Word: pashtun
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...attention to the Taliban's long-standing but murky presence in Karachi. Until this past week, they have resisted mounting attacks in the city, preferring to use the sprawling metropolis as a base for recruiting, smuggling weapons and racketeering for funds. Now there is fear that the city's Pashtun-speaking communities (where the Taliban find refuge) may come into conflict with Karachi's huge Urdu-speaking majority...
...Third World, with their lack of health care and their gun-toting distrust of democratic institutions. In an entirely nonjudgmental way I could not help thinking how at home, with perhaps a few cultural adjustments for the position of women, the Chutes and their neighbors might be among the Pashtun of Afghanistan. Dr. Stephen Hopkins, ECCLES, ENGLAND...
...invasion is a sign that the local population is at least more tolerant of an insurgency against foreign forces. Expanding the ground war may not solve this problem. As University of Michigan historian Juan Cole wrote last week, "The U.S. counter-insurgency plan assumes that Pashtun villagers dislike and fear the Taliban, and just need to be protected from them so as to stop the politics of intimidation. But what if the villagers are cousins of the Taliban and would rather support their clansmen than white Christian foreigners?" (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban...
...Pakistani army sees the conflict in Afghanistan being resolved through negotiations that lead toward the establishment of a new government with greater Pashtun representation and diminished Indian influence. Pakistan's security establishment has never embraced Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, which it sees as dominated by the ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara forces of the India-backed Northern Alliance. And it fears that India is expanding its influence there through massive development projects, even accusing India of using Afghanistan as a base from which to destabilize Pakistan...
...Pakistan's aim has always been to have a friendly government in Kabul that is an accurate representation of the Pashtun population," says Nawaz. "If there's a reconfiguration of the Karzai government, it brings more Pashtuns in, Pakistan may want to play a part to try and bring in people that may be supporting the Taliban but are not ideologues." Such a solution would probably not involve Mullah Omar and the Afghan Taliban directly but would perhaps include the notorious Haqqani network based in Pakistan's North Waziristan and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of Hizb-e-Islami - both of which...