The International Herald Tribune (IHT) ran a reasonable article (for them) recently on the al-Qaeda and Taliban forces who retreated from Afghanistan into the Pakistan area and efforts over the years to deal with them. I want to take some key information from that article to lay out the case that we are seeing the final steps towards dealing with this last pocket of Islamo Fascism, and to answer a question posed today by Ed Morrissey:

Did Pervez Musharraf give George Bush permission to launch attacks on Osama bin Laden in Pakistan without seeking approval for the mission first?  According to Calcutta News, the Washington Post reported this — but I can’t find any reference to this in the Post.  If true, it would solve the problem of tipping off al-Qaeda through its informers in Pakistan’s intel service:

I actually began reporting on the CIA and special forces efforts in the tribal area of Pakistan in the fall of last year (2007) when news reports started hinting at these activities. For example, from November 20th of 2007:

A senior Defense Department official said that Admiral Olson had prepared a memorandum on how Special Operations forces could assist the Pakistani military in the counterinsurgency, and shared that document with several senior Pentagon officials.

…

The briefing said United States forces would not be involved in any conventional combat in Pakistan. But several senior military and Pentagon officials said elements of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite counterterrorism unit, might be involved in strikes against senior militant leaders under specific conditions.

That post has two news sources linked, and emphasis mine of course. This permission for the US to strike senior militants is a recurring theme in the reporting, and as it continued to leak out it became clear the US could act on strong intelligence – and has as we saw in missile attacks from drones. So, to answer Ed Morrissey’s question – yes, Musharraf many months ago (and my guess is it goes back farther than that) made arrangements with the US that there were certain conditions under which our forces in Pakistan, or across the border in Afghanistan, could take action. The problem is the Washington Post article was from last December (reference this UPI report).

In fact, in February of this year there was another report that confirmed elements of the agreement:

American officials reached a quiet understanding with Pakistan’s leader last month to intensify secret strikes against suspected terrorists by pilotless aircraft launched in Pakistan, senior officials in both governments say. But the prospect of changes in Pakistan’s government has the Bush administration worried that the new operations could be curtailed.

Among other things, the new arrangements allowed an increase in the number and scope of patrols and strikes by armed Predator surveillance aircraft launched from a secret base in Pakistan — a far more aggressive strategy to attack Al Qaeda and the Taliban than had existed before.

But since opposition parties emerged victorious from the parliamentary election early this week, American officials are worried that the new, more permissive arrangement could be choked off in its infancy.

In the weeks before Monday’s election, a series of meetings among President Bush’s national security advisers resulted in a significant relaxation of the rules under which American forces could aim attacks at suspected Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the tribal areas near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

The change, described by senior American and Pakistani officials who would not speak for attribution because of the classified nature of the program, allows American military commanders greater leeway to choose from what one official who took part in the debate called “a Chinese menu” of strike options.

Anyway, that is part of the past which is now leading up to the present. I want to return to the IHT article and pull out some key bits of information regarding the militants and the region. For reference the militants who fled Afghanistan operate out of isolated areas within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA, in blue in the diagram below) and have many times tried to take over the North West Frontier Province (green in diagram below), each time being beaten back. Now, the only haven on the planet for al-Qaeda and the Taliban is in the FATA region, and that is surrounded to the south by Pak Forces, to the north by US/NATO/Afghan forces, and as we now know under the eyes of US Special Forces in both places.

The IHT article informs us that the decimated forces in FATA have regrouped (though I still think this is just the retreating leaders from failed campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan):

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terror camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired CIA officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 Arab and Pakistani militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Sounds scary, especially without the context. Prior to 9-11 there were 120 terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and tens of thousands of fighters going through them. The reality is 2,000 terrorists are no match for the Pakistan forces (somewhere above 80,000) and the US/NATO/Afghan forces (somewhere well over 100,000). The terrorist threat is not contained, it is encircled.

There have been reports 75% of Afghanistan is now pacified, and the Taliban keep taking major hits in the few areas along the border they can still operate. Bottom line, it is not as scary as the SurrenderMedia makes it out to be. We have a serious problem with these sanctuaries in Pakistan’s FATA, but compared to Afghanistan and Iraq this is a very much smaller area of concern. Something we can focus on now that the other two war fronts first attracted the Islamists to battle us on our terms, out of which came the decimation of their ranks so that 2,000 is all that is left. One recent report claims there are very few top al-Qaeda leaders left alive and in hiding:

From many hundreds, al-Qaeda now has fewer than 75 Arabs involved in the Afghan “war on terror” theater, but the group is more lethal in that it has successfully established a local franchise of warriors who have fully embraced al-Qaeda’s ideology and who are capable of conducting a war of attrition against the coalition in Afghanistan.

In the years following the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, al-Qaeda lost hundreds of members, either killed or arrested or departed to other regions. These included diehard Arab ideologues such as Mustapha Seth Marium (arrested) and commanders Abu Laith al-Libbi (killed) and Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi (arrested).

As I noted in April when this news came out, I am not sure how much credibility to give it, but I would wager the current Arab al-Qaeda numbers probably pale in comparison to their pre 9-11 levels.

Again, back to the IHT article, which does note how Pakistani and US forces initially worked together in the region in 2002-2003, but with little success:

When American military officials proposed in 2002 that Special Operations forces be allowed to establish bases in the tribal areas, Pakistan flatly refused. Instead, a small number of “black” Special Operations forces — Army Delta Force and Navy Seal units — were allowed to accompany Pakistani forces on raids in the tribal areas in 2002 and early 2003.

That arrangement only angered both sides. American forces used to operating on their own felt that the Pakistanis were limiting their movements. And while Pakistani officials publicly denied the presence of Americans, local tribesmen spotted the Americans and protested.

No doubt some Pakistanis might have also tipped off the locals. It is tough to operate like this. What is truly interesting is the revelation that it was not the US who took their eyes off the targets in Pakistan, it was the Pak’s who decided to push the US out of the area. The liberal SurrenderMedia has been debunked again:

Under pressure from Pakistan, the Bush administration decided in 2003 to end the American military presence on the ground. In a recent interview, Armitage said he had supported the pullback in recognition of the political risks that Musharraf had already taken. “We were pushing them almost to the breaking point,” Armitage said.

The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 added another complicating factor, by cementing a view among Pakistanis that American forces in the tribal areas would be a prelude to an eventual American occupation.

To have insisted that American forces be allowed to cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan, Armitage added, “might have been a bridge too far.”

Anyway, the IHT article has a reasonably detailed history leading up to today and worth reading. The bottom line is we have being doing all we can inside Pakistan to bring justice to those behind 9-11. And from the days right after 9-11 when we faced a region of Islamo Fascist fever we have come a long way, to the point we now face a small force hiding out in a backwards region of Pakistan, and we have to new democratic allies in the Muslim world: Iraq and Afghanistan. Pretty good work if you ask me.

Tags: Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, FATA, George Bush, Musharraf, NWFP, Pakistan, Special Forces, Taliban