International Herald Tribune
April 27, 2005
By Carlotta Gall

American instructors have been training Pakistani helicopter pilots in night-vision flying and army commandos in airborne assault tactics to tackle the latest refuge of Al Qaeda and foreign fighters in the tribal area of North Waziristan, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Barno, said Tuesday.

General Barno, speaking in an interview, said he visited the Special Services Group headquarters at Chirat, near the Pakistani town of Peshawar, Saturday for the graduation of two companies trained by American trainers and watched a display by the units in their new Bell4 helicopters.

It was the first time the U.S. military has admitted training Pakistani Army units to help in the war against terror because of the extreme sensitivity with which the presence of American troops is regarded in Pakistan. Until now Pakistani authorities have admitted only that some U.S. personnel are assisting with electronic surveillance in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.

Major General Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan's chief military spokesman, said that there were no U.S. military trainers in Chirat and that General Barno had probably been referring to joint military exercises between the two countries.

"The Pakistan Army has been training with many countries of the world," General Sultan said by telephone. "We have also been conducting joint military training with the U.S. Army many a time earlier. They benefit from each other's experience. They learn from each other. That's what has been happening and nothing else."

The comments came as the Pakistani Army is gearing up to go into one of the last redoubts of Al Qaeda and foreign fighters in the tribal agency of North Waziristan, close to the Afghan border.

Last year, the military moved against foreign militants in South Waziristan, killing some 300 fighters and losing about the same number of their own soldiers. The remnants of the foreign and local militants made their way into North Waziristan, and according to some reports the Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may also be in the region.

"They are working this hard," General Barno said of the Pakistani military. "It's too early to say that there is a new offensive, and I don't know what direction this is going to take, but there is no question from the vice chief of the army staff down, that they very much intend to determine how to best get at the enemy."

General Barno, who leaves next month after an 18-month tour in Afghanistan, vowed last year to hunt down bin Laden. He will leave without accomplishing that, but he said that Pakistan had successfully disrupted the Al Qaeda funded militants in South Waziristan and was set to advance on those seeking refuge in North Waziristan.

In Afghanistan, he predicted that the Taliban would suffer a major schism in coming months as he expected many, including some senior commanders, to join a government reconciliation program and give up their insurgency, leaving only a small hard core of militants still fighting.

Part of that hard core is in North Waziristan, a network loyal to the former Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani that continues to attack U.S. troops across the border, the general said.

"They are still working to some degree at the behest of Al Qaeda, and are financed by Al Qaeda to run operations here to disrupt activities here in Afghanistan, and they operate on both sides of the border," he said.

Foreign fighters were among them and some Arabs who were largely in the background providing the funding, General Barno said.

They had shown an ability to adapt and had shifted to new areas, had used the winter to regroup, reorganize and re-equip, and were conducting some training "very quietly," he said.

"If you were to look back five years ago, you would see large training camps and a large footprint," he said. "And now it's more very, very small groups - of three or four or five. They spend a short time getting some training here, and then maybe move to get some training somewhere else. It's very difficult to be able to pinpoint this activity even going on, much less to get and find it, disrupt it and capture or kill these guys.

"The risk is they are looking for a media victory or some kind of spectacular attack, whether they are successful or not, but that shows they are still a live organization," he said.

Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune

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