How FBI Monitored Occupy Movement
The FBI and other federal agencies coordinated with banks and local authorities
in reacting to the Occupy Movement, which was put in the category of a domestic
terrorist threat despite the group’s advocacy of nonviolence, Dennis J.
Bernstein reports.
By Dennis J. Bernstein
Newly obtained secret FBI documents show that the Feds treated the Occupy
Movement as a criminal terrorist threat even though the movement rejected
violence as a tactic, a fact that the FBI acknowledges in the files.
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the executive director of the Partnership for Civil
Justice Fund, which obtained the documents, discussed the FBI disclosures in an
interview with me on Pacifica Radio’s “Flashpoints.”
DB:
Before we get into some of the specifics talk a little bit about what
motivated the request and your initial response to these heavily redacted
documents that you did obtain.
MVH: The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund filed a series, or maybe more
accurately a barrage of FOI [Freedom of Information] requests in the fall of
2011. At the point at which we could see, and the movement could see, that there
was a coordinated crackdown against Occupy happening all over the country.
And we issued FOI demands against federal agencies including the FBI, Department
of Homeland Security, the CIA and others, as well as against municipalities and
police departments around the country. When we received these documents, which
then have taken more than a year to obtain from the FBI, it was very clear to us
and clearer, I think, to anyone reading these documents the very intense role
that the FBI played in surveillance, mass surveillance operation against the
peaceful Occupy Movement.
DB: Alright, let’s talk a little bit about the documents that you received,
despite the fact that they were blacked out, in many instances. Let’s go through
some of the information … You got a document that was as early as Aug. 19, 2011,
and what was the FBI doing? They were getting ready for this movement?
MVH: Yes.
It says a lot about the FBI’s conduct in the role of the American
intelligence agencies that the FBI, before a single tent was put up in Zuccotti
Park in New York, was meeting with the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the
plans and upcoming Occupy protests and that was as early as August, 2011. And of
course, the OccupyWallStreet started officially on September 17th.
And while, as you said, the documents are heavily redacted and it’s very clear,
too, from the redaction that it’s a limited redaction. There’s obviously a lot
more out there that we are working to get. That they were working with private
entities, as well, meeting with businesses to alert them that they were the
focus of protests.
And the documents, throughout, show the FBI, in cities around the country,
different field offices, different joint terrorism task force networks
communicating with the private banks, private security entities, really
themselves acting as a private security arm of corporations, banks and Wall
Street.
DB: That’s pretty extraordinary. It really did have the feel that they were
working in concert, in conjunction, with some of the major banks. And it was
interesting …. Well, talk a little bit about what happened in terms of
Indianapolis and the potential criminal activity alert, whatever that is.
MVH:
Right. There’s a potential criminal activity alert put out by the
Indianapolis Office of the FBI, even though they are saying that they are aware
of the Occupy Movement, they don’t have a date specific for demonstrations or
activities in Indiana. But, nonetheless, they are putting out these, you know,
warnings, these alerts. Their documents acknowledge that the movement is
peaceful.
And it raises these questions, that of course, so many have been asking, you
have the FBI granted, you know, mass license since September 11th under the
claims of the need for national security, you know, millions, billions of
dollars poured into the FBI, Homeland Security and what are they doing?
They are turning their sights on a peaceful social justice movement and doing it
at the same time that they are working, hand in hand, with the banks and Wall
Street, the very focus of peoples’ demonstrations and organizing because of the
economic crisis caused by the corporations, banks and Wall Street. And there you
have American intelligence agencies acting as their partners.
DB: And we know that the Occupy Movement had a great deal of students involved,
young people involved. What did you learn in terms of spying on campuses?
MVH: There’s a, the Campus Liaison Project of the FBI has been very
controversial. Many student groups, campuses, activists have protested against
it, saying that it was, you know, going to be an abusive program. And you have
plain evidence of it here. You have evidence in New York, and in Albany, that
the FBI was communicating outward to many campuses. The documents reference, at
one point, that they were communicating information, and this was all just from
the New York location, the 16 campuses, I believe it is, and then there’s
another six.
