Pakistan: Tankers Burn While Petraeus and Washington Fiddle and Fret

UPDATE 0715 GMT: Juan Cole offers further details, including this striking news:

American officers are reported by Pakistan’s “The News” daily to have threatened Islamabad with a cut-off of that aid if the boycott continues. They also are exploring other routes for resupply, including using the Latvia port of Riga to offload the cargo and then putting it on trains through Russia to Uzbekistan and thence Afghanistan. It would also be possible to ship from Russia through Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (the latter has a lively trade with Afghanistan, which it borders). A third route would be to ship through the Bosphorus Straits to the Black Sea, offloading at Georgia, going through the Russian Caucasus, and taking the goods across the Caspian to Kazakhstan and thence to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.

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The News in Pakistan reports, "Six people were killed and dozens sustained critical injuries [late Sunday night] when a group of bike-riding terrorists sprayed bullets at 28 Nato oil tankers and set them ablaze by throwing chemicals at them."

The Express Tribune is more conservative in its estimate, "At least 11 oil tankers carrying supplies for Nato forces stationed in Afghanistan were gutted and four people were killed when gunmen mounted a late night attack on a filling station in Islamabad."

Whatever the numbers, Sunday's attack is merely the latest development in an episode stemming not only from "terrorism" but from a dispute between US military commanders and the Pakistani Government. Upset at American bombings and raids that killed Pakistani troops as well as civilians and insurgents, Islamabad suspended permission for NATO tankers to cross the border and supply forces in Afghanistan. And sitting tankers make pretty attractive targets.

Steve Hynd calls out the US military and, specifically, American commander David Petraeus for the escalation in violence:

It's inconceivable that last week's cross-border incursions in to Pakistan by US helicopters - in which three Pakistani frontier guards were killed by American gunfire - could have been authorised anywhere but at the highest levels of NATO command in the region. Specifically, General David Petraeus would have had to green-light crossing the border.

Did he not get the memo from 2008, the last time such incursions caused five closures of supply routes through Pakistan in as many months as well as Pakistani threats to shoot down any further copters across the border, or did he just not care at the time? Did he not undrestand, as most anyone who watches the region does, that while drones flying from Pakistani bases may be one thing, manned incursions across the border that kill Pakistanis in uniform are quite another?

And Amil Khan sets out the increasingly tangled politics --- a politics that is unlikely to bring stability and public confidence, in which Petraeus is supposedly the master tactician --- that results from these episodes:

The hostility of the Pakistani public to U.S. actions in the region is obvious. However, any Pakistani government, whether civilian or military, will have to cooperate with the United States while managing public anger towards its benefactor. This increases the chances of both governments being pushed into secret, backroom deals that are less open to scrutiny and more likely to compound difficulties when they are uncovered. It also pushes the Pakistani authorities into a corner where they are forced to undertake face-saving actions such as the suspension of the NATO supply lines.

The latest snafu also exposes the increasingly fantastic proclamations of Washington observers. David Ignatius of The Washington Post is far from the only culprit, but his break-down may be the loudest. 

Ignatius is caught between noting that all is not quite right and his privileged access to Pakistani and American commanders, politicians, and intelligence services. So he always has to tack on a we-can-stay-the-course-and-do-it-better to his fiddling over all too obvious tensions.

So last Friday, Ignatius' nerves were offset, if not calmed, by an interview with a "senior official" of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence and his praise --- in contrast to Khan's analysis --- of the backroom deals that can somehow cope not only with "terrorism" but with US-Pakistan divisions and the consequence of military attacks:

This week a bad dream seemed to be coming true, with an American helicopter killing Pakistani soldiers. "No Pakistani government or military leadership can survive" if it's seen as a pushover for America, cautioned the ISI official. The anger on both sides is real. And yet top-level contacts continued, even as Pakistan was closing its border to U.S. transit.

That's the Pakistani-American paradox: No matter how furious they get, the two countries need each other, and never more than now.

Even Ignatius can only go so far in his belief and his invocations. Yesterday, after two more interviews with high-level Pakistani military commanders, he could not find any tangible advance. All he could offer was this weak final paragraph:

Even though U.S. drone attacks and other firepower can keep the insurgents on the run, but they won't bring stability. Neither will Tariq Khan's snipers. Somehow, the people in this desolate region have to feel they have a stake in a future that's something other than continuous warfare.