Spec ops raids into Pakistan halted

[unhappycamper]

Spec ops raids into Pakistan halted
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Sep 26, 2008 20:11:42 EDT

U.S. special operations forces have paused ground operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas, but military and civilian government officials differ over why the cross-border raids have been halted.

The issue of U.S. raids into the tribal areas was thrust into the international spotlight by a Sept. 3 raid in Angor Adda, in the South Waziristan tribal agency, by Navy SEALs working for a Joint Special Operations Command task force. (JSOC is the secretive military organization that oversees the military’s special mission units such as the Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta and the Navy’s Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DevGru, also known as SEAL Team 6.)

“We have shown a willingness starting this year to pursue those kinds of missions,” said a Pentagon official. However, he said, after temporarily granting JSOC greater latitude to conduct cross-border missions, U.S. leaders had decided to again restrain the command, at least as far as raids using ground troops are concerned, to allow Pakistani forces to press home their attacks on militants in the tribal areas.

“We are now working with the Pakistanis to make sure that those type of ground-type insertions do not happen, at least for a period of time to give them an opportunity to do what they claim they are desiring to do,” the Pentagon official said, adding that this did not apply to air strikes launched from unmanned aerial vehicles at targets inside the tribal areas.

Although JSOC is the organization tasked, along with the Central Intelligence Agency, with finding and killing or capturing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Sept. 3 raid was not aimed at “a huge type of target,” the Pentagon official said. “There were just consistent problems in that area that had come to a point where there was significant evidence that there was complicity on the part of the Frontier Corps and others in allowing repetitive raids and activities to go on. And there was a firm desire to, one, send a message, and two, also establish any intelligence audit that could be established that would be useful to respond to a frequent question that we get from the other side of the border, which is, ‘Well, show us and tell us where the problem is, then we’ll deal with it.’”


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/Army_border_ops_092608w/%2e