The first known U.S. ground assault in Pakistan against a suspected Taliban haven

[seemslikeadream]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jIE0IUn4WIiaMBpjG8SI_6H5RXzgD92VLM900

US confirms ground assault inside Pakistan


By PAUL ALEXANDER – 33 minutes ago

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — American forces launched a raid inside Pakistan Wednesday, a senior U.S. military official said, in the first known U.S. ground assault in Pakistan against a suspected Taliban haven. The government condemned the attack, saying it killed at least 15 people.

The American official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of cross border operations, told The Associated Press that the raid occurred on Pakistani soil about one mile from the Afghan border. The official didn't provide any other details.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry protested saying U.S.-led troops flew in from Afghanistan for the attack on a village in the country's wild tribal belt. A Pakistan army spokesman warned that the apparent escalation from recent foreign missile strikes on militant targets along the Afghan border would further anger Pakistanis and undercut cooperation in the war against terrorist groups.

The boldness of the thrust fed speculation about the intended target. But it was unclear whether any extremist leader was killed or captured in the operation, which occurred in one of the militant strongholds dotting a frontier region considered a likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.

U.S. military and civilian officials declined to respond directly to Pakistan's complaints. But one official, a South Asia expert who agreed to discuss the situation only if not quoted by name, suggested the target of any raid like that reported Wednesday would have to be extremely important to risk an almost assured "big backlash" from Pakistan.

"You have to consider that something like this will be a more-or-less once-off opportunity for which we will have to pay a price in terms of Pakistani cooperation," the official said.

Suspected U.S. missile attacks killed at least two al-Qaida commanders this year in the same region, drawing protests from Pakistan's government that its sovereignty was under attack. U.S. officials did not acknowledge any involvement in those attacks.

But American commanders have been complaining publicly that Pakistan puts too little pressure on militant groups that are blamed for mounting violence in Afghanistan, stirring speculation that U.S. forces might lash out across the frontier.

Circumstances surrounding Wednesday's raid weren't clear, but U.S. rules of engagement allow American troops to chase militants across the border into Pakistan's lawless tribal region when they are attacked. They may only go about six miles on the ground, under normal circumstances. U.S. rules allow aircraft to go 10 miles into Pakistan air space.

The raid comes at a particularly sensitive time for the Pakistan government which is trying to overcome political divisions and choose a new president on the one hand, while the army is battling the militants on the other.

In other signs of Pakistan's precarious stability three days before legislators elect a successor to Pervez Musharraf as president, snipers shot at the prime minister's limousine near Islamabad and government troops killed two dozen militants in another area of the restive northwest.

Pakistani officials said they were lodging strong protests with the U.S. government and its military representative in Islamabad about Wednesday's raid in the South Waziristan area, a notorious hot bed of militant activity.

The Foreign Ministry called the strike "a gross violation of Pakistan's territory," saying it could "undermine the very basis of cooperation and may fuel the fire of hatred and violence that we are trying to extinguish."

Prior to the U.S. military confirming the U.S. raid, Pakistan government and military officials had insisted that either the NATO force or the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan — both commanded by American generals — were responsible. A spokesman for NATO troops in Afghanistan denied any involvement.

The army's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said the attack was the first incursion onto Pakistani soil by troops from the foreign forces that ousted Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban regime after the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S.

He said the attack would undermine Pakistan's efforts to isolate Islamic extremists and could threaten NATO's major supply lines, which snake from Pakistan's Indian Ocean port of Karachi through the tribal region into Afghanistan.

"We cannot afford a huge uprising at the level of tribe," Abbas said. "That would be completely counterproductive and doesn't help the cause of fighting terrorism in the area."

The Pakistani anger threatens to upset efforts by American commanders to draw Pakistan's military into the U.S. strategy of dealing harshly with the militants.

[Botany]

1. This was Obama's idea

go get the bastards and then get out

[alittlelark]

2. Perhaps we will 'find' BinLaden in October.....

He'll be nothing more than carefully collected DNA due to thebombs.... but then it's all good!

