Re: Pak Afghan Border clashes
Afghans and Americans are quick to put the blame of their failures on Pakistan (and their favourite demand of do more) but on the other end they expect Pakistan to keep quiet about the terrorist safe havens in Eastern Afghanistan (as the area is difficult to control).http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/world/asia/rockets-fired-from-pakistan-pound-afghan-villages.html?_r=2&smid=go-share
Rockets Fired From Pakistan Pound Villages In Afghanistan
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and HABIB ZAHORI
Published: July 22, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — Villages in northeastern Afghanistan — an area thick with competing Taliban factions, operatives from Al Qaeda and other militants — were bombarded with hundreds of rockets fired from Pakistan over the weekend, leaving at least four civilians dead, Afghan officials said.
The latest cross-border rocket barrage exposed increasing tensions over what Afghanistan and the United States on one side and Pakistan on the other agree is a problem: the virtual free flow of militants across a frontier that often seems noted only on maps.
Each side accuses the other of tolerating Islamist militants, and Afghan accusations of sporadic barrages from the Pakistani side of the frontier — most, like Sunday’s statements, carefully calibrated to not directly accuse the Pakistani military of firing the rockets — have added to the mistrust between the countries as the United States struggles to extract itself from the Afghan war.
**The Pakistanis say Afghan and American forces, which have largely left northeastern Afghanistan over the past two years, have allowed factions of the Pakistani Taliban, an offshoot of the Afghan movement that focuses on attacks against the Pakistani government, to find refuge in the region.
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The militants now use northeastern Afghanistan as a springboard for cross-border attacks; there have been 15 in the past year, resulting in more than 100 deaths, a Pakistani military official said Sunday. The latest came this past week when militants attacked a Pakistani village militia that is fighting the Taliban, according to Pakistani officials.
**Afghan and American officials have long accused Pakistan of aiding the Afghan Taliban up and down the entire border and of turning a blind eye to Qaeda militants, who have managed to carve out havens along the frontier.
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**Yet officials from all three countries have largely remained cautious about making too much of the unstable situation in northeastern Afghanistan in large part because the region’s exceedingly remote and difficult terrain, with its isolated mountainside villages and easy militant hiding spots, have created stiff challenges with few easy solutions.
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**But Afghan officials now appear to be growing more vocal about the occasional rocket barrages coming from the border, which they often suggest is the work of Pakistan’s military.
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Afghan officials said Sunday that the region had been hit by about 400 rockets over the weekend. The Pakistani military official said his forces had not fired the rockets, and that “Pakistani troops only respond and engage militants from where they are attacked or fired upon.”The Afghan Foreign Ministry, in a statement, stopped short of outright accusing Pakistani forces.
But it did say that Deputy Foreign Minister Jawad Ludin had summoned Pakistan’s envoy in Kabul and told him continued rocket fire would have a “negative impact” on relations. The two agreed that military officials from both countries would soon meet in Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan, “to identify ways to prevent any future shelling into Afghan villages,” the statement said.
Officials in Kunar Province, which with neighboring Nuristan Province has faced most of the barrages, were less circumspect on Sunday — they directly blamed Pakistan’s military.
Wasifullah Wasifi, a spokesman for Kunar’s government, said Pakistani rocket fire had picked up since the signing in May of a strategic partnership deal between Afghanistan and the United States. Many Afghans believe Pakistan opposed the deal because, they say, it seeks to dominate their country, though the pact has not been a major issue in Pakistan, and Pakistan insists it wants good relations with Afghanistan.
The Pakistanis “claim that their outposts are attacked by militants who they say are enjoying sanctuary on our side of the border,” he said in a telephone interview. “But that is not true.”The rocket fire, Afghan officials and villagers said, killed four people in Dangam district of Kunar over the weekend.
“Some houses have been ruined, and many cows and sheep have been slaughtered as well,” said Haji Khan Jan, a village elder in Dangam. “
We cannot leave our homes.”In western Afghanistan on Sunday, the NATO-led international force said three civilian contractors were killed by a man wearing an Afghan military uniform. He was in turn shot and killed. The international force did not say who killed the assailant or specify the nationalities or the jobs of the contractors.But an Afghan official said a policeman had opened fire on international forces around 7:30 p.m., after the Afghan police had broken their daily fasts for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Col. Noor Khan Nekzad, a spokesman for the police in Herat, said the shooting took place at a coalition police training center near the city. The center is mainly staffed by Italian forces, although some Americans also work there.
Declan Walsh contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.