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07/21/2004:
"Pakistan Army Ousts Afghan Refugees in Militants' Area"
by Carlotta Gall New York TimesHAZNI, Afghanistan, July 19 - The Pakistani Army, backed by United States intelligence and surveillance, has stepped up its operations against supporters of Al Qaeda in the area near the Afghan border in recent weeks, displacing thousands of Afghan refugees.
Some 200,000 Afghan refugees have been living in the remote border areas of Pakistan, in poor and insecure conditions. In the past few weeks, as the Pakistani operations in the tribal area of South Waziristan have risen in strength and, according to some reports, prompted a matching increase in militant resistance, 25,000 people have poured back into Afghanistan, refugee officials said.
In the past five months, the Pakistani Army, at the behest of the United States, has pushed into the normally autonomous tribal areas, in an attempt to capture or kill an estimated 500 foreign fighters - many of them hardened Uzbek and Central Asian militants - and supporting tribesmen, and to search for Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who are often rumored to be sheltering in the area.
The United States military, which has 17,000 troops across the border in Afghanistan, has provided satellite intelligence and aerial surveillance to assist Pakistani operations, the Pakistanis have said. Last month a Pakistani tribal leader was killed in what officials in Pakistan said was a strike by a Hellfire missile launched from an American drone. Both Pakistan and the United States say American troops have not moved into Pakistani territory.
As the fighting has increased, the Pakistani military has hardened its position against the Afghan refugees living in the area, officials in Afghanistan said.
Refugees have been given as little as two hours' notice to leave before their houses were bulldozed, according to officials with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Some have returned to Afghanistan with no belongings, homeless once again.full article
Taking a page out of Israel's book.
