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Killings of Afghan civilians sharply up, U.N. says

September 17, 2008
Source: Reuters, Sep 16, 2008

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Nearly 1,500 Afghan civilians were killed in the first eight months of this year, many in attacks on schools, medical clinics, bazaars and other crowded areas, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The death toll, up 39 percent from the same period in 2007, includes 800 killings blamed on Taliban and other militants as well as 577 caused by Afghan forces and their U.S.-led coalition allies. Responsibility for another 68 deaths was not clear.

The U.N. human rights office said the spike in fatalities had coincided with “a systematic campaign of intimidation and violence” by Taliban forces targeting doctors, teachers, students, tribal elders, civil servants, former police and military personnel and public construction workers.

“The number of killings by the Taliban and other anti-government forces almost doubled by comparison with the first eight months of 2007, with the numbers killed by government and international military forces also increasing substantially,” it said in a report.

There were 330 civilians killed in Afghanistan in August alone, spokesman Rupert Colville said.

“That’s the highest number of civilian deaths to occur in a single month since the end of major hostilities and the ousting of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001,” he told a news briefing in Geneva, where the U.N.’s human rights work is based.

Air strikes by international forces caused nearly 400 civilian deaths in the year through August, the U.N. office said, calling for accountability and greater transparency about those attacks.

The Taliban carried out 142 summary executions and also used suicide attacks and improvised explosive devices, according to the report drawn up by human rights officers attached to the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

COMMUNITIES FEARFUL

In a statement, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanetham Pillay said there was “substantial evidence” that the Taliban was seeking to intimidate aand attack Afghan civilians thought to support the Afghan government, the international community and military forces.

While most Taliban attacks focused on military and government targets, “such operations were frequently undertaken in crowded civilian areas such as bazaars or busy roads,” the U.N. report found.

“Such attacks terrorise communities and make them fearful of supporting or even associating with the government,” it said. “Schools and medical services, in particular, have become prime targets for attack by anti-government elements”.

It singled out a suicide bombing during a dog fight in Kandahar province last February which killed 67 spectators, and a bomb in July at the Indian embassy in Kabul which killed 50.

An air strike on a wedding party in Nangahar province last July killed 47 civilians, including 30 children, and a strike in Azizabad village in western Herat’s Shindand district on Aug. 22 caused 92 civilian deaths, including 62 children, it said.

The U.S. military, which initially said 30 to 35 militants were killed in Azizabad, plans to reopen the investigation into the incident after a cellphone video emerged showing bodies of people said to have been killed in the strike.

Pillay, a former International Criminal Court judge who took up as the top U.N. rights official this month, said civilians must to be shielded from the ongoing fighting in Afghanistan.

“It is also imperative that there is greater transparency in accountability procedures for international forces involved in incidents that cause civilian casualties,” she said. (editing by Laura MacInnis and Robert Hart)

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BOOKS-IRAQ: “We Blew Her to Pieces”

September 17, 2008

By Dahr Jamail | Inter-Press Service News


MARFA, Texas, Sep 16 (IPS) – Aside from the Iraqi people, nobody knows what the U.S. military is doing in Iraq better than the soldiers themselves. A new book gives readers vivid and detailed accounts of the devastation the U.S. occupation has brought to Iraq, in the soldiers’ own words.

“Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupation,” published by Haymarket Books Tuesday, is a gut-wrenching, historic chronicle of what the U.S. military has done to Iraq, as well as its own soldiers.

Authored by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and journalist Aaron Glantz, the book is a reader for hearings that took place in Silver Spring, Maryland between Mar. 13-16, 2008 at the National Labour College.

“I remember one woman walking by,” said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the U.S. Marines who served three tours in Iraq. “She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realised that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces.”

Washburn testified on a panel that discussed the rules of engagement in Iraq, and how lax they were, even to the point of being virtually non-existent.

“During the course of my three tours, the rules of engagement changed a lot,” Washburn’s testimony continues. “The higher the threat the more viciously we were permitted and expected to respond.”

His emotionally charged testimony, like all of those in the book that covered panels addressing dehumanisation, civilian testimony, sexism in the military, veterans’ health care, and the breakdown of the military, raised issues that were repeated again and again by other veterans.

