Analysis // Ben FrankelUpping the ante: U.S. forces begin operations inside Pakistan
A third — and distinct — phase of U.S. anti-al Qaeda campaign has opened: In the first phase, the U.S. relied on Pakistan to fight al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in that country’s Northwest Territories; disappointed with Pakistan’s performance, the U.S., six month ago, began the second phase — sending UAV’s across the border to attack targets inside Pakistan; yesterday, the third phase began, as U.S. special forces crossed the border into Pakistan to attack terrorist targets there
Following the 9/11 attacks, the United States has given Pakistan billions of dollars to bolster that country’s capabilities to fight terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists hiding (well, not really hiding) in the mountainous northwestern region of the country. Since Pakistan gained its independence in 1948, these tribal areas were never under the central government’s effective control, and during the past fifteen years or so, with the rise of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, these swaths of territory became even more detached from Islamabad. Most of the money the United States has given Pakistan over the past seven years was used for gold-plated weapon systems that have nothing to do with fighting terrorism, or disappeared in the pockets of corrupt politicians and generals. Moreover, since the Pakistani secret service, the ISI, is the main supporter of the Taliban and other, Kashmir-based, the Pakistani commitment to fighting al Qaeda and those who harbor its operative always had a certain air of ambivalence about it.
During the past six months, the United States has shows that it was no longer going to wait for the Pakistani government to become more determined and effective in its campaign against al Qaeda and Taliban operatives finding shelter and training in the Northwest Territories. We have reported on military and CIA-operated UAVs crossing the border from Afghanistan to Pakistan in order to attack insurgent terrorist targets there. The United States has now upped the ante: U.S. and Afghan special operations troops attacked militants in Pakistan the other day — “the first publicly acknowledged case of United States forces conducting a ground raid on Pakistani soil,” according to the New York Times.
Wired’s Noah Shachtman writes that officials in Islamabad are livid — or making a show of being livid, at least. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Sadiq called the raid by helicopter-borne commandos a “gross violation of Pakistan’s territory” and “a grave provocation.” Dawn, the Pakistani paper, claims “20 people, most of them women and children, were killed” in the assault.
al-Qaeda and Taliban forces, based in Pakistan, have been striking targets in Afghanistan for years. They have even been blamed for an attempted hit on Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Shachtman correctly points out that, until now, American forces have mostly responded with airstrikes and artillery, although “the elite SEAL Team 6 raided a suspected Al Qaeda compound at Damadola [Pakistan] in 2006,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Also, U.S. troops “in ‘hot pursuit’ of militants have had some latitude to chase them across the border,” the New York Times notes.
But the commando raid by the American forces signaled what top American officials said could be the opening salvo in a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces against the Taliban and Al Qaeda inside Pakistan, a secret plan that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has been advocating for months within President Bush’s war council.
