NATO again shells Taliban positions inside Pakistan; Kabul charges ISI of involvement in the April 27 Karzai assassination attempt; Pentagon: Taliban safe havens in Pakistan “the greatest challenge to long-term security in Afghanistan”
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    • NATO shelled guerilla positions inside Pakistan again during the week in response to rocket and artillery attacks being launched from there into the neighbouring Khost and Paktika provinces which killed four Afghan civilians1. The newly-appointed US military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan meanwhile visited Islamabad on June 27 and held talks with Pakistani officials about the need to control militancy in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan2.

    Kabul on its part has accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI of complicity in carrying out the attempted assassination bid on President Karzai on April 27. A spokesperson for the Afghan intelligence service, Sayeed Ansari on June 25 charged that three of the people involved in the attack were in contact with contacts in Miram Shah, a town in Pakistan’s tribal region of North Waziristan, the main base for the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the region. Ansari asserted that Kabul was not guessing about the involvement of ISI but “saying it precisely3.”

    In other developments, 4 coalition soldiers, over 20 insurgents and 13 policemen were killed in different incidents spread across the country. The insurgents were killed in US-led operations in Paktika and in Helmand province4.

    The Pentagon meanwhile released a report on the resurgence of the Taliban. It described a ‘fragile’ security environment with the likelihood of an increase in the range and frequency of the Taliban attacks. The report termed the Taliban safe haven in Pakistan “the greatest challenge to long-term security in Afghanistan5.”

    The Russian Ambassador to Kabul, Zamir Kabulov, after a Russia-EU meeting in Brussels on June 26, also painted a worrying picture of the Taliban threat, noting that the militants were having an influence in more than half of Afghanistan's territory and that they had control in up to 20 percent of the area. Kabulov stressed that strengthened Afghan security forces were the key to handle the threat, instead of any further increase in NATO presence6.

    The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its World Drug Report 2008 noted that global opium production had reached 8,870 metric tonnes in 2007, with Afghanistan itself accounting for 92 percent of the world's supply. It pointed out that the 5 southern regions controlled by the Taliban accounted for the bulk of the production, even though it had stabilized or fallen in the rest of the country7.

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