And then a representative from SUNI Oswego, from the State University of New
York in Oswego communicating information back, reporting to the FBI on the
Occupy Movement on campus made up of students and professors. And, you know, in
that instance and in many other instances around the country, the documents show
this intense collaboration, not just with the banks and Wall Street, but also
with state and local law enforcement entities, and the fusion centers.
So here you have this, you know, mass apparatus collecting huge amounts of
information, a completely lawful, First Amendment protected — I mean cherished
first amendment protected — conduct in the United States and putting it into
these completely unregulated, and I think, very dangerous databases and data
warehousing centers.
DB: Now were students, were professors employed to be a part of this
surveillance. Is there any indication to have students, teachers were paid to
surveil?
MVH: I didn’t see anything like that. The reference there appears to be a
representative, so I am assuming it is someone in the administration or campus
police. Not that I think it was someone who was a student, or a professor or
something like that. You know, people can go look at the documents, which I
really urge people to do there. We made them all publicly available on our web
site, which is justiceonline.org.
And, you know, you can read through these documents and see the activities that
are going on. There are multiple instances where it appears from the information
in the text that is available that there was infiltration and surveillance or
undercover operations of that nature going on.
For example, in Richmond, there is discussion where the FBI is conferring with
the Federal Reserve, and there is an in-state law enforcement agencies and joint
terrorism task force, and there is this reporting going on from these other
entities back to the FBI giving them updates on planning meetings and general
assembly discussions.
So that certainly raises that specter, and there’s another similar incident in
Anchorage that we can see where someone whose private security working on behalf
of the port in Anchorage, Alaska, is meeting with the FBI over the planned West
Coast Occupy port actions. And saying that they are going to go attend the
planning meeting of the protestors and report back.
DB: I guess the thing that I became concerned about, and I covered a number of
these police attacks, really, on Occupy movements in New York and in Oakland,
where we would see, maybe there’s a 130 people in an encampment in Oakland and
you’d see 15 police forces converge. And apparently these police forces were
being coordinated by the federal government who, I guess, was making deals that
if they worked with the federal government they would be able to obtain certain
weaponry from the military.
And, of course, there’s a concern there when the federal government gets
involved in, if you will, community policing, coordinating police departments,
bringing police in from other areas. This is sort of walking that, to that
border called fascism, when the military and the federal government becomes
involved in repression.
MVH: Well, we’ve certainly seen that trend, and that very shift in police in the
United States into a paramilitary policing and our office has litigated, as you
know, a number of large cases related to demonstrations and mass demonstrations
in the United States. And, you know, in the Occupy context that’s really what
we’re trying to get at is this connection and coordination between the federal
government and local police agencies.
And, of course, the federal government always claims that they are completely
hands off, and yet these documents are showing this relationship, over and over
again. And you have that use of the legal term, imprimatur, that somehow these
activities fall under domestic terrorism, I mean, because that’s how the FBI is
categorizing it and that’s just stunning that the FBI is authorized to
categorize a social justice movement, peaceful protest, First Amendment, free
speech activities as domestic terrorism.
It says something too, that this is happening in this administration. People
think if you shift the Democratic, Republican administration that somehow these
abuses are not going to occur. But, of course, this is full license to have this
type of activity going on under the Obama administration.
You know, let’s look at the Tea Party. The Tea Party was having rallies across
the United States where they were open carrying [weapons]. They were bringing
guns to their rallies, some of them outside of where the President of the United
States was speaking but what does the FBI do? They are going after this nonviolent, peaceful Occupy Movement.
DB: Say a little bit more about the role of the Domestic Security Alliance
Council and what they are doing in the context of surveillance.
MVH: The Domestic Security Alliance Council is this coordinating body between
the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and major corporate banking, other
interests in the United States. And some of the documents we obtained from the
FBI, and one of these documents the Northern California ACLU had also gotten a
hold of. When you go through this document, it’s very interesting. It shows the
relationship between these private entities and the federal government antiterrorism security forces.
In this document, the one we have which is discussing demonstrations and the
port actions there’s even this, I think it’s a routine kind of footnote that’s
on the documents where they make the point of saying that everything that’s
within this entity, this communication should not be disclosed to the public or
to the media. That it’s to be kept internally between private corporate entities
and the DHS and the FBI.
