Some have commented on the fact that the mission to Iraq has distracted from the effort against al Queda in Afghanistan. The New York Times had an interesting article today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/world ... &th&emc=th
Afghan and NATO security forces have recently rounded up several men like Hafiz Daoud Shah, a 21-year-old unemployed Afghan refugee who says he drove across the border to Afghanistan in September in a taxi with three other would-be suicide bombers.
Every case, Afghan security officials say, is similar to that of Mr. Shah... The trail of organizing, financing and recruiting the bombers who have carried out a rising number of suicide attacks in Afghanistan traces back to Pakistan, they say.
“Every single bomber or I.E.D. in one way or another is linked to Pakistan,” a senior Afghan intelligence official said, referring to improvised explosive devices like roadside bombs. “Their reasons are to keep Afghanistan destabilized, to make us fail, and to keep us fragmented.”
A senior United States military official based in Afghanistan agreed for the most part. “The strong belief is that recruiting, training and provision of technical equipment for I.E.D.’s in the main takes place outside Afghanistan,” he said. By I.E.D.’s he meant suicide bombers as well.
So, if Pakistan is supplying many of the terrorists in Afghanistan, is providing safe harbor to Osama bin Laden, has a nuclear arsenal and is an acknowledged dealer of nuclear technology under A.Q. Khan, why has our response been to grant them Most Favored Nation trading status, rather than taking them out??
The handling of that relationship seems to be contradictory to everything the Bush administration has espoused. Why haven't they been the main point of the Axis of Evil? I'm just curious as to why we have handled that situation the way we have.
