Afghanistan and Pakistan, forever adversaries, are involved in a high stakes game. The Afghan government, weak and embattled, first tried to put Islamabad on the defensive by proposing holding of tribal jirgas to mobilise the Pashtun tribes on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border against the Taliban. Blessed by the US President George W Bush, it was a shrewd move by President Hamid Karzai to ensure that Pakistan became a party to the Afghan conflict and was made accountable for the resurgence of the Taliban. It was, therefore, understandable that Pakistani government functionaries were neither keen on holding the jirgas nor convinced of their utility in stabilising the region.

Pakistan then made its move and came up with the proposal to fence and mine selected parts of its Durand Line border with Afghanistan to prevent infiltration of militants into the war-ravaged country and regulate movement of the thousands of Afghans daily entering NWFP and Balochistan. The suggestion no doubt was provocative as laying mines is very unpopular nowadays, but Islamabad was still able to score points by reminding the world of its determination to take every possible step to assist the Afghan government and its allies, US and Nato, in tackling the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other militants.

Worldwide criticism of the Pakistani move to mine portions of the border could eventually force Islamabad to back down and give up plans for mining the borderland. It could then restrict itself to undertake some fencing at the official crossing-points between the two countries as it has already done before the present crisis erupted at Chaman, a town in Balochistan bordering Afghanistan's southwestern Kandahar province at Spin Boldak.

Both the proposals are still on the table. The Afghan government is pushing its suggestion for holding the jirgas and becoming impatient with Pakistan's slow progress in making this happen. Afghanistan had set up its commission for making preparations for the jirgas soon after President Karzai's return from the US in September last year after convincing President Bush and President General Pervez Musharraf at their tripartite summit to back his proposal. Former Afghan mujahideen leader Pir Sayed Ahmad Gillani is chairman of the commission. Pakistan has belatedly constituted a similar commission with interior minister Aftab Sherpao as its head and NWFP Governor Lt Gen (retd) Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai, Balochistan Governor Owais Ghani, and federal ministers Sardar Yar Mohammad Rind and Dr G.G. Jamal as members.

The commissions on either side of Durand Line would have to do lot of homework to finalise the plans for holding the jirgas and setting their agendas. The two sides look at the jirgas differently with Afghanistan wanting big jirgas having representation of all its regions, nationalities, elected bodies and civil society. Pakistan, on the other hand, would like to have smaller and manageable jirgas with tribal elders from the militants-infested areas taking part and making consensus decisions in the traditional way. Unlike the Afghan government that is attaching great expectations with such jirgas, Pakistani officials believe it would not achieve much.

It is clear that the Taliban and likeminded militants would be kept away from the jirgas but their supporters argue that their absence would make the whole exercise meaningless. As one of the important parties to the Afghan conflict along with the US and Nato forces, the Taliban role is vital in bringing peace and stability to the region. But they have little incentive to do that and, as expected, have already rejected both the proposal for jirgas and the mining and fencing of the border. They are also accusing the Americans of hatching conspiracies to turn the Afghan people against Pakistan.

Though Taliban spokesman Dr Mohammad Hanif and the movement's military commanders have repeatedly denied Kabul's allegations that most Taliban leaders were hiding in Pakistan and maintaining a command centre in Quetta, such charges are still being made with lot of conviction but without providing any hard evidence. The Taliban have also been dismissive of the effectiveness of fences and mines to stop cross-border movements. Their spokesman reminded that 80,000 Pakistani soldiers and a large force of US, Nato and Afghan National Army deployed in the border areas had failed to tackle the Taliban and their allies and any new measures too would meet the same fate.

It appears that the widespread criticism of its plans to mine and fence the border has forced Pakistan to review its decision. In fact, doubts began to emerge soon after the proposal was floated when some government officials argued that Islamabad had no other option but to lay mines and fence the border in view of the non-stop allegations by Kabul about cross-border infiltration of Taliban and other militants from Pakistan into Afghanistan. It was more an act of desperation because Islamabad felt it was being unfairly targetted instead of earning praise for sacrificing more than 700 soldiers fighting the militants in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and doing a lot more than that done by the US-led coalition to tackle al-Qaeda and Taliban.

