“It is not the end of our problems, and is symbolic more than anything else. It is useful in that one chapter has closed, but there are still many remaining. This sort of war on terror will last long past Bin Laden,” Zahariadis says.
The next issue to confront is the United States’ relationship with Pakistan, “because they have not been as forthcoming about it, and from all the reports we are getting this was primarily a U.S. operation and had little to do with the Pakistanis. And of course that creates a problem because there are still pockets of al Qaeda support in Pakistan, they are not going away. They will probably create problems for the U.S. and the Pakistani government. The Taliban will still be launching attacks in Afghanistan and now probably in Pakistan as well. ”
The next step according to Zahariadis? “We need to continue vigilance and probably re-evaluate our relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Primarily our objective in both Afghanistan and Pakistan was to capture Bin Laden—that was the overriding objective. Now that he is dead, we need to redefine our objectives. What do we want to do over there? What do we want to accomplish? That’s not the end of it, and we don’t exactly know where to go from here, at least the public debate has not centered on a more long-term non-bin Laden objective.
My main point is that this is not the end, this is just sort of an intermission,” Zahariadis says.
“It is not the end of our problems, and is symbolic more than anything else. It is useful in that one chapter has closed, but there are still many remaining. This sort of war on terror will last long past Bin Laden,” Zahariadis says.
The next issue to confront is the United States’ relationship with Pakistan, “because they have not been as forthcoming about it, and from all the reports we are getting this was primarily a U.S. operation and had little to do with the Pakistanis. And of course that creates a problem because there are still pockets of al Qaeda support in Pakistan, they are not going away. They will probably create problems for the U.S. and the Pakistani government. The Taliban will still be launching attacks in Afghanistan and now probably in Pakistan as well. ”
The next step according to Zahariadis? “We need to continue vigilance and probably re-evaluate our relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Primarily our objective in both Afghanistan and Pakistan was to capture Bin Laden—that was the overriding objective. Now that he is dead, we need to redefine our objectives. What do we want to do over there? What do we want to accomplish? That’s not the end of it, and we don’t exactly know where to go from here, at least the public debate has not centered on a more long-term non-bin Laden objective.
My main point is that this is not the end, this is just sort of an intermission,” Zahariadis says.