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  • 28 Pakistani troops killed in NATO attack, outrage in Islamabad

    What does the US media state about this incident? What triggered the attack?

    28 Pakistani troops killed in NATO attack, outrage in Islamabad

    ISLAMABAD: NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military outposts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing as many as 28 troops and plunging US-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 attack is the worst single incident of its kind since Pakistan uneasily allied itself with Washington in the days immediately following the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on US targets.

    Relations between the United States and Pakistan, its ally in the war on militancy, have been strained following the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by US special forces in a raid on the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad in May, which Pakistan called a flagrant violation of sovereignty.

    The Pakistani government and military brimmed with fury.

    "This is an attack on Pakistan's sovereignty," said Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. "We will not let any harm come to Pakistan's sovereignty and solidarity."......
    28 Pakistani troops killed in NATO attack, outrage in Islamabad - The Times of India

    Cheers!...on the rocks!!

  • #2
    Considering their anger and frustration over the civilian deaths and the humiliation due to killing of OBL, the Pakistanis might get really pissed off due to this. They are losing a lot of soldiers when they fight insurgents and terrorists and on top of that they get mauled by US/Nato..

    Comment


    • #3
      Could you imagine if that happened to US troops, that would be an act of WAR! 24 Pakistani troops, wow. I think Pakistan will cut all ties with the United States.

      Pakistan has the legal right to defend it's borders, I seriously doubt Pakistan troops were shelling on the Afghanistan side of the border.
      sigpic

      Comment


      • #4
        US and Pakistan enter the danger zone
        By M K Bhadrakumar

        The air strike by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) at the Pakistani military post at Salala in the Mohmand Agency on the Afghan-Pakistan border Friday night is destined to become a milestone in the chronicle of the Afghan war.

        Within hours of the incident, Pakistan's relations with the US began nose-diving and it continues to plunge. NATO breached the ''red line''.

        What is absolutely stunning about the statement issued by Pakistan's Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DDC), which met Saturday at Islamabad under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani is that it did not bother to call for an inquiry by the US or NATO into the air strike that resulted in the death of 28 Pakistani soldiers.

        Exactly what happened in the fateful night of Friday - whether the NATO blundered into a mindless retaliatory (or pre-emptive) act or ventured into a calculated act of high provocation - will remain a mystery. Maybe it is no more important to know, since blood has been drawn and innocence lost, which now becomes the central point.

        At any rate, the DDC simply proceeded on the basis that this was a calculated air strike - and by no means an accidental occurrence. Again, the DDC statement implies that in the Pakistan military's estimation, the NATO attack emanated from a US decision. Pakistan lodged a strong protest at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels but that was more for purpose of 'record', while the "operative" part is directed at Washington.

        The GHQ in Rawalpindi would have made the assessment within hours of the Salala incident that the US is directly culpable. The GHQ obviously advised the DDC accordingly and recommended the range of measures Pakistan should take by way of what Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani publicly called an "effective response."

        The DDC took the following decisions: a) to close NATO's transit routes through Pakistani territory with immediate effect; b) to ask the US to vacate Shamsi airbase within 15 days; c) to "revisit and undertake a complete review" of all "programs, activities and cooperative arrangements" with US, NATO and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), including in "diplomatic, political and intelligence" areas; d) to announce shortly a whole range of further measures apropos Pakistan's future cooperation with US, NATO and ISAF.

        No more doublespeak

        The response stops short of declaring the termination of Pakistan's participation in the US-led war in Afghanistan (which, incidentally, is the demand by Pakistani politician Imran Khan who is considered to be close to the Pakistani military circles). In essence, however, Pakistan is within inches of doing that.

        The closure of the US-NATO transit routes through Pakistan territory may not immediately affect the coalition forces in Afghanistan, as it has built up reserve stocks that could last several weeks. But the depletion of the reserves would cause anxiety if the Pakistani embargo is prolonged, which cannot be ruled out.

        Therefore, the Pakistani move is going to affect the NATO operations in Afghanistan, since around half the supplies for US-NATO troops still go via Pakistan. An alternative for the US and NATO will be to rely more on the transit routes of the Northern Distribution Network [NDN]. But the US and NATO's dependence on the NDN always carried a political price tag - Russia's cooperation.

        Moscow is agitated about the US regional policies. The NATO intervention in Libya caused friction, which deepened the Russian angst over the US's perceived lack of seriousness to regard it as equal partner and its cherry-picking or "selective partnership".

