US intelligence officials say there has been an increase in foreign fighters traveling to Pakistan to join up with al-Qaeda-linked militants in the country’s tribal areas.
US intelligence and military sources said that dozens or more Uzbeks, North Africans and Arabs from Gulf states have moved into Pakistan in recent months, shoring up al-Qaeda forces that are backing the Taliban insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan.
US intelligence officials say that some jihadist Web sites have been encouraging foreign militants to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan, which is considered a “winning fight,” compared with the insurgency in Iraq, which has suffered sharp setbacks in recent months.
A US military spokesman in Baghdad told the New York Times that there has been a corresponding drop in the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq, now less than 40 a month compared with up to 110 a month one year ago.
“The flow may reflect a change that is making Pakistan, not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia who are seeking to take up arms against the West,” the Times wrote, citing the officials.
General David McKiernan, the new NATO commander in Afghanistan, said that thee situation in Pakistan’s northwestern border areas, where al-Qaeda and other Islamic insurgents are based, has worsened.
“The porous border has allowed insurgent militant groups a greater freedom of movement across that border, as well as a greater freedom to resupply, to allow leadership to sustain stronger sanctuaries and to provide fighters across that border,” McKiernan told the Times.
The suicide bombing at the gates of the Indian embassy in Kabul on Monday underscored the increasing fears of US and Afghan officials that Taliban insurgents working with Pakistani intelligence operatives might have used the bombing to pursue Pakistan’s long power struggle with India.
Al-Qaeda and other militant groups have used redoubts in Pakistan’s rugged mountains as havens for the past several years.
Since the new Pakistani government sharply curtailed security operations in the tribal areas in March and began negotiating with tribal leaders to rein in the militants, the number of foreign fighters entering the tribal areas has increased “from a trickle to a steady stream,” said a US Defense Department official, who follows Pakistan closely, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
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