DB:
And is there, in terms of the FBI and these federal agencies working with
corporate institutions like banks and like working with the Federal Reserve,
what’s the problem there?
MVH: Well, I think we would all accept that, you know, having U.S. government
intelligence agencies acting as private security with corporations, with banks,
with Wall Street which, you know, in these instances also are the very entities,
that are the focus of peoples’ social justice activism, and their attempts to
change the status quo in the United States is that what your billions of tax
dollars are supposed to be going to do?
democracy? Of course not.
Is that what’s supposed to happen in a
It is the negation of democracy to have the
government acting arm in arm with corporations, and banks, and Wall Street,
against the people of the United States.
And that’s exactly what’s happening here. I think for most people in the
movement this doesn’t come as a shock but the fact that it’s being so plainly
revealed here, and that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security don’t
even feel that they have to explain it, apologize it or say it’s a mistake or an
anomaly. It’s enshrined in what they are doing.
DB: And speaking about what they were doing … what was the Jackson, Mississippi,
Joint Terrorism Task Force doing when they issued a counter terrorism
preparedness alert, whatever that is?
MVH: Well, there are throughout the documents repeated references to domestic
terrorism, counter-terrorism alerts. You have the FBI joint terrorism task
forces meeting in like Biloxi with all these private banks to discuss an
upcoming demonstration that they’d heard about where people were protesting that
it was “bad bank sit-in day.” And yet here they are meeting with all these banks
privately.
One of the documents that we have has the FBI domestic terrorism discussions
referencing three groups, in essence, in domestic terrorism capacity and that
would be the Arian Nation, Occupy and Anonymous. Which says a lot about the
FBI’s perspective on social justice organizing that they can just lay that side
by side with racist, violent, terrorist organizations, like the Arian Nation.
DB: And as you say the Tea Party is coming, openly, to their meetings with
weaponry, I guess they are following the laws of the states that they are
in. But it would seem to me that that would require some attention.
Before I let you go, I want to ask you what you think the significance is of
what you found, and what you plan to do with the information. Do you plan to
keep pushing forward given the fact that so much of this was redacted, or
blacked out?
MVH: Yes, we’re filing an appeal. We’re challenging the redactions. We’re also
challenging the scope of production. We believe there’s a lot more information,
when you read the text of the document it’s plain that there is a lot more
information that was being gathered, collected, meetings, memos that we don’t
have, and we intend to get.
And the point of this and why we undertook this project, we have these materials
from the FBI, we have other materials from The Department of Homeland Security,
other materials from local police departments, and we’ve made them all available
and searchable on our web site.
The point of doing this is because the people of the United States have the
right to control the intelligence agencies and these kinds of government
activities. They have the right to stop it.
But first you have to know about
it. And so long as the government can act under this cloak of secrecy, in the
dark, they are going to continue to get away with these actions.
But exposure is the first necessary step to trying to halt and bring an end to
this extremity and these abuses. We want to make them available to the public
because people need to actually see what’s happening and be able to take action.
DB:
Alright and if people again want to get more information about the work
that you’re doing over at the Partnership for Civil Justice, how do they do
that?
MVH: Please come to our web site. It is justiceonline.org. And on that site you
can see
all of these documents that we’re getting, we’re continuing to get more
regularly. And as we get them, we are posting them. And you can sign up for
breaking news alerts so that as soon as we get material we send out e-mail
alerts letting people know as the documents become available.
DB: Beautiful. Well, I want to thank you very much Mara Verheyden-Hilliard
executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, trying to get
documentation from the federal government, from the FBI in terms of potentially
actions of illegal surveillance of Occupy actions in New York City and around
the country. Thanks for being with us on Flashpoints. Have a happy holiday.
Dennis J. Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and
the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom.
You can access the
audio archives at www.flashpoints.net. You can get in touch with the author at
[email protected].
Can Iran Help on Syrian Crisis?
Official Washington, including the U.S. press corps, depicts the Syrian crisis
as a civil war between black hats and white hats with no room for talks with
dictator Bashar al-Assad and certainly no role for Iranian negotiators, but
Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett at RaceForIran.com see that position as
shortsighted.
