Gates' Afghan trip throws spotlight on Pakistan

Bagram (Afghanistan), Jan 17: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates met US commanders at the main US base in Afghanistan today on the second day of a visit that has thrown a spotlight on Taliban infiltration from Pakistan.

Gates travelled to the sprawling Bagram air base from the capital, Kabul, where yesterday US military commanders told him militant attacks from Pakistan into Afghanistan had surged, several-fold in some areas.

Violence in Afghanistan intensified last year to its bloodiest since US-led forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001. Fighting has eased since winter set in but US and NATO forces expect a renewed Taliban offensive in the spring.

US military officials in Kabul told reporters travelling with Gates yesterday command and control of the Afghan insurgency came from the Pakistani side of the border.

Training, financing, recruitment, indoctrination, regeneration and other support activities were also taking place in Pakistan, a US military intelligence official said.

US intelligence chief John Negroponte said last week it would be necessary to eliminate the Taliban safe havens in Pakistan's tribal areas to end the Afghan insurgency.

Pakistan was the main backer of the Taliban during the 1990s but officially stopped helping the hardline Islamists after the September 11 attacks, when Pakistan joined the US-led war on terrorism.

But while Pakistan has arrested or killed hundreds of al Qaeda members, including several major figures, critics say it has failed to take effective action against Taliban leaders and their sanctuaries.

AFGHAN ANGER

Afghan anger over the infiltration from Pakistan has damaged relations between the neighbours but Pakistan rejects accusations it is not doing enough.

Pakistan has sent 80,000 troops to its side of the border and has lost hundreds of them fighting militants.

But it has also sought political ways to isolate the militants to reduce the risk of sparking a wider conflict in its semi-autonomous tribal areas.

Those have included peace deals in tribal regions aimed at ending attacks on Pakistani forces and cross-border incursions but US commanders said raids into Afghanistan had increased sharply from areas where the deals were struck.

Nevertheless, Pakistan says the Taliban are an Afghan problem.

''The basic problem is in Afghanistan but we don't deny that there are some people from Pakistan in the FATA region supporting them,'' Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri told reporters in Islamabad on Tuesday, referring to Pakistan's border lands officially known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

''We are doing everything to reduce the movement to the minimum, but basically it's Afghanistan's problem. Pakistan can only help to the extent that it controls the cross-border movement but for that, too, we need support of the international community.'' Gates said Pakistan was ''an extraordinarily strong ally'' of the United States in the war on terrorism but militancy on the Pakistani side of the border would have to be dealt with.

There are more than 40,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, the highest level since 2001, about 22,000 of them American.

Gates said it was important to take the initiative in dealing with the security threat and if commanders in the field believed more forces were required, ''then I certainly would be strongly inclined to recommend that to the president''.

REUTERS

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