Word: qaeda
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Waziristan region made a surprising discovery: documents that appear to be linked to suspects in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Among the finds: a German passport in the name of Said Bahaji, a militant associated with hijackers, and a Spanish passport for the wife of an alleged al-Qaeda member. Though the documents have not been authenticated, U.S. officials say they're proof that al-Qaeda members took refuge in the area. Visiting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she found it "hard to believe" that Pakistani forces couldn't capture al-Qaeda leaders "if they really wanted...
...fixed on Clinton's undiplomatic bluntness. But they missed the point: her candor, her willingness to listen to and acknowledge criticism, had begun to undermine the prevailing Pakistani image of the U.S. as arrogant and bossy, more interested in having the Pakistani military fight its war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban than in having a true strategic partnership. The contrast was especially sharp after George W. Bush's eight years of unqualified support for the military dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf. "In the past, when the Americans came, they would talk to the generals and go home," said Farahnaz Ispahani...
Ironically, the rise of Sunni extremist groups like al-Qaeda has brought Clinton's interests - microfinance, education and health care - to the center of national-security policy for the first time. The impetus came not from the State Department but from the military, where counterinsurgency doctrine demanded that social services in war zones - schools, justice, economic development - reinforce the military's efforts to secure the population. As a result, there was immediate chemistry between Clinton and General David Petraeus, author of the Army's counterinsurgency manual, who became one of her prime military mentors when she served on the Senate...
...really has to show for his efforts so far is a Nobel Prize for Potential and - no small thing - the wisdom to have refrained from doing anything so wildly stupid as invading Iraq. The President has been willing to use military force - the Predator drones that have decimated al-Qaeda's leadership testify to his lack of squeamishness - but this Administration is supposed to be about the efficacy of using subtler expressions of U.S. power. That doesn't happen overnight, but for Obama's policies to be considered a success, it has to happen sooner or later...
Foreign fighters aligned with al-Qaeda make up a large component of the fighters that the army is taking on in South Waziristan. The military's chief spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, said that some 1,500 Central Asian fighters, mainly Uzbeks, were among the 5,000 to 8,000 fighters that the offensive was targeting...