New York Times
January 24, 2012
Pakistan Rejects U.S. Account Of Clash That Ended With Airstrike
By Declan Walsh

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s military issued an uncompromising formal rejection on Monday of the United States report last month on a contentious border exchange of fire that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, dealing a fresh blow to American hopes of reviving a troubled strategic relationship.

In a statement, Pakistan’s military press office described the American account of the Nov. 26 exchange as “factually not correct,” accused the United States of failing to share information “at any level,” and rejected any responsibility for the bloody debacle. In the exchange, American AC-130 gunships flew two miles into Pakistani airspace to return fire after Pakistani troops attacked an American-Afghan ground patrol across the border in Afghanistan.

It was the Pakistani military’s first public comment on the American report since immediately rejecting it when it was released nearly a month ago.

The American investigation, led by Brig. Gen. Stephen Clark of the Air Force, described a chain of errors, delays and conflicting protocols between American and NATO troops that ultimately prevented the United States warplanes from identifying the Pakistanis as friendly forces until 24 were dead and 13 others were wounded.

The inquiry also blamed Pakistan, saying its military had failed to inform NATO of the location of new military posts along the long, often poorly demarcated border.

Pakistan’s military refused to cooperate with the American inquiry, claiming that previous American investigations of disputed border attacks had been biased. The Pakistani military on Monday published its own 25-page report, described in the title as “Pakistan’s perspective” on General Clark’s report.

The military rejected American criticism as “unjustified and unacceptable,” adding that the United States and NATO had “violated all mutually agreed procedures” for border operations.

Pakistani fury is a product of genuine public outrage at the killings, which American officials privately admit were largely their fault, and deep-rooted hostility to the United States.

But it is also driven by a desire on the part of the Pakistani military to deflect attention from their embarrassment about the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2. “They’ve been preparing this a long time,” a senior American official said. “It is not coming out of the blue.”

In retaliation for the November killings, Pakistan has blocked NATO supply lines passing through its territory, which are estimated to account for 40 to 60 percent of supplies reaching Western troops in Afghanistan. Pakistani military officials say that when the supply lines are re-opened, NATO military goods will be subject to an as-yet-undetermined transit tariff.

Amid the crisis, Pakistan has also frozen diplomatic relations in public, although American officials say that cooperation continues at lower levels.

Pakistani lawmakers are engaged in a policy review aimed at reorganizing the relationship based on a hard-nosed assessment of each side’s interests.

The lower and upper houses of Parliament are expected to debate the new policy in a special joint session in late January. The senior American official said the Obama administration was engaged in “strategic patience.”

“They hope to come to us by early February and say, ‘We are ready to talk,’ ” he said. “We are waiting until they are ready to talk. Now they appear to be getting closer to that place.”

The crisis has also affected C.I.A. operations in Pakistan’s tribal belt. In December, the Pakistani military ejected American operations from an air base in western Baluchistan Province used to mount drone strikes against militant targets.

The drone attacks stopped in December, but resumed Jan. 10. The latest strike was Monday morning in North Waziristan, in a village called Deegan. Witnesses told The Associated Press that a drone fired several missiles at a house, killing four people.
Press reports in Pakistan have suggested that Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed in a Jan. 12 C.I.A. strike. But a senior Pakistani intelligence official said Monday that there was “no confirmation one way or the other.”

The troubled relationship has also hurt tentative American efforts to explore peace talks with Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents, as a major troop reduction scheduled for 2014 draws near.

The State Department’s envoy to the region, Marc Grossman, who is leading the effort, recently postponed a planned trip to Islamabad after Pakistani officials declined to meet with him.

In Kabul, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force declined to comment on the Pakistani report, but stressed that hard lessons had been learned.

The force was working off the recommendations in the American report to improve cross-border coordination and “ensure this type of incident does not ever occur again,” said the spokesman, Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings Jr.

“U.S. and I.S.A.F. are taking these recommendations and are moving forward toward full implementation,” he said.
Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting.

Pakistan Rejects U.S. Account Of Strike
By Karin Brulliard

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan on Monday sternly rejected a U.S. account of a deadly NATO airstrike in November, an incident that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at a post near the Afghan border and severely strained ties between the long-wary allies.

