WASHINGTON - A Pentagon report chronicling American and NATO operations in Afghanistan says that Pakistani troops' operations against the Taliban and other militant groups are focused on eliminating the threat posed to Pakistan alone.
The report, published in The Hill, a Congressional newspaper, describes Pakistani troops operations as ‘selective counterinsurgency operations’ within the restive tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. "The Pakistani military targets those militants which they believe pose a direct threat to the Pakistani government as opposed to those who they believe are focused primarily on Afghanistan," an unnamed State Department official told reporters at the Pentagon. According to the report, Pakistan's strict focus on internal terror threats has created an atmosphere of "pervasive mistrust and divergent strategic interests" between Kabul and Islamabad.
"It's Pakistan's duty as a responsible international country to control all violence that emanates from its borders into other areas. And we continue to urge them to do so," a Pentagon official said during the same briefing at The Department of Defence. Those safe havens being used by the Taliban and the Haqqani terror group "without any Pakistani effort to control them" remains one of the top threats to the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat, was quoted as saying by The Hill.
That said, Pakistan's limited counterterrorism campaign is having an effect on terror groups operating in Afghanistan, the State Department official noted.
Groups like the Haqqani network, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are essentially a "syndicate of extremists" whose efforts are linked in some form or fashion, "even though one group may be more focused on Pakistan than Afghanistan," according to the official.
"Given the links [between] them, pressure anywhere on the syndicate is positive," the State Department official said.
"When they go after ... the groups that are focused on Pakistan, that degrades the overall ability of the syndicate," the official explained. "And [that] does contribute to a more secure Afghanistan, even if they only go after those groups."