“Something else we were encouraged to do, almost with a wink and nudge, was to carry ‘drop weapons’, or by my third tour, ‘drop shovels’. We would carry these weapons or shovels with us because if we accidentally shot a civilian, we could just toss the weapon on the body, and make them look like an insurgent,” Washburn said.

Four days of searing testimony, witnessed by this writer, is consolidated into the book, which makes for a difficult read. One page after another is filled with devastating stories from the soldiers about what is being done in Iraq.

Everything from the taking of “trophy” photos of the dead, to torture and slaughtering of civilians is included.

Continued . . .

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The New World Geopolitical Order: End of Act I

September 16, 2008

Immanuel Wallerstein, Commentary No. 241, Sept. 15, 2008

It would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of the agreement on September 9 between Nicolas Sarkozy of France in his capacity as current president of the European Union (EU) and Dmitri Medvedev, President of Russia. It marks the definitive end of Act I of the new world geopolitical order.

What was decided? The Russians agreed to withdraw all their troops from what are called “central Georgian areas” or “Georgia proper,” that is, those parts of Georgia the Russians recognize as Georgia. These troops are being replaced by 200 monitors from the EU. This is done on guarantees by the EU that there will be no use of force against South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The issue of Russian recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has been left entirely open. Sarkozy and the EU’s Foreign Minister, Javier Solana, “hope” that Russia will agree in the future to allow EU monitors into these two areas. Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said they had made no such promise and that “all future monitoring arrangements would require ratification by the Abhaz and South Ossetian governments.” Lavrov said that Russian troops would remain in the two areas “for the foreseeable future.” And the secretary of Georgia’s National Security Council, Alexander Lomaia, while applauding the clear deadlines for Russian withdrawal from Georgia proper, did note that “the bad news is that [the agreement] doesn’t refer to [Georgian] territorial integrity.”

This accord was reached between Europe and Russia, and the United States played no diplomatic role whatsoever. Medvedev charged the United States with having given its blessing to the original Georgian action of entering South Ossetia. He said that, by contrast, the Europeans are “our natural partners, our key partners.” Georgia’s president received the strong encouragement of John McCain, and Vice-President Cheney flew there to say that the United States was giving $1 billion in aid for Georgian reconstruction. But Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, explaining why this aid would not include military aid and why there would be no economic sanctions against Russia, said that “if we act too precipitously, we could be the ones who are isolated.”

So, what is the bottom line? Russia has gotten more or less what it wanted in Georgia. Its “irrevocable” recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia could well be something it might trade in the future for a basic turn-around in Georgia’s relations with Russia. If not, not. The fact is that Europe believes it needs to come to terms with Russia, and has ruled out renewing what the Chinese call “the European civil war.”

The United States finds it has no real cards to play. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, it finds itself publicly rebuffed by its closest allies. In Iraq, Prime Minister al-Maliki is being a very tough negotiator about the continued presence of U.S. troops, and it is not impossible, barring further major U.S. concessions, that the current agreements that terminate on December 31 will simply run out.

In Afghanistan, President Karzai is so exasperated with the bombing missions of U.S. special troops that he has demanded “a review of the presence of U.S. and NATO troops in the country,” in what CBS News calls a “harshly worded statement.” The immediate provocation was an air raid in Azizabad that the U.S. army said had few casualties and attacked a Taliban group. The Afghans insisted there were no Taliban there and a large number of civilians were killed. When UN officials and others gave credence to the Afghan version, the senior U.S. general in Afghanistan, David McKiernan, back-tracked on the U.S. position and called for a further high-level U.S. investigation by a general who would come from the United States.

And in Pakistan, President Bush authorized U.S. hot pursuit of Taliban from Afghanistan into Pakistan against the advice of the National Intelligence Council who said it would carry “a high risk of further destabilizing the Pakistani military and government.” The incursion brought what the New York Times called “an unusually strong statement” by the chief of the Pakistani army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, who said his forces would defend Pakistan’s sovereignty “at all costs.” Since the U. S. government has been looking on Gen. Kayani as its strong supporter in Pakistan, this is not exactly what the United States has been hoping to hear.

