As American troops move deeper into southern Afghanistan to fight Taliban insurgents, U.S. officials are expressing new concerns about the role of fugitive Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and his council of lieutenants, who reportedly plan and launch cross-border strikes from safe havens around the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.

But U.S. officials acknowledge they know relatively little about the remote and arid Pakistani border region, have no capacity to strike there, and have few windows into the turbulent mix of Pashtun tribal and religious politics that has turned the area into a sanctuary for the Taliban leaders, who are known collectively as the Quetta Shura.

Pakistani officials, in turn, have been accused of allowing the Taliban movement to regroup in the Quetta area, viewing it as a strategic asset rather than a domestic threat, while the army has been heavily focused on curbing violent Islamist extremists in the northwest border region hundreds of miles away.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • Asia • Pakistan

1. nwlayman wrote: With great regret I wonder if it might just be time to let bronze age thugs be bronze age thugs.  We are so un-used to seeing an utterly pre-christian lack-of civilization we assume people wouldn’t want to live that way.  In despair I can actually see why wars used to be the way they were; you kill all the men and enslave everyone else.  Put an X over that valley and move on to the next one.  Since we aren’t likely to do a conquest of Canaan style effort we’re probably doomed to failure there.  Just hideous. September 30, 11:52 am | [comment link]

2. William Witt wrote: I thought New Haven was in Connecticut. September 30, 2:50 pm | [comment link]

3. Br_er Rabbit wrote: One free pass to the laffin’ patch for Dr. Witt. September 30, 4:31 pm | [comment link]

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