U.S. spy Aircraft Kill Seven People at Afghan border

Miranshah, Pakistan spy aircraft of the United States, Saturday, firing a missile into a complex three insurgents in Pakistan’s tribal regions near the Afghan border, killing seven militants, security officials said. The attack happened at 21 o’clock local time  in Marsikhel area, 20 km east of Miranshah, North Waziristan town of importance, known as a center of Taliban and Al Qaeda linked militants.

Citizenship seven guerrillas were killed was not immediately clear, said a senior Pakistani security officer told AFP on condition of anonymity. Another officer confirmed the attack and killed it, and added: “We do not know whether high-value target present in the area at the time of the attack.” The attack came a day after seven Pakistani soldiers were killed and 16 wounded, when militants armed with rifles and rocket launchers attacked their convoy, a routine mission to the town of Miranshah dai Dattakhel

U.S. forces have launched a spy plane attack against the commander hidden Taliban and Al Qaeda linked militants in tribal area in northwestern part of the country, where guerrillas build their hideouts in the mountainous areas outside the direct control of government. U.S. officials said spy plane attack is a very important weapon in the fight to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan to reverse, where Washington’s troops led the big waves.

Critics say high-tech attack is risky to make the local population into a radical, especially if the civilians were killed. The importance of North Waziristan in the spy plane attack was increased from a Jordanian al-Qaeda double agent blew himself up killing seven CIA staff in a province neighboring Afghanistan in December. More than 870 people have been killed in nearly 100 spy plane attack in Pakistan since August 2008.

Washington calls the Pakistani tribal areas, the global headquarters of Al Qaidda and most dangerous regions in the world. Guerrillas in the area believed to have helped nearly nine-year insurgency in Afghanistan. North Waziristan is a stronghold of Al Qaeda, Taliban and Pakistani and Afghan militants affiliated with the Haqqani network, which was established by Jalaluddin Haqqani commander of the Afghan war and now led by his son, Sirajuddin, are ambitious. Taliban and associated groups of Al Qaeda blamed for a wave of suicide attacks and bombings that have killed nearly 3300 people in Pakistan since 2007. (AFP)

24 people died in bomb attacks at a secondary school and a crowded market in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan

Peshawar, Pakistan At least 24 people died in bomb attacks at a secondary school and a crowded market in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Monday, officials said. Those attacks, which occurred with a few hours time difference between one and another, making the number of victims killed in bombings in Pakistan’s northwest to 73 in three days. Suicide attacks last weekend, characterized by the Taliban killed 49 people in the town of Kohat.

On Monday evening in Peshawar market Qissa Khawani, a suicide bomb attacker walked into the crowd and blew himself up. An AFP reporter at the scene saw scattered shoes, pieces of body and car were destroyed. “Twenty-three people were killed, including three policemen. At least 27 people hospitalized longer,” said senior police official told AFP Imran Kishwar. Senior provincial ministers Bashir Bilour confirm that toll.

Shafqat bomb squad chief Malik told reporters the explosion was caused by an attacker wearing a bomb vest weighing six to eight kilograms. We have found the attacker’s head and feet,” he added. The blast came after protesters who marched against rising inflation and power outages left the area, said some police.

Several hours earlier, a boy who was eight years old were killed and at least 10 people were injured in a bomb attack outside a middle school in Peshawar. Police did not say who had put the bomb in a city hit by Taliban attacks. Bombing came after three suicide attacks within 24 hours killed 49 people in the town of Kohat, Pakistan’s northwest.

More than 3200 people died in suicide attacks and bombings in Pakistan in three years. The violence was blamed on Muslim militants opposed to alliance with the U.S. government. Pakistan’s increasing international pressure to crush militant groups in the region and the northwest tribal zone amid rising attacks cross-border rebel against international forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s tribal areas, particularly Bajaur, plagued by violence since hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda rebels fled to the region after the US-led invasion in late 2001 toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Pakistani forces launched air and ground offensive into the South Waziristan tribal region on October 17, with 30,000 soldiers who assisted jet fighter and helicopter guns.

