Pakistan Afghanistan border fence update

[pakdefender]

800 kilometers done , rest of the 400km of priority one area to be completed by end of 2019

https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/406316-pak-afghan-border-fencing-to-complete-by-dec-2019-dg-ispr

 

[ghazi52]

PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN Border Fencing

A few of the 843 Border Forts being constructed by Pakistan on the 2,611 km Pak-Afghan Border.

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[Mrc]

What's the current status? How much is left?

 

[Foxtrot Delta]

What beautiful and well suited forts for the terrain. As Allah wills.

 

[ghazi52]

 

[Bil]

Hats off to all of those who have taken part in this vital initiative, which will significantly help to curb terrorism and stop the movement of militants from Afghan soil into Pakistan. Its a nail in the coffin of India.

More to the point, we should always remember our those brave hero's who got Shahadat whilst clearing the area ahead of fencing the border with Afghanistan.

Its high time to establishing a robust fence along the nearly 900-kilometer porous border with Iran in the southwest (which will be final nail in the coffin of India), because we will not have complete control on the security situation as long as our borders not fully secured.

What's the current status? How much is left?

More than 70% is completed, officials expect it to be finished by the end of this year or by summer 2021.

https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pa...ting-afghan-border-fencing-pakistan-army-says

 

[Dalit]

I am a big fan of fencing. Should have been done long ago. Never too late to demarcate the border and send a strong message across the board.

 

[ghazi52]

The military-led massive construction program, launched in mid-2017, is installing a pair of nearly 3-meter-high chicken wire fences, with a 2-meter gap between each one, and topped with barbed wire, along the nearly 2,600-kilometer border. Additionally, hundreds of new outposts and forts have been built or are under construction.

"We have achieved a lot of progress. I believe we will be able to complete the Pak-Afghan border fencing by the end of 2020," .


A soldier stands guard along the border fence outside the Kitton outpost on the border with Afghanistan in North Waziristan.
The fence runs through rugged terrain and snow-capped mountains as high as 12,000 feet. The border security plan, officials estimate, will cost about $500 million.

After securing the western Afghan border, the government will begin establishing a robust fence along the nearly 900-kilometer porous border with Iran in the southwest.

"We will not have 100% control over Pakistan's security situation as long as our borders remain porous," .

 

[Myth_buster_1]

dont forget nuke mines and death star pointing towards the afg

 

[ghazi52]

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PAK-AFGHAN BORDER FENCING

RAZA KHAN

March 16, 2020

While the situation in Afghanistan has taken a new turn and peace is still elusive in the country after an accord signed between the United States and the Afghan Taliban on February 29, Pakistan has successfully fenced most parts of its international border with Afghanistan.

According to reports, Pakistan has completed the planned fencing of 84 percent of its border with Afghanistan. Although the total length of the Pakistan border with Afghanistan, known as the Durnad Line, is 2640 kilometres, yet not all of its entire length was planned to be fenced. There are hundreds of kilometres of the border area which cannot be fenced as the terrain is located at a very high altitude and is extremely rugged and, therefore, its fencing does not serve any purpose as it cannot be crossed by humans. So, of the stipulated length of the border fencing, most of the target has been achieved and it is a great achievement of Pakistan in terms of its national security and foreign policy. If the border fencing or for that matter border management with Afghanistan can be described as one of the single most important achievement of Pakistan in terms of its security policy, then it would not be exaggeration rather more apt to describe it so.

It is important to mention that the Pakistan-Afghanistan border straddle along two provinces of Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan. While the fencing was planned in most of the border area in KP, a long and deep trench was to be dug along the border in Balochistan. Most work on the trench is also said to be complete. Of the entire length of the Durand Line, 1229 kilometres is situated in KP. Of that, the fencing of 829 kilometres had to be carried out and till this time it has been set up on 695.5 kilometres, which comes to around 84 percent. The fencing has been set up right in the north from the Bajaur district to in the South till the South Waziristan district of KP. Along with the fencing, 443 border forts were also to be constructed, of which 250 have been successfully completed and the rest would be constructed by the end of the current year.

