Fighting the enemy by protecting friends

Afghanistan | Experts argue for a new kind of surge | Mindy Belz

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Last October a U.S. unmanned Predator aircraft struck a compound run by the powerful, al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani family in North Waziristan. It was early Thursday morning in Pakistan, and the drone hit a village on the outskirts of Miramshah where militant leader Jalaluddin Haqqani had established a madrassa, or religious school, and where his extended family was believed to live. Scores of casualties were reported but Haqqani and other leaders went unharmed.

That was clear last month when, only days after President Barack Obama indicated that he would be willing to open talks with "moderate elements" of Afghanistan's Taliban, Afghan leaders acknowledged that a mediating team had been meeting for months—even before the Predator attack—with members of the Taliban and the Haqqani network.