Taliban leader 'in Afghanistan'

Taliban leader Mullah Muhammed Omar is not in Pakistan’s south-western Baluchistan province and the US should not carry out missile attacks in the region, a senior official said.

Western and Afghan officials have long suspected that Omar and other members of the Taliban government ousted by the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 have found refuge in or near the city of Quetta, Baluchistan’s capital.

Islamabad has challenged the US to provide it with any evidence of Omar’s whereabouts, insisting Pakistani forces will immediately move against the fugitive Taliban chief.

The New York Times reported this week that US officials were considering extending missile strikes into Baluchistan in pursuit of Taliban and al-Qaida leaders who have shifted from militant strongholds further north.

But the head of the Baluchistan provincial government insisted that Mullah Omar was not there.

“A person who is making war against the Nato forces, he must be present in Afghanistan, in (the Afghan province of) Kandahar or somewhere,” Nawab Mohammed Aslam Raisani said, adding “there is no justification for drone attacks in Quetta or other parts of Baluchistan”.

He said there was a distinction between Taliban militants fighting in Afghanistan and Taliban students studying peacefully in religious schools in Pakistan.

US officials say a stepped-up programme of missile strikes into Pakistan’s unpoliced tribal belt along the Afghan frontier has killed a string of top al-Qaida figures since last year.

The Obama administration has allowed the strikes, apparently carried out by unmanned aircraft operated by the CIA and is expected to announce a new strategy to pacify the region by April.

Pakistan argues that the strikes are counterproductive because they kill civilians, inflame anti-Western sentiment and undermine the pro-Western government’s own efforts to neutralise extremists.

Western officials also are concerned about Baluchistan because Taliban fighters slip across its long, thinly-policed border into Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where Nato troops face fierce resistance.

Militants have also eroded government control on the Pakistani side of the border, threatening Nato and US supply lines into Afghanistan.