NationStates Jolt Archive

So, as most of you know the taleban have been using Pakistan as their major source of refuge, recruits and resources. So simple question, do you think NATO would be justified in conducting operations within Pakistani borders?

I think everybody here knows my answer. :D

So, as most of you know the taleban have been using Pakistan as their major source of refuge, recruits and resources. So simple question, do you think NATO would be justified in conducting operations within Pakistani borders?

"taleban" :confused:

and mine

Without the approval of the Pakistani government? No. They wouldn't be justified in violating the countrys - a rather close ally of the US in the region, mind you - sovereignty. Not much good would come of that...

EDIT: And what's Cambodia got to do with anything?

pakistan can't equal cambodia. it just wouldn't fit in the song.

This is very true, but remember, how well did the Cambodian Incursion really fair in Vietnam? Most military historains regard it as a disaster, and killed about 10 times the ammount of civilians than NVA/VC. Doing the same here would probably give you same results, and unlike Cambodia, the Pakistanis can retaliate, they have Nuclear Weapons, and if attacked, my guess is that they would use them on our soldiers.

"taleban" :confused:

It's tal-uh-ban not tal-ee-ban. It's a spelling error largely perpetuated by the media.

It's tal-a-ban not tal-ee-ban. It's a spelling error largely perpetuated by the media.

And here I was positive it was Tal-i-ban.

in joint operations with the pakistan military perhaps. otherwise no.

And here I was positive it was Tal-i-ban.

And here i was knowing what you were thinking. And here i was telling you again that nobody in a-stan uses taliban. It's taleban.

in joint operations with the pakistan military perhaps. otherwise no.

What if they agreed to let us in?

What if they agreed to let us in?

In that case it wouldn't be much like the illegal. unprovoked act of war crime of attacking Cambodia, would it?

no, never ever quagmires suck as does the idea that Afghanistan will be magic land once we killed whoever we don’t like when the economy basically doesn’t exist

give a little help to the tribesmen who will hopefully clear the insurgents themselves its like hearts and minds only with an anarchist twist!

no, never ever quagmires suck as does the idea that Afghanistan will be magic land once we killed whoever we don’t like when the economy basically doesn’t exist

give a little help to the tribesmen who will hopefully clear the insurgents themselves its like hearts and minds only with an anarchist twist!

I agree on the merits of avoiding quagmires, but come on, they have an economy. A pretty one, too (http://www.lostworldarts.com/images/img384.jpg).

I agree on the merits of avoiding quagmires, but come on, they have an economy. A pretty one, too (http://www.lostworldarts.com/images/img384.jpg).

well that’s less there economy more vicious drug lords estate

Maybe the peasants will rise up, where is Mao these days?

If it was a choice between allowing a taleban supply convoy get supplies to a taleban raiding forces so that they can kill civilians or striking that convoy from the air within Pakistan which would it be?

So, as most of you know the taleban have been using Pakistan as their major source of refuge, recruits and resources. So simple question, do you think NATO would be justified in conducting operations within Pakistani borders?

Simple answer is no, absolutely not.

If it was a choice between allowing a taleban supply convoy get supplies to a taleban raiding forces so that they can kill civilians or striking that convoy from the air within Pakistan which would it be?

let them do it sadly the age of rational military actions ended in 1918 now generals have to be politicians as well

let them do it sadly the age of rational military actions ended in 1918 now generals have to be politicians as well

If the media decides to start covering afghanistan any time soon you might be surprised.

Without the approval of the Pakistani government? No. They wouldn't be justified in violating the countrys - a rather close ally of the US in the region, mind you - sovereignty. Not much good would come of that...



Have not the Pak govt already ceded sovereignty to the taliban by withdrawing from the area ?
[for argument's sake]

If the media decides to start covering afghanistan any time soon you might be surprised.

Considering the medias affect in Iraq (or more to the point Iran) lets not hope for too much

Also the news mostly covers the big sieges and missile attacks seeing as how its there job to scare everyone

let them do it sadly the age of rational military actions ended in 1918 now generals have to be politicians as well

1918? :D Generals have always had to be politicians.

