In November, U.S. airstrikes destroyed a Pakistani outpost killing 24 Pakistani soldiers. Following that, the government in Islamabad closed NATO’s ground supply routes in southeastern Pakistan in a punitive move to impede America’s ability to provide for the troops occupying neighboring Afghanistan.

Munter also said on Thursday that there should to be a mechanism in place to stop a future mistake like the one that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, reiterating that the attack was not pre-planned and was unintentional.

But the continued use of Pakistani territory, in contravention of the spirit of Islamabad’s initial closure of the supply routes, is exactly the kind of disrespect for Pakistani sovereignty that Islamabad blames the November attack on and has been so angry about in the past.

Supply routes are not the only issue Pakistan has expressed anger about. They also object, at least publicly, to America’s drone war in the northwest frontier provinces, arguing it violates their sovereignty. The Obama administration has harmed diplomatic relations with Pakistan considerably since taking office, which has helped the war in Afghanistan remain a stalemate.

The attack was the second strike in two days, with another on Wednesday that killed 8 people. The back-to-back strikes could signal a complete end to the hiatus that occurred after American airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November. The Obama administration halted drone strikes for about six weeks, and has slowly restarted them since January.

The identities of the 11 people killed in two days are not known publicly. U.S. policy is typically to refer to anyone who has been killed by drones as “terrorists,” whether they are or not.

The drone program kills large numbers of civilians and creates significant tension between the U.S. and Pakistani governments. Islamabad demanded Washington stop bombing their country immediately after the political fallout resulting from the November airstrikes on Pakistani outposts.

The Obama administration has launched hundreds of strikes in the past few years, despite the drone campaign resting on very shaky legal and moral ground. Naz Modirzadeh, Associate Director of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) at Harvard University,  was interviewed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and said killing people at a rescue site may have no legal justification.

“Not to mince words here, if it is not in a situation of armed conflict, unless it falls into the very narrow area of imminent threat then it is an extra-judicial execution,” she said. “We don’t even need to get to the nuance of who’s who, and are people there for rescue or not. Because each death is illegal. Each death is a murder in that case.”

The strike is the second in the past 24 hours. Another attack hit North Waziristan on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and destroying a house in Thapi, a village on the outskirts of Miramshah.

The identities of the 10 killed in the earlier attack are even less apparent than the first one, as villagers say everyone was burned beyond recognition. Once again, however, they were listed as “suspected terrorists.”

The restart of the US drone strikes last month supposedly came as part of a secret deal with the Pakistani government to limit the frequency of strikes. It seems, however, that this isn’t necessarily the case.

Reports of human rights violations in Pakistani Balochistan are nothing new within the Pakistani press, but the sudden interest among US officials, coupled with eager condemnations from human rights groups, comes with serious undertones.

That is because last month, Rep. Rohrabacher and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R – TX), in a policy paper condemning the Obama Administration, proposed that the US pursue an independent Baloch state “carved out of Pakistan,” nominally to defeat the Taliban.

Gohmert has been keen on this plan for some time, insisting that an independent Balochistan would stop the flow of arms into Afghanistan and be a far better US ally than Pakistan has ever been.

Rohrabacher’s endorsement of it is somewhat more strange, given his history as an outspoken supporter of the Taliban during the Clinton years. Somehow this has morphed into being willing to slice Pakistan down the middle on the off chance it actually harms the Taliban.

The proposal is not new. Indeed, the Pakistani media was all over the story in 2006 when Lt. Col. Ralph Peters began pushing for the creation of “Greater Balochistan” as an independent nation carved out of Pakistan’s Balochistan Province and Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan Province. He also called for Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Khyber-Pakhtoonwhah Province to be ceded to Afghanistan. Pakistan would be left only as a narrow nation along the Indian border.

Peters’ plan was rather ambitious — he further proposed carving up Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, totally redesigning the map of the Middle East. The plan may never have been given serious consideration, but shows that the notion of splitting up Pakistan is not a new one, and is now being given serious consideration in Washington.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, barred from speaking about foreign bombs killing people on their soil because the CIA’s drone war in Pakistan is technically classified. This, despite an open acknowledgement of the program by President Obama just last week.

The attack occurred in Spalga village where militants fighting foreign troops in Afghanistan reside. But the identities of the 8 people killed were not known or released by the government. U.S. policy is typically to refer to anyone who has been killed drones as “terrorists,” whether they are or not.

The drone program kills large numbers of civilians and creates significant tension between the U.S. and Pakistani governments. The London-based  Bureau of Investigative Journalism has recently published an important new investigation into America’s drone war in Pakistan, finding that many strikes have deliberately launched follow-up attacks, killing people “who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals.”

The Obama administration has launched hundreds of strikes in the past few years, despite the drone campaign resting on very shaky legal and moral ground. Naz Modirzadeh, Associate Director of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) at Harvard University,  was interviewed by the Bureau and said killing people at a rescue site may have no legal justification.

