Word: talibanism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When the world looks at Pakistan, its attention justifiably focuses on the rugged northern border with Afghanistan, a nexus of Taliban activity and the site of an ongoing multi-pronged campaign against the militants. Battling jihadism there is a pivotal plank in the Obama administration's plans to stabilize the war-ravaged region and eventually dial down America's military presence...
...helicopters. At the time, the two countries were allied together under the U.S.-led CENTO Cold War pact, but following Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979 relations changed, with Tehran's Shia establishment increasingly wary of their Sunni counterparts in the Pakistani military leadership. The Iranians loath the Afghan Taliban, who were created in part by elements within the Pakistani state. "There's an inherent set of tensions [between the two countries] based on their prior strategic choices," says Sameer Lalwani, a Pakistan watcher at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank...
...Iran who fear independence may be out of reach campaign for expanded freedoms and guarantees to preserve their language and culture within the Pakistani and Iranian states. Others have taken up arms over the years. Suggestions made by some Pakistani officials linking Baluch separatism to the activities of the Taliban are wrong, says Harrison. Baluch nationalism has always been a secular project; its militant fronts warring with Pakistan, like the Baluch Liberation Army, descend from a tradition of Marxist-Leninist guerrillas that took root in the 1970s. Jundullah, though an avowedly Sunni group, articulates its identity as a rejection...
...most that journalists have been able to see of the fighting, which is perhaps Pakistan's sternest test against the Pakistani Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies in South Waziristan. Accompanied by the army, a group of local and foreign journalists were taken by helicopter to the fringes of the fighting on Thursday, where they got a rare glimpse of areas that are notorious for being sanctuaries for al-Qaeda and Pakistan's most dangerous terrorists in recent years...
...choking off the main roads, troop commanders on the ground are confident that they are bleeding the militants dry and protecting against their flight to other areas. But a visit to Kotkai - the hometown of Taliban leaders Hakimullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman, which was cleared by the army last week - was not possible due to the continuing threat of rocket fire from militants nearby. There is no clear idea of either of the Taliban commanders' whereabouts, though there have been unconfirmed reports of Mehsud hiding atop Preghal in Badr Valley, South Waziristan's highest peak. Some observers speculate that...