Attrition: Losses In the Tribal Territories

Archives

April 26, 2007: Pakistan has been fighting Islamic radicals for decades, but the battle got particularly nasty after September 11, 2001. Since then, Pakistani police and troops have arrested over 4,000 Islamic radicals, mostlyin the tribal territories along the Afghan border. About half of those were then handed over to foreign governments. The U.S. apparently for about a thousand of them, but Pakistan refuses to say who got the rest. It would appear that many of the Islamic radicals were turned over to Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries, including neighboring Afghanistan.

During all that, Pakistani security forces suffered over 500 dead and nearly 2,000 wounded. Several thousand tribesmen, Islamic radicals and civilians have been killed in the fighting as well.