Pakistan reacts with fury after up to 20 die in 'American' attack on its soil· Children reported dead in assault near Taliban base ·
· Raid was gross violation, says foreign ministry ·
Simon Tisdall and Saeed Shah in Islamabad
The Guardian, Thursday September 4 2008
Relations have become increasingly fraught between the US and Pakistan, which is struggling to control Islamist militants. Photograph: John Moore/EPA
The war in Afghanistan spilled over on to Pakistani territory for the first time yesterday when heavily armed commandos, believed to be US Special Forces, landed by helicopter and attacked three houses in a village close to a known Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold.
The surprise attack on Jala Khel was launched in early morning darkness and killed between seven and 20 people, according to a range of reports from the remote Angoor Adda region of South Waziristan. The village is situated less than one mile from the Afghan border.
Local residents were quoted as saying that most of the dead were civilians and included women and children. It was not known whether any Taliban or al-Qaida militants or western forces were among the dead.
Furious official Pakistani condemnation of the attack followed swiftly, amid growing concern that the Nato-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan could spread to Pakistan, sparking a region-wide conflagration.
Owais Ahmed Ghanisaid, the governor of North-West Frontier province, adjoining South Waziristan, said 20 people had died and called for retaliation. "This is a direct assault on the sovereignty of Pakistan and the people of Pakistan expect that the armed forces ... would rise to defend the sovereignty of the country and give a befitting reply," he said.
The foreign ministry in Islamabad termed the incursion "a gross violation of Pakistan's territory" and a "grave provocation" which, it said, had resulted in "immense" loss of civilian life.
"Such actions are counterproductive and certainly do not help our joint efforts to fight terrorism. On the contrary, they may fuel the fire of hatred and violence we are trying to extinguish."
"This is a very alarming and very dangerous development," said a former senior Pakistani official. "We have absolutely been telling them [the US] not to do this but they ignored us."
US and Nato commanders say Taliban and al-Qaida fighters use the unruly, semi-autonomous tribal areas of Pakistan to stage attacks on coalition forces inside Afghanistan and create "safe havens" where they are immune from attack. Nato and civilian casualties in Afghanistan have reached record levels in the past 12 months in the face of a spreading Taliban offensive.
US forces have used missile-carrying drones - unmanned aerial vehicles - to attack militant targets inside Pakistan in the past. But yesterday's assault, involving up to three helicopters and infantry commandos, marked the first time the fight has been taken directly to the enemy on Pakistani soil.
Major-General Athar Abbas, a spokesman for the Pakistan army, said Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) had carried out the raid. "Two helicopters of Isaf landed very early in the morning and conducted a raid on a compound there. As per our report, seven civilians were killed in this raid."
But a Nato spokesman denied involvement. "There has been no Nato or Isaf involvement crossing the border into Pakistan," a Nato spokesman, James Appathurai, said. There were unconfirmed reports that the incursion was carried out by US Special Forces, which are not under Isaf command and can operate independently. A US military spokesman at the Bagram base near Kabul did not deny an attack had occurred but declined to comment.
Tensions between Pakistan's new civilian government and the US have been running high following American accusations that rogue elements in Pakistan's top spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, were feeding classified information on coalition troops to Taliban fighters. Washington has also repeatedly accused Islamabad of failing to do enough to curb militant activity.
The strains have been exacerbated by a political crisis in Pakistan following last month's forced resignation of President Pervez Musharraf and the collapse of a power-sharing agreement between the ruling Pakistan People's party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister. An election to find a replacement for Musharraf is scheduled for Saturday, with the PPP chairman, Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widower, expected to win.
In a further sign of instability, militants opened fire yesterday on prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's car, in an apparent assassination attempt, near Islamabad. The assailants, firing from a roadside embankment, hit the driver's side window twice. Gilani was not in the car at the time.
Today he was due to meet David Cameron, the Conservative leader, who is visiting Pakistan.
• Watch John D McHugh's video on the struggle for power and influence in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region
guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk
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Related:
Power cuts fuel Pakistan's power struggle
The assassination attempt on the Prime Minister is the latest twist in a complex battle for influence
Anatol Lieven
Times On-Line, UK
September 4, 2008
The apparent assassination attempt on the Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gillani, illustrates the threats facing his country. However, it also illustrates something else - the great difficulty of understanding what is really happening here, even when it comes to simple matters of fact. As with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto last December, official spokesmen have managed to contradict themselves even on whether the Prime Minister was in the car at the time.
The attack comes in the context of a growing Islamist insurgency in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan's North West, and after a string of terrorist acts. Last week suicide bombers outside Pakistan's main munitions factory in the town of Wah killed almost 100 people.
