The situation at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border is always tense, particularly after Friday’s exchange of fire between the two sides, but appears to be rapidly spiraling out of control, as Pakistani forces have attacked and destroyed several checkpoints along the Chaman border, which connects Balochistan to Kandahar.
At least 50 Afghan soldiers are reported dead, and over 100 wounded, as Pakistan reports they’ve destroyed five separate checkpoints in “retaliation” for Afghan fire. There was no news of new Pakistan casualties since Friday’s exchange of fire.
Locals say that the border crossing was closed earlier in the day by Pakistani security officials, and has remained so, with loudspeakers ordering all villages on the Pakistani side of the border evacuated until further notice. Helicopter gunships are reported overhead, and over 2,000 families have been displaced.
Pakistan has accused Afghan officials of unprovoked attacks on the villages, and of targeted census workers in the border region. Afghanistan does not recognize the current border between the two nations, but insisted it was Pakistan that fired first in this most recent round of fighting.
This situation is completely the fault of the British, who during their colonial rule over the Indian subcontinent hacked off over half of the historical Pashtun territories, including their summer capital of Peshawar, and included it in their Indian dominions. When they finally left in 1947, the border they’d artificially created, the Durand Line, still had no legitimacy in Pashtun eyes, and has none to this day. Just another of the endless postcolonial conflicts created by imperialist regimes.
Of couse. This was sooo predictable. Southern Afghan tribes have managed to defeat
ISIS — even though it is unclear where ISIS came from, who is doing recruiting, where did they get the recruits, and how much are they paying. Pakistan has made progress in underming their terror barons, and undercutting their business. This has come about as a result of terrorist acts against India — and that gave Pakistani government a large leeway in cracking down on larger bosses. With terror industry being squeezed in Pakistan and Southern tribes in Afghanistan kicking ISIS start ups before taking roots — this situation is highly undesirable from US perspective. Why? Because a peace in Pakistan and responsiveness to India’s concerns about terror networks — means progress on Chinese funded Economic Belt connecting China to China built Pakistani port of Gwadar in Pakistan. There has been no disturbance lately either in tribal areas, or on Indian border, or between Afghan tribes and Pakistani border guards. ISIS infiltration was the only danger — but for as long as tribal relations were good, peace remained.
For no reason whatsoever, higher troups were requested for Helmand. It appears now that somebody had a crystal ball, predicting a flare up on border. The number of victims indicate that there was no reason for anyone to be on the guard, it was a surprise attack. Given some recent Soros style aggitation in Pakistan, some “activists” suddenly remembered to complain about judiciary. It worked once to get wiley and hard to control Musharaf out of power. Protest of judges, and alike. You would think there is more creativity in the art of spookdom, and appears that when it comes to talent, they are scraping the bottom of a barrel. Terror industry barons in Pakistan are still out there for hire, and the money is still coming from UAE and Saudi Arabia. But now that Pakistan has a more competent intelligence, coordinating such intelligence throughout Sanghai Cooperation Organization network, it will not be long finding the provocators. With just concluded peace conference on Afhganistan in Moscow, and Russia supposedly arming Afghan tribes (or as US calls them, Taliban), some provocation was in order. Nothing new nor creative. The problem is, there is really no purpose to prolonged Afghan war, other then the continuation of fat contracts for logistics. So, Russian threat can be again used to justify the spending. I am just waiting for North Korean crisis to get its Russian dimension.