The US troops amassed at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border near the tribal North Waziristan Agency will not cross into Pakistan and will only install 'sophisticated equipment' on the Afghanistan side for surveillance of the Haqqani network, official sources said, citing intelligence reports.
“The intelligence agencies have told the government that the US forces do not plan to enter Pakistan and are at the border just to install sophisticated equipment to check the movement of the Haqqani network activists,” a senior government official told this newspaper.
“Keeping in view the latest meetings between the Pakistan and the US officials and the intelligence reports there is at least no fear of ground attack on North Waziristan,” said the official.
The US has deployed hundreds of troops along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border near the tribal North Waziristan Agency as fear grows of attack on the Haqqani network. The heavily armed US forces are backed by gunship helicopters. The relations between Pakistan and the US have deteriorated recently as the US is pressing Pakistan to launch a military operation in North Waziristan.
The Pakistan government and the military rejected the US demand and told them that a US operation in North Waziristan will be treated as attack on Pakistan. The US troops’ movement along the Pak-Afghan borderland at North Waziristan for the target identification of the Haqqani militants is an expression of the US mistrust on Pakistan’s security and intelligence set-up, analysts said.
Hundreds of the US troops deployed in Khost, a town in Afghanistan’s north-eastern Paktia province that borders Pakistan’s North Waziristan, during last couple of days, are tasked to identify the militant targets in the NWA areas that are to be taken on with drones and aerial strikes, according to intelligence sources.
Despite the exchange of 'warm' statements that stressed an enhanced Pak-US strategic cooperation after the tensions between the two states culminated to peak over the Haqqani row, the latest development concerning troop deployment comes as a vivid expression of the US mistrust on Pakistan’s intelligence and security agencies that had been assisting the US and Nato forces in hunting down the militants in Waziristan region.
The US reliance on its own troops for the target identification of the militants instead of exchanging information with Pakistan’s security and intelligence set-up is deciphered in the backdrop of the speculations from the US side that Pakistan was aiding Haqqanis and it would not cooperate with the US in hunting down the militant network.
Nato military spokesperson in Kabul, Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, said that troop movement and deployment in Afghanistan was a “routine operational procedure”.
He declined to comment on the US troop deployment in Khost and refused to provide any further details on the issue. “Troop movement and deployment are part of routine operational procedure. That’s all I have to say.”
Pakistan Army’s media wing Inter-Services Public Relations has not responded to the troops’ amassment in Khost nor did it issue any official statement. On Monday, some tribal elders had reportedly crossed into the North Waziristan Agency border to hold secret meetings with the US and Nato military command in Afghanistan.
The tribal elders were reportedly taken into confidence by the US military officials that the troops would not enter Pakistani territory.