US-Pakistani relations remain on the boil

US-Pakistani relations remain on the boil
By Keith Jones
20 September 2008

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

During an impromptu visit to Islamabad this week, the chairman of the
US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, reputedly gave
Pakistan’s government and military assurances that the US will respect
Pakistan’s sovereignty. But only hours later the US staged another
predator-drone attack inside Pakistan, killing at least six people in
a South Waziristan village.

Pakistani Prime Minister Raza Gilani denounced the drone strike, which
Pakistani authorities insist was mounted without their having been
warned, let alone giving it their sanction.

Mullen’s visit was described as an attempt to “defuse tension”—a
euphemism for the crisis in US-Pakistani relations provoked by the
unprecedented September 3 US military raid on Pakistan and the
subsequent revelation that George W. Bush signed a presidential order
in mid-July authorizing US Special Operations forces to carry out
missions in Pakistan without Islamabad’s permission.

In the days following the September 3 raid Pakistan’s parliament
unanimously passed a motion calling for any further attacks to be
repelled by force and members of the Pakistani top brass, including
Pakistan military chief General Ashfaq Kayani, pledged future US
incursions would be resisted.

On Monday, gunfire from Pakistani forces reportedly forced two US
military helicopters that were attempting to cross into Pakistan—very
near the site of Wednesday’s drone strike and the September 3 raid—to
turn back.

A Reuters report cited a Pakistani security official as saying, “The
US choppers came into Pakistan by just 100 to 150 meters at Angor
Adda. Even then our troops did not spare them, opened fire on them and
they turned away.”

The US and Pakistani governments have emphatically denied such an
encounter took place. The official Pakistani military account is that
US choppers did come under fire, but from local tribesmen, not
Pakistani military forces and that the choppers never entered into
Pakistani air space. “Like others,” Major Murad Khan, told the Dawn,
“our forces stationed in the region also heard firing but where it
came from and what was the target, we have no idea.”

This is belied by other reports. The governor of the nearby North-West
Frontier Province, Owais Ahmed Ghani, said forthrightly in a
television interview broadcast Tuesday, “My political administration
has reported that an incursion took place. In the reaction, people and
law enforcing officials took part.”

The day after the thwarted US incursion into Pakistan, Major-General
Athar Abbas, the head of the military’s press liaison branch (ISPR),
told Associated Press that in the event of an attempt by US forces to
cross into Pakistan, “The orders are clear. ... [If] there is a very
significant detection, which is very definite, no ambiguity, across
the border, on ground or in the air: open fire.”

Mullen flew Tuesday from Baghdad to Islamabad—his fifth visit to
Pakistan in the 11 months since he became US military chief. According
to the New York Times, the decision that Mullen should visit Pakistan
was made only after he had left for Iraq, strongly suggesting it was a
response to Monday’s incident.

A US embassy statement claimed that “the conversations” Mullen had
with Pakistani government and military leaders “were extremely frank,
positive and constructive.”

An act of war

The September 3 attack and the presidential order constitute nothing
less than an act of war. They underscore that Washington arrogates to
itself the unbridled right to militarily intervene anywhere in the
world—state sovereignty and international law be damned.

If they have elicited little political and press comment in the US, it
is because there is a strong bipartisan consensus in Washington in
favor of the US intensifying the war in Afghanistan and extending it
into Pakistan’s border region. Democratic presidential nominee Barack
Obama has repeatedly said he would be prepared to order unilateral US
military strikes in Pakistan.

The US and many of its NATO allies have latched on to the argument
that Pakistan is serving as a “safe-haven” for Afghan insurgency under
conditions where the US-imposed government in Kabul is increasingly
isolated and discredited.

The reality is the US occupation of Afghanistan has given rise to an
insurgency in Pakistan’s border regions, whose local populace have
never recognized the British colonial-imposed border. This insurgency
is fueled by outrage over the US intervention in Afghanistan, chronic
socioeconomic backwardness and Islamabad’s traditional indifference
toward the region, and last but not least the brutal methods the
Pakistani military have employed at Washington’s behest in trying to
stamp out support for the Afghan insurgency. These methods have
included carpet-bombing, “disappearances” and colonial-style
collective punishments.

In recent weeks, hundreds of people have been killed as the Pakistani
military seeks to exert greater control in FATA, the Federally
Administered Tribal Area. Tens of thousands have fled the region,
swelling the refugee population in FATA, which is home to little more
than 3.5 million people, to over 300,000.

Mounted just days before Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairperson
Asif Ali Zaradari was set to be officially sworn in as president,
replacing the ex-army chief and dictator Pervez Musharraf, the
September 3 US raid roiled the Pakistani elite.

