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1.01.2003
The Way of the Gun 'With 2003 barely hours old, word comes that US troops and Pakistan troops have been involved in an altercation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The official line is that members of the Pakistani Border Patrol approached and shot in the head a member of the US forces accompanying them. A number of individuals, including the shooter fled into an abandoned madrassa only to have the field commander for the US call out the birds and bomb the structure. However, it is unclear just where these events took place. The US military insists that the Border Guard were in Afghanistan and told to return to Pakistan but instead shot the individual and then cowered in the madrassa on the Afghan side of the line. The poor fellow injured apparently was escorting the Border Guard in carrying out a mission of destroying weaponry that had been recovered. When the attacker approached the US solider, he was told to return to the Pakistan side of the line. The shooter consulted with other Pakistanis before carrying forward. There remain few if any good explanations as to why this attack would occur. Had this occurred in Afghanistan, the standard response would be that feuding warlords decided to turn the tables on American forces. However with Pakistani forces allied with the US, there is some question as to how far this ambush resonates up the chain of command. It could be that local Taliban sympathizers hoped to kill the troops by posing as the Border Guard. But it could also be that the local commanders are in not interesting in having the Americans poke their head into Waziristan. It could also be that there was a general communication problem between Arabic and English, and that after accidentially firing, the Pakistanis retreated to a location that they believed to be in Pakistan, but on American maps was across the border. Make no mistake, the murky details are exactly what we didn’t want to hear. Afghanistan is turning into a bottomless pit, and with momentum building toward a war in Iraq it’s not clear if the situation on the first front is about to deteriorate. A new year yes, but old fears persist. |
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