The covert war on Pakistan

Who is bearing the ultimate cost of war drones?

Pakistan is an undeclared war zone yet launching war drones on the sovereign soil of the country has been a significant feature of the United State of America’s so-called War on Terror. This modern tool of warfare is somewhat a convenient alternative to having military troops on the ground. It is definitely less messy to press a button from a great distance to strike a target than to physically engage with the suspect on the ground. The slow-moving pilotless aircrafts are equipped with cameras, listening devices, and air-to-ground missiles. They can hover over their targets for hours, transmitting video feed of the scenes below, and then strike suddenly. The drone programme of America is haunted by questions concerning their legality, authorisation, effectiveness and their draconian (unintended) consequences. The heavy use of drones is not only changing the norms of modern warfare but also setting a very dangerous precedent for rest of the world.

How it started

On June 18, 2004, a Taliban leader Nek Muhammad Wazir was killed in a drone airstrike. Pakistan proudly claimed the credit of the attack. However, in 2006, various reports declared that it was in fact a CIA-operated US drone that killed Nek Wazir. However, the attacked was conducted as per the request of then President Pervez Musharraf. That is believed to be the first of the long series of drone attacks on the soil of Pakistan.

Many, like American journalist Mark Mazzetti, believe that in return for killing Nek Muhammad, Pakistan struck a deal with the US to collaborate for future drone attacks and also gave permission to the CIA to strike its enemies in the future. The drone programme under the Bush administration was almost invisible. However, his predecessor, President Barack Obama, expanded the programme exponentially.

Pakistani government’s stance

The official stance of Pakistani government is that ‘drone attacks are illegal, counterproductive, in contravention of international law and a violation of Pakistani sovereignty’. However, actions of the Pakistani officials tell another story. Anne Patterson, ex-US Ambassador to Pakistan, sent a cable to Washington in which she disclosed that in her meeting with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani on drones, he remarked: “I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.” And unfortunately, this is what the Pakistani government has been doing in the past. Despite huge public resentment and uproar, little if any, concrete action has been taken by the government officials to protests against the drone strikes. If the government actually believes the drone strikes are a violation of the sovereignty of the country then it is utterly shameful and quite disappointing to see what the officials have done so far to protect the honour of Pakistan.

The United States of America conducted the first drone strike outside of a declared war zone more than 12 years ago but it was not until May 2013 that the White House released a set of standards and procedures for conducting such strikes. This puts the Pakistan government as much as the American government at fault. For someone can take advantage of you as much as you allow it — the same principle can be extended to state politics.

Is it even legal?

The legality of the drone programme has been under question for a while now. By withholding information about its drone programme in Pakistan, the US defies the principals of free flow of information and transparency — the deeply cherished democratic hallmarks of the country. In the past, many officials like the US Congressman Dennis J Kucinich, have argued that even the Congress is denied the right to read the legal framework used by the Administration to justify the drone strikes.

Last year, President Obama while talking about the potential of the drones, admitted to CNN that regulatory guidelines are missing. He said, “We don’t yet have the legal structures and the architecture both globally and within individual countries to manage them the way that we need to.” He said that his administration “is seeing if we can start providing some sort of framework that ensures that we get the good and minimise the bad.” This is as good as saying that we have decided to do something which is illegal but we are working towards building a legal framework to justify our actions so it doesn’t get us into trouble. Go democracy.

If the sole purpose of the drone programme is to attain a pre-emptive military capability for taking out high value targets, I’d say it has failed poorly if most of the times the US doesn’t even know who gets killed. The signature strikes conducted by the CIA are a defiance of the international law which requires there to be a clear distinction between civilians and combatants. Conducting signature strikes is a particularly terrifying policy — it basically means that the drone will hit a target based on a target’s patterns of behaviour, but without knowing that target’s identity. If that itself is not bad enough, according to a New York Times report released in 2012, the US government counts all military-aged males in a strike zone as combatant unless posthumous intelligence proves them innocent (which it seldom does).

Blood of civilians

Even if the legality of the drone attacks is established, the civilian casualties can’t be brushed aside as collateral damage. In a Bureau of Investigative Journalism project, Naming the Dead, those killed in the CIA drone attacks are visually depicted. It is quite alarming to see how little the world knows about the identify of those who died. Journalists from the Bureau have been tracking drone strikes in the region since 2011. To date, the project has only named 704 of an estimated 2,379 killed by US drone strike in Pakistan. Of the 704 named dead, 322 are reportedly civilians, of which 99 are children, and 295 are alleged militants. The remaining 87 are classified as unknown.

It is heartbreaking to hear the stories of the people who are living their lives under the fear of the killing machines that hover over their houses. If someone is a criminal, then he/she needs to be tried in a court and given a chance of trial. Otherwise, innocent till proven guilty should be treated as a basic human right, not a luxury. More so, the location of a person should not be the sole factor to change this rule. In Afghanistan, there have been cases where US drones have reportedly attacked mosques, schools, funerals and large community gatherings and other social gatherings. A report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) also stated that the US Central Intelligence Agency deliberately attacked rescue workers and funeral processions in follow-up strikes after drone missile attacks on insurgents in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Various studies have highlighted the long standing and unsettling psychological impacts of living in constant fear of drones.

Is it worth it?

A series of military documents released to The Intercept recognised the shortcomings of the drone programme and even revealed that not only the drone programme was ill-suited to achieve its purported goal, but that it was actually counterproductive in many respects. This is apparent from the re-emergence and expansion of Taliban and al-Qaeda in the region. Taliban is in control of more territory than it was in the year 2001. David Kilcullen, a renowned Australian counterterrorism expert, said that ‘we are seeing a recovery of al-Qaeda on all fronts’ and Michal Moutot, a journalist, said that ‘al-Qaida is more dangerous than ever’.

Moreover, many experts argue that the supposed success of the drone attacks is misleading since those killed in the drone strikes were generally not high-value targets, but low-level militants — a term denoting any military-aged male killed in the campaign.

Droning of the peace process

A panel of experts convened by Washington’s independent Stimson Centre released a report arguing that even if drones were successful in killing terrorists, it didn’t mean they’re working. The report clearly warns that “the Obama administration’s heavy reliance on targeted killings as a pillar of US counterterrorism strategy rests on questionable assumptions and risks increasing instability.” Even if the administration is able to kill a significant amount of terrorists, it still doesn’t ensure that the militant organisations will cease to exist. It is about time that we question the capacity of the overly-militaristic approach to root out radical terrorist ideology. And killing thousands of civilians in the process is definitely not going to help. If anything, that only increases the chances of radicalisation of the otherwise peaceful society.

What next

The Stimson Centre report provides a set of policy proposals including a systematic review of drones’ costs and benefits; a commission on targeting, to show that we’re very careful about whom we kill; and an effort to establish international norms, so when Russia and Iran get drones, some basic rules are in place.

The US government has to be far more transparent in conducting its drone programme than the present. The onus also lies on the Pakistani government to push for transparency and accountability. There has to be limit on the exercise of power by a country. The US administration must reveal the rationale, procedure, and list of people that it targets. If they are terrorists, why is there a deafening silence and suspense revolving their identities? Until then, usage of war drones on a sovereign soil to kill whoever and whenever they want is nothing short of a policy of mass murder.