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
This past week, Iran hosted an international conference on the conflict in
Syria, a conference that is more important than most Western media coverage
conveyed.
The conflict in Syria is not just a civil war; it has become a highly
militarized proxy war, involving major regional and international powers
(including the United States). In such a situation, establishing a political
process involving not only the full range of relevant internal actors but also
all relevant regional and international players is critical to forestalling
strategic and humanitarian catastrophe.
Against this backdrop, Hillary Mann Leverett appeared on Al Jazeera to talk
about the prospects for resolving Syria’s internal conflict through diplomacy.
[Click here.]
Hillary compared the current situation in Syria to previous civil wars in
Lebanon and Afghanistan, places where, after the external militarization of
local conflicts had fueled years and years of fighting, with “dire” consequences
for civilian populations, domestic factions and their external backers finally
found their way to a political settlement based on negotiated power sharing.
She argued that the 1989 Ta’if Accord, that ended Lebanon’s civil war after 15
years of bloody violence still stands as a model for this approach to conflict
resolution. (It is noteworthy, in this regard, that one of the main architects
of the Ta’if Accord, former Algerian foreign minister Lakdar Brahimi, is
reportedly a leading candidate to succeed Kofi Annan as the UN SecretaryGeneral’s special envoy for Syria.)
Turning to Iran’s role, Hillary held that, notwithstanding the criticism heaped
on the Islamic Republic by the United States and some neighboring countries,
Tehran deserves “respect” for its efforts to promote a political settlement in
Syria.
The logic behind those efforts was well presented in an op-ed.by the Islamic
Republic’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, published in the Washington Post
earlier in the week in advance of the Tehran conference.
Dr. Salehi points out that “civil war in the Levant is not a thing of the
distant past. With Syria descending into worsening violence, the 15-year
Lebanese civil war should provide frightening lessons of what happens when the
fabric of a society unravels.”
In this context, he highlights some of (the many) illogical aspects of the
Western position toward Syria: “Little, if anything, is said about the
increasing presence of armed extremists in Syria. Even while preoccupied with
the rising extremism in Afghanistan, thousands of miles away, European leaders
seem unconcerned that they may soon have an Afghanistan on their doorstep.”
American leaders do not seem to us to be much more concerned than their European
counterparts about this prospect. Indeed, U.S. support for the Syrian
opposition, coordinated with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is raising the
chances for its realization.
During the 1990s, Iran regularly warned other states, including the United
States, about the rise of the Saudi-backed Taliban and the dangers posed by AlQa’ida’s relocation to Afghanistan under the Taliban’s hospitality. If
Washington and other capitals had taken Iranian assessments seriously, it might
have been possible to avert the 9/11 attacks.
Instead, Tehran’s warnings fell largely on deaf ears. Given the course of
subsequent events, Iranian warnings about what could come to pass in Syria
should be taken more seriously than most Western governments seem inclined to
do, at least at the moment.
Noting that “abrupt political change without a roadmap for managed political
transition will lead only to a precarious situation that would destabilize one
of the world’s most sensitive regions,” Salehi also warns that “some world
powers and certain states in the region need to stop using Syria as a
battleground for settling scores or jostling for influence. The only way out of
the stalemate is to offer Syrians a chance to find a way out themselves.”
To do this, Salehi argues that three things are essential: first, “ensure an
immediate cease-fire to stop the bloodshed”; second, “dispatch humanitarian aid
to the Syrian people”; and, third, “prepare the ground for dialogue to solve the
crisis.” In this vein, he endorses Kofi Annan’s outgoing observation that “a
political agenda that is neither inclusive nor comprehensive willfail.”
On a practical level, he conveys Iran’s “willingness to facilitate talks between
the Syrian government and the opposition” as well as its “support for political
reform in Syria that will allow the Syrian people to decide their destiny. This
includes ensuring that they have the right to participate in the upcoming free
and fair presidential election under international supervision.”
The final statement produced at the Iranian-sponsored conference on Syria
reflects both Salehi’s analysis and his practical approach. It underscores “the
necessity of pursuing political solutions based on national dialogue as the only
way to resolve the Syrian crisis with the main objective of bringing the
violence to a total end and encouraging the two sides to prepare the ground for
the national dialogue.”
