| Truces fueling resurgence of Taliban, critics say Charlotte Observer
09/01/2006
By Jonathan S. Landay
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KABUL - The Pakistani military is striking truces with Islamic separatists along the country's border with Afghanistan, freeing Pakistani militants and al-Qaida fighters to join Taliban insurgents battling U.S.-led troops and government forces in Afghanistan. Western and Afghan officials said the new infiltration came as the United States, its NATO allies and the Afghan government were struggling to stem a resurgence of the Taliban across large swaths of southern and eastern Afghanistan. The fighting in Afghanistan is the bloodiest since U.S. forces drove the Taliban from power after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Many of the movement's top leaders, along with Osama bin Laden and many of his followers, escaped to Pakistan and have never been caught. The Pakistani regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been negotiating truces - with the Bush administration's encouragement - with Islamic separatists in North Waziristan and South Waziristan, mountainous tribal areas along the Afghan border where U.S. officials think bin Laden may be hiding. In return, Pakistani officials are promising to restrict the country's troops in the area to major bases and towns and to pour huge amounts of aid - much of it from the United States and other nations - into the destitute region, according to American officials. But as the truces take hold, separatists have been crossing into Afghanistan to fight alongside Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, according to Western and Afghan officials. Diplomats who discussed the issue requested anonymity because the problem is the subject of highly sensitive discussions among Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United States and major contributing countries to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. The separatists and the Taliban are Pashtuns, the ethnic group that dominates Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal region. It's unclear whether the flow is an unintended consequence of the truces or is being ignored - or encouraged - by Musharraf's regime as part of the price for peace with the separatists. Pakistan, which backed the Taliban before Sept. 11, says it's doing its best to seal the frontier of towering mountains and isolated valleys and denies that it's resumed support for its former clients. Musharraf deployed 80,000 troops in mid-2003 to seal the Afghan-Pakistani border, subdue the separatists and track down bin Laden and his followers. But the military's heavy artillery and helicopter gunships failed to conquer the separatists and establish government control over the border region, a tribal area where the government has never established its dominance. The United States reportedly has spent more than $1 billion underwriting the border fight, but when the military failed to crush the separatists, the Bush administration agreed to support Pakistan's truce-making efforts and pledged millions of dollars in additional aid. The truces between Pakistan's military and the separatists have coincided with rising violence against civilians and increased attacks by the Taliban in four Afghan provinces along the Pakistani border, according to a United Nations-run security-monitoring program that Western diplomats consider highly reliable. "The Waziristan border is like somebody swung the gate open," one Western diplomat said. "They (the Pakistanis) have bought peace there by exporting the problem." A second Western diplomat said the U.N. monitoring tracked more incidents in Paktia, Paktika, Ghazni and Khost provinces Aug. 13-27 than in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban resurgence has been focused. "What's pretty clear is that a subtext" of the truces is that the Islamic rebels in Waziristan "have a free hand across the border," he said, adding that al-Qaida fighters who've backed the separatists also are crossing into Afghanistan. "It points to a real probability of even higher levels of violence" in Afghanistan, he said. Col. Tom Collins, a spokesman for the 23,000-strong American force responsible for southeastern areas of Afghanistan bordering Pakistan, said he couldn't confirm or deny greater infiltration from Waziristan. "But there has been a definite increase in Taliban activity in Ghazni province," one of the provinces near the border, along the main highway linking Kabul with Afghanistan's second largest city, Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, he said. Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his top aides have charged repeatedly that Musharraf's regime is supporting the Taliban, harboring their leaders and allowing them to maintain training camps and supply bases in Pakistan. Zia Mojadedi, a senior national security aide to Karzai, criticized the Bush administration for accepting Pakistani assurances that the new truces include rebel promises not to join the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. "The thrust of (Pakistan's) strategy remains the same: how to milk the Americans" for more money, he said. The Pakistanis' use of artillery and air power in the border fight - as well as cross-border U.S. strikes on suspected al-Qaida targets - claimed numerous civilian casualties, forced thousands of people to flee their homes and stoked support for the separatists. Hundreds have been killed on both sides. The separatists have imposed rigid Islamic rule in Waziristan, where Pakistani troops reportedly are suffering serious morale problems and the violence has helped fuel popular anger at Musharraf and the United States. More seriously, some experts said, discontent with Musharraf is growing within Pakistan's officer corps because of the army's humiliating setbacks in Waziristan. Musharraf is a key ally in the Bush administration's war on al-Qaida. He's refused to relinquish the post of army chief of staff since he seized power in a military coup in 1999.
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