Pakistani troops have supposedly fired at two U.S. helicopters attempting to cross the border into North Waziristan from Khost, making it the second time a force was “repelled” at the border in as many months.
But let’s take a deep breath. They didn’t fire “at” the helicopters—an apparently joint-Army/Frontier Corps force fired into the air as a warning, and the helicopters turned back. Twice. In itself, this is interesting, since the FC and the Army haven’t always played nicely in recent years (the FC is run by the Ministry of the Interior, not the Army).
Similarly, both Armies are expressing ignorance of what actually happened. Which can be taken two ways: a political decision not to admit that the U.S. might have tacit permission to enter the FATA and actually does so, or it could be a Special Operations unit operating without properly informing OEF (which happens more than we care to admit).
Which is all another way of saying we really don’t know what’s going on there. But there is a fundamental contradiction in place, whereby the Pakistani government has demonstrated an inability to stem cross-border attacks while also decrying retaliatory actions. And where these protestations stem from domestic political concerns, which require any government to be sufficiently antagonistic to the U.S. while also requiring American assistance to clean up its border areas. But the Americans don’t seem particularly able to navigate the tribal soup the British only kind of sort of figured out a hundred years ago.
Expect more on this in the coming weeks.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
{ 3 comments }
“or it could be a Special Operations unit operating without properly informing OEF”
Wait, you mean they’re not only NOT informing ISAF, they’re not even part of OEF, let alone inform them?!
Now THAT’S a coherent military strategy …
TCHe: Its becoming more and more clear that the Bush twist to COIN is to add to the hearts and mind idea a liberal sprinkling of independent operators who go “hunt and kill” missions completely outside the chains of regular command. What this says about the future of unified field command I cant say, but it seems omnious to me that there seems to be death squads/Hunter squads who take orders from unknown operators in Washington. Especially if they follow the Bush doctrine of not respecting sovereign borders. It seems the whole concept of military and civil separation of responsibility is slipping. Geneva conventions? So 1990s.
“Which can be taken two ways: a political decision not to admit that the U.S. might have tacit permission to enter the FATA and actually does so..”
Now that’s being highly optimistic.