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| Pak tribal deal boosts Taliban | | |
by James Rupert and Zubair Shah
KABUL, Afghanistan – There is growing evidence that Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf’s peace deals with Pakistan-based Taliban groups are letting them step up attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Since Pakistan signed a truce in June with the Taliban in its border region of North Waziristan, “we have seen a 300 per cent increase” in Taliban attacks and other incidents in the adjacent Afghan provinces, a U.S. intelligence officer said here recently. Most came from Pakistani soil, he said.
This month, Pakistan converted that truce into a long-term pact that Musharraf said bars the Taliban from crossing to fight in Afghanistan. Military analysts in Pakistan and Afghanistan say the deal cannot be enforced and is surrender to the Taliban. President Bush has defended Musharraf, saying simply, “I believe him.”
But new signs suggest the deal is letting the Taliban continue – and escalate – the fight:
North Waziristan residents say the Taliban have set new rules to make their infiltration of Afghanistan less visible to U.S. surveillance. A source close to the peace talks said these provisions were part of an oral agreement with the Pakistani government that accompanied the written peace deal. A Pakistani government spokeswoman denied there was a secret part to the agreement.
Last week, one of the Pakistani Taliban leaders who approved the North Waziristan peace deal was killed battling U.S. and Afghan troops in Afghanistan, Pakistanis and U.S. military sources said. The leader, Mullah Abdul Qalam, was buried in Pakistan, where other Taliban leaders vowed to continue the fight across the border.
In one village a few miles from the Afghan border, men said Taliban officials have declared that the jihad now will be more organized and disciplined. Men who volunteer to fight must now cross in smaller groups and stay for longer periods – at least 40 days, according to one source. Fighters will be required to hand their identity documents to the Taliban commander in their village to ensure that they will not be identifiable as Pakistani citizens.
Pakistan says the Taliban in Waziristan now are being controlled by the region’s tribal leaders. But that is a transparent fiction, Waziristan residents and analysts say. The Taliban have shattered the tribes’ authority, killing hundreds of pro-government tribal leaders, and “are too strong to be controlled by the tribes,” said retired Pakistani Brig. Gen. Mehmood Shah, a former security chief for the Pashtun tribal zone that includes Waziristan.
Musharraf says this month’s deal was with a council of tribal leaders rather than the Taliban, but that, too, is untrue, tribal leaders themselves have told journalists. The real terms of the deal were negotiated between a government team and the Taliban’s leadership, and “the council simply approved it,” said a tribal leader who asked not to be named for fear of government sanctions.
For U.S. forces in Afghanistan, there is no doubt the Taliban are mainly Pakistan-based, the U.S. intelligence officer said. “Some of the incidents (Taliban attacks) are generated from inside Afghanistan,” he said, “but the financing, logistics, recruiting and safe haven are all centered in Pakistan.”
By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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