Archive for the 'Pakistan' Category

Enemy activity appears to be increasing in Afghanistan according to ISAF medical personnel.

U.S. commanders have been braced for a “spring offensive”, a pick-up in violence tied to the season, when warmer weather allows the Taliban to work their way over the mountains from hideouts in north-western Pakistan and into Afghanistan.

In the first few weeks of this spring, there was little change in the level of violence compared with last year, officers say. But in recent days, at least in one key region along the border, that picture has shifted, even if it may be still too early to say that a renewed Taliban offensive has started.

“A lot of things are starting to happen in the area,” Lieutenant-Colonel Kathy Ponder, the chief nurse at the combat support hospital, which put out the call for more blood to treat the wounded from a roadside bomb, told Reuters on Thursday.

“The Taliban seem to be picking up on the IED (improvised explosive device) blasts and we’re getting a lot of gunshot wounds. The intel we’re getting is that they are targeting our area, so we’re ready. We’re making sure we’re overstocked on what we need.”

Wednesday afternoon’s attack, just north of the city of Khost, near the Pakistan border, targeted a U.S. military patrol. Two U.S. soldiers and one U.S. civilian were killed, and two U.S. soldiers were wounded. The wounded pair lost both of their legs, hence the call for large amounts of blood.

But according to U.S. personnel, its all just a myth.

“There is no such thing as a spring offensive,” Colonel Pete Johnson, the commander of a taskforce from the 101st Airborne Division that is responsible for security in six Afghan provinces along the border with Pakistan, told Reuters.

“I think this year this myth is finally going to be debunked. Last year was the same thing — it never materialised. This year it has not materialised and it won’t materialise.”

“Will there be increases in fighting and insurgent activity. Absolutely. But it’s a weather-based construct, a seasonal construct, not a deliberate execution of an offensive. Increased activity is not a coordinated offensive.”

But what difference does this make?  This argument has become rather passé.  The Taliban know that any “fire and maneuver” engagement of U.S. forces brings a disadvantageous kill ratio.  They tried it again in Garmser with the Marines, and lost.  This is why The Captain’s Journal had previously clarified the issue of a “spring offensive” in the context of distributed operations and what it does or doesn’t mean.  “When NATO speaks of a spring offensive, they are talking tactical maneuvers and larger scale kinetic fights.  When we speak of a spring offensive, we are talking about guerrilla tactics - small teams, fire and melt away, etc.”

There has been a disaggreagation of the Taliban into smaller groups of tribal and commander affiliation, fighting for different causes (with the only common goal being the overthrow of the Karzai government), sometimes competing with each other.  This makes the notion of a Taliban command and control quaint, but fairly useless (During questioning of the Presidential candidates Bill O’Reilly flatly stated that Taliban command and control was Quetta, and while this might have been true a year ago, it is doubtful that a literal command and control exists for Taliban).

So the supposed spring offensive to which U.S. commanders have so sardonically referred is not applicable to the current scene.  We have suggested that the tactics will rely on fire and melt away rather than fire and maneuver, IEDs, suicide tactics, guerrilla tactics and intimidation of the population.  In this way, the disaggregation of the enemy along with his focus on terror tactics make Afghanistan look somewhat more like the Anbar Province than it did a year ago.

In Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud is playing the Pakistani officials for fools as he repeatedly enjoins negotiations, then withdraws from the same, and then hints at them again.  Mehsud’s forces, rather than fight the Pakistan Army in fire and maneuver, simply set up a series of checkpoints and road blocks in South Waziristan.  The Pakistani Army responded with one of their own.  The population tires of this, the Pakistani Army tires of this and agrees to withdraw troops from South Waziristan, and Tehrik-e-Taliban gains their objective.

While Quetta cannot be said to be a literal command and control, as we observed earlier, there are dual Taliban campaigns, one in Pakistan (focused in Waziristan against the Pakistani government, led by Baitullah Mehsud) and the other focused on Afghanistan (focused on Southern Afghanistan where Quetta serves as a rallying point for fighters crossing the border).

Mapping the route the cross-border militants take, Mr Walsh said the insurgents crossed from Balochistan, whose capital Quetta was considered to be the Taliban headquarters by Nato commanders.

