‘Pak anti-terror fight impressive’

[sonicboom]

‘Pak anti-terror fight impressive’

December 27, 2010



THE top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan said there will be more coordinated military operations on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and commended Pakistan on its ‘impressive’ counterinsurgency efforts.

General David Petraeus said there had already been coordinated operations on both sides of the border, with Pakistani forces on one side and NATO and Afghan troops on the other.

“We want to do more hammer and anvil operations,” FoxNews quoted Gen Petraeus as saying in an interview with an American news agency. Pakistan recognised ‘the need to do more to solidify their gains in Fata, and we are going to coordinate with them to help their operations,” he said.
But the General insisted that Pakistan’s efforts at combating the various militant groups active in the country must be commended. “We have to be very clear in recognising what Pakistan has done over the course of the last 22 months, which is quite considerable. They’ve conducted impressive counterinsurgency operations” in several regions, including the Swat Valley, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal regions, Petraeus said. “And they have sustained significant military losses and civilian losses during the course of that time.”

Petraeus insisted that gains already made must be solidified before Pakistan expands its operations to other areas — such as troubled North Waziristan. “They are the first to recognise that there are groups in there that have to be dealt with over time,” the General said. “But ... they’ve got quite a few short sticks and hornets’ nests already, and rule Number 1 of a military operation is don’t start something you can’t finish. And they recognise the need to finish some of the operations they’ve already conducted before launching significant new ones.”

Forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan ‘have conducted very close coordination in the past two months in particular’, the General said, adding that he meets regularly with Pakistani Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, with two meetings held already this month, one in Kabul and the other in Islamabad.

“All participants recognise the need to do more against some of those elements that are undermining security in Afghanistan. And again, over time, as earlier gains are solidified we think there will be opportunities for coordinated activities,” he said.

“Over the last two years there has been an increase in Taliban activity up in the north of Afghanistan,” Petraeus acknowledged, but said there were plans by the Interior Ministry, the Afghan army and NATO ‘to reverse the momentum that the Taliban achieved in the north’.

Asked how this would be done, the General pointed to recent operations in Kunduz, where combined operations involving the Afghan army, police, border police and coalition forces were pushing further into territory where the Taliban operate.
The US had also sent an infantry brigade, an aviation brigade and additional special forces to the north over the past six to 10 months, Petraeus said, adding that Germany — which commands NATO troops in the north — had also conducted ‘impressive counterinsurgency operations, actually the first in their post-World War II history’.

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