Pakistan Vows to Shoot Down U.S. Drones In Its Air Space
Souring U.S. Pakistan relations are now poised to get much worse: Pakistan is vowing to shoot down U.S. drones that it sees in its airspace:
Pakistan will shoot down any U.S. drone that intrudes its air space per new directives, a senior Pakistani official told NBC News on Saturday.
According to the new Pakistani defense policy, “Any object entering into our air space, including U.S. drones, will be treated as hostile and be shot down,” a senior Pakistani military official told NBC News.
The policy change comes just weeks after a deadly NATO attack on Pakistani military checkpoints accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, prompting Pakistani officials to order all U.S. personnel out of a remote airfield in Pakistan.
Pakistan told the U.S. to vacate Shamsi Air Base by December 11.
A senior military official from Quetta, Pakistan, confirmed to NBC News on Saturday that the evacuation of the base, used for staging classified drone flights directed against militants, “will be completed tomorrow,” according to NBC’s Fakhar ur Rehman.
Pakistan’s Frontier Corps security forces took control of the base Saturday evening after most U.S. military personnel left, Xinhua news agency reported. Civil aviation officials also moved in Saturday, Xinhua said.
Pakistani Military Chief Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani had issued multiple directives since the Nov. 26 NATO attack, which included orders to shoot down U.S. drones, senior military officials confirmed to NBC News on Saturday.
It was unclear Saturday whether orders to fire upon incoming U.S. drones was part of the initial orders.
Bloomberg provides some additional context for the NBC report:
The U.S. withdrew its last personnel from a Pakistani military base it used to launch Predator drone missions in response to a demand made after a NATO strike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
Already tense U.S.-Pakistan relations were further stretched by the Nov. 25 attack on Pakistani army posts along the border with Afghanistan. The U.S. and NATO have denied Pakistani assertions that the raid was deliberate and have begun an investigation into the killings in a region where Pakistani forces have been battling Taliban militants.
“The last flight carrying leftover U.S. personnel and equipment departed Shamsi Base today and the base has been completely vacated,” the Pakistani military said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. “The control of the base has been taken over by the Army.”
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s government is reviewing the terms of its agreements with the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said in Dec. 8 in comments broadcast by television channels. The border incident triggered an angry backlash in Pakistan with protest rallies in major cities.
“The closure of Shamsi indicates that Pakistani generals this time want the U.S. to accommodate their demands and not weaken them in front of their soldiers and the public,” said Rashid Khan, a professor of international relations at the University of Sargodha in central Pakistan.
The U.S. and Pakistan have been trying to stabilize ties after a year that included the detention of a CIA contract employee for killing two Pakistanis, the unilateral American raid near Islamabad that that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May, and public accusations by top U.S. officials that Pakistan’s army is actively aiding militant groups.
If Pakistan shoots down a U.S. drone (regardless of any arguments pro and con), look for it to shove U.S. Pakistan relations down to a new, lower level — with Pakistan finding it extremely difficult to get what it wants in terms of aid from the U.S. Congress. Pakistan is a hair away from becoming a major political issue in the United States. It hasn’t happened yet since the U.S. needs Pakistan and the country has enjoyed strong ties with U.S. officialdoor many years. But if a drone is shot down, it’ll be the beginning of a new era.
Map via shutterstock.com
9 Responses to “Pakistan Vows to Shoot Down U.S. Drones In Its Air Space”
If pakistan flew drones over new york or new Zealand for that matter, we would probably shoot them down too.
Seems easy enough to understand.
This isn’t starcraft, this is real life.
Dont fly observers or attack drones over my house, mmmkay?
Wow hyper that’s a simplistic and naive view of the situation. Truth is Pakistan has areas that are not under it’s control. Third parties have and will continue to launch attacks on US forces from those areas. Any attack from an area Pakistan claims to control can be considered an act of war by Pakistan so the whole “my house” thing is pathetic. Don’t allow squatters in your house to take shots at me them we’ll talk.
As little as I like the current administration I’m not willing to second guess people who’s profession it is to handle these situations. Sometimes no matter how reasonable you are being the situation deteriorates. I do hope someone is letting Pakistan know that there is a limit, that if they get too hostile the tap will be turned off and hey India has been growing ever more friendly to the US.
“Truth is Pakistan has areas that are not under it’s control.”
And to add insult to injury, Pakistan’s political class, military, and intelligence services don’t all agree upon the proper path moving forward. They are all working to undermine each other to some degree.
I agree with EE and the question is…. when do we say enough is enough? Most of the region is just waiting for us to leave anyway.
I would submit that since there are likely no Al-Qaida people left in Afghanistan that we should probably prepare to leave sooner rather than later. Although the Taliban allowed the terrorist organization to set up shop on their turf, they were not hand-in-glove cooperating with each other. Our beef is with Al-Qaida (who has declared war on us), not necessarily the Taliban.
Meanwhile, we could offer Uzbekistan or some other ‘stan in the region a sweetheart deal to allow us to fly our drones from their territory over Pakistan looking for targets. In response to Hyperflow’s claim, EE is quite correct, the attacks coming from Pakistani territory and the lack of response of the Pakistanis to halt them would constitute and act of war. Granted, the act of war would seem to be against the host nation (i.e. Afghanistan) but that depends on whom the militants target. That Karzai seems to favor Pakistan over the US (in his own declaration) is, as a consequence, baffling to say the least, treasonous to his countrymen to say it in a more realistic way.
If Mexico had militants enter US territory and the Mexican government could not stop the incursions, would the US just sit by waiting for the host government to deal with their miscreants? Oh wait! That did happen a little before the US entry into WWI. Well…what did we do about it? We sent Pershing in with a whole bunch of troops to try to flush Pancho Villa out of his hiding spots. Although Pershing never got the warlord/bandit, he did succeed in convincing the Mexicans that it was a poor idea to attack across the border into the United States.
The U.S. has an outsized opinion of its rights. We seem to believe that we have the right to go anywhere in the world and do whatever we want. Our history is replete with an attitude we take and do what we want. The colonialists decided the entire continental US belonged to them so they took the land by slaughtering its native peoples.
From the Spanish-American war to the war in refusing Philippine independence we killed hundreds of thousands of natives. Even now in Iraq and Afghanistan if a native tries to defend his land or home, he is considered a terrorist and jailed or killed.Our attitude towards other people reminds me too much of Israel.
I understand how Pakistan feels about us. Pakistan has lost thousands of soldiers fighting in the lawless areas of their mountain border with Afghanistan. We don’t seem to care if we kill innocents or their soldiers. Hey – its the fog of war.
What we do in Pakistani territory should be up to them – not us. We can ask or bribe them for cooperation but if they decline we can take our money and go home. Their traditional supplier, China, will fill the gap left by us.
Don’t get me wrong, I love America but I am not persuaded that we have rights we do not bestow on any other peoples or countries. After all we are an imperfect country built and run by imperfect humans – the same as imperfect humans who are in other countries
All this spells “Its time to leave Afghanistan….now”.
You win Pakistan. It’s all yours. BTW, no more money from us, you’re cut off.
If Pakistan succeeds in stopping all cooperation with the US, it won’t be clear why we are giving them all that aid, let alone tolerating the double dealing of some factions of the government.
Pakistan needs to hold itself to its warnings to the US and do exactly what they said they will do. Many countries are dissing the US corporatocrocy and its puppet government for the rights of its own citizens to conduct and form its own government without the domination of a failing empire like the US or the British economic coloniziers, murderers and thieves since the early 1400′s.
I don’t blame them, “shoot their asses DOWN!!!!!!!!!