Telegraph.co.uk

Isambard Wilkinson
A polo competition played on yaks in a remote corner of Pakistan has fallen prey to the war on terror.

A Pakistani military intelligence agency has ordered that the festival, which is played in a mountainous area of Chitral bordering Afghanistan, on the ancient Silk Road, be moved to a neighbouring district because it is too close to a CIA listening post.

Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led war on terror, built the spy station to monitor cross-border infiltration by Islamic militants in an area the CIA believes could be a refuge for Osama bin Laden.

The intelligence agency informed the North West Frontier Province government that the tournament, which is played on arguably the world's highest polo ground at the 13,000ft Boroghil Pass, must be moved for "security reasons".

Officials want to deter foreigners from visiting the area which Russia and Britain sparred over during the 19th century "Great Game" of imperial expansion.

"We will have all the same activities but in a more secure place," said Syed Aqil Shah, the province's minister for tourism.

But locals, who come from Pakistan's poor, semi-nomadic Wakhi people, have complained that the move would entail herding dozens of yaks over a glacier and the 15,000ft Darkhot Pass in the Hindu Kush to Gilgit, a land alien to the Wakhi.

A local dignitary, who asked not to be named, said the move had "caused local anger and threatened the Wakhi's only source of income".

"They have built this so-called listening post next to the road in the valley where they play polo. Why could they not have built it higher up away from the Wakhi?"  (read from source ...>>)