Pakistan's Border Badlands Are a Challenge for the Next President

Kunar Province, Afghanistan—In the lush heart of the Kunar River basin, where valleys active with enemy forces snake toward the border with Pakistan, U.S. military units have been picking up some compelling intelligence. The insurgent groups striking U.S. outposts here seem to be having trouble paying their recruits, because of the rising cost of ammunition. This financial squeeze, U.S. officials believe, is the result of a newly paved road that makes it easier for Afghan security forces to interdict smuggled wares, driving up the cost of weapons coming from nearby Pakistan.

In Pakistan, a truck that was carrying fuel to U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

In this easternmost American outpost in Afghanistan, U.S. officials are anxious for such signs that they are making some headway against the Taliban fighters, who pay little attention to the porous mountain border that bisects the traditional Pashtun tribal lands. It's a border that limits the reach of American and Afghan troops and provides the Taliban and al Qaeda members a safe haven and a steady source of supplies.

This rugged territory of towering mountains and deep-rooted tribal loyalties will figure prominently on the national security to-do list of the next president. He will have to find ways to persuade Pakistani officials—some of whom are lending support to the Taliban—to go after extremists in the so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where Osama bin Laden is also thought to be hiding. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, last week said that al Qaeda leaders there are plotting new attacks on the United States and that Pakistan has not done enough to stop them. The Government Accountability Office, in a report issued in April, sharply criticized the Bush administration for failing to effectively target these sanctuaries. And a Pentagon-funded Rand study issued last week stresses the need to eliminate the insurgents' support base in Pakistan. "The failure to do so," it says, "will cripple long-term efforts to stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan."

Indeed, six years after the invasion of Afghanistan, neo-Taliban fighters trained in the ungoverned tribal regions of Pakistan have regrouped and returned here with relative ease, hardened by years of war. "The Taliban leadership now is different from what we were seeing in 1994," says a senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan. "The elder leaders are still there, but it's arguable how much actual no-kidding directive power they have. These young guys are in control of the fight now, and they are more ruthless, more vicious, in some ways a little more competent, and definitely more aggressive."

Plotters. Just across the border, Pakistan provides a staging area for what U.S. military officials call a "syndicate of insurgents," including al Qaeda fighters from Chechnya and Saudi Arabia, the Haqqani network of militants, criminals, and members of Hezb-i-Islami—a group led by radical Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now virulently anti-American but a CIA ally during the fight to drive the Soviets from Afghanistan. U.S. officials are still trying to figure out the extent of cooperation among these groups, but the common denominator is that each has its own command-and-control hub in Pakistan. Dismal refugee camps there, remnants of the Soviet-war era when millions of Afghans fled, have been fertile recruiting grounds.

The question is what to do about it. Pakistan has claimed various antiextremist deals in the past with tribal leaders, which have failed to hold up, and it's not clear that the new government will do any better. Pakistan bars U.S. ground forces from crossing the border, though CIA Predator drones have carried out cross-border strikes. The U.S.-led coalition acknowledged an attack last week targeting Taliban militants said to have fired on coalition forces operating in Kunar province. Pakistan protested that the airstrike killed 11 paramilitary border guards. A coalition statement said the Pakistani Army had been informed of the clashes, but the Pakistani military offered a differing account of events and said the "completely unprovoked and cowardly" airstrike could undermine future cooperation.

The border situation is a source of considerable frustration for the U.S. military. Counterinsurgency campaigns place a premium on controlling borders. But U.S. Special Operations Forces "have been begging for sustained operations" in the region to no avail, says a U.S. military analyst. And so for now, U.S. forces are focusing their attention on what they can do: for instance, delving into issues of governance here. Tying the people to the government, they say, offers the best chance of decreasing support for the insurgency and encouraging confidence in provincial councils and security forces. "It's not an ideological fight," says Alison Blosser, Department of State political officer for the provincial reconstruction team, or "PRT," here. "We found they can't even identify insurgent leaders."

Instead, what they are discovering is that the dynamics driving violence along the border are often somewhat mundane. Though perhaps only 5 to 10 percent of locals actively support the Taliban, by U.S. military estimates, the vast majority who don't are nonetheless fearful of opposing the insurgents, given the Afghan government's inability to protect them.

Here in Kunar, residents of small towns have been most upset about basic economic issues, like the high price of onions and the government's crackdown on timber smuggling, a large source of local income. "When you have locals supporting the insurgency, either tacitly or explicitly, it tends to be on very parochial grounds," says Seth Jones, the Afghanistan expert who authored the Rand report.

And so the local PRT has backed roads and vocational training to pump some money and projects into the area. One new high-ceilinged center has sinks and toilets in one corner for students to learn plumbing and a wall of light bulbs for aspiring electricians. There is a partially built bridge in the middle of the school building for budding engineers.

The trick, say U.S. officials here, is to outbid insurgents for fighting-age males. "If insurgent groups are paying $5 a day, then we pay $5.50," says Navy Cmdr. Dan Dwyer, who heads the PRT here. Graduates from the vocational school are paid $8 or more by local contractors, who are required by the U.S. forces engaging them to hire at least 70 percent of their workers from within 12 miles of the job site.

That said, the government's ability to provide security remains pivotal for many locals as they decide whether or not they will support insurgencies. This is particularly true in the Pashtun belt of central Ghazni province, where insurgents coming from across the border have received sanctuary from locals who do not yet trust the Afghan national police in an area some 80 miles from Pakistan.

At the first security meeting for the new governor—the province's fourth since August—the Afghan National Army commander cited the interference of Pakistan as one of the top problems he faces in his province. Many of the fighters he encounters are coming from training camps in Pakistan, he says. "You see them there outside Quetta—buildings in camps with signs for different areas. One for Kandahar, one for Helmand, Ghazni." Some intelligence indicates that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence forces help train fighters, according to Afghan military officials.

Police chief killed. For its part, the U.S. military is doing what it can to get the Afghan police—widely judged to be incompetent and almost uniformly corrupt—working more closely with the Afghan National Army, a far more credible force throughout the country. At Ghazni's provincial coordination center, Afghan National Army and police forces that once got into occasional shootouts with each other now live and work together. "It helps them build trust and care about what happens to each other," says U.S. Army Capt. Caleb Threadcraft, who runs the center. Still, it's a brutal fight every day. The replacement for the corrupt police chief in the provincial capital was killed last week after just a few days on the job, and soldiers from the U.S. battalion responsible for the area have earned 29 Purple Hearts in just 45 days on the ground.

Meanwhile at Camp Torkham in the fabled Khyber Pass, a main official border crossing, the U.S. military is preparing to launch a grand experiment. It has just finished building two huts that will house both Afghan and Pakistani security forces, who have been known to take potshots at each other over border disputes from time to time. One hut is for showers and beds; the other is an intelligence coordination center, where Pakistani units will live and work with Afghan security forces, sharing meals, bunks, and video feeds from Predator drones. "This is a full-Monty deal," says Brig. Gen. Mark Milley, director of operations for eastern Afghanistan. "They will eat together and work together—it's kind of historic."

The U.S. military plans to open six more such border centers by winter. More will need to be done, of course, including stronger action by Pakistan to root out al Qaeda and to constrain Afghan insurgents. Says Milley, "At some point in order for there to be resolution to the insurgency in Afghanistan—and Pakistan for that matter—both sides have got to come to grips with the issue of the border." And so, too, will the next president of the United States.