Meanwhile, the coalition of parties that brought down Pervez Musharraf has split after less than six months, with Ms Bhutto's widower, Asif Zardari, pushing successfully to become president, and the Muslim League, headed by her old nemesis, Nawaz Sharif, moving into increasingly fierce opposition.
Mr Sharif's opposition is not only to the coalition Government led by the Pakistan People's Party, but also to its close alliance with the US and its backing for tough military operations against militants in the Pashtun areas of Bajaur and Swat. These operations have made more than 250,000 people flee their homes and caused widespread anger. Mr Sharif's popularity has soared, in part because of his anti-American stance.
Given all this, one might ask whether it was worth getting rid of Mr Musharraf. Although he too pursued an alliance with the US, he was at least personally honest, whereas Mr Zardari is widely known as “Mr Ten Per Cent”, because of his behaviour when his wife was Prime Minister in the 1990s.
If things go badly, many Pakistanis may come to regret Mr Musharraf's overthrow. But it's no good crying over spilt milk. As I found talking to ordinary people in the weeks before his resignation, his popularity had sunk so low that he could have remained in power only through ruthless repression, which would have fuelled support for the Islamists - and which the Army was not prepared to implement.
The best thing to be said about the new Government is that, after prolonged hesitation, three of the four parties forming it have moved to take “ownership” of the tougher anti-insurgent campaign that the Army has been seeking for several months. Without this political backing, it would have been difficult to get the Army to motivate its men to fight as hard as they have been doing - or in some cases, to fight at all. This in turn has impressed the US Administration, and led to promises of more US aid.
And there's the rub. On the one hand, US aid, goodwill and help in mobilising support from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are vital to Pakistan. Surging energy prices and the slowing world economy have placed the country in a vice, with inflation soaring and power cuts lasting longer and longer as the State fails to pay the electricity authority. The authority, in turn, cannot pay for imported fuel. If things go on as they are, growing public protests could bring down a government that desperately needs hard cash, and quickly: after all, Mr Musharraf's failure to control inflation was one of the main reasons that he was hated.
On the other hand, the alliance with the US is loathed too. In the North West Frontier Province, where I have spent the past three weeks, that is true of the overwhelming majority of the population. The accusation that “Musharraf is an American slave who took US money to kill his own people” is now applied to Mr Zardari, together with the accusation of corruption. So deep is the hostility to Mr Zardari that there is even widespread (although totally baseless) talk of him having been responsible for his wife's murder. Almost 90 per cent of those who voted for Mr Zardari's PPP whom I interviewed said that they would prefer Mr Sharif as president.
This public distrust won't stop Mr Zardari becoming president, because election to that post is by members of Pakistan's elected assemblies, not the people. In those assemblies, the coalition has a solid majority.
This support, however, may prove fragile if mass discontent grows. And speaking to people in Peshawar, sweltering in 40 degree heat because of power cuts, unable to feed their children properly, it is not difficult to see how it may swell enormously in the months to come.
So the US and the European Union need quickly to provide about $1.5 billion to the Pakistani Government to pay its electricity bills and damp down the immediate cause of discontent. At the same time, despite Mr Sharif's criticism of the US-Pakistani alliance, they should do their best to maintain good relations with him, as there is a very good chance that his party will dominate the next Pakistani government. None of this makes for a very appetising choice. But as I said, it's no good crying over spilt milk - even if the milk is turning pretty smelly.
timesonline.co.uk
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US confirms ground assault inside Pakistan
sify - India
Thursday, 04 September , 2008, 10:21
Islamabad: American forces launched a raid inside Pakistan on Wednesday, a senior U.S. military official said, in the first known US ground assault in Pakistan against a suspected Taliban haven. The government condemned the attack, saying it killed at least 15 people.
The American official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of cross border operations, told The Associated Press that the raid occurred on Pakistani soil about one mile from the Afghan border. The official didn't provide any other details.
Pakistan investigators probe attack on PM's motorcade
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry protested saying U.S.-led troops flew in from Afghanistan for the attack on a village in the country's wild tribal belt. A Pakistan army spokesman warned that the apparent escalation from recent foreign missile strikes on militant targets along the Afghan border would further anger Pakistanis and undercut cooperation in the war against terrorist groups.
Taliban claim they attacked Pak PM's convoy
The boldness of the thrust fed speculation about the intended target. But it was unclear whether any extremist leader was killed or captured in the operation, which occurred in one of the militant strongholds dotting a frontier region considered a likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.
US military and civilian officials declined to respond directly to Pakistan's complaints. But one official, a South Asia expert who agreed to discuss the situation only if not quoted by name, suggested the target of any raid like that reported Wednesday would have to be extremely important to risk an almost assured "big backlash" from Pakistan.
