The slaying in a US airstrike on Tuesday of 11 Pakistani paramilitary troops on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border is an outrage which demonstrates the bitter failings of the Bush White House foreign policy. Put bluntly, the Americans have still not learned to respect their allies and understand that those allies cannot fall into precise steps behind Washington’s lead in the war against terror.
More than a thousand Pakistani troops have perished fighting Taleban militants and their local supporters in the North West Frontier region bordering Afghanistan. President Pervez Musharraf tried the big stick to smash Taleban support and failed. Now Pakistan’s new coalition government is taking the sensible approach of seeking to negotiate with the local tribes in order to end their armed confrontation with Islamabad and, by extension, their support for the Taleban.
Whatever Washington’s suspicions, there may still be Taleban sympathizers in the Pakistan Army and in particular, its intelligence services, no one can doubt the country’s deep opposition to terrorism. A thousand dead soldiers are surely proof enough of that.
This most recent deadly attack was, therefore, a blatant violation of the territory of a patient and long-suffering US ally. Rightly described by a senior Pakistan officer as “a cowardly attack,” it has probably seriously damaged relations between Islamabad and Washington. President Musharraf may have turned a blind eye to US incursions into his country when he held the reins of power, but such activities never were — and never can be — acceptable.
Bush’s insistence on the use of force as the only solution to what he calls international terror continues to undermine his own weakened position, while arguably making the terrorists stronger and their supporters angrier and therefore more obdurate. It is also likely to increase the pressures on the beleaguered Afghan administration of President Hamid Karzai, whose own relations with Pakistan remain fragile. Bush has made the campaign in the Afghan border region with its eastern neighbor largely a US effort into which all the vast resources of American intelligence, satellite cameras and reconnaissance drones have been poured. It thus remains inexplicable that a Pakistani border post with its unfortunate occupants should have been targeted for a US airstrike. At the very least, Washington should have issued an immediate apology along with an explanation of the error — if indeed error it was. Instead in the hours following news of the attack, there has been a sinister silence. President Bush, on the other hand, has been happy to rabbit on about one of his obsessions — Iran and its nuclear program. On his valedictory tour of Europe, he yesterday took the opportunity during his visit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel to warn that if Iran does not comply with demands for full disclosure of its program, “all options” were still on the table.
He could have taken the opportunity instead to regret the loss of Pakistani lives Tuesday and promise a full investigation. But true to form, he did not. Yet again this most blinkered of US presidents proved that he fully deserves to be known as “Mr. Missed Opportunity.”
