Pakistani pacts with pro-Taliban militants on the Afghan border have facilitated attacks on foreign troops in Afghanistan, an international think-tank has said.
The International Crisis Group said Pakistan must impose the rule of law in its semi-autonomous tribal lands on the Afghan border, where Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathisers have sheltered since 2001.
It said Pakistan must disarm the militants and shut their training camps to prevent the further expansion of their influence in the area.
"Despite Pakistani denials, the tribal belt, particularly agencies such as the Waziristans, remains a Taliban sanctuary and a hub for attacks on the US-led coalition and Nato/ISAF forces and the Afghan (International Security Assistance Force) government," the Brussels-based group said in a report to be released later today.
Pakistan's seven tribal agencies, including North and South Waziristan, have never been fully brought under the writ of any government, including British colonial authorities who saw the mountainous region as a buffer on the northwestern border of their Indian empire.
A rear-base for US- and Pakistani-backed Afghan mujahideen battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the region became a refuge for Taliban and al-Qaeda after US-led forces ousted Afghanistan's Taliban rulers in 2001.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere in the rugged ethnic Pashtun tribal belt.
Pakistan, a major US ally in the war on terror, launched military operations in 2004 to deny al-Qaeda militants sanctuary and stem cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.
But after clashes in which hundreds of Pakistani troops were killed, Pakistani authorities struck pacts - in South Waziristan in 2004 and last September in North Waziristan - aimed at ending attacks on Pakistani forces and raids into Afghanistan.
The International Crisis Group said the pacts had emboldened the militants.