Source: Friday Time:
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| Taliban patrol in their stronghold in Waziristan | |
A NATO report leaked earlier this year said Taliban insurgents who attack NATO and Afghan troops in Afghanistan flee to the Pakistani side of the border to take shelter. The report, titled State of the Taliban, said militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas provide safe havens to them. Pakistani authorities reject such reports.
Pakistani militants who had fought the guerilla war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s began to regroup on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line in the late 1990s and early 2000s, according to a Stanford University report Mapping Militant Organizations. Most of them were from madrassas all over Pakistan, mainly associated with the Deobandi school of thought, A Amir Rana et al say in their book Dynamics of Taliban Insurgency in FATA.
Naik Muhammad, who belonged to the Wazir tribe and fought alongside Taliban against Ahmad Shah Massoud, became the first operational commander of Pakistani Taliban based in Waziristan. He had also served as the security in-charge of Kabul Airport. Naik Muhammad was killed reportedly in a missile attack from a US warship in the Arabian Sea in June 2004, soon after signing famous Shakai peace treaty with the Pakistani military.