        Then, there are other specific issues that agitate Moscow: US's push for "regime change" in Syria, the US and NATO appearance in the Black Sea region, continued deployment of US missile defense system, and the push for US military bases in Afghanistan. In addition, Moscow has already begun circling wagons over the US "New Silk Road" initiative and its thrust into Central Asia.

        The future of the US-Russia reset remains uncertain. Washington barely disguises its visceral dislike of the prospect of Vladimir Putin's return to the Kremlin following the presidential election in March next year. Short of bravado, the US and NATO should not brag that they have the NDN option up their sleeve in lieu of the Pakistani transit routes. The Pakistani military knows this, too.

        Equally, the closure of the Shamsi airbase can hurt the US drone operations. Pakistan has so far turned a blind eye to the drone attacks, even conniving with them. Shamsi, despite the US's insistence that drone operations were conducted from bases in Afghanistan, surely had a significant role in terms of intelligence back-up and logistical support.

        By demanding that the US vacate Shamsi, Pakistan is possibly shifting its stance on the drone attacks; its doublespeak may be ending. Pakistan is ''strengthening'' its air defense on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Future US drone operations may have to be conducted factoring in the possibility that Pakistan might regard them as violations of its air space. The US is on slippery ground under international law and the United Nations Charter.

        A Persian response

        The big issue is how Pakistan proposes to continue with its cooperation with the US-NATO operations. Public opinion is leaning heavily toward dissociating with the US-led war. The government's announcement on the course of relations with the US/NATO/ISAF can be expected as early as next week. The future of the war hangs by a thread.

        Unlike during previous phases of US-Pakistan tensions Washington lacks a "Pakistan hand" to constructively engage Islamabad. The late Richard Holbrooke, former special AfPak envoy, has become distant memory and special representative Marc Grossman has not been able to step into his shoes.

        Admiral Mike Mullen has retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and is now a 'burnt-out case' embroiled in controversies with the Pakistani military. Central Intelligence Agency director David Petraeus isn't terribly popular in Islamabad after his stint leading the US Central Command, while his predecessor as spy chief and now Defense Secretary Leon Panetta always remained a distant figure.

        US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a charming politician, but certainly not cut out for the role of networking with the Pakistani generals at the operational level. She could perhaps offer a healing touch once the bleeding wound is cleansed of dirt, stitched up and bandaged. And US President Barack Obama, of course, never cared to establish personal chemistry with a Pakistani leader, as he would with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

        Now, who could do that in Washington? The horrible truth is - no one. It is a shocking state of affairs for a superpower with over 100,000 troops deployed out there in the tangled mountains in Pakistan's vicinity. There has been a colossal breakdown of diplomacy at the political, military and intelligence level.

        Washington trusted former Pakistani ambassador Hussein Haqqani almost as its own special envoy to Islamabad, but he has been summarily replaced under strange circumstances - probably, for the very same reason. At the end of the day, an intriguing question keeps popping up: Can it be that Pakistan is simply not interested anymore in dialoguing with the Obama administration?

        The heart of the matter is that the Pakistani citadel has pulled back the bridges leading to it from across the surrounding crocodile-infested moat. This hunkering down is going to be Obama's key problem. Pakistan is boycotting the Bonn Conference II on December 2. This hunkering down should worry the US more than any Pakistani military response to the NATO strike.

        The US would know from the Iranian experience that it has no answer for the sort of strategic defiance that an unfriendly nation resolute in its will to resist can put up against an 'enemy' it genuinely considers 'satanic'.

        The Pakistani military leadership is traditionally cautious and it is not going to give a military response to the US's provocation. (Indeed, the Taliban are always there to keep bleeding the US and NATO troops.)

        Washington may have seriously erred if the intention Friday night was to draw out the Pakistani military into a retaliatory mode and then to hit it with a sledgehammer and make it crawl on its knees pleading mercy. Things aren't going to work that way. Pakistan is going to give a "Persian" response.

        The regional situation works in Pakistan's favor. The recent Istanbul conference (November 2) showed up Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran sharing a platform of opposition to the US bases in Afghanistan in the post-2014 period.

        The Obama administration's grandiose scheme to transform the 89-year period ahead as 'America's Pacific Century' makes Pakistan a hugely important partner for China. At the very minimum, Russia has stakes in encouraging Pakistan's strategic autonomy. So does Iran.

