US: Pakistan Using Haqqani Network for Proxy War Against Us

Mullen Demands Pakistan Military Break Ties With Group

by Jason Ditz, September 21, 2011

Admiral Michael Mullen has reported that his latest meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Parvez Kayani, ended after four hours with the US angrily claiming that the Pakistani military is secretly backing the Haqqani Network in a proxy war against the United States.

The US has been blaming the Haqqani Network for literally every major attack in Afghanistan lately, even publicly rejecting claims of responsibility from other groups so they could lay the blame on the Pakistan-based Haqqanis.

Though this seemed at first to be just part of the ongoing drama of the US trying to defend drone strikes against North Waziristan over public objections from Pakistan and massive civilian casualties, it seems the US is escalating matters now by insisting first that Pakistan was “ignoring” the Haqqanis and now claiming they’re secretly in league.

The repeated US moves to blame Pakistan for failures in Afghanistan over the past decade has seriously strained ties for some time, but as matters get worse and worse it is hard to imagine that a split isn’t coming. particularly with top US officials openly threatening to invade Pakistan to deal with the Haqqanis.

It is already yielding a major backlash from Pakistani officials, and once again the US has had to agree to Pakistani demands to reduce the number of troops on the ground in Pakistan.

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