By Simon Cameron-Moore
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – “Lieutenant Seagoon,” barked
the commanding officer. “We have it on good authority from our
milkman that the besieged garrison at Fort Thud on the frontier
of Waziristan has lost its Union Jack.”
“You mean our troops don’t know what side they’re on?”
replied Seagoon in “Shifting Sands,” a 1957 episode of the
seminal BBC radio comedy “The Goon Show” set in the days of the
British Raj.
“They know which side they’re on, they just can’t prove
it!” countered the officer, Grytpype-Thynne, in Peter Sellers’
best stiff-upper-lip accent.
Seagoon: “Gad! It must be hell out there.”
Half a century on, in the real world, it still is. Loony
though the sketch is, it bears odd parallels to often heated
exchanges between Pakistani, U.S. and Afghan forces hunting al
Qaeda and Taliban insurgents along the rugged border between
Afghanistan and Pakistan’s restive tribal region of Waziristan.
Nearly 50 U.S. troops have been killed on the Afghan side
this year, while the Pakistan Army has lost almost 270 men and
killed more than 350 militants since deploying to the region in
late 2001.
The dangers posed by friendly fire and unauthorized
incursions only make it worse.
NO TRESPASSING
At the headquarters of the Pakistan Army’s 11th Corps in
Peshawar, Lt.-Gen. Safdar Hussain said he finally blew his top
this summer when artillery fire from U.S. coalition forces
exploded in the vicinity of his own troops.
“I told them straight: “Next time I’ll shoot at you,”
Hussain, who commands the army on the frontier, told Reuters.
Indeed, one Afghan soldier was shot dead by Pakistani
troops in the Angor Adda area of South Waziristan in recent
months, forcing a U.S. soldier to shout out to stop the firing.
“They trespassed into my territory and, despite a warning
shot, they kept penetrating into Pakistani territory and we had
no option but to shoot to kill,” Hussain said.
Soldiers in the frontier region have never known where the
next shot might come from, which the Goons also touched upon
with absurdist poignancy.
“Through the long night the Waziris attacked, firing their
bullets from the hidden positions inside their rifle barrels.”
It’s not just ground violations and friendly fire that
peeves Pakistan. U.S. aircraft loop over the border with such
frequency that Hussain doubts it is inadvertent, although the
number of incidents has tailed off since Pakistan protested in
August at a meeting of the Tripartite Commission on border
security.
Hussain says he gave the U.S.-led coalition forces a clear
message: “You take care of your area. We are quite capable of
taking care of our area.”
A U.S. Army spokesman in Kabul said he could not speak
about the past but added that there were concerted efforts to
improve communications on the ground in order to avoid
problems.
“We do everything in our power to coordinate with the
Pakistan military. But we will respond in kind to enemy firing
on us from across the border. The Pakistan military commanders
understand that,” Colonel James Yonts said.
On July 14, U.S. fire from Afghanistan killed 24 suspected
militants near Lawara Mandi, a North Waziristan village.
Thousands of tribesmen protested at funerals for the dead, and
some clerics never miss a chance to stoke bad feeling.
“If the Pakistan government gives us permission, we are
ready to wipe out the Americans from Afghanistan, because they
are enemies of Islam,” Maulana Abdul Khaliq told followers at
Madrasa Gulshan-e-Ilm in Miranshah, the main town in North
Waziristan.
Such incidents make it harder to keep a lid on sentiment in
North Waziristan, where the Pakistan Army is trying to fight
terrorism through stealth rather than the direct offensives
that led to heavy casualties in South Waziristan last year.
INACCURATE MAPS
About 80,000 Pakistani troops are deployed along the
frontier and Pakistani border posts easily outnumber those
established by the 20,000-strong U.S.-led coalition force and
Afghan army.
“The upsurge in Afghanistan — this is because of lack of
grip by the coalition forces and Afghan National Army,” said
Hussain, who has imposed a nightly curfew within 3 miles of the
border.
Stung by complaints that Pakistan could have done more to
stop the Taliban this summer, President Pervez Musharraf
proposed erecting a fence along parts of the 1,500-mile border
when he met U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this
month.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says it is impractical. The
frontier, known as the Durand Line after the colonial
administrator who drew the line on a map separating British
India from Afghanistan in the 19th Century, is disputed.
“So far it not clear where our border is. The demarcation
should be established first through international laws, for in
several places there have been violations of our territory,”
Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said.
Hussain said part of the problem is that Afghan troops use
inaccurate Russian maps even though, if they do not trust
Pakistani maps, they could refer to global positioning systems.
The disorienting qualities of Waziristan’s desert and
mountains is the stuff Goons’ material was made of.
Lieutenant Seagoon: “Sorry I’m late, gentlemen, but your
fort is 20 miles further north than it says on the map.”
Colonel Chinstrap: “Twenty miles north? Then it’s happened
again. This fort was built on shifting sands…”
Comments