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Saturday, September 24, 2011
US will suffer if it tried attack: HaqqaniISLAMABAD: Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the Haqqani network, a group his father founded in the 1980s, says he’d look forward to a US ground attack. “The United States will suffer more losses (in North Waziristan) than they suffered in Afghanistan,” he said in a conversation with Reuters. Sirajuddin does not carry a gun or wear a turban as he moves stealthily through the Waziristan wilderness along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, hoping to avoid detection and getting hit by a US missile from a drone aircraft. Yet, from his safe houses and mountain redoubts, the guerrilla commander has directed some of the most brazen attacks against US forces in Afghanistan, and is now seen as one of the most dangerous warlords in the Taliban insurgency. Haqqani spoke to Reuters by satellite phone from an undisclosed location on Thursday just hours before Washington, ever more strident, accused Pakistan’s shadowy but powerful ISI intelligence agency of working with the enemy. Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik rejected the accusations and warned against a unilateral US ground attack on the Haqqanis, believed to be based in the mountains of North Waziristan. “The Pakistan nation will not allow the boots on our ground, never. Our government is already cooperating with the US, but they also must respect our sovereignty,” Malik said in an interview with Reuters this week. Sirajuddin acknowledges that Haqqani fighters now number around 15,000, making it probably the largest force among the Taliban warlords. He also moves easily across the border to areas of eastern Afghanistan where the Haqqanis are entrenched. He even mediates disputes among the Taliban and takes part in their meetings in Afghanistan. “His word is enough,” said Mahmood Shah, a former Pakistan intelligence official who monitored militants for years. reuters
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk