Taliban And Al Qaeda

The move by Pakistan's military into the Taliban and Al Qaeda stronghold of South Waziristan today launched a risky offensive in a rugged expanse of badlands along the Afghan border widely seen as the key to crushing a militancy that has destabilized the nuclear-armed nation. The challenges are daunting: The military will face unforgiving terrain that has long been viewed as a possible hide-out for Osama bin Laden, as well as a battle-hardened enemy likely to respond by stepping up bloody attacks across the country.

An apparent U.S. drone strike early Thursday in northwest Pakistan killed a top Pakistani Taliban commander also serving as a key Al Qaeda operative, local officials said. The death of Badar Mansoor, 35, comes as the United States steps up its pace of drone missile attacks following a six-week hiatus after an airstrike accidentally killed Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border in November. Thursday's predawn strike occurred in North Waziristan, the volatile tribal region that serves as a sanctuary for several militant groups, including the Pakistani Taliban and the wing of the Afghan Taliban known as the Haqqani network.

America's Afghanistan policy is in chaos. Fear of another Vietnam is palpable, and our friends and adversaries worldwide sense it. NATO allies are lining up to depart the battlefield. Domestic political support is crumbling, all because of the utter incompetence of the war's management. The Obama administration has changed military commanders in Afghanistan for the second time, and the top civilian hierarchy may also change. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is said to be negotiating with the enemy.

He once lived under the Taliban's protection, met with Osama bin Laden and helped found a group the U.S. has listed as a terrorist organization. He died in a secondhand U.S. military uniform, ambushed by Moammar Kadafi's men as he cleared a road after an airstrike by his new NATO allies. Aides to Abdul Monem Muktar Mohammed say the Libyan rebel fighter was leading a convoy of 200 cars west of this hotly contested strategic city Friday when a bullet struck him on the right side of the chest.

U.S.-led forces have launched a sweeping offensive in Afghanistan's remote southern and eastern mountains aimed at crushing Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, a U.S. military spokesman said Saturday. Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said at a Kabul news briefing that the offensive had begun March 7 and involved troops from the 13,500-strong U.S.-led force with air support.

After unleashing a vicious wave of attacks on high-profile security buildings and crowded marketplaces in Pakistan this month, militants set their sights today on one of the capital's schools. Two near-simultaneous suicide bomb attacks on an Islamic university killed five people and wounded 22 others. The assault on an academic building and a women's cafeteria came on the fourth day of a long-awaited military offensive to uproot the Taliban and Al Qaeda from their stronghold in South Waziristan, a rugged and largely ungoverned region along the Afghan border.

On the second day of Pakistan's major offensive to uproot the Taliban from the country's tribal areas along the Afghan border, the military claimed to have killed 60 militants, while the Taliban countered that it had fended off the troops' initial surge. Wildly differing interpretations of progress being made on both sides are expected to continue in coming weeks, as the military pushes forward with its most crucial ground operation so far in its war against Islamist militants.

Re " 'Bad Guys' 1st to Arrive at U.S. Base," Jan. 12: Why all the fuss over the treatment by U.S. forces of the captured Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners flown over to Cuba? Is there any doubt that, despite the tight security, these prisoners certainly had a more comfortable--and safer--flight than did the passengers of the four aircraft hijacked on Sept. 11? David A. Gottlieb Los Angeles

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada's troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2011, as his minority government looks to win support in national elections next month. Harper, who has been a steadfast ally of President Bush in the post-Sept. 11 fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, said Canadians do not want to keep their soldiers in Afghanistan beyond 10 years.

A suspected U.S. missile strike on a Taliban commander's home in Pakistan killed six people, Pakistani officials said, in a possible indication that the U.S. was continuing cross-border raids despite protests from the new government. The attack in North Waziristan was the first since President Asif Ali Zardari warned that Pakistani territory cannot "be violated by our friends." U.S. forces recently ramped up operations against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants in Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan.

