The movement of US and NATO forces along the Afghan-Pak border, as well as the positioning of Pakistani forces along the southern boundary of the tribal areas of norther Pakistan, have been clear indicators of pending actions against al-Qaeda’s last refuge. Now confirming reporting on the planned actions, and possible Taliban and al-Qaeda responses, is starting to percolate from the region:

After more than six years, coalition forces in Afghanistan are preparing for an all-out offensive against the Taliban centered on their safe havens straddling the border with Pakistan.

…

The efforts of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and its 47,000 soldiers from nearly 40 nations will focus on specific areas that include the Bajaur and Mohmand tribal agencies in Pakistan, as well as South and North Waziristan in that country, and Nooristan, Kunar, Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces in Afghanistan. The ISAF is complemented by the separate US-led coalition of about 20,000, the majority being US soldiers. This does not include a contingent of 3,600 US Marine Corps who this week started arriving in southern Afghanistan. They will work under the command of the ISAF.

The terrorists cannot take these forces straight on, therefore they seem to be attempting a lame strategy of diversion:

But instead of taking on foreign forces in direct battle in the traditional hot spots, the Taliban plan to open new fronts as they are aware they cannot win head-on against the might of the US-led war machine.

…

For their part, the Taliban, according to Asia Times Online contacts, will open new fronts in Khyber Agency in Pakistan and Nangarhar province in east Afghanistan and its capital Jalalabad.

This move follows a meeting of important Taliban commanders of Pakistani and Afghan origin held for the first time in the Tera Valley bordering the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan.

Well, I doubt anyone meant to broadcast their plans like this in the media – so I would suspect this is more disinformation than anything else. But there are interesting tidbits in the reporting:

Pakistan’s Khyber Agency has never been a part of the Taliban’s domain. The majority of the population there follows the Brelvi school of thought, which is bitterly opposed to the hardline Taliban and the Salafi brand of Islam. The adjacent Afghan province of Nangarhar has also been a relatively peaceful area.

In fact, there is another news story that indicates the locals are rising up against al-Qaeda and their radical Taliban associates:

Shaheed Rehman Afridi lay in a casualty-packed trauma ward, unable to make sense of the blast that punctured his body with tiny metal missiles and killed dozens of his kinsmen as they met for a traditional tribal assembly.

On nearby beds, children with head wounds writhed in pain, inconsolable by frantic parents. Men with torn abdomens and shattered limbs lay in silent semiconsciousness or moaned in wide-eyed agony as relatives called out for one of Lady Reading Hospital’s too few doctors.

The young fanatic who detonated himself March 2 and inflicted the suffering on civilians would once have found welcome and honor in Pakistan’s autonomous tribal belt, along with other Islamic extremists, including Osama bin Laden and his followers, who fled there after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

No more.

The tribes no longer are willing hosts to the foreign fighters, local jihadis and criminal warlords who hold sway over parts of the Pashtun tribes’ mountain homeland. They’ve become tired and infuriated by the bloodshed, coercion and suffering that radical Islam has brought to their lives, said tribal elders and local journalists.

“We also want to get rid of terrorism, Al Qaeda and extremism,” said Hamidullah Jan Afridi, a tribal leader from the Khyber Agency region who serves in Pakistan’s Senate.

al-Qaeda’s mindless blood lust is causing them to wear out their welcome in the region from which they were born. The fact is the restless tribal areas ranging between Afghanistan and Pakistan are having their own “Awakening” as the Iraqis did a year ago. And who could blame them when they have to experience the cruelty of al-Qaeda close up. Injured children will pretty much always create an anger and hate for those responsible that transcends all other considerations. A force the SurrenderMedia in the West has failed to appreciate.

As a reminder of how this sea change happened in Iraq, a UK paper has a great story out today on how the tide turned against al-Qaeda there:

Twelve months ago, al-Anbar province, east of Baghdad, was the domain of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a nightmarish place to live and the scene of mounting casualties for the United States.

Then, a group of a dozen tribal sheiks took a hard look at the direction their region was heading.

…

Though the sheiks had opposed the U.S. invasion five years ago – their followers were among the first to take up arms against the occupation – they felt they now had another, more immediate, enemy to battle.

…

The decision by Mr. Hatem and the other sheiks to embrace “realism” has had dramatic effects. Since their formation, the Sahwa councils enlisted 80,000 men to their ranks, drawing many former insurgents to switch sides in exchange for salaries of anywhere from $250 to $450 a month from the United States.

While Iraq is still the scene of daily gun battles and devastating bombings, violence is down 60 per cent across the country from the worst of the bloodshed in 2006 and 2007 and, remarkably, Anbar is now one of the safer provinces in Iraq.

While the results in Iraq will not play out identically in the lawless regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, they do foreshadow what probably is happening right now as al-Qaeda racks up more and more bloody Muslim corpses and the Muslim community realizes al-Qaeda is not the future of Islam, but the enemy of Islam.