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Why Are They Patrolling On The Border Line
Memogate and the U.S. attack on the Pakistani border post that killed 28 Pakistani soldier increases the chance of Imran Khan's Tehrik-e-Insaaf (Movement for Justice) party to win the next Pakistani election. Kahn is against the U.S. Pakistan alliance. It also increases the risk of a coup by some lower rank officers in Pakistan.
This is all well known by the U.S. and that is why there is something with the deadly attack which I do not get:
A NATO spokesman, Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, offered details suggesting that allied and Afghan troops operating near the border came under fire from unknown enemies and summoned coalition warplanes for help.
“In the early night hours of this morning, a force consisting of Afghan forces and coalition forces, in the eastern border area where the Durand Line is not always 100 percent clear, got involved in a firefight,” General Jacobson said […]
“Air force was called in into this activity,” he said, “and we have to look into this situation of what actually happened on the ground.”
The Pakistani border post that was attacked is on a high point some 1.5 miles within Pakistani territory. The actual border line is not always clear, there are no markings, and at 2:00am in the middle of the night no patrol in the area will be able to tell on which side of the border it really is.
So why are the U.S. and Afghan forces patrolling there at all?
Why not pull back the troops like five miles away from the border and establish the surveillance and defense line against infiltrations from Pakistan there? Except where the roads cross the border there is nothing of value or interest in the immediate border area. A pull back would allow for full use of indirect weapons (mortar, planes etc) against any infiltrating enemy while being sure that no Pakistani land and troops will get hurt in such a response.
Declare a no man's land and free fire zone in the buffer on the Afghan side and have at it. Wouldn't that be the sensible thing to do if one wants to avoid such incidence with Pakistan?
Then again – maybe such incidents are intended. But for what purpose?
Based on all the fragmentary reporting so far across a range of open sources, this is how the ‘incident’ ‘may’ have gone down:
Around midnight, within Afghanistan but adjacent the Pakistani border, a joint Afghan-US special forces patrol under US Command, has a brief firefight with some Taliban insurgents armed with MG’s & mortars, checks with Pakistani Command that no Pakistani forces are in the immediate area, calls in some ground support strikes.
The band of Taliban insurgents successfully disengage/evade and give them the slip, SF patrol conducts a hot pursuit towards or even over the Afghan-Pakistan border.
SF patrol then ends up some distance from the initial engagement, apparently outside their mandate, (probably) on the wrong(?) side of the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Approximately 2:00-2:20AM, the US SF patrol commander sights two concrete fixed emplacements(positions) inclusive of tripod mounted heavy weapons (MGs ?) (within Pakistan proper), falsely assumes they are Taliban positions and (without having been directly engaged(?) (ie fired upon) by the outposts), stands off and requests and directs ground support strikes by at least two US Apache helicopter Gunships and subsequently an USAF AC-130 Gunship (absolutely lethal) to take out them Taliban terr’sts.
The ground support strike requests and their specific co-ordinates would have to have been explicitly individually approved by higher US-NATO HQ. Pakistan was not contacted for approval of the strikes on the outposts ‘specific’ co-ordinates. Outposts specific co-ordinates previously supplied to US-NATO, marked on NATO maps, noted in handheld and aircraft GPS units and identified/known as Pakistani regular army outposts/positions(ignored ?).
Once engaged by strike aircraft, US-NATO command ignore/fail to respond to repeated Pakistani Unit, HQ and Command requests to cease fire on the outposts, cease the strikes, which are to no avail.
The Pakistani troops that aren’t already dead or wounded likely reply with limited, ineffective small arms fire. Additional Pakistani regular troops moving up to the outposts are sighted, assumed to be more Taliban terr’sts and are also targetted by US strike aircraft, adding to the confusion and carnage.
It’s now about 4:00AM. From start to finish the directed strikes, the ‘incident’, occurs over approximately a two hour period.
End result, no dead Taliban terr’sts, Pakistan has two fixed border outposts utterly destroyed, with the loss of 28 regular soldiers dead and 14 more wounded, many severely, amongst the outposts and nearby, by US ordnance fired from US aircraft under the direction of a US patrol commander with the approval of US-NATO higher HQ. The KIA count could have easily been much higher. SF patrol casualties, probably nil ?
Afghan-US SF patrol saddles up on the choppers and heads back to base for a mission debrief and hot breakfast. A job well done, a few less terr’sts around.
Within only a few hours, by mid-morning, US-NATO Commands and White House have a handle on the key details. Pakistani Military Command and Government also, and are literally, enraged …
If not a deliberate, informed, directed policy action … then all in all, at the very least multiple counts of criminal negligence or gross incompetence or indifference, etc, a cavalier regard for life (non caucasian) and an unforgivable act of murderous hubris against an ally, followed by a cover-up.
Little wonder the extended deafening silence, poorly co-ordinated mis and dis-information from anonymous sources, hollow proforma statements of ‘regret’ and utter confusion as to how to hide/bury/conceal or spin this, ‘incident’.
The only thing more accurate and deadly than enemy fire, is friendly fire (to paraphrase Murphys Rules of Combat)
Posted by: Outraged | Nov 29 2011 16:42 utc | 33
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