The fact that Pakistan was having second thoughts about its controversial proposal when the Governor Aurakzai of NWFP said he was personally opposed to fencing and mining of the border but had to go along with it in the absence of any other realistic option to check regular movements across the long and porous Durand Line and reassure the Afghan government. Not long ago, the governor had termed the Taliban resistance as a Pashtun uprising and warned the British military authorities that they had a hopeless task putting down this resistance even if they sent thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan.

After having made its point, Pakistan would not mind backing down from its proposal to fence and mine the border in the hope that its sincerity about stabilising the region would not be doubted in future. Meanwhile, it would also be able to examine the benefits of its recently installed biometrics system aimed at screening travellers at the Pak-Afghan border at Chaman and share its results with the Afghan, US and other governments critical of Pakistan's inability to monitor movements across the Durand Line. Describing it as a step to stop terrorism and illegal movements across the border, Pakistan could then move ahead and build similar systems at other official crossing-points between the two countries such as Torkham.

However, the plans to mine the border would have to be dropped in view of the hue and cry that the proposal has evoked. Already, civil society groups and those mobilised by the Nobel Prize-winning organisation, International Campaign to Ban Landmines, have held press conferences, issued statements and set up networks to oppose the mining of the border. Except a few feeble pro-government voices, there has been universal condemnation of the proposal. The Pakistan Campaign to Ban Landmines and its sister organisation, CMDO, reminded that 1389 people had suffered due to landmine explosions in Bajaur and Kurram tribal agencies bordering Afghanistan and many more would lose their lives and limbs if the border areas were mined. It was thus increasingly becoming clear that mining of even selected parts of the border was going to be an extremely unpopular and largely unrealistic measure.

The fencing of the border too has met strong opposition. Everyone in Afghanistan is opposed to it and so are most people in the NWFP, including Fata, and Balochistan. Almost all political parties, from the nationalist ANP, PMAP and BNP to the secular PPP, and from the centrist PML-N to the religio-political JI and JUI-F, have criticised the move and termed it failure of foreign policy pursued by President Musharraf and his camp-followers in the PML and allied parties.

In the circumstances, the government would have to find a middle ground to tackle the problem. Alternative proposals haven't been made or are at best naive. The problem isn't going to go away soon due to the expected increase in Taliban attacks in the coming spring and summer. The more the Taliban resurgence the greater would be the criticism directed by the Afghan government and its international partners at Pakistan. We surely are going to hear a lot more about peace jirgas and fencing of the border in the months ahead.

I have been freezing my butt off, and probably so have you. Because the papers say that for the last three days temperatures in Lahore have been hovering around zero degrees 'c' which used to denote 'Centigrade' until we decided that all the temperature scales should be named after their inventors, and fortunately the inventor of this one was named Celsius. The point is that zero degrees is the freezing point of water so my butt cannot be blamed for being sissy.

The papers have also been filling out the story by going to the meteorological -- Ha! You thought I'd trip on that one! -- people who have fed them the story that this is the first time it has happened since 1935! I have merely been freezing mine off, they are talking through theirs! If that is the best they can do to cite records they should start all over again, because it is simply not true.

Contrary to popular belief I was not yet born in 1935 -- nor in1857 -- and in my childhood I distinctly remember a spell of at least a week when it went below zero, and stayed there! I remember because the first day we awoke to find that the water in the little hole we had dug in the backyard had frozen over. That gave us ideas. That night we filled shallow saucers with clean water and laid them out.

