Mian Shakeel Aslam--- Pakistani militants exploit a security vacuum left by the departure of U.S. troops a strip of eastern Afghanistan to launch attacks inside Pakistan, prompting cross-border violence that claimed dozens of lives and inflamed already tense relations between Islamabad and Kabul.
The Pakistani military on Monday called on the government of Hamid Karzai to arrest and surrender Maulvi Fazlullah, a Pakistani Taliban leader also known as "Mullah Radio," which had been using Afghan territory to mount cross-border raids killed dozens of soldiers in the past months.
"The information on these individuals and groups was transferred to the Afghan government and NATO, but no action was taken," said Major General Athar Abbas, military spokesman for Pakistan. "Fazlullah is going better and better every day."
Afghans say that the Pakistani military responded to the indiscriminate bombing raids of the border, reaching the villages of the attacks that killed at least 43 civilians since May.
"They want to destroy Afghanistan," said Ehsanullah, a professor of 25 years of age in the province of Kunar The Guardian. "They want people to stand up and protest against the government and the Americans."
Most of the fighting in Afghanistan is concentrated in the south and west, in territory controlled by the Taliban and Haqqani Network fighters. But Pakistani Taliban cousins have taken advantage of the departure of the United States of Kunar and Nuristan in the east, to open a new front in the conflict.
President Barack Obama fired the majority of U.S. forces in two provinces in 2009 as part of the "surge" in southern provinces. U.S. generals believe virtual lost causes. Taliban fighters had overrun a small U.S. base in Nuristan in 2008, killing nine U.S. soldiers, while the years of fighting in Korengal Valley of Kunar had caused heavy losses with little progress to show.
Now nearly 3,500 U.S. soldiers remain in Kunar, but none in Nuristan. The reduced presence of the West has helped the Pakistani Taliban, led by Fazlullah, who fled the Swat valley after a major offensive in 2009. He joined the local fighters Maulvi Faqir Mohammad and another fugitive from Pakistan to launch attacks on Pakistani territory.
In June, Taliban fighters detained 16 Pakistani border guards in the district of Dir and killed in the video. In late August, hundreds of fighters slipped into neighboring Chitral an overnight raid that killed at least 35 soldiers as they slept in their tents, making Pakistan's first military deployment in the region since the Taliban has begun.
Pakistani forces responded to the bombings by suspected Taliban positions.However, some shells have entered Afghanistan, often landing in populated areas.
Owili Sadar, an elder in Kunar, narrowly escaped death in mid-September, when he said a shell exploded in Pakistan near his vehicle moments after he entered a mosque.
"Broken windows and my driver was injured by shrapnel," he said. "The people of the mosque, said that if they die there, at least they will go to heaven." He said more than 100 families had fled the border area for security elsewhere.Aminullah Amarkhil, a police chief in charge of a stretch of 100 miles of the border, said that 43 people were killed and 54 wounded since May
Abbas, the Pakistani spokesman, admitted some shells landed in Afghanistan, but said it was "arson."
Border incursions led to a storm of protest in Kabul, where parliamentarians have accused President Karzai angry "go soft" in Pakistan to facilitate contacts with the Taliban.
A lot of conspiracy theories and misinformation on both sides of the border further complicates things. Many Afghans see the bombing of Pakistan as part of a bad policy led by the military intelligence service of high rank, Inter-Services Intelligence.
Posted By: Mian Shakeel Aslam
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/17/us-troop-withdrawal-pakistan-vuln...
