Source: The Daily Telegraph September 12, 2008 08:47 afghanistan
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Pakistani fury as suspected US drone attack kills 12
Pakistan threatens to withdraw from Bush's 'war on terror' as a missile from a suspected US drone kills 12.
Source: The Daily Telegraph September 12, 2008 22:50 Mirans
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US takes big gamble in launching attacks on Pakistani territory
Copy of report from The Sunday Times September 14, 2008:
Playing with firepowerSource: Timesonline.co.uk
By Christina Lamb
The Americans picked an inauspicious day to open a new front in the war on terror. It was 4am on the third day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and the villagers of Angoor Adda, a small Pakistani mountain town near the Afghan border, were lighting their stoves for breakfast before a long day of fasting.
Two US helicopters supported by a AC130 Spectre gunship landed close to the shrine of a local saint. Out jumped about three dozen heavily armed marines and Navy Seals from a crack unit called Detachment One. As they emerged from the churning dust onto the rock-strewn hills, they made for a terrifying sight in their night-vision goggles.
Within minutes the commandos had surrounded the mudwalled compound of Payo Jan Wazir, a 50-year-old woodcutter and cattle-herd. They believed an Al-Qaeda leader was hiding inside.
According to villagers, the troops burst in, guns blazing, killing Payo Jan, six children, two women and a male relation. Among the dead were a three-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy, they said.
The gunfire brought neighbours running out of their homes. As people headed towards Payo Jan’s house to see what had caused the commotion, the commandos opened fire, killing 10 more villagers.
The Americans fanned out, conducting house-to-house searches, before jumping back into the gunships and off into the sky. Stunned villagers were left to carry away the bodies left in the street.
The first known American ground assault inside Pakistan had left 20 people dead. US officials claimed they were suspected Al-Qaeda fighters; the Pakistan government said they were innocent civilians.
What is not in doubt is that the attack provoked outrage in a country supposed to be America’s ally, which eight days ago completed its transition to democracy with the election as president of Asif Ali Zardari, widower of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto.
After the long and deadly distraction of Iraq, the Pentagon has advanced into a new battlefield against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Beset by militant groups and possessed of the Islamic world’s only nuclear bomb, Pakistan is believed by many to be potentially even more dangerous. Others fear that putting soldiers’ boots on the ground in such a devastating fashion could only add to the problem.
THOSE involved in the war in Afghanistan have long been familiar with the name of Angoor Adda. The small town is in South Waziristan, one of seven federally administered tribal areas (known as Fata) that run in a strip along Pakistan’s 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan.
Originally created by the British to serve as a buffer between India and Afghanistan and stop the Russians reaching the warm water ports of the south, they are all inhabited by Pashtun tribes, the same ethnicity as the Taliban.
Because the British-drawn Durand line split tribes either side of the border, they have always been able to cross back and forth at will. Angoor Adda is one of the crossing points.
Militants have used this freedom of movement as a springboard for attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan and have found the tribal areas provide a safe haven. Under the Pashtun code of honour, hospitality must be given to those who seek it and it has long been believed this is where Osama Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, have found refuge.
Fata is now almost entirely controlled by the Pakistani Taliban militias who in turn provide protection to the Afghan Taliban and to Al-Qaeda. The area is fast becoming the principal global launching pad for terrorists.
“It’s like a terrorism super-market,” said one British military officer stationed in Pakistan. “It’s where you go to learn to make an IED [improvised explosive device] or be a suicide bomber.”
Under pressure from Washington to deal with these areas, in 2004 Pakistan sent in its own troops. Far from subjugating the tribes, the military lost more than 700 of its own men.
“We’re a conventional army set up and trained to fight one enemy – India,” said a retired general. “We are neither equipped nor skilled to fight an insurgency.”
Coalition soldiers across the border are also being killed in greater numbers. The US has lost 113 men in Afghanistan this year, the highest number since the invasion began in 2001 and already more than it lost last year.
“It’s becoming an increasing problem,” said Kurt Volker, the US ambassador to Nato. “The Taliban just go back to train, reboot and then they come back in across the border.”
The growing frustration among US commanders in Afghanistan coincided with what appears to be a new determination by George W Bush to find Bin Laden before his presidency ends in January.
“I know the hunt is on. They are pulling out all the stops,” said a US defence official. “They want to find Bin Laden before the president leaves office and ensure that Al-Qaeda will not attack the US during the upcoming elections.”
Both US and British special forces have been carrying out missions inside Pakistan since March this year following an agreement in January between Bush and Pervez Musharraf, then president of Pakistan.
In return, Pakistan’s military received £227m to upgrade its F-16 fighters. The deal explains why the Bush administration – and Whitehall – were so keen to keep Musharraf in office after elections in February in which the party he backed was defeated.
British troops from the Special Boat Service and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been working alongside the US Delta Force and the intelligence-gathering security coordination detachment.
