*NORTH WAZIRISTAN:* Trump administration and national security officials inPakistan don’t see eye to eye on issues these days — save, perhaps, for one.
Trump’s desire for a border wall is finding a distinct echo thousands ofmiles away in Islamabad, where top military leaders often cite the USpresident’s case for walling off the nation’s southern border with Mexicoto defend Pakistan’s efforts to seal its porous border territories withAfghanistan, reported *The Washington Times.link>*
“Why is the US looking at a border wall in Mexico? Because you need it. Weneed it in Pakistan as well,” Major General Nadeem Ahmed Anjum, inspectorgeneral of Pakistan’s Frontier Corps for Balochistan, said of the drive toerect a fence along the contested border with Afghanistan.
“It is the simplest solution in the history of the world,” he said.
Pakistani forces have begun lining the nearly 500 miles of its sharedborder with Afghanistan with chain-link fence and concertina wire,initially focused on cutting off access across the rugged terrain in NorthWaziristan.
The move has outraged the Kabul government, which has never recognised theDurand Line as the official border.
Standing on the parapets of Fort Kitton-2, one of several large Pakistaniforts along the “zero line” between North Waziristan and Afghanistan’sKhost province, an observer can pick out long strands of shimmering metaland barbed wire crisscrossing the various peaks and valleys up to thehorizon.
Troops from Pakistan’s Tochi Scouts, the Frontier Corps unit guarding theNorth Waziristan line, man small mud-brick outposts spaced evenly along theborder fence. Pakistan’s 7th Army Division jointly patrols the volatileborder regions in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA),including North Waziristan.
Islamabad plans to have the country’s entire 515-mile border withAfghanistan sealed off by next year, said General Nadeem, head of theFrontier Corps’ Chaman Scouts. The Scouts are responsible for a majority ofthe Afghan-Pakistani border belt that cuts between Pakistan’s Balochistanprovince. “In three years, we will be able to completely seal this border,”he said during an interview at his headquarters in Chaman.
Gen Nadeem made his comments days before Trump’s first visit to Californiaas president this month to inspect prototypes for his proposed border wallwith Mexico. The promise to build a wall was a staple of Trump’s campaignspeeches in 2016 and remains the linchpin of the administration’simmigration and border policy, despite congressional resistance tofinancing the estimated $25 billion project.
“We have a lousy wall over here now, but at least it stops 90, 95 percent,” Trump said of illegal border crossings. “When we put up the realwall, we’re going to stop 99 per cent. Maybe more than that.”
But officials in the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani say a walllikely won’t work and won’t address the deeper problem of Islamabad’streatment of militants within its territory.
A border wall is a “ridiculous” approach to the problem of extremistviolence, Afghan National Security Adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar toldreporters Thursday on a visit to Washington.
“The terrorists cannot be walled off,” he said a breakfast roundtable atthe Afghan Embassy. “You cannot stop the extremists with a wall or achain-link fence.”
Pakistan and Afghanistan would be better served by addressing the rootcauses of terrorism in the region — wealth disparities, governmentcorruption and the tacit support of extremist ideologies for politicalpurposes — rather than spending time, money and efforts on the wall, heargued. Pakistan, he claimed, has created its own “Frankenstein monster” byfailing to deal with the terrorist groups.
*WALLING OFF TERRORISM:*
In Pakistan, the issue driving a border barrier with Afghanistan is notillegal immigration but terrorism and Kabul’s supposed ineffectiveness tocontrol Islamist extremists from crossing the border and creating havoc inboth Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Afghanistan’s southern and eastern provinces, long seen as safe havens forinsurgents who can operate on both sides of the border, were the last areashanded over to Afghan security forces when US and NATO troops transitionedto an advisory role at the end of 2014 under President Obama.
Pakistan has fielded just over 1,100 posts along the nearly 500 milesbordering Afghanistan’s southeastern provinces, which traditionally havebeen the sites of some of the toughest fighting, said Major General AzharAli Shah, head of all 7th Division forces in North Waziristan.
By comparison, Afghan forces have fielded only 145 border posts along thesame stretch of territory, roughly a 7-1 ratio, Gen Azhar said, which hasallowed extremists to flourish in the borderlands.
Pakistan said in December that it had completed 92 per cent of the borderwall and hoped to finish it by the end of this year.
The Pakistani wall-building project has not protected Islamabad fromincreasingly sharp criticism from the Trump White House over its efforts todefeat the Taliban, Islamic State and other groups threatening Afghanistan.
Trump has lashed out at Pakistan on Twitter and in speeches over what hesays is its continuing support for extremists.
He said the US had “foolishly” given Pakistan more than $33 billion in aidover the years and received nothing in return but “lies & deceit”.Islamabad, Trump has claimed, offers “safe haven to the terrorists we huntin Afghanistan”.
The decision at the end of last year to withhold $225 million in foreignassistance to Pakistan and suspend all military support marked a new low inUS-Pakistani ties, which stretch back several decades.
Although US forces have crossed the Afghan border into Pakistan to pursuemilitants and terrorist targets — notably the 2011 Special Forces missionthat killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad — the Pentagon says there are noplans for major incursions as the Pakistani border wall goes up.
“We have no authority to go into Pakistan,” Pentagon spokesman Lt Col MikeAndrews has told the *Pajhwok Afghan News*. Any hot-pursuit missionsagainst Taliban fighters seeking sanctuary inside Pakistan “would certainlybe the exception and not the norm”.