When I was in Afghanistan two months ago, I was told – with some pride – that no one had been killed by gunfire so far this year. It seems, alas, that the gun battles were delayed rather than cancelled. Today, the MoD has announced that a REME soldier, attached to the Paras, was killed – by a landmine, after coming under fire, taking the death toll to 111. Two other Paras were seriously wounded.
My cover story for tomorrow’s magazine is about how the military believe the bombs, and many of the men they are fighting, are coming from the lawless Pakistan border territories. The Taliban operates with impunity in the town of Quetta in the Baluchistan area – and it was pretty much gifted the town by the Pakistani Army in 2002. Their prime concern is using the Taliban as a bulwark against the secular Baluchistan rebels. Pakistan (itself a misleading word – the army, government and intelligence corps each have their separate lives and agendas) is playing a double game with us. It helps us find British jihadis being trained there, and MI5 is grateful. But then it allows the Taliban to operate in Quetta, leading to the types of deaths we learn about this morning. As Brig Mark Carleton-Smith told me when I was out there, “When pushed out of Helmand, the opportunities are there for the Taliban to recruit, equip and retrain on the other side of the border.” And for as long as the Taliban has Pakistan’s tribal areas as a base then there is only so much progress we can make in Afghanistan.
Also, for as long as al-Qaeda and other terror groups operate freely in FATA, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, then we will make limited progress in the war on terror. This was pretty much Barack Obama’s message when he was there at the weekend. Soon US Central Command will be led by General Petraeus – author of the successful Iraq surge. So you can expect the Pakistan problem to be addressed now, where as the Bush administration too often looked the other way. The Afghanistan problem now contains the Pakistan problem, which contains the al-Qaeda jihadi problem. The British Foreign Office and US military now see these as interlocking Venn diagrams, and will aspire to solve these issues as a whole. Yes, this is far more ambitious than just fixing Afghanistan, itself a breathtakingly daunting task. But it is a task the West will nonetheless embark upon, regardless whoever wins the US election.
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