Taliban commander claims more fighters heading to Afghanistan

Shaktoi: A top Pakistani Taliban commander says he has sent thousands of fighters to neighbouring Afghanistan to rebuff incoming US troops, a claim that comes as a Pakistani army offensive is believed to have pushed many of his men to flee their main redoubt.

Waliur Rahman told Associated Press in an exclusive interview last Monday that the Pakistani Taliban remain committed to battling the army in South Waziristan tribal region, but that they are essentially waging a guerrilla war.

Rahman is a deputy to Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, and the man in charge of operations in South Waziristan.

"Since [President Barack] Obama is also sending additional forces to Afghanistan, we sent thousands of our men there to fight Nato and American forces," Rahman said. The Afghan "Taliban needed our help at this stage, and we are helping them."

Colonel Wayne Shanks, a US military spokesman in Afghanistan, called Rahman's comments "rhetoric" that were not to be believed.

"We have not noticed any significant movement of insurgents in the border area," he said.

Tense relations

Ishtiaq Ahmad, a professor of international relations at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, speculated the comments were just an attempt to worsen the already tense relationship between the US and Pakistan.

"When the United States expects Pakistan to synchronise its own counterterrorism policy with the troop surge ... the militants issue these statements in an attempt to create problems in this relationship," said Ahmad.

Either stance is nearly impossible to independently verify. Access to the tribal belt, especially conflict zones, is severely restricted. Pakistani army spokesmen could not immediately be reached for comment.

Rahman spoke in a large mud-brick compound in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan.

He looked relaxed as a he sat on a carpet surrounded by seven rifle-toting guards and Azam Tarek, a Taliban spokesman. It was apparently the first time either he or Hakimullah Mehsud had given an in-person interview to a journalist since the Pakistani military launched the ground offensive on October 17.

The army sent some 30,000 troops to battle as many as 10,000 militants in South Waziristan, including hundreds of Uzbek fighters. The military estimates it has killed around 600 Taliban fighters.