Anti-terror focus returns to Afghanistan

Discussion in 'World Events' started by kmguru, Jan 27, 2008.

  1. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    Anti-terror focus returns to Afghanistan, Pakistan

    By Robert Burns, Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — In a shift with profound implications, the Bush administration is attempting to re-energize its terrorism-fighting war efforts in Afghanistan, the original target of a post-Sept. 11 offensive. The U.S. also is refocusing on Pakistan, where a regenerating al-Qaeda is posing fresh threats.
    There is growing recognition that the United States risks further setbacks, if not deepening conflict or even defeat, in Afghanistan, and that success in that country hinges on stopping Pakistan from descending into disorder.

    Privately, some senior U.S. military commanders say Pakistan's tribal areas are at the center of the fight against Islamic extremism; more so than Iraq, or even Afghanistan. These areas border on eastern Afghanistan and provide haven for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters to regroup, rearm and reorganize.

    This view may explain, at least in part, the administration's increasingly public expressions of concern.

    At a Pentagon news conference last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that while the United States respects the Pakistani government's right to decide what actions are needed to defeat extremists on its soil, there are reasons to worry that al-Qaeda poses more than an internal threat to Pakistan.

    "I think we are all concerned about the re-establishment of al-Qaeda safe havens in the border area," Gates said. "I think it would be unrealistic to assume that all of the planning that they're doing is focused strictly on Pakistan. So I think that that is a continuing threat to Europe as well as to us."

    The Pentagon says it has fewer than 100 troops in Pakistan, including personnel who are training Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps in the western tribal region along the Afghanistan border.

    The U.S. military has used other means, including aerial surveillance by drones, to hunt Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda leaders believed to be hiding near the Afghan border. Ground troops on the Afghan side sometimes fire artillery across the border at known Taliban or al-Qaeda targets, and U.S. officials have said special operations forces are poised to strike across the border under certain circumstances.

    In recent days, administration officials have said they would send more U.S. forces, including small numbers of combat troops, if the Pakistani government decided it wanted to collaborate more closely.

    It is far from certain that U.S. combat troops will set foot in Pakistan in any substantial numbers. On Friday, Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, said his country opposes any foreign forces on its soil. "The man in the street will not allow this — he will come out and agitate," he said. Musharraf said the U.S. instead should bolster its combat forces in Afghanistan.

    More...

    I wonder if China is supplying arms via Kashmir...
     
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  3. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    but time bush decided to go after the real fucking threat again
     
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  5. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    What anti-terror threat?

    Does anyone else find it weird that the US is occupying Afghanistan and Iraq and talking about terror threats from them?
     
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  7. draqon Banned Banned

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    its all 911 hype
     
  8. kmguru Staff Member

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    Watch Bill Maher at HBO (last night's)...they talk about Afghanistan...
     

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