Bagram, Afghanistan – An Afghan insurgent leader operating from inside Pakistan sent some 200 ill-equipped fighters, some wearing plastic bags on their feet, into Afghanistan, where most were killed in a major battle last week, a top U.S. general said Saturday.
Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley said that Jalaluddin Haqqani recruited and sent unemployed and untrained men to fight in Afghanistan.
U.S. forces killed about 130 fighters moving in two groups in the eastern province of Paktika late Wednesday and early Thursday, one of the largest winter battles in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Western and Afghan officials accuse Pakistan of not doing enough to stop Taliban fighters using Pakistani soil as a training ground from crossing the border into Afghanistan. Pakistan says it does all it can to stop the fighters.
No officials in Pakistan could be reached for comment.
Freakley said one of the enemies in the Afghan-Pakistan border area is unemployment.
“It is clear to me that some of these men were just either collected in a poor part of a village or perhaps from a refugee camp and told to come fight,” he said.
