Word: tribals
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...coup, pledged to assist the U.S. war on terrorism. But not everyone was on board. Some in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency (ISI) played a double game, turning a blind eye when members of the Taliban leadership and al-Qaeda escaped to Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the border with Afghanistan. FATA's ungoverned spaces provided the ideal sanctuary for militant groups on the run. Musharraf made a halfhearted attempt, at Washington's behest, to stop the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda from waging insurgency across the border. But that only inflamed tensions; the Afghan...
Pakistan's troubles may not be solvable by the men in uniform. "With the insurgency in the tribal areas, the situation has become much more complex," says career diplomat Humayun Khan. "The military may try to step in, but it may not succeed." Pakistan today, he says, "has all the ingredients of a revolution: poverty, injustice, instability, alienation, religious fervor and an incompetent government. If the parties don't work together to solve these problems, there is a real danger that the government fails completely...
Whatever the military challenges, the U.S. Administration has continued its quiet cultivation of Kayani, who has acted more aggressively against insurgents in recent months, with full-scale aerial assaults. On Aug. 6 he launched a massive operation in Bajaur tribal agency, an insurgent-ridden area along the border. But the exercise was a lesson in being careful what you wish for. Pakistan's army was built to fight a conventional war with India and is ill equipped to handle violence at home. Three weeks of air strikes forced more than 260,000 residents to flee the region; many ended...
Will anything work? "The military has pursued two bad policies in the tribal areas--appeasement and excessive use of force," says Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group. "Either way, all they have achieved is empowering the militants, helping them in recruitment and in obtaining funding." She laments the lack of a coherent strategy. "Militaries are blunt instruments; they are not good at counterinsurgency," she says. "The police would be a far more effective instrument, but there is no coordination between the military and the civilian government, so political reform and economic development--essential elements...
...long-term effort to quell extremism in the tribal areas will require even more. Pakistan needs to bring schools, jobs, roads, health care, courts and the rule of law to a populace that has rarely seen government attention. Unemployment among the population of 3.5 million hovers around 70%. Two-thirds live in poverty. Only 6% of its people can read, and for women, the figure is less than 1%. Yet neither Pakistan nor the U.S. appears to have a comprehensive strategy for the area. A top expert on Pakistan recently visited a colleague at the White House who, the expert...