Foreign Policy In Focus

"Every now and again, one reads an editorial that stops the reader in his tracks," writes John Daly at Oil Price. He's referring to a story titled "War Inevitable To Tackle Indian Water Aggression" on Pakistan’s Urdu-language widely read daily newspaper Nawa-e Waqt, which "bluntly commented on India's Kashmiri water polices and Islamabad's failure up to now to stop New Delhi's efforts to construct hydroelectric dams in Kashmir."

First some background  on the tug of the war over the Indus, a prime water source for Pakistan. Almost 2,000 miles long, its wellspring is in the Tibetan plateau, which incorporates the Himalayas. The Indus runs through Kashmir (and Jammu) and flows south through Pakistan to Karachi where it empties into the Arabian Sea. But the dams that India builds across rivers feeding into the Indus not only decrease the share of water for Pakistan but can be used to deprive Pakistan of even more water in the event of war.

To address this issue, in 1960 India and Pakistan signed the Indus Waters Treaty, which gave India control of the main rivers of the Punjab, and Pakistan control of the Indus. Recently, though, wrote Tufail Ahmad for the Henry Jackson Society in 2009, "Concern is growing in Pakistan that India is controlling the water flow of rivers that flow from India into Pakistan, especially the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum rivers that pass through India’s Jammu & Kashmir state."

Pakistani commentators, pressure groups and religious leaders think that India is controlling the river waters to strangulate Pakistani agriculture, which could affect Pakistani exports and increase its dependency on food imports. Pakistani commentators fear future war with India may break out over water disputes.

This is hardly the first time that Pakistan voices have called for war over water issues. Ahmad writes about how in

… early 2008, an editorial in the [Pakistani] newspaper Roznama Ausaf accused India of planning a "Water Bomb" strategy to strangle Pakistan economically. The article quoted the officials of the IBWC pressure group [Pakistan's Indus Basin Water Council] as saying that India wants to achieve through a "water bomb" what it could not achieve through the three wars waged over the past six decades.

He then sheds light on the meaning of the phrase "water bomb."

Noting that India is planning "50 dams to raid the waters of the rivers" flowing into Pakistan, the IBWC warned: "If this is not foiled, Pakistan will face the worst famine and economic disaster."

Daly quotes the Nawa-e Waqt editorial on how to counter the water bomb.

India should be forcibly prevented from constructing these dams. If it fails to constrain itself, we should not hesitate in launching nuclear war because there is no solution except this.

That, too, is an old refrain in Pakistan. Ahmad again.

In May 2009, [IBWC Chairman Hafiz Zahoorul Hassan] Dahir described "India's water terrorism as a bigger threat than Talibani terrorism," and then added: "The day is not far when circumstances like those in Somalia, Ethiopia and Chad will emerge inside Pakistan... India has readied a weapon for use against Pakistan that is more dangerous and destructive than an atomic bomb." …  [A] convener of the Pakistani chapter of the Kashmiri secessionist organizations’ alliance, Syed Yousaf Naseem stated. … "Unless this issue is resolved, the Damocles' sword of a nuclear clash will remain hanging over the region." 

The rhetoric is as flamboyant as it is incendiary -- and irresponsible to the power of ten megatons. In a 2007 paper for the Physicians for Social Responsibility titled An Assessment of the Extent of Projected Global Famine Resulting From Limited, Regional Nuclear War, Ira Helfand, MD, writes that nuclear war in the region would result in "a total global death toll in the range of one billion from starvation alone."

An atmospheric scientist from the University of Colorado in Boulder, Brian Toon helped Carl Sagan put nuclear winter on the map. Colorado Arts & Sciences magazine reports:

In 2006, Toon helped lead two studies that found that even a small-scale nuclear war—one involving 100 15-kiloton explosions—could slaughter as many people as were killed during World War II and disrupt the world’s climate (and food production) for a decade. … Pakistan and India have the capacity to detonate 50 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs.

