THE TALIBAN’S SHADOWY PARTNERS
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The Taliban’s Shadowy Partners
War On Terror: The anti-war crowd says the small number of enemy fighters inside Afghanistan doesn’t justify sending 30,000 fresh troops there. They fail to understand the larger problem.
Sen. Barbara Boxer complains al-Qaida is scarcely in Afghanistan. She cites an intelligence report leaked to ABC News that only 100 fighters are actually present inside the country, along with several thousand Taliban fighters.
“I do not support adding more troops,” the California Democrat argued, “because there are now 200,000 American, NATO and Afghan forces fighting roughly 20,000 Taliban and less than 100 al-Qaida.”
In other words, why are we even over there?
What Boxer and other war critics fail to understand is there’s almost an endless supply of enemy fighters streaming across the border from neighboring Pakistan, where they’re actually based.
In fact, it’s an open secret the Taliban are headquartered across the border in the city of Quetta, Pakistan, where they operate openly under the aegis of Pakistani intelligence — and the financial sponsorship of the Saudis.
Sending more troops to Afghanistan is a necessary, albeit unfortunate, rear-guard action against marauding Taliban fighters armed, trained, supplied and deployed from Quetta — and funded from Riyadh.
NATO and U.S. military command know this. They’ve complained about it over and over in military action reports. So have Treasury officials regarding Saudi funding of the Taliban.
“Saudi Arabia today remains the location where more money is going to terrorism — to Sunni terror groups and the Taliban — than any other place in the world,” testified Stuart Levey, Treasury undersecretary.
Quetta is just across the mountains from Kandahar, Afghanistan, where so many U.S. troops have died. Islamabad refuses to move on the Taliban hub, despite increased pressure from the Obama administration. While it’s cracking down on groups targeting the Pakistani government, it’s giving a pass to those attacking U.S. and Afghan forces.
Islamabad has led us to believe that the Taliban problem is confined to the lawless tribal region along the Afghan border. But in fact, the Taliban leadership is holed up outside the tribal areas in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan.
Pakistani intelligence views Taliban chief Mullah Omar an asset ready to be redeployed in Afghanistan once the U.S. inevitably leaves the country. They had groomed and installed him as Afghan strongman prior to 9/11 to check Indian influence in the region.
There are now reports that Omar has been moved from Quetta to Karachi to keep him safe from U.S. drone attacks.
Pakistan was the only nation that continued to recognize the Taliban government in Kabul after 9/11. In fact, before the U.S. invasion, Islamabad evacuated as many as 1,000 intelligence officers, Taliban commanders and foot soldiers from Afghanistan in a major airlift spanning several nights, a new book reveals.
It’s no coincidence the Indian embassy in Afghanistan has been attacked along with the fragile Afghan government. The secret goal of Pakistani intelligence — which operates as a state within a state — is to destabilize Kabul and create a power vacuum for the return of the Taliban, who would shut down the Indian embassy and drive out Indians as their first order of business.
At the same time, the Pakistani military is running training camps in Lahore for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the al-Qaida subcontractor that attacked terror targets in Mumbai last year. In fact, a Pakistani major was just arrested in that attack.
This is the double game Pakistan is playing. In effect, Pakistani intelligence is running its own secret war against America, a war bankrolled by the Saudis. These are the Taliban’s shadow partners. And they are winning.
In effect, we are offering Pakistan-based insurgents 30,000 new targets with no changes in the rules of engagement. Even now, when our troops come under attack, they are not permitted to pursue enemy fighters back across the border and destroy their Pakistani redoubts.
Imagine sending troops to France to free the French from the Nazis but failing to take out their Eagle’s Nest next door in Germany. Welcome to our war policy today in Afghanistan.
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