Although there is resistance in South Waziristan, many officials and analysts believe that most of the Taliban insurgents had fled to neighboring areas of North Waziristan and Orakzai. North Waziristan is the stronghold of the Taliban, militants associated with Al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network, which is famous for attacking American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and the U.S. make that area as a target of missile attacks unmanned aircraft.

Some analysts have also warned that the Taliban and their allies will be stepped up attacks on security forces in Bajaur and other tribal areas to divert the focus of attention from South Waziristan. Security forces conduct large-scale operation against Islamic militants in the Mohmand and Bajaur in August 2008. In February 2009, the military said that net Bajaur after a fierce battle for months, but unrest continues.

According to the military, more than 1,500 militants have been killed since they launched an offensive in Bajaur in early August 2008, including Al-Qaeda’s operational commander in the area, Abu Saeed Al-Masri is an Egyptian. The area was also hit by a missile attack that almost about Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s second person, in January 2006. U.S. forces declared, that border area is used for militant groups as a place to do training, a rearrangement of forces and launch attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan. ( AFP)

45 civilians were killed in an airstrike in the Khyber tribal region

Pakistan acknowledged yesterday that at least 45 civilians were killed in an airstrike in the Khyber tribal region, an admission that could undermine the military’s anti-Taleban campaign in the country’s northwest region. Hundreds of tribesmen demonstrated against the attack in Sera Vela village, which was hit by air force jets at the weekend, causing the worst civilian casualties in a single incident in Pakistan’s war against Islamic militants. Tribal elders said that up to 71 people were killed in the strike, denying there any militants in the area.

A senior military official told The Times that civilians were among dozens of people killed in airstrikes aimed at insurgent hideouts along the Afghan border. He said that the attack also killed 30 militants.

The military rarely admits civilian deaths, which, according to some reports, have mounted in recent months as Pakistan intensifies its offensive against al-Qaeda backed militants in the lawless tribal region. The military had earlier denied that there were any civilian casualties in the weekend attack.

The military official insisted the military had received credible intelligence that militants had been hiding in the area. Security officials said that a large numbers of Taleban fleeing the military operation in South Waziristan had moved to the Khyber tribal region.

Tribal elders and residents disputed the military’s account, saying that there was no militant sanctuary in the area. Many of those killed in the attack belonged to the Kookikhel tribe which has a history of co-operating with the military in the anti-Taleban campaign. Most families in the village have sons in the security forces and many retired army and paramilitary soldiers were among the dead and injured.

Kashmalo Khan, 63, a retired paramilitary soldier whose right leg was fractured, said that he lost 11 family members in the attack. “The bombing continued as people were busy in relief work,” said Mr Khan, who was being treated in a Peshawar hospital. “There is not a single Taleban in our area. The military was given wrong information.”

Another resident said the house that was initially bombed belonged to Hamid Khan, whose two sons were serving in the Frontier Corps. “They had nothing to do with the Taleban,” said Hazar Gul, a resident of Sera Vela.

Sera Vella is a small border village in Khyber, one of the seven semi autonomous tribal regions where the Pakistani army has been conducting operations against Islamic militants. Analysts said that such a large number of civilian deaths could undermine the military’s efforts to mobilise public support for its anti-Taleban campaign. The incident has provided a strong propaganda tool for militants.

“The attack has killed the people most directly affected by the Taleban savagery. It may now turn these people against the military,“ said Rifaat Hussain, professor of Security Studies at Quai-e-Azam University in Islamabad. “The family members of the victims could become easy recruits for the militants.”

Tension ran high in the area, where hundreds of tribesmen joined an anti-Government rally demanding an apology from the military. They also demanded compensation for the family of the victims.

Thousands of Pakistan troops have been involved in the biggest ever offensive against militants in the tribal regions which had become a haven for the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

Pakistan’s military effort to clear the borderland of insurgents who have also been involved in the attacks on Nato troops across the border in Afghanistan has earned praise from Britain and the US administration. The offensive is seen as being critical to the success of the new US Afghan war strategy.

The army, backed by the air force, has recently expanded its operation to Orakzai and Khyber tribal regions after driving out insurgents from South Waziristan, which was also the headquarters of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the militant group responsible for most of the recent terrorist attacks inside the country.

