Dire Consequences of Drone Strikes

[MarkTheTruth]

In recent weeks CIA-operated drone strikes have increased on Pakistan’s tribal areas, resulting in more civilian casualties than the targeted militants. Besides a perennial wave of these attacks, in one of the atrocious strikes, 18 missiles by the US eight spy planes killed 16 innocent people on February 2 at a village in North Waziristan raising the death toll to 31.

In the last three years, more than 800 innocent civilians, and only 20 Al-Qaeda commanders including top militant leader Baitullah Mehsud had been killed by these unmanned air vehicles, while death of Hakimullah Mehsud has also been confirmed by the US special envoy Richard Holbrooke.

Despite the protest of Pakistan’s civil and military leadership, and assurance of some US high officials, especially Richard Holbrooke so as to stop these drone attacks, this campaign has intensified under the Obama Administration. In this regard, the US defence budget for 2011 seeks more funds to enhance drone operations by 75 per cent. Chairman of the US JCS Admiral Mike Mullen stated that with this funding, we would increase the attacks by the unmanned Predators.

Islamabad has repeatedly said that strikes by the pilotless aircraft are likely to affect war against terrorism in the country, particularly the ongoing military operations which also include the most volatile tribal area of South Waziristan, but American policy makers do not bother for any internal backlash.

Notably, on January 22, 2010, The New York Times indicated: “the C.I.A. is expected to double its fleet of the latest Reaper aircraft—bigger, faster and more heavily armed than the present Predators…by extending these strikes to Balochistan.” The Times also realized that the drones undermined the larger war effort.

Nevertheless, a continued wave of drone strikes in the tribal areas and prospective attacks on Balochistan will bring about dire consequences for Pakistan and the US itself.

First of all, attacks by US spy planes are likely to sabotage successes achieved by the ongoing military operations in Swat, Buner and Dir where pocket, particularly in South Waziristan where these military actions have commenced in the recent. At this critical juncture, when Pakistan has been facing a perennial wave of suicide attacks, the drone strikes are causing panic among the dwellers. Inclusion of Balochistan will further deteriorate the situation due to internal backlash in whole of Pakistan, resulting in public protests-moderates will join the radicals. Such a blunder will further organise and increase the number of Pakistani Taliban as majority of the Pakhtoons are likely to join them. However, in that scenario, suicide attacks are likely to increase in our country. While resentment against America could be judged from the fact that in the recent weeks, two US drones were shot down by the tribesmen.

More significantly, air strikes in Balochistan will lead to sustained Taliban attacks on the NATO supply lines through the Chaman border in Balochistan province, while until now, attacks have mostly focused on the northern route running through the NWFP.

Besides, by playing a double game with Islamabad, under the pretext of Talibanisation and lawlessness, America may also demand to send NATO troops in Pakistan, alleging that nuclear weapons are not safe there. In that situation, even our armed forces will be compelled to stop military operations, while the democratic regime will be forced to leave the US war against terrorism.

In the recent past, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Quereshi has pointed out that trust deficit exists” in Pak-US ties, while Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani stated on February 3 that Pakistan and the US had “different long term goal” in Afghanistan. Recently, during the NATO meeting at Brussels Kayani also indicated internal backlash, raising Islmabad’s concerns over drone strikes.

Nevertheless, a continued wave of missile attacks on FATA and Balochistan will certainly result in more unity among the elected government, security forces and the general masses, consequently massive hostility towards Americans. In that situation, the US policy of liberalism and democracy could badly fail, giving a greater incentive to the fundamentalist and extremist elements in our country.

If Washington isolates Pakistan through sanctions, such an act will also cause drastic impact on the US war against terrorism, not only in our country but also in Afghanistan where US-led NATO forces are already facing defeatism, damaging their regional and global interests. This action is likely to undermine international efforts of stability both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It is mentionable that France, Germany, Canada and Australia are reluctant to maintain their troops in Afghanistan for a long time because of casualties and insecurity, while Holland has announced to withdraw its forces this year. Frustrated in Afghanistan—in case of targeting Pakistan’s regions beyond Waziristan, most of the American allies could leave the US war on terror, and leading to a greater rift between the US and other NATO members.

