A number of teams of US Special Forces soldiers have been clandestinely fixed with Pakistani military forces in the ethnic belt, helping to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaida armed forces and co-ordinate drone strikes, the embassy cable reveal.
The numbers concerned are small – just 16 soldiers in October 2009 – but the deployment is of enormous political significance, described in a cable that provides an extraordinary glimpse into underground American operations in the world's most violent al-Qaida hotbed.
The first American Special Forces group of four soldiers was deployed to an old British colonial fort in the northern half of the tribal belt in September 2009, helping Frontier Corps paramilitaries to carry out armaments strikes on a rebellious base.
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