Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
CNN
April 7, 2009
CNN Newsroom, 2:00 PM
KYRA PHILLIPS: A troubling new challenge for American troops in Afghanistan. They're facing a threat from the Taliban that's grown dramatically over the last year.
Here's CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARBARA STARR: As Marines step up combat operations across southern Afghanistan, U.S. commanders are reviewing significant new intelligence about the insurgent threat.
ADM. MICHAEL MULLEN, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: The insurgency has grown dramatically over the last year, and the weather is starting to get a lot warmer. So we expect the fighting to pick up considerably.
STARR: Mullen spoke exclusively to CNN on his way to Pakistan. The Pakistanis are telling the U.S. they're worried the thousands of additional U.S. troops headed to southern Afghanistan will push insurgents into southern Pakistan and create a new safe haven in the region that the Pakistanis cannot control.
One man in particular U.S. troops are looking for goes by the battlefield name Zakir. He was released from Guantanamo Bay. U.S. troops think he's now operating in southern Afghanistan.
CNN has also learned the U.S. has new intelligence that Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban, has ordered insurgent factions to coordinate and step up attacks against U.S. troops.
There's particular concern about this man, Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of a Pakistani Taliban faction. U.S. intelligence believes he controls thousands of fighters. One U.S. official bluntly says Mehsud specializes in suicide bombers.
U.S. commanders are now up against a shadowy Taliban force that is increasingly targeting Afghan civilians.
BRIG. GEN. JOHN NICHOLSON: Their form of justice is replacing elders with mullahs or other Taliban representatives, and then enforcing justice at the barrel of a gun.
STARR: The U.S. believes the Taliban goal remains unchanged: attacks and intimidation against the people, and to kill as many U.S. troops as they can. (END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: Our Barbara Starr joining us live from Bahrain.
Barbara, isn't there a new insurgent leader in southern Afghanistan, that U.S. troops are going after a man apparently released from Gitmo?
STARR: Well, it is indeed, Kyra, this man Mullah Mohammed Zakir. We heard a lot about him on this trip from through southern Afghanistan that we just left a day ago. He is just one of several new emerging, if you will, insurgent leaders that the U.S. wants to catch, and wants to catch badly.
Zakirreleased from Guantanamo Bay in 2007. One U.S. commander describing him now as a rock star because of that Gitmo incarceration. They're looking for him, and they hope to catch him. They believe he has been involved in many of these attacks against U.S. troops -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: We'll have to talk more about that when the alleged closing of Gitmo takes place, something that President Barack Obama has proposed.
Thanks, Barbara.
April 7, 2009
CNN Newsroom, 2:00 PM
KYRA PHILLIPS: A troubling new challenge for American troops in Afghanistan. They're facing a threat from the Taliban that's grown dramatically over the last year.
Here's CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARBARA STARR: As Marines step up combat operations across southern Afghanistan, U.S. commanders are reviewing significant new intelligence about the insurgent threat.
ADM. MICHAEL MULLEN, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: The insurgency has grown dramatically over the last year, and the weather is starting to get a lot warmer. So we expect the fighting to pick up considerably.
STARR: Mullen spoke exclusively to CNN on his way to Pakistan. The Pakistanis are telling the U.S. they're worried the thousands of additional U.S. troops headed to southern Afghanistan will push insurgents into southern Pakistan and create a new safe haven in the region that the Pakistanis cannot control.
One man in particular U.S. troops are looking for goes by the battlefield name Zakir. He was released from Guantanamo Bay. U.S. troops think he's now operating in southern Afghanistan.
CNN has also learned the U.S. has new intelligence that Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban, has ordered insurgent factions to coordinate and step up attacks against U.S. troops.
There's particular concern about this man, Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of a Pakistani Taliban faction. U.S. intelligence believes he controls thousands of fighters. One U.S. official bluntly says Mehsud specializes in suicide bombers.
U.S. commanders are now up against a shadowy Taliban force that is increasingly targeting Afghan civilians.
BRIG. GEN. JOHN NICHOLSON: Their form of justice is replacing elders with mullahs or other Taliban representatives, and then enforcing justice at the barrel of a gun.
STARR: The U.S. believes the Taliban goal remains unchanged: attacks and intimidation against the people, and to kill as many U.S. troops as they can. (END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: Our Barbara Starr joining us live from Bahrain.
Barbara, isn't there a new insurgent leader in southern Afghanistan, that U.S. troops are going after a man apparently released from Gitmo?
STARR: Well, it is indeed, Kyra, this man Mullah Mohammed Zakir. We heard a lot about him on this trip from through southern Afghanistan that we just left a day ago. He is just one of several new emerging, if you will, insurgent leaders that the U.S. wants to catch, and wants to catch badly.
Zakirreleased from Guantanamo Bay in 2007. One U.S. commander describing him now as a rock star because of that Gitmo incarceration. They're looking for him, and they hope to catch him. They believe he has been involved in many of these attacks against U.S. troops -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: We'll have to talk more about that when the alleged closing of Gitmo takes place, something that President Barack Obama has proposed.
Thanks, Barbara.