The Battle for Pakistan

by Shuja Nawaz

  Pakistan’s Reply

  As expected, Pakistan was shaken by the deaths of two officers and twenty-two soldiers, and the wounding of thirteen others at their two border posts named Volcano and Boulder. The military response was swift and decisive. The army chief called the IG Frontier Force (FF) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at 9 p.m. on 26 November, and ordered the GLOC to Afghanistan to be shut down. He then called Prime Minister Gilani in Multan and requested him to return from his son’s wedding so that Pakistan could coordinate its response to the American attack. 13 Kayani believed that the GLOC closing would be temporary and was a means of getting the Americans to focus on this issue at hand. He said he conveyed this to the government. The government appears to have had a different view of the length of the blockade imposed by Kayani.

  Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was the point person in contacts with the US government. Early on the morning of 27 November, she called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to complain about the attack and said that it ‘negates the progress made by the two countries on improving relations’. Pakistan also lodged a protest with Afghanistan and urged its neighbour to prevent future air strikes from its territory. Khar recalled that Clinton shared ‘her deepest sympathies’ at the loss of Pakistani lives. Later, both Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta issued a joint statement offering ‘their deepest condolences for the loss of life’, and they supported ‘fully NATO’s intention to investigate immediately’ the attack on Salala. 14

  Khar remembered that ‘the Military was not very strong on what our reaction should be. We [the civilian government] were ready to close down the door.’ She said she ‘warned Kayani that if we don’t take a strong position the message you would give to the US is that they can do what they want’. The civil and military leadership were in agreement on the lack of usefulness of an American apology, though they continued to press for it. ‘What does it do for us?’ Kayani agreed with Khar. He said, ‘It will go in the dustbin!’ 15 But she reckoned that Kayani wanted to get more out of the Americans on the GLOC, while the civilians wanted to take a firmer position. Initially, the two sides were together. Later Khar said the government wanted to open the GLOC but the army delayed. This runs counter to Kayani’s narrative and even to the public record.

  The government took the issue to parliament. On 2 December 2011, the prime minister and relevant cabinet ministers and officers of the armed forces appeared before the Parliamentary Committee on National Security and gave a comprehensive briefing on Salala as well as the coordination mechanisms with the US, ISAF and NATO, including agreed Standard Operating Procedures. Foreign Minister Khar briefed the committee on 12 December and presented the recommendations of the Pakistani envoys conference held in Islamabad on 12 December. The committee was also briefed on extant agreements on cooperation between Pakistan and the Coalition in Afghanistan, but was not shown the actual documents. 16 The defence secretary was asked by the committee to get the response of the ‘stakeholders’ connected with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to these recommendations. On 24 December, the defence secretary informed the committee that the ‘stakeholders’ concurred with the recommendations and also offered his ministry’s views as well as the texts of various agreements signed with the US, ISAF and NATO. The committee then formulated its draft recommendations and on 5 January sought institutional responses from both the ministries of foreign affairs and defence. Their views were taken into account five days later. The finance ministry’s views were also sought on the economic impact of the situation and its consequences. The committee finalized its report on 11 January 2012, containing sixteen main and twenty-four sub-recommendations that were conveyed to the Speaker of the National Assembly and the prime minister on 12 January 2012. (One member, Senator Prof. Khurshid Ahmed of the Jamaat-e-Islami [JI], later resigned from the group on 24 January.)

  After reiterating Pakistan’s sovereignty and the need for an independent foreign policy, the committee reaffirmed Pakistan’s ‘commitment to the elimination of terrorism and combating extremism in pursuance of its national interest’. It also demanded an ‘unconditional apology from the US’ for the ‘unprovoked’ attack on Salala and asked that ‘those held responsible . . . should be brought to justice’. It also demanded that parliament should approve ‘any use of Pakistani bases or airspace’ and that all agreements be put in writing. It also recommended that the original Memorandum of Understanding of 19 June 2002 with the Ministry of Defence of the UK and Ireland acting as the Lead Nation for ISAF be revisited and the ten-year agreement with the US on Acquisition and Cross-servicing of 9 February 2012 should be renewed with terms that respect ‘the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Pakistan’. A laundry list of rules and regulations pertaining to the transit of supplies for Afghanistan via Pakistan then followed, reflecting the wide range of participants and their affiliations, as well as guidelines for relationships with other countries in the region. 17

