President Bush held an emergency meeting of his top foreign policy aides yesterday to discuss the deepening crisis in Pakistan, as administration officials and others explored whether Thursday’s assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto marks the beginning of a new Islamic extremist offensive that could spread beyond Pakistan and undermine the U.S. war effort in neighboring Afghanistan.
U.S. officials fear that a renewed campaign by Islamic militants aimed at the Pakistani government, and based along the border with Afghanistan, would complicate U.S. policy in the region by effectively merging the six-year-old war in Afghanistan with Pakistan’s growing turbulence.
“The fates of Afghanistan and Pakistan are inextricably tied,” said J. Alexander Thier, a former United Nations official in Afghanistan who is now at the U.S. Institute for Peace.
U.S. military officers and other defense experts do not anticipate an immediate impact on U.S. operations in Afghanistan. But they are concerned that continued instability eventually will spill over and intensify the fighting in Afghanistan, which has spiked in recent months as the Taliban has strengthened and expanded its operations.
Unrest in Pakistan and increasing fuel prices have already boosted the cost of food in Afghanistan, making it more likely that hungry Afghans will be lured by payments from the Taliban to participate in attacks, a U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan said.
Full Story Here:
U.S. fears Pakistan spillover
I hate to say ‘I told you so’, but, I told ya so, and so did a few other forward looking sites, Pakistan IS the most volatile place on earth right at this moment and warnings were sounded along about the time Bhutto went back to Pakistan, several mil-bloggers told everyone, this IS going to happen, and it has…
We, the USA, have tried to install a democracy in Iraq, a nation that is a lot more peaceful, for now, but all the Bush Bots need to ask themselves this question, why is it more peaceful, is it all because of the much maligned SURGE or are there other factors to be considered??
And IF they are willing to give an honest answer I think they would conclude that the reason for the lessening of violence in Iraq is because, as I opined recently, the radical Islamic insurgency are heading for Pakistan and Afghanistan, easier pickings so to speak, especially Pakistan, we don’t have a huge military presence there and the Pakistani army is not a force to be reckoned with…
Afghanistan is on the verge of becoming a HOT ZONE all over again, Pakistan is erupting as I write this and yet we are mired in the affairs of Iraq, not exactly where we need to be in MY opinion but that poses another question, what are we going to do IF Bush decides to re-engage the insurgents in Afghanistan as well as continuing to remain engaged with those that remain in Iraq and then address the problems and the certain dangers faced in Pakistan?? You see, for all the BS about WMDs in Iraq, the ones that to this very day have NOT been found, Pakistan DOES have WMDs, and those WMDs, nukes, are a heartbeat away from falling into the hands of Islamic radicals…
Bush supports Karzai in Afghanistan, al-Maliki in Iraq and Musharraf in Pakistan, 2 warlords that rose to power and 1 military leader that took over by means of a military coup, and now the administration is meeting to discuss the deepening crisis in Pakistan, well, I hope that the fate of the USA is much better served by these discussions than it was by the discussions 5 years ago, the ones that caused us to minimize our involvement in Afghanistan and traipse off to Iraq on the Bush Mission of Vengeance…
And then there’s Iran to consider, if Iraq and Afghanistan have our military stretched to the breaking point as has been claimed, what can we do to address the latest imminent threats??
Spillover?? I guess that’s going to become the new ‘catch phrase’ in D.C., spillover, seems to me like BOIL over may be a lot more appropriate…
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