Asia-Pacific, Headlines, Middle East & North Africa

AFGHANISTAN: Pressure on Pakistan to Flush Out Resurgent Taliban

Pajhwok Afghan News

KABUL, Jul 24 2007 (IPS) - Internal security and the U.S.-led war on terror are high up on the agenda of a meeting next month between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his U.S. counterpart, George W. Bush, at Camp David.

The two presidents are to meet Aug. 5-6 at the U.S. presidential retreat in Maryland. It will be Karzai&#39s first visit to Camp David since he was appointed leader of war-torn Afghanistan after U.S. led-coalition forces ousted the Taliban in late-2001.

The Pashtun Taliban have regrouped in southern Afghanistan to challenge the Afghan government and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The worsening conflict has claimed some 300 civilian lives this year, according to government officials. Retaliatory suicide attacks have targetted U.S. and NATO convoys.

The Karzai government has time and again accused Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf of providing the Taliban a safe haven in the Pashtun-dominated Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA) along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Last week, tribal leaders unilaterally renounced a September peace deal with Musharraf under which the Pakistan army was withdrawn from the tribal areas in return for pledges to stop Taliban and al-Qaeda militants from carrying out cross-border raids into Afghanistan.

This was to avenge the Jul. 10 storming of the Lal Masjid in Islamabad, where 75 pro-Taliban fighters were killed, and also to protest against the support given by the Pakistan president to the "war-on-terror" led by the United States and NATO in Afghanistan.

Violence has spiralled on both sides of the lawless border with a series of suicide attacks. Afghan forces claimed about 85 Taliban and insurgent fighters, along with four U.S. and two NATO troops, were killed on Monday alone. This year, Pakistan has seen 21 suicide attacks that have killed 225 people.

Early Tuesday, a top Taliban commander Abdullah Mehsud, believed to be 31, blew himself up with a grenade as Pakistani security forces closed in on his hideout in Zhob, a town in Baluchistan province that lies roughly 50 kilometres from the Afghan border.

Pakistan is under pressure to flush out Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters from its border areas. On Sunday, a senior White House aide said the United States would consider using military force to destroy illegal al-Qaeda hideouts in Pakistan, with or without sanction from Islamabad.

"Just because we don&#39t speak about things publicly doesn&#39t mean we&#39re not doing things you talk about," said Frances Townsend, Homeland Security Adviser to President Bush.

The Bush aide was responding to questions during interviews with two private TV channels. "Our job No. 1 is to protect the American people. There are no options off the table," was her response when asked why the United States does not conduct special operations to destroy al-Qaeda hideouts inside the Pakistani territory.

In a similar move, the Senate&#39s Democrat majority leader Harry Reid said the U.S. should use military force to destroy al-Qaeda safe havens "wherever they are".

"We have the intelligence report, which says al-Qaeda during this administration is stronger than ever. I don&#39t think we should take anything off the table. Wherever we find these evil people, we should go get them," Senator Reid said.

Responding angrily to these comments, Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri said his country&#39s army was best suited to hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda militants.

About 80,000 regular army troops are currently deployed along the Pakistan border with Afghanistan to put check to cross border movements by militants. But the army is being held back by a ceasefire agreement with tribal leaders in September that the government is keen to keep going.

In a TV interview, Kasuri angrily criticised talk of U.S. forces attacking al-Qaeda inside Pakistani territory. Any incursion would alienate opinion in the predominantly Muslim ally of the United States against terrorism, Kasuri warned.

"We are committed to controlling terrorism, and people in Pakistan get very upset when despite all the sacrifices that Pakistan has been making, you get all these criticisms in the press," he retorted.

"What I don&#39t like is the tone that I&#39m now hearing and that I&#39m now reading in the American media," said the Pakistani minister, who added that his country had lost 700 soldiers during fighting with militants and al-Qaeda elements in the tribal areas.

Kasuri said any U.S. raids into Pakistan would be a mistake. "When you talk of going after targets, you will lose the battle for hearts and minds," said the minister, who added: "The Pakistan army can do the job better."

Tuesday&#39s operation to nab Mehsud who had an 84,000-dollar bounty on his head after his group abducted two Chinese engineers in October 2004, showed the Pakistan army meant business.

(Published by IPS under an agreement with Pajhwok Afghan News.)

(Correction in paragraph 7: "Afghan forces claimed…")