Word: talibanizing
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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...
...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...
...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...