ANOTHER US airstrike in Pakistan, the fifth since the beginning of the month. And there are going to be more. That was confirmed just over a week ago by no less than the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen. He said there had to be a new military strategy that covers “both sides of that border.” It has been approved at the highest level. The BBC reports that it has evidence from sources inside the Pentagon that President Bush has authorized military raids against “militants” inside Pakistan without prior approval from the Pakistani government.
This is a dangerous development, both for the US and Pakistan. Public anger in Pakistan at American strikes has been growing since mid-June, when 11 Pakistani troops were killed at a border post, hit in airstrike during a US attack on Taleban positions nearby. Further strikes in which innocent civilians died substantially increased the resentment to the point where now, even if it is only Taleban who are killed and there are no civilian casualties, attitudes have changed radically. The raids have turned probably the majority of Pakistanis from being merely suspicious of the US into being bitterly anti-American. They see the war an American war for which they are paying the price. Many now question whether the militants should be under attack at all. Not only does that make it all the more difficult for the Pakistani armed forces in their fight against the Taleban, it plays straight into the hands of the militants. It is a recruiting sergeant for them.
If Pakistani public opinion cannot take out their resentment against the US — which it cannot — it is going to take it out on those it can. That is bad news for the government of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and the new president, Asif Ali Zardari. Both are well aware that public opinion turned against Prevez Musharraf because he was seen as Washington’s puppet. They cannot afford to be seen in the same light. But the more the Americans bomb, the more Pakistanis will blame them of incompetence for not being able to stop the attacks or of complicity in secretly approving them. That will further destabilize a country that has only just got over its last constitutional crisis and is struggling to deal with growing political violence.
Washington’s justification for its attacks is that Pakistan is not doing enough to combat what it calls the militants. Even if that were true, the US cannot take the law into its own hands and rampage into the territory of another country. Is that not what it accuses the Russians of doing in Georgia?
If fact, it is not true to say that the Pakistanis are not doing enough. A high-profile Pakistani military offensive against the militants has been under way in the Swat Valley and Bajaur. In August, some 500 militants were killed. Just two days ago, 20 militants were killed in fighting in Bajaur. The army had announced a Ramadan cease-fire but promised it would retaliate if attacked by militants.
The Americans are probably right in claiming that Al-Qaeda and the Taleban have regrouped and using bases in Pakistan to launch cross-border raids into Afghanistan. They are certainly right in thinking that there will be no peace in Afghanistan while that remains the case. But they have to let the Pakistanis deal with this. If they continue the raids, they risk not merely losing what dwindling support they have in Pakistan but, far worse, alienating the country so thoroughly than no government even vaguely sympathetic to the US and the West can survive there. The Americans are not looking at the bigger picture. They need to stop seeing the problem in military terms. But that probably cannot happen until the Bush administration departs.
