Pakistan, Iran helping Taliban: McChrystal

[Naveed Yaseen]

* US commander says new strategy needed, ‘inadequate resources to result in failure’

LAHORE: Factions of Pakistani and Iranian “spy services” are supporting Taliban that carry out attacks on coalition troops, the Washington Post quoted top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal as saying on Wednesday.

In a detailed analysis of the military situation delivered to the White House, the US military commander said he had evidence that the Taliban in Afghanistan were being aided by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

He said they were contributing to the external forces working to undermine US interests and destabilise the government in Kabul.

“Afghanistan’s insurgency is clearly supported from Pakistan,” McChrystal wrote, adding that senior leaders of the major Taliban groups were “reportedly aided by some elements of Pakistan’s ISI.”

“There is a mixture of motives and concerns within the ISI that have accounted for the dalliances that have gone on for years” with insurgent groups, Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA counter-terrorism official was quoted as saying.

McChrystal’s report also said that Tehran was playing “an ambiguous role in Afghanistan, providing developmental assistance to the government even as it flirts with insurgent groups that target US troops”.

“The Iranian Quds Force is reportedly training fighters for certain Taliban groups and providing other forms of military assistance to insurgents,” McChrystal said.

He said Iranian military assistance was not an immediate threat to Western forces but could become one in the future, Reuters reported.

More troops: He also warned President Barack Obama that the war against the Taliban could be lost within a year without more troops, AFP reported. McChrystal said a new strategy was needed and warned that “inadequate resources will likely result in failure”. “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) – while Afghan security capacity matures – risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” he said. daily times monitor/agencies

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...2009_pg1_7