In early September, it was reported that US Special Forces had mounted a ground attack from Afghanistan across the border into and into Pakistan. According to the reports, a couple of dozen people were killed in the attack, some of them civilians. Pakistan's political reaction was apparently touch enough to convince the White House not to launch further ground attacks.
However, according to this article in the New York Times, the policy has been replaced with one based on the increased use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, or 'drones'). Apparently 5 such strikes were launched in the first 28 weeks of 2008, but in the eleven or so weeks since then, there have been 18 UAV strikes. The same article describes the unpredictable results of some of these missions, including civilian casualties and missed targets, and notes that UAV strikes can never achieve the other goal of capturing Al Qaeda members and interrogating them for information about their leaders.
You may remember some of the earlier reports of UAV use, such as this incident in 2002 in Yemen, in which 6 suspected al Qaeda operatives were summarily executed in a rocket attack on their vehicle. For more technical and political context, see this page on the GlobalSecurity.org website.
What caught my eye in the current story, though, was the reported reaction of Pakistani officials, who have apparently described these attacks as a "less objectionable violation of Pakistani sovereignty" than ground assault. Talk about 'shades of grey'...
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The same militants who are being targeted have executed popular politicians in Pakistan and have been attacking the civilian government of Pakistan.
The issue, for many of the politicians in Pakistan (the politicians targeted by foreign terrorists) is how to cooperatively kill those who are trying to destabilize the regional civilian governments in Central Asia without bringing them under more aggessive attacks by terrorist sympethizing media.
Saying it is not a "violation" would excite the terrorist sympethizing media in Pakistan while saying it is a "violation" would give the red light to foreign coalition governments to stop cooperative actions against terrorists in their border regions.
U.S. Presidential Candidate Demoratic Senator Barrack Hussein Obama (leading in the polls) had indicated that the United States violate Pakistan sovereignty to aggressively chase terrorists and outgoing U.S. Republican President George W. Bush had been leaked into the media as saying "get Osama bin Laden" at all costs, including in Pakistan, before the current Presidential term ends indicates that the violoation policies are not only in agreement in Pakistan, but in the outgoing U.S. Administration, and the opposing party of the current U.S. Administration.
(The use of the word "terrorist" should be considered using the legal term of "unlawful enemy combatant" - as international and domestic bodies have described the term through the Geneva Convention and various judicial opinions.)
This is a very strange world, but not unsimilar to what the global community has been dealing with since the 1970's with Islamic Terrorism and before that with Communists in South East Asia.
People should have religious freedom and political freedom, as long as it is not forced down the throats of other civilians, by purposely targeting opposing civilians via combatants who are neither uniformed or have an internationally recognized chain of command (as defined in the Genega Convention.)
Posted by David on October 27, 2008 at 04:36 PM GMT+00:00 #