WASHINGTON: The gnawing and growing misgivings that the US and other western governments have endangered their own men and mission by arming an extremist Pakistan to the teeth has burst into public domain with an American war hero questioning the policy in a legal scrap.
Dakota Meyer is the first living marine to receive the nation's highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, since the Vietnam War for his role in repulsing an attack and saving the lives of many of colleagues in Afghanistan. Following his stint in the US forces, Meyer began working for armament maker BAE Systems in the US in March this year and straightaway ran into issues that evidently conflicted with his ground experience in Afghanistan of essentially fighting Pakistan and its proxies.
In an email to his supervisor earlier this year, Meyer complained that it was "disturbing" how Pakistan was being supplied with advanced thermal optic scopes made by BAE Systems when US troops were being issued outdated equipment. He argued that the firm was endangering US troops selling the scope to "the same people who are killing our guys."
"We are simply taking the best gear, the best technology on the market to date and giving to guys that are known to stab us in the back," Meyer was quoted saying in an email cited in a lawsuit he has filed against BAE Systems and his supervisors there. The lawsuit also refers to his fighting "Pakistani insurgents" in Afghanistan, and points to the growing resentment on the ground of US and Nato troops who see Pakistan as an enemy but are constrained by the political and diplomatic exigencies of their governments in coddling Pakistan.
The case is particularly relevant after the recent Nato/US attack on two Pakistani posts that killed 24 Pakistani troops and injured 12 in what Islamabad claims was a deliberate and unprovoked attack. But US ground commanders and troops have long complained in private that Pakistan supports terrorist proxies who attack and kill western and Afghan troops in Afghanistan and head back to Pakistan under covering fire - a charge echoed by Meyer in his lawsuit.
In the past, Pakistani ISI personnel have been killed in Afghanistan while training Taliban and al-Qaida elements, most notably in Khost in 1998 during the Clinton Presidency. The Bush administration also allowed Pakistan to airlift its terrorist assets from Afghanistan in the aftermath of the US invasion following 9/11. Successive US governments have continued to supply lethal arms to Pakistan under what many experts have said are spurious excuses about fighting terrorists, when, according to the US government's own account, the arms are being stacked up for use against India.
But even as Washington has complained about Pakistan keeping "snakes in its backyard," to paraphrase Hillary Clinton's complaint, it turns out that US and UK (BAE is a British firm) are providing the fangs.
That military equipment, not to speak of fungible civilian aid, is coming back to bite US forces, a sentiment that is common among troops returning from the combat zone. The supplies include F-16 fighter jets, which Washington gave to Pakistan despite objections from India that it was not useful in the war on terror, and which Pakistan is now threatening to use against its patron and supplier.
American war hero exposes how US and UK provided fangs to Pakistan's 'snakes in the backyard' - The Times of India