I think that NATO needs to march up to Mr Musharraf and tell him pretty clearly: "We don't really give a shit about your political career. We are fighting the Taleban, we need you to help us. So your troops and our troops will march into Quetta and clean the place out. And if you say no, we'll slap sanctions on you so hard the military is gonna have your head."

Obviously you're never gonna end the conflict if one side can simply walk back and forth between the borders.

I know a lot of you guys don't like the idea of the fighting there. Many would prefer peacekeeping and reconstruction. But how are you gonna do that if people shoot at you all the time?

I saw bits of a Dateline current affairs program (transcript (http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=archive&daysum=2007-03-07#)) yesterday with the Australian troops in Southern Afghanistan. They were meant to bring furniture to a village for the people there. When they got there, the danger was so great that they ended up putting all the stuff in the mosque as quick as they could and then get out of there. That's not reconstruction, it's not gonna help anyone.

Until the Taleban are sufficiently beaten as a military force so they can't go there and interfere with the reconstruction effort, nothing's gonna happen there. And I don't see a way of weakening the Taleban without going and attacking their bases in Pakistan.

I think that NATO needs to march up to Mr Musharraf and tell him pretty clearly: "We don't really give a shit about your political career. We are fighting the Taleban, we need you to help us. So your troops and our troops will march into Quetta and clean the place out. And if you say no, we'll slap sanctions on you so hard the military is gonna have your head."

Obviously you're never gonna end the conflict if one side can simply walk back and forth between the borders.

I know a lot of you guys don't like the idea of the fighting there. Many would prefer peacekeeping and reconstruction. But how are you gonna do that if people shoot at you all the time?

I saw bits of a Dateline current affairs program (transcript (http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=archive&daysum=2007-03-07#)) yesterday with the Australian troops in Southern Afghanistan. They were meant to bring furniture to a village for the people there. When they got there, the danger was so great that they ended up putting all the stuff in the mosque as quick as they could and then get out of there. That's not reconstruction, it's not gonna help anyone.

Until the Taleban are sufficiently beaten as a military force so they can't go there and interfere with the reconstruction effort, nothing's gonna happen there. And I don't see a way of weakening the Taleban without going and attacking their bases in Pakistan.

QFT. Sorry to sound like a broken record, but I have been saying this for a long time.

I think it's a terrible idea unless Musharraf agrees to it. The Taliban in the region can't be bad enough to justify endangering the stability of Pakistan.

This is very true, but remember, how well did the Cambodian Incursion really fair in Vietnam? Most military historains regard it as a disaster, and killed about 10 times the ammount of civilians than NVA/VC. Doing the same here would probably give you same results, and unlike Cambodia, the Pakistanis can retaliate, they have Nuclear Weapons, and if attacked, my guess is that they would use them on our soldiers.

We were only allowed to chase them so far; plus we had a deadline by which time we had to withdraw. All we really ended up doing was pushing the enemy deeper and deeper into the country. The operation wasn't a complete disaster, however; he managed to capture and/or destroy shitloads of the enemy's weaponry.

a-stan
a-stan?

a-stan?

I can only assume Afghanistan.

a-stan?

Sorry just a habit. You try writing a 12 letter word 300 times a week in reports when you could write a 6 letter one and get the same point across.

I think it's a terrible idea unless Musharraf agrees to it. The Taliban in the region can't be bad enough to justify endangering the stability of Pakistan.

Uhhhh, then i guess the question is, what is bad enough?

Uhhhh, then i guess the question is, what is bad enough?
Bad enough would be if they are doing more damage than an attack on them without the Pakistani government's consent would do.

Bad enough would be if they are doing more damage than an attack on them without the Pakistani government's consent would do.

Attacks in Pakistan won't do much damage politically at all. It is taleban territory not pakistani territory.

Attacks in Pakistan won't do much damage politically at all. It is taleban territory not pakistani territory.
I'm sure people said the same thing about Cambodia.
The truth is, the situation in that region is likely far more complicated than either you or I know.

