Word: zardari
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...recently that 60 strikes since early 2006 had killed 687 civilians and only 14 al-Qaeda leaders, a ratio few Pakistanis would find acceptable. The campaign, in fact, may be contributing to a swelling of anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and weakening the fragile government of President Asif Ali Zardari...
...Rumbling North from Islamabad toward the Swat Valley, refugees fleeing in the opposite direction: from the TV footage, at least, it appears that the Pakistani military is finally taking the fight to the Taliban. It was probably no coincidence that the assault began as Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari arrived in Washington for a summit with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Barack Obama. Zardari brought a long wish list: he wants aid, military hardware and training...
...that reason, Zardari's biggest takeaway from his trip may be the realization that he can't rely exclusively on a sympathetic White House to loosen the purse strings. Pakistan was once a country that most in the U.S. knew little about. But the more Americans learn about it, the less likely they are to think that all there is rosy. It will take more than TV footage for Zardari to convince Congress--and public opinion--that his country deserves the assistance he seeks...
...Missed Opportunities One answer to that question is, because Pakistan's leaders have been so feckless. When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007, her husband Zardari assumed leadership of her political party and then the presidency. Zardari swore to bring his wife's killers to justice. He has not done so, instead wasting an opportunity to rally the nation against terrorism. There is no national media campaign to combat Taliban propaganda and no clerics on TV or radio denouncing suicide bombers. See pictures of Bhutto's Village in Mourning...
...Instead, says Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group, Zardari's government has muddled the message: rather than punish those who used terrorist tactics, he originally met their demands in Swat. Wajiha Ahmed, a Pakistani-American graduate student at the Fletcher School of Tufts University, hopes that the current chaos holds a "silver lining ... It might put pressure on the military élite and the political oligarchy to finally change the country's outlook so that it focuses on bettering the condition of its people." But for decades, talented exiles - writers, bankers, software engineers and international civil servants - have been...