Word: waziristan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...wilds of Waziristan, the tribal belt along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, make an unlikely showcase for the future of warfare. This is a land stuck in the past: there are few roads, electricity is scarce, and entire communities of ethnic Pashtun tribesmen live as they have for millenniums. And yet it is over this medieval landscape that the U.S. has deployed some of the most sophisticated killing machines ever created, against an enemy that has survived or evaded all other weaponry. If al-Qaeda and the Taliban could not be eliminated by tanks, gunships and missiles, then perhaps they...
...President George W. Bush placed during his final months in office, when the CIA greatly increased drone sorties and strikes in Pakistan. The accelerated attacks have been stepped up under President Barack Obama. Nowadays, the low hum of the drones has become a familiar sound in Waziristan, where tribesmen call them machay, or red bees. Their lethal sting has been felt in villages and hamlets across the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). The main objectives of the campaign: to take out al-Qaeda's top tier of leadership, including Osama bin Laden, and deny sanctuary in FATA for the Taliban...
...screens in Nevada can detect "patterns of life analyses," or timelines of movements and meetings in any given area. But the drones' utility is dramatically enhanced when analysts know exactly what they're looking for and where. For that, there's nothing better than human intelligence. Reports from Waziristan suggest the CIA has access to a network of spies. Tribesmen have told TIME of agents who drop microchips (locally known as patrai) near targets; the drones can lock onto these to guide their missiles or bombs with pinpoint precision. But it has proved difficult to verify these claims of human...
...fighting in Swat masks far more serious problems. In Waziristan, a region on the Afghan border, security forces have ceded control to the militants. Outlawed sectarian groups are gaining a foothold in Punjab province. And in the financial capital of Karachi, where Pakistani Taliban insurgents raise funds, ethnic clashes claimed more than 30 lives last month. When U.S. President Barack Obama commented during an April news conference that the Pakistani government did not "seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services - schools, health care, rule of law, a judicial system that works for the majority of the people...
...South Waziristan now seems like a state within the state, and Baitullah Mehsud is running this like a head of government. Now he's an all-powerful man whose writ and command is visible across the tribal belt." -On Mehsud's burgeoning influence. (Washington Post...