Pakistans military chief apology over civilian killing is a gesture

Pakistan military chief general Ashfaq Parvez Kayani on April 17 made an apology of
killing civilians of Sara village in the Tirah Valley, a tribal region near the Afghan border.
More than 70 people of Kukikhel tribe including women and children were killed and
other several dozens were injured in two air attacks. The army initially claimed that the
attack was targeted and all those killed were militants.
German press agency DPA cited as saying residents and a government official who spoke
on condition of anonymity that the jet fighters first bombarded a cluster of six houses
and struck again when the people gathered to pull the dead and injured from the rubble
This brutal attack shows once again, the on going Pakistan military atrocities to crush the
resistance of Pakistani people to US led military occupation in Afghanistan on the pretext
of War against terrorism
To justify its attacks in the area the military branded the Tirah valley, as a "stronghold" of
local militant group Lashkar-e-Islam and a "hub" of Taliban militants and foreign
fighters.
The incident sparked popular anger among the Kukikhel tribal people who considered as
a pro-government tribe. The tribal leaders, rights activists and local media, criticized the
incident, warning that the military will loose the tribal support on going military
campaign against Islam extremists.

In this context, on April 17, a week later the attack, military chief Kayani made an
apology to victim families. In his statement he apologized for the unfortunate incident
that resulted in loss of precious and innocent civilian lives and offered his heartfelt
condolences to the bereaved families He further ordered measures to avoid a reoccurrence of such incidents in future
The Kayanis apology is not more than a cynical gesture to calm down the popular anger
over the incident.
The leaders of Kukikhel tribe who support the military campaign immediately welcomed
the Kayanis apology and expressed hops that it would cool down the anger among the
tribal people. Those tribal leaders are aliened with the military and the Pakistani
government for their interests.
A leader of the Kukikhel tribe, Malik Ikramullah, praised Kayani for admitting the
mistake saying, Mistakes were confessed by bold and courageous people and Kayani
was one of them.

The tribal leaders said the Kukikhel tribe would continue to support and stand by the
Army and they would offer every sacrifice for the integrity of the country.
As a part of cooling down popular anger, the political administration in Khyber has
promised 10.5 million-rupee (US$125,000) compensation fund for victims killed or
injured.
Under the new strategy of war against Afghanistan, the Barak Obama administration
renamed it as Afpak war and compelled Pakistan to escalate military attacks against
Taliban Islamists.
Under this pressure the Pakistani military and the government have been launched a US
proxy war against anti-government Islamist and tribal militants from last year. Mainly,
the military campaign is centered the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan
(FATA), where predominantly ethnic Pashtun tribes are living. Alone last year, at least
12,632 people were killed and wounded another 12,815, as a result, according to report
issued by the Pak Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS) on January 10. A majority of them
were civilians. A broad rebellion in the Swat Valley district of North West Frontier
Province (NWFP) sparked against the military onslaughts. Millions have been displaced
and towns and villages have been destroyed.
The US is conducting drone attacks against alleged Taliban targets inside Pakistan which
killed 700 and 363 injured in 2009.

The government of president Asif Ali Zadari and prime minister Yousaf Gilani completly
depend on the US support for the interest of the Pakistani bourgeois in the region and to
strength its hands

Wednesday were essentially to insist that the offensive against the TNSM continue,
regardless of the social consequences for millions of people in NWFP or even the
political costs for the Pakistani government.
The US summit with Afghanistan and Pakistan currently underway in Washington marks
the onset of a major escalation of military violence in both countries. The purpose of the
meeting is for the Obama administration to bully into line its stoogesAfghan President
Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardariand map out a comprehensive
war strategy to pacify large areas on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border currently
controlled by Islamist rebels.
The significance of the tripartite summit is underscored by the presence of key figures of
the US military, intelligence and foreign policy establishment, including Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, CIA Director Leon Panetta, FBI head Robert Mueller and US

Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus, and their counterparts from Afghanistan
and Pakistan. Further tripartite meetings are planned to coordinate the joint war that will
inevitably take a further terrible toll of lives in both countries.
Flanked by Karzai and Zardari, Obama told the media yesterday that America was on the
side of the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Such remarks should be rejected with the
contempt they deserve. US imperialism is stepping up its wars in Afghanistan and
Pakistan not to advance security, opportunity and justice for the local peoples, but to
pursue Washingtons strategic goal of dominating energy-rich Central Asia.
Under intense US pressure, the Pakistani military is currently waging an offensive in the
Buner district involving 15,000 heavily armed troops backed by helicopter gunships and
warplanes. The operation, which is being applauded in Washington, has already sent long
lines of refugees fleeing for safety. According to local officials, 40,000 have already left
the region and the exodus could reach half a million.
In neighboring Afghanistan, US air strikes that killed up to 150 people in the western
Bala Baluk district early this week are just the latest atrocity in a war aimed at terrorizing
the Afghan people and suppressing any opposition to the neo-colonial occupation. Obama
barely referred to the incident, simply repeating pro-forma that the US would make
every effort to avoid civilian casualties. Ominously, he warned that there would be
more violence, but that US commitment will not waiver.
Both the Afghan and Pakistani presidents pledged their fealty to Washington and its war
against terrorism. While Obama referred to them as democratically elected leaders, the
US would have no compunction in removing them, by one means or another, if they
failed to follow orders. In recent months, US officials have been highly critical of Karzai,
who is facing an election in August, for his corrupt and ineffective administration as well
as his criticisms of the US military for their killing of civilians.
Top US officials have also put Zardari on notice over this reluctance to launch an all-out
war against Taliban guerrillas. The New York Times cited an unnamed senior
administration official as saying that the war in Pakistan would hinge on the Pakistani
military, particularly given the countrys refusal, thus far, to allow American troops on
the ground. While the US military has been intensifying its missile strikes with
impunity, Washington is clearly pressing for a far greater military role inside Pakistan.
The same newspaper has published a rash of sensational stories in recent days
highlighting the danger of Pakistans nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of Islamist
extremiststhe same pretext that was used by the Bush administration to carry out
regime change in Iraq. The Obama administration is obviously weighing a range of
options to replace Zardari if he fails to live up to his pledges in Washington.
Editorials yesterday in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal gave uncritical and
fulsome support for Obamas new war plans. Both newspapers urged Congress to rapidly
pass Obamas request for billions in supplemental funding to bolster the Afghan and

Pakistani governments and militaries, with the Wall Street Journal demanding no political
caveats from Congress that would gum up the requests and place restrictions on the US
militarys conduct of the war.
This consensus demonstrates that the entire American political establishmentthe liberal
Democratic wing no less than its conservative Republican counterpartis backing
Obamas two-front war. The escalating conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan underscore
the fact that the previous criticisms made by Obama and sections of the media of the war
in Iraq were of a purely tactical nature. Obama was selected and thrust to the fore in last
years election by sections of the US ruling elite that regarded Iraq as a disastrous
diversion from more crucial American aims and interests in Central Asia.
Having won the election by appealing to widespread anti-war sentiment, Obama is now
carrying out the mission for which he was chosen. Overseen by key Bush personnel
Defence Secretary Robert Gates and General Petraeusthe US military has prepared the
ground for a major summer offensive in Afghanistan with the doubling of US troop
numbers to 68,000. At the same time, the Pentagon has secured alternate supply routes in
the event that the planned escalation of warfare in neighboring Pakistan threatens existing
supply routes that pass through that countrys border areas.
The Wall Street Journal concluded its editorial by urging the Obama administration to
make clear that the US is committed to the regions security for the long run, adding:
The greatest danger is that Pakistans weak institutions and uncertain leaders lose their
will to defeat the Islamists. That is how the Shah of Iran fell in 1979. We dont want a
repeat in Islamabad.
In fact, the ruthless US-backed dictatorship in Iran fell not because the Shah lost his will
to imprison and murder opponents, but as a result of a popular uprising which fell under
the sway of the Islamic clerics. Already there are signs in Afghanistan and Pakistan of
broad social and political opposition to the US and its puppets. The Wall Street Journals
advice to Obama is that the US must do whatever is necessary and for as long as
necessary to violently suppress any challenge to US economic and strategic dominance in
the region.
Obamas escalating war can only have a profoundly destabilizing impact across the
region, laying the seeds for even wider and bloodier military conflagrations. It cannot be
opposed by appeals to the Democratic Party or to Congress, but only through the
independent mobilization of workers in the United States together with the working class
and oppressed masses of South and Central Asia and internationally. That struggle must
be based on a socialist perspective to overturn the capitalist system which is the source of
imperialist oppression and war.
Peter Symonds

ISLAMABAD, April 14 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has assured
Pakistan it will approve the release of the next tranche of an $11.3 billion loan at a board
meeting on May 3, the Pakistani prime minister's office said on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said in talks with the IMF in Washington that his
government was trying to broaden Pakistan's tax base and keep the budget deficit "close
to" 5.1 percent of gross domestic product, according to a statement from his office.
Pakistan turned to the IMF for an emergency package of $7.6 billion in November 2008
to avert a balance of payments crisis and shore up reserves.

