Word: tribalized
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...Pakistani general helicoptered into a village in the Pakistani mountains of Waziristan last weekend to meet with a stubborn enemy. Lieut. General Safdar Hussain came to sign a truce with Nek Mohammed, a tribal leader whose pro-al-Qaeda fighters had eluded capture for more than six weeks and had killed about 80 of the general's men. The Pakistani army agreed to halt its operation against Mohammed's militants, repay Wazir tribesmen for war damages and set free most of the 160 suspected al-Qaeda supporters who were captured. The tribesmen were also allowed to keep their weapons...
...truce, however, could be a severe setback for the Bush Administration, which has been leaning on Pakistan to carry out a clean sweep of al-Qaeda and the Taliban from the tribal territory. Mohammed is a former Taliban commander who still swears loyalty to fugitive leader Mullah Omar and was earlier accused by the Pakistani government of giving shelter to al-Qaeda fighters, possibly including Osama bin Laden. In this area Pakistani troops last month mistakenly thought they had cornered bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri...
...More than a week of negotiations, however, have produced very little. The insurgents have mocked the agreement with local religious and tribal leaders under which they were expected to turn in their heavy weaponry, and have continued to attack U.S. positions. U.S. field commanders have little confidence that their negotiations, and plans such as the deployment of joint U.S.-Iraqi patrols, will resolve the standoff. That's hardly surprising: For insurgents willing to risk their lives by attacking the overwhelmingly superior firepower of the U.S., there appears to be little incentive to surrender. Their leadership is plainly well aware...
...proxy groups such as Afghanistan's Northern Alliance were considered the best hope for catching al-Qaeda's leader. But intelligence officials wanted to give some proxies less leeway to kill bin Laden in order to minimize the danger that they might use U.S. power to try to eliminate tribal rivals instead of bin Laden...
Another FBI strength is that its more than 11,000 agents are scattered throughout the country, not only assigned to big cities but distributed geographically. Over the years, these agents have developed working relationships with other federal, state, county, city and tribal law-enforcement officers that multiply the FBI's eyes and ears, hands and feet, and also can be said to form a tight grid that spans every part of the country. The importance of this unique coverage cannot be overstated when it comes to detecting terrorists, who may be anywhere. A new domestic-intelligence bureaucracy would not only...