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| Afghanistan | ||
| Taliban stronger than before US troop surge: US lawmakers | ||
| 2012-05-07 | ||
| WASHINGTON: The Taliban are stronger now than before US President Barack Obama ordered a surge of US troops to Afghanistan, two senior US lawmakers said on Sunday, contradicting the administration’s assessment of the insurgency. “I think we both say that what we found is the Taliban is stronger,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein told Fox News Sunday in an interview that included US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, who agreed with her statement. The two lawmakers returned last week from a trip to Afghanistan. The US Defence Department said last week in a report to Congress that its surge of 33,000 extra troops in Afghanistan ordered in late 2009 had weakened the Taliban but that the insurgency remained resilient. The report said overall insurgent attacks declined in 2011 for the first time in five years, even though violence increased in areas surrounding the Taliban’s southern stronghold of Kandahar, a region where US efforts have been focused since 2009. Feinstein, a Democrat, said radical madrasas in Pakistan were providing new recruits to the Afghan insurgency. “So an insurgency which one can expect will burn itself out after a period of time will not necessarily burn out,” she said.
Rogers said there was a danger that Obama’s announcement of a date of withdrawal of US combat forces in Afghanistan and Washington’s decision to hold talks with the Taliban could undermine the US objective of denying a safe haven to terrorists. “The first priority is to deny safe haven and that means a strategic defeat of the Taliban and we have to also defeat the safe havens in the tribal areas of Pakistan,” said Rogers, a Republican. The Obama administration is due to pull the last of its 33,000 surge troops from Afghanistan by this fall, leaving around 68,000 US soldiers there. Rogers and Feinstein both said the United States should designate the Haqqani network, an Afghan insurgent group believed to be based in Pakistan, as a terrorist organisation. “They’ve killed nearly 500 US troops. They are based in Miranshah (in Pakistan) ... This is something we have to be very aggressive to put an end to,” Rogers said.
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #5 No shit, Frank. What's up with that? Too much Harry Belafonte growing up, Barry? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2012-05-07 16:56 |
| #4 OK, Taliban may be stronger, but the "Tollybon" is not stronger, just ask Zero |
| Posted by: Frank G 2012-05-07 09:42 |
| #3 Feinstein, a Democrat, said radical madrasas in Pakistan were providing new recruits to the Afghan insurgency. Come now people! The entire conflict is being orchestrated under ISI tutulage and auspices from safehavens in Chaman and Quetta. It has been for YEARS! We are obviously unwilling to smite them, so we might as well declare it the miserable failure that it is, pack it up and leave. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2012-05-07 07:07 |
| #2 Note the complete silence of the media on the dismal failure of Obama's surge. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2012-05-07 05:30 |
| #1 Just wait until Hollande meets Obama Mr Hollande will take the presidential Airbus to a meeting of the G8 at Camp David on May 18-19, followed on May 20-21 by a Nato summit in Chicago. He can expect a chilly reception from President Barack Obama when he tells him France is going to withdraw its 3,400 troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012, a year ahead of schedule. "We will find the terms of language that will enable us not to break the china," said a Hollande aide. |
| Posted by: tipper 2012-05-07 00:40 |