Photos dpa and AFP. Text by RFE/RL's Central Newsroom.
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Afghan-Pakistani Border
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Pakistani paramilitary troops guard a border checkpost in North Waziristan, in western Pakistan's volatile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) - A long-standing border dispute between Islamabad and Kabul has bolstered the view from Pakistan that it must seek to contain Afghanistan and keep in check Afghan nationalists who might otherwise assert claims to Pakistani territory.
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Afghan nationals brought to Pakistan's Chaman border-crossing for handover to Afghan authorities after their detention for traveling on false documents - Critics claim that Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda have exploited the lack of central authority and local sympathies in Pakistan's border regions to provide a haven for their terrorist activities. Their suspected presence has kindled animosity among three declared allies in the U.S.-led counterterrorism effort: Kabul, Islamabad, and Washington.
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Afghan refugees return from Pakistan in April 2007 under a UN-backed voluntary-repatriation plan - The UN refugee agency has described Pakistan as "home to the world's largest refugee situation, the largest assisted repatriation in modern history, and the largest registration of refugees ever conducted."
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A doctor attends to a sick child who is among the displaced persons in the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak - In 2001, the UN said that more than 3 million Afghan refugees were either in camps (1.2 million) or cities and towns (2 million) throughout Pakistan.
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A Pakistani tribesman works among opium poppies in the FATA's Muhmand Agency, near the Afghan border - Afghanistan's fundamentalist Taliban regime was supported politically and militarily by Islamabad, while it enjoyed ideological and ethnic support in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Those areas enjoy a high degree of autonomy from central authorities.
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Three Taliban prisoners -- two Pakistanis and an Afghan -- who confessed to having crossed the border from Pakistan on a "jihadi" mission before a prolonged firefight in Paktika Province - In fact, much of the Taliban leadership grew up in refugee camps in the FATA; many also received their religious, ideological, and military training in seminaries and affiliated facilities operating in those same areas.
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U.S. soldiers burn a suspected Taliban shelter on the Afghan-Pakistani border in March 2007 - There are fears that operations near the tense border could bring NATO and Pakistan into direct conflict, either through third-party provocation or accidental fire. Skirmishes in the area in May 2007 reportedly killed at least a dozen people; a U.S. soldier who was escorting a delegation to negotiate an end to that violence died after he was shot by a man dressed in a Pakistani Frontier Corps uniform.
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai gestures toward visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in January 2007 - Afghan officials first suggested that insurgents or terrorists were crossing over from Pakistan in 2003, triggering an attack on Pakistan's embassy by an angry mob. Relations have run hot and cold ever since.
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A Pakistani paramilitary troop frisks a Pashtun tribesman as he crosses the border - But in fact, mutual relations have been strained from the start, when Afghanistan voted against nascent Pakistan's United Nations membership over Kabul's refusal to recognize the so-called Durand Line, which demarcated British colonial India. No Afghan government has ever recognized the legitimacy of that 19th-century border.
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Pakistani troops fence part of the Afghan border near Chaman in January 2007 - Pakistan recently moved ahead with plans to fence portions of its border with Afghanistan despite fierce opposition from Kabul, where officials want to avoid any perception that they endorse the Durand Line. Islamabad defends the move by citing frequent Afghan accusations of Pakistani laxity, or even complicity, that allows cross-border attacks on the central government in Kabul.
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A masked tribesman patrols near Wana, in South Waziristan, where torrid fighting that pitted tribesmen against Uzbek and other foreign militants in March 2007 left more than 100 dead - Almost from the outset of the post-Taliban insurgency that began in 2002-03, Kabul has accused Islamabad of supporting the insurgents, or at least of failing to prevent their activities inside Pakistan.
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Tribal elders from Khyber, one of the seven semi-autonomous agencies in the FATA, meet in Peshawar in May 2006 to discuss ways to quell violence in North Waziristan - Much of the Afghan criticism was focused on the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) -- which includes the Tribal Areas -- and Baluchistan Province.
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A Pakistani Army soldier looks out over the rugged Afghan-Pakistani border from the Pakistani tribal belt - Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said in May 2007 that Islamabad is likely to remain a U.S. ally based on the need for cooperation over neighboring Afghanistan. He added that he thinks Washington understands Pakistan's "fundamental" role in Afghanistan's future.