About 200,000 have fled the Orakzai and Khyber regions, swelling the total number of displaced people. According to the United Nations 1.3 million people fleeing from the conflict zone have taken refuge in neighboring towns in the North West Frontier Province.

Pakistani troops killed at least 34 militants after about 150 Taliban attacked a military checkpost in the northwest on Friday

Pakistani troops killed at least 34 militants after about 150 Taliban attacked a military checkpost in the northwest on Friday, challenging government assertions crackdowns have weakened the group.Homegrown Taliban rebels are seeking to topple the U.S.-backed government of unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari, who has been pressured to hand over some of his key powers, such as dissolving parliament and appointing military chiefs.

A senior military officer and four paramilitary soldiers were also killed in the attack in Orakzai, a day after Pakistani jets killed nearly 50 people, mostly militants, in strikes on a school and a seminary in the same region, a government official said.Fourteen soldiers were wounded in the Taliban assault.

Orakzai, one of seven Pakistani tribal regions near the Afghan border, also known as agencies, has seen a surge in military attacks in recent months, targeting militants who were driven out of their bastion of South Waziristan.Pakistan mounted two offensives last year in the northwestern Swat Valley and in South Waziristan on the Afghan border, which it says threw al Qaeda-linked militants into disarray.But despite losing ground, the Taliban hit back with bombings that killed hundreds, prompting troops to step up attacks in other northwestern regions where militants are believed to have taken refuge after offensives.In the latest attack, about 150 Taliban launched a pre-dawn assault on a checkpoint in Orakzai, triggering fierce fighting.

“They attacked from three sides which continued for nearly three hours in which a lieutenant colonel and four other security officials were killed,” said government official Khaista Rehman.”Security forces launched the counter-attack in which 24 militants have been killed,” he said. A paramilitary official, said as many as 30 militants may have been killed.

Army jets and helicopter gunships later targeted suspected militant hideouts in various parts of Orakzai and killed another 10 militants, said government official Mohammad Asghar Khan.Orakzai is considered a militant stronghold of Pakistan Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, who is widely believed to have been killed in a U.S. drone aircraft attack in January.

Pakistani action against militants along its Afghan border is seen as crucial to the U.S. efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan, particularly as Washington sends more troops there to fight a raging Taliban insurgency before a gradual withdrawal starts in 2011.

The two allies pledged increased cooperation in tackling militants during two days of talks in Washington that ended on Thursday, with Washington promising to speed up overdue military payments.U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates praised Pakistan for increased coordination over stabilizing Afghanistan, including the recent arrest of a key Afghan Taliban commander in what has been described as a joint American-Pakistani raid in Karachi.(Reuters)

missile attack launched by the United States (U.S.)

Miranshah A missile attack launched by the United States (U.S.) today, killing seven people in Pakistan. Death of seven people the victims took place in two separate attacks. The death toll is unknown is a member of the militant Taliban.This attack took place in the village Hamzoni, North Waziristan. This region is a suspected militant hideout of Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorist group. U.S. missile of unmanned bombers usually operate in Pakistan.”U.S. bomber aircraft fired five missiles at two vehicles used by members of the militants,” said a senior Pakistani military official was quoted as saying by AFP, Wednesday (17/3/2010).”Five militants were killed in this attack,” said a military official said.At the same time, a U.S. missile attack also occurred in the same village. This second missile attack killing two members of the Taliban.

Pakistan A pair of suicide bombers targeting army vehicles detonated explosives within seconds of each other Friday

LAHORE, Pakistan A pair of suicide bombers targeting army vehicles detonated explosives within seconds of each other Friday, killing at least 39 people in this eastern city and wounding nearly 100, police said. It was the fourth major attack in Pakistan this week, indicating Islamist militants are stepping up violence after a period of relative calm.About ten of those killed were soldiers, said Lahore police chief Parvaiz Rathore.

