Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
from Afghan Journal:
You got to do more, Pakistan tells United States
(Standing guard during a night operation in Kunar - Carlos Barria)
The shoe's on the other foot. The Pakistani army is saying that it's being let down by U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan just when it has made hard-fought gains against militants along its stretch of the border.
Some 700 militants have fled a successful military offensive in Pakistan's Bajaur tribal agency to the Afghan province of Kunar just over the border but no action had been taken against them, according to a Reuters report from the area.
That's the sort of criticism that U.S. military officials had repeatedly levelled against Pakistan over the past couple of years and only in recent months some of it has quietened down as Islamabad turns up the heat on the Taliban.
Is there really a lack of resolve on the Afghan side of the troubled border? Or is it that the Americans are changing strategy? Foreign troop presence has been thinning in recent months in sparsely populated Kunar under U.S. and NATO commander Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal's new counter-strategy focused on improving security in population centres.
from Afghan Journal:
Denying Afghanistan to al Qaeda; is that really the key ?
Much of the rationale for the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan has to do with making sure that it doesn't become a haven for militant groups once again. As President Barack Obama weighs U.S. and NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal's recommendation for 40,000 more troops at a time of fading public support for the war in Afghanistan, some people are questioning the basic premise that America must remain militarily committed there so that al Qaeda doesn't creep back under the protection of the Taliban.
Richard N.Haass, the president of the Council for Foreign Relations, kicked off the debate this month, arguing that al Qaeda didn't really "require Afghan real estate to constitute a regional or global threat". Terrorists head to areas of least resistance, and if it is not Afghanistan, they will choose other unstable countries such as Somalia or Yemen, if it hasn't happened already, he argues. And the United States cannot conceivably secure all the terrorist havens in the world.
