Afghanistan War Logs: Secret War Along the Pakistan border (Afghan vs. Pakistani Troops)

Guardian ^ | Sunday 25 July 2010

[nickcarraway]

Americans caught in middle of flare-ups over disputed colonial boundary and attacks by Taliban from within tribal zone

The Taliban are not the only enemy along the fraught borderlands of the Afghan war. Secret intelligence files reveal severe tensions between putative allies who can be drinking tea one day and fighting each other the next.

The war logs detail hundreds of cross-border clashes along the lawless frontier with Pakistan, far more than previously reported. The most violent salvos came from US troops disregarding Pakistani sovereignty to fire on Taliban fighters sheltering in its tribal belt.

But the most heated and heretofore hidden exchanges occurred between Afghan and Pakistani troops who, instead of uniting against a common Taliban enemy, have traded fire as part of a border grudge match that has often forced the Americans to intervene. "It was a pissing contest on the border, a bunch of kids who couldn't get along," said one American officer who served there. "Everyone was at fault."

Much of the tension has arisen from a longstanding dispute between Pakistan and Afghanistan over the Durand line, the 117-year-old colonial boundary they still contest. During one confrontation in September 2005, 120 Afghan troops massed on the border in Khost, threatening to attack Pakistani troops on the far side unless they abandoned a disputed checkpoint. "The conflict is believed to be over the posting of a Pakistan flag inside Afghanistan," reported the American unit that eventually defused the situation.

In January 2007 the friction exploded into combat when a Pakistani helicopter flew across the border and touched down near an Afghan village. Afghan border police opened fire with 82mm mortars and a machine gun. It got back to Pakistan unscathed.

[STD]

The ancient curse of the seed of Ishmael and Esau, ‘you will always be at war, whether the enemies a foreigner or your brother’

[James C. Bennett]

Pakistanis and Afghans are not Semitic. They’re Indo-European / Caucasian.

[rbg81]

Pakistanis are Caucasian? Really? Must have missed that one.

[James C. Bennett]

Yes.

[James C. Bennett]

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CAUCASIAN

Pronunciation:/kôˈkāZHən/

adjective

•  often offensive - of or relating to one of the traditional divisions of humankind, covering a broad group of peoples from Europe, western Asia, and parts of India and North Africa

[so named because the German physiologist Blumenbach believed that it originated in the Caucasus region of southeastern Europe]

The Oxford Dictionary

[logician2u]

Quite extensive explanation of the Durand Line in Wikipedia.

Another vestige of the British Empire coming back to bite them (and us) in the a$$. Rules of the game keep changing, so why are we still in it? How is even possible to "win?"

[swarthyguy]

America shot herself in the foot when Bush decided to respect the Durand Line, a border agreement that expired in 1993 and was signed by the Afghani King and the British Raj in 1933 and never renewed subsequently.

In one sense, we’ve done to ourselves what we did to the Soviets in the 80’s, allow safe havens for the Muj to R&R in Pakistan and keep coming back into Afghania. At least the Soviets had that to blame, we’ve got no one except our own blinkered and myopic thinking to blame.

The fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves.