(Even more) bad news from Pakistan
Not good: “‘More than 100 terror camps’ in operation in northwestern Pakistan”
A few days ago I wrote about the deteriorating situation in northwestern Pakistan and the rise of Taliban power and influence there. Apparently the situation is even worse than the already-troubling news I reported on Wednesday.
The rise of the Taliban in Pakistan has brought — not surprisingly — a rise in al-Qaeda activity.
Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and allied terrorists groups, collectively called al Qaeda and allied movements, or AQAM, by some in US military and intelligence circles, has set up a series of camps throughout the tribal areas and in the settled districts of the Northwest Frontier Province. “More than 100″ terror camps of varying sizes and types are currently in operation in the region, a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal. As of the summer of 2007, 29 terror camps were known to be operating in North and South Waziristan alone.
Some camps are devoted to training the Taliban’s military arm, some train suicide bombers for attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, some focus on training the various Kashmiri terror groups, some train al Qaeda operatives for attacks in the west, and one serves as a training ground the Black Guard, the elite bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.
I also found this section interesting:
The growth in the number of camps US intelligence officials said Pakistan is outpacing Iraq as the destination for recruits, The New York Times reported earlier this week. Iraq is now seen as a lost cause by jihadists while Pakistan is now seen as al Qaeda’s main effort. Recruits from Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East are heading to Pakistan.
While that’s definitely bad news for Pakistan, it’s certainly encouraging news for Iraqis and the United States’ efforts there, especially considering that in December 2006, Osama bin Laden himself announced that Iraq was the “most important” front in al-Qaeda’s war against the West
No longer, apparently — Pakistan now holds that distinguished position.
From the NYT story:
The flow may reflect a change that is making Pakistan, not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia who are seeking to take up arms against the West, these officials say.
…According to the American officials, many of the fighters making their way to the tribal areas are Uzbeks, North Africans and Arabs from Persian Gulf states. American intelligence officials say that some jihadist Web sites have been encouraging foreign militants to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan, which is considered a “winning fight,” compared with the insurgency in Iraq, which has suffered sharp setbacks recently.
If we know where they are it should be simple to nuke them ’till they glow, then shoot ‘em after dark. It worked with the Japanese in 1945. We avoided a bloody invasion and saved tens of thousands of allied lives. The Japanese mindset changed from aggression to surrender. Ground combat is foolish and homicidal to our own armed forces. Aggressor terrorist states or organizations deceptively manipulate diplomacy to benefit their violent tactics. They respect only overpowering force. Dozens of previous terror attacks did not cement our resolve. The next really disastrous attack against us may give us the national will to use any means necessary to permanently deal with crazed fanatics trying to destroy us. I am being only slightly facetious with these comments. Playing nice is not a logical survival tactic in this confrontation. However, our sons and daughters are much too valuable to continue their sacrifice to someone’s misconstrued Allah. I think it was Curtis LeMay who recognized that bombing your enemy back to the stone age ends their capacity, if not their will, to wage war.
Bob,
I hope you are not really advocating nuclear weapons use in this case. The purpose of war is to dissociate battle from civilians. President Truman’s use of nuclear weapons in Japan was a terrible perversion of that. We were fighting a (mostly) honorable enemy honorably until we decided to hold their entire population hostage to the threat of nuclear attack in order to obtain a more favorable political end to the war. Perhaps if President Truman had not pursued that path we might have avoided “wars” in Korea and Vietnam as well as the bill for keeping soldiers in the Pacific rim for the past 60 years.
While I agree the Taliban and al Qaeda do not fight with the honor their religion requires of them, that is no reason to advocate the use of the same hostage taking tactics they use against our innocent civilians against the innocents among the people living in Pakistan and Afghanistan. We lost the advantage of the aid that would have come from the civilians of those areas following the 9/11 attacks by pursuing a ridiculous “war” in Iraq. In order to destroy our enemies it is necessary to demonstrate they are criminals to the people in that part of the world. If we do as you suggest we would lose more credibility in convincing them of that than we already have. We would become criminals pointing the finger at another criminal.
So the HONORABLE Japanese diplomats were negotiating HONORABLY while the Japanese fleet was sailing to Pearl Harbor for a sneak attact. HHHMMM. No wonder this country is in trouble with thinking like that. DROP THE BOMB, incinerate them all.