Taliban Resurgence: Can Pakistan stop it?

Pakistan Says Taliban Activity Is Hard to Stop
By SALMAN MASOOD
New York Times, February 3, 2007

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Feb. 2 — Faced with mounting criticism that Pakistan is not doing enough to thwart incursions into Afghanistan by Pakistan-based Taliban militants, the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said Friday that securing the porous border was not the sole responsibility of this country.

He also insisted that despite some lapses, Pakistan’s security forces were fully behind him in an effort to root out the resurgent Taliban.

“Pakistan will not be allowed to be made a scapegoat,” he said, adding that securing the border was also the responsibility of Afghanistan and American and NATO forces.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have traded accusations in recent months over who bears responsibility for enabling the Taliban to regain strength and mount attacks on NATO and allied troops in Afghanistan.

While General Musharraf acknowledged that the Taliban were getting support from within Pakistan, he denied accusations that his security agencies were abetting the insurgency. “This is so preposterous I do not even want to comment,” he said. Maintaining that the Pakistani military is a professional force, General Musharraf said there was “no question of anyone abetting.”

A correspondent for The New York Times, Carlotta Gall, recently reported that she had found anecdotal evidence in and around Quetta to support charges by Western diplomats and Pakistani opposition figures that the Pakistani intelligence agencies were encouraging the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

General Musharraf said fighters had been able to slip over the border in part because Pakistan’s border guards were poorly armed and were up against “well-trained, well-armed and well-motivated people.” He said he would arm the guards better and provide them with security.

The president also denied allegations that some Taliban leaders were taking refuge in Pakistan. Last month the Afghan Intelligence Service announced that it had detained a Taliban spokesman who said the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, was in Pakistan. General Musharraf said he was “500 percent sure” that Mullah Omar was in Afghanistan. He said Mullah Dadullah, a top Taliban commander, and other top leaders were also in Afghanistan.

The president did say Mullah Dadullah had escaped arrest three times in Pakistan, though he did not mention when.

General Musharraf also defended the peace deal reached late last year with tribal militants in North Waziristan, a semiautonomous tribal area straddling the border with Afghanistan, calling it “a partial success.”

Diplomats and intelligence officials from several countries have said Islamic militants are using the peace deal to consolidate their hold in northern Pakistan and are openly flouting the terms of the accord, in which they agreed to end cross-border help for the Taliban. But the president said that his government was trying to wean the local population away from the militants and that using military force was not the answer.

General Musharraf provided details of plans to fence the porous and craggy Pakistani-Afghan border — a solution to curb cross-border movement that Pakistan has advocated but Afghanistan has rejected.

He said Pakistan would selectively fence 22 miles of the border in North-Western Frontier Province and would later erect a 155-mile fence in Baluchistan Province. He said plans to mine the border had been suspended, “due to sensitivities of the international community.”