About three months ago, NATO troops attacked and killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and injured 13 personnel in Pakistani territory. This is one of the most disastrous events of friendly fire in the history of American-Pakistani relations since 2001 and there is no evidence to suggest that there had been a disagreement serious enough to warrant this.
According to Pakistan’s director general of military operations, NATO had been informed that they were targeting Pakistani posts but they continued to launch the offensive regardless.
A multitude of arguments are being put forth by NATO justifying their side of the story ranging from them being provoked into the attack to them mistakenly assuming that they were attacking terrorist posts.
NATO has been occupying the Shamsi air base in Pakistan for a while now. Consequently, it is not surprising that the veracity of the later argument is being questioned by critics within the American as well as the Pakistani administrations.
The fact that NATO has not yet come out with unequivocal clarification of their actions has further confused this issue. It is important to collectively condemn these actions of the NATO to ensure any such incidents do not occur again.
MASHAL USMAN
Lahore