But lets remind ourselves what this is all really about. Let us remember that this is the
same Kayani who was in Washington just three weeks ago with a fifty-six page
shopping list of arms and ammunition that he wanted from the United States. These are
weapons designed to kill innocents, but more importantly for the Army, there is much
money to be made in weapons deals. So to keep the gravy train going, the Army needs to
keep finding punching bags, and right now, the people of FATA are it.
.
April 16th, 2010
07:32 AM ET

Four militants were killed in northwest Pakistan by a suspected U.S. drone strike Friday
afternoon, local officials said.
The attack occurred in North Waziristan when the unmanned aircraft fired four missiles,
said a local intelligence official and an administration official.
The United States has carried out 27 drone strikes this year, according to a CNN tally.
U.S. officials normally do not comment on suspected drone strikes, which have caused
tension between Pakistan and the United States in the past.
CNN's Kiran Khalid contributed to this report.

Oppose the Afghanistan-Pakistan war

7 May 2009

U.S. and Pakistan Agree to Reinforce Strategic Ties

By MARK LANDLER
Published: March 25, 2010

WASHINGTON Pakistan and the United States wrapped up two days of high-level
talks on Thursday, with a raft of economic development initiatives, an agreement to
hasten deliveries of military hardware and a promise to put their often mistrustful
relationship on a new footing.
In a communiqu issued after the talks, the countries said they would redouble their
efforts to deal effectively with terrorism and would work together for peace and
stability in Afghanistan.
Administration officials said Pakistan was likely to get swifter delivery of F-16 fighter
jets, naval frigates and helicopter gunships, as well as new remotely piloted aircraft
for surveillance missions. But the United States was silent about Pakistans most
heavily advertised proposal: a civil nuclear agreement similar to the one the Bush
administration signed with Pakistans archrival, India.

Given Pakistans history of selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North
Korea, such an agreement would realistically be 10 or 15 years away, a senior
administration official said Thursday. Still, the administration was careful not to
dismiss the idea out of hand.
This is a new day, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in greeting
Pakistans foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi. For the past year, the Obama
administration has shown in our words and our deeds a different approach and a
different attitude toward Pakistan.
The strategic dialogue was by itself meant to send a message: The administration
used the term reserved for the substantive, wide-ranging exchanges it carries on with
important countries like China and India. Pakistan and the United States held three
such dialogues during the Bush administration.
But last year, Mr. Qureshi asked Mrs. Clinton to upgrade the exchange to the level of
foreign minister. On Wednesday, he said he hoped the two days of higher-level talks
would help Pakistan and the United States overcome a history that did not always
enjoy a sunny side.
Mr. Qureshi said the United States had agreed to put on a fast track some
longstanding Pakistani requests for military hardware.
Although Mrs. Clinton deflected a question about civil nuclear cooperation, she said,
Were committed to helping Pakistan meet its real energy needs.
Among specific announcements was an agreement for the United States Agency for
International Development to help Pakistan upgrade three thermal power plants.
The administration said it would try to push through legislation creating so-called
reconstruction opportunity zones in Pakistan. And it hopes to set up a fund to
stimulate direct foreign investment.
Pakistans military campaign against Taliban insurgents in the Swat Valley and South
Waziristan has improved the tenor of its relationship with Washington. But success
on the battlefield cuts both ways for Pakistan, analysts said. It gives the countrys
government in Islamabad a more credible argument for increased military aid. But it
also imposes greater expectations from the United States about Pakistans
counterinsurgency efforts and military cooperation.

Yes, you get a pat on the back, said Bruce O. Riedel, an expert on Pakistan at the
Brookings Institution. But now that youve shown you can do something, youve got
to do more.
Pakistans role in Afghanistan also remains a subject of intense scrutiny in the United
States. The Pakistani authorities cooperated with the Central Intelligence Agency to
capture the Talibans military chief, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. But some analysts
question whether the Pakistanis are rounding up other Taliban leaders, including
shadow Afghan governors, simply to make sure that Pakistan has leverage in any
future political bargaining in Kabul.
Mr. Qureshi insisted that Pakistan wanted Afghanistan to lead this process. If they
feel we can contribute, if we can help, well be more than willing to help, he said.
But we leave it to them.
On this subject, however, administration officials are more interested in hearing
from Pakistans chief of army staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was part of the
delegation. General Kayani recently held talks in Islamabad with Afghanistans
president, Hamid Karzai, and the general is viewed as critical to determining the role
Pakistan will play.
Of all the raw nerves in the relationship, Pakistans nuclear ambitions may be the
most sensitive. Islamabad yearns for an agreement with the United States because it
would confer legitimacy on Pakistans existing program.
But Washington does not formally recognize Pakistan as a nuclear power. The selling
of nuclear secrets by the father of its nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and the
countrys refusal to allow American investigators to have access to him ensures that
this recognition may be a long way off.
The question is, can you move somewhere toward giving legitimacy to a Pakistani
nuclear program? said Daniel S. Markey, senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South
Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. Is there space between a civil nuclear deal
and just saying no?