“They muster in remote refugee camps west of Quetta — Girdi Jungle is most frequently mentioned — before slipping across the border in four-wheel drive convoys that split up to avoid detection. Sometimes sympathetic border guards help them on their way.

“Inside Afghanistan the fighters thunder across the Dasht-i-Margo — a harsh expanse of ancient smuggling trails which means “desert of death” — before reaching the River Helmand. Here, the sand turns to lush fields of poppy and wheat, and they reach Garmser, home to the most southerly British base in Helmand.”

British officers told Mr Walsh that they had ample evidence that many of the enemy were Pakistani. While remaining coy about their sources of intelligence, they spoke of hearing Punjabi accents and of finding Pakistani papers and telephone contacts on dead fighters.

Four months ago, Den-McKay said, British Gurkhas shot dead a Taliban militant near a small outpost known as Hamburger Hill. Searching the fighter’s body, they discovered a Pakistani identity card and handwritten notes in Punjabi.

There are dual fronts in the campaign, one in Afghanistan and the other in Pakistan.  These two fronts are part of the same insurgency / counterinsurgency campaign.  The expensive UAVs that fly overhead are merely further testimony to the necessity for force projection on the gound when reports arrive of more young sons of America who have had their legs blown off from IEDs.

Since Afghanistan may more closely resemble Anbar in terms of its reliance on terror tactics, the pretext for success in Anbar becomes all the more important.  Al Qaeda terror would have won the day without extreme force projection by the U.S.  The Taliban will not engage in fire and maneuver, and arguments about whether a “spring offensive” will materialize are childish, wasteful and irrelevant.  The Taliban will engage in fire and melt away, and the chase must ensue to hunt them down and kill them with the utmost violence.

In The Disaggregation of the Taliban we noted that the analysis by David Ignatius concerning the diminution of al Qaeda and the Taliban was likely overly optimistic.  The Taliban insurgency has strengthened.  But if The Captain’s Journal is quick to point out overly optimistic assessments, we are equally quick to claim the successes when they exist.  Take careful note of the assessment offered by Ignatius concerning al Qaeda.

The most interesting discovery during a visit to this city where Osama bin Laden planted his flag in 1996 is that al-Qaeda seems to have all but disappeared. The group is on the run, too, in Iraq, and that raises some interesting questions about how to pursue this terrorist enemy.

“Al-Qaeda is not a topic of conversation here,” says Col. Mark Johnstone, the deputy commander of Task Force Bayonet, which oversees four provinces surrounding Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Pete Benchoff agrees: “We’re not seeing a lot of al-Qaeda fighters. They’ve shifted here to facilitation and support.”

You hear the same story farther north from the officers who oversee the provinces along the Pakistan border. A survey conducted last November and December in Nuristan, once an al-Qaeda stronghold, found that the group barely registered as a security concern among the population.

Al Qaeda is defeated in Anbar, and is taking a beating in Tarmiyah, Mosul, and throughout the balance of Northern Iraq.  But if the assessment Ignatius gives us is correct, the power of al Qaeda is waning in the tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan as well.

The Asia Times must be read with caution due to the exaggeration in which this source sometimes engages, and so we sat on this report for several days while waiting for confirmatory analysis.  The assessment by David Ignatius serves as this confirmation.  Some (Asia Times) reports attempt to give excuses for al Qaeda and Taliban failures while they accidentally divulge important truths about the same.  There was recently such a report, humorously entitled Al Qaeda adds muscle to the Taliban fight.

From many hundreds, al-Qaeda now has fewer than 75 Arabs involved in the Afghan “war on terror” theater, but the group is more lethal in that it has successfully established a local franchise of warriors who have fully embraced al-Qaeda’s ideology and who are capable of conducting a war of attrition against the coalition in Afghanistan.

In the years following the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, al-Qaeda lost hundreds of members, either killed or arrested or departed to other regions. These included diehard Arab ideologues such as Mustapha Seth Marium (arrested) and commanders Abu Laith al-Libbi (killed) and Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi (arrested) .

And this month, news of the death in January of Abdul Hameed, alias Abu Obaida al-Misri, from Hepatitis B, was released to Western intelligence. He was a most-trusted aide of al-Qaeda deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri and had been appointed by Osama bin Laden as the head of the khuruj (revolt) in Pakistan. He was in his mid-50s.

