U.S.-Pakistan Relations Hit New Low

Posted by BooMan | Nov 26, 2011 | 28 |

I’m not sure if this was actually a mistake or not.

(Reuters) – 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 almost half of the alliance’s non-lethal materiel.

The outposts were right on the border which isn’t clearly demarcated. It could have been a case of mistaken identity. But it also could have been a carefully considered message to the Pakistani government to stop giving aid and succor to the Taliban.

Reflecting the confusion of war in an ill-defined border area, an Afghan border police official, Edrees Momand, said joint Afghan-NATO troops near the outpost on Saturday morning had detained several militants.

“I am not aware of the casualties on the other side of the border but those we have detained aren’t Afghan Taliban,” he said, implying they were Pakistani Taliban operating in Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan-Pakistan border is often poorly marked, and differs between maps by up to five miles in some places.

In September 2009, the Pakistanis cut off our supply routes for 10 days after a similar incident. That’s pretty much the only way that they can protest. Obviously, Americans were incredibly unimpressed when they learned that Usama bin-Laden had been living in a house in Abbottabad for years. I don’t think too many Americans are in the mood to hear the Pakistani military whine about their sovereignty. As for the drone attacks, our bases are on Pakistani soil and the flights operate with the full complicity of the Pakistani military. So, there’s not much to complain about there, either. However, this was an attack on Pakistani soldiers, and that’s a different matter. Whether it was accidental or intentional, the Pakistanis are furious and our troops could be left without crucial supplies for a considerable period of time.

About The Author

BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

28 Comments

Jinchi on November 26, 2011 at 11:10 am

In September 2009, the Pakistanis cut off our supply routes for 10 days after a similar incident. That’s pretty much the only way that they can protest.

That is absolutely not the only way that the Pakistanis can protest. American soldiers can end up ambushed with the aid of Pakistani intelligence. American citizens can find themselves kidnapped and killed by Pakistani ‘militants’. Pakistan can redouble covert aid to the Taliban and bribe Afghan officials to undermine our mission goals. Take a look at a map of Afghanistan, If the Pakistanis decide to permanently cut off access, we have very few options to keep our soldiers and allies supplied there.

Pakistan can effectively destroy our chances of building a stable state which, at this point, is the whole reason we’re still there.

I have enough faith in Obama to believe that he wouldn’t be stupid enough to send a “carefully considered message” to Pakistan by killing 28 soldiers and enraging the Pakistani public. That’s the sort of foreign policy I’d expect from Rick Perry.
- joe from Lowell on November 26, 2011 at 11:20 am
  
  All of that is a pretty good reason to wind up the Afghan War as quickly as we can: so we can toss The World’s Worst Ally over the side and move closer to India.
  
  Because as long as we’re in Afghanistan, we have to pretend that nasty, anti-American, semi-failed, jihadi-backing country is the equivalent of the world’s largest democracy. You know, the one that keeps suffering horrific terror attacks originating from our great ally, Pakistan.
  - Errol on November 26, 2011 at 11:59 am
    
    short sighted to take fully the side of India vs. Pakistan- unless you’re thinking it’s a good idea to escalate the equivalent of the cold war played out in South Asia. on a larger scale since Russia and China both have proximity hence multiple actors with nuclear weapons
    - joe from Lowell on November 26, 2011 at 3:14 pm
      
      India isn’t escalating. Pakistan is escalating.
      
      India just wants to live in peace.
      - Errol on November 26, 2011 at 3:26 pm
        
        not from what I’ve seen, but pls let me know what you base this on
      - Errol on November 26, 2011 at 3:30 pm
        
        yes, India wants to live in peace on its terms, that’s the problem. don’t misunderstand – I love India, I love both countries, just the reality of governments is something else
      - joe from Lowell on November 26, 2011 at 4:33 pm
        
        India isn’t backing any militants who launch attacks on Pakistan. India isn’t forming alliances for the specific purpose of positioning itself for a conflict with Pakistan, the way the Pakistanis are courting the Chinese.
- Oui on November 27, 2011 at 3:16 pm
  
  .
  My perception is different, the Pakistan government and ISI give their support to terror groups to keep influence in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Many recent attacks near Kabul costing US lives were coordinated with ISI support of Haqqani terrorists.
  