US and Pakistan hold strategic dialogue, but frictions

persist
By Sampath Perera
25 March 2010
The US and Pakistan are holding their first ever ministerial-level strategic dialogue.

Yesterday at the formal opening of the Washington talks, US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton claimed that they constitute a new day in US-Pakistani relations. For the past
year, said Clinton, the Obama administration has shown in our words and deeds a
different approach and attitude toward Pakistan.
In reality, the dialogue constitutes a continuation and deepening of the decades long
patron-client relationship between US imperialism and the venal Pakistani bourgeoisie
a relationship that has seen Pakistans bloated military-intelligence apparatus serve as a
tool of US interests in Central, South and West Asia and Washington promote Pakistans
armed forces as the countrys premier institution.
The enduring character of the US-Pakistan relationship is exemplified by the leading role
that General Ashfaq Kiyani, the current head of Pakistans armed forces, is playing in the
talks. Although the Pakistani delegation is officially led by Foreign Minster Shah
Mehmood Qureshi, even the New York Times had to concede that Kiyani has driven the
agenda for the talks and will be the dominant Pakistani participant.
Prior to Wednesdays opening of the strategic dialogue, Pakistans Chief of Armed
Services held talks with the head of the US militarys Central Command, General David
Petraeus, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and US Defense
Secretary Robert Gates.
Last week, Kiyani convened a meeting of the secretaries of the various Pakistani
government departments involved in this weeks talks, including the secretaries for
finance, foreign affairs, energy, education, and transport, and did so apparently without
even bothering to consult President Asif Ali Zardari or Prime Minister Yousuf Raza
Gilani.
Under the Pakistan Peoples Party-led civilian government, as previously under the USbacked dictator General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan is providing critical logistical
support to the US war in Afghanistan. Indeed over the past year, Islamabad has
dramatically increased its involvement in what Washington has renamed the AfPak War.
Eleven months ago, when Zardari and other top Pakistani officials visited Washington,
they came under intense pressure from the Obama administration to do more to choke
off support for the Taliban and other anti-US insurgents in Afghanistan from the
predominantly Pashtun-speaking areas of north-west Pakistan.
Subsequently, Islamabad mounted massive military offensives in South Waziristan and
the Swat Valley region of the North West Frontier Province. These offensives uprooted
more than 2 million people from their homes and resulted in heavy civilian casualties as
the Pakistani military used carpet bombing and indiscriminate shelling to suppress
Taliban-aligned militias.
The US, meanwhile, stepped up its campaign of predator drone strikes, dramatically
increasing their frequency and extending them beyond the Federally Administered Tribal

Areas (FATA). Hundreds of civilian have been killed in these strikes, which are mounted
in flagrant violation of Pakistani sovereignty.
While popular support for the social and political program of the Taliban and Talibanaligned militias is limited outside of Pakistans impoverished tribal areas, there is intense
hostility toward Washington among the Pakistani people because of its wars of
aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and its role in sustaining a succession of right wing
military dictatorships in Islamabad.
In her opening remarks at yesterdays talks, Clinton conceded, that the US and Pakistan
have had our misunderstanding and disagreements in the past, adding that there are
sure to be more disagreements in the future, as there are between any friends, or frankly,
any family members.
Clinton counterpart, Qureshi urged Washington to play a constructive role in resolving
Pakistans six decades old dispute with India over Kashmir and to provide Islamabad
non-discriminatory access to energy.
The latter was a reference to Pakistans oft-repeated demand that the US grant it a civilian
nuclear deal along the lines of that Washington concluded with India in 2008. Under the
Indo-US nuclear accord, Indialike Pakistan a non-signatory of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty and a country that developed nuclear weapons in defiance of the
regulatory regimes fashioned by the permanent UN Security Council membershas
gained the right to purchase foreign-made civilian nuclear technology, enabling it to press
ahead with plans to dramatically expand nuclear power generation and, even more
importantly, concentrate its indigenous nuclear program on the development of nuclear
weaponry.
Both Qureshis requests will undoubtedly illicit hollows of outrage from India, Pakistans
arch rival.
Pakistans foreign minister signaled that Islamabad is also looking for arms, increased
economic assistance, especially in meeting the countrys water- and power-shortages, and
greater access to US markets for Pakistani products.
Pakistan, said Qureshi, is committed to doing its part to facilitate the world
communitys effort for peace and stability in Afghanistan. We hope the world community
will be equally responsive to our legitimate concerns and help advance our common
interests.
Prior to his arrival in Washington, Qureshi had spoken much more bluntly. On March 18,
he told a media briefing about the forthcoming talks, We have already done too much
Pakistan has done its bit, we have delivered; now its your (the US) turn. Start
delivering.

