* Report says reconstituted Al Qaeda, resurgent Taliban collaborate with terrorist groups to complicate counterinsurgency war
WASHINGTON: Special operations forces of the United States military and CIA operatives are now conducting regular secret incursions into western Pakistan, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.
A review of the Afghanistan policy and as it affects Pakistan is said to be in hand and expected to be completed in weeks, while presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are unlikely to question a major new US commitment; both having called for an increase in US troops. And unlike Iraq, there is bipartisan backing for doing more, and doing it quickly, in Afghanistan.
Intelligence officials warn of a rapidly worsening situation on the ground. The nearly completed National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan and the Pakistan-based extremists fighting has concluded that reconstituted elements of Al Qaeda and the resurgent Taliban are collaborating with an expanding network of terrorist groups, making the counterinsurgency war infinitely more complicated.
It turns out that when urgent US appeals to the Pakistani military and government failed and the coalition moved to oust former president Pervez Musharraf, those who had long advocated stronger US action inside Pakistan finally prevailed with Bush. Bush is said to have given his assent to such action in July this year.
The administration concluded that the ground raids were legal under the self-defence provisions of the United Nations charter, an interpretation that a UN official said was questionable, according to the Post.
US officials are said to describe the Pakistan-based extremist network, which the Pentagon calls the syndicate, as a loose alliance of three elements.
Kashmiri militants, constrained by recent agreements between Pakistan and India have leaned over to assist a domestic terrorist campaign launched by homegrown extremists often referred to as the Pakistani Taliban.
The Afghan Taliban are based in Pakistan but focused on Afghanistan, as are the forces led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, his son Siraj and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, among others.
Traditional tribal groups in FATA are a third element and are believed to be focused primarily on keeping the Pakistan army and government out of their areas, and assisting the Afghan-oriented parts of the network.
Al Qaeda, composed largely of Arabs and, increasingly, Uzbeks, Chechens and other Central Asians, is described as sitting atop the structure, providing money and training to the others in exchange for sanctuary. They are oriented to just keeping the Pakistani military and government out of their areas, a US intelligence official told the newspaper.
They help the groups who are interested in Afghanistan. There is competition between and among them, another US counterterrorism official said, but their interests increasingly overlap and they understand the need to support one another.
President Bushs senior military adviser on Afghanistan and Iraq has told the Pentagon, intelligence and State Department officials to return to basic questions: What are US objectives in Afghanistan? What can the US hope to achieve? What are its resources? What is its allies role? What does the US know about the enemy? How likely is it that weak Afghan and Pakistani governments will rise to the occasion?
US policymakers are convinced that the war in Afghanistan is heading downhill. US military deaths and enemy attacks this year have risen to the highest levels of the nearly seven-year war. Hopes have faded that a new Pakistani government would seize the initiative against extremist sanctuaries, and that a new UN co-ordinator would bring order to the chaos of the multibillion-dollar Afghan reconstruction programme. Defence Secretary Robert Gates has already determined that the United States must take a more forceful lead in strategy and combat from NATO forces in Afghanistan.