While al-Qaedawas suffering losses, Pakistan’s tribal areas became increasingly radicalized, which al-Qaedawas able to tap into to reinvigorate the Afghan insurgency. When military operations chopped off its vertical growth, it grew horizontally.

This defied intelligence estimates, polls, analysis and strategic opinions. Former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld was of the opinion that by 2003, as a result of US military operations in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda had been destroyed as an organization and it was unable to strike against US interests.

However, the US National Intelligence Estimate report in July 2007 said al-Qaeda had regrouped and posed a threat to the US homeland. Recently, US President George W Bush also said al-Qaeda was a serious threat.

The year 2007 was important for al-Qaeda’s development as severalstand-alone Arab groups operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including Libyans and Egyptians, either merged into al-Qaeda or made an alliance in which they would be subservient to al-Qaeda’s command.

With al-Qaeda losing key members, a vacuum should have been created, but that did not happen, and another figure has emerged - Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri. He is a veteran fighter of the Kashmir struggle, groomed by Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence’s India cell.

Islamabad’s clampdown on activities in Kashmir and being arrested a few times disheartened Kashmiri, and he moved to the North Waziristan tribal area. He was soon followed by his diehard Punjabi colleagues and they made Afghanistan their new battlefield.

This year, a “crossbreed” of fighters - a combination of Arab command and that of Kashmiri, as well as an alliance with tribal warlord Baitullah Mehsud - is expected to spring some surprises in Afghanistan.

There is no reason to discuss the fact that Arab fighters have almost disappeared from the scene unless intelligence has already seen signs of this.  The public relations arm of al Qaeda jumped into action with the Asia Times, as they have many times before, since it is customary for them to regurgitate what they’re told without much critical analysis.

To  be sure, Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud is a very real threat, and has in fact actually made very real threats.  “Allah willing, Musharraf will suffer great pain, along with all his aides. The Muslims will never forgive Musharraf for the sin he committed.  We want to eradicate Britain and America, and to shatter the arrogance and tyranny of the infidels. We pray that Allah will enable us to destroy the White House, New York, and London.”  Note that Mehsud doesn’t make our destruction contingent upon our presence in Afghanistan or Pakistan.  He threatens to destroy the U.S. because we are “infidels.”  This is not a local insurgency.  It is a transnational insurgency.

The global jihad is not finished, and will be carried forward by the new breed of Taliban that has aspirations beyond the borders of Pakistan.  The Afghanistan campaign will proceed forward against primarily the Taliban (with perhaps also some Kashmiris), indigenous both to Afghanistan and Pakistan.  But despite the attempt by the Asia Times to put a good face on al Qaeda, they are diminishing in both numbers and effectiveness.  Despite their recruitment efforts, they are losing their global jihad to U.S. forces, and their very propaganda efforts tell us so.

David Ignatius has a very positive analysis in his latest commentary at the Washington Post.

The most interesting discovery during a visit to this city where Osama bin Laden planted his flag in 1996 is that al-Qaeda seems to have all but disappeared. The group is on the run, too, in Iraq, and that raises some interesting questions about how to pursue this terrorist enemy.

“Al-Qaeda is not a topic of conversation here,” says Col. Mark Johnstone, the deputy commander of Task Force Bayonet, which oversees four provinces surrounding Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Pete Benchoff agrees: “We’re not seeing a lot of al-Qaeda fighters. They’ve shifted here to facilitation and support.”

You hear the same story farther north from the officers who oversee the provinces along the Pakistan border. A survey conducted last November and December in Nuristan, once an al-Qaeda stronghold, found that the group barely registered as a security concern among the population.

The enemy in these eastern provinces is a loose amalgam of insurgent groups, mostly linked to traditional warlords. It’s not the Taliban, much less al-Qaeda. “I don’t use the word ‘Taliban,’ ” says Alison Blosser, a State Department political adviser to the military commanders here in the sector known as Regional Command East. “In RC East we have a number of disparate groups. Command and control are not linked up. The young men will fight for whoever is paying the highest rate.”