        None of these major regional powers wants the deployment of the US missile defense system in the Hindu Kush and Pakistan is bent on exorcising the region of the military presence of the US and its allies. That is also the real meaning of Pakistan's induction as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is on the cards.

        (Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey)

        Comment


        • #5
          US and Pakistan: deadliest of friends

          With the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in an air strike, the US may have made its costliest mistake of the war in Afghanistan

          How bad can a relationship between two military allies get? If this year's tally of incidents is anything to go by, Pakistan's rage against the American military machine can get a lot worse. First came the affair over Raymond Davis, the CIA agent who shot dead two men who had pulled up in front of his car at a traffic light in Lahore. Then came the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad. And now this.

          An Afghan special forces operation, backed up by Nato troops, allegedly came under fire from across the border. Afghan troops, another report goes, called in Nato airstrikes, and two Pakistani military posts were hit, killing 24 soldiers. The reaction in Pakistan ranged yesterday from cold fury (it is just not believed in Pakistani military circles that Nato was unaware of the co-ordinates of the two military posts in the village of Salala) to hot conspiracy: America was the "big evil". The politician Imran Khan told thousands of supporters on Saturday that it was time to end the alliance with the US. It would be folly to dismiss this as mere populism. After a year like this, the Pakistani military will have to cope with rising levels of pressure from within its own ranks to end co-operation with the US.

          The Afghan element to this tale of friendly fire is also troubling. If, as US forces start to draw down, Afghan troops take the lead in highly sensitive areas like these, where the exact line of the border is unclear, then this weekend's woeful events may not be the last. As it is, it would not take much for Pakistani and Afghan troops to open fire on each other. On the Afghan side of the border in Kunar province, there was little doubt that the US military had done the right thing. They were congratulated for hitting the right target. On Saturday the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, approved a second list of areas where Afghan forces will start taking the lead from Nato troops. As it is, the US is reluctant to give the Afghans fast jets or heavy artillery for fear of what they would do.

          The short-term response is not as troubling as the long-term implications. Pakistan closed two border crossings and gave the US 15 days to quit Shamsi airbase in Baluchistan, from which it flew drones targeting militants in the tribal areas. The closures will make Barack Obama more dependent on Vladimir Putin's goodwill, and the northern supply route through which 60% of troops and military cargo to Afghanistan now travel. But, of itself, the closures will be a temporary problem. Of greater significance is the erosion of Pakistani public support for the US fight against the Taliban. It would not be the first strategic mistake the US had made in this war, but it could yet prove the costliest.

          US and Pakistan: deadliest of friends | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian

          Comment


          • #6
            watching "secret pakistan" documentary, this event more likely due to pushing insurgents into AFG.

            Comment


            • #7
              Pakistan which supports the Taliban and fires shells into Afghanistan - was targeting Afghan troops.

              Afghan officials: Fire from Pakistan led to attack
              APBy RAHIM FAIEZ and SEBASTIAN ABBOT | AP – 31 mins ago
              http://news.yahoo.com/afghan-officials- ... 47287.html

              ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghanistan officials claimed Sunday that Afghan and NATO forces were retaliating for gunfire from two Pakistani army bases when they called in airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, adding a layer of complexity to an episode that has further strained Pakistan's ties with the United States.

              The account challenged Pakistan's claim that the strikes were unprovoked.

              The attack Saturday near the Afghan-Pakistani border aroused popular anger in Pakistan and added tension to the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, which has been under pressure since the secret U.S. raid inside Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden in May.

              Pakistan has closed its western border to trucks delivering supplies to coalition troops in Afghanistan, demanded that the U.S. abandon an air base inside Pakistan and said it will review its cooperation with the U.S. and NATO.

              A complete breakdown in the relationship between the United States and Pakistan is considered unlikely. Pakistan relies on billions of dollars in American aid, and the U.S. needs Pakistan to push Afghan insurgents to participate in peace talks.

              Afghanistan's assertions about the attack muddy the efforts to determine what happened. The Afghan officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said it was unclear who fired on Afghan and NATO forces, which were conducting a joint operation before dawn Saturday.

              They said the fire came from the direction of the two Pakistani army posts along the border that were later hit in the airstrikes.

              NATO has said it is investigating, but it has not questioned the Pakistani claim that 24 soldiers were killed. All airstrikes are approved at a higher command level than the troops on the ground.

              Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen offered his deepest condolences and said the coalition was committed to working with Pakistan to "avoid such tragedies in the future."