To these ends, the statement calls on “the conflicting parties to end clashes
and violence for three months on the occasion of the arrival of Eid al-Fitr”
(which will come on the evening of Aug. 18). Furthermore, it stresses the “need
to uphold the principles of international law regarding non-intervention in
domestic affairs of other countries and the respect of their national
sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
In contrast to statements from the various Western-dominated “Friends of Syria”
meetings, the Tehran statement also urges a cessation of hostilities “by putting
an end to any military assistance to armed groups” while “warning of the
dangerous impacts of support for armed groups on regional peace and security.”
Furthermore, it recognizes the importance of “establishing a contact group from
among the participating countries aiming to end the violence and starting the
inclusive dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition.”
This all sounds great, right? Who could possibly be opposed to such eminently
logical ideas and proposals? Well, the Obama administration is opposed to them.
The administration has steadfastly resisted any contact group on Syria that
would include the Islamic Republic and, as noted, is intensifying its material
support for one side in Syria’s civil war.
Of course, Washington professes support for a political process to resolve the
conflict, but only one in which Washington’s preferred outcome, President Bashar
al-Assad’s ouster, is stipulated at the outset. That is hardly the posture of a
major power seriously committed to diplomacy.
The Islamic Republic could, indeed, play a constructive, not to say
indispensable role in standing up a real political process and finding a
meaningful political settlement in Syria. As Dr. Salehi writes, “Iran is part of
the solution, not the problem. As the world has witnessed during the past
decade, we have acted as a stabilizing force in Iraq and Afghanistan, two other
Muslim countries thrown into turmoil.”
Hillary recounts in her Al Jazeera appearance that she was “personally part of
the U.S. negotiations with Iran over Afghanistan,” which were “critically
important” in bringing Tehran “into the problem of Afghanistan in a constructive
way that allowed us to move forward” and make real progress (at least
initially).
Notwithstanding these historical and contemporary realities, the United States,
even under the Obama administration, continues to disparage Iran’s
“destabilizing” role in Iraq and Afghanistan, to which it has now added
criticism of Iran’s role in Syria.
The hard truth, though, is that Iraq and Afghanistan were “thrown into turmoil”
(to use Dr. Salehi’s phrase) not by Iran but by U.S. policies, including
invasions and prolonged occupations that managed to combine strategic
incompetence with cruelty to civilian populations. The overwhelming majority of
Iraqis and a majority of Afghans see the Iranian role in their countries as
vastly more positive than that of the United States.
Although the George W. Bush administration initially accepted the imperative of
working with Iran in Afghanistan after 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other hardliners were able to undermine that and
to thwart any move to cooperate with Tehran on post-conflict stabilization in
Iraq.
The consequences were deeply damaging for American policy in both the Afghan and
Iraqi theaters. Of course, the United States eventually had to face the reality
of Iranian influence in both places, but only after it had largely blown the
possibility of leveraging this influence in ways that could have served American
interests.
Today, Iranian involvement is critical to the search for a political solution in
Syria. But, like the Bush administration before it, the Obama administration
does not want such a solution, certainly not if this entails cooperating with
Tehran, because that would require it to abandon its real goals in Syria:
getting rid of the Assad government and thereby recasting the Middle East’s
balance of power in ways that, in Washington’s fantastical view of these things,
would undermine the Islamic Republic’s regional position and perhaps even
reignite the Green movement.
(We are not making this up; Obama administration officials have been feeding it
to the New York Times’ David Sanger at least since April 2011.)
Driven by these ambitions, the administration has, as Hillary put it, dealt with
Iran “precisely in the opposite way” from how Washington dealt with Tehran in
the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Rather than engaging the Iranians
constructively, the United States has “tried to isolate them and make them the
problem. This is a fatal flaw in the U.S. strategy, and will lead to a further
decline in U.S. influence in the region and a further uptick in Iran’s
influence.”
In the process, a lot more Syrians will die than would otherwise have had to,
just as many of the civilian deaths that occurred during the U.S. occupation of
Iraq could have been avoided if the United States had cooperated with the
Islamic Republic, and the risks to regional stability from the prospective
creation of an Afghanistan-like state in the heart of the Levant will continue
to grow.
