The al Qaeda network has stepped up activity along the Afghan-Pakistan border, opening a “second front” to divert U.S. military resources and attention from Iraq, Afghanistan’s interior minister said Friday. Ali Ahmad Jalali said some recent attacks on U.S. forces, especially in the east of the country, had been carried out by foreign al Qaeda fighters, as opposed to native Taliban militia. Militants killed in clashes on the Afghan and Pakistan sides of the border in recent weeks included Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks and Pakistanis, a sign they were from the network of Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, whose fate remains a mystery. “Al Qaeda, not the al Qaeda leadership that is concerned only about Afghanistan, but the whole area, the whole region, want to keep another front open in Afghanistan while they fight in Iraq in order to split the attention of the United States,” Jalali told Reuters in an interview. Full Story
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