Daly wonders aloud if "there any way out before the missiles fly?" Ahmad wrote, "There is a realization in Pakistan that the 1960 Indus Water Treaty that establishes legal framework for use of river waters has been to the advantage of India." But Daly writes:

The 1960 Indus Water Treaty. … is considered one of the world's most successful trans-boundary water treaties, as it addresses specific water allocation issues and provides unique design requirements for run-of-the-river dams … All foreign governments interested in avoiding further military conflict in South Asia should impress upon both New Delhi and Islamabad the ongoing value of their 51 year-old water agreement and urge them to resolve their conflicts within its framework.

In the aftermath of the Nov. 26 NATO attack on two border posts that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, the question being asked is whether the assault was a “fog of war” incident or a calculated hit aimed at torpedoing peace talks in Afghanistan? Given that the incident has plunged relations between Washington and Islamabad to a new low at a critical juncture in the 10-year war, the answer is vitally important.

According to NATO, U.S. and Afghan troops came under fire from the Pakistani side of the border and retaliated in self-defense. American officials have suggested that the Taliban engineered the incident in order to poison U.S.-Pakistani relations. But there are some facts suggesting that the encounter may have been more than a “friendly fire” encounter brought on by a clever foe, an ill-defined border, and the normal chaos of the battlefield.

Afghan Taliban commander Mullah Samiullah Rahmani denies they were even in the area—and the insurgent group is never shy about taking credit for military engagements (of course, if deception was involved that is what the Taliban would say). However, this particular region is one that the Pakistani army has occupied for several years and is considered fairly “cleansed” of insurgents.

The incident was not the case of a drone attack or bombing gone awry, a common enough event. For all the talk of “precision weapons” and “surgical strikes,” drones have inflicted hundreds of civilian deaths and 500 lb. bombs have very little in common with operating rooms. Instead, the NATO instruments were Apache attack helicopters and, according to Associated Press, an A-130 gunship. In short, the assault was led by live pilots presumably identifying targets to their superiors.

Those targets were two border forts, architecture that has never been associated with the Taliban. It is true the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is porous and not always clearly defined, but the Afghan insurgents don’t build concrete posts. A “fort” is duck soup for a drone or a fighter-bomber, which is why the Taliban favor caves and hidden bunkers.

Naturally enough, both sides disagree on what happened. The Americans say they took fire from the Pakistani border, engaged in a three-hour running fight, and called in the choppers at the end of the battle.

But, according to the Pakistanis, there was no fire from their side of the border, and helicopters started the battle, which went on for a little less than two hours. Pakistan also says there were two Apache attacks. The first struck outpost Volcano, and when the fort’s nearby companion, outpost Boulder, fired on the helicopters, it also came under assault. Pakistan claims that its military contacted NATO to warn them they were attacking Pakistani troops, but the firing continued. The helicopters finally withdrew, only to reappear and renew the attack when the Pakistanis tried to reinforce the besieged forts.

Might it have been a matter of bad intelligence?

According to the Pakistanis, Islamabad has been careful to identify its posts to NATO in order to avoid incidents exactly like this. Pakistan Gen. Ashfaq Nadeem said, “it is not possible” that the “NATO forces did not know of the location of the Pakistani posts.”  Pakistan Gen. Ashram Nader called the attack a “deliberate act of aggression.”

Could it have been “deliberate”? Mistakes happen in war, but the timing of this engagement is deeply suspicious.

It comes at a delicate moment, when some 50 countries were preparing to gather in Bonn, Germany for talks aimed at a settling the Afghan War. Central to that meeting is Pakistan, the only country in the region with extensive contacts among the various insurgent groups. If the U.S. plans to really withdraw troops by 2014, it will need close cooperation with Pakistan.

“This could be a watershed in Pakistan’s relations with the U.S.,” Islamabad’s high commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, told the Guardian (UK). “It could wreck the time table for the American troop withdrawal.”

Pakistan has now withdrawn from the Bonn talks, and relations between Washington and Islamabad are as bad as they have ever been. The Pakistanis have shut down two major land routes into Afghanistan, routes over which some 50 percent of supplies for the war move. Islamabad has also demanded that the CIA close down its drone base at Shamsi in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province.

Who would benefit from all this fallout?

It is no secret that many in the U.S. military are unhappy about the prospect of negotiations with the Taliban, in particular the organization’s most lethal ally, the Haqqani Group. There is an unspoken but generally acknowledged split between the Defense Department and the State Department, with the former wanting to pound the insurgents before sitting down to talk, while the latter is not sure that tactic will work. Could someone on the uniformed side of the division have decided to derail, or at least damage, the Bonn meeting?

