Word: swat
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Smile, you're in Swat," reads a billboard on the main road into the lush green honeymooners' valley in Pakistan once dubbed the "Switzerland of Asia." But over the past two years, Swat has been turned into a playground for the Taliban. And it may be the Taliban and their fellow Islamists who have the biggest reason to smile as a result of the Pakistani government's decision last week to end its floundering military campaign there and instead accept the Taliban's demand for the imposition of Islamic Shari...
...lynchpin of the government's effort to defuse the Taliban insurgency is Sufi Mohammed, a septuagenarian Islamist cleric whose Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law has returned to Swat with the backing of the authorities. "We will ask them to lay down their weapons," Mohammed says of the local Taliban. "We are hopeful that they won't turn us down." Mohammed's credibility with the militants is based on the fact that he waged his own violent campaign for Shari'a law in the area in the mid-1990s; he also fought alongside the Taliban when U.S. forces invaded...
...With the military effort failing to stem the Taliban's advance in an area just over three hours from the capital, the government may have seen Mohammed as a lesser evil, accepting his demand for Shari'a law in order to help Mohammed win back control of Swat from the Taliban...
...Pakistan Seeking Peace and Stability In an effort to quell violence, the government struck a deal with insurgents on Feb. 16 that would implement a form of Islamic law in northwest Pakistan. The ruling will cover the Malakand region, which includes the Swat Valley, a onetime tourist spot and now home base for Taliban forces. While militants have agreed to a 10-day cease-fire, critics of the deal labeled the pact a dangerous concession to violent religious extremists...
Chinese nationals in Pakistan are in as much danger as other foreigners. In the aftermath of a tentative cease-fire between Pakistan and Taliban radicals in the beleaguered Swat Valley, militants there released Long Xiaowei, a Chinese engineer abducted six months ago - an incident that drew unusually forceful language from Beijing...