The incident on Saturday in which NATO airstrikes killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers at border outposts was an accident waiting to happen. In fact, similar accidents had already happened along the Afghan-Pakistani border, although with smaller death tolls. This most recent incident also has greater impact because it occurs at a moment when U.S.-Pakistani relations were already very bad and the Pakistani response will be more severe, including kicking the United States out of an airbase used to recover and service drones, cutting off NATO's supply lines for what will probably be a longer period than with previous interruptions and a possible Pakistani boycott of an international conference intended to address Afghanistan's future.
Regardless of what post-mortem inquiries uncover about the specific events on the ground that preceded the incident, the event had two fundamental causes. One is the convoluted and almost self-contradictory nature of what the war in Afghanistan has become, with lines of contention that defy logic. Militants based in Pakistan foray across the border to conduct operations in Afghanistan, while other militants—of similar ilk but organizationally separate—use the cover of chaos in Afghanistan as a base for operations in Pakistan. The rationale of a U.S.-led counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is to combat a terrorist group that has hardly anyone in Afghanistan. In the face of that last fact, the rationale sometimes instead becomes the security and stability of Pakistan, even though operations conducted as part of the counterinsurgency have if anything made things more difficult for Pakistani security forces. And the same Pakistani regime on behalf of whose stability the counterinsurgency is supposedly being waged maintains cooperative relationships with some of the very insurgents against whom the war is fought. With lines of contention like that, it is little wonder that confusion can bring about something like Saturday's lethal incident.
The second cause is that, even when the lines of contention are clearer, stuff happens in the fog of war—destructive, unintended stuff. The “friendly fire” incidents that have accounted for a proportion of casualties in each of America's recent wars are one indication of that. This is not a matter of ill-disciplined troops. It instead is a fact of life in war, one that applies even to the best led and most rigorously trained forces.
Two lessons follow. One is that there should be no straying from the exit path to get the United States out of the now-illogical war in Afghanistan. The other is that when contemplating any large-scale use of military force, the possibility of accidents like this—and whatever political or other cost to the United States flows from them—needs to be factored into the decision making. No such use of military force ever goes according to plan, and sometimes what is unplanned turns out to be most costly and consequential.
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ex-CIA station chief in Kabul agrees w/ you: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-e-f... - The situation in Pakistan has gone from bad to worse as a direct consequence of the U.S. war raging on the Afghan border. U.S. policy has now carried the Afghan war over the border into Pakistan with its incursions, drone bombings and assassinations -- the classic response to a failure to deal with insurgency in one country. Remember the invasion of Cambodia to save Vietnam?-- The deeply entrenched Islamic and tribal character of Pashtun rule in the Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan will not be transformed by invasion or war. The task requires probably several generations to start to change the deeply embedded social and psychological character of the area. War induces visceral and atavistic response.-- Pakistan is indeed now beginning to crack under the relentless pressure directly exerted by the U.S. Anti-American impulses in Pakistan are at high pitch, strengthening Islamic radicalism and forcing reluctant acquiescence to it even by non-Islamists.Only the withdrawal of American and NATO boots on the ground will begin to allow the process of near-frantic emotions to subside within Pakistan, and for the region to start to cool down. Pakistan is experienced in governance and is well able to deal with its own Islamists and tribalists under normal circumstances; until recently, Pakistani Islamists had one of the lowest rates of electoral success in the Muslim world.But U.S. policies have now driven local nationalism, xenophobia and Islamism to combined fever pitch. As Washington demands that Pakistan redeem failed American policies in Afghanistan, Islamabad can no longer manage its domestic crisis.The Pakistani army is more than capable of maintaining state power against tribal militias and to defend its own nukes. Only a convulsive nationalist revolutionary spirit could change that -- something most Pakistanis do not want. But Washington can still succeed in destabilizing Pakistan if it perpetuates its present hard-line strategies. A new chapter of military rule -- not what Pakistan needs -- will be the likely result, and even then Islamabad's basic policies will not change, except at the cosmetic level.In the end, only moderate Islamists themselves can prevail over the radicals whose main source of legitimacy comes from inciting popular resistance against the external invader. Sadly, U.S. forces and Islamist radicals are now approaching a state of co-dependency.
Come on Paul, be honest as you mostly have been in your analyses in the past. To doubt the US military's capability to corrrectly identify the shared locations of Pakistani posts along Pakistan - Afghanistan border (regardless of the difficulty of terrain and night time i.e. fog of war) tantamounts to undermining the cutting edge technology which they possess. Mind you, the same technology is used so precisely every second day by US drones to target even a moving car.Pakistanis believe, and have strong reasons to do so, that it was an intentional, well - deliberated and planned strike to give 'some' message to Pakistan. One cannot be so ruthless with a so - called 'Major non - NATO Ally', which has destroyed itself by siding with US in GWOT. This is not the way to treat the partners. Respect of Pakistan's soverignty and territorial integrity remains important for Pakistanis. It is callous, to say the least, to resort to such coercive strategy and to object to protests by Pakistan against this unprovoked and unjust strike by US forces. A serious introspection is required in US politico - military administration, if relations with an important ally are to be salvaged in this ongoing war; which US is so keen to end.