Pakistan’s air space may be denied to US
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has decided, for the time being, not to block US military use of its air space for over-flights into Afghanistan, but this could come within 15 days if bilateral diplomacy fails to relieve tensions over the Mohmand attacks, security experts say.
The government is currently reviewing the options available to it to demonstrate Pakistan’s vast leverage over their war in Afghanistan to the US and other members of the International Security Force, the experts said.
“If there is another incident, or even a nasty drone attack, the air corridor could also go,” said Simbal Khan, research director of the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, a Foreign Office-funded think tank.
Towards the top of the options list is the use of preventive cross-border fire by reinforced border-based army units in Bajaur and Mohmand against future raids by Afghanistan-based militants of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, they said.
It also includes the withdrawal of over-flight permission, and the use of Dalbadin, Jacobabad and Pasni air force bases to stage search-and-rescue missions in Afghanistan, they said. Pakistan will closely monitor the border behaviour of joint CIA-Special Forces Command (SFC) teams, which were responsible for Friday’s unprovoked, sustained attack on Pakistani military posts in Mohmand agency, the experts said.
The CIA-SFC teams also control drone operations over the Fata. However, there is agreement between the government and military to give the Obama administration enough time to find a political solution palatable both to Pakistan and competing power lobbies in Washington.
The White House is, amid the ongoing presidential election campaign, under mounting pressure from the Pentagon, CIA and their allies in Congress to postpone the September 2012 withdrawal of “surge” combat troops order by Obama, they said.
So far, only 2,000 of the 32,000 surge troops have left Afghanistan, while the scheduled withdrawal by year’s end of 10,000 US Marines based in Helmand province is awaited.
The Pentagon and CIA are lobbying for an extended deployment of surge troops to enable the US to make one more effort to break the stalemate with the Taliban, before the scheduled withdrawal of combat units by end-2014.
But Pakistan would be demonstrably impatient and require the US to come clean about its vague insistence that it “retains the right to respond to cross-border attacks”, the experts said.
“Unless this is clearly defined, I think this could completely spiral out of control, Obama’s Afghanistan strategy would completely fail, and the planned 2014 withdrawal would be scuttled,” said Khan.
Failure to go beyond hollow apologies could prompt an aggressive assertion of Pakistani sovereignty that could, in turn, prompt a US response, leading to a huge flare up on the Durand Line, the experts said.
Pakistan
This will be the biggest blow to USA if Pakistan go for this option in the future.I just hope Pakistan go for this as well.
