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Taliban releases video showing 17 beheaded Pakistani soldiers
Pakistani military officials are pressing NATO to do more to keep the Taliban from crossing the Afghanistan-Pakistan border after the Taliban released a video Wednesday allegedly showing 17 beheaded Pakistani soldiers, according to reports.
The video is from the Pakistani Taliban, which captured the Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border into Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press. The AP obtained the video by email Wednesday from Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan.
U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, met with Pakistan’s army chief about the border Wednesday, where a Pakistani military official told AFP Pakistan “demanded that ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] take action against the militant sanctuaries in Afghanistan.”
Of course, the United States and NATO have made identical demands of Pakistan, where insurgents from the Afghan Taliban have used Pakistan as a safe haven for attacks against NATO and Afghan troops.
“This attack bears the signature of the Haqqani network, which continues to target and kill innocent Afghans and blatantly violate Afghan sovereignty from the safety of Pakistan,” Allen said in a statement.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has also been critical of Pakistan for not doing more to stop terrorists from operating on Pakistani soil, and he said in a speech earlier this month that the United States was “reaching the limits of our patience” with Pakistan.
The border-control issues are just one of many sources contributing to high tensions in U.S.-Pakistan relations right now.
Pakistan shut down NATO supply routes after NATO troops accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on the border last year. Negotiations between the two sides have not yielded an agreement to re-open the supply lines, in part because the United States has said it won’t apologize for the incident.
Even before the border attack, Pakistan was already enraged with the United States for violating its sovereignty in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. U.S. officials, meanwhile, openly accused Pakistan of knowing where bin Laden had been hiding.
