WASHINGTON — In a shift with profound implications, the Bush administration is attempting to re-energize its terrorism-fighting war efforts in Afghanistan, the original target of a post-Sept. 11 offensive. The U.S. also is refocusing on Pakistan, where a regenerating al-Qaida is posing fresh threats.
There is growing recognition that the United States risks further setbacks, if not deepening conflict or even defeat, in Afghanistan, and that success in that country hinges on stopping Pakistan from descending into disorder.
Privately, some senior U.S. military commanders say Pakistan’s tribal areas are at the center of the fight against Islamic extremism; more so than Iraq, or even Afghanistan.
These areas border on eastern Afghanistan and provide haven for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters to regroup, rearm and reorganize.
This view may explain, at least in part, the administration’s increasingly public expressions of concern.
At a Pentagon news conference last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that while the U.S. respects the Pakistani government’s right to decide what actions are needed to defeat extremists on its soil, there are reasons to worry that al-Qaida poses more than an internal threat to Pakistan.
“I think it would be unrealistic to assume that all of the planning that they’re doing is focused strictly on Pakistan,” Gates said.
“So I think that that is a continuing threat to Europe as well as to us,” he said.
The U.S. military has used other means, including aerial surveillance by drones, to hunt Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida leaders believed to be hiding near the Afghan border. Ground troops on the Afghan side sometimes fire artillery across the border at known Taliban or al-Qaida targets, and U.S. officials have said special operations forces are poised to strike across the border under certain circumstances.
The top two U.S. intelligence officials made a secret visit to Pakistan in early January to seek Musharraf’s permission for greater involvement of American forces in trying to ferret out al-Qaida and other militant groups active in the tribal regions, a senior U.S. official said Saturday, but Musharraf rebuffed an expansion.
“There is strong pressure now from the international community to find some solution to Afghanistan because of the fear that this could quickly go south,” said Ashley Tellis, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a former adviser to Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs.
“We haven’t lost the war yet, but we could be on our way to doing so,” Tellis said Friday.
U.S. troop levels
Iraq 2007
January: 137,000
February: 138,000
March: 145,000
April: 144,600
May: 148,000
June: 155,300
July: 156,300
August: 164,000
September: 161,200
October: peaked at 170,000
November: 160,000
December: 156,000
Iraq 2008
As of Friday — 158,000
Projected for July — 135,000
Afghanistan 2007
January: 26,000
February: 25,200
March: 24,300
April: 24,100
May: 26,500
June: 23,700
July: 23,800
August: 24,000
September: 24,500
October: 25,000
November: 25,000
December: 25,000
Afghanistan 2008
As of Jan. 25: 28,000
Projected for March-April: 31,200
Defense Department
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