Pak to mine Afghan border

LAHORE: Groaning under increasing international pressure with regard to the infiltration charges by the Karzai government, the Musharraf regime has decided to fence and landmine its 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan to control the movement of undesirable elements across the Durand Line.

While making this announcement in Islamabad on Tuesday, Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan said that the decision has been taken to address the grievances of the Afghan government which believes that miscreants from the Pakistani side of the border were infiltrating into Afghanistan to carry out terrorist activities. “Pakistan Army has been asked to work out modalities of fencing and mining the Pak-Afghan border,” said Riaz Mohammad, adding that “It will be done selectively.” The foreign secretary said additional paramilitary troops are also being deployed on the Pak-Afghan with a view to supplement existing measures already taken by Islamabad to curb militant activity from Pakistan inside Afghanistan.  

Pakistan has about 80,000 forces in its northwestern tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. Riaz Khan failed to elaborate as to how much or exactly where the 1,510-mile poorly demarcated Pak-Afghan border would be fenced. Failing to give any time frame for the completion of the work, he said that even after the fencing and land mining of the Pak-Afghan border, there would be designated places for people to cross frontier.

Asked if Pakistan has sought permission from Kabul to fence and landmine the border, Riaz said Pakistan was taking the measure on its side of the border and therefore permission from Afghanistan was not required. It may be recalled that Hamid Karzai had opposed the idea of land mining and fencing the border when General Pervez Musharraf had first floated it a few months back, saying that these measures could not stop cross border infiltration.