Pakistan and the US: it's becoming deadly serious

HOW BAD is the latest flare-up in relations between the US and Pakistan? On Saturday, US and Afghan national forces operating in Kunar province, close to the Pakistan border, pursued Taliban forces who were pulling back to the safety of Pakistan's tribal territories. The US troops say they came under fire from two Pakistan border posts, meaning they came under fire from Pakistan forces. They requested strikes from helicopter gunships backed by fast jets.
 
In the subsequent action, the Pakistan Army says that 24 of its soldiers were killed in the course of "an unprovoked action" by US forces. "There was no reason for it," said the Pakistan Army's spokesman Major General Atha Abbas. "Map references of all our border posts have been passed to Nato a number of times."
 
Yesterday the head of Pakistan's forces, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, attended the burials of the 24 soldiers, with full military honours. The Pakistan government has closed the main supply route for Nato forces in Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass at Torkham indefinitely. The Americans were given 15 days to quit their drone base at Shamsi airfield in Baluchistan, western Pakistan.
 
As rows go between Washington and Islamabad, this is as bad – of not worse – than when the US Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in a safe house in the garrison town of Abbottabad last May.  The Pakistan military and government claimed that this, too, was an unprovoked raid by America on the sovereign territory of a key regional ally – quite ignoring the glaring evidence that Pakistan's military and intelligence services must have known where Bin Laden was, and very likely were baby-sitting him.
 
Both the Nato commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, and Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen have offered condolences and promised a full investigation into the events surrounding the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers. But this cannot conceal the deep sense of unease surrounding the whole episode which reflects again the deeply ambivalence of Pakistan and much of its command towards America and Nato on one side, and the Taliban – particularly the Haqqani network – on the other.
 
Unfortunately none of the reporting from Afghanistan has pinpointed the exact locations where Saturday's attacks took place. There have been no eyewitness accounts.
 
Last May, visiting Afghanistan, I was up on this border briefly with the 2nd Battalion the 27nd US Infantry Regiment 'Wolfhounds'. The battalion had been in several heavy firefights with the Taliban, which were mostly, though not exclusively, run by the Haqqani network.

The US commander, Lt Col Danny Wilson, had been hit four times in action. His men told me that the Taliban came across on a main supply route from Pakistan. "Quite often they get indirect fire support [ie from artillery] from Pakistan military units just inside the border, as they pull back."
 
Another officer said that the previous US unit had often found Pakistanis among the dead after an action – some identified as operatives for the ISI, Pakistan's inter service intelligence agency.
 
Pakistan's curious game of brinkmanship with America over Afghanistan risks spilling over into something much worse. Pakistan gets billions of aid and revenue from America and Nato, and it is unlikely that Islamabad wants to close this down altogether. On the other hand it is clear that elements in the Pakistan Army and ISI treat the Haqqani clan and network as something approaching an ally.
 
Many in the Pakistan civilian government as well as the military are suggesting that their country should see China as their leading international partner, and not America. China is already steadily snapping up all Afghanistan's mineral reserves that it can lay its hands on. China, many Pakistanis now believe, will be Pakistan's main protector against the old enemy, India.
 
Privately, however, many senior Pakistan officers fear that embracing Afghan Taliban groups is likely to provoke even more trouble and chaos in Afghanistan after the Nato troops leave. "They see no advantage in the chaos that could follow Nato's withdrawal," a senior British officer told me last week.
 
This sense of  a divided nation and command in Pakistan is the most dangerous aspect of the latest spat between Washington and Islamabad. It could in the end mean more chaos for Afghanistan, more instability for Pakistan itself, and bring the dreadful prospect of an outright clash between India and China that much closer to reality. ·