U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is in Afghanistan for talks with the Afghan government and Coalition commanders and said there has been a “significant increase” in cross-border attacks from Pakistan.  This as Time reports the increase in Taliban attacks in the month of December was 200 percent and the NYT reports Taliban attacks are “surging.”  I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the Time figure, nor do I know if the ’surge’ is the equivalent of a ’surge’ in Iraq or if it is an actual sizeable increase of attacks.

See-Dubya, posting at Michelle Malkin’s blog, notes something quite interesting regarding the killing of the hostage takers who attempted to take six Pakistani nuclear scientists hostage.  As I briefly mentioned on Monday, the militants were stopped at a Pakistani checkpoint in North Waziristan and a gunfight ensued.  But here’s the interesting part I didn’t catch, even though I cited the exact same DAWN article.

DAWN reports:

An injured kidnapper told interrogators that their local Taliban chief, Amir Ahmed Gul, had told them that they were going to attack a foreigners’ camp in Thall. He said they did not know that the chief would use them for kidnapping people. He said they were taking the kidnapped people and the vehicles to the seminary of Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani near the cattle market in North Waziristan.

Haqqani, of the Afghan-Soviet War fame and former top Taliban official before the Taliban was deposed, is in North Waziristan?  U.S. Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley said Sunday that Haqqani was in North Waziristan preparing for and launching cross-border attacks.  None of this is actually new news to anyone, or it shouldn’t be.  But apparently it is to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Monday rejected US Maj Gen Benjamin Freakley’s claim that Jalaluddin Haqqani was perating [sic] from inside Pakistan to foment violence in Afghanistan, and said that the “baseless allegations” could harm Pak-US cooperation in the war on terror.

There is a bit of a defense for Musharraf.  He has probably been told countless times by ISI and his own military someone like Haqqani could not be in his country, and this foiled hostage-taking attempt was after the above brush off.

The BBC reported more cross-border shenanigans yesterday, noting Taliban spokesman Muhammad Hanif was captured by the Afghan intelligence.  That’s the first time I had heard of an Afghani intelligence bureau, and one hopes the CIA does a better job of training them and selecting the group’s first officers than that of the ISI.

But anyways, an Afghan intelligence officer noted Hanif was “detained in the border town of Towr Kham in Nangarhar province soon after entering Afghanistan from Pakistan.“  Reuters confirmed the capture after, get this, getting in touch with Taliban officials and those Taliban officials “tried Hanif’s phone number repeatedly but got no response.”  It’s nice to know Rueters has Taliban commanders on speed dial.  I suppose it matches the AP’s own speed dial to Islamists in Somalia fighting with Al Qaida and Hezbollah.

You might know the name of Muhammad Hanif.  He’s been quite talkative.  Hanif is one of the go-to Taliban spokesmen for media organizations trying to get a scoop on what the Taliban plans to do and has also been used as a sounding board to make sure NATO isn’t just making things up, even though on at least one occasion he did make things up, delivering a promise by Taliban leader Mullah Omar to unleash a wave of suicide attacks last Spring and “unimagineable” violence.  Omar might have said that, but a wave of suicide attacks simply didn’t transpire.  Maybe the Taliban fighters are less committed than their AQ brothers in arms?

Also, NATO announced the capture of an unknown Taliban commander during a raid in Southern Afghanistan.  According to NATO, the commander managed to escape an earlier raid.  The AP notes this is the first Taliban commander captured, though many have either decided to drop their arms for a chance to enter the political process or have been killed.

Late last night, the United States military announced two Afghan civilians, a guard and a translater, stopped a suicide car bomb attack on a U.S. base in the nation.  The attempted suicide bomber tried to ram his car through the gate unsuccessfully and then tried to detonate the explosives using some sort of trigger mechanism.  The two Afghanis rushed the care and prevented the terrorist from frolicking with 72 virgins.