1March 2019, Vol. 39, No. 2 RUSI Newsbrief

Afghanistan–Pakistan Border

As violence stole the headlines in the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan on 21 October 2018,

accompanied by the fall of Ghazni two months earlier, fingers were once again pointing towards Pakistan. The Afghan government had requested Pakistan to close the border crossings for two days before the elections, anticipating a spike in violence on the eve of the polls. A few days prior to the elections, US acting Deputy Secretary of State Henry Ensher reiterated the now familiar line that Pakistan must do more to change its policy towards regional peace and stability in Afghanistan. That the solution to the Afghan problem lies in Pakistan is not a new narrative, successive American generals and leaders have spoken of the terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan and the cross-border support given to insurgents in Afghanistan. Early in 2018, when President Donald Trump’s New Year tweet started a new wave of allegations against Pakistan, this time the Pakistani military and its Chief of Army Staff Qamar Javed Bajwa, hit back.

The ‘Bajwa Doctrine’, Bajwa’s vision for the future of US–Pakistan military cooperation, has gained much attention as the new lexicon in the Pakistani army’s defence diplomacy in hitting back against a decade-long narrative that Pakistan must do more. For the last decade, while the Americans put pressure on the Pakistani military to do more to root out the insurgents in the Afghanistan–Pakistan border region, as per the Bajwa Doctrine, the Pakistan military asked the Americans and the world to do more in kind. Simultaneously, General Bajwa firmly brought the Taliban to the negotiating

table and decided to once and for all seal the Afghan border, thereby settling the whole debate of cross-border infiltration. One of the key points that the Pakistani military leadership is stressing in this new phase of defence diplomacy is how the army intends to seal the border with Afghanistan. The cross-border terrorism that Afghan and US leaders refer to when accusing the Pakistanis has greatly strained Pakistan’s ties with the US. As 2018 drew to a close and another winter of Afghan fighting started, the Pakistanis were busy physically sealing the Afghan frontier, thereby settling the argument once and for all as to who may or may not cross the Durand Line (the internationally recognised border between Afghanistan and Pakistan). This containment of the border, referred to as the ‘Bajwa Fence’, has already completed almost 500km of fencing. So, what is the significance of the Bajwa Fence, and could it significantly change the trajectory of Afghanistan–Pakistan relations? Erstwhile, US critics such as former Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Senator Lindsey Graham are already changing their opinion on Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan. As the border fence forges ahead and the Pakistani military delivers the Taliban to the negotiating table, there is a change in international opinion about the Pakistani role in Afghanistan.

Cross-Border Infiltration and Safe Sanctuaries

In October 2018, Afghanistan’s former Director of the National Directorate of Security Rahmatullah Nabil blamed the devastating

Kandahar attacks that killed Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq, the head of local intelligence, on the Haqqani network and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The former powerful head of Afghan intelligence, Nabil follows a long line of Afghan security officials who are in no doubt that the cross-border attacks have been supported by the Pakistani security services and their proxies, the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network. The fact that after 17 long years the blame is still falling on Pakistan has not gone amiss in Islamabad. Khalilzad, now US Special Representative to Afghanistan in Charge of Afghan Reconciliation, has had similar views on Pakistan in the past. So much so that the Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi urged Khalilzad to put the past behind him and forge a new relationship with Pakistan.

The allegation of terrorist sanctuaries and support has been a two-way street, with the Pakistanis also accusing the Afghan intelligence services of giving space and logistical support to the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The TTP has been fighting for more than 10 years against the Pakistani state, and its leader, Mullah Fazlullah, was killed in a US drone strike in June 2018 in Afghanistan, giving credence to the Pakistani allegations of Afghan complicity. His son was also killed in Afghanistan two months earlier. That TTP fighters were hiding in Afghanistan was also substantiated by their captured spokesperson.

Accusations and fist pumping aside, the facts are that both Afghanistan and Pakistan’s most-wanted men were found in each

The Bajwa Fence: The Pakistani Military Seals the Afghan Border Kamal Alam

Will the construction of a 1200km fence along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border spark new confidence in Pakistan’s commitment to combatting cross-border terrorism?

2March 2019, Vol. 39, No. 2 RUSI Newsbrief

other’s back yards, such as Mullah Fazlullah and his son along with 20 other senior commanders killed in Kunar province. In the case of Afghanistan, Mullah Omar and Mullah Mansour, both leaders of the Afghan Taliban, were in Pakistan – Omar died of natural causes in Karachi in 2013, while Mansour was killed in a US drone strike in 2016 just as he crossed into Pakistan from Iran. In August 2018 Afghanistan saw a steep rise in violence, and in the aftermath of fighting in the city of Ghazni, Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani blamed Pakistan for the attacks. In return, Pakistan’s military chief, General Bajwa, said that Afghanistan should ‘look inwards’ for its failures. It is this looking inwards that the Pakistani military is focusing on – after the success of Operations Zarb e Azb in 2014 and Radd-ul-Fasaad in 2017 to destroy militant safe havens in the borderlands, it is widely accepted

that the Pakistani army has turned a corner in its own war on terror.

Clearing, Building and Holding the Afghan Frontier

The Pakistan game plan under Bajwa has now moved from the clearing of sanctuaries into building and stabilisation operations. Despite the allegations of the Afghan officials, Pakistan is quite clear that it shall no longer live in fear of US threats of military aid cuts. Rather, the Pakistanis are building a fence to put a final end to all border crossings with Afghanistan, from Badakshan Chitral crossing in the northern-most corner, to the southwestern crossings between Baluchistan and Helmand in Afghanistan. Inaugurated in early 2018, in total over 800km were already completed out of a total of 1,200km, with state-of-the-art infrared detectors, forts on peaks to monitor crossings and a modern mechanism that can record

and log data for all Pakistanis and Afghans making the trek east and west.

