WASHINGTON, June 13: A US general on Friday accused the Frontier Corps of shooting American military personnel during border meetings and said the force is incapable of fighting insurgents.
Gen Dan McNeill, who commanded Nato forces in Afghanistan till June 3, said attacks on Nato and Afghan soldiers, will never stop unless the Pakistani military steps up its efforts to fight these insurgents.
“My understanding of what the Frontier Corps is, is they are pretty much tribals themselves,” he told journalists at the Pentagon. “They might find it more challenging than would regular frontline, well-trained, well-equipped and well-led soldiers” to fight insurgents.
The general recalled two incidents involving members of the Frontier Corps who allegedly “assassinated” two American military personnel.
“Well, if I live to be as old as Methuselah, I’ll be forever scarred by one event that occurred, and that was the assassination -- and I don’t have a better expression for it -- of Major Wesley Bauguess, a fine officer of the 82nd Airborne Division, spring of last year,” he said.
Gen McNeill claimed that at the end of a border meeting between Pakistani and US military officials, “when everybody was gathering to leave, then Major Bauguess was shot down by a member of the Frontier Corps, who, himself, was immediately shot down by an American soldier.”
In another incident in December 2002, a first sergeant of the US Army was shot in the neck by a Frontier Corps man during a meeting at the border near Angooradda.
Gen McNeill said it would not be fair to “pick a few anecdotes” to indict the entire Frontier Corps but he believed that the Pakistani government would be better off relying on their regular troops than the FC.
The US general claimed that the current political situation in Pakistan was delaying meetings between the Pakistani military and Nato and Afghan officials for discussing the border situation.
“There were three different delays coming from the Pakistani side that caused the meeting to continue to be pushed to the right. The last one should have occurred the last two weeks I was there. And I spoke with General Kayani on the phone, and he found it too difficult,” he said.
“And why did he find it too difficult? I’m only offering conjecture here. He didn’t offer me the reasons. I think because of a very difficult political situation in his country he was finding it difficult.”
Gen McNeill said some in Afghanistan argued that there was a level of dysfunction as Pakistan transitioned from one government to the other.
“I don’t think that the head of the Pakistani military was necessarily trying to avoid these talks.
“I think he found himself in a tough domestic situation, and I think he believed that that required more of his focus than the dialogue he would have.”
