I just read what militants/terrorists are doing in Swat. It is terrible, terrible. Swat has been turned into terroris heaven. I take my words back which were said in anguish. India and Pakistan need to get together and root out terrorists but this religious bigotry has to stop. People are people and there is no religion bigger then humanity. Insaniyat is the biggest religion of all religions. May Paki army and its ISi get some wisdom and find a way to give up the people behind the mumbai terrorists. May everyone live in peace and harmony. War is not the answer for India and Pakistan. They need to cooperate with each other in rooting out the terrorists which are the common enemy of Indian and Pakistani people.
Zardari is correct when he said - "we created a cancer and we recognize that we did, the terrorists are imposing their agneda on us." Let us support peace between 2 countries.
The Hornet’s Nest
Along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, insurgents are gaining in strength.
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Along the porous and rugged eastern border with Pakistan, Afghan insurgent forces this year have gained in strength. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, who commands the 19,000 U.S. combat troops that are trying to secure the area and bring development to it, puts the number of insurgents at 7,000 to 10,000, which includes foreign fighters from safe havens inside Pakistan. In his headquarters at the sprawling U.S. base at Bagram, just north of Kabul, Schloesser chatted with NEWSWEEK's Ron Moreau about his strategy to combat the resurgent Taliban. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK:
Has the recent Pakistani military offensive along the Afghan border reduced cross-border attacks and infiltration?
Jeffrey J. Schloesser: I'm really encouraged to see that the Pakistani military is involved in military operations in the Bajaur region. We've had discussions of that nature with them in the preceding months, and to see it occurring is a good news story. At this time, it's too early to say if there is a definite decrease in the amount of cross-border activities by the insurgents. This is what I'm hoping for.
Last June you said that combat incidents along the Pakistan border were up 40 percent. What's the situation now?
Incidents each month this year have still been fairly high compared to the same period in preceding years. Every year from 2002 to 2008, generally speaking, incidents have increased. There have been more insurgents in 2008 coming across the border. This year's numbers are going to be significantly higher, some 20 percent to 30 percent higher than those in 2007. So the 40 percent [increase] we saw in June meant that there was a pretty big spike in April, May and June. We've seen a leveling out, not a decrease.
How serious is the challenge?
As we introduced more ground troops in 2005 to 2007, we started going into places where we had not been before. There's no doubt about it--when you poke a stick inside a hornets' nest, you are going to get some hornets coming out. We still see that today: activity is rising. We are going in and are able to find, locate, capture, kill or cause to flee insurgents of a variety of different groups in this Taliban syndicate.
Can security and development ever come to Afghanistan as long as these insurgent safe havens in Pakistan exist?
Security and development are already here. Still, it's frustrating for me. I need more troops to be able to do the holding part of our good strategy, which is: clear, hold and build. It doesn't have to be linear; it can happen simultaneously. We have doubled the amount of money and the number of projects we are doing this year in what I call the commander emergency-response program. That funding is up to around $450 [million] to $480 million for the ideas of the provincial governors and councils. We don't dream it up, and we don't know what to do--they come up with the list of things that are needed to provide quick quality-of-life improvements. I would call it a development surge. We've got seven provinces in [eastern Afghanistan] that have been declared poppy- and opium-free. There's an award for this to each province. Nangarhar just received $10 million, which is being used to build three earthen dams. These are real projects to help people.
But what about security?
I plan on having a winter campaign that will take advantage of the mobility that I have to seek out any insurgent safe havens in Afghanistan, any facilitation areas, any places they go to for rest and recreation. We're going to give them those options: either get killed or captured, flee or reconcile. At the same time we are going to increase this development surge. By putting both of those together, you'll see that our ability to hold areas will increase over the next year to two years. It's a slow process.
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