Do drones kill extremists or recruit them, asks Washington Post
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Monitoring Desk
WASHINGTON: Even as the Obama administration launches new drone attacks in the tribal areas, concerns are growing among US intelligence and military officials that the strikes are bolstering the insurgency by prompting radicals to disperse into the countrys heartland, The Washington Post reported.
Al Qaida, Taliban and other militants whove been relocating to Pakistans overcrowded and impoverished cities may be harder to find and stop from staging terrorist attacks, the officials were quoted on Wednesday by Jonathan S Landay in The Washington Post.
Moreover, they said, the strikes by the missile-firing drones are a recruiting boon for extremists because of the unintended civilian casualties that have prompted widespread anger against the US.
Putting these guys on the run forces a lot of good things to happen, said a senior US defence official who requested anonymity because the drone operations, run by the CIA and the Air Force, are top secret. It gives you more targeting opportunities. The downside is that you get a much more dispersed target set and they go to places where we are not operating.
US drone attacks may have hurt more than they have helped, said a US military official whos been deeply involved in counterterrorism operations. The official, who requested anonymity because he wasnt authorised to speak publicly, called the drone operations a recruiting windfall for the Pakistani Taliban.
A significant number of bad actors arent where they used to be, but have moved to places where we cant get at them the way we could, he added. As a result of the drone attacks, insurgent activities are more dispersed in Pakistan and focusing on Pakistani targets, said Christine Fair of the RAND Corp, a policy institute that advises the Pentagon. So we have shifted the costs.
Several US intelligence, military officials and independent experts, however, said that theyre especially worried by an influx of extremists from the tribal areas into the slums of Karachi, the paper said, adding many militants are thought to have taken refuge among Karachis estimated 3.5 million Pashtuns. Their presence is stoking tensions with other groups in the southern city, which has a long history of communal bloodshed and terrorism, including against Western targets.
The whos who of extremism is present in Karachi, said Faisal Ali Subzwari, a Sindh government minister. There are many areas where police and Rangers cannot even dare to enter. It is a safe haven for those who want a hiding place. Subzwari said that part of his own constituency is one of these no-go areas.
US officials have long identified Karachi as the headquarters of the Afghan Talibans fundraising committee, and many top militants were educated at the Binori Mosque, the paper said. A feeder network of militant seminaries in Karachi supplies young suicide bombers, they said.
The Washington Post said an upheaval in Karachi would be catastrophic for a country that has only avoided bankruptcy with a $7.6 billion International Monetary Fund emergency credit line. Financial activities, as well as imports and exports for both Pakistan and landlocked Afghanistan, could be paralysed, as could supplies for US-led Nato forces in the region.
Concerns over blowback from the drone strikes is fuelling a debate in the Obama administration over whether they should be extended from the tribal areas to Balochistan, the alleged refuge of the Afghan Taliban leadership, US officials said.
Proponents of the drone strikes cite the killing of key al Qaida operatives and the disruption of the terrorist networks ability to plot new attacks; opponents, said to include some senior administration officials, fear that the operations are too destabilising for nuclear-armed Pakistan and are doing nothing to halt the insurgencies tearing through the country and Afghanistan.
There is no uniform opinion on this, the senior defence official said. You have some concerns that they are causing a ripple effect, that the consequences are too large for Pakistan to absorb.
Several US officials argued that it would be easier for the US and Pakistani authorities, including the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, to track down militants who leave the remote border region for the cities. They pointed out that senior al Qaida operatives in US custody were found in Pakistani urban areas.
Critics, however, noted that the ISI and the military cant be relied on to cooperate, because while theyve turned over foreign militants, some former and current ISI and Army officers are believed support Afghan and Pakistani groups, the paper said.
CIA and the Air Force operators remotely pilot the missile-firing Predator and Reaper drones, known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or UAVs, from the US. But the aircraft fly from an airbase in Balochistan, according to some experts, with the permission of Pakistani military officials who privately back the operations and want US approval to buy drones of their own.
Obviously, this enjoys high-level (Pakistani) approval, Fair said. US military and intelligence officials said that the US drone strikes are only one factor behind the outflow of extremists into other parts of Pakistan.
News reports that the Obama administration is considering extending the attacks to Taliban refuges in Pashtun-dominated northern Balochistan, including around the provincial capital of Quetta, have also contributed to the movement, they said.
Moreover, they said, some militants have moved into Pakistans heartland because of tensions between the groups in the tribal region. A US intelligence official whos been deeply involved in the counter-terrorism campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan, however, called the drone operations a major catalyst for the movement.
The UAV strikes have had two unintended consequences, said the US intelligence official, who requested anonymity because he isnt authorised to speak publicly and because much of the information is classified.
First, al Qaida and the Taliban have used our use of unmanned aircraft in their propaganda to portray Americans as cowards who are afraid to face their enemies and risk death. In their culture, and in the context of what they portray as a war between Western religions and Islam, that can be a powerful argument, he said.
Second and not surprisingly, he continued, rather than sit around in the (tribal region) waiting for the next strike, some of the Jihadi have moved into Pakistan proper, into Karachi and even into Punjab, where we cant target them and where theyre in a better position to attack the Pakistani government.
Do drones kill extremists or recruit them, asks Washington Post