But this analysis is far too positve.  Hamid Karzai is so concerned about the resurgence of the Taliban and future departure of U.S. troops (and consequent Taliban violence) that he has warned the U.S. against arresting Taliban.  It’s time to talk and negotiate, Karzai believes.

But there is more to this problem than meets the eye.  We have previously discussed how the Afghan Taliban have jettisoned a strict command and control structure in favor of distributed operations.  We have also examined how the Pakistani Taliban have fractured into multiple distinct but connected groups in The Taliban: An Organizational Analysis.

Turning to a more in depth analysis, Ashley J. Tellis, writing for The Washington Quarterly, gives us an important analysis in Pakistan’s Record on Terrorism: Conflicted Goals, Compromised Performance.  Part of his analysis is given below pertaining to the current makeup of the Pakistani Taliban.

The operational context surrounding the counterterrorism effort in the tribal areas and in Afghanistan has changed considerably to the disadvantage of the Western coalition since Operation Enduring Freedom began in 2001.  To begin with, the Taliban movement, which was never a tight and cohesive political entity in any case, has become any even looser network of affiliated individuals and groups since it was forced from power in Kabul.  Today, the Taliban “alliance” can be characterized as a disparate congeries of several elements united only by a common religious ideology, a desire to regain power in Afghanistan or in their local areas of operation, and a deep antagonism toward the United States and its regional allies.

Several distinct elements can be identified in the current Taliban coalition: the leadership council centered around Mullah Omar, other war councils, Taliban cadres, tribal networks of former mujahideen commanders, and “Pakistani Taliban” commanders.  Moreover, many drug lords in eastern and southern Afghanistan are either taxed or willingly contribute revenues that are indispensable for the Taliban war against Kabul.  Sundry former anti-Soviet commanders control small groups of fighters and are engaged primarily in criminal activities while offering their services as guns for hire.  Disaffected Afghan Pashtun tribes, most conspicuously the rural Ghilzai, feel disenfranchised in the current governing arrangements and subsequently continue to support the Taliban with manpower and sanctuary within Afghanistan.  Finally, al Qaeda, although distinct from all of the foregoing groups in that its focus of operations remains the global jihad, nonetheless collaborates with the Taliban to assist the later in recovering control of Kabul while continuing to preserve a sanctuary in the FATA in the interim.

The implication of such a diverse target set is that destroying the “Taliban” today has become much more difficult because its previously weak hierarchical structure has become even more diffuse with truly diverse entities coordinating as necessary, but each also carrying out their local agendas.  The complexity of Islamabad’s relations with many of the constituent elements in the Taliban coalition does not help.  Although Islamabad may readily cooperate in targeting some of the Pakistani Taliban commanders, the drug lords, the petty anti-Soviet commanders, and al Qaeda elements, the ties nurtured by its military and intelligence services with the Taliban leadership and the tribal networks of key former mujahideen commanders make these targets relatively inviolate, at least in the near term.  Therefore, winning the war on terrorism in Afghanistan will require combating all of these targets as well as dealing with the sanctuary enjoyed by various militant groups in Pakistan.

If Tellis is correct, this disaggregation of the Taliban will make it more difficult to conduct operations against them.

In Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan we set out the intended strategy of attacking NATO supply lines through the Khyber pass.  This Al Jazeera video does a fairly good job of laying out the strategy and summarizing the importance of this plan to date.

This strategy is, according to an Asia Times report, in tatters, and according to a Globe and Mail report, meeting resistance.  The Asia Times report is lengthy but gives us a glimpse into the treachery involved  along the Khyner pass from a trader named Namdar, who apparently sold the Taliban out for $150 000 right around the time of the March 20 attack on 40 gasoline tankers.

Unlike in previous Taliban attacks in the area, local paramilitary forces chased the Taliban after this incident. The Taliban retaliated and five soldiers were killed, but then their ammunition ran out and they surrendered the two workers and tried to flee, but they were blocked.

The Taliban called in reinforcements, but so did the paramilitary troops, and a stalemate was reached. Eventually, the Taliban managed to capture a local political agent (representing the central government) and they used him as a hostage to allow their escape.

They retreated to their various safe houses, but to their horror, paramilitary troops were waiting for them and scores were arrested, and their arms caches seized. A number of Taliban did, however, manage to escape once word got out of what was happening.