They were neatly frozen next morning, and we had a ball munching and crunching our custom made lollies all over -- until it set the parents' teeth on edge and we had our butts polished. Cold weather is tough on the butt in more ways than one. Then they retracted and gave us handfuls of almonds and pistachios and even a few Kishmish which we floated in the next nights array of water saucers. If you have never munched on a chunk of crystal ice, with almonds and pistachios frozen inside until your lips went purple, you have missed out on a lot of joy.

I cannot blame the meteorology boys though because they are probably not old enough to remember what Lahore winters used to be like in my youth, say in the fifties. Standard equipment for the season was a huge over-coat which was, for some reason, called a 'Chester'. And I remember months of being clad in it without a break. Now I spend winters in an open waist-coat and the sight of a great coat gives me heat rash. No this is not a tirade against global warming, this is mere local climate change, like the new fangled fog.

And I certainly don't expect them to know what went on a few centuries before. Have you never wondered how the Great Moghul got on while Akbar was here in Lahore for eighteen years, or his successors came to stay on their way to Kashmir? Let me tell you. From then up to British times in the twentieth century Lahore had its own 'Ice-pits'.

These were wide holes dug in the ground just outside the walled-city which they filled with water in the winter evenings, which, sometimes, not always, froze in the night. If it did, they would set off a cannon to signal the city, and people would come, chunk off their share of the ice and take it home; where it was kept in the ultra-cool place, a room built inside a well down at the water level, where it would stay till summer to cool their Sherbets with.

The small canon used to sit by the main gate of the Lahore Museum, but I presume has been moved inside since I last saw it a decade ago. And as far as I can discern from the scant records, the pits were in the low area around the Tomb of Anarkali, where the Civil Secretariat now stands. Traces of it are still there. If you stand outside the Secretariat and observe the people coming out of it after a brush with the bureaucracy, you can hear them muttering, "It's the Pits"! Maybe I've told you this before!

In one of his earlier speeches in the late 1950s, the then President Ayub Khan outlined the rationale of building a new capital of Pakistan by saying: "Capitals are not built, nor do they exist just for the sake of, shall we say, utility. Utility is very important, but at the same time it has to encompass much bigger vistas, and in a way, give light and direction to the efforts of the people of a country. It must, therefore, be in surroundings suited to this purpose."

The recent feeler shot by Federal Minister for Railways, Sheikh Rasheed seems contrary to this notion. Sheikh Rasheed is of the view that Rawalpindi is not being developed due to shortage of funds and the city developers are facing multiple problems. Rawalpindi's merger with Islamabad would help this area grow fast at par with the posh areas of the capital.

Rasheed who has been consistently winning the National Assembly seat from Rawalpindi city since 1985 further said that there will be no problem to include Rawalpindi in the Capital Territory and that would be done through proper legislation. "The Punjab government and residents of Rawalpindi would not have any objections to their prosperous future," he is reported to have said.

These ideas are being expressed at a time when the review of the Islamabad Master Plan has been done and the revised plan is awaiting the approval of the federal cabinet. The original master plan that was approved in 1961 envisaged the growth of the city uptil 2000. In between, at least two reviews should have been done, and a process that was carried out in the 1970s and 1980s but the proposed changes in the master plan could not get the approval of the governments of the day.

The Master Plan in city of Rawalpindi to allow their parallel and independent but coordinated growth within the same metropolitan area."

The allocations of functions in the Master Plan of 1961 were: a) Islamabad was to be the administrative, cultural and national centre of the country; b) National Park was to accommodate all national functions such as the sports centre, national university, the national research institutes, the botanical and zoological gardens, national health centre, exhibition grounds and such agriculture and farming functions which are necessary to serve the capital areas; c) the area of Rawalpindi would cater for all regional functions. It would also include the cantonments and General Headquarters of the Army. It was also to have the heavy industries, the whole sale marketing etc.

As the review of the original master plan started early last year, speculations of all kinds did the rounds. One, that Tehsil Fateh Jhang of District Attock would be included in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT). The speculation gained credence in view of the government plans to build the new capital airport in an area closer to Fateh Jhang. The Capital Development Authority, however, denied any such development by saying that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was the competent authority to forward such a proposal, as all airports of the country are under its control.

