There appears to be some ‘walking back’ of the outrage at the US by some areas of the Pakistan government regarding the incident on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, which apparently began with militants from Pakistan crossing over the border and attacking Afgahn and/or NATO (US) forces inside Afghanistan. From there it gets murky. I will use a combination of recent reports since my previous posts on the matter (here, here and here) to see if we can solve the riddle.
Because this is long and requires cross checking various sources let me give the bottom line up front. Taliban sources in one news outlet from Greece (I think) claim the incident was due to coalition forces attacking a Pakistan outpost (ludicrous, I know - there is not rational reason for this). An independent AFP source noted as a Pak ’security official’ (which should mean ISI) also independently makes the same claim.
Then later, another Pakistan ’security official’ states the incident actually began with a Taliban incursion into Afghanistan from Pakistan, which was repulsed and the US traced the attackers back and sent bombs to their positions. This source mirrors the US claims.
My conclusion is the incident actually exposed a much rumored ISI mole who is working for the Taliban, and seems to point to a situation where the Frontier Corps manning the outposts are manned by Taliban allies who probably provided cover fire for their retreating allies and attracted US fire. The rest of this is how I knitted together various news reports to reach this conclusion.
Let’s begin with an al-Jazeera report that quotes a Pakistani official admitting that the incident began when insurgents crossed from Pakistan into Afghanistan:
The soldiers were killed at a border post in the Mohmand region, opposite Afghanistan’s Kunar province, as US-led forces clashed with fighters attacking from Pakistan, a Pakistani security official said.
“The militants launched a cross-border attack into Afghanistan … our soldiers were killed in a counter-offensive by forces in Afghanistan,” said the official, who declined to be identified.
Emphasis mine. This is a Pakistan source admitting there was an incursion from Pakistan into Afghanistan. Other reports (like this one from AFP) seem to take the Taliban side of the story where the claim is Afghan troops entered Pakistan to try and take over a Frontier Corps outpost:
Pakistani security officials said the deaths came after Afghan troops crossed the porous frontier and tried to occupy the strategic Pakistani post in the troubled tribal belt, which borders eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar province.
The post was in an area long disputed between the countries.
Pakistani troops repulsed the Afghan soldiers and the coalition then bombed the area. Coalition aircraft also killed around 15 Taliban about a kilometre (half a mile) away, the officials said.
Emphasis mine. It is interesting to note the source for this ’side’ of the story. It seems possible this whacky claim may be coming from elements within the ISI. Keep this in mind as we unravel the accounts because it has been long claimed the ISI has Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathizers and allies amongst its ranks.