In a terse formal report, the Pakistani military maintained its previously stated position that coalition forces conducting a ground raid in Afghanistan carried sole blame for a clash that it said was “deliberate at some level.”

The Pakistani report came one month after a Pentagon investigation attributed the exchange to miscommunications rooted in mutual mistrust but said NATO forces acted in justifiable self-defense.

The incident plunged a hobbling U.S.-Pakistan relationship to new depths and underscored the gulf in communication between NATO troops and the Pakistani military. In response, Pakistan closed its border crossings to NATO supply convoys, evicted the United States from a base used to support CIA drone strikes and suspended high-level meetings with U.S. officials.

Although it repeated points that Pakistani officials had already expressed, the Pakistani account suggested that relations with the United States are unlikely to bounce back soon. Countering the findings of the Pentagon investigation, Pakistan said it was “inconceivable” that the border posts fired upon were unknown to coalition troops. The report also charged that NATO officials violated agreed procedures by, among other things, failing to notify Pakistan about the ground operation.

U.S. officials have faulted Pakistan for firing on the NATO mission. The Pakistani report justified that action, arguing that Pakistani soldiers, upon detecting unidentified movement along a border regularly traversed by insurgents, had a right to fire warning shots at forces they could only conclude were hostile. That the exchange lasted nearly two hours despite Pakistani pleas to coalition counterparts revealed “deep, varied and systemic” failures by NATO, the report said.

Pakistani and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan have worked for years to coordinate operations along the militant-riddled and mountainous frontier, but both sides complain about insurgent infiltration and firing from the other side. The Pakistani report said it is “obvious to the Pakistan military that the entire coordination mechanism has been reduced to an exercise in futility.”

Pakistan and the United States have been reevaluating the terms and expectations of their strategic partnership. Despite the public freeze, officials on both sides say relations are slowly improving, as is cooperation between NATO, Afghan and Pakistani troops stationed at joint centers along the remote border area. Pakistani officials say they expect to reopen the NATO supply routes but will impose higher taxes.

Drone strikes, which the United States stopped carrying out in the wake of the border clash, resumed two weeks ago. On Monday, an alleged drone attack in the North Waziristan tribal region killed at least four people, news services reported.

In Pakistan, A Military Coup Looms But Does Not Occur
By Karin Brulliard

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – Just days ago, the rumblings of a familiar process seemed underway in Pakistan: The squeezed civilian government berated the looming military. The army darkly warned of consequences. A new general assumed control of a brigade known for helping to oust past governments. The president flew overseas.

A coup d’etat was coming, the Pakistani media screamed. Except that it did not. Instead, Pakistan again defaulted to what is also becoming a familiar ritual. Having survived the forecast collapse, the government lurched closer to becoming the first-ever elected regime to finish its term. And public debate ensued about whether Pakistan is witnessing a veiled military power grab – or whether this coup-prone nation’s nascent democracy might be growing real roots.

“There is an enlarged democratic space,” said Raza Rumi, a newspaper columnist who counts himself among the optimists. “So this is an interesting moment. The government may or may not survive . . . but the assertion of the civilians is inspiring.”
The current political crises, involving a memo scandal and graft allegations, feature elements that have helped bring down previous civilian governments: avaricious politicians, baying opposition parties, pliant judges and a failing economy that is said to worry the generals.

But many analysts say the tools of past coups, such as tanks and state media blackouts, could not work in today’s Pakistan, where the news media and the judiciary have emerged as new power centers. That has given Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari surprising confidence to publicly challenge the army in what feels like a heavily watched bluffing game. One senior official in the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, confidently said the party does not “see the chances of direct army intervention.”

The military, for starters, has its own problems. Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, chief of the Army, has strived to restore the armed forces’ public image since a decade of military rule ended in 2008, but it has faced unprecedented domestic criticism after the U.S. raid to kill Osama bin Laden. A resilient Islamist insurgency leaves generals little down time to manage the economy, said one military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

“The military is so overstretched and preoccupied fighting the militants,” said retired Lt. Gen. Talat Masood, a prominent defense analyst. “It’s a full-time occupation.”

