Afghan Defense ministry ordered soldiers who have families in Pakistan to move them to Afghanistan in a bid to rid the army of Taliban infiltrators.

Afghan Defense ministry told ordered soldiers who have families in Pakistan to move them to Afghanistan in a bid to rid the army of Taliban infiltrators.

"We have been told to ask our soldiers who have relatives in Pakistan to move them to Afghanistan," Abdul Hamid Hamid, the army corps commander in Kandahar, told AFP, adding that the policy was not yet finalized.

"Sometimes their families are used as hostages by some intelligence agencies to put pressure on them to do what they don't want to," he said.
Most of the soldiers who are recruited in Kandahar, birthplace of Taliban, have families in Pakistan, he added.

The new policy was crafted in response to a recent spate of incidents in which Afghan soldiers reportedly with links to militants carried out attacks against NATO occupation troops.

According to officials, a renegade Afghan soldier who shot dead four French troops in January had visited Peshawar, near the Afghan border, before rejoining the army.
A leaked alliance report said that Six percent of overall NATO deaths in Afghanistan have been attributed to attacks by Afghan security forces.