StrategyPage has an update on the latest snag affecting post-quake relief efforts in Pakistan –

Under pressure from Islamic conservative politicians, Pakistan agreed to get [out] NATO troops, performing relief work in the earthquake zone, within 90 days. There are about a thousand NATO troops involved in the relief operations. The Islamic conservatives find this very embarrassing, with all those infidel (non-Moslem) soldiers in a Moslem country. Many conservative clerics are preaching that it is better to suffer and die from privation, than to tolerate infidel soldiers in your neighborhood. Thousands of people in the earthquake zone face death, as the brutal Winter weather has closed in. The NATO troops have the most helicopters and other high tech gear to get aid to people who need it most. European governments are trying to get civilian specialists into the area, to replace the departing troops.

These pressures are the same reason last weekend’s Predator strike on a senior Al Qaeda leader was initially pitched by the Pakistani’s as the product of a bungled bomb –

Pakistan declared that Harethi died when a bomb he was assembling went off. But people in the are displayed missile fragments, including data plates that said “AGM-114.” That’s a Hellfire missile, normally fired from CIA Predator UAVs known to operate in the area. The Pakistani government does not like to admit it allows the CIA to fly armed UAVs freely around Pakistan, but it does.

Tis a delicate dance when you’re barely sovereign over your own country & don’t want to admit that others (infidels, no less) are in there cleaning up your mess. Pakistani newspapers do seem to be talking pretty readily about the big secret –

“For their part, it is not surprising that the Pakistanis would deny that Rabia was taken out by a US missile. Although the government of Pakistani President Gen Pervez Musharraf is one of Washington’s most valuable allies in the war on terrorism, anti-American sentiment in the country runs high. Public acknowledgement that US drones are operating over Pakistan and launching missiles could direct that sentiment toward Musharraf,” he points out.

In the meantime, it appears that Amartya Sen’s dictum that the ultimate source of modern hunger is politics, not poverty may find a sad new proofpoint.

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And now a followup to one of the most vehemently commented old Sepia Mutiny posts – the annual fighter war games between the USAF and IAF. This year brought a new set of games and apparently a similar result –

Mingling over a few rounds of golf, dogfighting a bit over the jungles of West Bengal – this month’s Cope India 2005 war games were billed as a standard two-week exercise between Indian and American top guns.

…The exercises had mixed teams of Indian and American pilots on both sides, which means that both the Americans and the Indians won, and lost. Yet, observers say that in a surprising number of encounters – particularly between the American F-16s and the Indian Sukhoi-30 MKIs – the Indian pilots came out the winners.

“Since the cold war, there has been the general assumption that India is a third-world country with Soviet technology, and wherever the Soviet-supported equipment went, it didn’t perform well,” says Jasjit Singh, a retired air commodore and now director of the Center for Air Power Studies in New Delhi. “That myth has been blown out by the results” of these air exercises.

Predictably, chauvinists of all stripes were pulled out of the woodwork –

…during Cope India ’05, Bharat Rakshak was a veritable cheering session for the underestimated Indian Air Force.

Typical was a posting by a blogger who called himself “Babui.” Citing a quote from a US Air Force participant in Cope India ’05 in Stars and Stripes – “We try to replicate how these aircraft perform in the air, and I think we’re good at doing that in our Air Force, but what we can’t replicate is what’s going on in their minds. They’ve challenged our traditional way of thinking on how an adversary, from whichever country, would fight.” – “Babui” wrote, “That quote is as good an admission that the F-16 jocks got their clocks cleaned.”

…an American pilot who participated in the exercise, added his own two cents on the blog. “It makes me sick to see some of the posts on this website,” wrote a purported US “Viper” pilot. “They made some mistakes and so did we…. That’s what happens and you learn from it.”

Oh yeah? Well mine’s bigger than yours. Manish previously covered the new SU-30’s the Indian team fielded for the games. An impressive piece of machinery indeed and certainly an impetus for next generation F35’s and F22’s.

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One of the smartest moves the U.S. could have made (and did make) was moving military assets (helicopters to be specific) from the Afghanistan theater into Pakistan after the recent Earthquake. The U.S. learned in Indonesia after the Tsunami that the most effective way to win hearts and minds in the Muslim world was with less talk and more action.

The U.S. military has sent helicopters, a field hospital and a construction battalion to earthquake-stricken Pakistan – a gesture that has irked Islamic hard-liners but may help improve Washington’s image in the Muslim world after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“When they do something against Muslims, we condemn them. Now, as they are helping us, we should appreciate them,” said Yar Mohammed, 48, a farmer in Muzaffarabad, the devastated capital of Pakistan’s portion of the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir.

“We are facing hard times, and they are helping us…” [Link]

Now it seems some of the Islamic hardliners have decided to take it upon themselves to jeopardize the help their fellow citizens are getting by taking shots at the American aid helicopters. The AP reports:

Assailants fired at a U.S. military helicopter Tuesday as it ferried supplies to earthquake victims in Pakistan’s portion of divided Kashmir, the U.S. military said, but it vowed to continue aid flights.

The attack with an apparent rocket-propelled grenade came as the CH-47 Chinook flew over Chakothi, a quake-ravaged town near the frontier separating the Pakistani and Indian portions of the Himalayan region, said Capt. Rob Newell, a spokesman for the U.S. military relief effort.

“The aircraft was not hit and returned safely with its crew” to an air base near the capital, Islamabad, he told The Associated Press.

The Pakistani army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, expressed skepticism an attack took place, saying engineers were using explosives to clear a road near where U.S. helicopters were flying.

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SM readers are probably aware that I enjoy spotlighting animals whenever I can.  The latest beasts to rise to blog-worthiness are the noble asses of the Pakistani Military.  The only easy day was yesterday.  The BBC reports:

They have their own parades, rigorous training and dedicated doctors. They are treated as fully fledged soldiers.

Some villagers used to laugh at how much time the army spent on them.

But now the mules of the Pakistani army are proving saviours for some of the tens of thousands of quake survivors still stuck atop inaccessible mountains.

Nine days after the killer quake struck Kashmir and parts of northern Pakistan, the army mobilised its animal transport units (ATUs), or what’s left of them, to reach inaccessible areas – sometimes without any human assistance.

These units of specially trained mules have been a critical link in the logistics serving the Pakistan army – and the Royal Indian Army under the Raj before that – in the mountainous northern regions and Kashmir.

Anyone that has participated in high altitude climbing knows that mules can often be invaluable.  In addition to carrying supplies, mules and their cousins can help carry you should you fall ill, as many poor quake victims surely have.  My friend and I were accompanied by a friendly mule named Carlos while on a mountain in Peru.  Because of our manly egos we told each other that it was better to leave the other on the side of the mountain than be helped onto the mule.  We had this conversation out of earshot of Carlos of course.  Beasts of burden have been invaluable to armies for centuries, if not longer.

Military officials dealing with the ATUs say there were more than 2,000 mules deployed in Kashmir when the quake struck.

An officer in the border region of Chikothi in Kashmir told the BBC news website that “only a fraction survived“.

The army takes the loss hard – these mules enjoy a status no less than that of a fully fledged soldier.

Like men, they have to go through a rigorous selection procedure followed by several months of training before they can be formally drafted into the army.