Pakistan intelligence helping Taliban: NATO general

KABUL: Pakistan's intelligence agency is helping the Taliban to pursue an insurgency in Afghanistan that has seen a 50 per cent hike in attacks in some areas this year, the NATO commander here said.

The number of foreign fighters, including Europeans, is also increasing here while NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) still lacks the soldiers it needs, US General David D McKiernan said in a weekend interview.

"There certainly is a level of ISI complicity in the militant areas in Pakistan and organisations such as the Taliban," the four-star general said, echoing allegations by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and others.

"I can't say to what level of leadership that goes to but there are indications of complicity on the part of ISI... to the extent that they are facilitating these militant groups that come out of the tribal areas in Pakistan."

Karzai has directly accused the ISI of fuelling the unrest in Afghanistan, which sees near daily militant attacks, but Pakistan has rejected the claim.

McKiernan, who took command of the 53,000-strong ISAF force in June and who led US troops into Iraq in 2003, said the increase in unrest in Afghanistan is in part because Afghan and international troops have pushed into new areas.

Insurgents have also changed their tactics to operate in smaller groups carrying out more attacks while militant sanctuaries in Pakistan have been allowed to grow and are sending more fighters across the porous border.
These include men who are not from the Pashtun tribe that straddles the border and from which the Taliban, who were in government in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, are largely drawn.