US troops wont attack Pakistan. Inaccurate drone bombings cause civilian deaths

Posted on 27 October 2008.

Technorati Tags: USA,Pakistan,Illegal attacks on Pakistan

All this points to a depressing scenario for the NATO forces, and their allies, only a portion of which are actually engaged in combat. It goes to the British to put a dampener on undue optimism (not that there was much to begin with) in the conflict. For British Brigadier General Mark Carleton-Smith, commander of the 16 Air Assault Brigade in Afghanistan, the best one could hope for was “reducing [the conflict] to a manageable level of insurgency.” An adequate number of troops were needed to “contain the insurgency to a level where it is not a strategic threat to the longevity of the elected Government” (October 7).

Nothing new there: Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, when chief of the defense staff, warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that Britain risked having its “hand caught in the mangle of Afghanistan.” The key now is merely to redress the level of mangling. Some have advocated firm measures at the local level. Britain’s ambassador to Kabul Sherard Cowper-Coles has ventured that an “acceptable dictator” might be the best solution. The current strategy was “doomed to failure.”

Such jittery opinion should not be dismissed lightly. The British views are particularly important. Having already shed the blood of its soldiers in the Afghan wars of the 19th century, the reluctance to persevere on the current course is understandable. Instead, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has huffed, indignantly claiming that there was “no reason to be defeatist or to underestimate the opportunities to be successful in the long run.” Then, drawing the longest of bows, Gates could say with confidence that what applied in Iraq also applied in Afghanistan. Conflating wars and strategic dilemmas continues to be a bad habit at the Pentagon.

In the meantime, the Taliban, beset as they are by rifts, will continue being resilient under pressure. They await the new American president with sanguinary anticipation. Counterpunch Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

The worst part is that neither US candidate has a clue on what to do about Afghanistan. Both promise more of the same. Senator Obama wants to send more forces into Afghanistan and attack Pakistan. Senator McCain wants to send more forces into Afghanistan and not announce the fact that he will attack Pakistan. Now another candidate has become the pawn of the same war mongering crowd. Facing imminent defeat in Afghanistan Barack Obama wants to expand the theater of war. The British fought the Afghans and Paskhtuns for 80 years. In the end after the defeat of Maiwand and other defeats, they withdrew back to the Indus.

The US presidential candidates are warbling about what strategies will best suit Afghanistan in a post-Bush world. Both Barack Obama and John McCain promise that the interminable conflict will be of “top priority” come 2009. Neither has provided clear guidelines, largely because such guidelines are essentially useless. The Coalition forces in Afghanistan continue to lose the ground to Taliban. Planners are scratching their heads in desperation.

Obama has at stages advocated the deployment of two more army brigades. McCain has also called for a surge in troop levels. The military solution, that only solution doomed to failure, continues to attract followers. Empires with supposedly power, notably ones teetering on collapse, often revert to force when all else has failed.

In recent times, two allies of the US – the UK and Australia – have expressed reservations as to how such a conflict can be ever won on the ground. The warnings have been simmering for some time. The war, most of these parties concede, might yield tactical victories, short-term gains in skirmishes. But it can do nothing else. The Taliban, it would seem, are either winning the war, or at least fighting the coalition forces to a bloody stalemate. They have finances, time, and soldiers, to kill. Counter Punch: Afghanistan the Un-Winnable. By BINOY KAMPMARK

With a new government in Islamabad, the US tried to take advantage of the chaos that comes with the advent of a new coalition government in power. President Bush ordered US forces to take action inside the Northwestern territories of Pakistan. So the US attacked. The Pakistanis were furious and stopped the US supply lines for a couple of days and shot down a US helicopter.

WASHINGTON — The White House has backed away from using American commandos for further ground raids into Pakistan after furious complaints from its government, relying instead on an intensifying campaign of airstrikes by the Central Intelligence Agency against militants in the Pakistani mountains.

According to American and Pakistani officials, attacks by remotely piloted Predator aircraft have increased sharply in frequency and scope in the past three months.

Through Sunday, there were at least 18 Predator strikes since the beginning of August, some deep inside Pakistan’s tribal areas, compared with 5 strikes during the first seven months of 2008.

After months of debate within the administration and mounting frustration over Pakistan’s failure to carry out more aggressive counterterrorism operations, President Bush finally gave his approval in July for ground missions inside Pakistan.

But the only American ground mission known to have taken place was a Special Operations raid on Sept. 3, in which the roughly two dozen people killed included some civilians. American officials say there has not been another commando operation since.

