Not-so-friendly fire: US-Pakistan standoff rages on
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Much more fuel to the fire was added to US-Pakistani relations on Monday following the inside minister stated it was closing its border with Afghanistan following a US-led airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani troopers.

Pakistan had currently closed the border trucks supplying American troops in Afghanistan in reaction to the airstrike but there had been no indications that the shutdown was long term. It also informed the US to vacate an air foundation on its soil. Because then NATO has been coming up with excuses and stating it will examine the “tragic and unintended” accessoire.

Earlier on Monday, a Pakistani army spokesman stated that the US-led motion continued in spite of a plea from Pakistani army commanders to quit. Also on Monday, an angry team of Islamist protesters took to the streets of Karachi to contact on the government to break its alliance with the West. “Whoever is a buddy to The united states is a traitor to the land” they chanted.

Nevertheless, there is proof pointing to the reality the accessoire was not an incident – from each sides. US media are quoting an unnamed Afghan intelligence source that is stating the airstrikes had been initiated only following a team of Afghan commandos and US Unique Forces had been fired on from the Pakistani side of the border. But a Pakistani army spokesman denied this, stating there had been no casualties on the American side to recommend Pakistan began the accessoire.

In an job interview with RT, Welsh author Phil Rees, who is a specialist on the topic of terrorism, expressed his perception that it was Pakistan or a militant team allied to Islamabad that began the skirmish.

"We’re speaking about hyperlinks to the Pakistani army, it is in their interest to provoke a firefight simply because, let us keep in mind, the interests of NATO and the interests of Pakistan are fundamentally various in this region. And consequently you have received an uneasy alliance that is been collectively for more than a decade but truly the finish objectives of each teams are various". He goes on to say that Pakistan desires to have a force comparable to the Taliban (namely, Pashtun-primarily based) managing Afghanistan as soon as the US leaves the war-torn nation in 2014. He believes the US is bound to fall short and that “the Taliban are going to return as the most political force as soon as the West is gone”. Pakistan, in his see, desires to be pulling some of the strings of the new government, which “will not be something like that, which the West had hoped when it entered Afghanistan in 2001”.

The newest bout of violence is not the initial time the armies of the United States and Pakistan arrived into immediate confrontation. Final yr two Pakistani troopers had been gunned down by a US helicopter close to the troubled Afghan-Pakistani border following Pakistani troops opened fire on American helicopters. Relations soured additional following the US carried out a covert operation close to the Pakistani richesse of Islamabad to destroy Osama bin Laden with out informing Pakistan.