India-Pakistan: January 5, 2005

Archives

For the last two days, there has been firing of machine-guns and mortars back and forth on the Afghan border. Apparently some Afghan soldiers were unhappy with the poorly defined border (the exact location of the border has never been agreed on), and Pakistanis in general. So they fired a machine-gun at a Pakistani border post. They got some mortar fire in return, and mortar shells were fired into Pakistan, killing one soldier and wounding three others. Eventually, Afghan officers got the word out to knock it off. Such incidents are not unusual, although in this case it is believed that the cause of it all was the crash of a U.S. Predator UAV just inside the Pakistani border, which caused the initial confusion and machine-gun fire. .