As US officials disavow two recent “drone attacks” in early February, the Pakistan army on Tuesday strongly denied a New York Times report which implied that the strikes had been conducted by the Pakistani military.
The two strikes, one each in North and South Waziristan on February 6 and 8 respectively, had reportedly killed up to nine people, including two senior al Qaeda commanders. In Islamabad, the Foreign Ministry lodged an official protest with the American Embassy. However, according to an NYT report, three American officials with knowledge of the programme said the United States did not carry out those attacks. “They were not ours,” one of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity told the paper. “We haven’t had any kinetic activity since January,” they added.
The report went on to say: “What exactly took place in those remote tribal villages, far from outside scrutiny, is unclear. But the Americans’ best guess is that one or possibly both of the strikes were carried out by the Pakistani military and falsely attributed to the CIA to avoid criticism from the Pakistani public.”
According to another report, “Two senior United States officials said there had been no American involvement in the attacks. A third official said the CIA had not paid the reports much attention because no American forces had been involved. But that official said American intelligence pointed to the Pakistan Air Force as having conducted the first strike, probably as part of a military operation against Pakistani Taliban militants in the neighbouring Orakzai tribal agency. The second attack was more mysterious. ‘It could have been the Pakistani military,’ the official said. ‘It could have been the Taliban fighting among themselves. Or it could have been simply bad reporting.’ ”
‘NOT US EITHER’: Strongly reacting to the report, the Pakistani military’s media wing – Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) – issued a press statement on Tuesday, denying any involvement in the strikes. “…such an accusation is distortion of the facts and seems to be aimed at diluting Pakistan’s stance on drone strikes,” an ISPR spokesman said in a statement. He denied that Pakistan’s security forces had carried out any operation, including air strikes, in the area on the dates mentioned in the news report.
CURTAIN OF SECRECY: For the past month, John O Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser and nominee to lead the CIA, has been dogged by Congressional questions about the drone programme’s lack of transparency, particularly when it comes to killing American citizens abroad.
The biggest obstacle to confirming details of the strikes is their location: the strikes usually hit remote, hostile and virtually closed-off areas. Foreign reporters are barred from the tribal belt, and a handful of local journalists who operate there find themselves vulnerable to pressure from both the military and the Taliban.
That murkiness has often suited the purposes of both the CIA and the Pakistani military, said the NYT report. It allows the Americans to conduct drone strikes behind a curtain of secrecy, largely shielded from public oversight and outside scrutiny. For the Pakistanis, the paper said, it allows them to play both sides: publicly condemning strikes, while quietly supporting others, like the missile attack that killed the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in 2009.
Still, the information vacuum also places American officials at a disadvantage when it comes to answering accusations that the drone strikes kill large numbers of innocent civilians alongside bona fide militants. State Department officials have complained that they cannot effectively counter civilian death claims they believe are hugely inflated because the programme is classified – a subject of lively debate inside the administration, one official said.
