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(CNN) — In the past few weeks as the Pakistani Taliban have marched ever closer to the capital, Islamabad, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sounded the alarm about the threat posed by the militants, who she said in congressional testimony pose “a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world.”

The militants said they took control of the Buner district to ensure that Islamic law, or sharia, is properly imposed. The Pakistani government called the advance into Buner a breach of a recently signed peace agreement.

“Both Pakistani politicians and the military don’t really have a strategy on how to deal with this,” CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen said on CNN’s “American Morning.” “The Taliban are exploiting this and the full economic situation in Pakistan to gain even larger swaths of territory.”

AS President Obama orders an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, he faces growing skepticism over the United States’ prospects there. Critics of the troop buildup often point out that Afghanistan has long been the “graveyard of empires.” In 1842, the British lost a nasty war that ended when fierce tribesmen notoriously destroyed an army of thousands retreating from Kabul. And, of course, the Soviets spent almost a decade waging war in Afghanistan, only to give up ignominiously in 1989.

CNN National Security Analyst

CNN National Security Analyst

Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation; research fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security; CNN’s national security analyst; adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/outlook/interactives/afpak/afpak.pdf

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