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2009-07-02 India-Pakistan
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Pakistan: Taliban switches to NATO convoy attacks in southwest
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[ADN Kronos] By Syed Saleem Shahzad - As NATO and Pakistan have moved to cooperate in containing the Taliban's attacks on NATO supply lines in restive North West Frontier Province, the Taliban are switching their strategy to focus attacks on the southwest and Afghanistan.
Informed sources told AKI that the Taliban's bombing of a NATO container on Tuesday in Pakistan's southwest Balochistan province's Qalat district is the result of newly established militant networks.
The networks include several Pakistani jihadi groups based in the southern port city of Karachi, the Afghan Taliban and their allied Pakistani groups based in Balochistan's provincial capital of Quetta. "We have information that some Karachi-based groups had planned to sabotage NATO's supply lines right in the middle of Karachi as soon as the NATO supplies come out of the Karachi ports," said one source. "But due to the hostile attitude of Karachiites towards the Taliban and heavy vigilance they were able to carry out few such attacks and could not sustain these."
Karachi based militant groups currently only note the travel schedules of the NATO trucks and inform their Quetta counterparts. Attacks are then arranged on trucks bound for NATO's Kandahar Air Field base in southern Afghanistan which transit Balochistan, a senior security official told AKI. He spoke on condition of anonymity as his position does not allow him to speak to the press.
Al least 20 percent of NATO supplies bound for Kandahar air base pass through Balochistan. All NATO supplies arrive at Karachi's port before making the overland journey to Afghanistan. Eighty percent of supplies for NATO troops are destined for the main US Bagram air base outside Kabul. From there, supplies are distributed to several NATO bases in different Afghan provinces.
The Taliban have long worked to establish a powerful network in the Pakistani tribal areas in the northwest as part of their broader scheme to sever NATO's supply lines. Supplies for Bagram pass through the area around the town of Torkham on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Taliban attacks have jumped since December but NATO and Pakistani security agencies undertook several military operations against militants in Pakistan's Khyber and Orakzai areas close to the Afghan border. These operations has seriously impaired the militants' ability to launch attacks in recent months, prompting them to regroup and begin targeting NATO supply lines in southwestern Pakistan instead. 
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Posted by Fred 2009-07-02 00:00||
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