ISLAMABAD: While the foreign office remains firm in its stance that Pakistan has been forced to retaliate against Afghan militant attacks, a senior official of the defence ministry has claimed that foreign forces in Afghanistan are behind recent cross border attacks in Pakistan.
According to the official, international forces raised a Coalition Special Operation Force (CSOF) to ‘directly and indirectly attack security forces and civilians in the bordering towns of Pakistan’.
He further told The Express Tribune that Islamabad had filed formal complaints with the US and Nato against armed attacks on its security forces in Dir and Chitral. “We are waiting for their reply,” he added while requesting anonymity.
American news website the Long War Journal in a report last week confirmed that the CSOF was fighting against the Taliban in Afganistan’s Nuristan province – an area mostly under the control of the Taliban and other allied fighting groups.
Furthermore, noted strategy expert Brig Shaukat Qadir told The Express Tribune that the CSOF, which, he said, was established by the US to sponsor violence in Pakistan, was used by foreign forces to attack Pakistani bordering towns.
Meanwhile, a senior official in the foreign affairs ministry has confirmed that several rockets were recently fired as ‘retaliatory action’ on militants by Pakistani security forces in the Afghan province of Kunar.
The official made it clear that the attacks were part of retaliatory action against the militants who in the last two months have been constantly attacking Pakistani security forces and defence installations in Dir and Chitral from Kunar.
While the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government has repeatedly blamed US and Nato forces in Afghanistan for sponsoring militant attacks on civilian and security forces in Dir and Chitral, the foreign affairs ministry refrains from accusing foreign troops.
“We are aware that a third party is directly involved in anti-Pakistan violence in our tribal regions,” the source said while requesting anonymity.
Ruling out Afghanistan
“Islamabad is aware that the Afghan government is not responsible for the border violations,” the foreign office source said, adding that a militarily fragile country would not attack Pakistan on its own.
He also referred to the recent statement by the Afghan foreign ministry’s spokesman regarding the ongoing tug-of-war between Pakistan and the United States. He said Kabul was perturbed by the development. “The Afghan foreign ministry’s deputy spokesman Dr Faramarz Tamanna said that Afghanistan welcomes any regional and international pressure on Pakistan but believes that a deterioration of relationship between America and Pakistan can’t help regional peace”.
Pakistan’s foreign office believed that peace between Islamabad and Kabul was much more in the interest of Afghanistan. He said that after the recapture of the Waigal district in Nuristan by Afghani Taliban in March this year, foreign forces in Afghanistan sponsored attacks on the Pakistani bordering towns.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 29th, 2011.
COMMENTS (32)
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Looks like the CSOF is harkat ul mujaheedin or laskar e taiba or jaish that attacks Pakistan (assuming we are a Non Muslim state) just the way we taught our people for India.
Burn in the fury of your own acts. Taste your own medicine now.
How can Pakistan respond to US when several times Afghan mercenaries, ISAF and US Special Forces have attacked our border towns? Even if the US incursions occurred this time, we only have to call their senior diplomat and make hue and cry only.
Double games of the USA will further open who knows better then Pakistan in his forced marriage of 60 years with American totally full of black mailing and we have doing wrong things with all neighbours.
@ Ghaznavi - more delusion from one of ET's favorite delusionaries.
Let us have the documentary, audio, video or taped confessions evidence from Pakistan, so we can take these allegations seriously !!
@Cautious : how much $$
LOL....now anonymous officials are engaged in conspiracy theories.
@ DEE CEE: Well US and NATO can not go at war with pakistan and iran because both are nuclear powers, and US is against IRAN as well i think everyone knows that they can only destroy pakistan and iran by supporting terrorism, u know kill it from the inside. Moreover in recent past iran also accused US for trying to bring unrest in the country, (by bomb blasts) you can find this on internet. And for haqqani's there have been many attacks in pakistan that were lead by Haqqanis why would pakistan support them?. i am not sure whether you know or not but CIA agent "raymond davis" can speak pashtoo and urdu very fluently and accurately, he was caught in pakistan. i can literally write a long paragraph on this but there is no use, no one changes his mindset by reading such blogs, i would just request you to think over it.
The blame game would lead to nothing, I believe. Pak US have to, either follow a reconciliation path, or part ways to work independent of each other... Otherwise, the two states would still be Allies, while their publics will grow deeper sentiments against each other....
