Thaindian News

By Arun Kumar
Washington, April 29 (IANS) In a tacit acknowledgement that internal insurgency is a greater threat now, Pakistan has moved 100,000 troops from its border with India to the Afghanistan border to bolster its campaign against Taliban, according to a new Pentagon report.

The congressionally mandated “Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan” cites progress in President Barack Obama’s strategy aimed at disrupting, dismantling and defeating Al Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“More than 100,000 PAKMIL (Pakistan Military) troops were moved from the eastern border with India. This unprecedented deployment and thinning of the lines against India indicates that Islamabad has acknowledged its domestic insurgent threat,” said the report covering the situation on the ground from Oct 1 to March 31.

The Pentagon did not specify the regions from where the troops had been pulled out, but said it estimated that more than 140,000 Pakistani forces were now taking part in the ongoing offensive against the Taliban in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal region, known as FATA.

The Pentagon report was issued hours before a crucial meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani in the Bhutanese capital of Thimphu on the sidelines of the SAARC Summit that the State Department said was “good for the region”.

The Pentagon said a broad syndicate of extremist groups was operating in the AfPak region with multiple short and long term goals. It identified the groups as Al Qaida, Tehreek-e-Taliban and Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT) which it said threatened security of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and elsewhere.

Pakistani military operations in tribal areas of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) had placed “a high degree of pressure on militants and reduced their safe havens”, but it was unlikely to have an immediate impact on the US-led war in Afghanistan, the report said.

“The three major groups include the Quetta Shura Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, and the Haqqani Network. These groups cooperate and coordinate at times and their areas of operations tend to be geographically and demographically determined,” it said.

“They operate mainly in the Pashtun-majority areas of Afghanistan in the south and east, and in Pashtun pockets in the north. The common goals of these groups are to expel foreign forces from Afghanistan and to undermine the central government,” the report added.

Pentagon said Pakistan military crackdown so far has focussed only on internal threats, but outlined that these could be more productive depending on how they evolve in future as the military had also suffered attacks from terrorists in response to its successful operations.

“While these attacks do not appear to have shaken Pakistan’s commitment, they do demonstrate, for the time being, insurgent ability to continue attacks despite reported successful PAKMIL operations,” said the 150-page report.

The Pakistani military is also beginning to acknowledge the ties and threats posed by Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the report said noting “The Pakistani operations have focused almost exclusively on internal threats. These operations reduce the space available to all insurgent and extremists groups.”

“While this evolving approach is unlikely to have significant impact on the Afghan insurgency in the short term, it offers opportunities in coming months to have a greater impact on the conflict in Afghanistan, depending on how PAKMIL operations evolve,” the report said.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)