Pakistan’s “peace agreement” with the Taliban is quickly yielding predictable results. From AP:
KABUL, Afghanistan – American troops on Afghanistan’s eastern frontier have seen a tripling of attacks since a truce between the Pakistani army and pro-Taliban tribesmen that was supposed to stop cross-border raids by militants, a U.S. military officer said Wednesday.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry rejected the U.S. claim and said home-based insurgents were behind the violence in Afghanistan, where at least 25 militants were reported killed in fighting Wednesday.
Raising further questions about the cease-fire, a Pakistani political leader maintained Taliban leader Mullah Omar approved the deal. A government official denied that.
The developments could add to the feuding between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who were having dinner Wednesday night with President Bush at the White House to try to patch up their dispute over how to quell Islamic
extremists.
The U.S. officer said the cease-fire that began June 25, cemented by the signing of a peace accord Sept. 5, contributed to the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan. He said ethnic Pashtun insurgents are no longer fighting Pakistani troops and are using
Pakistan’s North Waziristan border area as a command-and-control hub for attacks in Afghanistan.
Pakistani tribal elders brokered the truce between Musharraf’s government and militants, which ended years of unrest in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
But the agreement appears to have bolstered Taliban infiltrators, with the number of attacks in eastern Afghan provinces rising threefold since July 31, said the U.S. officer, who agreed to discuss the situation only if not quoted by name due to the sensitivity of the issue.
“That’s why they had the chance to rest and refit, because they were in a sanctuary,” he said, referring to a surge in Taliban attacks over the last several months without giving specific numbers for incidents before or after the truce.
[…]
Meanwhile, Latif Afridi, a top official in Pakistan’s Awami National Party, said he received a letter containing Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s approval of the North Waziristan peace deal.
He said the letter also claimed Pakistani militants who back the Taliban in North Waziristan would fall under the command of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a front-line Taliban commander.
[…]
The U.S. officer said the Taliban’s connections with Pakistan run so deep that wounded fighters seek treatment on the Pakistani side of the border and even carry their dead to Pakistan for burial.
Some of the suicide bombers in Afghanistan have been recruited in Pakistan, including a 17-year-old boy who blew himself up in front of a U.S. military convoy in Kabul this month, killing a bystander and wounding three American soldiers, Afghan
police say.