AfPak: Canada helping efforts to improve border management

The length of the title of this post suggests the difficulty of the, er, challenges involved:

Afghan-Pakistani border plan wins leaders’ nod

The Canadian government used an international conference to announce that it has brokered a deal to bolster the anarchic Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Tuesday the two countries had agreed to timelines and objectives for bringing order to their lawless frontier.

The minister made the announcement from an 80-country meeting on Afghanistan, where all eyes were on the new Obama administration and its beefed-up commitment in the region.

Cannon said he is encouraged by the new American approach, including the idea of viewing Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single challenge.

The border has been a source of tension between the two countries for generations — most recently with back-and-forth movements by insurgents.

Canada has been hosting meetings between the countries in Dubai since 2007. Cannon said the most recent meeting last weekend produced the agreement.

He said the plan identifies customs, movement of people, counter-narcotics and law-enforcement as key priorities and that the countries will create working groups to tackle problems in those areas.

Officials say the sides have agreed to meet several times this year to set objectives in those areas, along with target dates for achieving them. "Ultimately what we want is a functional border between two countries," Cannon said in a teleconference from The Hague, site of the Afghanistan conference.

David Mulroney, the head of Canada’s Afghanistan task force, said the Afghan government told the conference it needs to collect more revenue from citizens instead of foreign donors.

"There’s a tremendous amount of lost revenue when it comes to customs," he said.

"If you have a functioning border and you have customs officials who are able to do their jobs, you are able to cover some of the costs of running your own government."

From an earlier post:

...the main cross-border road to Kandahar comes from Quetta; Taliban types can cross readily (no ID cards are carried by the locals) as long they're not carrying weapons...