by Danny Kemp
Sun Feb 18

LWARA FORT, Pakistan (AFP) - When the snow melts, soldiers from this Alamo-style outpost will erect the first part of Pakistan's new border fence to halt the flow of Taliban militants into Afghanistan.

Whether the controversial move can stem a recent wave of criticism by Islamabad's allies is another matter, as Pakistani forces gear up for a decisive joint offensive with
NATO and US forces this spring.

The brick Lwara Fort, painted a gaudy red, sits in the middle of an icy, mountain-fringed plain in the North Waziristan tribal zone -- and directly in the path of one of busiest insurgent routes in and out of Afghanistan.

"There's the notorious Chundi gap where most of the firefights take place between the militants, the Afghan army, the coalition and ourselves," says the fort's commander Brigadier Rizwan Akhtar, pointing at a break in the hills.

The fort is utterly isolated, apart from the hamlet of Lwara Mundi a few hundred metres (yards) away. About four kilometres (2.5 miles) further on is Camp Tillman, a US forward operating base in Afghanistan's Paktika province.

In one incident last September, some 10 militants returned across the border from Afghanistan and were surrounded in Lwara Mundi overnight before surrendering after negotiations with tribal elders, Akhtar says.

Three soldiers here have died in rebel attacks in the past six months.

Construction of the 14.5-kilometre stretch of fence -- part of 35 kilometres of fencing announced this month by President Pervez Musharraf -- "will start as soon as it thaws, let's say in 15 days," Akhtar says.

The barrier will be eight to 12 feet (2.4 to 3.6 metres) high, he says, gesturing down from the battlements as some of the 100 soldiers based here brandish assault rifles, looking both wary and bored.

On a snowbound mountain ridge at Mangrotai, further south by helicopter in the notoriously insurgent-infested Shakai Valley, some of the equipment is more low-tech.

Major Faisal says he knows when anyone suspicious tries to approach the border post that he commands -- the pet dogs start barking.

"We feed them and we like them, because they are our early warning system," he says.

Two kilometres away, NATO and Afghan forces on January 11 killed up to 150 militants who had allegedly crossed into Afghanistan on January. Pakistani forces mortar bombed the remaining rebels as they returned.

It is border positions like these that Musharraf may have been referring to when he told said earlier this month that "in some posts, a blind eye was being turned" to the passage of militants.

The admission increased the rancour between Islamabad, Kabul and NATO over claims that Pakistan's failure to curb Taliban infiltration has led to the worst violence in Afghanistan since 2001, with 4,000 people dead last year.

US forces say a peace agreement signed between militants and the Pakistani authorities in North Waziristan in September 2006 has led to a doubling of insurgent attacks in adjacent parts of Afghanistan.

Pro-government maliks or tribal leaders who attended a meeting on Saturday at the army base in Miranshah, the main town in semi-autonomous North Waziristan, said their followers would stick to the deal.

"We will defend this peace agreement with full force. We are all together," said senior malik Gul Abad Khan Wazir, wearing dark sunglasses and, like his fellow tribal chiefs, a traditional shalwar kameez outfit and turban.

North Waziristan army commander Major General Azhar Ali Shah says that the military has recorded only "six or seven" Taliban incursions since the deal -- and that NATO figures passed to Musharraf show a decrease in attacks.

"It is not physically possible to 100 percent seal the border by deploying troops. But we will make sure it is very difficult for them," Shah told a news briefing.

The general reels off figures to show Pakistan's commitment: 80,000 troops along the Afghan border, 20,000 of whom are in North Waziristan; 95 border posts and 38 rear posts compared with far fewer for the coalition.

More security measures planned for the spring include a three-kilometre buffer zone next to the frontier in which all vehicles will be checked and a curfew enforced, plus seven more border posts, he said.

But the more Pakistan insists it is winning the war against the Taliban and that the root of the problem is in Afghanistan, the more it looks as if the battleground is shifting back home.

Officials suspect a ѕυιcιdє bomb which killed 15 people at a courtroom in the southwestern city of Quetta on Saturday is linked to a wave of recent attacks blamed on pro-Taliban militants angry at recent military operations.

Arrested suspects in several of the blasts have links to a Taliban leader from Waziristan who signed an earlier peace deal, Baitullah Mahsud, although he has denied any involvement.

General Shah says the military's policy is the same for anyone who launches cross-border attacks or who is involved in bombings in Pakistan: "They will be killed."