I'm sure people said the same thing about Cambodia.
The truth is, the situation in that region is likely far more complicated than either you or I know.

You're either going to have to trust me or not but I KNOW that it won't cause great political damage.

You're either going to have to trust me or not but I KNOW that it won't cause great political damage.

That depends entirely on where those bombs you're dropping land no? I imagine US bombs falling in Islamabad would cause severe political damage and spark a nuclear retaliation.

Like it or not, one way or another, agreement from Pakistan's top leaders are needed if you want to conduct cross border interception unless you don't mind bringing Pakistan into the conflict in a way you don't want.

That depends entirely on where those bombs you're dropping land no? I imagine US bombs falling in Islamabad would cause severe political damage and spark a nuclear retaliation.
I doubt it would be nuclear but yes that would be bad.
Like it or not, one way or another, agreement from Pakistan's top leaders are needed if you want to conduct cross border interception unless you don't mind bringing Pakistan into the conflict in a way you don't want.

Again, i know that you are wrong but I can't prove it to you.

You're either going to have to trust me or not but I KNOW that it won't cause great political damage.
I don't trust the government or any of its employees in most situations and especially when that situation deals with the military-industrial complex.
No offense to you personally, of course.:)

If the information were really that enlightening, they'd let you share it with us.

Again, i know that you are wrong but I can't prove it to you.

And what exactly is the source of this confidence of yours?

Cambodia didn't have nukes. Simple.

I think everybody here knows my answer. :D

It's really not fair asking this question of indians. Where the hell are Londim and Johnny when you need them, huh?

It's really not fair asking this question of indians.

:D Actually no. If I were to put on my Indian nationalist hawk hat, I would actually want the US/NATO bogged down in Afg with Pakistani jihadis shooting at them instead of infiltrating Kashmir and shooting at us.

Infiltration levels have gone down steadily in Kashmir since taliban regrouped and started infiltrating into Afg.

Attacks in Pakistan won't do much damage politically at all. It is taleban territory not pakistani territory.

The Pakistani nationalists won't think that way. You might get away with limited incursions across the border in hot pursuits and maybe some predator bombings (I know both have been going on, you don't have to confirm :p ), but a full fledged operation in Pak in say Chithral valley (where the last sighting of OBL took place) or in Quetta - which is the Balochistan capital - where taliban leadership is rumored to be present - those will be hard to pull off.

The problem Musharraf faces is the certain prospect of internal mutiny/coup if he goes along with this. If he does not go along with this and choses to keep quiet while US/NATO conducts operation, he will be targeted by the islamists and islamist sympathizers.

There is no easy solution to this mess.

I think that NATO needs to march up to Mr Musharraf and tell him pretty clearly: "We don't really give a shit about your political career. We are fighting the Taleban, we need you to help us. So your troops and our troops will march into Quetta and clean the place out. And if you say no, we'll slap sanctions on you so hard the military is gonna have your head."

Sounds about like what I'd do, were I in charge.

Heads up, the US has been bombing Pakistan since 2002

give a little help to the tribesmen who will hopefully clear the insurgents themselves its like hearts and minds only with an anarchist twist!
That happened in the early nineties. It was called "The Afghani civil war".

That happened in the early nineties. It was called "The Afghani civil war".

only this time the guns aren’t flowing to just the mujaheeden there going to tribesmen who have been taking the talibans shit for years

Course naturally that will lead to the mountainous regions becoming even more uncontrollable but its not like anyone has ever had control over them

Sooner or later they will have to.

only this time the guns aren’t flowing to just the mujaheeden there going to tribesmen who have been taking the talibans shit for years

Course naturally that will lead to the mountainous regions becoming even more uncontrollable but its not like anyone has ever had control over them
...

The various secret services of the world were arming up just about everyone, to be honest.

And it still didn't do anything of any great value, it just consolidated power to one large group who were better armed than the others.

