Drone Attacks and Pakistan

[Ali Ahmad Syed]

Drone Attacks and Pakistan

Pakistan is being pushed to the brink by consistent anti-Pakistan actions and policies by its historical ally, the United States. Most of these policies lie at the door of Mr.Obama, whose lack of experience in foriegn affairs is begining to malign U.S.friends like Pakistan. It seems that the U.S. policy towards Pakistan follows a sinusoidal curve. There no consistency and stability in U.S. attitude, while claiming strategic partnership with Pakistan on one hand, U.S. deliberately violates Pakistan's air space and national boundaries on the other. Pakistani public has shown remarkable patience towards these flagrant violations of International Law and Norms. It now seems their patience is running out. A point of no return seems to be on the horizon, at which Pakistan may fully turn to its only ally in the region, China to back it up, when it responds defensively to assert its sovereignty. Pakistan is not Iraq. Its people have fought many invaders as guerrilas and as part of a conventional fighting force. Pakistani remember the lessons of Vietnam and Afghanistan. At the same time, Pakistani people are realistic enough to know that they cannot challenge a global power, they also live by the credo enunicated by their national poet, Iqbal, Ae tair-e-lahoti uss rizq say maut achi
jiss rizk se aati ho parwaz mei kotahi... Only time will tell... Pakistan's most prominent -- and vocal -- retired chiefs of the army are demanding that the country's air force be ordered to shoot down drones and helicopters -- and increasingly angry active duty officers are voicing their approval in off-the-record conversations with Pakistani journalists.

The country's senior generals on active duty are being blasted as "American stooges." Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, the retired army chief who succeeded President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who died in a mysterious 1988 plane crash, told The Nation daily that U.S. military and CIA drones were increasing the tempo of their intrusions in Pakistani air space and that many Pakistani people had been killed.

"We have got the means to avert threats to our security," said Beg, "and our air force must be ordered to take action against them."

Beg conceded it was "very painful for him to hear that U.S. war criminal (U.S. Special Envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan) Richard Holbrooke said in a statement that U.S. drone attacks were being carried out with the consent of the Pakistan government and the army's (general headquarters)."

Another influential former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services-Intelligence agency, Gen. Hamid Gul, said the United States fears the return of the Supreme Court because it could rule the U.S. drone attacks are violations of the country's sovereignty.

If that happens, the Pakistani parliament would have to act on the Supreme Court's decision and reverse the policy. The United States is skeptical and suspicious that if the Supreme Court is given free rein again in Pakistan, "it is likely to rule against their interests and agenda in Pakistan."

In another broadside, Gul said "the Pakistani government should stop NATO supplies permanently or face the reality" -- the wrath of the people.

What's left of al-Qaida's operational command structure is in North Waziristan, one of the seven tribal agencies in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border. The most recent al-Qaida commander killed in a drone attack was Fateh al-Misri, believed to be the commander for al-Qaida activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

FATA, like the capital of Islamabad, is federal territory. And America's many detractors -- the Pew Foundation found that 64 percent regard the United States as an enemy -- say that drone and helicopter attacks are a direct violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

A more ominous anti-American voice courted by the freest media in Asia is Dr. A.Q. Khan, the nuclear scientist Khan writes articles and gives interviews to print, radio and TV media, spreading hatred against the United States, openly discussing nuclear secrets, and courting arrest, presumably to provoke anti-U.S. demonstrations.

The security establishment convened a meeting in the prime minister's residence to discuss how Khan could be reined in and restricted to a life of anonymity. The conclusion was that couldn't be done without triggering a national pro-A.Q. Khan movement. He is still the most popular man in Pakistan and some pundits see him as a possible president in a future government with a return to power of another notorious anti-American, Nawaz Sharif.

In a unanimous decision, the country's parliament condemned U.S. attacks against FATA targets and asked for a halt in cross-border raids. But this was ignored and the attacks continued.

Tit-for-tat wasn't long in coming. A U.S. helicopter gunship returned fire at a group of Pakistani Frontier Corps soldiers, killing three -- triggering a major crisis between the two countries.

Pakistan suddenly closed the Khyber Pass, the most important supply route for NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. About 70 percent of the Afghan war's requirements is offloaded in Karachi, the port city of 18 million, onto trucks and tankers for the 1,200-mile trip through Pakistan to the 33-mile-long Khyber Pass and on to Kabul to service the needs of troops operating in eastern Afghanistan. A second route through Quetta in Baluchistan to Kandahar remained open. It handles supplies for southern, eastern and northern Afghanistan.

Some 1,200 trucks and gasoline tankers suddenly found themselves backed up over hundreds of miles -- and sitting ducks for Pakistani Taliban insurgent attacks. Over the 11-day shutdown of the Torkham border post at the end of the Khyber Pass, 125 transport vehicles were torched.

It is now clear Pakistan is no longer in the ranks of "major non-NATO allies," where U.S. President George W. Bush had promoted the tragedy-plagued nation of 180 million Muslims. For some U.S. policymakers, Pakistan is a regional and global cancer and for others what the CIA called "Terror Center of the World."

Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Turkey, all traced some of their nationals to al-Qaida and Taliban training camps in FATA -- particularly North Waziristan.

In its offensive against Taliban insurgents in FATA, the Pakistani army carefully avoided North Waziristan. The recent floods that affected almost 20 million people diverted much of the army to rescue operations. So that part of FATA continues to enjoy immunity from Pakistani counter-insurgency operations. It is also the location of headquarters and training camps for the Haqqani group of insurgents that is fighting allied forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistan's political and military leadership reached the conclusion years ago the United States wouldn't fight on to victory in Afghanistan and that the end would be closer to Vietnam than to Korea, where the enemy was pushed back to the status quo ante on the 38th parallel, a victory by modern definition. The Vietnam War ended with a wishy-washy compromise peace agreement pending a final push to victory by North Vietnam -- after Congress voted against any further military assistance to South Vietnamese allies.

