US Coordinating Pakistani Predator Strikes

The pace of UAV airstrikes against the Taliban and al Qaeda inside Pakistan and the frontier provinces continues to increase, and this is a major reason why. The US is closely coordinating with the Pakistani government over the targets in an attempt to smooth over ruffled feathers in the Pakistani government.

The project was begun in recent weeks to bolster Pakistan's ability and willingness to disrupt the militant groups that are posing a growing threat to the government in Islamabad and fueling violence in Afghanistan.

For the U.S. military, the missions represent a broad new role in searching for Islamic militants in Pakistan. For years, that task has been the domain of the CIA, which has flown its own fleet of Predators over the South Asian nation.

Under the new partnership, U.S. military drones will be allowed for the first time to venture beyond the borders of Afghanistan under the direction of Pakistani military officials, who are working with American counterparts at a command center in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

We've known that those Predator airstrikes have occurred inside Pakistan, but this is the first time that we're acknowledging that we're doing so, and that we're doing so in coordination with the Pakistani government.

So, while the airstrikes continue to take their toll on Taliban forces in South Waziristan, the Taliban continue their assaults on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bill Roggio notes the offensive against a security installation in Khost, and while the Taliban suffered significant losses, it shows that this war is far from over.

The attack began mid-morning when a suicide bomber dressed in a burka attacked the provincial headquarters and was followed up by a suicide car bomber. No casualties were reported in the opening salvo.

A six-man suicide team then assaulted a police station in Khost City but was repelled by the policemen. The attackers entered a nearby municipal center and took 20 people hostage. Three of the suicide bombers apparently detonated their vests as Afghan and US forces cordoned then stormed the building, killed the remaining Taliban fighters, and rescued the hostages.

Other explosions were heard throughout the city, while the Taliban set ambushes for US and Afghan forces as they responded to the attacks from nearby bases. The fighting later died down in the evening as security forces took control.

Zabiullah Mujahid, a senior Taliban spokesman, claimed the attack was larger than reported, and said 30 suicide bombers participated in the assault.

Today’s assault in Khost is the latest in a series of complex attacks and other strikes aimed and police and government centers in Afghanistan since January 2008 [see list below]. Taliban bombers and assault teams have carried out sophisticated strikes in Kabul, Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzgan, Nimroz, Nuristan, and Khost.

Over the past two years, of the Taliban attacks have become more sophisticated and more effective. The Taliban receive training for such attacks at training facilities in Pakistan's northwest as well as in Baluchistan province. Taliban fighters train with al Qaeda and other allied jihadi groups inside of Pakistan, and some Taliban fighters become members of al Qaeda's Shadow Army, the elite paramilitary force operating in the Afghan/Pakistani border region.

The Taliban continue crossing the Afghan/Pakistani border without the slightest hesitation, and that's a situation that must be rectified.

UPDATE:
The Taliban continue attacking NATO supply lines in Pakistan, damaging yet another convoy. MSNBC also reports that seven civilians were killed in the assault on the NATO facility in Khost when one of the suicide bombers detonated his bomb vest. The issue of civilian casualties remains a hot button issue, and the Taliban will continue putting civilians in harm's way by operating as lawless thugs who couldn't care about human rights or the Geneva Conventions, and hope to pin those deaths on the Americans.

Civilian casualties have been a cause of increasing anger in Afghanistan. Afghan officials say U.S. forces killed more than 100 civilians in strikes in Farah province in the west of the country last week.

U.S. commanders say they believe the death toll from that incident was lower and blame the Taliban for putting civilians in danger and possibly killing some of them.

They've been successful in getting the Afghan government to question US airstrikes against Taliban targets, by inflating body counts, and getting the US to defend its actions.