December 17, 2008: After a spurt of
success in finding and hitting (with UAV launched Hellfire missiles) Islamic
terrorist leaders in Pakistan, there has been a sharp drop-off in such
activity. The recent spurt of successful attacks (at least five senior al Qaeda
leaders, and many more mid-level guys were killed) was apparently the result of
a sudden boost in good intelligence. Now, nothing. Something interesting is
going on.
In 2006 and 2007, there were only ten
such attacks. Then there were about three dozen such attacks this year along
the Afghan border. About 75 percent of these attacks took place in September,
October and November. So far this month, not much. Most of the attacks took
place in Waziristan, an area that has long been a Taliban and al Qaeda
stronghold.
The U.S. has been developing an
informer network in this area for the last six years. Pakistani intelligence
also has its own networks there. The most popular theory is that the new
civilian government forced Pakistani intelligence to share, and that, combined
with the U.S. informant information, led to a large number of reliable target
locations for a short period of time. But the terrorists appear to have taken
down some key informants, as well as becoming much more stealthy in their
movements and communications. The Pakistani government continues to pressure
their intelligence services (the ISI) to get rid of Islamic radical (and often
pro-terrorist) members and to cooperate with the Americans. Meanwhile, the U.S.
has increased its efforts to recruit informants in the Pakistani tribal areas
along the border. The U.S. is putting more electronic monitoring aircraft over
the area, and continuing its Internet monitoring work. The recent burst of
success is a big incentive, because once you have good location information,
dead terrorists tend to follow.
