Pakistan builds anti-Taliban fence on Afghan border
PAKISTAN: Pakistan has erected the first section of a
controversial fence on the Afghan border, severing a key corridor used
by Taliban militants, the chief military spokesman said Thursday.
The building of the barbed wire anti-insurgent fence however provoked
anger from Kabul, which says it does not recognise the porous frontier
between the two pivotal allies in the US-led “war on terror”.
“We have completed 20 kilometres of fencing in North Waziristan’s
Lwara Mundi area,” spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad told AFP in an
interview at his office in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
“This is that difficult part where most militants reportedly were
crossing over.” Another 15-kilometre stretch would soon be fenced in the
neighbouring South Waziristan tribal area, Arshad said. The army has
also deployed extra troops and increased patrols in the area, which
faces southeastern Afghanistan.
Lwara Mundi is tiny and remote settlement located in a gap between
two mountain ranges through which Arshad said militants were driving
vehicles and heavy weapons.
North and South Waziristan and other Pakistani tribal areas along the
rugged border have been branded by US and NATO officials as havens for
Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents launching attacks into Afghanistan.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf formally announced plans in
February to build a fence along parts of the frontier. He said plans to
mine it had been postponed after international criticism.
More than 1,000 people have died in Taliban-related violence in
Afghanistan this year including around 50 foreign soldiers. The majority
of the bloodshed has been in provinces bordering Pakistan.
But Kabul does not recognise the international border first drawn up
by colonial Britain in 1893 and wrote to United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon
earlier this year to express “deep concern” over the fencing plans.
Afghan foreign ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen said Thursday
that “the Afghan government is against fencing the border. It separates
families and people living on both sides.”
Arshad angrily rejected Kabul’s objections, saying that the fencing
was done on Pakistani soil and “we do not need to ask anybody how we
should manage our borders.”
“In any case ordinary tribesmen are not suppose to use unauthorised
routes to cross the border,” he said.
“There are designated routes for them and there is no barbed wire
over there.” He said coalition troops operating across the border had
welcomed Pakistan’s measures to tighten border controls.
Islamabad, Friday, AFP |