  See my new diary – Secret Pakistan Double Cross: ISI Rebuilt Afghan Taliban
  
  "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Bazooka Joe on November 26, 2011 at 11:56 am

But it also could have been a carefully considered message to the Pakistani government to stop giving aid and succor to the Taliban.

Well, if that was true, there’s a word for that. Murder. Which makes us no better than the Pakistani intelligence services. So let’s hope that’s not the case.
- BooMan on November 26, 2011 at 12:15 pm
  
  Is it murder when the ISI blows up an embassy in Kabul? Is it murder when they facilitate Taliban attacks on U.S. soldiers?
  
  This isn’t a conflict where you can make that kind of distinction. The ISI is simultaneously our ally and our enemy. And that makes the Pakistani military a sometime enemy. They were hosting bin-Laden for years in their equivalent of West Point.
  
  Under the terms that were spelled out to Pakistan in September 2001 and the AUMF, we have the right to be at war with Pakistan for harboring bin-Laden.
  
  I’m not suggesting that that would be a good idea or even a morally justified one, but I see almost no difference between killing the Taliban and killing Pakistanis who facilitate their actions.
  
  For all I know, the Pakistanis who were killed were helping us track down Taliban. That’s how convoluted this whole conflict is.
  
  I expect that we send the Pakistanis a little message from time to time. Whether that’s the case here, I don’t know.
  
  I think we ought to remove ourselves from this situation precisely because we can’t even separate friend from foe.
  - Jinchi on November 26, 2011 at 12:43 pm
    
    You write like every warblogger of the Bush years. ‘It’s okay if we deliberately kill some Pakistanis, because some other Pakistanis attacked us.’
    
    That’s the kind of thinking that got us mired in two pointless wars for the most of the last decade.
    
    But what the hell, let’s start a new war with Pakistan.
    - BooMan on November 26, 2011 at 2:03 pm
      
      I don’t know why you think I am saying it is “okay.”
      
      What I am saying is that it is no more murder than killing the Taliban is murder. It might be a mistake, in which case it isn’t murder. Or it might deliberate and in direct retaliation for their role in getting a bunch of NATO forces killed. In which case, it’s war.
      
      If you’ve been reading here for any amount of time, you know that I’ve been calling to get our troops out of Afghanistan for years now. And I do so again in the comment you are responding to.
      
      That’s not saying this is ‘okay.’
      
      I was responding to the murder charge only.
      - joe from Lowell on November 26, 2011 at 3:17 pm
        
        I don’t know why you think I am saying it is “okay.”
        
        Anybody who thinks that what you just wrote is the equivalent of Bush-era warblogging is obviously incapable of understanding any military-related issue on any level beyond simple black and white.
        
        You didn’t condemn this action as the moral equivalent of the University of Texas sniper. Therefore, you must be supporting it.
        
        From where I sit, it is Jinichi’s simplistic reaction to your nuance that reminds me Bush-era warblogging.
      - Jinchi on November 26, 2011 at 7:20 pm
        
        I don’t know why you think I am saying it is “okay.”
        
        Whether you think it is okay is irrelevant. You’re implying that there are people in the administration who both believe it and act on it and are stupid enough to believe that it wouldn’t be counterproductive to everything that we’re trying to achieve in Afghanistan.
        
        Because deliberately killing Pakistani soldiers on Pakistani soil in order to “send a message” would be Cheneyesque in it’s stupidity. I’m sure it would be very satisfying to some American neocons, but the only message it would send to the people of Pakistan is that Americans are the enemy, and they would feel justified in taking any action against us in revenge. You may not see the difference between the ISI and a Pakistani soldier, but I guarantee you they do. And I don’t want to see American soldiers getting a bullet in the back of the head thanks to some Pakistani border guard who got your message.
TarheelDem on November 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm

My thought is that it is the result of poor tactical intelligence either through incompetence or because of a double agent.
- joe from Lowell on November 26, 2011 at 3:18 pm
  
  Two different outposts, though?
  
  At roughly the same time.
  
