60,000 troops to be added to patrol border with Afghanistan
islamabad — Pakistan’s military will add 60,000 troops to boost its patrols along its border with Afghanistan in an effort to curb the flow of insurgents passing between the two nations, military officials familiar with the matter said.
Forty per cent of the troops have already been recruited in the exercise, which is expected to take two years, the officials said, asking not to be identified so they could discuss sensitive troop movements. About 13 per cent of a fence planned along the 2,343km-long disputed border has also been completed, they said. The armed force’s media department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The move will consolidate Pakistan’s border operations, which have been beefed-up in recent years after widespread insecurity wracked the country following the US invasion of Afghanistan. Domestic terror-related violence is now at its lowest in more than a decade. The army has an estimated 560,000 active personnel, according to the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies. Forces have previously been more focused on the country’s eastern border with arch-rival neighbour India, with which it’s fought three wars against since British India’s partition in 1947.
Pakistan has come under increasing pressure to act against the Afghan Taleban and the affiliated Haqqani network since US President Donald Trump accused Islamabad of allowing them safe haven. In January, Trump suspended
military aid to the nuclear-armed nation and accused Pakistan of giving “lies and deceit” in return for what he claimed years of US funding. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan have denounced the other for harbouring insurgents, prompting relations to drastically sour in the past year. Afghan President Ashraf
Ghani has said Pakistan is waging an “undeclared war of aggression” against his nation and has threatened armed confrontation over the fence construction across the disputed Durand Line, which divided the largely ethnic Pashtun communities in the region during British colonial rule. —