America's Afghanistan policy is in chaos. Fear of another Vietnam is palpable, and our friends and adversaries worldwide sense it. NATO allies are lining up to depart the battlefield. Domestic political support is crumbling, all because of the utter incompetence of the war's management. The Obama administration has changed military commanders in Afghanistan for the second time, and the top civilian hierarchy may also change. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is said to be negotiating with the enemy.

A growing number of Taliban militants in the Pakistani border region are refusing to collaborate with Al Qaeda fighters, declining to provide shelter or assist in attacks in Afghanistan even in return for payment, according to U.S. military and counter-terrorism officials. The officials, citing evidence from interrogation of detainees, communications intercepts and public statements on extremist websites, say that threats to the militants' long-term survival from Pakistani, Afghan and foreign military action are driving some Afghan Taliban away from Al Qaeda.

The second-in-command of the Afghan Taliban was captured in Pakistan last week during a raid secretly carried out by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence operatives, officials from the two countries said Monday. The arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar deals a serious blow to the Taliban and also represents a potential turning point for the government of Pakistan, which often has seemed reluctant to pursue top members of the militant group that previously ruled Afghanistan and who now take refuge across the border.

President Obama ordered 30,000 more troops into the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda on Tuesday, but warned that the United States could not afford an open-ended war and pledged to begin bringing home U.S. forces in 18 months. Speaking to cadets at West Point, some of whom have fought in Afghanistan and others who may soon be deployed there, Obama said the administration would rush all the additional combat troops into the country by next summer. But those forces would not stay any longer than necessary to ensure U.S. security, Obama said, noting that the cost of the decade's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now approaches $1 trillion.

After unleashing a vicious wave of attacks on high-profile security buildings and crowded marketplaces in Pakistan this month, militants set their sights today on one of the capital's schools. Two near-simultaneous suicide bomb attacks on an Islamic university killed five people and wounded 22 others. The assault on an academic building and a women's cafeteria came on the fourth day of a long-awaited military offensive to uproot the Taliban and Al Qaeda from their stronghold in South Waziristan, a rugged and largely ungoverned region along the Afghan border.

On the second day of Pakistan's major offensive to uproot the Taliban from the country's tribal areas along the Afghan border, the military claimed to have killed 60 militants, while the Taliban countered that it had fended off the troops' initial surge. Wildly differing interpretations of progress being made on both sides are expected to continue in coming weeks, as the military pushes forward with its most crucial ground operation so far in its war against Islamist militants.

A two-month offensive by Pakistani forces has driven militants from a stronghold through which Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters had poured into neighboring Afghanistan to attack U.S. troops, the army said. The military said its forces had captured Loi Sam in the Bajaur tribal region. The town sits on a vital intersection linking the border to three neighboring Pakistan regions. "Now we have complete control in this area from where miscreants used to go to Afghanistan, Mohmand, Dir and Swat," army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas told reporters in Bajaur.

A suspected U.S. missile strike killed an alleged foreign militant in a Pakistani tribal area considered a haven for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and a suicide bombing left four security personnel dead, officials said. The missile strike hit a house in the lawless South Waziristan region along the border with Afghanistan, considered a likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden and his lieutenant, Ayman Zawahiri. Two Pakistani intelligence officials said that reports from informants and field agents suggested that a foreign militant died in the attack and that another was injured.

The move by Pakistan's military into the Taliban and Al Qaeda stronghold of South Waziristan today launched a risky offensive in a rugged expanse of badlands along the Afghan border widely seen as the key to crushing a militancy that has destabilized the nuclear-armed nation. The challenges are daunting: The military will face unforgiving terrain that has long been viewed as a possible hide-out for Osama bin Laden, as well as a battle-hardened enemy likely to respond by stepping up bloody attacks across the country.

The scenes and statistics are hauntingly familiar: a videotape of an American soldier held hostage, scared that he won't return to the family he loves; two fighter jets downed this week and four U.S. troops killed by a roadside bomb, making July the deadliest month yet for Western forces in the country; British support flagging as losses mount; and a rise in civilian casualties alienating the very people the troops are there to protect.