Setting Up Shop - In Pakistan

For a couple of months there have been accounts of a major build-up of Taliban forces in Pakistan in preparation for a major spring offensive against the Karzai government in Kabul.

Bearing those accounts out is a report in the International Herald Tribune that the Taliban has set up a mini-state in Pakistan's border territories:

"Islamic militants are using a recent peace deal with the government to consolidate their hold in northern Pakistan, vastly expanding their training of suicide bombers and other recruits, and fortifying alliances with Al Qaeda and foreign fighters, diplomats and intelligence officials from several nations say. The result, they say, is virtually a Taliban ministate.

"The militants are openly flouting the terms of the September accord in North Waziristan, under which they agreed to end cross-border help for the Taliban insurgency that revived in Afghanistan with new force this year, the officials say.

"The area is becoming a magnet for a new influx of foreign fighters, who not only challenge government authority in the area but are even wresting control from the local tribes, according to several American and NATO officials, and Pakistani and Afghan intelligence officials.

"'They are taking territory,' said one Western ambassador in Pakistan. 'They are becoming much more aggressive in Pakistan.'

"'It is the lesson from Afghanistan in the '90s,' he added. 'Ungoverned spaces are a problem. The whole tribal area is a problem.'"

The report also confirms that NATO's new enemy isn't just the Taliban anymore:

"These fighters include Afghans and seasoned Taliban leaders, Uzbek and other Central Asian militants, and what intelligence officials estimate to be 80 to 90 Arab terrorist operatives and fugitives, including possibly the Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"The tightening web of alliances among these groups in a remote, mountainous area increasingly beyond state authority is potentially disastrous for efforts to combat terrorism as far away as Europe and the United States, intelligence officials warn.

"They and Western diplomats say it also portends an even bloodier year for Afghanistan in 2007, with the winter expected to serve as what one official described as a "breeding season" to multiply ranks. "I expect next year to be quite bloody," the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Ronald Neumann, said in an interview last week. "My sense is the Taliban wants to come back and fight. I don't expect the Taliban to win, but everyone needs to understand that we are in for a fight."

The United States, NATO and Canada have had plenty of warnings of what is building and what that portends for the spring. Surely the time to strike at this growing threat is during the coming two months, before it can enter and disperse into southern Afghanistan. There's no guarantee that we can effectively crush this rebuilt insurgency so Harper, O'Conner and Hillier had better find some way to beef up our force to meet this challenge. The status quo is no longer an option.