Word: waziristan
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Pakistan's effort to hunt down suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda guerrillas in the rugged territory bordering Afghanistan scored a major success last week with a raid by the Pakistani army in the country's South Waziristan district. Eight suspected militants were killed and 18 more detained?all foreigners and "certainly terrorists," said military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan. "As a matter of policy, Pakistan is determined to root out terrorism from its soil...
Judging from his clothing and his features, locals say, the man was an Afghan from across the border. But nobody in Kaniguram, a mountain hamlet in the Pakistani tribal area of Waziristan, could say why he had been slaughtered just a few weeks ago. The Pakistani police have no jurisdiction; their command in the tribal areas extends only 100 yards off any main road. And tribal authorities have no interest in tangling with the man's killers, whom locals assume are linked to al-Qaeda. Kaniguram, residents say, is a main thoroughfare for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants...
Tribal sympathies in Waziristan appear to lie with al-Qaeda. Moreover, it is a sacred duty among Pashtun residents to give sanctuary to Muslims seeking it. With its rugged terrain, its warrior tribes and its centuries-old hostility to authority, Waziristan is a fitting bolt-hole for Islamic militants, possibly even al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. U.S. intelligence believes he is hiding somewhere near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, 150 miles of which snake along Waziristan's frontier. Last week the Qatari TV network, al-Jazeera, aired a videotape of bin Laden walking with his lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri...
...already having difficulty collecting intelligence in Waziristan. Last year the CIA dispatched several operatives to set up a base in an unused school in Miramshah, in north Waziristan. They were protected by Pakistani troops. The U.S. officers are still dug in, despite protest demonstrations and repeated rocket attacks by locals. Attempts to recruit local informants, meanwhile, are complicated by the fact that suspected collaborators are often murdered...
Agents at a makeshift FBI operations base set up in a smuggler's town in the northern tribal area of Waziristan that's full of former Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives, have to spend as much time guarding against counterattack as scouting. Surveillance of the Pashtun, who live there on hilltops in adobe forts surrounded by 15-foot-high walls, is difficult. The only way that U.S. surveillance can pick up anything is if suddenly one of these medieval-like castles receives a burst of visitors, rumbling up the dusty trails in four-by-fours, but that isn't happening...