The killing of 25 Pakistani soldiers by NATO forces was an accident foretold, writes Graham Usher Pakistan-United States relations sank to a new low on 26 November when NATO aircraft killed 28 Pakistani soldiers in attacks on two military posts in Mohmand on the Afghan border. The killings have stretched to breaking point an alliance considered key to any peaceful NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. Washington's panicked response to the debacle reflected the stakes. President Barack Obama was kept updated as the body count climbed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Pakistani officials insisting on "the importance of the US-Pakistani partnership, which serves the mutual interests of our people". NATO vowed an investigation. None cut much weight. Islamabad closed two routes that freight 50 per cent of all NATO supplies to Afghanistan. And it gave the CIA 15 days to shut down an airbase in the southern province of Baluchistan that supports drone attacks on Islamist militants in Pakistan's restive north-west. On 29 November the Pakistan cabinet said it would also be boycotting an international conference next month in Bonn, Germany, on Afghanistan's future. Even these sanctions were deemed mild to an outraged public. Demonstrators in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and other Pakistani cities called on their government to pull out of "America's war" in Afghanistan. Pakistani anger is not only to do with the soldiers' deaths, grim though they were. 2011 has been a chronology of disasters for the so-called Pakistani-US "war on terrorism". In May the CIA refused to tell its "partner" of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, despite the fact that it occurred deep inside the country. Pakistan expelled all US military trainers. US officials -- high and low -- have accused the Pakistan army and particularly its Inter-service Intelligence (ISI) agency of supporting the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network via critical sanctuaries in its borderlands: the Taliban heads the insurgency against NATO; the Haqqani Network is its most lethal arm. In July Washington cut $800 million in military aid as punishment for the ISI's refusal to take action against either. Circumstances surrounding NATO's attacks are vague. NATO sources told the BBC that a US-Afghan National Army (ANA) special force was tracking a Taliban cell on the Afghan border when it came under fire from inside Pakistan. NATO aircraft retaliated at the source of the fire which apparently included one of the military bases. Pakistan countered that there was no insurgent activity in the area. And it categorically denied that fire emanated from either of the bases hit by NATO. Most of the slain soldiers were asleep in their beds, said one Pakistan official. NATO is "making excuses. What are its losses and casualties?" asked Pakistan army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas. Anger is compounded because all know the "incident" is not just about error. The slaughter in Mohmand was always possible given a US- Pakistan clash between rival strategies over how best to end the war in Afghanistan. Washington's strategy is to surge before leaving by hitting the insurgency so hard that the Taliban and Haqqani Network will be forced to accept a NATO withdrawal on America's terms. In October some 36,000 NATO and Afghan troops massed near the Pakistan border to bombard the Taliban and Haqqanis, weakening their sanctuaries from without. Some Pakistanis feared that the build- up was a prelude to invasion. That's why retired brigadier and analyst Mehmood Shah does not buy US apologies for the Mohmand carnage. "It was a deliberate attack on Pakistani territory", he charges But if the build-up was meant to coerce the ISI into taking action against the insurgents on its soil it failed. Islamabad still deems the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network as allies that will serve Pakistani interests in any post-NATO Afghanistan. In fact, it sees the ANA as the true adversary: commanded by former militia leaders hostile to Pakistan, allied to India and with irredentist claims on its borderlands, the ISI is convinced the ANA is fighting a subterranean war against Pakistan under NATO's protection. Yet it fears an open Afghan war once NATO goes. Islamabad's strategy instead is for there to be a ceasefire now followed by negotiations between the Taliban, ANA and all other Afghan parties with the aim of reaching a power-sharing agreement for the day after NATO. Washington is said to be averse to such a peace process. One Pakistani analyst suggests that's because it looks too much like an American defeat. Can the Pakistan-US alliance survive after Mohmand? Islamabad has closed NATO supply lines before only to reopen them once public anger subsides. A greater measure of the depth of the rupture is Pakistan's decision not to attend an the conference in Bonn this week. The parley is meant to showcase international commitment to Afghanistan's security and development after the NATO withdrawal. By participating, pakistan would have signalled that, whatever the deteroriation in US relations, it still wants to play a role in any Afghan peace process, and use its influence to bring the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network to negotiations. But by boycotting, Pakistan is telling the US that investigations and condolences are no longer enough. It wants substantive changes to NATO's whole strategy in Afghanistan, says Pakistani political analyst Hassan Askari. "It is a way to build pressure to make the United States understand that Pakistan takes this very seriously. It is registering its resentment with the international community."