So, ignored in Georgia and under attack by its closest allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the United States is somewhat unhappily entering the realities of the post-Cold War world, in which it has to play by new rules that it seems to find rather unpalatable.

Meanwhile, as an ironic but not unimportant footnote, on September 10, a major development in particle physics was celebrated in Geneva when the European laboratory called CERN achieved a scientific breakthrough after 14 years of work and $8 billion in expense. This was such a major moment in world science that their U.S. counterparts at the Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois opened the champagne bottles at 4:38 in the morning to celebrate. Nonetheless, Pier Oddone, the director of the Fermilab, admitted this was a “bittersweet moment.” Until 1993, the United States ruled particle physics. That year, the U.S. Congress, flush with the self-confidence of having “won” the cold war, believed it was too expensive – and no longer geopolitically necessary – to build the kind of supercollider needed for this new advance in particle physics. The Europeans made a different kind of decision, and the United States now finds itself in second place here too.

I call this the end of Act I because it has sealed the reality of a true multilateral geopolitical arena. Of course, there are still further acts to come. And any faithful playgoer know that Act I merely establishes who are the actors. It is in Act II that we see what really happens. And then there’s Act III, the denouement.

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Protests target Blackwater facilities

September 16, 2008

By Rick Greenblatt | Socialist Worker, September 16, 2008

Protests stopped Blackwater from opening its planned facility in Potrero, Calif., east of San Diego (Rick Greenblatt | SW)Protests stopped Blackwater from opening its planned facility in Potrero, Calif., east of San Diego (Rick Greenblatt | SW)

ACTIVISTS DEMONSTRATED against the Blackwater mercenary company in four U.S. cities on September 13 and 14 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Nisour Square massacre, in which company operatives killed 14 Iraqi civilians and wounded dozens more.

Protests were held in North Carolina, Illinois, Idaho and California, each targeting an existing or planned Blackwater site.

In San Diego, some 125 protesters marched and rallied across the street from Blackwater’s new training facility and base in the Otay Mesa district, just yards from the U.S.-Mexican border.

Pedro Rios of the American Friends Service Committee spoke at the rally to highlight Blackwater’s presence at the border as part of “a process of militarization that has impacted our community.” Rios, who grew up close to the Blackwater site, said:

I know what it is to see Border Patrol chasing after people, detaining them and beating them up. I know what it is to see checkpoints where people are randomly searched and asked questions.

We now have two additional checkpoints that are leading to the Border Fields State Park area. I know what it is to have our civil liberties called into question. And so, when we add the component of a paramilitary mercenary group along our border, then we are really calling into question what’s at stake. And what’s at stake is our basic principles for democracy.

Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), whose congressional district includes Otay Mesa, addressed the San Diego rally by phone from his Washington office. There was also a phone report from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, describing the opposition to Blackwater’s attempt to set up a new training facility in northern Idaho.

To end the San Diego rally, a local imam read the names of the Nisour Square dead. A bell was rung once for each of the victims. Neither Blackwater nor its contractors have been prosecuted for the killings.

In the face of broad public opposition from residents, Blackwater failed in its initial attempt to establish a base in the rural San Diego country town of Potrero. Operating under front companies with different names, however, Blackwater was able to get a permit to open its current facility in an Otay Mesa industrial park.

The San Diego City Attorney has sued in federal court to overturn Blackwater’s permit to use the warehouse facility as a military training base. But the absence of a broad public mobilization against the military contractor will make it difficult to reverse the current foothold that Blackwater has established in San Diego.

In North Carolina, Blackwater’s home state, a demonstration was held outside the Winston-Salem office of the company’s main lobbying firm, Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge and Rice. In Chicago, a rally was held on Michigan Avenue to bring attention to the new Blackwater base in Mount Carroll, Ill., 100 miles south of the city.

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Pakistan troop fire turns back U.S. helicopters

September 15, 2008

Zeeshan Haider | Reuters North American News Service, Sep 15, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Firing by Pakistani troops forced two U.S. military helicopters to turn back to Afghanistan after they crossed into Pakistani territory early on Monday, Pakistani security officials said.

