Word: rana
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Faridkot) says the area has a long history of sending men to fight in Kashmir. Despite the risks, joining a militant network provides social mobility that is virtually unattainable in Pakistani society, giving the groups' members a sense of purpose and pride and elevating their status, says Muhammad Amir Rana, a Pakistani expert on extremist groups. And indeed, villagers have told journalists that when Qasab went home to see his family just before the Mumbai attacks, he was a changed man - calm, with a sense of purpose and able to demonstrate his new fighting skills. ((See pictures of a Jihadist...
...Rana, the expert on militancy, has seen an accompanying rise in extremist activity. He estimates that 60% of all terrorist attacks in Pakistan since 2002 have originated in the Punjab. "What the militant groups are doing now," says political analyst and academic Ayesha Siddiqa, "is recruiting people and sending them to fight elsewhere." Some are going to Kashmir, she says, but many more are fighting in Bajaur and Swat, in the North-West Frontier Province, where government forces are waging a losing war to contain militancy. Groups like LeT have always been open about their goals for an Islamic state...
Deputy Director Amtal Rana of Kiran-Asian Women's Aid, a nonprofit that received more than 100 calls last year regarding forced marriages, says Abedin's is not an uncommon reaction. "Children often don't want to have action taken against their parents but just want to get out of the situation," says Rana. Reports suggest that Abedin's strict Muslim parents disapproved of her Hindu boyfriend in Britain and wanted her to marry a man of their choosing. "Parents are doing the same thing that happened to them and their parents and their grandparents, so they don't think...
...mounting challenge from Islamic extremism. Weapons, distributed by a network of arms dealers that supply Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, Indian separatists groups and even Nepal's Maoists, are in easy reach. Neither the weapons, nor the tactics, of the Mumbai attackers point to any one country, says Rana. "For these kinds of attacks there is no need for training camps. There were no heavy weapons or guerilla tactics. The kind of training they needed could have been done in a single room...
...Both Rana and Sethi agree that the Indian accusations are more likely to be driven less by evidence than by political imperatives. India is to hold elections in the coming months, and the ruling Congress party has taken a beating over the attacks - rival parties are saying the government was poorly prepared and had not cracked down hard enough on previous terrorist activities. "Elections are coming," says Rana, "So there are internal pressures to blame someone, and to show that it is not the government's fault. Pakistan is the obvious scapegoat...