America must realise that in case of widening the course of drone strikes coupled with any full-fledged NATO military action on our soil, both Iran and Pakistan might stand together to frustrate the US strategic designs. Moreover, their alliance with Syria would make the matter worse for Washington. In that scenario, a vast region from Pakistan to Somalia will further be radicalized, bringing about more terrorism against the Americans. However, in these adverse circumstances, American worldwide interests are likely to be jeopardised in these countries including whole of the Middle East where the US has already failed in coping with the Islamic militants directly or indirectly.

These negative developments will further reduce the US bargaining leverage on hostile small countries. In this context, determination of Iran and North Korea to continue their nuclear programme, Syrian stand for Palestinian cause and refusal of the Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez to yield to the US pressure in relation to oil supply might be cited as an example.

After fighting a different war for more than eight years, American cost of war which has already reached approximately 6 trillion dollars will further increase—decline of dollar and acute recession inside the country are likely to give a greater blow to the US economy vis-à-vis other developed countries. Intensity of these problems will lead the United States towards downfall. In this context, disintegration of the British Empire and the former Soviet Union offers a drastic lesson to Washington. Now, either by continuing its drone strikes or by including Balochistan in its strategy, America is likely to face the same fate.

Mr. Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations.

Dire Consequences of Drone Strikes

 

[TruthSeeker]

ANALYSIS: Drone attacks and US reputation

Farhat Taj

In terms of the drone attacks, the US must not make any distinction between al Qaeda and the Taliban. They both have internalised a global ideology that is anti-civilisation and anti-human.

There is news coming up in the media that al Qaeda in Waziristan may run away to Yemen in the face of growing drone attacks. The people of Waziristan have expressed deep concern at this news. They do not want al Qaeda to run away from Waziristan. They want al Qaeda along with the Taliban burnt to ashes on the soil of Waziristan through relentless drone attacks. The drone attacks, they believe, are the one and only ‘cure’ for these anti-civilisation creatures and the US must robustly administer them the ‘cure’ until their existence is annihilated from the world. The people of Waziristan, including tribal leaders, women and religious people, asked me to convey in categorical terms to the US the following in my column.

One, your new drone attack strategy is brilliant, i.e. one attack closely followed by another. After the first attack the terrorists cordon off the area and none but the terrorists are allowed on the spot. Another attack at that point kills so many of them. Excellent! Keep it up!

Your drone technology has the full capacity to encircle and eliminate al Qaeda and the Taliban in Waziristan. If you fail to do so and al Qaeda manages to run away to Yemen or any other place, it could only happen in two cases: either you are highly incompetent people or you have ulterior motives.

The people who have established one of the world’s most vibrant democracies and have taken science and technology to a new zenith cannot be highly incompetent. Now the only possibility is that you have ulterior motives, which could facilitate al Qaeda’s escape from Waziristan.

In a sense the ISI of Pakistan and the CIA of the US share a sinister reputation: both use fanatic Islamists to promote strategic goals. The Taliban are the strategic assets of the ISI and al Qaeda of the CIA. Terrorised people in FATA believe that the ISI would never eliminate the Taliban for the sake of strategic depth in Afghanistan and countless people across the Muslim world believe that al Qaeda is a CIA invention to trigger chaos in Muslim lands and hence create excuses for the US to control natural resources such as oil and gas in those lands. There is also a perception in FATA and the rest of Pakistan that the US is especially going soft on Islamists from the restive Muslim areas of China. Those Islamists would be used to destabilise China, the emerging rival to the US in world politics.

Here in Waziristan the US has a good opportunity to prove to the Muslim world that it is indeed serious in eliminating al Qaeda. The escape of al Qaeda from Waziristan to Yemen or any other Muslim country would communicate the message that the US is an imperial power that just ‘relocates’ its strategic assets from one Muslim society to another only to destabilise them and hence paves the way for US military intervention in those areas.