              "We have a joint interest in the fight against cross-border terrorism and in ensuring that Afghanistan does not once again become a safe-haven for terrorists," Rasmussen said in Brussels.

              NATO officials have complained that insurgents fire from across the poorly defined frontier, often from positions close to Pakistani soldiers, who have been accused of tolerating or supporting them.

              The U.S. plans its own investigation. Two U.S. senators called Sunday for harder line on Pakistan.

              Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said Pakistan must understand that American aid depends on Pakistani cooperation. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Pakistan's moves to punish coalition forces for the airstrikes are more evidence that the U.S. should get its troops out of the region.

              On Sunday, Pakistani soldiers received the coffins of the victims from army helicopters and prayed over them. The coffins were draped with the green and white Pakistani flag.

              The dead included an army major and another senior officer. The chief of the Pakistani army and regional political leaders attended the funerals.

              "The attack was unprovoked and indiscriminate," said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas. "There was no reason for it. Map references of all our border posts have been passed to NATO a number of times."

              There were several protests around Pakistan, including in Karachi, where about 500 Islamists rallied outside the U.S. Consulate.

              The relationship between the United States and Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation in a strategically vital part of the world, grew more difficult after the covert raid that killed bin Laden in May.

              Pakistani leaders were outraged that they were not told beforehand. Also, the U.S. has been frustrated by Pakistan's refusal to target militants using its territory to stage attacks on American and other NATO troops in Afghanistan.

              A year ago, a U.S. helicopter attack killed two Pakistani soldiers posted on the border, and a joint investigation by the two nations found that Pakistani troops had fired first at the U.S. helicopters.

              The investigation found that the shots were probably meant as warnings after the choppers passed into Pakistani airspace.

              After that incident, Pakistan closed one of the two border crossings for U.S. supplies for 10 days. There was no indication of how long it would keep the border closed this time.

              On Sunday, about 300 trucks carrying supplies to U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan were backed up at the Torkham border crossing in the northwest Khyber tribal area, the one closed last year, as well as at Chaman, in the southwestern Baluchistan province.

              Militants inside Pakistan periodically attack the slow-moving convoys, and torched 150 trucks last year as they waited for days to enter Afghanistan.

              "We are worried," said Saeed Khan, a driver waiting at the border terminal in Torkham and speaking by phone. "This area is always vulnerable to attacks. Sometimes rockets are lobbed at us. Sometimes we are targeted by bombs."

              Some drivers said paramilitary troops had been deployed to protect their convoys since the closures, but others were left without any additional protection. Even those who did receive troops did not feel safe.

              "If there is an attack, what can five or six troops do?" said Niamatullah Khan, a fuel truck driver who was parked with 35 other vehicles at a restaurant about 125 miles, or 200 kilometers, from Chaman.

              NATO uses routes through Pakistan for almost half of its shipments of non-lethal supplies for its troops in Afghanistan, including fuel, food and clothes. Critical supplies like ammunition are airlifted directly to Afghan air bases.

              NATO has built a stockpile of military and other supplies that could keep operations running at their current level for several months even with the two crossings closed, said a NATO official closely involved with the Afghan war, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

              NATO once shipped about 80 percent of its non-lethal supplies through Pakistan. It has reduced that proportion by going through Central Asia. It could send more that way, but that would make NATO heavily dependent on Russia at a time when ties with Moscow are increasingly strained.

              Pakistan also gave the U.S. 15 days to vacate Shamsi Air Base in Baluchistan. The U.S. uses it to service drone aircraft targeting al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Pakistan's tribal region when weather problems or mechanical trouble keeps the drones from returning to their bases in Afghanistan, U.S. and Pakistani officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

              The drone strikes are very unpopular in Pakistan, and Pakistani military and civilian leaders say publicly that the U.S. carries them out without their permission. But privately, they allow them to go on, and even help with targeting for some of them.

              ___

              Faiez reported from Kabul. Associated Press writers Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, Abdul Sattar in Quetta, Pakistan, Matiullah Achakzai in Chaman, Deb Riechmann in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Slobodan Lekic in Brussels contributed to this report.
              To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

              Comment


              • #8
                The PA does the same thing on the LOC with us. They fire are us and we fire back. The calibre is restricted to small arms mainly (MMGs/ HMGs), no heavy mortars or arty (unless things are realy bad between us).

                They must have tried to give covering fire to their Talib buddies and got platered in return.

