The reaffirmation of the decision came during the 140th Corps Commanders' Conference at the General Headquarters. The military had, on Monday, said it could do without US assistance by depending on its own resources.
During the conference, which was chaired by Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI...
, the highest military forum was briefed in detail about the security situation in the country in general and ongoing operations in Kurram and
Mohmand... Named for the Mohmand clan of the Sarban Pahstuns, a truculent, quarrelsome lot. In Pakistain, the Mohmands infest their eponymous Agency, metastasizing as far as the plains of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar, Charsadda, and Mardan. Mohmands are also scattered throughout Pakistan in urban areas including Karachi, Lahore, and Quetta. In Afghanistan they are mainly found in Nangarhar and Kunar...
tribal areas in particular. Matters of operational preparedness were also discussed.
As the relations between the United States and Pakistain have been on the downward spiral after the unilateral American raid that killed the late Osama bin Laden
... who no longer has to waste time and energy breathing...
in Abbottabad without informing Islamabad beforehand, Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar in a televised interview on Tuesday threatened to pull back troops from the Afghan border in response to US aid cuts.
"If Americans refuse to give us money, then okay. I think the next step is, the government or the armed forces will move the soldiers from the border areas," Mukhtar said, adding, "If at all things become difficult, we will just get our armed forces back."
"We cannot afford to keep our military... it costs you extra amount of money when you are having soldiers in the mountains, so we will definitely use that tool."
Mukhtar later told Rooters that Pakistain wanted the money spent on the maintenance of its army in the Tribal Areas. "This is what we are demanding," he said. "It is our own money."
Although Mukhtar has previously made statements that did not come to fruition, his remarks are significant at a time when public relations between Islamabad and Washington are at an all-time low since the war on terror began.
At the corps commanders' conference, General Kayani appreciated the conduct of the ongoing military operations and the support of locals in flushing out beturbanned goons from their area.
Referring to Mohmand Agency, he instructed that all efforts must be utilised in coordination with the civil administration for safe return of internally displaced persons (IDPs).
Kayani said that the aim of the operation in
Kurram Agency...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora...
was to clear the area of myrmidons involved in terrorism, kidnapping, killing of locals and the blocking of a road connecting Lower Kurram with Upper Kurram.
The US had, on Sunday, confirmed that it had decided to withhold a third of its annual $2.7 billion security assistance to Islamabad, bringing relations to a new low. Cuts of $800 million reportedly include about $300 million used to reimburse Pakistain for some costs of deploying more than 100,000 soldiers along the Afghan border.