Pentagon report raises new questions about Pakistan’s willingness to take on the safe militant havens
The report, titled “Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan,” is the sixth in a series that the Pentagon is required to submit twice a year to Congress. The report charges that Iran continues to provide weapons and training to the Taliban, and says their safe havens along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border remain an obstacle even as Pakistani military cooperation with NATO improves.
Its data will be used in a more comprehensive White House review next month assessing United States strategy in Afghanistan and any need for revision.
The United States and its partners are making modest gains in some key areas of Afghanistan, but the insurgency is still strong and expanding across the country, a report has concluded.
“Efforts to reduce insurgency capacity, such as safe havens and logistical support originating in Pakistan and Iran have not produced measurable results,” notes the 96-page “Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan.”
The report says that Taliban is not popular but it exploits frustration with a weak Afghanistan government. The report also indicate that there were signs of progress in security, governance and development in “operational priority areas.”
While the Pentagon report describes “uneven” progress with “modest gains” in security and creating stable local government, it suggests the current strategy is showing “some signs of progress.”
Some seminaries promoting militancy in Pakistan: Rehman Malik
Islamabad, Nov 25 (IANS) Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik Thursday said seminaries ‘belonging to a particular school of thought’ were promoting militancy in the country.
‘We have more than 20,000 seminaries providing religious education to the students in the country and are making an effort to register all of these with the relevant authorities’, Malik said, adding that ‘this will help in regulating and monitoring their activities’.
He said: ‘I wonder how they brainwash a 10-year-old child for suicide bombing.’
‘I don’t agree with the debate on good Taliban and bad Taliban,’ he said as he stressed that there are ‘only one kind of Taliban with an evil agenda’.
The seminaries in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province are alleged to have been promoting militancy in the syllabi and the government has raided many such institutions. The Taliban chief Mulla Umar is also believed to have been trained in the seminary of Moulana Sami-ul-Haq in Akora Khattak near Peshawar.
Malik said Pakistan was the worst hit country after 9/11 and ‘the terrorists are laying landmines in tribal areas where the security forces have launched a crackdown’.
‘The Afghan border is being used by militants for infiltrating in Pakistan,’ he claimed as he called for joint efforts to check this practice.
Pakistan and Afghanistan have traded allegations previously as well as accused each other of instability and failure to curb terrorist activities. The tribal areas of Pakistan have been hit by terrorism after the war on terror during the last few years and the urban areas are now being targeted as well, causing huge loss of life and infrastructure.
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