Fiddling In Iraq While The World Burns

While the West's attention is fixated on Iraq, extremists are running rampant in other nations which don't get any media attention because the people being blown up do not include Americans. It almost beggars belief that so much has been poured into Iraq when it was never a primary element of the War on Terror until after an invasion that seems to have been a simple grudge-match on Bush's part. In Pakistan, in Indonesia, in Africa and in South East Asia, the terrorists have pretty much a free hand.

This from Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor:

Dismissing government efforts at reconciliation, emboldened separatist militants in southern Thailand have intensified their attacks sharply in recent weeks. May has been one of the bloodiest months in a conflict that has taken more than 700 lives since January 2004. Certain areas of the majority-Muslim provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat now appear to be sliding from a sustained campaign of destabilisation towards low-level guerrilla warfare.

May saw 26 incidents involving improvised explosive devices (IEDs) - the highest monthly total in the conflict to date after 22 such incidents in August 2004 and 21 in February 2005. By early June, IED attacks aimed mostly at security forces were taking place at the rate of one a day. This compares with a rough average of three IED attacks per month in the first half of 2004, which only rarely resulted in casualties, and nine per month during the second half of the year.

More worrying for the security forces than the frequency of the attacks has been a tactical shift on the part of the insurgents from mobile phone-initiated explosions to command-detonated IEDs in targeting security force vehicles. This tactic relies on a simple electrical wire running between the attacker and a pre-positioned charge beside or under the road surface.

Now doesn't that sound as if experience gained in Iraq is being exported to other groups worldwide? The Iraqi adventure was such a mistake and we are beholden to stick around and try to fix it if we can. What a waste of time and resources.