Tuesday, June 09, 2009 NEW YORK: Pakistan's politicians and armed forces are showing more cohesiveness in the fight against Islamic extremists and public opinion is increasingly on the government's side, the U.S. envoy to the region said on Monday. "Public opinion is solidifying behind the government. People are really fed up with what the Taliban and the other extremists have done," Richard Holbrooke told shortly after arriving in the United States from Pakistan. Pakistan's military has been fighting the Taliban in the Swat valley, northwest of the capital, for more than a month after the militants took advantage of a peace pact to conquer new areas in the region. It remains "critically important" that the campaign against the Taliban and other extremists should succeed and that an estimated 2.5 million refugees displaced by fighting should be able to return home securely, he said."So this is far from over," Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said after a speaking engagement in New York late on Monday. "But events in the last few weeks have been very positive from the government's point of view. I also found an increased sense of cohesiveness on this issue between the government, the opposition and the army." Compared with the political crisis of three months ago, Pakistan now has opposition leader Nawaz Sharif in support of the government on the fight against the Taliban and the military is also behind the campaign. "That's a big step forward," Holbrooke said.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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