Vol. 72/No. 29      July 21, 2008

The Pakistani military also carried out coordinated attacks June 30 along its side of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border near Afghanistan’s Khost province where U.S. and NATO forces were battling Islamist militias. Dozens of Taliban militia members were killed in the attacks, including 33 by U.S.-led helicopters and bombers, according to press reports.

The same day, NATO and the Pakistani military responded with coordinated artillery and rocket fire to a separate attack on a NATO outpost by Taliban-backed militia.

The actions draw Pakistan into the stepped-up combat tempo in the region resulting from increased U.S. military operations there.

Pakistan’s top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, said his militia would suspend peace talks with the government because of the offensive. The Pakistani government has implicated Mehsud in the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Pakistani troops took control of Peshawar, the North-West Frontier Province capital, on June 29 as Taliban forces massed near the city and a tribal area known as the Khyber Agency where another 400 paramilitary troops were deployed.

Mehsud has said his forces will continue to attack U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan despite the peace talks. The Pakistani military initiated the offensive to counter increasing threats to Peshawar and Taliban ambushes of supply convoys bound for U.S.-led coalition troops in Afghanistan, reported the Associated Press.

Pakistani Maj. Gen. Alam Khattak, head of the Frontier Corps, suggested this would not be the only operation against the militias. The Swat region may be next, other government officials said. The Pakistani military took big losses against the Taliban in Swat last year.

The stepped-up operations by the Pakistani military against the Islamist militia registers a shift by the Pakistani government. The new government, headed by the party of the slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, had been criticized by U.S. and NATO officials for negotiating peace agreements with Taliban-backed groups.

In a related development, the German government announced that it would increase the number of its troops in Afghanistan by 1,000 by this fall. German Defense Ministry officials said that would bring its total force in Afghanistan to 4,500.

U.S. Gen. James Mattis, in charge of NATO modernization, said he hoped that Berlin’s decision would result in other countries increasing their troop levels. The U.S. government has been pressing its NATO allies to commit more troops to the fighting.

There are about 53,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, about 23,500 of which are U.S. troops, according to NATO. At least 9,500 U.S. troops fight in Afghanistan under a separate U.S. command. Congress reported in April that the combined U.S. force in Afghanistan under NATO and U.S. command was 33,000.
 
 
Related articles:
1,000 U.S. troops join military exercises in Peru
U.S. troops out of Afghanistan  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home