Hard-won stability in Afghanistan’s Helmand province is undermined by the Pakistan Army’s failure to help stem the flow of arms coming into the area and drugs going out, a US general said.
“Everything is good, but it’s not irreversible,” Marine Corps Major General John Toolan said in an interview in Washington after appearing before the Atlantic Council, a policy research group. He ended a one-year tour last month as the commander in charge of the NATO coalition’s southwestern regional command responsible for Helmand. Toolan’s prognosis highlights the risks as the U.S.-led coalition turns its attention to eastern Afghanistan and prepares to withdraw more forces this year.
With reductions planned by other countries in the 50-nation coalition, about 108,000 personnel will be left until a next round of cuts. The number of U.S. Marines in Helmand is due to drop to 7,000 by October from about 20,000 now, Toolan said in the interview. “We need to maintain the pressure,” Toolan told the Atlantic Council audience. “The insurgency in the south is the greatest threat to the government of Afghanistan.”
The guerrillas known as the Haqqani network, who mainly operate in the country’s east from havens across the Pakistani border, have received attention beyond their potential longer- term impact on Afghanistan, Toolan said. The Haqqanis mainly operate to maintain themselves rather than to achieve any grander designs, he said.
“I know for a fact that drugs are moving out through Pakistan and lethal aid is coming in on a regular basis,” Toolan told the Atlantic Council. “I have had no support from 12th Corps,” the Pakistan Army unit in charge of the area across the border, he said.
He said he tried to organize meetings with the corps to discuss the issue. “There always seemed to be something that interfered,” he said.
“Unfortunately, from my perspective as a tactical commander in Regional Command Southwest, I have had no support” from the Pakistani brigades in the area, he added.
A spokesman for Pakistan’s embassy in Washington, Nadeem Hotiana, said coordination on common threats has occurred in regular three-way talks among border officials from his country, Afghanistan and the coalition led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“There are certain trilateral meetings where such issues can be discussed,” Hotiana said in an interview, declining to comment further.
