KHYBER PASS, Pakistan — Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai never had a shared border strategy. But at Michni Post, the highest point of the Khyber Pass, which overlooks the thousands of trucks and buses buzzing through Afghanistan into Pakistan under the shadows of the Hindu Kush, the answer is obvious: Controlling the Afghan-Pakistan border requires a counterinsurgency policy that looks at Afghanistan and Pakistan together.
Pakistan's new government has a great opportunity to make this change. To cut off the Taliban and al-Qaida's recruitment and supplies, both countries should fight the militants in tandem. That means:
Improving security training for border forces, starting with Pakistan's Frontier Corps, the 50,000-man combat force along the 2,500-kilometer Afghan border. These "sons of the soil" are in bad shape. They earn no more than $2 a day to patrol the area, which ranges from 8,000-meter-high mountains to barren deserts.