U.S. Incursions into Pakistan
U.S. incursions into Pakistan primarily refer to military operations conducted by American forces within Pakistani territory, notably following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. These incursions became particularly prominent with a significant ground raid on September 3, 2008, when U.S. Navy SEAL commandos executed a mission targeting Afghan fighters in South Waziristan without prior approval from the Pakistani government. This marked a departure from previous operational protocols that required advance permission for such incursions. The raid underscored escalating tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan regarding the presence of Taliban and Al Qaeda militants in Pakistan, which U.S. officials believed were exploiting safe havens to carry out attacks.
In the wake of the September raid, the Pakistani military vehemently condemned the operation, asserting its commitment to national sovereignty and threatening to cut off U.S. supply lines to Afghanistan. The political backdrop was complex, with a transition in Pakistani leadership from Pervez Musharraf to Asif Ali Zardari occurring just days before the raid. Following the incident, Pakistani officials convened to address the implications of U.S. actions, which were perceived as undermining their territorial integrity. The situation highlighted a challenging dynamic in U.S.-Pakistan relations, as both nations grappled with the mutual challenge of combating terrorism while navigating issues of sovereignty and cooperation.
U.S. Incursions into Pakistan
Summary: U.S. commandos aboard a helicopter landed in a village inside Pakistan on September 3, 2008, the first time American special operations forces were authorized to operate inside Pakistan without prior approval of the government in Islamabad. They acted on an order issued by President George W. Bush in July 2008, according to the New York Times. Pakistani military officials denounced the raid and vowed to protect Pakistan's sovereignty "at any cost." The raid symbolized both the spread of the war against Taliban from Afghanistan into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of northern Pakistan, just across the Afghan border, and growing strains between Pakistan and the United States over activities of the Taliban inside Pakistan. Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters have taken refuge inside Pakistan. For months preceding the September 3, 2008, attack, U.S. armed forces had launched unmanned airplanes to bomb sites suspected of housing Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, but not ground attacks. The September 2008 raid appeared consistent with the Bush Doctrine, which maintains the United States has the right to act unilaterally in its defense, including staging attacks in foreign countries without advance permission.
On September 3, 2008, more than two dozen U.S. Navy Seal commandos entered Pakistani territory via helicopter from Afghanistan and attacked what was described as a group of Afghan fighters who had taken refuge in the village of Angoor Adda in South Waziristan. According to Pakistani military spokesmen, the raid was not authorized in advance by Pakistan. First news of the September 3, 2008, attack came from an Associated Press report quoting an unnamed American official. Pakistani military spokesmen confirmed the attack and said that 15 people died, including some women and children. Pakistani officials said no militant leaders had been killed.
On two subsequent occasions press reports said Pakistani troops fired on American helicopters inside Pakistan, once on September 15, 2008, when news accounts said Pakistani forces had fired on two American military helicopters near Angoor Ada, and again on September 21, 2008, when U.S. helicopters were fired upon about one mile inside Pakistani air space and turned back towards the Afghan border without landing.
The raids came at a sensitive time in Pakistani politics, just as Asif Ali Zardari was succeeding Pervez Musharraf as president and as the Pakistani Taliban--as distinct from the Afghan Taliban--was expanding from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) into the Northwest Frontier province. Initially the new government reacted by denouncing the introduction of ground forces without Pakistani permission as a perceived violation of Pakistan's sovereign territory. In October the government insisted that rockets launched from unmanned drone aircraft against targets inside Pakistan also violated its sovereignty and demanded that such attacks halt immediately. To reinforce its objections after the September 3 raid, Pakistan threatened to cut off U.S. supply lines that stretch across Pakistan into Afghanistan.
A new policy. On September 11, 2008, the New York Times reported that President George W. Bush had signed a secret paper in July 2008 authorizing ground attacks inside Pakistan without advance permission from the government in Islamabad. The authorization reflected long-standing frustration by U.S. commanders that Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters had safe havens in Pakistan and that Pakistan had not effectively acted against them--or had even warned militants when an attack was coming. For months preceding the raid unmanned U.S. drone aircraft had bombed suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda sites inside Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) adjacent to Afghanistan.
