LAHORE Dec, 05 2009: Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar stays most, if not all, of the time in Pakistan, US Army General David Petraeus told the National Public Radio (NPR) on Friday.
In an interview with NPR, Petraeus said Pakistan had taken important steps against the Taliban in the last nine months. ?I think there was a major development there about nine months ago that is very worth discussing. And that is a recognition by the Pakistani population, by virtually all of the political leaders, including the major opposition figure, Nawaz Sharif, and the bulk of the clerics that the most pressing threat to the very existence of Pakistan is the extremist syndicate, again, and, in particular, the Pakistani Taliban,? he said. He particularly mentioned the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as an existential threat to Pakistan.
Petraeus said the TTP and the Afghan Taliban were ?a threat to our Pakistani partners or even a trans-national threat in terms of extremism?.
Haqqani: The US general said the Siraj Haqqani network, believed to be operating from North Waziristan, was a ?big concern?.
?The leader of the Haqqani network is a big concern because, although their leadership tends to be occupying an area on the Pakistani side of the border, the Haqqani network is one of the syndicate of extremist elements that operate in the eastern part of Afghanistan.? ?[Haqqani] is the head of an organisation that causes significant problems in Afghanistan and also can cause problems for Pakistani authorities as well.?
Extremist creativity: The US general said Washington had been party to the creation of these militant groups. ?The existence of these organisations, their initial development was actually a reaction to Soviet occupation [of Afghanistan] and funded by, among others, some of the US contribution to the anti-Soviet occupation of Afghanistan,? he said. ?We funded many of them when they were the mujahideen who were fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.?
He told NPR that the Afghan Taliban were located ?in various locations in Pakistan… typically in Balochistan. It?s called the Quetta shura?. ?I?m not sure that folks will say [the Taliban] right inside the city [Quetta] or precisely ? it will move around and so forth. But… has historically been centred on that city,? Petraeus said. ?And when the Taliban were ejected, defeated along with Al Qaeda and other extremist elements that were located in Afghanistan prior to 9/11… they dispersed in these very rugged areas of eastern Afghanistan, the tribal areas of Pakistan and then down in the Balochistan as well?.
He said there were limits to how fast the world expected Pakistan to overcome terrorism. ?The fact is that they have shifted a substantial amount of their military capability from, for example, the Indian border, from other locations, indeed to deal with this extremist threat. And I think you cannot underestimate how important the steps they have taken in the last nine or 10 months have been,? he said.
?They have also taken very significant casualties in these fights with the extremists. And their civilians have suffered severe losses as well, as these extremists have fought back,? Petraeus said. ?And again, a good bit of this fighting, of course, has been from the [TTP] former Baitullah Mehsud organisation and from some of the other extremist elements that have ? as the Pakistani forces, the frontier corps and the military have gone after them ? have indeed then blown up innocent civilians in marketplaces, visiting cricket teams, [and] of course all the way back to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.?