It's tal-a-ban not tal-ee-ban. It's a spelling error largely perpetuated by the media.And here I was positive it was Tal-i-ban.Meh, it's a transliteration of the plural of طالب (Tālib). Right and wrong spellings are kind of irrelevant. Especially since the Arabic word was absorbed into Persian, but the pronunciation was altered, and considering that the majority of people in southern Afghanistan are Pashtun which is an indo-iranian ethnicity and has its own language, Pashto, which is a subgroup of Iranian. Well it's only just beginning to get confusing.

Though I haven't come across Talaban before.

The various secret services of the world were arming up just about everyone, to be honest.

and for awhile the Soviet supported government was winning more so after they pulled out

And it still didn't do anything of any great value, it just consolidated power to one large group who were better armed than the others.

That was because there was so little going to moderates and independent groups

We were only allowed to chase them so far; plus we had a deadline by which time we had to withdraw. All we really ended up doing was pushing the enemy deeper and deeper into the country. The operation wasn't a complete disaster, however; he managed to capture and/or destroy shitloads of the enemy's weaponry.

Which accounted for nothing. In terms of the NVA's strategy it was but a bump.

I doubt that any kind of ground or air operations would do much, apart from spark a potentially nasty backlash against the west within Pakistan. I've been to the Pakistani/Afghan border myself, and it's little surprise that essentially guerillas can get through - miles and miles of nothing apart from mountains and dust. You could hide for years and never get found, I think.

Of course, that doesn't make inaction right, but a few tentative steps (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6210057.stm)have been made. Hopefully, a few more might be seen in the future, both in the border and in Kashmir.

Without the approval of the Pakistani government? No. They wouldn't be justified in violating the countrys - a rather close ally of the US in the region, mind you - sovereignty. Not much good would come of that...

Yep... as usual, you can give asylum to as many terrorists as you want if you're a US-allied country and a nuclear power to boot.
Nice "war-on-terror-till-we-meet-a-tough-guy" policy...

I smell chicken...

add: of course, I think that going at Pakistan would do nothing but stir more trouble... anyway the "war on terror" policy is clearly a fake. I don't remember problems with sovereignity of a country with Afghanistan and Iraq...

pakistan can't equal cambodia. it just wouldn't fit in the song.

Aww. "Backpacking in Pakistan" perhaps?
No? Purist. I'll take it to Weird Al Yankovich then!

And to the OP: oh fuck no. Undermine whatever weak government Pakistan has got by doing their policing for them, likely ending in theocracy?
What's plan B? Occupy Pakistan with NATO troops?

Stop sweating the tactical stuff, and enforce democratic elections in Pakistan instead. A democratic, anti-West Pakistan is preferable to a dictatorship which does just enough to be considered an ally.

Stop sweating the tactical stuff, and enforce democratic elections in Pakistan instead. A democratic, anti-West Pakistan is preferable to a dictatorship which does just enough to be considered an ally.

The problem is the army. They have had elected leaders in the past to no avail - Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Shariff. Both had no real power. Benazir Bhutto was not even allowed to enter her own country's nuclear facilities and Nawaz Shariff was not even told about the extent of his country's army's involvement in Kargil. It was under Benazir, the taliban was formed by Pakistan.

The army has its hold on pretty much everything there, they are in a very privileged position and they would be loathe to let go of the power. Elected leaders have to toe the army line in matters of defence, foreign policy etc or they will be toppled no matter how much mandate they have. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was a very popular leader who was one fine day put into arrest and hung by Zia, the army general.

The problem is the army. They have had elected leaders in the past to no avail - Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Shariff. Both had no real power. Benazir Bhutto was not even allowed to enter her own country's nuclear facilities and Nawaz Shariff was not even told about the extent of his country's army's involvement in Kargil. It was under Benazir, the taliban was formed by Pakistan.

The army has its hold on pretty much everything there, they are in a very privileged position and they would be loathe to let go of the power. Elected leaders have to toe the army line in matters of defence, foreign policy etc or they will be toppled no matter how much mandate they have. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was a very popular leader who was one fine day put into arrest and hung by Zia, the army general.