In terms of the drone attacks, the US must not make any distinction between al Qaeda and the Taliban. They both have internalised a global ideology that is anti-civilisation and anti-human. They will keep coming back to strike at civilisations — Islamic, Western, Confucian or Indian. The sooner the world gets rid of them the better.

This was the view of the people of Waziristan. I would now draw the attention of the US to the Peshawar Declaration, a joint statement of political parties, civil society organisations, businessmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, students, labourers and intellectuals, following a conference on December 12-13, 2009, in Peshawar. The declaration notes that if the people of the war-affected areas are satisfied with any counter-militancy strategy; it is drone attacks that they support the most. Some people in Waziristan compare drones with the Quran’s Ababeels — the holy sparrows sent by God to avenge Abraham, the intended conqueror of the Khana Kaaba. Which other Muslim society has likened anything from the US military with a Quranic symbol? Only the Pakhtuns did that so publicly in this time of rising anti-Americanism across the Muslim world! What more does the US want from a Muslim society? Now please go ahead and do the needful as indicated by the people of Waziristan.

The overpowered people of Waziristan are angry. They believe no one in their entire history has inflicted so much insult on them as al Qaeda. In our native land, they say, al Qaeda has killed so many of us. Anyone in the world who has gone mad in the name of religion has come to occupy our land. They are Arabs, Central Asians, Caucasians and Africans. They are people with black, brown, blue and green eyes. They are brown, black and white. They all have chosen our land for their sinister designs against all civilisations. No self-respecting people, they argue, can accept this situation.

The ball is now in the US’s court. Their action or inaction against the terrorists in Waziristan would either confirm their image in the Muslim world as an imperial power destabilising Muslim societies in the name of the war on terror or would challenge that image, at least in FATA and the NWFP, the Muslim society on the frontline of the war on terror. The people of Waziristan hope the US challenges that image through the elimination of all terrorists — al Qaeda or the Taliban — in Waziristan.

The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy. She can be reached at bergen34@yahoo.co

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

 

[TruthSeeker]

Drone attacks -- a survey
Thursday, March 05, 2009

Farhat Taj

The Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, a think tank of researchers and political activists from the NWFP and FATA, conducts research, surveys and collect statistics on various issues concerning the Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorism and human security there. AIRRA research teams go deep inside Taliban- and Al-Qaeda-occupied areas of FATA to collect information. Most of the areas are not accessible to journalists.

Between last November and January AIRRA sent five teams, each made up of five researchers, to the parts of FATA that are often hit by American drones, to conduct a survey of public opinion about the attacks. The team visited Wana (South Waziristan), Ladda (South Waziristan), Miranshah (North Waziristan), Razmak (North Waziristan) and Parachinar (Kurram Agency). The teams handed out 650 structured questionnaires to people in the areas. The questionnaires were in Pashto, English and Urdu. The 550 respondents (100 declined to answer) were from professions related to business, education, health and transport. Following are the questions and the responses of the people of FATA.

-- Do you see drone attacks bringing about fear and terror in the common people? (Yes 45%, No 55%)

-- Do you think the drones are accurate in their strikes? (Yes 52%, No 48%)

-- Do you think anti-American feelings in the area increased due to drone attacks recently? (Yes 42%, No 58%)

-- Should Pakistan military carry out targeted strikes at the militant organisations? (Yes 70%, No 30%)

-- Do the militant organisations get damaged due to drone attacks? (Yes 60%, No 40%)

A group of researchers at AIRRA draw these conclusions from the survey. The popular notion outside the Pakhtun belt that a large majority of the local population supports the Taliban movement lacks substance. The notion that anti-Americanism in the region has not increased due to drone attacks is rejected. The study supports the notion that a large majority of the people in the Pakhtun belt wants to be incorporated with the state and wants to integrate with the rest of the world.

