Pakistan's generals meet as relations with US hit new low

Pakistani military join scramble to tackle crisis as tensions with US escalate, raising likelihood of more drone strikes
Anti-US protesters in Hyderabad burn a mock US flag
Protesters burn a mock US flag during a protest in Hyderabad, Pakistan. Photograph: Nadeem Khawer/EPA

Pakistan's army chief has gathered his generals to discuss the escalating war of words with the US over the Haqqani insurgent network amid a deep sense of foreboding across the country.

The military refused to comment on the meeting chaired by General Ashfaq Kayani other than to say it was to discuss the "prevailing security situation". Media reports said the generals considered retaliatory action in the event of US military strikes in the north-western tribal belt.

Meanwhile the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, recalled his foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who has strongly defended the military, from the United Nations in New York.

The political and military scrambling reflected the gravity of a crisis triggered by a 20-hour Haqqani assault on the US embassy in Kabul on 13 September, and subsequent US allegations that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency was behind the attack.

On Sunday night militants again attacked the US embassy compound in Kabul. The BBC reported gunfire and an explosion. Reuters said a US government source had acknowledged the building targeted likely contained CIA offices.

Last week the outgoing US military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the Haqqani network as a "veritable arm" of the ISI that were being used to fight a "proxy war" in Afghanistan.

The bare-knuckles criticism of Pakistan's military, unprecedented since 2001, has plunged already troubled relations between the two countries to a new low and led to widespread anxiety in Pakistan about what is coming next.

US actions will also be driven by domestic political pressure. In a taste of rising impatience with Pakistan, one senior Republican said the US was "going to have to put all options on the table, including defending our troops".

"We need to put Pakistan on notice," Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the armed services committee, told Fox News.

Analysts say the US will have to take action, but there is little indication what it will be. "They have to do something; they can't leave it hanging like this," said regional analyst Michael Semple.

Speculation is rife. One option would be air strikes or a special forces raid into the Haqqani safehaven of North Waziristan in the tribal belt. But most analysts believe such a scenario is unlikely, at least for now, given the risks of triggering upheaval that could destabilise the Pakistani government, and even lead to a military takeover.

Instead there are suggestions that the US could increase the tempo of CIA-directed drone strikes against the Haqqanis, including on populated urban areas that the CIA has previously avoided.

One likely target would be Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, where US officials complain the Haqqani leadership lives in close proximity to a major Pakistani base.

Pakistan's military admits it has contacts with the Haqqanis but insists they are for the purposes of gathering intelligence, not for priming attacks on US forces in Afghanistan.

"Any intelligence agency would like to maintain contact with whatever opposition group, whatever terrorist organisation … for some positive outcome," military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told CNN.

President Asif Ali Zardari's government, meanwhile, finds itself hamstrung by a foreign policy it does not control. Paradoxically, this lack of power could insulate the civilians from a military takeover, said defence analyst Dr Hasan Askari-Rizvi.

"I don't think there will be a coup. The civilian government doesn't get in the military's way, so they have no need to knock them out," he said.

Meanwhile other tensions are bubbling along the northeastern part of the Afghan border, away from Waziristan. The Afghan defence ministry has accused Pakistan of firing over 300 artillery shells and rockets into Kunar and Nuristan provinces since Wednesday.

Pakistan says that Pakistani Taliban militants are using the same Afghan territory – recently vacated by US forces - to mount raids into Pakistan.

Behind the angry rhetoric between the US and Pakistan, there is a strong sense that both sides need each other – at least for now. Amid the firestorm of allegations a senior US officer, General James Mattis, paid General Kayani a visit on Saturday.

Prime minister Gilani perhaps put it most succinctly: "They can't live with us. They can't live without us."