Word: peshawar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...been a favorite target of insurgents. In February, John Solecki, the head of the U.N. refugee agency's office in Baluchistan, was kidnapped by Baluch separatist fighters and held for two months before being released. In June, the U.N. was forced to pull its staff out of Peshawar, the capital of the lawless North-West Frontier Province, after a vehicle laden with explosives slammed into the side of a hotel in the city, killing 17 people. Just hours after Monday's attack, the U.N. said all of its offices in Islamabad would be closed indefinitely. That could severely hamper relief...
...easy to imagine that a little boy growing up in Paktia province might have heard heroic tales of the Battle of Jaji and its hero, bin Laden. When Zazi was about 7 years old, his father moved the family across the border into Pakistan, near Peshawar, another zone of bin Laden influence and a hotbed of jihadist activity...
...America weren't paved with gold for Zazi. He fell deeply into debt. Starting around 2006, when he traveled to Pakistan to marry a 19-year-old cousin, Zazi began dividing his time between New York City and the increasingly radical milieu of Hayatabad, a relatively prosperous city near Peshawar where bin Laden's influence was deeply felt. Visits in 2006 and 2007 produced two children, and he hoped to bring his family to the U.S. someday. It was a dim hope, as Zazi spiraled toward bankruptcy...
...Then, in 2008, a third trip generated an entirely different result. According to court documents filed by the FBI, Zazi and an unspecified number of companions flew on Aug. 28 to Peshawar via Geneva and Doha. According to knowledgeable sources, something about this trip inspired U.S. officials to ask Pakistani authorities to keep an eye on Zazi, and what they saw was unsettling. "There was reason to believe that Zazi met with terrorists in Pakistan," a U.S. counterterrorism official tells TIME. The FBI confirms this, saying that since his arrest, Zazi has admitted to attending an al-Qaeda training camp...
...Where was he recruited? It's possible Zazi simply turned up in Peshawar and asked to be led to the nearest jihadi recruitment center. Plenty of terrorists have done that. Given his legal residency in the U.S., he would have been a great get for any of the terrorist groups that operate in the northern Pakistani city...