The survey also reinforces my own ethnographic interactions with people of FATA, both inside FATA and the FATA IDP’s in the NWFP. This includes people I personally met and those I am in contact with through telephone calls and emails. This includes men and women, from illiterate to people with university level education. The number is well over 2000. I asked almost all those people if they see the US drone attacks on FATA as violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. More than two-third said they did not. Pakistan’s sovereignty, they argued, was insulted and annihilated by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, whose territory FATA is after Pakistan lost it to them. The US is violating the sovereignty of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, not of Pakistan. Almost half the people said that the US drones attacking Islamabad or Lahore will be violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan, because these areas are not taken over by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Many people laughed when I mentioned the word sovereignty with respect to Pakistan.

Over two-thirds of the people viewed Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as enemy number one, and wanted the Pakistani army to clear the area of the militants. A little under two-thirds want the Americans to continue the drone attack because the Pakistani army is unable or unwilling to retake the territory from the Taliban.

The people I asked about civilian causalities in the drone attacks said most of the attacks had hit their targets, which include Arab, Chechen, Uzbek and Tajik terrorists of Al-Qaeda, Pakistani Taliban (Pakhtun and Punjabis) and training camps of the terrorists. There has been some collateral damage.

The drones hit hujras or houses which the Taliban forced people to rent out to them. There is collateral damage when the family forced to rent out the property is living in an adjacent house or a portion of the property rented out.

The Taliban and Al Qaeda have unleashed a reign of terror on the people of FATA. People are afraid that the Taliban will suspect their loyalty and behead them. Thus, in order to prove their loyalty to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, they offer them to rent their houses and hujras for residential purposes.

There are people who are linked with the Taliban. Terrorists visit their houses as guests and live in the houses and hujras. The drones attacks kill women and small children of the hosts. These are innocent deaths because the women and children have no role in the men’s links with terrorists.

Other innocent victims are local people who just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

People told me that typically what happens after every drone attack is that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorists cordon off the area. No one from the local population is allowed to access the site, even if there are local people killed or injured. Their relatives cry and beg the terrorists to let them go near the site. But the Taliban and Al Qaeda do not allow them. The Taliban and Al Qaeda remove everything they want from the site and then allow the locals to see the site.

The survey conducted by AIRRA and my ethnographic interactions contradict the mantra of violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan perpetuated by the armchair analysts in the media. I have been arguing on these pages that analyses of those analysts have nothing to do with the reality of the FATA people. For some reason they take FATA for granted. They feel they are at liberty to fantasise whatever they like about FATA and present to the audience as a truth. Some of those armchair analysts also have a misplaced optimism about themselves. They believe my challenge to their fantasies about FATA is because I like to give them time! I give time to the land I love--FATA and the NWFP--and to the state I am loyal to--Pakistan.

What is happening in FATA is destroying the lives and culture of the FATA people, threatening the integrity of Pakistan and world peace. Fantasies of the armchair analysts are helping no one but Al Qaeda and the Taliban--enemies of the land and culture I love, and our state. I will therefore continue to challenge the fantasies of the armchairs analysts, whenever possible.

The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy. Email: bergen34@ yahoo.com

Drone attacks -- a survey

 

[TruthSeeker]

Howling at the moon

By Irfan Husain
Saturday, 09 Jan, 2010

The only civilians who have been killed are the family members of the militants in whose houses other terrorists have gathered, Dr. Farhat Taj writes in her article.

Many of us in the punditry profession are guilty of making generalisations about what is happening in the tribal areas without having visited them in recent times. Thus, when we hear about the anger and outrage supposedly sweeping though the people of Fata over the frequent drone attacks, we tend to accept this as the gospel truth.

This myth was recently exploded by Farhat Taj in her article ‘Drone attacks: challenging some fabrications’, published recently in a national daily. Dr Taj is an academic at the University of Oslo, but more importantly, she comes from the region and has a degree of access to tribal Pakhtuns that is rare.

