Free Licensed to Kill by Robert Young Pelton

above Khost, continues to be the weak spot for American operations. Khost, with its mountain fortresses of Zhawar Khili, has been the traditional center for resistance; Miram Shah, directly across the border in Pakistan, has always been the staging and retreat point for attacks. In the 1980s, Miram Shah was the gateway for 20 percent of the muj’s arms needs. Today it offers the fastest route into Kabul and the easiest place from which to launch an attack against Americans and to slip safely back over the border. A number of border posts have been attacked and overrun south of Khost—not once, but multiple times. The Pakistani towns of Wana and Angoor Ada are the main southern staging points for these attacks against the American base at Shkin, farther to the south in Paktika Province.
    As a Westerner, to travel to the Pakistani border from inside Afghanistan is easy. To travel to the Afghan border from inside Pakistan seems nearly impossible. Tall, skinny Pakistani soldiers wearing brown sweaters and cheap shoes enforce the famous NO FOREIGNERS ALLOWED signs in the tribal areas. In the eyes of the world community, Pakistani borders geographically contain the tribal areas. However, cartographers deliberately mislead. The tribal areas do not wholly accede to the idea of Pakistan but consider themselves the center of an independent nation called Pashtunistan, an entity falsely divided down the middle by the colonial-era Durand Line.
    The Durand Line runs along mountainous ridge tops, a wandering artificial border originally designed to separate India from Afghanistan. A British colonial officer named Sir Mortimer Durand created the 1,519-mile-long border between India and Afghanistan as part of a November 12, 1893, agreement with Amir Abdur Rahman Khan. At the time, area Pashtuns violently opposed its imposition, and this rarely marked or defended border has been ignored as much as possible ever since.
    The central government in Pakistan always had trouble developing support in the tribal area, and Pakistani leaders have long recognized that they face a potentially explosive scenario there. Pashtuns make up only 12 percent of the population but control 40 percent of the territory of Pakistan. If these tribally linked Pakistani Pashtuns were to align themselves with Afghan Pashtuns (approaching half of Afghanistan’s population) to form a separate entity, Pakistan would become a tiny, mostly Punjabi-populated country—a ripe target for Indian aggression. So Pakistan takes the affairs of Afghanistan, and their influence in them, very seriously. The jihad against the Russians provided an ideal opportunity to promote universal religious ideals while repressing more traditional Pashtun tribalism. Today, the Pakistanis proceed cautiously by using troops recruited from the local tribes and only interfering in local affairs with the direct permission of tribal leaders.
    Despite insistent pleas by the governors of both Gardez and Khost to avoid the border area, I set out from Khost for a day trip with the relative of an elder warlord of the border region acting as guide. I want to see for myself how the hunt for bin Laden is going and to seek out the elusive American contractors I have heard to be participating in the area’s operations. The “dangerous” trip to the border turns out to be a bit of a disappointment when I am greeted not with suspicion, but with hospitality. As we approach the last Afghan checkpoint, the border guards do not check for passports, they do not inspect our car, but they do insist we stop for tea. Why do they not suspect us? Their answer surprises me: “If someone wanted to sneak in, they would use any of the numerous other unmanned entry points.” I quickly discover that the concept of the border is as illusory as the American concept of controlling it.
    At the actual border, no markers or signs differentiate Afghanistan from Pakistan; there literally is no recognizable