Zardari was in effect being put on notice that the US will work with
him, but only insofar he does its bidding and intensifies the
counterinsurgency war in the country’s border areas.

For years, Washington strongly backed the dictator Musharraf, calling
him an indispensable ally in the “war on terror.” Now that his regime
has unraveled under the combined weight of popular opposition and
economic crisis, Washington is ratcheting up the pressure, demanding
that the new “democratic” government wage war on its behalf
irrespective of the wishes and aspirations of its own people.

Opinion polls have repeatedly shown that Zardari and the PPP have
already suffered a huge drop in popularity because of their
subservience to the US in respect to the war and their long dalliance,
at Washington’s urging, with Musharraf.

As for the military, which has a decades-long intimate relationship
with the Pentagon, the US incursions are a tremendous blow to its
prestige and can only exacerbate tensions within its ranks over its
role in the counterinsurgency war.

Many within the officer corps subscribe to a fierce Islamic Pakistani
nationalism that was cultivated by General Zia ul-Huq, the dictator
who with Washington’s full-support ruled Pakistan from 1977 to 1988
and presided over the Pakistani military’s emergence as the conduit
for US and Saudi support for the Islamic fundamentalist opposition to
the Soviet-backed government in Kabul.

Also, there is a strong Pashtun presence in the officers corps. Press
reports suggest that this layer is particularly angered over having to
suppress their own brethren—the Pashtun bestraddle the Pakistani-
Afghan border—on the US’s behalf.

For the military as a whole the US violations of Pakistani sovereignty
constitute a challenge to its legitimacy. For decades the Pakistani
military has sought to justify its claim to a massive budget and
decisive share of political power on the grounds that it is the only
institution able to uphold the integrity of Pakistan.

A new understanding?

According to articles that have appeared in recent days in various
well-connected newspapers, including the Dawn, New York Times, and
Washington Post, the intensity of the Pakistani military’s opposition
to Washington’s bald assertion of a right to conduct manned military
operations within Pakistan has given the Bush administration pause.

In the immediate aftermath of the September 3 raid, Pakistani
authorities temporarily closed the most important land route for
transporting supplies via Pakistan to US and NATO forces in
Afghanistan, citing vague security concerns.

British Law and Justice Secretary Jack Straw made reference to the
issue during a visit to Islamabad. After claiming Britain supports
Pakistani sovereignty, Straw, reports the Pakistani press, “expressed
the hope that Pakistan would continue providing passage to NATO supply
convoys through its territory on their way to Afghanistan.”

If the press reports, which all cite unnamed sources, are correct,
Washington has agreed—at least for the moment—not to stage further
Special Operations incursions in Pakistani territory in return for
increased “cooperation” in mounting offensive operations in FATA and
increased leeway to unleash predator drones.

It is an open secret that under Musharraf the CIA was given the right
to stage drone missile strikes in Pakistan’s border regions. Indeed,
the New York Times reported earlier this year that the CIA has a drone
base inside Pakistan.

“A senior Pakistani diplomat, who did not want to be identified,”
reported Friday’s Dawn, said “while Pakistan would not allow US ground
forces inside its territory, it would be more tolerant of US missile
strikes ...

“The diplomat said that public perceptions of US military actions in
FATA would, however, force Pakistani authorities to sometimes condemn
air strikes as well.”

Perhaps signaling such a deal, US Deputy Secretary of State John
Negroponte said Thursday, “Unilateral actions are probably not a
durable or a viable solution over a prolonged period of time. I think
the best way forward for both of our countries is to try to deal with
the situation in that border area on a cooperative basis.”

Even if the Bush administration has drawn back from a reckless,
flagrantly illegal policy of mounting large-scale raids into Pakistan,
any patched-up agreement between Washington and Islamabad will be
highly unstable.

The US-installed Afghan regime of Hamid Karzai is rapidly losing
support, and both it and the US have a strong political and military
interest in seeking to shunt as much of the burden of the war onto
Pakistan as possible.

The US persists in making other demands likely to increase frictions
between Pakistan’s military and its civilian government, such as
removing ultimate control over the principal intelligence agency, the
ISI, from the military.

India, recognizing Pakistan’s weakness and acting at least in part in
concert with Washington, continues to ratchet up pressure on its
archrival. In recent days, New Delhi has insinuated Pakistan had a
role in a terrorist bombing in India’s capital, stationed new fighter
jets in Kashmir, and unilaterally reduced the flow of the Chenub River
into the Pakistani Punjab.

Last but not least, anti-US sentiment—fuelled by the occupation of
Afghanistan, the counterinsurgency war inside Pakistan war and the
US’s decades-long policy of sustaining military rule in Islamabad and
using Pakistan as a pawn in its global imperialist strategy—continues
only to grow.