The Economist - “IT'S going to be a violent spring,” is the blunt assessment of General Karl Eikenberry, the senior American commander in Afghanistan. Insurgents allied to the Taliban are believed to be planning a big offensive. NATO had hoped its soldiers in Afghanistan could forestall this during the winter, through a mixture of military pressure on the Taliban and huge amounts of civilian aid. That strategy is in tatters.

Afghan and American officials lay much of the blame on Pakistan, for providing havens for the Taliban. General Eikenberry highlighted the stretch of border opposite North Waziristan where the Islamabad government struck a peace agreement with tribal leaders and militants last September. This week, Afghanistan produced a video of a captured Taliban spokesman, alleging that the group's leader, Mullah Omar, was under Pakistani protection in the city of Quetta. Pakistan pooh-poohed the claim.

Before the latest row, Pakistan had revived the idea of fencing and mining the 2,500km (1,560 mile) border with Afghanistan, ostensibly to restrict the movement of Taliban fighters. Afghanistan and the UN objected that this would endanger civilian lives and divide the Pushtun tribes straddling the frontier. Thousands of tribesmen on the Afghan side of what is known as the Durand Line were rounded up to protest against the plan.

The issue smells pungently of red herring. No Afghan government has accepted the Durand Line (see map), which was drawn up by Britain in 1893. Pakistan's ruse is to deflect criticism about insurgents crossing the border, while staking its territorial claim. American military-intelligence officials say that Pakistani border guards often allow insurgents to cross at checkpoints.

The Durand Line is a sensitive issue for Pakistan, which has seen attempts by both Pushtun secessionists and Afghan irredentists to carve away chunks of the frontier. But the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, a Pushtun, does not want to be the man who abandoned the claim for a Greater Afghanistan.

As was perhaps intended, the idea of fencing and mining the border is now obscured in a fog of debate. America and its allies, Pakistan and Afghanistan, are facing the looming spring offensive with worrying disunity.

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