The bombers, who were on foot, struck RA Bazaar, a residential and commercial neighborhood where several security agencies have facilities. Security forces swarmed the area as thick black smoke rose into the sky and bystanders rushed the injured into ambulances. Video being shot with a mobile phone just after the first explosion showed a large burst of orange flame suddenly erupting in the street, according to GEO TV, which broadcast a short clip of the footage shot by Tabraiz Bukhari.”Oh my God! Oh my God! Who are these beasts? Oh my God!” Bukhari can be heard shouting after the blast in a mixture of English and Urdu.Senior police official Tariq Saleem Dogar said 39 people were killed, and another 95 were hurt. Some of the wounded were missing limbs, lying in pools of blood after the enormous explosions, eyewitness Afzal Awan said.

“I saw smoke rising everywhere,” Awan told reporters. “A lot of people were crying.”No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion quickly fell on the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida.The militants are believed to have been behind scores of attacks in U.S.-allied Pakistan over the last several years, including a series of strikes that began in October and lasted around three months, killing some 600 people in apparent retaliation for an army offensive along the Afghan border.In more recent months, the attacks were smaller, fewer and confined to remote regions near Afghanistan.But on Monday, a suicide car bomber struck a building in Lahore where police interrogated high-value suspects – including militants – killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.Also this week, suspected militants attacked the offices of World Vision, a U.S.-based Christian aid group, in the northwest district of Mansehra, killing six Pakistani employees, while a bombing at a small, makeshift movie theater in the main northwest city of Peshawar killed four people.The attacks show that the loose network of insurgents angry with Islamabad for its alliance with the U.S. retain the ability to strike throughout Pakistan despite pressure from army offensives and American missile strikes against militant targets.

The violence also comes amid signs of a Pakistani crackdown on Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida operatives using its soil. Among the militants known to have been arrested is the Afghan Taliban’s No. 2 commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.The Pakistani Taliban, meanwhile, are believed to have lost their top commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, in a U.S. missile strike in January. The group has denied Mehsud is dead but has failed to prove he’s still alive.

Militant attacks in Pakistan frequently target security forces, though civilian targets have not escaped.During the bloody wave of attacks that began in October – coinciding with the army’s ground offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in the South Waziristan tribal area – Lahore was hit several times.In mid-October, three groups of gunmen attacked three security facilities in the eastern city, a rampage that left 28 dead. Twin suicide bombings at a market there in December killed around 50 people.(AP)

the leader of a major Taliban faction attacking Western forces in Afghanistan was killed in a recent missile strike by a U.S. drone in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD  A son of the leader of a major Taliban faction attacking Western forces in Afghanistan was killed in a recent missile strike by a U.S. drone in Pakistan, security officials said on Friday. A pilotless U.S. drone fired two missiles into a compound owned by the Haqqani militant network on Thursday in Pakistan’s North Waziristan ethnic Pashtun tribal region on the Afghan border, killing three people.Mohammad Haqqani, a son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, head of the Haqqani network which is linked to al Qaeda and has carried out several high-profile attacks in Afghanistan, was among the dead, Pakistani security officials said.

But another son of the elder Haqqani, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is a much more high-profile target of the U.S. drones.”Mohammad Haqqani is a younger brother of Sirajuddin. He (Mohammad) was killed in the attack,” a security official who declined to be identified told Reuters.Veteran guerrilla commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is in his 70s, has passed on the leadership of his militant faction to Sirajuddin.U.S. forces in Afghanistan describe Sirajuddin as one of their biggest enemies and the United States has posted a bounty of up to $5 million for him.

Thursday’s drone strike was in Dandi Darpakhel village near North Waziristan’s main town of Miranshah where many members of Haqqani’s extended family have been living since the U.S.-backed Afghan jihad, or holy war, against Soviet forces in the 1980s.
BORDER STRONGHOLD Sirajuddin Haqqani was known to visit the village but another Pakistani intelligence agency official said he was not there at the time of the attack.Residents and government officials also confirmed the death of Mohammad Haqqani.U.S. drones have targeted the village several times and 23 people, many of the members of the Haqqani family, were killed in a strike there in September 2008.The elder Haqqani set up a sprawling madrasa or Islamic seminary in the village in the 1980s.Jalaluddin Haqqani has had close links with Pakistani intelligence, notably the military’s main Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

U.S. ally Pakistan officially objects to the drone strikes, saying they are a violation of its sovereignty and fuel anti-U.S. feeling which complicates Pakistan’s efforts against militancy.But at least some strikes are carried out with the consent of Islamabad, in particular those on Pakistani Taliban militants fighting the state.The latest missile strike came a day after Pakistan confirmed the arrest of the Afghan Taliban’s top military strategist, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in the city of Karachi this month.

