Above the trucks and travelers lining up at the main eastern gateway between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a glinting new landmark scales the dun-colored mountains: Parallel mesh fences, a couple of feet apart and topped with coils of razor wire, climb from the border crossing up over the dizzying crags.
The section of fence overlooking Torkham is just a glimpse of a 1,600-mile barrier begun four years ago by Pakistan’s military and set to be completed this year.
Nearly 9,000 miles from US President Trump’s border wall with Mexico, Pakistan has quietly been building its own version to try to control what has long been one of the world’s most porous and lawless frontiers.
The Pakistani Army credits the fence with helping to transform security in the country, sharply cutting terrorist attacks after a sustained army offensive pushed many militants — and tens of thousands of civilian refugees — into Afghanistan.
Yet the barrier is also a projection of hard power in its own right, to the detriment of diplomacy with Afghanistan and the life of Pashtun tribes that had functionally ignored the border for generations.
Afghanistan disputes the border that the fence follows, drawn by British colonial officials in 1893 and known as the Durand Line. And as the wire unfurls over hundreds of miles, it is cutting off routes through the mountains used by smugglers, militants, traders and families alike, according to interviews with government officials, tribal leaders and diplomats.
Pakistan had long considered a border barrier. But construction began in earnest in 2016, after costly army offensives to push many militants out of the country’s tribal areas and into Afghanistan.
Some 800 miles of the USD450 million fence are now complete and more than 1,000 border forts are being built, according to a statement from the Pakistani military’s information wing. The route takes it through forbidding mountains where rockfalls, avalanches and landslides cause constant damage.
The vast majority of the work has been out of view of the public or other governments. One senior Pakistani security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the public, said, “It’s a herculean task because of the terrain up there.”
Last year only 82 attacks in Pakistan were attributed to that network, down from 352 in 2014, when the military offensive began, according to the Islamabad-based Pak Institute for Peace Studies, which monitors extremist violence.
The difficulties of maintaining the fence and keeping watch to see that it is not being breached have led some diplomats to question how practical it will be without high-tech assistance like cameras or other surveillance.
Pakistan’s military said in a statement that the fence was strengthened with “surveillance and intrusion detection systems,” as well as border forts, but gave no further details.
“Security is much better,” one Pakistani security officer said. “But you can’t do everything with a fence. People will still come through. They look like the local population, and they live among them.”
But in recent months, there have been increasing reports that some Pakistani Taliban militants have managed to come back to some of the tribal areas in the northwest. Last Monday at least three people, including a Pakistani colonel, were killed in a shootout between soldiers and militants in Tank district, near South Waziristan.
Fence construction groups have also been attacked by militants, who have released videos of themselves tearing down sections and seizing building supplies.
Corruption and bribery are also likely to help people find ways through in a region where smuggling has been a way of life for many.
The fence may slow down illegal crossings, but it will not stop them entirely, said Elizabeth Threlkeld, an American diplomat in the border city of Peshawar until 2016 and now with the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on foreign policy.
Each day, children in orange tunics line up at the Torkham crossing to get to the Pakistani side from Afghanistan to school, showing how close the links remain. But the fence has been accompanied by tightening immigration rules. Travelers now need passports and visas to cross, and lines at embassies in Kabul and Islamabad have sharply lengthened. Much to their anger, traders must pay customs fees.
“The question will be in the longer term, is it going to have a real social and cultural impact on this area,” said Muhammad Amir Rana, the director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies.