                Cheers!...on the rocks!!

                Comment


                • #9
                  American and Afghan troops were being attacked.

                  Afghans say commando unit was attacked before airstrike was called on Pakistan

                  View Photo Gallery —  Disagreements underscore fissures between the U.S and Pakistan amid efforts to engineer a settlement to the war in Afghanistan.
                  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/afg ... ory_1.html

                  By Karen DeYoung and Joshua Partlow, Updated: Monday, November 28, 8:32 PM

                  The latest U.S.-Pakistan crisis threatened Monday to undo months of efforts to mend an increasingly frayed relationship and to undermine the Obama administration’s strategy for gradually ending the war in Afghanistan.

                  Administration officials did not respond to Pakistani demands for an apology for the cross-border U.S. airstrike that killed at least 24 Pakistani soldiers early Saturday. Instead, they expressed condolences for the loss of life while saying that the facts about what happened were under investigation.

                  Both sides said they believed they were attacking insurgents along the border. A senior Pakistani defense official acknowledged that Pakistani troops fired first, sending a flare, followed by mortar and machine-gun fire, toward what he said was “suspicious activity” in the brush-covered area below their high-altitude outpost barely 500 yards from the border.

                  According to Afghan security officials, their commandos were engaged with U.S. Special Operations troops in a nighttime raid against suspected Taliban insurgents when they came under cross-border fire and called in an airstrike.

                  Despite extensive coordination mechanisms set up to prevent such encounters, the U.S. military failed to respond to Pakistani alerts that its troops were being bombed, said the Pakistani defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue on the record.

                  “We told them, hold your horses, these are ours,” the official said. While repeated urgent appeals went up the coalition chain of command, he said, the airstrike continued for an hour and a half against two Pakistani border positions and a contingent of troops.

                  Administration and U.S. defense officials raised the possibility of a different set of circumstances but declined to elaborate. “Where we are is that we’ve regretted the loss of life and said there should be an investigation,” said a U.S. official who agreed to speak about the tense situation only on the condition of anonymity. “We've just got to put one foot in front of the other here.”

                  The Pentagon placed the U.S. Central Command in charge of the inquiry, and Centcom’s commander, Gen. James N. Mattis, announced Monday that a Special Operations officer would head it. Air Force Brig. Gen. Stephen Clark was directed to include representatives of NATO and the Pakistani and Afghan governments on the investigation team and to report his conclusions by Dec. 23.

                  The investigation, however, risked being overtaken by events in Pakistan, where the government and military commanders are under strong pressure from the increasingly anti-American Pakistani public and the ranks of the army to end counterterrorism cooperation with the United States.

                  “You cannot win any war without the support of the masses,” Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told CNN. “We need the people with us.” Gilani said that “business as usual” with the United States could not continue.

                  Pakistan has blocked NATO supplies transiting to Afghanistan at two border crossings and threatened to withdraw from an international conference on Afghanistan next week in Germany. A small contingent of U.S. personnel at Shamsi air base in southern Pakistan was told to leave within 15 days.

                  Additional measures are expected to be announced after a Pakistani cabinet meeting Tuesday.

                  Relations were already fractured after a series of clashes this year, including the January shooting death of two Pakistanis in Lahore by a CIA contractor, the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May and public U.S. charges that Pakistan’s intelligence service has aided Afghan insurgent networks within its borders.

                  “You crawl back” from those incidents, the U.S. official said, “and then there is this. There is no question, this is the worst.”

                  The administration views Pakistani cooperation as crucial to its hopes of bringing Afghan insurgents to the negotiating table within the next year and developing a regional trade zone that could ultimately allow Afghanistan’s economy to prosper without massive foreign aid.

                  “This imperfect partnership is no longer enough to save Afghanistan,” said Moeed Yusuf, South Asia adviser at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He said President Obama’s plans to withdraw nearly 100,000 combat troops between next month and the end of 2014 require “an almost perfect coordination effort” with other elements of the administration’s strategy.

                  “I just don’t see how this is going to happen,” Yusuf said.

                  Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta issued a joint statement of condolence over the deaths, and CIA Director David H. Petraeus telephoned his Pakistani counterpart Sunday. “Our side says they don’t know the facts,” said a second U.S. official, who also declined to discuss the matter on the record. “The facts are undoubtedly that somebody messed up on both sides.”

