I’m not sure if this was actually a mistake or not.
(Reuters) – NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military outposts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing as many as 28 troops and plunging U.S.-Pakistan relations, already deeply frayed, further into crisis.
Pakistan retaliated by shutting down vital NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, used for sending in almost half of the alliance’s non-lethal materiel.
The outposts were right on the border which isn’t clearly demarcated. It could have been a case of mistaken identity. But it also could have been a carefully considered message to the Pakistani government to stop giving aid and succor to the Taliban.
Reflecting the confusion of war in an ill-defined border area, an Afghan border police official, Edrees Momand, said joint Afghan-NATO troops near the outpost on Saturday morning had detained several militants.
“I am not aware of the casualties on the other side of the border but those we have detained aren’t Afghan Taliban,” he said, implying they were Pakistani Taliban operating in Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan-Pakistan border is often poorly marked, and differs between maps by up to five miles in some places.
In September 2009, the Pakistanis cut off our supply routes for 10 days after a similar incident. That’s pretty much the only way that they can protest. Obviously, Americans were incredibly unimpressed when they learned that Usama bin-Laden had been living in a house in Abbottabad for years. I don’t think too many Americans are in the mood to hear the Pakistani military whine about their sovereignty. As for the drone attacks, our bases are on Pakistani soil and the flights operate with the full complicity of the Pakistani military. So, there’s not much to complain about there, either. However, this was an attack on Pakistani soldiers, and that’s a different matter. Whether it was accidental or intentional, the Pakistanis are furious and our troops could be left without crucial supplies for a considerable period of time.
