Word: waziristan
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...Taliban and the army would both be observing a four-day truce in Bajaur, the tribal area along the Afghan border that has seen the fiercest fighting in Pakistan's domestic campaign against extremists. And on a more ominous note, last weekend at an undisclosed location deep in Waziristan's mountains, Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud forged a new alliance with two rival commanders who had been fighting him with backing by the government...
...result, Obama's foreign policy will move at the speed of diplomacy - slower than a sclerotic donkey - punctuated by the occasional laser whoosh of a Hellfire missile in Waziristan. His policies will be nuanced and will not please anyone overmuch - not the Muslims (nor the Israelis) nor our NATO allies nor those Americans seeking ideological clarity or consistency. This will make for a round of more argumentative policy conferences next year, but perhaps fewer "How could you?" questions directed at Americans...
...challenge facing Holbrooke is underscored by two Predator drone attacks on villages in North and South Waziristan on Friday that killed some 15 people, dashing Pakistani hopes that the Obama Administration would end the U.S. attacks on militant targets inside Pakistan, which Pakistani military spokesman Athar Abbas calls "counterproductive." There have been more than 30 such missile strikes in Pakistan since last August, and U.S. officials say they have eliminated several top al-Qaeda leaders. But Pakistan considers the strikes a violation of its sovereignty, and the accompanying civilian casualties have become a potent anti-American rallying point. Despite Pakistan...
...example, two key Taliban commanders in South Waziristan, Maulvi Muhammad Nazir - who helped the Pakistani army mount an attack on his tribal rival, Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud - and Hafiz Gul Bahadur have nonaggression pacts with the Pakistani army. The military defends these arrangements on the grounds that it is unable to operate in areas where there are "hostile tribes" like Mehsud's and that it is prioritizing offensives in other parts of the border region. Some are unconvinced. "It appears that unless the militants are attacking Pakistani forces, the army doesn't consider them a problem," says one senior...
Cross-border strikes are an increasingly common tactic by U.S. forces operating along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. U.S. missile-launching drones reportedly killed at least 20 people on Sunday in Pakistan's South Waziristan province close to the Afghan border, an area suspected of harboring al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Andrew Exum, a former U.S. Army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as founder of the influential Abu Muqawama counterinsurgency blog, suggests that the American action in Syria shows that the tactic may simply have been exported. "The precedent has already been established of crossing borders into...