                  A former U.S. official who closely follows events in the region said the Pakistani army’s 11th Corps command near the western border was informed that coalition operations would take place Friday night and Saturday morning in the Maya area of Afghanistan’s Konar province. Pakistan says no such notification was given.

                  Afghan security officials said Monday that the Special Operations mission was targeting training bases and hideouts of Taliban fighters. Insurgents there had regularly fired at a U.S. base in the area in the past, the officials said.

                  The Afghan officials said the coalition troops came under fire from the vicinity of the Pakistani bases, located in the Mohmand tribal areas, and they called in airstrikes in self-defense.

                  One senior Afghan police official said that after an initial gun battle, the insurgents retreated into a Pakistani post and began firing from there. “They started firing at the commandos, and they continued firing, so the air support had to come to their defense,” the official said.

                  The Pakistani defense official offered a sequence of events that differed in key aspects.

                  The Pakistani post, called Volcano, is clearly marked on grids shared with Afghan and coalition forces and flies the Pakistani flag. Its mission, the official said, is to prevent the return of Afghan insurgents that Pakistan has driven over the border. “We have repeatedly sensitized our friends [in Afghanistan] to this situation and asked their cooperation,” the official said.

                  Early Saturday, he said, Volcano “detected suspicious activity — sound and movement — in the vicinity. They are sitting there for the express purpose of stopping infiltration, so what do they do? They fire a few flares, a couple of mortar rounds and one or two bursts of heavy machine-gun fire in that direction.”

                  The Pakistani official added that “there was no return fire” from the ground. He dismissed suggestions by U.S. officials that the subsequent strike on Volcano and another post by U.S. attack helicopters and helicopter gunships was a case of mistaken identity provoked by Taliban forces in the area.

                  Even if the attack began that way, he said, “within a maximum of 10 or 15 minutes” the Americans should have known they were Pakistani military posts.

                  Partlow reported from Kabul. Staff writer Karin Brulliard in Islamabad, Pakistan, and special correspondents Sayed Salahuddin and Javed Hamdard in Kabul, Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad, and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.
                  To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Despite extensive coordination mechanisms set up to prevent such encounters, the U.S. military failed to respond to Pakistani alerts that its troops were being bombed, said the Pakistani defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue on the record.

                    “We told them, hold your horses, these are ours,” the official said. While repeated urgent appeals went up the coalition chain of command, he said, the airstrike continued for an hour and a half against two Pakistani border positions and a contingent of troops.
                    This is the curious bit. It wasn't just a border post but a company quarters that got hit and apparently the soldiers were asleep and that is presumably why the numbers were as high.

                    Administration and U.S. defense officials raised the possibility of a different set of circumstances but declined to elaborate.
                    Can't say anything until more is confirmed from the Afghan side.

                    The topic caused a 140+ pg thread on the def.pk forum, i gave up after a few pages. The lot there are certain this was an unprovoked attack.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      The Pak unit seems to be at fault. Who the hell fires mortars and HMGs to check for suspicious movement on the border? The hue and cry is 'coz they got clobbered.

                      Pakistan has asked China for help...what help have they asked for? - protection from the US. Are they going to have PLA units in Pakistan?

                      Cheers!...on the rocks!!

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Pakistan's prime minister warns United States

                        Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Tensions among Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States jumped a notch Monday, with Pakistan's prime minister warning there would be "no more business as usual" with Washington after NATO aircraft killed two dozen Pakistan troops.

                        Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told CNN in an exclusive interview that Pakistan is re-evaluating its relationship with the United States in light of the airstrike, which NATO called a "tragic unintended" event. He said the South Asian nation wants to maintain its relationship with the United States so long as there is mutual respect and respect for Pakistani sovereignty.

                        Asked directly if Pakistan is getting that respect, Gilani said: "At the moment not."

                        "If I can't protect the sovereignty of my country, how can we say that this is mutual respect and mutual interest?" he asked.
                        The Pakistani Taliban urged Pakistan to respond in kind to the airstrike, while a top adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned that Afghanistan and Pakistan could be on a path to conflict.

                        In his CNN interview, Gilani highlighted incidents such as the killing of the Pakistani troops and a U.S. raid into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden as violations of his country's sovereignty.

                        "You cannot win any war without the support of the masses ... and such sort of incidents makes people move away from this situation," he said.
                        Pakistan is a vital land supply route into Afghanistan for the United States and its allies, and a key partner in the battle against al Qaeda and its aligned jihadist movements. But Pakistani authorities turned back 300 trucks carrying NATO supplies and fuel into Afghanistan on Monday, and the prime minister said his government had not yet decided whether to boycott an upcoming Bonn conference on the future of Afghanistan.