Insofar as the management of the Durand Line is concerned, it has its roots in the core and longstanding issue between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Kabul has never recognized the Durand Line as the official border between Pakistan and Afghanistan and it has always considered Pakistan’s Pashtun areas as part of Afghanistan. Therefore, Kabul has also considered the Durand Line as an “imaginary” line dividing Pashtuns, whose traditional homeland is Afghanistan. Pasthuns are the majority ethnic group of Afghanistan whereas it is second largest ethno-linguistic group of Pakistan. The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan has always been very difficult to manage as it is located in a very inhospitable terrain. Therefore, Pakistan had always thought it would be next to impossible to manage the border. It had been despite the fact that Kabul has had irredentist claims on large tracts of Pakistani territory. Even Pakistan did not bother to have solid management of the Durand Line before mid-1980s, when there had never been any “Strategic Depth” policy of Pakistan in place regarding Afghanistan. The Strategic Depth policy, conceived by military ruler General Ziaul Haq (1979-88), wanted to have open access to the Pakistani military forces in an eventuality of war with its eastern arch-rival India, so that the Pakistan forces could enter Afghan territory and then launch a counteroffensive against Delhi from Afghanistan. In other words, an open border or no-border policy of Pakistan with Afghanistan, although very myopic, was understandable in the context of the Strategic Depth policy but it did not have any justification whatsoever before mid-1980s.

Now when Pakistan has self-admittedly shunned the policy of Strategic Depth in Afghanistan, there was a critical need to revisit the strategy of open or no border with Kabul. Fortunately, Pakistani strategists and decision-makers rightly understood the situation and they came up with an elaborate policy of border management. Under the policy of border management, Islamabad started fencing its long border with Afghanistan in the middle of March, 2017, to effectively control the inflow of terrorists and militants from Afghanistan and the outflow of armed militants from Pakistan.

The decision to fence the border, whether taken in the past or presently on the Pak-Afghan border, is the irreducible minimum to protect Pakistan and its citizens from terrorist attacks, ricochet the vitriolic criticism from Afghanistan, NATO, the US and Western countries of not doing enough to stop the cross-border infiltration of Taliban insurgents from its soil into Afghanistan. The Afghan government in the past had outrightly rejected the fencing and mining of the Pakistan-Afghan border. There is also stiff opposition from important political groups and stakeholders on the Pakistan side of the Durand Line, including the Pashtun ethno-linguistic nationalist parties, like the Awami National Party (ANP) and PkMAP, as well as Jamaat-e-Islami and tribesmen organizations, like Tanzeem-e-Ittehad-e-Qabail.

As far as the fencing of the 2640 kilometres Durand Line is concerned, it is near to impossible to fence the whole of it but a good part of it can be fenced. In Pakistan’s border management plan, the fencing had become extremely important. An 1100 kilometre-long trench has been dug while satellite and physical air surveillance as well as several hundred pickets have also been put in place. Against this backdrop, even selective fencing serves its purpose. Islamabad should make an all-out effort to secure its border with Afghanistan, whether through extensive or selective fencing. Because it is not just the matter of cross-border infiltration of terrorists and militants, but this is also very important for Pakistan’s overall national security, sovereignty and national integration and equally important, economic development. It has been due to the porous border with Afghanistan that smugglers of food items have been taking advantage to move out essential commodities from Pakistan to Afghanistan, creating extreme shortage of the items in the local markets and skyrocketing their prices. On the other hand, luxury items have been coming into Pakistan, basically imported for Afghanistan, giving serious blows to the local industry.

Whether Pakistan or Afghanistan governments publicly admit it or not, but the problem between Afghanistan and Pakistan is not limited to militants and terrorists infiltration. Cross-border terrorism and militancy may be an immediate cause of strained relationship between the two countries but the roots of the mistrust lies in history. The fact of the matter is that behind the Pakistani decision to fence the border and Afghanistan’s opposition to it is the disputed nature of the Durand Line. Pakistan’s official stance on the issue has been that it is an established border while Afghanistan’s stand has been that it has never recognized the border, therefore, it has the legal right of reclaiming the Pashtun areas of Pakistan. Even the Taliban regime in Afghanistan refused to renounce its stance on the Durand Line issue when asked by the Pakistani government in the past. In this historical context, the importance of the fencing and overall border management of the Durand Line by Pakistan could very well be understood.