“Not to mince words here, if it is not in a situation of armed conflict, unless it falls into the very narrow area of imminent threat then it is an extra-judicial execution,” she said. “We don’t even need to get to the nuance of who’s who, and are people there for rescue or not. Because each death is illegal. Each death is a murder in that case.”

The Supreme Court initially charged Gilani with contempt last month, citing his refusal for over two years to abide its late 2009 ruling that found the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) unconstitutional. This overturning of a Musharraf era immunity law had been a major blow to Gilani’s government because virtually his entire cabinet was facing corruption charges at the time. Gilani ignored the ruling.

In charging Gilani with contempt last month, the Court also cited repeated demands to investigate President Zardari and others in his cabinet over corruption. Undaunted, Gilani insisted he “answers to no individual.”

This time, the prime minister appears much less confident. A conviction on the contempt charge could end his political career and put him in jail. He insists he will attend the hearing.

“It seems to be a report that is detached from reality,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit. “Pakistan’s commitment to end the insurgency along the Pak-Afghan border has been very strong over the years and we had to pay a very high price for that. Thousands of our soldiers and civilians have lost their lives in the fight against militancy.”

The leaked document was reported to have been based on interviews with some 4,000 detainees at Bagram airbase, allegedly members of the Taliban or al-Qaeda as well as civilians. Bagram is well known as a Guantánamo-like base for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. 

The document says that the Taliban is set to retake control of Afghanistan once NATO withdraws, and that it will have the help of Pakistan. It also claims that Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI knows the locations of senior Taliban commanders.

“Senior Taliban leaders meet regularly with ISI personnel, who advise on strategy and relay any pertinent concerns of the government of Pakistan,” reports said.

As Pakistani officials were out denying any ties with Afghan insurgents and Taliban leaders, Pakistani warplanes bombarded militant hideouts in the northwestern tribal area of Peshawar early Wednesday morning, killing at least 20 Taliban insurgents, according to Pakistani officials.

Pakistan has a history of both supporting Taliban militants and killing swathes of them when it suits their interests, either by themselves or in coordination with the U.S. This has been difficult for U.S. officials to publicly protest, since Washington has been supporting its own band of terrorists in Afghanistan and since bribes to the Pakistani government allow them to conduct their own terrorism through a drone war in the tribal areas.

Islamabad issued another condemnation on Monday of Washington’s drone war in northwest Pakistan, branding it “unlawful, counterproductive and unacceptable,” after President Obama for the first time publicly acknowledged the classified program.

“I want to make sure people understand actually drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,” President Obama said in an hour long interview hosted by Google. “For the most part, they’ve been very precise, precision strikes against against al-Qaeda and their affiliates.”

The claim mirrors previous attempts to downplay the civilian casualties of the drone war. John Brennan, President Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor, told the public back in June that zero civilian casualties have occurred as a result of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan.

This was an obvious lie, but the Bureau of Investigative Journalism helped prove it so in August by cataloguing their lengthy findings on civilian casualties in the drone war, counting hundreds of civilians by name who were killed in drone strikes, including at least 168 children. Investigative reporter Noor Behram, who had been on the ground in Pakistan tallying the dead, estimated that “for every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant.”

A Washington Post article last month explained that, although the government has dismissed “reports of collateral damage and the alleged killing of innocents” by claiming that drones “result in far fewer mistakes than less sophisticated weapons,” they have yet to provide any details to support those claims.

The Post report said that the drone war in Pakistan has resulted “in an estimated 1,350 to 2,250 deaths.” But the public simply doesn’t have a good idea of how many have been killed, because “the identities…remain classified, as does the existence of the drone program itself.”

In the same Google interview, President Obama also down-played the role of U.S. drones in Iraq, saying that “the truth is we’re not engaging in a bunch of drone attacks inside Iraq. There’s some surveillance to make sure that our embassy compound is protected.”

Both Pakistan and Iraq have publicly objected to America’s use of drones flying over their skies, saying it amounts to a violation of their sovereignty.

The Karzai government, however, doesn’t appear to have any way of contacting the Taliban, whose leadership has long shunned him, arguing that because Afghanistan is occupied by a massive US-led force, Karzai has no real negotiating power.

Afghanistan is therefore courting Pakistan in the hopes that Pakistani FM Hina Rabbani Khar, who is visiting Afghanistan on Wednesday, can connect the government with some Taliban for negotiations.

This puts Afghanistan in a rare position, as Karzai is usually condemning Pakistan, and blaming them for insecurity in the nation. In turn, Pakistan has accused the Afghan government of favoring India in their regional rivalry. Whether the Afghan government can convince Pakistani authorities that facilitating Karzai’s desired talks will benefit the Pakistani government remains to be seen.