Word: taliban
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Shortly before dawn on Saturday, under a starry, icy desert sky in southern Afghanistan, American-led coalition forces launched the long foretold attack against the Taliban stronghold of Marja, along the Helmand River. In the biggest land and air offensive in the nine-year long war against Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, more than 15,000 coalition forces, backed by wave after wave of 90 helicopters and aircraft, sealed off Marja and seized key positions inside the town and on its periphery...
...Last year, more than a thousand Pakistanis were killed in 80 Taliban-orchestrated suicide attacks at volleyball games, pilgrimages, police academies, army bases and more. In response, Pakistan's army swept into the northern and southern ends of the tribal belt, particularly the Mehsud tribes' homeland in South Waziristan. With the Mehsuds flushed out of their stronghold, it is easier for the Drones to pick them off. "Because of improved cooperation between the American and Pakistani intelligence services," says analyst Masood, "the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban can't hide itself as effectively." And since the Mehsud tribesmen...
...Some Taliban experts say that if Mehsud is indeed dead, his organization won't announce it until a new leader for the Pakistani Taliban is chosen - and that could take a while. "Very likely, there is confusion in the ranks," Talat Masood, a retired general and political analyst, told TIME. "The Taliban will keep on denying Mehsud is dead until the battle for succession is over...
...Agreeing on a successor to Mehsud, who has led the organization for less than a year, won't be easy, but a Taliban commander quoted in the news said it would probably be Waliur Rehman, a high-ranking fellow Mehsud tribesman from South Waziristan. But he may not be acceptable to other Taliban fighters scattered across the lawless borderlands. Although various regional commanders are united under the organization Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, their reasons for becoming Taliban are varied. The ideology of replacing the pro-Western Islamabad government with an al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic caliphate is often a flag...
...That is a major victory for the Pakistanis and the Americans. The reign of terror of the previous Pakistani Taliban chief, Baitullah Mehsud, went on for two years before he was struck by a missile. Hakimullah Mehsud may have lasted only seven months. Whoever is next will have to keep glancing anxiously up at the sky, knowing that at any moment a missile could come streaking down. And that can only gladden his American and Pakistani hunters...