It is also no secret that not everyone in Afghanistan wants peace, particularly if it involves a settlement with the Taliban. The Northern Alliance, made up of mostly Tajiks and Uzbeks, want nothing to do with the Pashtun-based Taliban that is mainly grouped in the south and east, and in the tribal regions of Pakistan. The Afghan Army is mostly Tajik, who not only make up the bulk of the soldiers, but 70 percent of the command staff. President Hamid Karzi is a Pashtun, but he is largely window dressing in the Northern Alliance-dominated Kabul government.

There are broader regional issues at stake as well.

It was no surprise that China immediately came to Pakistan’s defense, with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechu expressing “deep shock and strong concern” over the incident. China is not happy about the NATO deployment in Afghanistan and less so about the possibility of permanent U.S. bases in that country. At a Nov. 2 meeting in Istanbul, China, along with Pakistan, Iran and Russia, opposed a long-term American deployment in the area.

Iran is worried about the threat of U.S. military power on its border, Islamabad is concerned that prolonging the war will further destabilize Pakistan, and Beijing and Moscow are suspicious that the Americans have their sights set on Central Asia gas and oil resources. Both Russia and China rely on Central Asia hydrocarbons, the former for export to Europe, and the latter to run its burgeoning industries.

China is also anxious about the Obama administration’s recent strategic shift toward Asia. The U.S. has openly intervened in disputes between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors in the South China Sea, and recently signed an agreement to deploy 2,500 Marines in Australia. Washington has also tightened its ties with Indonesia and warmed up to Myanmar. To China, all this looks like a campaign to surround Beijing with U.S. allies and to keep its finger on the Chinese energy jugular vein. Some 80 percent of China’s oil moves through the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.

A key ingredient in any formula to offset Beijing’s growing power and influence in Asia is the role of India. New Delhi has traditionally been neutral in foreign policy, but, starting with the Bush administration, it has grown increasingly close to Washington. China and India have a prickly relationship dating back to the 1962 border war between the two countries and China’s support for India’s traditional enemy, Pakistan. China claims on part of India’s border area have not improved matters.

India would also like a Taliban-free government in Kabul, and anything that discomforts Islamabad is just fine with New Delhi. There are elements in the American military and diplomatic community that would like to see Washington dump its alliance with Pakistan and pull India into a closer relationship. A fair number of Indians feel the same way.

So far, the White House has refused to apologize, instead leaking a story that showing any softness vis-à-vis Pakistan during an election year is impossible.

In the end, the border fight may turn out to be an accident, although we are unlikely to know that for certain. Military investigations are not known for accuracy, and much of what happened will remain classified.

But with all these crosscurrents coming together in the night skies over Pakistan, maybe somebody saw an opportunity and took it. In a sense, it is irrelevant whether the attack was deliberate or dumb: the consequences are going to be with us for a long time, and the ripples are likely to spread from a rocky hillside in Pakistan to the far edges of the Indian Ocean and beyond.

For more of Conn Hallinan's essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series.

"Not everyone is outraged by the NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers," I wrote at Focal Points yesterday.

In other words, Pakistani insurgents got NATO, with its helicopters and fighters, to do its work for it and attack Pakistani military forces, as well as sow yet more discord between Pakistan and the United States. 

Others celebrated the attacks too. At the Guardian, Saeed Shah and Jon Boone write that Afghans who in Kunar -- the incident occurred on its border with Mohmand, Pakistan -- "said they were delighted by the strike against the bases, saying they believed Taliban fighters were being harboured by the Pakistani army."

Though

Pakistan says there were no militants operating on its side. … Coalition and Afghan troops believe they received fire from insurgents operating from close to the Pakistani post, which is located 300 metres into Pakistani territory. A senior Afghan official told the Guardian that a combined Afghan-Nato squad had received incoming fire from 'the so-called Pakistani post", prompting them to call for air support. "The most important point here is that they were receiving fire from the direction of that post." … Afghan and coalition officials have accused Pakistan repeatedly in the past of failing to act to stop Taliban militants using its territory.

