ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Seven years after 9/11, al Qaida and its allies are gaining ground across the region where the plot was hatched, staging their most lethal attacks yet against NATO forces and posing a growing threat to the U.S.-backed governments in Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan .
While there have been no new strikes on the U.S. homeland, the Islamic insurrection inspired by Osama bin Laden has claimed thousands of casualties and displaced tens of thousands of people and shows no sign of slackening in the face of history's most powerful military alliance.
The insurgency now stretches from Afghanistan's border with Iran through the southern half of the country. The Taliban now are able to interdict three of the four major highways that connect Kabul , the capital, to the rest of the country.
"I am not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan ," Adm. Michael Mullen , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded before a congressional committee on Tuesday.
Al Qaida and the Taliban — the Islamist militia that harbored bin Laden while it ruled Afghanistan — were quickly defeated by U.S. airstrikes and opposition forces directed by CIA officers and U.S. commandos after the Sept. 11, 2001 , attacks.
But many extremists fled and regrouped in Pakistan's remote tribal region, in part because Bush declined to use U.S. troops to block escape routes and began diverting resources for the 2003 invasion of Iraq .
The insurgents' strategy has two major goals: to erode popular support for the U.S.-backed governments in Islamabad and Kabul and to undermine popular backing in the United States and allied countries for continuing the mission in Afghanistan .
They appear to be succeeding, with recent polls in Britain , France , Holland and Canada showing majorities favoring troop withdrawals.
http://news.yahoo.com/story//mcclatchy/20080910/wl_mcclatchy/3041862
