Strain in ties as US launches ground raids inside Pakistan

4 hours ago

Ashfaq Parvez Kayani

Pakistani Islamists at an anti-US demonstration

Pakistani Shiite Muslim burning a US flag

WASHINGTON (AFP) "” US ties with "war on terror" ally Pakistan are strained after US commandos unilaterally launched ground assaults on militants on Pakistani soil, drawing fire from the military chief in Islamabad.

"There is strain in the bilateral relationship but on the plus side, both sides are speaking honestly to each other about what it is we need," a US administration official told AFP Thursday.

The official virtually confirmed that US-led coalition ground troops in Afghanistan had been given the green light to undertake unilateral cross border operations against militants in Pakistan.

The first such foray on September 4 left two dozen suspected Al-Qaeda fighters dead, US reports said.

But Pakistan insists civilians were killed in the raid and Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Kayani described it as a reckless move which would "only help the militants and further fuel the militancy in the area."

The US official said Washington has been wanting to "sort of free the hands of the military commanders on the Afghan side," for months.

This was "to give them greater ability to seize the opportunities when they arise because frankly we have plenty of examples of opportunities we were unable to seize," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The New York Times newspaper reported Thursday that US President George W. Bush secretly approved orders in June allowing US forces to conduct ground operations in Pakistan without Islamabad's prior approval.

The White House refused to confirm the report.

A day earlier, Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Kayani strongly criticized the maiden cross border raid last week, reportedly by two dozen US commandos supported by an AC-130 gunship.

"The sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country will be defended at all cost and no external force is allowed to conduct operations inside Pakistan," said the usually soft-spoken and low-profile Kayani.

But the US official said Washington was frustrated with "delays and sometimes non-answers" from Islamabad regarding "actionable intelligence" on militant movements in the tribal areas in Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan, where Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants were believed hiding.

In addition, there was lack of Pakistani action on a comprehensive counter insurgency strategy in the suspected terrorist hideouts, he said.

"We've been clear, we've been frank about the paramount importance of preventing the extremist elements from continuing to consolidate in the tribal areas," he said.

The US-Pakistan strains appeared just two weeks after Kayani met the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff Admiral Michael Mullen together with their top military officers in a US aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean to discuss counter terrorism strategies.

Mullen said Wednesday he had ordered the military to draw up a new strategy that encompasses insurgent safe havens in Pakistan.

"I think probably there was a decision made (by the United States) that 'enough is enough' and they needed to take these steps in order to try to take care of the problem on their own," said Lisa Curtis, a former senior advisor on South Asian issues in the State Department.

The move, she said, could be attributed to Pakistan's attempt to forge peace deals with militants in the tribal areas recently that followed heavy casualties suffered by US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Information linking Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, known as the ISI, to a deadly blast at the Indian embassy in Afghanistan in July could be another factor that led to the new action, said Curtis, a South Asia expert at Washington-based Heritage Foundation.

Analysts at the CIA and other US spy and security agencies believe not only that the embassy bombing was aided by ISI operatives, but also that the highest levels of Pakistan's security apparatus -- including Kayani -- had knowledge of the plot, The New York Times reported Thursday.

"It's very difficult to imagine he was not aware," it quoted a senior American official as saying of Kayani.

The CIA has for years fired missiles at militants inside Pakistan from remotely piloted Predator aircraft but the new ground raids on the territory of a key ally without permission highlighted a more aggressive US stand.

"I think this is definitely an escalation from the US side, there is a big difference between predator, missile strikes and actually having boots on the ground without coordinating first with the Pakistani government," Curtis said.

Controversies Surrounding Direct US Operations in Pakistan

Pakistan Did Not Agree to New Rules, Officials Say
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, September 12, 2008; A10

New rules of engagement authorizing U.S. ground attacks inside Pakistan, signed by President Bush in July, were not agreed to by that country's civilian government or its military, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, the Pakistani army's chief of staff, was informed last month by senior U.S. defense officials that if Pakistan failed to stem the flow of Taliban and other militant fighters into Afghanistan, the United States would adopt a new strategy, one allowing ground strikes on targeted insurgent encampments. A senior Pakistani official said that Kiyani believed the strategy was still under discussion and that Pakistan's counterinsurgency performance was improving.

News of Bush's order, following a strike last week by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos on a village about 20 miles inside Pakistan, brought denunciation yesterday from Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, who echoed Kiyani's earlier charge that the attack had violated Pakistani sovereignty.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said at a news conference in Kabul that he approved of the new U.S. strategy, citing the need to "remove and destroy" insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan. But NATO said it had no intention of sending any of the 48,000 troops under its command in Afghanistan across the border. NATO's U.N. mandate does not include "ground or air incursions . . . into Pakistani territory," said spokesman James Appathurai.

Nearly 31,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, divided between the NATO command and a separate force under the U.S. Central Command.

A senior European official said that the NATO allies shared U.S. concern over the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and were aware new U.S. rules were under consideration, but that they were unaware the rules had been approved. Bush's July order, first reported yesterday by the New York Times, was confirmed by several U.S. officials.

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, said U.S. officials assured him yesterday that "no such order had been given." The United States, he said, "respects Pakistan's sovereignty."