Returning to the same theme later in the press conference Qureshi declared, We have
been talking a lot. The time has come to walk the talk.
The Obama administration has made much of the fact that last year it secured
Congressional approval of legislation providing Pakistan with $1.5 billion in annual
economic assistance for the next five years. But this amounts to less than $10 per
Pakistani per year.
The Pakistani elite resents the extent to which the US is seeking to control the
distribution of this aid money, as well as the increased oversight it is insisting on in
respect to the dispersal of money from the Afghan War Coalition Support Fund.
According to Islamabad, Washington is currently $1.5 billion in arrears on the payments
it makes to the Pakistani military for expenses occurred in assisting the US occupation of
Afghanistan.
In recent weeks, top Obama administration and Pentagon officials have gone out of their
way to laud the Pakistani militarys and governments support for the US war in
Afghanistan. They claim that there is a new level of cooperation between the Pentagon
and the Pakistani military and that this indicates a shift in the latters attitude toward the
Taliban. (The Taliban originally took power in Afghanistan under Pakistani patronage and
Islamabad has been loathe to sever all ties with it for fear that India will consolidate its
influence over Kabul at Pakistans expense.)
In testimony before Congress yesterday, Gates and Mullen termed Pakistans military
campaign against Taliban-aligned groups in Pakistan exceptional. Earlier Obamas
special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke had dismissed claims,
including from the UNs former top representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, that
Pakistans recent arrest of Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was
aimed at closing off a back-door channel of negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban,
so as to ensure that Islamabad plays a major role in any Afghan peace settlement.
Speaking last week, Holbrooke said the US was extremely gratified that the Pakistani
Government has apprehended the number two person in the Taliban.
US officials now claim to have a greater appreciation of Pakistans claims to a strategic
stake in Afghanistan. The commander of the US Central Command General Petraeus
recently said that Pakistan has an interest [in Afghanistan] that is somewhat different
than ours, and that is their strategic depth [T]heir strategic depth is and always has
been for a country thats very narrow and has its historic enemy to its east (i.e. India).
In what also constitutes a shift, Secretary of State Clinton now says that the US is willing
to consider Pakistans request for a civilian nuclear deal akin to that granted India. Until
now, Washington has always briskly rebuffed Pakistans calls for such a deal, insisting
that the Indo-US nuclear accord is unique.
But as Clinton added, agreeing to talk about something is a far cry from agreeing to it.

The crisis-ridden Pakistani elite is trying to leverage its role in the Afghan war to win
concessions from its US paymasters. But, the flights of rhetoric notwithstanding, the
Obama administration will be driven by the economic crisis and the imperatives of its
geo-political strategy to continue to drive a hard bargain with Islamabad.
For years, Pakistani officials have been seeking access to advanced US military
equipment, including missile-launching drones and advanced helicopters. But
Washington has spurned their appeals. In advance of the opening of this weeks strategic
dialogue, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell cautioned reporters, I would not look
for there to be some great announcement about any hard items that are being produced
as the result of the conversations.
The US-Pakistani strategic dialogue is only adding to apprehensions in India that
Washington is sacrificing its interests in pursuit of closer ties with Islamabad. From the
opposition benches and the Indian press there are all manner of voices complaining that
the Obama administration has downgraded Indo-US ties (in contrast with the Bush
administration which actively courted India as a counterweight to China). In particular,
they fear that India, which has lavished aid on Kabul, will be denied a significant role in
any future political settlement in Afghanistan. They also complain that while the US has
prevailed on Islamabad to crack down on Taliban-aligned elements it has not shown any
such resolve in pressing Pakistan to end its support for the insurgency in Indian-held
Kashmir.
In an attempt to push back against Islamabad and disrupt US-Pakistani ties, New Delhi
has mounted a vigorous campaign to label Pakistan the epicenter of world terrorism and
issued veiled threats of a cross-border strike in the event of a further terrorist attack inside
India.
The USs aggressive foreign policy has added a new explosive dimension to the historic
Indo-Pakistani rivalry. Holbrooke was forced to concede this when he recently summed
up what he called the American policy dilemma in South Asia. Both in New Delhi and
Islamabad, people come up to us and say, Oh youre pro-the other country, youre
favoring one country over the other.