  That’s pretty odd.
  - TarheelDem on November 26, 2011 at 4:03 pm
    
    Not if the intelligence came from the same people.
Quentin on November 26, 2011 at 12:02 pm

How can you so casually suggest that the murder of these soldiers may have been intentional as a so-called warning to Islamabad? Where’s the logic? Where’s the humanity? The whole thing is depraved, starting with the continuation of the US occupation of Afghanistan itself. The US has become a war state all over the world, including the ‘Homeland’ where pepper spray is evidently available to the general public. In a few years ‘consumers’ will bring nuclear weapons to stupid Friday sales. And then there’s all the bragging and swaggering about waging war on Iran. Wouldn’t you just love to live in Iran and hear that a bunch of unhinged Americans are considering dropping bombs on you? Evidently just for the hell ‘v it. For their political profit.
- BooMan on November 26, 2011 at 12:19 pm
  
  How can I so casually suggest it?
  
  Because it is so possible.
Arthur Gilroy on November 26, 2011 at 12:06 pm

The holy trinity of the PermaGov’s intelligence services.

Misinformation.

Disinformation.

Wrong information.

Kinda like a matrix for Rumsfeld’s little poem.

The Unknown

As we know,  
There are known knowns.  
There are things we know we know.  

We also know  
There are known unknowns.  
That is to say  
We know there are some things  
We do not know.  

But there are also unknown unknowns,  
The ones we don’t know  
We don’t know.

–Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Have some more, straight from the left side of the (PermaGov/CIA) horse’s mouth.

What’s behind the furor in Pakistan?

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst, and Andrew Lebovich, Special to CNN

Editor’s note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a director at the New America Foundation and the author of “The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda.” Andrew Lebovich is a policy analyst at the New America Foundation.

(CNN) — Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz has set off a political firestorm in Pakistan with his claims that he was brokering an offer from Pakistan’s civilian leaders to the Pentagon to unseat the leadership of the Pakistani military.

Those accusations forced the resignation on Tuesday of Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, who Ijaz says orchestrated this proposal, which was delivered in a unsigned memo in May to Adm. Mike Mullen, then-U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state that is home to a number of Taliban groups that attack U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan and also is home to what remains of al Qaeda’s “core” organization.

Haqqani helped smooth over many tense moments in the important U.S.-Pakistan relationship, including the shooting in January of two Pakistanis by CIA contractor Raymond Davis and the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in northern Pakistan in May.

Ijaz has said that the offer to get rid of the leadership of the Pakistani Army was sanctioned by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari. The story is an explosive one in Pakistan, where relations between the civilian government and the military leadership are often tense and the United States is deeply unpopular.

Writing in the Financial Times on October 10, Ijaz explained that, “The embarrassment of bin Laden being found on Pakistani soil had humiliated Mr. Zardari’s weak civilian government to such an extent that the president feared a military takeover was imminent. He needed an American fist on his army chief’s desk to end any misguided notions of a coup — and fast.”

Haqqani denies being involved in any such scheme, and Mullen says that while he did receive a memo that made this kind of offer– delivered to him by Obama’s former National Security Adviser James L. Jones — he ignored it because it just didn’t seem credible.

According to Ijaz, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence chief, recently traveled to London to meet with him, where he “forensically tested” Ijaz’s evidence, which consists of Blackberry messages between Ijaz and Haqqani.

While the affair has already brought down Haqqani, a longtime critic of Pakistan’s military establishment and a well-known figure in diplomatic and national security circles in Washington, it could also damage the country’s civilian government. Haqqani’s wife, Farah Ispahani, is President Zardari’s spokeswoman and a prominent member of the governing Pakistan People’s Party.

The man at the center of it all

Who is Mansoor Ijaz, the Pakistani-American businessman at the center of this twisted tale? Born to a family of Pakistani immigrants in Tallahassee, Florida, Ijaz grew up in rural Virginia, the son of two college teachers.

After getting an undergraduate degree in nuclear physics from the University of Virginia and an MA in engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the early 1990s Ijaz founded Crescent Investment Management, a New York investment firm. Crescent was politically well-connected. Ijaz’s partner in the firm was retired Air Force Lt. General James Alan Abrahamson, who played an instrumental role in President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”).

Another Washington heavyweight, the former CIA director R. James Woolsey, was chairman of the board of Ijaz’s publicly listed company, Crescent Technology Ventures PLC, based in London.

In the mid-’90s, Ijaz gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party, and hobnobbed with the Clintons at fund raising events.

In 2003, journalist Richard Miniter, in a book titled “Losing Bin Laden: How Bill Clinton’s Failures Unleashed Global Terror”, relied on Ijaz as the principal source for the key part of his thesis, which concerned the five years Osama bin Laden spent in Sudan in the early and mid- 1990s. Miniter described multiple attempts Ijaz made between August 1996 and 1998 to interest the Clinton administration in improving relations with Sudan, as well as Sudanese offers to hand over intelligence on al Qaeda.

