10-09-2006, 03:45 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Pakistan is no ally
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National Post
Saturday, October 07, 2006
NATO generals in southern Afghanistan have called on their governments to take a tougher stance with Pakistan over its active support for insurgents fighting Canadian troops, and those of Britain, the United States, Denmark and the Netherlands. It's about time. Pakistan's support for radical Islamic jihadis has been the elephant in the room that everyone has tried to ignore in the war on terror. Iran may be the principal underwriter of terrorism against Israel, and Saudi Arabia the biggest supporter of the insurgency in Iraq, but Pakistan has emerged as the main source of terrorists and terror supplies in Afghanistan, and against the Western world as well. Until Western countries force Pakistan to stop its quiet, but pervasive, encouragement of global jihad -- or at least to get tough with the terrorists who operate with impunity from within its borders -- the war on terror cannot be won.
In their official report on Operation Medusa last month, the NATO generals were blunt about the extent of Pakistan's involvement in training and arming our enemies. The largest, most intense campaign against the Taliban since the initial invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, Medusa pitted NATO forces, led by Canada, against 1,500 entrenched Taliban forces in the southern district of Panjwai. Commanders report that during the two-week battle, Taliban fighters fired an estimated 400,000 rounds of ammunition, 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,000 mortar shells. And following their defeat, nearly one million more rounds were seized. All this ordnance could only have come from one place, the generals conclude: Pakistan.
During the operation, troops watched as Pakistani border guards waved trucks full of Taliban reinforcements and ammunition over the border into Afghanistan. Militiamen captured by our troops also revealed in great detail the training, safe haven and resupply afforded them by Pakistan.
The principal source of the aid is the ISI, Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate. Like much of the Pakistani government, the ISI is split between radical Muslim hardliners and more moderate factions. The Taliban were a mid-1990s creation of the ISI's hardliners, who organized and trained them, then sent them into Afghanistan to seize power in the vacuum left by the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
The ISI still supports the Taliban, reportedly helping recruit new fighters, training and arming them and giving them safe passage back and forth over the Afghan frontier. The problem with the moderates in the Pakistan government, including President Pervez Musharraf, is that they refuse to do anything to rein in the extremists in their midst. Instead, they deny the hardliner-terrorism connection and pretend their country is a trustworthy ally in the war against global Islamofascism.
Nothing could be more untrue.
The plotters in this summer's scheme to explode 10 airliners over the Atlantic had extensive connections with radicals inside Pakistan. So did the previous summer's 7/7 bombers of London's underground and commuter buses. The madrassas that exist by the hundreds in Pakistan's militant border provinces were the primary source of foot soldiers for al-Qaeda before and after 9/11.
Some of the most violent riots earlier this year against the Danish cartoons were in Quetta and other Pakistani cities, where many Western businesses were burned or ransacked. The Pakistani "street" erupted again last month when remarks by Pope Benedict XVI about Islam were wildly misconstrued.
Iran's nuclear know-how came initially from A.Q. Khan, a radical Islamic scientist at the head of Pakistan's nuclear program. And Pakistan is suspected by nearly every Western intelligence service of sheltering Mullah Omar, the Taliban chief, and, very likely, Osama bin Laden himself.
To call Pakistan an ally in the war on terror is a joke. And it is high time Western leaders stopped doing so.
It may be that President Musharraf and the moderates are reluctant to take on their hardline colleagues, who have, admittedly, tried at least twice to assassinate Mr. Musharraf. Perhaps what he needs from the West is support, as much as backbone. But whatever he requires to take on the Pakistani Islamists -- whether threats or assistance -- must be forthcoming from Western governments. Otherwise the mission in Afghanistan and the wider war on terror will go on endlessly, without resolution.
© National Post 2006
http://www.canada.com/components/print.asp...7d-fd8f9758a959<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
haha, the West is still confused, Musharraf and moderate, now that's an oxymoron.
Â
National Post
Saturday, October 07, 2006
NATO generals in southern Afghanistan have called on their governments to take a tougher stance with Pakistan over its active support for insurgents fighting Canadian troops, and those of Britain, the United States, Denmark and the Netherlands. It's about time. Pakistan's support for radical Islamic jihadis has been the elephant in the room that everyone has tried to ignore in the war on terror. Iran may be the principal underwriter of terrorism against Israel, and Saudi Arabia the biggest supporter of the insurgency in Iraq, but Pakistan has emerged as the main source of terrorists and terror supplies in Afghanistan, and against the Western world as well. Until Western countries force Pakistan to stop its quiet, but pervasive, encouragement of global jihad -- or at least to get tough with the terrorists who operate with impunity from within its borders -- the war on terror cannot be won.
In their official report on Operation Medusa last month, the NATO generals were blunt about the extent of Pakistan's involvement in training and arming our enemies. The largest, most intense campaign against the Taliban since the initial invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, Medusa pitted NATO forces, led by Canada, against 1,500 entrenched Taliban forces in the southern district of Panjwai. Commanders report that during the two-week battle, Taliban fighters fired an estimated 400,000 rounds of ammunition, 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,000 mortar shells. And following their defeat, nearly one million more rounds were seized. All this ordnance could only have come from one place, the generals conclude: Pakistan.
During the operation, troops watched as Pakistani border guards waved trucks full of Taliban reinforcements and ammunition over the border into Afghanistan. Militiamen captured by our troops also revealed in great detail the training, safe haven and resupply afforded them by Pakistan.
The principal source of the aid is the ISI, Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate. Like much of the Pakistani government, the ISI is split between radical Muslim hardliners and more moderate factions. The Taliban were a mid-1990s creation of the ISI's hardliners, who organized and trained them, then sent them into Afghanistan to seize power in the vacuum left by the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
The ISI still supports the Taliban, reportedly helping recruit new fighters, training and arming them and giving them safe passage back and forth over the Afghan frontier. The problem with the moderates in the Pakistan government, including President Pervez Musharraf, is that they refuse to do anything to rein in the extremists in their midst. Instead, they deny the hardliner-terrorism connection and pretend their country is a trustworthy ally in the war against global Islamofascism.
Nothing could be more untrue.
The plotters in this summer's scheme to explode 10 airliners over the Atlantic had extensive connections with radicals inside Pakistan. So did the previous summer's 7/7 bombers of London's underground and commuter buses. The madrassas that exist by the hundreds in Pakistan's militant border provinces were the primary source of foot soldiers for al-Qaeda before and after 9/11.
Some of the most violent riots earlier this year against the Danish cartoons were in Quetta and other Pakistani cities, where many Western businesses were burned or ransacked. The Pakistani "street" erupted again last month when remarks by Pope Benedict XVI about Islam were wildly misconstrued.
Iran's nuclear know-how came initially from A.Q. Khan, a radical Islamic scientist at the head of Pakistan's nuclear program. And Pakistan is suspected by nearly every Western intelligence service of sheltering Mullah Omar, the Taliban chief, and, very likely, Osama bin Laden himself.
To call Pakistan an ally in the war on terror is a joke. And it is high time Western leaders stopped doing so.
It may be that President Musharraf and the moderates are reluctant to take on their hardline colleagues, who have, admittedly, tried at least twice to assassinate Mr. Musharraf. Perhaps what he needs from the West is support, as much as backbone. But whatever he requires to take on the Pakistani Islamists -- whether threats or assistance -- must be forthcoming from Western governments. Otherwise the mission in Afghanistan and the wider war on terror will go on endlessly, without resolution.
© National Post 2006
http://www.canada.com/components/print.asp...7d-fd8f9758a959<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
haha, the West is still confused, Musharraf and moderate, now that's an oxymoron.