And the award goes to…Pakistan! Escalating tensions between the US and Pakistan have only been getting worse. As Pepe Escobar notes, this “row”–as it is called by the mainstream media–has the potential to deteriorate quickly into one hot mess:
Expect a festival of MQ-9 Reapers droning North Waziristan to death. What US President Barack Obama calls a tool of “unique capabilities”, for Pashtun farmers is a weapon of terror.
Expect strike after strike conducted out of a control room in Nellis air force base in Nevada.
Expect an array of strategic missile bombings with spectacular collateral damage.
Expect more Joint Special Operations Command-ordered special operations forces “kill/capture” raids.
Expect a new, humongous Joint Prioritized Effects List, just like in Afghanistan; no names, just a list of mobile or satellite phone numbers. If your mobile gets on the list by mistake, you’ll be snuffed the Hellfire way.
Expect deadly, eternal Pashtun vengeance against Americans to be as irreversible as death and taxes.
And most of all, expect a low intensity war to turn volcanic anytime.
Now, to make matters worse, the US is blaming Pakistan as the source for IED’s that plague the war effort in Afghanistan. They claim fertilizer, the main ingredient in IED’s, moves freely across the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
While solutions are already being brainstormed by top military brass, two important questions remain concerning these accusations: does the United States have definitive proof, unlike the debunked claims from 2007 that Iran was supplying Iraqi fighters with weapons? And, if true, why doesn’t the US halt all aid in the form of fertilizer to Pakistan that it continues to give year after year?
