Word: talibanize
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...country. However, these glory days have been outshone by its current role as a detention center. Since early 2002, the beginning of the U.S.-led War on Terror, the base has been used to house those suspected of terrorist activity or of having ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban...
...people detained in Guantánamo since its establishment, many were found to be noncombatants with no ties to either the Taliban or al-Qaeda, many of them mistakenly apprehended or wrongfully turned over by anti-Taliban bounty hunters in Afghanistan. Only around 250 prisoners remain in Gitmo, the majority of whom have either already been cleared or are expected to be cleared of charges due to lack of evidence...
...indigenous protagonists have been proxies for bigger, more complicated enemies. During the Great Game, the British fought there to prevent the Russians from invading India. In the 1980s, Americans equipped mujahedin to bleed the Soviet Union dry. In the civil war following the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, Pakistan backed the Taliban, a fundamentalist faction fostered in its own religious seminaries, to counter Indian influence in the rival Northern Alliance. When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1994, Pakistan was one of only three nations to recognize their government. The Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Pakistan's clandestine services, then sent militants hardened...
...Taliban was toppled, and a Northern Alliance-dominated government took its place. Hamid Karzai, educated in India, became President. India stepped in with multimillion-dollar reconstruction projects. Pakistani officials mutter darkly about up to 19 Indian "consulates" based in sensitive border areas as if it were fact (there are only three). "Who is the beneficiary of this war on terror that requires the collaboration of Pakistan?" a retired major in the Pakistani army once asked me. "India is again in Afghanistan, working against us. Unless you demonstrate what good for Pakistan will come out of this collaboration, you will...
Until Pakistan is secure in its relationship with India, it will continue to believe that its interests are best advanced through clandestine support of the Taliban and other elements that destabilize Afghanistan. The way to do that would be to help resolve the festering Kashmir issue. Such a resolution would bring other dividends as well - deprived of the Kashmir cause, Islamist militancy within Pakistan would lose support. A strong diplomatic initiative will go a long way toward convincing local stakeholders that the U.S. is not only committed to eliminating extremism, but that it is also invested in regional development...