Loading ...New violence in Pakistan could undercut any concessions being considered for the Taliban and make it difficult for President Obama to avoid escalating the war in Afghanistan.
New and increasingly deadly violence in Pakistan threatens to undercut any concessions under consideration toward the Taliban, making it difficult for President Obama to avoid escalating the war in Afghanistan.
Obama is torn between following the advice of his military advisers to deploy at least 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan on top of the 68,000 already there, or to heed the advice of his political advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden, who are urging him to scale back the war effort, consider allowing the Taliban into a political role in Afghanistan’s future and target Al Qaeda in Pakistan.
Complicating the war deliberations is a widening campaign of anti-government violence in Pakistan, which threatens the stability of a nuclear-armed country.
“The two countries are closely tied, the border between the two is porous and certainly there’s cooperation between radicals in both Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Bernard Finel, a senior fellow at the American Security Project.
“Of course the Afghanistan Taliban is based in Pakistan right now, and that’s part of the reason why we see the spate of attacks,” he told FOX News.
On Thursday, teams of gunmen launched coordinated attacks on three law enforcement facilities in Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city, and car bombs exploded in two cities near the Afghan border, killing 39 people.
Islamist militants are trying to scuttle a planned offensive into the Taliban heartland near Afghanistan. But President Asif Ali Zardari said the bloodshed that has engulfed Pakistan over the past two weeks would not deter the government from its mission to eliminate the violent extremists.
At the same time, Obama signed a bill Thursday that gives $7 billion in aid to Pakistan over five years, a measure that the nuclear-armed U.S. ally’s military had claimed was an intrusion into the Asian nation’s internal affairs.
The White House said the aid package signed Thursday provides $1.5 billion annually for economic and social programs as the Obama administration works to shore up Pakistan’s return to civilian rule and to encourage it in the fight against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.
Obama met with his war council Wednesday for the fifth time, and they will meet one more time next week. A decision on how to proceed in Afghanistan is expected shortly after that.
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