Yup. "President" Musharraf was a General in the PA who took over the nation by force, for those of you who didn't know/don't remember.

What is the solution to camps like these ?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16240565/site/newsweek/
Al Qaeda's Western Recruits
Along the ungoverned border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Al Qaeda is training would-be jihadists from the West to attack their home countries.
By Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau And Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

Dec. 25, 2006 - Jan. 1, 2007 issue - For the past year, a secret has been slowly spreading among Taliban commanders in Afghanistan: a 12-man team of Westerners was being trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan for a special mission. Most of the Afghan fighters could rely only on hearsay, but some told of seeing the "English brothers" (as the foreign recruits were nicknamed for their shared language) in person. One eyewitness, a former Guantánamo detainee with close Taliban and Qaeda ties, spoke to NEWSWEEK recently in southern Afghanistan, demanding anonymity because he doesn't want the Americans looking for him. He says he met the 12 recruits in November 2005, at a mud-brick compound near the North Waziristan town of Mir Ali. That was as much as the tight-lipped former detainee would divulge, except to mention that Adam Yahiye Gadahn, the notorious fugitive "American Al Qaeda," was with the brothers, presumably as an interpreter.

Another Afghan had more to say on the subject. Omar Farooqi is the nom de guerre of a former provincial intelligence chief for the Taliban; he now serves as the Taliban's chief Qaeda liaison for Ghazni province, in eastern Afghanistan. He says he spent roughly five weeks this past year helping to indoctrinate and train a class of foreign recruits near the Afghan border in tribal Waziristan, and among his students were the English brothers. The 12 included two Norwegian Muslims and an Australian, along with nine British subjects, says Farooqi. Their mission, Farooqi told NEWSWEEK, will be to act as underground organizers and operatives for Al Qaeda in their home countries—and their yearlong training course is just about finished.

U.S. and British security agencies have known this threat would come sooner or later. While saying he could not confirm the English brothers' case specifically, a spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office (unnamed as a matter of standard policy) calls it "common knowledge" that jihadist recruits have been traveling from Britain to Pakistan for indoctrination and training. The existence of a Qaeda pipeline between those two countries has grown harder to deny with every new terrorism story that has broken since the suicide bombings in London that killed 52 subway and bus passengers on July 7, 2005. Each new case that emerges features at least one or two suspects with ties to Pakistan—such as an alleged plot that began before 9/11 to bomb financial buildings in New York, Newark, N.J., and Washington, and this past summer's alleged plot to blow up airline flights from Britain to the United States.

A few weeks ago Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of the British security service M.I.5, publicly disclosed that British authorities are monitoring 200 networks and 1,600 individuals "actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts here and overseas." A "substantial" fraction of those 1,600 people have connections to Pakistan, says a British official, declining to be named because the subject is sensitive. The M.I.5 chief added that her investigators had identified nearly 30 separate plots "that often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and through those links Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here."


Indeed, while often thought to have become mostly an inspiration to jihadists around the world, Al Qaeda appears to be gaining strength along the unruly Afghan-Pakistani border. Within the past year, M.I.5 has produced detailed reports about a group of British men, ethnic Pakistanis, who traveled to jihadist training camps in Pakistan by way of Saudi Arabia, Syria and Afghanistan, according to a counterterrorism official in London who requested anonymity because of the sensitive subject. And the scariest part is not what M.I.5 knows but what it doesn't know: there's no way the authorities can watch more than a tiny percentage of the 400,000 British residents who visit Pakistan every year.

U.S. security agencies are no less worried. American intelligence officials tell NEWSWEEK that their people are definitely concerned about terror suspects and operatives shuttling back and forth between Britain and Pakistan. One particular worry is that under current practice, British visitors to the States are not required to apply in advance for temporary visas, which are routinely granted to any British passport holder who is not on a watch list. In other words, the door is wide open for Britain's growing ranks of young jihadists, even those who have attended Qaeda training camps, if they are unknown to intelligence agencies. U.S. officials are discussing how the visa system could be tightened. "For the most effective background checks on passengers, the United States needs information and assistance from the country where the traveler resides," says Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke, adding that such help should be "routine."

