Militants Try to Enter Afghanistan
By ANWAR FARUQI
Associated Press Writer
CHAMAN, Pakistan - One group headed east, running from war. The other group was going west to find it.
On Friday, at a dusty border post between Pakistan and Afghanistan, they converged and passed each other _ two sets of people, each driven in starkly different ways by the U.S. military strikes against Afghanistan.
As hundreds of refugees streamed across the border into Pakistan Friday, small brigades of bearded Islamic militants headed in the other direction to fight alongside the Taliban in a holy war against America.
Going one way: "There was so much chaos," said Ahmed Shah Shafiq, 23, who fled the Afghan city of Kandahar to Pakistan with his family Friday.
Going the other: "We have already sent more than 3,000 volunteers," boasted a proud Mohammed Nasim of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a powerful militant group that has broad support in Chaman.
Chaman, just inside Pakistan and about 40 miles east of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, is one of the major border posts on the 1,700-mile Pakistan-Afghan border.
Here, the border is a loose line, and a parade of people, vehicles and donkey carts _ everyone from smugglers to merchants to locals with relatives on both sides _ crosses back and forth with little resistance.
Some appeared not to be mere refugees. Several expensive cars with Kandahar plates, carrying men wearing the trademark black turbans and bushy beards of the Taliban, crossed here Friday.
Pakistan insists its border with Afghanistan is closed to refugees, and fresh barbed wire went up here Friday to underscore the point. But there was little impeding the hundreds of refugees and would-be holy warriors who crossed.
Pick-up trucks stopping at the border disgorged scores of volunteers from militant Islamic groups in Pakistan. Dozens young men wearing black or green turbans and carrying small bags of possessions waited to get across.
Some piled into trucks that Pakistani border guards permitted to pass; others bribed guards to get across. Still others tried to creep in on foot, or on motorcycles driven by natives who can slip through hidden, unguarded passes.
Most spoke in languages and dialects from other parts of Pakistan and wouldn't say why they were going to Afghanistan. But a few acknowledged they were going to join the Taliban in a jihad, or holy war, against America.
"Many, many Muslims have been arriving from around the world, even the United States, for the jihad," Nasim said.
Mohammad Nasir, a dark, bearded man in his 20s trying to sneak across the frontier with two other companions on bicycles, revealed his goals: Fight or die.
"I can wish for nothing better than to defend Islam, or to get my lifelong wish of dying for Allah," Nasir said before disappearing into the barren landscape that surrounds the border.
Less than a mile away from the official crossing, small teams from Pakistan's border militia were digging trenches a short distance from the line.
But they weren't trying to stop refugees: A senior intelligence official at the border said they had received reports of possible attacks on Pakistan by the Taliban. The trenches, the official said, were for "protection."
As the stream of refugees passed Friday looking for safety, Mohammed Islam, a pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam member, talked of the 22 volunteers he had joined on a ride up from Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city in the country's far south.
"We won't return until we are either martyred or victorious," Islam said. "This is something we have all agreed to. We invite all Muslims around the world to join us and to fight the infidels."
Then, like the others, he turned his attention back to the border he planned to cross _ the imaginary line in the earth that, these days in Chaman, is a strange waystation for an even stranger war.
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