@ Dee Cee
I was truly unable to decode your message, what are you trying to say?? Let me ask you couple of questions in return..
Why has India occupied Kashmir with 700,000 strong army against the wishes of locals? Why did India arm, train and infiltrate the terrorists "Mukti Bahini" into East Pakistan? Why did US attack Iraq? Why did US attack Afghanistan? Why are you posting on a Pakistani website?? Why is your name Dee Cee? WHY WHY WHY??
Who is defending Haqqanis? nobody, they are defending themselves. They are not in North Waziristan. Why doesn't US drones eliminate the haqqni network? Who is stopping them? Not Pakistan. Who failed to get a grip on Afghanistan after dislodging Taliban? Who has been meeting Haqqanis in white house and commenting "goodness personified".... Why doesnt US man the Pak Afghan border? Pakistan has more than 10 times the post on the border than afghan/nato/isaf combined. Is it complacency or US involvement with taliban? Why is US is giving money to taliban directly for protection of their troops?
Any answers???
@Cautious: There is pollution and there are paid bloggers.
Grow up -- you act like children calling nasty names on a school yard. No one outside of Pakistan believes that NATO is behind these border attacks.
This might come across as a joke, but, where's the proof? I mean solid documented proof with four reliable eye-witnesses to testify for each one of these assertions. Pakistanis had no problem asking for proof for WTC and Mumbai attacks, so now, where's the proof?
@Waleed: If I was to answer your answer, will you on OBL?
@Ghaznavi: And why would anybody attack Pakistan, pray, tell me? You do not have any answers except that "the world is against Islam and Pakistan is the only nation upholding Islam". Funny thing is that even the "supposedly Islamist militants" are being used by the world to fight "Islam"! Why is nobody attacking Iran inspite of the fact that it is definitely more anti-american than Pakistan ever was. What does Pakistan possess that Iran does not? Iran also has its covert nuclear program as well. Look at the problems clearly please. The world wants Pakistan to prosper, but Pakistan wants to worship the Haqqanis. In what logic harbouring any kind of terrorists is sane? The people you are fighting are your misguided friends. Either they toe the line or they have to be killed. Although I am an Indian, I will concede that India has a strategic interest in keeping the Baloch pot bubbling, but that is nothing compared to these militant groups. So, please don't blame others for your own troubles. And yes, the Nato force should do more to prevent Afghan terrorists, but that doesn't mean that Pakistan should do anything less. If Pak army wants support in tackling Haqqanis, it can ask China and India to help. Let Pak, India, China, US all join hands against the terrorists. Nobody is defending TTP, why should Pakistan defend the Haqqanis?
This was expected........ both gloves must come off. This is no ta surprise at all.
@ John B
And who is going to believe US? Everybody knows the WMD issues. This is the question i have been raising in my comments but people like you never bother to answer simply because you dont have any. You find pakistan an easy target for accusation.
Vienna,29-09-2011 I hope at least the articulate Pakistani Ambassador in the United States given an opportunity to appear before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee hearings if not the Pakistani Prime Minister or Foreign Ministers are unwilling or otherwise hindered from appearing personally for any reason. That would give Pakistani view a global coverage to help Transparency International to judge for itself. Pakistan would get enough public exposure to its reasonable views. Taravadu Taranga Trust for Media Monitoring TTTMM India --Kulamarva Balakrishna
if by "international" you mean Uzbek, Chechen, and Arab militants of Al-Qaeda and Taliban then you win a cookie for your troubles
WOW! Someone must have marbles in his head to say such a thing. Throw anything that comes from the establishment and the people will just JUMP on it. I saw a carton in one of the Pak papers today where the first picture shows a very weak man with a bowl in one hand and a thin walking stick in another. The next picture shows how this same person changes the bowl into a hemlet and the thin stick into a rifle.
Desperately waiting for @Mirza's and @Cautious's comments on this article.
n they blame us for the double game??
READ IN REDIFF
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Pakistan should have projected it to the international community on diplomatic grounds and to the media in a proper manner.
And who is going to believe what PAK says. PAK has always complained that foreign hand is working against PAK whenever her internal problems are on the spot light.
US, NATO and Afghan forces are using TTP as its veritable arm to stage cross border attacks on targets in Pakistan. They need to do more to curb terrorist safe havens.
Now who is playing "double game" or duplicity or dual role here?