Word: quetta
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This is a rift that Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials are eager to widen. In the border cities of Quetta and Peshawar, Pakistani military intelligence agents are dusting off Afghan war veterans and putting them to work sending out feelers to fellow ex-commanders who are serving the Taliban. Those commanders are being urged to defect in exchange for bribes and the guarantee of a job in the next Afghan government. First indications are promising, according to anti-Taliban sources in both cities. When he asked about arms, one commander from Afghanistan's Nangarhar province was assured that anti-Taliban...
Meanwhile, tribal chieftains such as Achakzai have their own game plan against the Taliban. In Quetta, the elders of the 23 million-strong Pashtun tribe, which is spread across western Pakistan and most of Afghanistan, are moving to bring back Mohammed Zahir Shah, the deposed Afghan King who is living in Rome. In high-walled and guarded villas, these elders receive a stream of whispering chieftains, Afghan ex-army generals, mujahedin commanders and Pakistani officials--all eager recruits for an uprising against the Taliban. "It's happening so fast," says Hamad Karzai, an influential Afghan Pashtun elder who is backing...
...against the Taliban commanders. Otherwise, a major U.S.-led assault could have disastrous effects inside Afghanistan--and in neighboring Pakistan too. "We have a saying: 'To kill a louse, you needn't set fire to your jacket,'" explains Mohammed Sarwar Khan Kakar, an influential tribal leader and politician in Quetta. "In other words, to catch Osama bin Laden, you don't have to burn all Afghanistan." Despite their grievances against the Taliban's brutish rule, Pashtuns would close ranks and rally to their fellow tribesmen against the U.S. In all likelihood, their forces would swell with zealots crossing over from...
Located near the Afghan border at the center of the chaos that threatens to engulf the region, Quetta is a rough-and-tumble town flooded with refugees, drugs, guns, Islamic militancy and, most of all, fear. Alexandra Boulat's striking photo essay captures the mood. time.com/pakistan...
...Balkh, northern Afghanistan, since deliveries were suspended after the Sept. 11 bombings. Aid workers estimated that they would have to provide 55,000 tons a month to feed all 6 million people thought to be in need. Another threat to the refugees appeared in the Pakistan border town of Quetta, where 75 people have caught Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, an Ebola-like disease that causes victims to bleed to death from the body's orifices. Seemingly anxious to reduce...