Posted on 03/12/2004 2:40:50 PM PST by Cap Huff
SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan - Despite a crackdown involving tens of thousands of troops and a pledge by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to do all he can in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Afghans say a steady stream of Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives are finding a safe haven on Pakistan's side of the 2,000-mile border.
The Afghan border chief gestures toward a fresh spray of bullet holes across his pickup truck, then points toward the place he says the Taliban attackers came from: Pakistan.
"See the trees? They started from that border post," said Palawan, his head shaved. Afterward, "the vehicles came from there, and took the Taliban away."
Sealing the border is vital if a promised spring offensive by American troops is to succeed in its main goal, crushing Taliban resistance and capturing al-Qaida leaders like bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, both believed in hiding somewhere along the porous frontier.
The U.S. military has described the strategy as a "hammer and anvil" approach, with Pakistani troops moving into semiautonomous tribal areas on their side of the border, and Afghans and American forces sweeping the forbidding terrain on the other.
But Palawan and other Afghan security officials say they aren't convinced, insisting Pakistan's security and intelligence services are rife with Taliban and al-Qaida sympathizers.
"They are living there, they are coming to do the terror attacks, and they are going back," Palawan said, gun at his side as he drives along the barren border.
Pakistani officials scoff at the charges and say they are doing everything they can to arrest Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives.
"This is nonsense," Pakistan Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said in Islamabad. "We are fighting against terrorists, not sheltering them."
Pakistan can point to an impressive record: It has arrested more than 500 al-Qaida suspects since the Sept. 11 attacks and it has recently deployed 70,000 troops to the tribal regions of Waziristan.
But Palawan is not alone in his suspicions, and Afghans have not forgotten the strong support Pakistan gave to the former Taliban regime before Musharraf abandoned them in favor of the United States just after the attacks on New York and Washington. Pakistan supplied money, arms and shelter to Islamic guerrillas, including the Taliban, during the guerrilla campaign in the 1980s against Afghanistan's then-Soviet occupiers.
"Without Pakistan, the Taliban would be finished. Without the Taliban, al-Qaida would be finished," Gen. Khan Mohammed, regional commander of the Afghan militia, said in Kandahar, capital of the southern province that includes Spin Boldak.
Some Afghans say Pakistan's security and intelligence services make a distinction between turning away al-Qaida members - many of them Arabs foreign to the region - and turning away their former Taliban allies seeking shelter. "I don't think there's been a fundamental shift in the perception of the Taliban in the Pakistan military," said Vikram Parekh, an analyst with the International Crisis Group in Kabul, the Afghan capital. "That's going to be the big problem," - whether Pakistan's military "draws a line between al-Qaida and the Taliban."
Afghan intelligence officials say they have intercepted phone conversations from Taliban commanders in Quetta, the largest Pakistani city near the southern border. Attackers have maintained a steady series of rocket, small-arms and bomb assaults on Afghan and U.S. posts along the border and elsewhere in Afghanistan. Pakistan prohibits the 13,000 U.S. troops in this country from crossing into its territory, but says it is rigorously hunting down terror suspects there.
The bullet holes in his pickup-truck door come from a Taliban attack 10 days ago, said Palawan, whose nom de guerre means "strongman."
Later, he showed the graves of what he said were 15 of 45 Taliban killed in an attack in June. Burial flags - green, white or embroidered with flowers - and ceremonially broken dishes marked visits to the alleged Taliban graves by loved ones.
Afghan border officials said the June battle began when alleged Taliban ambushed an Afghan official. Palawan said he watched the night of the attack as vehicles came from the Pakistani side of the border to retrieve Taliban survivors.
Later, he said Afghans laid out the bodies of the Taliban dead - young- to middle-aged men in bushy beards and turbans, with old weapons - on the border.
People from the Pakistan side collected all but the 15, he said.
Pakistan dismisses the Afghan account of the battle, saying there was no cross-border involvement from its side.
But immediately after the battle, Pakistan began fortifying 90 miles of border stretching south and north from Spin Boldak.
Over eight months, Pakistan border Col. Abdul Basit began installing berms, barbed wire, security lighting, video cameras, and far more guards along the border and checkpoints leading to it.
Shoot-to-kill orders went out to Pakistan border guards for anyone seen crossing illicitly.
The Spin Boldak crossing, opening to the Pakistan town of Chaman, today stands as a showcase for visiting dignitaries.
On Friday, when The Associated Press made a scheduled visit, sentries armed with rifles stood astride the mud berms, staring resolutely into Afghanistan.
"If not 100 percent, 99 percent we have been able to seal" Basit said of the border area, though he acknowledged "undesirable elements" have simply shifted to more remote, less policed mountains to the north.
A more global perspective of this region can be seen on this map of Afghanistan.
--Boot Hill
Note that the "North West Frontier" is different than the "Northern Areas" (q.v., below). The rest of the country consists of three additional (large) provinces: Balochistan (in the southwest), Sindh (in the southeast) and Punjab (in central Pakistan).
--Boot Hill
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