The top US military commander in Afghanistan says the US has increased its surveillance over the Afghan-Pakistani border since Pakistan began pounding a militant stronghold with airstrikes, but so far officials have not seen any militants fleeing the latest offensive. Marine General Joseph Dunford told The Associated Press in an interview that the US was not co-ordinating military operations with Pakistan along the border, but officials have increased the amount of intelligence-sharing with the Afghans.
He said the Afghan troops and US forces in that region were ready for any effects of the strikes, including extremists seeking refuge in Afghanistan. The US has long pressed Pakistan to root out Taliban militants who have found safe haven in the lawless tribal region of North Waziristan, along the Afghan border, and used it as a staging area to launch attacks against Afghan and Nato forces in Afghanistan. Dunford said officials have seen Pakistani families crossing the border to escape the military airstrikes that have pounded the country's north-west since Sunday.
"The Afghan forces as well as our forces are fully prepared to deal with the second-order effects of the Pakistani operations in North Waziristan," Dunford said in an interview from Afghanistan. He added that officials were still trying to determine how many Pakistani families have fled into Afghanistan to escape the violence, but it was difficult because many relocate to families in the south-east and north-east. More broadly, Dunford expressed increased confidence in the Afghan security forces, and said he did not believe that the military collapse playing out in Iraq would occur in Afghanistan once US combat troops leave.
He said the US fully expects to get a bilateral security agreement with Afghanistan's government that will allow up to 14,000 US and Nato troops to remain in the country next year to advise the Afghans and conduct counterterrorism missions. The US left Iraq after the government in Baghdad refused to agree on a security arrangement.
"I don't see, at least today, the divisive politics that obviously resulted in the situation in Iraq playing out here in Afghanistan," said Dunford. "We're encouraged by the fact that we will have a bilateral security agreement. I'm encouraged by the fact that we have multiethnic (presidential) tickets." Sunni militants are advancing across Iraq, taking control of several cities in the north and moving toward Baghdad, while roiling Sunni-Shiite ethnic tensions. In the face of the brutal al Qaida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, some Iraqi security forces have fled.
The failure of the Iraqi troops to hold off the ISIL, just three years after American troops left the country after eight years or war, has led some US leaders to question whether the same slide into chaos and insurgent control will happen in Afghanistan.
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