The British Chief of Defence Staff Nick Carter has toured the fence twice, in 2017 and 2018, both along the Baluchistan border with Afghanistan in April 2018 and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa border in October 2017. Over his previous two visits as then Chief of General Staff, Carter was full of praise for the Pakistani army in the way they had cleared the difficult terrain and now sought to build the area and bring the development arm into focus. This stabilisation that the British Army and Pakistani army have been cooperating on over the last two years as a means of cooperation between the two militaries encapsulates a wholesome strategy that is not just about stopping cross-border terrorism but also securing the cleared areas and building schools and hospitals. There have been three major stabilisation conferences where both armies have learned from each

People crossing the Afghanistan–Pakistan border in the Torkham region of northwestern Pakistan, March 2017. Courtesy of Xihua/Muhammad Hadi/PA Images

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other’s work in Afghanistan and Pakistan respectively.

On the Pakistan side there is a heavy commitment to bring the troubled border areas under mainstream Pakistani sovereignty. The old British colonial law of seeing the border areas as a buffer-zone whereby tribal law governs itself has been abolished. This means that for the first time since Pakistani independence, Pakistani law shall apply to all areas aligning the Pakistani side of the Afghan border. This is hugely significant as for decades there had been an accusation that the majority of the tribal areas were ignored by the Pakistani state, thereby creating the perfect conditions for non-state actors to take hold and agitate against the central government.

Now with the full support of Bajwa, the tribal and adjoining areas will be merged and as a result the Pakistani army will hand over territory reclaimed from the TTP to the central government rather than the tribes. The Swat Valley, which 10 years ago was lost to the militants, has now been restored and handed over by the army to the civilian administration. The handing over of Swat by the military to the civilians is the model for border regions. It was from the Swat Valley that Pakistan’s most-wanted man, the leader of the TTP Mullah Fazlullah, fled in 2009 to the neighbouring tribal areas and then on to Afghanistan. It is no coincidence as the Pakistani army seals the border in 2018 and hands over the Swat Valley to the civilians – the same year a US drone strike led to the killing of Fazlullah. The synchronisation of military operations, together with defence diplomacy with the US and the UK, has brought tactical and strategic rewards, such as Carter’s acknowledgement and President Trump praising the Pakistani effort in 2017 in freeing an American/Canadian family who had been kept hostage on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border for more than five years.

Afghan Protests and the Way Forward

The Afghans are not happy with this fencing of the border, as it ends the historical claim of Afghanistan to lands they see as theirs. No Afghan

government has ever recognised the international border as legitimate, instead complaining that the Durand Line is an agreement with the British Empire and not the government of Pakistan. Indeed, more than 10 years ago, then Army Chief and President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf suggested fencing the Afghan border as the only solution to solving the intractable problems of Afghan–Pakistan cross-border terrorism.

The allegation of terrorist sanctuaries and support has been a two-way street, with the Pakistanis also accusing the Afghan intelligence services of giving space and logistical support to the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan

Pakistan has had a long and costly journey since it launched military operations on the Afghan border, beginning with Musharraf ’s time in office. It is only now under Bajwa that the Pakistani army has reached a natural state of holding the mountain peaks on the border with Afghanistan, which had been lost to the TTP in the years after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan was not equipped to fight the war on its western border, after training for six decades to fight their eastern neighbour, India. Musharraf admitted major lapses on the Afghan border and a lack of capacity for the army to fight while accusations started being raised of support to the Taliban and an open border. Musharraf had even proposed to mine the border as the only way to put to rest US and Afghan concerns of Pakistani duplicity.

Bajwa Fence: The Last Word as the Americans Begin to Change Tack

Then as now, the Afghans are not happy about the fence to formalise the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the last year the border has been closed several times, including, ironically, at the request of the Afghans

so that it could reduce violence in local polls. Despite a historical grievance over the border, the Durand Line is the internationally recognised border and the Pakistanis are now sealing it to make sure cross-border terrorism can be eliminated. The Bajwa Fence also means the return of Afghan refugees to Afghanistan as part of the overall solution to the issue of terrorism sanctuaries in Pakistan. The physical barrier of the fence, the return of refugees languishing in camps for almost 30 years, and bringing the border areas under Pakistani sovereignty is seen as a process for which Pakistan is now ready. While there was next to no infrastructure in areas such as South Waziristan, Bajaur and even large swathes of Baluchistan, now the best-quality schools, universities, hospital and vocational centres are opening speedily and Bajwa has said the future of Pakistan is linked to the prosperity of Baluchistan. 720 forts to oversee the border crossings have been planned and more than 300 have already been constructed, covering 800km of the border. On the Baluch border, the key control over the smuggling of narcotics and terrorists crossing is being addressed on a daily basis. There is a mix of infantry and engineer regiments building areas previously untouched by Pakistan.

With a fresh mandate from Trump to bring about a speedy end to the war, in January 2019 Khalizad publicly praised the Pakistan leadership, saying they are playing a positive role in the end game. Prominent US Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of Trump, had been the most vocal critic of Pakistan in the past. However, on his last trip in January 2019 he reversed his judgement on the Pakistan leadership.

The Bajwa Fence is here to change Pakistan’s western borders for good and it is having a major impact on how the Americans view Pakistan and its army.

Kamal Alam Kamal has been a visiting fellow at RUSI since 2015 and has concentrated on Pakistan Army operations on its Western border and Pakistan Defence Diplomacy with the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s, and do not reflect those of RUSI or any other institution.

Afghanistan–Pakistan Border