BRITAIN wouldn’t put up with, say, France sending bombers across the Channel to dump their payload on Dover in hopes of killing a criminal. The US wouldn’t condone the Mexican military marching into California to obliterate drug smugglers. And no nation worth its constitution or with even an iota of dignity would allow foreigners to cross its borders and incinerate innocent village folk in the name of combating terrorism. This is why I felt like cheering when I heard that the government of Pakistan has finally asserted its independence and made a firm stand.
Last week, US Special Forces invaded Pakistani airspace to launch an attack on a farm village that left 20 dead, including women, children and the elderly. Surviving villagers swear the assault occurred while everyone slept and insist none of the dead had any links with either the Taleban or Al-Qaeda. As far as the mourners are concerned, this was a wanton act of murder that has forever changed their lives.
Washington acknowledges the deed as well as the fact there may have been women and children among the casualties but claims the people greeted them with guns. That contradicts the villagers’ account but even if they did come out firing who can blame them? If armed men entered my home at night with obvious murderous intent and I happened to have a weapon at hand, I wouldn’t hesitate to protect my family by firing it. Wouldn’t everyone? Pakistan’s foreign minister described the slaughter as a violation of his country’s sovereignty, adding, “No important terrorist or high-value target” was taken out. “Innocent citizens, including women and children have been targeted,” he said. Pakistan’s lawmakers and military have also condemned the bloody incursion.
ISLAMABAD has repeatedly rejected comprising its sovereignty by inviting either US or NATO forces to operate on its soil while, at the same time, confirming its partnership in the global fight against militant extremism.
But now that the US has openly flouted this restriction and not only refused to apologize for the deaths but promised more of the same, the Pakistani government has retaliated by refusing to allow weapons and supplies destined for Afghanistan-based American and allied forces to cross its borders. There are those who say this was a move made to appease angry tribesmen calling for military retaliation.
Whether they’re right or not, there is no doubt that any government in Pakistan has to tread carefully between its duty to protect its people and the demands put upon it by its US ally to proactively flush “terrorists” out of its frontier regions.
Like President Musharraf before him, Pakistan’s new leader Asif Ali Zardari — who will be sworn into office today — will have to manage a balancing act between adhering to pro-Western policies to bolster Pakistan’s depressed economy and international clout while taking the temperature of his people’s mood and defending their sovereign rights.
The question is this. Is maintaining the popularity of his government and continuing good relations with the US that has showered his country with over $10 billion in aid over the past seven years mutually exclusive goals? They needn’t be if only Washington would be more respectful in its understanding of Pakistan’s border sensitivities and be willing to give due value to human life during its military operations.
The government of Afghanistan is faced with a similar dilemma, although as a nation that is still under occupation, it does not enjoy the luxury of choice.
Last month, US airstrikes stole the lives of 90 innocents — mainly women and children — in the province of Herat, as confirmed by UN investigators. This was initially denied by the Pentagon but now mobile phone videos have emerged showing gruesome footage of children’s corpses laid out in rows. As following the recent assault on Pakistan, the American military says it was fired upon. Many of those youngsters were toddlers and babies. Are we seriously to believe that they were toting guns?
President Hamid Karzai was distraught about this and similar incidents in the past and he has complained bitterly to his Washington backers, which have recently stepped up their anti-terrorist campaign in Afghanistan that often fails to discriminate between insurgents and ordinary Afghans. According to various aid agencies more than 1,000 civilians were killed during the period January — June this year. Why aren’t we outraged? If the Pakistani leadership tries to keep the White House happy for financial/economic considerations, the government of Hamid Karzai needs the US for its very survival. Moreover, without Western support Afghanistan’s reconstruction would be imperiled, foreign investment would disappear and the country would soon would be lawless and fractured by warlords. But what if Pakistan and Afghanistan made common cause and came together. Currently at loggerheads, which is the way that Western neoimperialists like it, the two countries could together tell the US and NATO to quit the neighborhood while assuring the international community that they will take their anti-terrorism responsibilities seriously. It’s time to ask what foreign armies are doing in the region and demand answers. The long-stated reason that they are there in search of a bearded troglodyte with a life-threatening kidney disease and his one-eyed motorbike-riding Taleban associate will no longer wash. The longer they stay, the more they kill. In the end nothing is achieved apart from an understandable increase in anti-Western sentiment.
How do you ask a mother or father, whose child’s legs have been amputated by US bombs, or those who are placing blackened corpses of their relatives in the ground to bless America and its friends?