The Haqqani faction does not launch attacks in Pakistan but sends fighters across the border into Afghanistan from its stronghold in lawless North Waziristan.The United States has stepped up missile strikes in North Waziristan since a Jordanian suicide bomber killed seven CIA employees at a U.S. base across the border in the Afghan province of Khost in late December.Separately, two pro-Taliban militants suspected of involvement in several high-profiles attacks in Pakistan were killed in a shootout with police in the central city of Faisalabad after they refused to surrender.”They plotted more attacks. They opened fire on police when we intercepted them. Both of them have been killed,” senior police official Sarfraz Falki told(Reuters)

Pakistani military confirmed on Wednesday that the Taliban's top military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar had been captured

ISLAMABAD The Pakistani military confirmed on Wednesday that the Afghan Taliban’s top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, had been captured.U.S. and Pakistani officials who declined to be identified said on Tuesday Baradar had been captured in the Pakistani city of Karachi in a raid by Pakistani and U.S. agents.”At the conclusion of detailed identification procedure, it has been confirmed that one of the persons arrested happens to be Mullah Baradar,” the military said.It declined to say where he had been caught or to give other details, citing security reasons.The capture came as U.S. forces spearhead one of NATO’s biggest offensives against the Taliban in Afghanistan in an early test of U.S. President Barack Obama’s troop surge policy.U.S. officials and analysts said it was too soon to tell whether Pakistan’s cooperation against Baradar would be extended to other top militants on the U.S. hit list.The arrest followed months of behind-the-scenes prodding by U.S. officials who saw inaction by Islamabad as a major threat to their Afghan war strategy.

Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik had on Tuesday declined to confirm Baradar’s capture, saying a large number of people had fled operations by NATO forces in Afghanistan to Pakistan and many had been picked up.He denied that there had been any joint operation by Pakistani and U.S. agents.Though nuclear-armed Pakistan is a U.S. ally, anti-U.S. sentiment runs high and many people have long been suspicious of the U.S.-led campaign against militancy and oppose any U.S. security operations in Pakistan.

“HE IS WITH US”A Pakistani intelligence official said security agents had been searching for Baradar in the southwestern city of Quetta, where the United States says a Taliban leadership council is based.

“Sensing that he might be arrested, he somehow slipped out of Quetta and into Karachi, maybe in disguise. That’s where we arrested him, about four days back,” said the official, who declined to be identified.”He is with us and is being interrogated.”Asked if the United States was involved in the questioning, he said: “Yes of course. We have that sort of cooperation with them.”Baradar’s arrest comes amid a renewed drive for peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.Asked if the Taliban commander could help with any reconciliation process, the Pakistani agent said: “It might lead to that eventually … Anything is possible but so far we have not come to that.”Pakistan is anxious to have a say in post-war Afghanistan in order to limit the influence of old rival India there.Anger in Pakistan toward the United States has been exacerbated by attacks by pilotless U.S. drone aircraft on militants in lawless enclaves along the Afghan border.

In the latest strike, a U.S. drone fired a missile into the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border, killing at least three militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.The drone targeted a militant compound in the village of Tapi, about 15 km (9 miles) east of Miranshah, the main town in the region, which is a hotbed of Taliban and al Qaeda militants. It was the second attack on the village this week.There was no information about the identity of those killed or of three men wounded in the strike, they said.Pakistan objects to the drone strikes, saying they are a violation of its sovereignty and complicate its efforts against militancy.The Pakistani army has made gains against militants battling the state over the past 10 months but it has ruled out a major offensive against Afghan Taliban factions on its soil, saying its forces are already stretched.(Reuters)

Pakistani lawyers for five young Americans accused of contacting militants over the Internet and plotting terrorist attacks sought their release on bail

SARGODHA,Pakistani lawyers for five young Americans accused of contacting militants over the Internet and plotting terrorist attacks sought their release on bail on Tuesday, saying the prosecution lacked evidence.The students, in their 20s and from the U.S. state of Virginia, were detained in December in the central Pakistani town of Sargodha, 190 km (120 miles) southeast of the capital.They have not been formally charged, but could face lengthy prison terms if found guilty.The case of the Americans has underscored global security dangers posed by the Internet as militants use cyberspace to evade tighter international security measures and plot holy war.