Over the last couple of years, the air has been thick with charges that the US drone campaign is ‘counter-productive’ as it is supposed to have caused the death of many non-combatants. The Pakistani government has lodged numerous protests with the Americans over the collateral damage their attacks have caused, and how they are destabilising the Zardari administration. The hypocrisy inherent in these protests is little short of breathtaking, considering that many of these remote controlled aircraft are said to operate from runways located in Pakistan.

However, as Dr Taj explains in her important article, ordinary people in Fata are delighted that at least somebody is killing the ruthless thugs who have seized control of their villages and their lives. She says that Pakistani and US media have tossed around the figure of ‘600-700 civilian casualties’ without citing any evidence.

According to Dr Taj, “…after every attack the terrorists cordon off the area and no one, including the local villagers, are allowed to come even near the targeted place. The militants themselves collect the bodies, bury the dead and then issue the statement that all of them were innocent civilians.”

Dr Taj goes on to explain that the only civilians who have been killed are the family members of the militants in whose houses other terrorists have gathered. In effect, these killers are using these women and children as human shields, hoping their presence will deter drone attacks. In any case, it is impossible to make even a rough estimate of how many civilians have been killed in the drone campaign.

The writer goes on to say: “The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It is in this context that they would welcome anyone, Americans, Israelis, Indians or even the devil, to rid them of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks. Secondly, the people feel comfortable with the drone attacks because of their precision and targeted strikes. [People prefer them to] the Pakistan Army’s attacks which always result in collateral damage.…”

Dr Taj makes perfect sense: after all, why would the people under Taliban and Al Qaeda occupation and oppression not cheer when these murderers are killed? What does not make sense is the chorus of protests over these drone attacks emanating from people like Imran Khan and Hamid Gul — to name only two — who claim to speak for the people of the tribal areas. What exactly is their agenda, and why are they acting as cheerleaders for these terrorists?

The breach of our supposedly sacred sovereignty has been cited as the reason for this outrage over the American campaign of targeting terrorists seeking shelter in the tribal areas, and attacking western forces over the border in Afghanistan. However, why should the Americans wait passively for their soldiers to be picked off by militants who use our territory as a base for cross-border attacks?

With the concept of sovereignty comes the responsibility to exercise control over territory. Successive Pakistani governments have failed to seal our borders, and the entire region is suffering from terrorism as a result. All our neighbours have complained publicly and privately over the Pakistani state’s inability or unwillingness to effectively prevent cross-border attacks of the kind we have been witnessing for over two decades now. Indeed, we have been accused of using our lawless borders to further our establishment’s agenda.

In any case, sovereignty is never absolute. Just as nations have the duty to prevent effluents from their factories from contaminating rivers that flow down to lower riparian neighbours, so too do they have the responsibility of halting terrorists from crossing into other states.

Dr Taj concludes her article thus: “Moreover, Al Qaeda and the Taliban have done everything to stop the drone attacks by killing hundreds of innocent civilians on the pretext of their being American spies. They thought that by overwhelming the innocent people of Waziristan with terror tactics they would deter any potential informer, but they have failed…. Interestingly, no one in Pakistan has raised objections to killings [sic] of the people of Waziristan on charges of spying for the US. This, the people of Waziristan informed, is a source of torture for them that their fellow Pakistanis condemn the killing of terrorists, but fall into deadly silence over the routine murders of tribesmen.…”

I have often wondered about this callous hypocrisy too. If we condemn the Americans so vociferously over the drone campaign, should we not be more critical of the thugs who are killing far more Pakistani civilians? And yet, it seems that our more popular Urdu anchorpersons and TV chat show guests reserve their outrage for Washington, while giving the Taliban and Al Qaeda a free pass over their vicious suicide bombings that have taken hundreds of innocent lives in recent weeks.

Why then are we silent over the daily killings of fellow Pakistanis by the TTP and other terror groups, while frothing at the mouth over the drone attacks? Clearly, this irrational and double-faced reaction is based in the anti-American sentiment that has taken root in Pakistan.

