The Pakistani military leadership's response to the United States report on its helicopter attack on two Pakistani border posts on November 26 has assailed the credibility of the investigation by Air Force Brigadier General Steven Clark and expressed doubt that the attack could have been "accidental."
The long-expected rejoinder, made public on Monday, charged that 28 of its soldiers at two border bases were killed one by one long after the US military had been told about the attack on a Pakistani base.
The Pakistani critique questions the claims that the US did not know about the Pakistani border posts, that the combined US-Afghan Special Forces unit believed it was under attack from insurgents when it called in air strikes against the two border posts, and that a series of miscommunications prevented higher echelons from stopping the attacks on the border posts.
Revelations in the Clark report -- as well as what it omits -- support the Pakistani contention that the US investigation covered up what actually occurred before and during the attack. Information in the report suggests that the planners of the Special Forces operation the night of November 25-26 may have known about the two Pakistani border posts that were attacked while feigning ignorance to the commander who had to approve the operation.
It also portrays a military organization that was not really interested in stopping the attack on the border posts even after it had been told that Pakistani military positions were under fire.
The Pakistani analysis does not repeat the assertion made by General Ashfaq Nadeem, the director general for operations, in the aftermath of the attack that the coordinates of the two Pakistani border posts had been given to the US military well before the incident of November 25-26.
The analysis leaves no doubt, however, that the Pakistani military believed the United States was well aware of the two posts. It said each of the posts had five or six bunkers built above ground on the top of a ridge and clearly visible from Maya village about 1.5 kilometers away.
The Pakistani critique asserts that two or three US aircraft had been operating in the area daily, and that US intelligence had questioned Pakistani officials in the past even about changes in weaponry in its border posts.
The Pakistani military document highlights the revelation in the Clark report that Major General James Laster, the commander of the "battlespace" in which Operation SAYAQA was to take place, had demanded that the planners of the operation "confirm the location of Pakistan's border checkpoints."
The most recent map of Pakistani border positions available at the time, according to the Clark report, was dated February 2011. The obvious intent of the demand by Laster was that the planners find out if there were any new border checkpoints that needed to be added to update the map.
The Clark report reveals that "pre-mission intelligence analysis" had indicated "possible border posts North and South of the Operation SAYAQA target areas."
That intelligence was obviously relevant to Laster's order, but those border posts did not show up on the map produced on November 23. The planners had decided not to check on those "possible border posts" by asking a Pakistani border liaison officer or investigating unilaterally.
The Clark report tiptoes carefully around the implications of that fact, saying the operation's planners "did not identify any known border posts in the area of Operational SAYAQA."
The point of requiring confirmation of a new map would presumably have been to go beyond border posts that were on the available map.
Air crews planning for the operation also knew about the "possible border posts," according to the report, but didn't include them in their "pre-mission planning packages," because "they were data points outside the Operation SAYAQA area."
