Pakistani forces choke off Taliban on border: tribal area cleared of militants: ISPR

Pakistani forces have choked off the infiltration of Taliban insurgents into Afghanistan from a violence-plagued border region, a Pakistani army commander said on Wednesday. US-led Nato forces in Afghanistan are bracing for a Taliban surge as the winter snows melt, and Pakistan has been facing a chorus of calls to stop the militants launching attacks from sanctuaries in tribal areas on its side of the border.
But the commander of Pakistani forces in the militant-infested South Waziristan region said his men had virtually sealed the frontier. "No regular movement is taking place between South Waziristan and the Bermel area of Afghanistan," Major-General Gul Muhammad told reporters on a military-organised trip to the region.
"If someone proves it with any satellite imagery, I am responsible. We have choked all main routes," he said. He also said Pakistani tribesmen had cleared foreign al Qaeda-linked militants from strongholds near South Waziristan's main town after several weeks of bloody battles.
As security has deteriorated in Afghanistan, calls have mounted for Pakistan to do more to stop the Taliban using sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border, and to crack down on the Islamist networks supporting the rebels.
But another Pakistani officer rejected suggestions the Taliban and al Qaeda were operating out of Waziristan, and said Afghanistan and its allies had to do more to improve security on their side of the border.
"There are no al Qaeda training camps, there are no Taliban training camps," military spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad said. "Both sides are equally responsible that no-cross border movement takes place."
Meanwhile, Pakistani tribesmen have cleared all foreign militants from an area on the Afghan border in an offensive that is a role model for the rest of the region, a general said on Wednesday.
But a key Uzbek al Qaeda-linked militant, with a five-million-dollar US bounty on his head, has not been caught, regional commander Major General Gul Muhammad told reporters on a rare trip to South Waziristan. Muhammad also confirmed earlier reports that around 200 foreign militants and around 40 tribesmen had died in fierce fighting which broke out on March 19 after a mortar fired by the Uzbeks killed several schoolchildren.
"The Uzbeks have been kicked out lock, stock and barrel from the Wana Valley," Muhammad said at Sholam Post, a military check-post over looking Wana, the mountain-fringed capital of South Waziristan. Reporters were flown to the remote region by helicopter and driven through the rugged valley for the first time since the fall of the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2001.
"Wana will be the role model for the whole of South Waziristan and North Waziristan," he said, referring to the neighbouring tribal region where the army fought bloody clashes with insurgents in 2006. The government has previously said that the formerly Taliban-supporting tribesmen's efforts vindicate its policy of signing peace deals with the ethnic Pashtun clans of the region, despite criticism from Western allies.
The tribesmen sheltered hundreds of foreign militants, including Uzbeks who fled from Afghanistan after US-led forces toppled the Taliban regime following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The army carried out major operations in South Waziristan in 2004 and 2005 but was unable to drive out militants because they had the support of local tribesmen at the time, Muhammad said.
But the Uzbeks fell out with the Pakistani tribesmen over the course of the past year after they killed several local people and "were involved in kidnapping and car snatching. The locals were sick of them," Muhammad said.
The Pakistani military secured part of South Waziristan on Friday after a tribal force of around 1,000 fighters expelled the militants, the first time the army has moved in the region since signing a peace deal there in 2005.