Pakistanis challenge Clinton over drone attacks, US bullying

Specifically, she urged Islamabad to extend the current military offensive against Taliban-aligned militias beyond South Waziristan, a Pashtun-speaking tribal agency bordering Afghanistan.

Under heavy pressure from Washington, Pakistan since October 17 has been mounting a three-pronged assault on South Waziristan involving 30,000 troops, helicopter gunships and F-16 jets.

According to aid agencies, the fighting has displaced a further 200,000 people, most of them poor villagers. The Pakistani military is notorious for it use of indiscriminate artillery assaults and bombing, frequently flattening whole villages to “liberate” them from the Taliban.

Leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition government and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif publicly praised Clinton, the Obama administration, and Washington. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi called the secretary of state “a friend of Pakistan” and said her visit was a “loud and clear message” of US solidarity with the Pakistani people.

But Clinton encountered widespread popular anger over the US’s treatment of Pakistan—its support for a succession of military dictatorships, its bullying and repeated violations of Pakistani sovereignty, and readiness to push Pakistan toward civil war in pursuit of victory in the Afghan war.

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