In his account to Miniter and in later writings, Ijaz claimed to have helped draft a proposal for Sudan to provide intelligence on al Qaeda to the Clinton administration, and that Sudan had offered to arrest bin Laden. Clinton administration officials did not take Ijaz up on any of his offers to help because they viewed him as “a Walter Mitty living out a personal fantasy,” according to Miniter. And the 9/11 Commission, which interviewed Ijaz, concluded that were was no “credible evidence” that the Sudanese had made any offer to hand over bin Laden.

In a 2004 interview with Fox News about Iraq, Ijaz, in his then-capacity as a foreign affairs analyst for the network, made another sensational claim: Chemical warheads were being smuggled into Iraq for a potentially catastrophic attack against American troops. And to top it off, Ijaz strongly suggested that the whole plan was given the green light by hardline Iranian mullahs. The story had everything to attract attention — Mad mullahs! WMD on the loose in Iraq! (At last!) And the threat of thousands of potential American casualties.

Ijaz now concedes, “This was an erroneous report based on information I had received from a former intelligence official on the ground in Iraq. I did not second source this story.” Ijaz also told CNN, “I have written over 170 op-ed columns, appeared over 200 times on television and have not once had a word of what I said retracted due to factual errors.” (Ijaz has written one op-ed for CNN.com).

Ijaz told Fox in 2003 that “eyewitness sources” placed Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Iran. Asked by host Brit Hume about the sourcing of the story, Ijaz responded, “I can just tell you that the source is unimpeachable. It is from inside Iran. These are eyewitness accounts.”

There was, of course, nothing to this story. Ijaz now says, “At the time I made it, I believed the source who had given the data to me.”

Described as a “U.S. nuclear proliferation and terrorism expert,” Ijaz told the Gulf News newspaper in 2006 that Iran not only had a nuclear bomb, it was seeking to “duplicate them in large numbers before revealing their existence to the world.” Five years later, Iran still does not have a nuclear weapon, but Ijaz asserted to CNN, “They had in my view then, and it remains my view now, at least one nuclear weapon stored in component parts.”

In August 2003 Ijaz told the British newspaper The Guardian that he had learned that the Bush administration had brokered a deal with Pakistan’s dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, not to capture or kill bin Laden so as not to cause unrest in the Muslim world. Ijaz told The Guardian “There was a judgment made that it would be more destabilizing in the longer term (if bin Laden were captured or killed). There would still be the ability to get (bin Laden) at a later date when it was more appropriate.”

Ijaz provided no evidence for this claim, and the idea that the Bush administration would do a deal to let bin Laden go free is ludicrous on its face. Ijaz told CNN “I stand by my comments, taken in full context, throughout that article.”

Peeling back the layers of the story

Pakistan’s government and Pakistani and American journalists continue to look into story behind “Memogate.”

What is puzzling about all of this — if the allegations are true that Ambassador Haqqani used Ijaz to propose a deal to remove Pakistan’s military leaders to Mullen — is: Why would Haqqani use Ijaz to do this?

After all, Haqqani has many formal and informal contacts at the Pentagon, and Ijaz has a history of making sometimes exaggerated or erroneous claims, and his record as an unsuccessful freelance diplomat with Sudan in the 1990s is a matter of public record.

Finally, if Haqqani was looking for a discreet back channel to the Pentagon, Ijaz turned out not to be the ideal messenger as he was the person who outed the whole affair in the pages of the Financial Times last month.

Have you ever heard such a pack of disinformation? It is totally opaque. Impenetrable on every level.

Meanwhile the true hustle….You know, the one you never hear about???…continues.

Bet on it.

AG
- Oui on November 26, 2011 at 3:49 pm
  .
  
  Pls kill more paki dogs
  
  Alf (Mumbai)
  53 mins ago (11:42 PM)
  
  Seems its was a retaliation for recent big losses of US in Afghanistan include the downing of the helicopter with 28 killed and bombing of military bus with 36 killed. Just keep figure cross and expect another big blow to US, its just tit for tat, but its humiliating for super power to get blow after blow, the losses of Pakistan would be seen courage in the face of a super power bully.
  
