April 23, 2009
Taliban seizes control of Pakistan’s Buner district

On Thursday, the government of Pakistan sent paramilitary troops to a northwest district that was recently taken over by the Taliban – the Buner district, just 60 miles from Islamabad and adjacent to the Swat Valley, where the government allowed the Taliban to take control early this year in a peace deal.

The troops arrived in Buner with the aim of protecting government buildings and bridges, but soon after they arrived, militants attacked their convoy, killing a policeman.

The Taliban’s growing influence is causing increasing concern about the Pakistani government’s ability to control the militants. 

Michael Krepon, the co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center and a specialist in South Asian security matters, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the threat posed by the Taliban, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and if the Pakistani military has the ability to stem this tide of extremism.

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4 comments

#4

04/28/2009 :: 10:09:03 AM
Whispered or shouted, Pakistan is cause for concern | Politics News Says:

[...] editorial consultant Peter Eisner examines the blunt U.S. reaction after the Taliban briefly gained control of Pakistan’s Buner district last week — just 60 miles from [...]

#3

04/27/2009 :: 07:41:50 AM
Satirically Serious Says:

In the infrastructures of society we will not be able to control the ideological emotional states of others other than by intellectuallizing the ideologies of the proposed scenarios on the table which should be ostensibly negotiated within the parameters of the possible and with a certain symmetry attached by email to clear thinking which in turn will produce a debate involving many shouting parties whose ideologies will need to be studied further by Doctors of Philosophical
Philosopho-snoozing in order to determine the best
methodology and rationale as to how exactly to proceed talking to those who wish to continue talking on their cellphones even while they write of various ongoing news subjects which are breathtaking in their details as they progress from multi-party talks to talking at parties…which will need political analysis as to what degree of concern we should use in annotating our thoughts while following guided missiles all the way up to where they will probably come down again…hopefully not in anyone’s kitchen where Mother is cooking supper
and Father is…well? wondering where all the Children are…hopefully not anywhere where they will be harmed by shrapnel (they haven’t eaten dinner yet, for crying out loud!).

The Moral of this Maze? That morals get lost in mazes…but to be so serious about one’s wandering around in the Maze so much that one cannot laugh at one’s very misery, often produced by one’s false beginnings and endings, is to lose all hope of ever finding one’s way out of the Maze, again.
Did we remember to bring along a Map? (Not a roadmap but a map for enjoying our being in a Maze more.)

#2

04/26/2009 :: 03:10:33 PM
niila keshava Says:

you may want to keep a note of this: limited nuke exchange between pakistan and india. china sides with pakistan and invades india from the eastern boundry of the himalayans, but are stopped at ganges near patna.

#1

04/23/2009 :: 08:55:10 PM
Mumtaz U. Khan Says:

Kudos to Michael Krepon, whose analysis of the situation in Pakistan just cannot be disputed.

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