However, if we are to win the war against extremism, we need to analyse where our best interests lie. First we need to face the fact that the war is not going well. Even though the army has cleared most of South Waziristan of the TTP, it does not have the manpower to both hold the area it has wrested from the terrorists, and to take them on in the other regions they have fled to.

We need to wake up to the reality that the enemy has grown very strong in the years we temporised and tried to do deals with them. Clearly, we need allies in this fight. Howling at the moon is not going to get us the cooperation we so desperately need. A solid case can be made for more drone attacks, not less.

DAWN.COM | Columnists | Howling at the moon

 

[TruthSeeker]

Analysis: Drone attacks: challenging some fabrications

Farhat Taj

The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and al Qaeda. Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks

There is a deep abyss between the perceptions of the people of Waziristan, the most drone-hit area and the wider Pakistani society on the other side of the River Indus. For the latter, the US drone attacks on Waziristan are a violation of Pakistani’s sovereignty. Politicians, religious leaders, media analysts and anchorpersons express sensational clamour over the supposed ‘civilian casualties’ in the drone attacks. I have been discussing the issue of drone attacks with hundreds of people of Waziristan. They see the US drone attacks as their liberators from the clutches of the terrorists into which, they say, their state has wilfully thrown them. The purpose of today’s column is, one, to challenge the Pakistani and US media reports about the civilian casualties in the drone attacks and, two, to express the view of the people of Waziristan, who are equally terrified by the Taliban and the intelligence agencies of Pakistan. I personally met these people in the Pakhtunkhwa province, where they live as internally displaced persons (IDPs), and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

I would challenge both the US and Pakistani media to provide verifiable evidence of civilian ‘casualties’ because of drone attacks on Waziristan, i.e. names of the people killed, names of their villages, dates and locations of the strikes and, above all, the methodology of the information that they collected. If they can’t meet the challenge, I would request them to stop throwing around fabricated figures of ‘civilian casualties’ that confuse people around the world and provide propaganda material to the pro-Taliban and al Qaeda forces in the politics and media of Pakistan.

I pose that challenge because no one is in a position to give a correct estimate of how many individuals have been killed so far in drone attacks. On the basis of American media estimates, 600 to 700 ‘civilian population’ have been killed. The Pakistani government, pro-Taliban political parties like Jamaat-e-Islami, Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, Tehrik-e-Insaf, and the media are quoting the same figure. Neither the government of Pakistan nor the media have any access to the area and no system is in place to arrive at precise estimates. The Pakistani government and media take the figure appearing in the American media as an admission by the American government. The US media too do not have access to the area. Moreover, the area is simply not accessible for any kind of independent journalistic or scholarly work on drone attacks. The Taliban simply kill anyone doing so.

The reason why these estimates about civilian ‘casualties’ in the US and Pakistani media are wrong is that after every attack the terrorists cordon off the area and no one, including the local villagers, is allowed to come even near the targeted place. The militants themselves collect the bodies, burry the dead and then issue the statement that all of them were innocent civilians. This has been part of their propaganda to provide excuses to the pro-Taliban and al Qaeda media persons and political forces in Pakistan to generate public sympathies for the terrorists. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or other militants have never admitted to the killing of any important figure of al Qaeda or the TTP. One exception is the killing of Baitullah Mehsud that the TTP reluctantly admitted several days after his death. According to the people of Waziristan, the only civilians who have been killed so far in the drone attacks are women or children of the militants in whose houses/compounds they hold meetings. But that, too, used to happen in the past. Now they don’t hold meetings at places where women and children of the al Qaeda and TTP militants reside. Moreover, in this case too no one is in a position to give even an approximate number of the women and children of the terrorists killed in drone attacks.

