Pakistan is unable to control either its border with Afghanistan or the vast tribal areas where Osama bin Laden is likely hiding, a new study released Thursday said. The study of ungoverned areas around the world by the Rand Corp. depicts Pakistan’s tribal areas as largely immune from security moves by President Pervez Musharraf, making it an ideal haven not only for al Qaeda and the Taliban but also for arms and drug traffickers.
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“Pakistan has been unable to assert effective control over its border with Afghanistan,” reported Rand, a private think tank that did the study for the Air Force.
The report said the border area “is mostly bereft of roads, greatly limiting the scope for security force deployment.” Even if security forces could gain better access, “immigration and customs procedures are almost nonexistent and reflect the stationing of officials who, for the most part, are corrupt,” Rand said.
“The Afghan-Pakistan border remains the least regulated region of Pakistan and the one where the legitimacy of the Musharraf regime is most questioned,” the report added. The analysis helps explain why a steady stream of Taliban fighters and their al Qaeda allies have flowed across the 1,500-mile border into Afghanistan to attack NATO and Afghan troops in a bid to topple President Hamid Karzai.
Musharraf ordered his troops into the tribal areas for the first time in history in 2004 to battle militants and hunt for bin Laden. But the incursion proved politically costly for Musharraf. He approved a peace treaty last year with tribal leaders in hopes they would stop providing a safe haven to terrorists.
The Bush administration in recent months has called the treaty a failure and urged Musharraf to try another military crackdown. The administration has all but ruled out its own military move into Pakistan.
The Rand report explains why Musharraf is failing. It said elders in what are called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas view his government as “in fundamental conflict with the interests of the tribe.”
The areas, the report said, “remain beyond the formal functional, geographic, and technical writ of the central government in Islamabad.”
It said an “Islamist coalition has played a particularly important role in blunting federal efforts aimed at education reform and at curtailing the militant and logistical activities of local Islamist armed groups.”
One solution, Rand said, is for the U.S. and Pakistan to cut off money al Qaeda reportedly receives from Afghan drug proceeds and from the tribal areas’ huge underground economy.
