February 19, 2007	Monday	Safar 1, 1428

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LWARA FORT, Feb 18: Pakistani troops in Lwara Fort on the Afghan border are on the guard, but not for invaders from Afghanistan. They are trying to stop militants from crossing into Afghanistan to battle US-led Nato troops.

The red, brick fort sits on a small, barren plain surrounded by snow-streaked mountains, several hundred metres from the Afghan border.

Brigadier Rizwan Aktar, commander of the fort, points from its high walls to a fracture in a nearby line of hills – the Chandi Gap, a notorious militant crossing point, he says.

But he told reporters on a weekend tour of border defences in North Waziristan that he and his men were determined to stop infiltration into Afghanistan: “The people who want to create any nonsense, we are going to control them.”

Pakistan is a major US ally in the war on terrorism but US officials appear increasingly frustrated about the help a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan is getting from the Pakistani side of the border.

Taliban leaders are operating from Pakistan where training, financing and recruiting are also taking place, they say.

Pakistan says it can’t completely seal the 2,500km border but it is doing all it can to stop infiltration.

But Pakistan says infiltration is a minor factor behind the Taliban surge. Rather, it’s a cocktail of Afghan factors, including anger over civilian deaths in military attacks, corruption and the booming drug trade that’s fuelling the Taliban war, it says.

Pakistan, which backed the Taliban until the Sept 11, 2001, attacks, is also determined to show a pact it struck in North Waziristan in September, aimed at ending local Taliban attacks on its forces and raids into Afghanistan, is working.

Pakistan says the deal is aimed at empowering tribal leaders and marginalising militants but critics say it effectively ceded control of North Waziristan to pro-Taliban militants and the region has become a militant training ground.

Tribal elders, invited by the military to meet the media in the main base in Miramshah, rejected that.

“No one’s getting any training here,” said Gul Abad Khan, a tall, thin elder wearing a large black turban. “There’s no connection between us and the terrorists fighting in Afghanistan.”

US military officials in Afghanistan say attacks in Afghan areas opposite North Waziristan were several times higher late last year than the previous year.

But Pakistan points to Nato figures showing a sharp fall in Afghan violence since September as proof the deal has worked.

General Azhar Ali Shah, the commander of Pakistani forces in North Waziristan, says the peace the deal has brought to North Waziristan has allowed him to deploy 70 per cent of his 28,000 troops to the border to tackle infiltrators.

“Wherever there’s a piece of intelligence or a technical report, these people are struck,” Shah told reporters as he escorted them on a helicopter tour of his border.

Pakistan has 97 border posts in North Waziristan, perched on brown, barren ridges, or high on mountains blanketed in snow and speckled with stunted trees.