Pakistan shut down a key US-NATO Afghan war supply route at Torkham, north of Peshawar on Thursday, Sept 30. Officials in Islamabad said the action was a protest against NATO helicopter attacks on a border post in Khurram that killed three soldiers of the Frontier Corps (FC). The first attack took place at about 5.30 AM; some four hours later the helicopters came again and strafed the very same area at Mandata Kandaho outpost.
This is not the first time that the US-NATO drones and helicopters have violated the Pak air space. Only a week back, three helicopters raided the area and the action resulted in fifty plus deaths. Afghanistan based US and NATO forces always justify the air raids as acts of ‘self-defence’.
Pakistan claims officially that the US action is a violation of its airspace and keeps registering loud protests. But it has never denied officially the NATO contention that there is an informal understanding with Pakistan army and that often if not regularly, Pak army is kept in the loop of such raids.
In fact only on Sept 29, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed to have reached a “decent understanding”, with General Ashfaq Kiyani, Pak army chief, about ‘incursions’ into Pakistan. Therefore, the blockade of the crossing into Afghanistan is an unusual reaction. So is the comment of Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik, “We will have to see whether we are allies or enemies (of the US).”
Politicians and Generals in Pakistan have a tendency to stoop to conquer particularly when they are pushed to the wall. President Zardari led civilian government is in one such awkward situation today.
Failure to stand by the people who are battered by fury of unprecedented floods has battered its image. There is open talk of and calls for revolution.
And General Kayani has not helped matters either by his demarche to President and Prime Minister Gilani to downsize the cabinet by showing the door to the corrupt ministers.
Zardari-Gilani see in the NATO helicopter intrusion their badly needed opening for a pole vault to refurbish their image.
