It’s happened twice in recent days – two US incursions into the Pakistani Province of Waziristan, both denied by the United States. The first involved two US helicopters that were, according to Pakistani sources, fired upon, and which returned to Afghan airspace without returning fire. The second incident involved a US drone that reportedly crashed in Southern Waziristan yesterday according to the Pakistani media.

Despite the recent attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the Pakistani government’s position regarding the sanctity of its sovereignty remains unaltered – Pakistani forces will use force to repel operations by foreign militaries emanating from Afghanistan. While the attentions of many in the United States, and elsewhere, are focused on the current economic crisis, the potentially catastrophic game that is being played by the Bush Administration has been flying under the radar.

As Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer, pointed out in a recently article for Time…

“As Wall Street collapsed with a bang, almost no one noticed that we’re on the brink of war with Pakistan. And, unfortunately, that’s not too much of an exaggeration. On Tuesday, the Pakistan’s military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty.

You have to wonder whether the Bush administration understands what it is getting into. In case anyone has forgotten, Pakistan has a hundred plus nuclear weapons. It’s a country on the edge of civil war. Its political leadership is bitterly divided. In other words, it’s the perfect recipe for a catastrophe.”

[…]

“U.S. forces have been entering Pakistan for the last six years. But it was always very quietly, usually no more than a hundred yards in, and usually to meet a friendly tribal chieftain. Pakistan knew about these crossings, but it turned a blind eye because it was never splashed across the front page of the country’s newspapers. This has all changed in the last month, as the Administration stepped up Predator missile attacks. And then, after the New York Times ran an article that U.S. forces were officially given the go-ahead to enter Pakistan without prior Pakistani permission, Pakistan had no choice but to react.

On another level the Bush Administration’s decision to step up attacks in Pakistan is fatally reckless, because the cross-border operations’ chances of capturing or killing al Qaeda’s leadership are slim. American intelligence isn’t good enough for precision raids like this. Pakistan’s tribal regions are a black hole that even Pakistani operatives can’t enter and come back alive. Overhead surveillance and intercepts do little good in tracking down people in a backward, rural part of the world like this.

On top of it, is al-Qaeda worth the candle? Yes, some deadender in New York or London could blow himself up in the subway and leave behind a video claiming the attack in the name of al-Qaeda. But our going into Pakistan, risking a full-fledged war with a nuclear power, isn’t going to stop him.”

What has shocked me more than anything is the fact that reports of a three-phase plan, approved at the highest level of government, have gone completely overlooked. According to an article published by NPR on the 13th of this month, President Bush himself gave the green light to the plan, which includes the use of Predator Drones and US Special Operations Forces to strike targets within Pakistan. One of the first actions taken under this new strategy was a raid by US Navy Seals in which civilians were killed. Further, it has been reported that CIA personnel from various parts of the world are being deployed along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier in an attempt to produce an ‘intelligence surge’ to aid in the selection of cross-border targets.

In the end, the reality, as Baer pointed out, is that the United States is willfully ignoring the sovereignty of Pakistan. Given that, it is empowering both the Pakistani military and local militants to support an aligned cause – the repulsion of foreign military incursions.

Given that President Bush has mere months left in office, the risk of sparking something disastrous is only bolstered by his administration’s repeatedly proven track record of outright stupidity. And while the condemnation of Iran continues to attract more international attention, the fact that the United States is goading a nuclear power is certainly something that should not be excused as Republican political necessity with regards to making an 11th hour attempt to kill or capture high level al-Qaeda figures to feebly justify the administration’s mistakes.