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US Defence Secretary Robert Gates was briefed in Afghanistan on efforts to defeat the Taliban as Pakistan — stung by accusations of being a militant base — destroyed three suspected Al-Qaeda hideouts in a dawn strike.
Gates met President Hamid Karzai and military commanders and flew by helicopter to a military post on the border with Pakistan to see work ongoing to put down an insurgency launched after the Taliban were driven from power in 2001.
Hours earlier, while the newly appointed defence secretary prepared for his round of talks, the military in neighbouring Pakistan announced a dawn strike on five suspected Al-Qaeda hideouts in a tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
Seven helicopters attacked the camps after reports of 25 to 30 local and foreign militants there, spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said.
“I can't give you the exact number of casualties but most of them were believed killed,” Shaukat told AFP, adding three camps were destroyed.
Officials said the precision strike targeted a complex in South Waziristan where local and foreign extremists had been training.
Islamabad was angered by statements last week by US intelligence director John Negroponte that top Al-Qaeda leaders who had been harboured by the Taliban had found “secure hideouts” in Pakistan from where they were regrouping.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz firmly rejected the complaints on Sunday but admitted his government was struggling to stop Taliban insurgents moving across the porous border despite the positioning of 80,000 troops along the frontier.
But the Afghan government has welcomed Negroponte's statement and similar ones from other top officials as acknowledgement of its long-held assertions that the roots of the insurgency are in its neighbour.
Bickering over the dragging Taliban insurgency — which was at its deadliest last year with more than 4,000 people killed, most of them rebels — has soured relations between the Islamic neighbours.
Gates expressed concern, during a stopover in Brussels to meet NATO, which is leading 33,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, about increased Taliban attacks as the weather warms — the traditional “spring offensive”.
In Kabul he told reporters a surge in cross-border insurgent activity from Pakistan was a “problem” that would have to be pursued with the Pakistani government, which has struck a peace deal with tribal leaders in some border areas.
Gates also said he would recommend more troops for Afghanistan if this were requested by his commanders. There are about 23,000 US troops here serving in a US-led force and the separate NATO-led force.
The top US commander in Afghanistan, General Karl Eikenberry, told reporters he had recommended extending the stay of a US infantry battalion and pressed for more NATO troops amid indications of a stronger spring offensive.
The general pointed to a doubling in the past month in the number of cross-border incidents along a stretch of border opposite a Pakistani tribal area where the Islamabad government struck a peace agreement with tribal leaders last September.
The deal was that Pakistan would refrain from action against the Taliban or foreign fighters so long as they did not attack.
He said the 33,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force was 10 percent short of the troops promised by NATO. A US military official said it was also short of aviation support, logistics and intelligence elements.
Eikenberry said one reason the Taliban had been able to mount their biggest offensive since their ouster in December 2001 was that they had been able to establish a command structure inside both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“And they need to be interdicted,” he said.