  An examination of some of the US–Pakistan agreements shows that they were produced in opaque Pentagonese by lawyers for the US military, and mid-level Pakistani MoD officials signed them, probably without understanding the details of the texts that gave the US open access to Pakistani routes and services and little in return. As a former senior Pentagon official told me later, often, senior Pentagon officials had trouble understanding these legal texts!

  The Pakistan Military Response to Salala

  Within a few days of the attack, the Pakistan Army had prepared its own immediate report on the incident that it shared via a detailed briefing for selected journalists. The briefing was presented on 29 November 2011. I heard about this presentation and contacted a senior member of the military high command to see if I could get a copy, provided it was not classified. I received a copy almost immediately and was told later that it had been cleared at the highest level. I then asked if I could share it and was told I could. In my conversations with senior White House officials, I discerned that they were still waiting for details of the incident from the US military. I immediately shared the Pakistan military briefing with a senior White House official so that the Pakistani perspective was available in Washington, even as the DoD conducted its own investigation.

  Later, a version of that Pakistani brief was shared with US journalists in Washington by the Pakistan embassy. But B.G. Clark denied having taken any of these presentations or media reports on them into account, when asked by Eric Schmitt of the New York Times on 22 December 2011. He did not refer in his report or in the news conference to having seen the official Pakistan military briefing that was available to the White House within days of the Salala attack. ‘Unfortunately we did not have Pakistani participation in this investigation,’ he said. When Schmitt pressed as to why the US had not sought to redirect questions based on media accounts of the Pakistani version of events to Pakistan, Clark was emphatic: ‘The direction I was given. I had very specific things to look at and things that we could take into account.’ Clearly, the Pakistani point of view as presented by the media was out of bounds for the report he issued. Also out of bounds was any recommendation for punishments as a result of the investigation. 18 The Clark report failed to explain why Operation Sayaqa had been kept from the ODRP as well as the BCCs where Pakistani officers were stationed, raising the question that this could have been a planned diversion to ‘punish’ the Pakistanis for their sins of omission or commission related to the interdiction of Afghan Taliban attacks from Pakistani territory.

  The Pakistani military briefing laid out in detail the background to the recent operations of the Pakistan Army in Mohmand Agency and the coordination mechanisms with Coalition Forces/ISAF. It listed the use of Centrixs (Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System), email and commercial line and cell phones. In addition, there were personal contacts between senior Pakistani liaison officers at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa and CENTCOM senior staff, including Gen. Mattis. GHQ Pakistan Army was connected via its Military Operations Directorate with 11 C
orps in Peshawar and its formations in the Afghanistan border region as well as with Regional Command East and the BCCs in Afghanistan. The US ODRP was also serving as a connection between Islamabad and Kabul and Islamabad and Washington. The mandate for all these coordination systems, according to the Pakistani presentation, was to ‘communicate shared situational awareness of border activities to include surveillance, intelligence, force dispositions and movement in order to de-conflict and coordinate operations against militants.’

  A key slide in the Pakistani military presentation identified ‘Mutually Agreed SOP for Operations Close to Border.’ The Clark report makes no reference to any agreed SOPs nor does it address the list of SOPs that the Pakistani military shared with the world.

  The SOPs were:

  Sharing of detailed information about impending operations regardless of size.

  In case fired upon, immediate sharing of information about point of origin to the other side. Responsibility to take action, if confirmed, is of the country from where the fire is originating.

  In case of operation, request for blocking position/complimentary (sic) operations on the other side of the border.

  Immediate cessation of fire by both sides when communications established.

  All this information was presented by Pakistan before the Clark report was issued. Clark ignored it.

  Within a month of the Clark report being made public, and in the absence of any sharing by the US and NATO with Pakistan of a draft of the public report or its classified version, a more detailed Pakistani response was issued. This response raised some key issues related to the events leading up to the Salala incident, the environment, and coordination mechanisms.

