Word: sunni
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that may have been unprecedented, to use the word of the week, for a U.S. Secretary of State. The trip, planned by Holbrooke and Pakistan specialist Vali Nasr, offered an unusually subtle itinerary for a U.S. diplomatic mission. A visit to a Sufi mosque that had been bombed by Sunni extremists, for example, sent a powerful message to Pakistan's moderate Islamic majority. "We saw her praying there," an academic named Shala Aziz told me, "and, for the first time, I'm thinking, The Americans have hearts."(See pictures of the suicide bombings in Islamabad...
Ironically, the rise of Sunni extremist groups like al-Qaeda has brought Clinton's interests - microfinance, education and health care - to the center of national-security policy for the first time. The impetus came not from the State Department but from the military, where counterinsurgency doctrine demanded that social services in war zones - schools, justice, economic development - reinforce the military's efforts to secure the population. As a result, there was immediate chemistry between Clinton and General David Petraeus, author of the Army's counterinsurgency manual, who became one of her prime military mentors when she served on the Senate...
Iranian officials accused the U.S., Britain and Pakistan of helping to orchestrate a suicide bombing in Sistan-Baluchestan province Oct. 18 that killed 42 people, including commanders of the Revolutionary Guard, the nation's élite military unit. Though the Sunni rebel group Jundallah claimed responsibility for the attack--Iran's deadliest in nearly two decades--President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the foreign powers for funding the majority-Shi'ite country's insurgency in order to destabilize its borders. All three nations denied involvement...
...civilians reportedly died in the thousands - Iran lent Pakistan logistical support, including helicopters. At the time, the two countries were allied together under the U.S.-led CENTO Cold War pact, but following Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979 relations changed, with Tehran's Shia establishment increasingly wary of their Sunni counterparts in the Pakistani military leadership. The Iranians loath the Afghan Taliban, who were created in part by elements within the Pakistani state. "There's an inherent set of tensions [between the two countries] based on their prior strategic choices," says Sameer Lalwani, a Pakistan watcher at the New America...
...Baluch separatism to the activities of the Taliban are wrong, says Harrison. Baluch nationalism has always been a secular project; its militant fronts warring with Pakistan, like the Baluch Liberation Army, descend from a tradition of Marxist-Leninist guerrillas that took root in the 1970s. Jundullah, though an avowedly Sunni group, articulates its identity as a rejection of the Shia clerics ruling Iran - a political act - rather than one born out any particular fervor...