 

[ghazi52]

View from Kunar...

 

[Dalit]

Wave that flag high. Very high. I want every American, NATO and Afghan to see the flag. Let the reality sink in.

 

[ghazi52]

COVID-19 Not Affecting Afghan Border Fencing, Pakistan Army Says

By Ayaz Gul
May 05, 2020



Pakistani soldiers stand guard at a fence between Pakistan and Afghanistan at Angore Adda,
ISLAMABAD - Officials in Pakistan say a unilateral construction effort has erected a robust fence along “more than 70%” of the country’s roughly 2,600-kilometer border with Afghanistan, and the coronavirus pandemic has not hampered the work.

The army-led, roughly $500 million project to secure the largely porous and historically open frontier was launched in 2017, and officials expect it to be finished by the end of this year or by summer 2021.



Truck drivers sit on a shelter beside trucks parked alongside a road near the closed Pakistan-Iran border in Taftan on Feb. 25, 2020, as fears over the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus escalate.


The fence has been installed along more than 85% of the border in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and almost 70% percent in southwestern Baluchistan province, according to the information shared with VOA by the military’s media wing, the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR).

The pair of three-meter-high mesh fences, a couple of meters apart, are filled and topped with coils of razor wire, running through rugged terrain and snow-capped mountains as high as 12,000 feet. Additionally, hundreds of new outposts and forts, equipped with modern surveillance gadgetry, also are being built.

Chief military spokesman Major-General Babar Iftikhar told a local news channel Monday night the coronavirus-related lockdown has not affected the border security project.

“The fencing activity has not stopped. The stretch of Pak-Afghan border in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is near completion and the work is speedily underway on the stretch in Baluchistan,” Iftikhar told Pakistani ARY news channel in an interview broadcast.

Officials maintain the fence would go a long way in addressing concerns of Pakistan and Afghanistan stemming from illegal crossings and militant infiltration.

Afghan officials are opposed to Pakistan’s border security measures because Kabul disputes the 1893 British colonial era demarcation, what Afghans still refer to as the Durand Line. Islamabad rejects the objections and maintains Pakistan inherited the international frontier after gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

The United States also has hailed Pakistan’s border security measures and U.S. officials told lawmakers during recent Congressional hearings that Washington "sees the Durand Line as the internationally recognized boundary.”

The border fencing in a traditionally lawless border region followed years of sustained counter-militancy operations, killing thousands of militants and pushing many others into volatile border provinces of Afghanistan.

The Pakistani military says it has effectively “dismantled" terrorist infrastructures in the area, leading to improved security and a sharp reduction in militant attacks in the country.


By
Ayaz Gul

 

[Dalit]

COVID-19 Not Affecting Afghan Border Fencing, Pakistan Army Says

By Ayaz Gul
May 05, 2020



Pakistani soldiers stand guard at a fence between Pakistan and Afghanistan at Angore Adda,
ISLAMABAD - Officials in Pakistan say a unilateral construction effort has erected a robust fence along “more than 70%” of the country’s roughly 2,600-kilometer border with Afghanistan, and the coronavirus pandemic has not hampered the work.

The army-led, roughly $500 million project to secure the largely porous and historically open frontier was launched in 2017, and officials expect it to be finished by the end of this year or by summer 2021.



Truck drivers sit on a shelter beside trucks parked alongside a road near the closed Pakistan-Iran border in Taftan on Feb. 25, 2020, as fears over the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus escalate.


The fence has been installed along more than 85% of the border in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and almost 70% percent in southwestern Baluchistan province, according to the information shared with VOA by the military’s media wing, the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR).

The pair of three-meter-high mesh fences, a couple of meters apart, are filled and topped with coils of razor wire, running through rugged terrain and snow-capped mountains as high as 12,000 feet. Additionally, hundreds of new outposts and forts, equipped with modern surveillance gadgetry, also are being built.

Chief military spokesman Major-General Babar Iftikhar told a local news channel Monday night the coronavirus-related lockdown has not affected the border security project.

