Overwhelmed border police search motorcyclists crossing from Pakistan into
Afghanistan at Spin Boldak.  The busy checkpoint is a reputed
gateway for Taliban fighters on terrorist missions.

Tensions over infiltration pervade Afghan border town, Taliban fighters reputed to flock in from Pakistan

By Declan Walsh, Globe Correspondent  |  July 2, 2006

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan -- The motorbikes surge across the border from Pakistan in waves, hundreds of turbaned riders jostling for space amid a cloud of milky fumes and a feverish revving of engines.

Overwhelmed border guards try to search for explosives or weapons, a seemingly fruitless task. After a cursory patdown of every fifth or 10th man, the bikes roar through, barreling down a barbed-wire corridor and into Afghanistan.

Border officer Khushnay Kaka watches despairingly.

``The Pakistanis are trying to send suicide bombers across," he said on a recent day, casting an accusatory glance at the frontier. ``They make a queue of 300 motorbikes and release them all at once. It is impossible for us to check everyone."

Tensions are high at Spin Boldak, one of the main crossing points along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Long a hub of smugglers, traders, and tribesmen, it is now an alleged gateway for Taliban fighters on terrorist missions.

Afghan officials charge that militants are flooding across the border from radical madrassas, or religious schools, in Pakistan's northern tribal areas. Pakistani officials concede some infiltration takes place but insist they are doing their best to control the busy and often chaotic frontier.

About 2.6 million Afghan refugees live in Pakistan, many with homes and businesses on both sides of the border. Up to 30,000 people cross at Spin Boldak alone, said Major General Shaukat Sultan, a spokesman for the Pakistani military. ``You can't arrest everyone with a turban."

Last week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a visit to the capitals of both countries in an effort to stop the bickering.

``We have to realize we have a common enemy," she told reporters in Kabul on Wednesday. ``We can all do more. We can all work harder."

A day earlier in Islamabad, Pakistan's foreign minister, Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri, responded testily to questions from American journalists about his country's commitment to fighting terrorism. Referring to the border area, he said: ``We have more troops than Afghanistan and the US put together."

The difficulty in sealing the border is best appreciated from the gates of Spin Boldak. To the west lies the Registan Desert, a vast wasteland of red sand and crescent-shaped dunes that stretches into Helmand Province, where 3,300 British troops are based. To the northeast is Waziristan, the violent Pakistani tribal area and Al Qaeda haven.

The town itself is a bustling center of commerce. Goods from tea kettles to contraband such as smuggled mobile phones and electronics are sold from shops built around old cargo containers.

Inexplicably, old truck cabs that have been separated from their vehicles sit perched on shop roofs. Dusty lots are filled with timber and rows of second hand vehicles at knockdown prices. Burka-clad women glide past silently. A handcuffed opium addict caught stealing is marched to a cell.

At the border, Pakistani guards with rubber hoses whip Afghan travelers into line. Travel documents are optional, but bribes are practically a must for travelers in both directions.

Haji Hanif, a self-described petty smuggler, said a donkey cart of goods costs about $15, but a person can cross for as little as 20 cents.

Cross-border trade has soared from $23 million to $1.5 billion over the past five years, according to Pakistan's prime minister, Shaukat Aziz. Most goods pass through Spin Boldak and the Khyber Pass, about 300 miles to the northeast.

But the illicit trade is even more profitable. Shipments of hashish and heroin slip into Pakistan disguised as boxes of black tea, Haji Jan, the deputy highway police chief, said at his headquarters -- an abandoned gas station on the edge of the desert. ``They just pay a bribe," said the former militia fighter.

But a more pressing worry is fired-up fundamentalists headed in the other direction. Last week a US military spokesman warned of ``significant fighting" in the coming months as about 10,000 coalition troops step up Operation Mountain Thrust in southern Afghanistan, the largest anti-Taliban drive since 2001.

About 200 French special f orces soldiers camped at a desert fort outside Spin Boldak trying to halt the infiltration of militant fighters from Pakistan.

It is a dangerous job -- four soldiers have been shot or bombed since October, according to French media reports, and the contingent is due to move east to Nangarhar Province later this summer.

In January, a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle plowed into a crowd at a wrestling match in Spin Boldak, killing 23 people and wounding 40.

Others militants melt into traffic racing along the dog-eared road to Kandahar, where a Romanian soldier died in a roadside bombing last week.

Now, a giant billboard on the Afghan side of the chaotic border urges new arrivals to dial 888, which connects to the intelligence services, with information about ``people with explosives."

Farther down the road, a second billboard advertises a radio station run by the NATO military alliance -- presumably in competition with the Taliban's relaunched Voice of Sharia station.

The enmity between Afghanistan and Pakistan is further complicated by their historical rivalries.

The Afghan government still refuses to accept their common border, which is known as the Durand Line after the British colonial officer who traced the division in the late 19th century. Ethnic Pashtuns, in particular, are irked by the boundary because it divides their homeland in two.

After 2001, Pakistani officials pushed the Spin Boldak checkpoint about a mile inside Afghan territory and marked the spot with a large arch called the ``friendship gate."

Angry Afghans piled sandbags in front of the crossing and now walk around its closed gates.

Even the Afghan border tribes are in disarray. The killing of 17 people near the border last March, allegedly by a senior border police officer from the Achakzai tribe, has rekindled a centuries-old feud with the rival Noorzai tribe, which controls the highway police.

Now Canadian soldiers are retraining the border police, the first 10 of whom graduated last week.

``They are taking their job very seriously," said Master Corporal Dan Martineau, one of the trainers. ``They lack certain skills, but make up with a lot of hands-on experience."
© Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company