"This is a lawless process".
The simultaneous attacks, in the Baizai area close to the Afghan border, were the biggest since Pakistani forces launched operations in the lawless tribal regions along the border.
If he loses Afghanistan as a result of the current military campaign, he will move his operations to another lawless area, perhaps Chechnya, officials in the region said.
As attorney general, Mr. Gonzales helped cover up the administration's lawless behavior in anti-terrorist operations, helped revoke fundamental human rights for foreigners and turned the Justice Department into a branch of the Republican National Committee.
The area of their operation is mostly lawless and they will not give up their weapons easily.
Mario Monti, the Italian prime minister, was informed of the operation in the increasingly lawless north-west of Nigeria only once it had started, apparently because of the need to move quickly.
Headley also provided details of the extensive operation of militants in the lawless "tribal zones" along Pakistan's western border.
The suspect, Arcangel de Jesus Henao, who was arrested last week in a joint Panamanian-American operation in a remote and lawless region of Panama, was flown to New York, where he was to be arraigned.
In the intervening years, by and large, the U.S. presence in Somalia has been fleeting and furtive: lighting raids by Special Forces commandos to snatch or kill fugitive extremist suspects; convoys of naval warships escorting seaborne shipments of food to alleviate the country's periodic famines, and anti-piracy operations in the seas off its lawless shores.
There is some hope that the appointment three months ago of a new spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who previously oversaw military operations against militants in Pakistan's lawless western districts, signaled a move away from sympathies with the Islamist fighters who control much of the region bordering Afghanistan.
