This situation has been made possible by coordinated efforts by both the Pak Army and NATO forces, whereas the US side abandoned all bases and forward outposts in the Nurestan area  after the devastating defeat at the Battle of Wanat, allowing the Pakistan Taliban to acquire a new free-fire zone within Afghanistan, from which to harass Pakistani forces. 

 

Cooperation among the TTP, the Pak Army and the US Army has created this situation and given all sides the excuse to keep the fight going, in order to expand it into a three-sided conflagration, which can only be resolved with overwhelming US air power and Special Forces mobilization.

Hang on, Pakistan and Afghanistan; It’s going to be a very rough ride.

 

 

 

ISLAMABAD/PESHAWAR: Up to 600 terrorists from Afghanistan attacked two Pakistani villages on Wednesday, officials said, the latest in a campaign of large-scale raids on civilians and security forces.

 

Terrorists stormed the border villages of Nusrat Dara and Kharo in Upper Dir region, fighting soldiers and pro-government tribal militia.

 

“According to reports from the two villages, between 550-600 terrorists launched the attack at around 5 in the morning and the fighting continued for several hours,” police official Abdul Sattar told Reuters.

 

Another official said four pro-government tribesmen who fought along with troops were wounded in the attack. Paramilitary troops and police were sent to the villages in Upper Dir district to help armed tribesmen there who were trying to fend off the insurgents, local police official Gul Fazal Khan said. The terrorists torched two schools and a mosque in the village of Nusrat Dara, and destroyed a school in the adjoining village of Saro Kili, said Ghulam Muhammad, a top government official in Upper Dir.

 

They used rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns along with assault rifles. Security forces killed three terrorists and captured three others during the fighting, he said. Two members of a militia fighting the terrorists were killed and two others wounded, he added.

 

Information from the area is difficult to verify independently because it is remote and dangerous.

 

Pakistan says more than 55 soldiers have been killed in several attacks from across the border over the past month. The raids have raised tension between the neighbours as they battle protracted insurgencies by Taliban and al Qaeda-linked terrorists.

 

Pakistani Taliban fighters who fled to Afghanistan in the face of army offensives have joined allies in Afghanistan to regroup and threaten Pakistan’s border regions again, analysts say.

 

Pakistan blames Afghanistan for giving refuge to terrorists on its side of the border, leaving its troops vulnerable to counter-attack when it chases them out of the tribal areas and into Afghanistan.

 

Kabul in turn has blamed Pakistan for killing dozens of civilians in weeks of cross-border shelling.

 

ASADABAD: Up to 33 police and five civilians were killed in fighting after Taliban crossed over from Pakistan and attacked a remote region in eastern Afghanistan, an official said on Wednesday. Nuristan provincial governor Jamaluddin Badr said about 40 rebels also died in the two days of clashes that followed weeks of tit-for-tat allegations of cross-border attacks that have fanned diplomatic tensions. But, Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry contradicted the toll, saying 12 policemen had died and another five were wounded.

 

Dozens of rebels who began crossing the border from Pakistan on Tuesday triggered the fight, Badr told AFP, attacking police posts in the Kamdesh district of Nuristan. “The report we have now from the area is that 33 border police and five civilians, two of them women, have been killed,” he said. He said most of the dead rebels were Pakistan Taliban.

 

The Interior Ministry said that “dozens” of rebels were killed in a clearance operation that lasted several hours, 12 of them Pakistanis. “The situation in the border areas of Kamdesh district has returned to normal,” it said. The escalating conflict in the rugged border zone between Afghanistan and Pakistan has forced more than 200 Afghan families to flee so far.