We'll give the last word to Qari Ehsanullah Ehsan, a Kunar tribal leader, who said "The people of Kunar are happy. We have been telling the Americans for a long time that the Pakistanis are bringing the Taliban to our villages."

Pakistan, writes Spencer Ackerman at Wired's Danger Room, "is making the world a vastly more dangerous place." Is he referring to support by its military and intelligence to the Taliban and the Haqqanis in their fight against Afghan and coalition forces? Not exactly.

Freaked out about the insecurity of its nuclear arsenal, the Pakistani military's Strategic Plans Division has begun carting the nukes around in clandestine ways. That might make some sense on the surface: no military wants to let others know exactly where its most powerful weapons are at any given moment. But Pakistan is going to an extreme.

The nukes travel "in civilian-style vehicles without noticeable defenses, in the regular flow of traffic," according to a blockbuster story on the U.S.-Pakistan relationship in The Atlantic. Marc Ambinder and Jeffrey Goldberg write that tactical nuclear weapons travel down the streets in "vans with a modest security profile."

In short, writes Ackerman, "Pakistan is taking nuclear paranoia to a horrifying new low." It's hyper-alert to the lust that militants experience for its nukes -- tactical, as well as strategic -- right? Again, not exactly. Ackerman explains.

It’s trying to safeguard its nukes from us. The Navy SEAL raid in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden has made important Pakistani generals think that the U.S. military’s next target is Pakistani nukes. So off the vans go … trying to throw off the scent of the U.S.

As with its failure to rein in the militants that it supports in Afghanistan, never underestimate Pakistan ability to underestimate the terrorist threat on its own soil.

Ackerman writes: "The irony is that the U.S. isn't planning to steal Pakistan’s nukes — but Pakistan's cavalier attitude toward nuclear security is making the U.S. think twice about whether it should." No, not steal Pakistan's nukes, but "revise some worst-case-scenario contingency planning."

Furthermore, Pakistan's skewed nuclear-security priorities might have a trickle-down effect on the West's attitude toward Iran's nuclear program. As if the attitude toward Iran's nuclear plans of many in the United States government and, of course, Israel weren't at least as overwrought as Pakistan's attitude towards designs it thinks that the United States has on its nuclear program. In the end, Pakistan's behavior only adds to the tendency of the West to divide the world into states that we deem of sound enough mind to administer a nuclear-weapons program and those that we don't.

In the course of an October 3 article at MEMRI titled The Failing U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan, Tufail Ahmad and Y. Carmon puncture the myth that the Taliban is negotiating, or preparing to negotiate, with the United States. (MEMRI is the Middle East Media Research Institute.) Even more of a revelation -- at least to me --they report that Pakistan mounted a series of military attacks on Afghanistan this year. Here's a sample:

In February 2011, Pakistani planes also bombarded Afghan Border Police posts and civilians' homes in Afghanistan's Nangarhar and Khost provinces. … In June 2011, Pakistan launched a series of missile and artillery attacks on the Afghan provinces of Kunar, Nangarhar, Khost and Paktia, killing dozens of civilians which were described by the Afghan government in a resolution as an "act of invasion" by Pakistan. On June 26, 2011, Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused Pakistan of firing 470 missiles into the eastern Afghan provinces. … In a July 2, 2011 testimony before the parliament, Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak confirmed that two Pakistani helicopters entered the Afghan territory sometime in the summer of 2011. On July 5, 2011, Afghan border police commander Aminullah Amarkhel reported that hundreds of fighters from the Pakistani Taliban crossed the border into Afghanistan's Nuristan province, where they attacked police outposts and torched homes. … on the eastern borders of Afghanistan with Pakistan, and that Pakistan has established 16 security checkposts inside Afghanistan's territory; 31 Pakistani security checkposts on the border with eastern Afghanistan were also seen as a threat to Afghanistan.

It's embarrassing enough for the United States that Pakistan not only refuses to clamp down on, but enables, the Haqqani network's campaign in Afghanistan. But when Pakistan's military itself invades Afghanistan, it nudges our campaign there into the realm of the  farcical. At least, though, it permits Pakistan a degree of payback for our drone attacks on Pakistan's soil, as well as the raid on Abbottabad.