Similarly, there have been rumours that the ICT would include not only Rawalpindi city but also its two other tehsils -- Murree and Kahuta. There is also a talk about having a joint industrial zone.

The reason why Rawalpindi must be included has been put forward as this: Islamabad, that is planned as triangular in shape based on a grid system with its apex towards the Margala Hills, has encircled the city of Rawalpindi from both side. Therefore, it's only logical that it should be merged in Islamabad.

A review of the master plan in 1987 confirms the impression that Rawalpindi was decided to be included in ICT after shifting of the General Headquarters from Rawalpindi to Islamabad.

Originally the military installations and functions were to be located in the Rawalpindi and Chaklala Cantonments. But the Director-General Inter-Services Public Relations Maj-Gen Shaukat explained in a press statement in December 2005 that the Pakistan Army started its planning for shifting of the GHQ to Islamabad in early 1990 but did not start construction because the government could not provide the funds. Explaining the process of the shifting of GHQ to Islamabad, he said it will be done in phases and shifting will materialise over the next 5-10 years. He said the present GHQ Building was originally a Sub Area Command of the British Army and was never designed to contain as big an installation as the General Headquarters.

In December last year, Chairman CDA, Kamran Lashari said in front of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Planning and Development that the land for GHQ was not demarcated in the Islamabad Master Plan because GHQ was not included in the plan. "GHQ was supposed to expand towards Chaklala and Dhamyal with its services headquarters north of Margalla Hills. Its entire shifting to Islamabad is not according to the Master Plan," he is reported to have said.

This shifting of GHQ seems to have come as a loss of significance for the city therefore the leaders from the city are demanding a merger in the capital territory.

A CDA official said in December last before a National Assembly Committee that the latest revised master plan had proposed extending the official limits of Islamabad to the area adjacent to the motorway and for increasing the numbering series of sectors from 16 to 18 and that 12 new residential sectors would be developed in Islamabad, while the previous master plan (1961) had envisaged 56 sectors for the city. More residential sectors would mean more encirclement of Rawalpindi.

The situation would only be clear if the revised master plan is made public before it is approved by the federal cabinet. And that seems highly unlikely.

The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has registered over 1.5 million Afghan refugees across the country during a drive continuing since October 15 last year. Although there are hundreds of thousands who are still reluctant whether to go for getting the Proof of Registration (PoR) card or stay away from the process.

Calculating the pros and cons, a huge population of the refugees is still undecided. They have been given a last chance by extending the campaign till January 19. As reported in the media, around 57 per cent of the whole refugee population is not interested in the process of registration for they believe it is an initiative for their repatriation which is something they don't want.

During the visit of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to Kabul last week, both Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to expedite the repatriation of over 2.5 million refugees to their homeland. Though the relations between the two countries have been tense for the past many weeks or even months, Karzai had to publicly thank Pakistan for hosting over three million Afghans for around three decades.

The registration exercise costing $6 million started on October 15 and was supposed to end by December 31. NADRA is conducting the exercise, using fingerprint biometrics and photographs to record information through stationary and mobile registration centres across the country with the support of the Commisionerate for Afghan Refugees (CAR) and United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The ongoing registration campaign aims at providing Afghan refugees a provisional legal status through a Proof of Registration card, which recognises the bearer as an Afghan citizen living temporarily in Pakistan. Children under five are listed on their mother's card. While a photograph was mandatory for registering Afghan citizens, the condition has been relaxed for females where it was found against their culture. According to some sources around 1/3rd of the registered Afghan women have been issued Proof of Registration cards without photographs.

The practice is a follow-up of the Afghan census conducted in February/March 2005. According to that census over 2.6 million Afghan refugees were lodged in NWFP and other parts of the country despite the fact that war with Russia ended long time ago. More than 2.8 million Afghan refugees have returned to their homeland since 2002 under a UNHCR-assisted voluntary repatriation programme that ended on October 14 after five years.

