Word: pakistans
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...Pakistani Taliban who has unleashed a wave of suicide bombings around the country in the past year - dead or alive? The mystery deepens. In mid-January, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence reported that Mehsud may have been hit by a U.S. missile strike in the sawtoothed ranges along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, a claim that was at once disputed by the Taliban. Then on Tuesday, Pakistani TV channels, quoting an unnamed Taliban commander, reported that Mehsud had indeed been injured by the missile, and that he lapsed into a coma and died on Feb. 7 near Multan, a large town...
...Mehsud posed for visiting journalists like a B-movie action hero with a rocket-propelled grenade on his shoulder, and then again leering behind the wheel of a humvee that his men had looted from a NATO convoy trapped in the canyons of the Khyber Pass. (See pictures of Pakistan's class divisions and ethnic rivalries...
...forces intensified their drone flights over Pakistan's lawless border region after a video was released showing Mehsud posing with a Jordanian doctor, a double agent who on Dec. 30 blew himself up along with seven CIA agents and a Jordanian intelligence officer at a U.S. base near Khost in eastern Afghanistan. Since Jan. 1, say Pakistani military officials, the unmanned drones - the most feared weapon in the U.S. arsenal - have struck 15 times inside Pakistan, usually in remote mountain hamlets that Pakistani ground forces cannot reach. (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable frontier with Afghanistan...
...Taliban commander quoted in the news said it would probably be Waliur Rehman, a high-ranking fellow Mehsud tribesman from South Waziristan. But he may not be acceptable to other Taliban fighters scattered across the lawless borderlands. Although various regional commanders are united under the organization Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, their reasons for becoming Taliban are varied. The ideology of replacing the pro-Western Islamabad government with an al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic caliphate is often a flag of convenience for other motives. Some joined the Taliban for revenge against Islamabad for past assaults against their tribes and for U.S. drone...
...Both sides predict the fight for Marja could be brutal, with belts of IEDs believed to be buried along all major approaches to the town. Unlike earlier battles over towns and villages further east, where many Taliban are from Pakistan, the enemy in Marja is largely local, which will further complicate the fight. "It's harder to separate the enemy from the people," a Pentagon planner says, "when they are the people." (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban...