US Invasion Of Pakistan?

If we can even begin to believe anything Musharraf ever says then America has already invaded Pakistan. That is what he in effect told Singapore's newspaper The Strait Times on January 11 this year. The paper reported him saying that "Musharraf, Pakistan's embattled president, warned that any unilateral intervention in his country by coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan would be treated as an invasion".

The Washington Post reported today that the United States controlled Predator aircrafts have already struck at least three times in Pakistan over the past two months (on March 16, killing about 20 in Shahnawaz Kot; on Feb. 28, killing 12 in the village of Kaloosha; and on Jan. 29, killing 13 people in North Waziristan) but the United States "has escalated its unilateral strikes" ... "in Pakistan's tribal areas, partly because of anxieties that Pakistan's new leaders will insist on scaling back military operations in that country."

A Pentagon spokeman Bryan Whitman said: "Pakistan recognizes that we fight a common enemy when it comes to terrorists."

But how is Musharraf reacting to this invasion of his country? With a "tacit understanding" and by "providing better information to guide the strikes." And he is doing it at a time when he is on his way out; his cronies have lost elections big time; and a new prime minister who has sworn in and has told US President Bush that a broader approach to the "war on terror" is necessary, including political solutions. His army chief General Ashfaq Kayani is also in cahoots with him in closing his eyes to the American invasion.

A senior American official described the strikes as a "shake the tree" strategy.

Are two senior US diplomats, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs Richard Boucher, in Pakistan just to make sure that the "tree" does not "shake" too much?

President Bush called Gillani on Tuesday, and basically threatened him that "fighting extremists is in everyone's interest," according to a White House spokesman. A former State Department policy planning staffer Daniel Markey, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the new leaders are being "pulled in opposite directions by their electorate and the Bush administration."

But Americans are not content with the Drone strikes. They "need exploitation, troops on the ground."

Musharraf is not concerned that these "strikes only encourage militants to undertake retaliatory actions in urban areas" as it has happened in Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Islamabad.

Pakistan has become "a killing field" as Nawaz Sharif has put it. Pakistan has lost hundreds of army and civilian personnels, including some generals, and innocent people. A former prime minister has been assassinated. This Mush-Bush policy has brought war of terror to Pakistan's streets.

The newspaper has quoted a tribal (Pashtu) saying: 'Kill one person, make 10 enemies". And that is what this ludicrous strategy is doing. The paper has also quoted Thomas H. Johnson, a research professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. saying: "You might take out a bad guy in one of these strikes, but you might also be creating more foot soldiers. This is a war in which the more people you kill, the faster you lose."

Is America moving to 1954 Iran situation in Pakistan? Many people are thinking on this line. Dana Priest, the Washington Post intelligence reporter, who was online todya for live discussion on national security, was asked a similar question by some one from Ogden, Utah:

The story in today's paper about us hurrying up and doing a lot of bombing in Pakistan makes me flash back to Iran in 1954, when we were worried that the democratically elected government there might not be our most vigorous ally against Communism, so we engineered an overthrow. Here we are again, worried that democratically elected people might not be as helpful as the dictator who supported us as long as we kept him well paid. That overthrow, for short-term gains, caused long term misery, not the least of which is the development of the extremists who took over, and now run, Iran. Please convince me I should not be worried. History has a way of repeating itself.

Dana Priest: There's no way the US would attempt to overthrown the newly elected Pakistan government as we did in the Iranian case. First of all, and most importantly, with what support internally? The Army? no. The intel services? no. Plus, you have the pesky press, which you didn't have as much back then. The whole thing would be chronicled for all to see and the backlash would be huge everywhere.