Aug 15 2008
al-Qaeda Fighting Alongside Taliban In Bajaur, May Indicate A Prime al-Qaeda Enclave Has Been Discovered
As a follow up to previous posts on the Pakistan effort to take on the al-Qaeda hornets nests in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) there is some interesting news coming out of Bajaur Agency today (see previous posts Exodus In Mohmand Agency Might Indicate al-Qaeda Presence, Taliban Use Human Shields To Protect Them In Bajaur Agency, Pakistan Extremists Not Doing So Well and Pakistan Targets Militants In Tribal Areas for reference). This week has seen a massive offensive against militants in Bajaur Agency, with scores dead and al-Qaeda (foreign fighters) fighters in the battles in serious numbers:
Pakistan’s interior ministry chief said Friday that over 460 Islamic militants and 22 soldiers have been killed in more than a week of fighting in a tribal area bordering Afghanistan.
More than 3,000 armed militants, most of them foreigners, are taking part in the clashes in the troubled Bajaur tribal region, said Rehman Malik, the prime minister’s advisor on interior matters.
…
The “major portion” of the militants were foreigners, Malik said, adding that they included “Afghans, Chechens, Yemenis and Afro-Asians.”
Emphasis mine. We must have hit a central and important al-Qaeda enclave to see this many al-Qaeda fighters swarming out and dying in such large numbers. They must be protecting someone since they are not attempting to flee. They are possibly buying time for some to flee – if they can.Â
This is excellent news. Our Pakistani allies must be working on intelligence we fed to them through our CIA and Special Forces units working in the region to gather targeting information. Now Pakistan is hitting at the heart of al-Qaeda’s last sanctuary on Earth, not simply hitting abandoned Taliban facilities.
Hopefully we will see more and more news like this, where large numbers of foreign fighters are being engaged and eliminated. Once the area is cleared of these Islamo Fascist thugs then there is a chance Pakistan can reestablish the rule of law and lower the risk of the entire world from the terrorists now gathered in these areas.
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