Clash Between NATO and Pakistani Forces Defused
by Rod Norland
New York Times
Dec 1, 2011
KABUL – A cross-border incident involving NATO and Pakistani forces was quickly defused early on Wednesday with no loss of life, according to Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, the spokesman for the American-led international coalition here.
Few details of the incident were immediately available but it apparently involved heavy artillery fire across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in Afghanistan’s Paktika province.
The firing broke out at a time of Pakistani anger over the killing of 24 of its soldiers in a United States air strike on Saturday. Pakistan closed its border to NATO supply convoys and pulled out of an international conference on Afghanistan next week in Bonn in protest at the killings.
Separately, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed regret at Pakistan’s decision to stay away from the Bonn conference.
FULL ARTICLE HERE…
(hat tip: Infowars)
Gen. Hamid Gul: The Sum of All Fears (video)
The Alex Jones Show
November 30, 2011
On the Wednesday November 30 edition of the Alex Jones Show, Alex talks with retired Pakistani Army three-star general Hamid Gul about the situation in Pakistan following NATO airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan has also issued a demand that the U.S. stop running drone strikes out of the Shamsi airbase located in the Balochistan province. Gul served as the Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Chinese Government Official: ‘US Threat To Pakistan Is Threat To China’
Chinese military stages massive wargame exercise near Pakistan in response to build-up of U.S. troops
by Paul Joseph Watson & Yi Han
Infowars.com
December 1, 2011
The Chinese military has staged a massive wargame exercise near Pakistan in response to a build-up of U.S. troops in the region as a top Chinese government official warned that any threat to Pakistan would be taken as a direct threat to China.
Citing a report by China’s Central Television, Junshijia reports that an unnamed government official warned, “Any threat to Pakistan is a threat to China,” in response to increasing hostility directed towards Pakistan by both the US and NATO in the aftermath of a NATO bombing that killed 26 Pakistani soldiers last week.Pakistan responded to the airstrike by sealing its border with Afghanistan, preventing supplies from reaching the US-occupied country.
According to the report, the United States is massing troops on Pakistan’s border in an act of aggression that China sees as a direct threat to its close alliance with the country. In response, China recently sent large numbers of Second Artillery PLA troops armed with sophisticated DF-21C and short-range DF-11A tactical missiles to China’s northwestern plateau near Pakistan for a huge military exercise designed to reflect China’s “attitude towards the US threat to Pakistan.”
The drill ran from the 14-27 of November and included Pakistani troops. It was also reported by numerous other Chinese news sources (1,2,3).
The report strongly emphasizes the Chinese position that its alliance with Pakistan represents a “brotherhood,” and that “China will never be in peace if Pakistan is lost.”
“Militarily, China will be conducting massive and heavy equipment desert warfare in Pakistan on the 16th,” states the translated report. “America has always desired Pakistan, especially in recent years. As the U.S. war in Afghanistan deepens, and military actions against Iran’s determination become stronger, (the threat of ) confrontation with China increases, Pakistan is the place for America to gain military advantage strategically and geographically.”
As we reported earlier, while China’s official rhetoric in English language media regarding hostilities towards the likes of Pakistan and Iran has taken on a concerned tone, discussions taking place inside China itself are a great deal more bellicose.
In response to increased western hostility towards Iran, Chinese Major General Zhang Zhaozhong remarked that “China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a third world war,” comments that have provoked much debate in China.
The subject of Iran is also discussed in the Chinese media report. A western-led military assault on Iran is strongly discouraged, a point China also hoped to stress by way of a show of force in its recent wargames. China’s ambassador to the UN has warned IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano not to create “unfounded” evidence to justify a military attack on Iran in the name of halting its controversial nuclear program.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
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Pakistanis burn Obama effigy and US flag
Sky News
November 28, 2011
Hundreds of enraged Pakistanis have taken to the streets across the country, burning an effigy of President Barack Obama and setting fire to US flags after 24 soldiers died in NATO air strikes.
The Sunday rallies were organised by opposition and right-wing Islamist groups in major cities of the nuclear-armed country of 167 million people, where opposition to the government’s US alliance is rampant.
In Karachi, the port city used by the United States to ship supplies to troops fighting in Afghanistan, more than 700 people gathered outside the US consulate.