  [Links added are mine – Oui]
  
  Pentagon warns Pakistan to end ISI ties with terror groups
  
  "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
torpid bunny on November 26, 2011 at 12:11 pm

This is nothing another 10-20 years of COIN won’t fix, I’m sure.
- BooMan on November 26, 2011 at 12:19 pm
  
  No doubt.
Oui on November 26, 2011 at 1:02 pm
.
Pakistan government has requested the US stop all CIA activities on its soil. However, the Shamsi airbase in Balochistan was used by the CIA for highly secret drone strikes inside Pakistan. This airstrip is operated under the auspiciën of the Unite Arab Emirates. The original lease in 1992 was to facilitate hunting falcon trips for the Houbara Bustard, a rare bird some Arabs believe has aphrodisiac properties.

Pakistan Army takes partial control of Shamsi base

ISLAMABAD (The Nation) July 17, 2011 – “Pakistan had leased Shamsi airbase to United Arab Emirates in 1992. In global war against terrorism, the UAE handed over operational control of the base to the US.” On May 19, the Parliament was told by a top air force commander that the US was making drone flights from Shamsi which according to an agreement was under UAE control. The comment stunned lawmakers and ordinary citizens – who in the wake of May 2 US raid that killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad – had been questioning whether their nation was surrendering its sovereignty.

Pakistan orders US out of drone base
- America’s Secret Empire of Drone Bases
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Oui on November 26, 2011 at 1:10 pm
.
An earlier comment from my diary – Bin Laden Documents and Hardship Inside Al-Qaeda.

UAE was upset over leak about Balochistan airstrip

It should be noted that on May 13, 2011, days after the Abbottabad operation, Pakistan’s deputy chief of air staff in an in-camera briefing reportedly revealed to the parliament that the Shamsi Airbase in Balochistan — alleged to be a base for American drones — had been under the control of the UAE— and not the Pakistan Air Force — since the 1990s. Moreover, press reports in the past have also referred to the Shamsi airbase as being in use by US forces.

« click

Mr Al Musally further specified that “the UAEG [UAE government] desires to keep details of the UAE cooperation with the US military in Afghanistan and Pakistan confidential, because the [UAE] government is concerned that public acknowledgement of this assistance could pose risks” to the security of UAE officials within the UAE or in Pakistan.

Mr Musally moreover noted that “members of the UAE’s ruling families frequently visit Pakistan for hunting,” and the information may compromise their security. “He noted that there are 500,000 to 600,000 Pakistanis residing in the UAE…`Maybe they can’t do anything here [in the UAE], but they might try there (i.e. Pakistan), especially when our leaders travel there.'”
- Bin Laden falcon hunting outside of Kandahar, Afghanistan [1999]
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
utried on November 26, 2011 at 3:23 pm

AP also had the headline that US Marines are winding down combat mission in Afghanistan in 2012.
I hope we are getting out. And it could be a double agent. That has happened in Afghanistan to US people stationed there.
shan on November 26, 2011 at 4:14 pm

Not a mistake. This maybe the crossings that allowed Taliban free movement back and forth across the border. Appears there will be no more Taliban movement of assets into Afgan. via these 2 check points. It’s also not like we have not been warning the Pakistan to control the Taliban on their side of the border.
- Oui on November 27, 2011 at 6:55 am
  .
  
  Pakistan Taliban demand prisoner swap deal
  
  (Tribune) Sept. 8, 2011 – The Mamoun tribe is opposed to al Qaeda and Taliban and has raised militias to fight them, angering militants who often hit back with bombings and shooting attacks. Bajaur, which lies opposite to Kunar, has long been an infiltration route for militants entering Afghanistan to fight US-led forces there.
  
  But Pakistani officials say many of Pakistani militants who have fled to Afghanistan have established sanctuaries there. Pakistan late last month lodged a protest with the Afghan government after officials said hundreds of militants from Afghanistan launched a raid on Pakistani border posts in northwestern Chitral district, killing up to 36 people, most of them soldiers. Twenty-seven Pakistani servicemen and 45 militants died in clashes in July when some 600 militants from Afghanistan attacked Pakistani border villages.
  
  Pakistan summons Afghan envoy over border attacks
  
  ‘International forces behind Dir, Chitral attacks’
  
  Cross-posted from my diary – ISAF Close Air Support for Special Forces Under Attack.
  
  "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

U.S.-Pakistan Relations Hit New Low

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