A defense lawyer for the five, who appeared in an anti-terrorism court in Sargodha, requested bail, saying allegations against them were “vague”.”No substantial evidence is available to show their guilt,” the lawyer, Mohammad Shahid Kamal Khan, told reporters.

“It’s a violation of their legal and fundamental rights to keep them in confinement,” he said, adding he expected the court to decide on the bail request on Wednesday.The five told the court earlier they only wanted to provide fellow Muslims in Afghanistan with medical and financial help.

They have accused the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Pakistani police of torturing them and trying to frame them.Pakistani authorities have denied the accusations of mistreatment, which the five repeated on Tuesday, saying authorities were trying to force then back to the United States on “phony charges”.

“We have been threatened to be tortured again if we continued to speak out the truth,” one of the five wrote on a piece of tissue paper dropped from a police van as they arrived at court.Khalid Farooq, the father of one of the accused, said they were innocent. “There is no question about that,” he said.Two of the five are of Pakistani origin, one of Egyptian, one of Yemeni and one of Eritrean origin. They were arrested days after arriving in Pakistan.

Police have said emails showed they contacted Pakistani militants who had planned to use them for attacks in Pakistan, a front-line state in the U.S.-led war against militancy.Pakistan is struggling against al Qaeda-linked militants and is under pressure from Washington to help stabilize neighboring Afghanistan, where a Taliban insurgency is raging.The United States says Pakistan must crack down harder on militants who cross into Afghanistan and attack U.S.-led troops. (Reuters)

Barack Obama's national security team singled out one man from its list of most-wanted terrorists, Baitullah Mehsud,leader of the Pakistani Taliban

WASHINGTON In the early months of his presidency, President Barack Obama’s national security team singled out one man from its list of most-wanted terrorists, Baitullah Mehsud, the ruthless leader of the Pakistani Taliban. He was to be eliminated.Mehsud was Pakistan’s public enemy No. 1 and its most feared militant, responsible for a string of bombings and assassination attempts. But while Mehsud carried out strikes against U.S. forces overseas and had a $5 million bounty on his head, he had never been the top priority for U.S. airstrikes, something that at times rankled Pakistan.”The decision was made to find him, to get him and to kill him,” a senior U.S. intelligence official said, recalling weeks and months of “very tedious, painstaking focus” before an unmanned CIA aircraft killed Mehsud in August at his father-in-law’s house near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

It was not the first airstrike on Obama’s watch, but it marked the first major victory in his war on terrorism, a campaign the administration believes can be waged even more aggressively than its predecessor’s. Long before he went on the defensive in Washington for his handling of the failed Christmas Day airline bombing, Obama had widened the list of U.S. targets abroad and stepped up the pace of airstrikes.Advances in spy plane technology have made that easier, as has an ever-improving spy network that helped locate Mehsud and other terrorists. These would have been available to any new president. But Obama’s counterterrorism campaign also relies on two sharp reversals from his predecessor, both of which were political gambles at home.Obama’s national security team believed that the president’s campaign promise to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq would have a side benefit: freeing up manpower and resources to hunt terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Intelligence officials, lawmakers and analysts say that approach is showing signs of success.

Obama also has sought to reach out to Islamic allies and tone down U.S. rhetoric, a language shift that critics have argued revealed a weakness, in an effort to win more cooperation from countries like Yemen and Pakistan.For example, though Pakistan officially objects to U.S. airstrikes within its border, following the Mehsud strike, the U.S. has seen an increase in information sharing from Pakistani officials, which has helped lead to other strikes, according to the senior law enforcement official. He and other current and former officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters.Pakistan’s cooperation is key to U.S. counterterrorism efforts because much of the best intelligence still comes from Pakistan’s intelligence agency. Ensuring that cooperation has been a struggle for years, in part because Pakistan wants greater control over the drone strikes and its own fleet of aircraft, two things the U.S. has not allowed.

