land mines in Pakistan

Pakistan has recently proposed fencing and placing landmines on its 1,500 mile shared border with Afghanistan. Purpose? To deter Taliban terrorists from spilling over the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan...

Is this an effective strategy to deal with the problem, or the path of least resistance which will use military resources and manpower to put razor blades in the pants of its own people (the analogy being, if you don't move, you won't get hurt...)?

The proposed strategy seems ineffective because it creates a humanitarian threat that does little to solve the fundamental problem while creating more serious ones in its wake...

-Landmines along the border are ineffective because they do not effectively target the sources of terrorism. If you want to use landmines, why not place land mines around the terrorist sanctuaries and training grounds themselves? That seems more effective...(And you can't tell me that we don't have the technology to find those areas...after all, if we've been able to find portable chemical/bio labs in Iraq, surely we can find those terrorist training grounds; on the contrary, it would be an insult to the power and capability of our military intelligence to say that we don't know where such camps lie...)

-Rather than deter terrorists, landmines along the border will divide. Divide who? Those tribes, communities and peoples who share a common culture and heritage in the area. Thus, these landmines are not only a physical threat, but also a cultural one to the peoples who live in the border regions, threatening to isolate them from one another and diminish their sense of community. (Community, I would argue, is one the most valuable resources a group of people can have, especially in the modern age, where there exist many forces that are actively hostile to it...) Is it not the "terrorists" who should be isolated instead? And do we not have the capability to do so?

-Landmines are a superficial solution to a much more deep-seated problem. Addressing it is no easy task, but the role of community seems critical here. What steps could be taken? According to Said T. Jawad, who wrote an opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal entitled "The Taliban in Pakistan", there are several things which need to be addressed at the community level, which can counter the extremism that is growing there:

• strengthen the traditional leadership in tribal areas
• lift the ban on political parties
• provide more resources to local tribal elders and civic institutions

Wait a minute, though. What is this beginning to sound like? Something akin to democracy perhaps? Not the diluted pseudo-democracy we live in today, but democracy in a truer form, one that is closer to what we have been led to believe that our founding fathers would have upheld. Instead, what are we left with? The military putting razor blades in the pants of its own people...