Islamabad finally managed to extract formal apologies from the US and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for the Sept 30 raid on a Pakistani border security post in Kurram Agency, in which two Frontier Corps soldiers were killed.
The apologies were offered by Ambassador Anne Patterson and Gen David Petraeus, commander of the NATO-led ISAF in Afghanistan. Admiral Mike Mullen, Richard Holbrooke, special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen also expressed regrets at the incident. Subsequently, Pakistan reopened the key Torkham route for supplies to the NATO forces in Afghanistan, after 10 days of closure.
It was surprising that the Pakistani authorities denied suggestions that the closure of the Torkham supply route was in response to the attack on the border post by NATO helicopter-gunships and the killing of Pakistani soldiers. Instead, the suspension of the supplies was attributed to the enhanced security threat to the convoys passing through Pakistan amid the emotions caused in the country by the repeated violation of the country's borders and, in this case, the death of the two Pakistani soldiers, Lance Naik Nawazish Khan of Peshawar and Sepoy Shahinshah of Mianwali.
At least four big attacks subsequently took place in all four provinces of Pakistan on stranded oil-tankers carrying fuel for the NATO forces. More than a hundred oil tankers were burnt and several people, including drivers, guards and bystanders were killed, with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its allied groups quickly claiming responsibility.
The attacks showed that the security threat mentioned by Pakistan was real, but the assault on the oil tankers stranded in Shikarpur in Sindh raised eyebrows as no presence of militants had been reported there until then. The attacks in Khairabad in Nowshera in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and in Mithri in Bolan district in Balochistan were also reportedly easy jobs, as the parked oil tankers, without proper security to guard them, were sitting ducks for the militants or anyone else who wanted to attack them.
The attack on oil tankers in the limits of the Islamabad Capital Territory, close to the ICT's boundary with Punjab, also caused suspicion because of the ease with which the attackers managed to escape after the daring assault. The situation became complex and confusing when the Islamabad Police, like their counterparts elsewhere in the country, argued that it wasn't their responsibility to protect the NATO convoys, blaming the lapse on the private security assigned to do the job. The US embassy in Islamabad responded by saying that it was the responsibility of the Pakistani government to give protection to the supplies for NATO forces.
This kind of blame-game and the activities raising suspicion could have been avoided, had Pakistan made it clear at the outset that it stopped NATO supplies through one of its two border crossings to Afghanistan in retaliation for the attack on its clearly marked security post flying the Pakistani flag. The claims of "victory" by government ministers after Pakistan received apologies from the US and NATO, would have sounded credible if it had been made obvious that the supplies had been blocked in response to the raid on the border post and the killing of the two soldiers.
That wasn't done, out of fear that the US and its NATO partners would be antagonised. A rather strange method was adopted to convey Pakistan's anger and put pressure on the US and NATO to tender the apology. At the same time, Islamabad failed to close the Chaman border route through which close to 20 per cent of all NATO supplies passing through Pakistan enter Afghanistan. The US and NATO planes using Pakistan's airspace to fly supplies to their troops in Afghanistan also continued to operate.
The closure of the Torkham route, through which almost 80 per cent of NATO supplies of food, fuel and other goods passing through Pakistan are transported to Afghanistan, was thus meant to be a temporary measure aimed at conveying Islamabad's anger and making the US and its allies realise that Pakistan's cooperation was vital for the achievement of NATO's war objectives in Afghanistan.
Pakistan was and is in no mood to completely and permanently shut down the NATO supplies or end its military alliance with the US. Instead, Islamabad is using to its best advantage the leverage given to it by the dependence of NATO forces in Afghanistan on the shorter and less expensive supply route through Pakistan.
Pakistan's weak and muted response to its border violations by US forces in the past meant that its demand for an apology this time wasn't taken seriously. It had failed to lodge a strong protest and seek apology for a far more serious incident of border violation in 2008 when 14 Pakistani soldiers were killed in a cross-border attack by US helicopter-gunships on the Gorparai security post in Mohmand Agency. They all belonged to the Frontier Corps.
As in the incident in Kurram Agency, missiles were fired to attack the clearly marked Pakistani border post. There were also two more serious incidents of border violations in Angoor Adda in South Waziristan and in Saidgi in North Waziristan in which twenty-one and three Pakistanis, respectively, were killed, and a few taken away in military helicopters that had actually landed inside Pakistani territory.
Pakistan had specified "red lines" warning against such incidents in which US and NATO troops operated and launched attacks on its soil. Promises were made at the time by the US and NATO authorities that such incidents would be avoided in the future, although the promises were never honoured. The closure of the Torkham supply route was also seen in Kabul, Washington and Brussels as a temporary measure for a brief period. It was only after realisation dawned on the US and NATO authorities that the closure of the Torkham border could go on and threaten their military operations in Afghanistan that they agreed to offer formal apologies.
Initially, the US and NATO military authorities tried to justify the Kurram Agency attack by arguing that it was undertaken in self-defence because their helicopter-gunships were fired at. This is strange logic because the two military helicopters had menacingly intruded about 200 metres into Pakistani territory and threatened the border post manned by Frontier Corps soldiers. The soldiers, who opened fire with their G-3 rifles after coming under attack, were certainly firing warning shots. In fact, it was they who were using their right of self-defence, and not the Americans intruding into and violating Pakistan's borders.
No principle of "hot pursuit" was involved in this incident as no militant activity was reported in that part of the Pak-Afghan border. In any case, Pakistan has made it clear it hasn't agreed to any "hot pursuit" operations by the NATO forces in Pakistani territory because the ISAF mandate is confined to Afghanistan. Besides, Pakistan has mostly ignored and kept silent whenever the NATO forces have carried out operations against militants operating on or near the Pak-Afghan border.
More importantly, Pakistan seems to have accepted as a fait accompli the drone attacks that the US carries out with increasing intensity and impunity in its tribal areas. The government denies that these missile strikes are undertaken by the US in tacit agreement with the Pakistani military, since some of the drone attacks have killed some most-wanted TTP commanders, such as Baitullah Mahsud.
The apologies have been received and accepted and NATO supplies through Pakistan have resumed. But there are no guarantees that cross-border attacks on Pakistani territory will not take place again. However, Pakistan has finally learnt to use its leverages while interacting with the US and NATO to make its point and restore some of its lost dignity.
Nearly 500 trucks and a large number of oil tankers pass daily through Pakistan to meet almost 80 per cent needs of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, and the alternative route via Russia and the Central Asian states costs two to three times more and takes twenty days longer. This is the greatest leverage that Pakistan has and it is no longer shy of using it to protect its interests.

The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar. Email: rahim yusufzai@yahoo.com