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PAKISTAN: Soldiers’ Families Demand Revenge Against U.S.

CHARSADDA, Pakistan , Dec 9 2011 (IPS) - As Islamabad and Washington wrangle over responsibility for the Nov. 26 cross-border airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani troops, families of the dead soldiers are demanding revenge on the United States.

“The naked assault has shown that America is our real enemy. A tit-for-tat response could lessen our grief,” Asfandyar Khan, father of Najibullah Khan, 25, one of the dead soldiers, told IPS.

The circumstances that led to the ‘friendly fire’ directed on a border post by North Atlantaic Treaty Organisation (NATO) helicopters are still unclear. U.S. officials maintain that the strike was cleared by the Pakistani military, but Islamabad has denied this.

“Our government should not back down. It’s not first strike by the U.S. In previous attacks they have killed dozens of (Pakistani) soldiers,” Khan told IPS at his adobe house in Nissata village, 15 km from this border town.

Najibullah is survived by his parents, wife, two brothers and two sisters. “His mother is in a semi-conscious state,” said Asfandyar, who has another son serving in the army.

“It was Najibullah’s passion to fight terrorists and enemies of the country,” his grief-stricken father said. “Now we ask the government to punish those responsible for his death.”

Asfandyar said if the Pakistan government failed to take satisfactory action he would get his other son in army service to quit.

In retaliation for the attack, Pakistan has blocked NATO supply routes running through this country, and also boycotted Monday’s international conference in Bonn, Germany, on the future of Afghanistan.

Islamabad has also asked U.S. personnel to leave the Shamsi air base, which is believed to have been used to provide support for attacks on suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda hideouts in the northern areas bordering Afghanistan.

But, that appears to be small comfort for the families of those who died or survived the U.S.-led NATO attack in Afghanistan. All of them want Pakistan to act militarily against the U.S. in revenge.

Javid ur Rahman, 25, a soldier who was injured in the face and neck in the attack, now under treatment at the Combined Military Hospital in Peshawar, said he and his fellow soldiers were caught unawares by the airborne strike.

“We mistook the NATO attack for a Taliban assault, but when we saw about five helicopters we realised what was happening,” Rehman said, adding that the Pakistan government should give a “fitting response.”

“We have been paying a high price for being the frontline state in the war against terrorism led by the U.S. in Afghanistan. We are being targeted by both the U.S. and Taliban,” Rehman said.

“Why are our children being martyred?” asks a grief-stricken Allah Bakhsh, father of Ghulam Raza, another soldier who was killed in Mohmand.

Speaking over telephone to IPS from his native Sargodha district in Punjab, Bakhsh said his family would get relief only after Raza’s killers are punished.

Similar feelings were expressed by Ahmad Ali Meerani, elder brother of Mujahid Ali Meerani, an army major who died in the attack. “We are proud of my brother’s sacrifice for the country, but we are worried over the way he was killed.

“Now that Mujahid has been killed, the only satisfaction for us would be the death of his assassins,” Meerani told IPS over telephone from Larkana in Sindh province.

Mian Gohar Ali, a sociologist at the University of Peshawar, says that the culture of revenge runs strong in many parts of Pakistan, particularly those dominated by ethnic Pashtuns. “Sometimes, local feuds run for decades and even after dozens of people are killed,” he said.

“Even a poor Pashtun would not hesitate to take up arms against a powerful enemy,” he says. “Pashtuns do not care for the consequences and only quick revenge satisfies them,” Ali says.

Najibullah’s uncle, Niaz Mohammad, who rushed to Nissata village from Karachi on hearing the news of his nephew’s death, says the Pakistan government should “fight the infidels (the U.S.), because they are the enemies of Islam and Muslims.” “But first, we should put our own house in order and develop a consensus that U.S. is our enemy and then cut off our relations with it,” Mohammad said. “The people will not forgive the government if it fails to respond to this kind of aggression.”

Pakistan’s relations with the U.S. have been deteriorating since May when helicopter-borne NATO forces crossing over from Afghanistan raided the garrison town of Abbottabad to kill Al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden.

Pakistan has termed the May attack and the one in November as flagrant violations of sovereignty.