The incident took place near Angor Adda, a village in the tribal region of South Waziristan where U.S. commandos in helicopters raided a suspected al Qaeda and Taliban camp earlier this month.

“The U.S. choppers came into Pakistan by just 100 to 150 metres at Angor Adda. Even then our troops did not spare them, opened fire on them and they turned away,” said one security official.

The U.S. and Pakistani military both denied that account, but Angor Adda villagers and officials supported it.

Pakistan is a crucial U.S. ally in its war on terrorism, and its support is key to the success of Western forces trying to stabilise Afghanistan. But Washington has become impatient over Islamabad’s response to the threat from al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Pakistan’s tribal regions on the border.

At least 20 people, including women and children, were killed in the South Waziristan raid earlier this month, sparking outrage in Pakistan and prompting a diplomatic protest.

Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani said in a strongly worded statement last week that Pakistan would not allow foreign troops onto its soil and Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be defended at all costs.

Another security official said on Monday that U.S. armoured vehicles were also seen moving on the Afghan side of the border, while U.S. warplanes were seen overhead.

He said Pakistani soldiers sounded a bugle call and fired in the air, forcing the helicopters to return to Afghan territory.

CONFLICTING VERSIONS

Military spokesman Major Murad Khan confirmed that there had been shooting. But he said the American helicopters had not crossed into Pakistani airspace and Pakistani troops were not responsible for the firing.

“The U.S. choppers were there at the border, but they did not violate our airspace,” Khan said.

“We confirm that there was a firing incident at the time when the helicopters were there, but our forces were not involved.”

A spokesman for the U.S. military at Bagram Airbase, north of Kabul, said its forces had not reported any such incident.

“The unit in the area belongs to the (U.S.-led) coalition. They are not reporting any such incident,” the U.S. military spokesman said.

But the official denials were contradicted by Pakistani civilian officials and villagers in Angor Adda.

One official told Reuters by telephone that “the troops stationed at BP-27 post fired at the choppers and they turned away”.

Two Chinook helicopters appeared set to land when troops began shooting, alerting tribesmen who also opened fire on the intruders, said a senior government official in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province.

A resident described the tension in the village through the night. “We saw helicopters flying all over the area. We stayed awake the whole night after the incident,” he said.

The fiercely independent tribesmen of the region carry weapons regardless of whether they are militants.

PAKISTAN ARMY FIGHTING MILITANTS

The New York Times newspaper reported last week that U.S. President George W. Bush has given clearance for U.S. raids across the border.

The raid on Angor Adda on Sept. 3 was the first overt ground incursion by U.S. troops into Pakistan since the deployment of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in late 2001.

The United States has intensified attacks by missile-firing drone aircraft on suspected al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistani tribal lands in the past few weeks.

Despite apparent U.S. frustration with Pakistan, the Pakistani army has been involved in fierce fighting with Islamist militants in Bajaur, another tribal region, and Swat, a valley in North West Frontier Province, close to the tribal lands.

Pakistani forces, using helicopter gunships and artillery, killed at least 16 fighters and wounded 25 in Bajaur on Sunday. More than 750 militants have been killed in an offensive there that began in late August.

The U.S. pressure comes at an awkward time for President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Zardari was elected on Sept. 6, having forced former army chief Pervez Musharraf to quit last month, almost nine years after Musharraf took power in a coup.

The new Pakistani president is in London and due to meet Prime Minister Gordon Brown to talk over the border situation.

Bush held a video conference with Brown last week to discuss a new strategy for the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier.

Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani have both endorsed the stand taken by General Kayani. (Additional reporting by Alamgir Bitani; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Paul Tait)

Source: Reuters North American News Service

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Raids into Pakistan: What U.S. authority?

September 15, 2008

Bush’s orders to send special forces after Taliban militants have roots in previous presidencies.

Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, Sept 15, 2008

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Reporter head shot

Reporter Howard LaFranchi talks about the US military’s raids inside Pakistan, looking for terrorists.