That doesn’t matter in Official Washington, however; as Hillary encapsulates it,
“Syria is very much the piece on the chessboard here for the United States.”
Iran is the most important regional actor “willing to push back against what the
United States wants to do. So the United States is trying to contain that
resistance, to contain that opposition. And the Obama administration thought it
had a window of opportunity to do so when this revolt happened in Syria in March
2011.”
The window turned out to be illusory and the administration’s effort to exploit
it has “failed.” As a result, “the United States has tried to increasingly
militarize this conflict” in “a desperate attempt to contain Iranian influence.”
Hillary concludes with a broader and very important point about the strategic
challenge facing the United States in the Middle East today:
“In the information age the issue is not who has the most guns, who can use the
most force. It’s who has the best narrative. The United States is not going to
carry the day here with the narrative of trying to arm the opposition to try to
win the story here.
“That’s something that the Syrians are going to have to do for themselves,
without foreign intervention, and that’s something that Iran is trying to
harness, and potentially can harness very effectively to increase its influence
in the region.”
Flynt Leverett served as a Middle East expert on George W. Bush’s National
Security Council staff until the Iraq War and worked previously at the State
Department and at the Central Intelligence Agency. Hillary Mann Leverett was the
NSC expert on Iran and from 2001 to 2003
was one of only a few U.S. diplomats
authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Iraq.
[This article was originally published at RaceforIran.com. For direct link,
click here:
http://www.raceforiran.com/iran-deserves-%e2%80%9crespect%e2%80%9d-for-its-effor
ts-to-foster-a-political-settlement-in-syria
US Struggles to Explain Pakistan Attack
The tense relations between the United States and Pakistan have sunk to a new
low over an American aerial assault along the Afghan-Pakistan border that left
two dozen Pakistani soldiers dead and the country in an uproar. The U.S.
military also is having trouble sorting out exactly what happened, writes Gareth
Porter.
By Gareth Porter
The U.S. military and the Obama administration have been thrown into confusion
by the attacks on two Pakistani military posts near the border with Afghanistan
last Saturday, as the attacks provoked the Pakistani government and military
leadership into much stronger opposition to U.S. policy in the region.
The decision to attack by helicopter gunships, which killed 24 Pakistani troops
and stoked a new level of anti-U.S. sentiment in the country, has caught the
U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan in a rare
defensive posture, because senior officials don’t know what happened and why.
The unwillingness of ISAF, now commanded by Gen. John Allen, to comment on the
episode and the swift call for a full investigation clearly reflect doubts on
the part of the chain of command as to the veracity of the account given by the
unnamed commander of the U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) unit who ordered
the operation across the border in Pakistan.
That non-committal posture is strikingly similar to the standard ISAF response
to charges by Afghan government officials of the killing of civilians by ISAF
forces, whether in air strikes or in SOF night raids.
Accounts of the sequence of events leading to the attack leaked to the news
media since Saturday by unnamed officials on behalf of the SOF unit in question
have portrayed it in stark terms as a provocation by the Pakistani military.
The account of the attack given to Reuters the day after said a combined NATOAfghan force seeking Taliban commanders in Kunar province near the Pakistani
border came under fire “from across the border,” after which NATO aircraft
attacked the Pakistani army post.
The story was attributed to both an unnamed “Western official” and a “senior
Afghan security official,” suggesting the two had briefed Reuters together. The
Afghan official claimed that the combined force had been fired on from Pakistan
while descending from their helicopters, and that the helicopters had then
“returned fire.”
That account seemed to suggest that the same helicopters that had delivered the
combined force to its target in Afghanistan had then crossed the border in
pursuit of the insurgents.
The insistence that the attack had come from across the border parallels the
rationale for a previous attack by helicopter gunships inside Pakistan on Sept.
29, 2010. That attack had begun in pursuit of insurgents who were said to have
attacked an Afghan army base in Khost province from across the border and killed
two Pakistani soldiers after taking ground fire.
