Pakistan helped facilitate US air strikes

The precision achieved in the strikes is not possible if only cruise missiles were used, said the officials. Experts here are convinced that fighter aircraft firing precision-guided munitions, and coordinated by sophisticated force multipliers like AWACS and J-STARS, were used. And this, say the officials, would not have been possible without the consent of at least some part of the Pakistani establishment.

While the precise details of the attacks on Khost and Jalalabad are yet not available with the MoD, there is a strong belief that Pakistan helped facilitate the US air strikes on the Zhawar Kili al-Badr camp near Khost, 150 km south-east of Kabul, and Jalalabad. “It is even possible that the US aircraft operated out of an airbase near Quetta,” said a MoD official.

Quetta would be the most logical forward-operating base since it provides close proximity to the targets, while also being in a sparsely populated part of Pakistan. “That remoteness gives a greater degree of security to such operations,” said the official.

The Pakistani condemnation, therefore, is not being taken seriously by the officials. “This is simply posturing. Given the state of their society, Islamabad can hardly appear to be a party to such a decision,” said an official.

With conditions in Pakistan being what they are, it is also possible that only certain sections of the Pakistani establishment were privy to this decision. “They have serious social problems with sectarian conditions being what they are. While they cannot even remotely be seen to be supporting such an action, it would not have been possible for them to share such a decision other than only with those in the most critical offices,” he added.

The scepticism here is also furthered by the fact that even if only cruise missiles had been used, they still had to go over Pakistan’s airspace. “What happened to Islamabad’s air defence (AD) systems then?” say the officials. Despite the fact that the AD apparatus in that part of Pakistan is not as elaborate as that placed against India, “sub-sonic cruise missiles would definitely have shown up on the radar screens, and fairly easily brought down,” believe many in the MoD. The only way air defences can be neutralised is through either jamming or having them switched off.

“This only goes on to prove that even if either of these two methods was used, the Pakistanis would have known before hand what the game was,” said an officer familiar with AD technologies. When AD systems are jammed they have to be done hours in advance, and sustained for an extended duration. That in itself gives away the plans, “since it becomes obvious that an air-launched military strike is going to be underway sometime,” said the AD officer. And if they were switched off, that could only have been done with the approval of the Pakistani military leadership, claim the officials.

Since the Pakistani armed forces did not get activated when, and if, the jamming was undertaken, it is obvious that they knew of the plot. “They would have gone to town once they got to know that jamming was being done, but that is only they had not been kept informed,” said another MoD official. And if the US armed forces did not undertake jamming measures it is only because Pakistan had given then a tacit, or active, sanction for the air strikes.

The belief amongst MoD officials is that the US investigators enquiring into the twin blasts at Nairobi and Dar es Salam have picked up sufficient information from Mohammed Sadiq Howeida, the suspect arrested at Karachi airport. “And it is also sufficient enough to twist Pakistan’s arm into allowing these air strikes. Obviously they have collected something which is important enough for Pakistan to want to keep under the wraps, and are, therefore, willing to give a tacit, or active, sanction to these US strikes against Osama Bin Laden,” said a senior MoD official.