Pak laments the shifting sands of a frontier battle

“They know which side they’re on, they just can’t prove it!” countered the officer, in best Peter Sellers’ stiff upper lip accent.

Loony though the sketch is, it bears odd parallels to exchanges between Pakistani, US and Afghan forces hunting insurgents along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan’s restive Waziristan.

About 80,000 Pakistani troops are deployed along the frontier and Pakistani border posts easily outnumber those established by the 20,000-strong U.S.-led coalition force and Afghan army.

Nearly 50 US troops have been killed on the Afghan side this year, while the Pakistan Army has lost almost 270 men since deploying to the region in late 2001.

The dangers posed by friendly fire and unauthorised incursions only make it worse.

At the headquarters of the Pakistan Army’s 11th Corps in Peshawar, Lieutenant-General Safdar Hussain said he finally blew his top this summer when artillery fire from US coalition forces exploded in the vicinity of his own troops. “I told them straight: ‘Next time I’ll shoot at you’,” Hussain said.

It’s not just ground violations and friendly fire that peeves Pakistan. US aircraft loop over the border with such frequency that Hussain doubts it is inadvertent, although the number of incidents has tailed off since Pakistan protested at an August meeting of the Tripartite Commission on border security.

Hussain said part of the problem is that Afghan troops use inaccurate Russian maps even though, if they do not trust Pakistani maps, they could refer to global positioning systems.

The disorienting qualities of Waziristan’s desert and mountains are the stuff Goon material was made of.

Lieutenant Seagoon: “Sorry I’m late, gentlemen, but your fort is 20 miles further north than it says on the map.

Colonel Chinstrap: “Twenty miles north? Then it’s happened again. This fort was built on shifting sands.” —Reuters