Posted on 04/30/2006 5:36:53 PM PDT by blam
War on terrorism will last 20 years, West told
By Isambard Wilkinson in Kundi Ghar
(Filed: 01/05/2006)
"The West cannot expect quick results in the war on terrorism," said a young Pakistani major as he surveyed the restive Afghan province of Paktika from a bunker 10,000ft up in the mountains.
"It took 20 years to create this situation and it will take the same to resolve it. The tribesmen here have a medieval mind-set and foreign fighters are entrenched in the community."
Pakistani soldiers watch the border with Afghanistan
It has been eight years since America first launched cruise missiles to try to assassinate Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and five years since he and his cohorts are believed to have fled to Pakistan's unruly tribal areas after the fall of the Taliban.
Despite massive deployment of American and Afghan soldiers in Afghanistan, and Pakistani troops on their side, bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, remain at large and the region's resistance to the war on terrorism is burgeoning.
Last week Gen Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, admitted that "Talibanisation" had taken place not only in the autonomous Pashtun tribal areas but in adjoining areas traditionally under tighter government control.
A league of mullahs has rallied tribesmen against the government.
In the past two months ambushes and attacks on military patrols and forts have occurred almost daily in North Waziristan, a land of fortified villages and a murky confluence of money, propaganda and shifting allegiances.
In March several thousand armed tribesmen attacked the main military base and town of Miran Shah. In recent weeks militants have assassinated some 120 pro-government tribal leaders, of whom a dozen have been beheaded.
Seven mullahs "with a lust for money" were directing groups of deeply conservative Pushtun tribesmen, said Maj Gen Sahi Akram, who commands 45,000 troops in North Waziristan. "Since last July we have razed several madrassas [religious schools] that are used by the mullahs for recruitment and training."
Gen Akram was addressing journalists invited to Waziristan for a rare glimpse of the Taliban and al-Qa'eda haven.
He said: "We have killed 324 miscreants, including 76 foreign fighters."
His claim that the military was in full control of the area was belied by the fact that it was too dangerous to take the rough tracks that wind across Waziristan's serried hills and mercilessly hot plateaux. During the visit, militants ambushed a convoy of paramilitary forces on the outskirts of Miran Shah.
Pakistan faces a multi-faceted enemy. There are the illiterate tribesmen, dubbed "Pakistani Taliban", who are motivated by religion, money or politics; Afghan Taliban; and disparate groups of Arabs, Chechens and central Asians, some with connections to al-Qa'eda and others whose fathers settled in Waziristan after the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s.
To complicate life, relations between Pakistan and the US are fraying.
American Hellfire missile strikes aimed at two al-Qa'eda suspects in North Waziristan and Bajaur have caused Gen Musharraf public embarrassment over American incursions on Pakistani soil.
Then on a visit to Pakistan last month President George W Bush publicly asked Gen Musharraf to make greater efforts to prevent militants from crossing to Afghanistan, where they are conducting an increasingly effective insurgency against coalition forces.
In Waziristan, the distrust between the reluctant allies is almost palpable.
"We have 227 border posts in this area," said Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan, the head of the Pakistan army's public relations wing. "The Americans and the Afghans have 27.
"The Americans drop a daisy-cutter bomb and call it a success. Here we have our countrymen, so we do not want to carry out that kind of operation. We have lost more men than the Americans in this war."
Even 20 years seem optimistic.
You are right. I believe that the cowardly RINOs and Demos will bring down the country. They've already surrendered our borders to the lawless. The law means nothing, and don't think that message isn't loud and clear. A full fledged race war is closer than I have ever seen in my 63 yrs.
20 years is a very low estimate if we don't do some really major destruction. Modern weaponry that will continue to be available to the saracens will keep it going so long as they think they can keep it going.They will always believe they can wear down the West so long as their major cities are still intact and they continue to gain in Europe ind Europe is probably past the "tiping point" now.
The west has only been at war, well at least fighting back, for 900 years with Islam. Twenty more will make no difference unless we realize the religion is the problem. Providing this uneducated and unwashed rabble with a constitutional republic so they can vote themselves a terrorist regime is not the answer.
Hamas won because a majority of Palestinians feel that way.
WOT would have taken about 20 minutes had I been president.
BLAM!!!
I think there will be no peace till the earth is purified by Christ.
It's an unpopular opinion - but - I do feel that the U.S. and British commonwealth are modern day Israel and we will live out the end time prophesies.
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