WASHINGTON – Orders President Bush signed in July authorizing raids by special operations forces in the areas of Pakistan controlled by the Taliban and Al Qaeda and undertaking those raids without official Pakistani consent, have roots stretching back to the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In an address to a joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush said, “From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

But even before that declaration, two key steps had been taken: One, Congress had authorized the use of US military force against terrorist organizations and the countries that harbor or support them. Two, Bush administration officials had warned Pakistan’s leaders of the dire consequences their country would face if they did not unequivocally enlist in the fight against radical Islamist terrorism.

What Mr. Bush’s July orders signify is that, after seven years of encouraging Pakistan to take on extremists harbored in remote areas along its border with Afghanistan and subsidizing the Pakistani military handsomely to do it, the US has become convinced that Pakistan is neither able nor willing to fight the entrenched Taliban and Al Qaeda elements. Indeed, recent events appear to have convinced at least some in the administration that parts of Pakistan’s military and powerful intelligence service are actually aiding the extremists.

“We’ve moved beyond the message stage here. I think the US has had it with messages that don’t get any action, and that is why the president authorized this,” says Kamran Bokhari, director of Middle East analysis for Stratfor, an intelligence consulting firm in Washington. “This says loud and clear, ‘We’re fed up.’ ”

Even before the July order, the US had undertaken covert operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Moreover, the CIA over the past year has stepped up missile attacks by the unmanned Predator drones it operates to hit targets in the region. That increase has coincided with a deterioration of the war in Afghanistan, where the Afghan Army and NATO forces have come under increasing attack from militants crossing over the rugged and lawless border from Pakistan.

But Bush’s orders, first reported in The New York Times Thursday, mean that operations against insurgent sanctuaries will become overt and probably more frequent. A Sept. 3 ground assault involving US commandos dropped from helicopters targeted a suspected terrorist compound. Missile attacks by the CIA’s unmanned drones, including one Friday reported by Pakistani officials to have killed at last 12 people, are also on the rise.

Precedence for the orders authorizing the attacks on terrorist havens can be found in President Bill Clinton’s authorization of retaliatory attacks in 1993 (against Iraqi intelligence facilities) and in 1998 (against terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Sudan), and in President Ronald Reagan’s bombing of Libya, legal scholars say.

The administration has debated the use of commando raids in Pakistan for years, but the tipping point came in July, as relations with Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders deteriorated, intelligence sources say. The “kicker,” according to one source who requested anonymity over the sensitivity of the issue, was two July events: the bombing of India’s embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, an act that US intelligence officials concluded was aided by Pakistani intelligence operatives; and a July 13 attack on a US military outpost in eastern Afghanistan that killed nine US soldiers. The outpost attack was carried out by Taliban militants who had crossed over the nearby border from Pakistan.

Continued . . .

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Go home, gringo

September 13, 2008

Richard Gott | guardian.co.uk, Friday September 12 2008 17:03 BST

On the 35th anniversary of the military overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile on September 11, 1973, which had the overt support of the United States, the presidents of Bolivia and Venezuela have asked the US ambassadors accredited to their countries to leave.

They both believe they are facing the possibility of an imminent coup d’etat in which they accuse the Americans of being involved. A third country, Paraguay, announced 10 days ago that it had detected a conspiracy involving military officers and opposition politicians. Latin America now faces its most serious crisis since the re-introduction of democratic practice at the end of the last century.

Brazil and Argentina have both denounced the violent activities of opposition groups in Bolivia that have led to the closure of the natural gas pipelines to their countries, while President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has warned that a coup against Evo Morales of Bolivia would be seen as a “green light” for an armed insurgency in that country.

Giving details of a planned coup in his own country, in which retired military officers and opposition figures were involved, Chávez announced the expulsion of the US ambassador, Patrick Duddy, and the withdrawal of his own ambassador from Washington. Any aggression against Venezuela, Chávez said, would involve a halt in the supply of Venezuelan oil to the United States.

Chávez’s decision came one day after President Morales had thrown out the US ambassador in La Paz, Philip Goldberg, who has been frequently accused by the Bolivian government of plotting with the separatist politicians in the eastern province of Santa Cruz.

The situation in Bolivia is immediately more dramatic than in Venezuela, although both countries are facing important electoral battles at the end of the year.