Although the normal practice in any cross-border pursuit of insurgents by U.S.
forces is to inform the Pakistani military, last year’s incursion avoided such
coordination based on an alleged “imminent danger to troops.” It appears that
U.S. and Afghan officials were constructing a similar rationale for a surprise
attack inside Pakistan in this case.
In subsequent accounts of the Saturday attack from both U.S. and Afghan
officials, however, the initial claim that the forces were attacked from across
the border was dropped. The Associated Press, which said it had been given
“details of raid,” reported Monday that the insurgent attack took place inside
Afghanistan.
The revised account given to the Associated Press portrayed the helicopters as
having followed the insurgents in the direction of the Pakistani border outposts
and spotting what they believed were insurgent encampments.
Afghan officials were continuing to insist that the insurgents were being
sheltered inside the Pakistani posts. A Washington Post story Tuesday quoted a
“senior Afghan police official” as saying that, after an initial gun battle, the
insurgents retreated into a Pakistani post and began firing from there.” The
insurgents were “firing at the commandos,” the Afghan official was quoted as
saying, “and they continued firing so the air support had to come to their
defense.”
The Los Angeles Times reported Monday that “several officials” said it was
“unclear whether the fire came from insurgents sheltering near the Pakistani
posts or from the posts themselves.”
The shifting accounts, the ambiguity about whether the helicopter was unaware
that the posts belonged to the Pakistan military, and whether insurgents were
actually in the posts or not all clearly bothered the ISAF command and officials
in Washington.
Meanwhile, the claim that the helicopter was firing on the posts in the mistaken
belief that they were insurgent camps has been refuted in detail by the
Pakistani military. Maj. Gen. Ashfaq Nadeem, the director general of military
operations who was directly involved in dealing with attack Saturday morning,
said it was “impossible that they did not know these to be our posts,” according
to the Pakistani daily The News.
Nadeem and military spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas both pointed out the posts were
located on the tops or ridges more than 300 meters from the Afghan border and
that they were permanent structures, which would not have been occupied by
insurgents. Furthermore, Nadeem said, NATO had been given the map coordinates of
those posts, called “Volcano” and “Boulder.”
The head of Pakistani military operations also provided a detailed account of
the events indicating that the U.S. military was aware of the fact that
Pakistani posts were being attacked from the beginning.
Just minutes before “Volcano” was first attacked, he recalled, a U.S. sergeant
from the “Tactical Operations Center” in Afghanistan called a Pakistani major on
duty in Peshawar and told him U.S. Special Forces had taken indirect fire in an
area called Gora Pahari about nine miles from the army posts.
A few minutes later, the U.S. sergeant called back and told the major, “Your
Volcano post has been hit,” Nadeem said.
Nadeem said the Pakistani army informed NATO that their posts were being
attacked by ISAF forces, but the attack continued for 51 minutes, then breaking
off for 15 minutes, and resuming for about an hour.
U.S. officials in Washington, meanwhile, still had no clear interpretation of
Saturday’s events three days later. When asked by a former U.S. official Tuesday
whether the U.S. military now understood any better what had happened, an
officer following the issue at the Pentagon replied, “We do not.”
Senior officers in ISAF have long lobbied for a more aggressive approach to the
problem of insurgent safe havens in Pakistan, arguing that without such a
change, success in Afghanistan will be impossible.
But the cross-border attack on Pakistani border posts has had exactly the
opposite effect. It has united Pakistanis, both military and civilian, behind a
much more nationalistic policy toward the U.S. military role in both Afghanistan
and in Pakistan.
It has provoked the Pakistani government to threaten to stop NATO supplies from
crossing into Afghanistan permanently, order the United States to vacate its
drone base at Shamsi within 15 days, and boycott the upcoming international
conference on Afghanistan in protest.
Pakistan’s minister of information, Dr. Firdous Aashik Awan, described the
decision to boycott the Berlin conference as marking “a turning point in
Pakistan’s foreign policy” that was supported by all parties represented in the
cabinet.
A cabinet meeting held in Lahore on Tuesday even discussed the expected U.S.
cutoff of assistance to Pakistan and called for a detailed assessment of how
that cutoff would affect different sectors.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S.
national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of
Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in
2006. [This article was published by Inter Press Service.]