American officials acknowledge that following the Sept. 3 raid they were surprised by the intensity of the Pakistani response, which included an unannounced visit to Washington, three weeks after the incursion, by the country’s national security adviser, Mahmud Ali Durrani. He registered his anger in person with top White House officials.

A senior administration official said Sunday that no tacit agreement had been reached to allow increased Predator strikes in exchange for a backing off from additional American ground raids, an option the officials said remained on the table. But Pakistani officials have made clear in public statements that they regard the Predator attacks as a less objectionable violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

“There’s always a balance between respecting full Pakistani sovereignty, even in places where they’re not capable of exercising that sovereignty, and the need for our force protection,” said the administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Washington Post. October 27, 2008 U.S. Takes to Air to Hit Militants Inside Pakistan By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT

The drone attacks cuase a lot of civilian damage, cause problems for the government of Pakistan and are counterproductive.

ISLAMABAD, Oct 26: US attacks in tribal areas are harming the government’s efforts to isolate extremists and mobilise people against militancy, according to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. Addressing a press conference after returning from Beijing on Sunday, the prime minister criticised the Inspector-General of the Frontier Corps for saying that the military operation in Bajaur Agency might last another year, asserting that any decision about the timing of the army’s withdrawal from tribal areas would be taken by his government. Mr Gilani was referring to remarks by Maj-Gen Tariq Khan during a briefing for media on Saturday. The Dawn. October 27th, 2008

To support the Plan for a New American Century (PNAC) the Bush administration has created justification for the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. The “Operation Iraqi Liberation” (OIL) has set the fire from the Euphrates to the Oxus. The war on a state for the action of non-state players is unprecedented in the history of mankind–akin to bombing Mexico for the actions of the Mexican gangs in Los Angeles and New York or bombing Italy for the actions of the Organized crime (Cosa Nostra). Of course the Taliban gang was created by Congress Rohrabaker and with CIA help. Their benefactor was the main person that liberated Afghanistan from the USSR–another US protege called Osma Bin Laden (the scoundrel drummed out of Saudi Arabia ad stripped of his citizenship).

One of the most important purposes of UN is “to maintain international peace and security” by suppressing such wanton “acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace”. Article 2 (4) of its charter gives substance to this statement of intent by prohibiting all kinds of aggression aimed at other states. There are, however, two exceptions to this provision, and we have to ascertain whether America’s into Pakistan fall within their ambit. The first exception is provided under chapter VII of the Charter, whereby the Security Council may authorize collective action against the erring state to maintain or enforce international peace and security. It is to be noted that no such UN resolution authorizing an attack on Pakistan has been passed as yet and hence no question of UNSC-backed collective action arises against Pakistan.

Secondly, Article 51 of the Charter gives “the inherent right of collective or individual self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations.” In this regard, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently told a Senate panel that the US had a right of “individual self-defence” under the UN Charter where a foreign government was either “unable or unwilling to take care of international terrorist activity inside its borders”. This assertion needs to be scrutinized.

It is true that Article 51 is vague as to who should launch the armed attack before this right of self-defence is invoked – it only says “if an armed attack occurs”, meaning thereby that the armed attack could either be instigated by the state itself through its regular armed forces; someone on behalf of the state; or by lawless individuals or groups who do not have state’s patronage. However, this open-ended point of view is curtailed or interpreted by the concept of state responsibility as enshrined in UN Resolution 3314 where the right of self-defence applies only when an act of aggression is carried out by, or on the behest of, one state against the territorial sovereignty of another.

Given this, the legal basis on which America has justified its incursions into Pakistani territory becomes untenable, as the persons involved in attacks against the allied forces in Afghanistan are non-state foreign militants who are a law and not regular Pakistani armed forces. Moreover, the Pakistani government has, by committing more than “one hundred thousand” of its regular armed troops to the border areas, shown to the world that it is more than “able and willing” to take care of the international terrorist activity inside its borders. Also, that more troops have died in the war on terror than those of all other allies combined should speak for itself. Crossing the border Thursday, October 16, 2008 by Nauman Qaiser and Osman Khan

History is forgotten, stories have been created by the Neocons. A vulnerable population in Afghanistan already bombed out of existence by the USSR is now facing the brunt of the attack from drones and choppers 9which a just years ago were hailed as angles of mercy in the same region).

