The Pentagon has urged Congress to authorize 500 million dollars for building a network of friendly militias around the world to purge terrorists from "ungoverned areas" -- and warned Muslim clerics against providing "ideological sanctuary" to radicals. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday the money would be used "for training and equipping local security forces -- not just armies -- to counter terrorism and insurgencies."
If approved as part of a larger defense bill, the package will "provide greater internal security in areas that are or could become sanctuaries for terrorists," he said. No specific beneficiaries of the program were named, but US officials have repeatedly expressed concern about vast tracts of land along the Afghan-Pakistani border, in Iraq, the Caucasus, Horn of Africa and various islands in the Philippines where radical Islamic fighters could set up shop. The strategy has already been tried in Afghanistan, where US special forces managed to forge alliances with some tribal warlords, who became instrumental in bringing down the Taliban government in 2001 and keeping its remnants at bay, said US military experts. "Indeed, our most important allies in the war on terrorism will be Muslims who seek freedom and oppose extremism," Wolfowitz stated. The request comes amid a concerted push by top Defense Department and other administration officials to develop new forms of "asymmetrical" warfare that would be more effective against small terrorist cells and would spare the United States the need to deploy large contingents of its own forces around the world. Addressing the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the need for the Pentagon to adjust to the new reality of not having to confront big foreign armies, navies and air forces it was originally trained to fight. "There are not a lot of them around at the moment," the secretary pointed out. "And we've got manhunts going on." |