  The Pakistani report 19 referred to a series of earlier incidents involving attacks on Pakistan military posts in the border region by US/ISAF forces. There were at least four recorded attacks between June 2008 and July 2011 before the deadliest attack at Salala. A total of eighteen Pakistani soldiers were killed and ten injured in these four attacks. One of these four attacks was on Ziarat Post in the area close to Salala on 17 June 2011. The first attack was on 10 June 2008 at Goraprai Post in Mohmand Agency when ‘an unprovoked aerial strike’ killed eleven Pakistani soldiers and injured seven. The second attack was another air strike on 30 September 2010 in Kurram Agency at Kharlachi Post when two US helicopters killed three soldiers and seriously injured three. The third incident, as mentioned earlier, was at Angoor Adda in South Waziristan Agency, when mortar and artillery fire erupted.

  According to the Pakistani narrative on Salala, ‘Despite repeated contacts with ISAF, including Lt. Gen. (LG) Ken Keen and Maj. Gen. (MG) Laster and activation of other coordination mechanisms, the fire which was proving fatal continued for several hours resulting in the Shahaddat [martyrdom] of four Pakistani soldiers.’ COAS Gen. Kayani had to intervene personally with Chief ODRP Lt. Gen. Keen, and warn that he would order ‘an enhanced level of response’ before the firing was stopped. The Pakistani report stated that the resulting inquiry by US/ISAF of the Salala attack and other similar incidents ‘failed to hold anyone accountable’.

  Separately, a senior Pakistani general involved in border operations for many years stated in a private communication to a senior US military counterpart that the Salala attack was ‘the eighth attack on our troops by friendly troops. We have lost a total of 72 troops to our allies. Only 5 of these 8 incidents have been enquired into and none of these enquiries has ever given closure to these events.’ He also stated that, ‘There has never been a single incident of our [Pakistani] troops ever causing casualties through such friendly fires/activities.’ 20

  The Pakistani military pointed out that the Clark report acknowledged that there had been no Coalition or ANSF presence in the area of Operation Sayaqa for some time. Meanwhile, Pakistan had been experiencing infiltration of terrorists from Konar province. Pakistan maintained that ‘since September 2011, no crossing from Pakistani side from Mohmand Agency into Afghanistan had taken place’.

  Regarding the two Pakistani posts of Boulder and Volcano, the Pakistani report used Google maps to indicate their location relative to the Afghan border and the village of Maya as well as the landing zone north of the village. Photographs of the two posts support the Pakistani claim that each of the two posts constructed two months prior to the attack was located on top of barren mountain ridges with clearly visible bunkers on the ridgeline. They were in the line of sight of Maya village and would have been visible to attacking aircraft and ground troops, especially once flares had been deployed.

  Commander 11 Corps Lt. Gen. Asif Yasin Malik, who was responsible for the region on the Pakistan border, arrived at the battered posts the next morning. He was livid at what he saw at Volcano and Boulder and later at the Clark report. He termed the Clark report ‘a cover up’. According to him: It was,

  . . . all a cover up. There was a five foot Green and White [Pakistan flag] flying even after the raid, as I was the first one to land in the morning. They [The Americans] had refused a joint investigation. The Red Neck [his angry characterization] pilots actually hunted down the soldiers as they fled the terror of gunships. In fact two of the bodies were found nearly two thousand feet below in a nullah [a dried gully] behind the post. They even intercepted a relief patrol coming to the help of the beleaguered post. All of these [Pakistani] troops were in combat uniforms. As far as location of posts is concerned the US side did not update their maps while locations were updated regularly by LOs [Liaison Officers]. Actually this post was hindering a TTP gathering on Afghan side preparing to attack Pakistani positions. Mohmand has a history of large-scale attacks from Afghan side, some times as large as 200/250. In one incident they even took prisoner 26 FC personnel. 21

