Word: talibans
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There had been recent warnings that the Taliban would resume their campaign of terrorism against sensitive targets. On March 31, a militant identified as Qari Hussein - considered the head of the Taliban's squad of suicide bombers - told the English-language daily Dawn that the Taliban would "refresh memories of the attack on the Khost base" in Afghanistan, which left seven CIA agents dead. (See TIME columnist Robert Baer's assessment of the damage to the CIA after the Khost attack...
According to several Pakistani security and defense analysts, one factor that may have instigated Monday's attack was the U.S.-led coalition forces' imminent plan to push into the Afghan Taliban's stronghold of Kandahar. The message: If the Americans and NATO create problems for the Taliban in Afghanistan, then Taliban militants have the option to target American sites anywhere. And in that case, "Peshawar is the easiest target," says Dr. Hasan Askari Rizvi, a defense analyst and professor emeritus of political science at the University of Punjab in Lahore...
...gateway to Pakistan's restive tribal belt, Peshawar is "within easy reach" of the Taliban militants who are based in the country's lawless zone, says Dr. Riffat Hussein, chairman of the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Quaid-e-Azam University. "This is a payback attack for what the Pakistan army has tried to do to them in the tribal areas, and the Americans as well, in addition to the anticipated Kandahar attack." Cross-border infiltration - and coordination - between the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban remains a key obstacle. Rizvi says the threat posed by the linkage will take...
...recent months, the U.S. military has staged increasingly frequent drone attacks against militants in the tribal area of North Waziristan, while the Pakistani military has sought to crush the Taliban in several fierce offensives in South Waziristan and Orakzai. But the militants have proved resilient, and their ability to stage massive attacks appears intact. The combined offensives against them meant the Taliban "simply spread out wherever they could to other areas," says Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. "I was under no illusion that this phenomenon is gone, that they would...
Rizvi blamed complacency on the part of some members of the security forces for Monday's sophisticated attack, especially since there hadn't been a major Taliban attack in Peshawar this year. "With the passage of time, security people on roads, especially those checking the roads, become less attentive," he says. Indeed, several weeks ago, Interior Minister Rehman Malik suspended a police chief in Islamabad for lax security after officers manning a checkpoint failed to stop and search the minister's vehicle...