From The Patriot Update:
Al Qaeda Makes Afghan Comeback
April 6, 2011
Over the past six to eight months, al Qaeda has begun setting up training camps, hideouts and operations bases in the remote mountains along Afghanistan’s northeastern border with Pakistan, some U.S., Afghan and Taliban officials say. The stepped-up infiltration followed a U.S. pullback from large swatches of the region starting 18 months ago. The areas were deemed strategically irrelevant and left to Afghanistan’s uneven security forces, and in some parts, abandoned entirely.
American commanders have argued that the U.S. military presence in the remote valleys was the main reason why locals joined the Taliban. Once American soldiers left, they predicted, the Taliban would go, too. Instead, the Taliban have stayed put, a senior U.S. military officer said, and “al Qaeda is coming back.”
The militant group’s effort to re-establish bases in northeastern Afghanistan is distressing for several reasons. Unlike the Taliban, which is seen as a mostly local threat, al Qaeda is actively trying to strike targets in the West. Eliminating its ability to do so from bases in Afghanistan has always been the U.S.’s primary war goal and the motive behind fighting the Taliban, which gave al Qaeda a relatively free hand to operate when it ruled the country. The return also undermines U.S. hopes that last year’s troop surge would beat the Taliban badly enough to bring them to the negotiating table—and pressure them to break ties with al Qaeda. More than a year into the surge, those ties appear to be strong.
“There’s been several times that we’ll get intelligence that there’s going to be a gathering, whether it’s junior-level leadership, whether it’s Taliban, Haqqani or al Qaeda and if we can target those locations than we’re absolutely going to do that,” said Major Gen. John Campbell, the commander of NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan, in an interview.
More quiet—and more effective, many American officials say—is the U.S. military’s secretive Joint Special Operations Command, known as JSOC, which oversees elite units like the Army’s Delta Force and Navy Seal Team Six. The groups are working with Afghan intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to keep al Qaeda off balance in northeastern Afghanistan.
It was a JSOC operation that led to the capture of Mr. al-Masri, the al Qaeda veteran, in December.
The problem, say officials, is that JSOC, with a global counterterrorism mission that gives it responsibility for strikes in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and other trouble spots, is already stretched thin. Relying on it to police Afghanistan’s hinterlands as American forces pull out may be unrealistic, some officials said.
“We do not have an intelligence problem. We have a capacity problem. We generally know the places they are, how they are operating,” said the senior U.S. military official, speaking of al Qaeda. The problem “is our ability to get there and do something.”
Al Qaeda Makes Afghan Comeback
April 6, 2011
Over the past six to eight months, al Qaeda has begun setting up training camps, hideouts and operations bases in the remote mountains along Afghanistan’s northeastern border with Pakistan, some U.S., Afghan and Taliban officials say. The stepped-up infiltration followed a U.S. pullback from large swatches of the region starting 18 months ago. The areas were deemed strategically irrelevant and left to Afghanistan’s uneven security forces, and in some parts, abandoned entirely.
American commanders have argued that the U.S. military presence in the remote valleys was the main reason why locals joined the Taliban. Once American soldiers left, they predicted, the Taliban would go, too. Instead, the Taliban have stayed put, a senior U.S. military officer said, and “al Qaeda is coming back.”
The militant group’s effort to re-establish bases in northeastern Afghanistan is distressing for several reasons. Unlike the Taliban, which is seen as a mostly local threat, al Qaeda is actively trying to strike targets in the West. Eliminating its ability to do so from bases in Afghanistan has always been the U.S.’s primary war goal and the motive behind fighting the Taliban, which gave al Qaeda a relatively free hand to operate when it ruled the country. The return also undermines U.S. hopes that last year’s troop surge would beat the Taliban badly enough to bring them to the negotiating table—and pressure them to break ties with al Qaeda. More than a year into the surge, those ties appear to be strong.
“There’s been several times that we’ll get intelligence that there’s going to be a gathering, whether it’s junior-level leadership, whether it’s Taliban, Haqqani or al Qaeda and if we can target those locations than we’re absolutely going to do that,” said Major Gen. John Campbell, the commander of NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan, in an interview.
More quiet—and more effective, many American officials say—is the U.S. military’s secretive Joint Special Operations Command, known as JSOC, which oversees elite units like the Army’s Delta Force and Navy Seal Team Six. The groups are working with Afghan intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to keep al Qaeda off balance in northeastern Afghanistan.
It was a JSOC operation that led to the capture of Mr. al-Masri, the al Qaeda veteran, in December.
The problem, say officials, is that JSOC, with a global counterterrorism mission that gives it responsibility for strikes in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and other trouble spots, is already stretched thin. Relying on it to police Afghanistan’s hinterlands as American forces pull out may be unrealistic, some officials said.
“We do not have an intelligence problem. We have a capacity problem. We generally know the places they are, how they are operating,” said the senior U.S. military official, speaking of al Qaeda. The problem “is our ability to get there and do something.”
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