The USA killed 24 or more Pakistani soldiers during what Pakistan called an “unprovoked” attack on two Pakistani army border posts on the Afghan-Pakistan border on November 26, 2011. I’ve read Internet reports which give conflicting reports about who fired first or what happened during this military attack, but the bottom line is that Pakistan is furious and is taking retaliatory actions against the USA. Pakistan and the USA have been in a very strained relationship for years (not unlike two people in a very strained marriage), but this time it looks like a formal “divorce” between the USA and Pakistan is not only inevitable but is happening before our eyes. Previous posts to this blog have warned that this was inevitable, based on the prophecy of Ezekiel 38.
The first link reports that Pakistani-USA relations were at a new “all time low” as the Pakistanis not only shut down border crossing privileges for trucks bringing supplies to US troops in Afghanistan, but also ordered the USA to withdraw all its drones and personnel at a mostly secret CIA and/or USAF military base located at Shamsi, Pakistan from which secret US Air Force drone missions were launched.
The second link indicates that the border crossings are apparently still closed as many trucks carrying oil shipments to Afghanistan were attacked while parked at a NATO trucking terminal inside Pakistan. The article reports that of the 44 oil trucks parked at the NATO truckyard, 34 trucks were totally destroyed, 8 were damaged and only 2 were undamaged. Obviously, Pakistani troops have no interest in protecting US trucks or convoys passing through Pakistan. Given the growing hostility in Pakistan toward the USA, it is not impossible the attack was carried out by Pakistani troops posing as Taliban tribesmen. The third link reports that the USA was, indeed, booted out of the Pakistani military base that had been used for US drones.
The USA is trying to pacify Pakistani anger, but there isn’t much to indicate those efforts are having any success. As I’ve noted in previous posts, Ezekiel 38:2-6 lists the nations that will be part of the Gog-Magog alliance which will be headed by Russia, China and Iran. [The biblical “latter days” are our modern times, as can easily be proven in my free article, Are We Living in the Biblical Latter Days?] The King James Version of the Bible lists “Ethiopia” as a member of the Gog-Magog alliance in Ezekiel 38:5, but the word translated “Ethiopia” is “Cush,” one of the sons of Ham (Genesis 10:6). While some Cushites are still in the region of the Horn of Africa, most Cushites moved into Asia and the name “Cush” is still on modern maps in the Hindu Kush Mountains which lie in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The fact that Cush’s name is on both Pakistan and Afghanistan argues that these nations will eventually end up in the Gog-Magog alliance. Pakistan already is in that alliance for all intents and purposes as China is Pakistan’s close ally. Pakistan is only a temporary “ally” of the USA due to the billions of dollars of “aid” given to Pakistan by the USA to “hire” it as an ally for the Afghan War. However, a permanent Pakistani-American breach seems ever-closer. I sense it will happen whenever Beijing decides that it will happen. It serves Russian-Chinese interests to have much of the US army trapped in Central Asia wearing out its troops and equipment for no apparent American strategic goal, but China could easily pay Pakistan many times the amount of money to Pakistan to close the border to American troop supply trucks that Pakistan now receives to allow such traffic. The US is also building large facilities in Afghanistan which China and Russia may rightfully perceive as threatening to Russia and China, and Russia and China could act to force the US out of Central Asia.
When and if Pakistan decides to permanently close the Afghan-Pakistani border to any US/NATO truck traffic, the US troops in Afghanistan will be cut off from the lifeblood of their support. The first link reports that 50% of all non-lethal supplies (oil, food, etc.) for the US war in Afghanistan traverse Pakistan via trucks. When/if Pakistan decides this traffic will end, the USA’s Afghan War will be unsustainable. Check your map or globe. When Pakistan shuts its territory to US truck traffic, the USA has no way to supply its forces in Afghanistan. There is a northern air route that brings in some supplies via the “-stan” nations of Central Asia, but that air route will be cut off the instant Russia decides to cut it off. If Russia shuts downs the US air route at the same time China tells Pakistan to shut down the overland route, US troops could starve for all kinds of supplies. The best case would then be for Pakistan to allow the USA to execute a humiliating withdrawal of all its forces out of Afghanistan via Pakistani soil to Pakistani ports to exit Asia. The worst case would be having the entire US/NATO force in Afghanistan cut off from all new supplies and having no way out of Asia by either air or ground. That would force the US/NATO forces to fight their way out of Asia across Pakistan or Iran while receiving air support from the USAF and Navy ships in the Arabian Sea or Persian Gulf. That would give Iran and/or Pakistan a chance to fire land-based and air-launched Chinese-made supersonic missiles at US carriers. Let’s hope this “worst case” exit scenario doesn’t happen. However, Pakistan’s obvious and growing rage at the USA has made this “worst case” exit scenario more likely.
One final observation. I’m continually amazed at the lack of strategic military thinking that has caused the USA to get itself stuck in Afghanistan in another “Vietnam-like” Asian war. Any cadet at West Point should know enough military history and strategy to realize that you never go into a war with no friendly flanks, no secure line of supply and no secure line of retreat unless you have to do so in the interests of national survival. However, the USA now has a large portion of its army fighting a war in Afghanistan with no friendly flanks, no secure line of supply and no secure line of retreat, and…it is fighting this war with no discernable US national security interest at stake. The Al Queda bases were destroyed almost immediately when the USA entered Afghanistan in anger after 9/11. Afterwards, we got ourselves drawn into an Afghan civil war that was already ongoing between the Islamic Taliban and what was called the “Northern Alliance”—which was also Islamic. We are still trying to make sure the Taliban doesn’t win this civil war, I guess. Pakistan favors the Taliban, and Pakistan definitely wants to make sure the US-backed Karzai government in Afghanistan falls rather than allow an Afghan government to have any lasting good relations with India, Pakistan’s arch-enemy.
Can you find any vital US interest anywhere in this Afghan morass to justify losing American lives, wearing out our army equipment and going further into debt to finance a war with no meaningful national interest at stake? Why doesn’t a single American member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff point out to President Obama that American/NATO troops in Afghanistan are at risk of becoming so isolated that they may have to fight their way out of Asia across Iranian or Pakistani soil, sustaining and inflicting heavy casualties in the process and risking a much wider war occurring. As I said above, let’s hope this “worst case” doesn’t happen. However, if I were a strategic war-planner in the Kremlin or Beijing, that is exactly what I’d be planning for the US forces in Afghanistan. The only question would be when to “spring the trap” by simultaneously shutting down all air and overland supply routes to the US forces in Afghanistan—something Russia, China and Pakistan can easily arrange whenever they decide to do so.
http://www.startribune.com/world/134526633.html
http://news.yahoo.com/nato-tankers-set-ablaze-pakistan-rocket-attack-170241753.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-57340946-503543/u.s-vacates-pakistani-air-base/
