Word: swats
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Pakistan is taking the fight to Mehsud's mountainous stronghold, ordering an expansion of its current offensive against Taliban fighters in the Swat valley. On Sunday night, denouncing Mehsud as "the root cause of all evils," Owais Ghani, the governor of the North-West Frontier Province, said the government has called on the army to launch a "full-fledged" military operation to eliminate Mehsud and his estimated 20,000 men. The crucial battle may prove to be the most difficult that Pakistan's military has faced on its soil in recent years...
When Pakistani troops began to pummel Taliban positions in the Swat Valley last month, there were other military advances against insurgent outposts - barely noticed by the global media - taking place in valleys not so far away. In late May, Uzbek soldiers and tanks patrolled parts of the troubled Ferghana Valley following shootouts with suspected Islamist extremists and a suicide bombing in the valley's main city of Andijan. In neighboring Tajikistan, government forces fanned out across the remote Rasht Valley in a supposed attempt to hunt down a notorious militant commander named Abdullo Rakhimov. The veteran jihadi, according to some...
...assault on its fighters, Taliban commander Hakimullah Mehsud warned of further attacks across the country. Other likely suspects include al-Qaeda. On June 3, a voice believed to be that of Osama Bin Laden's railed against President Barack Obama's administration. Specifically citing the military operation in the Swat Valley, the audiotape broadcast on Al-Jazeera accused Washington of "having planted new seeds to increase hatred for and revenge against America". The Marriott attack is believed to have been orchestrated by Usama al-Kini, a senior al-Qaeda operative who was killed in a drone attack...
...Among the hotel's diners on Tuesday night were 25 United Nations staff assisting the relief effort for the estimated three million people displaced by fighting between Pakistani forces and Taliban fighters in the Swat Valley and two neighboring districts. The UN says that five of their staff were killed by the attack, including Aleksandar Vorkapic, a Serbian national working for UNCHR and Perseveranda So, a Philippines national running education projects for Unicef. Their deaths may now halt some of the UN's extensive operations in Pakistan's northwest. Most of the staff has been sent to Islamabad. Other...
Moments after Saturday's attack in Islamabad, Interior Minister Rehman Malik condemned the suicide bombing as "a cowardly attack" mounted after "the defeat" of the Taliban in Swat. While the army has claimed a flurry of successes, including clearing the main town of Mingora and killing more than 1,300 Taliban fighters, a decisive victory is yet to be achieved. The army says that it is still facing "pockets of resistance," and the senior leadership remains elusive. Many of the militants have fled the area, believed to have melted away into the valley's snow-capped mountains, the tribal areas...