Musharraf admits secret deal with US on drone strikes

Former president Pervez Musharraf acknowledged his government secretly signed off on US drone strikes, the first time a top past or present Pakistani official has admitted publicly to such a deal.

Pakistani leaders long have openly challenged the drone programme and insisted they had no part in it. Musharraf’s admission, though, suggests he and others did play some role, even if they didn’t oversee the programme or approve every attack.

In an interview this week in Islamabad, Musharraf insisted Pakistan’s government signed off on strikes “only on a few occasions, when a target was absolutely isolated and no chance of collateral damage”.

Still, his admission that Pakistani leaders agreed to even a limited number of strikes runs counter to their repeated denunciations of a programme they long claimed the US was operating without their approval. The drone strikes – which the nonpartisan public policy group New American Foundation estimates have killed at least 1,990 people in Pakistan, including hundreds of civilians – are unpopular in Pakistan.

Unmanned US drones began launching attacks in Pakistan in 2004, by which time Musharraf had been president for five years after taking power in a bloodless coup.

Musharraf said Pakistani leaders would OK US drone strikes after discussions involving military and intelligence units and only if “there was no time for our own military to act”.

This happened “only rarely”, said Musharraf, who left office in 2008 and spent years in exile before returning to Pakistan last month to launch a political comeback. But sometimes, he said, “you couldn’t delay action”.

“These ups and downs kept going,” he said. “It was a very fluid situation, a vicious enemy, mountains, inaccessible areas.”

Musharraf said that one of those killed by US drones was Nek Mohammed, a tribal leader accused of harbouring al Qaeda militants in Pakistan’s western border region. At the time, in June 2004, Pakistan intelligence sources said Mohammed died after Pakistani forces launched a missile at a house where he was staying.