"You have to consider that something like this will be a more-or-less once-off opportunity for which we will have to pay a price in terms of Pakistani cooperation," the official said.
Suspected US missile attacks killed at least two al-Qaida commanders this year in the same region, drawing protests from Pakistan's government that its sovereignty was under attack. U.S. officials did not acknowledge any involvement in those attacks.
But American commanders have been complaining publicly that Pakistan puts too little pressure on militant groups that are blamed for mounting violence in Afghanistan, stirring speculation that U.S. forces might lash out across the frontier.
Circumstances surrounding Wednesday's raid weren't clear, but U.S. rules of engagement allow American troops to chase militants across the border into Pakistan's lawless tribal region when they are attacked. They may only go about six miles on the ground, under normal circumstances. US rules allow aircraft to go 10 miles into Pakistan air space.
The raid comes at a particularly sensitive time for the Pakistan government which is trying to overcome political divisions and choose a new president on the one hand, while the army is battling the militants on the other.
In other signs of Pakistan's precarious stability three days before legislators elect a successor to Pervez Musharraf as President, snipers shot at the Prime Minister's limousine near Islamabad and government troops killed two dozen militants in another area of the restive northwest.
Pakistani officials said they were lodging strong protests with the US government and its military representative in Islamabad about Wednesday's raid in the South Waziristan area, a notorious hot bed of militant activity.
The Foreign Ministry called the strike "a gross violation of Pakistan's territory," saying it could "undermine the very basis of cooperation and may fuel the fire of hatred and violence that we are trying to extinguish."
Prior to the US military confirming the US raid, Pakistan government and military officials had insisted that either the NATO force or the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan — both commanded by American generals — were responsible. A spokesman for NATO troops in Afghanistan denied any involvement.
The army's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said the attack was the first incursion onto Pakistani soil by troops from the foreign forces that ousted Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban regime after the September 11 attack on the US.
He said the attack would undermine Pakistan's efforts to isolate Islamic extremists and could threaten NATO's major supply lines, which snake from Pakistan's Indian Ocean port of Karachi through the tribal region into Afghanistan.
"We cannot afford a huge uprising at the level of tribe," Abbas said. "That would be completely counterproductive and doesn't help the cause of fighting terrorism in the area."
The Pakistani anger threatens to upset efforts by American commanders to draw Pakistan's military into the U.S. strategy of dealing harshly with the militants. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met last week with Gen Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistani army chief. Mullen said he came away encouraged that Pakistanis were becoming more focused on the problem of militants using the country as a safe haven.
However, Abbas, the army spokesman, said on Wednesday that cross-border commando operations were not discussed and he reiterated Pakistan's position that its forces should be exclusively responsible for operations on its territory.
Pakistani officials say the US and NATO should share intelligence and allow Pakistani troops to execute any raids needed inside Pakistan. However, Washington has accused rogue elements in Pakistan's main intelligence service of leaking sensitive information to militants.
American officials say destroying militant sanctuaries in Pakistani tribal regions is key to defeating Taliban-led militants in Afghanistan whose insurgency has strengthened every year since the fundamentalist militia was ousted for harbouring bin Laden.
But there has been debate in Washington over how far the US can go on its own.
Citing witness and intelligence reports, Abbas said troops flew in on at least one big CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter, blasted their way into several houses and gunned down men they found there.
He said there was no evidence that any of those killed were insurgents or that the raiders abducted any militant leader, but he acknowledged Pakistan's military had no firsthand account.
There were differing reports on how many people were killed. The provincial governor claimed 20 civilians, including women and children, died. Army and intelligence officials, as well as residents, said 15 people were killed.
Habib Khan Wazir, an area resident, said he heard helicopters, then an exchange of gunfire. "Later, I saw 15 bodies inside and outside two homes. They had been shot in the head," Wazir said by phone. He claimed all the dead were civilians.
Near Islamabad, meanwhile, snipers fired at a motorcade near the capital as it headed to the airport to pick up the prime minister, hitting the window of his car at least twice, officials said. Neither Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani nor his staff were in the vehicles.
Muslim Khan, a spokesman for the banned militant organization Tahrik-e-Taliban, claimed responsibility and pledged more attacks in retaliation for army operations in tribal areas and the Swat Valley along the border with Afghanistan.
In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined to comment on the claimed cross-border raid, but she said the U.S. would continue to work with Gilani's government.
"I am relieved, of course, that the incident aimed at the Pakistani prime minister did not succeed," Rice said.
"We're going to be in continued contact with the Pakistanis as we both try to help them to build a strong economic foundation, to build a strong democratic foundation and to fight the terrorists who are a threat not just to the United States and to Afghanistan but to Pakistan as well.”
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