The Widening Pakistan-Afghan Rift

US troop withdrawal leaves Pakistan vulnerable to attack by insurgents
Taliban exploiting a security vacuum in the wake of American forces departing from eastern Afghanistan
Declan Walsh in Chitral and Jon Boone in Jalalabad, guardian.co.uk, Monday 17 October 2011

Pakistani militants are exploiting a security vacuum left by the departure of US troops from a swath of eastern Afghanistan to mount attacks inside Pakistan, triggering cross-border violence that has claimed dozens of lives and inflamed already tense relations between Islamabad and Kabul.

The Pakistani military on Monday called on the government of Hamid Karzai to arrest and hand over Maulvi Fazlullah, a Pakistani Taliban leader also known as "Mullah Radio" who, it said, had been using Afghan soil to mount cross-border raids that have killed dozens of soldiers in recent months.

"Information about these individuals and groups has been passed to the Afghan government and Nato but no action has been taken," said Major General Athar Abbas, the Pakistani military spokesman. "Fazlullah is going from strength to strength, day by day."

Afghans claim that the Pakistani military has responded to the incursions by indiscriminately firing artillery across the border, hitting villages in attacks that have killed at least 43 civilians since last May.
"They want to destroy Afghanistan," Ehsanullah, a 25-year-old teacher from Kunar province told the Guardian. "They want people to rise up and demonstrate against the government and the Americans."
Most fighting in Afghanistan is concentrated in the south and west, in territory controlled by Taliban and Haqqani network fighters. But the Taliban's Pakistani cousins have taken advantage of the US departure from Kunar and Nuristan, in the east, to open a new front in the conflict.

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Related:
U.S. goes after Haqqani network - Washington Post
Implications of drone attacks increase unclear - The Express Tribune
Haqqani network insider dies in US drone strike in Pakistan - Boston Globe

Pakistan warns Afghanistan after pact with India - AP

India's Afghanistan Ties Driven by China, not Pakistan - World Politics Review