“The efforts overseas are bearing fruit,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a strident critic of Obama’s domestic counterterrorism policies who said Obama has at times shown himself even more aggressive than Bush in his use of force overseas. “I give them generally high marks for their efforts to capture and kill terrorists in Pakistan, and they’re pushing the envelope in Yemen.”CIA drones, the remote-controlled spy planes that can hunt terrorists from miles overhead, are responsible for many of the deaths. Drone strikes began increasing in the final months of the Bush administration, thanks in part to expanded use of the Reaper, a newer generation aircraft with better targeting systems and greater, more accurate firepower.

Obama has increased their use even further. A month after Mehsud’s death, drone strikes in Pakistan killed Najmiddin Jalolov, whose Islamic Jihad Union claimed responsibility for bombings in 2004 at U.S. and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan. Senior al-Qaida operatives Saleh al-Somali and Abdallah Sa’id were killed in airstrikes in December. And Mehsud’s successor at the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, died following an attack last month.Intelligence officials and analysts say the drawdown of troops in an increasingly stable Iraq is part of the reason for the increase in drone strikes. The military once relied on drones for around-the-clock surveillance to flush out insurgents, support troops in battle and help avoid roadside bombs.

With fewer of those missions required, the U.S. has moved many of those planes to Afghanistan, roughly doubling the size of the military and CIA fleet that can patrol the lawless border with Pakistan, officials said.”These tools were not Obama creations, but he’s increased their use and he has shifted the U.S. attention full front to Afghanistan,” said Thomas Sanderson, a defense analyst and national security fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.The Obama administration has also benefited from stepped-up cooperation with officials in Osama bin Laden’s ancestral homeland of Yemen. Authorities there killed 30 suspected militants in airstrikes in December closely coordinated with U.S. intelligence agencies.

Yemen has had a sometimes rocky relationship with the U.S. and was perceived to have an on-again-off-again approach to fighting terrorism, but officials in Washington are cautiously optimistic about a newly strengthened relationship.Abdullah al-Saidi, Yemen’s ambassador to the United Nations, said his country has always been committed to fighting terrorism. But in a fragmented country beset by a growing al-Qaida presence, a rebellion in the north and a secessionist movement in the south, it wasn’t always easy for the government to openly align with the United States.Washington is trying to make it easier with the promise of more money. But perhaps more important, al-Saidi said, were overtures such as Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo, where he sought a “new beginning” with the Muslim world.

Obama has also abandoned terms like “radical Islam” and “Islamo-fascism,” rhetoric that was seen as anti-Muslim by many in the Arab world and which al-Saidi said made it harder for governments to openly cooperate with Washington.”Just the notion of not equating Islam with terrorism, there is a lot of good will toward him,” al-Saidi said. “For the public, it’s easier to say, ‘Well, it’s no longer a hostile power as it used to be.'”Such international successes have largely been drowned out by the controversy that followed the failed bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas. When the FBI read suspected bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his rights and charged him in federal court, Republicans accused Obama of not understanding the country is at war.

“They’re trying to be tougher than Bush overseas but different from Bush at home,” Graham said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense. They really got the right model for Pakistan and Yemen, but they’re really tone deaf at home.”After Obama missed his own deadline to close the prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and backtracked on a plan to prosecute 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a New York courthouse, Republicans saw the Detroit case as an opportunity to renew questions about Obama’s national security credentials, Republican strategist Kevin Madden said.Madden said that Obama’s stepped-up strategy overseas doesn’t resonate with voters, and Republicans gain little in an election year by acknowledging where they agree with the White House strategy.

“National security politics is driven by events more than it’s driven by long-term trends,” he said.Or, as Graham put it: “What resonates with people is what happens in Detroit, more than what happens on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.”The White House says it see no conflict between broadening the attacks overseas and sticking with the U.S. judicial system at home, where hundreds of people have been convicted on terrorism charges since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”The president believes that we need to use all elements of American power to defeat al-Qaida, including the strength of our military, intelligence, diplomacy and American justice,” White House spokesman Ben Rhodes said. “We only weaken ourselves when we fail to use our full arsenal.”(AP)