According to the New York Times, the United States Armed Forces are considering an expansion of incursions into Pakistan through its porous border with Afghanistan.
The strategic goal of such actions would be the gathering of information about terrorist activities, or as reported by Reuters: “Military commanders said using Special Operations troops could bring an intelligence windfall, if militants were captured and interrogated.” A Pentagon spokesman had no comments about those claims.
It is however rather interesting that these news is coming out just as China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has visited Pakistan and congratulated the government as well as the Pakistani Armed Forces on the: “efforts to battle al Qaeda, just days after the United States said its ally could do more to crack down on militants, especially along the Afghan border,” as reported by Reuters.
In any case all three countries agree on the necessity of a joint battle against Al Qaeda and international terrorism, but personal interests and disagreements on different issues seem to get very much into the way. The deciding superpowers, US and China, are divided on many strategic issues, starting with the Koreas, Tibet, Kosovo, etc…
Unfortunately enough, the two mighty countries are also divided on the Kashmir issue over which India and Pakistan have a decades long conflict that could ignite a nuclear war. Therefore some interpret that China and the US are showing their allegiance to Pakistan and India respectively at this moment, while having the Korean situation in mind.
Of course, the problem with the Afghan border remains, and even though it has been discussed a lot in the media, the contraband, corruption and the incursions of all kinds of criminal, terrorist and intelligence groups are simply blooming, while the Obama administration is trying to show a more effective approach before withdrawing the troops as planned.
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