Anatomy of ‘Why NATO Supplies are Back?’:
Hundreds ofNATO cargo trucks and containers are back on the Pakistani roads, carrying vital military, fuel and food supplies destined for troops based in Afghanistan. These almost 2000 kilometers roads ´ between the Karachi port in the south and the northwestern and southwestern border towns Torkham and Chamman remain the key, shortest link in this crucial supply chain, comprising some 6,500 trucks.
This supply chain had come to a grinding haltafter NATO Apache helicopters fired two missiles on a Pakistani security post in the Kurram tribal region on September 30, destroying the post and killing three soldiers on the spot.
Pakistan reacted fiercely to the border incursion by closing down the border in the Northwest to protest both the killings and the border violation. Also, within the next few days, NATO lostalmost 130 NATO oil containers at various locations, apparently to Taliban militants, who, too,grounded their torching of the trucks and containers to NATO incursion in Pakistan.
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Background interviews with a few of the most influential and senior most military commanders reveal that the altercation triggered unusually stiff opposition by the army chief General Ashfaq Kayani, who took up the deaths of his soldiers with Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gillani early October. The General Headquarter also conveyed its rejection of border infringement through the Office of the Defense Representative in the US embassy in Islamabad to Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Viewed against the hard-line that the army took on the issue of cargo supplies, it should be safe to conclude that the resumption ofthe traffic came at a relatively heavy cost, though, and quite a few ripples and ruptures in the US-Pakistan military-to-military relationship that had begun in July 2008 in the Indian Ocean.
The Pivotal ‘Petraeus Factor:’
At the centre of this controversy stands the man who, along with Admiral Mullen, helped shape what many viewed as an unusual friendship between the two militaries i.e. General David Petraeus.
Pakistani military officials, who once revered Petraeus as a good strategist,are meanwhile wary of what they call his ‘ambitious plans for the Af-Pak region.’ ‘We think we have checkmated Petraeus and thwarted his designs to impose a new hot pursuit paradigm on us.’ This is how a very senior Pakistani military official explained the backdrop and the consequence ofborder violations by NATO choppers. Army believes Gen. Petraeus deliberately sent his men into hot pursuit of suspected Taliban. With this, he probably wanted to gauge the Pakistani reaction before intensifying the military campaign into Waziristan, which the US defense establishment insists is the source of violence in Afghanistan.
Although public apologies from the Obama administration and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman joint chiefs of staff let to the resumption of cargo traffic after over ten days, yet the incident, second after a boots-on-ground- operation in early September 2008 in South Waziristan, has dented the cordiality that had existed between Gen. Kayani, Petraeus and Mullen.
‘We were left with no choice but to conveythat the US and NATO cannot take anything for granted, we already are paying a very heavy price for our cooperation with the western forces,’ the official said.
Is Pak-US Militaries– ‘Honeymoon’ Over?
The honeymoon between the top military bosses had in fact begun on board the Abraham Lincoln in the Indian Ocean in late July 2008, when General Ashfaq Kayani, accompanied by two aides, sat across the table to discuss his operational plans and limitations with five top American military officials including Admiral Mullen andboth sides, according to Gen. Kayani, heard out each other, and this laid the foundation for a relationship that seemed to had climaxed in December last year, with the two American generals showering praise on General Kayani during their visits to Islamabad. “I couldn–t give the Pakistani Army anything but an ‘A'” for how they–ve conducted their battle so far (in Swat and Waziristan),’ Mike Mullen had told US journalists accompanying himon December 16th. “He planned well, and he’s been very deliberate about how much he can get done and when he can get it done,” Mullen said. “I think that a very realistic approach to the operations,”a CBS correspondent had quoted Mullen as saying after the tour.
It was Mullen again who went public in regretting strikes by NATO helicopters and promised it won–t happen again but, highly placed government officials insist, Petraeus has already done the damage.
Change of Policy in the Offing?
Pakistan army and the concerned ministries, officials claim, arenow insisting on reviewing the rules of engagement that had governed the military cooperation since 2001.
They say that right-wing opposition parties and religio-political groups are already up in arms against the government for its helplessness vis-à-vis CIA-operated drone strikes into the Waziristan region ´ almost 30 since early September ´,Taliban insurgents are knocking up targets in southern and central Pakistan as well, and the country is reeling under the consequences of devastating floods. Both the army and the government believe that the country already is paying a heavy price and it cannot put up with the ambitions of Gen. Petraeus, which are likely to entail long-term implications for Pakistan.
That is why, it seems, the Pakistani government and the army are also concerned about the American desperation to woo key Afghan insurgents into talks via Saudi Arabia, which wields considerable influence over important Afghan leaders such as Mulla Omar, Gulbudin Hekmetyar, Professor Sayyaf and some Kandahari business who had also been friends with Mulla Omar.
America End-game is not Pakistan End-game:
For the Obama administration, opening up space for talks holds the key to what some analysts call the endgame. But this phrase raises alarm in Pakistan. It may be the US and NATO endgame but not for us. For us, it a battle for long-term survival as a permanent neighbor of Afghanistan, a highly placed general told the Journal. He believes Gen. Petraeus shall have to lower his goalposts if he wished to see some semblance of peace in Afghanistan.
And near history is probably a good guide to follow that advice; an over-ambitious and reckless Pakistan and a disinterested American ignored the importance of an endgame after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989. Both allowed the Afghan factions to fight it out among themselves, rather than helping them put a power-sharing mechanism in place. The result; Afghanistan descended into factionalism and chaos. It now threatens Pakistan too.