Warning Signs From Afghanistan

Two U.S. soldiers talk, as an air plane flies in the sky, after a ceremony held for marking the 7th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, at the U.S. Camp Phoenix in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2008. An insurgent attack on a compound in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday killed a U.S. soldier, bringing the year's death toll to 112 and making 2008 the deadliest for American forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

US Death In Afghanistan Makes 2008 Deadliest Year
-- Yahoo News/AP

KABUL, Afghanistan - An insurgent attack on an eastern compound killed a U.S. soldier on Thursday, bringing the year's death toll to 112 and making 2008 the deadliest for American forces in Afghanistan since the U.S. invaded the country in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The NATO-led force said the soldier was killed in eastern Afghanistan "when insurgents attacked a compound." It provided no other details, but a Western military official told The Associated Press that the soldier was American.

Afghanistan was the launching pad for al-Qaida's terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. In response, U.S. forces invaded in October 2001 and drove the Taliban out of power in a matter of weeks.

Once derided as a ragtag insurgency after the fall of their regime, Taliban fighters have transformed into a fighting force advanced enough to mount massive conventional attacks. Suicide and roadside bombs have turned bigger and deadlier than ever.

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A U.S. soldier patrols the Jaji district of the southeastern Paktia province, near the Afghan-Pakistan border January 28, 2008. (Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

Taliban Rife With Jihad Recruits -- Washington Times

Commander says cross-border bombers waiting to attack

BAJAUR TRIBAL AGENCY, Pakistan | A senior Pakistani Taliban commander has warned that suicide bombers are waiting in every "nook and cranny" of Pakistan and also have crossed the border to attack U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.

In a 70-minute interview conducted near the Afghan border in late August, however, the commander - Maulvi Umar - denied that his group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

"We don´t force anybody to do suicide attacks. They automatically come to us and request a chance to sacrifice their lives for Allah," Umar said. "We teach our children. They study the Koran, understand it and memorize it, and when they become totally ready, then they are recruited for jihad."

Umar answers directly to Baitullah Mehsud, the TTP leader based in South Waziristan, who claims to control Pakistan's seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the scenic Swat Valley, hotbeds of Taliban activity and havens for al Qaeda. Apart from Mehsud, Umar is the only Pakistani Taliban authorized to speak with the news media. He also is the top Taliban commander in Bajaur.

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Defense Secretary Robert Gates, left, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008, before the House Armed Services Committee hearing on the security and stability in Afghanistan and Iraq. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Pentagon Gives Bleak Afghan View -- Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- Top Pentagon officials gave Congress pessimistic assessments of the war in Afghanistan, with the nation's highest-ranking military officer warning that the U.S. is "running out of time" to stabilize the country.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified one day after President George W. Bush announced a plan to gradually withdraw some 8,000 U.S. troops from Iraq while sending an additional 4,500 troops to Afghanistan. The Pentagon believes the Iraq war has begun winding down while the Afghanistan conflict is intensifying.

Speaking to the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday, Mr. Gates said the U.S. had entered the "endgame" in Iraq. "We are reducing our commitments in Iraq and we are increasing our commitments in Afghanistan," he told the lawmakers.

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US military vehicles evacuate a base following a handing over ceremony to the Iraqi military in the al-Wahdah neighborhood of south Baghdad on September 9. The modest shift in US forces to Afganistan announced by President George W. Bush falls short of his commanders' requests despite signs the seven year-old US-NATO project there is at risk. (AFP/Ali al-Saadi)

ANALYSIS-Britain And NATO Struggle For
Afghanistan Numbers -- Reuters

LONDON, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Two-and-a-half years into an operation to secure vast desert reaches of Afghanistan from the Taliban, British commanders quietly admit they are seriously undermanned.

While the official line is that Prime Minister Gordon Brown must decide if more troops are needed, officers on the ground in the southern Afghan province of Helmand concede privately that they do not have enough men or helicopters to seize and hold the territory they oversee.

With nearly 60,000 square kilometres (22,000 square miles) of desert, mountains, a dense river valley and lush poppy fields to patrol, Britain has a little over 8,000 troops and just eight Chinook transport helicopters at its disposal. "There's only so much we can do," a colonel in the Parachute Regiment said with exasperation last week, comparing the number of troops unfavourably to some small countries, where he said more than 8,000 police were usually available to keep the peace.

When asked if additional troops are needed, Brown and his defence minister Des Browne tend to say that they listen to their commanders on the ground, and if they do not ask for more, then no more will be sent.

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Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud (L) speaks to reporters in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region May 24, 2008. Chief of Tehreek Taliban-e-Pakistan or Taliban movement of Pakistan Baitullah Mehsud has denied his involvement in assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Mehsud vowed on Saturday to carry on fighting NATO and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan regardless of negotiations for a peace deal with the government of Pakistan, local media reported.

A Man, A Plan, Afghanistan -- The New Republic

In late May, some 40 Pakistani journalists received a summons to an unusual press conference given by Baitullah Mehsud, the rarely photographed leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who is accused of orchestrating the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, of sending suicide bombers to Spain earlier this year, and of dispatching an army of fighters into Afghanistan to attack U. S. and NATO forces in recent months. Surrounded by a posse of heavily armed Taliban guards, Mehsud boasted that he had hundreds of trained suicide bombers ready for martyrdom.

It was an extraordinarily brazen public performance for a man who is supposedly on the run. The conference wasn't in a Pakistani jail or a U.S. detention center, but in a school in South Waziristan, on Pakistan's northwestern border with Afghanistan. And the meeting wasn't secret: According to two of the journalists who attended, reporters were given 24 hours' notice and were able to call in news from the press conference on their satellite phones.

Don't be surprised. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan achieved wonders--but only in the short term. Today, Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders are running free. Pakistan seems unable or unwilling to clamp down on leading militants on its territory, and jihadist attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan have increased enormously in the past year. More Pakistani citizens died in militant violence in 2007 than in the previous five years combined. Similarly, in Afghanistan's eastern provinces, violence is up by 40 percent in the last several months; more American soldiers are now dying in Afghanistan than in Iraq. And, as is by now well-known, U.S. intelligence assesses that Al Qaeda has regrouped along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

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