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| October 25, 2003 | Saturday | Sha’aban 28, 1424 |
More US help sought in anti-terror war
QUETTA, Oct 24: Pakistan said on Friday it was doing everything it could to stop infiltration of Taliban and Al Qaeda fugitives, but it needed more US equipment and money to plug its border with Afghanistan.
“Whatever we got from the US is just peanuts,” military spokesman Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan told reporters here at a briefing.
“We need helicopters and UAVs (unmanned aviation vehicles) for day-night surveillance of the long and difficult border,” Sultan said, referring to the 1,200-kilometre border between Balochistan and Afghanistan.
Pakistan, a frontline state in the US-led global war against terrorism, has arrested and handed over some 500 Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects to the United States after the Sept 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States.
The border between the two countries was a mere formality before Sept 11, as people could move almost freely across to the Pakistani town of Chaman from Afghanistan.
But Pakistan stepped up its vigil after the ouster of the hardline Taliban militia in US-led operations in late 2001, and the Afghan government’s complaints that Taliban were regrouping on the Pakistani side of the border for attacks on coalition forces.
“All efforts are being made to bring maximum (border) area under surveillance,” Sultan said.
The United States has provided five helicopters and some communication equipment and vehicles to Pakistan’s Frontier Corps (FC), which guards the Balochistan border against the infiltration of suspected terrorists, narcotics peddlers and other illegal border crossers.
“The equipment that we have is not enough to monitor such a long and mountainous border,” FC chief Maj-Gen Sadaqat Ali Shah said.
“We are erecting fences at key entry points at the border, constructing a 41km long embankment around Chaman and have installed 16 search lights for night time monitoring of the border,” said Mr Shah, who was also present at the briefing.
“The FC has done all this on self-help basis and has received no money from the federal government,” Sultan added.—AFP
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