Yet another drone strike, this time killing 25 people, including women and children. And yet again, Islamabad was found to be clueless and without options that every government worth its salt is supposed to evolve over time. What has happened is neither new nor unexpected. Drone attacks have continued for more than four years. Early this week Admiral Mullen bluntly told media in Islamabad that unless there was a comprehensive operation in North Waziristan, the attacks would not be called off. On Friday, when another US General was breathing down Gen Kayani’s neck, the inevitable happened. Interestingly, the same day Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir and US special envoy Marc Grossman decided to continue to hold more talks. There were obviously no prospects of an early end to the drone attacks.
The situation has led Chaudhry Nisar to question the rationale of spending so much on defence when the armed forces were found to be incapable of providing security to the citizens from outside attacks. The air force chief says he has the ability to strike down the drones entering Pakistan’s territory and what he needed was a go-ahead from the administration. Everybody knows this is not possible for a government depending on the US for economic bailouts and a military which wants more and more F-16s and helicopters and would like to have drones and night vision gadgets from the US. There is thus a lot of rhetoric but no options.
Terrorists, meanwhile, continue to have a field day. On Thursday they struck again in Lower Dir, where several inconclusive actions have been conducted by the security forces, killing 14 security officials. In case the attacks continue unabated, the number of Pakistani security personnel and civilians killed by the terrorists might soon surpass our casualties in the wars with India. Does this not require a revisiting of the security paradigm? The only rational choice for Pakistan is to fully concentrate on the terrorists who presently pose a greater existential threat to Pakistan than anyone else. Instead of providing an occasion to the outsiders to indiscriminately bomb our tribal areas, a more rational policy would be to divert whatever resources are required to the eradication of the terrorist threat once for all.
