Word: regions
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Indonesia used to be a reliable punch line for jokes about Third World ineptitude. Crippling corruption? Check. Homegrown terror movements? Check. Protectionist policies that dissuade foreign investment? Check. But in recent years, Indonesia's leadership has matured. In a region where one nation's political system is still reeling from a military coup (Thailand), another's top economic advisers are confounded by runaway inflation that's threatening much-vaunted growth (Vietnam) and the politics of a third is mired in racial recrimination (Malaysia), Indonesia - led by its first-ever directly elected President - has emerged as Southeast Asia's unlikely star...
...military used religious schools in the borderland to train and equip Afghan mujahedin and to heal them when they returned. More than 3 million Afghan refugees took shelter in Pakistan's cities and in makeshift camps. But after the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the U.S. lost interest in the region. Afghanistan's war of liberation turned into a civil war, and the Pakistani government--led by Bhutto and her political rival Nawaz Sharif, who alternated in power--backed the Taliban, student warriors committed to a fundamentalist Islamic state...
When it ran Afghanistan, the Taliban provided a safe haven for al-Qaeda--which had its origins among those who had gone to the region to fight Soviet forces. Pakistani government support for the Taliban officially ended after 9/11, when Pervez Musharraf, an army general who had seized power in a 1999 coup, pledged to assist the U.S. war on terrorism. But not everyone was on board. Some in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency (ISI) played a double game, turning a blind eye when members of the Taliban leadership and al-Qaeda escaped to Pakistan's Federally Administered...
...this has combined to make the governability of Pakistan and the character of its latest leader matters of intense concern far from the mountains of the Hindu Kush. Al-Qaeda has "hundreds of training camps" scattered throughout the region, says a Western official in Pakistan. CIA director Michael Hayden has called FATA an al-Qaeda "safe haven" that presents a "clear and present danger to Afghanistan, to Pakistan and to the West in general, and to the United States in particular." So the question becomes: How dangerous is Pakistan now--and does Zardari have what it takes to make...
...look the problem in the eye, and we can solve it." Punting may have been his only option: continued U.S. operations on Pakistani soil are inevitable; Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Wednesday called for a "new, more comprehensive military strategy for the region that covers both sides of that border." Pledging to stop U.S. raids would only undermine Zardari's credibility...