Pakistani military troops fired shots at American and Afghan soldiers several times in recent months in clashes that the United States has downplayed but that underscore the rapidly deteriorating relations between Washington and one of its former strategic allies.

On September 28, Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry said some 300 rockets had been fired from Pakistan into Afghanistan, killing an unspecified number of civilians and endangering the lives of American soldiers. Pakistan claimed it was targeting members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban terrorist group.

In late May, Pakistani soldiers opened fire on American Apache helicopter crews. Did the Pakistani soldiers mistake one of the U.S.’s trademark choppers for the ragtag equipment of terrorists? That encounter was reported by the International Security Assistance Force (isaf), but Afghan and U.S. officials told the Washington Examiner that most such skirmishes are not made known to the public.

“We’re not allowed to return fire to coordinates inside the Pakistan border,” a military official said on condition of anonymity. “We know it’s the Pakistani military in many cases. Pakistan has been instigating, aiding [terrorist family] Haqqani, and has been purposefully working to turn back any gains isaf has made in the region.”

A different U.S. official said, “This has been going on for some time, but because it’s so sensitive it has been kept relatively quiet.”

Earlier this month, Adm. Mike Mullen said the Pakistani military works with the Haqqani terrorist family as a “veritable arm” of its operations.

Former cia officer Bruce Riedel said Pakistan thinks that although the U.S. is ready to leave Afghanistan, Islamabad is trying to “push us out faster.” Pakistan has ramped up its use of Afghan proxies to undertake terror operations designed to deplete the patience of the Americans and Europeans. Riedel said that Pakistan’s military leaders think “they can weather the blowback from Washington,” since the U.S. has need of Pakistan’s logistical supply lines that stretch from Kabul to Karachi.

This spate of Pakistani attacks on U.S. troops takes its place atop a great mound of evidence of the deterioration of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.

Last December, a lawsuit filed in Pakistan exposed the identity of the man who was then station chief of the cia, and the blown cover forced the organization to pull the vital agent out of Pakistan. Some interpreted the move as a calculated act of revenge by Pakistan after its intelligence chief, Ahmad Shuja Pasha, was named in a U.S. lawsuit relating to the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Then in May, cia director Leon Panetta explained why U.S. troops killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil without first alerting officials in Islamabad. “It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission,” he told Time magazine. “They might alert the targets” (May 3).

The unilateral action made plain that the U.S. didn’t trust Pakistan, and deeply embarrassed the Pakistani government. The embarrassment intensified on May 9, when U.S. military officials said President Obama had insisted that the assault team be large enough to battle its way out of Pakistan in the event of confrontation from hostile Pakistani troops or police officers. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani responded by saying Pakistan could react to future U.S. raids on its soil with “full force.” Any “overt or covert” attack would be met by a “matching response,” Gilani said.

The significance of the rising tensions between Pakistan and the U.S. cannot be overstated.

Over the past decade, Washington has pumped over $18 billion in military and civilian aid into Pakistan, but the alliance is crumbling. As Pakistan parts with the U.S., it is gearing up to replace the billions of dollars of aid it has been receiving from Washington by courting China and seeking help from Saudi Arabia. With much of the Muslim world blazing with uprisings, the time may be ripe for a coup that could ally nuclear Pakistan with another emerging bloc.

The Trumpet has often warned of the danger of Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal falling under the control of radical Islamism and Iran. For example, in January 2008, editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote that “Pakistan also has the nuclear bomb and could be taken over by radical Islam, with plenty of help from Iran.” This nation, the world’s seventh-most powerful military power, could soon become a “proxy of the Iranian mullahs,” he warned, and “this would be the worst possible disaster!”

We have also pointed to the possibility that, despite its Muslim majority, Pakistan could eventually be allied with China, contributing its strategic seaport and its soldiers to a prophesied end-time pan-Asian army.

In any case, as columnist Joel Hilliker wrote earlier this year, “It certainly appears that America’s tattered alliance with Pakistan is all but over.” This is yet another sign of the end of the Anglo-American era and the rapid development of a new world order.