Americans leave nothing to chance when they fight their enemies, or so it seems. If required - and that is not once in a blue moon, but a regular practice - they use napalm bombs and hellfire missiles to attack and destroy their enemies, and in the process, very often, take lives of innocent non-combatant civilians. And as they openly rain fire, they send in hired assassins to take care of their adversaries' leadership.
New York Times, in one of its latest issues, has told the story of such a hired gun, a former army officer named Michael D. Furlong, tasked to establish a network of informants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, "whose job it was to help locate people believed to be insurgents".
He worked under the cover of a media venture and ran a Website, bank-rolled by the US Defence Department. Did he take any lives? NYT quotes one of the Furlong's employee saying the video images posted on his Website were used for American strikes on South Waziristan.
Strangely, having paid him something like 3 million dollars out of the allocated 22 million, 'some US officials were not sure who condoned and supervised his work'. No wonder, mercenaries remain orphan.
One won't be surprised if the presence of Furlong's spy network in Pakistan is denied by the government. Categorical denials of the alleged presence of similar outfits, including Blackwater, DynCorp and more of that ilk were put out by the Ministry of Interior. And it is quite possible that the government doesn't know that may be, of the 400-plus houses rented to foreigners in Islamabad, some are occupied by the operatives of the Furlong network.
But what the newspaper has to say, explaining the details of the episode, merits serious attention of our government. It may be "an attempt to get around the Pakistani government's prohibition of military personnel operating in Pakistan", says the newspaper.
Ambassador Patterson is absolutely justified in asking the government to ensure the security of American nationals in Pakistan. But do spies also enjoy the right of protection? The truth is that in Pakistan, there is no dearth of people who absolve the Taliban and militants of the ongoing incidents of violence and insist that a 'foreign hand' is involved and who knows this hand may be the Furlong's.
This is nothing short of official confirmation that US military has been using covert spies in pursuance of objectives which fall out of the agreed parameters of co-operative arrangements between Pakistan and the United States. On this we would welcome clarification, if any, by the US embassy.
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