Musharraf Unable To Shake Off Taliban Suspicions Despite Pledges

http://archive.gulfnews.com/article...

Musharraf Unable To Shake Off Taliban Suspicions Despite Pledges
Reuters
07/28/2006 12:44 AM

Islamabad: Almost five years after thousands of Taliban fighters fled Afghanistan to escape a US-led invasion, Pakistan is unable to shake off suspicions that it is allowing them to operate from its soil.

Just as India is losing patience with Pakistan’s failure to act more forcefully against numerous anti-Indian militant groups, Afghanistan, the United States and other Nato powers have been telling Islamabad to get tougher with the Taliban.

"There is little doubt that top Taliban commanders find sanctuary within Pakistan and opportunity to plan and launch operations," Marvin G. Weinbaum, a former analyst with the State Department’s intelligence bureau, wrote in a study published by the United States Institute of Peace last month.

"Islamabad’s efforts to check extremism and prevent the infiltration of anti-[Afghan] regime insurgents are accurately described as inconsistent, incomplete and at times insincere."

The deployment of Nato forces in southern Afghanistan during the worst phase of the Taliban insurgency, with 1,700 killed so far this year, has once again put Pakistan’s role under scrutiny.

Whenever President Pervez Musharraf comes under pressure over the Taliban he points to three things: difficult terrain on the long frontier, inadequate attempts to control the insurgency on the Afghan side, and the hundreds of casualties the Pakistani army has suffered since deploying 80,000 troops in the border areas.

Analysts say the points are valid, although casualties have largely resulted from fighting Al Qaida militants in the Waziristan region, while there has been no confrontation with Afghan Taliban fighters further west in Balochistan.

Baloch police said they arrested over 200 Afghan Taliban last week, but analysts are highly sceptical whether many of those detained were fighters, despite diplomatic welcomes given to the crackdown by Afghanistan and Britain.

For all Musharraf’s pledges to the global war on terrorism, there is an increasing feeling that militants are being left in circulation in order to retain leverage across Pakistan’s eastern and western borders.

Despite publicly abandoning the Taliban after Al Qaida’s attacks on the United States in 2001, analysts say Pakistani intelligence agencies probably want their options open due to both India’s growing friendship with Afghanistan and doubts about the durability of President Hamid Karzai’s rule in Kabul.

In his report, Weinbaum alluded to speculation that elements within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or still active retired officers, covertly support the Taliban.

Having already suffered from the backlash of militancy thanks to support for the mujahideen war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, some Pakistanis now fear the country’s spymasters are continuing to play a dangerous game.