Previously, American forces had authority to cross the border only when in active pursuit of insurgents, and even then, they could not venture farther than one mile from the border. The Times report described the July 2008 order as "a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants' increasingly secure base in Pakistan's tribal areas."
The New York Times report on the change in American operational rules went on to say, "A second senior American official said that the Pakistani government had privately assented to the general concept of limited ground assaults by special operations forces against significant militant targets, but that it did not approve each mission. The official did not say which members of the government gave their approval." In public, Pakistani officials later denied such an agreement.
American officials have suspected Pakistan intelligence and military officials of tipping off militants inside Pakistani borders when advance notice of raids was provided. Thus, Bush's new orders authorized raids without advance notice, although the U.S. would notify Pakistan afterwards when such raids had been carried out. U.S. officials had long suspected that some elements of Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), continued to collaborate with the Taliban long after Soviet troops began withdrawing from Afghanistan in 1988. During the 1980s, the ISI worked closely with the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in supplying weapons and other support to the anti-Soviet Mujahideen (holy warriors), of whom the Taliban and Al Qaeda were two components.
In July 2008 officials in India also complained that the ISI's continued links to the Taliban were part of the larger subcontinent competition for influence between India and Pakistan, and were aimed at undermining what they feared was India's growing influence with the secular government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. After India's embassy in Kabul was bombed on July 7, 2008, India accused the ISI of collaborating with Afghan terrorists in the attack. U.S. intelligence agencies also concluded that there had been coordination between the two groups.
Pakistani Reaction. The September 3, 2008, ground attack came three days after a meeting between senior American military officials, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and their Pakistani counterparts on an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean. Admiral Mullen said afterwards he was encouraged that Pakistan was focused on the issue of militants operating in Pakistan. Pakistani officials, describing the subject of the meeting aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, said no new formal agreements had been reached, and they denied that they had agreed to look the other way in the event of U.S. ground raids inside Pakistani territory.
After reports of Bush's order, General Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani, head of Pakistan's military, issued a statement declaring that "no external force is allowed to conduct operations inside Pakistan." Kiyani promised that Pakistan would defend the country's sovereignty "at all costs." Other Pakistani officials said the new American policy could jeopardize Islamabad's cooperation with Washington, notably in allowing supplies to be shipped across Pakistan from ports in the Indian Ocean.
Pakistan's parliament passed a resolution condemning the raid. The government summoned the American ambassador to lodge a protest.
The initial ground raid came only a few days before voting in Pakistan's national and provincial parliaments for a new president to succeed Pervez Musharraf, a long-time American ally in the war on terrorism who resigned in August 2008 under threat of impeachment. Musharraf was succeeded on September 9, 2008, by Asif Ali Zardari. On the day of his inauguration Zardari held a press conference with Afghanistan's President Karzai, in which Zardari said combating terrorism would be a priority for his government. Karzai of Afghanistan had previously joined U.S. criticism of Pakistan's failure to root out Afghan insurgents inside Pakistan.
On September 16, 2008, Admiral Mullen made what was described in press accounts as a "hastily arranged visit to Pakistan" to discuss the September 3, 2008, raid and news reports of a possible subsequent raid. Mullen flew to Islamabad to meet Pakistan's army chief General Kayani and with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. The visit was added at the last minute to a previously scheduled visit to Baghdad.
As evidence of continuing Pakistani consternation over the unilateral U.S. incursions, on September 20, 2008, Zardari addressed the Pakistan parliament and declared: "We will not tolerate the violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity by any power in the name of combating terrorism."
In late October 2008, after reports of a rocket attack from unmanned American drone aircraft on a target inside Pakistan, the government in Islamabad appeared to escalate its objections to include these flights as well. On October 30, 2008, the Pakistani foreign ministry delivered a formal protest to the U.S. ambassador and a demand that such air strikes be "stopped immediately." The protest came two days after a drone aircraft struck in South Waziristan, killing 20 people, including some local Taliban commanders. According to news reports the United States had flown at least 19 such missions in the three month period August-October 2008.
American military officials in Washington were reported as having been surprised at the intensity of the Pakistani objections to the attacks, both the ground incursion and the drone flights--both of which were reported in the press as having come from "the highest level" of government.