World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org

By Peter Symonds
19 March 2008

An air strike on Sunday on a compound in the Pakistani tribal
area of South Waziristan that borders Afghanistan has left up
to 20 people dead. While Washington has not acknowledged responsibility,
there is little doubt that the US military or the CIA carried
out the attack as part of a widening covert war against anti-American
militants entrenched in the Pakistani border areas.

Up to seven missiles or bombs flattened the compound just south
of the regional centre of Wana at around 3 p.m. “When I heard
the explosions, I rushed to the place where it happened. I saw
dead bodies scattered everywhere,” a villager Aziz Ullah
Wazir told the Washington Post. Local residents and officials
claimed that the house belonged to a Taliban sympathiser, Noorullah
Wazir, and was frequented by “Arabs”—the term used
to denote foreign supporters of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Veteran journalist Sailab Masood told the Guardian,
however, that local tribesmen were angry that innocent civilians
had been killed.

Details of the attack are scanty. According to the New York
Times, villagers said a B-52 bomber carried out the raid.
Other reports cite locals who claim to have heard the sound of
a US Predator drone—an unmanned surveillance vehicle that
has been used in previous attacks inside Pakistan. The Pakistani
military acknowledged that the blasts had occurred, but pointedly
refused to identify the attackers, saying only that the army had
no operations in the area.

Both Washington and Islamabad are deliberately playing down
the attack, which will only further fuel anger at Pakistan’s
support for the US-led occupation of Afghanistan. President Pervez
Musharraf’s involvement in the Bush administration’s
bogus “war on terrorism” and tacit approval of US operations
inside Pakistan were a major factor in generating opposition to
his regime.

The issue remains highly sensitive as the winners of last month’s
elections—the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)—prepare to form a government.
Whatever their limited criticisms of US militarism during the
campaign, both parties have a long record of supporting Pakistan’s
alliance with Washington and collaborating with the US military.
Significantly, neither party has protested against the latest
missile strike, an indication that the new government, like Musharraf,
will acquiesce to US strikes in the tribal areas.

There are many signs that the Bush administration has expanded
covert operations inside Pakistan since the beginning of the year.
In early January, the New York Times reported that a top-level
White House meeting, involving Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley
and other senior officials, discussed in detail “far more
aggressive covert operations” inside Pakistani border areas.

“The new operations for expanded covert operations include
loosening restrictions on the CIA to strike selected targets in
Pakistan, in some cases using intelligence provided by Pakistani
sources, officials said. Most counter terrorism operations in
Pakistan have been conducted by the CIA... [I]f the CIA were given
broader authority, it could call for help from the military or
deputise some forces of the Special Operations Command to act
under the authority of the agency,” the article stated.

While the New York Times claimed that no decisions were
taken at the January meeting, another article last month reported
that the CIA had established a base inside Pakistan. “Among
other things, the new arrangements allowed an increase in the
number and scope of patrols and strikes by armed Predator surveillance
aircraft launched from a secret base in Pakistan—a far more
aggressive strategy to attack Al Qaeda and the Taliban than had
existed before,” the Times explained.

In its report of Sunday’s strike, the Times noted
that Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence and General
Michael Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, reached
an agreement in January with the new Pakistani army chief, General
Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to allow the US greater freedom to strike
targets in the tribal areas without specific permission from the
Pakistani Army. The article claimed that the US was receiving
“better on-the-ground human intelligence” by providing
“large cash payments to tribesmen”.

There has been a marked increase in visits to Pakistan this
year by senior American military officers, including two by the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen. During
his latest visit on March 4, Admiral Mullen discussed US assistance
to expand Pakistan’s Frontier Corps to a force of around
85,000 recruited from tribesmen in the border areas. The Pentagon
has already spent around $25 million to provide the Frontier Corps
with equipment, including vehicles, radios and surveillance devices,
and plans to spend another $75 million over the next year.

At least two other US aerial attacks have taken place inside
Pakistan this year. On January 29, a missile destroyed a compound
in the village of Khushali Torikhel in North Waziristan, killing
13 people. US and Pakistani officials claimed that Abu Laith al-Libi,
a senior Al Qaeda commander, was among the dead. On February 28,
a missile strike destroyed an alleged Taliban safe house in the
village of Kaloosha in South Waziristan, killing at least 10 people.
A local tribal leader told the Washington Post that women
and children were among the dead, and that at least six others
were injured.

It is not possible to confirm the identity of the victims of
these attacks. In neighbouring Afghanistan, US officials routinely
brand the casualties of US operations as “Taliban” and
“Al Qaeda” and deny civilian deaths even in cases where
locals have provided clear evidence to the contrary. On-the-ground
intelligence provided by paid informants is often unreliable and
coloured by local rivalries and animosities. Claims about the
outcome of US strikes inside Pakistan are undoubtedly just as
uncertain.

Other attacks on targets within Pakistan are taking place from
US bases inside Afghanistan. Pakistani officials lodged a formal
complaint with the US military after artillery fire from Afghanistan
hit a house in North Waziristan last Wednesday, killing two women
and two children. According to the Pakistani-based News,
last Friday four missiles fell on the village of Botraki, just
inside the Pakistani border.

The extent of Washington’s covert war inside Pakistan
remains unclear, but such operations are fuelling widespread anger
and provoking a rising number of suicide bombings and attacks
on Pakistani security forces and other targets. Last Saturday,
a bomb blast at a restaurant in Islamabad popular with foreigners
killed a Turkish woman and wounded at least 10 others, including
five American officials, two Japanese journalists and a British
police officer. Four of the five Americans were FBI agents operating
in Pakistan.

The escalation of US operations can only have a profoundly
destabilising impact, not just in the border regions, but throughout
Pakistan, which is already wracked by deep political crisis. While
the PPP and PML-N won a decisive victory in last month’s
election, in part because of their criticism of Musharraf’s
collaboration with the US, the mood will quickly turn as the new
government seeks to maintain the US alliance amid ongoing American
strikes on Pakistani soil.

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