Some interesting news on the war front in Pakistan and Afghanistan. One piece that caught my eye was an LA Times article that claims this is the year to finally get Bin Laden. It notes the drop in support for al-Qaeda and their ilk in Pakistan and Afghanistan as the key change that could expose Bin Laden:

This welcome change in probabilities has almost nothing to do with the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism strategy, which remains rudderless and starved of resources because of the war in Iraq. It is a consequence, instead, of dramatic political changes in Pakistan, where Bin Laden is believed to be hiding and where Al Qaeda’s local mistakes and the restoration of civilian democracy have combined to make him considerably less safe.

Bin Laden’s personal approval rating in Pakistan, as measured by a number of international polls, is plummeting. Beginning last year, Al Qaeda began to support an unprecedented wave of suicide bombings on Pakistani soil; the campaign culminated in the murder of two-time former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December. Before, when Bin Laden targeted the United States and Europe, many Pakistanis saw him as an Islamic folk hero. But although Pakistanis remain deeply skeptical about the United States, they have changed their thinking about Al Qaeda as hundreds of their own innocent civilians have become its victims.

In a poll released in February, Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based nonprofit group, found that Bin Laden’s popularity had fallen by half over just six months, to about 24%. In the Northwest Frontier Province, along the Afghan borderlands where he is most likely to be hiding, it fell into single digits. Recent British polling in the most radicalized border areas is less encouraging, but there is no doubt that the general picture in the Northwest Frontier is one of increasing anxiety and resentment toward Al Qaeda.

These souring attitudes are important because, in the past, hunts for terrorists hiding in Pakistan have almost always ended when a disillusioned (and generally greedy) local resident has dropped a dime on the fugitive for reward money. During the 1990s, for example, it took a number of frustrating years until the United States tracked down Mir Amal Kasi, a Pakistani who killed two CIA workers outside the agency’s headquarters in 1993. It took about as long to locate Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the architect of the first World Trade Center bombing; colleagues ultimately betrayed both men. Now that a larger number of Pakistanis see Bin Laden as a nihilistic killer, the chances that such a walk-in informant will surface have grown.

Confusing determination and patience when dealing with an ally’s sovereignty is not rudderless leadership – it is dealing with reality. Everyone wants an easy button when it comes to this war. We clearly are not the greatest generation – we don’t have the patience and resolve to see things through to the end. Well, not all of us. Bush and his small cadre of supporters (like myself) have helped hold our resolve in the face of partisan defeatism. And now it is paying off.

Bin Laden is ‘a guest’ in Pakistan, which is not an Arab country. He has worn out his welcome there just has his thugs did in Iraq. I agree, this year could be the year, conditions are definitely trending in the right direction.

In fact there is continued pressure on the terrorists in Pakistan, who were dealt a huge blow in the latest elections in that country. They are being continuously rolled back into ever shrinking enclaves.

Pakistan security forces arrested three suspected Islamic militants Thursday and gained control of a fugitive pro-Taliban cleric’s stronghold, the military said.

The three men were detained during a “search and cordon” operation in the northwestern militant stronghold of Imam Dheri, a village in the Swat Valley, a military statement said. The army, paramilitary Frontier Corps and police have set up a joint check post there, it said.

…

Imam Dheri was the base of a pro-Taliban cleric, Maulana Fazullah, and a mosque and a seminary there served as his headquarters. He used a pirated FM radio frequency to call for Taliban-style Islamic laws in Swat and for taking up arms against the government.

Fazullah’s fighters battled security forces in Swat for months before the government sent in troops in November and gained control of the former tourist destination. Fazullah is in hiding and on the run.

But the Daily Times newspaper, citing unidentified officials and residents, reported that militants have reappeared in Swat. It quoted Sirajuddin, a Fazullah spokesman who goes by one name, as saying the cleric would return to his stronghold to relaunch his “mission.”

Lots of bluster from a group of thugs who have big red targets on their backs. We shall see, Pakistan is still in flux with a lot of violence still popping up in various locations in the tribal lands. For example:

There appears to be no end to the bloody sectarian clashes going on between the rival groups for the last about few months in restive Parachinaar Kurram agency as the fresh fightings on Saturday left eight more people dead and serious injuries to 10 others raising the number of those killed in the short span of one week to 35.

The sectarian uprising in the Kurram agency headquarters Parachinaar, it may be recalled had started in November last and the since then the intermittent clashes between the rival groups according to cautious estimates have crossed well over 500.

Reports reaching from Parachinaar speak of high tension in the region and the fresh bloody violence erupted between rival groups in parts of the Kurram Agency Saturday claimed eight more lives and injuries to many others.

More here and here. This may be a power struggle between terrorist groups and it could be locals fed up with the extremists. This infighting was one of the first signs that the Anbar Awakening in Iraq was coming into fruition. Let’s keep our fingers crossed something similar is happening in Pakistan and the authorities will use it to their advantage.

The reporting on progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan is always overshadowed by the Surrendcrat and SurrenderMedia hand wringing over Iraq. But if you step back (and get some data) the picture is not bad for us, and horrible for the extremists:

BRITISH troops are to scale back attacks on the Taliban after killing 7,000 insurgents in two years of conflict, defence sources said last week.

British paratroopers have returned to southern Afghanistan in increased numbers this month. For the first time, members from every battalion of the regiment will be fighting together on one battlefront.

The paratroopers of 16 Air Assault Brigade killed at least 1,000 Taliban during their first deployment to Helmand province in 2006. Since then another 6,000 Taliban insurgents have been killed by British troops, the sources said.

No force can survive clashes that decimate on the order of 10 to 100 for every 1 killed on the opposing side. It is not sustainable. And it explains why the extremists are losing support. They are losing the fight and only bringing bloodshed and tears for all their efforts.

And now that forces have circled the last refuge for al-Qaeda and their Taliban cousins the situation is going to get much worse. Over the last year Pakistan has mobilized 80,000 soldiers south of the tribal regions and has cleared areas while pushing northward. In Afghanistan NATO and US forces have done the same thing, but pushing southward. And now the enemies of the free world are caught in an ever closing vise.

Al Qaeda and Taliban militants on the Afghan-Pakistani border are increasingly facing pressure on two fronts and they can be squeezed with more coordination between the neighbors, a U.S. official said on Monday.

The Taliban have been battling U.S. and other foreign troops in Afghanistan since 2001.

Pakistani forces have also been fighting the militants, based in semi-autonomous tribal regions along the border, who have unleashed an unprecedented wave of violence in Pakistan since the middle of last year.

“To some extent, the extremists in those areas are now fighting on two fronts,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher told a news conference in Kabul.

“They have to deal with pressures from the Pakistan side and the pressure from the Afghan side. The more we can do that in concert with each other, the more squeezed the al Qaeda and Taliban supporters in those areas will feel,” said Boucher who makes regular trips to both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Bush has this entire summer to decimate the remnants of al-Qaeda’s fighters. He will end his second term more victorious than defeated, and probably victorious outright in Iraq. The Surrendercrats in DC and the SurrenderMedia have no control on the events that will be unfolding. They picked the wrong side, cheer-leading our enemies and extending the war by giving the thugs hope we will lose our will. There is only one side that will surrender, and it is not our side.