The exercise of registering Afghans in Pakistan had to be suspended for four days due to Eidul Azha holidays and has resumed since January 4. Apart from the four-day break, the chilling weather and continuous rains during the past many days affected the enrollment of refugees in different registration centers. "While improvements in technical searches of census database, crowd control and the flow management continue to speed up the process, the rains have had some effect on the turnout," Vivian Tan, a UNHCR spokeswoman, admitted. She added that the UNHCR has made arrangements in NWFP and Balochistan, where temperatures are freezing after heavy rain, to ensure the continuity of the exercise. The UN body has arranged gas heaters and wood-burning stoves to keep the centres warm.

Countrywide, over 631,000 Afghans have registered in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), some 174,000 in Balochistan, about 122,000 in Punjab, around 67,000 in Sindh and more than 6,000 in Pakistani-administered Kashmir till the end of December. Some 48 per cent of those registered were females, whereas another 51 per cent are under the age of 14.

"I haven't registered myself or family. All my brothers have enrolled their wives and children at the nearest registration centres and they also asked me to do it but I don't know if it would benefit my family or would bring some harm to us," a visibly confused Habibullah Khan replied when asked about whether he has registered his family.

The young Afghan was living in a sub urban locality on Kohat Road, along with his wife and five children, and not in any refugee camp. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans are scattered in different posh, moderate and lower class localities in Peshawar and surrounding areas.

After an initial slow start in mid-October, the registration campaign accelerated in the end of December, with over 13,00,000 Afghans having registered with Pakistani authorities. As many as 28,000 Afghans, according to UNHCR, and over 25000, according to Pakistani authorities, were being registered daily in some half a hundred registration centres across the country during the last month of the previous year.

The acceleration of the exercise forced the authorities to rethink the deadline set for the drive and give some more time to refugees who were yet undecided. The matter was discussed by the authorities of UNHCR, NADRA and SAFRON and the deadline was extended for another three weeks. "After an initial slow start due to logistical and technical problems on our end, the pace of Afghan registration accelerated to the point that today, we were registering over 25,000 Afghans per day across the country. In response to this increased output, we decided to further continue this registration, to provide Afghans a final opportunity to get registered," informed Sajid Hussain Chattha, Secretary of the Ministry of State and Frontier Regions (SAFRON).

There were reports that action would be taken against all those Afghans living in Pakistan who did not register their families. It was said that all those who will not have the PoR cards would be considered as illegal immigrants and would be deported to their homeland. However, a huge population of refugees lodged in different parts of the provincial capital believes getting the PoR card would be harmful for them because they would be enlisted in the government's books and may be deported under a planned programme. They deem the registration an initiative to arrange for their return, which is still faced with armed clashes between NATO forces and local militants.

The local police authorities blame Afghan refugees for many of the incidents of terrorism as well as crimes like kidnapping, robbery, dacoity and murders. "I would say out of all the criminals we arrested during the past few months campaign, 70 per cent were Afghan nationals. One reason is that there is no record of these refugees. They can easily escape towards their country after committing a crime and reemerge on the screen after sometime," an ex-city police chief Habibur Rahman told newsmen during a press conference.

Pakistan is the country that is hosting the largest number of refugees for the past many decades. It is also probably the only country where refugees can own land, vehicles, and property, run business and live within the locals and not in any of the specific refugee camps. Had the process of registering Afghan refugees started soon after their arrival into the country, there would be no complaints of the kind that we are faced with now.

Last week I had a chance meeting with my old friend, Chaudhry Lal Khan, alias Lalloo, of my village. He is a Matriculate and drives the Sunehri Paree (Golden Fairy). That's a pile of profusely decorated scrap iron that plies between Kharian City and my ancestral village eight miles away.

