Word: swatting
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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...
...peace deals" that have only served to embolden Mehsud. But the military appears more determined this time. It also enjoys the backing of a government that has gained public support as the recent wave of terrorist attacks has heightened revulsion against the Taliban. (See pictures of refugees fleeing the Swat valley...
...Military analysts say that the fighting in South Waziristan will not be easy and that the government must be prepared to handle the potential fallout. The harsh, rugged terrain has found much favor with hardened guerrillas. "It will be more difficult [than the Swat-valley operation]," says Hasan Askari-Rizvi, a military analyst. "The Taliban are more deeply entrenched, and they are going to put up a fight. They will avoid head-on battles but will try to harass the army by other means, including ambushes." There is also the possibility that Mehsud's ranks have been fortified by some...
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...
...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...