It's official: Haqqani Network are terrorists!

From Homeland Security News Wire:

House designates Haqqani Network as a terrorist organization

18 July 2012

The U.S. House of Representative yesterday voted to designate the Haqqani Network as Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO); the network has been supported and armed by Pakistan, which uses the Haqqanis to attack U.S. and coalition soldiers, aid the Taliban, destabilize the Karzai government, and frustrate U.S. Afghan strategy; if the Senate approves the House bill, this would mean designating the Pakistani government, or at least some of its major agencies, as supporters of terrorism, making it legally difficult for the United States to continue and send billions of dollars in military and civilian aid to Pakistan

[...]

The Haqqani Network is engaged in a reign of terror in Afghanistan and is the single largest threat for IED’s our soldiers face in that country,” Representative Mike Rogers (R-Michigan), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “They actively plot and kill U.S. and allied soldiers and routinely harm innocent Afghan civilian men, women and children in their path. To better protect the lives of U.S. soldiers, now is the time for action, not simply paperwork and talk. There is no good reason that this group has not yet been designated.”

CNN reports that the bill originated in the Senate, where it was sponsored by Senator Richard Burr (R-North Carolina). It now goes back to the Senate for consideration.

“We are bringing a great deal of pressure to bear on the Haqqanis,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said last week. “And we believe that on the Pakistani side of the border, that additional action needs to be taken by the Pakistanis to root out this network of militants that is a menace to Afghanistan and to Pakistan.”

The Haqqani Network was created by the Mezi clan of the Zadran Pashtun tribe in Afghanistan in the 1970s, then supported by the CIA and the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, during the 1980s in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, the Haqqani Network occupied itself with crime and smuggling....

There is more here.

Whilst it may be helpful that the American politicians are now officially acknowledging the Haqqani as terrorists, some who pay close attention - and educate themselves - have known this for a long time. Go over to War On Terror News and put Haqqani in their search thing..LOTS to read about the history of this group.