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Pakistan threatens to pull back troops after U.S. cuts aid
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan threatened Tuesday to pull back troops from the Afghan border in response to US aid cuts, defying American demands to open new fronts in the war on Al-Qaeda and escalating tensions with Washington.
“I think the next step is, the government or the armed forces will move the soldiers from the border areas,” Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar told the English-language Express 24/7 television.
“If at all things become difficult, we will just get our armed forces back.”
The United States confirmed Sunday that it had decided to withhold a third of its annual $2.7 billion security assistance to Islamabad, bringing relations to a new low after the covert American raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Cuts of $800 million reportedly include about $300 million used to reimburse Pakistan for some costs of deploying more than 100,000 soldiers along the Afghan border, a hotbed of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants.
“We cannot afford to keep our military… it costs you extra amount of money when you are having soldiers in the mountains, so we will definitely use that tool,” Mukhtar said.
The military did not Read more…
Drone strikes are police work, not an act of war?
Launching an air strike in another nation would normally be considered an act of aggression. But advocates of America’s rapidly expanding unmanned drone programme don’t see it that way.
They are arguing, as Tom Ricks writes on his blog The Best Defense over at Foreign Policy, that the campaign to kill militants with missile strikes from these unmanned aircraft, is more like police action in a tough neighborhood than a military conflict.
These raids conducted by sinister-looking Predator or Reaper aircraft in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen – and since last month in Somalia – should not be seen as a challenge to states and their authority. Instead they are meant to supplement the power of governments that are Read more…
Pakistan tells US to leave `drone attack base`
RAWALPINDI: Pakistan on Wednesday told the United States to leave a remote desert air base reportedly used as a hub for covert CIA drone attacks.
“We have told them (US officials) to leave the Shamsi Airbase,” Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said while talking to journalists here. His remarks are the latest indication of Pakistan attempting to limit US activities since a clandestine American military raid killed Osama bin Laden.
The minister reiterated that the trust deficit between Pakistan and the United States has increased after the Read more…
‘Drone strike’ kills several in Pakistan
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| The high number of civilian casualties in drone attacks have caused anger in Pakistan [File:EPA] |
At least five people have been killed after a suspected US drone fired two missiles into a vehicle in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, local security officials say.
Thursday’s raid was the third such attack reported in the tribal district near the Afghan border, which Washington has dubbed the global headquarters of al-Qaeda, since US commandos killed the group’s leader, Osama bin Laden, in a Pakistani city near Islamabad.
“A US drone fired two missiles on a militants’ vehicle in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan,” one Pakistani security official told the news agency AFP. “Five militants were killed.”
Another local official confirmed the strike and the toll, saying: “The target was a pick-up van.”
Intelligence reports from the area said the dead included “foreigners” – a term normally used for Afghan Taliban, Uzbek fighters or Read more…
Pakistan urges end to US strikes
The row between the US and its Asian ally over the scale of the unauthorized CIA drone operations in Pakistan’s North Waziristan were exposed last week.
Pakistan has repeatedly criticized the attacks which it condemns for violating the country’s sovereignty.
Washington, on the other hand, defends the strikes as necessary to fight the militants it claims to have holed up.
But Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Sunday that Washington should share better intelligence so Islamabad can take action against militants itself.
For several months, Pakistani diplomats and military officials have complained that they were being kept in the dark by the US administration’s non-UN-sanctioned military campaigns.
Politicians on both sides are disappointed with the results of investment of billions of dollars in the US military and civilian assistance since 2001 with Washington admitting in a recent report to Congress that the results of the spending fell short of expectations.
More than 1,180 people were killed by over 120 CIA drone strikes in 2010 alone, reports say.
The strikes have further fueled the anti-US sentiment already on the rise in the region.
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