The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and al Qaeda. It is in this context that they would welcome anyone, Americans, Israelis, Indians or even the devil, to rid them of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks. Secondly, the people feel comfortable with the drones because of their precision and targeted strikes. People usually appreciate drone attacks when they compare it with the Pakistan Army’s attacks, which always result in collateral damage. Especially the people of Waziristan have been terrified by the use of long-range artillery and air strikes of the Pakistan Army and Air Force. People complain that not a single TTP or al Qaeda member has been killed so far by the Pakistan Army, whereas a lot of collateral damage has taken place. Thousands of houses have been destroyed and hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed by the Pakistan Army. On the other hand, drone attacks have never targeted the civilian population except, they informed, in one case when the funeral procession of Khwazh Wali, a TTP commander, was hit. In that attack too, many TTP militants were killed including Bilal (the TTP commander of Zangara area) and two Arab members of al Qaeda. But some civilians were also killed. After the attack people got the excuse of not attending the funeral of slain TTP militants or offering them food, which they used to do out of compulsion in order to put themselves in the TTP’s good books. “It (this drone attack) was a blessing in disguise,” several people commented.

I have heard people particularly appreciating the precision of drone strikes. People say that when a drone would hover over the skies, they wouldn’t be disturbed and would carry on their usual business because they would be sure that it does not target the civilians, but the same people would run for shelter when a Pakistani jet would appear in the skies because of its indiscriminate firing. They say that even in the same compound only the exact room — where a high value target (HVT) is present — is targeted. Thus others in the same compound are spared. The people of Waziristan have been complaining why the drones are only restricted to targeting the Arabs. They want the drones to attack the TTP leadership, the Uzbek/Tajik/Turkmen, Punjabi and Pakhtun Taliban. I have heard even religious people of Waziristan cursing the jihad and welcoming even Indian or Israeli support to help them get rid of the TTP and foreign militants. The TTP and foreign militants had made them hostages and occupied their houses by force. The Taliban have publicly killed even the religious scholars in Waziristan.

I have yet to come across a non-TTP resident of Waziristan who supports the Taliban or al Qaeda. Till recently they were terrified by the TTP to the extent that they would not open their mouth to oppose them. But now, having been displaced and out of their reach, some of them speak against them openly and many more than before in private conversations. They express their fear of the intelligence agencies of Pakistan whenever speaking against the Taliban. They see the two as two sides of the same coin.

What we read and hear in the print and electronic media of Pakistan about drone attacks as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty or resulting in killing innocent civilians is not true so far as the people of Waziristan are concerned. According to them, al Qaeda and the TTP are dead scared of drone attacks and their leadership spends sleepless nights. This is a cause of pleasure for the tormented people of Waziristan.

Moreover, al Qaeda and the Taliban have done everything to stop the drone attacks by killing hundreds of innocent civilians on the pretext of their being American spies. They thought that by overwhelming the innocent people of Waziristan with terror tactics they would deter any potential informer, but they have failed. On many occasions the Taliban and al Qaeda have killed the alleged US spies in front of crowds of hundreds, even thousands of tribesmen. Interestingly, no one in Pakistan has raised objection to killings of the people of Waziristan on charges of spying for the US. This, the people of Waziristan informed, is a source of torture for them that their fellow Pakistanis condemn the killing of the terrorists but fall into deadly silence over the routine murders of tribesmen accused of spying for the US by the terrorists occupying their land.

The writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Oslo and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy.

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

 

[ASQ-1918]

Why does Pakistan GOV even let USA drones inside its territority?

 

[LCA Tejas]

Why does Pakistan GOV even let USA drones inside its territority?

Pak can very well shoot it down, but why would they as its helping them kill terrorist

 

[ASQ-1918]

Pak can very well shoot it down, but why would they as its helping them kill terrorist

Yes tought of that, but still...

 

[TruthSeeker]

Yes tought of that, but still...

Read the articles above I posted. The drone strikes are the only "game in town" that effectively goes after the terrorists while not actually disrupting the civilians or causing very much "collateral damage". A PA or PAF operation would be much worse on the civilians. All the anti-drone strike stuff is just xenophobic BS that gives aid and comfort to the terrorists.