Word: taliban
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...knacker's yard: Musharraf's popularity at home has plummeted since March, when he suspended the independent-minded Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. That sparked massive protests by moderate Pakistanis, the people who had once backed the general against al-Qaeda terrorists and Taliban militants. With a general election looming in Pakistan, the Bush Administration began to write a new cover story, giving its hero an unlikely sidekick: exiled opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whom Musharraf had long accused of corruption and misrule. The new script called for Musharraf to step down...
...motives. "If he wants to stamp out terrorism in Pakistan, why is he arresting civil society leaders and lawyers instead of militants and religious fanatics? Why didn't he arrest Fazlullah when he first started preaching jihad? Today he has arrested hundreds of lawyers, but not a single militant, Taliban, al-Qaeda or religious fanatic. It doesn't make any sense. If you want to take the country away from the extremists, you don't do it by arresting the moderates...
...officers, ascending to ever more senior ranks, who soon could be overseeing various elements of the Pakistani military, including the security of the several dozen atomic weapons Pakistan is believed to have in its arsenal. Their provincialism, U.S. officials fear, could make them sympathetic to the al-Qaeda and Taliban elements now roiling the country...
...promised and hold elections before January 15. But it is still unclear what happens if Musharraf doesn't do any of these things. Bush's pro-democracy goals for the country seem as much in conflict as ever with the U.S.'s other goal - to stamp out the Taliban in Afghanistan and dismantle terrorist networks operating inside Pakistan...
...even begun to impinge on his ability to play the war-on-terror role for which Washington is depending on him. A new poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org shows that just 44% of Pakistanis are in favor of sending troops in to the tribal areas to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "The Pakistani people are not enthusiastic about Musharraf," says Steven Kull, director of the polling organization. "[They] do not support his recent crackdown on fundamentalists, and are lukewarm at best about going after al-Qaeda or the Taliban in western Pakistan. It appears that a U.S. strategy that rests...