Word: quetta
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Three weeks after 9/11 and two days before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, Mamdouh Habib was on a bus headed out of the Pakistani town of Quetta when police swooped and arrested him. What, they wanted to know, was an Australian citizen doing in this restricted border zone - a Taliban stronghold - without a permit? "Wrong place, wrong time," says Habib's lawyer Stephen Hopper: the Egyptian-born father of four, who planned to move his family to Pakistan, had simply been looking for business opportunities and a good Islamic school for his sons. But U.S. security agents, who soon took custody...
...Pakistan Responds Your report "Hiding in Plain Sight" [Nov. 29] claimed Pakistani authorities were ignoring Taliban fugitives who have taken refuge in our southern city of Quetta. No Taliban member is welcome in Pakistan. Our country is a key, vital partner of the U.S. in the war on terrorism. President Pervez Musharraf has ordered more than 70,000 troops to police Pakistan's southwestern border with Afghanistan. The President has repeatedly made it clear that he will spare no effort to rid Pakistan of all inimical foreign elements. Talat Waseem Press Counselor Embassy of Pakistan Washington...
...authorities to the locations of specific Taliban hideouts, only to find that the extremists had slipped away before the raids started. (In response, Pakistani officials say the tip-offs were too sketchy.) "Right now," says a senior Afghan official, "we have solid evidence that Mullah Omar is hiding near Quetta." Two weeks ago, the elusive Taliban commander of the faithful issued his first message since July, renewing his call to fight Americans...
...claims he was recruited to carry bombs into Afghanistan by a senior Taliban living in Peshawar's swanky Hyatabad district. And an Afghan who works with the U.S. in Kandahar, Afghanistan, says the former Taliban Defense Minister, Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, openly celebrated his marriage to a teenage bride in Quetta several months ago. "We know the entire al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership is on the other side, and we can't do a damn thing about it," a U.S. commander complained to his officers on a recent tour of a firebase on the Afghan side of the border. He called...
...fighting. "Let others do the jihad," he says. "Me, I'm exhausted." If Pakistan really started to do all it could to crack down on the Taliban, it might find that fatigue among those battle-weary warriors would finish off the job. --With reporting by Muhib Habibi/Kandahar, Ghulam Hasnain/ Quetta and Rahimullah Yusufzai/Peshawar