KABUL, Nov 9: Taliban have fought back against the Afghan government and western forces with surprising intensity this year, strengthened by drug money and the ability to shelter in Pakistan, a top US official said on Thursday.

Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asian Affairs Richard Boucher said efforts to extend the rule of President Hamid Karzai’s government deeper into the provinces had run into tougher-than-expected resistance.

“As this extension of government goes out, we are challenging those people and they are challenging us back,” he told reporters at the heavily fortified US embassy in Kabul.

“I think we have all been surprised by the intensity of the violence this year. It has a number of factors: part of it is drug money linking up with the insurgency. Part of it these people have the ability to operate in and out of Pakistan.

“But we need to deal with it.”

Mr Boucher said Pakistan was using military, economic and other measures to prevent the Taliban using its territory as “a place of refuge or of support”.

In September, the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban militants signed a truce in North Waziristan to end fighting between militants and government forces and attacks into Afghanistan.

But Nato and US officials say cross-border attacks have jumped dramatically since the deal.

Many analysts say the Taliban's resurgence has been fuelled by record opium crops and growing frustration and anger at a lack of reconstruction, development and jobs.

He said the United States was backing efforts on both sides of the Afghan and Pakistan border to assert government authority and defeat Taliban militants operating there.

However the “jury was out” on a government deal with tribal elders in Pakistan's North Waziristan that was intended to curb militant activity, he said.

Mr Boucher was in Afghanistan for talks with President Hamid Karzai and other top officials about efforts to end the Taliban insurgency and to push development of the war-battered country to discourage support for militants.

The country has about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan and is working on development and training projects to establish state institutions destroyed by nearly three decades of war.

While the US has no military presence on the other side of the border, it is supporting efforts to bring economic development to the area and assert government authority, Mr Boucher said.

“Both Pakistan and Afghanistan recognise the threat and danger of the Taliban but this process of extending government to both sides of the border is well under way and that remains the central task,” he said.

“We do have a policy that works on both sides of the border...,” he said.

Mr Boucher said the real test was “whether they (tribal authorities) exert that control and whether they stop the activity...I think the jury is still out.” The unrelenting violence in Afghanistan was a result of authority pushing out from the centres into rural areas, which had in the past been havens for drug smugglers, criminals and Taliban who did not want government rule, Mr Boucher said.

“As this extension of government goes out, we are challenging those people and they are challenging us back so there is going to be a certain amount of violence involved,” he said, admitting that the intensity of the unrest this year had been “surprising”. “It is a big task and it is one we are not finished with yet,” Mr Boucher said.—Reuters/AFP