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| Nieuwe Oorlog 2003 / Ander Nieuws week 30-31 |
Unreported conflict with Pakistan flaring in the mountains
Daily Telegraph
July 18, 2003
By Jonathan Ledgard at Baba-DoudHigh on the craggy peak of Baba-Doud, a war is brewing. Far from the unblinking gaze of the television camera and the commands of politicians in the distant capitals of Afghanistan and Pakistan, artillery and mortar fire are already being traded.
The Afghan fighters who claim their country has been invaded say the explosions regularly echo across the hills. Positions are being stormed and men are being killed.
An Afghan border guard triumphantly passed across a set of binoculars. "There", he said, "up among the trees".
Just visible through the twin lenses, a white tent came into focus, a Pakistani army position well inside territory that Afghans take to be part of Afghanistan.
"We're going to kill those cruel Punjabis," hissed the Afghan border guard. Elders in the impoverished village of Tutkai, in the lee of Baba-Doud, agreed.
On both sides of this new frontline the forces are building up, promising a grim new problem for the United States in keeping two of its crucial allies in the fight against al-Qa'eda away from one another's throats.
At least 600 Afghans, a battalion-sized force, have already attempted to storm Baba-Doud and regain it from the Pakistanis. On June 30, members of the Khujakhil tribe launched their attack, even though they were pathetically armed only with antique British rifles. At least two, elders claim, were killed by Pakistani fire and 10 wounded.
The engagement was just one of many border skirmishes which have been fought out in the past fortnight on a wild stretch of country between the Afghan province of Nangahar and the Pakistani tribal agencies.
While fighting has always been a feature of life on the border, the result of the unhelpfully sketchy Durrand Line the British drew in 1893, Afghans in the area say they have never seen the Pakistanis so close or so aggressive. Everyone speaks of war.
Everyone, that is, except the Pakistani soldiers atop Baba-Doud. A steep climb up to the summit brought the surprised Pakistanis into view -around 30 men in tan uniforms drawn from the army and frontier guard, a dozen tents, and freshly dug-in artillery.
"We're here to seal the border against al-Qa'eda," said a polite sergeant serving in army intelligence. "We arrived 25 days ago and we now have 1,200 men on this ridgeline."
The mood changed with the arrival of a superior. A brief altercation was followed by the confiscation of this correspondent's passport and camera. But it was clear that the Pakistanis' 82mm mortars were aimed into supposedly friendly Afghanistan.
Back in Afghanistan, the Pakistani arguments were greeted with disdain: "There is no al-Qaeda in these parts," said Mohammed Rahim, a 70-year-old head of Khuizi village, which he believes is in Afghanistan.
"Pakistanis are tricky people. They have tricked Bush and now they'll catch us by the neck." Mr Rahim said he has also sent men to fight the Pakistanis. Three were killed by mortar fire, several others were taken to hospital with shrapnel wounds.
"Pakistan is strong while we have no guns, no bullets. But it is our duty and policy to fight them." According to Zahir Qadir, the bejewelled regional commander of the border guard, based in Jalalabad, fighting has been more or less constant in different places along the 40-mile front for the last two weeks.
He said he had 500 men along the front line in 30 newly dug checkposts.
In places, he said, the Pakistanis had encroached five miles into Afghanistan, even by the Pakistani understanding of the border, before being pegged back by heavy return fire.
"Of course the fight will happen," said Khair Rahman, a softly-spoken 35-year-old commander of the Afghan border patrol artillery division, based below Tutkai. "All Afghan boys are ready to push the Pakistanis back."
A roving Afghan commando known as Dervish insisted that the Pakistanis are also taking casualties in exchanges of heavy machine gun and mortar fire centred on the village of Yaqoubai.
His informants in hospitals on the other side of the border, he said, speak of many wounded Pakistani soldiers. Villagers have fled in droves.
"My question is, if this is Pakistan why did the Pakistanis wait so many years to claim it?" said Mohammed Tahir, who oversees the provincial sura, or council of professionals, in Jalalabad.
"It's a dangerous situation. The problem about being poor is we have nothing to lose."