October 14, 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n Following a series of high-level meetings between American and Pakistani security and military figures related to the operations of the notorious Haqqani Network in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, the leadership of the Taliban\u2019s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has released a statement denouncing what it perceives as an American attempt to detach the Haqqani Network from the Taliban command in the interests of creating divisions within the movement.\u00a0 The statement is also critical of American suggestions that the Haqqani Network has close ties to Pakistan\u2019s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the latter agency long suspected of having close ties to the Taliban and various other Islamist militant groups active in Kashmir and in the tribal agencies of Pakistan\u2019s northwest frontier. The Taliban consider this an attempt to \u201cattribute the decisive and staggering attacks by Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate to the neighboring country of Pakistan\u201d (ansar1.info, September 27).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jalaluddin Haqqani<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The Taliban assert that the success of their summer \u201cBadr\u201d offensive was so successful that it forced many Coalition partners to reassess their participation in the Afghanistan conflict. Afghanistan\u2019s government claimed from the beginning that \u201cBadr\u201d was coordinated with the ISI (Tolo News [Kabul], May 28). According to the Taliban statement, the success of this campaign revealed the true nature of the \u201clies and false information\u201d spread by CIA chief General David Petraeus and others in the American command. Unwilling to attribute these victories to the Afghan Taliban, these same U.S. officials have concocted an intervention from Pakistan to explain their defeats at the hands of an enemy they claim to have weakened long ago. These unfounded allegations are meant to \u201cdeceive the members in its coalition for a bit longer.\u201d<\/p>\n The Taliban are especially disturbed by American suggestions that veteran Pashtun jihadi commander Jalaluddin Haqqani is not part of the Afghan Taliban command but is rather somehow a separate force \u201ctied to others.\u201d The statement asserts that such efforts are designed to \u201cgive a bad name to our prominent figures by tying them to foreign intelligence\u2026 the Islamic Emirate is at its strongest and [is] unified more than it has been at any other stage\u2026 Neither are our bases in Pakistan, nor do we need residence outside of our country\u2026 The respected Jalaluddin Haqqani is [one of] the Islamic Emirate\u2019s honorable and dignified personalities and receives all guidance for operations from the leader of the Islamic Emirate.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. military has long been frustrated by deadly operations carried out against its troops in Afghanistan by Haqqani Network forces, which typically retire into Pakistan after finishing their operations, placing them beyond most forms of retribution by American forces.\u00a0 A series of meetings in the last few weeks has been designed to goad Pakistan\u2019s military into carrying out a major offensive against the Haqqani Network and compel the ISI to stop its support for the group (Pakistan Observer<\/em>, October 10).<\/p>\n According to U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, \u201cWe cannot have the Haqqanis coming across the border attacking our forces and [Afghans] and disappearing back into a safe haven\u2026 We keep telling [the Pakistanis] you can\u2019t choose among terrorists. If you are against terrorism, you have to be against all forms of terrorism\u201d (Dawn<\/em> [Karachi], September 22).<\/p>\n This article was originally published in the October 14, 2011 issue of the Jamestown Foundation\u2019s Terrorism Monitor<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Andrew McGregor October 14, 2011 Following a series of high-level meetings between American and Pakistani security and military figures related to the operations of the notorious Haqqani Network in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, the leadership of the Taliban\u2019s Islamic Emirate … Continue reading <\/p>\n