While the Americans talk, Al Qaeda is pressing on with its training plans, Farooqi says. He confidently described those plans to a NEWSWEEK correspondent at a mud-brick house in Paktia province, not far from the Pakistan border, mentioning the English brothers almost in passing as an example of the jihad's recent successes. The specifics of his story could not be independently corroborated. But one gunman among the dozen or so guarding the house, with most of his face hidden by a black-and-white kaffiyeh, appeared to be a European with light-colored eyes; Farooqi later confirmed that the guard was one of the brothers. An open notebook lay on the carpet where Farooqi sat, and the NEWSWEEK correspondent caught a fleeting glimpse of scrawled names and phone numbers, including several that were preceded by the United Kingdom's country code: 44.

Farooqi says he first met the brothers, all of them in their 20s, soon after they reached Waziristan in October 2005. He recalls one of them, known as Musa, telling him that the 7/7 bombings in London "were just a rehearsal of bigger acts to come." A few, he couldn't say how many, had arrived in Pakistan by air, but most had taken a clandestine overland route across Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, escorted by a network of professional smugglers. As NEWSWEEK has reported previously, Al Qaeda uses the same underground railroad to transport Iraqi bombmakers and insurgent trainers to share their skills with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

According to Farooqi, the brothers' travel arrangements were made by Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, one of Al Qaeda's top operations men and a liaison with insurgents in Iraq. (His name has also cropped up in an ongoing British criminal trial in which seven London-area defendants of Pakistani descent are accused of conspiring to bomb British targets with homemade explosives. Prosecutors have alleged that Abdul Hadi's deputy even visited Britain and prayed at a mosque near London with one of the suspects.) The transcontinental journey took a month to complete, but Farooqi claims the brothers left no official traces of their passage, slipping past every border-control post without showing any travel documents. Once they get home, there may be no record that they ever visited Pakistan.

That's something a British Qaeda operative would certainly want to keep secret. A newly issued International Crisis Group report on the tribal areas says the militants have been able to "establish a virtual mini-Taliban-style state there" where they can "provide safe haven to the Taliban and its foreign allies." In the words of a senior Western diplomat in Islamabad, who asks to remain nameless to avoid offending his hosts: "The Pakistanis simply don't control the territory in any meaningful way, and that means a common enemy has a place [to operate]. You have to assume Al Qaeda will make the most of it." Before September 11, Al Qaeda had no network inside Pakistan and only limited contact with Pakistani militants. Now the group has close support on both sides of the border.

Inside Afghanistan, Taliban field commanders depend on regular visits from their Qaeda paymasters. Guerrillas in eastern Ghazni province say the Arab money teams ride in from the direction of the Pakistan border astride motorcycles driven by Taliban fighters. The Qaeda men ask each local commander what weapons, money and technical assistance he needs—and then deliver the aid that is required. According to Zabibullah, a senior Taliban official who has been a reliable source in the past, Al Qaeda has more than 100 specialists, mostly Arabs, helping support Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

Still, Al Qaeda took no chances with the English brothers' safety. They received much of their training behind mud-brick walls in the sprawling compounds that are typical of Pakistan's tribal areas. The idea was to keep the men hidden from U.S. and Pakistani reconnaissance planes. Farooqi says the recruits were taught a wide variety of subjects, from religious and ideological doctrine to the art of molding, assembling and detonating state-of-the-art Iraqi-style shaped-charge IEDs. They learned how to make and use suicide-bomb vests, how to rig car bombs, how to motivate other men to sacrifice their lives for the jihad and how to maintain communications with Al Qaeda on the Afghan-Pakistani frontier. They're not meant to be suicide bombers themselves, Farooqi says; they are far too valuable to waste. The recruits that M.I.5 was tracking also seemed bound for bigger things than cannon fodder.

