that it is "not possible" that the failure to
check on the Pakistani posts was "an innocent
omission."
A second point made by the
Pakistani military is that the US attack on its
"Volcano" base by US helicopter gunships continued
for "as long as one hour and 24 minutes" after the
US side had been informed of the attack on its
post.
Despite the fact that US and
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
officials had already been informed about the
assault on the Pakistani bases "at multiple levels
by the Pakistan side," the Pakistani analysis
charges, "every soldier in and around the posts
was individually targeted."
The Clark
report's account of US responses to being informed
by Pakistani officials that their bases were under
attack does nothing to allay Pakistani suspicions
about the claim that the attack was unintentional.
that its border liaison officer at the ISAF
Regional Command East (RC-E) had informed the US
officers in charge of "deconfliction" with
Pakistani positions on the border minutes after
the attack had begun at 23:40 hours that Pakistani
Frontier Force soldiers were being "engaged" by
US-coalition forces coming from Afghanistan.
The exchange over the news from the
Pakistani officer was testy. Air Force Brigadier
General Steven Clark recalled in his
press briefing on the report on December 22 that
the Pakistani liaison officer had been asked where
the border posts were located, and had not given
the coordinates, but had responded, "Well, you
know where it is because you're shooting at them."
Clark suggested that there was "confusion"
about where the attack was taking place, but there
was only one place where US forces were firing at
positions inside Pakistan that night, and RC-E's
border confliction cell could have easily
identified that place quickly enough with one or
two calls.
Neither the text of the report
nor the detailed timeline in an annex show any
effort to contact the Special Forces Task Force or
Task Force BRONCO, which had approved the
operation, about the report that they were
attacking Pakistani border posts. The report
offers no explanation for the absence of any
action on that report, saying only that it "could
not be immediately confirmed."
Twenty
minutes before the information had arrived,
according to the Clark report, Task Force BRONCO
told the Special Operations Task Force in the
region it was still waiting to get confirmation
from the Border Coordination Center for the area
that there were no Pakistani troops near the
operation. It added that RC-E was not tracking any
PAKMIL border posts on its computerized map of the
area.
The Special Operations Task Force
then then sent out a message system saying,
"PAKMIL has been notified and confirmed no
positions in area."
In yet another
suspicious episode, instead of asking the
Pakistani liaison to the border coordination
commission whether Pakistan had any posts or
troops in the area of Operation SAYAQA, RC-E give
him a general location that was 14 kilometers away
from that area and asked if Pakistan had troops
nearby.
The misdirection of the Pakistani
liaison officer, which ensured the response that
there were no Pakistani troops in the area, is
explained in the Clark report as having been
caused by a "misconfigured electronic map
overlay."
Asked in his press briefing why
the RC-E had refused to provide precise grid
coordinates under circumstances in which it was
supposed to be determining whether US forces were
firing at Pakistani forces, Clark cited "the
overarching lack of trust."
Nearly 40
minutes after the attack on border post "Volcano"
began, according to a timeline in the report, the
US Liaison officer to Pakistan's 11th Corps
reported to the Special Operations Task Force that
US helicopters and a drone had been firing on a
Pakistani military post.
But the Task
Force waited for at least 10 more minutes,
according to the timeline, before informing the
Special Forces Unit.
Meanwhile Pakistani
troops were being hunted down one by one.
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