As Pakistan and Saudi Arabia battle internal Islamic extremists, their struggle presents the US with "broader strategic problems" as significant as Iraq or Afghanistan, the commander of American forces in the region said on Thursday.
The officer, General John Abizaid, also said the ranks of insurgent forces in Iraq were not being swelled by large numbers of foreigners, although he said some have formal ties to al-Qaeda, and some have ideological sympathies to the terrorist network.
And while the US occupation authority in Iraq has set July 1 as the deadline for handing sovereignty to a new government in Baghdad, it appears unlikely that a formal agreement on the status of US military forces in the country would be ready by that deadline, he said.
Abizaid, chief of the military's Central Command, noted that the fight by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia against their own Islamic radicals was critically important to America's global campaign against terrorism, but that their problems could not be solved by American military power.
Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia "are involved in their own fight against extremists that is crucial to the ability of their nations to maintain control over the internal situation," he said during a meeting with military affairs correspondents.
"It's a battle of ideas as much as it is a military battle," he said of Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf has survived two assassination attempts.
Of recent terrorist strikes in Saudi Arabia, he noted that this is "not the type of the fight that you're going to send the 82nd Airborne Division to go fight," a reference to the first US troops into Saudi Arabia after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. "It's the type of fight that you need to send the full support and weight of diplomatic, political and social help."
Abizaid said the anti-terrorist struggle in the region would be a lengthy one, and he warned: "Culturally speaking, our patience quotient is not high. Culturally speaking, the patience quotient of our enemies is very high."
Discussing opposition to the stabilization mission in Iraq, Abizaid discounted reports that the insurgency is heavily manned by foreigners.
"I am confident that there is no flood of foreign fighters coming in," he said, and he put their number as "low" and in "the hundreds." He declined to assess the overall number of insurgent fighters.
While the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority is negotiating the path to sovereignty with the Iraqi Governing Council, the US has not yet presented a formal proposal governing the status of US military forces after the hand-over, he said.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
BEYOND WASHINGTON: Although historically the US has been the partner of choice for military exercises, Jakarta has been trying to diversify its partners, an analyst said Indonesia’s first joint military drills with Russia this week signal that new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would seek a bigger role for Jakarta on the world stage as part of a significant foreign policy shift, analysts said. Indonesia has long maintained a neutral foreign policy and refuses to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or US-China rivalry, but Prabowo has called for stronger ties with Moscow despite Western pressure on Jakarta. “It is part of a broader agenda to elevate ties with whomever it may be, regardless of their geopolitical bloc, as long as there is a benefit for Indonesia,” said Pieter
US ELECTION: Polls show that the result is likely to be historically tight. However, a recent Iowa poll showed Harris winning the state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris courted voters angered by the Gaza war while former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump doubled down on violent rhetoric with a comment about journalists being shot as the tense US election campaign entered its final hours. The Democratic vice president and the Republican former president frantically blitzed several swing states as they tried to win over the last holdouts with less than 36 hours left until polls open on election day today. Trump predicted a “landslide,” while Harris told a raucous rally in must-win Michigan that “we have momentum — it’s
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say