US
probe hardens Pakistani
suspicions By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - The Pakistani military
leadership's response to the United States report
on its helicopter attack on two Pakistani border
posts on November 26 has assailed the credibility
of the investigation by Air Force Brigadier
General Steven Clark and expressed doubt that the
attack could have been "accidental".
The
long-expected rejoinder, made public on Monday,
charged that 28 of its soldiers at two border
bases were killed one by one long after the US
military had been told about the attack on a
Pakistani base.
The Pakistani critique
questions the claims that the US did not know
about the Pakistani border posts, that the
combined US-Afghan Special Forces unit believed it
was under attack from
insurgents when it
called in air strikes against the two border
posts, and that a series of miscommunications
prevented higher echelons from stopping the
attacks on the border posts.
Revelations
in the Clark report - as well as what it omits -
support the Pakistani contention that the US
investigation covered up what actually occurred
before and during the attack. Information in the
report suggests that the planners of the Special
Forces operation the night of November 25-26 may
have known about the two Pakistani border posts
that were attacked while feigning ignorance to the
commander who had to approve the operation.
It also portrays a military organization
that was not really interested in stopping the
attack on the border posts even after it had been
told that Pakistani military positions were under
fire.
The Pakistani analysis does not
repeat the assertion made by General Ashfaq
Nadeem, the director general for operations, in
the aftermath of the attack that the coordinates
of the two Pakistani border posts had been given
to the US military well before the incident of
November 25-26.
The analysis leaves no
doubt, however, that the Pakistani military
believed the United States was well aware of the
two posts. It said each of the posts had five or
six bunkers built above ground on the top of a
ridge and clearly visible from Maya village about
1.5 kilometers away.
The Pakistani
critique asserts that two or three US aircraft had
been operating in the area daily, and that US
intelligence had questioned Pakistani officials in
the past even about changes in weaponry in its
border posts.
The Pakistani military
document highlights the revelation in the Clark
report that Major General James Laster, the
commander of the "battlespace" in which Operation
SAYAQA was to take place, had demanded that the
planners of the operation "confirm the location of
Pakistan's border checkpoints".
The most
recent map of Pakistani border positions available
at the time, according to the Clark report, was
dated February 2011. The obvious intent of the
demand by Laster was that the planners find out if
there were any new border checkpoints that needed
to be added to update the map.
The Clark
report reveals that "pre-mission intelligence
analysis" had indicated "possible border posts
North and South of the Operation SAYAQA target
areas".
That intelligence was obviously
relevant to Laster's order, but those border posts
did not show up on the map produced on November
23. The planners had decided not to check on those
"possible border posts" by asking a Pakistani
border liaison officer or investigating
unilaterally.
The Clark report tiptoes
carefully around the implications of that fact,
saying the operation's planners "did not identify
any known border posts in the area of Operational
SAYAQA".
The point of requiring
confirmation of a new map would presumably have
been to go beyond border posts that were on the
available map.
Air crews planning for the
operation also knew about the "possible border
posts", according to the report, but didn't
include them in their "pre-mission planning
packages", because "they were data points outside
the Operation SAYAQA area."
United States
investigators showed no apparent curiosity about
what appears to have been the deliberate exclusion
of the two new border posts from the map given to
Laster.
The Pakistani critique charges
that it is "not possible" that the failure to
check on the Pakistani posts was "an innocent
omission".
A second point made by the
Pakistani military is that the US attack on its
"Volcano" base by US helicopter gunships continued
for "as long as one hour and 24 minutes" after the
US side had been informed of the attack on its
post.
Despite the fact that US and
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
officials had already been informed about the
assault on the Pakistani bases "at multiple levels
by the Pakistan side", the Pakistani analysis
charges, "every soldier in and around the posts
was individually targeted".
The Clark
report's account of US responses to being informed
by Pakistani officials that their bases were under
attack does nothing to allay Pakistani suspicions
about the claim that the attack was unintentional.
It confirms the earlier Pakistani claim
that its border liaison officer at the ISAF
Regional Command East (RC-E) had informed the US
officers in charge of "deconfliction" with
Pakistani positions on the border minutes after
the attack had begun at 23:40 hours that Pakistani
Frontier Force soldiers were being "engaged" by
US-coalition forces coming from Afghanistan.
The exchange over the news from the
Pakistani officer was testy. Clark recalled in his
press briefing on the report on December 22 that
the Pakistani liaison officer had been asked where
the border posts were located, and had not given
the coordinates, but had responded, "Well, you
know where it is because you're shooting at them."
Clark suggested that there was "confusion"
about where the attack was taking place, but there
was only one place where US forces were firing at
positions inside Pakistan that night, and RC-E's
border confliction cell could have easily
identified that place quickly enough with one or
two calls.
Neither the text of the report
nor the detailed timeline in an annex show any
effort to contact the Special Forces Task Force or
Task Force BRONCO, which had approved the
operation, about the report that they were
attacking Pakistani border posts. The report
offers no explanation for the absence of any
action on that report, saying only that it "could
not be immediately confirmed".
Twenty
minutes before the information had arrived,
according to the Clark report, Task Force BRONCO
told the Special Operations Task Force in the
region it was still waiting to get confirmation
from the Border Coordination Center for the area
that there were no Pakistani troops near the
operation. It added that RC-E was not tracking any
PAKMIL border posts on its computerized map of the
area.
The Special Operations Task Force
then then sent out a message system saying,
"PAKMIL has been notified and confirmed no
positions in area".
In yet another
suspicious episode, instead of asking the
Pakistani liaison to the border coordination
commission whether Pakistan had any posts or
troops in the area of Operation SAYAQA, RC-E give
him a general location that was 14 kilometers away
from that area and asked if Pakistan had troops
nearby.
The misdirection of the Pakistani
liaison officer, which ensured the response that
there were no Pakistani troops in the area, is
explained in the Clark report as having been
caused by a "misconfigured electronic map
overlay".
Asked in his press briefing why
the RC-E had refused to provide precise grid
coordinates under circumstances in which it was
supposed to be determining whether US forces were
firing at Pakistani forces, Clark cited "the
overarching lack of trust".
Nearly 40
minutes after the attack on border post "Volcano"
began, according to a timeline in the report, the
US Liaison officer to Pakistan's 11th Corps
reported to the Special Operations Task Force that
US helicopters and a drone had been firing on a
Pakistani military post.
But the Task
Force waited for at least 10 more minutes,
according to the timeline, before informing the
Special Forces Unit.
Meanwhile Pakistani
troops were being hunted down one by one.
Gareth Porter is an
investigative historian and journalist
specializing in US national security policy. The
paperback edition of his latest book, Perils
of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to
War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.
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