How far is too far in the war against terrorism – 18 miles seems to cut it
The Pakistani populace is hopping mad with the US today. A leading Pakistani Islamic group, Jamaat-e-Islami, has reached their end of their patience with the US pre-emptive strikes in to Pakistan. They are threatening reprisals including the blockading of trade routes that provide NATO forces with vital supplies. Pakistan has been somewhat tolerant of these strikes. There have been over 20 such attacks since August of this year. The strikes had up until today been confined to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area - in North and South Waziristan, two tribal regions where the government has ceded much of its limited control to militants. Pakistan had voiced diplomatic protests to the incursions but not initiated any direct response.
However the attacks today occurred in the Bannu district, which falls under the control of the regional government, and begins roughly 18 miles away from the border with Afghanistan. This is a strike into the heart of Pakistan. Locals are very upset at the attacks and want them to stop.
“If these missiles attacks continue, then we will ask the people to create hurdles in the way of supplies for NATO,” Qazi Hussain Ahmed, chief of Jamaat-e-Islami, told reporters. The party has shown it can easily mobilize thousands of supporters at short notice. The supply lines have never been blocked by protests but militants and criminals often attack trucks traveling with them.
Associated Press carried the following report of the attack. “AP- “Two intelligence officials, both based in Bannu, said militants had begun moving farther away from the border, including to their district and other settled areas, in an apparent bid to avoid the missile strikes. All the intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to news media. Pakistani officials says they are rarely warned of such attacks, and have demanded the U.S. share intelligence so that Pakistan can go after targets on its own. Even as the U.S. strikes have picked up, American officers in Afghanistan have stressed improved day-to-day Pakistani cooperation in squeezing militants nested along both sides of the lengthy, porous border.
U.S. military officials said troops in Afghanistan coordinated with Pakistan on Sunday in shelling insurgents inside Pakistan who were launching rockets at the foreign troops. Pakistan’s official statement on the matter referred only to militant activity in Afghanistan. In the past month, NATO and Pakistan also have cooperated in so-called Operation Lion Heart – a series of complementary operations that involve Pakistani army and paramilitary troops, and NATO on the Afghan side, said Col. John Spiszer, U.S. commander in northeast Afghanistan.
“What we have done is worked very hard to refocus our … intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance assets to do everything we can to identify transiting across the border,” he told a Pentagon news conference in Washington via teleconference from Afghanistan on Tuesday. Commanders hope pressure on both sides of the border will eventually mean militants will be “running out of options on places to go,” Spiszer said. U.S. officials have praised Pakistani military offensives against militants in its border region, including an operation in the Bajur tribal area that the army says has killed some 1,500 alleged insurgents. Besides questions of sovereignty, Pakistani officials say the U.S. missile strikes are counterproductive because they often kill civilians and deepen anti-American and anti-government sentiment along the border. But Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, has defended the missile strikes, saying at least three top extremist leaders, whom he did not identify, have been killed in recent months in the attacks.”
Pakistani patience is worn thin. 18 miles inside a border where control resides with the Pakistan government is a very different proposition to incursions into militarized border zones where control is contested. It is a strange path for the US to follow in the war for hearts and minds in the Muslim world. The short term gain may well be outweighed by the long term resentment such acts produce. Obama has voiced strong opinions on the same issue so it does not seem the attacks will cease in the short term. This may be a lesson of history that the US may be slow in learning