The only person aware of the safe houses was Namdar, their supposed protector: they had been sold out.

Their worst suspicions were confirmed when Namdarbroke his cover and announced on a local radio station that Taliban commanders, including Ustad Yasir, should surrender or face a “massacre”, as happened when local tribes turned against Uzbek fighters in South Waziristan in January 2007.

Namdar said that he had the full weight of the security forces behind him, and he did not fear any suicide attack.

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban immediately called an emergency shura in North Waziristan to review the situation. Al-Qaeda’s investigations revealed that the CIA and Pakistani intelligence had got to Namdarand paid him $150,000 in local currency.

The immediate result is that Taliban operations in Khyber Agency have been cut off. This in itself is a major setback, as the attacks on supply lines had hit a raw NATO nerve.

In the broader context, Namdar’s betrayal vividly illustrates the dangers of traitors within the ranks of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The fear is that the various peace deals being signed now between the Islamabad government and selected tribal leaders could lead to a whole new batch of betrayals.

Namdar is a pawn, and the real power according to the Globe and Mail report is a tribal leader who owns a local army of fighters.

An Islamist warlord whose fighters are overrunning Pakistan’s famous Khyber Pass area may now be the only force stopping the Taliban from swooping in to cut off this key supply route for NATO in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Mangal Bagh, who leads a group called Lashkar-i-Islam, said in an interview that he has rebuffed an offer from Pakistan’s Taliban to join them. Although he voiced his disdain for the United States, his independence is likely to be significant for NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan.

Khyber agency is a 2,500-square-kilometre district that is part of Pakistan’s tribal belt, and truckloads of food, equipment and fuel for NATO troops wind through it daily to the bustling border at Torkham. Last week, fighting between Mr. Bagh’s men and a pocket of resistance around the town of Jamrut closed the Pak-Afghan highway for several days.

Mr. Bagh’s stronghold, the market town of Bara, is a 30-minute drive from the city-centre of the provincial capital, Peshawar. An escort of his heavily armed followers is needed to reach his fortified compound in the surrounding countryside.

“I’m not the ruler of Khyber, I’m the servant,” said Mr. Bagh, who had an unexpectedly gentle manner, as he relaxed with his Kalashnikov-toting men, drinking tea. “My aim is to finish all social evils.”

There have been repeated entreaties to combine forces from the Pakistani Taliban, who run other parts of the country’s wild northwestern border terrain, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. A traditional jirga, a meeting of elders, was held between Lashkar-i-Islam and the Taliban about 40 days ago.

“I told them that what I am doing is enough. It is the right direction. There is no need to join you,” he said.

“The Taliban consists of religious scholars. We are fighters for Islam - laypeople. We don’t have any religious figures in our organization.”

However, he said that the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was “wrong” and that U.S. soldiers must leave.

Our assessment is that this is a mixed blessing.  First, Asia Times can give good information, but tends towards exaggeration, and it isn’t likely that the whole strategy of attacking NATO supply lines is in tatters.  Second, before beginning the dances of jubilation over the failure of the Taliban approach, remember that Mangal Bagh is no friend of the U.S.  It is likely that the battles in this area are just beginning.  The Taliban have not typically been inclined to give up after the first battle.

Continued CIA pressure must be brought to bear in this region, in addition to UAV strikes when known Taliban are observed.  This force must be balanced against the need to prevent targeting Mangal’s fighters, even if he is unfriendly to NATO efforts.  For now, at least, he must be considered a friend, even if a tenuous and potentially treacherous one at that.

Prior:

Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan

The Khyber Pass

The Canadians are having misgivings about the Afghanistan campaign, even as Canadian Brigadier General Denis Thompson is preparing to take over head of NATO forces there.  The disagreement is over the very nature of the mission and how to ensure the departure of Canadian forces as soon as possible.

Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan was looking murky as the week began. On Sunday, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier told news reporters that Canada felt it was time to replace Kandahar governor Asadullah Khalid, who has been linked to persistent reports of torture and corruption.

Then, on Tuesday, Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier announced his retirement after three years as Canada’s top soldier.

By the end of the week, opposition MPs were calling for Bernier’s resignation. “The minister still doesn’t understand that he put the government of Afghanistan in an impossible situation,” said Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae.

