Pakistanis Welcome al-Qaeda
[ OGHAZ PASS, Pakistan – Pakistan's tribal areas are free passage zones for Taliban and al-Qaeda's foreign legionnaires escaping from Afghanistan, a UPI team has verified in a weeklong investigation along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The Pakistan army has announced that two brigades, each made up of three battalions of 850 men each, or a total of 5,100, have been deployed along a 30-mile stretch of jagged, zigzag mountainous and totally porous border and have now "sealed the frontier tight." Helicopter gunships, military authorities have assured the United States, are surveilling mountain passes against infiltration.
Presidential spokesman Gen. Rashid Qureshi went so far as to publicly deny that any al-Qaeda fighter had made it across the border into Pakistan.
Junior officers – all officers and most non-coms speak English – speculate that such assurances are given to make "the Americans feel good." Border tribal zone populations have long been pro-Taliban and pro-al-Qaeda as countless painted slogans and posters of Osama bin Laden are visible in towns and villages throughout the three key tribal "agencies" – Kurram, Orazkai and Kohat.
Tribal elders, over post-fast Iftar dinner, told this reporter, accompanied by a Pakistani friend and a multilingual guide, that while the army had established interlocking fields of fire at four key mountain passes, it could not possibly check dozens of other routes invisible from the air. A Pakistani captain, who asked that his name not be used, shared the same assessment. ]
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