US airstrike strains alliance with Pakistan

The pre-dawn airstrike aimed at Ayman al-Zawahri in a remote Pakistani village was intended as a devastating blow to al-Qaida but it has strained ties with a key US ally in the war on terror and could provoke more anti-Americanism in the Islamic country, analysts said today.

Friday’s purported CIA mission, which Pakistani officials say missed its target and killed 17 people including women and children, also undermined the fragile goodwill cultivated in Pakistan by generous US relief in the wake of October’s earthquake that killed more than 80,000 people.

“This will consolidate anti-American sentiment,” said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and political analyst – as former US president George Bush arrived in Pakistan to tour the quake zone.

Thousands joined anti-US rallies across Pakistan at the weekend, calling for the resignation of military leader President Gen. Pervez Musharraf – who walks a political tightrope by maintaining close ties with Washington, which is reviled by many in this Islamic country for its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Monday that in the aftermath of the attack, the United States “should try to work to improve their image” and added it had “also created problems for this government.”

The attack was the third suspected US strike in less than two months inside Pakistan, which says it does not allow American forces based in Afghanistan to cross the border in the hunt against Taliban and al-Qaida.

US news networks and Pakistani intelligence officials have described it as a CIA attack, probably carried out by missiles from a drone aircraft.

A US counterterrorism official said it’s still unclear if Osama bin Laden’s top deputy was killed in Friday’s attack in the Bajur tribal region, and Pakistani intelligence say 12 militants may have been killed – possibly including some of al-Zawahri’s aides.

But Pakistan clearly feels the attack was a step too far. It prompted its second formal protest within a week to the United States over what it called the “loss of innocent civilian lives.”

Masood forecast icy ties if the missions continue, but expected the anti-terror alliance to endure if such an attack “is not repeated in the near future”.

Despite suspicions that al-Qaida and Taliban figures enjoy some degree of sanctuary inside Pakistan, its agencies have arrested more than 700 al-Qaida suspects in the past four years – including top figures, among them the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on America, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday paid tribute to Pakistan’s role in fighting terror, but did add that al-Qaida members “are not people who can be dealt with lightly”.

In a sign of fence-sitting that appears to be Pakistan’s lot in its ties with America, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz renewed the government’s condemnation of the attack today – but in the same breath announced he was travelling to Washington tomorrow to meet US President George Bush for talks on security and to drum up investment in Pakistan’s poor but fast-growing economy.

“The incident … is very regrettable, which we have condemned. I don’t think that takes away from the fact that Pakistan needs investment from everywhere in the world,” Aziz told reporters.

His ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q party later issued a statement demanding an official apology from the United States.

But the boost to America’s battered profile in this Islamic nation by providing helicopters and hundreds of millions in aid in the aftermath of the October 8 earthquake has been squandered.

“This has done great harm to the American image in Pakistan and neutralises the good deeds done in the earthquake relief,” said Khalid Mehmud, senior research analyst, Institute of Regional Studies in Islamabad.

Pakistan’s The News newspaper also warned in an editorial today that the missile strike could stir more fanaticism – particularly in tribal areas near the Afghan border, long a recruiting ground for jihadists.

“Episodes such as the Bajur tragedy, for a province where the situation is already delicate, can supply an excellent new cause to the fanatics,” it said.