Evo Morales, an indigenous politician from the Andes in the west of the country, has organised a referendum on a new constitution to which the rightwing (and white racist) politicians in the eastern lowlands are bitterly opposed. The atmosphere of violence has now broken into the open, with endless political demonstrations and several deaths, the seizure of provincial airports, and sabotage of the oil and gas installations on which the country’s economy depends. Morales has accused the regional governors of the five eastern regions of creating the conditions for a coup.

Chávez originally announced his decision to expel the US ambassador from Caracas as an act of solidarity with Morales – “so that Bolivia is not alone”. But it was soon clear that he had his own possible coup d’etat to deal with. A tape recording of phone conversations between retired military officers, some of whom were involved in the failed coup of April 2002, was broadcast on Venezuelan television on Wednesday night, revealing plans to seize the Miraflores presidential palace and to capture or shoot down the presidential plane.

The suggestion that there were plans to assassinate the president brought large crowds down from the shanty towns on Thursday night to demonstrate their solidarity with Chávez. Several of the alleged conspirators have been detained. Venezuela, like Bolivia, has an uncertain pre-election climate, since there will be regional and municipal elections in November that will be viewed as a judgment on the popularity of the president.

The possible coup in Paraguay appears less serious, since it only appeared to involve preliminary discussions between retired General Lino Oviedo, an old hand at failed coups, and a serving officer. Yet since the government of the left-wing former bishop, Fernando Lugo, has only been in power since August, tales of a possible coup have reverberated through the continent. Brazil declared pointedly that it would not tolerate a coup in Bolivia “or in any other Latin American country”.

The US is, of course, preoccupied with Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but whichever presidential candidate takes over in January will also find Latin America at the top of his in-tray.

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Pakistan to protest new U.S. missile strike

September 13, 2008


12pakistan_violence.jpg


Zeeshan Haider, Reuters, Sat Sep 13, 2008


ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Missiles fired by a U.S. drone aircraft killed 14 people in northwest Pakistan on Friday, security officials said, in a strike against suspected militants that drew condemnation from Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

A U.S. commando operation inside Pakistan last week, followed by several attacks from drones, has sent tensions soaring between Islamabad and Washington over how to tackle the Taliban and al Qaeda on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan.

Gilani said Pakistan would raise the issue with the United States at diplomatic level.

“We will try to convince the United States … to respect (the) sovereignty of Pakistan — and God willing, we will convince,” he told reporters.

Security officials said about 12 people were wounded in the attack near the town of Miranshah in North Waziristan. Residents said the pilotless aircraft fired two missiles at a former government school where militants and their families were living.

“We confirm a missile attack at around 5.30 in the morning (2330 GMT on Thursday) … We have informed the government,” said military spokesman Major Murad Khan.

The military, apparently reluctant to highlight infringements of sovereignty, has rarely confirmed such attacks.

An intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan has raised U.S. fears about its prospects, seven years after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban. That worry has compounded pressure on Pakistan to go after militants operating from enclaves on its side of the border, including in North Waziristan.

Security forces stepped up offensives in two areas in August, the Bajaur region on the Afghan border and the Swat Valley in North West Frontier Province.

The security forces killed 40 militants, including foreigners, in clashes in Bajaur on Friday, raising the death toll to around 150 in fighting this week. Two soldiers were also killed and 16 wounded.

Hours after Friday’s missile strike, a roadside bomb hit a security convoy in a nearby village, seriously wounding two soldiers. Soldiers in the convoy opened fire after the blast, wounding four civilians, residents said.

REVISE STRATEGY

Fears about Afghanistan’s future and frustration with Pakistani efforts to tackle the militants have led to more U.S. missile attacks by drone aircraft in Pakistan.

About a dozen strikes this year have killed scores of militants and some civilians.

In addition, helicopter-borne U.S. commandos carried out a ground assault in South Waziristan last week, the first known incursion by U.S. troops into Pakistan since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

Pakistan condemned the raid in which officials said 20 people, including women and children, were killed.

The U.S. military raised the prospect of more incursions on Wednesday, saying it was not winning in Afghanistan and would revise its strategy to combat militant havens in Pakistan.

Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani said in a strongly worded statement that Pakistan would not allow foreign troops onto its soil and Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be defended at all cost. Kayani also dismissed speculation of a secret deal allowing U.S. forces to attack.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that President George W. Bush had secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allowed U.S. special forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the approval of the Islamabad government.

U.S. officials declined to comment on the report and Pakistan’s U.S. ambassador Husain Haqqani told Reuters Bush had issued no new orders.

Kayani ended a meeting with his top commanders on Friday saying the military, under government leadership, would protect Pakistan’s territory and there was “complete unanimity of views between the government and the army” on the issue.

Tension with the United States has added to the worries of investors who have seen Pakistan’s financial markets battered by political turmoil and economic problems.

At the same time, Pakistan is highly vulnerable to any reduction in U.S. financial support given the depletion of its foreign reserves, which has sparked talk it could default on a sovereign bond next year unless it gets foreign financing.

© Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved

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Danger in South Asia

September 13, 2008

Conn Hallinan | Foreign Policy In Focus, September 10, 2008

If most Americans think Iran and Georgia are the two most volatile flashpoints in the world, one can hardly blame them. The possibility that the Bush administration might strike at Tehran’s nuclear facilities has been hinted about for the past two years, and the White House’s pronouncements on Russia seem like Cold War déjà vu.

But accelerating tensions between India and Pakistan, coupled with Washington’s increasing focus on Afghanistan, might just make South Asia the most dangerous place in the world right now, a region where entirely too many people are thinking the unthinkable.

Pakistan in the Middle

At the heart of this crisis is a beleaguered Pakistan, wracked internally by economic crisis and deep political divisions. Islamabad is simultaneously fearful of New Dehli’s burgeoning military power and pressured by Washington’s growing alarm over the deteriorating situation in Kabul.

When the Indian government accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) of being behind the recent bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, it revealed what journalist J. Sri Raman calls a “secret war” between the two nations’ intelligence agencies. The Indians charge the ISI with being behind a string of bombings in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur, while the Pakistanis accuse India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Intelligence Wing (RAW), of encouraging a separatist movement in Baluchistan and undermining Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan.

The two countries have fought three wars since the 1947 partition, and came perilously close to going nuclear during the Kargil incident in 1999. In the latter flare-up, separatist guerrillas backed by the Pakistani Army attacked Indian troops in Kashmir, leading to a bitter 11-week war.

Elements in both countries have long considered “the unthinkable” — nuclear war — quite thinkable. When Pakistan-sponsored Kashmiri separatists attacked the Indian parliament in December 2001, it set off a round of Armageddon saber-rattling.

Pakistan’s General Mirza Aslam Beg, former Pakistani army chief, said that Pakistan “can make a first strike, and a second strike, or even a third.”

The talk on the Indian side was no less hair-raising. George Fernandes, India’s defense minister at the time, said that “India can survive a nuclear attack, but Pakistan cannot.”
A U.S. intelligence analysis of a war between India and Pakistan found it would kill up to 12 million people immediately and injure seven million more.

Deal, No Deal

The Bush administration has ratcheted up the tension with its proposed nuclear deal with India. Under the so-called 1-2-3 Agreement, the United States would supply India with nuclear fuel for its civilian program, although India refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The deal would allow India to divert its own meager domestic uranium supplies to its nuclear weapons industry. Although civilian factories in this industry will be open to inspections, the ones that India deems “military” would remain off-limits.

In a July letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group, Pakistan warned that the 1-2-3 Agreement “threatens to increase the chances of a nuclear arms race in the subcontinent.” It would also likely unravel the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

India has a “no first-use” policy. But Pakistan refuses to sign such a pledge, in large part due to the superiority of the Indian military, a superiority that grows day by day. India will import over $30 billion in arms over the next five years, including modern fighter planes, helicopters, tanks, and warships. The Indian air force is currently the world’s fourth largest.

Pakistan simply can’t match those figures. Its economy is smaller, and it has been hard hit by rising fuel and food prices.

Afghan Challenge

Pakistan’s newly elected and deeply divided government is also confronting intense U.S. pressure to halt the cross-border movement of Taliban fighters into Afghanistan.

