REAL Pakistanis getting rid of Taliban traitors
CAMP WILDERNESS, Afghanistan: Pakistani offensives against Taliban bastions have stemmed the flow of fighters into Afghanistan, according to a US general, but local officials want further action.
Pakistan last year embarked on a series of ambitious offensives to evict the Taliban from their rugged and isolated northwest sanctuaries.
The army went after fighters who swept through the Swat valley perilously close to the capital, moving on to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan heartland South Waziristan and other tribal districts that hug the Afghan border.
“I think overall the effects that we see is that it is putting a strain on our common enemy,” said Major General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in eastern Afghanistan.
“Now it’s actually fighting in two directions… We know that they are having more difficulty with their supplies, their finances, their leadership.”
The US general told AFP on a visit to ISAF’s Camp Wilderness, deep in the mountains of eastern Paktya province, that Pakistan’s military push was most effective when coupled with Nato action over the border.
“There was a period of time in summer where the cross-border activity was actually lower than it had been in the last two years,” he said.
“So, yes, you can see the effects of it. It has decreased the cross border activity for the period of time that we are working together.”
Militant training camps and safehouses in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt mushroomed after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan sent Afghan Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other Islamist fighters flooding into the region in late 2001.
But critics say Islamabad is picking and choosing which groups to pursue, with little effect on the nearly nine-year Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
“Those operations are not effective for Afghanistan,” said Abdul Qayum Katawazy, governor of Afghanistan’s Paktika province, which borders North and South Waziristan and southwest Baluchistan in Pakistan.
“The Pakistani military are fighting those Taliban that are against the Pakistan government,” said Katawazy.
They do not want to fight militants who are against the Afghan government and coalition forces but who do not oppose the Pakistani authorities, he added.
Brigadier General Mohammad Asrar Aqdas, commander of the Afghan army in Khost province, which borders Pakistan’s North Waziristan and Khurram tribal districts, praised the operations but said he also saw few benefits.
“We haven’t felt any positive effect from the operations yet. This operation was not in all of Waziristan and all the insurgent camps,” he said.
Washington has criticised Islamabad for targeting only the militants that attack within Pakistan while taking a softer stance on groups using their territory to target foreign soldiers over the border.
Pakistani officials bristle at any suggestion that they are not doing enough, when thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed in the military assaults and Taliban attacks.
While the blame game rages on, US military officials say fighters continue to move back and forth over the two countries’ porous border, either to attack foreign troops or travel on elsewhere.
US troops stationed at Camp Deysie just south of Camp Wilderness – a key militant infiltration route from Pakistan to the big Afghan cities – are preparing for more attacks as winter snows melt on the frontier mountains.
In the nearby Ibrahim Khel village, locals are deeply wary of their neighbour’s intentions, fuelled by decades of conflict and mistrust.
“If the military of Pakistan want to remove the Taliban, they can do it in one month, but they don’t want to do that,” said the hamlet’s education director, Jawaz Khan.
Source: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/03-pakistan-anti-taliban-push-effective-us-officials-ss-02
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