[I can has Low Taxes?]

The accent is just the standard American “if I make all the vowels long it sounds exotic.”

The pronunciation of “Pakistan” is relatively close, but jars with the American pronunciation of “Afghanistan”. As noted above, the “local” prounciation has the “ah as in calm” versus “a as in cat” sound. Plus the Afghan “gh” is rolled in the back of the throat.

HOWEVER, doing long vowels for “Tal-ee-ban” is silly, since it’s a short “i” in Arabic. So even in Arabic, as well as in Dari and Pashto, it’s “Tahl-ih-BON”.

So yeah, it’s just generic “trying to sound exotic but just making it up.”

Substantive comment. See, isn’t this nicer than just kvetching?

[missanne]

Thank you soooo much! Now it makes sense. That clears things up totally for me on the only puzzlement I ever had regarding the “Anointed One”.