WASHINGTON / ISLAMABAD, July 12: Washington has fears – growing fears – that a large number of Mujahideen has amassed in the tribal areas of Pakistan and that it would require direct US intervention to assassinate the Mujahideen group.

The US sent its Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen to press Islamabad on Saturday to act decisively against the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden inspired groups (OBL) – all of whom are Muslim militants – who are suspected of mounting cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.

Sources in Pakistan said that the United States was “deeply frustrated” with Pakistan’s lack of ability or willingness, or both, to move decisively to end the rising infiltration by the Taliban militants into Afghanistan. Mullen is also said to have threatened direct US intervention in the Pakistani tribal regions – which is highly not recommended even by the most anti-Muslim neo-cons in the US administration itself.

Pakistan is certainly brewing for a possible unilateral American action – with air strikes and long range missiles – against the so called ‘terror heavens’. Sources in Pakistan said the US will use its entire terror arsenal to try terrorizing the Mujahideen and forcing them to abandon their attacks in Afghanistan.

Pakistan said it has lost many soldiers – 16 died in an incident against the Taliban on Saturday – and it is not willing to humiliate itself by sending more troops in the North West Frontier (NWF) region. This region has been a semi-independent region which accepted to join the Pakistan republic at the time of its creation but with the sole objective of being under one flag. The NSF people do not follow Pakistan’s so called ‘secular’ rules.

Osama bin Laden’s people and Taliban leaders as well as soldiers are known to have found refuge among the tribes in the NWF at the height of the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. It is from this mountainous and porous region that the Mujahideen forces launched their various attacks against the soldiers of the Soviet Union in the 1980’s.

Recent reports in the Washington Post and New York Times claimed that the US administration was considering using direct military force to stop the infiltration and it may use commando forces, besides direct missile attacks, on militants’ targets.

Some Pakistani leaders, including General Musharaf has said in the past that the US will cause more pain to its army and to itself if it send troops – commandos or not – into the NWF to search and kill Mujahideen. The reason they mentioned was that if the Pakistani army failed to do so, the US army is well unprepared for such a war.

Since it is election year in the US, it is certain that Washington will have to attack either Iran or the Northern region of Pakistan in a bid to give a boost to the Republican Party and better its chances in the general elections. The US will be electing a new president in November this year while the Senate and the Congress will also hold its 2 yearly elections at the same time.

During his brief stay, Admiral Mullen met the Chief of Army Staff, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Gen Tariq Majeed, and discussed with them the latest situation in Afghanistan and joint efforts to deal with the challenge posed by terrorists in Fata.

Pakistan army spokesman Maj-Gen Athar Abbas would neither confirm nor deny the meeting, saying no meeting between Admiral Mullen and the Chief of the Army Staff was scheduled.

The sources said that Mullen conveyed to Pakistan military leaders the US government’s growing frustration over Pakistan’s ‘inaction’ against Taliban militants in tribal areas.

Admiral Mullen reiterated Washinton’s stance that these safe havens of the militants should be eliminated, emphasising that Pakistan’s peace deals with terrorists were not achieving the desired results of isolating them and were rather aggravating the problem.

The sources quoted Mullen as complaining that militants were moving across the border with greater liberty now than during the previous government. This was Mullen’s fourth visit to Islamabad this year. But, contrary to his previous visits, this visit was kept in low profile and no official announcement was made.

The United States, in a clear shift in its military strategy in Afghanistan, has stopped sharing information with Pakistan regarding action against Mujahideen elements in tribal areas.

 

Other sources in Pakistan puts the number of Mujahideen in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at several thousands, heavily armed but trained in guerilla tactics learned from Vietnam and Southern America. Many of them were also involved in the war against Russia in Chechnya and the American allied troops in Iraq.  

(With Dawn.com)

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