Word: pakistans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...think of Fox News cranked up to full volume, in Urdu. It resounds from the mosques, in virulent anti-U.S. sermons during Friday prayers. But most ominously, according to Islamabad observers, this deep suspicion of America's intentions in the region seems to be shared by elements within Pakistan's powerful military and intelligence services...
Here's a sample of a few conspiracy theories making the rounds: the U.S. military has a secret plan to seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal; more than 9,000 agents of Blackwater, the U.S. security company, now called Xe Services, are roaming the country like bogeymen, at the CIA's behest, kidnapping people and setting off bombs that are later blamed on Pakistani Taliban militants; B-52 bombers are constantly circling the skies over Pakistan, waiting to strike when the signal is given (to strike what is never exactly clear from the rumors). (See a video about bomb threats against...
This anti-U.S. resentment strikes many in Washington as a tad ungrateful - not to mention misplaced - given that last fall, Congress enacted the Kerry-Lugar bill granting Pakistan over $7.5 billion in economic aid over the next five years. In addition, Pakistan receives military hardware and training to combat Pakistani Taliban - whose wrath is focused on Islamabad - in the mountainous borderlands with Afghanistan...
...Pakistan has long been characterized as a country whose rulers may be pro-American but whose people are decidedly not. In 1979, for example, Pakistani radio falsely reported that U.S. aircraft bombed Islam's holiest site in Mecca, prompting a mob to storm the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, killing five American and Pakistani staffers. This simmering hostility was stirred again after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 and boiled over, more recently, with drone missile strikes inside Pakistan's tribal territory in which dozens of suspected terrorists - and civilians - died. The Feb. 3 conviction in New York...
...bill, has unintentionally riled the Pakistani army. The billions came with strings attached. The generals opposed one of the conditions of the bill: that the U.S. must be satisfied that the Pakistani military was fighting terrorism and not, as the legislation said, "subverting the political and judicial processes of Pakistan." Says Talat Masood, a retired general and military analyst in Islamabad: "Some in the army think this is intrusive and a loss to our sovereignty...