Fissures have opened within the Obama administration over the drone programme targeting militants in Pakistan, with the US ambassador to Pakistan and some top military leaders pushing to rein in the Central Intelligence Agency’s aggressive pace of strikes, reports the Wall Street Journal. The programme, expanded by President Barack Obama soon after taking office, has angered Pakistan.
According to the newspaper, the White House National Security Council debated a slowdown in drone strikes in a meeting on Thursday, a US official said. At the meeting, CIA Director Leon Panetta made the case for maintaining the current programme, the official said, arguing that it remains the best weapon against al Qaeda and its allies. The result of the meeting – the first high-level debate within the Obama administration over how aggressively to pursue the campaign – was a decision to continue the programme, the Wall Street Journal quoted the US official as saying.
Another official, who supports a slowdown, said the discussions about revamping the programme would continue, alongside talks with Pakistan. Most US officials, including those urging a slowdown, agree the CIA strikes using the pilotless aircraft have been one of Washington’s most effective tools in the fight against militants hiding out in Pakistan and no one in the administration is advocating an outright halt to the programme.
Yet an increasingly prominent group of State Department and military officials now argue behind closed doors, says the WSJ, that the intense pace of the strikes aggravates an already troubled alliance with Pakistan and, ultimately, risks destabilizing the nuclear-armed country.
US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter, backed by top military officers and other State Department officials, wants the strikes to be more judicious, and argues that Pakistan’s views need to be given greater weight if the fight against militancy is to succeed, said current and former US officials.
Defenders of the drone strikes take umbrage at the suggestion that the programme is not judicious. “In this context, the phrase ‘more judicious’ is really code for ‘let’s appease Pakistani sensitivities’,” said a US official.
Advocates of sustained strikes also argue that the current rift with the Pakistanis is not going to be fixed by scaling back the programme, says the WSJ.
But the opponents say the pace and scope of strikes have become politically unsustainable because of their unpopularity in Pakistan. In a series of recent closed-door meetings, according to current and former U.S. officials, Ambassador Munter and some senior military officials argued that more selective targeting will maintain the strikes’ effectiveness while easing the political blowback in Pakistan, making it easier for officials there to work with Washington.
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss the covert programme or any internal debate over its future. “The president has issued a clear directive to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda, and the United States government is completely united behind that goal. I think the results speak for themselves,” Vietor said.
The CIA last year conducted more than 100 strikes. The pace has slowed to roughly 30 in the first five months of 2011, partly over concerns about Pakistani reaction, a US official said.
There is disagreement over how many civilian bystanders the strikes have killed. The Pakistanis say hundreds of civilians have died in the strikes, which is part of the reason they want them scaled back. The US says 30 civilians have been slain. Both sides agree hundreds of militants have been killed.
The pushback by some US officials against the drone programme comes as US diplomats and officials serving in Pakistan say the deep vein of anti-Americanism that runs through Pakistani society forces its elected and military leaders, including army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to distance themselves from Washington to avoid a popular backlash.