Normally I am driven to the village in our own car but this time I was confronted with a logistic problem that necessitated travelling by public transport. Lalloo's bus was standing at the terminus, waiting for its turn to move when ordered. As soon as he discovered that the octogenarian looking about was his old friend, he ordered a young man to surrender his seat for me.

The passenger rightly protested and although I was the beneficiary of Lalloo's high-handedness, I agreed with the evicted man's argument that he was already occupying the seat before I boarded the bus. Lalloo's counter-argument was that it was a seat reserved for ladies! Since there was no lady claimant, he reserved the right to allot it to anyone he wished, in this case a senior citizen. Who can resist the temptation of a seat in a country where people do not swear by God but by a seat, be it in the national or the provincial assembly, the Senate or even the toilet?

Lalloo's turn to leave the terminus would come only after the four buses ahead of him had left, so we could enjoy our gupshup.

As every rural exchange of reminiscences must be accompanied by tea, Lalloo shouted for tea. The lad from the nearby hut soon arrived with a battered tin tray loaded with a pot of piping hot tea, cups and eatables. I partook of the tea but couldn't summon up courage to even taste what I was told were creamrolls.

During our chat, Lalloo related to me an interesting experience of his when he was ordered by the owner to take a marriage party to a village.

"On such occasions, it is customary for the driver and his assistant to be treated as guests and fed at the bride's house. This time we were both ignored, so we registered our protest in our own way. While going to the bride's village, I had noticed a large branch of a mango tree ten feet or so over the katcha path of the bus. On our return journey, we had among the standard dowry paraphernalia, a huge tin trunk on the roof rack. I braced myself and steered right below the mango branch. In the mid-air collision between the tin trunk and the sturdy mango branch, the trunk came out second best. The bridal party couldn't complain as we were insured by the cops I think that fellow will never ignore bus drivers again."

"Lalloo, when we last met ten years ago, you were behind a plough and a pair of oxen. When did you get your driving license?"

"What license?" demanded Lalloo. "What do you think the bus owner pays the cops for?"

When Lalloo's turn was announced, he moved off amidst a hideous grinding of unoiled gears and a dense cloud of black smoke. I am not much of an auto-mechanic but it didn't take me long to realize that Lalloo's sardine can on wheels was nothing less than an instrument of deliberate murder of eighty innocent human sardines stuffed inside.

"Lalloo. Don't the cops challan you for driving this..."

"This what? Come on, out with it."

"I mean this bus."

"No, they can't! We are..."

Lalloo struggled and wrestled with the controls until he had succeeded in coaxing his bus into top gear. He drove very carefully through the cantonment and it was only after he had passed the military checkpost that he completed his sentence.

"...insured with them."

"I know what is life insurance, theft insurance, accident insurance, fire insurance and lots of other kinds of insurance but haven't heard of police insurance."

He pressed the accelerator pedal right down to the floor and tore through the countryside as if he were taking part in a Pakistani Grand Prix race. I must admit that for an ex-ploughman accustomed only to handling slow lumbering oxen, he did proud to any competitor in the Paris Dakar Rally depicted on his spare tire cover.

The tin plates covering the bus body threatened to fall apart, spilling their human contents with disastrous results. But Pakistani grit, determination, and sheer faith in God, triumphed and the chassis survived the punishment. Lalloo took the opportunity of explaining how the owner paid rupees (figures withheld on Lalloo's-specific request) per month as 'cops insurance'. It covered all risks of which I give one example.

As the bus approached the first stop on the way to its destination, Lalloo put his gear lever into the neutral position and allowed his bus to roll gently to a standstill. He performed this feat at six more stops until my village arrived and I descended. Such precision! No brakes and yet I never felt the slightest jolt or jerk as the bus stopped right at the terminus.

"All the brakes have been out of order for the last three months but the owner can't afford to have them repaired yet," he explained Lalloo. "Anyway, there is nothing to worry about. We are..."