FULL ARTICLE HERE…
(hat tip: Drudge Report)
NATO accused of killing at least 14-28 Pakistani soldiers in cross-border assault
Madison Ruppert
End the Lie
November 26, 2011
Pakistan has alleged that NATO conducted a cross-border helicopter attack operation that resulted in the murder of at least 20 Pakistani troops near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border early Saturday.
This comes as relations between the United States and Pakistan are already quite strained over the continued American drone attacks that defy Islamabad’s requests to cease the operations.
The incident was quickly decried as an egregious violation of Pakistani sovereignty, which Pakistan has been increasingly vocal about.
Back in May of this year, China had backed up Pakistan’s demands to respect their sovereignty, although it appears that the West has no interest in doing such.
Pakistani officials said that the attack occurred around 2 am Saturday morning at a checkpoint in Salala which was manned by Pakistan’s army.
Salala is a village in what The Los Angeles Times characterizes as “the restive tribal region of Mohmand,” and 50 soldiers were at the checkpoint at the time of the attack according to officials.
The Pakistani officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter but NATO officials confirmed that they were aware of Pakistan’s allegations and were investigating the matter.
The Pakistani government “retaliated,” if you could call it that, by closing a border crossing that is used by convoys that deliver supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials said that they had closed the Torkham checkpoint at the Khyber Pass and suspended movement of NATO tankers and supply vehicles traveling into Afghanistan through the checkpoint.
This is hardly retaliation given the fact that coalition forces attacked Pakistani soldiers in sovereign Pakistani territory for no reason at all.
The Los Angeles Times cites a quite similar incident on September 30th, 2009, when NATO helicopters killed two Pakistani soldiers at a border checkpoint in the Pakistani Kurram tribal region near the Afghan border.
The American government and NATO officially apologized for the murder of the two Pakistanis, claiming that the crews manning the helicopters believed the soldiers were insurgents they were pursuing across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In reaction to this assault on Pakistani sovereignty, they stopped allowing the movement of fuel and supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan through the Torkham checkpoint for 11 days.
This shutdown bottlenecked the transportation system and left NATO tankers and trucks vulnerable to attack across Pakistan, resulting in more than 150 NATO trucks being set on fire or damaged and six deaths.
Early numbers cited by the London Telegraph said that 14 Pakistani troops were killed in the NATO incursion, but Russia Today puts the number at 25 and the Sidney Morning Herald cites the Pakistani government’s number of 24 dead troops.
The Telegraph cites two intelligence officials in the region who report that up to 14 Pakistani troops were killed and seven wounded in the assault.
Russia Today is reporting that two anonymous intelligence agents and one government official said that 25 troops were killed and five more were wounded.
The Sidney Morning Herald cites Pakistani security officials who say that at least 24 soldiers have been killed and more than a dozen were injured.
They report that an official located at the paramilitary Frontier Corps headquarters in the city of Peshawar, the capital of the north-west province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa said that initial reports showed 22 soldiers and two officers were killed and 15 other troops were wounded in the attack.
Provincial governor Masood Kausar, who is the head of seven tribal districts’ civilian government said, “This is an attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty and such attacks will not be further tolerated.”
The acting Pakistani Ambassador in Washington, Iffat Gardezi has also expressed strong protest with the U.S. Department of State over the cross-border assault, according to Geo Television.
The Khyber district supplies more than 50% of supplies to coalition troops in Afghanistan and Jamil Khan, a senior Khyber security official said, “So far 50 trucks have been turned back.”
NATO is keeping quite silent on the matter so far, with Lieutenant Commander Brian Badura, the spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) saying, “We are aware that there has been an incident in the border region.”
“Right now we are gathering details and starting to investigate what happened,” Badura said.
It remains to be seen if NATO will take responsibility for this egregious assault on Pakistani sovereignty and how the Pakistani government will handle the response.
There also might be some critical responses from Pakistani allies like China which have been highly critical of Western incursions in the near past.
UPDATE: Reuters is now reporting that two Pakistani military sources are estimating that the number of dead is 28, three more than the closest estimate from a different news source.
The same sources say that 11 soldiers were wounded and 40 were manning the post at the time of the attack. What is clear at this point is that the details are very unclear. We will keep you updated as information becomes available.
If you have information or an article to pass our way, please do not hesitate to email admin@EndtheLie.com// <![CDATA[
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