US sending more air power to Afghanistan

The United States is sending more air power to Afghanistan amid reports that American commandos are poised to stage hot pursuit raids into Fata.

Three US lawmakers — Gene Green, Michael McCaul and Henry Cuellar — said the plans for stepped-up US military operations were in response to Pakistan’s failure to disrupt terrorist training camps and cross-border attacks from Fata.

On Tuesday, US military officials told reporters in Washington that the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and its escort vessels were moved out of the Gulf to the Arabian sea, shortening the time that the carrier’s strike planes must take to support operations in Afghanistan.

The officials said that since violence is down dramatically in Iraq, US military planners believe it was possible to focus some air capabilities away from Iraq and more on Afghanistan.

The three lawmakers told the Houston Chronicle in separate interviews that they were briefed about the US plan to stage hot pursuit raids into Fata during a recent trip to the region.

They said the Bush administration was recalibrating US operations in the region because of a 40 per cent increase in violent attacks against US-led forces in Afghanistan that had pushed US casualties for the month of June beyond the monthly toll in Iraq.

The United States has about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan, a number expected to rise to nearly 40,000 with reinforcements next year.

The Texas congressmen said they devoted much of their delegation’s separate meetings with President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani last Friday to urging additional action against militants in the tribal territories.

But they said Pakistani officials rejected resumption of the joint US-Pakistani operations that ended in 2003, calling instead for additional US military assistance and intelligence cooperation to target seven or eight terrorist leaders operating in the tribal areas.

Pakistan’s ineffective campaign makes it “imperative that US forces be allowed to pursue the Taliban and Al Qaeda in tribal areas inside Pakistan,” Congressman McCaul insisted. “If we don’t do something now, they’re going to strike us again (in the United States) and it is going to be out of this area.”

Congressman Cuellar said that “either Pakistan does more or we will be taking things into our own hands,” adding: “If our troops are fired on, there will be hot pursuit into that territory.”