Al-Qaeda, Taliban threat to Pakistan, says Gates
Foreign Desk Report

MUNICH (Germany)—Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan’s northwest frontier region pose a direct threat to the Islamabad government, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned here Sunday. The presence of the Islamic extremists in the tribal region is not just “a nuisance” to Pakistan, but “is potentially a threat to their government,” Gates told an international security conference in this southern German city.
Gates, who has been calling for NATO reinforcements to defeat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in neighbouring Afghanistan, suggested the time had come for a Pakistani anti-insurgency sweep on its own side of the Afghan border. Pakistan Saturday dismissed US claims that Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar were operating from its northwestern tribal areas. Washington has placed multi-million dollar rewards on the two men’s heads.
A top Al-Qaeda operative, Abu Laith al-Libbi, was recently killed in a suspected US missile strike in Pakistan’s north Waziristan tribal area early this month. The Islamic extremist Taliban militia ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and gave sanctuary to bin Laden, who masterminded the September 11 attacks in the United States. A US-led invasion in October 2001 ousted the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, but they have regrouped and are putting up increasingly stiff resistance to NATO-led international forces.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates made a direct appeal to Europeans on Sunday to support the war in Afghanistan, warning that violence and terrorism could surge worldwide if NATO was defeated there. While admitting policy mistakes — and his own role in one of them — Gates urged the allies to come together in the fight against Islamist militants in Afghanistan and said the credibility of NATO itself was at stake.
“The threat posed by violent Islamic extremism is real — and it is not going to go away,” Gates told an annual gathering of security and military experts in Munich, Germany. “I am concerned that many people on this continent may not comprehend the magnitude of the direct threat to European security,” said Gates, admitting public support for the war in Afghanistan was weak in Europe. His speech was the latest move in a campaign he has undertaken — sometimes quietly, sometimes through blunt public statements — to persuade NATO allies to supply more troops and resources for the mission. Although France has indicated a willingness to send more troops, Germany has been adamant that it cannot do more.
Gates said NATO could not afford “the luxury” of letting some nations conduct less dangerous missions while others did more fighting and dying — a remark which appeared aimed at Germany, which confines its forces to the safer north of Afghanistan. After his speech, several German politicians criticized Gates, with one accusing him of public “finger pointing,” but the Pentagon chief said he had not meant to single out specific countries and called Germany “a little overly sensitive.”
“This is a problem that the alliance has, not that any individual country has,” Gates said. “The finger was never pointed in Germany’s direction.” Gates branded Islamist militancy a movement built on false success, saying “about the only thing they have accomplished recently is the deaths of thousands of innocent Muslims while trying to create discord across the Middle East.”