Their missions have concentrated on surreptitious “special reconnaissance” operations designed to go undetected, a British source said. The only firepower has come from unmanned Predator spy planes.
“They are tracking the Taliban who are doing deals to get cash and weapons, looking where the opium is being traded and tracking the Taliban back looking for the leadership,” one British source said.
They have then guided the Predator to the targets so they can be tracked and attacked with Hellfire missiles.
The covert nature of the missions, with the troops staying clear of situations where they might get drawn into fire-fights, ensured they attracted little attention other than tribal villagers complaining about drones overhead.
In July all that changed. Pakistan’s new democratically elected government made its first visit to Washington. Instead of the congratulations and aid packages they expected, ministers received what they described as a “grilling” and left reeling at “the trust deficit” between Pakistan and its most significant financial backer.
Bush confronted Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s prime minister, with evidence of involvement by its military intelligence (ISI) in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.
“They were very hot on the ISI,” said Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister. “Very hot. When we asked them for more information, Bush laughed and said, ‘When we share information with your guys, the bad guys always run away.’ ”
While the talks were underway in Washington, Lieutenant-General Martin Dempsey, acting commander of US forces in southwest Asia, made an unannounced visit to Miranshah in North Waziristan and concluded the Pakistani effort was going nowhere.
Whether it was because of the worsening security situation, or in the hope of springing “an October surprise” in the form of Bin Laden’s head to boost the election chances of the Republican John McCain, Bush decided it was time to go beyond reconnaissance and tracking. In late July he issued a secret national security presidential directive authorising special forces to carry out ground operations inside Pakistan without its permission. Britain was not consulted about the directive.
“It’s a very close-hold programme with few cleared for access to the details,” said one US source. “The onus of the new presidential directive allows for ‘kinetic’ operations against targets on the HVT [high-value target] list.”
What it meant in practice was American boots on the ground. The question is whether they will bring gains or merely inflame the region.
CRITICS say “direct action” missions inside Pakistan such as that at Angoor Adda are bound to cause more damage than good.
“What have they gained out of this except animosity?” asked Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan’s high commissioner to London and one of Zardari’s closest advisers. “They have not killed or captured any prominent Al-Qaeda leader, but the collateral damage is responsible for hundreds of deaths and the reaction is being felt everywhere in the country.
“They’re playing into the hands of the people we’re supposed to be fighting.”
He insisted that Pakistan had responded to US demands for more aggressive action in the tribal areas and accused the US of jeopardising Pakistan’s hard-won new democracy.
“It seems no coincidence they do all this just as Zardari takes over. The Americans talk of wanting democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan yet here they have always supported military dictatorships. They must give us space.”
For once Pakistan’s military and civilians seem in agreement. General Ashfaq Kiyani, Pakistan’s army chief, warned that the armed forces would defend the country’s sovereignty “at all costs”.
The British voiced concerns that “killing groups of civilians and not killing high-level targets can only make the situation worse”, according to an official.
The US defended the raids. “We can hunt down and kill extremists as they cross over the border from Pakistan,” Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told a congressional committee last week. “But until we eliminate the safe havens from which they operate, the enemy will only keep coming.”
Another US attack took place on Friday, this time a missile directed against a former school in Miranshah being used as a base for a militant organisation. The front page of Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper yesterday accused the US of “mocking talk of sovereignty”.
Pakistan has again threatened to block off supply routes to Nato troops in Afghanistan. Because Afghanistan is landlocked, about 85% of Nato supplies come in through the port of Karachi.
However, Washington appears to be gambling that Pakistan needs the US at least as much as the US needs Pakistan. Spiralling food and fuel prices have left Pakistan in its worst economic crisis in a decade and it is expected to have to resort to the International Monetary Fund. America has provided $12 billion in handouts to Islamabad over the past six years.
Sensing division between Whitehall and Washington over the new policy, Pakistan’s government has decided it will appeal to Britain.
Zardari flies to London today. It was supposed to be a private visit to take his daughter Bakhtawar to begin her degree at Edinburgh University. But because of the situation, he will hold meetings with Gordon Brown and David Miliband, the foreign secretary.
He told The Sunday Times last month that he felt Pakistan was being blamed for Nato’s failure in Afghanistan. “Okay, we’re really bad and done everything wrong this side of the border, but has Nato been able to control the situation with all its soldiers or come up with a proper Afghan army as yet?” he asked. “I’m not pointing fingers, just saying we’ve all come short of expectations.”
At the UN general assembly later this month he will call for an international conference on the issue. “Whatever medicine we’ve been using it hasn’t ended the poison, it’s made it worse,” he said.
“If the problem was two on a scale of one to 10, now it’s nine. I’m proposing to the world that we players should all get together and start a new dialogue. There needs to be trust.”
Additional reporting: Michael Smith; Sarah Baxter; Dean Nelson Editorial
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