Seven Frontier Corps (FC) personnel were killed early Tuesday morning in firing from the Afghan side of the border in the Angoor Adda area of South Waziristan Agency. “The firing occurred on an FC check post northeast of Angoor Adda in South Waziristan,” the military’s media wing Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement. Earlier on Sunday, at least four soldiers of the Pakistan Army were killed and four others were injured as militant groups fired rockets from across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Khyber Agency. While Afghanistan does allege that there are continuing occasional, small-scale incidents involving Pakistani fire into eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan does complain of problems with the Afghan border forces, the overall situation between the security forces — at least along the border — appears to be much more stable compared to the recent troubles. It is unclear whether the fire came from Afghan forces or militants seeking to support their comrades in the Shawal Valley, but the incident has been claimed by yet another splinter group, calling itself the Majlis-e-Askari. Matters are no better diplomatically with Afghan Chief Executive Dr Abdullah Abdullah as he has said that he has doubts and suspicions in respect of the Pakistan role in the currently-stalled peace process that encompasses the Taliban. After a tumultuous few months, the bilateral relationship appears to be stabilising once again — but for how long and whether this time genuine and sustained breakthroughs are possible is not known. The fighting season in Afghanistan is nearing an end; US troops are committed to remaining into 2017; Mullah Mansour seems to have established his leadership; the insurgency is wider and deadlier than it was a year ago; Pakistan insists it is still committed to bringing the Taliban to the peace table; and the Afghan unity government is yet to demonstrate it can put aside internal struggles. These factors indicate that the possibility of an early and meaningful resumption of dialogue between the Taliban and the Afghan government seems neither worse nor necessarily better than it was earlier. To make the unlikely possible, however, the old rule still applies: Pakistan and Afghanistan must work on bilateral ties.
pk.shafaqna.com