  The occupants of the bunkers were in fact not FC but regular Pakistan Army soldiers of the 7 Azad Kashmir Regiment, belonging to 77 Brigade of I Corps, based in Mangla and inducted from their home base at Kharian (near Kashmir) into Mohmand in 2011 to deal with the surge of infiltration from Kunar province. This brigade took over the area in Mohmand and from 26 Brigade in Bajaur that had been deployed for two years. The 77 Brigade continued to monitor the border and manned forty-eight posts on the Pakistani side, while, according to Lt. Gen. Tariq Khan, former IG Frontier Corps (FC) and at that time commander I Corps, there were only twenty-nine posts manned by the Afghan National Army in that sector. Since there was no strong US/ISAF or Afghan National Army or Afghan Border Police presence across the border, they assumed that any movement was by potentially hostile elements on the move into Pakistani territory. The Pakistani report stated:

  This is true for both ISAF and Pakistan Military for entire Area of Responsibility of ISAF ’s Regional Command East (RC-E) and that of Pakistan Military’s 11 Corps. Fire is also carried out on suspected movement(s), such fire is called ‘speculative fire’. On any given night several Pakistani posts, if any when deemed necessary carry out speculative fire.

  The Pakistan military maintained that there had been US/ISAF ground activity ‘in and around Maya village’ prior to 26 November supported by aircraft, and that 2–3 US/ISAF aerial platforms, including ISR aircraft, fighters, helicopters and drones, operated opposite Mohmand Agency on a daily basis. It did not indicate if it had shared the location of the two newly constructed posts named Boulder and Volcano with US/ISAF, but assumed that ‘it is inconceivable that these or any other Pakistani Posts in the area were/are not known to US/ISAF.’ The Pakistan military blamed the USD/ISAF commanders for not briefing Pakistani military colleagues at GHQ Rawalpindi about Operation Sayaqa, though both Maj. Gen. Laster and Maj. Gen. Nicholson had been involved in the formulation of the concept of operation for Sayaqa. If this was not a witting omission on their part, the Pakistani military maintained that in the planning phase of Sayaqa US planes should have conducted an ISR sweep of the area that would have identified the Pakistani posts. Further, the concept of operations was not formally shared with the Nawa BCC and the Pakistani liaison officer at
that post, having been provided by ‘an interested third party’ that is not identified by B.G. Clark. Nor, as stated earlier, was the concept of operation shared with ODRP in Islamabad.

  Regarding the actual exchange of fire, there appeared to be a wide gap between the US and Pakistani versions. The Pakistani military stated that their speculative fire was aimed at a spot ‘only 400 metres from Volcano Post, a location which was already registered and which lay almost 1.5 to 2 kilometres away from Maya Village, and in a different direction’ from the US/ISAF patrol. The US/ISAF ground force was approaching from a landing zone to the north of Maya Village and heading to the village itself from two directions. ‘There is no chance that this fire could have landed even close to US/ISAF GF [Ground Force], let alone being effective.’ They maintain that the Pakistani fire could not have provoked ‘self defence ROE (Rules of Engagement)’.

  There is a clear disconnect between the two narratives. If the US/ISAF troops were far north of the area of speculative fire from Volcano, at whom were the Pakistanis directing their speculative firing? Further, if the Pakistanis were using night-vision goggles, they must have identified the infrared lights in use by the US/ISAF that were ordered switched off by local commanders during the exchange. There are no reports of Pakistani Taliban insurgents using IR devices or night-vision goggles. So, both the US/ISAF troops and the Pakistanis could have ruled out insurgent ‘hostiles’ as the source of ground-based firing. If the firing was really ‘accurate’ as described by Clark, why were there no casualties on the US/ISAF side? These issues have not been addressed by Clark, nor in the Pakistani report on Salala. Against this background, the Pakistani narrative challenged the description of the use of force by US/ISAF as proportionate or justified. The attack lasted between ninety minutes and two hours, and involved helicopters, a gunship and fighter aircraft, aided by ISR aircraft. The Pakistanis maintained that after the initial speculative fire, the post personnel were firing in defence mode on the attacking aircraft rather than at the ground force, as alleged in the Clark report.