The senior European official called the implementation of the new strategy "peculiar," since its timing coincided with this week's inauguration of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

"If you're going to invade another country . . . without their permission, after you've just spent eight years trying to get a democratic government in place, it strikes me as kind of confused politics," the official said.

Zardari plans to meet with Bush this month, either in Washington or in New York at the U.N. General Assembly, U.S. officials said.

Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that he had called for an overhaul of U.S. strategy, including greater U.S. military involvement in Pakistan's tribal areas, but gave no indication that orders had already been given.

"I'm not convinced that we're winning it in Afghanistan," Mullen told the House Armed Services Committee. But, he added, "I'm convinced we can."

"That is why I intend to commission and have looked -- are looking -- I'm looking at a new, more comprehensive military strategy for the region that covers both sides of that border," Mullen said. "That is why I pressed hard on my counterparts in Pakistan to do more against extremists and to let us do more to help them."

Mullen and other senior U.S. military officials have met repeatedly with Kiyani to urge a more robust offensive to roust Taliban, al-Qaeda and other militant fighters from safe havens in the rugged Pakistani border region.

Gillani, who heads Pakistan's first democratic government since 1999, told Bush during a Washington visit in July that he needed more time to implement an economic development strategy to pacify the border region.

But with rising troop deaths in Afghanistan, U.S. patience has run thin. On Tuesday, Bush announced he would send an additional Army combat brigade to Afghanistan early next year.

Previous military rules of engagement, agreed to by Pakistan, allowed U.S. forces to travel up to six miles across the border if they were in "hot pursuit" of fighters chased from inside Afghanistan. The senior Pakistani official said that Kiyani was told last month that failure to increase the tempo of Pakistani military operations and provide better intelligence for American cross-border air attacks could result in new rules.

"There was a conditionality," the Pakistani official said. "If we take care of certain things on our side, then the rules don't change." Improvements were "already being put into place," he said, attributing several recent U.S. strikes with Predator unmanned aircraft to Pakistani intelligence, and citing an attack this week by Pakistani security forces in the tribal region of Bajaur that reportedly left 100 fighters dead.

But a U.S. official, one of several who discussed the sensitive situation on the condition of anonymity, said that as far as the United States was concerned, "most things have been settled in terms of how we're going to proceed."

Official: Bush OK'd Raids into Pakistan

by CNN

Published: September 11, 2008

President Bush authorized U.S. special forces to conduct ground assaults inside Pakistan without seeking Islamabad's permission first, a senior American intelligence official said Thursday.

"We have had the president's OK for months," said the official, who declined to be identified because the order is classified. "It is my understanding that the Pakistanis are well aware of the change."

The official would not elaborate on the exact nature of the order.

The official said Pakistan's leaders will be notified during an assault or after the fact, depending on the situation but "most definitely after a decision has been made and things set in motion."

National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe declined to comment on the report.

Pakistan's ambassador to the United States said he had been "assured at the highest level by the U.S. government that no such orders exist," and that Pakistan would be very displeased if they did.

"We will not allow foreign troops on Pakistani soil under any condition," Ambassador Husain Haqqani said.

The United States is concerned that Taliban and al Qaeda forces operate with relative impunity in tribal areas along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, and use those areas as a staging ground to attack U.S. forces and their allies inside Afghanistan.

The intelligence official's revelation comes after what Pakistan said was a September 3 incursion by U.S. forces into the country. A senior U.S. official said last week that U.S. helicopters dropped troops in the village of Angoor Adda in South Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan.

Local media reports said the troops came out of a chopper and fired on civilians. The U.S. official who spoke about the operation said a small number of women and children may have been in the immediate vicinity, but when the mission began, "everybody came out firing" from the compound.

Pakistan summoned the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad to complain about the incident, which it said killed 15 civilians. It called the raid "reckless."

Haqqani on Thursday insisted Pakistan would handle security within its borders.

"We have been assured that the United States ... fully understands that the most effective means of fighting terrorism would be to allow Pakistani military forces to operate on the Pakistani side, while letting international forces and Afghan forces operate on the Afghan side," he said.

Haqqani said unauthorized U.S. operations inside Pakistan would only harm relations between the two countries and added that the September 3 incursion was counterproductive.

"The kind of operation that we saw on the third of September is certainly not acceptable to the Pakistani people or the Pakistani government, and it does not advance the cause of the war against terror. It enrages the people of Pakistan," he said.

On Wednesday, Pakistan's top general, reacting to the September 3 operation, also said no foreign forces would be allowed to conduct operations there.

Pakistan's "territorial integrity ... will be defended at all cost and no external force is allowed to conduct operations ... inside Pakistan," according to a military statement attributed to Chief of Army Staff Gen. Parvez Kayani, who succeeded Pervez Musharraf after he stepped down as Pakistan's army chief last year.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that the United States and Pakistan must increase cooperation to battle al Qaeda and Taliban militants that are using areas along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan as a safe haven.

Mullen stressed that Afghanistan can't be referenced without "speaking of Pakistan," where, he said, the militant groups collaborate and communicate better, launch more sophisticated attacks, employ foreign fighters and use civilians as human shields.

"In my view, these two nations are inextricably linked in a common insurgency that crosses the border between them," he said, adding that he plans "to commission a new, more comprehensive strategy for the region, one that covers both sides of the border."