Word: tribalized
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...deaths of dozens of militants and ten soldiers - Pakistan's Islamist extremists have retaliated with a series of attacks that have killed more than 180 people, most of them soldiers and police. A U.S. intelligence report this week concluded that Pakistan's policy of non-engagement in the lawless tribal areas along its border with Afghanistan has been a complete failure and allowed al-Qaeda to regroup. Washington is already ratcheting up the pressure for Pakistan to do more...
...believes Musharraf's autocratic rule is preferable to what might replace it: a nuclear-armed, fundamentalist regime sympathetic to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. But there are growing doubts about how long Musharraf can hold on to power. Al-Qaeda's leadership has regrouped in Pakistan's tribal areas, while the country's middle class has taken to the streets to protest Musharraf's decision to suspend Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. (A suicide attack during a pro-Chaudhry rally on July 17 killed more than a dozen.) On July 10 Musharraf ordered the army into Islamabad's Lal Masjid...
Probably, but it may have happened anyway. Growing resentment against Musharraf's heavy-handed tactics has fueled defiance across the country. Rule of law in the tribal areas, already weak, has collapsed entirely. A 2006 peace accord with Islamic militants in North Waziristan, near the Afghan border, forced the army back to the barracks, allowing al-Qaeda to flourish, according to the National Intelligence Estimate. Now the agreement has failed, and al-Qaeda is even stronger...
...result of the military's "surge" strategy is that the U.S. has handed over to Sunni tribal sheiks much greater responsibility for their security - and even the weapons to back it up - in exchange for severing their links to al-Qaeda. That's a manageable risk while U.S. forces are nearby; if they depart, it becomes tinder in a dry forest. The danger would be not just sectarian slaughter but outright anarchy as well. "Our immediate concern," says a senior Arab diplomat, "is that sending a signal of complete withdrawal could encourage some elements in every faction in every political...
Another could come in the form of a lightning blitz of murders, most likely targeting the Sunni sheiks of Anbar province who've thrown their lot in with the Americans. Sheik Abdul Sittar, the leader of the tribal alliance in Anbar province, has already survived at least one suicide attack against him. A successful one, in conjunction with the killing or maiming of one or more of his fellow Sunni chieftains, could largely undo one of the biggest successes the Americans have had against al-Qaeda in Iraq...