News & Politics - Pakistani Truce Already Falling Apart

Lexis · 10-25-2006, 03:08 AM

Quote:

U.S. military officials tell ABC News cross-border attacks by the Taliban are up "300 percent" since President Musharraf declared a "truce" with tribal leaders in the troubled Northern Waziristan region that borders Afghanistan.

"Politically, it is very sensitive for us to raise this issue with Pakistan," said a senior NATO officer in Kabul. "But the facts are the facts."

Reports from the district capital Miram Shah say Taliban vigilantes now patrol the streets, while Pakistani government officials and the military are all but absent.

U.S. military officials say militants are openly ignoring the truce's requirement that they lay down down their weapons.

NATO took over the Afghan coalition in early October, amid the fiercest fighting since the Taliban government was toppled five years ago.

Senior NATO officials say there is growing fury among the 26-nation alliance that Islamabad is doing little to stem the violence coming from its border areas.

"If the Pakistan army is not willing to clean this up in a sustained manner," worries a top U.S. military official, "I just do not know what we are going to do."

Although the peace deal with Islamabad specifically forbade the Pakistani tribesmen from forming a parallel government, Taliban rulers in the region have issued a strict legal code, even announcing plans to begin taxing vehicles that pass through their district.

The Blotter

I wonder where they'll spend the money they make in tax - on more weapons to attack our troops and innocent Afghans perhaps?

goodnightboy · 10-26-2006, 04:11 AM

I suppose it's a combination of external and internal factors: the external factor being the difficulty of patrolling the Pakistani-Afghan border; and internal factors being, I assume, corruption, lax enforcement, and plain indifference rearing their ugly heads.

Look, if the Indian-Pakistan war over Kashmir has resulted in wars because Pakistan overstepped the Line of Control boundary, what makes you think they'll stick by this truce? I'm not saying that India, or Afghanistan in this case, is entirely blameless, but Pakistan, they've got a lot to think about if they're really serious about doing more to keep their promises.


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