News
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Pakistan blames US for letting Taliban slip away
* Pak Army says it forewarned US counterparts that Taliban were fleeing into territories under US control
Daily Times Monitor
LAHORE: Senior military officers are furious with the US for letting hundreds of Taliban fighters escape across the border into Afghanistan, where they are being housed and protected in camps set up by Afghan supporters, the Telegraph said in a report on Friday.
“Pakistani soldiers responsible for guarding the world’s most inhospitable terrain were finding it hard to conceal their frustration,” the paper said. “For the past 18 months, they had been fighting to drive thousands of Taliban militants from their strongholds in the remote tribal regions that straddle the country’s border with Afghanistan.”
The campaign reached its peak last month when forces dislodged the Taliban from their heavily fortified positions in Bajaur Agency.
But even after the forces inflicted a crushing defeat on the Taliban in the Tribal Areas, the military is furious that hundreds of fighters escaped into Afghanistan.
Warnings: Pakistani military officers say they informed their American counterparts in Afghanistan that large numbers of Taliban were fleeing into territories supposedly under US control, but they failed to intervene.
The military now fears that the Taliban will regroup in Afghanistan and launch a fresh offensive to re-establish their positions in the Tribal Areas.
“We have done everything the West asked us to do,” Col Nauman Saeed told the Telegraph at the headquarters of the Bajaur Scouts. “We feel badly let down.”
Previously, NATO commanders accused Pakistan of not taking effective action against the Taliban, but the Pakistanis are turning the tables on NATO.
Following nine years of Western forces’ deployment to the region, there still appears to be no proper coordination between NATO commanders in Afghanistan and their Pakistani counterparts.
“After all, the whole point of the new strategy devised by General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of NATO forces, is that it involves those on both sides of the border working together to defeat their common enemy,” the paper said.
The paper said complaints heard from Pakistani officers “were not dissimilar to those heard from their British counterparts” in Helmand.
“While both sides have made significant military gains against the Taliban, they are critical of the lack of support they are receiving from their allies,” the paper said.
“It is clearly in the interests of everyone that this impasse is resolved the Telegraph said.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk