Word: taliban
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...local police precinct in the village of Matta has a new sign: Taliban Station. The same thing in the village of Kabal - in fact, nine of the twelve districts in the picturesque Swat Valley, 100 miles from Pakistan's capital, have been taken over by militants, who have torched music shops, barred girls from going to school, forced women to wear burqas and decreed that men must grow beards. As if to complete the flashback to Taliban-era Afghanistan, the new overlords have even attempted to blow up centuries-old Buddhist monuments...
...maintains that emergency rule is essential for ensuring peaceful, democratic elections, and for combating extremist militancy. And, perhaps mindful of criticism that Musharraf's emergency rule has distracted security forces from the war against Islamist extremists, the military mounted an offensive this week to reverse recent gains made by Taliban-aligned militants in the Swat Valley. Critics, however, warn that by banning rallies, muzzling the press and keeping the threat of detention hanging over every political organizer, the emergency prevents the staging of a credible election campaign...
...against the Soviet Union after Moscow invaded and occupied that country. That Afghan war, which ended with the Soviet defeat in 1989, assumed a religious nature in the Islamic world and, as it came to a close, fostered the rise of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime that eventually took over most of Afghanistan. In the 1990s, relations between Islamabad and Washington chilled after the U.S. imposed sanctions on Pakistan for pursuing nuclear weapons. Pakistan's government backed the puritanical Taliban government in Kabul until Sept...
...ISSUES The War on Terror is key to American policy on Pakistan, which has gladly accepted $10 billion in aid from Washington since the 2001 attacks. In the years after 9/11, after the overthrow of the regime in Kabul, al-Qaeda and the Taliban have regrouped in the mountainous region along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. The area, often described as lawless, has long been controlled by fiercely conservative tribes that run their own semi-autonomous administration. Over the past few years foreign and local militants have grown stronger. Last year, after failing to quash the insurgency militarily, the Pakistani...
...concern might be Pakistan's ethnic Pashtuns. They make up roughly 20% of Pakistan's officer corps and 25% of enlisted. Historically, they have faithfully served Pakistan, but since 9/11 their loyalty has been sorely tested. Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are holed up in Pashtunistan, on both sides of the remote, mountainous, impenetrable Pakistan-Afghan border - the rear base they use to wage jihad on Islamabad and Kabul. Al-Qaeda has at least the implicit support of the local Pashtuns, and, inevitably, Pashtuns are dying, both at our hands and the Pakistan army...