Pakistan’s prime minister said Thursday that strikes by foreign forces were “counterproductive,” as officials said there was no warning about the latest U.S. missile strike in the Pakistani northwest.

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The missile strike Wednesday was part of a surge in U.S. cross-border operations, and it was especially galling to Pakistanis because it came the same day an American military leader assured the nation’s leaders the U.S. respects Pakistan’s sovereignty. ~AP (via Antiwar)

Secretary Gates maintains that the U.S. has a right to launch attacks into Pakistan, and that our forces are “partnering” with Pakistan, except for the small detail that they are left out of the loop and are not informed about these operations.  It seems to me that when an ally, even a nominal ally, insists that we cannot violate their sovereignty with impunity, that should be enough to cause a reassessment of the tactics being used.  It is conceivable that a civilian government perceived to be too weak to defend Pakistani territory against foreign encroachments could fall to a new coup, which could create a military government much less inclined to cooperate.  Meanwhile, as Pakistan’s Daily Times reports, there is the very real possibility of stirring up otherwise quiescent tribes to launch attacks into Afghanistan, substantially complicating an already difficult, undermanned mission:

Every Ahmedzai Wazir tribesman will fight US forces on Afghani soil if their incursions into South Waziristan continue, a 3,000-strong jirga ruled on Wednesday.

The jirga consisting of pro-government tribal elders and pro-Taliban clerics was held in Wana.

“Each and every Ahmedzai Wazir tribesman, be young or old, will take up arms against the US and fight alongside the Pakistan Army,” eyewitnesses told Daily Times, quoting pro-Taliban Noor Muhammad reading a unanimous resolution at the end of the jirga.

This is the thing that proponents of these strikes don’t seem to understand, or have failed to consider: forces from the Pakistani side can enter Afghanistan and launch attacks right back at our soldiers.  Some of these tribal forces have stayed neutral so long as the Pakistani army was engaged in the fighting, but with every one of our strikes the harder it will be to keep additional Pashtuns from aligning against our forces.  The relatively limited number of soldiers in Afghanistan has meant a heavy reliance on air power, which has resulted in a series of politically damaging episodes of civilian deaths that have resulted from using air strikes to provide support.  The more forces our drone attacks in Pakistan stir up the more outnumbered NATO forces are going to be on the ground, thus requiring still more reliance on air power.  If you wanted to think of a way to exacerbate all of the problems we are having in Afghanistan, launching these drone attacks would not be a bad way to start.

Filed under: foreign policy, politics