United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

The New York Times reported in a front-page story Thursday that "American military and intelligence officials say there has been an increase in recent months in the number of foreign fighters who have traveled to Pakistan’s tribal areas to join with militants there," making "Pakistan, not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia."[1] -- Officials say many of them are "Uzbeks, North Africans, and Arabs from Persian Gulf states." -- A "senior administration official" said that given the political situation in Pakistan, little is likely to change anytime soon. -- "There’s no apparent solution at hand. The next six months look like they’ll be a lot like the past six months.” -- "Several American officials expressed exasperation that small elements of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force, the Pakistani Army, and Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency — Inter-Services Intelligence, or the ISI — were turning a blind eye to militants launching cross-border attacks, if not supporting them outright. -- 'Right now, the Pakistanis are in a muddle over how to use the tribal leaders, Frontier Corps paramilitary forces and the Pakistani Army to deal with the situation,' said a senior allied military officer who has served in the region. 'To complicate matters, U.S.-Pakistani relations are currently toxic.'" -- Eric Schmitt connected the shifting of a U.S. aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea to these developments: "The Pentagon moved the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to the Arabian Sea from the Persian Gulf in recent days, shortening the time that the carrier’s nearly four dozen FA-18 Hornet and Super Hornet strike planes must fly to support combat in Afghanistan." -- COMMENT: Given the report on Tuesday in the Houston Chroncle that "American commandos are poised to stage 'hot pursuit' raids into Pakistan's loosely governed tribal areas . . . in response to Pakistan's failure to disrupt terrorist training camps and cross-border attacks from a region known as 'the Federally Administered Tribal Areas,' a remote, mountainous border area" of Pakistan,[2] the prominently placed New York Times article would appear to be preparation of the 'information space' for this military escalation. -- It is also an indication of the degree to which the Iraq war has already morphed into a regional Middle East conflict....

PAKISTAN IS SAID TO BE ATTRACTING MORE INSURGENTS (Online version: MILITANT GAINS IN PAKISTAN SAID TO DRAW MORE FIGHTERS)
By Eric Schmitt

** U.S. Officials Note Rise — Seen as Bolstering Al Qaeda — Setbacks in Iraq May Be Spur **

WASHINGTON -- American military and intelligence officials say there has been an increase in recent months in the number of foreign fighters who have traveled to Pakistan’s tribal areas to join with militants there.

The flow may reflect a change that is making Pakistan, not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia who are seeking to take up arms against the West, these officials say.

The American officials say the influx, which could be in the dozens but could also be higher, shows a further strengthening of the position of the forces of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, increasingly seen as an important base of support for the Taliban, whose forces in Afghanistan have become more aggressive in their campaign against American-led troops.

According to the American officials, many of the fighters making their way to the tribal areas are Uzbeks, North Africans, and Arabs from Persian Gulf states. American intelligence officials say that some jihadist Web sites have been encouraging foreign militants to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan, which is considered a “winning fight,” compared with the insurgency in Iraq, which has suffered sharp setbacks recently.

The number of foreign fighters entering Iraq has dropped to fewer than 40 a month from as many as 110 a month a year ago, a military spokesman in Baghdad said Wednesday. “The sanctuary situation in Pakistan’s tribal areas and North-West Frontier Province is more, rather than less, troublesome than before,” Gen. David D. McKiernan, the new NATO commander in Afghanistan, said in a telephone interview. “The porous border has allowed insurgent militant groups a greater freedom of movement across that border, as well as a greater freedom to resupply, to allow leadership to sustain stronger sanctuaries, and to provide fighters across that border.”

The suicide bombing at the gates of the Indian Embassy in Kabul on Monday underscored the increasing fears of American and Afghan officials that Taliban insurgents working with Pakistani intelligence operatives might have used the bombing to pursue Pakistan’s long power struggle with India.

Al Qaeda and other militant groups have used redoubts in Pakistan’s rugged mountains as havens for the past several years. But especially since the new Pakistani government sharply curtailed security operations in the tribal areas in March and began negotiating with tribal leaders to rein in the militants, the number of foreign fighters entering the tribal areas has increased “from a trickle to a steady stream,” said a Defense Department official who follows Pakistan closely, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Some of the foreign militants take commercial flights into Pakistan and make their way to the tribal areas by car or bus, while a smaller, undetermined number go overland through Iran and then up through Baluchistan, the Defense Department official said. General McKiernan said, “There are noticeably more non-Pashtun-speaking fighters than this time last year.”

Some American intelligence officials cautioned, however, that the increases were still relatively small, perhaps a few dozen -- military and independent analysts estimate between 150 and 500 hard-core Qaeda fighters are operating in the tribal area -- and that Al Qaeda was still recruiting fighters and suicide bombers for both Afghanistan and Iraq.

With the number of attacks in eastern Afghanistan up by 40 percent from a year ago, senior Bush administration officials have been voicing increasing alarm about the growing strength of the militants using havens in Pakistan.

“The ability of the Taliban and other insurgents to cross that border and not being under any pressure from the Pakistani side of the border is clearly a concern,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters two weeks ago in one of his most pointed comments to date on the situation. “That’s the area that needs to be addressed with the Pakistani government.”

The Bush administration is struggling to work with the Afghan and Pakistani governments to find an effective combination of political, diplomatic, and military tools to help stem the increasingly entrenched insurgency, but it has faced difficulties dealing with Pakistan’s new coalition government, officials say.

“We’re trying to impress upon the Pakistanis how bad things are,” said one senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities. “Before, we could go to Musharraf,” the official said, speaking of President Pervez Musharraf. “Now it’s more of a power-sharing agreement, and it’s more difficult. There’s no apparent solution at hand. The next six months look like they’ll be a lot like the past six months.”

