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Picture of Newsweek cover: http://tinyurl.com/23r6hz
The legacy of the Bush administration will probably be that he made
everything worse than it was before he took office including causing
Pakistan to become a safe haven for terrorists:
"Newsweek Cover: The Most Dangerous Nation in the World Isn't Iraq.
It's Pakistan.
The October 29 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, October 22),
"The Most Dangerous Nation in the World Isn't Iraq. It's Pakistan"
looks at how Pakistan has become a safe haven for Taliban and Al Qaeda
jihadists and what this means for the war on terror. Plus: a
comparison between the 1972 film, "Deliverance," the Bush
administration and the war in Iraq. . .
NEW YORK, NY UNITED STATES
Pakistan Poses Bigger Threat Than Afghanistan and Iraq in War on
Terror
Taliban Could Not Ask for Better Nation to Hide in; Leaders 'Come and
Go as They Please'
NEW YORK, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror
attacks, the United States successfully deposed the fundamentalist
Taliban leadership in Afghanistan. But in the years since then, there
have been an increasing number of signs of a resurgence, and their
influence has crossed the border into neighboring Pakistan, which many
now fear has become a safe haven for terrorists.
Today no other country on earth is arguably more dangerous than
Pakistan, according to Newsweek's South Asia Bureau Chief Ron Moreau
and Senior Editor Michael Hirsh, who delve into the Taliban's
spreading influence in Pakistan and what it means to the war on
terror. The October 29 cover story, "The Most Dangerous Nation In the
World Isn't Iraq. It's Pakistan." (on newsstands Monday, October 22),
states that unlike countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan
has everything Osama bin Laden could ask for: political instability, a
trusted network of radical Islamists, an abundance of angry anti-
Western recruits, secluded training areas, access to state-of-the-art
electronic technology, regular air service to the West and security
services that don't always do what they're supposed to do. Then
there's the country's large and growing nuclear program.
The conventional story about Pakistan has been that it is an unstable
nuclear power, with distant tribal areas in terrorist hands. What is
new, and more frightening, is the extent to which Taliban and Qaeda
elements have now turned much of the country, including some cities,
into a base that gives jihadists more room to maneuver, both in
Pakistan and beyond.
Taliban fighters now pretty much come and go as they please inside
Pakistan, Newsweek reports. Their sick and injured get patched up in
private hospitals there. "Until I return to fight, I'll feel safe and
relaxed here," Abdul Majadd, a Taliban commander who was badly wounded
this summer during a fire fight against British troops in Afghanistan,
told Newsweek after he was evacuated to Karachi for emergency care.
Guns and supplies are readily available, and in the winter, when
fighting traditionally dies down in Afghanistan, thousands retire to
the country's thriving madrassas to study the Qur'an. Some of the
brainier operatives attend courses in computer technology, video
production and even English. Far from keeping a low profile, the
visiting fighters attend services at local mosques, where after
prayers they speak to the congregation, soliciting donations to
support the war against the West. "Pakistan is like your shoulder that
supports your RPG," Taliban commander Mullah Momin Ahmed told
newsweek, barely a month before a U.S. airstrike killed him last
September in Afghanistan's eastern Ghazni province. "Without it you
couldn't fight. Thank God Pakistan is not against us."
The contrast to 2002 is striking. Back then, in the first flush of
President Pervez Musharraf's crackdown on extremists, a newsweek
reporter met Agha Jan, a former senior Taliban Defense Ministry
official, in an orchard outside the city of Quetta. A nervous Jan
recounted how he had to change homes every two nights for fear of
capture, and he fled when some local villagers approached. Jan now has
a house outside Quetta, where he lives when he's not fighting with
Taliban forces across the border in his native Zabul province.
Reporters in Peshawar, a strategic Pakistani border city some 50 miles
east of the historic Khyber Pass and the Afghan border, say it's not
unusual these days to receive phone calls from visiting Taliban
commanders offering interviews, or asking where to find a cheap hotel,
a good restaurant or a new cell phone.
