Word: tribal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...intelligence community believes that al-Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan's ungoverned tribal territories abutting Afghanistan and that this area now serves as a staging ground for the movement's activities not only in Afghanistan but worldwide. The billions of dollars the U.S. has pumped into training and equipping the Pakistani military appears to have produced neither a capability nor a will to decisively tackle the problem. Many in Washington even suspect that members of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence spy agency are actively supporting Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders and may be tipping them off about planned attacks...
...Some former military leaders have already admitted the need for a fundamental change. "You cannot treat the two sides of the border as two different war zones," says Jehanzeb Raja, a retired brigadier who served in the tribal areas. "The Pakistan Army's aversion to any Predator or missile strike into Pakistan territory to kill the Taliban is tactically defeatist in essence, and strategically flawed in concept," he recently wrote in a local newspaper. "The Pakistan Army not only lacks any worthwhile real-time surveillance capability to pursue multiple targets in these remote regions, it also lacks the means...
...private Islamabad residence to the prime minister's house last week because of security fears. The attempt comes just weeks after Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud announced that his militants would target "every city" in Pakistan, in retaliation for a military crackdown on extremist groups in Pakistan's tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. Nearly two weeks ago, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at the gate to a munitions factory not far from the capital, killing at least 63. Similar attacks, including one on a hospital in Peshawar, have claimed scores of lives...
...predator drones have also attacked high value targets in the tribal areas, most notably in 2006 when a missile aimed at Ayman al-Zawahiri killed 18 civilians in Damadola, a border village in Bajaur agency instead. Pakistan's foreign ministry released a statement calling the U.S. attack in South Waziristan "a gross violation of Pakistani territory" and said that it caused an "immense loss of civilian life" and that "Such actions are counter-productive and certainly do not help our joint efforts to fight terrorism. On the contrary, they undermine the very basis of cooperation and may fuel the fire...
...Create two classes of CIA employees. For example, there are hundreds of ethnic American Pashtuns ready to go work for the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but their murky family and tribal ties prevent them from being hired. However, they could be brought in with lower security clearances. Spies in the field rarely need to see the crown jewels to do their...