Pakistan shuts key Afghan war supply-route

Pakistan shut down a pivotal US-NATO Afghan war supply route yesterday following a NATO attack on a Pakistani border post that killed three Pakistan Frontier Corps troops and injured three others.

Attack helicopters from the US-NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) twice strafed positions in Kurram, one of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Thursday morning, first about 5:30 AM and again some four hours later.

NATO officials have justified the attack on the Mandata Kandaho outpost as an act of “self-defence,” just as they did three helicopter attacks last weekend that killed more than 50 people.

According to a Pakistani military spokesman, the Frontier Guards at Mandata Kandaho had fired in the air to indicate to the ISAF helicopters that they had entered into Pakistan airspace: “Instead of heeding to the warning,” the helicopters fired “two missiles, destroying the post.”

Soon after yesterday’s attacks, Pakistan officials closed the crossing into Afghanistan at Torkham, north of Peshawar. By the end of the afternoon, the blockade had reportedly forced more than 150 NATO trucks and oil-tankers from the road.

Pakistan government and military officials have not publicly called the border closure retaliation for the violation of its national sovereignty and murder of its citizens. But on Tuesday, Pakistan’s military warned NATO leaders in Brussels that if NATO forces continue to mount military strikes inside Pakistan, Pakistan will no longer be “able to ensure the safety” of ISAF supply convoys.

While Pakistan’s government has for years tacitly accepted US drone attacks in FATA, it has strongly protested whenever US and NATO forces have crossed into Pakistan, including making thinly veiled threats of military retaliation.

This is hardly extraordinary. Under international law, cross-border attacks are tantamount to an act of war.

In commenting on Thursday’s developments, Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik said, “We will have to see whether we are allies or enemies.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit vowed Pakistan “will protect our sovereignty in all circumstances.” When asked how Pakistan might retaliate he said, “I leave it to your imagination.”

This latest crisis in US-Pakistani relations erupted one day after Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed to have reached a “decent understanding, with General Ashfaq Kiyani, the head of the Pakistan Army, about last weekend’s incursions into Pakistan and on a day that CIA director Leon Panetta was consulting with top Pakistani officials in Islamabad.