistan were convinced that the Taliban had exceeded their bounds in Buner and Swat and needed to be pushed back - but not necessarily crushed. Whereas U.S. officials warn of the Taliban...