ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.
Islamic militants surrendered in July after Pakistani authorities stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad. Government officials reported more than 100 deaths; militants insisted that thousands had been killed.
As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups, they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly even Benazir Bhutto.
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan -- In an embarrassing battlefield defeat for Pakistan's army, Islamic extremists attacked and seized a small fort near the Afghan border, leaving at least 27 soldiers dead or missing.
The militants did not gain significant ground, but they did further erode confidence in the U.S.-allied government's ability to control the frontier area where the Taliban and al Qaeda flourish.
So the Taliban are beating the Pakistan Army on the ground in company-sized engagements. Meanwhile, NATO is totally failing to put out the fire next door in Afghanistan. And Iraq, uh, let's not talk about that. You know what I think would be funny? (Not ha-ha funny, you understand.) If between Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the only country that boasted a stable (or exisiting) government by January of 2009 was the one that explicitly rejected US "assistance".
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Rule #1: Never get in a land war in Asia.
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