By Nick Allen Jan 11, 2007, 14:08 GMT
Islamabad - Though intended to help bring order, Pakistan's package of steps to shore up its porous border with Afghanistan has sparked a bitter backlash among local tribes and the government in Kabul.
On Thursday, a protest by thousands of Afghan tribesmen blocked the Chaman crossing point in Pakistan's southern Balochistan province, a day after officials commissioned a new biometric system of identification checks to hinder insurgents and criminals.
And pressure is mounting on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to drop the idea of mining stretches of the 2,500-kilometre frontier as well as erecting fences.
'Mining and fencing the border will not prevent terrorism but it will divide the two nations,' Afghan President Hamid Karzai said recently of the proposal, which was unveiled last month, further cranking up tensions between the neighbours.
Afghanistan does not recognize the colonial-era border, known also as the Durand line, and says that reinforcing it this way will only drive a wedge through ethnic Pashtun communities that live in the area.
Moreover, sowing more mines around a country that has been saturated by them in the past three decades and continues to suffer many innocent casualties as a result is also seen as an inflammatory move.
Pakistan is not a signatory of the Ottawa Treaty banning the use of landmines and is technically entitled to deploy them on its territory.
The UN has voiced concern over the planned use of the weapons. And during a visit to Islamabad this week, Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay urged Musharraf's government to reconsider and accept his country's help in finding a workable compromise solution.
Agreeing that fencing might help, Mackay said other technical assistance Canada could provide Pakistan included satellite phone technology, aerial surveillance with unmanned and unarmed drones, biometric cards and training for border guards.
Musharraf 'agreed to explore some other options' on how to stem the Taliban's activities, MacKay said after the meeting.
But after repeated charges by Kabul and NATO forces in Afghanistan that Pakistan is not doing enough to contain insurgents in its western tribal belt, Islamabad's patience is wearing thin.
Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said he and the president conveyed to MacKay that they were 'quite fed up' with constant allegations.
Pakistan's government reminds critics that it has 80,000 soldiers stationed on the frontier and lost more than 700 men in clashes with militants.
One complication is the existence of Pashtun communities that straddle the border, whose members are allowed to travel without passports but with special identity permits.
In the high-tech bracket of the new control measures, Pakistan on Wednesday opened its first biometrics system screening travellers.
Residents of Chaman and the surrounding district will now be issued with new passes that are compatible with the system that records a person's fingerprints, retinas or facial patterns, for identification.
Locals on the Afghan side reacted badly to the move and their protest forced the crossing point to suspend work for six hours on Thursday.
Meanwhile, a major incursion into Afghanistan by two large groups of insurgents from the Pakistani side further north highlighted the continuing illegal cross-border movement.
NATO ground and air forces attacked scores of fighters infiltrating Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province on Wednesday night, killing up to 150, coalition forces said in a statement.
Some 4,000 people died in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan in 2006, which was the bloodiest year since the US-led invasion ousted the ruling Taliban in 2001.
Your Talkback on this Story