Early on the morning of Wednesday, 3 September, just before people were waking for the first of their daily prayers, a squad of US and Afghan commandos attacked the small village of Angoor Adda in South Waziristan, Pakistan.
'I saw 15 bodies inside and outside two homes,' Habib Khan Wazir told Associated Press. 'They had been shot in the head.' Most of those killed were women and children.
The attack may not have been the first ground attack by US forces in Pakistan — it has maintained a military presence since soon after September 11, 2001 — but it is the first to be publicly confirmed. Pakistan has also been conducting attacks against militants in Waziristan, but this and other US attacks have not been cleared by Islamabad.
The Angoor Adda attack was followed, the next day, by a missile strike that killed five 'foreign militants'. On Friday, another missile attack reportedly killed five more civilians.
All three attacks occurred less than a week into a ceasefire brokered between the Pakistan Government and militants in honour of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Further strikes this week have claimed more lives, most of them civilians.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd endorsed the Angor Adda attack, saying that the US is acting 'appropriately' in this and other unilateral strikes.
It is true that hardcore Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters cannot be negotiated with. But military strikes are a blunt instrument, particularly in the rugged tribal frontier of northern Pakistan. Such strikes end up killing more civilians than militants and offer no solutions to the underlying social and economic conditions that generate conflict.
That reality has yet to dawn on the US, although NATO now claims it will no longer undertake unilateral strikes within Pakistan.
Analysts note that US strikes have increased since Pervez Musharraf, Washington's staunchest ally in the War on Terrorism, resigned as President of Pakistan. Freed from the fear that its unilateral strikes would create resentment towards Musharraf, they have now decided that it is open slather on Pakistan's Taliban, Al Qaeda and affiliated militants. With the increase in attacks comes an increase in civilian casualties.
The presumption underlying this strategy is that the risk of civilian casualties is outweighed by the capture or elimination of high value targets. In this respect the US strategy has not changed since September 11. There is a belief in the Pentagon that the