Influence today is spread more widely than in past eras, analysts say. In recent years, Pakistan has sprouted a slew of sensationalist and scrappy news outlets that, while generally rabidly anti-government, would be reluctant to endorse a uniformed regime that could corral their reach and profits. Parliament has become less deferential to the military, and the main opposition party, led by Nawaz Sharif, is no friend of the army, which overthrew him in 1999.

The main coup deterrent, some argue, is an emboldened Supreme Court, which has assumed an activist, almost messianic public role. Like the media and the army, it has displayed clear antipathy toward the government by keenly pursuing alleged corruption cases. Those include dated money laundering allegations against Zardari, over which the court has threatened to dismiss Gilani.

But the court was also restored after a struggle against Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the former dictator, and appears unlikely to give legal blessing to a military takeover.

“This was not the case before. The courts were very happy and eager to play along with dictators,” Rumi said.

There are far gloomier analyses about the new roles of the media and the Supreme Court. Pakistani intelligence is widely believed to plant anti-government stories in the news media and intimidate journalists to prevent coverage that is critical of the military.

The court’s laser focus on government misdeeds – driven, its backers say, by a desire to return looted funds to public coffers – has led to accusations that it is doing the bidding of the military and carrying out a “judicial coup.” It is cheered on by Sharif’s opposition party, whose leaders have largely escaped the court’s scrutiny, as has the military.

Against that backdrop, some say the absence of military intervention is irrelevant. The government, hounded by the news media and courts, has been stuck in survival mode since day one, said Ayesha Siddiqa, a military analyst.

“People ask me if I think this government will complete its term. I say it’s immaterial now if it does or it doesn’t, because it has been made absolutely redundant,” Siddiqa said.

That the debate swirling here centers on a “clash of institutions” underscores the dysfunction Pakistan’s democratic setup: The army is a branch of the government that, officially, answers to Zardari. In practice, it has long maintained a grip over foreign and security policies – including some, such as the sponsorship of anti-India jihadist fighters, that have come to haunt Pakistan.

In its bid to survive, the government has spent three years doing little to challenge this arrangement. But it has lashed out recently, with Gilani issuing statements that count here as perilously provocative: Last month, the prime minister warned of a “state within a state” and questioned what kind of visa allowed bin Laden to live in Pakistan for years – a clear dig at the failure of Pakistani intelligence to identify the whereabouts of the world’s most wanted man.

In the bizarre chess match that the duel has become, some analysts and Pakistan People’s Party members say an outright coup would be the party’s preference. That would allow the party to cast itself as a martyr, a role it has cultivated over many years of battle with the military.

But as the government continues to duke it out with the army and the courts, the civilian leadership risks losing the tolerance of the public. For ordinary Pakistanis, the main concerns are rising prices, power shortages, unemployment and violence, which get scant attention in the halls of power.

For now, Gilani and Zardari seem to be betting on the generosity of people such as Arif Hayat, a civil engineer who took a break on a recent morning from shopping at an Islamabad market to practically spit insults about the government.

That civilian government, Hayat said, remains “not democratic,” unconcerned about ordinary Pakistanis and “only here to plunder.” But, he said, military rule is an unsavory alternative.

“It is only democracy that can change this country,” Hayat, 41, said “All the previous military rulers badly failed and created more problems for us.”

Khar, Munter discuss Pak-US ties

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar and US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter on Tuesday discussed the cracks in relations between the two allies after the Nato attack on a Pakistani border check post in November last year.
The two officials held a meeting here to discuss matters of mutual interests.

Khar informed Munter that the Parliamentary Committee on National Security (PCNS) had forwarded its recommendations to the prime minister relating to a review of ties with the US in the aftermath of the Nato border attack.

She told the envoy that a joint session of parliament was likely to be convened on the matter soon.

Meanwhile, India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan Sharat Sabharwal also held a separate meeting with Khar and exchanged views on restoration of peace between Pakistan and India.

Sabharwal told Khar that the Indian trade minister would visit Pakistan next month to bolster economic activities between the two neighbouring countries.