Some counterterrorism experts argue that Al Qaeda has become only a figurehead, with no real control over the local terrorist cells it has spawned around the world. The English brothers—and the Pakistan pipeline—are signs that the organization is still in action. Farooqi says he believes, based on overhead conversations, that Al Qaeda is planning for the very long term, a decade into the future. He says the terrorist group is talking about gradually fielding more than 1,000 operatives in Europe over the next 10 years. From what he has heard, only 10 percent of those jihadists are in place so far. Based on information from M.I.5, the British Home secretary, John Reid, recently warned that a terrorist attack in the United Kingdom could be highly likely during the holidays.

The English brothers completed their Waziristan stay in October, Farooqi says, but before going home, they had one final assignment. Their Arab handlers separated them into several smaller groups and sent them into Afghanistan to see the jihad firsthand, embedded with Taliban units in Khowst and Paktia provinces. The unit commanders were warned to avoid putting them in any danger. After that, the brothers were supposed to return to Britain the same way they got to Pakistan. That means most of them could be getting home any day now—if they aren't there already.

With Zahid Hussain in Islamabad and Emily Flynn Vencat in London

Another newsweek article on the camps

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17438995/site/newsweek/
Taliban officials tell NEWSWEEK that they have carved out a huge border zone of their own. And they say Qaeda "foreigners"—mainly Arabs bent on killing Westerners—are being welcomed back into parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan's North Waziristan region, where Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf signed a controversial peace deal with tribal elders last September.

Under that pact, the Pakistan military agreed to end its military operations and dismantle its checkpoints. In return, the tribesmen promised not to allow militants to conduct cross-border operations and to expel all foreign fighters from the area. That latter pledge has been largely ignored. As NEWSWEEK has previously reported, informal terror training facilities have cropped up in the tribal area. In contrast to the open-air camps seen in pre-9/11 Qaeda videos, these sites are set up inside tribal-style compounds of mud-brick houses surrounded by high walls, so as to stay out of sight of U.S. and Pakistani reconnaissance aircraft. Several of those inside are being trained as suicide bombers. "I hope one day I will get my dream and hit the U.S. Army and that will be the best moment for my soul and spirit,":rolleyes: one Pakistani trainee told NEWSWEEK last week.

With friends like KSA and Pakistan.........

Have not the Pak govt already ceded sovereignty to the taliban by withdrawing from the area ?
[for argument's sake]
No, not really... It's their choice to not have their military forces there, but you don't cede sovreignty that easily.
Yep... as usual, you can give asylum to as many terrorists as you want if you're a US-allied country and a nuclear power to boot.
Nice "war-on-terror-till-we-meet-a-tough-guy" policy...
Thing is, why would you attack your ally or within their borders with out the cooperation and acceptance of your ally? Do you wish to loose that ally, go right ahead.

I smell chicken...
Crispy? Mmm...


add: of course, I think that going at Pakistan would do nothing but stir more trouble... anyway the "war on terror" policy is clearly a fake. I don't remember problems with sovereignity of a country with Afghanistan and Iraq...
Well, Afghanistan was UN sanctioned, and Iraq was illegal... And see where it all ended up...

Transcript of recent Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing on Afghanistan. This is the testimony of James Dobbins, former US Ambassador to Kabul.

DOBBINS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Lugar, members of the committee.

I'll try to summarize quickly, so we can get to some questions for General Jones.

I think that one can pin responsibility for the current difficulties in Afghanistan on two sources. They're sort of sins of omissions and sins of commission.

The sins of omission were essentially our failure back in 2002 and 2003, to move quickly when we had a benign environment with the Taliban on the run and an Al Qaeda largely dispersed, to provide security and begin the process of reconstruction.

The amounts of money that are now being spent and being requested for Afghanistan for economic assistance are 20 times more than the amounts that I had in early 2002 to begin that process -- 20 times more on an annual basis.

And the number of troops we have there now is four times -- more than four times more -- than we had for that first year.

This is -- I've overseen post-conflict reconstruction in five societies. And I've studied them going back to 1960.

