Inquiry into US airstrike on Pakistan troops finds both sides to blame

Pentagon says incident which led to the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers due to poor co-ordination
General Ashfaq Kayani
General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani pledged to 'defend the sovereignty of the country at all costs' following the attack. Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty

A US military investigation into the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in repeated air strikes by American warplanes on two border outposts last month has found that both sides were to blame after a chain of misunderstandings led to a "tragic result".

But a key finding of the inquiry – that Pakistani troops fired first – is likely to infuriate Pakistani military authorities and provoke a new row.

In statements hastily issued on Thursday after elements of the secret report surfaced in the American press, Pentagon spokesmen blamed the incident on poor co-ordination between Pakistani troops, a joint US-Afghan special forces unit targeting a Taliban training camp and the Nato personnel who called in the air strikes. Mapping errors compounded the mistakes.

But crucially, a Pentagon statement read: "The investigating officer found that US forces, given what information they had available to them at the time, acted in self defence and with appropriate force after being fired upon."

Pakistani officials have repeatedly claimed their men were deliberately attacked, saying that it was impossible that they were mistaken for insurgents. In the aftermath of the clash, General Ashfaq Kayani, the chief of the army staff and the most senior soldier in Pakistan, publicly pledged to "defend the sovereignty of the country at all costs" and reportedly gave ground commanders permission to return fire against any "aggression" across the border from Nato forces operating in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon statement said the inquiry had found "there was no intentional effort to target persons or places known to be part of the Pakistani military, or to deliberately provide inaccurate location information to Pakistani officials".

Pakistani military officials were not available for comment on Thursday.

The report comes at a difficult moment for the deeply unpopular Pakistani civilian government, which is already under pressure from the military and elements of the senior judiciary.

President Asif Ali Zardari, who is also co-chairman of the ruling Pakistan People's party, recently travelled to Dubai for medical treatment, sparking rumours of an imminent coup. He has now returned to Pakistan but the sense that his hold on power is slipping is still strong.

On Thursday Yousuf Raza Gilani, the Pakistani prime minister, told an audience in Islamabad that there was a conspiracy to oust the country's civilian government. "Conspiracies are being hatched to pack up the elected government," Gilani said.

Though he did not specifically blame the powerful military, which has ruled Pakistan through much of its 64-year independent history, the prime minister later insisted in a speech to parliament that the army operate under the authority of elected politicians. "They cannot be a state within a state," he said.

Gilani's comments came as the supreme court began a hearing into a secret memo sent to Washington earlier this year asking for help in averting a supposed military coup. The affair has already led to the resignation of Pakistan's ambassador to the US and threatens the president. Analysts say it is unlikely any coup would see "tanks rolling down the street" but is more likely to see the ousting of Zardari, 56, through "the manipulation of constitutional mechanisms".

The prospect of further political instability will not cheer Washington, however disillusioned US policymakers are with the current administration. Relations between the Pakistani security establishment and their American military and intelligence counterparts have deteriorated over recent months and years.

In the immediate aftermath of the Afghan war of 2001, co-operation on a range of issues was good and America supplied about $1bn (£638m) worth of military aid each year through the past decade to the Pakistani army. But distrust is now deep on both sides.

Dr Humayun Khan, a former Pakistani foreign secretary, said the report made any improvement in the near future unlikely.

"Our side were very categoric about what had happened and will simply deny credibility of the findings of this investigation," Khan said.

"The incident was a humiliation for them as it makes it look like they can't protect our borders."

The Pakistani army is still smarting from the American raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed in May. The al-Qaida leader was found by US intelligence in a northern Pakistani garrison town, leading many in Pakistan to question the military's competence and others in America to question their allies' loyalties.

Pakistani authorities were not informed about the operation in advance. In the aftermath of last month's border incident, Islamabad demanded that US forces quit a base in the west of the country where unmanned drones were based, significantly reduced intelligence co-operation and closed important border crossings used by Nato to ship fuel and other supplies to coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Last week, unhappy at the apparent inability of Pakistani forces to stem the flow of components for bombs used to kill international forces in Afghanistan, the US Congress proposed freezing a $700m tranche of American aid. The Pentagon statement did however offer "deepest regret".

Pakistani authorities have demanded, but not recived, a personal apology from President Barack Obama.

Khan, the former diplomat, said at some stage relations would have to improve. "Pakistan can't really afford to annoy the US permanently and will have to cool down a bit at some stage," he said.

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