Australia will offer military advisers to Pakistan to train security forces to fight Taliban and al-Qaeda militants taking sanctuary there from Afghanistan, the government said yesterday.
Australian Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon called for a bigger international effort, including more economic and military aid, to combat Taliban insurgents based in Pakistan’s largely lawless tribal border areas.
“We must arm the Pakistani army with the skills and means to conduct counter-insurgency campaigns and civil operations,” Fitzgibbon said in a speech, warning Pakistan must not become a breeding ground for al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah militants.
Fitzgibbon said this month he was “pessimistic” about the security situation in Afghanistan, where Australia has 1,080 troops. He said Pakistan must be secured for the US and NATO-led war effort against Afghanistan insurgents to succeed.
“Despite their best efforts, and their heavy losses ... they are making only limited headway in dealing with the lawlessness in that particular region,” he told the National Press Club.
“I’m not talking about a deployment which requires force protection and sending people into the tribal areas. I may only be talking about military advisers in Islamabad,” he said.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported yesterday that a senior CIA official confronted Pakistani officials earlier this month over ties between the country’s intelligence service and militants in the tribal areas.
Citing defense and intelligence sources, the Times said that the trip by CIA Deputy Director Stephen Kappes demonstrated a harder line being taken against Pakistani ties to those responsible for the surge of violence in Afghanistan, including militant Maulavi Jalauddin Haqqani.
The paper said the meeting could be a sign that the relationship between the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI “may be deteriorating.”
A US official said there was no evidence of official Pakistani support of al-Qaeda, but there was “genuine and longstanding concerns about Pakistan’s ties to the Haqqani network, which of course has ties to al-Qaeda.
In related news, Pakistani troops killed 20 Taliban militants and imposed a curfew in the northwestern Swat valley yesterday to prevent further deterioration of a two-month-old peace deal, officials said.
The clash came a day after rebels kidnapped 30 security officials in Swat, which until last year was a thriving tourist resort known as the “Switzerland of Pakistan” for its snow-clad peaks.
A gunbattle lasting up to five hours erupted after fighters loyal to pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Fazlullah attacked a security checkpost in the town of Sarbanda, Major Mohammad Farooq said.
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