|
Musharraf playing game with US, Afghanistan
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is playing a double game with the US and Afghanistan by arresting only the foreign members of al-Qaeda to placate the US, but allowing the Taliban to rearm and regroup for further forays into Afghanistan against the US, media reported on Tuesday. According to Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban, Jihad, and The rise of militant Islam in Central Asia, Musharraf is also supporting the fundamentalists in his country and using their "threat" to get more military aid from the US. Rashid, who shares an excellent rapport with Afghan premier Hamid Karzai, told the Wall Street Journal about Karzai's fears that "Pakistan is giving him sleepless nights" by allowing extremist elements, living in Pakistan, to undermine his government in the Pashtun belt. Karzai also wondered why these rogue elements have not been arrested or handed over to the Afghan Government. The ominous issue, said Rashid, is that the rebels who have resurfaced in Southern Afghanistan recently were assembled in Pakistan with heavy weapons, sophisticated communications equipment for a clandestine radio station, posters and pamphlets announcing a jihad against US forces and the government of President Karzai. They had enough supplies to set up a base camp and a medical clinic in the mountains south of Spin Baldak, just 15 miles from the Pakistani border, he said, adding their objective was clearly to harass the (US) 82nd Airborne Division camp near Kandahar, some 120 miles to the west. According to Rashid, hundreds more are being mobilised in Wazirstan, in the Pakistani tribal belt adjacent to eastern Afghanistan, for a spring offensive calculated to coincide with a US assault on Iraq. Thought so. Not the least little movement of the old surprise meter. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-02-12 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=10155 |