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Pakistani forces hunting al-Qaeda at Afghan border

Pakistani forces have begun operations along the border with Afghanistan, continuing their pursuit of foreign al-Qaeda fighters into the mountainous tribal area where Osama bin Laden has been thought to be hiding for the past year, Pakistani and US military officials said late last week.

On Saturday, in the most recent operation, the Pakistani military killed two foreign fighters who appeared to be Arabs in a raid in Devgar, near the Afghan border in North Waziristan province. They captured eleven others -- one from Sudan, one from Qatar, and a number of Pakistanis from Punjab province, said Brigadier Mehmood Shah, chief of security for the tribal areas.

Major General Eric Olson, commander of the combined joint task force in Afghanistan, confirmed Thursday that Pakistan had begun operations in North Waziristan and was planning more.

US officials have pushed for Pakistan to move on North Waziristan after military operations in South Waziristan last year smashed at least two militant training camps and disrupted hundreds of foreign militants taking shelter in that tribal area.

More than 300 foreign fighters and local tribesmen were killed or captured last year, but more are thought to have retreated into the Shomal Mountains of North Waziristan.

Some reports in the past 18 months have placed bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, in the impenetrable Shomal Mountains, where they are thought to live a wary existence, not moving or communicating in any way that would attract attention. Other reports have suggested that the men moved down into the cities of Pakistan last year as the fighting intensified in South Waziristan, but US and Pakistani officials still say they suspect bin Laden is hiding in the mountainous border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistani forces lost about 200 soldiers in the fighting last year and this time are conducting targeted operations based on specific intelligence, rather than the broad sweeps that were so costly for them, officials said.

The US military in Afghanistan is also running "very extensive operations" on the Afghan side of the border in Khost province, Olson said, in part to watch for movement of militants trying to evade the operations in Pakistan.

US forces inflicted heavy casualties on a group of armed men they encountered close to the border last week. The group was probably a patrol seeking to ambush US or Afghan troops, and may have come in from Pakistan, Olson said. US soldiers on the ground confirmed that 11 of the men had been killed and more probably had been wounded as the group scattered and escaped across the border, he said.

Elements of al-Qaeda in this eastern region remain the most serious concern for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, but a shift in popular sentiment against them, and the operations on each side of the border for a year now, mean that it increasingly has looked like an "insurgency in decline," the general said.

He contended that the Taliban, insurgents linked to the rulers of Afghanistan whom the US ousted in late 2001, also are a declining force, and that 30 midlevel Taliban members have approached the US military seeking reconciliation under a government program to end the insurgency. More, including midlevel and senior commanders, have contacted the Afghan government directly. When commanders should be preparing and recruiting for new fighting as spring approaches, the movement was struggling to regain support among the people, he said.

Nevertheless, he said, the US-led coalition plans to increase the number of troops in the country, now at 18,000, before parliamentary elections this year to ensure security across the country.
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