Foreign Ministry: US Strikes In Pakistan “Helping the Terrorists”

One day after a US drone strike in North Waziristan killed at least nine people, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry has issued a harshly worded condemnation of the repeated strikes, warning that they are undermining the war on terror and “helping the terrorists.”

Spokesman Mohammed Sadiq also cautioned that the attacks are “destabilizing the situation.” This echoes the sentiment from a report earlier this week that North Waziristan’s Taliban were behaving more aggressively in the wake of a previous US strike.

The US has launched a number of unilateral strikes in North and South Waziristan over the past month and a half, part of a reported “the gloves have come off” strategy in the region, seen by many officials as a key base for militants launching attacks across the porous border into southern Afghanistan.

The Pakistani government has complained regularly about the strikes, but US officials have vowed they will continue. This has raised tensions along the border between Waziristan and Afghanistan, with Pakistani forces reportedly opening fire on invading US helicopters on multiple occasions, and ground troops from the two nations briefly exchanging fire across the border last month.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.