A few updates from the war on terror. Seems allied forces have been busy over the weekend. In Iraq a large number of terrorists have been killed, and nearly twice that number have been killed in Afghanistan. Strangely (or maybe not), the liberal media is all upset that our systemic killing of Taliban commanders is creating an army of younger leaders:

The Taliban leadership in southern Afghanistan is passing into the hands of younger, more extreme insurgents as the relentless targeting of traditional commanders by British forces takes its toll.

In a week spent in Helmand province, The Daily Telegraph has found widespread evidence that special forces operations are degrading the Taliban’s leadership and its ability to co-ordinate operations.

But there are also indications of increasing radicalisation within the Taliban as more extreme fighters, many of them al-Qa’eda-linked foreign militants, fill the gaps left when experienced Taliban leaders are killed.

Western military officials say privately that approximately 200 medium and high-level Taliban commanders were killed countrywide in targeted bombings or assassinations by American and British special forces last year, and a further 100 captured.

Using local intermediaries, the Telegraph was able to meet two mid-level Taliban commanders in the provincial capital Lashkargar. Both claimed that the Taliban was increasingly recruited from outside Helmand and that its hierarchies were becoming far less clear cut.

Clearly we are decimating the terrorist leaders to the point locals no longer run the fighters, which is probably why more locals are being killed and there is a rising resentment with the Islamo Fascists in the region. This is how al-Qaeda lost Iraq, foreigners killing Iraqi Muslims.

Moreover, the fact we are taking out their senior and experienced leaders and they are being replaced by less-wise, more reckless younger folks not familiar with the region and locality is not a bad thing. Hitler did the same thing in the waning days of the 3rd Reich – it did not slow the destruction of the Nazi movement, just as this won’t slow the destruction of radical Islam.

And on a matter which I started picking up on last July and then again last fall (check here and here for examples) we find that there is, in fact, permission for US Special Forces to hunt down key targets in Pakistan:

The Musharraf regime has indirectly approved the US Drone (pilotless plane) attacks on Al Qaeda targets in tribal areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan.

Since January, missiles have been fired from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operated Predator drones and have hit at least three suspected hideouts of Islamic militants, including a strike on March 16 in Toog village in South Waziristan that left 20 dead.

Sources said that the recent wave of Predator attacks are the result of Musharrafs understanding with the US officials and other top Pakistanis which gave Washington virtually unrestricted authority to hit targets in the border areas.

Sorry Barack, we won’t have to actually invade Pakistan if you become President! There are our allies, and acting like it.

On a more positive note, more Afghan children are in school these days:

Afghanistan’s Education Minister, Khanif Atmar, has revealed that Afghani children are now attending school in record numbers.

Mr Atmar has given the figure of nearly seven million children enrolling for new school year classes.

…

It is believed numbers in the coming year will show a third of the pupils are girls who were banned from attending the classroom under the Taliban regime, which was ousted in the US-led invasion in 2001.

Now that is clearly a brighter future for Afghanis, and clearly the families are participating in this new feature of Afghan life since they are sending their girls to school. No wonder the Taliban was recently ejected from Islam in a religious fatwa released from the Pak tribal areas.

It seems to me al-Qaeda is also on the ropes, given the recent pronouncements from Bin Laden and now Zawahiri:

A new statement attributed to al Qaeda’s No. 2 figure, Ayman al-Zawahiri, calls on Muslims to attack Western interests in defense of the Palestinians in Gaza.

“Let us strike their interests everywhere, just as they gathered against us from everywhere, and let them know that every dollar they spend on the killing of Muslims, there will be shed blood instead in return,” the speaker in the nearly five-minute statement says.

No more trying to save Iraq or Afghanistan. AQ is going back to the tried and true (and well worn) call to arms against Israel. One item that is telling about AQ is the line I highlighted. The image it conveys is one of a movement surrounded and being pummeled. This may be an accidental exposure of the feelings of AQ right now.

I think the biggest mistake AQ made was retreating its forces to the tribal areas of Pakistan to regroup. Because now there is a noose around the area with 80,000 Pakistani forces around the southern edge of the region and some 30,000 NATO fighting forces along the norther edge in Afghanistan. And there are a couple hundred US and UK Special Forces personnel hunting the bad guys inside the tribal region.

Surrounded and begging for help – that is AQ. And with Islamic sects now going on record with fatwas claiming the Taliban are now out of Islam due to their atrocities (and possibly foreign leaders), it will not be much longer before Islam decides AQ should join them and is also expelled from Islam. These Islamo Fascists are not the future of Islam – they are its enemies. And the Muslim community is awakening to that fact quite rapidly.