Word: stilles
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...Valley's lush, mountainous tribal terrain of its Taliban usurpers last summer, using some 30,000 troops to dislodge the guerrillas from the once-bustling tourist haven, 80 miles northwest of the capital Islamabad. Now, however, almost a year after winning the war, the same number of troops are still in place in order to hold Swat, rebuild it and prevent a Taliban resurgence - and that may keep Islamabad from going after the extremists in other parts of Pakistan's unruly frontier with Afghanistan...
...also believed to be a refuge for senior al-Qaeda leaders. Yet the Pakistani military has refused to go into North Waziristan because it says its forces are already stretched thin (the bulk of the country's troops are stationed along the eastern border with India, the nation Islamabad still considers its primary foe). (See pictures of refugees fleeing the Swat valley...
...Still, some people say they are wary of the army's intentions - and its omnipresence. They fear that a military accustomed to being in control is unlikely to relinquish power and give up its space to civilian institutions. Lt. Col. Abbas dismisses such concerns. "Pulling [the military] back is the decision of the political government. Whenever they require us, we're here. If they say we are no more required, again we're happy," he says. "But since we're sitting here in the valley, we are reconstructing." And not going after the extremists in North Waziristan...
...Back in Vilnius, Toropovaite is still sorting out how she'll get to her boyfriend. She briefly had plans to take a train from Vilnius to Warsaw to Paris, but scratched that when France began shutting its airports. She now has a flight booked on Sunday that will take her to Riga, Latvia, where she will wait for five hours for a flight to London that may or may not take off. "I'm not optimistic," she says. "But I can't be angry at anyone. It's nobody's fault. This is a volcano...
...commanders in chief. "No credible criminal investigation can proceed in Pakistan," says Farzana Shaikh, a senior Pakistan analyst at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs, "because that would mean going to the heart of the military and its intelligence arm. This is a weak civilian government. The military still calls the shots. That's the reality of Pakistan. Like many other murders, we are not going to get any answers any time soon...