US in favour of cross-border attacks to check Taliban flow from Pak

MELBOURNE - US military officials are advocating cross-border attacks as part of new tactics to choke off the flow of Taliban fighters and bomb-making materials from Pakistan into key battlefields of south Afghanistan.

Two senior officers belonging to the team of General David Petraeus, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, are scheduled to meet their Pakistani counterparts this week, a senior NATO official said.

Major-General Mike Flynn and Major-General William Mayville plan to share US intelligence about Taliban efforts to recruit fighters in refugee camps in Pakistan, and locations where the Taliban load ammonium nitrate to make bombs.

The officers will also present intelligence to their Pakistani counterparts about Taliban operations in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, The Age reports.

The US has had faced problems this year in Kandahar and neighbouring Helmand province, where it has sent tens of thousands of additional troops.

The US offensives in the region have struggled to clear guerilla fighters, who easily disappear into the local population.

General Petraeus is facing a deadline from the White House to show progress in the war by next July, and officials said he was pushing the Pakistani military to confront the Taliban.

“We’re going to take this fight to the edge. We’re not going to back off,” said one official.

Kandahar and parts of Helmand have remained violent in part because of the infiltration of fighters over the border.

The Taliban leadership fled across the border to the Balochistan capital, Quetta, after the US invasion of 2001, and some members are believed to be directing the insurgency from there. (ANI)