At the same time, however, officials said that relying on airstrikes alone, the United States would be unable to weaken Al Qaeda’s grip in the tribal areas permanently. Within the government, advocates of the ground raids have argued that only by sending Special Operations forces into Pakistan can the United States successfully capture suspected operatives and interrogate them for information about top Qaeda leaders.

The decision to focus on an intensified Predator campaign using Hellfire missiles appears to reflect dwindling options on the part of the White House for striking a blow against Al Qaeda in the Bush administration’s waning days.

Top American officials have justified the Sept. 3 ground raid as a self-defense response against militants who use havens in Pakistan to launch attacks against American and allied forces in Afghanistan. Those attacks have increased by about 30 percent from a year ago, according to military officials.

As part of the intensified attacks in recent months, the C.I.A. has expanded its list of targets in Pakistan and has gained approval from the government there to bolster eavesdropping operations in the border region, according to United States officials.

Once largely reserved for missions to kill senior Arab Qaeda operatives, the Predator is increasingly being used to strike Pakistani militants and even trucks carrying rockets to resupply fighters in Afghanistan.

Many of the Predator strikes are taking place as deep as 25 miles into Pakistani territory, not just along the border.

Spokesmen for the White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article.

The information about the American operations inside Pakistan was described in interviews by a dozen military and civilian officials from the United States and Pakistan, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic concerns and because details remained classified.

While Pakistan is now headed by a new civilian government, under President Asif Ali Zardari, the tense discussions between the countries over counterterrorism operations appear to echo at least some of the uneasiness that long characterized the partnership between Mr. Bush and Pervez Musharraf, the former president. He was defeated in parliamentary elections in February and left office in August.

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, told the Council on Foreign Relations this month that the two nations were cooperating in deploying “strategic equipment that is used against specific targets.”

On Oct. 16, a Predator strike in South Waziristan killed Khalid Habib, a senior Qaeda operative. But the strikes sometimes have unintended consequences. On Sept. 8, one in Miranshah on a compound owned by a Taliban leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani, failed to kill him but did kill women and children. On Aug. 27, a Predator strike near the village of Wana missed its target; it is unclear whether civilians were killed.

Senior military and counterterrorism officials say the increased Predator strikes have disrupted planning, pushed some insurgents deeper into Pakistan, prompted some militant commanders to post additional sentries and forced the militants to use their cellphones and satellite phones, which American eavesdropping operations can monitor.

“It’s fair to say that it has caused key Al Qaeda figures to focus even more on their safety and security,” said a Western counterterrorism official. “It has caused them to be more suspicious of people they don’t know well, and it also has caused frictions between Al Qaeda and tribal elements.”

But the official acknowledged that the intensified operations have failed to shake Al Qaeda’s hold on the tribal areas. “Things haven’t gotten to the point that they would even consider another option,” he said.

Pakistan and the United States are also taking steps to repair the relationship between their intelligence services, which reached a nadir this summer after evidence emerged that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate had a hand in the July bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s top military official, recently replaced not only the ISIs commander but also four midlevel generals believed to have had advance knowledge of the embassy bombing.

The C.I.A. has also put a new station chief in Islamabad, replacing one whose tour of duty had ended and whose relationship with the ISI had become contentious.

Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the new head of the ISI, is in Washington this week and is scheduled to meet with the C.I.A. director, Michael V. Hayden.

Pentagon officials have publicly praised the Pakistan Army’s aggressive campaign against militants in the Bajaur tribal agency. But privately, some American officials are wincing at a full-scale military operation that is taking a heavy toll on civilians as well as insurgents, and has not diminished the cross-border attacks.

“They don’t have a concept of counterinsurgency operations,” one senior American officer said. “It’s generally a heavy punch and then they leave.”

More than 200,000 people have now fled the attack helicopters, warplanes, artillery and mortar fire of the Pakistani Army, and some officials in Washington say the Pakistani government has been slow to follow up with food, water and other assistance to help displaced villagers. The United States has approved $8 million to aid the refugee effort.

Still, a senior official in the State Department said the situation was a vast improvement from years of Pakistan’s off-again-on-again military operations in the tribal areas.

“They have shown more fight than ever before,” that official said of the Pakistanis. “They show no desire to negotiate with the militants.”

The official said that Pakistan’s civilian government had been moved to act in part by large-scale terrorist attacks in Pakistan, like the Sept. 20 bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which killed more than 50 people. Washington Post. October 27, 2008 U.S. Takes to Air to Hit Militants Inside Pakistan By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT