Security

Qaeda Focusing on Pakistan, Top Marine Says

Pakistan has become Al Qaeda’s "strategic focus," the Marine Corps Commandant says. And Pakistan still isn’t trying all that hard to quash the terror group. "Iraq is now a rear-guard action on the part of al Qaeda," Gen. James Conway tells the Wall Street Journal. "They’ve changed their strategic focus not to Afghanistan but to […]

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Pakistan has become Al Qaeda's "strategic focus," the Marine Corps Commandant says. And Pakistan still isn't trying all that hard to quash the terror group.

"Iraq is now a rear-guard action on the part of al Qaeda," Gen.
James Conway tells the Wall Street Journal. "They've changed their strategic focus not to Afghanistan but to Pakistan, because Pakistan is the closest place where you have the nexus of terrorism and nuclear weapons."

Gen. Conway said Pakistan's best troops were deployed along its border with India and weren't being used in the fight against the country's militants. Pakistan's leadership doesn't yet seem to accept that terrorism poses an existential risk to the country's future, he added. "Pakistan has to understand there's a dire threat there that they have to act against," he said.

Pakistan's failure to take concerted action against the Islamist fighters has led the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S.
military's secretive Special Operations Command to launch a wave of missile strikes against insurgent targets inside Pakistan.

The government in "Islamabad has given tacit approval to the strikes," fired from Predator and Reaper drones, the *Journal *notes. But the military still seems itching for a fight over the robotic aircraft. Last week, Pakistan's army practiced drone shoot-downs. Now, air force chief Air Marshal Tanvir Mahmood Ahmed says he's ready to knock the aircraft out of the sky; the country's political leaders just need to give the thumbs-up.

"The air force is ready for any type of air defense," Ahmed tells Reuters. "First this nation, you people, our parliament, our government, has to debate how we have to engage the foreign UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). Whether we have to engage them diplomatically and politically to resolve it or engage them militarily."

[Photo: NYT]

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