Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Sowing seeds for an unwanted harvest

Sept.10, 2008

Sowing seeds for an unwanted harvest

THE innocent civilians whose only crime is that they are living in areas near the Pakistani border with Afghanistan are paying a heavy price for the US-led "war against terror," which, in any event, has lost its relevance, given that it has only added intensity to what Washington perceives as the "threat of terrorism."
Scores of civilians, most of them women and children, have been killed in a stepped-up US military operation in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province in recent days. Naturally, the attacks have drawn condemnation from the Pakistani parliament and the new civilian government in Islamabad. But it is clear that the US could not care less for such denunciation of its actions and is determined to press ahead with its campaign with little regard to its consequences on the civilian population in the area and the stability of the Pakistani government and military.
It has been revealed that the administration of President George W. Bush is not heeding warnings by the National Intelligence Council, one of the prime agencies in the US intelligence community, against commando raids by US troops on the Pak-Afghan border.
The National Intelligence Council said three weeks ago that such actions would carry a high risk of further destabilising the Pakistani military and government. The warning, which represented a consensus in the intelligence community, came amid intense discussions in Washington on whether to carry out commando raids against Al Qaeda and Taliban targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan.
That the Bush administration opted to ignore the National Intelligence Council warning was evident in its actions since then.
The foremost question among the residents of the border region is whether their government and military could offer them protection or support the US actions.
Washington is referring all questions in this regard to Islamabad as if suggesting that the US military has the implicit backing of the Pakistani government in its actions against the people of Pakistan.
Surely, it needs no elaboration that the US military incursions into Pakistan will help the political-military groups allied with the Taliban that are seeking to destabilise the Islamabad government.
The Pakistani military says that the US actions would only provoke new attacks by militants in the frontier area and destabilise the country's armed forces. The risk is that local residents who have supported the Pakistani soldiers and opposed militants the past will shift their loyalties out of anger over the killings of civilians. Bearing the brunt of the anger will be Pakistani security personnel, including the military.
The apparent helplessness of the Islamabad government and the country's armed forces to check the US military actions would also undermine the morale of the Pakistani army.
Whether Washington wants it or cares about it or seeks to prevent it, the US military actions are punishing the civilian population of Pakistan's border regions and contributing to destabilising the country's government and military. In the broader context of the US-led "war against terror," the American military attacks in the border region would only create more "militants" and "extremists" determined to fight the US anytime, anywhere.