Word: south
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...NATO forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan's priority is simply to get them to agree to stay neutral or join in the fight between the army and the Pakistan Taliban. Nazir, who was freed from Pakistani custody to fight al-Qaeda-linked Uzbek militants, controls the areas of South Waziristan where the Pakistan army has positioned troops to seal off a line of retreat for the Pakistan Taliban. The danger for the U.S. is that such deals involve a nod and a wink for continued cross-border attacks, making the militants an even more potent threat...
...ahead of it, the Pakistan army won't welcome demands that it expand its range of operations. "They will view this letter with some displeasure," says Hasan Askari-Rizvi, an independent military analyst. "Pakistan army is not going to go to North Waziristan before it completes its operation in South Waziristan." Two of the militant groups that Washington would like to see Islamabad target are based in North Waziristan: the Haqqani network and the one led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, both of whom mount cross-border attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan...
...that pose a direct challenge to its authority on home soil. Buoyed by its successes in last May's campaign to drive the Taliban out of the Swat Valley, it has for the past month deployed some 30,000 troops to confront the militants in their main stronghold of South Waziristan, along the Afghan border. The army has steadily cleared territory eastward, seizing some of the Pakistani Taliban's most prized bases, but also sparking a vicious wave of terrorist attacks that continues to claim innocent lives on a near daily basis. (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable north-west...
...South Waziristan offensive, however, may be the limit of what the Pakistani military is willing to take on right now. It's priority after clearing the area of Taliban elements will be to hold it - and there are signs that the militants have merely scattered to areas beyond the scope of the current offensive, waiting to stage a return. "We have not been defeated," Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq told reporters at a secret location on Wednesday, dismissing the army's claims. "We have voluntarily withdrawn into the mountains under a strategy that will trap the Pakistan army in the area...
...need an increased U.S. troop strength to countervail the Taliban in the south and the east, so that you can bring them to the negotiating table," says retired general Talat Masood. "The Pakistani military also thinks that if they succeed in Afghanistan, the Taliban will be less powerful in Pakistan. The Americans should see Pakistan as an interlocutor for trying to handle these groups politically...