Nobody articulated it, but Bernier was acting and talking like he worked for the U.S. State Department, not Canada’s Foreign Affairs department. Americans have no hesitation about telling other countries what to do and how to do it. Their meddling is renowned, right down to plotting coups and takeovers and attempting assassinations. Bernier was, indeed, trying to influence an internal Afghan matter, albeit in softer tones.

Many feel that his leadership made the Afghanistan mission possible. In his three years as chief of defence staff, Hillier skilfully changed the perception of the Canadian Forces among Canadians. Their first job, he told us, was to kill. He boosted morale among the troops with his unreserved support and respect for them. He got them the funding and equipment they needed to be, for the first time since the Korean War, full-fledged combatants.

Between the foreign affairs faux pas and the general’s departure, could Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan collapse? That’s not likely, according to journalist and author Linda McQuaig, who was in Kingston this week to talk about how Canada, since marching into Afghanistan, has become complicit in U.S. militaristic designs.

McQuaig says we’ve made a big mistake trading in our famous blue United Nations peacekeeping helmets for the khaki desert camouflage of a U.S.-led NATO conflict. She believes Canadian troops will always be viewed by Afghans as an invading force and, as such, will always be held in suspicion and subjected to attacks.

The political reality of the mission’s future, McQuaig argues, is that even should the Liberals oust the Conservatives in an election, the deal the Tories struck agreeing to extend the mission to 2011 will be honoured. Liberal leader Stephane Dion, she says, was “bullied by [MPs Michael] Ignatieff and [Bob] Rae” into cutting a deal with the Conservatives.

The deal cut between the Liberals and Conservatives calls for the pullout of Canadian soldiers by the end of 2011. But will we be able to do that in good conscience knowing that the vacuum left by a withdrawal would be filled by either the return of the Taliban or the warlords who have historically divided and conquered the nation? Of course not. That’s why Canada must open the way for negotiations between the current, democratically elected Afghan government and the Taliban. Detente is the only hope for peace and progress in Afghanistan after 2011.

The solution, it is claimed, it to negotiate with the Taliban.  These calls for negotiations are well worn and not limited to Canada.  The new Pakistani regime has been negotiating with the Taliban ever since taking authority.  These negotiations, or jirga, may soon reap rewards, but not for the Pakistani government.

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan Wednesday claimed a breakthrough in talks with the government for restoration of peace to the restive tribal areas and militancy-hit Swat valley.

“Our talks have entered into a crucial phase and there is a possibility of signing a peace accord next week,” remarked Maulvi Omar, a TTP spokesman.

The TTP is an association of all the militant groups operating in the seven tribal regions as well as 24 settled districts of NWFP.

The TTP is a conglomeration of tribal warlords and fighters led by Baitullah Mehsud, whom we profiled in Baitullah Mehsud: The Most Powerful Man in Waziristan.

Talking to ‘The News’ from an undisclosed location, he avoided disclosing identity of the jirga members brokering the deal between the government and militants.

Omar said both sides had forwarded their respective demands and proposals to the negotiating team for restoration of peace in the region.

“We have been showing maximum flexibility in our stance and strictly stand by the ceasefire that we announced earlier for success of our talks,” the spokesman said.

About some of their demands forwarded to the jirga members, Omar said they wanted an end to military operations, which according to him caused numerous hardships to the common tribes people including release of their people being held during military actions and compensation for those suffered losses.

Sounding optimistic about their negotiations, he claimed the talks could make a breakthrough next week and could pave the way for signing a peace deal.

About the government’s stand for not including foreign militants in the negotiation process, Omar strongly denied presence of foreigners in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and alleged that government had killed innocent people in the name of war on terrorism and foreign elements as, according to him, all the important al-Qaeda members like Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Abu Zubeda were arrested from Islamabad and Faisalabad.

“There is no need for foreign militants in the tribal areas as we have the strength to fight our common enemy which is the United States and its allies,” said the militants spokesman.

Omar, however, made it clear that their war against the US-led forces would continue till their complete withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“US forces’ presence in Afghanistan is dangerous for the entire region in general and Pakistan in particular. They must be forced to leave the region at all costs,” Maulvi Omar said.

