NATO Commanders Say West Must Get Tough With Pakistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Commanders from five NATO countries whose troops have just fought the bloodiest battle with the Taliban in five years are demanding their governments get tough with Pakistan over the support and sanctuary its security services are providing to the Taliban.NATO’s report on “Operation Medusa,” an intense battle that lasted between September 4 and 17 in the Panjwai district, demonstrates the extent of Taliban’s military capability and states that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence may be involved in supplying it.Commanders from Britain, America, Denmark, Canada, and Holland are frustrated that even after President Musharraf of Pakistan met President Bush and Prime Minister Blair of Britain last week, Western leaders are declining to call General Musharraf’s bluff.“It is time for an ‘either you are with us or against us’ delivered bluntly to Musharraf at the highest political level,” one NATO commander said.After the September 11 attacks in 2001, America gave General Musharraf a similar ultimatum to cooperate against the Taliban, which they said was then harboring Osama bin Laden.“Our boys in southern Afghanistan are hurting because of what is coming out of Quetta,” he added.The Taliban uses the southern province of Baluchistan to coordinate its insurgency and to recuperate after military action.The cushion Pakistan is providing the Taliban is undermining the operation in Afghanistan, where 31,000 NATO troops are now based.The Canadians were most involved in “Operation Medusa,” two weeks of heavy fighting in a lush vineyard region, defeating 1,500 well-entrenched Taliban who had planned to attack Kandahar city, the capital of the south.NATO officials now say they killed 1,100 Taliban fighters, not the 500 originally claimed. Hundreds of Taliban reinforcements in pickup trucks who crossed over from Quetta — waved on by Pakistani border guards — were destroyed by NATO air and artillery strikes.NATO captured 160 Taliban, many of them Pakistanis who described in detail the ISI’s support to the Taliban.NATO is now mapping the entire Taliban support structure in Baluchistan, from ISI-run training camps near Quetta to huge ammunition dumps, arrival points for Taliban’s new weapons and meeting places of the shura, or leadership council, in Quetta, which is headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the group’s leader since its creation a dozen years ago.NATO and Afghan officers say two training camps for the Taliban are located just outside Quetta, while the group is using hundreds of madrassas where the fighters are housed and fired up ideologically before being sent to the front.The Jamiat-e-Ullema Islam, a political party that governs Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province, runs many madrassas now being listed. The party helped spawn the Taliban in 1994.“Taliban decision making and its logistics is all inside Pakistan,” the Afghan defense minister, General Rahim Wardak, said.A post-battle intelligence report compiled by NATO and Afghan forces involved in “Operation Medusa” demonstrates the logistical capability of the Taliban.During the battle the Taliban fired an estimated 400,000 rounds of ammunition, 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades, and 1,000 mortar shells, which slowly arrived in Panjwai from Quetta over the spring months. Ammunition dumps unearthed after the battle showed that the Taliban had stocked more than 1 million rounds in Panjwai.In Panjwai, the Taliban also had established a training camp to teach guerrillas how to penetrate Kandahar, a separate camp to train suicide bombers and a full surgical field hospital. NATO estimated the cost of just Taliban ammunition stocks at around $4.9 million. “The Taliban could not have done this on their own without the ISI,” a senior NATO officer said.General Musharraf this week said “retired” ISI officers may be involved in aiding the Taliban.

NATO Commanders Say West Must Get Tough With Pakistan

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