Maj Gen Yaftali says most explosive devices and fighters coming to Afghanistan from Pakistan
Taliban militants in Pakistan have established an increasingly close relationship with insurgents from across the border in Afghanistan, supplying them with explosives and well-trained fighters, a senior Afghan army commander said on Wednesday.
The Taliban in Pakistan have always operated separately from their Afghan namesakes, fighting to topple the democratically elected government in Islamabad and establish a strict Islamic Sharia state in the nuclear-armed nation of 180 million people.
But in recent weeks the two groups have secretly agreed to work together, with Pakistani militants announcing a ceasefire with their government in order to preserve militant bases used to stage cross-border attacks.
Major General Muhammad Shareef Yaftali, in charge of several eastern provinces on or near the Afghan border with Pakistan, said this relationship was growing stronger.
“They are working together now. They are going to hold this relationship. It helps them,” Yaftali, commander of the 203rd Corps, said at a military base in Afghanistan’s Paktia province.
“The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban have the same ideology. They are the same people. They are of the same school.”
Militant commanders have said the recent ceasefire in Pakistan was mainly imposed on the Taliban by the Afghan Haqqani Network which fears that an offensive by the Pakistani military in their North Waziristan stronghold could hamper their own push to carry out attacks in Afghanistan.
Yaftali said many students brainwashed in strict madrassas in Pakistan, had crossed the border to join forces with the Taliban. He said some 30,000 madrassas were shut in Pakistan last year, prompting an exodus of radically minded fighters.
“If one group is defeated they bring new fighters and it is easy for them to do that,” said Yaftali, whose command extends over an area of about 83,000 square kilometers with a population of five million people.
He said most of the explosive devices also came from Pakistan. “There are no explosives-making factories in Afghanistan,” Yaftali said. “All the explosives enter Afghanistan from Pakistan. We are close to North Waziristan and there are Taliban training ground and funding sources.”
