Word: swat
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Militant violence returned to the Pakistani capital on Saturday when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the courtyard of a police rapid response center, killing two people and injuring six others. The attack came just hours after militants ambushed a military convoy near the Swat Valley, where the army has waged a punishing month-long offensive against Taliban militants. The violence has raised fears that the militants are intent on striking deeper inside the country, mounting revenge attacks and attempting to demoralize a population that has increasingly united against them. (See TIME's photos of Pakistan beneath the surface...
...when a suicide bomber struck the headquarters of the Special Branch - a special police investigative unit - killing a guard who tried to stop the attacker. Law enforcement authorities in the capital have been bracing themselves for militant attacks since the army launched a wide-ranging military operation in the Swat Valley and two neighboring districts in a bid to wipe out the Taliban. Manned entries to the city have been beefed up with increased numbers of policemen searching vehicles, while sentries at all checkpoints lying athwart main roads have been given instructions to exercise greater vigilance...
Saturday's attack has heightened fears that there may be more to come as militant terror spreads geographically. A day earlier, a suicide bomber killed more than 30 people in a mosque near the Swat Valley as they were gathered for Friday prayers - the most important weekly event for religious Muslims. While there has been no claim of responsibility yet, the victims were from Hayagai Sharqi in Upper Dir, a mountainous village that has a reported history resisted Taliban influence. It was the first time that the district of Upper Dir has been...
...course of my reporting on Pakistan, I hear conspiracy theories all the time: that the Pakistani Taliban fighting in Swat are funded by Indian intelligence; that the Americans are assisting the Taliban in Afghanistan to justify and secure a Central Asian foothold against China; and the old chestnut that Israel's Mossad and the CIA were behind the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. While no press in any country is without flaw or bias, I count on fellow journalists everywhere to be more enlightened and sensible than average folk. But in Pakistan's case, sections of the media are reinforcing...
...girls' school built by the Tarakais, recently arrived refugees from Swat describe the Taliban's preparations for the military offensive. (Schools across the North-West Frontier Province have closed for six months; their buildings are being used to house refugees.) "The Taliban took over the food shops and changed the locks," says Mohammad Ali, 30, who used to sell clothes in Mingora's main bazaar. "They occupied a high school to make their base there. In the town there was a stock of wheat flour that had arrived for us from the government of Punjab. The Taliban took that over...