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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (66890)	10/6/2010 10:36:02 PM
From: TobagoJack	Respond to of 217917

watch n brief just in from stratfor, the people who do not have enough imagination to see that the pakistanis can just and simply leave some anti-aircraft weapons carelessly around to be picked up by the people who do enthusiastically dare to use the weapons on whom they see as invaders situation can get complicated fast charlie wilson's war in re-make Rumors of Pakistan's Anti-Aircraft Deployment Against NATO October 6, 2010 \| 2056 GMT A highly placed Pakistani STRATFOR source on Oct. 6 vehemently denied reports that Pakistan has deployed anti-aircraft missiles along its border with Afghanistan. The reported deployment originated in an Oct. 3 Pakistani TV report on channel SAMAA, where a member of the Pakistani National Assembly claimed that now that the missiles were deployed, “no helicopter will be able to escape after entering Pakistani territory.” Notably, the apparently sensationalist story never got picked up by Pakistani mainstream media, and the STRATFOR source commenting on the issue adamantly ridiculed the idea of Pakistan making such a bold move against the United States. The source drew a parallel to the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s, when Soviet aircraft would regularly bomb Pakistan’s Kurram agency. If the Pakistanis were too afraid to shoot at their Soviet rivals then, he said, Pakistan is most definitely not interested in firing on its U.S. allies now. The mere fact that rumors of a Pakistani anti-aircraft deployment are being circulated deserves attention. The United States has now hit day seven in Pakistan’s closure of the Torkham border crossing at the Khyber Pass through which pass three-fourths of the supplies for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Throughout the whole affair, militants have attacked scores of fuel tankers on the Pakistani side of the border. Following the Sept. 30 incident, in which ISAF attack helicopters fired on a Pakistani military post and killed three paramilitary Frontier Corps soldiers, the Pakistani military and government have chosen the ISAF supply line dependency as its main retaliatory weapon of choice against Washington. The United States, not wanting to further undermine the security of its supply lineswhen its forces are concentrated in the region and when Pakistan has already been greatly destabilized, has had to be extremely cautious in dealing with Islamabad on the matter. Meanwhile, Pakistan is using swelling anti-American sentiment in the country as an opportunity to assert its sovereignty and rally Pakistanis around the embattled government. While it is unclear whether these rumors originated with deliberate leaks from the government or were simply wild speculation by a Pakistani politician, the rumors of anti-aircraft batteries being deployed can serve two main purposes for Islamabad. One is to satisfy its domestic constituency, which has been galvanized by the Sept. 30 event and is calling on the Pakistani leadership to stand up to Washington over the deaths of its soldiers. The second, more significant, purpose is to signal to Washington the danger of pushing Islamabad too far in this war. The United States is not interested in seeing Pakistan increasingly turn from friend to foe, especially when the key to any U.S. exit strategy from the war in Afghanistan lies in Islamabad.