Taliban
exploiting tribal peace deal: ICG
BRUSSELS—Pakistani pacts with pro-Taliban militants on the Afghan border
have facilitated attacks on foreign troops in Afghanistan, an
international think-tank has said.
The International Crisis Group said Pakistan must impose the rule of law
in its semi-autonomous tribal lands on the Afghan border, where Taliban
and al-Qaeda sympathisers have sheltered since 2001.
It said Pakistan must disarm the militants and shut their training camps
to prevent the further expansion of their influence in the area.
“Despite Pakistani denials, the tribal belt, particularly agencies such
as the Waziristans, remains a Taliban sanctuary and a hub for attacks on
the US-led coalition and Nato/ISAF forces and the Afghan (International
Security Assistance Force) government,” the Brussels-based group said in
a report to be released later today.
Pakistan’s seven tribal agencies, including North and South Waziristan,
have never been fully brought under the writ of any government,
including British colonial authorities who saw the mountainous region as
a buffer on the northwestern border of their Indian empire. A rear-base
for US- and Pakistani-backed Afghan mujahideen battling Soviet forces in
Afghanistan in the 1980s, the region became a refuge for Taliban and al-Qaeda
after US-led forces ousted Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers in 2001.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere in
the rugged ethnic Pashtun tribal belt. Pakistan, a major US ally in the
war on terror, launched military operations in 2004 to deny al-Qaeda
militants sanctuary and stem cross-border attacks into Afghanistan. But
after clashes in which hundreds of Pakistani troops were killed,
Pakistani authorities struck pacts - in South Waziristan in 2004 and
last September in North Waziristan - aimed at ending attacks on
Pakistani forces and raids into Afghanistan. The International Crisis
Group said the pacts had emboldened the militants. Pakistan’s peace
deals with militants in its tribal areas have allowed the Taliban to
regroup and have led to increasingly deadly attacks on foreign troops in
Afghanistan, a think-tank has said. President Pervez Musharraf’s policy
of “appeasing” insurgents after the failure of army offensives has
merely fuelled radicalism along the border and throughout Pakistan, the
International Crisis Group said in a report released Monday.
“Using the region to regroup, reorganise and rearm, they are launching
increasingly severe cross-border attacks on Afghan and international
military personnel,” the report said. “The Musharraf governments
ambivalent approach and failure to take effective action is
destabilising Afghanistan,” it added.
The think-tank criticised the peace deals signed by the government in
the semi-autonomous tribal regions of North Waziristan in September 2006
and neighbouring South Waziristan in April 2004. “While the army has
virtually retreated to barracks, this accommodation facilitates the
growth of militancy and attacks in Afghanistan by giving pro-Taliban
elements a free hand to recruit, train and arm,” the report said.—Online |
