StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

It is difficult to avoid the derogatory terms. But there is a massive human trafficking industry that has been created by another Cuban exodus. We have a serious problem here and neither of the candidates is addressing it. Illegal immigration is continuing. Our borders are not safe. And now the “Dusty Feet” are are our newest illegal arrivals.

U.S. Coast Guard patrols have sharply reduced the flow of Cubans across the narrow Florida Straits, enforcing a policy of returning people intercepted at sea to Cuba’s communist government.

It’s called “wet-foot, dry-foot” - wet for those caught at sea, dry for those who reach land in Florida and thus qualify for U.S. entry. A third expression has entered the jargon - “dusty-foot,” referring to Cubans who arrive in Texas, where Cubans need only present identity documents and undergo medical and background checks before being welcomed to America.

The price of passage is $5,000 to $10,000 per person and much shorter than in the days when Cubans would spend days at sea headed for Florida or Mexico on rickety boats and rafts. They were known as “balseros,” from the word “balsa” to indicate the flimsiness of their boats.

But the Mexican route is also becoming increasingly prone to violence.

Cut the crap people! Illegals, more illegals and many of them “other than Mexicans” are entering the United States through Texas. I once took a position that Congressman Steve King’s solution, an electrified fence was wrong. Now, I wonder if I was wrong. There are many other ways to guard our border, other ways to track the people entering the country illegally.

I suppose that I now even agree with Texas Fred. Shoot’em before they take over this place.

Dusty Feet, illegal immigration

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Coming on the heels of the U.S. bomb strike on the Afghan-Pakistani border that killed a dozen or so security and civilians, and the escape of nearly a 1000 Taliban from the Kandahar prison, we now witness the boastful Karzai saying that the Afghan army will pursue the Taliban on the Pakistani side of the border. I must be seeing things!

The Afghan government announced that 870 of the jail’s 1,005 inmates had escaped — including the vast majority of its 398 suspected rebels, the ones they call “political prisoners.”

It is said by Canadian officials that they hope that the newly reintroduced insurgents would not negatively impact on their troops. Further, in Friday’s Canadian National Post, they commented on the premature assessment that the Taliban was on its last legs.

That message has been one that NATO has been pounding home over the last several months. Canadian commanders hailed their latest mission, Operation Rolling Thunder, as proof coalition forces could pretty much go where they wanted in southern Afghanistan.

A couple of weeks ago, the top NATO commander in the country, U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill, told a journalist that the Taliban in southern Afghanistan had been routed and were fleeing toward safe havens in Pakistan.

In February, Britain’s Brig. Andrew Mackay said the Taliban had been brought to their knees in Helmand province. The insurgency was lacking fighters because of the large numbers killed by coalition troops, he added.

 
So ontop of this less than optimistic assessment there is Hamid Karzai threatening to invade neighboring Pakistan to pursue the Taliban escapees.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened Sunday to send Afghan troops after notorious Taliban leaders inside Pakistan in an angry warning to his eastern neighbor that he will no longer tolerate cross-border attacks.

The threat — the first time Karzai has said he would send forces into Pakistan — comes only days after a sophisticated Taliban assault on Kandahar’s prison freed 870 prisoners, and six weeks after Karzai survived his fourth assassination attempt.

Now, in my opinion, the confluence of the events described above suggests strongly that the Taliban is far from dead and defunct; that while there are those who “wish” the Taliban to be kaput in Afghanistan to defuse calls from some camps to fight (and complete) the “real” war in Afghanistan by redeploying forces from Iraq. The other implications are that there is no real border. A number of people do not acknowledge the importance and controversy over the Durand Line. As I wrote “elsewhere” and earlier:

The Taliban are far from dead (IMO of course). The dynamics and ebb and flow of the battle in that region of the world are hard to follow for some. It isn’t as simple as moving pieces on a game board (like “Risk”). An oversimplification of the newly declared, and once again, premature death of the Taliban in Afghanistan is belied by the facts. One article in a British newspaper on line quoting British (NATO) forces does not strike the end of the Taliban. Whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan (or more likely in the tribal regions that “buffer” both pseudo-countries along the mythical border established by the Durand Line is inconsequential to the way things evolve. The prison break in Kandahar, not discussed I believe in any comment in this thread, in which 800-1000 Taliban fighters were sprung loose is an example. The ongoing poppytrade and the sex trade remain as a foundation for another rebirth.

Nearly three years ago the Taliban were declared dead and gone and defunct by NATO…they were not…and the NATO expert with whom I had a running on-line debate suddenly disappeared from the discussion. I remain hopeful, and yet I remain realistic and suprised that Karzai has survived. Frankly, I still believe that Karzai lives each day, only at the pleasure of the warlords (drug lords). If you decalre an end to the Taliban in Afghanistan, by default you are suggesting that the jihad is over there. That is a premature conclusion…

The implications further are that by challenging the Taliban so outwardly, Karzai, in my opinion, is simply putting a target on his back. Anyone want Karzai in the death pool?

Kandahar prison break, Karzai, NATO, Taliban

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The siege in Mexico in the war between Calderon’s government forces and the drug cartels has taken a new turn with the Gente Nueva posting lists of 21 police officers marked for death. These banners appeared on bridges across the border near El Paso Texas.

An unusual chill has fallen Chihuahua City, just across from El Paso on the Texas border, after authorities said they found banners attached to bridges displaying a list of 21 police officers targeted for assassination, reportedly written by a gang called Gente Nueva (New People).

The fight for the US-Mexico border rages on. The limited effort to stop the drug trafficking coupled with the increased boldness of the Mexican drug cartels should make a vacation “down Mexico way” a thing of the past (I know people who still drive across the border to go shopping…I don’t understand how they could take their lives in their hands like that).

Calderon, Chihuahua, El Paso, Gente Nueva, Merida Initiative

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