Word: talibans
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Since the capture of the Taliban's purported second in command by Pakistani forces, military relations between Islamabad and Washington have appeared to be on an upswing. Not too long ago, U.S. insistence that Pakistan step up its cooperation in the fight against the Afghan Taliban had riled the military bigwigs in the south Asian nation - Pakistan's military helped create Mullah Omar and his Taliban fighters in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and have surreptitiously supported them, for the most part, ever since. The ties have remained testy. When army chief Ashfaq Kayani, the most powerful man in Pakistan...
...from the CIA, picked him up. The first theory is that Pakistan owed the U.S. big time for knocking out one of their troublesome insurgents and could not dither when the CIA demanded that Baradar be grabbed. But the second theory, put out by local Pakistani journalists with reliable Taliban contacts, suggests that Baradar was dispensable for the Pakistani intelligence since he broke last December with Omar. According to Peshawar journalist Rahimullah Yousufzai, Taliban sources said the two old comrades split over Baradar's supposed openness to talks with the Kabul government of Hamid Karzai, whom Omar and the Pakistanis...
That fear is exactly what the U.S. military command wants to stir in the minds of Taliban leaders. Afghan Taliban commanders may now hesitate before heading to Pakistan for refuge. Meanwhile, the U.S. is being generous with its intelligence. Pakistani military sources say the U.S. has passed on GPS coordinates of the bases used by the Pakistani Taliban - extremist tribesmen who see Islamabad as their enemy No. 1, not the NATO troops across the border in Afghanistan - so that the Pakistani military under General Khan can hammer them with artillery or aircraft strikes. These sources say that several dozen American...
...drone strike earlier this month that either killed or severely wounded Hakimullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistani Taliban. Knocking Mehsud out of commission may have been the favor Islamabad was repaying with the capture of Baradar and three Afghan Taliban "shadow" governors who were operating out of Pakistan. Mehsud had masterminded a suicide-bombing campaign that hit schools, police stations, bazaars and garrisons across the country, killing hundreds. (On Tuesday, another Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Qadir, ex-governor of Afghanistan's Nangahar province, was reportedly arrested, though neither Pakistan nor the Taliban spokesman would confirm the capture.) (See pictures...
...Grono, deputy president for operations at the International Crisis Group in Brussels. "The Dutch decision creates an impression among both allies and insurgents and makes the NATO effort just a little bit more difficult. It raises questions about other countries thinking about their commitments. At the same time, the Taliban has an effective propaganda effort, and they will play it up as a lack of international resolve...