                        Details of Saturday's deadly raid remained unclear Monday, and the chief of U.S. forces in the region named an Air Force general from the military's Special Operations Command to lead an investigation. Gen. James Mattis ordered the investigating officer, Brig. Gen. Stephen Clark, to report back to him by December 23.
                        According to two senior U.S. officials with direct knowledge of initial reporting on the incident, the probe is focusing on what coordination failures occurred before the airstrike.

                        One of the officials said initial reports indicate U.S. and Afghan forces said shots were fired across the border from Pakistan, noting that it is a known tactic of insurgents to fire into Afghanistan from very close to Pakistan border checkpoints because they believe it will give them sanctuary. The United States believes the Pakistanis "were called" before NATO opened fire, the official said, but he added that "at this point, we just don't know exactly what coordination was done."
                        A NATO official said Afghan troops were working with elements of U.S. Special Operations forces in a combined mission on the Afghan side of the border.

                        Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas denied the reports that Pakistani troops had prompted the attack Saturday by firing on the NATO helicopters. Speaking by phone to Pakistan's Geo TV News, Abbas said NATO helicopters fired first on the Pakistani military checkpoints.

                        Abbas said the soldiers notified Pakistani military headquarters, which informed NATO authorities immediately. The spokesman said Pakistani soldiers fired at the NATO aircraft in retaliation.

                        Speaking in London, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, acknowledged that the U.S.-Pakistani relationship was "troubled." But he suggested it would survive once the two nations work through the "real tragedy" of the Pakistani deaths.

                        "We've had other moments before," Dempsey said. "I'm hopeful that with the relationships we've built leader-to-leader and worked at over the past years, that we can find our way forward. But I understand the anger. I understand the concern."

                        The White House offered its condolences to Pakistan, while State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Washington was concerned about the impact the incident could have on relations with Pakistan.

                        "The relationship is vitally important to both countries. We both face a shared threat from extremists. ... We're taking this very seriously," he said.
                        A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity told CNN that Pakistan remains a "critical" partner in counterterrorism, "and we do not anticipate significant changes in that relationship."

                        The Pakistani Taliban appeared to try to widen the rift Monday. A spokesman for the fundamentalist Islamic movement, Ihsanullah Ihsan, said in a phone call to CNN that the U.S. will infringe on Pakistan's sovereignty and continue operations on Pakistani soil in the coming days.

                        Ihsan said Pakistan must respond in kind to the NATO attacks, and he warned that the Pakistani Taliban will continue jihad as long as Pakistan remains an ally of the United States.

                        In Kabul, meanwhile, a senior adviser to President Karzai said Afghanistan and Pakistan may be on a course toward military conflict.

                        Ashraf Ghani said the link between Pakistan and the assassination of a former Afghan president had united his country "against interference."

                        Ghani accused Pakistan of harboring and assisting the insurgency in Afghanistan, and said his country's neighbor probably helped the suicide bomber who killed former Afghan President Burhanudin Rabbani in September.

                        "The assassination of President Rabbani has gelled the nation together against interference. And one or two more actions could put us in an irreversible course (toward) conflict. And we've shown through our history that we are a match for any invader," he said.

                        The two nations have been trading accusations in the border regions in the past few months, with Pakistan accusing the Afghans of harboring militants and Afghanistan claiming Pakistani shells have hit Afghan territory.

                        But on Sunday, a spokesman for Karzai urged Pakistan to come to the Bonn conference, which is being billed as a chance to start a reconciliation process in Afghanistan.

                        "We want Pakistan to participate in that. We want Pakistan to be part of the solution in Afghanistan," Aimal Faizi said.
                        No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

                        To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

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                        • #13
                          As far as it being some sneak/pre-emptive attack, ridiculous. They'll KNOW if and when that comes and it won't be a single strike on a lonely outpost.

                          Regardless of the how & why of this incident, the fallout is going to be severe, IMO. Relations, what they were, were already extremely shaky.

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                          • #14
                            One element of that fallout is Pakistan is going to boycott the upcoming Bonn conference on Afghanistan.

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                            • #15
                              Its good to know the Brits aint the only victims of "friendly" fire . :whome:
                              Last edited by tankie; 29 Nov 11,, 17:42.

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