It’s clear that whoever is President will have a major issue on his or her hands as the United States moves into the 20th century, the ongoing problem with Pakistan. And this weekend relations have gotten worse and it could impact the war in Afghanistan:
NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military outposts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing as many as 28 troops and plunging U.S.-Pakistan relations, already deeply frayed, further into crisis.
Pakistan retaliated by shutting down vital NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, used for sending in just under a third of the alliance’s supplies.
The attack is the worst single incident of its kind since Pakistan uneasily allied itself with Washington in the days immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. targets.
Relations between the United States and Pakistan, its ally in the war on militancy, have been strained following the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces in a raid on the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad in May, which Pakistan called a flagrant violation of sovereignty.
A spokesman for NATO-led troops in Afghanistan confirmed that NATO aircraft had been called in to support troops in the area and had probably killed some Pakistani soldiers.
“Close air support was called in, in the development of the tactical situation, and it is what highly likely caused the Pakistan casualties,” said General Carsten Jacobson, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
He added that he could not confirm the number of casualties, but ISAF is investigating the “tragic development.”
“We are aware that Pakistani soldiers perished. We don’t know the size, the magnitude,” he said.
The Pakistani government and military brimmed with fury.
“This is an attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty,” said Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. “We will not let any harm come to Pakistan’s sovereignty and solidarity.”
The Foreign Office said it would take up the matter “in the strongest terms” with NATO and the United States.
The powerful Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, said in a statement issued by the Pakistani military that “all necessary steps be under taken for an effective response to this irresponsible act.
According to Pakistan, the helicopter attack on its border posts — located nearly 2.5 km from the border with Afghanistan — was totally unprovoked as there were no reports of any terrorist activity in the area. ISAF spokesman Carsten Jacobson told the BBC from Kabul that the incident took place when close air support was sent in on request by ground forces — a combined group drawn from coalition forces and Afghan troops — to the Eastern Kunar area of Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan.
Without going into details of what kind of operation was being undertaken in Eastern Kunar, Brigadier General Jacobson said the troops were operating in a very rugged part of the country.
“It is in a part of the country where the borderline is not 100 per cent clear. The Durand Line does not show 100 per cent the border on the ground. The forces were operating in Afghanistan. The investigation has to come out with details of what happened on the ground and we need time for that.”
About the threats coming from Pakistan that the incident could have repercussions on the cooperation Islamabad is giving to the coalition forces in Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Jacobson said: “It is important that in this part of the country where terrorists use the border and the uncertainty of the border in their favour that all three sides involved — the Afghan government, the Pakistan government and the international coalition forces — work as closely together as they possibly can to fight terrorism.”
Last autumn, a similar NATO helicopter firing at a Frontier Corps checkpost had resulted in a prolonged stand-off between Pakistan and the U.S./ISAF during which time trucks ferrying supplies through Pakistani territory to coalition forces in Afghanistan were not allowed to cross over.
Reuters offers a factbox on this issue. Here’s a small part of it (go to the link to read it all):
There are two routes into Afghanistan from Pakistan, one across the Khyber Pass to the Afghan border town of Torkham and on to Kabul. The other goes through Pakistan’s Baluchistan province to the border town of Chaman and on to the southern Afghan city, and former Taliban stronghold, of Kandahar.
Between them these two routes account for just under one third of all cargo that the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) ships into Afghanistan.
Just over one third of all cargo goes on routes dubbed the “northern distribution network” through Central Asia, and the Caucasus or Russia. The remaining 31 percent is flown in.
NATO declined to give details of how the shipments through Pakistan are divided between the two routes, but a spokesman said the figures likely change each month.
Some imported supplies for the fledgling Afghan armed forces, which the United States and its allies are building up, also come through the Pakistani routes….
….As recently as July, the balance of supplies transiting through Pakistan and the northern distribution network were weighted in Pakistan’s favor, with slightly more than half of ground-transported supplies arriving through Khyber or Chaman.
After a string of disruptions, NATO-led forces and the U.S. military decided to push supply networks away from reliance on Pakistan. The United States has gone even further than other nations in the alliance with a target that only 25 percent of ground cargo should arrive via Afghanistan’s eastern neighbor.
This was done with the goal of “reducing reliance on any single line of communication to avoid any unnecessary vulnerabilities should that network become unavailable,” according to an ISAF spokeswoman.
Two cross-border attacks by NATO aircraft in autumn 2010, that killed three Pakistan soldiers, closed one supply route through Pakistan for several days. NATO apologized for the incident, which it said happened when its gunships mistook warning shots by the Pakistani forces for a militant attack.
For some background on Pakistan, be sure to also read this.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.