We have achieved a stunning victory in Iraq. al-Qaeda rushed reinforcements into that country to take out The Great Satan and establish their modern caliphate. Those Muslims who leaned towards the romantic vision of Jihad, as promoted by the Islamo Fascists, rushed to Iraq to share in the glory. Now they are dead and captured or on the run. (Update: The Washington Post is reporting all the key al-Qaeda leadership has left Iraq and is now in Afghanistan or Pakistan with the rest of the rats running from the sinking ship. The clearest sign yet we have achieved victory, the enemy general has fled the field! – H/T Ed Morrissey end update)

al-Qaeda’s support in the Muslim world has been shattered. There are more Muslims fighting with us than against us (something like 150,000 verses 3,000 in Iraq alone). This fact cannot be dismissed or ignored. In the end the Muslim street rose up against al-Qaeda. There has been no Islamists upheaval in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt. Kuwait, UAE, Turkey as many of the hand wringers in the intelligence community predicted. After the initial wave of Jihad-lust over Iraq, most Muslim communities abhor the violence the Islamo Fascists inflicted on their fellow Muslims (who were the targets of most of their actions so they could garner liberal news coverage).

To win a war you need popular support – which is why the SurrenderMedia and Surrendercrats here in the US are trying to lose this war by way of sowing doubt and fear regarding our ability to win it. They did so in Afghanistan and all through Iraq. And they were wrong. Dead wrong.

Now the forces of Islamo Fascism are gathering in the Tribal Regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the same region that spawned the Islamo Fascist movement that took out the Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan, and these are the same people in the leadership roles. There is no getting around it, this is the offshoot of our efforts to use pawns to do our dirty work. The Taliban and al-Qaeda are products of our foreign policy efforts where we encourage others to do the work we are politically to afraid to do.

OK, now we understand the price we have paid to destroy the iron curtain and free 100’s of millions of people who lived in oppression in the Soviet Union and who helped armed Communists to theaten us and countries like Afghanistan around the world. We are seeing the last battle of the cold war, one that rebounded on us and is waged by those we once called allies.

I know we did not intend this whole area to backfire in our faces. We expected these people to take their freedom and do something positive with it. And there was the very Europeanized Pakistan that covers much of this region to guide these liberators into the modern world. Would they consider taking up cricket? Nope, they took up the sword and Koran instead. It was a possibility I am sure people knew about. It was a risk that could have been handled much better. And we know both Democrat and Republican Presidents and Congresses were the ones who should have taken steps to avoid the radicalization of the region and the ultimate result: 9-11.

We learn from our mistakes and deal with them. All this history doesn’t change the fact that since we have been engaged we have turned things around and decimated the Islamo Fascists cancer. The Muslim Street has turned on them in ever increasing numbers and expanding locals. When the blood-soaked Koran of the Taliban and al-Qaeda is a much more real threat than American Idol is to the Muslim world.

This all becomes clear as we see who is at the nexus of reports that the CIA has told Pakistan that its intelligence service (ISI) is helping keep the Islamo Fascists alive and hidden. Here is one of many media reports on the matter:

The CIA has depended heavily on the ISI for information about militants in Pakistan despite enduring concern about divided loyalties within the service, which was close to the Taliban in Afghanistan before the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US.

“The CIA assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of al-Qa’ida in Pakistan’s tribal areas,” the Times reported.

Jalaluddin Haqqani, like Bin Laden, is a veteran of the Afghan-Soviet war. He is actually getting quite on in years and apparently has handed the keys to his movement to his son, who is operating out of Afghanistan right now – if you can believe this NBC interview:

Haqqani is the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of the most feared Afghan commanders, who fought against the Soviet occupation during the 1980s. Jalaluddin, now aged and in failing health, lives in Khost and has passed the reigns of the Haqqani terror network on to his second son, Sirajuddin.

…

In the interview with NBC News, his first ever, Sirajuddin Haqqani admitted that Arab and other foreign fighters had joined him in fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan.

“We are in trouble,” Haqqani said. “We are occupied by foreign forces so we asked our Muslim brothers from all over the world to come join us and help us. And they have come.”

The difference, Haqqani explained, is that the Arabs and other foreigners are under his control while Afghani President Hamid Karzai asks for help too but remains under the control of the foreigners.

The article interestingly gives details on that will help intelligence shutdown Haqqani’s efforts:

NBC’s Mushtaq Yusufzai spent months arranging the interview. He contacted local Pakistani Taliban commanders in North Waziristan and asked them to try and make contact with Haqqani across the border in Afghanistan. Yusufzai was told that because Haqqani is a wanted man, he cannot move around freely and no longer crosses the border into Pakistan.

Yuzufzai waited two days in Thall, a hamlet near the Pakistani tribal agency of Kurram, bordering Khost Province in Afghanistan.

…

Yusufzai described the trip. “After two hours driving, we reached Sabaro in Khost Province, a village under their control,” he said. “The Taliban were manning the check posts and there were no Afghan army soldiers anywhere around…I was taken first to one house and waited 1&1/2 hours before being taken to a second house.

I doubt any Taliban with a brain are still in Sabaro, but it will be seeing a visit from US/NATO forces soon enough. Now we have two lynchpins to deal with in this area which could turn the tide for us – again. We have the Haqqani group to deal with in the Northern Waziristan Agency of FATA and those following Baitullah Mehsud in Southern Waziristan Agency (see map above). There is another group in Bajaur Agency as well. This seems to be the last significant groups threatening the world with Islamist Terrorism with training camps for terrorist and planners trying to achieve worldwide mayhem.

It is clear that the terrorists want to break out of FATA and move into the neighboring NWFP since military actions have been escalating in the SWAT region of the NWFP. So I think the new Pakistan government is starting to realize they need to act, unless they want to be hung in the square at the end of a Islamist revolt in the country. We shall see.

But when we have targets, we and our allies can then take all sorts of actions. This could be forming up to be the last chapter in the war on Terror, fought in the birthplace of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. There are challenges, but we have made it through 7 years of those and come out on top. The first step, though, is to purge the ISI of the traitors.

Tags: Afghanistan, Baitullah Mehsud, CIA, Haqqani, Pakistan, Tribal Area