Armed militants have also effectively seized control in places like
the picturesque Swat Valley, where a jihadi leader named Mullah
Fazlullah rides a black horse and commands hundreds of men under the
noses of a nearby Pakistani Army division that seldom leaves its
barracks. Peshawar is perhaps the most important production and
distribution center for Taliban and other Islamist material. Jihadi CD
and DVD shops abound. The Afghan refugee camps around Peshawar,
meanwhile, have become vast jihadist sanctuaries, according to Moreau.
"The biggest chink in Musharraf's armor is his failure to move against
the Taliban, particularly in the cities," says Samina Ahmed, the South
Asia director of the International Crisis Group in Islamabad. "The
brains, the ones who plan the operations, are not necessarily in the
boonies or in the sticks, they're in cities like Quetta. Can he pick
them up? Easily."
Bruce Riedel, the former senior director for South Asia on the
National Security Council, points out that Pakistan's large and
growing nuclear program is another cause for concern. "If you were to
look around the world for where Al Qaeda is going to find its bomb,
it's right in their backyard," he says. And despite the U.S.
government's assertion that Musharraf's government has tight control
over its nuclear-weapons program, radicals would not need to steal a
whole bomb in order to create havoc. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a noted nuclear
physicist at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, says outside
experts don't really know much highly enriched uranium Pakistan has
produced in the past and how much remains in existing stocks. "No one
has a real idea about that," he says. "That means that stuff could
have gotten out. Little bits here or there. But we really don't know."
The most recent example of how bold the extremists have gotten in
Pakistan occurred during what would have been former Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto's joyous return to Pakistan on Thursday, Oct. 18, after
an eight-year exile. One or more suicide bombers set off twin
explosions that killed at least 134 bystanders and police, and injured
450 others as her motorcade inched along a parade route guarded by
roughly 20,000 Pakistani security forces. Musharraf's government
quickly fingered as a suspect Baitullah Mehsud, a longtime Taliban
supporter and director of some of the most lethal training facilities
for suicide bombers in the far-off mountains of Waziristan."
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/10-21-2007/0004686314&EDATE=
The legacy of the Bush administration will probably be that he made
everything worse than it was before he took office including causing
Pakistan to become a safe haven for terrorists:
"Newsweek Cover: The Most Dangerous Nation in the World Isn't Iraq.
It's Pakistan.
The October 29 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, October 22),
"The Most Dangerous Nation in the World Isn't Iraq. It's Pakistan"
looks at how Pakistan has become a safe haven for Taliban and Al Qaeda
jihadists and what this means for the war on terror. Plus: a
comparison between the 1972 film, "Deliverance," the Bush
administration and the war in Iraq. . .
NEW YORK, NY UNITED STATES
Pakistan Poses Bigger Threat Than Afghanistan and Iraq in War on
Terror
Taliban Could Not Ask for Better Nation to Hide in; Leaders 'Come and
Go as They Please'
NEW YORK, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror
attacks, the United States successfully deposed the fundamentalist
Taliban leadership in Afghanistan. But in the years since then, there
have been an increasing number of signs of a resurgence, and their
influence has crossed the border into neighboring Pakistan, which many
now fear has become a safe haven for terrorists.
Today no other country on earth is arguably more dangerous than
Pakistan, according to Newsweek's South Asia Bureau Chief Ron Moreau
and Senior Editor Michael Hirsh, who delve into the Taliban's
spreading influence in Pakistan and what it means to the war on
terror. The October 29 cover story, "The Most Dangerous Nation In the
World Isn't Iraq. It's Pakistan." (on newsstands Monday, October 22),
states that unlike countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan
has everything Osama bin Laden could ask for: political instability, a
trusted network of radical Islamists, an abundance of angry anti-
Western recruits, secluded training areas, access to state-of-the-art
electronic technology, regular air service to the West and security
services that don't always do what they're supposed to do. Then
there's the country's large and growing nuclear program.
The conventional story about Pakistan has been that it is an unstable
nuclear power, with distant tribal areas in terrorist hands. What is
new, and more frightening, is the extent to which Taliban and Qaeda
elements have now turned much of the country, including some cities,
into a base that gives jihadists more room to maneuver, both in
Pakistan and beyond.