This is the only time on record in which we spent more money and had more troops five years after we started than we did the first year or two. And I think this is indicative of this early failure to seize the golden hour when we could have done so much more.

But if that's the sins of omission, I think the sins of commission largely lie not in Afghanistan or in Washington, but in Pakistan.

This is not an insurgency led by a discontented population in Afghanistan with an abusive or an ineffective government. It's true that the population in the affected areas don't have a lot of reasons to take risks for their government, or place much confidence in their government.

But the real source of this conflict lies in Pakistan. The insurgency is organized in Pakistan. It's led in Pakistan. It's recruited in Pakistan. It's trained in Pakistan. It's funded from Pakistan, and it operates into Afghanistan.

And I think that the question, of course, comes as to what to do about that. How can we grapple with that phenomenon?

I don't think that punitive actions with respect to Pakistan are likely to be productive. We tried that through the 1990s. We made them international pariahs, and everything just got worse. They proliferated, they sold nuclear secrets to other countries, and they supported terrorist movements.

So, I think that we need a positive agenda with respect to Pakistan.

I'm not sure that requiring the administration to certify that Pakistan is fully cooperating as a condition for U.S. assistance is particularly productive. Frankly and candidly, it simply requires the administration to come up here and lie to you, and you to accept those lies, because neither you nor they are actually going to move toward punitive steps toward Pakistan.

And what we need, in fact, is a more candid discussion of what's going on in Pakistan. We need to raise the international visibility of what's going on in Pakistan. And we're not going to be able to do that, if it gets linked with punitive steps, which everybody recognizes are likely to be counterproductive.

So, I hope -- I mean, I think that we need a -- we need U.S. officials to say in public what they freely say in private about what, the links between elements of the Pakistani government and Taliban activities, the levels of Taliban activities in the country, and the incentives that Pakistan has to be not fully cooperative.

And I'd be glad to go into some of that in response to questions.

As I said, I don't think we should be looking at punitive things. In my written testimony I've suggested four things that we should do with respect to Pakistan. One is to promote settlement of the Kashmir issue.

The second is to address the economic and social needs of the Pashtun populations on both sides of the border. There's no sense -- there's not much to be gained from winning the hearts and minds of all the Pashtuns in Afghanistan, if we haven't done the same with the Pashtuns in Pakistan.

There are more Pashtuns in Pakistan than there are in Afghanistan, a lot more. And unless their aspirations and their grievances are addressed, we're going to have a permanent problem.

Thirdly, I think we need to encourage the Afghan and Pakistani governments to establish an agreed border regime. Afghanistan doesn't recognize that border. It's insisting that Pakistan assert better control over a border that it refuses to recognize.

And finally, I think we need to encourage Pakistan to move back towards civilian rule.

So, as most of you know the taleban have been using Pakistan as their major source of refuge, recruits and resources. So simple question, do you think NATO would be justified in conducting operations within Pakistani borders?

Considering that the US operations in Cambodia during the Indochina wars were not justifiable and they killed nearly as many people as the Khmer Rouge, which arguably would have never have come to power without the massive destruction of Cambodia by US strikes, I do not think that the comparison is merited, nor does it justify the invasion of pakistan.

Can't Nato just set up a 'Berlin Wall' kind of border along the afghan-pakistani border? Surely this would prevent, or at least reduce the amount of, the jihadists crossing the border to attack Nato forces?
Then pile on the pressure with the pakistani gov't to start shutting these training camps down or
if you say no, we'll slap sanctions on you so hard the military is gonna have your head.

Or is that too simple? :p

Oh wait... I've just seen how long that border actually is... :eek:

Can't Nato just set up a 'Berlin Wall' kind of border along the afghan-pakistani border? Surely this would prevent, or at least reduce the amount of, the jihadists crossing the border to attack Nato forces?
Then pile on the pressure with the pakistani gov't to start shutting these training camps down or


Or is that too simple? :p

Oh wait... I've just seen how long that border actually is... :eek:
Which makes it difficult to police, and easy to Pakistan-bash.