Pakistan seals borders against Taliban

Pakistan is sealing parts of its border with Afghanistan, trying to prevent Taliban militants from escaping a major US military operation that’s just been launched in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Anchor Lisa Mullins gets the latest from the BBC’s Mike Wooldridge in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
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LISA MULLINS: The new operation in Afghanistan is being backed up by Pakistani army troops across the border. The BBC’s Mike Wooldridge is in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. He describes what these troops are doing.

MIKE WOOLDRIDGE: What they say they’re doing is to concentrate their forces there, in the places where they feel any escaping Afghan Taliban are most likely to try and cross into Pakistan, moving in from left and right, as one military official here put it to me. Now, this is a desert part of the border. It has actually got one main transit route between Afghanistan and Pakistan on it, but there’s plenty of other places where it’s known that Taliban quite regularly cross. So, what they’re doing, they say they’re not putting any additional troops into this. It’s very much about reorganizing their forces in this area. And in a sense, therefore, to try and back up what’s happening on the other side of the border, and also, of course, protect Pakistan itself from more Taliban coming over into this country.

LISA MULLINS: Well, would you suggest the geography of the region makes it notoriously difficult to entirely seal, but are Pakistani forces now any more able to seal it than they were before, and any more willing to?

MIKE WOOLDRIDGE: Well, one of the problems in a way, although they quite clearly do want to contribute to helping the coalition forces on the Afghan side, it’s that they’ve very much got their own pre-occupations, at the moment, in taking on the Pakistan Taliban further to the north, and the north west of Pakistan. That’s consuming a lot of the military effort here. So, the Pakistan army is most certainly focused on that, and that’s probably one reason, there may be others, why they’re working with their existing troops, making sure, as they would see it, that they can be out there most effective in trying to prevent this infiltration into Pakistan.

LISA MULLINS: Well, I wonder how effective they can be, and how much the United States is counting on these Pakistani forces right now? How significant Pakistan’s role is overall to the United States, and international forces as they try to get the Taliban out of Afghanistan, or at least try to stabilize Afghanistan.

MIKE WOOLDRIDGE: Well, the Obama administration has, of course, in its new strategy for this whole region said that what happens on this side of the border, the actions that the military take here and other agencies in this country, is absolutely critical. That is why they’re being so encouraging of this new military offensive here against the Pakistani Taliban. And not only against them, They obviously hope that as a byproduct of that, it will make it more difficult for Al Qaeda, indeed any other militant groups to see those, and use those areas in the tribal regions along the border as a safe haven. It’s all joined up, really. And I think that undoubtedly significant that General David Petraeus, the regional commander, was here in Pakistan just to the weekend on Sunday, having discussions that were described by officials here at the time, on matters of mutual interest. Now, they were obviously about all of these operations, and co-ordinations are going to be critical.

LISA MULLINS: Well, it’s interesting that Pakistani officials even announced what’s happening with the Pakistani soldiers. I mean, is this unusual that, especially who’s to say a maneuver of this size, this magnitude, has been basically broadcast, trumpeted?

MIKE WOOLDRIDGE: I think that Pakistan is very keen that American and the rest of the world sees what it is doing at this time. It knows that it’s being accused in the past of not being fully committed to tackling militants here of all kinds in these Afghan/Pakistan border regions. So they are doing a great deal to try and convince everybody that they are playing a full part in this, both in Pakistan and in supporting what’s happening on the other side of the border. And they would say, very much backed up by public opinion in this country at the moment, the government calls it a fight for Pakistan’s survival, quite a lot of Pakistanis see it that way too.

LISA MULLINS: Alright. The BBC’s Mike Wooldridge, the world affairs correspondent, speaking to is from Islamabad, Pakistan. Thank you.

MIKE WOOLDRIDGE: Thank you.

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