Four senior military officials said that Al Qaeda was strengthening its increasingly close operational ties in the tribal areas with the Taliban and various other militant groups -- financing, training recruits, and facilitating attacks into Afghanistan, though not necessarily conducting attacks themselves.

Inside Pakistan, the forces of the Tehrik-e-Taliban of Pakistan, an umbrella group of Taliban, are most prominent among the militants. The group is led by Baitullah Mehsud, who is accused by the Pakistani government of masterminding the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December and running scores of suicide bombers on both sides of the border.

Mr. Mehsud, who has risen from near obscurity to become a powerful ally of Al Qaeda, brazenly held a news conference in May in his home base, South Waziristan, to announce that he would expand his fight against the American military across the border in Afghanistan, where the group has close links to other Taliban forces.

American options for strikes inside the tribal areas are limited. The C.I.A. has armed, remotely piloted Predator aircraft ready if high-level insurgents are located. But a Pentagon order authorizing an increased campaign by Special Operations forces in the tribal areas remains under review by administration officials.

The Pentagon moved the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to the Arabian Sea from the Persian Gulf in recent days, shortening the time that the carrier’s nearly four dozen FA-18 Hornet and Super Hornet strike planes must fly to support combat in Afghanistan.

President Bush’s new homeland security adviser, Kenneth L. Wainstein, traveled to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Qatar, and Kuwait last month, and urged leaders in those countries to help crack down on groups or individuals that are helping to finance or funnel fighters to the insurgency in the tribal areas. “We’re seeing financing and recruiting from the gulf countries going to the tribal areas,” Mr. Wainstein said in an interview.

The Saudis, in particular, committed to continuing to expand their efforts to prevent terrorist financing and facilitation from their country, a spokesman for Mr. Wainstein said in an e-mail message.

“We’re aware we’re down to the last six months,” the senior administration official said. “There’s no real time for new initiatives. What we can do is set up a number of initiatives for the next administration, to give them possible options.”

Those options, the official said, include continuing to support Pakistan’s army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who late last month was given a mandate by the new civilian government to use force in the tribal areas and the North-West Frontier Province when “verifiable intelligence” was available, Pakistani televisions stations reported.

Several American officials expressed exasperation that small elements of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force, the Pakistani Army, and Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency -- Inter-Services Intelligence, or the ISI -- were turning a blind eye to militants launching cross-border attacks, if not supporting them outright.

“Right now, the Pakistanis are in a muddle over how to use the tribal leaders, Frontier Corps paramilitary forces and the Pakistani Army to deal with the situation,” said a senior allied military officer who has served in the region. “To complicate matters, U.S.-Pakistani relations are currently toxic.”

--Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.

WASHINGTON -- American commandos are poised to stage "hot pursuit" raids into Pakistan's loosely governed tribal areas to stem mounting Taliban attacks against U.S. troops in Afghanistan and to disrupt resurgent al-Qaida operatives' efforts to map strikes against the U.S. homeland, according to three Texas congressmen briefed during a trip to the region.

The lawmakers -- Reps. Gene Green, D-Houston, Michael McCaul, R-Austin, and Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo -- told the Houston Chronicle in separate interviews that the plans for stepped-up U.S. military operations are in response to Pakistan's failure to disrupt terrorist training camps and cross-border attacks from a region known as "the Federally Administered Tribal Areas," a remote, mountainous border area.

The Bush administration is recalibrating U.S. operations in the region because of a 40 percent increase in violent attacks against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan that have pushed U.S. casualties for the month of June beyond the monthly toll in Iraq, the lawmakers said.

Osama bin Laden, who has a $50 million bounty on his head, is widely believed to be hiding among the 3.3 million people in the rural region.

The United States has about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan, a number expected to rise to nearly 40,000 with reinforcements next year.

The Texas congressmen said they devoted much of their delegation's separate meetings with President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan's prime minister, Yusaf Raza Gillani, last Friday to urging additional action against Islamic militants in the tribal territories.

But they said Pakistani officials rejected resumption of the joint U.S.-Pakistani operations that ended in 2003, calling instead for additional U.S. military assistance and intelligence cooperation to target seven or eight terrorist leaders operating in the tribal areas.

Pakistan's ineffective campaign makes it "imperative that U.S. forces be allowed to pursue the Taliban and al-Qaida in tribal areas inside Pakistan," McCaul insisted. "If we don't do something now, they're going to strike us again (in the United States) and it is going to be out of this area."

Cuellar said that "either Pakistan does more or we will be taking things into our own hands," adding: "If our troops are fired on, there will be hot pursuit into that territory."

The lawmakers' comments suggested that the Bush administration may have resolved bureaucratic turf battles that the New York Times recently reported had delayed implementation of a secret administration plan to authorize U.S. Special Forces to deploy teams into Pakistan's tribal areas to track, capture, or kill terrorist leaders.

Army Lt. Col. Mark Wright, serving as a spokesman for the Defense Department, said U.S. forces "remain ready, willing, and able to assist the Pakistanis and to partner with them to provide additional training and to conduct joint operations should they desire."

U.S. Predator aircraft, pilotless drones, have carried out at least four missile strikes against suspected terrorists inside Pakistan so far this year, killing at least 45 people, according to the Washington Post.

U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan already have exercised hot pursuit on a limited basis to chase Taliban fighters and al-Qaida militants into adjacent Pakistani areas.

A joint U.S.-Afghan operation pursuing Taliban fighters from Afghanistan's Kunar province into Pakistan on June 10 provoked members of Pakistan's 85,000-strong Frontier Corps to fire upon U.S. forces, the congressmen were told, prompting U.S. commanders to call in airstrikes that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers.