Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
from Afghan Journal:
On the Afghanistan-Pakistan border : cutting off the nose to spite the face
Pakistan's defence minister has threatened to move forces away from the Afghan border, where they are deployed to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban, if the United States cuts off aid to the cash-strapped country. Ahmed Mukhtar's logic is that Pakistan is essentially fighting America's war on the Afghan border, and if it is going to put the squeeze on its frontline partner, then it will respond by not doing America's bidding.
But apart from the issue of whether Pakistan can really stand up to the United States is the question of whether Islamabad can afford to pull back from the Afghan border for its own sake. This is no longer the porous border where movement of insurgents is confined to members of the Afghan Taliban travelling across to launch attacks on foreign forces in their country. Over the past few weeks, the traffic has moved in the reverse direction, with militants crossing over from Afghanistan to attack Pakistani security posts, Pakistani officials say. These are not armed men sneaking across in twos and threes , but large groups of up to 600 men armed with rocket launchers and grenades flagrantly crossing the mountainous border to attack security forces and civilians in Pakistan. (It also stands Pakistan's strategy of seeking strategic depth versus India on its head; now the rear itself has become a threat.)
It is not very clear who these raiders are - which adds to the anxiety - but one obvious guess is that they could be members of the Pakistan Taliban who have come under pressure in their mountain redoubts in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) from the military and may have found sanctuary just over the border in eastern Afghanistan. The umbrella organisation is sworn to fighting the Pakistani state and is mainly behind the wave of suicide bombings in the country over the past three years, stepping up the momentum even more after Osama bin Laden's killing, with an audacious attack on a naval base in the southern city of Karachi.
Indeed, the Pakistani military's offensives have been focused on crushing the Tehrik-e-Taliban, and it is inconceivable that they would thin out on the Afghan border which is where the threat is coming from, at the moment.
from Afghan Journal:
Pakistan military: the enemy within ?
The breach of security at a major Pakistani navy base in the southern city of Karachi has, inevitably, raised questions of complicity, which must be the greatest worry once the night-long siege by the militants ends and the military has finished counting its losses.
That a group of 15 or more attackers armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades could gain access to the inner perimeter of the Mehran base and succeed in blowing up one U.S.-supplied P -3 Orion maritime aircraft and damaging another aircraft, while holding off security forces for more than 12 hours speaks of a large, complex attack that needs some level of help from within. One former Pakistani navy official told a TV channel that the attack appeared to have been planned from a map of facility.
