THE government of Pakistan yesterday summoned the US ambassador to Islamabad to protest at yet another US drone missile attack on Pakistani civilians.
The attack, deep into Pakistan’s Bannu district, last Wednesday, killed five local people, Pakistani officials confirmed yesterday.
The continuing US missile attacks inside Pakistan have evoked a huge national hatred for US imperialism, and also the Pakistani government that is seen more and more as a servant of US imperialism.
These attacks, along with the use of bombs and artillery inside Afghanistan, have led to large numbers of civilian casualties, that are mounting day after day.
These atrocities have further undermined the Afghan puppet regime led by President Karzai.
He is now being denounced by his own people as a US puppet.
He has become so isolated that he last week offered to have secret peace talks with the Taleban leader Mullah Omar, and said that he would guarantee the Mullah’s safety during such talks, and that if the US did not like what he was doing it could remove him.
Omar declined the invitation to talk peace with Karzai, and said that he would only talk peace when all US-UK troops were out of Afghanistan.
Over the border in Pakistan the US missile attacks have had an equally profound effect.
Hafiz Gul Bahadur, one of the two main Taleban commanders in North Waziristan, has been at peace with the Pakistani army and government since 2006. He now states that the US attacks give the Pakistani people little option but to attack the Pakistani army and government who are allowing these attacks by the US to take place.
The US considers that Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan is a safe haven for the Taleban and al-Qaeda militants and is used by them to launch attacks against US-UK forces in Afghanistan.
Since August, the territory of Bahadur has been hit 19 times by missiles fired by US drones.
Bahadur said yesterday that: ‘It has been decided that if there are any drone attacks in our territory after 20 November, we will attack targets in Pakistani territory outside the tribal areas.’
He added: ‘Pakistan is directly involved in aiding America to carry out these attacks.’
The proof of this statement was immediately supplied when Isaf, the NATO supported intervention force in Afghanistan, admitted that an attack inside Pakistan had been coordinated with Pakistani troops.
This is the ongoing and developing war that President-elect Obama has pledged that he will take over and step up, both inside Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Thousands more US and UK troops will be heading for Afghanistan where Obama will be presiding over what will become a major war in central Asia.
As a result of the imperialist interventions, both the Karzai government and the government of Pakistan will be overthrown.
Obama will no doubt respond by sending even more troops into Afghanistan and Pakistan. A war that began in Afghanistan will spread throughout central Asia. and may even require the introduction of a call up in the UK, if it is to be fought until victory is won.
In reality this war is going to further weaken both the British army and the British state and the sacrifices required to fight it will drive forward revolution within the UK itself.
Workers in Britain must oppose any Obama-Brown war in central Asia.
They must call for all British troops to be withdrawn from the Middle East and central Asia, and must also demand that the British army recruiters be kept out of the UK’s schools and universities, where they are trying to recruit cannon fodder.
In fact, any move to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan must be met with industrial action to bring the government down.