Already accused of being in league with the US government and facing a major investigation over a “coup memo” Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari must’ve been asking what else could go wrong. Then US warplanes attacked Pakistani military posts in the Mohmand Agency, killing 24.
And with NATO officials trying to balance precariously on the fence between “self-defense” and “oops,” major anti-US rallies are being held nationwide with growing calls for the government to cut off all ties with the Obama Administration.
For Zardari its a bad choice and comes at the worst possible time, leaving his already shaky regime with the choice of cutting ties with the international backers that have mostly kept them in power, or once again giving fuel to the opposition to demand early elections that would almost certainly force him out of office.
In the meantime, broadcasts of the funerals of the 24 slain soldiers are filling TV screens across Pakistan, ensuring that the public does not quickly forget about the attack.
Resentment against the US was already high, between the Raymond Davis murders earlier this year and the unilateral attack that killed Osama bin Laden. For many in Pakistan, the Mohmand strikes are just the latest in a pattern of behavior by US forces, one which has brought the nations once again to the verge of open hostilities.
And while the Zardari government will probably try as hard as they can to not make any major moves, the killings may well leave Pakistan’s political landscape permanently changed, and must inevitably make pro-US positions more unpopular than they already are.
Remember when the Japanese demanded that the US close their militray bases in Okinawa and Obama simply told them no? Or remember when Kyrgystan demanded teh Americans vacate their airbase and Washington just paid them a little more money? Yea, I'm pretty sure we're not leaving any base in Pakistan either.
If the US administration cannot retreat from the region, it will almost certainly forfeit what little support it may still claim in Pakistan or Afghanistan. It's hard to see what the US hopes to achieve through these drone attacks. Already, American have made themselves persona non grata in that region. Propping up perhaps the most corrupt Pakistani President to date hasn't exactly endeared them either. Obama would do well to beat a hasty retreat before it is too late….
No way is the Pakistani military going to give up the billions they get from the US and which allows the upper echelons of the officer corps to live in luxury. So what will happen will be the usual Kabuki for the benefit of the Pakistani public: mouthings and posturings and expressions of outrage, while all parties wait for the eventual defeat and departure of the Americans and their Nato poodles.
Same old same old. Nothing to see here. American money buys the Pakistani military just as AIPAC money buys the US Congress.