Asked that Baitullah Mehsud’s name had appeared in the Time magazine’s list of world’s 100 most influential people, Omar said Baitullah got worldwide reputation by his love for Islam and spirit for jihad.

Like every year, Time magazine is inviting reader to vote for leaders, artists, entrepreneurs and thinkers who shape the world and deserve a spot on its annual list. There are currently 207 finalists and the list will be published in the magazine’s next issue.

“Baitullah Mehsud got this reputation because of his services for Islam who played crucial role in uniting all Mujahideen factions in Pakistan and bringing them under the single banner of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan,” explained Maulvi Omar, who was not aware that Baitullah’s name has been published in the magazine.

The pathway of negotiations is even being pursued within the Afghanistan administration.  Counterinsurgency campaigns have an ebb and flow.  Timeliness is critical, as is convincing the population that those who wage COIN are committed to the effort.  The commitment has been evident in Iraq where negotiations with Sheikh Sattar Abdul Abu Risha occurred from a position of military strength in the Anbar Province, thus leading to continuing peace and alliance with the U.S. in Anbar.

The Pentagon is showing an understanding of the need for force projection in Afghanistan with the recent deployment of Marines to the theater.  However, the mission for the Marines involves a bit of myth-telling.

More than 1,000 American troops from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit will take control of the border between Helmand and Pakistan later this month. They will concentrate on providing the firepower to kill Taliban leaders as they cross the border from their base in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

The US marines will work with the British Special Forces Support Group and Special Boat Service commandos who are tracking Taliban crossing the border. They will use the firepower of their M1A1 Abrams tanks and AH-1W Cobra helicopter gunships to launch a frontal assault on the hardliners.

Note the focus on “hardliners” and border region crossings by “Taliban leaders.”  The presuppositions are that [a] the leaders are all crossing the border on a regular basis and are subject to interdiction, and [b] those who are not so-called “hardliners” are amenable to negotiations, a British tactic utilized since the failure of the same at Musa Qala.

Being missed in this strategy is that without the appropriate force projection within Afghanistan itself, there would be a reason for the balance of the Taliban to negotiate with the administration.  The jirga in this region of the world has never and will not in the future lead to results that are helpful to the war on terror.  One final example serves as an exclamation point.

We had previously noted that the Khyber agency would become a focal point for insurgent actions, being a vulnerable pass through which NATO supplies passed.  Law enforcement in Khyber has proven almost impossible due to the jirga.

A jirga of Zakhakhel and Qambarkhel elders and Taliban leaders from Waziristan succeeded in arranging the release of four detained Taliban commanders on bail, participants said.

The Taliban commanders from the South Waziristan Agency had been held for destroying tankers carrying oil for coalition troops in Afghanistan, and abducting their drivers.

In exchange, the Taliban commanders handed back 50,000 gallons of petrol and two oil tankers to complainants in Landi Kotal (Khyber Agency) and released two abducted drivers.

Sixty people were injured and 40 oil tankers burnt after two explosions near the Torkham border four weeks ago.

Javed Ibrahim Paracha, chairman of the World Prisoner’s Relief Commission of Pakistan, headed the jirga at his residence. He told Daily Times he had been directed by Interior Affairs Adviser Rehman Malik and Interior Secretary Kamal Shah to organise the jirga to resolve the issue peacefully.

He said the jirga consisted of Waziristan’s Taliban commanders Mir Qasim Janikhel and Ishaq Wazir, and Zakhakhel and Qambarkhel elders including Nasir Khan and Khyber Khan.

Paracha said the Zakhakhel and Qambarkhel tribes had charged the four Taliban commanders from the Janikhel tribe, including Khalid Rehman, for destroying the oil tankers and abducting the drivers.

He said Karak police had arrested the Taliban commanders a few weeks ago and charged them with terrorism.

Paracha said the jirga had ruled that the Qambarkhel and Zakhakhel tribes would take back their testimony against the Taliban commanders in the anti-terrorism court of Kohat, to allow their release on bail.

Force projection is needed quickly in the Afghanistan campaign.  Force projection includes military action, but the greater the force projection, the less need there will be to exercise that force in the long run.  Turning to the jirga means failure of the campaign.