“The fencing activity has not stopped. The stretch of Pak-Afghan border in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is near completion and the work is speedily underway on the stretch in Baluchistan,” Iftikhar told Pakistani ARY news channel in an interview broadcast.

Officials maintain the fence would go a long way in addressing concerns of Pakistan and Afghanistan stemming from illegal crossings and militant infiltration.

Afghan officials are opposed to Pakistan’s border security measures because Kabul disputes the 1893 British colonial era demarcation, what Afghans still refer to as the Durand Line. Islamabad rejects the objections and maintains Pakistan inherited the international frontier after gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

The United States also has hailed Pakistan’s border security measures and U.S. officials told lawmakers during recent Congressional hearings that Washington "sees the Durand Line as the internationally recognized boundary.”

The border fencing in a traditionally lawless border region followed years of sustained counter-militancy operations, killing thousands of militants and pushing many others into volatile border provinces of Afghanistan.

The Pakistani military says it has effectively “dismantled" terrorist infrastructures in the area, leading to improved security and a sharp reduction in militant attacks in the country.


By
Ayaz Gul

After becoming nuclear this is next best thing to have happened to Pakistan's security. People don't realise what a colossal undertaking this is. Pak army deserves all the credit.

 

[ghazi52]

Fencing at Pak-Afghan border:

A success story of Pakistan’s security forces

ISLAMABAD: The year 2018 has been a complete success story of Pakistan’s security forces as through the ongoing countrywide Operation Raddul Fasaad they have not only been able to cleanse the society of the menace of terrorism to a great extent but have also broken the myth that fencing at the 2,611-kilometre long and zigzag Pak-Afghan border is unmanageable.

A delegation of journalists visited the Torkham Border the other day to get a firsthand knowledge as to how successful the RUF had been in wiping out terrorists, their sympathisers and abettors since its launch on February 22, 2017.

The visit was also aimed at viewing the arduous undertaking to fence 1,403-kilometre perilous Pak-Afghan border in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), since its installation began on April 27, 2017.

Running on some of the most inhospitable rugged terrains, the fencing has been divided into three phases on the basis of urgency – priority one, priority two and priority three.

“The fencing of the first phase (priority one area), that covers 539 kilometres, has been completed as per schedule (at the end of December 2018),” an official associated with the project told the journalists.

He said that around 233 forts had also been built on the 1,403 kilometre-long border, while work on 140 more forts was underway. “Fencing of the Pak-Afghan border is a reality now. The first phase has been completed, while the next two phases – priority two (379km) and priority three (485km) will be completed in two years.

“The Torkham Border is no longer a free-for-all crossing-point. The illegal border crossing has come to an end as only individuals with authentic documents are able to cross it now,” he added.

The fence is a dual wire trellis, 11 feet high from Pakistan side and 13 feet high from Afghanistan side, with a six feet gap between them, which is filled with razor wire. It is tech-meshed with a state-of-the-art surveillance system, closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, drone cameras and other gadgets for effective day and night monitoring of the border.

Sharing the details of the impact of fencing and close computerised monitoring system, the official revealed that since its start, around 1,900 Afghans had been arrested and deported, while 600 Pakistanis were also stopped from entering Afghanistan.

However, as a goodwill gesture, he said that emergency patients were allowed to enter Pakistan for treatment without documents. “Similarly, as there is a water shortage on the other side of the border we allow them to take water to their check posts from our side,” he said.

“Moreover, special cards have been issued to around 200 Afghan students, who come to Pakistan in a school near the Torkham Border in the morning and then move back to their homes at afternoon on daily basis,” he added.

He said that cross-border infiltration, illegal trade and smuggling were becoming impossible now. “The figure of individuals crossing the Torkham Border on valid travelling documents has increased. Around 12,000 people cross the border legally, besides 1,200 trucks, carrying goods cross it on daily basis. This has turned Torkham one of the world’s busiest crossing points,” the official claimed.

The total length of the fenced border is 2,611 kilometre, including that of rugged regions in Balochistan. It is hoped that after its completion, the project will benefit the peace loving people of Pakistan and Afghanistan.