The July 2011 date for the beginning of a drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan now looms larger in national security adviser Tom Donilon's White House office than it does in Bob Gates' at the Pentagon or at Gen. David Petraeus' Afghan headquarters.

On Jan 23, days after Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States, a series of missiles slammed into Pakistan's tribal areas along the Afghan border - in continuation of Washington's policy of targeting al-Qaeda and Taliban elements regardless of sovereignty issues.

"The drone attacks anger Pakistanis because the government, in cahoots with the media, refuses to explain that Pakistani governments have been complicit in seeking rent from Washington to fight what now appears to be America's war," said military analyst, Ayesha Siddiqa.

Drones or remote-controlled are pilotless aircraft that hover high in the skies and fire missiles with accuracy at selected targets, but in Pakistan they have caused significant 'collateral damage' to civilian populations.

In 2008, there were 32 such attacks on Islamist militant sites, killing 216 terrorists and 84 civilians, according to a report by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), an Islamabad-based think tank.

More than 134 civilians have died, so far, in missile attacks within Pakistani territory and no other country in the world has been subjected to such a sustained campaign using drones. The attacks followed Washington's perception that Pakistan was not doing enough to stop cross-border operations by Islamist militants or, more recently, attacks on supply routes to Afghanistan through Pakistan.

Siddiqa, who got into the military's crosshairs after the publication in 2007 of her book, 'Military Inc., The politics of Military's Economy in Pakistan', said Obama was only protecting U.S. interests. "His understanding is that despite payment of 12 billion US dollars Pakistan has not delivered [on its commitment to go after al-Qaeda and Taliban holed up in the tribal areas].''

Obama's policy appears to be one of using a smaller carrot and a bigger stick to get the Pakistan army to stick to its side of the bargain. On his first day in office he said that the delivery of non-military annual aid worth 1.5 billion dollars to Pakistan would depend on "performance" in combating extremists.

Washington has also deducted 55 million dollars from reimbursements for expenses billed by Pakistan for war-on-terror expenses - releasing only 101 million dollars against Pakistan's claim of 156 million dollars.

This approach has bred resentment in Pakistan and President Asif Ali Zardari said, in an article in the Washington Post published on Jan. 28, that this country did not "need lectures" on its commitment to the war but "assistance".

''Frankly, the abandonment of Afghanistan and Pakistan after the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s set the stage for the era of terrorism that we are enduring. U.S. support for the priorities of dictatorship back then, and again at the start of the new millennium, neglected the social and economic development of our nation, the priorities of the people,'' Zardari wrote.

Nasim Zehra, a political analyst said in her column published on Feb. 4 in 'The News', a leading English-language daily, that "to aid Pakistan in tracking and fighting militants operating within Pakistani territory and from keeping its Pakistan-Afghan border secure, Washington should provide Pakistan the military means that Pakistani forces have repeatedly requested to ensure effective intelligence gathering..."

"At this stage Pakistan cannot afford to reduce the strength and budget of the army," says Sher Zaman Taizai, a noted Pakhtun writer, and formerly Pakistan's defence attaché to Kabul. "The civil armed forces in most parts of the frontier province are not strong enough to control the situation."

According to Taizi, Pakistani army operations in the north-west have been funded by the U.S. "With the cut in funds, the army may have to withdraw and the militant groups in the tribal areas will move further into the settled districts; and that will pose a great danger to survival of Pakistan."

All through 2008, following every air-strike, the Pakistan government was seen vehemently protesting to the U.S. about collateral damage.

"They are controlled and conducted by CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] deployed in Afghanistan along the border and the Pakistan army is not informed of the attacks," said Taizi. "The U.S. intelligence agency is sceptical of the integrity of ISI [Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence]."

Mistrust between Washington and Islamabad deepened in September 2008 when the Pakistan's military stated that it had issued orders to 'open fire' on U.S. soldiers crossing the border in pursuit of militants and news reports said that on Sep. 25, 2008 Pakistani troops actually fired at U.S. helicopters.

On Nov. 19, after a drone attack was carried out in Bannu, deeper into Pakistani territory and beyond the tribal areas, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, was summoned to the foreign ministry and a formal protest lodged with her.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, emphasised that attacks on targets within Pakistan were "counterproductive" and a ''violation of the country's sovereignty''.

But Ayaz Amir, a seasoned journalist and parliamentarian suggested that Gilani's words were meant only for "public consumption".

"There is no point in shedding crocodile tears. If we had any guts, we could have at least threatened to withdraw all cooperation [to the US] henceforth," said Amir. His reference was to a tacit understanding between Islamabad and Washington on how to stem militancy in the tribal areas.

There is now a growing fear that the militants are not only gaining ground in the remote tribal areas but also moving into the settled areas.

Rahimullah Yusufzai, resident editor of English-language daily, 'The News', says the people of the tribal areas no longer trust anyone and suffer from what is akin to a 'battered-child syndrome''.

"It [the drone attacks] sends different messages to the tribal people,'' said Yusfazia. ''One, that they have to fend for themselves and two, that the only force willing to fight the Americans are the Taliban."

Yusufzai, an expert on Taliban and Afghan issues, predicted that continued drone attacks will stoke anti-U.S. sentiments, and warm the local people to the Taliban in their fight to rid the region of foreign troops.

Written by Adaptation of Commentary: Arnaud de Borchgrave, UPI Editor at Large and By Zofeen Ebrahim | Published in Defense

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