US, Pakistani militaries devise strategy against growing militancy

WASHINGTON: Top US and Pakistani military officials have met to discuss strategies to contain the growing militant threat along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff Admiral Michael Mullen said Thursday.
 
Mullen, who led the US side to the talks this week, also said that Pakistan military chief General Ashfaq Kayani had stepped up operations to flush out Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants using the border area as a staging point for attacks in Afghanistan.

"We certainly talked about the complexity of the challenges that we have in the border area, the pressure that we believe needs to be applied there for lots of reasons, not the least of which is the effect it's having on the fight in Afghanistan," Mullen told a Pentagon briefing.

There was "a very clear need from a US standpoint and from the Pakistani standpoint that we have got to figure out a way to get at this problem," Mullen said, in an indication that fresh strategies could be drawn up to combat the rising militancy threat.

Kayani led the Pakistani team to the talks among the top military brass, which also included US General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq who is set to be the senior military officer in the Middle East.

The meeting was reportedly held on a US aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday.

Kayani "is undertaking operations that were not ongoing a few months ago," Mullen said, cautioning that it could take some time to bring the problem under control.

"I am encouraged that he's taking action and I also think it's going to take some time," he said. "Expectations for instantaneous results are probably a little bit too high."

The meeting came amid increasingly deadly attacks against Afghan and Western targets in Afghanistan following a series of bombings and threats by Taliban-led insurgents trying to drive out the Western-backed government and its allies.

Washington has also been concerned that the Pakistani military had not been doing enough to stem the flow of militants from the Pakistan side of the border used as a staging point for attacks on Afghanistan.

"The meeting was mainly to continue to discuss ongoing operations against extremists in the border region and to work together to find better ways to solve those problems," one US military official who was briefed on the talks was quoted saying by the New York Times.

Last week, at least 10 suicide bombers staged a cordinated attack on one of the largest American military bases in Afghanistan and about 100 insurgents ambushed and killed 10 elite French paratroopers in what was seen as the Taliban's most complex and audacious attacks of the war since 2001.

US-led forces invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 and ousted the Taliban regime for harbouring Al-Qaeda.

Nearly 70,000 international troops are helping the Afghanistan government fight the growing insurgent threat and rebuild its security forces. The Afghan army already takes the lead in some joint operations.