[seemslikeadream]

3. American Forces Attack Militants on Pakistani Soil

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/asia/04attack.html?_r=2&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin


DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Helicopter-borne American Special Operations forces attacked Qaeda militants in a Pakistani village near the border with Afghanistan early Wednesday in the first publicly acknowledged case of United States forces conducting a ground raid on Pakistani soil, American officials said.

Until now, allied forces in Afghanistan have occasionally carried out airstrikes and artillery attacks in the border region of Pakistan against militants hiding there, and American forces in “hot pursuit” of militants have had some latitude to chase them across the border.

But the commando raid by the American forces signaled what top American officials said could be the opening salvo in a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces against the Taliban and Al Qaeda inside Pakistan, a secret plan that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has been advocating for months within President Bush’s war council.

It also seemed likely to complicate relations with Pakistan, where the already unstable political situation worsened after the resignation last month of President Pervez Musharraf, a longtime American ally.

[seemslikeadream]

4. Deadly 'foreign raid' in Pakistan

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7595208.stm

Foreign troops based in Afghanistan have attacked targets inside north-west Pakistan, killing at least 15 people, witnesses and officials say.

The governor of North West Frontier Province called it an "outrageous" assault on Pakistan's sovereignty.

The attack is said to have involved helicopters in the tribal area of South Waziristan, close to the Afghan border.

US-led and Nato forces said they had no reports of any such incursion. Border tensions have risen in recent weeks.

The BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad says the US occasionally launches air strikes against militant targets in Pakistan's border region, sometimes in co-ordination with the Pakistani army.

But a raid by ground troops would be rare. It is not clear who the target of any attack might have been.

In other violence, Pakistani security forces killed up to 30 militants and injured dozens more in the Swat valley north-west of Islamabad, the military says.

'Cowardly'

Locals say three helicopter gunships dropped international troops in the Musa Nikeh area of South Waziristan, located on the border with Afghanistan, early on Wednesday morning.

[seemslikeadream]

5. Pak Army condemns ISAF forces’ attack on Angoor Adda

http://www.geo.tv/9-4-2008/24126.htm

RAWALPINDI: ISPR spokesman Major General Ather Abbas strongly condemned the unprovoked attack by the ISAF forces at a small village of Angor Ada in South Waziristan, saying the attack has been carried out without any basis and we reject loss of precious lives.

While talking to Geo News, ISPR spokesman said that the Foreign Office has also lodged a strong protest with the US government through diplomatic channels and reiterated that Pakistan reserved the right of Self Defence and retaliation to protect our citizens and soldiers.

Responding a question regarding a mechanism of co-operation between the ISAF and Pakistani forces, he said that there is a mechanism of tripartite commission, which keeps meeting on and off. Also, there is a border co-ordination committee to co-ordinate the attacks on both sides of border.

Although all these committees keep meeting and co-ordinate the effort in the war against terror but at the same time we always maintained that right to take action on Pakistani side of border rests with the Pakistani Army and on actionable intelligence we do take actions, he added.

[seemslikeadream]

6. Raid based on bad intelligence -Pakistani official

http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=327793

David Morgan
Reuters North American News Service

Sep 03, 2008 12:53 EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Suspected U.S. commandos blamed for killing 20 people in Pakistan were acting on faulty intelligence that was never shared with Pakistani forces inside the country, a Pakistani official said Wednesday.

Nadeem Kiani, spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, told Reuters the predawn raid near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan in South Waziristan was a violation of Pakistan's sovereign territory.

"The intelligence was not correct and the people who have been killed are unarmed civilians, not militants, and those include women and children," Kiani said in an interview.

Pakistani security officials in the region said they suspected the attack was mounted by U.S. soldiers backed by helicopter gunships in a region known as a sanctuary for al Qaeda and Taliban militants. The targeted village is across the border from a U.S. military base in Afghanistan's Paktika province.

Some residents said foreign troops involved in the raid also detained people and took them away.

"It was a violation of Pakistan's territory," Kiani said.

"Being an ally, any action taken on this side of the border should have been taken by Pakistani forces. There was a need to share that information with the Pakistani side," he added.

"We do have the capacity to share intelligence, and if there is any intelligence, our forces are in a position to take action immediately."

[Karenina]

7. ..

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