“The situation on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border presents a clear and present danger to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the West in general, and the United States in particular,” U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden told Congress in March.

But Islamabad has been increasingly unwilling to play spear-carrier for the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told the Guardian that it is “unacceptable that while giving peace to the world we make our own country into a killing field.”

The United States has sent dozens of armed robots across the Pakistan border to attack Taliban leaders, many times killing civilians in the process. According to Pakistani officials, U.S. helicopter-borne commandos crossed the border on September 3 and killed up to 20 people.
The current Pakistani government was elected on a platform of making peace with the Taliban, and, in any case, attempts by the Pakistani army to occupy the frontier have failed disastrously. That is hardly surprising. As British General Andrew Skeen noted during the colonial period, “When planning a military expedition into Pashtun tribal areas, the first thing you must plan is your retreat.”

Even Washington’s allies recognize that the increasingly strident calls by Washington and the Afghan government to close off infiltration from Pakistan are impossible. “You cannot seal borders,” says British Defense Minister Des Browne. “We could not seal 26 miles of border between the north and south of Ireland with 40,000 troops.” The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is over 1,000 miles, much of it consisting of formidable mountains.

While the White House and NATO are pushing for a military solution in Afghanistan, a recent study by the RAND Corporation, a think tank associated with the U.S. Navy, found “There is no battlefield solution to terrorism. Military force usually has the opposite effect from what is intended.”

Some in Pakistan’s current government seem to have reached the same conclusion. “We have to talk to the Taliban,” says Asif Ahmed, a member of parliament from the secular Pakistan People’s Party, the largest vote getter in the last election. “There is no peace in Pakistan or Afghanistan without it.”

Many Pakistanis worry that war in the tribal areas could ignite a movement among Pashtuns on both sides of the border for an independent “Pashtunistan.” Pashtuns make up 15%-20% of Pakistan’s 165 million people.

Islamabad also worries about increasing Indian influence among Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun groups, and the possibility that Pakistan could lose its “strategic depth” in the region, a place to fall back to if they are overwhelmed by an Indian conventional attack.

Kashmir Flashpoint

The United States has long tried to rope India into its efforts to offset growing Chinese power in Asia. Washington has stepped up arms sales to New Delhi, increased joint military training, and is willing to help India increase its stockpile of nuclear weapons. But an India powerful enough to help offset China looks very threatening from Islamabad’s point of view.

The most immediate flashpoint is Kashmir, where Indian troops have killed more than two dozen people and injured hundreds. A miscalculation by either side could be disastrous. The flight time for nuclear-armed missiles between the two countries is from three to five minutes.

Every few years the U.S. military conducts “war games” that play out a war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Every game ends the same: nuclear war. “It is a scary scenario,” Col. Mike Pasquarett, who runs the games at the U.S. War College, told the Wall Street Journal.

Rather than escalating another war, arming India, and pressuring Pakistan, the United States should be pushing for the de-nuclearization of South Asia, peace talks with the Taliban, and a stand-down in Afghanistan.

Conn Hallinan is a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist.

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Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan

September 11, 2008

By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI | The New York Times, Sep 10, 2008

WASHINGTON — President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.

The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants’ increasingly secure base in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.

“The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable,” said a senior American official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the missions. “We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued.”

The new orders reflect concern about safe havens for Al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan, as well as an American view that Pakistan lacks the will and ability to combat militants. They also illustrate lingering distrust of the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies and a belief that some American operations had been compromised once Pakistanis were advised of the details.

The Central Intelligence Agency has for several years fired missiles at militants inside Pakistan from remotely piloted Predator aircraft. But the new orders for the military’s Special Operations forces relax firm restrictions on conducting raids on the soil of an important ally without its permission.

Pakistan’s top army officer said Wednesday that his forces would not tolerate American incursions like the one that took place last week and that the army would defend the country’s sovereignty “at all costs.”

It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country. A second senior American official said that the Pakistani government had privately assented to the general concept of limited ground assaults by Special Operations forces against significant militant targets, but that it did not approve each mission.

Continued . . .

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