The Miramshah airstrike took place on Friday 12 September 2008 in

Miramshah Mīrānshāh (Pashto and ur, ) or Mīrāmshāh () is a small town that is the administrative headquarters of North Waziristan District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Miranshah lies on the banks of the Tochi River in a wide valley surr ...

North Waziristan North Waziristan District ( ps, شمالي وزیرستان ولسوالۍ, ur, ) is a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. It is the northern part of Waziristan, a mountainous region of northwest Pakistan, bordering Afghanist ...

in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

. It was part of a series of attacks targeting presumed militants, and was carried out by a

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

drone aircraft. It took advantage of the

power vacuum In political science and political history, the term power vacuum, also known as a power void, is an analogy between a physical vacuum to the political condition "when someone in a place of power, has lost control of something and no one has repla ...

in Pakistan, following the fall of

Pervez Musharraf General Pervez Musharraf ( ur, , Parvez Muśharraf; born 11 August 1943) is a former Pakistani politician and four-star general of the Pakistan Army who became the tenth president of Pakistan after the successful military takeover of the ...

on 18 August 2008. The missiles hit two buildings – in one three women and two children were killed, and in the other seven Taliban militants died. President

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

had two months prior to this attack issued a classified order authorizing US raids against militants in Pakistan without prior approval from

Islamabad Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital T ...

. Missile strikes have traditionally provoked an outpouring of public resentment that Musharraf's political opponents used to help drive him from power. Many of those opponents are now seated in the new government – giving it broader political support and fewer high-profile critics. The attack came at the same time as American and international troops was fighting

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...

and

al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...

militants close by in neighboring Afghanistan. The upsurge in strikes alarmed Pakistani military and government officials, who said it seriously undermined their counter-insurgency operations. Pakistan had repeatedly stated, that it would not allow foreign forces onto its territory and that it would vigorously protect its sovereignty. It said that cross border raids were not the best way of fighting the "war against terror".

References

{{reflist Airstrikes of the insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa September 2008 events in Asia 2008 in military history 2008 in Pakistan

See also

References