Taliban fighters now pretty much come and go as they please inside
Pakistan, Newsweek reports. Their sick and injured get patched up in
private hospitals there. "Until I return to fight, I'll feel safe and
relaxed here," Abdul Majadd, a Taliban commander who was badly wounded
this summer during a fire fight against British troops in Afghanistan,
told Newsweek after he was evacuated to Karachi for emergency care.
Guns and supplies are readily available, and in the winter, when
fighting traditionally dies down in Afghanistan, thousands retire to
the country's thriving madrassas to study the Qur'an. Some of the
brainier operatives attend courses in computer technology, video
production and even English. Far from keeping a low profile, the
visiting fighters attend services at local mosques, where after
prayers they speak to the congregation, soliciting donations to
support the war against the West. "Pakistan is like your shoulder that
supports your RPG," Taliban commander Mullah Momin Ahmed told
newsweek, barely a month before a U.S. airstrike killed him last
September in Afghanistan's eastern Ghazni province. "Without it you
couldn't fight. Thank God Pakistan is not against us."
The contrast to 2002 is striking. Back then, in the first flush of
President Pervez Musharraf's crackdown on extremists, a newsweek
reporter met Agha Jan, a former senior Taliban Defense Ministry
official, in an orchard outside the city of Quetta. A nervous Jan
recounted how he had to change homes every two nights for fear of
capture, and he fled when some local villagers approached. Jan now has
a house outside Quetta, where he lives when he's not fighting with
Taliban forces across the border in his native Zabul province.
Reporters in Peshawar, a strategic Pakistani border city some 50 miles
east of the historic Khyber Pass and the Afghan border, say it's not
unusual these days to receive phone calls from visiting Taliban
commanders offering interviews, or asking where to find a cheap hotel,
a good restaurant or a new cell phone.
Armed militants have also effectively seized control in places like
the picturesque Swat Valley, where a jihadi leader named Mullah
Fazlullah rides a black horse and commands hundreds of men under the
noses of a nearby Pakistani Army division that seldom leaves its
barracks. Peshawar is perhaps the most important production and
distribution center for Taliban and other Islamist material. Jihadi CD
and DVD shops abound. The Afghan refugee camps around Peshawar,
meanwhile, have become vast jihadist sanctuaries, according to Moreau.
"The biggest chink in Musharraf's armor is his failure to move against
the Taliban, particularly in the cities," says Samina Ahmed, the South
Asia director of the International Crisis Group in Islamabad. "The
brains, the ones who plan the operations, are not necessarily in the
boonies or in the sticks, they're in cities like Quetta. Can he pick
them up? Easily."
Bruce Riedel, the former senior director for South Asia on the
National Security Council, points out that Pakistan's large and
growing nuclear program is another cause for concern. "If you were to
look around the world for where Al Qaeda is going to find its bomb,
it's right in their backyard," he says. And despite the U.S.
government's assertion that Musharraf's government has tight control
over its nuclear-weapons program, radicals would not need to steal a
whole bomb in order to create havoc. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a noted nuclear
physicist at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, says outside
experts don't really know much highly enriched uranium Pakistan has
produced in the past and how much remains in existing stocks. "No one
has a real idea about that," he says. "That means that stuff could
have gotten out. Little bits here or there. But we really don't know."
The most recent example of how bold the extremists have gotten in
Pakistan occurred during what would have been former Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto's joyous return to Pakistan on Thursday, Oct. 18, after
an eight-year exile. One or more suicide bombers set off twin
explosions that killed at least 134 bystanders and police, and injured
450 others as her motorcade inched along a parade route guarded by
roughly 20,000 Pakistani security forces. Musharraf's government
quickly fingered as a suspect Baitullah Mehsud, a longtime Taliban
supporter and director of some of the most lethal training facilities
for suicide bombers in the far-off mountains of Waziristan."
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/10-21-2007/0004686314&EDATE=
