Word: talibanize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...rocky promontories. White smoke rises from a village across a deep gorge. The screeching whistle of mortar fire echoes in the expansive valley as troops target militants in a village five miles away. Cobra helicopter gunships buzz overhead. Two weeks into its ambitious ground assault on the Pakistani Taliban's heartlands, the Pakistani army has edged its way east and says it is poised to make fresh gains against the Central Asian and Taliban fighters who are hunkered down in the Kaniguram Valley, faintly visible in the distance...
...Perhaps only by finally ridding their mountains of the Taliban will those hearts and minds be won back. As the army slowly pushes deeper in the face of stiff resistance, there are signs of stronger resolve. But victory remains distant - and until then, the refugees' anger will only grow...
...Standing at a slight distance, the chaotic scene only makes Fazal Din more nervous. As Pakistani troops advanced into South Waziristan 10 days ago to target the stronghold of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the villager from Karam was fleeing with his family in the opposite direction. After walking for several hours, a bus happened to stop nearby. Parting with whatever cash they had, they bought themselves a ride to this wild and dusty frontier town three days later. "The bombing was hard," Din recalls. "It destroyed five houses near my own." (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable North-West...
...Helping the security effort in Dera Ismail Khan are some of its most unusual residents: the so-called good Taliban. In a small, nondescript house deep inside the town live the successors of the late militant leader, Abdullah Mehsud. Once the object of the army's fury, the group has since rediscovered favor as the enemy's enemy. Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader who was killed in a CIA-operated drone strike in August, had murdered two of their leaders, and they want revenge against his successors. (Read "Are the Taliban Leaders Fighting Among Themselves...
...That fear also pervades the refugee registration centers, where few are willing to openly denounce the Taliban's brutality. Instead, there are fierce criticisms of the army's earlier operations, the ruinous peace deals that it left behind and its role in the creation of these factions. "I don't like Baitullah Mehsud at all. He caused all this to happen in the first place," says Dilawar Khan, 50, a teacher from Kotkai village. "But who made these Taliban? It was the army...